The District of Columbia government Thursday will launching a campaign that advocates say is a first of its kind: A series of ads “promoting respect for the District’s transgender and gender-non-conforming communities.” One of the ads features Kisha, a trans woman who lives in D.C. The ad quotes Kisha, saying, “I love wandering through Smithsonian museums, eating on H Street with friends, and going to shows at Howard Theatre.” Then, the aim of the campaign: “I’m a transgender woman and I’m part of DC. Please treat me the way any woman would want to be treated: with courtesy and respect.” The posters — which the D.C. Office of Human Rights has been sparking interest about on Facebook — then note that discrimination based on gender identity and expression is illegal in the District of Columbia and provide a website and phone number for more information. (via DC Launches First-In-The-Nation Trans Respect Ad Campaign)
This is really rad but it is also not the first of its kind. Allow me to point you to the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition’s I Am: Trans People Speak project, which has been going on since I was living in Boston in 2010.
Which is not to diminish this project in any way! In fact, I Am kind of fizzled out, and I would love to see DC’s project do much better. But it did happen, and I am rather proud of it regardless of its failure to really get off the ground.
(via dr-killjoy)
drop out and find god: autumn-fhtagn: Legitimate question: Can trans men even be “visibly...
Legitimate question: Can trans men even be “visibly trans”? Because it seems like “visible transness” is based on degrading stereotypes of trans women. Like it goes back to “women wearing men’s clothes is fine” so like, are trans men ever read as trans men? Or like are their…
Well, being visibly trans doesn’t necessarily mean you are doing something that you can check off a list as much as you get shit for it from transphobic assholes. Like, random people can see that you’re trans.
Like when I would go out in a suit, I would get all these compliments about OH AWESOME GOOD FOR YOU because being masculine is a good thing and they could see I was assigned female so by being masculine, I was ascending something that isn’t good. When Minerva goes out in dresses or skirts, she gets shit about EW WHAT IS THAT.
So I think there is a shitton of masculine privilege involved in whether you’re visibly trans or not. Because if you’re being read as a girl in boy clothes, they’re glad you’ve seen the light that femme is gross and powerless. At the worst they’re irritated they don’t have the same power over you as they would a femme person. But if they read you as a boy in girl clothes? It makes them confused and disgusted and in some cases it makes them want to kill you.
I feel like “visibly trans” is a pretty iffy concept, though. Especially because it’s defining what “looks trans” by the viewpoint of strangers, probably cis people? like, hell, I would consider myself to be visibly trans but people who see me wouldn’t. I’m pretty routinely misgendered — but when that happens people assume I’m a cis girl.
I would not say it’s a matter of some kind of privilege necessarily because of the danger inherent in being recognised as a trans woman or transfeminine, and the necessary presence of male privilege when we are recognised as men/masculine, but there isn’t really a “noticeably trans” point of reference for trans guys/transmasculine people and that’s pretty frustrating. Even reaching a state of indecipherable androgyny people will typically assume we’re cis and either a) guess a binary gender, or b) demand to know.
I’m pretty sure this comes from the place of “it’s okay for a woman to dress like a man, because being a man is better. It’s not okay for a man to dress as a woman, because women are inferior.” which of course is misogyny, but one of the great things about our society is that it finds a way to apply misogyny to anyone who isn’t strictly a cis dude regardless of whether their own identities match up.
it’s interesting though, the way that transfeminine bodies are sensationalised and transmasculine bodies are erased. one is obviously more dangerous than the other, but that doesn’t mean they’re not both valid complaints.
Julia Serano: Trans people still “disordered” according to latest DSM
From the post:
The DSM gets revised every 10-20 years or so, and diagnoses sometimes get modified, expanded, or completely removed. The change that people are now celebrating is the fact that the previous diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) has now been changed to Gender Dysphoria.
Admittedly, the new Gender Dysphoria diagnosis is an improvement over GID for a number of reasons - Kelly Winter of GIDreform.org describes some of these improvements, as well as many of the lingering problems with the new diagnosis. Despite the remaining drawbacks (for instance, that gender variance is still formally pathologized in the DSM), many people seem excited that transgender people are no longer described as being “disordered” in the DSM. But the problem is that this is patently untrue.[…]
Ray Blanchard has been named to chair the Paraphilia subworkgroup for the DSM-V, and he has proposed changing the Transvestic Fetishism diagnosis to Transvestic Disorder with one of two modifiers: with Fetishism, or with Autogynephilia. While the diagnosis supposedly targets “heterosexual males” who crossdress, the psychological literature regarding autogynephilia (the bulk of it written by Blanchard) repeatedly claims that lesbian, bisexual and asexual trans women are really just heterosexual men with a fantasy problem. Therefore, according to Blanchard’s proposal, a queer-identified trans woman (such as myself) could theoretically be diagnosed as having “Transvestic Disorder” any time that I have any kind of sexual urge while wearing women’s clothing. Since I wear women’s clothing pretty much every day of my life these days, my sexuality would presumably be considered perpetually transvestically disordered according to this diagnosis.
