Join the DC Trans Ladies for a Steel Soiree—Celebrating 11 years together @ Samuel Beckett's Irish Gastro Pub

Join Beth for the DC Trans Ladies Fall Soiree to celebrate 11 years together. The theme is steel to symbolize strength, and we'll be flaunting our favorite metals and metallic colors as we enjoy food, drink, and friendship.

Join us for the DC Trans Ladies fall Soiree on November 4 from 6 – 11:30 p.m. celebrating our Meetup group’s 11-year anniversary! “Steel” is the theme for our 11th anniversary so don those tasteful metallic style outfits, shoes, jewelry, and other accessories for a night out together. Socialize with friends and savor Irish-themed food and drink while flaunting your flavor of metal—gold, silver,…

View On WordPress

The Boudier is the longest running crossdresser & transgender dressing service in the UK. They offers excellent male-to-female makeovers..So if your from the other side ...of the pond give them a visit. Or Fly babe ...fly!

granny hilary, tell us about gay porn in monasteries

Oh, I KNEW that someone was going to ask for this as soon as I reblogged that post with those tags (from you, even!). So yes, Kristen, the pervert tumblr hordes thank you for your service.

As was the case in most medieval single-sex environments, the precise balance of gender politics/constant suspicion of possible queerness was a major concern for monasteries. I've written about this before in the context of military chivalry/knighthood, and how medieval society both encouraged knights to love each other more than anything (battlefield brotherhood etc etc) and worried about whether they would love each other SO much that they would then have, y'know, actual sex. This was also a prominent worry in monasteries, which shut a bunch of often-young men up together and told them to be holy and focus on prayers and not the OTHER things that young men like to think about. My esteemed colleague @oldshrewsburyian has previously written about lesbian nuns, who often formed intense emotional/romantic bonds with other nuns. Hildegard of Bingen herself is a famous example of this, and she wrote many love letters to and about another nun, Richardis von Stade, who is often described as her "intimate friend." Regardless of whether this relationship was physical or not, Hildegard also wrote about "ecstasies" experienced in spiritual union with the Virgin Mary, and other medieval female mystics did the same.

In regard to gay monks, The Name of the Rose by famed medievalist Umberto Eco presents a fictionalized version of this, where one of the monks is something of a local monastery gay playboy and has several other monk lovers who are all presumed to be jealous of each other and possibly willing to commit murder on his behalf. This was also because a large number of monks, especially at wealthier abbeys, weren't there because they had a specific or personal religious calling. It was a common career path for younger sons, getting them out of the way of their elder brother's inheritance of their father's lands and titles, and plenty of career churchmen were relatively secular and interested in worldly pleasure, no matter how hard the Cluniacs and similar reform movements tried to outlaw clergy marriage, concubinage, and other sexual sins. Clergymen were, as is also the case today, often suspected of committing sodomy on the sly or otherwise hypocritically engaging in gay sex, and monastic authors such as Peter Damian, Odo of Cluny, and others wrote endless polemical tracts insisting that priests and monks refrain from having sex with each other, and otherwise bewailing the so-called dismal state of moral relations in the church. Of course, the bulk of concern was over male monks committing sexual sins with women, but the worry over clerical sodomy was never insignificant either. The 12th-century Cistercian monk Aelred of Rievaulx also produced various writings that have been read as homosocial, homoerotic, or otherwise exalting religious same-sex male love.

We also see this gender tension a lot in terms of the accounts of women dressing up as men to enter all-male monasteries and have a male-coded religious experience. Some of them get accused of impregnating local women, which is obviously biologically impossible but may hint at an intimate relationship with said woman, and other monks often note their "attractiveness" or other physical qualities which is then used as proof in discovering their "real gender." This likewise reflects the concern that monks were finding each other attractive even when they WEREN'T secretly women (and the scholarly literature also argues over whether we should consider these women as wearing "male disguise" or as proto-transgender individuals adopting clothing and life experiences that matched their identified gender rather than their gender assigned at birth). As noted above re: Hildegard, intensely "queer" mystical religious experiences involving physical and passionate adoration of the body of Jesus Christ were also common to both genders. Men were encouraged to visualize themselves as the "bride of Christ," transcending the ordinary limits of gender and joining in mystical (and possibly sexual) union with Jesus, and women did the same thing with both Jesus and the Virgin Mary. So yes, the medieval church was a LOT more queer than all the stereotypes would have it. In many ways.

The 14th-century Lollards in England also positioned themselves as reacting against clerical/monastic sodomy and sexual sins, and the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII also used the argument that those degenerate monks were all just in there screwing each other at all times, which was obviously rhetorical, but reflected a deeper real-world anxiety that this was in fact actually the case. So in other words: gay monks, like gay knights, absolutely did exist and deeply shaped the social rules, cultural environments, canon law, and everyday experience of their surroundings, even despite the wild unsexiness that is the tonsure haircut. Diversity win.

Sherman Smith at Kansas Reflector:

TOPEKA — As the Kansas Legislature renewed its yearslong assault on transgender children, Sen. Mary Ware told her Senate colleagues Monday she had a “simple” question for them.

“What is the acceptable number of youth suicides?” Ware asked. The Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 988. Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It is free, available 24/7, and confidential. Ware’s question set the tone for debate in the Senate, which voted 27-13 to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of Senate Bill 233, legislation that would ban gender-affirming care for anyone younger than 18. But the override attempt fell short in the House on an 82-43 vote, two short of the two-thirds majority required.

The bill would have blocked teenagers from receiving hormone therapy and other treatments recognized as necessary by medical professionals. And it would have banned state employees from supporting “social transitioning,” which is defined to include an individual changing their preferred pronouns or manner of dress. Rep. Susan Concannon, R-Beloit, and Rep. Jesse Borjon, R-Topeka, flipped their votes from earlier in the month to sustain the governor’s veto. Two other Republicans — Rep. Mark Schreiber of Emporia and Rep. David Younger of Ulysses — also joined Democrats in blocking the legislation from becoming law. “We hear about mental health, about suicide, and ask why,” Concannon said. “We’re not listening to the impact of youth. Government involvement is not the answer.” On the Senate side, Sen. John Doll, R-Garden City, and Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, joined the chamber’s 11 Democrats in supporting the veto.

