Ben Appel, as a man yourself, you seem exclusively interested in the welfare of men. Therefore I craft my response to you in those same terms.

You’re right: gender non-conformity doesn’t disqualify one from being male! Men can love men, and even like men; they can wear dresses and makeup and sit down to urinate in a civilized manner; they can prioritize care and communication; they can move with grace and elegance; they can read fiction; they can have internality. We are both, presumably, in favor of this. Other men often get very upset about men who act these ways but they shouldn’t. Men can and should be allowed to do all these things.

And if you want more gay boys to be allowed to do these things, you should assist in social transition up through adolescence — until the patient hits Tanner Stage 2, when WPATH Guidelines recommend medical intervention. This will maximize the number of gay boys in the world.

Look, if you have talked to any trans people ever you know how gay they are! Have you ever met a trans guy who wasn’t into men?1 Do you know how much most trans guys love being effeminate gay boys and making more effeminate gay boys and devoting themselves entirely to the worship of effeminacy, gayness, and boyishness? These vapid little fluffy-haired twinks are out here dying of tuberculosis and getting sodomized in ruffled silk shirts! The less visibly gay ones still become cartoonists, or ecologists, or board game players, or psychologists, or stagehands. Is that not gay enough for you, Ben Appel?

You say that “According to a 2019 report in The Times of London, staffers at Britain’s foremost gender-identity clinic joked darkly that, as a result of the facility’s work, ‘there would be no gay people left.’” The actual news story here should be that staffers at 'Terf Island’s foremost gender identity clinic, who you’d think would be decent about gender treatment, don’t consider their patients as their true genders2. Much like you.

Ben Appel, you say you are concerned about gay boys getting to be boys — but you spare not a single sentence for the single most marginalized demographic of gay boys around. Either you are transphobic or you are stupid. Does it matter which?

How, you ask, are adults supposed to respond in the moment to an AMAB child who demands long dresses and dolls, and who insists that they are really a girl? What do we tell such a child when they come home from school crying about how different they feel from their peers?

My suggestion is to tell that child the truth: some kids who like dolls and dresses grow up to be men; some grow up to be women; some grow up to be neither — and you will love and support that child no matter what. It’s like choosing a job, or where to live as an adult, or who to get married to: play helps them approach possible futures, and deciding on which is a problem for when they get older.

We trust children when they tell us they’re hungry or thirsty or sleepy; while they may not always realize it themselves, when they do, it is our duty as adults to meet their needs. Sometimes that means making sure they go to bed on time, and sometimes that means giving them dolls and dresses and wells to stare longingly into — and bikes and building blocks and toys that launch child-safe projectiles, so they can decide what they like for themselves.

Distinguishing proto-gay children from proto-trans children means informing them about the world around them and listening to them when they tell us what they want. Some effeminate children-perceived-as-boys will grow up to be gay men; some will grow up to be women; some will grow up to be neither, or even straight. All of these groups are best served by love, care, and respect for who they are. Feminine children, regardless of eventual or assigned gender, should be allowed to be themselves. That means letting them wear dresses and play with Barbies, but it also means letting them interact with a wide range of gay and transgender adults so they can know what kind of people they can grow up to be.

You already agree with me: children need to be allowed to grow up safely and healthily, so that they can make their own choices about what kinds of people to be. It’s just that the only children you seem to care about are the children who aren’t getting screwed over by puberty, when the ones whom puberty harms are the ones who need our help the most. I wish you were advocating for that instead of concern-trolling over transgender kids.

Transgender women are women. The women of women even. Perhaps the most fruitful theoretical application 1 of transgender women is as a mirror: the exploration of assumptions around transgender women leaves the explorer well-positioned to explore assumptions around women as a whole. Mostly my Substack is for investigating transgender women, and various bits of esoteric fanfiction but this particular article is for everybody else.

Sorry transgender women. You can read it too. But it probably just says things you already know, and have experienced. If nothing else it may provide you with some insight into how people raised as women often think, which I believe you may find valuable.

Anyways I was working through some differences in gendered socializations for a previous article when I ran into one of these assumptions held by most of the queer community2. I thought this particular difference would be worth explicating because it is a fundamental mismatch between the queer community at large and transgender women.

Being raised as a woman leads one to assume by default that visibility = safety.

If you were raised as a girl and live in a city, you know that a subway car full of people is much safer than a subway car with only one or two other occupants. If a man tries to grab you on the train and you shriek, you can rely on the public at large to help you out — or you know that assailants are cowards, and won’t try to take advantage of you if there are others around. If you suddenly collapse on a sidewalk, you know that the passersby are likely to help you up or ask you if you’re okay. Nights and alleyways are unsafe not just because they mean you can see less but because they mean that you can be seen less. When you see a woman in a leadership position, you feel safer in that organization — if she could do it, so could you.

When a whisper network accrues enough social capital aimed at an abuser, its members go public, relying on visibility as a means of punishment. Conversely, if you’re treated as a girl and you deviate from your assigned role, by, say, cutting your hair short, or dating girls, or not actually being a girl at all, social condemnation typically comes in the form of pretending you didn’t do any of that. “That isn’t the real you.” “That doesn’t matter.” Your visibility is punitively lowered.

This is the ancient compact of womanhood: as long as you are seen to be pretty and pleasant and compliant, you are regarded as a precious and valuable thing, and precious and valuable things are to be protected3.

For the modern woman, who understands that she must depend on herself, and that her ambition must sometimes come before her security, visibility is a demonstration of power and a necessary precondition for solidarity with her peers. Feminism requires that women connect to each other and prioritize their needs over those of men. Obviously there are exceptions: celebrity brings stalkers and public scrutiny. But for the most part women understand visibility to be a kind of shield — if not a perfect one, still better than nothing.

Queer visibility operates under these same assumptions, with the twist of solidarity. Visibility is enough of a shield that we can make a bargain, with the world and each other: we trade our some of our safety for freedom of expression. If the lesbians and the gays and the bi people and the trans people and everybody else who doesn’t quite fit into sexually normative categories all agree to stick our necks out for each other, bigots will have a harder time with all of us. When we make ourselves visible, we can show those of us who aren’t — who are living straight lives, who are hiding in the closet — that there are other ways to live. Every celebrity, co-worker, teacher, and friend who comes out demonstrates to the straight majority that queer people are their neighbors, not their enemies.

And likewise, bigots like to pretend that queer people don’t exist. Gay people are told that our sexualities are something we will repent from or grow out of; bisexuals struggle with bisexual invisibility; transgender men and nonbinary people are denied their rightful genders by (often deliberate) lack of recognition.

When they tell us we don’t exist, the correct response is to take the high ground. It should come as no surprise that queer people as a whole, as a demographic obsessed with performance, have a correspondingly excellent PR campaign. At this point, most audiences know homophobia is low-class — or they know that enough other audiences think so that the perception still affects them, which is almost as good.

Here’s the thing, though. When we make that bargain, of safety for freedom, we are declaring some amount of safety ‘worth giving up’ for our free expression. And for most of us, it is. Being closeted is corrosive to the soul in ways you can only appreciate if you’ve ever had to live inauthentically, as corny as that term sounds.

There is, however, one group under the umbrella on which Conservative parties worldwide have chosen to focus their efforts; one group set apart by the fact that this basic equation, visibility = safety, does not work for them.

I’m talking, as I so often do, about transgender women.

“Visibly gay” among lesbians4 is unambiguously a compliment; if you call a transgender woman visibly trans she will take it as an insult. The very appearance of transness is something she is trying to escape. Complicated internal discourses circulate through communities of transgender women on the matter, but it largely boils down to the fact that transgender women imagine that if they were not visibly trans their lives would be much easier.

They aren’t wrong.

One of the reasons that the safety-for-freedom trade so many gays make is a good one is that visibility works in our favor. Bigots respond differently based on how they see us. Look at Shrier’s execrable Irreversible Damage — or don’t, because you will gain nothing of value from doing so: the rhetoric employed against transgender men echoes that employed against lesbians. AFAB deviants are considered wayward children who need to be re-educated into walking wombs. Personally I would rather die. The correct response to Shrier and her ilk’s patronizing dreck is to coolly assert our independence and personhood, because they need a majority to actively do anything to us and they aren’t going to get it.

But the rhetoric employed against trans women is much more vicious. Only the youngest transfeminine adolescents are called “misguided” — against adult transgender women they do not bother with even Shrier’s facade of civility. Trans women get cut off from their lifelines, starved of resources, and killed.

