Happy Trans Day of Visibility 2023! I love being trans – the part that makes it difficult is the transphobes.
Tell me in the replies/tags/reblogs what trans joy looks like for you. :D
Transphobes do not touch this post.
Image ID: 10-image cartoon comic featuring Joey, a boy with short hair. Image 1: Joey smiles and gesticulates to the title of the comic which reads: “Accessing gender-affirming care as a minor has allowed me to experience trans joy as a transgender adult!”. The words “trans joy” are in large block letters the color of the trans flag. Image 2: A younger Joey wearing a sweater and boxers receives his first T shot from a nurse. The text reads: “I started testosterone 5 days before my 17th birthday after spending the year jumping through a bajillion hurdles. Today, my home state is trying to criminalize my care and specifically shut down the trans specialty clinic that cared for me. Throughout all of this false ‘debate’ about best-practice medicine, I have seen no politicians, reporters, or cis allies talk about trans joy.” Image 3: A younger Joey in a hoodie stands at the stove cooking. He is happy, and there are music notes around his head. The text reads: “When I realized that I was trans years earlier, the world became lighter. I suddenly had answers for why I felt the way I did, and I knew that I wasn’t alone. I found myself humming and singing again”. Image 4: Joey is posed stretched across the frame. He’s wearing suspenders and plaid pants and throwing up a peace sign. The text reads: “I discovered my fashion sense for the first time. I had never been happy in any clothing, but realizing that I was a boy let me explore and find the clothes that made me feel great”. Image 5: Joey’s hand holds up a phone, and on the screen are thumbnails of videos of his face. The text reads: “Most trans people can tell you the day they started hormones (or another transition milestone). It’s like having a second birthday! I’ve got a digital diary recording my monthly changes from the first 2 years.” Image 6: Joey sits on the ground next to a friend, and they are both drawing in notebooks and smiling. Joey’s friend has glasses, an undercut, earrings, and facial hair. The text reads: “I have the most wonderful trans friends who enrich my life every day. I am so lucky to be part of such a loving community”. Image 7: Joey holds hands with his boyfriend, who is a taller boy with long hair in a ponytail and facial hair. The text reads: “Realizing that I was a boy made me realize that I was gay. Up until then, I just thought that I couldn’t experience attraction at all (which is also perfectly normal, by the way!). A wonderful boy and I fell in love 5 years ago, and we get to watch each other grow. Image 8: Joey is shirtless and holding a toothbrush while his boyfriend hugs him from behind. They are both smiling. The text reads: “He often reminds me of how good I look, and boy do I know it! I love my trans body. It’s perfectly me!” Image 9: Joey is shirtless and showing his chest and top surgery scars. The text reads: “Like most places, my clinic does not refer minors for surgery. But when I turned 18, I got top surgery to remove my (bountiful) breast tissue. It’s one of the best things to ever happen to me. I adore my chest. I’ve been freed.” Beside a small doodle of a cat, the text reads: “My cat sleeps on my flat chest every night”. Image 10: Joey has his arms behind his back and is addressing the reader. The text reads: “In the midst of purposeful misinformation and frankly genocidal language and laws, I’d like us to remember the joy of getting to be ourselves. Gender-affirming care not only saves but enriches lives for people of all ages. The joy of being oneself is what the Right wants to eliminate. It is imperative that we preserve and encourage the continuation of trans joy by allowing all trans people to safely thrive.” The comic is dated March 31, 2023. End ID.
I am really not a fan of "love is love" as a slogan for the queer community. It centers queerness as romantic/sexual interest in other people, and to me feels like it’s inherently ignoring or even excluding intersex people, gender variant people, aspec people, and people with intersecting queer identities. It sanitises queerness into a form that’s easily consumed by a perisexist/endosexist, allonornative, amatonormative, cisnormative culture, instead of critiquing the harm those structures cause.
“Love is love” takes the focus away from important pieces of queer history and culture, such as drag queens, butches, trans folk, and other gender variant or fluid identities. With a slogan like “love is love”, it becomes easier to imagine every queer person as looking straight or at the very most slightly camp, and just happening to be attracted to and wanting to marry someone of the same gender, with a little wiggle room for polyamorous people too.
I think it just becomes a form of respectability politics. Queerness ought to be about accepting and embracing other ways of Being, not making a little extra wedge of space for certain people in an oppressive framework that still demands gender conformity and adherence to certain relationship rules, and still pathologises intersex and aspec people. It ought to be about tearing down that framework so it’s safe for people to be however they want or need to be — regardless of whether or not that falls within what was acceptable in the original framework.
Queer culture and queer liberation are intersectional, they always have been, saying “love is love” just feels like whitewashing it away.
man it makes me really sad when people ignore the religious theming of soldier poet king to be like “well its about my blorbo/dnd character now” bc like…dear wormwood is such a deeply religious album religion and god are so central to the whole thing that it feels really like…disingenuous to try to erase the religious themes of any of the songs. like you are looking at this beautiful piece of art about love and heartbreak and the apocalypse and god and intentionally discarding a central theme so it can be more easily consumed. why did you listen to the christian indie folk rock band if you didn’t want to hear christian indie folk rock. im not even christian but it bothers me
this is part 2 [part 1]
THROW THAT BABY INTO THE SUN, I HATE IT SO MUCH ABORT THAT THING
i got physically ill drawing that first image because i had to draw the baby
piano concerto no.2 in g minor, mvt 1 - sergey prokofiev; local music student passes out in the practise room and has an existential horror related epiphany
any other transmascs forget they’re afab and forget they might by read as female and are surprised when people read them as women because in their head they literally look like this
A pride thing cause this month always goes by far too quickly 🧡💛⚪️🩵💙
Look how far we’ve come
Short Comic -- Death of a Star
I'm not terrific at making comics, but I think this is one of my better written and illustrated ones. I hope I didn't make you too sad ;v;
Some of my favorite songs from gaming
i reblog things to save them for later…too nervous to post anything:/ pretend i’m not here
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