Ana Mardoll's Ramblings: April 2018

Storify: HBO and Confederate

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

There were no sympathetic Confederate slave owners. There weren't any "good" slave owners in the Confederacy. This is partly a definitional issue: one cannot be both "good" and a Confederate slave owner. But it is also a statement about how white supremacy polices itself, INCLUDING its white members.

One of the Dear America books (overall a good series but with a racism problem and very white authors) features a "good" Confederate slaver. The author actually imagined that a "good" Confederate slave owner would have public school for slave children to teach reading. This comes, I suspect, from modern white people imagining what they would do if they were born in a slave-owning family. "Well, I might accept slavery as normal, but I'd be a good master and open a school." Without any understanding of Slave Codes in law.

Every slave-holder in the Confederacy was BOTH fully complicit AND policed to remain so by the rest of the white supremacy. White supremacy doesn't prop itself up and then nicely ask its members to please not dismantle it. White supremacy wrote itself into LAW and made sure any white qualms of conscience were quashed. (Still complicit. Always complicit.) Any fictional property about the Confederacy, written by white people, is going to want to show "good" white slave owners. There were none.

Because: A) being a good Confederate slaver is a contradiction in terms. B) acting "good" to slaves was illegal and policed by white society. Slave Codes were often inconvenient to white slave owners! But they were enforced to protect white supremacy at all costs. This HBO show cannot show slavery accurately because they will never commit to understanding how white supremacy works.

They'll want to make "good" white slavers for the white audience to empathize with. "Good" people socialized to accept bad things. And it doesn't work that way. Confederate slavers were **regularly** confronted with the disconnect between their morals and actions. They KNEW they were doing bad things and they did them anyway. They were not "good", not even in some amorphous heartfelt way.

And I understand the place white people come from where we want to wank off to "what if I were born into that situation?" But that wankfest of rolling around in guiltfeels shouldn't be given a goddamn HBO series that will hurt Black people right now. We have white privilege NOW. We can use it NOW. Write letters. Yell about this show. Elevate Black voices. Call HBO. Threaten to cancel.

"What would I have done with white privilege back then?" is best answered by "What am I doing with my white privilege right now?"

Open Thread: Avengers Infinity War

This is a place to discuss the movie Avengers: Infinity War, including spoilers (without need for ROT 13 Cthulhu summoning.)

Unfortunately the "Current Comments" feature removes whitespace so, to avoid spoilers appearing there, please use some space for non-spoiler comments or just start your comment with some nonsense.

Example nonsense:

[nonsense] Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, id soleat doctus sit, cum te erant omnium. Invidunt periculis at cum, eos diam vivendum no, ea qui vivendum legendos. Verterem similique ut pri, iisque prodesset voluptaria no nam. Eos esse mollis et, mei no putent utamur praesent, nec ex solum saperet. No has soluta molestie.[/nonsense]

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Storify: Tech Girls and Imposter Syndrome

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

I'm having an anxiety attack so who wants a thread about how Positive Tokens can cause harm if they aren't followed up w/ nuance? Let's set the stage:

- I'm a feminine person in STEM.
- I have an Electrical Engineering degree.
- I've done coding for pay.

I've been thinking a lot about how a lot of ensemble casts will (goodly! but stick with me!) put a girl/woman in the Techie/Q role.

Storify: Respecting Chosen Names

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

We don't deadname cis characters/people like we do trans ones.

A 'deadname' is a name that a person doesn't use or go by anymore. It may be a 'birth name' (or may not be). I want to note up-front that some trans people still use birth names in some contexts (esp. if they're closeted). But the phenomena we see right now in, say, book reviews is an immediate rush to establish a trans character's 'deadname'. "NAME, born DEADNAME..." is a thing we do to trans people in an attempt to push their gender identity to light first and foremost.

We don't do this with cis people in the same way. We MAY note their birth name (in, say, an obituary) but not EVERY TIME we talk about them. So this is a thread of cis people whose chosen names are respected way way more than trans people's names are.

@ShiraGlassman opens with Sweeney Todd.

@ShiraGlassman: If u always call him Sweeney Todd instead of Benjamin Barker but refuse to stop deadnaming real, living trans ppl pls examine yr motivations

You know him by Logan or Wolverine, and almost never by James Howlett. (X-Men)

You know Dirk Gently by his chosen name and not by Svlad Cjelli. (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency)

You know Ford Prefect by his chosen name, not as by Ix or Praxibetel Ix; and Trillian by her chosen name and not Tricia Marie McMillan.

We call him Superman or Clark Kent, not Kal-El.

We call Finn by a name Poe came up with and Finn enthusiastically agreed to.

@mixtormenta: Star Wars babe Finn's assigned name is FN-2187, but everyone refers to him by the name given by Poe. Respect Finn, respect trans people.

We call her Rogue, not Anna Marie. (X-Men)

We call him Han Solo (and I have no interest in the prequel's promise of a deadname reveal). (Star Wars)

We call him Bones, not Leonard McCoy. (Star Trek: The Original Series)

We call him Neo. Only the villain calls him Thomas Anderson. (The Matrix)

@adamndsmith: Neo, rather than Thomas Anderson in The Matrix. Only Smith calls him Anderson (and that film has a pretty clear trans theme throughout)

We call him Booth, not Seeley Joseph. (Bones)

@DiannaLGunn: Also nobody calls Booth in Bones by his first name unless they're TRYING to piss him off

We respect the chosen names of actors and authors--when they're cis.

We call her Marilyn Monroe.

@planethalia: Not fictional, but Marylin Monroe is my go to example

We call him John Wayne.

@witchandry: Agreed. John Wayne - almost never named as Marion Morrison. Old Hollywood routinely changed actors' names.

We don't deadname Black activists unless we're being racist as fuck.

@Shaker_aphra: Another RL example: Everyone who's not an asshole understood that it was racist AF to call Mohammed Ali and Malcolm X by their deadnames.

We call him Pippin, not Peregrin. (The Lord of the Rings)

We call her Petra. (Jane the Virgin)

We call him Ender, not Andrew Wiggin. (Ender's Game) (An example of how people can use their deadname in other circumstances, IF THEY WANT.)

We call him Hank, not Henry. (X-Men)

We call him Robin Hood, not Robert Fitzooth.

We respect cis people who want to go by their middle names, rather than first ones.

We call him Indiana Jones, not Dr. Henry Walton Jones Jr.

YES. The supporting characters remember to use the right name in the right context.

@Geek_Kelly: And people who are aware of their secret identities call them the appropriate name at the appropriate time.

Lois doesn't slip up and call Clark Kal-El or Superman when he's in "mild-mannered reporter" mode. This is important. Cis people often say that remembering to use our names is "too hard".

@merlinslaugh: All of the Cullens in Twilight have different surnames they chose to give up when they join the family.

@dtmooreeditor: Kaywinnet Lee Frye, from Firefly?

@mjt273: UK royalty does this all the time - Queen Victoria and George VI are both using names that were originally middle names, among many others.

@inafried: Would be great to hear from Katy Perry, Meg Ryan, Demi Moore or Chevy Chase on this.

@OtherBecky: Hardly anyone calls Saint Paul "Saul of Tarsus."

@JanetteKirchner: If people watched Highlander, all of the immortals used other names to go by.

@jeannette_ng: Voldemort, where arguably populace doesn't deadname him but also doesn't want to call him that and say YouKnowWho?

@lizjwriter: Indiana Jones. All 3 of the 3 Musketeers. Scout Finch. Leela. Neo. Mystique. Seven of Nine. Mandark.

@afewbugs: Any character who changed their name on marriage (or for that matter, any real person)

@natquiadd: Vin Diesel, born Mark Sinclair, stars with The Rock, born Dwayne Johnson, in Fast and the Furious Something Something Fast Cars the Movie

@ChaKatKimber: Jamie Foxx, which name he intentionally chose to sound feminine/androgynous.

We (usually) respect cis people's nicknames.

@LizzieColt: Sort of example, my birth name is Elizabeth, I don't use it apart from legally, if I say my name is Lizzie no one asks if it's 'real'.

@SylviaDHook: I feel like Prince (and "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince") deserves a special place in this thread...

Cis people using nicknames and chosen names are, of course, deadnamed on occasion. I mentioned obits and news reports earlier. But we tend to talk about them in reviews, in their work, in passing using their chosen names. There isn't the same RUSH to deadname them. That rush to deadname us is not really because there's some sacredness to birthnames; it's a decision to make our transness known upfront.

But it's done in a way that hurts trans people by asserting that our identity and our chosen names aren't legitimate. If our transness is relevant, it is far better to say "NAME is a trans woman..." rather than "NAME, born DEADNAME..." Understand that forcibly asserting deadnames on us (because it's too hard, too much to remember, too inconvenient, too special) is violence.

Cis privilege includes having your chosen name largely respected. Trans oppression means ours largely are not. Understand too that this misuse of deadnames in book reviews have made it difficult for trans authors to even DISCUSS deadnames, because we worry that reviewers will then wield those names hurtfully and carelessly in reviews. Please don't.

