Anonymous asked:
using a pumice stone isn't very butch of you
rationalisms answered:
i need you to know that this is already a top contender for funniest anon message of the year for me
deeply resent that i've literally not been able to take a shower since i got this message without thinking "pumice stone butch" to myself the moment the water comes on. i hope you're all happy.
A post I've been thinking about but yall need to realize men are just people. Gender and biological essentialism is still bad even when you apply it to men. Men aren't inherently evil or bad. Men are taught toxic masculinity and to be misogynistic (just as white people are taught to be racist) but they aren't inherently this way. This isn't meant to absolve them either. Men need to take responsibility for unlearning the toxic messages they have been taught. But like, honestly men are just people. They aren't inherently bad people.
I know you're a minor so I'm being nice but I want to comment on your correction of this to cis men in the tags. I mean all men and one could even include transmascs in this as I find this they also face similar issues. Don't get me wrong, trans men and cis men aren't exactly the same but they're both men and this post applies to all men. People 100% also use biological essentialism against trans men. The number of times I've heard people call testosterone "poison" or claim we're gonna become violent monsters on T is beyond count. Also on the flipside, people use biological essentialism to claim that trans men can't be bad people because they were afab (just as terfs claim they can't be oppressors because they were afab). The infantalization of trans men (and also transmascs) is also biological essentialism.
100% agreeing with the above, while also adding that transmeds also use biological essentialism to justify their own brand of internalised transphobia/sexism? Like I once saw a truscum guy claim that his being trans is because he has a “male brain”, and that “male brains are superior to female brains” - trying to separate himself from women by claiming that women are just not as smart or talented as men.
Even when not taken to that kind of extreme, biological essentialism causes many trans men (as truscum/transmeds do tend to be trans men or transmasculine) to insist on Gender Dysphoria as being this medical disorder and also the only thing that makes someone trans, usually due to hormone exposure in the womb or having a cross-sexed brain or whatever the fuck pseudoscience they prefer.
It’s stupid because it creates a hierarchy of trans people and opens people up to being attacked for “not being trans enough” or of being “fake-trans”, and it upholds a rigid gender binary; non-binary people get attacked the most because, in the eyes of transmeds, there’s no biological way for someone to be not a man or a woman (despite how…you know, there is). It posits a gender binary as being innate in people’s brains and genetics; men are this way, women are that way, and there is no way to change which one you are. Even worse, if we frame gender dysphoria as being a medical disorder, then it’s a “disorder” that we don’t know the cause of, leading to people trying to find the “trans gene”, or waste time on gendering brains rather than helping trans people’s healthcare.
I apologise if this is off-topic a little bit - men are perfectly fine and no man is inherently a bad or evil person on the basis of being a man. I just wanted to discuss how trans men and transmasculine people often wield biological essentialism against each-other.
seriously i wish people understood that queerbaiting has almost nothing to do with the actual content of a story. two men can gaze soulfully into each other’s eyes for 45 minutes straight and then at the end be like “oh yes my good pal friend no homo” and its still not anything more than homoerotic and kind of stupid writing.
queerbaiting is a marketing technique to get gay people to buy a ticket. it’s hemming and hawing whenever someone asks about subtext, giving long answers that don’t mean anything to sort of imply “maybe you just need to wait and find out. ;)” it’s interviews where the actors talk about how much they love that particular relationship, and they think they will ~surprise~ you with how it turns out. it’s every single trailer showing these two people almost kissing, even as the creators talk about how offended they are that anyone would think it’s gay. it’s disney’s 65th First Gay Character that they sort of imply might
actually be a main character this time but is yet another nameless
asshole. it’s evil, because it’s completely deliberately misrepresenting the actual media just to make a buck.
Anonymous asked:
queer is literally a slur. like you’ve never been called that in a derogatory context like most lgbt people? you think your experiences escaping homophobia make it okay to justify the use of a homophobic slur?
helenasurvives answered:
queer is an identity.
it has also been used as a slur. there is no denying that. but using a word as a slur does not make it a slur. because before queer is a slur it is an identity. before it is derogatory it is a label. the use of queer as an identity is infinitely more important than the use of queer as a slur because the people who identify as queer are infinitely more important than the people who use queer as a slur.
say a lot of people decided they hated me. despised me. were disgusted by me to the point where my own name became a slur. would you tell me not to say it? would you tell me i could no longer be helena, and instead must come up with a euphemism for the name that belonged to me decades before it belonged in the mouths of bigots?
because that would make you an enabler.
you would tell me i can’t say my name anymore because some lowlife decided he could use it to insult me?
you would tell a gay man that he can’t be gay anymore because some teens in the early 2000’s started calling everything they didn’t like “gay”, and now he has to say “same sex oriented male identifying individual”?
does that enrage you? because it should. that’s exactly how you sound.
you are telling me i cannot use my label. you are telling me that when my great-uncle shouted until his face was red and he spat tobacco and the word queer at my feet, he was right. he was right to insult me, and i was wrong to say my name.
you are shitting on every single one of our predecessors. you are slandering every person who fought for their rights to exist and and be tolerated and be celebrated in their countries, every person who was lost to the aids epidemic, every person whose country criminalizes love and gender expression, every child whose parents abandoned them for straying from the norm, every person who was born and will die in the closet longing to be themselves. the queer umbrella is a safety net, a security blanket, the comfort of being known without being pressured to tell. it is near and dear and important as fuck to every member of the lgbt+ community and you are a blight upon the earth you walk.
