keyblademasteralex:
“Hello Tumblr. My name is Alex. I identify as FTM Transgender and I survived EX gay conversion therapy.
I’m here to tell my story-
A while back in 2011 for my 11th grade year of high school, my mother sent me to a Christian...

Hello Tumblr. My name is Alex. I identify as FTM Transgender and I survived EX gay conversion therapy.
I’m here to tell my story-
A while back in 2011 for my 11th grade year of high school, my mother sent me to a Christian private school called Calvary Chapel. That was bad enough on its own with the constant states and remarks, being accused and disciplined for acts I didn’t do, and rebelling against the uniform code to wear pants instead of a skirt.
Calvary Chapel was a bad enough place on its own but I also soon came to find out they held ex gay conversion therapy there courtesy of Exodus International, a cult which luckily closed its doors a couple years back because the main man admitted he still likes dudes.
Let me put it out there that I like women and was out as lesbian at the time, but secretly I identified as Trans because If I had come out as Trans to my family I would probably be DEAD.
So my mother literally tricks me, tells me we’re going out to eat and then instead takes me to my school. I knew what was up so I started to run. She chased after me grabbed me, held me down and dragged me into the conference room, and said “you better change your disgusting sinner ways” and left me there with this older blonde woman staring at me.
I had no idea what the hell was happening so I said “where am I!?” The women said “you’re going to be converted to being straight by me, your mentor. Your mother thought it would be best to put you in gay conversion therapy” immediately I rose up and screamed “I was FORCED to go here you can’t make me!” The women said “your parents have every right to bring you here and there is no law stating they can’t they’re doing what’s best for you and your soul.” By that time I was about freaked out and ready to go, but instead I broke down crying my eyes out for the rest of the session basically staying silent otherwise.
Future appointments consisted of me going straight to therapy after Christian school. Hiding my face incase anyone knew where I was going. Therapy was starting to shame me.
Normal every day therapy would be starting out reading a verse from the bible, reciting it three times and asking God for my forgiveness. Then we would go over my conversion homework (which I will get into later), then she would make me lay down on a table while she prayed over me. She would ask me things like “have you had any lesbian urges?” “What do you think God thinks of those?” “What will happen if you act on those urges?”
Afterwards she would sit me down in front of a computer and make me watch some type of hypnotism therapy. Daily, it was over and over “you will go to hell if you are gay” “why would you want to live the gay lifestyle” it also literally looked like hypnotism on the screen, not only that but the women would hypnotize me herself, which is partially why I’m having trouble recollecting my memories of this. A lot of it I blacked out during.
Onto the homework. The homework consisted of huge pamphlets that I would have to read every day. All of stories of gay people who fell to their sin, or people who successfully “became straight”. After every story I would have to answer a page of questions such as, “what should John have done to control his homosexual urges” and “what would you have done in his situation” “WHY is homosexuality a sin and what will happen if you act on it” being as scared as I was at the time it actually started getting to me. For a while I rebelled and wrote “nothing nothing nothing” or “homosexuality isn’t a sin” but eventually I became afraid, the “therapy” started “working” and I wrote things like “I will go hell” “that character died and became a drug addict because they were gay” “that character went to college and got married because they were straight” and so on.
One time I asked the woman who was counseling me, “have you ever been gay?” She gave me a long look and said, “never tell anyone.” “I used to be a lesbian but now I’m married.” I said, “have you ever even kissed a girl?” She said “no”. Right then she lost credibility to me that and it was sad.
After every session she would make me read from the bible the verse where it says something like “nor the murderers, adulterers, or homosexuals, ect will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Don’t you like my word for word quote? Lol
But seriously halfway through the year I hauled my ass out of there and stopped going because it started to have effects on me negatively. I became more suicidal, and the effects still last on me to this day.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night crying to my girlfriend asking her if I’m going to go to hell. I’m tied down by religion because I’m afraid of going to hell. This stuff did some serious damage to me, and although it might not be as bad as some of the stories out there I wanted to give people a look into what leelah alcorns life may have been like. When I heard of her passing I thought “that was me”.
That’s why I want to put an end to conversion therapy! I need leelahs law to be passed! Please share my story. I want as many people to know the horrors and dangers of conversion therapy as possible.