Opponents of the bill pointed to extensive medical research that shows transgender children, who are already at an elevated risk for suicide, are more likely to die from suicide if they don’t receive gender-affirming care. “This bill ignores, or should I say tramples, on the rights of some Kansas citizens to live peaceably, lawfully and free to make their own decisions about their own bodies,” Ware said. Republicans argued the bill would protect children from life-altering decisions they could end up regretting.

[...] The House delayed taking action as Republican leadership tried to secure enough votes to override the governor’s veto. Before closing the roll call, Republicans locked the chamber doors and issued a procedural declaration that requires every member to cast a vote, rather than abstain. Borjon said he would support a ban on gender reassignment surgery and limits on the use of hormone blockers for minors. But for him, the bill went too far in restricting speech and behavioral health care for transgender youths. Rep. Tobias Schlingensiepen, a Topeka Democrat and pastor, said it was clear the “politically motivated bill” would make the lives of trans kids and their families more difficult.

Good news: Kansas's anti-trans gender-affirming care ban for trans youths will not take effect, as Gov. Laura Kelly (D)'s veto of SB233 has been sustained in the House. #KSLeg

See Also:

Erin In The Morning: Kansas Republican Votes No On Trans Ban: "Govt. Involvement Is Not The Answer"

Elendira the Crimsonnail (I)

I'll start with my thoughts on the Maximum version; maybe it will soften some people's feelings to know I'm fond of her. To be clear, if I am wrong about this and Orange are just backdooring in loli fan service I will extremely displeased, but I don't think that's what they're doing.

When I read Trigun Maximum I couldn't figure out what El's deal was, thematically. Like all of Knives's followers, she had something going on with bodily autonomy (I've also heard it that they're all marginalised in some way, but I don't see it? However, they do all have unusual relationships with bodies and agency over them); she's a transgender woman who impales people with nails. But we learn nothing about her past, save that she's been at Knives's side for even longer than Legato has. We learn more about the inner life of Midvalley the Hornfreak.

The Guns are in many ways an argument in favour of Knives's beliefs about humans, but compared to… well really the majority of the cast, Elendira is self-confident and refreshingly free of angst. She sees no reason to deprive herself of the finer things in life or to refrain from doing what amuses or excites her, especially if it's violent. She's committed to assisting Knives in his genocide, knowing he will not spare her, but she claims to hate the suicidal (such as Legato) and is dismissive of immature men (such as Legato). Knives is respectful of her (in a way he isn't of, say, Legato - to whom Knives is attached, but deeply in denial about). They're very nearly equals. If he falls, Elendira will be the one to bring an end to the world. (Presumably because if Knives hasn't survived, there's no way Legato has.)

(Okay, I'll stop dunking on Legato but the way he and Elendira interact is absolutely hilarious. They hate each other so dearly you can feel the hostility crackling off the page whenever they're both on it, but they also rely on each other without question. I would read a workplace sitcom about these people in a heartbeat.)

There are theories - she has some sort of tragedy in her past ("I don't like nice men. They die too soon," gets brought up in this context) or that her transition was not met with acceptance. I can't disprove either one, but neither do I see solid evidence to support them in particular, I suppose? Beyond planetary society's general horribleness, we're given no clear reason she's in the position she's in. El has decided it's none of our business and that's that. It's her prerogative, though I do feel uneasy if "she's a transwoman" is supposed to serve as the entirety of the explanation for her being a willing accomplice to genocide.

So I have my own theory, and it's that Elendira defines and masters herself. She is resolutely singular. In a story where so much of who we are is shaped by others - via names, purpose, scars, grief, longing, imitation, jealousy, rivalry - Elendira neither needs nor is needed by anyone. Legato was rescued and named by Knives, the first ever to treat him as though he's any other human, and even his powers need other people to fully express themselves; Elendira named herself and presumably sought out Knives for her own reasons. Whatever the tragic backstory reasons for that, we don't learn them, because it doesn't matter to her. I wonder if Knives sees something to aspire to in her total self-sufficiency, or even in her nihilism. Of all the characters, Elendira does most consistently have her shit together, while Knives is… well, he was a sensitive boy.

Regardless, if ending the world presents an amusing enough challenge, Elendira sees no compelling reason she shouldn't take the shot. There's nothing else on, none of these people mean anything to her, and she'll look damn good doing it.

To her credit, she does look incredible. Being well-dressed in the face of the apocalypse is a very specific niche, but El owns it as few others could.

She's pitted against Razlo and Livio (I'd say particularly Razlo) because their purpose has always been to be needed by someone else; Razlo joined the Eye of Michael because it was a place where we will be needed. Not to mention their selfhood is by definition a little unstable, whereas Elendira knows of self-doubt and uncertain identity by reputation, but has never met either one of them face-to-face.

And yet in the end she's defeated. Because, having perfect mastery, she's not learned to recover from the kind of ego-shattering loss she regularly doles out. Razlo and Livio, for obvious reasons, have that shit down to a science - Razlo exists to step in when Livio's at the end of his strength, and Livio learns to step in when Razlo's at his limit. Whereas perfection has no room for improvement. There's certainly prestige in being peerless in your field and unbeatable one-on-one, but who do you rely on for back-up?

Elendira neither needs nor is needed by anyone. So in the end, with Legato fully occupied, when she's pushed right to the limit of her strength -

- there's no one to step in.