[…]
And then, when no one was looking, in mid-2010, Blanchard and the DSM committee expanded it even further, so that it now includes trans people of all identities, trajectories and sexual orientations. As it is written now, Transvestic Disorder can be applied to any person who is sexually active while wearing clothing incongruent with their birth-assigned sex. It also canonizes the term “autoandrophilia” as a sexualizing diagnosis that can be applied to trans male/masculine folks. And while GID/Gender Dysphoria are pathologizing, Transvestic Disorder is both pathologizing and sexualizing. And when you sexualize someone, you invalidate them!
So please don’t say that transgender people are no longer considered “disordered” according to the latest DSM. It is simply not true.
(via lilacbootlaces)
NEED COUCH - LOGAN SQUARE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
tumblr user fengon, 20 years old trans man needs a place to stay starting tomorrow, july 30th in the Logan square, chicago area. you can contact this person via their tumblr or at (702) 354-9469.
he has enough for one train ride/transfer, so he can travel to get there.
he has a few heavy suitcases that aren’t necessary to bring, and a ps3 that can be shared.
thank you for doing this fey i’m really sorry eveyrone
reblogging again to fix location error and because john is one of my most important people so I will be reblogging the shit out of this anyway. Please pass it along especially if you know people in Chicago!
g=fcuk i’m sorry i get confuesd easily this is the correct verison it’s logan square not lincoln sqwuare i’m sorry
(via shmotguy)
i was thinking about gender stuff the other night and
while being trans has been a pretty big part of my identity for some time now, t he same is not necessarily true for being male. being queer male, yeah, but straight up being a dude… i mean, i am one, much like i am in possession of a belly button and was born in the month of july. these things are true but not necessary to my identity. i would still be a queer as fuck audiophile college dropout dual-citizen mixed race word-mincing babe without them.
being male’s just… a medical condition i guess
i am, however, equally deeply invested in reclaiming the word transtrender
on account of
it’s adorable.
The fact that people are proud of calling themselves transtrenders is disturbing and sickening.
Not to mention, if you’re trending you fucking deserve negative messages. Being trans isn’t cool, it sucks ass.
Expected response: JUST BECUZ UR INSECURE AND UNHAPPY DOESNT MEEN U GET TO INVALIDAET EVERYBODEE ELSES IDENTITY. WE SHULDNT BOTHR U IF UR SECUR IN UR IDENTITY. LOLOLOLOL IM A TROLL U GUYS.
yo, no need to rain on someone else’s parade, dude. it really sucks that your trans status is a thoroughly terrible experience for you, but some of us are fortunate enough in that we’re able to take pride in our identities and be playful about them and shit like that. There’s not one right way to be trans, and insisting that trans folk conform to a single tragic narrative is pretty shitty.
i mean, there are a lot of shitty parts to being trans, but that just seems like a better reason to take pride in it if one can, and reclaiming words like ‘transtrender’ (which honestly is really fucking adorable) is a way of doing that. i mean we’re all stuck being who we are, no matter who that person is, trans or no.
and don’t you think you’re doing more harm, shitting all over other trans people like that, than they/we are by having fun with a silly made-up word someone tried to use to hurt us?
man i have not weighed in on the ‘die cis scum’ thing and i have been drinking so fuck it let’s give an Actual Opinion
here’s the thing: i will never say it myself because i am not comfortable wishing death upon anything. however if other trans people find that it empowers them or makes them feel like they can rise against the threat of cis attackers — more power to them. a statement like that from a minority is 1) not oppression 2) hardly a threat — however we like to think otherwise, if we actually tried to visit widespread violence against cis bigots we would be smacked the fuck down, which is the whole point, because cis people can visit widespread violence against us without even worrying about repercussions. so honestly if you’re cis and you’re afraid? you’re fucking naive. this is what privilege means.
on the other hand, when cis people say it i am skeeved the fuck out. it is not your edgy statement, i don’t care how much of an ally you are, it is not something you can take to make you feel like a good person or like an activist or whatever. just stop. please.