Storify: Gender Reveal Parties

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

[Content Note: Pregnancy]

Cis people, we need to talk.

Look, can I speak plainly? I get it. You're about to have a baby. EVERYTHING is interesting about that baby. I get it. If there were parties for the length of the baby's fingernails, you'd throw a Baby Fingernail Party. Your baby is your PROJECT. I get it.

Open Thread: Wall Thingy

I don't have any current pictures, so I looked back through old stuff for something vaguely eye catching. This is what I found. It is, if I remember correctly, on the same street as the weirdly weathered masonry.

I'm reasonably confident that I haven't used this image here before.

We have a special open thread set aside for discussing the 2018 movie A Wrinkle In Time (including plain text spoilers.)

We also have a special open thread set aside for discussing the movie Black Panther.

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Friday Recommendations! What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately? Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Storify: We're Here, We're Queer

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

[TW: Child sexual assault.]

Hey, just to let everyone know. I'm queer. I unapologetically refer to my community as Queer. Objections will be muted. That's it. You don't have to use the word. You just don't get to come into my mentions telling me a long-standing community term is ~dangerous~. I will mute ANYONE who comes at me on this, that is how DONE I am with this. We're here, we're queer; if you're personally not, fine. I don't care.

Nobody had a problem with this term over Queer Studies and Queer Eye shows. Folks only came at me when they realized Queer is inclusive. I will not change my identity because someone else doesn't like it. That's my stance on "bisexual", too, while I have you here. I'm going to be using Queer regularly on this account BECAUSE IT'S INCLUSIVE (and "LGBT" isn't, btw) and you can mute me if needed.

I'm not gay as in happy, I'm queer as in fuck all this in particular.

I'm not going to tell ANYONE how to identify but since some of you have asked: the "alternatives to queer" some of you are seeing and hearing shake out of tumblr spaces are in many cases SUPER problematic. Queer is a community term that has been considered and refined and reclaimed longer than most of us have been ALIVE. It has history. These "alternatives to Queer" that are popping up and being spread by well-intentioned folks are often created with intent to harm.

Storify: Bisexual Characters

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

Sitting here getting angry at the idea that bisexuality has to be "established organically" so as to not startle the reader. Bi people cannot fucking win.

If they have a crush on another gender, they're assumed straight and any later bisexuality is treated like a jump scare;

If they have a crush on a same-gender person, they're established gay and any later bisexuality is treated as homophobia.

If bisexuality never comes up, it's erased; if their bisexuality is mentioned in passing, it's "shoe-horned in" or "told, not shown".

There is no way, NONE, to establish a bisexual character that will not ruffle feathers.

I'm still angry about this and here's why. Multiple bisexual people told the person I'm subtweeting that their bisexuality was a "surprise" for them. Their response? "Fine, but that's Real Life. FICTION has to follow NARRATIVE RULES." MY SEXUALITY IS NOT CHEKOV'S GUN.

We are allowed to have REALISTIC, messy, complicated bisexual rep. We don't have to follow Robert's Rules of Order for Coming Out. Bisexuality isn't a PLOT POINT that has to follow narrative rules. Bisexuality isn't a TROPE. Bisexuality isn't a gun over the mantle. Yes, fiction has to follow stricter rules than reality in service to a plot. BUT REPRESENTATION IS NOT A PLOT POINT. Yes, a major plot twist can't be introduced 900 pages in. BUT MY SEXUALITY ISN'T A PLOT TWIST. This person is treating bisexuality as a narrative device that has to follow literary conventions and I am just. NO.

@LabyrinthRat: *nod* If they're established as bisexual and then they end up with an opposite-gender character, then it's a queer-baiting cop-out.

This. THIS IS HOW WE'RE TREATED. Bi character + different gender Love Interest = "settling", "less than", "not queer rep". How many times have we seen a bisexual m/f romance called "straight" or "het"? So many times. As a young adult, I *needed* to know that bisexuality existed. That I could like a boy AND still be bisexual. I needed to know that liking a boy didn't make me straight, that there were other ways to like a boy. So all these folks saying that m/f bi rep isn't what kids need? *I* was a kid who needed that.

"Ending up with a boy means you're basically straight" is WHY I didn't know I was bisexual until I was an adult. I was miserable. I am just so damned angry.

THIS is why we're so on edge and tetchy about bi-bigotry in the community. It's not just bisexuals looking to get angry!! We're worked over for EVERY INCH OF REP we get and treated like we're a bunch of privileged half-straights who have the world and want more. We're not half-straights! And I'm not saying bisexuals have it worse, but don't tell me our erasure is a little thing, please! There is a HUGE amount of difference between a het m/f portrayal and a bisexual m/f portrayal, and we NEED that rep. I didn't need bisexual m/f rep because I couldn't get m/f anywhere else; I needed it to know I could be in an m/f rel AND STILL BE BI.

I have been watching erasure and bigotry against bisexual people in the book community for so long now and I am weary to the bone. I feel like I can, at this point, LIST ALL THE WAYS a bisexual character will be deemed Problematic and/or Trendy in a book review.

1. A boy who has feels at another boy but ends up with a girl? "Turned straight. Homophobic."

2. A girl who has feels at another girl but ends up with a boy? "Turns straight. Lesbophobic."

3. A boy who has feels at a girl but ends up with a boy? "Realizes he's gay."

4. A girl who has feels at a boy but ends up with a girl? "Realizes she's a lesbian."

5. A character whose bisexuality is never mentioned and they end up with someone? Erasure. Straight or gay, never assumed bi.

6. A character who ends up with someone but mentions in dialogue that they're bisexual? "Trendy. Told-not-shown. Jumped on the bandwagon."

7. A character who kisses / fucks people of multiple genders? "Slutty bi trope. Harmful. I thought we were done with this."

Let me be clear: many of these tropes CAN be harmful. Slutty bi IS a trope. Queerbaiting IS a trope. Turned straight IS a trope. BUT there ARE ways to handle these narratives thoughtfully and bisexual people with these experiences SHOULD be allowed to try.

When we say "but that was my experience!" the answer is always "well, fiction isn't reality and you can't do these tropes because harm." You know what else is harm? The TOTAL ERASURE of my sexuality and experiences because non-bi people don't like bisexual folks.

About the only time I see bi/pan rep allowed is when the romance is with a trans person. Which is a side-shoot of anti-trans bigotry. People don't have to be bi/pan to love trans people! Stop assuming straight, gay, and lesbian folks don't want us.

We need to talk about how m/f bisexual rep is NOT THE SAME as m/f heterosexual rep. Bisexual people in m/f relationships face constant erasure. They're told they aren't *really* queer. They're made to feel they "settled". Bisexual people in m/f relationships are made to feel "basically straight" despite the bigotry faced--and the book community reflects this.

I see a lot of talk about why we even need m/f bisexual rep when, if you WANT m/f, you can pick a book off the shelf at random. But bisexual m/f rep IS NOT THE SAME as heterosexual m/f rep. Yes, we need it. I needed bisexual m/f rep as a kid to understand that I could BE in an m/f relationship and STILL bisexual. I needed bisexual m/f rep as a kid in order to recognize that liking boys didn't make me straight. I needed bisexual m/f rep as a kid to show me that my sexuality wasn't "turned off" or "straightened" because I held a boy's hand.

"Why d'you need bisexual m/f when there's so much m/f already?" assumes we're hungry for m/f sex scenes rather than THE BISEXUAL REP ITSELF. We know that Exploitation and Representation are different things. We know context and nuance are important. Or, if we don't know that, we need to learn.

Gay m/m books written to titillate straight women readers isn't the same as gay m/m representation.

Lesbian f/f books written to arouse straight men reading along isn't the same as lesbian f/f representation.

Trans narratives written for chasers to jerk off to are not the same as trans representation written by/for trans readers.

We need bi and pan representation that is GOOD and reflects our real and messy experiences for real, messy bi/pan readers.

We're not "half-gay, half-straight" (the original meaning of the bi in bisexual) in need of gay and straight books. WE NEED BI BOOKS. We need bi books to be reviewed by bi readers. Takes from other folks about whether the bisexuality was "established correctly" = NOPE.

And because this keeps coming up: No, I do not think all bi rep is equally good. That's ridiculous. OF COURSE there are badly written bi characters in fiction. Do you know who gets to critique them? Bisexual people! What we do not need or want are generalized rules (esp. from non-bi people!) about how bi characters have to be written!

"They have to show an experience of an attraction to two genders." No! I am bi all the time, not just when attracted to people.

"They have to say 'bisexual' on the page." Look, I prefer that too, but sometimes it doesn't work in the story. Case-by-case basis.

"They have to show more attraction than just a fleeting 'girls are hot'." No, they literally do not have to meet an attraction bar.

"They have to experience bigotry against bisexuals." Hahahahahahaha, NO. We're allowed to write bi fluff, closeted bis, wev we want.

"They have to differentiate themselves from straight characters." NO. You can *stop* assuming straightness is a default we deviate from.

"They have to be canonically bi, not just authorially so." Look, the Dumbledore effect is a thing, BUT perhaps you are not the best judge.