Transgender Malaysians Win Appeal Against Islamic Law Banning Muslim Men from 'Cross Dressing'

Three Malaysian transgender women have won a landmark appeal against an Islamic law that bans Muslim men from wearing female clothes or “cross dressing”[…]

Appeals court Judge Mohamad Yunus said the “degrading, oppressive and inhumane” law discriminated against people with gender issues while the appellants’ lawyer called the ruling “historic”.

Photo: Reuters
International Business Times has more.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports

The lead judge, Mohamed Hishamudin Mohamed Yunus, made it clear that the court was not ruling on homosexuality, which is illegal in Malaysia, and that transgender people had a disorder. […]
Transgender people were traditionally accepted in the culture of Malaysia’s dominant Malay ethnic group and served in a variety of roles, including performers and advisers to the country’s sultans. But the influence of conservative Islamic politics over the past three decades has often left transgender people ostracized.

sallymolay:
“ Transgender and gay village in Papua New Guinea
“ The sleepy coastal village of Hanuabada on the north western outskirts of Papua New Guinea’s capital, Port Moresby, […] is a safe haven for Port Moresby’s gay and transgender community....

sallymolay:

Transgender and gay village in Papua New Guinea
The sleepy coastal village of Hanuabada on the north western outskirts of Papua New Guinea’s capital, Port Moresby, […] is a safe haven for Port Moresby’s gay and transgender community. […]
“You can see many of them walking in the streets in Hanuabada and they, transgender people, they don’t hide, they can wear women’s clothes there,” [says documentary producer Roman Kalyakin]. […]
About 30 gay men, or ‘Gelegele’ in the local tongue, permanently live in the village, while others drift in and out.
In Papua New Guinea, the Gelegele tend to take traditionally female roles in society. They do the cooking, wash clothes and participate on the women’s side in cultural rituals and traditional festivals.
Read the whole story and see a trailer for Guavas and bananas, a documentary from Hanuabada.

Psychiatry is responsible for creating the heterosexual in largely the same way that it is responsible for creating the various categories of sexual deviance that we are familiar with and recognize and define ourselves in opposition to.
The period lasting from the late Victorian era to the first 20 or 30 years of the 20th century was a time of tremendous socioeconomic change, and people desperately wanted to give themselves a valid identity in this new world order.
One of the ways people did that was establish themselves as sexually normative. And it wasn’t the people who were running around thinking, “Oh, I’m a man and I like to sleep with other men, that makes me different,” who were creating this groundswell of change; it was the other people, the men who were running around going, “I’m not a degenerate, I don’t want to sleep with other men, I am this thing over here that is normative and acceptable and good and not pathological and right, that’s what I am. That’s what I need people to understand about me, because I need people to understand that I am a valid person and I need to be taken seriously.”

Great article about the recent birth of the terms “heterosexual” and “homosexual” over at Salon!

The article presents Hanne Bank’s fascinating book Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Hetrosexuality.

The point here is not that gays and lesbians do not exist, but that the definitions created by sexist and bigoted scientists are far too narrow to catch the true diversity of sex, gender and love.

draconicloveaffair-deactivated2 asked

So, you claim to know gay guys who have "girlfag" lovers? Well, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but if a guy is having sexual relations with women, he's not gay.

crossdreamers answered

If the definition of homosexual man is to be attracted to male bodies only, you are of course right.

The textbook definition of homosexual is something in the line of of “relating to, or characterized by a tendency to direct sexual desire toward another of the same sex.” Since the girlfag is of another “biological sex”, a man who is attracted to her must be bisexual or straight.

Unfortunately our narrow definitions of straight and gay, male and female, stop us from seeing other, equally valid, combinations of sexual orientation, romantic orientation, gender identity and gender expressions.

The formal definition of homosexual does not change the fact that in this particular instance, a man who identifies as gay and who normally is oriented towards men, is attracted to a person who was assigned female at birth.

The answer to the riddle is found in the fact that she thinks of herself as male, and is expressing her own kind of masculinity. And it is this masculinity he finds attractive.

The fact that masculinity/femininity is an independent variable should come as no surprise to someone from the gay and lesbian communities. Butch lesbians may express a perfectly valid female masculinity. Other lesbians may be attracted to this masculinity.

I realize that in many gay male communities femininity has become a taboo. Nevertheless, even in gay male circles you will find men who express their own kind of male femininity. You will also find gay men who love them.

In this resepect the girlfag and gudykes have much in common with butch lesbians and ”femme” gay men. The main difference is that most of of the girlfags and guydykes are sexually attracted to people of the same “biological sex” as their own.

