Hexagons

Interestingly, I'm glad I didn't realize I was trans earlier than I did! I was like 27, partway through grad school, had good health insurance and a supportive environment (including the best partner ever, love that guy), my parents couldn't say shit, and I'd already spent years living as a woman, interrogating what womanhood meant to me, before deciding I didn't want it. (Don't want manhood either, my gender is "no thank you, I'm good".)

Sure, I maybe could have avoided some pain and awkwardness if I'd realized I was trans sooner. On the other hand, as cool as my parents are, I don't think they would have let me transition as a kid and that would have been a whole different level of hell I don't think I would have dealt with very well. And given the conservative area we lived in, the bullying would have been off the charts, and I was already bullied. No thanks.

Also, I kind of like the empathy and understanding of women that living for so long as one has given me. I know from personal experience what it's like to be a woman in a male-dominated profession, and if I'd transitioned earlier I wouldn't have had that same experience.

I'm glad I've transitioned, I'm much more myself now, but I don't mind having lived 27 or so years of my life as a woman, it was alright. A mask and a performance, yes, but an enlightening one that usually wasn't too constricting.

I understand your point of view more than most of the arguments I've seen against mandatory pronouns. So please take my comment as friendly, I'll do my best not to be a rude asshole.

How would you feel about (any) for your pronoun choice? That's functionally the same as not listing them, people can still choose which ones they want to use for you, but it still shows you're supportive of people prominently displaying their pronouns. That or you could consider maybe a neopronoun. I personally really like e/em/eir. They're nice and genderless, easy to use, and, bonus, a mathematician came up with them in like the '70s (I could have the year wrong and I refuse to look it up), not because he was trying to be trans inclusive, but because he hated that math books assumed their readers were all men and he wanted to include women in his writing. (Singular they was considered ungrammatical at that point.)

No, they don't. I personally know a cis person who has their pronouns on hexbear set as they/them or comrade/them. Those aren't the pronouns they use in real life.

If someone assumes you're trans simply because your pronouns are set to something other than she/her or he/him, that's kind of on them. People are allowed to lie on the internet. Choose any pronouns you like, it doesn't matter.

I personally assume absolutely nothing about the cisness or transness of someone with "any" or "none/use name" as their pronouns of choice.

Exactly.

Good god the medical system is awful about trans stuff, isn't it? Absolute nightmare of a system, when it would be so easy to just give hormones to people who are like, hey, my life is better with hormones.

I didn't actually realize that was the history of these terms, thanks for explaining. I guess "gender incongruence" is better, at least it's not saying the person experiencing it is disordered. Still though, especially this far into transition, I don't actually feel any "incongruence". I'd be miserable if I had to stop taking testosterone, but having experienced that feeling, I wouldn't describe it as gender incongruence, or, frankly, even having anything whatsoever to do with gender! My body just runs better with a testosterone-dominant endocrine system.

Ah well, the medical system is what it is, and despite the fact that the terminology used for us fucking sucks, there's not really a better option right now.

I don't exactly disagree with you and I certainly don't want to say your feelings about the term are invalid, they're very valid. I'd like to be very clear that I don't wander around calling people transsexual.

But for me personally, at least in a medical context, I think it's better than some other options. More precisely, last year my official diagnosis for health insurance purposes was "TRANSSEXUALISM", all caps, I still have the letter from insurance because I find it deeply hilarious for some reason I can't quite place, probably because "transsexual" is such an outdated term. This year they updated my diagnosis to "gender identity disorder" and I gotta say, I hate that. I don't think my gender is disordered, I'm just not cis, that's all. I'd much rather be labeled a "transsexual" than told I have "gender identity disorder".

It's part of the whole medicalizing trans identities fucking sucks, but those of us who need hormones do need to interact with a healthcare system that assumes all healthcare exists because we're unhealthy in some way. I wish my diagnosis could just be, like, "needs testosterone".

This got long, sorry. Basically, I, personally, only speaking for myself here, would much rather be diagnosed with "TRANSSEXUALISM" than "gender identity disorder".

This is a partial answer, with possibly some misinformation. Should I just shut my mouth and hope that someone who actually knows what's happening will answer you? Yes. Yes I should. But I'm a bit drunk, so you're just going to have to read my incomplete (and possibly wrong) explanation.

Brianna Wu got famous from gamergate. She got harassed by gamers. I don't remember what for, possibly they thought she slept with someone for good reviews on a game? That or she criticized a game that maybe an ex had worked on. Shit, I dunno, I'm actually absolutely making stuff up. Well, I've come this far, let's keep going! TERFs are certain she's trans, I'm not certain she's trans, but maybe she is? I'm unsure. Not that it matters, she was a woman that gamergate targeted, of that I am certain. She's now just the most annoying lib of all time, but keeps trying to draw on progressive cred from being harassed by gamers during the gamergate era. I suspect she's going to do a "why I left the left" situation, but maybe you don't even have to do that to be a grifter these days.

Long story short, she was harassed during gamergate, she's extremely, unfortunately lib, and it's better if you pay no attention to her twitter takes.

There are indeed a few of us! (Caveat: I'm extremely not actually a man, but I am transmasc and strangers treat me as a man, which I don't think I'll ever get used to!)

This article is so fucking funny. "Yes, Ansar Allah said they're responsible for this attack, yes, all the evidence points towards them being responsible for this attack, but are we really sure it was them, really?" It really feels like whoever wrote this piece is really trying to minimize how capable Ansar Allah are, especially since they blame "human error" (by the Israelis) for the lack of warning about the attack when Ansar Allah has said this is a new type of drone that is undetectable by radar.

I guess I'm just more willing to take Ansar Allah at their word than whoever wrote this article, and I find it deeply amusing how much hedging you have to do if you refuse to believe that Ansar Allah is capable of doing the things they say they're doing.

(Civility is a long-standing bit account here at hexbear. The whole shtick is replying with happy emojis when people are being civil but awful and angry emojis when people are being morally principled but uncivil. Check out Civility's post history to see what I mean)

Nah, it's just like a normal bar full of extreme alcoholics. It's extremely neat that they're super queer supportive!

Very extremely nice! I love supportive graffiti!