Trans Megathread for the week of September 16th to 23rd, 2024/Unjust Depths unofficial promotion
Trans Megathread for the week of September 16th to 23rd, 2024/Unjust Depths unofficial promotion
Remember to follow the Traaa com rules or else you are liable for any action that mods deem necessary
IMPORTANT SITE REMINDERS ARE LISTED AFTER THIS RANT (so please read all of it in order to find the rules >:3)
On this mega I shall take the opportunity to rant about one of my favorite things: the Webnovel UNJUST DEPTHS!
Do you love transgenders?
Do you love communism?
Do you love queer romance?
Do you love killing fascists in a giant fucking mech?
Would a plotline with all of these things happening in a underwater retro-futuristic gundam setting intrigue you?
Especially if its actually really well written with good characters, rich worldbuilding, and a marxist leninist transfem author?
All of the answers should be: YES I DO or else I WILL BAN YOU
Since you obviously love all of those things then Unjust Depths is perfect for YOU yes YOU! It is DESTINY
The Imbrian Ocean is at a time of severe instability. The monarch of the vast Empire that spans its unjust depths (:3) is sick and nearing death, every territory of the ocean now vying to carve their own Destiny out of the chaos. From the Volk fascists 
, Zionists 
(they literally will not die why are they still here oh my god), The 'Anarchists' (social chauvanists) 
in Bosporus, and the monarchs 
of each vast noble domain, each vies for power and prestige no matter who they crush underfoot, but it would be a pretty depressing story without a bright light in the dark.
On the edge of the Empire sits the glorious Union! The (Soviet) Union 
is a socialist federation of three states (and one anarchist mountain 
)that were formerly slave colonies under the Imbrian Empire until they broke away in a fierce liberation war. They have spent the last 20 years since then building themselves up. Whether they be Human 
, Shimmi 
(Catgirls who usually follow a religion closely related to modern Islam), and Kattaran 
(a hybrid humanoid species with characteristics of sea life ranging from sharks to cuttlefish)building socialism side by side.
First lead under the revolutionary leader Dashka Kansal, then the Idealist Ahwalia who lead the country to near ruin in pursuit of building a utopia on pillars of sand, then under the scientific socialist 
leadership of the Grand Marshall of the Union, Bhavani Jayanskar (I love Jayanskar so much shes basically as if Stalin, Lenin, and Zhukov were rolled into the same person but was a black lesbian badass who wore the uniform REALLY WELL)(she aint the main character at all tho shes only in very few scenes i just love her so much). Under Jayanskar, the Union has been growing their economy to both eliminate hunger and give everyone a home 
, but also growing their military capabilities for the inevitable return of the Empire. The Union is alone, but with the people by its side nothing, not even Destiny, can snuff out true freedoms light. 
As war wages between the Empire and Republic (basically underwater USA) once more over the lands between them, the facade begins to finally crack...
And a border conflict between the Empire and Union escalate, and the dreaded reconquest begins.
Amidst this turmoil, lives our main characters (yes there are multiple and all of them are lovely). Each of whom I personally love dearly, and are very well characterized. Many are soldiers of the Union, some are scientists, some are divers (mech pilots), some are lost strands finding new meaning after joining this band of Brigands
All are Communists 
All serve the Union 
All would gladly give their lives to defending socialism 
but even they would have little inkling of the adventure set in store for them as the lands beneath the waves erupt in fire, fury, and revolt
Can these transgender badasses kick fascist ass?
Can they kiss? (oh my god please kiss ISTG THERE IS SO MUCH SHIPPING AHHHH ITS GLORIOUS)
FIND OUT HERE: https://unjustdepths.com/
please do or else I will pout incessantly
just try it pleeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase i need to talk to someone about it after Cromalin went AFK
(I miss her, she was a real one)
REALLY IMPORTANT RULES BELOW, MUST READ
Join our public Matrix server! https://matrix.to/#/#tracha:chapo.chat
As a reminder, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It's for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.
Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.
You're viewing a single thread.
I touched on this in another thread but wanted to share here.
CW: controversial? Musings on my own personal experience of being trans by happenstance
Unlike most trans people I've met, I am of the belief that I am here now, living life as a stealth trans woman, as a direct result of my environment, not because of some internal gender that was always there. I am convinced that if I wasn't relentlessly bullied, harassed, degraded, beaten, and rejected by my peers as a child (due mostly to racism and homophobia) I would not have even thought to transition. I feel as if I consciously decided to become a woman at my lowest point, 4 years ago, simply as a way to kill the broken, unloved and unlovable husk of a person with no childhood, and no hope for the future and become someone, anyone, else. I dipped my toes in the water of experimenting with my presentation, and I was surprised by how easily I was able to pass, which only fueled my desire to transition solely as a way to save my life, which simply could not have continued as the broken "man" I was. I was on the brink but I saw a way out.