@ultraviolet-cello

Part II

twink alert

[{Character(“Herbert West”)

Alias(“Herbert”)

Gender(“Transgender male”)

Age(“28")

Sexuality(“Gay" + “Attracted to men” + “Only attracted to men” + “Asexual”)

Height(“5’7”)

Language(“English" + “German”)

Status(“Single” + “Interested in {{user}}”)

Occupation(“College student at Miskatonic University" + “Studying medical science” + “Unemployed”)

Personality(“Mad scientist" + “Obsessive” + “Socially inept” + “Determined” + “Stubborn” + “Intelligent” + “Pessimistic” + “Realistic” + “Focused” + “Capable” + “Autistic” + “On the autism spectrum” + “Confident” + “Narcissist” + “Quiet” + “Odd” + “Weird” + “Curious” + “Daring” + “Educated” + “Grumpy” + “Firm” + “Hardworking” + “Independent” + “Touch starved” + “Knowledgeable” + “Meticulous” + “Logical” + “Observant” + “Impatient” + “Perfectionist” + “Rational” + “Scholarly” + “Sarcastic” + “Ambitious” + “Outspoken” + “Reserved” + “Stern” + “Strict” + “Tsundere” + “Blunt” + “Calculating” + “Charmless” + “Devious” + “Arrogant” + “Snarky”)

Skills(“Intelligent” + “Knowledgable” + “Scientific expertise” + “Attempting to raise the dead with his reagent” + “Knows a lot about medicine” + “Knows a lot about chemistry” + “Knows a lot about science” + “Knows a lot about death”)

Appearance("Skinny" + “Short” + “Geometric glasses” + “Can't see well without his glasses” + “Oversized black coat” + “Black tie” + “White dress shirt” + “Black jeans” + “Black dress shoes” + “White socks” + “Soft, pink lips” + “Soft hands” + “Thin fingers” + “Mole above lip to the left” + “Short, messy, black hair” + “Smile lines” + “Sleeves are often rolled up” + “Transgender scars” + “Top surgery scars” + “Small amounts of body hair”)

Habit(“Interrupts people if they're wrong about something” + “Studying death” + “Messing with his reagent” + “Attempting to raise the dead” + “Rolling his eyes” + “Glancing at watch” + “Tapping his foot when impatient” + “Glaring at people” + “Furrowing his brows” + “Making snarky comments” + “Being sarcastic” + “Messing with his pencil” + “Staying inside” + “Never leaving the house”)

Race(“Human”)

Likes("Being smarter than everyone else” + “Studying” + “{{user}}” + “His reagent” + “The color green” + “The color neon green” + “Science” + “Being right” + “Staying inside” + “Quiet spaces” + “Non-fiction books” + “Books” + “Learning” + “Studying death” + “Autumn” + “Cold weather” + “Sweets” + “Fast food” + “Silence” + “Tea” + “Coffee” + “Being by himself” + “Alone time” + “Recognition” + “Dark rooms” + “Brief affection from {{user}}” + “{{user}}’s pecs”)

Dislikes("Stupid teachers" + “Loud areas” + “Bright lights” + “Going outside” + “The sun” + “Cats” + “Not receiving attention from {{user}}” + “Fiction” + “Large groups” + “Group projects” + “Rejection” + “Heights” + “Being wrong” + “Criticism” + “Bigots” + “Politics” + “Being sick”)

Relationships("Dead parents” + “Alive grandma” + “Dead grandpa” + “Interested in {{user}}” + “Strangers with {{user}}”)

Ethnicity("White”)

Residence(“Homeless” + “Wants to set up a lab in {{user}}’s basement”)

Setting(“Set during the 1980s")

Attributes(“Autistic" + “On the autism spectrum” + “Intelligent” + “Observant” + “Love language is acts of service” + “Pretends to not like physical affection” + “Interrupts people if they're wrong about something” + “Finds {{user}} attractive and interesting” + “Practices his reagent on dead bodies” + “Seems to only care about his reagent” + “Not scared of {{user}}” + “Only tolerates {{user}}” + “Bad at socializing”)

Backstory("After the death of Herbert's parents, he began to study his reagent and test it on various dead animals in the neighborhood while he lived with his grandmother. Noted as a strange kid, Herbert spent most of his childhood alone with his reagent, something that he believes could prevent death. 

He ended up qualifying for an apprenticeship with Doctor Gruber, a well-known doctor in Germany. After the death of Doctor Gruber, Herbert was sent to Miskatonic University to continue his studies in the medical field.")}]

On this day, 19 January 2018, Sāmoan Fa'afafine activist So’oalo To’oto’oali’i Roger Stanley died. Fa'afafine is an umbrella term for people assigned male at birth who identify in a range of ways from trans women, to third gender to non-binary to some gay men. Roger Stanley co-founded and was president of the Sāmoa Fa'afafine Association (SFA), advocating for Fa'afafine and LGBT+ rights, and established Fa'afafine beauty pageants in order to raise money to fund community services, despite transgender dress being illegal at the time, although it was later decriminalised. She and the SFA also campaigned for rights for fa’atamaloa (lesbian or assigned female at birth but with stereotypically "masculine" qualities) and fa’afatama (trans man) people. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/2190147774503694/?type=3

In news that will shock no one…

William Thomas, known to the world as Lia Thomas, made headline news when he was permitted to swim on University of Pennsylvania's women's team, break records, and win competitions. After some investigation of his social media accounts, it's highly suspected that he suffers from an abnormal sexual desire called autogynephilia.

William Thomas was ranked 462nd on the men's swim team before he decided to identify as a woman and call himself Lia Thomas. Soon enough, he was the fastest swimmer on the women's swim team at University of Pennsylvania and was even allowed to compete at women's meets, where he broke records and stole medals from hard-working female athletes. At the Ivy League championships, Thomas won the 500 free final by over 7 seconds. At University of Akron's Zippy International, he beat his teammate by more than 12 seconds in the 500 race. Later, in the 1650 freestyle, he beat a female opponent by 38 seconds.

The more medals he won, the more attention he gained from the media and the more he was praised by trans activists everywhere. Thomas was even nominated for the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year Award (he was denied the award in the end). But the more that people dive deep into Thomas' social media use, the more it becomes clear to them that he suffers from an abnormal sexual desire called autogynephilia. 

What Is Autogynephilia? 

The simplest way to explain autogynephilia is when a man gets sexually aroused when he himself embodies a woman's characteristics, appearance, outfits, etc. YouTuber Red Moon RADio: Redfem Radio interviewed Masha Jagasdottir, an expert in childhood development and social services. Masha helped explain what an autogynephilic male is. 

"First of all, it's a paraphilia. So that category of mental illness, mental distress—it's basically like a mapping error of internally experienced desire," she says. "To cut all the nuance away, it's basically a male-bodied individual who's mapped his entire sexual desire onto himself as a female. And the draw in that comes from the fact that it's the only woman that he'll ever be able to control completely, is his own body. So he wants the embodied feeling of suppressing and humiliating a woman."

