[ID: a screenshot of a comment from reddit, with no username visible. The commend reads: This doesn’t make a ton of sense to me either. Setting aside the question of whether gender/sex is assigned or observed at birth, the gender I was assigned at birth was ‘boy.’ The gender I have now is ‘man’. Boys and men have different gender roles, and few adults identify as boys anymore. From this standpoint, every adult has a different gender than the one they had at birth. End ID]
Framing “girl” and “boy” as separate genders from “woman” and “man” is such an amazing take. it’s a framework that accommodates and explains so many trans experiences. Some trans people never were their AGAB. Some feel like they were their AGAB, but that that changed (usually when puberty hits, which is when you start “becoming a man/woman”. The accepted societal path is that girls grow up to into women, and boys grow up into men. But some girls grow up into men, and some boys grow up into women. This guy was a boy who grew up into a man, which generally works out pretty well for people. Some boys and girls grow up into people who aren’t men or women, even! It’s like this random cis guy skipped right over transgender 101, 102, 201, etc. and stumbled directly into Transgender Nirvana.
This is like one of the things in Kate Bornstein’s gender workbook! Maybe not exactly adult-child, it’s been awhile since I read it, but it offers some prompts for thinking about other gendered identity shifts that aren’t The Big Trans One.
I’ve cracked the code. Next time you correct someone on your pronouns and they respond with that generally positive but slightly defensive vibe like “oh sorry, I’m new to this so it’ll take me a while” just hit em with one of these:
“No worries, I’m practicing at reminding people and you seem like a safe person to practice with”
Boom. Took the perceived blame off their shoulders and made the connection for them that being corrected = being trusted. Rinse and repeat. It’s also not a lie, correcting people on my pronouns is stressful and personally I really am super cautious about it
I figure some angry people will jump into the notes on this one so let me clarify: trans people do not have to be nice or coddle cis feelings. Some of us like living low-conflict lives though, so get off our dicks about it
Cis people if you would like to avoid having this interaction in the first place, try “thank you for correcting me”
About a year ago (almost exactly), I made a big announcement here, do y’all remember?
If not, here’s a brief recap: I very excitedly revealed that because of the gender dysphoria that I had been experiencing, I was making the big decision to have Gender Affirming Surgery, aka Top Surgery. I think I said something like “holy shit, no more tits”. That sounds like something I would do, right?
Paid parental leave provides workers with financial compensation during temporary absences following the birth or adoption of a child. Private companies often provide paid leave and the federal government mandates 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave, but recently policymakers and advocates have become dissatisfied with the status quo.
Proponents of federal intervention argue that the private market does not or cannot provide sufficient paid leave. Moreover, proponents believe government supported leave would improve labor market outcomes and reduce gender and labor-market inequality.
Policymakers should not adopt paid parental leave policies. Instead, they should consider improving workers’ lives through reforms that increase economic efficiency, remove barriers to flexible work, and increase choice.
One advantage of not really having a strong sense of gender identity is that you’re very [shrug emoji] about how people gender you. Sometimes people call me by she/her pronouns and sometimes they go with he/him pronouns and on the internet people often default to they/them, and neither option is entirely right but also, fuck if I know what would be right, and I don’t particularly care. Therefore I’m perfectly happy to outsource my gender identity to the people around me who actually need to figure out which box to put me in. I don’t need to talk about myself in third person, so really my pronouns sound like a you problem.
My pronouns are I/me and the rest is for someone else to deal with because I have better things to do.
Very fond of macrolabels, like “queer”, that provide zero extra information. Is it genderqueer? Is it romantic/sexual orientation queer? Is it queer as in “none of your fucking business what’s in my pants and what I do with it and with whom”?
Gender and Genre: How Do Our Prejudices Affect Our Preferences?. (Jill McCabe Johnson, Kevin Clark, SJ Sindu, Viannah Duncan, Martha Amore)Do gender stereotypes influence literary tastes? Does a love poem from a male-identified poet seem more tender because it defies common gender assumptions? Does a critique from a female-identified writer feel more barbed for the same reason? What about writers whose identities or work blur society’s imposed gender distinctions? Join this panel as we explore whether we value writing more or less because of the perceived gender of the author, including how that may affect publishing decisions.
I love trans girls for lots of reasons but I think the biggest is that growing up as a girl for me was SO hard. horrible. nightmare. but they make it look happy and enjoyable… they redefine what womanhood is to me from something horrible to something beautiful… very hard to explain… me being a boy is awesome… and seeing trans people love womanhood in a way I couldn’t is even better. thank u girls
This is similar to another post I saw that described womanhood as defined by cisgender people (and especially terfs) versus womanhood that is inclusive of trans women. According to terfs and, sadly, many cis women who arent terfs as well, a woman is someone who suffers and is trapped in a life of being prey, expected to be submissive, always forgotten by history. Men in this story are opposite: always predators, agressive, stealing credit.
But when trans women define womanhood? It’s a personal feeling; something you have agency in defining and describing and reflecting to the world. Being a woman isn’t about being lesser or seen as lesser. Being a man isn’t about being dominating and angry all the time.
And if you don’t identify as what you always have? If you don’t identify with either binary gender? That’s okay too.
[ID: a screenshot of a comment from reddit, with no username visible. The commend reads: This doesn’t make a ton of sense to me either. Setting aside the question of whether gender/sex is assigned or observed at birth, the gender I was assigned at birth was ‘boy.’ The gender I have now is ‘man’. Boys and men have different gender roles, and few adults identify as boys anymore. From this standpoint, every adult has a different gender than the one they had at birth. End ID]
Framing “girl” and “boy” as separate genders from “woman” and “man” is such an amazing take. it’s a framework that accommodates and explains so many trans experiences. Some trans people never were their AGAB. Some feel like they were their AGAB, but that that changed (usually when puberty hits, which is when you start “becoming a man/woman”. The accepted societal path is that girls grow up to into women, and boys grow up into men. But some girls grow up into men, and some boys grow up into women. This guy was a boy who grew up into a man, which generally works out pretty well for people. Some boys and girls grow up into people who aren’t men or women, even! It’s like this random cis guy skipped right over transgender 101, 102, 201, etc. and stumbled directly into Transgender Nirvana.
There is nothing that annoyed me about JKR than people calling her a feminist. Because even if you decide to ignore her transphobia (which is not feminist), I implore you to read the way women and girls are written in HP, especially Cho Chang and Fleur Delacour. The racism, the xenophobia, the internalized misogyny, the pick-me-girl energy, unmatchable. Those two characters are literally describes as “they’re conventionally attractive, so every guy loves them, but not for their personality because they’re annoying, and every girl hates them”, it’s quite pathetic. When she wants the reader to not like a girl/classmate who isn’t r*cist, she uses a stereotype used against women. Lavender is a too clingy girlfriend, Fleur is centered on her appearance, Cho likes cringy pink hearts decorations… She can say she’s a feminist, but she’s not.
There really are very few on-page positive female-female interactions. Ginny and Luna and Ginny and Hermione’s friendships are very tell not show. Fleur, Lavender and Parvati are figures of fun. Pansy hates Millicent. McGonagall hates Trelawney. Everyone hates Rita Skeeter. Tonks only has male friends and coworkers, as does Harry’s mother and Ron’s mother. Hermione’s mother is a non-entity. We see no female goblins, centaurs or werewolves. There’s only two female Death Eaters and I’m not sure they ever share page space.
Petition to ban strangers from using terms of endearment for other strangers. If I have to heave ONE MORE CUSTOMER call me ‘hun’ or ‘dear’ I’m gonna revolt
