original english tl for comparison

diversity win!! this trans girl in a game for children is being maliciously misgendered by her family!

In contrast to the gender binary, Bugis society recognizes five genders: makkunrai, oroané, bissu, calabai, and calalai.The concept of five genders has been a key part of their culture for at least six centuries, according to anthropologist Sharyn Graham Davies, citing similar traditions in Thailand, Malaysia, India and Bangladesh.

Oroané are loosely comparable to cisgender men, makkunrai to cisgender women, calalai to transgender men, and calabai to transgender women,[  while bissu are loosely comparable to androgynous or intersex people and are revered shamans or community priests. The classification of the calabai, calalai, and bissu as third genders is disputed. These roles can also be seen as fundamental occupational and spiritual callings, which are not as directly involved in designations such as male and female.

In daily social life, the bissu, the calabai, and the calalai may enter the dwelling places and the villages of both men and women

even more bluntly: What were those completely and utterly ridiculous thoughts that you had in hindsight that make you wonder how on earth you ever even managed to convince yourself that you were cis? I'll start:

I remember browsing through a bunch of trans memes on reddit (already very cisgenderly) and I kept coming across ones that were some variation on stepping out of a time machine to meet your past self as a different gender. For maybe about 2 months until I realized that it really was true, I admitted to myself and two of my close friends who are both trans women that i would just not be surprised if I stepped out of the time machine from the future as a trans woman. my only thoughts on that were basically to laugh it and say "yeah that tracks". Somehow I could admit that I think it's totally plausible to be a trans girl in the future yet still be 100% cis

anyone have any other fun thoughts like that?

I very recently started training my voice, and I used the Voice Tools app that I've seen a lot of other trans people use. I've always been scared of doing it because of the large portion of trans people who describe it as extremely difficult. It is difficult, and I've been so stressed that I didn't want to do it because I thought it'd be too frustrating, but my first W of it is that I learned how to harness an androgynous pitch while speaking. I know that pitch isn't necessarily everything for gendering a voice, and it still feels unnatural, forced, and exaggerated to talk with anything except my "male" voice, but I'm definitely gonna keep going. I feel proud of myself because I used to be very terrible at manipulating my voice, so the fact that I'm at this point alone is a shock to me. This result was from me reading a whole passage on the app's analysis page.

FYI: I want my voice to be androgynous, not feminine, so voice training might even end up being easier for me as a non-binary person than it is for most binary trans women.

It never even started it is so over

:3

i hate how annoyed i get at work i feel like my whole personality changes for the worse because my bosses have unreasonable expectations and then act all annoyed when i just do the work im paid to do. like i finished work an hour ago now im high with my workplace living rent free in my head. also im transgender or something

had this post stuck in my head since yesterday and i love it

This post is for all of the gender questioners who lurk around these parts and feel like their experiences don’t line up with other people’s. I write this as a trans person who has no clear indication of what s/he’s transitioning to.

In the last few years, I’ve gone through extensive questioning and experimentation with my gender all up until my recent hatching. During this time, I’ve met so many different kinds of beautiful people on this site. Over a year and a few accounts, I’ve talked with binary trans people, non-binary trans people, bigender people, people who have detransitioned, queer people, and many others who have been incredibly supportive when sharing their experiences and supporting my journey. I think the people who I have interacted with the most over this time, though, is the group that I belong to myself—gender anxious people—gender weird people. The people who aren’t even sure if they’re unhappy with their gender and their body.

I stayed quiet for a long time because I didn’t feel like my experience lined up with anyone else’s, but when I started posting, I started seeing one comment in particular. I wrote this comment to others, and people wrote it to me, and others wrote it to others.

“Are you me?”

After literal years of questioning, it took maybe two hours in the mega to have multiple people replying to me telling me that they felt the same way. If I don’t relate to the experience, I don’t reply, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the call “does anyone else feel this way?” go unanswered. Other people feel the way you do about your body and gender.