We take for granted that visibility allows a sympathetic public to take action on our behalf — but trans women are not guaranteed that sympathetic public. Visibility without soft social power just makes transgender women into targets. Parades and protests and Pride raise visibility, and make it easier for gays of all kinds to come out — but for transgender women who are out, visibility can be an active hazard. This emphasis on visibility can alienate transgender women, who are often deeply insecure about their appearances in ways that take medical intervention to alleviate. As many women are! But they will judge themselves more harshly about it in a community with such an emphasis on the usage of appearance to declare ourselves.

in a righteous world, "trans investigation" would be a delight and honor. she could be discovered and recognized and given a little treat, for existing so beautifully. chasing like birdwatching. just another beautiful truth potential that transphobia has destroyed....

https://x.com/HalimedeMF/status/1890409858676969969

I’m not saying that visibility is an unambiguous negative for transgender women; as the most marginalized and most closeted group under the queer umbrella, they have a lot to gain from visibility, particularly as transition at younger ages becomes viable. What I am saying is that it is easy for more privileged demographics to forget that visibility is a double-edged sword for transgender women and we need to be relieving more of its downsides for her.

Gay men are often quietly sympathetic to transgender women here, as they experience a lesser version of this same hatred as a result of conservative revulsion for a perceived abandonment of their manhood — but gay men, as men, have kinds of social power and money that let them get past or at least mitigate the haters. Gay men are also rarely as interested in broader queer community in the same ways as gay women. Which makes sense, as they are men after all.

If we want transgender women to protest with us (as many do! Their bravery is to their credit); to feel fully safe and included; to share our lives and joys and sorrows? We must keep them safe enough that they can choose to trade off that safety for freedom. We must change the culture so that visibility means safety for them as well — only then can transgender women develop her visibility to her fullest potential.

no sarongs, no burkinis, and no little skirts. I stand for trans visibility

https://x.com/HalimedeMF/status/1539673143639433220

STAR TREK: CIVIL HANDS

FADE IN:

Medbay, to the rhythmic medical BEEPING of a monitoring device. A human girl of twenty or so lies in a biobed underneath a thin blanket. On the crown of her head and extending down over her eyes is a complex device of visibly jury-rigged technology, which begins to HUM.

The girl thrashes in the throes of a nightmare, her face in distress. The HUM intensifies. She HOWLS like an animal in pain and then SCREAMS like a human. The device splits in half; both halves fall aside to reveal her terrified eyes. She squints at the sudden brightness and tries to raise her hand in front of her face — but discovers that her hands are tied with medical restraints to the sides of the biobed.

GIRL

(with growing intensity)

Fuck fuck Fuck FUCk FUCK! (this last she nearly spits) Hell!

COMPUTERIZED VOICE

(inhuman in tone)

Doctor el-Fadil to ICB 4.

The girl goes still at the sound of the voice. The soft WOOSH of a door sliding open. She begins to buck at her restraints with renewed vigor, to no avail.

Through the door swishes Doctor Alexandra el-Fadil, in a strapless top decidedly not Starfleet Uniform standard. She holds up her hands as though to defuse anger.

ALEXANDRA

(To the girl)

One second. Please. (to the computer) 500mL 0.9 saline with one shot Raktajino. No, make that two.

She picks up her cup from the replicator and fumbles for two white pills, which she drops into the unholy concoction, causing it to fizz. When she has gulped it down she lets out a loud Ah of satisfaction before turning to the girl in the biobed.

ALEXANDRA

(As though to a small child)

It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.

GIRL

(Guarded)

I don’t know that.

ALEXANDRA shrugs.

I suppose you don’t. But it’s true. If I was going to hurt you, I would have done it while you were unconscious.

GIRL

(Guarded, but also mildly annoyed)

Why would you care if I was awake or not to hurt me?

ALEXANDRA has a response ready.

Well, it’d be a lot easier if you were asleep.

GIRL

So what, you’d only want to hurt me when I was asleep? That doesn’t make any sense.

ALEXANDRA makes a show of taking a second to think about this.

She looks up at the ceiling; gives a little frown.

(Affably) Well, if I only hurt you while you were asleep, then you’d want to stay up as long as possible, right? Did you know it’s possible to die of sleep deprivation? (She pulls up a chair; sits on it backwards, with her chin on the backrest). Historical human societies often used it as torture. Very effective. At least as far as torture goes, that is; torture in general mostly just makes people tell you whatever they think you want to hear to get it to stop.

The GIRL swallows.

(hesitantly, trying to put on a brave face)

What do you want to hear? Can you skip the torture please?

ALEXANDRA smiles whole-heartedly.

Oh, I like you. But no. It’s important that you feel a little pain because that means your nerves are linking up properly. It took me days to get all this tissue just right. A normal doctor would have taken weeks. You’re very lucky, you know.

GIRL

(sarcastically)

To get tortured?

ALEXANDRA, puttering about with vials and tricorder.

To be alive. What did they do to you down there?

ALEXANDRA, after it becomes apparent the GIRL is not responding.

Well, you don’t have to tell me. When we beamed you up, though, the scar tissue and lacerations on what was left of you were consistent with —

GIRL

(interrupting)

Can you let me out?

ALEXANDRA

Alright, alright. Sorry about that. Don’t attack me, okay?

The girl does not agree, but Alexandra takes her silence as assent. Presumably she is confident she can handle any attack that might come. She makes her way to the bedside and undoes the girl’s restraints: first her left side, then her right. When the girl’s final wrist is freed, she sits suddenly up; we see her bare back, slender and smooth, from behind.

ALEXANDRA

Huh.

GIRL

(peering suspiciously at her) What do you mean, huh?

ALEXANDRA

Your range of motion seems fine. And your musculature. I just thought you’d be a little more modest, is all. Coming from a colony that… regressive.

GIRL

Modest?

ALEXANDRA waves at the girl’s uncovered chest. The girl looks down and makes a strangled noise.

ALEXANDRA

Relax. I’m a doctor; it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. I literally put you back together.

The GIRL pulls the blanket tightly around herself.

ALEXANDRA

I’m not going to hit on you, if that’s what you’re worried about.

GIRL

(Confused)

Hit on me?

ALEXANDRA

Oh you do have a lot to learn. What Non-Interference sect were they, on Chanforan Synd? Catholic? Protestant? Neoprotestant? Neo-Genesis Evangelical? (to herself) No, they never would have abandoned their biotech. (to the girl) Humans end up outside the Federation sometimes. Usually it’s ideological: they want to practice some kind of cult that breaks Federation regulations or start up an entirely new system of government. The Federation puts their planets down on a list and leaves them alone. But basically all of those have medical tricorders or they die. Poor things. Well, the ones that don’t kind of do it to themselves.

GIRL

We’re good people, and damn you if you say otherwise. But I-I don’t understand… This isn’t my body. What did you do to me?

ALEXANDRA

If they had medical tricorders, they’d scan you at birth and give you your childhood vaccines and check if there were any illnesses you were predisposed towards. And that scan would have caught… this. Due to a genetic anomaly you ended up with a male body that you never should have had. So I fixed that.

GIRL

(speechless)

I.

ALEXANDRA

I can change you back, if you want. It wouldn’t be difficult.

GIRL

(with a vehemency surprising herself)

NO. Well. Maybe a little bit. That’s complicated.

ALEXANDRA

(A little smug)

I didn’t think so. You know, there hasn’t been a case like yours recorded in hundreds of years. Usually we catch this very early and the child grows up without ever knowing something went wrong. Actually, I know a fellow who was once in a similar case. Alok Sahar; maybe you’ll meet him someday. The literature says exposure to others in your situation may help but of course we don’t have any. Would you like to talk to a Trill?

GIRL

A Trill?

ALEXANDRA

The Trill carry their memories in external symbionts, which they pass down between hosts. Sometimes an insufficiently prepared host experiences a bout of this gender dysphoria but that usually clears itself up pretty quickly.

GIRL

(shocked)

Like aliens?

ALEXANDRA

Well that’s not very polite. They’re a different species, yes.

GIRL

Then you’re the Federation. I am in Hell. This is, a temptation. No, torture. You’re going to make bread out of my blood, and cut out my heart, and usury me. That’s why you’re not wearing your uniform: you want me to trust you. And once I trust you, you’re going to make me forsake everything I’ve ever believed in.

