Tag: lgbt

Secret Lady

This is a spoken word piece about my experiences growing up transmasculine. There are mentions of suicidality, sexual harassment, and rape culture.

When I grow up, I want to be a woman. I know I’ll be one someday. The older ladies told me that being a tomboy is just a phase, so don’t worry about not feeling like a “real girl,” because the girly stuff will come naturally someday. I am waiting for her to arise, the natural woman in me. The one who will throw away my comic books, sweep away my desire to be a boy with a delicately manicured hand, demolish my personality with a perfectly made-up smile. I am waiting to stop existing, to burst into flames and allow a beautiful, secret lady to rise from my ashes, like Jean Grey.

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LGBT Blogging Challenge Day 1

Hey everybody! As I’ve been running out of ideas for what to post lately, I’m turning to the 30-Day LGBT Blogging Challenge. I want to start writing on a regular basis rather than just posting some old pieces and rants I wrote a while ago, like I’ve been doing sometimes lately. I am also interested in trying a more traditional blogging format, rather than just personal rants, to see if that brings in a wider audience.

So here’s the first prompt for the LGBT Blogging Challenge. (I looked for autistic and mental health-related blogging challenges too, but I didn’t find any. Maybe I’ll write some myself.) It says “Day 1,” but I probably won’t be posting these every day. I’ll try to keep it to at least once a week.

Day 1 – Your sexual orientation or gender identity. Be creative in your definition.

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Why I Like Singular They

Plenty of people talk about how singular they is incorrect. After all, “they” inherently refers to more than one person, right? Plenty of other people talk about how it’s awesome and they need to get over themselves. I fall into the latter camp. I like singular they a lot.

Why? Well…

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Acquired Taste

When a medical professional tells me I’m probably autistic, I’m not surprised. I’ve suspected it for over a year now. This diagnosis isn’t even the main reason why I’m here. I’m in this office because my sister was just diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I think I might have it too.

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Sometimes I Don’t Know What to Do with Cis People

Last week, I got hit by two shitty “trans people are fakers” jokes within two days, from two different people I care about.

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Monster

Content note: This is a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago about cissexism and transphobia, both external and internalized. If you’re a trans person and you’ve had a particularly bad or dysphoric day, you might wanna skip this one.

Today in my literature class, the professor said we were going to deconstruct race and gender in Frankenstein. A sense of dread settled over me as she wrote “Race” and “Woman” on the board and asked a room of mostly white students what race is. After a very intellectual discussion, she asked the class what woman is. The first response was exactly what I was dreading. A student said, “Being biologically and anatomically female.” Continue reading “Monster”

Here’s to Gender Agnosticism, Y’all

I recently found a blog post where someone wrote about their identity as “gender agnostic.” I liked it so much that gender agnosticism is becoming part of how I describe my gender identity. It makes for a very apt description of the attitude I’ve been developing towards gender lately. The way I’ve been feeling about gender is similar to the way I feel about God. Weird, right?

Continue reading “Here’s to Gender Agnosticism, Y’all”

Seeking Humanity in Trans Stories

In my world literature class, we cover the Epic of Gilgamesh and Babylonian myth. My teacher talks about a being named Asushunamir. He uses the words “creature” and “hermaphrodite” to describe them. According to my teacher, Asushunamir was created to rescue the goddess Ishtar from the underworld. He says that because they were both male and female, they were considered “more than human” and therefore could enter the underworld safely, whereas mortal men and women could not.

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Things HB2 Has Taught Me

Because this North Carolina resident gets real tired of people sometimes.

For non-NC residents, House Bill 2 is a piece of legislation that struck down all anti-discrimination ordinances for LGBTQ folks in the state and mandated that transgender people have to use the restroom that corresponds with the gender marker on their birth certificate. A more extensive explanation of HB2 is here.

In the wake of HB2, many memes have been circulating which show pictures of muscular, bearded trans men with a caption along the lines of, “Would you want these guys sharing a restroom with your wife/daughter?” The implication is that of course these guys should be allowed to use the men’s restroom, because they look just like any other guy. I’m not a fan of this approach, as you can see below. Continue reading “Things HB2 Has Taught Me”