Many of us feel like we’re in a gendered box, and we’re asking for permission to leave it. We want to know that our reasons are good for leaving the box. We feel like we need a clear destination of where we want to go after we’re out of the box. The truth is that we don’t need any of these things. We just have to want to leave the box—that’s it.

I was stunned when I read Trans Liberation because it had hardly anything to do with binary trans people at all. That book is about all of us, all the weird stuff sprinkled from binary to binary (including the binaries!).

Let me dispel a few myths for you:

1. There is not a prerequisite amount of pain that you need to feel to prove you want to change your gender or gender expression. You don’t need to be sick at the sight of your body. It doesn’t matter if you’re comfortable living they way you are. If you want to change your gender expression just because you think it might make you happier, that’s the only reason you need.

2. There is no number of signs that you need to collect that will validate your experience and choice. You don’t need an epiphany where you “knew for sure.” You don’t need to have grown as a boy who always loved playing with Barbie or a girl who hated wearing skirts. Many trans people knew for sure, and they knew it for a long time, and that comes with its own challenges; however, it is not a necessary experience for all trans people. Some of us get halfway through our lives and just feel like we’d like to be something else.

I think a lot of us who grew up in the West are stuck on essentialist thought. We want to feel that there is something inherent to our existences that will tell us what our gender is. What we “truly are” deep down. What we’ve always known we are. For some people, this may be comforting; however, I think that there are other ways to think about it. For instance, we can look at gender through the lens of practice, and we can ask ourselves how each of us practice our gender each day. Most cis people practice their genders daily, but it’s invisible to them. Once you start practicing your gender differently, that’s when things start to come into focus.

Once I started dressing in women’s clothing and painting my nails, you won’t believe how many straight cis guys came out of the woodwork to give positive feedback. They tell me things like “I always wished I could paint my nails, but I never had the guts” or “I’ve always been jealous of women’s clothing. I don’t feel like I have any options in menswear.” These are dudes who have probably never complimented another man’s outfit in their entire lives, but, when confronted with someone outside of the rigid gender box, they start admitting that they want to paint their nails and wear dresses.

So, what I’m saying is, regardless of where you fall on the gender/sexuality spectrum—even if you just want to break the rules a little—your gender expression is beyond valid. Your simple existence is revolutionary because it’s a challenge to a rigid binary gendered society.

Don’t believe your existence is revolutionary? Try to practice your gender in a non-sanctioned way. You’ll feel the counterrevolution real fast. If you’re a guy and you do something as simple as grow out your hair, you will be constantly socially policed. Push the gender binary just a little bit further than that, and you’re very realistically facing violent opposition in a fascist society. Don’t think being a crossdresser is valid? It’s valid enough to get you outlawed or thrown in a pit. These non-conforming gender identities, no matter how subtle, stand in complete opposition to the fascist project. You being publicly weird robs them of one more mechanism of social control.

So, if you take anything from this post, please let it be this:

1. If you think nobody else feels the way you do, start asking and finding the people who do.

2. Don’t get hung up on the validity of your feelings or reasons—they’re all real. Not every option is available to every person, but there are things within your power now to start practicing and exploring. Start practicing. It really doesn’t need to be big. start slow. You don't need to start HRT tomorrow, or ever, for that matter. Do what is fun and safe. It's your body to manage the way you please.

I hope to see more folks in the mega. It’s really been popping off lately.

Btw, even if, by some freak chance nobody feels the way you do, you’re STILL going to get good ass advice from our expert posters. There’s no gatekeeping happening.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4293617 (The original post by Sovereign State)

Oops!

I feel kind of silly. I spent 12-13 years knowing internally that I am a woman. I regularly "pretended" to be a woman online as a kid and teenager. I have always preferred my "feminine" features and appreciated the "feminine" side of my personality far more than the "masculine". I used the nonbinary label as a shield, protecting myself from the truth for years.