ALEXANDRA

Your stereotypes are severely out of date, and offensive to a completely different group of people. I’m not wearing my uniform because I wanted to be there when you woke up, so I could see my work and help you get used to things without you getting upset. More upset, I mean.

GIRL

I can’t trust you.

ALEXANDRA

(gritting her teeth)

Here is the truth: you were almost dead when we beamed you up, and the people you’re trying to defend are the ones who did that to you. You trusted them, right? Do you have any idea what the readings on your pathology scans looked like? Any of the parasites that were infesting you? Forget your gender incongruence syndrome, you had cancer! (at this the girl looks confused) Do you even know what cancer is? For most of human history, that was a death sentence. (pause. Alexandra is really affected by the fact that humanity has managed to beat cancer; she considers it a point of pride for her species — insofar as she considers herself human).

(more quietly) I’m not asking you to trust me. I understand you’ve been through a lot. I can put you back, if you want; back on your home planet, where they very nearly killed you. But I have not tried to kill you at all, and I have given you decades of life, and I would appreciate if you would listen and try not to be prejudiced against the many kinds of people here on this ship. If you want.

The GIRL nods, her eyes downcast.

ALEXANDRA

Besides, we’re not Federation. Not exactly. Well, it depends on who you ask. Sloan would say we’re the most Federation of all, but I disagree. I picked you up because I thought you deserved better, and if you agree with me, that everyone deserves better, that the galaxy deserves better — well, someday maybe you’ll be able to do the work I do. Welcome to the Themis, miss — Sorry. What was your name, again?

GIRL

I never told you my name.

ALEXANDRA

Well, you can’t blame me for trying. That suspicion will serve you well. Still, I have to call you something. You don’t have to name yourself right away, you know—

GIRL

Amity.

ALEXANDRA

Then Amity it is. I’ll get you registered. Welcome to the Themis, Amity. And welcome to Section 31.

NOTES

Alexandra was presumably cloned without consent from Doctor Julian Bashir of Deep Space Nine, who Luther Sloan attempted to recruit for off-the-books Federation Intelligence unit Section 31 (DS9 6x18, Inquisition). Section 31 was responsible for various crimes committed during the Federation-Dominion War, including the use of tailored species-targeting bioweapons and the circumvention of the Federation ban on the use of genetic augmentations put in place in the wake of the Eugenics Wars. Section 31 often sought out individuals with non-Federation backgrounds for recruitment, with the reasoning that those who had seen the alternatives to Federation rule would understand the morally challenging lengths they went to in the Federation’s defense.

I was very upset in middle school about the death of Gul Dukat’s daughter Ziyal, and thought she should have gotten to live and join Section 31. That’s where the seed of this idea was born. That, and Sahar being a girl’s name. Transgender is a natural fit for spy fiction.

… I guess I inadvertently wrote forcefem here. But Star Trek isn’t Star Trek without some kind of fetishy episode.

Other characters would include: a Ja’naii interested in gender who doesn’t really understand that it’s more than a performance; a Betazoid who isn’t a woman, a Vulcan who is really just sick of all this gender stuff and wishes all the other Vulcans wouldn’t do something so patently illogical.

Many Souls areas do. Lost Izalith’s hypersaturated orange lava sears the eyes; Vendrick’s McMansion and Aldia’s Hallway sear the brain. Each of Miyazaki’s beloved poison swamps revulses uniquely1, but Caelid evokes particularly vivid sense-impressions: thick wet windless air; sour emetic material on the back of your tongue, still more bearable than the reek char and blood and nauseate-sweet notes of scarlet rot, which seems to writhe at every bit of unsealed skin; the crunch-squish-slip of boots breaking through lichen-coral crust; the omnipresent heat of omnipresent decomposition. Yuck.

Yharnam hurts to look at in a very different way.

Iosefka’s Clinic, where you awaken, is cluttered and claustrophobic. You bumble around the frustratingly solid operating tables and ascend to a door expecting, perhaps, a Majula or Limgrave: a peaceful hub area; a beautiful vista full of promise.

What you get is attacked. Central Yharnam assaults the eyes with horrific amounts of detail. Every wall has a frame, and every frame has molding and trim around its uneven stone bricks; every door has multiple moldings and trims on trims and oh! Such pediments! and so does every stone railing (those also have little sculpture guys). The short columns underneath each railing have their own capitals and stylobates and so forth. The floor provides no relief; that’s cracked and sprouting or carved as assiduously as everything else. Every bit of ironwork has spikes and curlicues; lamps are carried by macabre little carved grotesques2 windows are just space for more surrounding flourishes — and stick an ironwork cage on there too, just in case there wasn’t enough to look at!; candles are everywhere, each demanding attention; pillars are everywhere, and between each is an archway and in each archway are three little subdividing archways, each notched and noduled like the rooftops of Notre Dame. It’s an entire city made out of fractal cathedrals and full of so so many reaching statues (some carved, some petrified corpses) and guys who love to hide behind them and set you on fire, so you’d better look at all of them.

Here is a stone lamp near the Hypogean Gaol, stolen from Reddit. One stone lamp. This isn’t even an important piece of stonework it’s all just like that. I feel like Freud, horrified by Rome.

The enemies, too, are hyperdetailed. Crows scream and jump and peck with their hideous unpreened feathers; Yharnamites and Hunters often have two weapons to look out for; beast hair looks like bad aliasing; the various knights and guys and such are covered in distractingly decryptable symbolisms.

Yharnam drips and shines with thick sticky blood. You heal with it; you wade through rivers of it; you seek it and eat it and knead it into your weapons, with which you shoot and beat and rip it out of your enemies before they can shoot and beat and rip it out of you. Over the course of your journey it cakes itself on absolutely everything: hard stone folds and wet wiggly aliens and the shaggy matted hair of the beasts.

The Hunter’s Dream, where you can upgrade your weapons and gesture at the Doll, is your only respite from this visual assault for at least half the game3. I found myself wandering its gently looping paths just to get away from the sensory overload. The alleyways of Yharnam proper, by contrast, are cramped and hostile; individual buildings have fences scarcely a foot away from them just to make it very clear that nobody should ever loiter; railings have spiny nodes meaning nobody could ever sit on them; interacting with most of the red lanterns that indicate doors you can talk at gets you told to screw off, foreigner.

It’s all the more cramped for how fast and fluidly you move. The Hunter’s elegant sidestep, which in an open field would render her practically untouchable, often leaves her trapped against a wall. Even ground that looks clear at first is often riddled with gravestones, statues, or corpses. Every fence and bench and tree in Yharnam feels precisely and perversely placed to get in your way. No Chosen Undead or Tarnished ever slid smoothly through anywhere; Yharnam’s choke points are practically made for their style of methodical killing. But the Hunter’s very ease tempts you to take fights you shouldn’t, just because you think you can get away.

And if you’re good, you can. That’s the real nasty part — that it works just often enough that you get confident, and then cocky. Souls combat is turn-based: dodge then hit then dodge then hit. Sekiro combat builds to a fair and honest climax: block block block slash block block block posture break Deathblow. Combat in Bloodborne centers on the Visceral Attack: flit into danger and sucker punch them right in the arteries. The positive reinforcement is sweet and immediate: a few seconds to catch your breath as your target slouches, weakened, ripe for hemorrhage. Get dirty with it: slash an opponent and rally a little health back. Cheat a little. You can do it, if you’re careful. Rallying means you get health back whenever you hit an enemy, so trading should always be profitable, right? Just one more swing — just a little more stamina — finish off this one beast, and save a few precious vials —

If you win, you come out ahead4. If you lose, well, you can always buy back in at the low low price of a few more vials of blood, and if you win this next time it won’t matter.

You get refillable flasks and the Guidance of Grace in Souls games because somebody (Marika, at least until Godfrey’s return, and Miquella, until he doesn’t; Gwyndolin and Frampt; Kuro) wants you to be there; Bloodborne keeps you grubbing for blood like a greedy little leech. It’s Disco Elysium’s addiction mechanic: The Substance is great and it always helps you and isn’t it nice of those poor downtrodden women to give it to you so gratefully?

