it’s truly astounding how many people are incapable of finding the midpoint between “hey i’ve decided you’re trans” and never even mentioning the concept of trans people around someone.
You can talk to people 😭
you can say “hey, this and this and this thing makes me think you’re not quite happy in your body, just letting you know that people can be trans, nonbinary, and any number of other things, so if you want to talk more about it i’m always open and i support whatever your identity is, including staying completely the same as you are now, i just want you to be as comfortable in your own skin as possible.”But that also means accepting when someone says “Nah, I’m good.” and leaving it at that.
yeah that’s what i wrote :)
I need some punctuation please.
I want to be supportive and I try, but sometimes fail to understand.
It definitely doesn’t help when the statement itself is so far outside of communication norms, that the statement itself has become non-binary.
“If you write properly, you shouldn’t need punctuation.”
- Cormac McCarthy
Why can’t today’s youth speak. Geez that was a giant sentence. Lol 😉
It’s important to allow men to be feminine and be still allowed to be men. Gay men, for example, shouldn’t be having their masculinity questioned.
From my understanding, so much of what is coded as “feminine” fashion now was previously also present for men’s fashion prior to the European Enlightenment, where the men stopped wearing flamboyant clothing because they wanted to be seen as all “logic and reason” and different than all those “emotional” women.
Another big part of the Great Male Renunciation is that the Enlightenment was a time of revolution and violent rejection of the nobility’s privileges. The nobility whose defining fashion traits were to wear complex, frilly, colorful dresses and heels and wigs.
Muted fashion was a way for the new ruling class of capitalist bourgeois to set themselves apart from that history and to pander to the proletariat. We still see some of that for example with the stark difference between “luxury” brands like Gucci that are considered nouveau-riche and gaudy, and the fashion of billionaires which is “clothes that look like everyday clothes (but probably cost more than some houses)”.
The Enlightenment, fall of the “Ancien Régime”, and Industrial Revolution altogether explain the Great Male Renunciation, however the reasons why flamboyant fashion was pushed on to women (to then be reclaimed by gay men) have everything to do with misogyny.
i agree with comrade flickerman. i am doing my part to reclaim the flamboyant clothing at least, but that’s just my personality. also whenever anyone calls my purse a “european carryall” i correct them, call it a purse and tell them i’m secure in my masculinity.
Nothing beats a shift or tshirt/dress in hot weather. Gender stereotypes be damned.
If anything can be masculine, then what does it mean to be masculine? I’m all for call yourself whatever you want, be how you want to be; but a certain logical consistency would be nice. If there are no differences between genders, that’s great, but then what’s the meaning of being trans or not?
Fun fact social genderism is a construct. So the only thing that defines what is masculine is what the avg person does.
It’s not different then slang.
At one point people called losers squares. That changed and fell out of fashion.
Masculinity is just the same. It’s slang, it changes by the decade and century. If enough men do something that’s masculine. If enough women do it then it’s feminine. If everyone does it then it’s nongendered.
Gendered terminology is deeply rooted to language and class. So just do what you want, get your friends and community to do it. Start a movement or don’t.
End of the day, it doesn’t really matter. Its going to change no matter what anyone wants. Humanity is after all a social animal, and what the tribe does at large decides our language and views.
So do your part and be true to yourself. Your influence may be small but together we are strong.
You have hit the point exactly. As a trans person, I’m not fighting for the right to obey a different set of social norms than the ones I was assigned at birth.
I’m fighting for the right to not obey gender norms at all, and (relatedly but separately) the right to modify my body to my liking.
In an ideal world, I wouldn’t need to declare myself non religious - I could just not be religious and no one would care. Similarly, in my ideal world “transness” would cease to exist because there would be no expectation of conformity against which I currently stand out by my transgressing them.
Cool. But then isn’t the fight for trans rights sort of the wrong fight? Why not fight directly against all gender stereotypes and inequalities? Which as a progressive 80’s kid, was what I’ve fought for all my life. Dress and act how you like and it shouldn’t have anything to do with what’s between your legs at birth.
Because both matter. It’s a spectrum, and trans rights are just one part of that spectrum: people who feel/identify entirely as though they were born in the wrong body and want to fix that. That is as much their right as those of us who may want to dress and how we like. But there are small-minded people who see that as wrong.
People who have a problem with trans people, will eventually come for those of us who don’t dress or act to fit their stereotype of what our gender should be. They just think it’s easier to scare people about that kind of body modification when we all make choices about hair length, fingernails, piercings, tattoos, etc.
Trans rights are the same rights as my right to paint my fingernails and have long hair as a man. It’s all just bodily autonomy, and there are people like my mother who see both as bad/against God. Give a bigot an inch, and they’ll take a mile.
Far.
On top of the answers you got there is a problem of semantics. “Feminine” can mean very different things in different contexts once you step even slightly out of the cishet gender binary.
Standard English lacks a concise way to convey the idea of fashion choices reclaimed from “feminine” fashion as its own (usually but not necessarily) male gay thing. We call that “femme” or “effeminate”, but the difference between a cross-dresser and a hairy gay man wearing a crop top and booty shorts is obvious. We call that “femme clothing” because we lack a better word for it, but that archetypal gay man isn’t any less masc for it and probably isn’t any closer to attracting archetypal lesbians or straight men.
