You know what I want out of a Buffy reboot? I want a trans slayer. I want someone assigned male at birth but pre-transition to show up with all the slayer abilities and everyone to be like “a boy slayer wtf???!!!” and then she’s like “oh I’m a trans woman” and everyone is like “ohhhhh.” I want the slayer line to transcend biology and genetics. I want slayer powers to be something so innate that it’s tied into one’s own gender identity. Please. Give me a trans slayer.
Y’all this is pissing off terfs in the Buffy fandom, reblog it to support trans women and piss off terfs
I don’t know if that’s meant in a metaphorical way as in, “their insults have no bite” or a literal sense as in “someone was talking shit so he got his fucking teeth knocked out” but I like it either way
some dude on survivor outed another survivor who happened to be trans and called it “deception” like this was some damn soap opera and everyone was like ”lmao that’s personal and not your fucking problem?” and the host immediately said “We don’t need to vote, just grab your torch” and had him kicked off. that’s some instant fucking karma.
We really have harmed a whole generation of trans and gnc children by failing to communicate how serious a decision binding actually is, how there’s no ACTUALLY safe way to bind, how it permeneantly damages the body, how it can make top surgery more difficult in the future. I don’t think we should be keeping trans kids from binding (we let kids do all sorts of things they’re really not old enough to understand the potential consequences of) but we owe them the ability to make informed decisions at LEAST
So this is definitely an important conversation to have, but can you point me at some reading about “permanent damage”? I might just be lucky, but I had zero lasting effects from binding. I’d like to at least read up on it so I can have this conversation and be more specific than “be careful.”
Of course! I can’t easily source right now but I am more than happy to provide further info when I am not at work and on mobile. Unfortunately, like a lot of trans healthcare, a lot of what we know about binding is anecdotal and word of mouth. BUT permeneant damage can include:
-Musculoskeletal damage. Binders are indiscriminate compression tools; they can’t flatten the chest without applying pressure every other anatomical structure underneath including the spine, ribs, lungs and heart. Many people who bind experience chronic back pain, shoulder pain, sharp stabbing chest pains, permeneantly decreased lung capacity, literal spine deformation, etc etc.
-A continuation of the above but the ribs are actually jointed bones. Their ability to flex is absolutely vital to their ability to withstand trauma and protect your vital organs. Imagine the damage that would be done to your elbow if your bent your arm to full flexion and then tightly bound it closed like that, for six, eight, twelve hours per day, every day, for weeks or months or years. And you don’t NEED a functioning arm to live!
-Tissue atrophy. Forcing chest tissue to lay in an unnatural way can and will change the way that tissue looks, even to risk of atrophy. Some people who bind and only moderately dislike the way their chest looks find that they HATE the way it looks after binding for a period of time. Tissue atrophy can also make top surgery more difficult in the future, and increase the risk of complications like nerve damage.
-Worsened dysphoria. Once someone starts binding and becomes accustomed to seeing themselves with a flat chest, it can be much more difficult to see yourself without one, and dysphoria that much more intolerable. You can imagine the psychological feedback loop of binding more in response.
The typical safety measures passed around about binding are harm REDUCTION measures and should not be advertised as making binding “safe.” Binding is not safe. It is a very serious health decision with long term consequences and should be treated as such. That doesn’t mean it’s the wrong decision, but it should not be considered the DEFAULT decision for chest dysphoria which is frankly how it’s currently treated.
ive been reading a book that basically explains how so-called “brain differences” between the genders is the result of gendered socialization and not the cause of it. i honestly expected the book to be very cis-centric but its actually the opposite, the author stresses that testimony from trans ppl is actually indispensable because we’ve, in a sense, “lived both experiences”
more cis feminists should have this mindset
one of the first examples that she uses to introduce her point about how perception by others can shape a person’s performance actually uses a trans woman. it explains that as a certain trans woman became to be seen as a woman more and more frequently, the ppl arond her eventually started viewing her as being ill equipped for tasks that they did not bother her about pre-transition. eventually she even found herself underperforming in these tasks herself.
I knew it was this book before I’d finished reading the first two lines. Honestly this book is indispensible if you want to debunk any gender determinism people claim is science. I can’t recommend it enough.
(Bonus bonus: I am myself a neuroscientist, and the old white men mentioned above – who are not – could not have missed the point harder if they’d actively tried. Which. Maybe?)
scarjo dropped out of rub & tug but please remember that that doesn’t make her a good person. she still auditioned for that role, she still took it, and the only reason she dropped it is because she couldn’t handle facing the consequences of her transphobic actions.