I have written bi characters attracted to multiple gender in CHAPTER ONE and still had people surprised when same-gender sex happened later.

So, again, the Dumbledore Effect (vs. On Page Rep) is a case-by-case thing that BISEXUAL PEOPLE get to discuss. Everyone else gets to hush.

I keep saying this, but allyship includes *being quiet* when something isn't your lane. Let the bi people thrash out the reviews.

"They have to be attracted to someone with opposite genitals, not just opposite gender trans people." Step on Legos if you think this.

"They shouldn't call themselves gay." Look, some of us do and realize later we're not and/or some of us use it as an umbrella term.

And, look, you don't HAVE to READ bisexual books! No one is saying (I hope?) that they're mandatory reading. Just that, by gum, we're allowed to write our own messy rep and non-bi people can please be quiet while we have our bi conversations.

I honestly don't know why non-bi people are invested in this AT ALL or @-ing my thread. If you're not bi, you don't get to judge bi rep. I feel mean saying that, but why would someone not in this identity BE a good judge of the authentic representations of said identity?

Storify: Passive Characters

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

I've been talking to my writing-group friends this week about the words we use to describe marginalized protagonists. One of the things we hear a lot about marginalized--particularly female--protagonists is "passive". I have a lot of thoughts about this and I'm going to try to organize them here.

One: We cannot 1-to-1 compare a marginalized character to a more privileged default we've become accustomed to. Marginalized people have been taught from birth to minimize ourselves. Don't stick your neck out, don't cause trouble, don't stand up. That marginalized 17-year-old or 25-year-old protagonist had a lifetime of being smacked down when they tried to excel. I know I did. So when we see a marginalized protagonist being "passive" or hesitant or fearful, where some see a Personality Flaw, I see their trauma. I see someone who has learned "passive" behavior in order to survive.

Now, we can argue whether such a character is "interesting" or not, but that comes back to the "depressed characters are boring" problem which is to say (a) they aren't boring to depressed readers (we exist!) and (b) it's problematic to declare a marginalized group "boring". So to sum up this first point: we can't expect a marginalized character to have had the same experiences as a privileged one.

Two: Much as how "Mary Sue" is rarely applied to male characters, "passive" is rarely used against them even when it would be fitting. When a male character pulls a Refusal of the Call and runs away from his duty, that's not "passive", it's a character arc. When a mentor or an elf girl or a dragon egg plops into his lap and he's pulled into a greater story, we don't see him as passive. When stormtroopers burn down his home and make the decision to leave FOR him, we don't call him passive. When a wizard takes him to a stone--or his adopted brother says 'get me a new sword'--and he gives it a tug, we don't call that "passive". When clues fall into a detective's lap, or when a video game sucks him into the electronic world, or when a girl kidnaps him... not passive?

I feel almost like the passive/not-passive arithmetic is reserved for non-default white cisallohet male protagonists. Which is interesting. I wonder if we don't see privileged men as *inherently* active in ways that marginalized people have to "earn".

Three: I have noticed that "active" marginalized protagonists get complaints for not being passive enough. A girl thinks she's good enough for that hot vampire boy? Mary Sue. A girl dreams of bigger and better things than the life she's been born into? She's a bitch leaving her family behind. (Oh, the SO MANY hot takes about how Katniss didn't love her mother enough like a good daughter should.) A girl throws her drink at a boy who scared and upset her? Violence and abuse! A girl actively seeks out a lover to divest her of her virginity because she wants to be sexually active? The reviews will EXCORIATE her.

All of this points to a problem with using the "passive" label when there's an invisible line, once crossed, that makes her Unacceptable. By which I mean "passive" becomes meaningless as a criticism if being "active" also results in criticism.

Four: This is subjective (as are most book discussions) but "passive" isn't an objectively bad or uninteresting thing. I *like* the story of the quiet little hobbit whose life was turned upside down because a wizard decided he needed an adventure. Stories about passive protagonists are, perhaps, written for readers who feel passive themselves, as escapism. If presented with a magic portal and the title of Chosen One, I might NOT leave my family and my responsibilities to go adventuring. But if thrown into that situation, I would react in ways true to myself. Why do I have to *choose* to go to Narnia for a story to be valid? Life includes things we *didn't* choose to happen to us. Those stories are valid to write. Maybe not for everyone! But valid.

@sapphixy: [quoting Dante from CLERKS] "I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"

YES. A VERY APPROPRIATE QUOTE! Stories are about people and character. It troubles me when we act like an entire TYPE of people--"passive" people--aren't valid characters. Especially when that label is often applied to folks who have been marginalized and traumatized, whose "passivity" is really "survival".

NOW HAVING SAID ALL THAT, reading tastes are what they are. If some people prefer active characters that's 100% fine! But simply saying "Bella Swan is passive", however true, doesn't make the book bad any more than saying "Bella Swan is a brunette" does. And I think it's critical to note that "Bella Swan is passive" is very much a thing, but "Bilbo Baggins is passive".....kinda isn't. Or whoever. Luke Skywalker. Eragon. Harry Dresden. Hicks from Aliens. John Connor. Think about why we rarely discuss their "passivity".

@fromankyra: Arthur Dent's whole shtick is his passivity, and that's used as THE example for the relatable everyman character.

YES. I adore Arthur Dent and have never heard him called an uninteresting character for being passive. Anyway, I think that's the sum of my thoughts. This thread brought to you by a discussion I brought up in writing-group last night.

A fifth point has occurred to me on this active/passive topic and I'm struggling with how to phrase it properly. We do not have nearly enough marginalized rep as protagonists in fiction. When I read someone with my marginalization, I identify with them. But I've noticed that more privileged readers/viewers will not "identify with them" so much as enjoy *observing* them for entertainment. This can manifest less as "oh god, it's ME but set in Narnia" and more as "do things to entertain me, Mx. Character!" So "this character [I don't identify with] is passive" can come from a character they don't identify with failing to grippingly entertain. Whereas other "passive" characters they DO identify with--Arthur Dent, Luke Skywalker, Dante from CLERKS--aren't expected to entertain.

This isn't necessarily a BAD way to approach fiction, but I think it's important to understand from an audience-centering approach. I've had to explain to a lot of guys in my life that while THEY don't identify with lady-reboots (SW, GB) the movies aren't really FOR them. Ladies in Star Wars and Ghostbusters and so on give feminine-identified people a protagonist to identify with. They aren't FOR men. So "this character was passive" when we mean "this character didn't entertain me" can sometimes point to maybe the character wasn't FOR you.

On an individual level, that's okay! Nobody has to like something just because it's ~diverse~ in one way or another. Like, I know some folks who read protagonists that aren't like them and then feel guilty for not 'getting' something that wasn't FOR them. Please don't feel guilty! Tastes are subjective and weird and they're allowed to be what they are. I think it's just something we want to think about when we talk about critiquing, reviewing, sharing, etc. "This wasn't my kind of thing and that's okay" is very different from "This was bad because it failed to entertain me, personally."

I wonder if it's worth recognizing that, say, "Entertainment Value" and "Identity Representation on Page" may not be the same things. An active character will entertain me, but a passive character is more likely to be someone I identify with. And I think that's due in very large part because my entire life has been shaped to traumatize me into a passive position for survival.

While I have you here, this might be why so many women adore Sansa while the men tend to favor Arya, afaict. Because a girl "quietly surviving" isn't entertaining, but she's identifiable. A girl running around on a murder spree is very exciting! But I can identify with a girl's anger and desire for revenge, and I can be entertained by murder, but it's... a different kind of "identify".

@lirelyn: YES. I like Arya fine, but Sansa is the one I'm most anxious to see come out on top. Zero men have understood when I say that.

@StoryHospital: Identifying with Arya's desires is the wish-fulfillment fantasy. Identifying with Sansa's survival is the mirror.

Storify: Don't Give Suggestions to Chronic Pain Patients

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

Don't tell chronic pain patients how to manage their pain.

Don't offer suggestions.

Don't help us.

Don't.

Yes, I know about weed. Yes, I know about acupuncture. Yes, I know about yoga. Yes, I know about meditation. Yes, I know about chiro. Yes.

I know about your aunt who does crystal bowl sound therapy. I know about the lady who tapes tarot cards to the hurty spot. I know.

I know about that thing on Amazon and that other thing on Amazon and the back brace and the neck warmer and the tube socks and I KNOW.

I know the impulse comes from the best possible place. Nothing is kinder than wanting to heal the world. But stop. STOP. S-T-O-P.

Offering suggestions for pain management to spoonies is the metaphorical equivalent of pouring a canister of salt on an open wound.

If we want suggestions, WE. WILL. ASK.

Every. Damn. Person. who urges me to use weed has NO idea that:
- it's not legal in my state.
- it's not a protected class from firing.

So they're literally urging me to lose my job and go to prison. GET FUCKED.

Not to mention the sheer breath-taking audacity to think that, while I'm over here in pain 24/7, I've never Googled pain management. This is stigma against chronic pain patients: the idea we're so "addicted" to our meds that we've never thought about alternative methods. Like a doctor gave me opioids and I just took them like a wide-eyed little lamb and never considered that Big Pharma is against the tarot lady. My medication works better than anything else available to me, so please insert your suggestions into the nearest loo.