I started doing everything in my power to dress fasionably and femininely, went crazy hard on voice training, researched all I could on DIY hrt and how to source it, in an effort to pass at all costs. It was working shockingly well, and in a few months, long before I had even self identified as a women, I was passing as a women, very consistently, and for the first time in my life, I was able to be okay. I was able to feel confident in myself, express myself, not hate everything about me, because I wasn't me anymore, I wasnt that broken THING I left behind, I could start over, and it was the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced. Living this way, passing as a woman while still secretly identifying as a man in my own head, slowly but surely over the course of a year, my internal gender literally changed into that of a woman, and one day, I actually, truly belived it with every fiber of my being, long after the world arround me did. It's funny looking back, and a bit embarrassing, but after all that, 4 years later I am more sure that I am a woman than literally anything else about me, despite my recollection of events, and am positive that transitioning not only saved my life, but finally allowed me to enjoy it. However, I am almost positive that had my childhood been full of love, acceptance, and happiness, I would have never even considered transitioning. It very well could be the case that I am simply rationalizing away my "inherent transness" but that's just my current take on it. Anayws, just felt like I wanted to get that off my chest and maybe hear the thoughts of other trans people on that whole ordeal...
Okay I just read this back like 5 minutes later and I'm completely delusional, I just described what being trans is, lol nevermind
have you read the Gender Accelerationist Manifesto? https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/vikky-storm-the-gender-accelerationist-manifesto It helped me frame some of the cognitive dissonance I felt in my identity, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
Can I ask how it helped you frame things?
sure! stop me if i've told you any of this before, but I transitioned over 10 years ago at this point, and I've always struggled with identifying as a woman, and I could never really figure out why. Like it would be patriarchal to take that label for myself or something.
I was talking to a doctor and she asked me how I identified and I stumbled all over myself. Am I a woman? What is a woman? Can I really call myself one if I was socialized male? Prove it? What does it really mean to be trans? Nobody has scanned my brain and looked at the white matter or whatever to see if I'm Really Trans, and I've never gotten a chromosome test, either! To other people, these answers may be easy, but to me, I was unable to really feel genuine inside the mainstream canon about gender.
I like to be accurate when I'm describing things, and myself, so I was left frustrated with all of the popular queer and progressive descriptors. "Trans women are women" - yes ok, but what is a woman? I'm clearly different from the cis women I meet because of a vastly different life experience. What is a woman? Someone who is not a man? What is a man? A miserable pile of secrets? I have a lot of secrets. Or is it that a man isn't a woman? This kind of circular logic went around and around in my head, and the best answer I has was "A woman is someone who fits the gender role and expectations of women in society" which just seems really unstable as a foundation because society changes, different around the world, and fuck I don't want to just do what society tells me, and I don't want to try and cram myself into womanhood either, I want to be authentically me, instead of mediating my gender for cisheteronormativity.
Then, someone mentioned the Gender Accelerator here. I read it. I was accelerated. Suddenly, I found a foundation with which to understand all of these complicated feelings I'm having. Gender is a class structure, created to divide out reproductive labour. Of course it is! Three, five, etc. gender societies exist because they have unique ways of splitting reproductive labour! Finally, this integrated those questions I had about them for me!
And ... well, even "biological sex" is a construct. This fucking changed me. I'm an enby now. All my books have bright orange covers, I read about ace-spec identities for fun, and I refuse to label my gender except to be like "idk, demigirl maybe lmao." This one document answered all of my confusion about how to label my actions regarding transition and what felt right to me, which is why I recommended it here in this post. Maybe others would have a different experience, or not be able to relate. Maybe some disagree with my perspective, I'd love to hear it if so.
I dont identify at all with any masculine labels, I never did. But I could never really feel like I could claim the mainstream concept of "woman" or "female" either. So, I kinda just wasn't happy for years.
Thank you for writing up your thoughts! Theres some parts here that really make sense and parts that are a little confusing to me.
You said youd love to hear disagreements, and while I dont know if I have any of those, K do have thoughts i guess and ill put them here.
maybe shit opinions? Also super rambly... Talking about language and identity.
Like it would be patriarchal to take that label for myself
I dont understand this bit? Perhaps im misunderstanding and this is where you were at and not where you are at in your thought processes? Cause to my mind, a man removing themselves from that class and placing themselves in another class that is lower on the patriarchal hierarchy is inherrently non- or even antipatriarchal. Cause that system depends on its rigidity and punishes those who transgress, anyone who moves outside their class is engaging in non- or antipatriarchal movement.
Regarding womanhood, idk, i see the accelerators view as the one that makes the most sense, as a class under our gender system. And like, for myself, i wander between i guess woman, woman-adjacent, and agender/wtf-is-gender-stop-asking-me-weird-questions.
