Transphobes Can Die Mad

Transphobes can die mad 🤷🏻

Any advice on how to figure out of ur a straight trans guy or a nb butch lesbian? Its weird cause when i dont feel like a guy, i want to be masculine but when i do feel like a guy, i want to be feminine. Its a weird paradox of never beening gender conforming and flowing between masculine femininity and feminine masculinty... Idk alot of these labels are white and exclude me as a two spirit person anyway but i wish i could just figure it out. Ive been like this for 4 years...

since i absolutely do not have the expertise to answer this, i asked people on the discord about it. here are their responses (distributed with permission):

note: this is the first time i’ve ever transcribed something, please let me know if it sucks

[image description: a conversation on discord between three users: Hal, james (it), and theodore. the text is as follows:

Hal: i wasn't ever quite in the same situation as this person (i generally always wanted to be masc & am also white and can't speak to other gender feelings they may have as a two spirit person), but in my case being a straight trans guy felt like an option i was Not Allowed to take, leaving me to sort of be doing mental gymnastics to figure out how to basically be a straight trans guy without calling it that or thinking of it as that. in my case letting myself go "im a het trans guy" let me build up a foundation that allowed for the more wobbly gender feelings to like.. Not make me worry that i've been wrong this whole time basically? like i do still have nonbinary gender feelings but i now have a foundation to understand them in, vs trying to pick without having any larger context to place them in going on T also helped because it was easier to more certainly cement myself as "okay, i experience dysphoria which is being helped by being on T" but that's not really something thats super easy to do in all cases, admittedly

james (it): u should ask if they Want to be a guy sounds more genderfluid 2 me u should also let them know being both is an option and there are more butch trans men than they probably think i mean i thought i was the only straightbian on earth until i found this server its alright to be both if they wanna be

Hal: yeah, theres a lot of people who are sort in the overlap between butch & trans dude for sure. knowing that that's a possibility is also really important, i think

theodore: the things that particularly pointed out to me where i stood were like (there’s a lot of internalized transphobia & some descriptions of homophobia in here so i’m gonna censor) [transcriber’s note: the following text by theodore was spoilered out in the original discord message, but has been revealed in the screenshot] • i was under the impression that being a lesbian would differentiate me from other women enough that people would Get that it was different for me. I stopped being able to live with it when I realized most people just saw me as a regular woman but with like, a mental illness or authority issues. (<-the “woman” part of this bothered me the most.) • i had a bad impression of other trans men and had been only exposed to really reductive explanations of gender from them and had to spend time around other trans men who Didn’t Suck for a while before I realized that complicated gender feelings weren’t, like, nb or woman exclusive and the fact that I thought about it didn’t exclude me from being a guy • if i’d been asked “would you rather be a very complicated man or a very complicated woman” i feel like the answer would’ve been clearer • + “do you feel like you Have to be feminine as a guy because you don’t want privilege from being a man or don’t want to be intimidating or is it just nicer for you to be a feminine guy” • also i know a lot of lesbian tumblr will deny this but it IS possible to be bigender and that’s okay

Hal: oh the second to last point theodore posted is a good one to consider as well, because exploring the feelings behind that may be very helpful]

riding a bear would be so badass. of course it’d have to be in another realm where i could telepathically get consent from the bear and be it’s best friend but like,, badass i’m telling you

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) dir. F.W. Murnau

I love that people so expertly picked apart and displayed the fearfulness and conservatism of “if we allow gay people to make evocative or explicit images that challenge the beliefs of volatile and abusive people, we are all collectively responsible for the reactionary violence that falls on vulnerable people within the abusive person’s sphere of control.”

because the imperative is crystal clear in that phrasing: we need to collectively control the images of gay people that enter the wider sphere, and images that could possibly provoke a violent person to inflict violence have to be intercepted to render them inert and “safe” so that this violence never occurs. Since unambiguously sexual images, images of Black queer bodies, and images that blur the lines between genders are the most provoking, these need to be the most tightly controlled, as they present the most danger to vulnerable people who are within reach of the uncontrollably violent people they live with.

Step in, is the imperative in that scenario. Intercept images of queer sensuality and gender-bending before they wreak havoc. The best way to protect our community is to make sure that there is absolutely nothing about our images that could possibly provoke violence— violence that cannot be confronted or defended against, with no collective action that could possibly prevent it.