evil-saint:

couronnebead:

perverselyvex: rehfan: euclase2: Imagine being in a relationship in which you are treated like an equal, consciously and unconsciously, sexually, emotionally, socially, romantically, without being bound by gender expectations, without risk of pregnancy (or having your reproductive rights taken away from you), without feelings of inferiority, without being mistreated or neglected because men don’t understand your body and can’t be bothered to learn how to give you pleasure (or that you even deserve pleasure). Imagine having a reciprocating relationship with someone who knows how to touch you and how to talk to you, who will never abuse you or take away your consent. Imaging feeling powerful, safe, like the default rather than the specific or second-class. Imagine not requiring special handling by awkward, inconsiderate men who were never taught any better. Imagine being allowed to touch and enjoy and indulge without apprehension. Imagine being able to trust your partner. Imagine knowledge and understanding, someone who sees your depths and treats you the way you’d treat yourself if you hadn’t been told from birth that you weren’t worth it. Girls aren’t “making them gay.” Girls are fantasizing about being equal. This is my favorite thing EVER. I need to memorize this, word-for-word. Always, ALWAYS reblog. AND oftentimes, women in fiction aren’t presented in such a way that you really want to work with their characteristics - they are one-dimensional or weak or stereotyped or an incredibly small part of the original story that its hard to derive anything from their characters.

I need to think about this. On the one hand, this is an incredibly idealized (bordering of ignorant) view of same-sex relationships, but on the other, I know enough about gender and society to get where OP is coming from.



I can get behind this. BUT as a queer man…I’ve been pushed out of my share of fandoms by women who see m/m ships as theirs, and have no qualms about being homo/transphobic to ppl who look to m/m ships for positive/accurate/sympathetic representation of our actual experience. If fandom has taught me anything, it’s that men and women in general have different power fantasies – which is not bad per se. There’s a lot of scope for mutual respect and enjoyment, but it would be really nice if ppl who are not queer men could respect the fact that what is fantasy to them, is someone else’s lived reality.



For you it might seem “different” and “refreshing” to take a grown man and soften him up, make him small and slim and pale and pretty – make him “vulnerable” by casting him in the same role women have been relegated to and let him be “saved” by the badass masculine ideal…or reform the bad boy…or *insert your cliche of choice.* Making the “damsel” character male, might give you some comforting distance, but as a queer man, having my identity challenged at every turn for not living up to the badass top jock ideal is painful and exhausting, having ppl make assumptions about whether I “catch or pitch” based on my BMI relative to my boyfriend’s (and making comments on it to my face) is insulting and invasive. Being threatened, outed, disenfranchised…none of these things are “new” or “refreshing” to me, and no, I do not want a savior, I want to be respected.



As a transman, my non-cis anatomy is not a source of arousal I like to flaunt. It is the cause of decades of anxiety and isolation and self-doubt and fear. Fetishism isn’t flattering. It’s dehumanizing. Dealing with ppl (not just cis men) who use words that define ppl like me by our genitals is a fact of life I’ve had to learn to navigate. I do this by avoiding them. Most of these ppl are honest (i.e. shameless) enough to be upfront about their interest. They don’t care about “trans issues” or the human beings inside trans bodies. They care about themselves, their entertainment and their orgasms. When you write a fanfic about PIV penetration, about pregnancy, and female reproduction, and you use a transman to do it, you’re treading on territory that doesn’t belong to you. If you want to write about the truth of that experience, do what you need to and get it right. If your story hinges on a character’s non-cissness as a way to het-up a queer couple, you need to stop.