so this has been bouncing around my head for a while and I’m still not sure if this is the best way to phrase it, but…
making opportunities for everyone to explore their gender and orientation means nothing if it’s not safe for people to be wrong about their gender and orientation. otherwise, “exploring your identity” becomes limited to “confirming what you were already pretty sure of,” which isn’t going to do anything for anyone who isn’t already at that stage.
like, time and again i’ve seen people questioning whether they’re allowed to use certain pronouns or labels if they’re still questioning those identities or if they need to wait until they’re more sure of the label. or people being worried that changes in how they identify and the language they use to describe themselves will validate stereotypes.
and this is the result of a culture where choosing an identity label that ends up being wrong is far worse than never exploring your identity in the first place. it’s the same reason people freak out about trans kids, because what if they decide they aren’t trans after all in the future? it’s also why i’ve run into multiple callouts on this site that include things like “10 years ago they called themself a ‘lesbian with an exception’ for a couple of months,” because trying to reconcile old identities with new experiences is seen as a threat.
and in the end, the people this attitude ends up punishing are folks who are targeted by cissexism and/or heterosexism, but are lacking some of the language or the experiences or even the community that would allow them to express how those systems impact them.
Take all the time you need to figure it out. Try different clothes, pronouns, names. Our society doesnt make this easy. Theres nothing wrong with being wrong while you figure it out
and just because you settle on something different later doesnt mean you were ‘wrong’ before
at 13 we are already held responsible. if our shoulders show in school, we are sent home on behalf of the boys who are distracted. we grow up like this. by 16 it’s your fault if you wear the wrong skirt, drink too much, make a mistake, what did you think was going to happen. you are responsible for not screaming, for being too much of a tease, for trusting the wrong person. it’s your job to carry the baby to term, to mother it, to suffer for nine months for something someone else absolutely did. but you got yourself pregnant.
but men. god, it must be nice. nothing sticks to you, does it. when men do terrible things, you shrug your shoulders i’m one of the good ones, though, not all of us are like this. and you can say that because men is a big broad term and it’s unfair to use a brush under which a whole gender might be painted. women are liars, though. women just want attention. women make it up and try to ruin lives and are hysterical and never think about the consequences of their harsh language. and you all can look at each other and know you’re one of the good ones, even if you’re just mediocre, because you don’t think you’ve ever, you know, done something that bad. and it’s fine you’re still friends with that guy you know did do something that bad, but you weren’t at the party she says he raped her at (but you remember his snapchat), but it’s not like you’re him, and besides, it was a year ago and everybody lived. and it’s not your fault, and it’s probably just a misunderstanding, and you’d never say something like “women are whores” but you’d smile, wouldn’t you, and you’d nod because it’s a joke, come on. and it’s a joke, come on.
and when it’s your fault – and god! is it ever? – there’s always an excuse. you were drunk a little bit too. you didn’t know better. you were too young, making a boyish mistake. you were too old, from a different generation, you only know how to treat women in that way. you were angry, you were just fooling around, you were a good guy, not like one of the bad ones, you know, the black men or the brown men or the muslim men or the real problems with this country, amen. you’re a good upstanding citizen, and what, are we going to ruin your life with this simple accusation? no, we’re not, because you aren’t any of those things (if you were, huh, you’d be dead, you’d be shot by a cop or dragged in the street or lynched or kicked out of housing or in jail for weed or a million other things). you’re just a good guy who is being lumped in with the others because women, women are vindictive.
you spend three beautiful months in jail. or one. or a week. or you’re told by a judge the official ruling is no sex until marriage. or buckle down next time and really try harder for your swim team. and this is heartbreaking, god, you cry next to your lawyer while you are found actually guilty with no time served. does she even know the kind of stress you are under. how sad you are. how dare she look at you and ask you to take responsibility. you’re not a monster.
but god forbid you have a uterus and don’t want something growing in it. the judge looks at you from over where he sits. you’re 17 and an immigrant. and you’re going to carry that baby to term because he thinks you’re old enough to have good judgement.
it’s your fault. your responsibility. well, you should have thought about it.
“The problem is
I still call myself a woman
and every time it drops from my mouth
the word feels like a bar of soap slipping
through my fingers,
fish out of water,
something I wish I could reel back into myself.
I call myself a woman and it feels like an accident:
like a six car pile-up just outside city limits, like
you were so close to home.
You were so close.