This game, more than any of the rest of the modern5 Fromsoft oeuvre, feels hostile and gross. Demon’s Souls loves physical punchlines and absurd systems that hurt the player. Dark Souls yanks you back and forth between hopelessness and accomplishment; Dark Souls 3 holds you to higher standards and scoffs just a little when you inevitably fail to meet them. Sekiro is instructive; Elden Ring is so so delighted to show you a new kind of guy with a new kind of grab attack that kills you in a new horrifying way. I felt like Bloodborne wanted me to be disgusted with it, and to revel in a sick fascination. Sawing through beasts brings me back to the tension-and-looseness of highschool labs, where for the first time I shut down the parts of my brain that cared about the violation of dead flesh, let my hands take over, and got praised for my scalpel work.

If you like that in your video games you should play Bloodborne. I do, even if I had to be Stockholm Syndromed into it.

Saw Spear +10/10. I will play this one again.

miscellanea:

wow! the first Fromsoft game to have a reasonable and coherent weapon upgrade system! and you can get infinite slabs with enough Insight! Chunks are a little scarce though for the number of trick weapons I wanted to try out.

I wish there were more clothes…

Lady Maria of the Astral Clock Tower please liberate me from my wild curiosity

yes theres a lot of stuff about womanhood and birth and menses and such in this one. no I don’t really want to talk about that, except to point out “made men by the blood”. it seems pretty self-explanatory thematically, if not in detail.

Favorite areas: Yharnam collectively, the Nightmare Frontier in contrast. That little street with all the red lamps where Arianna lives in the Cathedral Ward. The banquet table room in Castle Cainhurst. The circle of couches on Byrgenwerth’s second floor.

Favorite fights: Lady Maria, Gehrman, Blood-Starved Beast, Ludwig. Mergo’s Wet Nurse stands out as a Dark Souls fight. Micolash was not fun exactly but I couldn’t not smile at him.

Favorite NPCs: Eileen! Djura, the guy who thinks you should just leave beasts alone. and of course the Doll.

Unfortunately most of the rhetoric around the particular sexual magnetism transgender women often possess is horrifically toxic and dehumanizing — for instance, the idea that she is (and pardon my use of this transphobic term) the “best of both worlds.” We should not be surprised by this: both because one comes to expect bigotry flung at undeserving trans targets and because she is a woman, and the rhetoric around women’s sexuality is noxious.

When a man treats a transgender woman as having a mix of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ traits, he is reinforcing the division of traits by gender and defining her as in-between his perceptions of man and woman — when she is no more in-between than any other woman! It’s a familiar patriarchal double-bind: a woman must be passive, but not too passive; sexual but not too sexual; agentic but not too agentic, lest she have the status of her womanhood revoked. Her situation here is distinguished only by the magnitude of her marginalization. As always: transgender women are women.

And yet transgender women, are not just women. A transgender woman is not in any part a man, and yet she is not a central example of the category we define as woman: she is typically lonelier, for one, and has been raised under the false presumption that she must be forcibly made into a man, and of course her anatomy is of a non-standard configuration for the role in many respects, although thankfully hormonal treatment changes certain specificities of this.

Her body is a woman’s body, and a tantalizing one — but the physical is best left to individualized examination, ideally in person. What I’m interested in interrogating here are the social factors that result in her particular sensual appeal.

That’s right. It’s time to talk about how gendered socialization, makes transgender women more sexually attractive.

TO BE CLEAR (lest you misunderstand and I be pilloried): gendered socializations are highly complex and microculturally specific processes, each with their upsides and downsides. The goal of male socialization is to produce a man, and so it has definitionally failed in the cases of transgender women.

It may be more instructive to note that transgender women are forced to undergo the processes which are intended to produce men, which of course results in them internalizing certain norms and customs. Though they are not and cannot be successfully made to be men, women regardless of transness often appropriate masculine customs for our own reasons: pants, while a historically masculine garment, are far more practical for everyday wear than dresses or skirts. While this appropriation of norms is to our benefit, rather than the coercive adoption demanded of transgender women, I think it’s important to make the comparison to emphasize her womanhood. Womanhood often feels like wading through toxic waste; hers is no different, though of course the waste is more toxic, and she suffers more for it.

Some of the male-associated norms transgender women internalize, like opening doors for those walking behind them, are just good common courtesy; some of those norms, like being worse at lying, are neutral in value; and some of those norms, like refusing to let anybody see her cry, are deeply harmful. And many, if not all of these, have the potential to make a woman sexy.

The only scene anybody wanted to talk about in Challengers (2024) was Tashi making her two boys kiss. Sure. I think straight women’s sexuality should be more visible, even if I find it baffling personally. But as a post-fujoshi, the scene that really grabbed me was those two boys chasing each other around the tennis court freely and without judgement. It’s an expression of love, guileless and rough: run as fast as you can! Come and catch me and hold me fast forever!

This freedom to move and run and play is coded masculine; girls are supposed to stay quietly indoors, or perform specific floor routines. Would it cause her gender dysphoria if I said so? Perhaps, and so I would not bring it up. But when I see a transgender woman jump down a few stairs or lope across a parking lot rather than take a sidewalk or slip through a fence, with thoughtless perfect ease, what I see is a girl who has been allowed to be in tune with her body in ways that so many of the rest of us have been denied. Of course I’m attracted to that easy physicality. How could I not be? It should have been my birthright too. Society calls it masculine but I think there’s a beautiful feminine expression to the grace, power, and economy of movement she displays — and if she didn’t know that on some level, I don’t think she would smile as she did it.

Asking women out is also something that transgender women are more likely to do, because they are told from a young age that they should be the ones to do that. As a woman, I support transgender women being held to the standards we hold all women to, so I wish she could live in a world where she was the one asked out. But as a lesbian I support lesbianism and that means that I am in favor of whatever gets girls to be asking each other out and not doing the whole lesbian sheep syndrome dance until nothing happens. I love the dance so much but it should do something1. When a woman wants me and is willing to show it? I think that’s hot. That makes her hotter to me.

Honor as a social technology concerns the permissibility of violence, and develops most strongly in cultures where individuals can’t rely on a third party to ensure justice is served. Transgender women can rely on very few, and so consequently they tend to make it clear that they are capable of exacting retribution as a means of deterrence. She may do this by working out, or wearing leather, or owning guns, or having a piercing glare. All of these are extremely hot when a woman does them. She can be shaped by her upbringing without threatening her womanhood; she needn’t even be butch to admit that. I wouldn’t mind if she was though. Transgender butches……….

I’ve touched lightly on this before, but male socializations allow the development of specialized expertises in ways that female socializations push against. The transgender woman understands from very early on that she must make herself useful in some way; if she does not, she will be considered unmanly and disciplined accordingly. She is not a normal boy2 and so she cannot take the normal boy’s route of hardening and cruelty. Also she is very often prone to aneurotypicality. And so she begins, to touch the computer…

And eventually she becomes very very good at it. Or at mathematics, or snake raising, or sculpture, or at making very loud music, or blacksmithing, or in certain regrettable cases magic gathering. In a better world, she would have been raised as the girl she so obviously was and allowed to pursue her skills to the fullest. In this one, she is only given one of those two opportunities. She might prefer the other — but unfortunately that is not a choice that any of us get to make. It does make her sexy though.

Men and women alike are taught that female vulnerability is sexy! Girls — trans and otherwise — are conditioned from a very young age to understand womanhood as a marker of desirability rather than agency in desiring. While the transgender woman might not have been the direct object of this inculcation, she is hyperaware that the role she so desperately longs to fill is deeply associated with sexual objectification and a lack of sexual internality. All this to qualify: female vulnerability is sexy, and trans women are vulnerable. She shouldn’t be taken advantage of — she deserves love and gentlenesses. But if you pretend that just because she is traumatized she does not have certain needs, that does neither you nor her, any favors. If anything, sexuality often ends up as a release valve for the tremendous amounts of stress that living in the world places on her.

I melt whenever I think of a trans girl taking care of a bird with a broken wing or leading a lost child back to their parent. Is having been coercively socialized in cruel ways essential to this? No. Anyone can be kind. But female socialization compels those who undergo it to act as though we care, and to place the needs of others above our own. When a transgender girl goes above and beyond to help others at cost to herself — when she saves a girl from an awful family situation and holds her as she cries; when she picks you up a little treat or drink to cheer you up when you need it most; when she manages to have compassion for herself, as difficult as that often is for her? She demonstrates a fierce defiance of all those who have tried to crush her into something other than who she is.

And yes, I find the unsulliable purity of her girlish heart deeply erotically compelling. That’s chiaroscuro, or as we call it now, gap moe.

