Title: The Radical Copyeditor’s Style Guide for Writing About Transgender People: 2.8-2.11: Avoiding Invalidating Language Traps
Speech bubbles contrast the following phrases under the headings “Invalidating language” versus “Validating language”: “Women and trans women” versus “Cis and trans women”; “Students who consider themselves ‘non-binary'” versus “Non-binary students”; “Zed, who identifies as agender” versus “Zed is agender”; “her secret was exposed” versus “her history was publicized”; “closeted,” “stealth,” and “passes” versus “private” and “nondisclosure”; and “an out trans man” versus “openly trans” and “public.”
anyway most writing advice is frequently contradictory to other writing advice you might receive from people who have just as much/more writing ~expertise~ and a lot of writing advice is just flat-out terrible even if it’s coming from an ~expert~ so if you’re a writer consider this post a reminder that
writing advice that comes up on your dash should be looked at as tips you can choose to follow or discard as it suits you, not hardline rules you MUST abide by or else you’re a ‘bad writer’
you’re allowed to look at a piece of writing advice and say, “wow, that’s a shit idea and i don’t want write like that” and forget about it – even if the post has thousands of notes full of other people agreeing with it
there is no One True Right Way to write, your writing does not have to be just like everyone else’s – if all stories were written the same way and with the same style, reading would be a much more boring thing to do
if you try to write in a way that pleases everyone, you will fail because pleasing everyone is not possible – your own satisfaction with your work, your own desire to write a story, and your own enjoyment of writing are more important than that
I grew up hearing the phrase “you never stick with anything, what’s the point” a lot. I’ve always been attracted towards seemingly disconnected interests, and gone through phases of being really into something. But eventually my interest would fade and I would move onto something else.
Or at least that’s always how it’s been phrased for me, by others. Now I realize that my interest for the old thing didn’t fade so much as my interest for something new outshined it, and that’s vastly different.
I was always made to feel bad about it, with every abandoned endeavour I was told I needed to stop starting things if I wasn’t going to stick with them. I was told I was wasting time and money picking up these random interests and abandoning them after a year.
So eventually, I stopped picking things up. I told myself “what’s the point, I’m going to give up in a year anyway”. Even worse, I started dismissing every new interest, because I had no way of knowing if my interest was “real” enough or just another passing phase. I stopped trying new things, I stopped looking up stuff that piqued my curiosity, and having chronic depression made it really easy to leave everything on the dirty floor of neglected ideas. The more they piled up, the more depressing it was. All these things that could be nice, but I just can’t take care of them.
I realize now how bullshit that kind of thinking is. So what if I stopped doing karate after a year? That’s one more year of karate than most people I know. And in that year I learned discipline, I learned to listen to a teacher, something I had never done before in all my years of private education. I learned the true meaning of respect, that it’s something you do out of faith at first and maintain as it’s reciprocated, not something you do blindly and regardless of how you’re treated.
It gave me the foundation for the determination and grounding I needed to practice yoga. Another year. Not enough to be good at it maybe, but again a year more than most people I know and a year that is not lost, but gained. I learned balance, I learned to listen to my body, I learned how to let go of emotional tightness through physical stretching.
And then iaido, only a few weeks because I couldn’t afford to keep going. The year of yoga I had done a couple years previous had given me a better starting point than the other newcomers to the class. I already had balance, I had strength in my legs and I had better posture. In those months I learned the importance of precision, the true definition of efficacy, the zen state that is incessant repetition.
Did I practice long enough to get good at iaido, and yoga, and karate? No. Of course not. It takes years to become proficient and decades to master any of those things, but I learned other skills and those skills were an invaluable part of my growth both spiritually and emotionally. Likewise for my forays into painting, sewing, graphic design, film. I’m a photography student now heading into my second year of school, and every single second of practice I have in those other disciplines has given me more experience in those areas and made learning easier.
Skills carry over. They intersect and connect in ways that are sometimes unexpected. Nothing is ever lost, experience is never a waste of time or worthless or stupid. Allow your focus to wander, reflect on what you learn, and consider how you can keep using it in other aspects of your life. Stop telling people their interests aren’t worth their time.
those little things on ur nose aren’t blackheads, don’t try and get rid of them they’re sebaceous filaments and they’re permanent and literally everyone has them
every girl has that little pouch of fat on her lower tummy, despite what magazines try n show u, you have important organs there that need to be protected don’t try and get rid of ur pouch
ur body is smarter than u think and it knows what to do when u eat more than normal. one bad day, or even week, of eating poorly isn’t gonna ruin anything at all I pinky promise
if u think u look good up until u try taking a selfie, it’s not ur fault - our faces are asymmetrical and when u see ur face flipped it will look unnatural to u, since u don’t see it that way when u look in the mirror. to everyone else it looks perfectly fine
no one’s stomach looks the same at 8pm as it does at 8am. no one has a chiseled six pack after a day of eating, not even the super fit people u see on tumblr, because ur stomach naturally expands after eating and expecting to have a flat tummy before bed is very unrealistic
no one notices if the bags under ur eyes are bad today. no one pays attention to the bump in ur nose or the zit on ur chin or the piece of hair that u missed when u were straightening. literally no one notices these things except you so stop worrying about it ur gonna be fine
Like, Slurs aren’t just “mean names” you know? Slurs are slurs for a reason. Slurs are words with long painful histories. Slurs are words weighed down with death, pain, sadness, loss. You can’t just throw them around to show how edgy you are, how much you don’t care. If you feel like you’ve just gotta toss out a slur to make your point then tbh you’re argument obviously isn’t strong enough to stand on its own. There is never an appropriate time to use a slur that doesn’t belong to you. If you’ve got no claim to a word then keep it out of your damn mouth
I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
