im the adoptive father of like 14 different kids because im the only out and proud trans dude at my school and all the lgbt underclassmen subconsciously flock to me
me in the hallways at school: [hugs a freshmen trans girl, high fives a young butch lesbian, platonically kisses a bi dude on the forehead]
my straight friends: wow nate u have so many friends! how long have you know them all?
me: first of all these are my children and i love them and second i met two of them this morning and one last week
with the help of my friends, I made a new lesbian flag that has a meaning since the widespread lesbian flag we use has no meaning and was just posted as the lipstick/femme lesbian flag on a blog back in 2010. I know a lot of lesbians including myself who would rather have a flag with a meaning, so my friends & I are hoping this is gonna catch on eventually!
from top to bottom, the meanings of the colors are: loyalty/trust, freedom to love women, trans/nb lesbians, serenity, and pride/love for oneself.
after a lot of input from people on this post, Iâve realized some things that need fixing about the colors of this flag. with the help of my friends again, weâve made modifications to the flag. the two top colors have changed to fit better together, and the flag as a whole is more saturated. thank you all for your criticisms on the flag because that helped a lot with fixing it! this is the finalized version:
since a couple of people were asking as well, it is okay to use this flag as icons/headers/etc and is okay to use without credit but I would appreciate it since the flag is fairly new. I also 100% donât mind people who arenât lesbians reblogging this, as long as youâre being respectful and are spreading this for your lesbian followers I appreciate it!
special thanks to @cerebrite & @maidofluck for helping me with the original flag, and @lesbistani & a friend who does not wanna be mentioned for helping with the finalized version!
this flag is also a lot more inclusive of butch lesbians because the old flag was based off of the lipstick lesbian flag, which was a flag for femmes, and made butch women feel isolated from its symbology
this flag is brand new! so it doesnât carry that connotation. i am butch and i love this cool new flag, personally
ive been reading a book that basically explains how so-called âbrain differencesâ between the genders is the result of gendered socialization and not the cause of it. i honestly expected the book to be very cis-centric but its actually the opposite, the author stresses that testimony from trans ppl is actually indispensable because weâve, in a sense, âlived both experiencesâ
more cis feminists should have this mindset
one of the first examples that she uses to introduce her point about how perception by others can shape a personâs performance actually uses a trans woman. it explains that as a certain trans woman became to be seen as a woman more and more frequently, the ppl arond her eventually started viewing her as being ill equipped for tasks that they did not bother her about pre-transition. eventually she even found herself underperforming in these tasks herself.
I knew it was this book before Iâd finished reading the first two lines. Honestly this book is indispensible if you want to debunk any gender determinism people claim is science. I canât recommend it enough.
(Bonus bonus: I am myself a neuroscientist, and the old white men mentioned above â who are not â could not have missed the point harder if theyâd actively tried. Which. Maybe?)
Since weâre on the subject of things to get to better understand autism, or to gift people so they can better understand autismâŚ
âŚWhile fiction, rather than non-fiction, the novel On The Edge Of Gone by
Corinne Duyvis is excellent. Young adult post apocalyptic novel staring an young autistic woman, with lots of well written LGBTQIA+ side characters to boot, written by an openly autistic author, and as an autistic adult contains what might be the most real feeling depiction of autism I have ever read, fiction or non-fiction. Itâs also a cracking good read.
Excellent book 10/10, have never related to a character so hard. And the autism stuff – the traits that come out like stimming by tapping fingers on their thigh, the sensory stuff, and even the âcoming outâ as autistic is just written so naturally, so properly, so damn well.
You never find out the trans girlâs deadname, and the MC has a special interest in cats.
âA federal judge late Friday barred the federal government from implementing President Donald Trumpâs ban on transgender members of the military, finding that the ban had to be subject to a careful court review before implementation because of the history of discrimination against transgender individuals.
U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman of the Western District of Washington ruled that transgender people were a protected class and that the injunctions against the implementation of the ban that had been issued in December should remain in place. She wrote that there was a âlong and well-recognizedâ history of discrimination and systemic oppression against transgender people, that discrimination against transgender people was clearly âunrelated to their ability to perform and contribute to society,â that transgender people have immutable characteristics and that they lacked relative political power.
âTransgender people have long been forced to live in silence, or to come out and face the threat of overwhelming discrimination,â Pechman wrote.
âThe Court also rules that, because transgender people have long been subjected to systemic oppression and forced to live in silence, they are a protected class. Therefore, any attempt to exclude them from military service will be looked at with the highest level of care, and will be subject to the Courtâs âstrict scrutiny.â This means that before Defendants can implement the Ban, they must show that it was sincerely motivated by compelling interests, rather than by prejudice or stereotype, and that it is narrowly tailored to achieve those interests,â Pechman wrote.
