I’m not THE anon but i’d love to your imput on how to tell transness from internalized misogyny
So I’m not the anon thag that originally asked the question about being afraid that my feelings are internalized misogyny and not actual dysphoria (trans masc) but that definitely is a worry that I have and has caused me a great deal of confusion. If you could re-answer that ask then that would be wonderful…
This is a bit of a tough question. Most people who’ve detransitioned or who thought they were trans but realized they weren’t thought so because of gender roles, and stuff like this: disliking the way society treats women, so they thought they could deflect it by transitioning into a man.
For me, I know I was trans because of how uncomfortable I was in a female body. It wasn’t being a woman, necessarily, that made me uncomfortable, but my body itself. I was (and am) a huge feminist, and I wasn’t ashamed to be a woman. I knew I could be strong and brave as well as soft and caring while being a woman. But I just knew, deep down, that I couldn’t keep living as one because I just wasn’t.
I’ve seen some videos by detransitioners (which can be really informative, just be careful if you’re easily triggered by transphobia, because some of these people go full-TERF after transitioning), and from the sounds of it, they transitioned because they wanted power, respect, and freedom from sexual harassment, which are all things they thought they could achieve by becoming male. They saw their female characteristics as the cause of their suffering, because of how society treated them because they were female.
I think that’s the main difference between someone who is actually transgender, and someone who is a cis woman, but doesn’t want to be treated as one because of sexism. Transitioning for yourself because your body seems wrong, versus transitioning to escape societal expectations of your sex.
Granted, this isn’t a subject I’m especially educated on, so I’d appreciate input from anyone who is a detransitioner or who thought they were trans but realized it was internalized misogyny, etc.
Some people think Enjolras has the worst sense of humor… he is constantly telling dad jokes.
What those people don’t realize is that he tells those jokes for Grantaire’s benefit.
He just loves watching him laugh. It is a thing of beauty – it starts with a wrinkling of his eyes, followed by the dimples on his cheeks, it continues with a belly laugh that makes his whole body shake. If the joke was particularly bad, it ends with tears on his eyes.
Enjolras loves those laughs. And he is guaranteed one whenever he tells Grantaire one of his dad jokes.
Grantaire loves the jokes because he knows they are for him.
a fun thing with writing stories is that while i’m writing them i just go with a dumb title like ‘ghost condo,’ or ‘scuba skeleton thing’, something i can look at and instantly know yeah that’s that story ok.
and then i finish and have to come up with an actual title, and the story i’ve been thinking of as ‘ghost condo’ is suddenly ‘We Who Inhabit These Walls’ or crap like that. and anyone reading it wouldn’t know, but for me those stories are forever marked ‘scuba skeleton thing’
It’s unsettling how much I empathize with the characterization in this story. We (meaning me as I read this) see this ghost of sorts as a personification of our emotions,or lack thereof. A silent spector called depression wandering through life, never seeing, never hearing, but always there. And the more we see it in our lives, the longer we spend in it’s company, the more it tends to affect us. We begin to…adopt it’s mannerisms,haunting the walls of a home while still going through the basic necessities and motions of life. We become it,embrace it’s company like an old friend. A cherished loved on who once swore to never leave, that they would always be there. And in truth it always remains to haunt our halls.
We cannot escape the cold grip that is it’s truths, because to do so or to try to is to deny ourselves the truth of the essence of our naked selves. To deny the one thing that makes us human. It is our ability to know of, to be able to process the reality of, the inevitable day that is the day of our death. For we are the only creatures on the face of this wretched planet that know of death. Who fear that death. That can prepare for that death and yet still question what is beyond that moment when our lives expire and our bodies begin to rot and decay the way nature intended.
And yet…still…despite our knowledge of these things…we still allow that ghost into our lives. We begin to haunt our halls the same way that ghost wanders the halls of our conscious minds. But when we chose to turn to this cold…dead creature for comfort? This thing that should in all sense of the word know us as intimately as we know it’s every move and effect and action…will it comfort us? Will it finally acknowledge our prescience? Because we came to terms with it’s existence already. Obviously we have if we’re turning to it for comfort.