I think it’s also worth saying that I find transgender women sexual because they are, well, quite sexual. Being a woman is understood to be a fundamentally sexual positionality3 — even among cisgendered heterosexual women, “feel like a woman” is a synonym for arousal. When she transitions, and becomes fully and truly herself, no longer having to hide means she is freer to express her desires; when her hormones remake her in her own image and her emotions run freely she is, naturally, a beautiful and sensual creature. Puberty just does that to people. Now obviously I would not partake, until she has spent two years accustoming to herself. But it is also true that transgender women are worse at lying, probably because they had to do it for so long, and used up their abilities to do so. There’s a lot of pent up desire there, and it makes itself known in how she presents herself: how she walks, how she speaks, how she folds up so nicely.

And I in my turn am drawn to reciprocate.

My supporters and haters alike, agree on very few things. But they all understand that only a woman could post like this.

In person, however, things don’t always work out. Once every two months or so I get they’d — and you know what? I hate it! Yes, I understand that nobody means any harm by it and that it’s just something that happens in sufficiently woke circles but it makes me feel like I’ve failed a test. I am gender non-conforming in a few specific ways1 (who isn’t!) but I am a girl and I want to be understood as such and I would like to think I’m doing a good enough job at it to not be questioned.

I understand that that pronoun circles are a good way for nonbinary people to feel seen2, and whenever I’m in one I grit my teeth and politely answer with my actual pronouns unless there’s a trans woman in the group, in which case I give a little lecture on how using they is not neutral but degendering, and that there are people who need that non-neutrality. I’m willing to bite that bullet because it’s important that nonbinary people become more legible. But something in me really really does not like getting they’d.

Asserting that should be enough on its own, but I want to talk about why I’m not nonbinary.

To be clear, I think being nonbinary is fine! I have nothing against nonbinary people. The two conventional cardinal genders work just fine for most people but categorization systems should accurately reflect their data points; having another cluster specifically defined by not being men or women seems like a good idea because some people are neither men nor women, and describing them as such just doesn’t give very good results. There should be a place for the placeless. Even if it isn’t going to capture them all because there is always going to be somebody with a boutique gender designed specifically to upend all metrics, it’s going to fit more people better and therefore be a good system. Nonbinary people deserve to be socially legible — to not be asked about their pronouns unless they want to be; to get to have names that declare them as nonbinary, and to be treated as such, once they decide what that means; to have different things3 expected of them than society asks of men and women.

But I am not one of those people.

I am not always happy with my gender, which is often a sign of being nonbinary, but in my case that does not mean that my gender isn’t mine.

There are many reasons one might be unhappy with the expectations that come with womanhood: one is expected to date and marry men, raise children, accept lower wages and prestige for one’s work, defer and assert and present oneself in specific contextual ways that often feel ridiculous/objectifying/pointless etc. And it’s certainly true that I have mixed to negative feelings about all those things, and that existing as a woman who deviates from those expectations exacts a very real cost on me.

But that doesn’t make me not a woman. I am my mother’s daughter as she was her mother’s daughter — I stand at the end of an unbroken chain of women sculpted and sculpting in turn. Certainly some of them lacked artistic vision; certainly some of them lacked basic human decency. I am not just their work but I am not completely my own person either and it seems ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

I mean I could transition. I could be perceived as a man and take on the social roles and expectations of a man. I wouldn’t be bad at it! What is expected of men seems pretty clearly easier than what is expected of women. I could get myself perceived as nonbinary if I wanted, as much as anybody can. But I don’t want that either.

Changing yourself means making a choice and following through. But not changing yourself also means making a choice and following through. It seems to me like I am constantly choosing to be a woman for reasons beyond not wanting to be a man or nonbinary, no matter how stressful and exhausting it can be.

Look, what I really want to say is that I have an internal sense of myself as a woman. It’s kind of unpleasant to try and justify this but it does seem to be immutably there.

So what is it like to have a sense-of-being-a-woman rather than having been born and raised as somebody grown to be one and passively accepting that descriptive label?

This internal sense manifests positively in that I like being seen doing womanhood correctly and competently and find women fundamentally more interesting than non-women. I suppose, theoretically, I could be a non-woman who likes being seen doing womanhood correctly and finds women more interesting than non-women (such people do exist; we call them himedanshi and they deserve our pity.)

My internal sense manifests more sharply as a negative. If I were to say, dress up as a male character for Halloween for an entire night and on into the morning (I haven’t done this but I have done similar), a weird gross feeling would start building up and I would be compelled to act more traditionally feminine afterwards to dispel it. Probably this is something like what transgender women refer to as gender dysphoria. Being not-perceived-to-be-a-girl makes me deeply uneasy on a fundamental level.

Honestly I’m really uncomfortable with that. It seems such a nonsensical thing to demand, especially when I have to go out of my way to have it not be the case. I don’t mean to be Not Like The Other Girls here but most women who feel this way seem to lack any internality and never push at the edges of their gender, and consequently I find them tolerable at best (at worst they are bigots). It feels regressive and shameful4, but ultimately I can’t not believe that there is some kind of mysterious set factor that causes this that I don’t have control over. Or at least that being a woman is important enough to me that I wouldn’t take fifteen percent more in my lifetime earnings to be a man instead (not withstanding differences in jobs chosen by gendered alignment). Which works out to quite a bit of money.

“Dios mio!” (you cross yourself.) “A GENDER ESSENTIALIST!”

I don’t think women or anybody else should be constrained by social role. I do however believe that gender isn’t something that can be changed, only revealed.

There do seem to be people out there who just kind of happen to get gendered growing up and end up in a category they don’t really mind, but who probably would have been fine in a different one — but if gender were just a matter of being who and what you were told to be in every case, I would be straight and no transgender woman would ever become herself.

Gender expression is clearly highly constructed5. Men with long hair are, contextually:

• Degenerate hippies

• Filially pious

• Rebelling under repressive policy

• Wealthy and powerful

• Masterless drifters

• Under religious vows

• Filthy barbarians

• In good and honorable social standing

Nevertheless in a society where women were expected to be bald, I would be bald. I’m glad I’m not, of course. But if I was, I’d be glad to not have to grow my hair out.

“But Halimede,” you say, “Didn’t Judith Butler bring you the good news? Gender is performative! Anybody can do anything!” Wrong. First off, ‘performative’ refers to speech acts that define social realities, such as “I now pronounce you married” or “Knight to e4”. While it’s true that gender has to be constantly upkept, that doesn’t mean it’s weak or ignorable — if anything it means the opposite. Just because anybody can do anything doesn’t mean they will! Even people who would be fine regardless of what box they would be sorted into stay in their boxes!

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that both Nature and Nurture are extremely powerful and more relevant than most people expect, and that people should take transgender women more seriously6, and that for some women, stupid as it seems, womanhood7 is something very important8.

being vulnerable on the internet never backfired on anybody. anyways. next up I’m interested in the relationship transgender women seem to have with dolls and how it differs from non-trans.

So you are an author and you want to write a transgender woman.

The most important thing I can tell you is that you should take your draft to a transgender woman and compensate her at fair market rate for a diversity read. Listen to her and take her advice, unless it’s bad.

But before you do that, here are some questions you should be able to answer:

CONTEXTS: How does this transgender woman fit into the world around her?

Transgender women, or people who would be transgender women in a modern social context, are historically either exoticized as sacred (as with the Galli of Cybele) or, more typically, relegated to marginalized roles - as forcibly third-gendered scapegoats and sex workers, etc1. What does this transgender woman’s society perceive her role to be, and how does it push her towards fulfilling that role? What portions of her society push her in what directions? In what ways does she deviate from her role-as-ideal? How does this perception of what she should be affect her?

How does this transgender woman, as a marginalized person, make her living? What costs does she pay for her transgender womanhood (in coin, or blood, or safety)?

How does her transgender womanhood affect her social interactions and class? How is she racially categorized, and how do the stereotypes associated with that racial categorization intersect with her transgender womanhood to determine her gendered expression?

How does she interact with people on an individual level? Transgender women typically seek out and befriend other transgender women on the basis of shared experiences and finding them safer to be around, but may find themselves isolated in male-dominated fields. Are her friends, family, and lovers transgender women as well? What does that say about her? How does she interact with other transgendered women? How does she interact with cisgender women? How does she interact with people who aren’t women at all?