While Trump had tweeted that he consulted generals and military experts about the ban, Pechman wrote that the government had âfailed to identify even one General or military expert he consulted, despite having been ordered to do so repeatedly.â
THIS IS HUGE NEWS and can have major implications for trans rights moving forward in the US, as it establishes a precedent for legal treatment of trans people as a protected class due to ongoing persecution. This means it would be illegal to fire someone, to refuse them a job, or a home/apartment rental, because the person is trans.
Folks, even if youâre a pacifist / anti-military, remember:
THE TRANS BAN DOES NOTHING TO STOP MILITARISM, AND EVERYTHING TO LEGALIZE & NORMALIZE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE TRANS COMMUNITY.
đTRANS PEOPLE ARE A PROTECTED CLASS đ
This declaration of Trans people as a protected class is important beyond the military because it has effects on laws that would seek to implement discriminatory practices towards trans people in other areas of US law.
I donât know how universally relevant this is (I guess no part of queer history ever is) but I wonder how many trans people know the history of T&T groups.
Like, in the 90â˛s and 00â˛s in the Netherlands almost every trans related groups was a T&T âTranssexual and Transvestitesâ group and that seemed to also be a quite common thing in other north-west European countries for as far as I can see. Maybe beyond Europe too? Iâm not sure.
People who called themselves transsexual and transvestites at the time felt that they had many experiences in common that made organising together valuable and many agreed that there was a large grey area of overlapping identities. With very little information available, a lot of trans women identified as transvestites first, before identifying at trans women (in that period often using the term Male-to-Female transsexual and transwoman without the space between the words).
Then, in about 2007-2012, things changed. Transgender became more popular than transsexual and crossdresser largely replaced transvestite. In those early days, the term transgender was often understood to include crossdressers. The transgender umbrella is from that time:
Back then, the word transgender was seen by many as the umbrella term that would unite all the struggles against gender roles. But that grouping together was far from uncontroversial and a lot of heated debates took place over how broad or narrow the transgender umbrella term should be. Some feared too wide an umbrella would take attention away from transsexuals, others feared it would be confusing, some groups that had previously only had transwomen and transvestites did not appreciate the new presence of transmen and transmasculine people in their transgender community, some felt that it was very important to distinguish binary-identified transsexuals from all sorts of weird non-binary identities.
Those who took part in the debates probably remember the specific standpoints in more detail. For me, I just remember how in 2008-2012 all the T&T groups started changing their names to âtransgender groupsâ and then slowly but surely focussing more on only those transgender people that wanted some kind of transition, physical or social. Eventually, transvestites (or crossdressers, as the common term was by then) disappeared entirely from the transgender groups and a lot of transgender people forgot about the earlier wider meaning of transgender as an umbrella term.
Within that same period, there started to be a LOT of new and fairly positive media attention for transgender issues, specificallytransition related atttention. The media was no participant at all in the âwhat does transgender meanâ question but the questions they did ask were âare you on hormones yet?â and âdid you have the surgeryâ? Since that was a lot better than âso are you mentally ill because you want to be a woman?â a lot of people who fitted the hormones + surgery narrative eagerly accepted this âpositive visibilityâ and did not question the narrow focus. This further cemented the view that transgender meant transition.
And the transgender activists? Well, letâs just say many of them, knee deep in a struggle against terrible health care and cruel human rights violations, leaped at the opportunity to seize the momentum and finally make some changes and many didnât really give much thought to the slow disappearance of transvestites from the newly named âtransgenderâ community.
So where are we now, in 2018?
The transgender community seems to have largely forgotten about their T&T history. The terms transvestite and crossdresser both seem to be in decline, as are the communities that meet around those identities. Younger people who donât fit the gender binary but also do not desire social or physical transition, are now more likely to identify themselves as some kind of genderqueer and nonbinary or just ânot into labelsâ or just to wear whatever they want and rock it. Some of them find their way back under the transgender umbrella after all. Which I guess is some kind of a happy ending.
But then theres the question of recognizing our legacy. I donât think a lot of these young people realise that, had they been born 20 years earlier, many of them would probably have found a home in the transvestite community. I donât think a lot of young transgender people recognize older transvestites as their elders, who paved the way for them. I often get the impression that they view the dwindling groups of 50+, 60+, 70+ transvestites with an element of disdain, as people who held on to a regressive binary identity, instead of as like – their badass grandfather-mothers who build parts of trans history.
I encourage everyone to think of the above next time you see someone shitting on crossdressers. Weâre stronger together than we are divided.
