Allegations

allegations

[ID: Three panel comic with crudely drawn stick figures for people.

Panel 1: A grayscale person holding some paper is talking to a dark red person.

Grayscale: "You should know, your green friend is actually a really terrible person."

Dark Red: "...I assume you've got proof of this assertion?"

Grayscale: "Oh I do, have a look at this"

Panel 2: Dark Red is holding the paper and looking at it.

Dark Red: "Is this... fandom drama?"

Grayscale: "Read on, it gets so much worse"

Dark Red: "It gets worse but you started with their opinions on a cartoon?"

Grayscale: "Keep going! The really bad stuff starts at page 127!"

Dark Red: "Why the fuck would you put it after the cartoon opinions"

Panel 3: Dark Red rips apart the paper as the grayscale person complains

Dark Red: "Right. Your source on the bad stuff is a cyberstalking group. What a waste of time."

Grayscale: "But if the accusations are true they're really bad!"

Dark Red: "If."

End ID.]

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confusion

[ID: Two-panel "Pills that make you green" comic.

Panel 1: A grayscale stick figure is pointing at the green stick figure

Grayscale: "How can you claim that you pass as fully green when we're not even allowed to define what green actually is?"

Green: "What-"

Grayscale: "You must be so confused when you're not even allowed to say that grass is green to avoid offending "green" people!"

Panel 2: Zoom in on green's face

Green: "I think you're starting to confuse yourself with all this stuff you're making up."

End ID.]

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Obligatory disclaimer! The mention of passing here is irrelevant to the point the comic is making, this comic is not a commentary on passing as a concept in any way! The inclusion of a line about passing is purely related to the conversation that inspired it!

It sounds like the only ingredients caesar salad and your salad have in common are lettuce and garlic? Well i’m glad you enjoy it!

idk it drifted there eventually...

well, I'm not a fan of tomatoes, so I didn't add them a lot even before going vegan. And I did add croutons before too.

But yeah, guess it doesn't really fit, but whatever

outreach

[ID: Five-panel comic with crudely drawn stick people.

Panel 1: A moss green person and an orange dog person are working a stand at some sort of event. They have brightly colored flags, hats and pins.

Moss: "...Why are we here?"

Orange: "Activism is important!"

Moss: "Yeah, sure, but why are we here doing it? I mean, look at the neighbor tent!"

Panel 2: Zoom out. On the left is a nondescript tent with a non-chromoforming grayscale person in a purple hat, with a lime green pin. There is also a visually pink individual wearing orange anime glasses and a blue jacket. On the right is a tent labelled "Lockheed-Nestlé", staffed by a wide purple person, two grayscale people, and a sort of pinkish-red person. A turquoise person is listening intently.

Purple (Not that purple. The cool purple is not this person): "We of course have many career opportunities for chromatic-variant individuals with a passion for assisting the migration of hopeful water molecules seeking to escape from war-torn, impoverished nations."

Turquoise: "Wow!"

Grayscale person from the same tent: "Our diversity initiative seeks to employ at least three hue-diverse drone pilots with in this fiscal year."

Panel 3:

Moss: "It sort of makes me hate this!"

Orange: "But we're doing good by handing out stuff to people"

Moss: "That doesn't cancel out the fascist tent!"

From offscreen: "Hey, Moss!"

Panel 4: The person with the anime glasses gives Moss a high-five. It is the coolest thing that has happened in this particular comic.

Anime Glasses: "Firebombs later, monarch?" (They inexplicably punctuate this spoken sentence with an emoji of a pair of anime glasses.)

Moss: "Absolutely!"

Anime glasses: "Rad. Also a blue hat for my friend."

Moss: "Sure."

Anime glasses: "Hell yeah. They'd ask themselves, but they're scared to."

Panel 5: Closeup on Moss and Orange.

Orange: "See, we're helping people!"

Moss: "Next to the fascist corporation. Do you not see the problem with the fascist corporation?"

Orange: "I decided to be a dog because engaging with politics was too stressful"

Moss: "Right."

End ID.]

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I don't think younger/newer users fully grasp the shit show that ace discourse was around 2014-17

It was so hostile that, to this day, discussions that begin to derail just enough can make me physically nauseous, some specific mockery trigger crying sessions years later. We lost most accounts with any sort of ace positivity. There was no information, no support, and all this damage was done predominantly by other queer people.