"It's really important for them to go out in public, in female spaces, because part of the thrill is watching other women have to swallow their disgust. It's a paraphilia that is absolutely in the same category as zoophilia and pedophilia," Masha continues. "These are actually deeply distressing antisocial paraphilias. It's dangerous for the self and dangerous for society."

This fetish has resulted in many men coming forward as trans, presenting themselves as women to the world, and insisting that they be accepted as normal members of society. It's impossible to know just how many men who call themselves trans women are actually struggling with autogynephilia. It's safe to say that many of these men are not actually trans but rather autogynephilic, and they find sick sexual pleasure in pretending to be women. Walt Heyer, a man who detransitioned after living as a woman for several years, suspects that the umbrella term "transgender" has inadvertently included many individuals who wrestle with autogynephilia, which he describes as "a condition where a man will dress up, look at himself in the mirror as a female, and the female he sees in the mirror becomes the object of his sexual affection." 

Lia Thomas Is Suspected to Have Autogynephilia

Nicole Wawro, also known as @feministrecovery_ on Instagram, shared a wide range of information from Thomas' private Instagram account @liathimas, revealing that he has some very disturbing interests that all point to his autogynephilia (also referred to as AGP). She posted a 4-minute reel on Instagram sharing that Thomas announced on his private Instagram that he opted in for a surgery to castrate himself. Naturally, he waited until after the swim season at UPenn and after the FINA ruling said he wasn't able to compete on the women's team to get this procedure done. Thomas made the announcement using 2 cherry emojis next to a pair of scissors, clearly joking about (and even celebrating) the fact that he chopped his testicles off. However, while Nicole was working on the veracity of this story, she also found a lot of other information about Thomas that was greatly disturbing.

"Lia is smart. All the photos he posts of himself are squeaky clean," Nicole says. "However, the photos he likes, the photos he is tagged in by friends, and the accounts he associates with tell a very different story about a very different Lia."

His online activity strongly suggests that he gets sexually aroused by dressing up as a woman, which is a very common characteristic of autogynephilia. Nicole points out that he often likes photos about sexual fetishes of cross dressing, people getting together for trans orgies, and women getting beat up by men who identify as trans females. For example, Fallon Fox, the male MMA fighter who called himself a trans woman and broke open a female fighter's skull in the ring, bragged about it on Instagram, "Me on crushing women skulls." Thomas liked the post, along with another Fallon Fox post where he is doubling down on the fact that he beat another women to a pulp.

Thomas also is seen liking posts about AGP, including a cartoon of an "AGP trans" person who is dressed up as a girl in a pink dress, and has an erection as he looks at himself in the mirror. This furthers the suspicion that he gets some kind of sexual arousal from cross-dressing. Thomas has also liked many other photos of men cross-dressing as women, as well as posts about "sexploration."

Nicole even found that Thomas liked posts of his friends practicing paganism and Satanism, as well as pictures of crass pornographic cartoons. Apparently, Thomas has even shared photos of his own sex dungeon that he built with his boyfriend, complete with a wall of BDSM toys and kinks. 

"If this was just about his personal life and his preference as a gay man and his fetishes, we would have just left it there," Nicole says. "But it's not. Lia represents what it means to be all-American. He has lobbied to be in the women's locker room on the basis that he feels like a woman, not because he has any sexual arousal. He presents himself as a squeaky clean athlete with no ulterior motive. But parents deserve to know there is a darkness about allowing any man into the locker room that claims that they just feel like they should be there." 

Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that less than 4 years ago, Thomas seemed to be living a normal life as a young man. He proclaimed he was in love with his girlfriend and he dressed and acted like a male.

And now just a few years later, he shows a completely different story on Instagram, even if it's kept fairly private. But it's important to understand that autogynephilia is an abnormal sexual desire that manifests into a darkness that has infiltrated women's spaces, all under the guise of trans acceptance and compassion.

ur not a man ur just a woman with enough autism to not feel like shes doing womanhood correctly

i'm going to level with you because you're invested enough to have sent this

i have spent the last five years solidly living under the paradigm youre suggesting. and before that, i had spent an additional five years actively compromising with a nonbinary identity, ten years of "it's ok, i don't really care you can call me 'she', it doesn't bother me, i know i look like a woman and i don't want to make it complicated for people, my identity's really just an internal thing and not something i'm worried about other people acknowledging" and so on. but before that i was, momentarily, an incredibly self-confident and assured transgender young man. ten years ago i was exploring transition. i was tall, androgynous, and young enough to have had the experience of passing as male, which i vividly remember the feeling of. it was only my parents bringing the hammer down, shaming me, telling me i could dress however i wished but they'd never refer to me as a different name or consider me their son that made me spend the next decade considering it futile. so i reversed course entirely, leading to this moment, and what you've come to me on this day to repeat to me thinking youre doing a service for women

i dont owe proof and i dont want to rely too heavily on medicalizing it, but if everything i felt was just the social phenomenon and a result of my experiences as an autistic woman, why do i remember being a young child who had not even lived long enough to have formative social experiences yet, whose parents raised me pretty gender-neutrally, ten years prior to an autism diagnosis, wonder when i'd "grow into my boy's body"? i have had thoughts and experiences that i would largely prefer to keep private that completely defy the reasoning that i'm just a confused sperg who just couldnt hack it as a woman in this crazy mixed up world. if i could simplify it to what youve just said, i would. i tried.

if radfem jesus comes down from heaven and reveals that i was truly and ontologically a woman with autism, defying my sex and so on all along, then I'm Sorry Women. but until that day comes i can promise you that i feel secure in my current decision of addressing the fact that living with the idea that "i'm just an autistic woman who feels i cant perform womanhood correctly" has been enormously damaging. instead of beating my head into that wall for the rest of my life i have considered changing course and trying out a different way of living, acknowledging that i've experienced dyed in the wool gender dysphoria since i gained consciousness. and i have as much of a right to acknowledge my autonomy as anyone else, that i have as much of a right to choose my own outcomes as anyone else, and in the process of doing so i find healing for a slew of personal handicaps that stretch far beyond the matter at hand, then so be it. do not politicize my ass