There is another similarity as well. In the same way there is a gray area between butch lesbian women and trans men (in the sense that people who first identify as lesbian, may later come out as men), there are also girlfags who suffer from gender dysphoria and who end up transitioning. These grey zones are real, even if the strict definitions of gay and straight, male and female, cis and trans do not allow for them.

By the way, you write that ”if a guy is having sexual relations with women, he’s not gay.” I doubt that you actually mean this. A lot of gay men are married to women and have sex with them. They are still gay, even if they stay in the closet or live in denial.

The photo is of Katharine Hepburn from the movie Sylvia Scarlett. Hepburn was queer in a girfag way. She looks great, doesn’t she?

On girlfags, gay men and fetishes

The argument that all girlfags are fetishists make no more sense than saying that all homosexuals are fetishists. Here’s why:

I posted Janet Hardy’s rebuttal to girlfag bashers:

Re: “These people [girlfags] are fetishizing gay male sexuality.”
[Janet:] Well, duh. All sexual fantasy is inherently fetishistic (unless you know someone who fantasizes about whole people, including their intellect, their personality, their spirituality, their favorite foods, their grooming habits, their favorite TV shows and their pets). Unless our behavior is in some way unacceptable, STFU.
[Complete post here!]

Three Dollar Wine posted this response:

No. One thousand times no. NO If you are attracted to a human being because of their sexuality then you are attracted to the stereotype of that sexuality. Not all gay men and women are even slightly the same. This is no different than fetishizing trans people and PoC which invalidates us as human beings. You are making our entire selves about one characteristic that you are basing off of stereotypes.
If you are “a gay man trapped in a woman’s body” or a “lesbian trapped in a man’s body” you are either fetishizing people and it’s fucked up or you’re trans and maybe you should ID as trans rather than girlf*g or guyd*ke.
Also, I’ve never heard those statements used by people who were not saying them to be “cute” or “funny” to hide their fetish.
Sexuality, what gets you off, is not inherently fetishistic. It is inherently an attraction, but I see no difference in this and that bullshit “jungle fever” shit. It’s not okay.
Like I said, if you truly feel like your sex and gender do not match, and you are truly a gay man or woman or non-binary person, I can fucking dig it. And I support the shit out of you and your journeys. But And this is a big but if you are not trans and you are only or mostly attracted to homosexual people who are not attracted to you because you are not a lesbian or gay male, then you are fetishizing. You are no different than the people who only like a specific race.

Serano on fetishes

Dear Three Dollar Wine,

I would strongly recommend that you read trans activists Julia Serano’s recent article on how the fetish argument is used to invalidate the partners of trans people.

She makes a very interesting observation on using fetishes to invalidate people, which is also relevant here:

“Way back in the past, I used to assume that people who were attracted to trans people had some kind of a ‘fetish.’ But then a trans friend challenged me on this. She asked me why we call men who are attracted to trans women (the vast majority of whom also are attracted to women more generally) 'fetishists,’ yet men who limit their dating pool to *just* non-trans women somehow manage to avoid the 'fetish’ label? Isn’t the latter group more restrictive and particular in their desires? Aren’t they the ones who really have a 'fetish?’ Her question stumped me. I thought about it for days, but I couldn’t come up with a reasonable rebuttal.”

The point here is that if you are using someones fetishistic preferences to define them, you must do so for all people, because all men and women are attracted to people, features or objects in ways that can be interpreted as fetishistic.

This was Janet Hardy’s point as well, I believe.

We are all fetishists, and yet so much more

The girlfag case is very similar to the one presented by Serano. Girlfags are not the only ones who thrive in the company of gay men. Many gay men do so too, and not only because they are looking for sex. They may have interests and ideas in common. They like being together. And yes, they may share a culture. Does that make them fetishists?

I would argue that the fact that a man goes to a gay bar does not allow us to reduce his his love life to a fetish. This applies even if the club makes use of all the stereotypical gay paraphernalia and has drag queens on stage. And the fact that gay men fetishize the male body (which they most certainly do), does not allow us to reduce their identity to fetishists.

Heterosexual cis people also find comfort in each others’ company.They look for sex among other straight people, and while doing so, they make use of mannerisms and symbols that express that they belong to one of the many hetero tribes of the world.