All this to say that you, however you identify yourself, should be engaging with aphobic comments the same way you do any hate. We don't sugarcoat or try to be comprehensive with people who are blatantly racist, homophobic or terfs, so why give it a pass just because it's coming from a queer person? I see how this tolerance goes and it's done enough damage as it is.

'Trans' Before 'Girl': The Third-Gendering of Trans Women

I have found myself considering often recently the stark difference in comfort I feel when hanging out with a group of trans women as opposed to any other mix of people.  The way I unfold and stretch into a warm familiarity in the presence of my sisters in ways I didn’t even know were possible; the years I spent hunched in on myself, slouched and cramped into something smaller than I am. I’ve wondered about why this is, why I feel this pressure even amongst lifelong friends who have never once been anything but supportive of me and my identity. Friends who stand up for me to others and go out of their way to be affirming. Even in a room full of gender-freaks and capital-Q Queers, I am still shrink-wrapped in tight discomfort, like fitting into clothes that aren’t too big or too small, but cut in just the right way that you know they look wrong on you. I have realized it is because in all of these spaces, the queerness of my identity is more important than my identity itself. I am never just a woman, I am always a transgender woman. I am always ‘trans’ before I am ‘girl’. 

I think this phenomenon is clearly related to the fetishization of trans women, but not because it is fetishizing in itself. I don’t hang out with the kind of people who would read the Trans Girl Pick-Up Guide, and yet I still encounter this feeling of separation, of reduction and simplification and otherness, on a near-daily basis. I think this and the fetishization of trans women have the same root cause, which is the third-gendering of trans identities. The reduction of trans women to genitalia is certainly one part of this, but there are non-sexual aspects as well that are based in the way we define transgenderism itself. As long as transgenderism is marked as the switch from one gender to another, often but not always from the “assigned” gender to the “chosen” gender, it implicitly distances those people from the very gender identities they are trying to claim. My womanhood is always predicated on the context of my previous “manhood”. My transition, be it social or physical, is always the foundation upon which my womanhood is built; I am always ‘trans’ before I am ‘girl’. In this why I am consistently third-gendered by those around me, made to exist outside of the binary (this is not to say that I believe or support the gender binary; I think we should do away with it entirely. The problem lies from the binary being enforced and stapled over, of creating categories that are made other because of their movement). 

There are, of course, spaces and times where I do claim and celebrate this foundation, this otherness. I am proud of my journey into self-realization, and my queerness is an important aspect of my personality that I don’t try to play down or hide. My experiences, my beliefs, my actions and my desires, all are influenced by this part of my identity in ways I may not even fully realize. I am trans, and I am proud of that. But when I claim myself as a trans woman, those two words are given equal weight; they share the podium. I am trans. I am woman. I am me. In the presence of others, though, I can feel the latter being pushed to the back, like a celebrity being pushed behind their representative. A child being pushed behind their parent. My womanhood is to be seen, but my transness is to be heard. I think that the emphasis on queer identity can sometimes be a tool of ostracization from the self, rather than simply ostracization from others. Especially in the current social climate of precise identification and ‘queer solidarity’, people become focused on the queer identity, and not enough on the identity itself. It is only when I am surrounded by other trans women that I feel like I exist without caveat or precursor; when I am truly, uncompromisingly ‘girl’. I know more trans women than I can count, and yet I can count on one hand the number of times I have heard any of them refer to themselves simply as ‘a woman’ around others. Only when we are alone can it become implicit, an understanding rather than a explanation, and we can simply exist in our womanhood together. When we can just be a couple of girls, hanging out. 

Hopefully you’ve noticed that throughout this I have separated the word trans from the word woman. This is on purpose: I think that the increasing commonality of “transwoman” or “transfem” as a single word is a large part of this issue, because it intrinsically links our identity to a modified womanhood, a modified femininity. We can never take off the context of our separation; of our previous identity. And of course there are trans women who do identify with that label, who want to claim that context and wear it proud, always. I fully support any transfem who does so, as her self-realization is the most important thing. This, just like everything else, is just my observations from the lens of my own experience.

I don’t know that I have a call to action here besides asking people to be cognizant of what they prioritize when talking with trans women. Separate the words. Remember that her identity is not just her transition. Remember that she is a girl, too.