Pauline Ragny

one time when i was like 19 someone called me an "enby babe" and i was like "don't call me that, i find it very infantilizing" and at first he thought i was taking umbrage with babe. i said "no, don't call me enby". he was really insistent that his other nonbinary friend told him that enby was the correct term and what's the big deal anyway this is Your word I'm just being supportive. he refused to listen to me! just steamrolled over my actual feelings because they were getting in the way of his Trans Ally Knowledge

anyway. i think about that guy a lot when i see people online try to explain to others what being trans is by way of memes and shitposts. trying to define these many experiences into convenient boxes that cis people engage with to seem With It. then the next time they like, meet a trans woman they can make a joke about Fallout New Vegas and it won't matter if she's never played it or even knows about the meme—the cis person gets to feel With It

#sorry im just. thinking

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in reply to @nicky's post:

Vincent Kinian @Video-Game-King6/21/2024, 5:05 PM

Relevant Tumblr post I read about this yesterday.

Fallible @fallible-things6/21/2024, 5:28 PM

oh dear fucking g-d this hit me like a truck.

General Purpose Homunculus @nullpatch6/21/2024, 5:43 PM

i know this is a completely 'different' problem, so to say, but whatever the hell 'the queer community on twitter' is at this point is about 40 percent people (including inexplicably other trans people) doing this shit past each other at this point from what i've seen and it's miserable in a way that i lack the diction to adequately describe. it's like reading the entirety of harrison bergeron every time i go on there. angels clipping each others wings

n. lyn-marie charlene excelsia @charlenemaximum6/21/2024, 6:01 PM

this shit has been pissing me off high key. what is even the point of diversifying ourselves if everyone is just going to assume we all function the same anyway.

and people are so obsessed with "fitting in" with "the group" that they all take this shit and run with it en masse. oh, you're trans? you must be obsessed with anime, electronic music, roleplaying, and being a smol bean. like no dude. i am just a trans person. "oh, i don't like the things that all trans people like? there must be something fundamentally wrong with me. i'm going to have a crisis about this now."

ironically, this whole "fitting in" and "boxing yourself in" shit i think has severely harmed our ability to be involved in even our own communities. because if you can't have your entire sense of self crystallized into a couple of meme images on a shitpost, then what are you even doing here?

Princess Icky @princess-icky6/21/2024, 6:24 PM

I completely agree. It ends up just becoming a very frustrating and racialized echo chamber. Theres so much more to me than any meme could get across. I understand its fun to have in jokes and the like, but I dont want anyone to ever feel like they dont belong. I want my own horizons and ability to conceptualize what is possible to expand through the fantastic diversity and variance there is among trans people. We all deserve that at the absolute least!

elise @pinewarbler6/21/2024, 6:15 PM

are you telling me that not everyone’s HRT doc makes them bring two letters from psychiatrists and a completed F:NV save file before they prescribe estrogen? :eggbug-tuesday:

Innes @aliengeo6/21/2024, 6:56 PM

I also hate being called that. The number of times I've seen people point to some sort of memey bullshit that technically includes nonbinary people but only in the context of making things cute and quirky, to the point that they can't conceptualize why plenty of nonbinary people might not want that to be the default 🙄

"Haha I like the toilet signs where next to the gender symbols they have a centaur and a unicorn"
"Haha instead of 'ladies and gentlemen' what about 'guys, gals, and nonbinary pals' "
And so on.

We're not a collection of quirks and trans inclusion shouldn't inherently be cause for levity.

Voxandra @Voxandra6/21/2024, 9:53 PM

It will forever baffle me that the take away from the origin of the F:NV shit was "trans women love new vegas!!!" and not the far more common thread of using character creators in general. That'd be, at least, somewhat easier for more people to relate to.

syl @alugard6/22/2024, 3:46 AM

i feel this in my nonbinary but decidedly not enby soul

Damien @eramdam6/22/2024, 8:08 AM

truly bizarre to me to tell someone "now actually I know your lived experience better than you do so I call the shots here" 🙃 im sorry this happened to you

cerry 🍒@cereza6/22/2024, 8:28 AM

"haha ur trans? do u play fallout new vegaChainsaws you in half

roresu @roresu6/22/2024, 1:47 PM

euch, going around calling people by labels is so gross and defending using it under the guise of being an ally just makes me think they're one slightly negative experience (by their own making) away from writing a post on twitter about "why I left the left"

Alice Over Zero @AliceOverZero6/22/2024, 2:05 PM

I'm really offput by this kind of attitude of looking at an aspect of queerness from the outside and treating it like a solved game of chess. There's no universal shortcut to getting in the good graces of any person of a specific identity and to act like that's true is going to make the individual with the misfortune of being on the other side of the conversation just assume that you can't see past yourself.

The protip for cis people reading this is to acknowledge the other person and adjust how you speak to/about them with minimal fuss when you make this kind of mistake. Maybe a quick apology before trying to continue, but don't try to center your guilt in the conversation.