You could have been exactly
what they wanted you to be
when they wrapped you in a pink blanket,
when the doctor said girl and they were so happy.
But how could the word woman
feel like such a stranger
when I have been wearing it my entire life? The problem is
my gender is language I cannot speak, yet.
I go wide-eyed-jealous, sticky-handed child
reaching for the bodies of the strong-limbed boys
I have always wanted to look like.
I think of how many things I’d be willing to give up
so that I could look so long, so that I could look so flat,
look so sharp and so boy.
But my curves are something I am not ready
to be divorced of, yet.
I look down at my body and think
no, I will not abandon you. Not yet, not again,
not like the rest of them.
I think—Girl.
I think—Girl.
I think,
Girl, you have been unwanted in so many hands.
And I can’t turn traitor to my own powder pink.
I can’t bleed the woman out of my lungs.
I have tried.
She does
not
go
easy.
Instead, I wear woman like a coat two sizes too small.
It doesn’t fit, anymore, but it smells like home. When I was thirteen, all my daydreams
were technicolor:
taking these heavy, useless things
on the front of my body
and chopping them off with a hacksaw.
I say I want the reduction because my back hurts–
because they have crippled my body into
something unusable.
What I am afraid to admit
is I want the reduction
because I don’t want
them, anymore. What do you do when you are given the choice
between two costumes
and neither of them has enough elbow room?
What do you do when the word woman
is the only one that shares all the violence
that’s been done to you for daring to look so
sweet?
What do you do when the word woman isn’t
wrong—it’s just not the whole story?
And you don’t have a word for your story.
What do you do when you love that word–
woman. Girl. She. Her. Her’s–
but you don’t like how it looks on you.
But “he” just looks like it’s missing something–
the word man has never belonged to me without
woman in front of it. Sometimes
all these words feel like an ancient text
that don’t have the degrees to decipher.
They don’t make sense to me.
I don’t want them. But I live in a society that says
I have to be one or the other, that there is no
in-between, just accidentally mismatching
of body parts. At the end of the day, I have no quarrel
with my body—only the things everyone else seems
to assign to it. Only these words that feel useless
up against the person I have worked so hard
to love.
Only woman: ill-fitting as it sometimes is.
What I want to know, is
am I allowed to hold woman at arm’s length
and love it like my favorite dress?
Am I allowed to put it down
when it is too heavy
to carry?”
— QUESTIONS FOR GOD, OR JUST ANYONE WHO’S LISTENING by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
“Minneapolis Public Schools students can now choose their preferred name and gender on all district forms, a change that was made over spring break but took effect Monday when students arrived back at school.
The new policy, which has been in the works for a while, builds on an informal one instituted in 2013 that said teachers and other school staff should honor the preferred names of transgender students and allow them to use the restroom of the gender with which they identify, said district spokesman Dirk Tedmon.
This latest step formalizes the district’s support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students, Tedmon said.
“Now it’s an official thing in the student information system,” he said. “I think it’s about affirming the experiences of our students and recognizing them for who they are.”
The Pentagon concedes that gender dysphoria is treatable, but asserts there is “considerable scientific uncertainty and overall lack of high-quality scientific evidence demonstrating the extent to which transition-related treatments” address the symptoms associated with gender dysphoria. The report mentions the high suicide rates of the transgender population as a central reason for its ban.
Our findings make it indisputable that gender transition has a positive effect on transgender well-being. We identified 56 studies published since 1991 that directly assessed the effect of gender transition on the mental well-being of transgender individuals. The vast majority of the studies, 93 percent, found that gender transition improved the overall well-being of transgender subjects, making them more likely to enjoy improved quality of life, greater relationship satisfaction and higher self-esteem and confidence, and less likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, substance abuse and suicidality.
Only four studies (7 percent) reported mixed or null findings, and none found that the transitioning created more harm than good. Despite recent media focus on anecdotes about “transgender regret,” actual regret rates across numerous studies were minuscule, generally ranging from 0.3 percent to 3.8 percent. Our review of primary research confirmed the positive findings of at least 16 previous literature reviews.
The research shows that gender transition improves well-being, and that it can redress the specific health conditions that the military claims are its primary concern, particularly suicidality. A 1999 United States study found a “marked decrease of suicide attempts” and substance use in its postoperative population. In a 2014 British study, gender transition “was shown to drastically reduce instances of suicidal ideation and attempts.” The study reported that “67 percent of respondents thought about suicide more before they transitioned and only 3 percent thought about suicide more post-transition.”