They may get turned on by bulging biceps, low neck lines, feminine long hair, tight t-shirts, a witty disposition, brute strength. You name it, and someone will probably be trying to provide it.

Does that mean that they are all fetishists? In some ways they are. But it would be mad to reduce their their sense of self to those sexual turn-ons.

Fetish as something abnormal

Now, you might say that this is not what you mean by a fetish. You are, rather, defining a fetish as an anomaly, something abnormal.

But doing so puts you in the same category as people like Edmund Bergler and Ray Blanchard, so-called “experts” who have used terms like “fetish”, “perversion” and “paraphilia” to invalidate homosexual and transsexual people for over more than a century.

In other words: Perverts are people who do things you do not like, for whatever reason. These “experts” feel threatened by homosexuals and trans women, and want to erase them. You feel threatened by girlfags.

It doesn’t sound so good if you put it that way, now, does it?

Most gay men are not threatened by girlfags

When I ask my gay male friends about girlfags, none of them react like you do. All of them have heterosexual female friends (many of which they call “fag hags”, with no offense intended). The fact that some of these women – the girlfags – may feel sexually attracted to them, doesn’t bother them at all. They appreciate the fact that they are desired.

Maybe it is the fact that they enjoy their own sexual kinks that makes them more tolerant. Or maybe they know more of the history of homophobia, and recognize their own confusion in the eyes of the girlfags. Or maybe it is the fact that they are able to distinguish between superficial sexual attraction and love. They love their girlfag friends. They just do not want to have sex with them. And since they are good friends, both parties see beyond the stereotypes.

Maybe you do not know any girlfags, and this is why you need to divide them into the sterile boxes of “fetishists” or “real trans men”. That barrier is only in your head, I can assure you. The real world is much more complex.

The girlfag stereotype

I see that some FTM truscum have developed this image of the girlfag as they horny young teenage blonde, avidly reading yaoi comics and watching Torchwood, knowing no real gay men. (Now, there is another stereotype for you! Janet Hardy is young at heart, but she is no teenager, and she knows a lot of gay men!)

It is true that most yaoi and slash fiction does not reflect the real lives of gay men. Most girlfags know that. This is fantasy, entertainment, erotica, porn. It is not meant to be social realism. Some of the element of yaoi and slash are indeed cliches with fetishistic overtones.

Still, gay men and lesbians read porn, too, and little of it reflects the real lives of real people. In my opinion we should not be allowed to reduce any of these people to fetishists.

Separatist fear of contamination

Since my non-transgender gay friends do not feel threatened by the existence of girlfags, and so many FTM trans men do, I am starting to suspect that we are facing the traditional trans-separatist fear of contamination here.

Maybe some of the FTM trans men insist on sorting girlfags into the clear and distinct categories of real transsexuals and fetishists, because they fear that they will be labelled fetishists themselves if the girlfags are allowed to roam freely.

I have seen the same on the MTF side. Crossdressers are labelled as fetishist by the powers to be, and the MTF trans separatists internalize this transphobia, trying to force the unwanted ones back into the closet. The fact is that these separatist trans women do not want to be trans at all. They want to be “normal” (whatever that is) and the stereotype of “the ugly bloke in a dress” threatens that normalcy. Or so they believe.

This sickens me, not only because there is no clear divide between dysphoric and non-dysphoric, but also because some (although not all) of the girlfags and MTF crossdreamers who identify as cis are gender dysphoric. They just don’t know it yet.

I know of gay men and lesbian women who lived for years trying to live up to the hetero ideal, suffering tremendously in the process. Take a look at Daniel Rauch’s book Denial for more about gay men’s ability to kill their own true selves.

Daniel tried to interpret his fascination for the attractive male body as a desire to become more masculine. In the same way, the girlfag fascination for yaoi, slash and M/M may be a reflection of some kind of gay male inner self. But if they do not know who they are, you most certainly don’t!

Terms like girlfag, queer, genderqueer, crossdreamer and transgender are flexible terms, encompassing a lot of diversity. That is good, because they give gender variant people room to explore their own identity and their own sexuality. By forcing girfags to choose between cis or trans, homosexual or heterosexual, you are denying them that possibility. Please reconsider!

ANOMALYETERNAL: Fascinating blog on sex, gender, identity and sexuality

This blog is dedicated to informing others about everything to do with gender and sexuality and gender/sexuality diversity.