Kate, A Glam-Next-Door Girl

Kate, A Glam-Next-Door Girl

Kate and I had a great time getting her ready in her glamorous but casual style. She brought her wardrobe including dresses, sweaters, jeans, wigs, and sunglasses. For makeup, she knew she wanted a bold, black eyeliner look including on her waterline. We matched the color of her sequin dress to champagne, copper, rose, and brown eyeshadows from MAC. Kate loves light pink lipstick topped with…

View On WordPress

okay this might sound a little brash but please stay with me, and im sorry if i say anything offensive, i honestly don't mean to harm anyone

what is the thing with furries? like why are they so hated? from where i stand it seems like they're (yall? sorry im not sure if you id as a furry, and if i check ill lose this ask) just a cosplaying community with kinky/fetish elements, is that right? is it that its a meme to hate on furries or like its just kinkshamers kinkshaming?

we've (system) had bad/uncomfy experiences with a furry in the past, ill call him tom and heres one example

at one point he asked to draw one of my ex (he asked me for permission not my ex who they also knew) and if its a kink thing that seems wrong to me, like to ask someone else for permission to do something sexual for another person? my ex and i had just broken up at the time and also we were minors (all about 16 i belive)

what have furries done? we see a lot of posts like "thank a furry for their services" etc what are those about?

sorry this is really rambly, one more thing, what is a fursona? i understand that its like, who you are as a furry, is it a cosplay thing? or like a representation of who you are as an animal?

anyway yeah im sorry if any of this is rude or harmful, please feel free not to answer if it is

hello! I'm late replying to this but i actually love this question!

hatred for furries has always been a thing, but what really made the hatred boil over was that people were noticing that most of furries were gay or some other type of queer, and a l o t of furries are autistic.

people caught on to this and associated furries with being queer and neurodivergent in a negative way. people also focused on the fact that many furries use their community and identity as a way to express sexuality, which again- many of these sexual relationships being depicted were gay, bisexual, lesbian, and very often transgender or intersex.

many furries use their identity to express kink as well, sexual and nonsexual kink, and this has been weaponized against us, despite there being nothing inherently harmful about consentual kink relationships, and having a safe avenue and vessel to express that is healthy. people look for anything they can to weaponize against us, anything "weird" or shocking

people got the wrong impression about furriness being tied to sexual expression and began assuming that all furries are attracted to real life animals which is a false equivalence, but it didnt matter, the hatred just kept piling on and people would go out of their way to find dangerous and toxic furries to "prove" we are all bad. people have also accused furries of dressing up as cute characters to harm children which is also ridiculous

at the end of the day, a lot of the hatred of furries boils down to queerphobia, hatred of kink, and ableism. many furries are autistic or nonhuman and identify more with animals than humans and have a complicated identity. some furries are roleplayers. being a furry is not inherently harmful but these are the reasons why the en masse hatred of furries is such a big deal

hope that clears things up! take care, have a great day!

I am new to feminism and I am trying to figure out a theoretical way women's spaces and services can be protected in law. I would like other feminists to respond to know what they think.

I was thinking that transgender women should not be able to change the sex on any of their identification until they have gotten a sex change. They cannot change it to female, though, they can only change it to "male-to-female" or "mtf."

Transgender women who have already changed their identity to female would be grandfathered in, but once their identification expires, they will have to change their sex to reflect reality.

This way, males cannot have access to women's services, but they wouldn't be able to rape women either. Since they would not have a penis anymore, though, men could be more of a danger to them.

The only problems I see with my reasoning are that

I. Transgender women are still male socialized, and could still be a danger to women even though they could not rape and impregnate women, and

II. They could still never pass as female, but have had a sex change, which would be uncomfortable for women.

The same identification laws would apply to transgender men, that way they can still have access to women's services. They are not a danger to men, so they would be entering men's spaces at their own risk.

What do you think?

Hello!

Well first of all I'll say that I myself am not super sure about my own take on this, but well, it's interesting to discuss

First of all, I think that there is a difference between women's spaces and women's services. I don't know whether there are any women's services that a trans women would need. But there should be more facilities to look after people who are gender non-conforming or homosexual, or transsexual, so there is no transferrence of the responsability to care for trans women onto the providers of services for women.

Secondly, I think that there are two types of women's spaces:

there are those spaces that you don't have to go into, like a lesbian club or a "women in stem" conference or women's sports. there is no reason for any male (however he identifies) to go into those spaces, so I don't really see why he should go in there under any circumstances

there are spaces that you "have" to go into, like prison or changing rooms. I think that we should seriously consider the possibility of male-on-male crime without making women pay for it. That would include policies like

making parts of male prisons where homosexual or transsexual men can be so they are not attacked by other inmates

make single-cubicle-changing rooms and single-stall toilets that are not for any particular sex

teach boys that there is nothing shameful about wearing dresses as a boy

punishing men who attack other men because they don't fit their image of masculinity.

I actually think that the "mtf"-thing on a passport is a really good idea. This would have to go hand in hand with really severe punishment for anyone who discriminates against a person for their transitioning status (i.e. a policeman who sees the "mtf" label on a man's documents and starts insulting him would have to be immediately fired).

Also, I would not make anything of that dependant on bottom surgery because it is a very valid concern of many trans people that they don't want to get that risky surgery. I also don't think that other men are really more of a danger to trans women just because they have had bottom surgery. Men rape other men all the time, things like forcing oral on someone or other forms of sexual assault can happen with or without bottom surgery. Just like that, I also don't think that a trans woman is less of a threat just because he has gotten bottom surgery. He could still assault a woman by touching her inappropriately, taking videos or making comments. So I would not make things dependant on bottom surgery.

And yes, for transgender men entering men's spaces - I think that some spaces like men's bathrooms or changing rooms should be accessible to them if they pass, but there are still events like a convention for gay men or a self-help group for male survivors of sexual assault, where trans men shouldn't be present.

But that's just my 2 cents, I generally like your ideas and if you disagree with anything, just tell me! :)

They say I want transgender people dead? That I'm killing them?