To me ig, woman is a label that is both applied to me by the outside world and that I apply to myself. Perhaps its cause I really like being femme, and the labour of the woman-class (under our gender system) is labour I do most often. I guess to me its not an issue of being a woman, but rather an issue of performing womanhood coupled with being seen as a woman. To be clear, the performance is not in a "person performing" kind of a way, but rather that the performance makes the person. And by "being seen", i perhaps could say it better as being recognized in/for your labour. Because its rooted in a class system concerned with perpetuating not just individuals but society, womanhood and manhood and any gender cannot exist in a vaccum or without being seen by others. Or I guess, it could be in the sense that one observes onesself? Like, thats what were doing when we apply labels to ourselves, were observing ourselves as we would another, just with the added benefit of knowing our internal states far better than anyone else could. But the performative nature of identity is supee important imo, and to me explains a lot of my thought and feeling about who&how I am.
I guess an issue in what Im saying is that our language isnt suited to describing gender in this way; we speak of being a man/woman/enby/etc., but we should rather (imo) speak of it in a non-stative or otherwise transient way. Idk the verbs to do that without being clunky. Gender fluidity can kind of be used this way, but because of our language its still spoken of in a stative manner, and using it in that way feels wrong, because its misappropriating a stative label to describe a nonstative experience.
reject markov chain interpretations of self, we cannot divide a person infinitely into a series of states, we are not a computer!
even "biological sex" is a construct
This one was primed into me before I read the accellerator. I understood it as "sex is inherrently nonbinary and is a phenotype; its best thought of as a bimodal distribution of traits". None of those traits are inherrently male/female. The missing part for me was that sex arises from gender, not the other way around. The accelerator brought me further into understanding this better. Like, imo we can re-sex ourselves. For a binary example, a penis can be a deeply feminine sexual organ, a vagina can be likewise a deeply masculine sexual organ, depending on how we apply gender to it.
Ok that got real rambly, and idk really how to conclude this, so uhhhh ill close by saying gender is fucky and we should roam free among the hills and plains of it, not be confined to penns and fenced in areas.
damn i fucking live for posts like yours, let me get in there
there's gonna be some brainworms discussion here
Like it would be patriarchal to take that label for myself
So, this was a reference to a moment I enjoyed from Orange Book, but it is honestly something I've felt. This is some Janice Raymond shit that I've internalized from being on the internet most of my life. I am working on this (which is why I'm reading Orange Book and why I enjoyed being accelerated so much), but it's stubborn, and I do have this feeling of "invading women's spaces" in changerooms etc. I simply do not go to women's spaces.
I was in the hospital a few years ago due to gallstones (ow btw), and I was in the ER at first, but eventually they moved me to a surgical ward, and I honestly did not know until I saw it on a form somewhere that this was a capital W Women's space. I felt uncomfortable - I don't belong here, I'm not a "real" woman, do they know I'm trans? Do I pass too well? Was the change in my forms too successful?!
Everyone was very nice. And they all knew. It was meant to be gender affirming, and while I appreciated having my stated gender validated, and everyone was very very kind (I was emotional at a couple of bits because I was scared and they were so reassuring) I felt more at home in the ER where gender wasn't a factor.
Maybe I felt this because of brainworms. Maybe I felt this because I don't really see myself as a capital W Woman. It's hard to tease all of it apart.
like, for myself, i wander between i guess woman, woman-adjacent, and agender/wtf-is-gender-stop-asking-me-weird-questions.
Honestly, I'm not sure where I'm going to end up, but I think you're really getting into the direction I'm leaning here:
I guess to me its not an issue of being a woman, but rather an issue of performing womanhood coupled with being seen as a woman.
This 100%. It's hard to say I am "being" anything except me. What is being, anyway? All gender to me feels like a performance, I like acting a certain way, I like dressing a certain way, but that's not a statement of being. My true self is kinda meek, my voice apparently sounds really fem (according to Partner) even when I'm not trying (I never try anymore), my mannerisms are "cute," apparently. But that isn't a statement of being, I just kinda fit the role of "woman" more naturally.
Learning that agender people can still present fem has been a revelation. Maybe that's where I'm leaning, due to all of this.
Because its rooted in a class system concerned with perpetuating not just individuals but society, womanhood and manhood and any gender cannot exist in a vaccum or without being seen by others.
Yeah, agree.
Or I guess, it could be in the sense that one observes onesself? Like, thats what were doing when we apply labels to ourselves, were observing ourselves as we would another, just with the added benefit of knowing our internal states far better than anyone else could.
huh... i'm not sure why that seems so weird to me. maybe this is just a me thing, i have trouble with labels without specific criteria. Autism? I can check off the boxes. ADHD? Literally diagnosed. Gender? I have to decide for myself, and the labels are fuzzy, and I get to just pick whatever.
