Can y’all stop forcing celebrities to have to say that they’re actually not non-binary and instead they’re just gnc.
Whenever a celebrity is gnc, instead of initially celebrating it, people are like ‘this celebrities comes out as non-binary? This celebrity is now trans?’
And then they have to explain that they don’t see clothing as guys clothing or girls clothing and they just want to wear whatever they want
And THEN people celebrate it, even though some people online think they just haven’t realized they’re trans yet.
With how minuscule the probability of someone being trans is, can people just appreciate the initial thought that a celebrity is breaking free of gender norms therefore helping younger kids realize they can be gnc too.
Let gnc people EXIST
Y'know, there’s actually quite a few sex researchers now who believe that the number of trans individuals is actually a lot lower than the current number. What they believe is that individuals are actually gnc, get depression when they aren’t accepted as a boy or a girl, and then develop body dysmorphia as a symptom of their depression. Which actually makes a lot of sense because some brain scans of trans individuals look like “this is the other gender’s brain,” but some brain scans look like “this is just a regular person with depression.”
I’m not saying that all transgender people are just gnc with bad experiences, but according to the research, a lot are. And this may be why the trans community has such high suicide rates. So instead of insisting that people are trans or bi when they do something that isn’t stereotypical of their gender (whether it’s wearing clothes, having a hobby, behaving Butch/effeminately) like people on this site are wont to do, you should just accept people like! they! are!
You’re not gonna like it when you find out about how the LGBT community treats cross dressers. People are actively witch hunting them, telling them they’re just in the closet because wearing a dress for fun totally means that you have to be a girl right??? It’s not like cross dressing is a performance similar to drag or cosplaying where people get dressed up and put on a different persona…
On another note, can we please stop with the “If you have to question if you’re trans, then you absolutely are trans, sweaty!!!” bullshit? Questioning our identity is how we solidify it and grow more comfortable with it. Pestering people that the slightest bit of doubt about their gender identity is undoubtedly evidence that they are trans, is just furthering their misery. You are not “saving” people, you are actively contributing to the raising numbers of detransitioner and suicide cases.
Cross dressing, drag, and gender non conformity, while it may have some ties, is not lgbt. People who identity with or participate in those things mentioned may be lgbt, but doing those things doesn’t make them lgbt.
So if a cis/het person wants to participate? Let them. They’re allowed. It’s not rude or ignorant or appropriation. They’re not hurting anyone by having fun like the rest of the people there. Stop forcing them to think they’re something they’re not.
The GENDER Book second edition is in the works… and we need your help to make it happen!
Hi friends! With COVID-19 turning the world upside down, our illustrator has less work on his plate. The upside is that means more time to (finally!) go back and do some revisions on the GENDER book.
We’re looking to fix all those typos that have been bugging you, add more identities, and generally make the book the best it can be. After all, the world of gender has evolved some since the first edition came out in 2014!
So, if you’re willing, we’d love your sharp eyes and keen minds to help out with the editing process. Just bust out your copy (or grab a pay what you like ebook) and fill out this formwith anything you’d change. This is your chance to be heard! There’s even a spot if you want to be drawn into the next version of the GENDER book.
[Image Description: Two images set to the background of a flag with three stripes; the upper and lower stripes are both light red, the middle stripe is a darker red. The first image is of the three striped Drag pride flag. The stripes are vertical and from left to right are light purple, white, and blue. All stripes are of equal size. In the middle stripe is a pink crown symbol. The second image has the Autism Speaks logo crossed out with a ‘no’ sign. Another image at the bottom reads “TERFs, exclusionists, transmeds, and queerphobes, DO NOT INTERACT! You’re out of touch and we hate you almost as much as Autism Speaks”. End Description.]
Jay’s friend and fellow drag king Oliver Assets has set up a DropBox archive that anyone can view and anyone can add photos, video and memories to. It’s not got too much in it at the moment, because everyone is having difficulty processing everything with the lack of information and most don’t feel ready to sort through photos and video yet. The archive isn’t going anywhere, however, so save these links and you can go back whenever.
When you upload to the archive, it will show the file name to everyone. This means that you can provide a caption of sorts if you rename your files before uploading them. You can also provide a name to upload them under (you don’t need an account or to log in so can put any name) which means that within each folder they will be organised with all of your submissions together. Once submitted, you cannot edit or delete anything from the archive so make sure you want it public forever.
I understand that a lot of our memories on here of Jay are difficult to share in such a setting. Some gifs can stand alone, but some of the most poignant need the context of the posts they were made for. To tackle this, I’ve created our own archive of sorts, which will be detailed in this post here.
[ID: A dark blue-scale image depicting @siriussly-serious in heart shaped sunglasses with the words “The Royal Archive -A Dropbox archive project for Royal E. Blu, AKA Jay/Blu/Jaxon”]
This is American Sign Language (ASL) for Drag King. It represents fabulous moustaches of Drag Kings.