[âŚ] he and she were creek beds, quiet when they were full and quiet
when they were dry. but when they were half-full, wearing a coat of
shallow water, the current bumped over the rocks and valleys in the
creek beds, wearing down the earth. giving someone else a little of who
they were hurt more than giving up none or all of it.
Just requested five purchases from my local library: Autoboyography, Beneath the Sugar Sky, When the Moon was Ours, Not Your Sidekick, and Dreadnought.
They bought Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel and Down Among The Sticks and Bones for me last year, so. *fingers crossed*
Reminder that you can request items for purchase, and then, not only do you get to read them if the library buys them, but youâre making them available for others, for example, closeted queer kids who can read them at the library under the guise of study if their home isnât a safe space. Be the change you wish you had when you were a kid.
⤠⤠â¤
Wait, Dreadnought by April Daniels?! Itâs so good! I mean, gonna warn you that it has hella transphobic characters (including an emotionally abusive father) that youâre supposed to hate, but itâs really good if thatâs not an issue for you.
I actually own it already – I bought a second hand copy from BetterWorldBooks – and I love it and think it’s super important. I know the transphobia in it is hard to read, but it’s not sugar-coated and it’s an #ownvoices writer describing a very common transgender experience through the lens of science fiction. I don’t think there’s anything quite like it in my library’s YA collection yet. Thanks for the warning, though.
So, recently youâve found out some big news about somebody you care about. Maybe they came out to you as transgender and/or non-binary, maybe theyâve told you that theyâre changing their name and/or that theyâd like to be referred to by a different set of pronouns. Maybeâhopefully!âyou want to be supportive of them but youâre worried youâre going to mess up (which is an understandable fear)!
Coming out is hard and the fact that they came out to you is a big deal! You should be proud of them for taking this big step and being honest with you about who they are. Changing the way you think about someone is a process, and you will mess up at some point! However, if you really love and respect this person, you will keep trying, and eventually it will become second nature to you.
As someone who has changed my own name and pronouns, here are some things that I feel are important to keep in mind as youâre getting used to this change.
1. Use the new, correct name and pronouns all the timeâeven when theyâre not there to hear you, even when youâre just thinking about them in your head. This is because the end goal of this process shouldnât be to retrain yourself to call them a certain thing, it should be to think of them in a certain way. By coming out to you and asking you to use their new name and pronouns, your loved one has shared with you something very real about who they really are. You should be trying to retrain your brain to know them by this name, because itâs their real nameâmuch realer than the one they were being forced to use before.
2. Correct yourself when you get it wrong, even if they donât say anything. It might be tempting to hope that it just slipped through the cracks and they didnât notice your mistake. But trust me, they noticed. Being called by the wrong name or pronouns is jarring and painful, but sometimes itâs hard to stand up for yourself and say something.
3. Donât over-apologize when you mess up! Apologize once, correct yourself, and move on. Apologizing over and over just brings more attention to it than they probably want, and going on and on about how bad you feel for getting it wrong puts pressure on them to comfort you, when this should really be about them and how they feel.
4. Correct other people too! Like I said, it can be very hard to muster the courage to correct people, especially over and over, so having allies in my life who are willing to do that work for me is a godsend. This is a really simple way to take on a little sliver of your loved oneâs burden while theyâre transitioning. Even a very simple reminder like, âPlease donât forget, Jamey uses they/them pronouns!â can be super helpful and take a lot of pressure off.
5. Be sensitive not to âoutâ them to people theyâre not out to! (This is a caveat to #1 and #4, by the way, because you have to ask them if theyâre comfortable with you using their new name and pronouns in front of others.) Coming out is a nerve-racking experience and itâs common not to come out to everyone in your life at once. Outing someone before theyâre ready is a terrible, stressful, and sometimes dangerous position to put someone in. Ask who theyâre comfortable being out to and be very careful to respect that.
6. Be patient if they change their mind on what they want to be called. Itâs really tough to figure out what name and pronouns fit you best and feel the most comfortable without âtrying them onâ and seeing how it feels when other people use them. Experimentation is an important part of that! If someone changes their name a few times in a row trying to find something that fits, or changes their pronouns but then changes them back, thatâs just a natural part of that experimentation.
7. Remember that theyâre going through something very personal. Their transition is all about them and what makes them comfortableânot about you and what you think is best. If you donât think their new name fits them, or if you donât think the singular they is grammatically correct, or if you think trying to remember their new name and pronouns is too hard⌠those are all thoughts you should keep to yourself!
Again, coming out is really tough! If your loved one has gathered the strength to come out to you, trust that this is important to them. They know best about what they need to be called to be comfortable and happy. Do your best to put their needs first when it comes to this change and before long, hearing their old name and pronouns will sound almost as wrong to you as it does to them!
knitting in the dark 