In closing: I've used all the above methods (except weed) so miss me with claims that I don't like tarot or meditation or whatever. Tarot and meditation are lovely things I use for my own personal reasons but they DO NOT MANAGE MY PAIN and you can take my word on that, buddy.

Storify: "Cis Enbys" and Nope

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

A Brief Thread on Nonbinary Gender Identities.

There are hundreds of nonbinary (i.e., not Man or Woman) genders. Here is an incomplete list of some. When you were born, your parents and doctor gave you a gender assignment. IF that assignment matches your gender, you're cis. If not: trans.

It is possible to be cis + nonbinary, but for that to happen your parents would have had to raise you with an assigned-at-birth nonbinary gender. Since very, VERY few parents assign their children nonbinary genders at birth, 99.99999999% of enby people are transgender.

Now this part is important. Pull in close and listen up.

Your gender can be ANYTHING and can have NOTHING to do with what you were assigned at birth or what's between your legs. Your gender is YOUR GENDER, and if it doesn't 1-to-1 match what you were assigned at birth, YOU ARE TRANS. Why am I shouting? I will tell you.

Someone was out here today saying that if you were assigned-girl-at-birth and you're a demigirl, then it's "close enough" to cis. That AFAB demigirls are "cis enbys". NOPE. NOPE.

Gender is not a game of horseshoes. If you are nonbinary gender, you are trans no matter how much or little overlap you have with your AGAB. AFAB Demigirls are not "cis" because they're "close enough" to their assigned gender at birth. That is transphobic erasure and wrong.

Nonbinary genders are each individually REAL AND VALID. They aren't all "basically" one of three ("man, woman, third gender"). Anyone coming out here to toss gender cards into binary or trinary buckets is a transphobe you can block and never speak to again.

Storify: Pride Month

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

#PrideMonth. For each fav/RT, I'll tweet a Pride fact I was going to tweet anyway. Typos will be liberal and unapologetic.

#PrideMonth. I am queer and I belong to the Queer community.

#PrideMonth. The word Queer was reclaimed for use by our community (much as gay was for the Gay community) & I am proud of my fellow queers.

#PrideMonth. The Queer community includes queers, intersex folk, lesbians, trans folk, bisexuals, pansexuals, asexuals, aromantics, & gays.

#PrideMonth. Queer is an inclusive word and doesn't privilege any letter over another. There are no invisible letters or plus signs in Queer.

#PrideMonth. Queer includes many people who are intersex. If you are not intersex, you are perisex.

#PrideMonth. [TW] It is still legal and common practice in most parts of the world to operate on intersex infants' genitals due to stigma.

#PrideMonth[TW] The above practice is a human rights issue and hostile to bodily autonomy. We should all care about this.

#PrideMonth. Queer includes many lesbians. Both cis women and trans women can be lesbians; lesbian as an identity is not limited to cis folk.

#PrideMonth. Lesbian trans women are women who are trans and lesbian. They're not "straight men", and saying they are is transphobic bigotry.

#PrideMonth. Queer includes transgender folks simply for being trans. We trans people are queer no matter our sexual orientation.

#PrideMonth. "Trans" means a person's gender is not the gender that was assigned at their birth. It is not a statement about our bodies.

#PrideMonth"Cis" means a person's gender is the same gender assigned at their birth. It is not a statement about their body.

#PrideMonth. Genitals are not a binary. Genital modification is something some trans and cis people participate in, and some do not.

#PrideMonth. A trans person is not somehow less valid if they choose not to modify their bodies.

#PrideMonth. There are dozens of genders. All of them are valid. Genders which are not man or woman are nonbinary genders.

#PrideMonth. Trans people come in any sexual and romantic orientation combination. All of them are included in the Queer community.

#PrideMonth. Straight trans people belong in Queer. Lesbian trans women belong in Queer. Gay trans men belong in Queer.

#PrideMonth. Trans people who opt for body modification do so for themselves, not for the benefit, pleasure, or deception of cis people.

#PrideMonth. Trans people's gender and pronouns are their gender and pronouns. No one gets to misgender them as a punishment.

#PrideMonth. Trans people are integral to the Queer movement and always have been. Look up why Pride month is held in June, specifically.

#PrideMonth. Queer includes bisexual people. Bisexuality is an attraction to two or more genders. (Reminder: there are dozens of genders.)

#PrideMonth. Bisexuality includes trans people the same as any other sexual orientation. Bisexuality is not a transphobic identity.

#PrideMonth. Bisexuals are not necessarily attracted to men or women. (Reminder: there are dozens of genders.)

#PrideMonth. Bisexuals are not necessarily attracted to their own gender. (Reminder: there are dozens of genders.)

#PrideMonth. Bisexuals do not necessarily want sexual contact with every genital configuration available.(Reminder: genitals are not binary.)

#PrideMonth. Bisexual is not the same thing as pansexual.

#PrideMonth. Queer includes pansexual people. Pansexuality is an attraction to people from all or most gender identities. (Reminder: there are dozens of genders.)

#PrideMonth. Pansexuality includes trans people, just the same as any other sexual orientation includes trans people. Pansexuality is not "the trans orientation".

#PrideMonth. Pansexuals are not necessarily attracted to men or women. (Reminder: there are dozens of genders.)

#PrideMonth. Pansexuals are not necessarily attracted to their own gender. (Reminder: there are dozens of genders.)

#PrideMonth. Panseuxals do not necessarily want sexual contact with every genital configuration available.(Reminder: genitals aren't gender.)

#PrideMonth. Pansexuality is its own valid thing. It isn't "bisexual but with trans" or "better than" others. Attraction isn't a competition.

#PrideMonth. Queer includes people who are asexual. Asexuality is a spectrum; if you are not asexual, you are allosexual.

#PrideMonth. The existence of asexual people and a word for not-asexual people (allosexual) does not inherently "sexualize" others.

#PrideMonth. The word "allosexual" does not sexualize people to whom it applies any more than "heterosexual" or "bisexual".

#PrideMonth. Queer includes people who are aromantic. Aromanticism is a spectrum; if you are not aromantic, you are alloromantic.

#PrideMonth. People can be asexual and aromantic (acearo), but sexuality and romantic attraction do not have to "match" neatly.

#PrideMonth. A person can be asexual & heteromantic (or biromantic or [any orientation]romantic), or heterosexual & aromantic, or ANY COMBO.

#PrideMonth. Queer includes asexual-spectrum and aromantic-spectrum people, regardless of whether their other axis is hetero or not.

#PrideMonth. Queer includes asexual heteromantic people. Queer includes heterosexual aromantic people. Ace and aro are inherently queer.

#PrideMonth. Ace and aro people face stigma for being queer. Even if they all somehow did not, they would still be queer.

#PrideMonth. Aro and ace people face stigma for being aro and ace. The onus is on the Queer community to not replicate that bigotry.

#PrideMonth. Ace and aro people are not being ace and aro *at* you, any more than bisexuals are bisexual *at* you. Respect our identities.

#PrideMonth. Queer includes many gay men. Both cis men and trans men can be gay; gayness as an identity is not limited to cis folks.

#PrideMonth. Gay trans men are men who are trans and gay. They're not "women" and saying they are is transphobic bigotry.

#PrideMonth. Queer is a community term chosen by the community and used in university coursework, academic study, and activist spaces.

#PrideMonth. Queer is the appropriate inclusive term for our community. "Gay", "LBGT", and "LBGT+" are not inclusive.

#PrideMonth. Terms like "MOGAI", "MOGII", "GSD", "SAGA", and other acronyms have been used to sneak in pedophiles and/or misgender trans people. Use with care and understand that some people will not want to claim those terms.

#PrideMonth. Queer was reclaimed over decades. It is our word and using it is an act of defiance against those who would render us nameless.

#PrideMonth. Queer is used by our community BECAUSE it is inclusive in ways that "gay", "lbgt", and "lbgt+" are not.

#PrideMonth. The inclusiveness of Queer has caused recent and strong pushback from bigots who wish to push bi/pans, trans, aces and aros out.

#PrideMonth. In-community bigotry against bi/pans, trans, aces, and aros is rooted in white supremacy which is why we're seeing a resurgence.

#PrideMonth. In-community bigotry against bi/pans, trans, aces, and aros is a rejection of intersectionality and privilege theory.

#PrideMonth. Possessing one or more Queer identities does not erase any other privileges you may possess: cisness, whiteness, ablebodiedness.

#PrideMonth. Possessing one or more Queer identities does not make someone an expert on (or bigotry-free towards) any other Queer identities.

#PrideMonth. Queer people are queer because of who they are, not because of what they've suffered.

#PrideMonth. There is no minimum suffering one must experience to be Queer. Queerness is not a fraternity and Pride month isn't Pledge week.

#PrideMonth. No one can tell you if you're queer or not; you have to decide for yourself. But the Queer community is here and I welcome you.

Open Thread: Darkness and Light

Power was out at South Station. Sort of.