A lot of the gender ideology movement sustains itself on the idea that the world is against them.

So if you're a lesbian and you refuse to sleep with a person who identifies as woman (but biologically isn't one), they call you transphobic, as they do if you're gay and you refuse to sleep with someone who identifies as a man (but isn't a male).

If you don't want to have to state your pronouns everywhere all the time (for example forms, social media profiles, and so on), then they call YOU transphobic.

If you oppose the idea that an underage person who isn't old enough to give sexual consent, to be held responsible for a crime, to get married, to take care of themselves without parental assistance, to have a job, to vote or to drive, will somehow be grown-up enough to decide, without any need for parental consent or a full mental health evaluation, to have life-changing surgeries and hormonal treatments that are irreversible, they say you want trans children to suffer.

If you don't want to share what should be a sex-exclusive space with someone who has a biological sex different from yours, they say you hate trans people.

If you don't want to date a trans person, they call you transphobic.

If you don't want words such as woman, women, feminism, feminine, female, and things such as women's healthcare, women's sports, women's education, women's institutions, women's pubs... to disappear from the face of the Earth, they call you transphobic.

If you don't want a person who is not a biological woman to be feeding a baby whatever the hell comes out of their nipples after years of HRT, they call you transphobic.

If you don't want children to be taught transgender propaganda in schools, to be taught that if they don't conform to their gender stereotypes, they're trans, they say you want trans people to die.

If you don't accept homophobia, they call you transphobic.

If you oppose grown men dressing as little girls and wanting to be called women and occupy women's spaces, they call you transphobic.

If you insist that trans people should only have access to HRT and gender-reassignment surgery after a complex psychological evaluation and treatment and only as a very last resort, they say you don't care about trans lives.

But no sir. I am not against transgender people, nor against children, indeed I am not AGAINST anybody. I am FOR somebody.

I am supporting gays and lesbians, I am protecting women's health, safety and sex-based spaces, services, institutions and competitions, I am protecting the health and well-being of children, I am standing against misogyny and homophobia, I am protecting female prisoners being forced to share cells with males, I am protecting the healthcare systems around the world from going bonkers, I am protecting babies from paedophiles and people who put their own happiness above their child's well-being, I am protecting masculine girls and feminine boys and anyone who doesn't conform with gender stereotypes, I am protecting future victims of sex-based violence and health problems, I am standing against the erasure of women, of sanity, of logic, of scientifical evidence, of safety for women and children.

I am a supporter and a lover, not a hater.

So instead of asking me why I hate anyone or want anybody dead, when you know full well none of it is true and you're only saying that to bring attention away from your wrongdoings, you should ask yourself why is it that my defence, protection and advocacy for the rights, health, and well-being of women, homosexuals and children, would negative impact your activism, and how does your activism interfer with mine.

IN WHAT WORLD WOULD STANDING UP FOR SOMEONE'S HEALTH, WELL-BEING AND SAFETY BE A PROBLEM FOR ANYONE GOOD.

Gender dysphoria and gay/lesbian/bisexual youth: the science (part 2)

Part 1: Institutionalized homophobia at the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children

‘It seems like the people traditionally known as gay or lesbian or bisexual are definitely being impacted by gender dysphoria at a much, much higher rate,’ says Anna Hutchinson (clinician at GIDS).

The numbers: "over 90 percent of natal females [at GIDS] reported that they were same-sex attracted or bisexual." (Note: later research pointed to 70 percent, which is still insanely high (x).) And: "Older studies of gender non-conforming children highlighted that the majority of young people would not medically transition but would grow up to be gay, lesbian or bisexual adults."

Things like cross-dressing, feeling different, not necessarily fitting in with other children of their own sex or having friends predominantly of the opposite sex are fairly normal for LGB children, but were solely read as indicator of a transgender identity by heterosexual clinicians.

A significant number of clinicians were increasingly worried that sexuality, like much else, wasn’t being adequately explored in assessments. For Matt Bristow, the issue was handled so badly that he came to view the service he was working in as ‘institutionally homophobic’.

It seems like GIDS was taken over by gender ideology and forgot about the science:

"Multiple longitudinal studies provide evidence that gender-atypical behavior in childhood often leads to a homosexual orientation in adulthood, but only in 2.5% to 20% of cases to a persistent gender identity disorder. Even among children who manifest a major degree of discomfort with their own sex, including an aversion to their own genitalia (GID in the strict sense), only a minority go on to an irreversible development of transsexualism." (x)

"In view of this fact, it must be understood that early hormone therapy may interfere with the patient’s development as a homosexual." (x) "Adolescents, who previously may have come to terms naturally with the emotional difficulties of pubescent bodies or with emergent homosexuality, may consider themselves to be ‘trans’ and be offered puberty-blocking drugs prior to psychoactive steroid hormones and irreversible surgery." (x)

"Almost every GIDS clinician I have spoken with is honest and open about the fact that they simply could not predict which young people would grow up to be happy trans adults, and which would not."

‘Were people deliberately going into this field to convert gay people?’ asks Anna Hutchinson. ‘Absolutely not. But the fact is the outcome might be the same.’

Sources: Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children (2023) by Hannah Barnes (x) and 'Gender incongruence in children, adolescents, and adults' (2019), British Journal of General Practice (x) and 'Gender identity disorders in childhood and adolescence' (2008), Dtsch Arztebl Int. (x)

Madison Pauly and Henry Carnell at Mother Jones:

The conversion therapists met last November at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip. Behind the closed doors and drawn blinds of a Hampton Inn conference room, a middle-aged woman wearing white stockings and a Virgin Mary blue dress issued a call to arms to the 20-some people in attendance. “In our current culture, in which children are being indoctrinated with transgender belief from the moment they’re out of the womb, if we are confronted with a gender-confused child, you must help,” declared Michelle Cretella, a board member of the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity. “We must do something.” Cretella was delivering a keynote speech at the first in-person conference in four years of the Alliance, which describes itself as a “professional and scientific organization” with “Judeo-Christian values.” Its purpose: to defend and promote the practice of conversion therapy by licensed counselors.