If I have to pick something, I will pick nothing, at least today, lol.
But the performative nature of identity is supee important imo, and to me explains a lot of my thought and feeling about who&how I am.
Yeah, that makes sense to me. I feel like my entire life has been a performance due to masking though, so right now I'm trying to go deeper and figure out what's beneath. The core identity of me, if I'm being real, that's beneath any concept of gender.
we should rather (imo) speak of it in a non-stative or otherwise transient way.
YES OMG THIS FR FR. I think this suits me better, "being" hurts my head. I'm "doing" woman at work (but more like "tomboy"), I'm "doing" non-binary femme online, I'm "doing" agender to my parents (this is a compromise for them), and sometimes I "do" ultra-femme at home. I never do anything on the male end anymore, but that's just me.
Gender fluidity can kind of be used this way, but because of our language its still spoken of in a stative manner, and using it in that way feels wrong, because its misappropriating a stative label to describe a nonstative experience.
I was literally just about to say that I don't really like the label "genderfluid" because it's too restrictive, myself.
reject markov chain interpretations of self, we cannot divide a person infinitely into a series of states, we are not a computer!
speak for yourself i'm rewriting myself in Rust
The missing part for me was that sex arises from gender, not the other way around.
totally, good point!
Like, imo we can re-sex ourselves.
I Changed My Sex Last Year? (idk this reminded me of another post)
For a binary example, a penis can be a deeply feminine sexual organ, a vagina can be likewise a deeply masculine sexual organ, depending on how we apply gender to it.
yeah, I won't get into this but I'm struggling with my born-in uh physical attributes at the moment as I plan for bottom surgery. How much is framing? How much is actual dysphoria? What if my particular discomfort is about the incongruity with the role I'm expected to play?
idk really how to conclude this
lol, just like me fr fr
ill close by saying gender is fucky and we should roam free among the hills and plains of it, not be confined to penns and fenced in areas.
agree, i don't want to put whatever's going on in here into a box anymore.
damn i fucking live for posts like yours
Alright my turn lol
Re: orange book, i havent read it so I cant comment.
invading womens spaces + your gallstone experience
So, is it like specifically about womens spaces, or about the perhaps unneccessary gendering of spaces that gives you bad/weird feelings? Perhaps both?
Fwiw i relate to that feeling, but for me its a preemptive thing, like im anticipating judgement and potential violence. I had a huge breakthrough for myself like a month ago when I used the womens bathroom at a big store with tons of people, i was just doing my business and I didnt feel like I belonged but I didnt feel like I didnt belong.
The core identity of me
To me, its not just gender thats a performance, but the entirety of identity. Theres a ton of performance that we dont exactly have control over. Like, the mind and self arent seperate from the body, its all one continuous thing, and every aspect of our identity is performance.
To me, part of coming out, and breaking down my general performances, all of that wasnt supposed to result in not performing anything, but rather to get rid of the explicit and intentional performances that make me unhappy, that bring me sadness and pain, the ones that I do for others and not for myself.
Even when Im alone, because Im self aware, I perform and am observed by myself, and it makes me happy/sad/etc. because of the way the identity performance is engrained into self-ness. Im both the observer and the observed. This is inherrent in our self awareness, without it we would be just impulse machines responding to stimuli (imo).
YES OMG THIS FR FR. I think this suits me better, "being" hurts my head. I'm "doing" woman at work (but more like "tomboy"), I'm "doing" non-binary femme online, I'm "doing" agender to my parents (this is a compromise for them), and sometimes I "do" ultra-femme at home. I never do anything on the male end anymore, but that's just me.
Ok i really like this "doing" way you talk about it. Like, as stereotypical and ironically used as it is, the whole "its giving x" thing, when coupled with the usage of "doing" youve put forth here, really captures the idea of identity to me. Theres what one does, i.e. how one performs, intentionally or not. And then theres how that is recieved and interpreted by other parties, the "what its giving" aspect of it. These coupled together show the way identity exists in between observer and performer.
speak for yourself i'm rewriting myself in Rust
Like, imo we can re-sex ourselves.
I Changed My Sex Last Year?
I cant tell if this is supposed to be tongue in cheek? But if not, like, theres the aspect of changing our phenotype, yes, but im trying to get at that we can change our sex just by re-gendering our physical traits, and seeing them as feminine/masculine/etc. But also theres like the whole aspect of society at large not seeing that, and enforcing both implicitly and explicitly that such a re-gendering is wrong/unacceptable to our gender system.
Thats not to invalidate physical dysphoria. Like, I know that my anatomy is wrong for me, theres a fundamental impedance mismatch between my mind and my genitals (and some other things). That we can re-gender our sexual traits doesnt make them physically congruent, just socially/relationally congruent.
agree, i don't want to put whatever's going on in here into a box anymore.
Time for an anti-box manifesto
