Source: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/42332078/

#transitiongoals

When i first read that passage, i seriously wondered if somebody had reformatted a Halimede tweet. I don't want to dunk on Serrano too much here, i've taken a lot of good input out of her works, but this is one of her takes that has aged poorly. Like, seriously, i am so fed up with that view of being trans. The one that always, always without fail, centers suffering and pain and misery, that can only frame our joy and our thriving in contrast to the damage that has been inflicted on us, the one that can never let the past rest.

I am not like this. And it's beginning to become a problem.

You see, i like being in community with other trans people. I'm at home there, i've made friends there, found lovers there. It's where i belong. As long as i stay within my own bubble. As soon as i step out of it, i immediately get bombarded with unsolicited trauma dumps, dysphoriaposts out of a 4chan hellhole and a trainload full of internalized transphobia. Everything is a trigger for me. I cannot safely navigate most trans spaces anymore because the people there just drag me down. I logged in yesterday after a long hiatus and looked into the trans megathread and the first thing i had to do was block a user for her unspoilered loathing of the trans existence. I don't know how to handle this anymore. I used to be the kind of woman who writes big effortposts about self acceptance and how to figure yourself out and how to begin navigating systems of medical gatekeeping, but the further i go along in my own transition, the further i am removed from making these early experiences myself, the less i have it in me to unpack all that needs to be unpacked when baby trans yell their pain into the void.

And that's eating at me. It makes me feel guilt, it makes me feel like a failure to my community. My second puberty feels as if i get to sit at the table with the pretty, cool and popular girls, giving fashion advice to the prom queen while i'm leaving the most vulnerable trans people out in the rain, the ones that would need my experience and my encouragement the most. But when i try to be there for them, i harm myself. I can't say it otherwise, it is burning me out to expose myself to that kind of pain. It feels as if i'm walking backwards into a darkness i have escaped from. How do i deal with this? Do i retreat to my wonderland of privileged, happy women and girlthings or is there a way to move beyond the triggers and face the misery of others without becoming miserable myself? Because that's what i would need if i wanted to keep helping my siblings.

I’m researching hair removal and the sheer amount of options as well as the range in price just seems daunting. Why are there $30 devices and also $300 devices? And why would people chose to pay more for a single session than the device costs on its own?

Hey folks, the results are in and the vast majority of active Hexbear users say they are not cishet!

This survey had the same limitations of our previous transgender survey. This means we do not have the tech to make this survey more accurate through other means (more questions, more options, negative/positive answering, anonymous answering, etc). However, we do have a good sampling of the active userbase (about 1/3rd of daily active users answered) and combined with the transgender poll, we can conclude that Hexbear is an overwhelmingly queer instance that is proud of stating its queerness publicly.

You can see the graphs of the previous transgender survey here:

You can find the raw (public) data of the survey here. Feel free to audit my numbers and make sure I didn't hallucinate anything!

The total tally was

Yes = 114 
No = 195 
Unsure = 30 
Total = 339 

A number of people did not follow instructions properly, and I put them into the category that made sense based on the information they provided.

A number of people used the dean-malice emote which was not in the set of emojis I provided for responses. Most were merged into yes, unless they stated they were queer otherwise.

This survey is a little less complex than the last one, I kept it short and sweet and did not tally the pronouns.

Both surveys were done over three days and were pinned on the front page.

P.S. Thanks @ComradeEd@lemmygrad.ml for helping make this a bit quicker with your code here.

I hope you all have as much fun with this information as I did and I hope you all have a great Pride Month

HAPPY PRIDE EVERYONE!!!

It was the most trans movie I’ve ever seen and I don’t know what to do with it.

I’m not absolutely devastated like so many people have been but maybe I hyped it up in my head. I managed to avoid spoilers. But emotionally I had heavy expectations for it. I also can’t get it out of my head. It’s just swirling around in there.

I don’t know how anyone can watch it and not see the transness of it, but apparently some people do.

I always hesitate to call what I experience a period, because i dont know if thats what it is or if it operates the same, plus some deep-set fear that as soon as I use that word in reference to myself 10 terfs will jump out of the woodwork and berate me for an hour.

I was wondering if anyone else experiences intense period-esq symptoms? Every ~3 weeks i have intense mood swings and am borderline psychotic for 2-5 days. I get very super dysphoric and everything is just really terrible. I also lose memory and dont remember what I did during those times very well (although my memory is terrible regardless so it could just be normal-for-me memory loss).

Its not directly related to my shot schedule, but its at its worst when it lines up with my shot. I cant tell if progesterone makes it better or worse, but I went off it to try and narrow everything down, because it wasnt always this intense. I might try cycling it to see if that helps? But it might just make it worse.