INTERNALITIES: What might it feel like to be a transgender woman?

Any transgender woman will tell you that her transgender womanhood informs but does not strictly define everything about her — though sometimes it feels like a prison. Yet the line between influence and definition is not nearly so clean-cut as many would like to pretend. For the most part, transgender women, like people of any other gendered positionality, do the things they are told to do, want the things they are made to want, and live the way they are told to live. The consequent commonalities between them are obvious to anybody willing to look.

Consider for a moment yourself what it would be like to be a girl being raised to be a man, with very little say in the matter.

What would that do to your emotions? Your patterns of sexual attraction? Your relationship to your body? Your sense of self? How would you react to the psychic pressures of being made to fit that particular mold, especially as a child?

How would you come to understand yourself? How would your presentation and attitudes and likes and dislikes and strengths and weaknesses be different?

And keeping that in mind: how would you be the same?

Can you really know that?

REALITIES: What are the pressures applied to transgender women, and how do they affect your character?

While it’s true that you should write a transgender woman as a person first, rather than as a set of identity tags, it’s also true that being raised by parents aiming her towards manhood tends to shape a transgender woman in certain ways. Creating a transgender woman character should ideally take these pressures and realities into account.

Being raised to be a man means being taught that depending on others is a weakness. Obviously agentic transgender women exist — but they carry out one supreme act of agency and they hate it. Individual transgender women are more likely to prioritize results over the smooth functioning of a group and ask questions when she, or another woman needs clarification — though of course the possibility that she retreats completely into her shell exists. They have often been freer to express competitiveness than cisgender women; this may present its own issues.

Transgender women are women, and have women’s problems. There are two major related double-binds leveled against all women: “Be feminine, but not too feminine,” and “Be desirable/sexually available, but not too desirable/sexually available.” Transgender women often grapple with these problems later in life, but that doesn’t make them any more prepared to solve them; your transgender woman character may still be figuring her answers out, or changing them as she goes.

How femininely does your transgender woman present herself? How does she feel about presenting that femininely? In what circumstances does her presentation change, and how does she feel about that change? What is her relationship to her sexuality like? To shame?

While a transgendered women will likely come to understand that she was not raised in ideal ways (and after all, who is?) she is hesitant to abandon entirely the circumstances which created her, and so she picks and chooses the pieces of her upbringing to carry on. Which pieces has your transgender woman character chosen to discard? How ambivalent is she about the pieces she has chosen to keep? Does she consider herself honorable, value forthrightness and competitiveness, or consider the ability to commit violence if necessary part of her self-image? What cycles will her choices perpetuate, and what continuities will they destroy?

Various fraught social realities create social complexes as they perpetuate themselves through women as a class. These social complexes lead to ‘natural’ associations between certain thematic approaches/conflicts and transgender womanhood or womanhoods. A transgender female protagonist may make a useful device for authors wishing to investigate:

• The relationships of traditional societal systems (family in particular) to the individual, particularly regarding assimilationism and the maintenance/disruption of norms

• Moral purity and innocence and the expectations surrounding them, especially of the loss thereof, slanting the Bildungsroman towards independence

• Roles and expectations; both of others and of the self. Subjection and subjectivity; objection and objectivity; the abject, which is defined against.

• The destruction of futurity, or the creation thereof

• The destruction of a hideous and evil world by those who have suffered, or the creation thereof

• Dynamics of power and control; power relations and fantasies of weakness and empowerment both

• Reactivities towards the unchangeable, or that which is perceived to be unchangeable. Fatalism, nihilism, existentialism, absurdism.

• Emotional textures; “painterly” character work

Of course, your transgender woman protagonist does not strictly need to interface with any of these thematic considerations — but it is likely that at least one of them has impacted her life in some way or another. Which? How? And how has she dealt with them?

Finally, but not least important: Why is this character transgender? What does it mean for your story that she has had these experiences and has come to exist as herself in this way?

Now go read the other panel of this diptych.

Discussion Questions, to be completed after finishing both articles.

1. Why do you think these articles were so similar, or perhaps, so different?

2. What might the juxtaposition of these two articles be intended to suggest?

3. What about men? Transgender men specifically? Why don’t you as a lesbian write about them? People keep asking me this so I thought I might as well ask you.

4. Did you feel more strongly about one article than the other? What might that suggest about the world? What might that suggest about you?

So you are an author and you want to write a cisgender1 woman.

The most important thing I can tell you is that you should take your draft to a cisgender woman and compensate her at fair market rate for a diversity read. Listen to her and take her advice, unless it’s bad.

But before you do that, here are some questions you should be able to answer:

CONTEXTS: How does this cisgender woman fit into the world around her?

Cisgender women, or people who would be cisgender women in a modern social context, are historically either exoticized as sacred (as with the Vestal Virgins or Delphic Oracle) or, more typically, relegated to marginalized roles - as homemakers, thread-spinners, wives and sex workers, etc. What does this cisgender woman’s society perceive her role to be, and how does it push her towards fulfilling that role? What portions of her society push her in what directions? In what ways does she deviate from her role-as-ideal? How does this perception of what she should be affect her?

How does this cisgendered woman, as a marginalized person, make her living? What costs does she pay for her cisgendered womanhood (in coin, or blood, or safety)?

How does her cisgendered womanhood affect her social interactions and class? How is she racially categorized, and how do the stereotypes associated with that racial categorization intersect with her cisgender womanhood to determine her gendered expression?

How does she interact with people on an individual level? Cisgender women typically seek out and befriend other cisgender women on the basis of shared experiences and finding them safer to be around, but may find themselves isolated in male-dominated fields. Are her friends, family, and lovers cisgender women as well? What does that say about her? How does she interact with other cisgendered women? How does she interact with transgender women? How does she interact with people who aren’t women at all?

INTERNALITIES: What might it feel like to be a cisgender woman?

Any cisgender woman (myself included) will tell you that her cisgender womanhood informs but does not strictly define everything about her — though sometimes it feels like a prison. Yet the line between influence and definition is not nearly so clean-cut as many would like to pretend. For the most part, cisgendered women, like people of any other gender positionality, do the things they are told to do, want the things they are made to want, and live the way they are told to live. The consequent commonalities between them are obvious to anybody willing to look.

Consider for a moment yourself what it would be like to be a girl being raised to be a woman, with very little say in the matter.

What would that do to your emotions? Your patterns of sexual attraction? Your relationship to your body? Your sense of self? How would you react to the psychic pressures of being made to fit that particular mold, especially as a child?

How would you come to understand yourself? How would your presentation and attitudes and likes and dislikes and strengths and weaknesses be different?

And keeping that in mind: how would you be the same?

Can you really know that?

REALITIES: What are the pressures applied to cisgender women, and how do they affect your character?

While it’s true that you should write a cisgendered woman as a person first, rather than as a set of identity tags, it’s also true that being raised as a woman tends to shape a cisgendered woman in certain ways. Creating a cisgendered woman character should ideally take these pressures and realities into account.

Being raised to be a woman means being taught to defer and value consensus. This doesn’t mean that agentic cisgendered women don’t exist, but it does mean that an individual cisgendered woman is more likely to prioritize the smooth functioning of a group over her own personal needs, act like she understands something that she wants clarification on in order to move a conversation along, and may find it more difficult to object in public.

Cisgendered women are also often taught to prioritize composure and social cohesion over results. Women’s tennis famously demands more technical precision than men’s tennis, as cisgender women are taught to deprioritize strength in favor of skill — and female players who are perceived as defying this standard2 suffer the undeserved consequences.

Cisgender women are women, and have women’s problems. There are two major related double-binds leveled against all women: “Be feminine, but not too feminine,” and “Be desirable/sexually available, but not too desirable/sexually available.” It is basically impossible for your adult cisgender woman character to not have arrived at some kind of solution to these problems (not necessarily consciously) without some external factor3 as justification.

How femininely does your cisgender woman present herself? How does she feel about presenting that femininely? In what circumstances does her presentation change, and how does she feel about that change? What is her relationship to her sexuality like? To shame?

While a cisgendered women will likely come to understand that she was not raised in ideal ways (and after all, who is?) she is hesitant to abandon entirely the circumstances which created her, and so she picks and chooses the pieces of her upbringing to carry on. Which pieces has your cisgender woman character chosen to discard? How ambivalent is she about the pieces she has chosen to keep? Does she consider herself caring, value cleanliness and composure, or consider raising children to be part of her self-image? What cycles will her choices perpetuate, and what continuities will they destroy?