Another way semantics betray us is when we call emotionally available/sensitive men “effeminate”. Usually in a misogynistic way, but regardless men who are emotionally sensitive aren’t “feminine”.
At the end of the day “being a man” is a vibe, the sum of countless things that aren’t offset simply because a small part of your gender presentation is borrowed from traditionally female things. And vice-versa, neo-nazis on their gym grind aren’t better men because they put on 100 kg of useless muscle and refuse to shake a woman’s hand.
Right. And I’ve always viewed the notion of trans as weirdly social conservatism - because it seems to buy into sexism. I would think a fight against gender stereotypes would be better than a fight to be able to use flexible labels to fit in gender stereotypes. But I guess it amounts to the same thing.
- Being trans isn’t about gender stereotypes. There are plenty of GNC trans people.
- Gender is a social construct and it doesn’t have to be sexist when consented to. No woman owes feminism to shave their head and wear cargo shorts. If gender truly is a choice then how could it be sexist?
- Some people feel strongly man or woman, some feel strongly neither or both, some don’t feel strongly any way. That’s just a fact of life and no amount of social theorizing will invalidate those people’s feelings.
To play devils advocate: Do you think we should invalidate people’s feelings of hate toward trans folk?
Regardless, your first two points seems to conflict. The social construct of gender is based on stereotypes. How can there be any notion of a particular gender unless there are characteristics attributed to it? And any generalization based on such assumptions is sexist by definition.
I agree that some people just feel they are what they are and that’s totally cool. Power to ya! But it is interesting to see the echos of conservatism hiding in these ‘progressive’ ideals, whether people want to admit it or not.
Gender is a social construct, so there is no baseline other than current sociatal norms which change all the time.
what does it mean to be masculine?
confidence in yourself
So women can’t be confident in themselves without being masculine?
if that’s what it means to you, sure
Well that’s completely wrong then. You are therefore wrong about masculinity meaning confidence . You agree?
nah it means i really don’t care too much about masculinity
“Do you want to talk about why it makes you sad?”
Done. An egg must hatch on its own. You cannot just crack it yourself, but you can put it in an environment where it is ready.
Or you could have a situation like my cousin who ended up attempting to kill them self over body dysphoria with out realizing it even tho myself and many other members of the family kept trying to help them and even offered to pay for therapy because they were too dense and depressed to realize what was wrong or what everyone around them was trying to do.
Sometimes the best help help you can give someone is to just be fucking blunt about and metaphorically bitch slap them up side the head with the trout of truth.
There’s no reason to force it past that. You can’t walk the journey for them. But dear god some people DO need to be lead by the nose to the starting line.
But seriously acting like everyone HAS to figure everything out for themselves no matter what is a recipe for disaster. It only hurts others to be that upright about some bullshit rule that has zero fucking basis in reality. We are humans, a communal animal. We HELP each other no matter if that’s softly or with the grace of a brick falling from the sky.
The only rule is you know your friends and family ones better then anyone who doesn’t. Do what’s right based on what you about them.
And anyone trying to push the whole “egg must hatch on its own” bullshit needs to shut the fuck up and stop pushing a poor God damn fucking excuse of common wisdom. It’s not a one sized fit all rule and it causes more harm than good since it shouts down nuance and circumstance.
Toxic positivity is a MASSIVE problem. And this is a great example of it. It sounds good and comes from a place of kindness. Which makes it hard to speak against. Since anyone who tries will be yelled at by the masses.
But after seeing what this bullshit can do when everyone is too scared to cause “harm”. Because of some nonsense rule. Fuck that.
Do what is best for you, your loved ones and community. And don’t be afraid to be blunt and “crack” a egg. Some people DO need that help.
Never push an identity on someone, nor make people face an identity crisis before they are ready. Suspiciously eggy person who is probably trans? You might be right, you might be wrong. Just give them room to explore their identity and make sure they understand you would accept them no matter what.
What goes on with someone elses thoughts and feelings might not be the same as what went on in yours! We are all different. I also notice that quite a few people push people towards the gender binary. That fem amab might be an enbie or gender neutral, or as snot mentions they might simply be fem and cis. Don’t accidentally enforce the gender binary!
Just because they make genderbend OCs of themselves, doesn’t mean they want to be genderbend themselves.
Those are 2 different concepts.
Reminds me of that meme about someone saying they like waffles, and an other replies with how they must hate pancakes then.
I agree but the “kinda makes me sad when I look at them” is pushing me to thinking it’s the other way in this case
I imagine it would be super annoying to be harassed by people who see nail polish on a dude and start calling him an egg. But as a potential egg, I would just love it if someone other than me could make this decision. They can’t, I know, but it would be kind of nice if I could at least get input from various people.
there are certainly a bunch of spaces (at least in my city) usually labelled as queer where this is pretty normal
especially if you do block colour or something - like wear vibrant nail polish and match it to clothing
honestly i even do this with work sometimes - my kinda “personal brand” i guess is orange (helps when you’re in a room of people and you want to be remembered - block colour is easy for people to remember)… once you have that as “just the thing they do” adding nail polish is kinda just part of that and doesn’t mean anything much to the people around you; just to you
transfem culture is a weird cult that runs on bullying and lovebombing and it needs to fucking stop.
Surprised no one has caught the Revolutionary Girl Utena reference in the title yet.
i did, i just didn’t comment on it, but i appreciated it
the discussion in the comments was also pretty interesting though