Im unsure why i made this post, i guess i just want to know im not alone?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2679948

things are HAPPENING besties

Hey, we still haven't been able to find a secure way to poll everyone yet. I've really been wanting to ask (in the negative, to be more inclusive) what proportion of Hexbear is queer. This isn't going to be super scientific or anything as a result, but just a quick guess.

Please respond to this post with the following emojis :

For yes, you ARE a cisgender heterosexual (cishet):

For no, you are NOT a cisgender heterosexual (cishet):

For unsure, as in you are UNSURE or QUESTIONING if you are queer, transgender, a cisgender heterosexual (cishet), etc:

If you have anything to add, please use a spoiler tag below your answer like so:

Remember to respond even if you are cisgender, queer, or otherwise. Everyone should try to respond, if you feel comfortable!

It's for a local LGBTQ nonprofit. Honestly I poured my soul into this application, was honest in ways i never have been, and now that it's done the only thing I feel is dread. I took a big step and let myself feel hope, but I know with near certainty given the past 293+ job applications that have ended in failure, i can't help but feel that this go the same way. i don't know how that will feel—worse, maybe, since i exposed the barest hint of what I want to be and will inevitably be punished for it. i'm so tired of this.

I finished this book a while ago and it really blew my mind. I'm a trans woman and it completely changed my understanding of my own gender and my understanding of gender as a concept. It's given my a new understanding of the ways I may have been perpetuating harm and ways to change for the better. It was just a life changing read for myself and my cis wife as well.

My question is why don't I see this opinion more frequently in the world? I've almost never heard someone use the term effemamania even though it feels so accurate to what's going on so often. I googled it and I don't see much real critique of it other than a single reddit post. Is there some big problem with the book that makes it not actually a good book that I'm missing? Or is it just more or less ignored for some reason?

Also if anyone else has read it I'd love to hear your thoughts too. Sorry if this is the wrong comm.

Hoping to hear everyone’s week went well this past week. Go out there and have a great week this week everyone!

:::spoiler Bonus versions

On one hand, I have people, both misunderstood cis and binary trans people, who ask me "Why can't you just be a cis man?". On the other hand, I have people, both misunderstood cis and binary trans people, who ask me "Why can't you just be a trans woman?".

Geez, if I have to dictate my identity on the basis of what these strangers want me to identify as, then I'm very confused as to what the right answer is! Some want me to force me in the box of being a man, and some want to force me in the box of being a woman! Surely, this is too much of a contradiction for binarists to find a fair compromise. Hmm, oh wait!

💡

I have a great compromise! Since people are interpreting my relationship with the gender binary as ambiguous and hard to condense down into simply one of the two boxes overall, I'll just reject the two boxes! Problem solved!

But the problem wasn't solved.... not in the eyes of binarists

I got pretty emotional over this video. Part of it is a conversation between current day Abigail and her old self when she was still living life as a man, and it resonated with me on a pretty intimate level. As someone who is still pretty early on in her journey, it was really touching to see how far Abigail has come, and how she refutes the internalized transphobia and the doubts she had that were holding her back from transitioning as a dialog with her old self.

i don't have the first idea of how to talk about this movie. you need to see it, especially if you're trans. even more if you're transfem, and most of all if you're transfem or questioning but haven't come out or started transition yet. i cannot recommend it enough, it's in theaters now and you should see it there if at all possible. this is going to be kind of a mess because this movie made me feel so many emotions i have no idea how to properly express, but i'll do my best

this movie is about you if you've ever felt trapped in your own body, feeling like you're drowning and not knowing why. if you've ever loved a work of art so much it became the lens you saw the world through and felt alienated because of how the people around you didn't get it. if you've ever been stuck in a small town and known something was wrong, this isn't how things are supposed to be, life isn't meant to be like this. but most of all, if you've ever looked at yourself in the mirror and cried because you'll die looking like this. if you've known you'll die as a man and nothing is scarier than that, but what other choice do you have? you might even know there's another option, but it seems impossible and it's almost scarier than dying like this

this is a movie about a lot of things, but first and foremost it is about being a transgender woman in that time when you know in the back of your mind that that is what you are but are too scared to truly let that out. some people are saying this is subtext, which is absurd. the main character is transgender. this is the text of the film

there will be some spoilers after this point, because i can't keep talking around the actual movie itself, though i'll avoid anything too major outside a spoiler tag

