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I've told this story before but the non-negotiable in allyship really reminded me of my gaming group. So one of my best friends is a twin and while I know *her* pretty well I don't really know her brother as well despite knowing him for roughly same length of time. We play videogames together and her brother asked to join us so at some point I took him aside and had The Talk with him because we at that point had a recently out trans fem within the group and she had just barely started hormones and hadn't done any voice training etc so I fully intended to head any trouble off at the pass.

So I basically had the "respect my friend's pronouns or die by my sword" discussion because while he knows I'm a trans guy and had so far been chill, I didn't know if that extended to all trans people.

What I did not expect was for him to pull an uno reverse on me and invite his two trans woman friends to game with us as well and did a "no no, *you* respect *my* friends' pronouns or die by *my* sword".

When I was working at Petco, one of my coworkers came to me having a total panic and anxiety meltdown and when I finally got them to tell me what was going on, the revealed they had sought me out because they were having Transgender Feelings and wanted advice. I ended up giving them my old binders that were too small for me but a perfect fit for them, and one of my roommates gave them their first masc haircut.

A few weeks later a customer speaking Spanish was saying many nasty things about my coworker and reacting with disgust. Another coworker- a cis gay man who speaks fluent Spanish- came to get me first so I could pull the other coworker away while he effectively cussed them out in Spanish. He told us the sparknotes version of the English translation and it was mostly horrifically transphobic drivel. My coworker had responded mostly neutrally to me being trans, but for him to be visibly steamed the rest of the day over my other coworker definitely bumped my respect for him.

And I've talked about how a cis lesbian friend of mine visibly bristles at anyone she even thinks is being shitty to me about being trans to the point of making them splutter and back down.

A cishet woman I am only sort of acquaintances with once caught me wincing at being she/her'd at a trial and asked if that had been happening all day. When I responded the affirmative, she stormed off and I didn't see her the rest of the day. The next day, any time anyone referred to me there was an audible pause before a deliberate choice to choose masc versions.

Another trans woman who is a friend of mine once beat up a bully for calling her trans boyfriend a heshe when they were in schooling together.

It's about holding the line. It's about making the active choice to show up for each other. And it's about linking hands and refusing to budge.

If you cannot hold the line with me by your side, then we are not moving together.

late night doodle of a twily,,,this is a superrr early concept from lauren faust and I think it's really cute 🤭💕💕

call me ignorant but i genuinely don’t understand why sports have to be split up by gender.

Every Bugsnax looks like a autism creature and I just…look at them

on colors and being different and not being enough for yourself

(please reblog instead of liking)

I come from a culture that has no nudity taboo - nudity is not considered inherently sexual, or somehow traumatising to witness. What that means in practice is that there is a clearly drawn line between sexual and non-sexual nudity. There is nothing wrong or inappropriate about nudity in a sexual context, and nothing wrong or inappropriate about nudity in a non-sexual context. However, it is 100% inappropriate to be nude in a situation where it is not obvious from context whether this is sexual or not.

I've seen random kids who briefly escaped from their parents bolt across a public park buck-ass naked after they were playing in the water fountain and their parents were in the middle of changing their kid from wet clothes to dry clothes when the small nudist escaped. Changing your small kid's clothes right there in public is ok because there is obviously nothing sexual about a child whose clothes got wet. But although people will have baby pictures of their kids in the bath or just running around the house like that because sometimes little apes hate clothes for some reason, it's considered common sense to not share those pictures on facebook mom groups and such, because you have no way of knowing who's seeing them, and that blurs the line of context.

It all boils down to the clearly defined context. Bathing nude in the same sauna with five of your co-workers at the office christmas party? Clearly nonsexual, therefore completely fine. Your friend-with-benefits inviting you to come over and opening the door in nothing but a doggy collar and the most porn-scented perfume? Clearly sexual, therefore completely fine. A woman checking her breasts for lumps in the gym lockers just before or after a shower? Clearly non-sexual, therefore completely fine.

But if you went to the bank today and there's some guy who walks in and immediately strips naked, doing his banking business wearing nothing but a deep smile and being clearly very content with this situation, you have no way of telling whether he's getting kicks out of this or not. There is no contextual reason for him to be nude. Therefore, that is inappropriate.

Then you go home and post on tumblr - as one does - going like "there was some dude completely fucking buck-ass naked in the bank today. That was fucking weird and I wish he had not done that." And someone immediately swoops into inform you that actually nudity is not inherently sexual or inappropriate, and there are cultures out there that have no nudity taboo. It's not fair to call somebody a freak for something like that, maybe that guy was just finnish.

Memento Mori

this isn't something that exclusively affects nonbinary people, but for reasons i'm gonna get into, we're disproportionately and the most obviously affected by this.

whether we'd like to admit it or not: the trans community has a problem with bioessentialism and is at times just as obsessed over genitals at birth as cis people are.

it becomes really obvious when you look at how nonbinary people are grouped into amab and afab, transmasc or transfem. for trans men, everyone assumes they were born with a vagina, for trans women, everyone assumes they were born with a penis. with those terms, it's easy for people to make assumptions about "where they came from", i.e. what genitals they were born with. of course in these ideas, there is no room for intersex experiences.

nonbinary is more vague and doesn't have "built-in" assumptions about AGAB or genitals at birth. and people hate that. i believe it's one of the main reasons why people are obsessed with dividing us into amab and afab.

but many people have realised that this isn't a good look, so instead they divide us into transmasc and transfem. if trans men are assumed to all be afab and have vaginas at birth, then so are all transmascs. of transfems are assumed to all be amab and have penises at birth, then so are all transfems. (note: this is not at all about people self-identifying as transmasc or transfem, but rather about people using them as collective descriptors.) nonbinary people are constantly confronted with questions like "are you transmasc or transfem?" by other trans people, trying to figure out "where we came from". nonbinary people confuse most people, and most people can't sit with that at all. transmasc and transfem as collective terms like this are considered less bad than amab and afab, because at least they don't refer to agab anymore, so we're not allowed to say anything. ignore the fact that these terms are misgendering many of us and painting a linear picture of the gender spectrum.

i'm very sure that this is also why people hate afab transfems and amab transmascs so much. if transmasc no longer automatically means afab, and transfem no longer automatically means amab, then these terms have supposedly "lost all meaning", because whatever will i do if i don't know what genitals someone was born with.

because let's be real, that's what the obsession with AGAB comes down to. you were born with either a vagina or a penis and that will shape all of your trans experiences. once again ignoring intersex people or any sort of diversity in people's upbringing. it's bioessentialism.

and because nonbinary as a label is free from agab assumptions, we're called by these extra terms that we may or may not identify with way more often. not only are we reduced to our bodies, we're also misgendered and/or consistently related back to our agab in the process.

bastard sounds great in an irish accent. if an irish person calls you a 'daft bastard' it just feels right

the welsh have the monopoly on things ending in hell. fuckin hell and bloody hell hit different in a welsh accent. its like music to my ears

the scots have piss and shite for sure. "its pishin it doon out there" "this is a load of shite" absolute poetry

if i may speak for the english i think we do penis related words very well. dickhead, knobhead, twat, etc.

and for all the shit we give them, you gotta admit that no one can deliver a 'goddamn' quite like an american. theres a certain weight to it that you just cant achieve in other accents. when an american says goddamn you know shit just got real