Specifically power was out at the Red Line stop. As soon as you got above ground level power was just fine. In the part where the power was out there was sufficient back up lighting as well as light from machines with internal power. (Think those freestanding ATMs and their ilk.)

-

~~Friday~~ Saturday Recommendations! What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately? Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ~~ahead of us~~ here, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Storify: Deadnames in Fiction

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

So, hey, um. *shy wave* I'm trans and nonbinary. Can I talk a little about writing trans characters? I'm gonna. Specifically, I want to talk about deadnames. Trigger warnings for same apply to this thread.

Term definition time: A deadname is a name that a trans person no longer uses, usually a name that was given to them at birth. Our society tends to assign gender to names. For example, "Benedick" and "Beatrice" imply genders because our society has attached them. So some trans people feel that their birth name doesn't fit well with their gender and decide to bury that name and use a new one.

Deadnames *can* be triggering for a lot of trans folk, because of the way family and friends may insist on using the deadname on them. That persistent, unwanted deadnaming can be a form of misgendering and of refusing to acknowledge the trans person's identity. But it's also important to understand that not ever trans person has a deadname, and/or some of us who do don't find them triggering.

(A note on triggers: People aren't "weak" for having them or "strong" for not. We're all different and we have different traumas.)

It's also important to understand that trans people who choose new names don't all use the same process. Some trans people pick an entirely new name they love; some trans people pick a name that incorporates their old name in a new way.

Deadnames are.... complicated in fiction, because (a) they can be triggering for readers and (b) cis reviewers can misuse them. But that doesn't mean that a deadname should never be used for any story ever or that authors can't know their characters' deadnames. I have trans characters whose deadnames I do not know, sure! But I also have trans characters whose deadnames I DO know. I have a character whose deadname I never plan to write, but I know their deadname because they incorporated that deadname into their name.

Here is my advice--and keep in mind I am just one voice here and not The Trans Pope--for deadnames in fiction.

1. Does it NEED to be used? Can the story be written without it and the heart of the story stays the same? Would its use be gratuitous? If the story doesn't need the name, consider not using it--if only to minimize harm for readers who will find its use triggering. If you do NEED it, there should be a trigger warning on the book for deadnaming, and a note to reviewers to please NOT use it in reviews.

2. Do YOU, the author, need to know it? Is this just another irrelevant birth detail, like the character's favorite crib-mobile? Sometimes the answer is "yes" and you can file deadname under "first word spoken" as a childhood detail you don't need to come up with! Sometimes the answer is "no" and you need to know the deadname (even if you'll never use it!) because it matters to the character. Okay!

3. Can you "use" the deadname without USING the deadname? Something I've used is dashes:

"R-----?"
Rothe looked up. "Yes?"

I used an R with dashes because Rothe's deadname has the same starting letter. @Mer_Squared has also suggested gibberish noises. Here's her example, which I really like--especially in a contemporary setting.

@Mer_Squared
"Merry Christmas KSSCCZZRRK," Mom says.
"Mom," I say, rubbing my temple. "That's not my name."

(It makes me think of a white static noise.)

These "workarounds" on deadnames protect readers, but also show character with regards to the POV character, which I like. As in, the character is blanking out the sound of their name into static. Just from that example, I can tell they're weary of the argument.

Please don't lose sight of the fact that trans people are *individuals*. Some of us don't have deadnames. Some of us do but regard them without pain or even fondly. Some of us weave them into our new names. Those stories are valuable too. We can and should write them. We just need to label them (trigger warnings) and review them respectfully.

I do feel comfortable saying a reviewer should *never* use a deadname in a review. There may be an exception somewhere, but.... pls don't. There may be a case to be made for characters who name-switch willing ("X in the work, Y at home"), but I don't call names a person willingly uses / switches between to be deadnames, so I stand by my "don't use deadnames in a review" stance.

If there's a word for name-switching based on context, or rather for the names one switches between, I'd love to hear that term. I have a genderqueer character who has one name for friends/family and another for strangers. I have another genderfluid character who uses different names with different pronouns.

So. We contain multitudes. Thank you for listening.

OH AND THAT REMINDS ME ABOUT PRONOUNS HANG ON. If you read a genderfluid person and if they move between she, he, and they, please consider using they/them for your review. I mean, if the character spends a disproportionate amount of time using another pronoun or expresses a preference for a pronoun, use THAT, but I have seen reviewers use "he" or "she" over "they" in an attempt to express their opinions on a character's bodily configuration.

So don't do that. Trying to use pronouns to dogwhistley signal a fictional genderfluid character's genital arrangements is transphobia.

As a final point, be gentle with yourself as a writer. You aren't going to be perfectly Socially Justice Aware in your head at all times. You aren't. Let go of that. You are probably going to misgender your characters in your head at times, NOT because you don't respect their gender but because you were thinking through the scene from the POV of another character who doesn't know or is themselves transphobic.

You will probably type neopronouns wrong at times. Muscle memory is a hell of a thing to untrain.

There will be characters where you are comfortable never knowing their deadnames and/or genital configurations. Great! There may also be characters where your brain nags at you until you figure those things out, then set them aside and never USE them. Okay! And there may be characters where one or both of those things may matter to the story and may need to be respectfully included. The important thing isnt to Be Perfect At All Times During The Process; it's to listen to sensitivity readers and fix problems before print.

I'm trans myself and I spend a disproportionate amount of time being terrified that I'm doing everything wrong. Try to be gentle w/yourself. The first draft doesn't need to be perfect and the most socially justice aware thing ever written such that grown men weep at its beauty. Bad stuff is gonna slip in and you go back in with your elbow grease and your team of experts and you drag the bad stuff back out.

SURVIVAL ROUT has a character who uses xie/xer pronouns JUST LIKE ME, and I had to edit out erroneous she/hers. I did a find-replace in Word of "she/her" to "she/her [format: highlighted yellow]" and checked EVERY INSTANCE.

Understand and embrace that you will screw up at times. Keep going, don't give up, and listen to trans folk when we tell you a thing hurts. Thank you!

Storify: Cis Actors in Trans Roles

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

Content Note: Violent Transphobia.

Cis Actors in Trans Roles: My thoughts on the upcoming movie "Anything" produced by Mark Ruffalo with Matt Bomer playing a trans woman.

Okay, here is a thread of things people need to STOP saying re: cis actors taking trans character roles.

"Maybe no trans actors applied for the job." They did. Even if they hadn't, they should have been actively sought. If you cannot get a trans person to take the role, SHELVE THE SCRIPT until you find out why and can fix it.

"Maybe the cis actor was the best for the role." They are not. Even if they were, there are reasons to stop casting cis folks as trans.

"I don't blame the actor for taking the part." You should. Not taking trans roles is BASIC allyship from cis people.

"The cis actor is gay." Cis gayness is irrelevant to being trans.

"The cis actor is LBGTQ." No, they literally fucking are not. Cis people are not "LBGTQ". There's a T in that acronym.

"Maybe they didn't know this was bad to do." They were told. Even if they were not, it's a basic google search away when researching a character.

"Maybe they'll listen. They've been good on [other issue affecting cis people]." Trans bigotry isn't cancelled out by other activism.

"Maybe they'll listen anyway." They're batting zero on listening so far. Just because YOU just found out about this doesn't mean THEY have.

Stop worshiping Ruffalo because he was a Bernie fan, and Bomer because you loved Magic Mike XXL. STOP. I liked Magic Mike XXL too, that doesn't mean the actors involved haven't said and done misogynistic and/or transphobic things. People can be BOTH bigots AND attractive to look at / listen to / watch on the silver screen.

You don't have to throw all your Ruffalo and Bomer movies into a bonfire! Just stop defending their latest bigoted trashfire! Before you tweet a defense of Ruffalo/Bomer just quietly close the browser and go look at kitten pictures instead. IT IS THAT SIMPLE.

This is the bare minimum of allyship: knowing when to NOT TALK because this isn't your lane to speak up in. Thank you. (& god bless all of the cis people who DON'T do this. I see you and I thank you.)

Honestly, of all of these, the "Bomer is gay" take bothers me the most. A gay man should not be playing a straight woman. The ONLY reason he is doing so is because of bigotry. Straight trans women are not cis gay men, and the assumption that they are is getting them killed under "trans-panic" legal defenses.

Our legal system literally uses homophobia and transphobia--FEAR of gayness and transness--to murder trans women. So, yes, it is in fact a big fucking deal for gay dudes to play trans women. Do not give me this "I don't blame Bomer" bullshit. Ruffalo and Bomer could be using their money and influence to (a) cast a trans woman and (b) make noise about "trans panic" legal defenses.

Storify: Enby Gaslighting in TERF Spaces

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

So a friend has been digging through the usual TERF sites and reported back to me on something that makes me very sad and upset. There are TERF campaigns going on right now to *actively* seek out AFAB enbys and seed them with TERF rhetoric.

The goal is to break up trans communities by sending in enbys with TERF rhetoric to hurt trans people and sow distrust. And if the enbys are hurt in the process and confused about their own gender identity, that's a bonus to the TERFs running these campaigns.

