click through to see whats what – fun fact the dragonfruit was the First One made but as i had no plans to make the rest of em at the time theres a noticable difference in quality and size a h h ah a
it’s infinitely more accurate to characterize a trans woman as a woman pretending to be a man than it is to say she’s a man pretending to be a woman
This is such an important point, and it hits at the crucial problem that even when cis people do genuinely try to wrap their brains around trans people, they tend to have trans men and trans women entirely reversed.
When a cis man tries to imagine what it would be like to be trans, invariably that man imagines what it would be like if he “wanted to be woman,” because that’s what many people think trans women are.
Instead, he should be trying to empathize with trans men. He should be thinking about his own childhood and relationship to manhood, and then asking himself how it would have felt if he’d grown up being told he was a girl, forced to wear dresses, never recognized by other boys as a boy, and then experienced the horror of going through the wrong puberty and becoming a giant estrogen factory.
Many cis women, particularly in LGBT spaces, will fall all over themselves trying to empathize and identify with trans men, because the same transmisogyny that tells them that trans women and cis men are connected tells them that cis women and trans men are connected.
Instead, cis women should be asking themselves what it would have been like if they had never been allowed to have their womanhood acknowledged. How would it have felt to grow up being told you were a boy, not allowed to deviate from male stereotypes (often with violent repercussions if you did), always viewed by other women as an icky boy or predatory male, exposed to the utter horror that is being a woman in male spaces where they think no women are around, and had testosterone distort your body irreparably only to have everyone around you use your anatomy and appearance to forever deny your womanhood and where your best possible outcome is to transition and live your life in abject poverty fighting loneliness and dysphoria and surrounded by people who think you’re a disgusting, subhuman monster who should be locked away or put down?
If you want to worry about men pretending to be women, pay more attention to trans men. They are men who are forced to pretend to be women, and while that is immensely fucked up for them to go through, it doesn’t change the fact that they are MEN in WOMEN’S spaces, and many of them take advantage of transmisogynist ideas about gender to stay in those spaces even after coming out and transitioning. Just look at all the trans men at women’s colleges – schools that in most cases will not allow trans women.
Trans women have always been women. Trans women have always been female.
Trans men have always been men. Trans men have always been male.
A trans woman cannot be a “man pretending to be a woman” because by definition we aren’t men and never were.
Needed to hear this today.
If you wanna have a clue what being a transgender person is all about, read this.
I’ve made mention of EXCEPTIONAL fanfiction on this blog in the past and now I feel the need to make another mention.
This is literally one of the most fantastic pieces of literature I’ve read in my entire life. Not even counting the fact it’s longer than some novels, it could easily be a piece of fiction in its own right. The amount of world and characterization building are breathtaking. The author, spectralPhobia, managed to take names and characters and references and concepts any fan of Homestuck is well familiar with and make them into her own universe of a tale.
And I mean that quite literally.
I’ve read plenty of alternate universe fanfiction but never one so meticulously well-crafted and put together. As I mentioned, the story could be an original work of its own without the Homestuck elements. But for a fan, those elements just make it all so much more relatable and enjoyable. Even if you don’t like some of the characters used, or whom she chose as the main protagonists/antagonists, or the relationships that occur- I guarantee, you will still be enthralled with this story.
It’s been a long, long, long time since I could confidently claim a story left me on the literal edge of my seat. Gripping at it, my desk, my keyboard- whatever was within reach because of just how hard I was sucked in. The range of emotions I felt multiple times left me with an incredible experience. I cried, I raged, I exclaimed joyously and threw my hands around and would tug at my hair screaming “NOT THIS AGAIN JAKE FUCKING ENGLISH DON’T YOU EVER LEARN?!” (Read the story and you will understand, trust me, he gets better. They all do.)
I’m making this post because it took me far, far too long to find this gem and I’m so disappointed I didn’t get to read and experience it sooner. (Even though, blessedly, it meant I didn’t have to wait for updates, haha.) I want the world to know this work exists. I want everyone in or out of the fandom to know. It’s so beautifully written I think a non-Homestuck could read this, take the characters as they are and still be satisfied. That’s how good the story is.
Oh, and did I even mention? The fact it had lovely artwork accompanying it? The illustrations are wonderful and all made by the author herself, s-opal as she’s known on Tumblr. They add another layer of immersion into an already grand story.
I’m telling you, this is one piece of writing you DO NOTwant to miss. Go and read it ASAP!!! I’ll even give you a link. Though I warn you, as mentioned prior, it is a doozy of a read. But worth every single day spent.
non-autistic authors write autistic characters all the time. they just don’t realize it. they’d rather not admit it most of the time, either.
the thing is, non-autistic people have met autistic people more than enough times. however, due to their stereotypes about autism, they often can’t identify it as autism. they see something is up, but they can’t put their finger on just what is up.
so they see people like us and they know the ‘archetype’ which is autistic people. they write us all the time: airheaded professors, awkward nerds, pent up geniuses, etc.
when autistic people point out how strikingly obvious it is that this character is autistic, they usually deny it, or at best, they say the character is ‘if anything, extremely high functioning’, which is more of a kick in the gut than a confirmation. we hardly get those, either.
so, here’s the thing: there are some characters that are very obviously autistic to actual autistic people. pearl from steven universe and papyrus from undertale are two of the most agreed upon examples that i’ve seen. nearly ever autistic fan of steven universe i met says, “yeah, she’s autistic”, and the same goes for papyrus.