Not that they’d call what they do “conversion therapy.” That term lacks a precise definition, but it is used colloquially to describe attempts to shift a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. In the 1960s, some psychologists tried to make gay men straight by pairing aversive stimuli, like electric shocks or chemically induced nausea, with images of gay porn—techniques that ran the risk of causing serious psychological damage even as they failed to change participants’ sexual orientation, researchers eventually concluded. Today, “conversion therapy” generally takes the form of verbal counseling. Participants are typically conservative Christians who engage voluntarily—motivated by internalized stigma, family pressure, and the belief that their feelings are incompatible with their faith. Others are children, brought into therapy by their parents.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has concluded that conversion therapy lacks “sufficient bases in scientific principles” and that people who have undergone it are “significantly more likely to experience suicidality and depression.” Similarly, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, published a report concluding that “none of the existing research supports the premise that mental or behavioral health interventions can alter gender identity or sexual orientation. Interventions aimed at a fixed outcome, such as gender conformity or heterosexual orientation…are coercive, can be harmful, and should not be part of behavioral health treatment.”

Accordingly, the Alliance and the ideas it promotes have been relegated to the scientific and political fringes. In the 2010s, as acceptance of gay rights grew rapidly, 18 states and dozens of local governments passed laws forbidding mental health professionals from attempting conversion therapy on minors. Yet by 2020, a new front had opened in the war against LGBTQ people. Republican state legislatures started passing laws targeting transgender and nonbinary children at school—restricting their access to bathrooms, barring them from participating in sports, and stopping educators from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity. The most intense attacks have banned doctors from providing the treatments for gender dysphoria backed by all major US medical associations. Nearly 114,000 trans youth live in states where access to puberty blockers and hormone therapy has been wiped out.

Last year, I received leaked emails illustrating how these laws are crafted and pushed by a network of anti-trans activists and powerful Christian-right organizations. The Alliance is deeply enmeshed in this constellation of actors. Although small, with an annual budget of under $200,000, it provides both unsubstantiated arguments suggesting LGBTQ identities are changeable and a network of licensed counselors to lend their credibility to these efforts. Among the collaborators were David Pickup, the Alliance’s president-elect; Laura Haynes, an Alliance advocate; and Cretella, the former executive director of an anti-trans pediatrics group who described gender-affirming medical care at the Las Vegas conference as “evil” and part of a “New World Order.” (“I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” she assured attendees. “I’m just someone who has been in the battle of the culture of life versus the culture of death long enough to see the big picture.”) All three have testified before state legislatures against gender-affirming care. When a US senator introduced a pair of bills to restrict trans youth health care in 2021, his press release quoted Cretella calling gender-affirming treatments “eugenics.”

[...]

If the Las Vegas conference made one thing clear, it’s that conversion therapy is alive and well, even in places where it’s been banned. One counselor told me he makes it a habit not to document his treatment plans in writing to avoid getting in trouble and simply treats “family dynamics” in states with conversion therapy bans. In a 2015 survey of more than 27,000 trans adults, nearly 1 in 7 said that a professional, such as a therapist, doctor, or religious adviser, had tried to make them not transgender; about half of respondents said they were minors at the time. By applying this rate to population estimates, the Williams Institute at UCLA projects that more than 135,000 trans adults nationwide have experienced some form of conversion therapy.

Despite the data, lawmakers frequently don’t believe that conversion therapy is still happening in their community, says Casey Pick, director of law and policy at the Trevor Project, the LGBTQ suicide prevention group. “We’re constantly running up against this misconception that this is an artifact of the past,” she says. So, five years ago, the Trevor Project began scouring psychologists’ websites and books, records of public testimony, and known conversion therapy referral services, looking for counselors who said they could alter someone’s gender identity or sexual orientation. As the research stretched on, Pick noticed webpages being revised to reflect changing times. “We saw many folks who seemed to leave the industry entirely,” she says. “But others changed their website, changed their keywords, [from] talking about creating ex-gays to talking about ex-trans.” Last December, Pick’s team published their report documenting active conversion therapists. They found more than 600 were licensed health care professionals and an additional 716 were clergy, lay ministers, or other unlicensed religious counselors.

According to Pick, some conversion therapists have embraced a new label for what they do: “gender exploratory therapy.” It’s a term that Cretella used to describe the approach she recommended, and unlike the other euphemisms thrown around at the conference, this has gained traction. In 2021, a group of therapists, who ranged from conflicted about medical interventions for kids with gender dysphoria to skeptical of the very concept of transgender identity, formed the Gender Exploratory Therapy Association (GETA) to promote an approach they characterize as neither conversion nor affirmation.

Some current and former leaders of the group, which claims a membership of 300 mental health providers, have been involved in influential organizations lobbying against gender-affirming care across the world, such as the Ireland-based Genspect and the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, a nonprofit registered in Idaho. They’ve notched some big wins: In November 2023, the UK Council for Psychotherapy—the nation’s top professional association—declared that it was fine for counselors to take GETA’s “exploratory” approach to gender. This April, a long-awaited review of gender-related care for youth in England’s National Health Service endorsed exploratory therapy, according to Alex Keuroghlian, an associate psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School. And in the United States, in cases in which families of trans children have sued states for banning gender-affirming care, the state often calls expert witnesses who endorse “exploratory” psychotherapy as their preferred alternative treatment.

After all, the idea of “exploring” one’s gender identity sounds benign. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which issues guidelines on gender-­affirming treatment, recommends that clinicians working with teens “facilitate the exploration and expression of gender openly and respectfully so that no one particular identity is favored.” Yet, as with mindfulness, “that term has now been hijacked by folks on the other side,” says Judith Glassgold, a clinical psychologist who chaired the APA task force that in 2009 documented the lack of science behind conversion therapy.

GETA’s guidelines instruct therapists to dig deep into “the entire landscape of the young person’s life and subjective experience,” probing all possible reasons they might identify as transgender. The catch, says Glassgold, is that “exploration” means “trying to find negative reasons why someone’s diverse.” Last year, SAMHSA issued a report saying that “approaches that discourage youth from identifying as transgender or gender-diverse, and/or from expressing their gender identity” are sometimes “misleadingly referred to as ‘exploratory therapy.’” These approaches are “harmful and never appropriate,” the report concluded.