Against Me! singer Tom Gabel reveals plans to begin living as a woman in the new issue of Rolling Stone. Gabel, who has dealt privately with gender dysphoria for years, will soon begin the process of transition, by taking hormones and undergoing electrolysis treatments.
Gabel will eventually take the name Laura Jane Grace, and will remain married to her wife Heather. “For me, the most terrifying thing about this was how she would accept the news,” says Gabel. “But she’s been super-amazing and understanding.”
Gabel only told a handful of family and friends about her plan to transition before talking to Rolling Stone. Because this is the first time a major rock star has come out as transgender, the singer made a point of speaking openly about it. “I’m going to have embarrassing moments,” says Gabel, “and that won’t be fun. But that’s part of what talking to you is about – is hoping people will understand, and hoping they’ll be fairly kind.”
The full story of Gabel’s transformation is in the latest issue, on newsstands this Friday (May 11th). In it, the singer tells Josh Eells about her history of gender dysphoria, the specifics of the transition process and what becoming Laura Jane Grace will mean for the future of Against Me!
(via hollyandvice)
REBLOG! REBLOG!
View ‘em all on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=34778&id=177738242261268&l=46783bb1ac
Behold my vision for Trans Forms! FTM Binders new line, (As Colorful as We Are!)
ENOUGH with the ABDOMINAL binders, ace bandages, and maguiver tape - that is destroying our backs! Many of us may have a long time to wait before we can save up enough for chest reconstruction.
It’s time there was some variety on our market. Why can I only find chest binders and compression shirts in beige, black and white? Not only are many of us fabulous and require fancy outfits, but something this simple can add a nice touch to the way we rep’ ourselves.
I believe there should also be binders in multiple skin tones. People who want something subtle can’t just slap on a black or white binder, have their 8 t-shirts ride up on each other, and not be obviously wearing compression gear. For those who need neutrality, subtlety, stealth - we need binders that match our skin tones!—————————————
NOW HOLD UP. These items are NOT YET ready for sale. BUT AREN’T THEY GORGEOUS????
Who wants one? I will start keeping count, so consider this a poll. Which do you want to see most? Do you want them ALL? If I can prove the interest, these are very real possibilities, and then we can start developing them in more styles, sizes, strengths and materials.
Property of Trans Forms! FTM Binders: © 2011
ORANGE BINDER ORANGE BINDER
please get on my body post haste
i would also rock that blue or pink one yo
(via khaleesi)
I just saw FTMDave porn (warning: identity policing, “you’re not a ~true~ trans person if”
Where Karkat was eating him out.
I hate you. I fucking hate you. Fuck you, tumblr. Fuck you. Fuck this trans fad. You will never know how hard it is to be trans, it’s not a fucking joke, it’s not there for your porn. Jesus fucking christ I can’t stand this, seeing that made me feel physically ill. You know nothing about trans people. No truly trans person would ever let anyone near their sexual organs before surgery. Jesus CHRIST. Wrapping bandaids around your chest is NOT A BINDER. People actually KILL THEMSELVES over body dysphoria and just wanting to be seen as their right sex. But I guess that means nothing to you, you just want the character to be ~different~, like being trans somehow makes you ~special~. It doesn’t make you fucking special. It’s a fucking birth defect you absolute morons. It is one of the most soul crushing things a person could ever go through. These people try their whole lives to do everything possible to just be seen as their right sex, and then you go and draw porn of them engaging in sexual acts with their wrong body.
Jesus fucking christ. You know nothing. Fuck you. Fuck you so much.
But then again the new fad now on tumblr is to be trans. Everyone is trans ^_^_^ omg lol i like being called by a male pronoun I’m so trans ^_^_^ omg i wore mens clothes today that means i’m a man omg ^_^_^ omg you better call me a man even though i don’t try to pass at all and experience zero dysphoria but i ~identify as a man~ that means i’m a man ^_^_^ lol no it’s not like i want to go on hormones or get surgery fuck the binary \m/
I hate you. I hate you so much. You have made an absolute mockery out of true transexuals. This is why it takes YEARS for trans people to get surgery, because of shit like this. Because no one takes them seriously. You think you’re being open minded by making him trans, but you’re not. You’re being just as cissexist as the next moron, by treating him as ‘ftm’ instead of just a regular guy. Like it’s a fucking fetish. Like it’s an identity.
Fuck you.
…. WOW fuck you. I didn’t even have the patience to read much of the bullshit followin it, but I know a lot of pre-op trans men, and they have varying levels of comfort with below-the-belt action, and NONE of it invalidates their trans* status. Don’t fucking speak for them as a whole.