And guess what? You can buy this in art prints, shirts stickers, mugs, notebook, etc! Just go to carodoodles.threadless.com. Have fun shopping!
[Image description: Three same illustrations of a drag king signing ‘drag king’. But each have different skin colour, hair colour, and accessories and make up colour. ‘Drag king’ is signed with finger twirling the moustache. Last three images are the same illustrations but on a bag, a phone cover, and a shirt.]
In this op-ed, nonbinary writer Riley R.L. shares the impact of makeup on their identity, and the risks that come with cosmetic brands capitalizing on queer narratives.
October 21, 2019
“They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Lady Gaga declares in the launch video for her new makeup line. “But at Haus Laboratories, we say beauty’s how you see yourself.” The video features Gaga surrounded by a racially diverse, gender nonconforming group of models showing off glittery eye makeup and bold lip colors. Its message is about freedom, specifically the freedom to express your identity however you want to. “We want you to love yourself,” Gaga concludes, and she’s got just the thing to help us do it: For $49, you can get a trio of lip products in a variety of color combos, which the brand’s website calls “tools of self-expression and reinvention.”
The Haus Laboratories launch is just one of many examples of how the cosmetics industry has been using identity narratives to market their ads with LGBTQ consumers in mind. Through pride campaigns and inclusive marketing, brands like Morphe,Milk Makeup, and M.A.C are trying to push the cultural conversation around makeup forward by bringing queer, trans, and gender nonconforming faces to the forefront, apparently as a way to help normalize the varying expressions of our community.
This mirrors a larger shift in the beauty space. LGBTQ creators like Gigi Gorgeous,Jeffree Star, and Nikita Dragun have gained huge audiences online and created successful product collaborations, while major beauty publications like Elle,Cosmopolitan, and Allure have covered the rise of queer beauty influencers and gender-neutral cosmetics brands. It’s clear that the world of cosmetics is trying to move away from the conventional standards it was previously associated with to promote an aesthetic of freedom, however ambiguously defined that may be.
For many LGBTQIA people, makeup can play a valuable, if not complicated, role in exploring gender, something that rings true in my own story. The first time I wore eye shadow out of the house, I still largely identified with the gender I had been assigned at birth; I spent most of that night worrying about what wearing makeup while presenting as male might open me up to. I feared ridicule, harassment, even violence — things that, fortunately, had not been an average part of my day-to-day life. Wearing makeup that first time was the most aware I’d ever been of the grip that gendered expectations had on the way I lived, and that realization made me feel weak and unfulfilled; all my life, I could suddenly see, I’d been under the control of beliefs about gender that I didn’t agree with, and that I had internalized without ever choosing to.
Thankfully, nothing out of the ordinary happened that night. As a kind of resistance to those feelings of weakness, I made an effort to start wearing makeup more often, and became increasingly comfortable with choosing to present and express myself in a way that was more unconventional. Ultimately, makeup was one of many things that helped me come to terms with the fact that I felt more at home outside of traditional gender roles than I did within them, and that my identity fit better under the umbrella of nonbinary than it did under male.
For me, that revelation came with a reduced emphasis on how I presented. Nowadays, I rarely wear much makeup (neither do most of my trans and nonbinary friends). But as queer identity seems to become more and more intertwined with the cosmetics industry, I find myself shying away from sharing the role that wearing makeup—a purely aesthetic part of a deeply internal process—played in that time of self-discovery. When I watch someone sell makeup under the auspices of queer self-love, regardless of how well intentioned they might be, I can’t help but feel as if a story like mine is being packaged and sold to young queer people desperate to find confidence in their own identity.
“Sometimes beauty doesn’t come naturally from within,” Gaga muses on the Haus Laboratories website. “But I’m so grateful that makeup inspired a bravery in me I didn’t know I had.” The narrative is clearer than ever: If conventional aesthetic “beauty” is no longer a marketing team’s focus, then something like “bravery” must be; rather than encouraging consumers to fit in, it’s now about using makeup to help reveal “who you are.” These brands are leveraging LGBTQIA narratives to maintain relevance in a competitive market, thanks to the very real and very complicated relationship that trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people like me have with cosmetics.
An example like Sephora’s “Identify As We” campaign, full of ethereal imagery and moving ideas about freedom and identity, is certainly a progressive alternative to the kinds of advertising I was exposed to growing up. It’s easy to recall the history of hypermasculine marketing for products like Axe, whose goal was to play on conventional gender roles to make sales. Today, some brands would like us to believe that they can do better, and that by focusing on the expansive understanding of gender the LGBTQ community provides, companies can push progress forward rather than reinforce tired stereotypes.