Various fraught social realities create social complexes as they perpetuate themselves through women as a class. These social complexes lead to ‘natural’ associations between certain thematic approaches/conflicts and cisgendered womanhood or womanhoods. A cisgender female protagonist may make a useful device for authors wishing to investigate:

• The relationships of traditional societal systems (family in particular) to the individual, particularly regarding assimilationism and the maintenance/disruption of norms

• Moral purity and innocence and the expectations surrounding them, especially of the loss thereof, slanting the Bildungsroman towards independence

• Roles and expectations; both of others and of the self. Subjection and subjectivity; objection and objectivity; the abject, which is defined against.

• Futurity, and the destruction thereof

• The potential for a better world to be made by those who have suffered, or the destruction thereof

• Dynamics of power and control; power relations and fantasies of empowerment and weakness both

• Reactivities towards the unchangeable, or that which is perceived to be unchangeable. Fatalism, nihilism, existentialism, absurdism.

• Emotional textures; “painterly” character work

Of course, your cisgender woman protagonist does not strictly need to interface with any of these thematic considerations — but it is likely that at least one of them has impacted her life in some way or another. Which? How? And how has she dealt with them?

Finally, but not least important: Why is this character cisgender? What does it mean for your story that she has had these experiences and has come to exist as herself in this way?

Now go read the other wing of this butterfly, here.

Discussion Questions, to be completed after finishing both articles.

1. Why do you think these articles were so similar, or perhaps, so different?

2. What might the juxtaposition of these two articles be intended to suggest?

3. What about men? Transgender men specifically? Why don’t you as a lesbian write about them? People keep asking me this so I thought I might as well ask you.

4. Did you feel more strongly about one article than the other? What might that suggest about the world? What might that suggest about you?

Reticella, the lace-precursor from which Punto in Aria and the Venetian Line Lace both derive, requires a structural cloth grid and is therefore more properly termed a kind of embroidery. While Punto in Aria, as the first true lace, is distinguished by its lack of grid, the Venetian Line Lace seems to have been constructed in and through a grid made up of itself.

While the name “Linea de Venise” seems to imply a correspondence to 17th-century raised needle lace Point de Venise, the existence of pins recovered from the wreckage of the 1751 fire and immediately sold at market suggests that the Venetian Line Lace was, at least in part, woven with bobbins.

Sources indicate that the Venetian Line Lace was only ever produced by one highly-secretive workshop in the lace district of Burano, at the exclusive command of the Doge. Multiple record corroborate that the lace would have been constructed in multiple portions, each subcontracted out to individual workshops and convents, before being woven together by a master over a period of years. The process of apprenticeship was arduous even by the period’s standards, and it was said that a master might only produce a single work in her lifetime. Still, the money and fame associated with the Venetian Line Lace meant there were never any shortage of young women applying for the position.

Attempts to deduce and steal the patterning of the miraculous lace were commonplace; in light of this, and the fabulous price which a complete work of Venetian Line Lace commanded, instructions for false portions were deliberately distributed. The reconstruction of the lace from the hundreds of alleged submodules known would be near-impossible; for a time it was said that “Un’espressione idiomatica intraducibile non può essere espressa in nessuna lingua diversa da quella in cui ha avuto origine.” — “Venetian Line Lace is as easy and cheap as a virgin nun,” in keeping with the popular perception at the time of the convent as a house of ill repute.

Sadly, no specimens of the lace itself survive, although a patterning thread coded with colors purported to correspond to a design of the Venetian Winged Lion in flight is preserved in the archives of the British Museum, and a long-disputed set of scraps held by 19th-century American steel baron J. T. Massichine’s estate has recently been opened with limited permissions for academic access. Analysis of the stress points in those scraps has been inconclusive, but remains ongoing; a team at Wellesley College is currently seeking funding for the deployment of algorithms developed for protein-folding.

Boys become himedanshi, because of their internality.

In contrast to the fujoshi, who seeks to displace the sexual positionality enforced on her onto a boy, the himedanshi seeks to erase himself entirely — though his own desires inevitably emerge, cathected into a girl of great importance to him.

This is not the normal male response to lesbians, fictional or otherwise! The typical male responses to lesbians are “Wait, you like girls? You still like guys though, right?” (Die.), “So you’re not interested in me?” (Die.) and “That’s hot. I want to have sex with both of them at the same time” (Die.) Occasionally you get a guy, often gay or one of the ones treated like a girl from birth for some reason1, who will be decent about the whole thing. If the lesbians he hangs out with are trans, he is termed a grungler. If the lesbians he hangs out with are not, he is a punchline from season 1 of The L Word.

But the himedanshi aren’t that either.

What are they like, then? Well, the classic himedanshi stereotype is of a quietly neurotic ‘herbivore’, prickly when pushed and self-abnegating to the point of passive suicidality, who considers pairings between girls to be the only pure thing in a rotten world.

This, to be clear, is the image that himedanshi have created of themselves, because nobody else talks about them. While American fujoshiism is largely sexually liberatory, himedanshi the world over follow the classic fujoshi rule: “I want to be a wall.”

In fact, some Japanese himedanshi on twitter find “himedanshi” an insufficiently pejorative description — both by analogy with fujoshi (“rotten girl”) and as its literal meaning “princess boy”. Nevertheless I have chosen to here use himedanshi, rather than more neutral terms like yurijin or yuri danshi, because of something those Japanese otaku missed: “princess” in english, when applied to a boy, effectively means “f——t2”. I think that’s pejorative enough.

Here’s an interview with Iori Miyazawa (Otherside Picnic) on this particular approach to yuri.

Leaving aside that this man talking about the profundity and expansiveness of yuri sat down and wrote the most “will they won’t they” two girls going to school and having feelings about each other imaginable3, I think this should give you a kind of idea of the knots these people tie themselves in.

Notice Miyazawa speaks only in the most oblique terms about what he wants. Himedanshi really really do not want to talk about why it is that two girls kissing and holding hands makes them so happy. They will say “well, I like girls and there are two girls.” They may, if probed, reveal misogyny or cite sexual appeal; they will depict themselves as deranged and obsessive etc. The important thing here is that they are deeply uncomfortable with their comparatively benign desires.

Here is yuri luminary Erika Friedman, baffled and horrified by the way himedanshi choose to write about themselves. And she’s right! It is weird and offputting, and she correctly identifies that Reiji might actually be a girl and need to transition.

But no, himedanshi aren’t all actually girls. Many of them turn out to have been, and many of those girls keep many of their attitudes they picked up during this time in their lives, but some of them are just guys who are like that for some reason.

I think I can explain something Friedman is missing here — one of the things that drives himedanshi so mad. She herself has (relatably) been mildly exasperated with yuri made for the male gaze. Sure, men are absolutely capable of producing good yuri, but men have also produced a tremendous amount of terrible dreck that fails to understand that women are human. Yuri requires that, at minimum, that men be decentered; the himedanshi understand this and become attached to their ‘lack of a place’.

Consider first the CGDCT himedanshi, who like light and frothy moe shows with girls who are entirely unlike them. Moe shows traditionally have at least one girl (Tomoyo, Kagamin, Mai Minakami) with homosexual inclinations, and many himedanshi consequently end up focusing on fluff. Purity here is something they understand as an existence completely independent from themselves. The girls are playing out their relationships on the other side of a screen; disconnected entirely from the viewer.

However, if the nascent himedanshi really latches onto one of these gay anime girls, what he wants more than anything else is to see her fall in love and experience horrible heartwrenching pain.

(three illustrations, from the canon. For those familiar, this ought to suffice:)

• Tomoyo x Sakura (Cardcaptor Sakura) -> Homura x Madoka (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)

• Yuno x Miyako (Hidamari Sketch) -> Chito x Yuuri (Girls Last Tour)

• Renko x Maribel (ZUN’s Music Collection) -> Sorawo x Toriko (Otherside Picnic)

The himedanshi projects onto girls who he feels share his traits: Homura has a teenage boy’s sense of what is cool; Chiito is a closed-off and prickly reader; Sorawo really only cares about her special interests and has terrible social anxiety. And of course all three of them are in deep emotional pain and incapable of talking about their emotions, just as the himedanshi believes himself to be.

