My Gender Today Is The Hidden Tumblr Dash Full Of Only Blogs You Follow. Yes It Apparently Exists.

My gender today is THIS picture of my cat, Wednesday.

My gender isn't "boy" like "male" but "boy" like when you see a dog and go "what a good boy"

Inside a Dishwasher by Slow Rider

The queer community is full of hurt people.

This can lead to a knee-jerk reaction when we hear someone else say "I am hurt". We look at them and say "shut up, you're not as hurt as me because you have X privilege".

This leads to femme afab queers being told "you can pass and hide as cishet, you're not as hurt as queer women who look queer, you're just complying with the patriarchy's ideals for beauty, you're hurting the queer community, you're anti feminist."

It leads to masc afab people, whether trans men or nonbinary or genderqueer etc, being told everything from "you're not as hurt, you can pass as a cis man" to "you have no desire to transition, you still look like a girl, shut up".

It leads to trans amab people who are nonbinary or genderqueer or agender etc, who still dress or look "masculine", being told that they are "unsafe" for queer spaces, that they don't belong at a "women and nonbinary meeting", that they are "basically just cis men trying to escape accountability".

It leads to asexuals being told "you don't even feel sexual attraction, the thing we're ostracized for! how could you possibly be oppressed? You're just straight and a prude" and aromantics being told "you're just straight and like casual sex, get over yourself" and both being told "you're just a cishet who wants to steal resources".

I have heard every single kind of queer person say "I have been harmed and ostracized by the queer community". Lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and mspec people, trans people, aroace people - every single one of us has expressed feeling ostracized by our own community.

On the plus side, this means you're not alone. Your group isn't the only one facing this. You have allies!! Other queer people who have gone through what you've gone through!

We need queer unity. We need to stop attacking each other. If you feel the urge to say "shut up, my group has been hurt MORE", go take a walk. Remember that every single one of us has been hurt.

Trans history: whatever happened to the other T?

I don’t know how universally relevant this is (I guess no part of queer history ever is) but I wonder how many trans people know the history of T&T groups.

Like, in the 90′s and 00′s in the Netherlands almost every trans related groups was a T&T ‘Transsexual and Transvestites’ group and that seemed to also be a quite common thing in other north-west European countries for as far as I can see. Maybe beyond Europe too? I’m not sure.

People who called themselves transsexual and transvestites at the time felt that they had many experiences in common that made organising together valuable and many agreed that there was a large grey area of overlapping identities. With very little information available, a lot of trans women identified as transvestites first, before identifying at trans women (in that period often using the term Male-to-Female transsexual and transwoman without the space between the words).

Then, in about 2007-2012, things changed. Transgender became more popular than transsexual and crossdresser largely replaced transvestite. In those early days, the term transgender was often understood to include crossdressers. The transgender umbrella is from that time:

Back then, the word transgender was seen by many as the umbrella term that would unite all the struggles against gender roles. But that grouping together was far from uncontroversial and a lot of heated debates took place over how broad or narrow the transgender umbrella term should be. Some feared too wide an umbrella would take attention away from transsexuals, others feared it would be confusing, some groups that had previously only had transwomen and transvestites did not appreciate the new presence of transmen and transmasculine people in their transgender community, some felt that it was very important to distinguish binary-identified transsexuals from all sorts of weird non-binary identities.

Those who took part in the debates probably remember the specific standpoints in more detail. For me, I just remember how in 2008-2012 all the T&T groups started changing their names to ‘transgender groups’ and then slowly but surely focussing more on only those transgender people that wanted some kind of transition, physical or social. Eventually, transvestites (or crossdressers, as the common term was by then) disappeared entirely from the transgender groups and a lot of transgender people forgot about the earlier wider meaning of transgender as an umbrella term.

Within that same period, there started to be a LOT of new and fairly positive media attention for transgender issues, specifically transition related atttention. The media was no participant at all in the ‘what does transgender mean’ question but the questions they did ask were ‘are you on hormones yet?’ and ‘did you have the surgery’? Since that was a lot better than ‘so are you mentally ill because you want to be a woman?’ a lot of people who fitted the hormones + surgery narrative eagerly accepted this ‘positive visibility’ and did not question the narrow focus. This further cemented the view that transgender meant transition.

And the transgender activists? Well, let’s just say many of them, knee deep in a struggle against terrible health care and cruel human rights violations, leaped at the opportunity to seize the momentum and finally make some changes and many didn’t really give much thought to the slow disappearance of transvestites from the newly named ‘transgender’ community.

So where are we now, in 2018?

The transgender community seems to have largely forgotten about their T&T history. The terms transvestite and crossdresser both seem to be in decline, as are the communities that meet around those identities. Younger people who don’t fit the gender binary but also do not desire social or physical transition, are now more likely to identify themselves as some kind of genderqueer and nonbinary or just ‘not into labels’ or just to wear whatever they want and rock it. Some of them find their way back under the transgender umbrella after all. Which I guess is some kind of a happy ending.

But then theres the question of recognizing our legacy. I don’t think a lot of these young people realise that, had they been born 20 years earlier, many of them would probably have found a home in the transvestite community. I don’t think a lot of young transgender people recognize older transvestites as their elders, who paved the way for them. I often get the impression that they view the dwindling groups of 50+, 60+, 70+ transvestites with an element of disdain, as people who held on to a regressive binary identity, instead of as like - their badass grandfather-mothers who build parts of trans history.

Hi! I have been frantically searching for a fic for a while and you always have good luck with it so I am turning to your audience for help.

Okay so it's marvel and starts when Thor and loki and Tony and Steve have just flattened the trees in the first avengers. Thor sees Loki's eyes are blue and suspects foul play. I remember they break him free and are more prepared for the chitauri and find out about Thanos early and make preparations. It had a pretty big word count but I can't remember the name or anything.

🥺Please help!Thanks!🥺

.

My gender is - okay, so basically - umm, so my gender is - like, so it’s - yeah, okay, so what I’m trying to say is that - so my gender is - ugh, what I mean is that - you know?

grabs you. hey. listen. one day youll get out of your parents house. you will be able to not go to church on sunday. you will be able to cut and dye your hair any colour you want. you will be able to wear crazy eyeliner and black lipstick or whatever makeup you want. you can swear and be openly queer with your friends and transition and date. YOULL GET OUT OF THERE!!!!!!!

Okay so I have like 5 other tumblrs and I'm curious to see if there's any overlap for any so have my shameless plug I guess (is it a shameless plug if I don't care about followers? Dunno)

@cherub-chemurgist This is my main. I use this one to scroll through tumblr and reblog anything interesting.

@fractionalfictionalfanciful I made this one to reblog fanfic recs and masterlists to supplement my own Fanfic Masterlist

@soupisasandwich I actually made this one because my girlfriend and I get into wierd arguments all the time. (ie "Rootbeer float in a bowl, is it soup?" The answer is no)

@minecrafting-is-yunecrafting I reblog minecraft inspiration pieces and tutorials here, as well as interesting IRL architecture

@katlandyouneedtoseethis My partner doesn't have a tumblr but she's logged into mine on her phone, when I see tumblr posts I want to show her I reblog them to this and she scrolls through them every once in a while

If you follow any of these let me know! Thanks! ^^