how dare you speak upon my experiences with homophobia. how dare you disguise your own homophobia as activism. and how fucking dare you have the audacity to come to my blog and hide behind an anonymous ask and preach to me about how i’m oppressing myself. go look at the fucking wikipedia page for queer and read about how 1980s lgbt+ activists, especially lgbt+ people of color, fought to call themselves queer in a world that still hates peculiar things. and here you are forty years later spitting queer back at their feet.
i don’t give a fuck if people start using my name as a slur. my name is still helena. i will not change it. i chose it, i like it, and it belongs to me. it does not belong to bigots no matter how badly they want it. your discomfort with my identity is not my fucking problem.
i am helena. i am queer. die mad & go fuck yourself
it’s pride month babes reblog if you’re queer or if you like frogs
Next anon is going to tell fat people they aren’t allowed to call themselves fat don’t you know it’s a slur that thin people use against fat people.
genuinely as a fat queer person this is a good example. do you know how many times fat ppl are told by thin ppl they can’t/shouldn’t call themselves fat, like, oh, no, you’re PLUS SIZED you’re CUDDLY you’re FLUFFY, like, fam, it’s fat. I’m fat. It’s not my body’s fault that you decided a perfectly normal word was an insult. Frankly the way queer ppl and fat ppl have mobilized around their words can be compared as well, as well as the way ppl try to disarm them by giving them more “harmless” or “pleasant” epithets.
Anonymous asked:
also on the same note before terfs come in like "nooo you can't be trans because trans is homophobic noo"
if gay people don't want to date me because of my genitals, cool, not everyone is attracted to those and I can't force someone to be attracted to them. the difference is whether you don't want to date a trans person /because they're trans/, that's transphobic and it needs to stop.
we're not some kind of puzzling gender, we've always been there and you also have always dated us, you just like to pretend we're a new 2015 Tumblr thing to spread misinformation.
terfsarehomophobic answered:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You know as well as I do that is not what the anon meant at all but do you know a lot of the reason why that is? Is because a lot of trans men identify as lesbians before they come out as trans.
I’m a lesbian: I’m never going to knowingly date a trans man. Bc he’s a man, and I’m not attracted to men.
As I’ve told y’all before, you continue to love and date vaginas if you want. For me, if I’m dating, it’s going to be a woman. As in a person.
chiming in with Lesbian/Sapphic Trans Men are also A Thing, especially out here in the working class, and not just as the result of queer historical miscommunications.
We're nonbinary.
^^^^^^^^^^
Yeah TERFs will never get that gender is nuanced.
I’m also going to add that mixed-orientation relationships exist too? Like lesbians who stay in a relationship with a trans man partner are relatively common and if they can figure out a way to make that work then that’s all fair and good. (There’s also a number of straight women whose “husbands” came out as trans women,
People forget that labels are just how we describe our experiences; our actual experiences very often have multitudes and nuances that are lost just by saying “I’m gay” or “I’m trans.” Labels are basically the cliff-notes version and people can mean very different things depending on the person - it’s why people keep trying to redefine certain terms to suit their own needs, and include/exclude the people they want to include/exclude most.
Of course, TERFs are the worst offenders; they not only try and redefine “lesbian” to basically make themselves The Only True Lesbian Womyn In The World, but they ALSO want to redefine several other terms, and also queer history.
People just need to accept uncertainty and ambiguity with these things!
From my reading of queer theory/bisexual-themed essays, it seems to me like there’s a really long history of gnc bi women strongly identifying as both lesbians and gay men?
Adding to that all the books on autistic women in which autistic women keep describing themselves as both male and female, or genderless, or externally female and internally male and it’s like…as a gnc bi autistic woman, I can’t let the side down. :D
The more I live on this earth, the more convinced I am that the gender roles of “masculine woman” and “feminine man” just…don’t exist in a cisnormative, heteronormative society.
I referenced this before, but the warped spiral I used to be in was: being told that I’m too masculine and lesbian to be a real woman, and the constant pressure to be more feminine; trying to socially transition as a trans man before being told that I’m too effeminate and campy and gay to actually be a man, I should be a straight girl instead; and, lastly, coming out as non-binary and being told “why can’t you just be a masculine woman???”
The reason why I can’t be a masculine woman - or rather, why there’d be little point framing my gender in that way - is because, even if I DID identify that way, “masculine woman” is an oxymoronical statement. Identifying as a woman immediately creates an expectation in people of gender-conformity, femininity and heterosexuality - the second you defy one of those points, they get confused!
I’m not saying that masculine women or feminine men don’t exist, obviously gender-nonconforming people of all genders are real and I love them. It’s more that, in a society where gender and gender-based violence exist, “man” and “masculine” are synonyms, as are “feminine” and “woman”.
I’m too androgynous for either of those roles. Whichever I attempt to embody - which can be either, I like them both - I’ll face some kind of frisson, because people will hear “woman” and get confused, and they’ll hear “man” and get confused.
The new documentary Queer Japan, which premieres Dec 11th in virtual theatres and on-demand, features artists, activists, and everyday people from across the spectrum of gender and sexuality in Japan.
The documentary presents, among others, drag queen Vivienne Sato, erotic manga artist Gengoroh Tagame, councilwoman Aya Kamikawa (the first transgender elected official in Japan), and nonbinary performance artist Saeborg.
The Japanese Government is being urged to end a rule requiring transgender people to undergo sterilisation to legally change gender.
People who seek to alter their legal sex must appeal to a family court under legislation entitled Law 111.
Although the law affords some rights to transgender people and was hailed as step towards equality for LGBT people when it was introduced in 2003, it imposes a series of restrictions on those seeking legal recognition.
Bridal photoshoot by Tokyo based studio Tsubomi Photo. I’ve already shared their wlw version, I am so glad they did the mlm too!