I’ll let my followers field the rest, if they can.
so like who went and made you the expert on every trans person everywhere? i’ve got a million and one objections here but let’s do this in order:
No truly trans person would ever let anyone near their sexual organs before surgery.
hahahaha fuck you. being sexual has been such a huge struggle for me but the fact is i have sexual organs and i use them! and they are not surgically attached! because bottom surgery is expensive and difficult and honestly the results don’t particularly enthuse me. does this mean i’m not ~truly trans~? what does that make me, then? because this fucking beard i’m sporting seems pretty indicative of the gender i’m presenting. (which is not to say that lacking a beard takes away one’s trans status, i just happen to use mine to present male)
is it so absurd to you that trans people make peace with their bodies and their sexualities? that we could want to deal with our dysphoria that way? i am highly dysphoric, and probs always will be. but i’ve got a working arrangement. other trans people have different levels and expressions of dysphoria. and that has no bearing on their gender!
It is one of the most soul crushing things a person could ever go through.
yeah god forbid trans people ever be happy or comfortable with themselves
These people try their whole lives to do everything possible to just be seen as their right sex, and then you go and draw porn of them engaging in sexual acts with their wrong body.
except for the ones who don’t have a “right” sex? also fuck you again, no one gets to dictate our bodies are wrong except for us, individually. i for one get enough of that from myself.
being trans is not about shame. it’s not about suffering. yes we commonly experience shame and suffering but it is not our defining feature. i would so much rather be depicted joyfully in porn than read another fucking article about how inferior my existence is, oh how it sucks to be a trans person, we must all pity them because their lives are defective and they’re not whole and they’re definitely not sexual beings ever! god forbid they get pleasured without undergoing ~the full surgery~
You have made an absolute mockery out of true transexuals. This is why it takes YEARS for trans people to get surgery, because of shit like this.
no, it takes years for trans people to get surgery because the fucking standards of care, actually. also because it’s fucking expensive. blaming trans people for their own oppression is basically the definition of being a cissexist tool.
i don’t know if you’re trans or cis or whatever, but clearly you need to take a big fucking step back and recognise that your experiences are not everyone else’s. Trans people don’t have to prove anything to you. Our bodies are ours alone, our identities are ours, our histories and experiences and desires and sexualities (or lack thereof) are ours, and no one gets to decide which are “right” and “wrong” except ourselves, individually. Full. Fucking. Stop.
and you know what? it makes me feel fucking validated to know that someone thinks my body is attractive. it makes me feel fucking validated to know someone views my body as a body capable and deserving of sexuality. i don’t need your vitriol sending me back to the days of revulsion and self-hatred (and self-harm) just because you don’t think i’m a ~true~ trans person.
(via gossipseer)
On the feminine trans guys thing that’s blowing up my Dash…
I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, we didn’t have XBoxes and PS3s and DSs and iPods and the Internet and we weren’t so afraid of pedophiles, so we played outside our houses. With each other. In groups, even. Like, we went over to our friends’ houses, and ate whatever their parents made us for lunch. We didn’t even have to call. All we had to do was be home by suppertime, or before it got dark.
We got to know each other, in person. In public, and in private.
The world was a little different then. Sexual and affectional orientation weren’t discussed. Gender identity was only beginning to be discussed in the academic community. But, the policing was still there, and even stronger than it is today. Things are easier, today. More open. Ellen came out. Will & Grace was a big hit. Brokeback Mountain made a lot of money in mainstream movie theatres. Even The Crying Game has been useful, in some ways.
See, the thing I’m trying to say is, there was always that kid in your town, the one who was…weird. The little boy who acted more like the little girls, but not because he was taught to act that way, not because he was putting on an act, and here’s what’s really weird to some people…not even because he was trans or even gay. He was just like that.
And there was always that other kid, too, the girl who was not just a tomboy, but didn’t even care if she ripped her tights and got mud all over her new dress and patent leather Mary Janes while she was teaching you a fucking lesson about how girls throw or who can kick whose ass, or whose ass at what. And she wasn’t trans, either. She didn’t grow up to be a lesbian. She didn’t even have a role model for that kind of behavior, and her parents were pulling their hair out because they were afraid the whole neighborhood thought they were bad parents when they were doing everything they could think of to teach their daughter to be “ladylike”. She was just being herself.