This makes me sad and furious, both for the enbys being gaslit and the older trans people they're being sent out to hurt. So here's some thoughts and prayers and advice and definitions and stuff from an enby. Take it as you will.

If you're having confused genderfeels, please find an experienced enby-friendly trans person to talk to. I follow LOTS of them and RT often. If you can, talk to a lot of sources and not just one. There are a lot of different ways to be transgender.

Transgender doesn't mean "transition". I'm transgender because the gender assigned to me at birth isn't mine now. It's that simple for me. You don't have to want surgery or prosthetics or anything else to be trans. LOTS of trans people don't get surgery or pack or pad or bind. You don't have to have dysphoria to be trans. LOTS of trans people are perfectly happy with their bodies. Or unhappy in non-trans ways!

You are an expert on YOUR identity, but you are probably not yet an expert on what it means to be nonbinary trans for others. We're ALL experts on our OWN identities, but the terms and ideas and conversations in the trans communities take time to learn. Like WHY we don't define transness as dysphoria or transition, and WHY exclusionary definitions hurt people. Inclusive is better.

For folks who don't have or want a gender, understand that many nonbinary people treasure OUR genders and don't want them abolished. Gender identity is not the same as gender roles or gender stereotypes. Be wary of anyone who conflates these things.

People who are not transgender are called "cisgender" by the trans community. The term is not a "slur" or an insult. It is a *trans* term. Non-trans people don't get a vote on how trans people talk about the world around us. Non-trans folks don't get to tell us not to use "cis". "Cisgender" is not an identity to "claim" or "deny". It is a word trans people call non-trans people. Please do not police trans language.

Please learn to recognize TERF arguments and why they are harmful, for the same reason you need to recognize any form of bigotry. Red flags for TERF rhetoric are an opposition to "cis", to gender existing at all, to trans people facing unique anti-trans prejudice. Trans people face prejudice *because* they are trans, not merely because of our genders (though we face gender-based prejudice too).

Be careful out there. Not everyone welcoming us enbys with open arms has good intentions. Be safe.

Storify: Transition and Fluidity

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

Transition and Fluidity: They're not the same thing.

*sets up chairs and blankets and foods and pillows* Come. We are going to have a thread about identity and fluidity.

Some people experience fluidity of identity. For example, some people experience gender in fluid ways over time. Some of those people who experience gender in fluid ways may identify as genderfluid. (I do, for example.)

Other people who experience gender in fluid ways may feel their gender was static THEN and is static NOW, but shifted over time.

Other people do NOT experience gender in fluid ways. They may have a static gender from start of life to finish.

Some of those genderstatic people may not RECOGNIZE their gender right away because maybe people kept telling them they were something else. "I didn't have the words to recognize I was [gender] in spite of people telling me otherwise" does not equal "my gender shifted over time."

Cis authors sometimes use the act of coming out as trans, or the process of medical transition, to suggest an identity change or fluidity. I will not say that *NO* trans person would describe their coming out / medical transition that way but I think that is the exception. In many (most?) cases, coming out and/or medical transition are ways to affirm an identity that is already there, not "changing" a identity.

Cis people tend to see transition as an identity change because THEY have to "change" the pronouns they've been using for the person. But that doesn't mean the trans person views their transition as a change from Being A to Being B. It is more likely that they view the "change" their cis friends experience as "using the right words for me instead of the wrong ones."

Similarly, when queer friends come out as ace or aro or bisexual or pansexual, this often isn't an example of fluid sexuality. "New" queer friends are usually going "oh god, look at all the identity flags I missed over time, how did it take me this long to see it??"

Gender and sexuality CAN be experienced in fluid ways! But "coming out" shouldn't be read automatically as "becoming a new identity". Coming out is just as likely a case of "using a new WORD to explain the identity I've had for years but didn't see". When we treat cisness and unqueerness as a default that people "change" from in order to "become" new things, we entrench the problem.

(Which isn't to say no one should describe their trans or queer journey that way. I'm talking about NON-ownvoices narratives.)

So to the cis people: please do not call all trans people "genderfluid" or imply that transition is "changing" one's gender. And to the unqueer people: please do not imply that coming out as queer is sexual fluidity or changing one's sexuality.

Let us also understand that challenging the DEFAULT state of cisness and unqueerness is a valuable and important rhetorical act. Sometimes I joke about giving "Do You Know Bisexuality Is An Option?" brochures to straight girls because I needed to know that. People compare the idea to conversion therapy and corrective rape because just POINTING OUT that people might be queer is viewed as violent.

Pointing out that transness and queerness are options is important when we live in a society where many of us didn't know until adulthood. We can't treat education about transness and queerness existing as equal in any way to violent cis-normativity and unqueer-normativity. Hell, I spent YEARS thinking I couldn't be into girls because I prefer penetrative sex to oral and I didn't know girls could have that.

Wanna reiterate that I spent ACTUAL ADULT YEARS as a miserable 'straight' because I didn't KNOW girls can have penetrative sex together. So, yes, we goddamn need brochures. We need comprehensive sex ed that acknowledges bis, pans, aces, aros, and transness. And we need people to understand that coming out / transition doesn't mean we totally WERE that default but aren't NOW. Some of us may have been but for many of us, we were NEVER that "default" we were shoved into.

People who thought we were cis/unqueer may think we're "changing", but really THEY are being asked to change how they perceive us. This is how we get parents saying "I miss my daughter!", without realizing they (maybe) never had one. They had a son. They still do. I think it's understandable to miss a thing you never had; when I divorced my ex, I missed the man he wasn't and never would be.

BUT.

It isn't right to load trans and queer folk down with the fantasy you had for them. We are who we are. We aren't a fantasy.

Storify: Gender Non-Conforming (and why I'm not)

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

Since folks come to my yard for trans stuff, here's a thread on "gender non-conforming" and why I don't use it for myself.

My gender is a nonbinary gender; my gender is demigirl.

I "conform" to my gender because it is MY GENDER. Anything I do is something a demigirl can do, by definition. I cannot say I am "non-conforming" to gender expectations, because my gender (demigirl) doesn't COME with expectations.

And I most certainly refuse to identify as "gender non-conforming" to womanhood because my gender is NOT a woman. If someone were to suggest I'm "gender non-conforming" because I'm not acting like a woman as assigned, that would be misgendering.

So these are some of the reasons why "GNC" isn't a 1-to-1 synonym for transgender or enby, and why I do not identify as GNC.

I love my demigirl gender, and I conform the fuck to it. My gender is the most comfortable set of clothes I've ever worn, molded to me. There's kinda a weird thing that some cis people do where they fixate on assigned gender at birth more than they should. I'm trans *because* my assigned gender at birth was incorrect, yes, but that doesn't mean that incorrect gender is always relevant.

It would feel very weird (to me! ymmv! talking about myself) to define myself as non-conforming to an incorrect gender assigned to me. I'm a brunette, I'm not a "non-conforming blond". (Even though I was blond as a baby, ironically enough for this thread.) I'm a demigirl who also happens to be transgender because they didn't put 'demigirl' on the birth certificate. So when people call me gender non-conforming (which has happened a couple times), I will correct them.

My gender is demigirl, and I conform to it beautifully. Whether I conform to any gender I'm NOT is irrelevant to me.

Storify: Who Defines Transness?

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

A thread on transness by an enby trans person watching growing anti-trans sentiment on the internets. (1)

I & many trans people in the community define transgender as being a gender other than what was slapped on your birth certificate. (2)

This definition is deliberately simple and inclusive. It welcomes nonbinary people. It includes non-dysphoric people. (3)

It doesn't tie itself to gatekeeping or recognition by the medical community. It welcomes folks who can't afford to transition. (4)

It welcomes folks who can't transition for other reasons: closeted folks, folks with phobias around surgery. (5)

It is a definition that is simple to explain.
- "Trans" = on the other side of
- "Cis" = on the same side
Chemistry peeps know these terms. (6)

Now here is the thing. There is a lot of stigma in our society about what transness looks and feels like. (7)

I grew up being told that trans people changed their bodies, got surgery, wore clothes and makeup I wouldn't wear. (8)

I associated transness with an image of drag queens, and it never occurred to me that I might be trans because I wasn't like that. (9)

A lot of the push by non-trans people right now to redefine trans as "transition" is based in those stereotypes. (10)

When folks say "trans is transition!" they are denying transness to people who can't access transition. THAT IS NOT 'INCLUSIVE'. (11)

The "trans is transition!" movement coming from non-trans people is inherently, fundamentally exclusion. Not inclusion. (12)

Now here is the thing. Nobody has to call themselves "trans" if they don't want. You say you're not trans? Okay. You're not trans. (13)

But once you're Not-Trans you do not get a say in trans terms. You do not get to vote on how the trans community defines itself. (14)

You do not get to demand a narrower exclusionary redefinition that HURTS trans people just so no one ever mistakes you for trans. (15)

Repeat: Non-trans people do not get to THROW TRANS PEOPLE OUT OF TRANSNESS. And we're not going to pretend that's inclusion. (16)

Here is what non-trans people get to do:
- say they aren't trans

Here's what they don't get to do:
- tell trans people how to define trans

And non-trans people especially do not get to use anti-trans bigotry to define transness in a bigoted way. (18)

I see a LOT of enby people lately pulling the "trans is transition!" bigotry because that's the 'common view' of trans people. (19)

Without ever examining that the 'common view' of trans people is bigoted, so they're arguing for definition through bigotry. (20)

Here is a comprehensive list of the people who get to define transness:
- Trans people.