But really? Will it comfort us? Will it care? Or will we have to deal with the harsh truth that it is not an entity that we should have emulated our lives from, some…gaud that thought to care about us, but instead was just…plain and simply…a ghost. A cold dead shell of a being. And proof that maybe…just maybe..there is nothing after. That those who linger behind have not yet come to terms with the nothing.
And so it lingers…not to cause us grief…not to force us to accept it. No. It lingers because it has not accepted the nothing…and so in turn the nothing has not accepted it.
Is this really what we want? To emulate and embody something that even the nothing has rejected?
(Jeeze…I should really get some sleep omg)
i fucking love in-depth reader analysis, thank you you funky little nerd
Just zoned out for about 10 minutes thinking about this
someone did that thing to me where they ask an lgbt person “how do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tried ____?” and i was like “this isn’t fucking SOUP karen this is SEXUAL ATTRACTION it’s DIFFERENT”
[Image of a tweet by @decolonizeont saying “Friendly reminder that White Privilege doesn’t mean your life isn’t hard, can’t be hard, or was never hard… It means the colour of your skin will never be a factor in what’s causing your difficulties.”]
I’m going to reblog this again, during normal hours. See, when I was first getting educated about the notion of ‘white privilege’, I had a really hard time digesting the concept. The kneejerk reaction is to say “I may be white but I certainly haven’t lived the life of luxury”. It took a lot of deconstructing what privilege actually was for me to finally get it. I had an AMAZING professor in my Psych of Gender class during community college. She had us learn about race issues in nearly equal measure to gender issues. Group activities, open frank discussions, and really thought-provoking projects were central to this class. I grew SO much because of this wonderful professor. I went in feeling like ‘oh ya, i’m color-blind i don’t see race, we’re all the same, i’m super open minded blah blah’ and had some classic white notions of ‘poc over-reacting to perceived racism’ among other things.
What finally clicked for me in terms of privilege, specifically, was one single handout. One piece of paper finally made it all make sense. It was written for a white audience and gave examples of thoughts and concerns that I, as a white person, will pretty much never have.
Examples from memory: -When I am pulled over by the police, I never wonder whether my skin color was a factor. -When I interview for a job I never worry about my skin tone or name affecting the outcome. -I’m never followed around stores because of my skin color.
I mean, there was about 30 items if not more that all had a similar sound to them. (I wish I had saved a copy.) But it was powerful for me, because I had never really realized that point of view, in those sorts of terms.
The professor’s lessons were endless and helped to really tear down a lot of those ‘kneejerk’ sort of reactions and self-placating beliefs. I could go on and on about the powerful lessons we all learned.
And I’m *still* learning and working to deconstruct my unhealthy, inaccurate privileged points of view. Recently, my patient in our hospital complained about ‘someone wearing too much perfume’ which she said was affecting her ability to breathe. Which may well be a legitimate concern. From inside her room, she saw one of my black co-workers walk past and from then on insisted that the smell was coming from her. To the point where my supervisor asked my black coworker to change assignments. The patient was sweet as damn pie to me, so I was very much was on board with the perfume issue. My black co-worker was LIVID. In the privacy of the med room she called the patient racist and vented about the situation while I kept quiet. A little later, another co-worker asked my opinion and I immediately came to the defense of the patient, thinking my black co-worker had majorly over-reacted… my patient was so nice! As the shift went on, more and more of this patient’s behavior became apparent. She was rude and short with any poc employee, and nice as shit with white employees. But the bottom line is this: My automatic reaction was to doubt my co-worker over a patient because I just didn’t see the racism in the situation. Because I never, ever have to worry about my skin color. (It turns out the nursing station was loaded with perfumed lotions and was just across from the patient room. It had nothing to do with the employee she complained about.)
I digress. The point is, the above quote is an awesome way to put it. There are plenty of white people out there (like me) that can get very defensive when our unhealthy behaviors/attitudes are called out. So, I really, really appreciate it when someone out there is able to articulate it so well. ❤
That article is called “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”! It was a major part of my Social Work education and something that is beneficial for everyone to read!!!
Here is a link to that article, if anyone wants to read it
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 