Research suggests that gender transition may resolve symptoms completely. A 2016 literature review by scholars in Sweden concluded that, most likely because of improved care over time, transgender “rates of psychiatric disorders and suicide became more similar to controls,” and that for those transitioning after 1989, “there was no difference in the number of suicide attempts compared to controls.” The corollary is also true: Another study found that withholding hormone treatment from transgender people increased the risk of depression and suicide.
While transgender people can still face disproportionate stresses after transition, research suggests that stigma and discrimination are primary causes of such “minority stress.” That’s all the more reason we should provide treatment and social support rather than exclusion and barriers to care.
Suicide and mental health challenges do not, of course, define transgender people, many of whom are just as healthy as their peers. There are other populations that are plagued by suicide, including the military community itself. Children of military members are at much higher risk for suicidal ideation than both the general and the transgender population. Yet children of service members are not barred from enlisting, despite these higher risks. This suggests a double standard in which transgender people are singled out for unequal treatment not because they present an unacceptable risk but simply because of bias.
when I try to hear this in my head my mental voice is incapable of pronouncing it fast enough to fit the timing of the line
“noooo oooone… adjksjfksfjslenry like Gaston!”
and when I try to fit it to one of the longer such lines, my mental voice becomes too confused about conflicting scansion to continue
no one’s droll like gaston no one’s swole like gaston no one fits his assigned gender role like gaston
I’m especially fond of the paaaatriaaarchy
My what a guy that gastooon
Bless you for making it scan
NOW I CAN’T READ IT WITHOUT SINGING IN MY HEAD
No one’s droll like Gaston, No one’s swole like Gaston, No one fits his assigned gender role like Gaston! For there’s no one online half as phony, His tinder’s got dick pics to spare, You can ask any neckbeard or brony They’ll show you (no homo) whose trilby they’d wear! No one drawls like Gaston Or catcalls like Gaston, Or manspreads on the train in a sprawl like Gaston! I’m especially fond of the paaaatriaaarchy! My what a guy that Gastooon!
just a quick note- no trans person has ever said “did you just assume my gender.” trans people are very aware of how their gender and physical appearance differ and that visually one might assume that they are a man/woman when they are actually not. that’s kind of the whole idea of gender dysphoria.
and also you’ve beaten your “attack helicopter” joke into the fucking ground. cut that shit out.
i wanted to add one more thing to this post that other people have pointed out: i know its an awkward question, but a lot of trans people are going to be 100% fine with you asking what their gender is, or with calmly correcting you if you get it wrong. and if they’re not, then they’re way more likely to keep it to themselves than get visibly angry with someone. this idea that trans people just go apeshit when people misgender them accidentally/when first meeting them is a complete fabrication for a stupid joke and that’s why i despise it so much.
I can’t afford to get visibly angry about people misgendering me because that puts me in danger of getting harmed. once a cis person finds out my gender, one of two things will happen: they either accept me to various degrees, or they reject me and potentially escalate the situation. politeness is the only way I can decrease the risk of the latter.
the “DID YOU ASSUME MY GENDER?!” trope only serves to make trans people look ridiculous/unreasonable in the eyes of cis people, and places in their minds preconceptions about us that makes it harder, ultimately, for us to come out safely. if all they know about trans people are shitty jokes, then we as a people become those jokes to them.
yeah cis people, seeing as you’re literally the only people that make these jokes I’m gonna need you to reblog this
It’s open until 1st March 2018, it’s open to everyone, and last year we got about 10,000 participants – you can see the results here.
After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a blog post summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.
If you think you might have followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, retweet this tweet or boost this Mastodon post. Every share is extremely helpful – it’s what helped us get 10,000 responses last year.
call me ignorant but i genuinely don’t understand why sports have to be split up by gender.
@ everyone in the notes talking about physical performance: if that were the case, then sports would be divided by physical performance. that’s a thing you can measure. that’s a thing that varies by individual. a weak man and a strong man would be an unfair fight in boxing/wrestling/MMA, which is why they divide those sports up into weight groups based on physical performance. but they also further segregate them based on gender. chess is segregated by gender for no reason but sexism. if it’s actually about skill and physical ability, then measure those and separate people by those metrics. don’t do some bullshit gender segregation and pretend like men and women are inherently on different levels no matter their individual abilities.
💅
Remember that time a teenage girl struck out Babe Ruth? That’s fucking why. Men are afraid of being beaten by women.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 