I got out of a really rough, codependent relationship in 2023. I was told a lot of really horrible things about myself that I know now aren't true, but believed at the time. A lot of things that had me examining my supposed manhood and the more toxic parts thereof. I "came out" as cis. I created the Men's Liberation community here (and proceeded to not take an active role there due to depression and... well, this.)

I read a lot about masculinity and manhood, and began using my 'maleness' as a means to get better, as a means to do better, to be better. It would allow me to more critically examine the ways I was socialized and more adequately deconstruct them. It did, for a time.

In the midst of my stint with manhood, I met a couple of people who knew the truth. Before we had even spoken to each other beyond base pleasantries, they would talk about me using she/her pronouns. After we got to talking, I felt like I could be queer again, be me again. I have found my people and my home, and in doing so I have managed to find myself again.

I am a woman. I start HRT within the week. I am so, so excited. I am a woman.

NOTE: I will repeat, I, as the crossposter, am not trans... I am merely crossposting from Sovereign State's post... I just try to give attention to it....

highlights:

Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Michael Holbrook issued a two-week temporary restraining order on Tuesday to block House Bill 68. The legislation would prohibit Ohio’s children’s hospitals from providing treatment like hormone therapy to trans minors, and was set to take effect on April 24.

~~lowlights~~ lowlifes:

Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery), the primary sponsor of H.B. 68, said on Tuesday he was “disappointed, but not surprised,” and argued “the longer this bill is in the waiting, the more harm takes place.” Click noted he knew, from the day he introduced H.B. 68, that it would be “a marathon, not a sprint,” and said he would “keep fighting for kids in Ohio.”

“We’ve seen this in other states where the lower courts will put on a stay and then it moves up to an upper court until it finally gets to the court of final authority and that’s where we win,” said Click. “The science is not there, is not a social issue, this is not a part of the culture wars, this is a medical scandal what we’re doing to our kids.”

thankfully, they at least immediately correct his bullshit:

Gender-affirming care is backed by every major medical association in the nation, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association. To override medical consensus is “government overreach,” the ACLU said and promised it will “reinstate Ohio families’ right to make personal medical decisions with healthcare providers — not politicians.”

...

“Anytime we are in a situation when we are micro-managing medical professionals, I think that is incredibly damaging, let alone the fact we are literally banning medical best practices,” said Bruno. “I can not emphasize enough how ridiculous that is.”

it's not world-shaking, but it's not nothing

My expectations for my kid's rights here in Ohio are very low, and I've been trying to gently suggest Michigan etc as fun places to go to college. I don't want him to go far away, but I want him to be safe, so 🤷

But meanwhile - hey, maybe the creep of fascism can be slowed a little bit in the courts! That'd be great.

This can work as a community banner or a profile banner, I think.

Here is the full sized version

Might end up making some other stuff similar to this at some point. Or maybe some cute trans cat cartoon stuff

Tennessee has recently passed a bill, effective July 1st 2024, declaring it a class-C felony to "recruit, harbor, or transport an unemancipated minor within this state" for transgender healthcare procedures, carrying a sentence of 3-15 years in prison. This applies over state lines and states that do not have anti-extradition laws relating to trans rights can extradite you to Tennessee.

Notably: the bill is vague. This means: telling stories of your own transition, describing your healthcare experiences to an open group chat, describing your trans experiences on a public website, creating trans health guides online, describing how you have gotten DIY HRT, describing anything to do with trans healthcare, even as a cis person, can result in a class-C felony conviction.

Given that being arrested in any capacity for transgender people can be an incredibly dangerous experience (CW: SV), I strongly suggest you begin caring about opsec, stop referring to where you live, use VPNs, stop using apps like Discord, and stop using social media sites that track your IP or user agent fingerprint while unprotected. Remember that for a bill like this to be challenged in court, you have to be arrested first.

Will discuss creating / linking to a transgender matrix chat so that we can help people to move off of things like discord.

link