Genderblogging - Blog Posts

"A growing number of people are and have been questioning the more usual representations of gender. Some have had chemical and surgical enhancement, and many have not. Inhabiting a less static gender identification than that of typical transsexuals, they are exploring and experiencing a fluid range of gender embodiment. My own intimate partner, Kayt is one such individual. Ironically it has been through knowing and loving her that I have gained an even deeper understanding of the mutable soul. Her flexible consciousness has encouraged me to be generous in my thinking, and less rigid about the way others self-define, or in fact, when they choose not to" - Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits (1996) by Loren Cameron

Preoccupied by the way polyamory is treated with hate. I've gotten hate for even approaching the subject in the past. There's so much violent rhetoric and ideation surrounding it, so much genuine bigotry and prejudice towards people who practice it. But if you mention that, you get met with dismissal. It's not a big deal. You're taking it too seriously. Who gives a shit. Get over yourself. It is something that people respect so little that they refuse to even see it as a legitimate identity. Even left-wing progressive types will make jokes tantamount to thrashing blue-haired SJW snowflakes when it comes to polyamory. They're gross. They're weird. They're always cringe. It's never the people you want to be poly. I would rather kill myself. You'd think simply changing the structure of a relationship wouldn't be a problem, but even the most ardent defenders of equality can begin to say some pretty awful shit. Problem is, fundamentally, it is not seen as legitimate. It's not seen as deserving respect. There's all this handwringing about how these relationships are doomed to fail in order to justify this kind of thought and speech. It's bizarre to watch unfold. Frankly, it's the same sentiment and a lot of the same jokes as those cracked about nonbinary people. We're at a point where we've firmly accepted that everyone has a right to do what they want within the structure of social norms, you can take any side you want and do it with whoever you want. But as soon as you step outside of those norms, as soon as you go beyond the boundaries of social convention to find what suits you personally, everybody becomes a bitter reactionary.

kinda funny that my body hair is just like every other aspect of me in being poised precisely between 'will get funny looks' by hegemonic standards and 'pfft, you think that invisible shit counts?' by counterculture ones

unrelatedly changing seasons is always kind of a brutal renegotiation with the mysterious rules of dysphoria but i WISH i understood why like. the exact same tank tops will have been totally fine with certain bottoms and then with others it's suddenly like 'agh nooooo we're doing a bad job of Man AND of Woman, time for death 💀💀💀'

saw a family tree template were you marked family members as male, female, or deceased. so glad we're finally recognizing a third gender (corpse)

tfw a binary trans woman describes hrt as inherently feminizing because she finds that framing gender-affirming and you, a nonbinary person, are like, could we maybe not describe having breasts as an intrinsically "female configuration," actually?

just having one of those little upswell-of-gender-despair moments, you know how it is

specifically of the nonbinary variety where like. you know you don't really like how you look¹ or how other people react to you but the Opposite Version wouldn't really be better, really you want something in-between or ambiguous or nothing at all but that isn't actually a real option you get to have in real life, in real life you either get to be a mannish woman whose real gender desires are a painful secret or you get to become Pronoun Pin Guy and then are still effectively seen [and treated!] as a mannish woman, just, you know, a crazy, annoying one

i mean obviously part of the problem here is that i don't really have nonbinary/agender/&c people in my life, i'm super isolated and then even my internet circles have historically been comprised of like. trans people μέν who care about medical transition but not about the language other people use for them (which to be clear is perfectly valid but like. unfortunately my maybe-deepest identity is 'poet (non-practicing)' and i care so much about language. [i may or may not also care abt (some aspects of) medical transition but like. i don't atm have any health insurance or income and also due to the ongoing cptsd frozen-rabbit psychological situation it's a bit hard to tell what ""i"" might ""want"" so. question mark there]). cis+ people δέ who basically are like 'well the real practical, adult approach is just to accept that one's Basically Materially Cis unless one's strongly motivated to medically transition, but, like, your special-snowflake baby sensitivities are Valid or whatever…'² which, again, you have to let people frame things for themselves and pretend it doesn't imply anything abt you, because if nothing else, your differences of inclination wrt how to frame things make your situations different! but unfortunately, even though i do genuinely intellectually believe that, emotionally it hurts my feelings every time, because i really resent this idea that like. cis is the box everyone starts in + stays in unless they kick hard enough to get out of it. bodies shouldn't mean anything by default!!