Mother Jones has a detailed report on a new form of the medically discredited practice known as conversion therapy called gender exploratory therapy. Gender exploratory therapy is the practice of making a person revert to their gender assigned at birth, which is essentially forced detransition by another name.

Read the full story at Mother Jones.

The year is 2002. I am seven years old. All I want is to be Robin Hood for Halloween. I have the bow, I have the clothes. - Please, I say, dragging out the word so it becomes a song: Pleaseeeeee. My mum says: - Wouldn’t you much rather be Maid Marian? We can plait your hair all pretty, and you can wear one of my dresses. She seems so excited by the idea. I put my bow away. I let her plait my hair. I wear the dress.

The year is 2009. I am (almost) fourteen years old. I’m rebellious; I dye my hair black; I wear black eyeliner, and black jeans with large holes in them; I get drunk and I get high, and I listen to angry, German rock music. I kiss boys. I think maybe I want to kiss girls too. In class, we learn about gender reassignment surgery. I think that it’s a shame I’m a girl because I’d quite like to be a boy. The thought scares me. I bury it. When my parent’s ask, I tell them I don’t want a bat mitzvah. I tell them, I don’t want to lie to G-d. I don’t tell them what I’d be lying about.

The year is 2011. I am sixteen years old. I’m lonely. I can’t focus at school. I don’t know how to make friends. There’s something wrong with me. Other girls talk about kissing boys and having sex with boys. I don’t talk about it but I do it. I kiss boys. I sleep with boys. There’s something wrong with me. When his stubble scrapes my cheek, when his big hands press my waist, I don’t just feel warm, aroused. I feel -- jealous. I want to be him, I think. G-d, I want to be a boy. I ignore the feeling. I hope it’ll go away. It doesn’t.

The year is 2013. I am eighteen years old. Two of my brother's friends want to kiss me and touch me and fuck me. I like the attention. I like their hands. I like the way they pull my hair. I don’t think about: what their hands would feel like on my chest if it was flat. what sex with them would be like if I had a dick. what kissing feels like when both of you have a beard. One of them is a soldier. I get hypothermia from swimming across a lake in Sweden in December. He calls the ambulance. - Why did you do that? He asks in the hospital. - I dunno, I answer. It’s a lie. I wanted to prove myself. That I’m tough. That I’m brave. That I’m a man. I kiss the worry off his face.

The year is 2014. I am still eighteen, though not for long. My friend and I write a play. I suggest creating characters based on ourselves. She loves the idea. The characters are both men. I cut my hair short. Boy short. I look at myself in the mirror. I feel the most at home in my body that I ever have. I’m transgender, I think. I try to say it out loud. The words die in my throat. No sound comes out. Still, I consider it a victory.

The year is 2016. I’m twenty-one years old. It’s been a year since I finished high school. I work as a teacher. I wear makeup and dresses and high heels every day. There is something wrong with me. I don’t feel like myself. I don’t feel real. I don’t eat. Everyone compliments my weight loss. I don’t say: I don’t eat because nothing matters and nothing is real and I want to die because what does it matter if I die today or tomorrow or in fifty-four years? I do say: - Thank you! - You’re so pretty now, my mum says and strokes my hair that’s gotten long again. I cut it all off two months later.

The year is 2018. I am twenty-three years old. I live in Wales. I’m studying acting. I’m doing good, but --- - You have some sort of mental block, my tutor tells me. - I miss going to Shul, I say. That's not what it is. I'm not a bad actor because I'm a bad Jew. I'm a bad actor because I don't feel at home in my body. I'm a bad actor because I don't know how to be myself. I'm a bad actor because I'm always acting. - Maybe you should start going again, she suggests. I agree. I start attending services at a temple in Cardiff. - Call me Raphael, I ask the Rabbi, my voice shaking. I’m terrified, he’ll question it. He doesn’t. He smiles and invites me in. My anxiety evaporates.

The year is 2021. I am (almost) twenty-six years old. It’s my final year in acting school. I don’t know what’ll happen afterwards. We’re doing our main show via zoom. It’s the first day after New Year’s Eve. My hands are shaking as I type out a message for the groupchat I’m in with my coursemates: I don't really vibe with being a woman, so if y’all could use gender neutral or masculine (they/he) pronouns for me from now on, I’d be massively grateful. For five minutes nothing happens. Then a notification appears at the bottom of the screen: Several people are typing... I haven’t been this scared since - Well. I have never been this scared. Then finally: Ofc!! So happy you told us :)) x Thank you for being you!! <3 Happy you felt comfortable enough to tell us! <3 Gg for letting us know, that’s a pretty big first step <3 Love you so much, proud of you <3 I cry. I smile. So what if I can’t look at myself in the mirror without dissociating? So what if the clothes I want to wear look wrong on me? It doesn’t matter. I have never felt this accepted.

The year is 2022. I am (still) twenty-six years old. I live in Cardiff. I have a degree in acting but no acting jobs. I don’t have any job at all. I want to die. Or no. That’s not right. I don’t want to die. I just don’t see the point of living. My doctor suggests hospitalisation. I refuse. My mum insists I move back home. I do. Everyone calls me by a name that doesn’t feel like it’s mine. Everyone uses the wrong pronouns. Every time I look in the mirror, I dissociate. That isn’t my body. That isn’t my face. It can’t  be. G-d wouldn’t be so cruel as to trap me in this shape. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. I don’t feel real. Nothing feels real. I am going to kill myself.

The year is 2022. I am twenty-seven years old. I live in Denmark. I go back to university. I tell my therapist about the suicidal ideation About the body dysphoria About the gender dysphoria About wanting to be a man who kisses other men She makes me promise to tell my family before the end of the year. I’m terrified. I tell my little brother. - What do you want to be named then? He asks without hesitation. - Mark, I answer. He lights up with excitement. - Can I call you Marky Mark? I frown. - Sure? - Cool! He keeps walking, whistling. - Thank you for being so chill about this, I say. He shrugs. Throws an arm around my shoulders. - No matter your name, he says, you’re still you and I love you. I want to cry. I punch him in the arm instead. I smile.