That's it. (21)

You're not trans? Okay! You don't get an opinion anymore on what transness is. YOU DON'T GET A VOTE. You don't. Bye. (22)

Nonbinary folks don't get to straddle this fence and say, "oh, I'm not trans but I still get to be on the definition committee." (23)

You want a say in what transness is, you gotta be trans to sit at the definition committee table. (24)

Because demanding that trans people adopt an exclusionary, bigoted definition of transgender to suit non-trans people HURTS TRANS FOLK. (25)

An inclusive definition of transness doesn't hurt enbys who don't identify as trans. An exclusive definition throws out trans people. (26)

While I am on the topic, enbys don't get to pull the "I can't hold bigoted views, I'm nonbinary" card. (30)

There is nothing about being nonbinary that makes us magically not-bigoted towards binary trans people. (31)

We come back to a definition of transness, held by me and many other trans people: being a gender other than the one assigned at birth. (32)

And trans people tend to define cisness as "being the gender you were assigned at birth" and/or "not-trans". (33)

If non-trans nonbinary people want to come up with a third term they use for themselves, I support that but-- (34)

--that third term isn't "nonbinary". I'm transgender *because* I'm nonbinary. I accept there are non-trans enbys, but nonbinary does not equal Non-Trans.

Folks positioning nonbinary as inherently non-trans are throwing me and a lot of other enby people out of our identity. (36)

Positioning nonbinary as inherently non-trans is *exclusion*, which is harmful. And, in this case, rooted in anti-trans bigotry. (37)

You cannot define me out of trans without reaching for anti-trans bigotry about what trans people "should" look and be and live like. (38)

My transness is not a statement on my gender or lack thereof, it is a statement on institutional privilege. (39)

People who are trans--who aren't the gender assigned to them at birth--face systemic oppressions that non-trans people do not face. (40)

We need to be able to talk about trans oppressions and cis privileges in order to correct the problems we face. (41)

Non-trans people do not face trans-bigotry. Non-trans people do not face "harm" from inclusive trans definitionary terms. (42)

Is our definition perfect? No. Of course not. I will give you an example. (43)

Let's say a kid is born. Has a penis. Parents name the baby Christopher McBoyson. But someone prints the birth certificate with an F. (44)

The parents go through hoops but get the F changed to an M within a few weeks. Christopher grows up he/him and identifies as a man. (45)

Yes, by my definition in #2 (trans is being a gender other than what is on your birth certificate), McBoyson is technically 'included'. (46)

McBoyson: "Ha, isn't life funny? But, no, I'm not trans. Thanks for asking." Okay, cool beans. Not trans. (47)

Inclusive definitions cast a wide net ON PURPOSE so as not to leave anyone out. It is UNDERSTOOD some people will say "thanks but no." (48)

Inclusive-with-opt-outs is better than exclusionary. The former leads to some occasional awkward convos. The latter kills people. (49)

Trans lives outweigh the feelings and a few awkward "haha I'm not trans" convos on the part of non-trans people. (50)

If you are not trans, being occasionally mistaken for trans is NOT HARM unless you consider transness a bad thing to be. (51)

And we are NOT going to redefine transness in a way that EXCLUDES trans people to satisfy the desire of non-trans people. (52)

We may need to have a conversation about whether to redefine cisness to suit nonbinary people who don't want to be called cis or trans, (53)

BUT that conversation will need to bring something to the table other than anti-trans stigma about transness. (54)

Which so far has not been done. (Again: "trans means transition" IS STIGMA, harms trans people, and folks using it should be ashamed.) (55)

And I will add that TERFs are deliberately driving this stigmatizing redefinition of transness.

TL;DR: Out-group members don't get to define in-group terms to be exclusionary for their convenience. NEVER.

Storify: Including Trans People In Your Anthology Calls

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

For the short version of this thread, hop down to the ** addendum at the bottom.

Y'all, we gotta have a serious thread about trans inclusion and some stuff we've been seeing with clumsy allyship. First of all: THANK YOU for accepting enbys as valid and wanting to be an ally!! You're trying and learning, thank you. But some terms.

- "AFAB" means assigned female at birth. AFAB does not mean "women and enbys".

- "Women and enbies" are groups that include AMAB people! (Trans women! AMAB enbies!)

- "AFAB" is a group which includes men! (Trans men! AFAB genderfluid men!)

I see groups struggling with how to say "this women's thing is open to more than women". Like anthologies, meetings, etc. If you say "women and enbys welcome" are you willing to include masculine enbys? including AMAB masc enbys? Are you willing to include trans men? Why or why not?

Side note: I coined "fembys" to include enbys who are feminine identified (demigirls, girlflux, etc.) but I realize that term isn't widespread. So this may be a case where more words help you. And, no, I don't have perfect words for this. I'm not sure anyone does. "This anthology is for women and nonbinary people with feminine-adjacent genders"???? Idk. But understand a few things:

- Enbys include AMAB people.
- Enbys include masculine people (regardless of assignation at birth!)

Please also note someone's birth assignment tells you NOTHING about their genitals either then or now. Please stop mapping AGAB to genitals. "AFAB" and "AMAB" are very useful terms in the trans community for discussion, but some allies are kinda being.... clumsy with them. Think long and hard about what you mean to convey.

If an anthology is for women, saying "submissions from AFABs, pls!" in an attempt to be nonbinary-inclusive then polices out trans women and AMAB enbys--and implies you think trans men are women. Saying "submissions from women and enbys, please!" is maybe okay in theory, but again ARE you okay with AMAB demiboys submitting? If yes, you may want to stress "submissions from women and ALL enbys" or something to make your intent clear.

If no, then what do you want? Women and feminine-identified / feminine-adjacent enbys? I think you can just say that! TL;DR: Inclusion is hard and I appreciate trying, but please think about how you word your inclusion outreach.

This doesn't mean people should stop using AFAB/AMAB, just a request that folks think about what they mean when they use them. Also the gentlest of warnings against broad statements like "AFAB people are socialized to...XYZ." As a general rule, socialization is done around gender. Women and people-perceived-as-women are socialized to XYZ. Socialization is complicated but understand that assigned gender at birth is not something immediately obvious at all times with all people.

I see enbys who are regularly perceived as their assigned birth gender making this mistake of using AF/MAB to mean People Perceived As F/M. And those two things--(1) Assigned Gender at Birth, (2) Perceived Gender Now--are not the same thing for everyone. And socialization about what boys/girls mean and do are soaked up by EVERYONE, not just people with specific birth assignations. When we say "AFABs are socialized to be nice", there's some implied weirdness going on there that, say, trans women missed that message.

I understand why fembys want something more than "women are socialized to be nice" because we're NOT women, but "AFAB" isn't it. "Women and people perceived as women are socialized to be nice" or "Society expects women-perceived people to be nice" maybe. The larger point here is that nonbinary-inclusiveness should NOT throw out trans men and trans women with the bathwater.

And here is the point where I scold cis people very very very gently. Cover your eyes if you can't deal with scolding. Cis Allies, I better see you put AS MUCH IF NOT WAY MORE effort into outreach for trans women and men as you do for us enbys.

Back to 'how do I word the anthology call to be trans-inclusive?' how do I KNOW that "women authors" means you include trans women? "Well, you should just assume I'm not a TERF--" no sir, that is not an even risk calculation there at all. Consider making your trans inclusion explicit and not a quick afterthought. Like: "This is a trans-inclusive anthology call. We accept submissions from cis and trans women, as well as feminine-adjacent nonbinary genders."

If the only way I can guess you're trans-inclusive is a wave in the direction of enbys? THAT IS A PROBLEM, MY CIS FRIENDS. "But I include enby people--" So do a lot of TERFs, my friend. Still doesn't mean you are safe. So please please please PLEASE make your trans-inclusion efforts explicitly outreach to binary trans men* and trans women, not just us enbys.

* An addition, but: Why are you excluding trans men? Consider this carefully because it again ties back into the question "what is the anthology for?" If you're wanting to talk about childbirth and periods, or about growing up perceived as a girl, or really any number of things... trans men are going to have a valid perspective on that. Trans men are men, but they're not cis men.

** If you're open to trans men being included in your thing if they want to be--and 9 times out of 10, I think this is optimal--consider just saying "open to women and all trans people". That covers everyone and you don't have to haul out things like "feminine-adjacent genders" which is going to alienate some folks because it's potentially reinforcing of the gender binary.

Storify: Stop Defending Cis Men from the Opinions of Trans Women

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

This was written in the wake of one trans woman writing an article criticizing a call to ban women from gay bars, while another trans woman was being harassed for suggesting straight men examine their genital preferences in sexual partners to determine whether those preferences were genuine or reflexive assumptions they'd made (thoughtlessly associating genitals with gender, for example).