the main character (who i am going to refer to as isabel and with she/her pronouns because it makes me feel nauseous to refer to her with the name she goes by for almost the entire movie) is a closeted transgender woman growing up in the 1990s. the movie is about her and a friend (maddy, who is a lesbian) bonding over a show (called the pink opaque) that they connect to in a way they can't connect with the world around them. isabel is trans and in the closet and she never leaves the closet. she never says she is trans, or that she's a girl, or tries to live as a woman. she is in the closet, she is too scared to say the words. maddy recognizes this in her, tries to push her to express herself, but isabel doesn't. she lives her life as a man, pushes maddy away every time maddy reaches out. maddy gets out of the small conservative suburb they live in, changes her name to tara to reject the past. even so, tara never found a community. she comes back one last time to try and get isabel to come with her

spoilers for the end of the film

the most harrowing scene in the film comes after isabel rejects tara. she's too scared to leave the home she knows, deciding all the pain that comes with her life as a man is better than going into the unknown and living as a woman. as she walks home she passes by chalk writing on the street in the same handwriting and color as when she would get notes from maddy about the pink opaque back in high school. the chalk reads "it's not too late" and "there is still time". she ignores it, walks past it. in a voiceover she says "it was time i became a productive member of society, it was time i became a man." it still exists in her no matter how hard she tries to reject it, but she buries it as much as she can. we see her decades later, still living that life no matter how obvious it is that the pink opaque and her true identity are within her. there is still time but she doesn't believe that. she's convinced herself it's too late, that she's made her choice and has to stick to it. she accidentally lets some of these buried emotions slip out and as the film ends she's apologizing to everyone around her for making such a mistake as they completely ignore her, her alienation stronger than ever

some of the pieces of the transfem experience that show up in this movie i've never seen anything else touch on. the way that men around you will try and bond with you and you can't follow along. you fuck up, and they realize on some level that you're different and they grow hostile to you. the crushing weight of those around you constantly scrutinizing you for anything you do being too effeminate, and how even when that isn't the thing they're looking for it's what you're scared they'll find. the way many of us gravitate towards other queer people even when we can't define ourselves, and can't answer why when people ask

this movie is drenched in the crushing weight of dysphoria. it's impossible to describe to someone who hasn't seen it, or to someone who hasn't lived it. the one time a character's actor changes is when isabel goes from 7th grade, played by a kid of the right age, to 9th grade, played by an adult man. this shift in her body, the way she views herself, is so dramatic it feels slightly ridiculous, but that's how it is. when she looks at herself in the mirror, when she is talking to her father, when she deals with customers or coworkers or gets called "sir" at the drive through it feels like she's being hit with a hammer. it beats her down until she has no hope, no matter how much the world around her and the one person who sees her for who she is tell her otherwise. it's not too late, it's never too late. there is always still time. but she can't, she's been crushed into her assigned role and is too scared to leave. it's maybe the saddest movie i've ever seen

i know people who saw this movie and realized this would be them if they didn't find the courage to come out. a friend called her mom and came out right after watching it. on letterboxd several reviews are from women who only realized what they were through this film. it might be the single most transgender thing i've ever seen

i haven't talked at all about one of the major plotlines of the movie, because it's something i think would be better not spoiled and it's not as important for this pitch. and i want to be clear this is a kind of weird movie, it does not have moments of catharsis and it can be hard to follow from scene to scene. it's very lynchian in the truest sense of that, it's david lynch if he was a trans millennial. it's labeled as horror by many but it isn't truly scary, more existentially troubling. a movie that makes me feel like i'm dying, but not one that scared me in any kind of horror movie way

i wanna just put some words from other people here, add some slightly different perspectives

I Saw the TV Glow was so good, omg. If you have ever questioned your gender identity, or have even had empathy for someone who was questioning their gender identity, this one will probably hurt. But maybe in a good way

As much as I Saw The TV Glow is about the anxiety and fear that comes before you transition it's like. I think it's like, so great about showing what being a latent tgirl looks like and what it feels like and like yeah. Here's this person that looks like a dude and who thinks they're a dude but like it's just not-quite right, but still they have to play along w/ the whole boy thing no matter how not-quite-right it is just out of inertia and others' expectation. And here's how like this profound feeling identification w/ another girl and girlness in general looks like as it plays across their face. And this is how having that affects your relationships. Oh and here's the moment when they dip their toes into occupying a girl's role socially and it just makes so much more sense, but then how scary that is for someone that everyone expects to be a boy, or a gay boy or something. And here's how immense and valuable it is to them to have a relationship w/ someone who doesn't expect that from them. It's such a dramatic position to be in and like. God what a movie, it did it so well