when we, as a community, bring this up, however, we are shot down. “oh, he’s not autistic.” i once was told that – ironic as it was – my headcanoning papyrus as autistic offended autistic people or hurt autistic people. but i’m autistic and they weren’t.
two autistic people were both agreeing – damn, this character is blatantly autistic – but non-autistic people felt the need to but in and say how horrible it was to “project” onto characters with such a horrible thing.
listen, if you aren’t autistic and you’re reading this –
if an autistic person says a character is autistic, can you just shut up about it?
because if you’ve watched any amount of tv, read any amount of books, whatever – if you’ve consumed stories, there are tons of autistic characters in them.
just because neither you nor the media’s creators knows shit about autism doesn’t mean that the character can’t be autistic.
either way, it’s none of your business.
we have little to none confirmed representation that isn’t terrible and inconsiderately offensively written.
find something better to do with your time.
1 in 58 people is autistic. That’s like… being American and meeting someone from Louisiana. Or Hawaii, Maine, and Alaska combined.
And for those of us that learn to pass, a ton of us congregate in a handful of areas: STEM is the one I’m familiar with, because that is me, but I know there are more. I would guess, based on my personal experiences in the areas, that 1 in 3 math professors are (mostly undiagnosed) autistic, and probably 1 in 2 software engineers at startups. We exist out there in the world, interacting with you, and most of us don’t wear signs.
So, if you write a person like that software engineer who goes to your church, or like that one math professor in college who was funny and weird, there’s a really good chance that you’re writing an autistic person.
And we’ll notice, because hey, it’s one of us!
So maybe stop and think about why you’re so sure that character you wrote can’t be autistic.
-According to you, why did Voldemort kill your parents?
-They were REALLY strong?
-No, because of a prophecy. I have to drop the key.
-Aw Shit.
(Ok this one is impossible to understand for non-french people. There is a french TV show called “Fort Boyard” here. The candidates have to pass tests to get the keys of the next rooms. (by fighting opponents, or getting it in a jar full of giant spiders, or climbing a wall…) One of the tests is an old man telling a riddle: if the candidate doesn’t answer right, he drops the key in the sea and the loser has to dive to get it.)
I’ve been a part of a lot of advocacy groups with a tendency to fall into pessimism traps.
A pessimism trap is where something good has happened, but it’s not cool to be excited that something good happened, so everyone starts trying to temper their joy with cynical comments about how it doesn’t mean much anyway and how it’ll really make things worse. Coming up with more cynicism and more biting clever reasons to feel bad are socially rewarded. Being authentically happy and enthusiastic marks you as naive and thoughtless. So soon people suppress all their happy feelings and dig deeper for more sources of pessimism, far more than the situation merits, and pretty soon everyone feels miserable and dispirited about their own significant achievement!
I don’t really know how to fix this, but I have noticed a few things that seem to work as counters.
The first is a community agreement that optimism is not inherently naive. Joy is not naive. Happiness is not naive. Just like no one likes reading stories that are relentlessly negative – we need small victories to bring us along in real life. It is okay to be sincerely and authentically thrilled when things go right.
There’s lots in the world to be miserable about. But it’s terrible advocacy to try to force yourself to feel miserable to a degree that’s appropriate to the challenges you’re facing. You’ll be more effective when you’re happy, so why not try to be happy? Yeah, even though people are dying. Yeah, even though people are ignorant and cruel. Yeah, even though the problems that motivated you to get into advocacy are real and urgent and senseless and pressing. You can believe all of those things and still not be obligated to be miserable.
The second is a community agreement to let everyone else have their emotions. “How dare you feel happy when” and “how dare you complain when” are both really common phrases in the day after a major achievement. Let’s stop it with both of them. People get to feel happy; don’t challenge them or suggest that it makes them shallow or argue that if they’re happy they don’t care about others. But people get to not feel happy; we can’t fix pessimism by ordering forced optimism. We can fix the dynamics that let pessimism take over, that make people feel silly for being happy or worthless because they can’t react to every problem in the world with appropriate anger. But we do that by validating all emotions, including joy. Not by validating joy at the exclusion of frustration or anger.
Hi friends!
If you’re ftm or nb, but have rather large pectorals you’d like to hide, and sports bras aren’t doing it for you? Especially under t-shirts or other clingy shirts? And you can’t get a binder due to home and/or medical reasons? /have I got a thing for you/.
/dance tops/. I was in ballet and jazz and tap for a while, as was my mom, and those things are designed to keep you flat and still. Things sports bras are not designed for. Sports bras are designed to support /up/ and keep pain from movement to a minimum. Meaning that most sports bras actually push in and up instead of in and out. A dance top, however, is designed to squish in, like a binder except not as strong and stiff. It’s basically a perfect blend between a sports bra and a binder, and because it was designed for dancers (not an easy sport, I tell you), it’s super easy to breathe in and you can exercise in it. It’s easier to breathe for all you asthmatics out there, and it’s super comfy and easy to move in.
They look like the pics above (I’m a 34 C and I included what size I have and what brand), and I suggest a higher neckline (a lower neckline might show through your shirt, while a higher one hugs up against your collarbone). I also suggest a light color like grey so it can go under white shirts (I wore this under a white t-shirt and it didn’t show at all).
Hope I was a help to all my brothers!
***** Hey, cool! That is some great info, and you included everything we’d need to know so thank you ❤ I, personally, will be looking into this!
queerhomestuck 