⸻ ¹ i think this gets worse every time the season changes and i have to re-figure out how to walk the extremely narrow sartorial line i can actually bear, is part of what's going on here ² to be clear and fair to the people in question the level of superiority i've portrayed here is entirely my projection onto them, it's not on them that this stance makes me feel this way, it just does :/

also i've been mainlining patricia moyes' henry tibbett mysteries which are like. generally solid-enough if not brilliant entries in the Classic British Mystery Canon if you like that sort of thing, with of course the usual disclaimers about homophobia, sexism, &c: notably there's also one book with a minor trans character! and a Helpful Explanation about how her husband doesn't feel at all strange about her being trans because she's so obviously ~naturally feminine~ and being trans is Totally Separate from being gay—not, to be clear, in the way we'd actually agree with, that like, one is sexuality and the other gender; but rather in a way where 'it always leads to misery if a transsexual experiments with homosexuality.' [me at this juncture staring into the camera & thinking abt all the gleeful gay trans people on tumblr.] anyway to me this was ultimately less offensive than it was laughable, though of course ymmv! however there was also one with a butch character, and that one made me rather sadder and also got me thinking again about how stupid trans infighting is, because you can't actually separate homophobia from transphobia from misogyny—

[H]e saw a massive and somewhat formidable figure making its way across the lawn from the direction of the greenhouse. It was impossible at this distance to tell if the newcomer was male or female—the cropped grey hair, the weather-beaten features, the corduroy knee-breeches and open-necked shirt were appropriate to either sex. Even the voice was ambiguous. […] At close quarters, Henry was surprised to see that the mannish face was coated with a thick layer of pancake make-up, in a grotesque parody of femininity.

and

Facing her, with their backs to the door, were two masculine back-views, both wearing dinner jackets. As they turned to greet the newcomers, Henry was not at all surprised to see that one of them was Dolly, nattily dressed in evening wear, complete with taped-seam trousers, a frilled white shirt and a black bow tie. […] Dolly stood in the doorway, lumpish and unhappy in her ridiculous dinner jacket…

like. the feminine-coded aspects of her presentation are 'grotesque.' the masculine aspects are 'ridiculous.' she can't win! and like. the character is a butch who was almost certainly assigned female at birth, but the narrative critiques her in these ways that are unavoidably deeply transmisogynistic—i mean, that line about her made-up 'mannish face' being 'a grotesque parody of femininity'?? yikes.

anyway. just wild in light of this to be aware of how many trans bloggers on here are fighting one another abt which of us are Really Oppressed. like. is dolly ~transmisogyny-exempt~? what about the trans woman from the other book, who's treated entirely respectfully by the narrative and by the characters—but also can't access her inheritance, because claiming it would require her to out herself…? i just don't understand any analysis that comes to any conclusion besides 'these are all different heads of the same vicious hydra, and many of us may face the same attack at different times; the answer is mutual solidarity and united resistance.'

i was like well i could ""compose a post"" or i could just. mine the way i explained this in chat the other day for parts—

anyway all this [trying to work out a congenial set of blogs to follow] has me thinking back to when i made a friend in my german reading class and was like 'oh right actually sometimes you meet people and it immediately feels good and easy and safe and fun. forgot that was how it was supposed to work!' bc unfortunately the reality is that as a now–chronically isolated misfit i'm strongly motivated to try and convince myself i could like people even when. we aren't actually compatible.

bc the thing is, it turns out that not feeling like you're part of either mainstream gender club is: really fucking lonely! bc you just feel constantly like. wow insane gender coercion is happening all around me constantly and it makes me angry and scared and i don’t know how not to vent incredulously about it but i'm also acutely aware that becoming someone who can't shut up abt their gender alienation is a great way to come off as a bore and (pun not intended) a drag…

not to mention that like. people are basically only nice to me when they girlbox me so like. i need it and hate it and feel guilty abt it!