Then there were the other kids, who had no difficulty playing Barbies with the girls across the street in the morning, and racing bikes with the boys down the block in the afternoon. The boys who unabashedly dotted their “i’s” with little hearts and still kicked your ass at Dodgeball. The girls who went to ballet class and then got their traps out of the garage and went crabbing, enjoying both equally. (That was me. I was one of those kids.)
Gender identity and expression run the gamut from ultra-femme to super-macho, and there’s really no telling from one aspect of someone’s personality if that’s necessarily going to have any bearing on another aspect. Sure, some of us actually did turn out to be trans, or gay, or lesbian, or queer, or ace, or genderqueer, or any number of different ways to be. But lots of those kids didn’t.
Look, I get that, especially for some of you young dudes out there, when you see a trans guy who looks to you like they’re not putting much effort into looking like you, it pisses you off. I mean, it’s hard enough being trans as it is, amirite? Then you get this little shit muddying the waters. As a transsexual woman, I’m no stranger to those reactions, and I’m woman enough to admit that I’ve had them, and that they’re kinda problematic.
But the thing is, it’s not up to you. It’s not up to any of us. The reason why we have so much trouble with these feelings is that the ideas of what gay, or lesbian, or trans, or just in any way different from what most people are going to expect people “ought” to act like is imposed upon us from the outside. That’s why being any of these things sucks so much in our society. It’s because we’re constantly swimming upstream trying to forge our own way of being that makes us comfortable with ourselves.
So, let’s not do this to each other, OK? We get enough of that from “them”, and really, you ought to know better. There’s no one way to be. And being like that is just buying in to a whole lot of bullshit that’s better left in the distant past.
Even among the trans women I know most closely, since I’m a trans woman myself and their interests tend to align a bit more closely with my own, there’s a huge range of identity, expression, and circumstance.
I know femme trans women who couldn’t pass to save their lives, not because they don’t wear the right clothes or the right makeup, or have the wrong mannerisms, or the wrong voice, but because they just have the unfortunate legacy of long-term testosterone exposure. I know butch trans women who you would never suspect of being trans, not because they “look like men”, but because they “look like women”, and let me tell you something, that’s pretty fucking hard to pull off, and might be the Holy Grail of Passing. Being all hard-edged, butch, punk-rock and trans, and still being read as feminine and female is many orders of magnitude less common for trans women. It’s one of the reasons why so many of us appear to be so vain. It’s not because we have no brains, so to speak, or because we’re reifying the gender binary system, it’s just a survival tactic in a lot of cases.
Hell, I even know trans women who look just like cis guys and don’t even bother wearing “women’s” clothing. And you know what, where I come from, we still call them “she” and “her”, not because we’re just being polite about it, but because that’s who they really are, and we know that sometimes other issues get in the way of hormones and surgery and new wardrobes and changes to your mannerisms.
Whatever they look like, when they tell you they’re trans, respect that, and respect *them*. You don’t have to be friends with every trans person in the world, you don’t have to be like any other trans person in the world, and you don’t even have to agree with any other trans person’s choices of identity, expression, or orientation.
All you have to do, is let them be, and let them be them. You can still be, and you can still be you. They’re our brothers, sisters, and siblings, and for fuck’s sake, it’s the Transgender Day of Remembrance, today, so remember this: Our killers don’t give a fuck how well we pass when they want us dead. In fact, if anything, they tend to be even more dangerous and violent when we put so much effort into how we look that they think they’ve been “fooled” or “tricked”.
Your external appearance isn’t who you “are”, nor are the clothes or cosmetics you choose to wear, or not wear, as the case may be. You would think that trans people would be the first to grok that.<3
(via t-saurus-rex)
a picture so nice it should be reblogged twice
by everyone
ever
this actually makes me pretty uncomfortable as it carries with it the implication that if you can ”tell” who’s trans in this picture that you have the right to know
I know it doesn’t actually state that if you don’t “pass” you don’t count but it can easily be read that way and that is actually pretty harmful and not validating or supporting at all
what it should say is something like “there’s no way to tell someone’s gender, or whether they identify as trans. don’t assume anything.”
(via sparkz-achive)
hey guess what when you say that you’re gay because you love cock it makes me feel like shit as a woman with a cock
because the implication is that i am therefore in that category of people you would like to bone because of my genitalia, ignoring my gender totally. and also because you are implying that only men have dicks and men only have dicks and its just ignorant oppressive and erasing
please kindly stop i would really appreciate it
also it makes me feel like shit as a man without a cock because the implication is that despite my gender and presentation i will never be desirable because i lack a certain small bit of genetalia
basically when you define your gender preference based on genetalia you are hurting everyone so please stop
(via supey)