Concerning yourself with whether a celebrity you don’t know is or is not a “good person” in their hearts is a distraction from targeting discriminatory behavior that actually matters. What matters is Hollywood’s actual actions, and public outcry spearheaded by trans people resulted in a positive action here – if it was just “caving to public pressure”… good! That’s what the point of the public pressure was! Reward good behavior, punish bad behavior, and don’t waste time worrying about how celebrities really feel in their hearts.
It’s possible she’s actually learned. It’s also possible she hasn’t, but wasn’t allowed to get away with it. I don’t care which as long as she doesn’t do it again.
Exactly! The whole POINT of public pressure is to generate change – to then judge that change on the person’s purity of heart is pointless.
If the lesson here is “you fucked something up, you apologize, you don’t do it again, and your career isn’t (badly) damaged,” that’s good.
If the lesson here is “you fucked up, you apologized, you don’t do it again, but no one cares and people hate you personally forever and ever,” then there’s no point in dropping out of projects like this. Once the damage is done, they might as well continue on because people will hold it against you anyway.
You should WANT people to change. That’s the goal.
(And let’s not forget the shitty white man, Rupert Sanders, who cast her as a transman, and ALSO as an asian woman.)
trans people taking testosterone need to drink orange juice cause testosterone weakens your immune system!! trans people taking estrogen need to drink milk cause estrogen causes calcium to be absorbed less
If you’re lactose intolerant you can eat nuts and if you’re allergic to oranges, most other fruits have vitamin c. If fruits aren’t an option, there’s also vitamin c supplements.
First off, consider that I had to specify I was talking about an owl, because Hedwig the human is famously very angry about their complicated gender identity in the broadway show Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Only male snowy owls have pure white plumage, like she is described as having.
“But she’s a magical owl! They could be different”
No, no, you see, the only differences between magical versions of normal animals like rats and owls and cats that we are told about are increased intelligence and increased lifespan.
We can say that all pure white snowy owls irl are male, because snowy owls haven’t socially constructed the idea of gender, so their maleness is just a descriptor of their sexual organs.
But owls with more intelligence, and a closer relationship to human social structures? No one is going to say the owls in Harry Potter don’t have unique identities, and Hedwig is particularly self assured.
Occam’s razor suggests that the simplest solution is most often the correct one. You don’t have to make up any oddly specific facts about how every magical snowy owl is pure white. You don’t have to make up anything at all to know Hedwig is trans. Just look at what’s there and it’s clear.
You are allowed to imagine, however:
The scenes in the pet shop when Hedwig bit everyone all the time and no one could figure out why “he” was so terrible.
Until a tiny black haired kid with glasses who doesn’t know anything about the anatomy of white owls goes “oh she’s so pretty!” and Hedwig falls instantly in love with him. Shop keepers rush up in shock, saying “oh wow! He usually bites every-OW!” And getting cut off when the yet-unnamed owl turns on them viciously.
“Oh, it’s a boy?” Asks the naive young Harry, making the owl scream in anger, only for Hagrid, who reads animals better than anyone and always treats them like people, to get a hunch and ask the owl if she is a girl. Hedwig hoots happily and nibbles Hagrid’s ear as the bewildered staff try to insist otherwise. Hagrid doesn’t even entertain those idiots, isn’t it clear this owl is a girl? She just TOLD them she was!
Harry asks if he can hold her with wonder, and exits the pet shop that day with his first real friend, and the best birthday present ever.
This is not shown, even though it IS relevant to Harry’s journey. This segment of the book is all about the colorful characters and wonderful sights he encounters in his first trip into the wizarding world. Establishing that magical animals have strong anthropomorphic personalities and identities would add to this atmosphere. It would help establish an iconic side character. It would build on Hagrid’s “rough but kind, and competent in his own way” characterization in this segment of the book, and introduce his way with ferocious animals earlier than in the original. Introducing his actual skills here would only aid in coloring him as the literally larger than life hero Harry paints him as in this segment.
Instead the scene just cuts to after the pet shop. Skipping all the absolutely true things about Hedwig’s trans identity.
For the final, irrefutable proof?
Hedwig is killed off for absolutely no plot relevant reason. She has to be LGBT.
Thank you, now you know that despite JKR Harry Potter featured the first transgender owl in literary history. Landmark.
(The best correction I could receive on this post would be an earlier example of a transgender owl in literature, somebody please)
wupacing 