A lot of work has gone into this brand new blog on gender and sexuality. Think of it as a sex and gender dictionary, if you like!

The site has been set up by Evelyn, an aromantic asexual androgyne.

Take a look!

Transgender and Inner Gender

My friend Natalie from Thailand has suggested that I add the term “inner gender” to my Creative Crossdreamer Vocabulary, to accompany the terms gynephilic (attracted to women) and androphilic (attracted to men).

She says:

“The definition [of an androphilic, man-loving, or gynephilic, woman-loving, sexual orientation] should ideally pertain to the inner gender the person is attracted to rather than the outer physical sex.

"In case of transgendered people, it refers to their inner gender as much as for non-transgendered people. For transsexual people, this inner gender does not change but it is the outer sex that is changed to match this inner gender. So it is the inner gender that should always assume a greater significance.

"This makes it also significant in non-transgender attractions because a masculine-man<->effeminate male sexuality is not same as masculine-male<->masculine-male sexuality. In various cultures including traditional Thai society, while the former is referred to as ‘gay’, the latter is accommodated silently within the mainstream 'straight’ category without giving it any social marker or identification at all!”

In other words: In some contexts and in some cultures people are able to see past the biological sex and affirm the inner identity of another person even if this identity is different from the one found in his or her passport.

Image by Timothy Crawford, iStock

How to Effectively Invalidate Marginalized People!

Many people seek comfort in strict stereotypes, and they do their best to police others who do not share their prejudices.

A very efficient way of forcing others to adhere to whatever is considered “self-evident” in a society is to negate or invalidate the lives of those who fall outside these norms.These tactics are used against women, people from other cultures, the disabled, homosexuals and transgender.

The Norwegian psychologist and philosopher Ingjald Nissen established the concept of Master Suppression Techniques, which were further developed by the feminist and social psychogist Berit Ås.

What they found was that there are a lot of subtle and manipulative techniques and strategies that can be used by those in power to invalidate the identity and views of those marginalized.

Ås pointed out that men often marginalize women by

Ignoring or silencing them
Making fun of them
Keeping them out of the information loop
Punishing or otherwise belittle the actions of a person, regardless of how they act (double bind)
Embarrassing them, or by insinuating that they are themselves to blame for their position
Discussing the appearance of someone in a situation where it is clearly irrelevant
Threatening with – or using – one’s physical strength

As trans activist Julia Serano has pointed out in her book Excluded, there are many ways of invalidating people, transgender and genderqueer included:

Claiming that you are mentally ill or incompetent.
Sexualizing. People of color are for instance often depicted as being exotic, promiscuous or sexually predatory.
Accusing you of being immoral, like in “homosexuals are out to deceive straight people”.
Claiming that you are sick or contagious (Like in: “One drop of Jewish blood is enough to make you a dirty Jew!”).
Arguing that some type of body or behavior is anomalous or even “unnatural”. (Homosexuality is for instance often considered “unnatural”, even if same-sex relationships are common in nature).
You are accused of being inauthentic or fake (like in “You are not a woman. You are just a male rapist in an ugly dress!”)
Claiming that you and those who like you are suffering from a fetish (like in: “He does not really love you; he just has a fetish for fat people”.)

It is truly fascinating to see how people who would never consider using these techniques against some marginalized groups have no qualms about using them against others.

In the essential study The History of White People Dr.Nell Irvin Painter describes how Irish immigrants to the US – who were originally labelled racial inferior by American scientists – felt no qualms about using the same invalidation tactics against African-Americans after having gained access to the Anglo-Saxon family.

I suspect many took the anger caused by those harassing them out on those further down on the racial pecking order. Moreover, now that they were on the inside, they felt free to express the darker side of their psyche. In other words: hatred breeds hatred breeds hatred in a never-ending cycle of violence.

These days this kind of negation causes a tremendous amount of suffering among transgender, transsexual and genderqueer people, as it makes it extremely hard for many of them to gain respect for their true identity.

It is time to break that circle of hatred!

Transgender animals

Humon has made a wonderful set of comics depicting the diversity of sex and sexuality in the animal kingdom.

They are important because many of them completely debunks the dominating myth of proper sex and gender roles. There is same-sex activities, different “transgender” morphs of males and females, dominant females and reactive females.

This means, of course, that dismissing gay, transgender and genderqueer identities and sexualities as being “unnatural” makes no sense at all. Human diversity is most likely as natural as the one we see in other species.