If people could stop piling onto trans women for discussing their experiences with misogyny from cis men, that would be great? I don't really give a rat's ass if people agree / disagree with trans women talking about straight cis men or gay bars, you can jog on??? "Well, that's certainly an opinion!" people can think before going on to talk about literally anything else than a Trans Woman Is Wrong!

Men--especially cis men, and regardless of sexual orientation--live and breath misogyny. Trans women do not have institutional power or privilege over cis men. Stop defending cis men from trans women's opinions!? We know for a fact that trans women are given less space to talk in our communities AND are torn down for smaller mistakes. Sometimes the best way to ally with a marginalized person you disagree with is to talk about something or someone else.

Whatever you think about genital preferences, you lose NOTHING by letting trans women talk about their experiences with cis men.

Whatever you think about gay* bars, you lose NOTHING by letting trans women share their opinion over being kicked out of them.

* I have also seen no discussion wrt "gay bars" about how "gay" is often used as an umbrella term within the queer community?? I am honestly unsure how people are supposed to know which "gay bar" is Just For Men and which includes all Queer people. I've seen "well, trans women can go to lesbian bars" which okay great where are the aces, aros, bisexuals, pansexuals, and enbys** welcome?

** I see people defending gay man against a "mean" trans woman sharing her opinion, and a LOT of erasure of nonbinary trans experiences. We are NOT going to pretend that I wasn't harassed for the ENTIRE PRIDE MONTH because I wouldn't call myself "gay", but then pretend that OBVIOUSLY the "gay" in "gay bar" means Gay Men And Only Gay Men.

Do not think I don't SEE how many people were upset about women's spaces ("but enbys!!") when it was ONE women's movie showing of Wonder Woman but when a trans woman argues that gay bars should be gender inclusive, it's all either criticism or crickets.

Folks are so happy to pick up enbys to wield against women having ONE Wonder Woman showing, but we aren't welcome in gay bars. Thanks. But if we call ourselves "Queer" instead of "Gay" because gay isn't welcoming to us, we're harassed and doxxed and told to kill ourselves.

Y'all can talk about BAD BEHAVIOR at gay bars without banning women. And all the questions we had about "wait, HOW are they telling gender???" with women's spaces don't stop being valid for gay spaces. I need folks to interrogate why they get so antsy about women's spaces, but don't get antsy about (gay) male spaces. Hint: The answer is misogyny. Which is what the trans woman writing that article wanted to talk about.

Furthermore, I am upset at the total erasure and non-discussion of enbys with regard to gender-segregated queer spaces. Which is jarring as fuck, because we DO talk about enbys whenever the "no men allowed" signs come out. If you defend enbys against women-segregated spaces but leaping on the "gay bars are for men-only" train, we need to talk.

I'm also not going to pretend that enby bisexuals aren't routinely erased and told we're anti-trans bigots for using the Bi word. What the fuck are we supposed to be? Lesbians and Gays don't want us, and we get attacked for using Bi and Queer. But I guess carry on defending gay bars from trans women and trans enbys--even though none of us have privilege over cis gays.

Sorry if I seem salty after being harassed for the entire month of Pride because I won't treat Gay and Queer as interchangeable. This is *why* I won't treat Gay and Queer as interchangeable. I'm just supposed to *know* that "gay bar" means "not ME".

Anyway, if allyship people could stop defending cis men from the opinions of trans women, that would be great. I see it & it hurts. Part of being a cis ally is realizing trans people may have different perspectives from you. You don't have to agree, but you can listen. At the very least, you can choose not to contribute to viral discussion which is just going to end in harassment for more trans people.

The sheer irony is that a LOT of these threads are cis women defending cis men from a mean trans woman, but thinking they're allies. Gold star for defending cis men from a trans woman with an opinion about her own experience with misogyny in gay spaces!

OH AND ALSO this is happening in a week where cis men are joking about killing trans women for being trans. Like. Do... do y'all not see how INCONGRUOUS it is for folks to tell me that gay men don't feel safe with trans women in their bars?? I see people slamming a trans woman for saying women shouldn't be banned from gay bars & the SAME people ignoring [a viral "joke" about a cis man killing a trans woman if she 'tricked' him into dating her] thing.

How many cis men kill trans women? How many trans women kill cis men? But folks are defending cis men from trans women in their spaces. Not even defending men from trans women BEING in their spaces. Defending men from a trans woman SAYING their spaces should be inclusive. It hurts when you roll out big threads to defend men from trans women asking for inclusion, but are silent about men killing trans women.

So please leave that woman alone. She asked for inclusion in an online article addressed to her queer community. Point your outrage at the people joking about killing trans people and the people calling us rapists for asking that cis people examine their genital preferences for a few introspective minutes.

Open Thread: Weirdly Weathered Masonry

The recipe for the above seems to be

1: Build Church.
2: Leave outside for 166 years

My lack of knowledge of anything remotely relating to weathering means that I have no idea why this particular section of the front of the church has more depth and contour than the average artificial climbing hold while the rest of it looks more . . . normal.

This is the State Street UUC Church which is up the street (and I do mean up, this is a hill) from where the Casco Bay Bridge (which goes over the Fore River, not Casco Bay) makes landfall in Portland.

Open Thread: A Wrinkle In Time (2018 Movie)

This is a place to discuss the movie A Wrinkle In Time, including spoilers (without need for ROT 13 Cthulhu summoning.)

Unfortunately the "Current Comments" feature removes whitespace so, to avoid spoilers appearing there, please use some space for non-spoiler comments or just start your comment with some nonsense.

Example nonsense:

[nonsense] Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, id soleat doctus sit, cum te erant omnium. Invidunt periculis at cum, eos diam vivendum no, ea qui vivendum legendos. Verterem similique ut pri, iisque prodesset voluptaria no nam. Eos esse mollis et, mei no putent utamur praesent, nec ex solum saperet. No has soluta molestie.[/nonsense]

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Storify: Transness and Our Community

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

I'm super grateful to @D_Libris for live-blogging the trans panels at the SFF thingy this week but hooboy I wanna TALK to some folks.

I Have Opinions With How Transness Is Discussed In Our Community, a paper by Ana Mardoll.

I have Opinions about Wordsmithy People calling transness "transgenderism". The -ness suffix means "state or quality of". The -ism suffix means "practice, system, philosophy, or ideology." This isn't neutral in a climate where everyone in opposition to trans existence claim it's an ideology being chosen and forced on others.

I have Opinions about Enbys confidently stating we are the Most Ignored of the Trans Band. Enbys are often ignored, yes. Trans men are also invisibled like whoa. Trans women are subjected to violence. AMAB enbys are regularly ignored. AFAB enbys are... sometimes ignored, but often used as weapons. I just don't think anyone can confidently state that of all the Trans Band, [xyz] faces the most erasure / lack of attention.

I have very strong Opinions about genderqueer representation through the medium of aliens and robots and non-human entities. While conceding that human gender ideas are, after all, human, I have issues with looking to non-human characters for representation. I am not an alien for being genderqueer. I'm not a robot. I don't have MORE in common with non-humans than I do with cis human siblings.

I was invited to a couple panels on things this year and had to sadly decline because of travel costs, but as of January 2017, I didn't feel qualified to talk about gender to groups as a professional. I now reconsider this stance. Maybe I can drag my disabled butt to some 2018 panels, idk. But the way we're talking about transness troubles me.

Storify: The Gender Binary Is False

Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.

The Gender Binary Is False... but binary genders still exist!

Alright, apparently I'm going to be trapped on twitter talking about gender today, so here is a thread about The Gender Binary.

The Gender Binary is the idea that there are only two (hence "binary") genders to choose from: man and woman. This Gender Binary is false in the sense that nonbinary people exist. I exist as a nonbinary gender, ergo there are more than 2 options. QED.

HOWEVER, the two genders that make up "The Gender Binary" (man and woman) still exist. My nonbinary existence doesn't negate those genders. A lot of people have misunderstood "The Gender Binary Is False" to mean "The Binary Genders of Man and Woman Don't Exist". "The Binary Gender Is False" means there are MORE than the "big 2" (man and woman) to choose from. It doesn't mean the "big 2" don't EXIST.

There is also a thing people do where they decide that everyone has their own unique individual gender and no two genders are the same. This is incredibly hostile to trans people! It means I can't identify as a "demigirl" if someone else has that word. The framing of "custom gender for each person" means trans women don't share a gender with cis women, for example.

"Everyone has their OWN gender, dude! Groovy!" sounds super socially aware and educated and inclusive, but it's actually massive erasure. There are many, MANY people whose gender fit into the Big 2 (man and woman), and we call those "the binary genders" for shorthand. Calling man and woman "binary genders" separates them from all the many, MANY "nonbinary genders" for now.

So when we say The Binary Gender Is False, we are saying nonbinary people EXIST. We are NOT saying binary gender people are nonbinary. To say binary gender people (men and women) are nonbinary is to literally deny the genders of trans men and trans women. Don't do that!

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