Recently, Jonathan Van Ness, one of Queer Eye’s fab five, revealed that he’s nonbinary to Out. “[Gender is] this social construct that I don’t really feel like I fit into the way I used to,” Van Ness shared. Couched in this personal revelation was Van Ness’s sponsorship with nail polish brand Essie, something he hopes will help inspire young people: “I always used to think, Oh, I’m like a gay man, but I think any way I can let little boys and little girls know that they can express themselves, and they can, like, be… making iconic partnerships with brands like Essie no matter how they present is really important and exciting.”
Van Ness and Essie, like many of the brands mentioned, seem to operate under the assumption that visibility alone can bring much needed change in how our culture regards gender nonconformance. And maybe they’re right; but as a nonbinary person, I can’t help but question: Would my self-perception really have been different had I seen someone like Van Ness wearing nail polish on a billboard while growing up? Would I have come to understand my identity sooner had I seen a gender nonconforming person on a cosmetics display?
Many queer people grow up with a longing to be seen and validated by popular culture in the way our straight and cisgender peers are. When we come to adulthood, I worry that lingering desire may leave us with an inability to protect younger generations from the potential risks that putting value in “visibility” can conceal. If we place our trust in advertising to advance our cause rather than sharing our stories on our own terms, we’re passing them over to those whose primary goal is to profit from them. These sanitized, corporate narratives run the risk of leading young queer people to believe that embodying their identity is as simple as buying the right lipstick or wearing the right nail polish, instead of expressing themselves in whatever way feels true to them.
By creating a narrative of self-actualization based on a product, it’s easy to erase the pain that can come too. For many queer and trans people, embodying your gender is not always fun, freeing, and transformative; it can also make you a target of discriminationandviolence. Every time I choose to walk out the door with makeup on, I’m choosing to do so in spite of the world I’m walking into. At its best makeup was often a grounding ritual that helped me come to terms with my own experience of gender. At its worst the reactions it caused — condescending compliments, strange looks, yells of “faggot” from passing cars — could make it feel like a way of inscribing the dissonance between my body and identity on my skin. Those experiences, like those endured by many in my community, are the ones you aren’t so likely to hear about in a beauty ad or the next big pride campaign, because they don’t fit the right narrative. We can’t ignore that these brands are more invested in their own survival than they are in ours, and we owe it to ourselves — and to those who’ll come after us — to be careful with how we allow others to use our stories.
*It is important to note that while researching powerful LGBT+ people from the past, it can be complicated to label their identities with words we currently understand while respecting who they were in their own time. While Storme may have used different identifying terms now, I am respecting her own choice of identity - a lesbian, woman, drag king.*
Storme DeLaverie was the fierce biracial, butch lesbian who threw the first punch at Stonewall, igniting years of passionate LGBT+ activism. From being one of the first “male impersonators”, to patrolling the streets of New York City until she was 85 to protect young LGBT+ people, Storme’s legacy of badassery lives on in modern LGBT+ activism. Read more about her here:
anyways. drag kings have been around for decades & are equally as important as drag queens. drag masculinity faces serious erasure & that’s a problem. support your local drag kings
whenever I see people reblog this or my other post about this with some variation of “oh i didn’t even know drag kings existed!!” it makes me so sad. I’m glad u know it now but like, the fact that people don’t even know drag kings exist? how many people do you thing would get into drag if they knew drag kings and drag masculinity was a Thing? how many more people would get to explore their masculinity via drag?
Some kings to get you going.
Landon Cider, Buck Wylde, Miles Long, Koco Caine, Murray Hill, and Spikey Van Dykey.
I should also recommend Beau Jangles and Mudd the Two Spirit, my two personal favorite kings!
Beau is very much inspired by Cab Calloway, so you know. I, Heidi Ho myself, just have to be obsessed.
Mudd is an indigenous king and honestly? His looks are FUCKING INSANE I love him.
Drag kings haven’t just been around for decades, they’ve been around for over a hundred years.
As an aspiring professional queen myself, the erasure of drag masculinity is quite literally offensive to the artform as a whole. Kings have contributed so much and they deserve better.
They have been around for over a hundred years!
In the 1800s, drag kings were called “male impersonators” (and likewise, drag queens called “female impersonators”), and they would work the music halls (like, variety acts, comedy and theatre) - mostly singing silly or risqué songs like “Burlington Bertie from Bow”, “Following in Father’s Footsteps” or “Jolly Good Luck to the Girl that Loves a Soldier” - and many of them also did panto, acting as the Prince Charming, or Peter Pan (as is traditional), things like that
One of the early ones was Bessie Bonehill in the 1890s
Here she is, from an image search -
Later on, there was Ella Shields
And Hetty King, who worked until the 1930s, 30 years on the halls