And yet there is no yuri paddle. The himedanshi is not the fujoshi: he does not seek to offload his own trauma, but to redeem himself. He fixates on purity: the girl who he projects onto can and will suffer horribly, but her heart is unquestionably pure because she soldiers on for love4.

Fortunately for verisimilitude, falling in love and experiencing horrible heartwrenching pain is exactly what it feels like to be a teenage lesbian, and so a lot of the work that this kind of himedanshi produce strikes home.

Once the himedanshi has indulged sufficiently in this lonesome heartwrenching pain, he longs for social acceptance. He may return to the fluff from whence he came or pivot towards characters like Bocchi or Suletta, who are gay and stressed but also loved in return; he may move onto pairings like Farcille, which lack an easy projection point character; or, if he self-defines as a cuckold hard enough, he may decide to devote himself entirely to the yaya archetype5. Maybe he gets really into Maki Bloom Into You or Onimai or transitions and becomes more normal. That’s his own business. Whatever.

Anyways. Despite all this weirdness I still have more in common with the himedanshi than I do any normal men. Like me, they have something in their brains that makes them think of women and their opinions as more important than men and theirs. Probably this is related to whatever biological factor it is that makes people lesbians, or even transgender. I just wish they weren’t so weird about it.

Next up: Weight of Weeaboo Womanhood III: what does this have to do with transgender women? BL and forcefem as coping mechanisms; “traps”.

APPENDIX I: For those puzzled about why people like that drunk girl from Bocchi The Rock so much.

Many people find public performance difficult. You can practice a set or routine or solo for weeks and fail in front of a crowd, if you don’t know what you’re doing. Busking is even harder than that. You’re breaking the rule of polite non-interference in public to specifically get people’s attention and also you’re asking them to give you money for it. Being able to do something like that is basically about as much narrative power as you need to confess your feelings or shoot a goku laser. The reason that trans (and himedanshi) love her so much is that her existence sets a lower bound on Bocchi’s future. Her predations hold the appeal of pure craft, unbounded by morality.

Naturally this is of tremendous interest to the himedanshi, who are all bottoms.

I received a copy of J. Ursula Topaz’s A Rotten Girl for Christmas — a book headlined by a quote from me! How flattering!

Here is the epigraph in question:

I was hoping to read a book about the aforementioned wisdom of the fujoshi. What I got was a book about how booktok readers are the most despicable people on Earth. Which, sure — I have no great love for booktokers, especially transphobes — but I was looking for something else entirely.

It is my personal opinion, having befriended many and even having been one, in my time, that fujoshi are neither good nor evil. They are simply experiencing the fullness of life.

Women become fujoshi to escape how hard it is to be a woman.

Many American fujoshi like to say that Fujoing Out is somehow a revolutionary act — that in a society as rigidly heterosexual as Japan’s1, being a BL fan is a kind of righteous defiance of expectations for women. This is not necessarily untrue so much as it completely misses the point: women become BL fans as a means of sexually displacing the weight and pressures of womanhood onto men.

To be clear this is fine, if often distasteful in execution. I myself come from fujoshi roots; while I am no longer what I would consider a practicing fujoshi, having discovered something truer and more beautiful, I still attend the equivalents of Christmas and Easter Mass. I just think pretending BL fandom is about anything more than sexually objectifying men is futile and also wrong. It’s true that there are sociological pressures driving women towards it but the thing itself is very simple: you take a man and you treat him like a girl and you get off on it because the degradation he is subjected to is a repayment for the ways you have suffered. It’s like being a mother-in-law and being given a daughter-in-law’s life to ruin as recompense for what you have been put through, but with fictional boys. Or real ones, even, in very specific circumstances.

The yaoi paddle is a sanctioned kind of violence: a means for a girl to mark and declare herself superior to the weak and effeminate Sasuke in whose objectification she has participated2.

This is why pairing order is so important: it denotes which man is the Man and which man is being put in the place of a girl. True Yaoi3 requires that the shorter more feminine partner must be sexually subject to the taller more masculine partner. You take a guy and you designate him physically weaker, regardless of whether he actually is (just as you were so designated); sexually submissive, regardless of whether he actually is (an expectation placed on you since childhood); he must like it and hate that he likes it and so forth (this should be obvious). In the olden days, before transgender women became visible enough to make this no longer work, you would give the uke long hair and makeup and dress him up in women’s clothing, because the emphasis is on the constructed nature of womanhood-which-ruins-him — or you’d tweak the boy’s gender identity and get a Grell Sutcliff.

As the fujoshi increases in ability, the kinds of men she is interested in taking apart (often literally; I’ve known many more women than men interested in eroguro) become more masculine. Body hair, muscularity, and advanced age become more common, as she needs less femininity from the target in order to project female suffering onto men.

The power dynamic is the yaoi paddle — the method by which you take a man and break and twist him into a feminized subject. The important thing is that he be humiliated and made to suffer: that’s why Guel Jeturk is a yaoi boy despite Lauda clearly being the most classic uke-type imaginable (and also why I prefer Shaddiq). This is also why Dirkjake is so powerful: Jake is constantly narratively emasculated, while Dirk’s obsession with masculinity conceals vulnerable internality. Each boy functions as a way to rip open the other.

This reciprocal debasement is the mark of the truly committed fujoshi. “Ahhh…. Viktor is clearly the bottom — just look at him! But what about a scenario where he ties Yuuri up and has his way with him to try and awaken the athlete inside the overweight young man?” When you recognize that all that fatphobia in the first episodes of Yuri On Ice serves as implicit feminization for Yuuri Katsuki4, you unlock the reverse pairing. Fujoshi of the highest class create/manifest/twist these destructive dynamics out of the tiniest slivers of men interacting; they take pride in perverting shows like South Park or Osomatsu-san, and in their own self-deprecation.

Fujoshi sexuality is omnivorous so long as the key ingredients of degradation and self-alienation/projection of experience are present. Fujoshi themselves are disproportionately likely to be queer, even lesbian, and to have a taste for sadism — though this may extend no further than fiction.

All that said I really do think there’s something valuable there. When I said the fujoshi have much wisdom, I meant it. I don’t just mean community either — people find that everywhere, even in churches. I mean look at Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, or Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, or The Summer Hikaru Died. Or Gquuuuuux’s reinterpretation of Challia Bull. They’re clearly producing good art.5 Yuri practitioners in particular can often benefit from the ‘bite’ fujoshi so love to infuse their works with. How do you reckon with the trauma of girlhood without letting it define you? I’m not nonbinary, so I have no interest in figuring that out. But I think the fujoshi are at least on track to some kind of answer.

And of course, if you raise a boy like a girl for some reason, he will often develop corresponding neuroses. Which I have no interest in.

FURTHER READING: Anything to do with Astarion; Kaze To Ki No Uta; fandom conceptions of Jesse Pinkman, and of course ever-relevant masterpiece Genshiken Nidaime

Next time: Part 2. “himedanshi” as compared to fujoshi and their methods of projection; Iori Miyazawa and the pedestal; BL and forcefem as coping mechanisms; what transgender women have to do with all this.

Obviously this is no guarantee that every person of the following demographics will be a decent human being but hopefully this helps.

So! Where do you look!

Old-school fandom people. Spirk shippers; fic writers; dreamwidth and tumblr and ao3 users. Star Trek specifically carries with it the dream of a pluralist future, however amateurishly realized; our slash-author foremothers carry that dream forward. As white as they often are, they will try, and that’s better than a lot of other people ever do. Join a fic circle! Sign up for Yuletide!

Any kind of hobbyist interested enough in a specific topic that their love for it and desire to share it overcomes their hesitation about “what if I say something wrong and she cancels me?” Most normal people, for some reason, think that transgender women have the power to cancel them — when the reality is sadly the opposite. Consider model-makers, fiber artisans, chess players, roleplayers, and type A grad students. Unfortunately women’s sports are kind of a culture war battleground right now but there’s a comparatively high proportion of lesbians who do them and most lesbians are on your side; consider activities that skew younger and less competitive, like rock climbing or aerobics, or activities that skew definitely competitive but in ways where being a sore loser is a bad look, like martial arts. Birdwatchers especially skew older and liberal.

Fujoshi will accept you without question if you can prove that you have the Fujoshi Factor. You either have it or you don’t. Not having it will make you much happier and more fulfilled, in your life.

Gay men who like Nintendo.

People you repeatedly come into contact with. If you’re in school, you should be able to get at least one classmate — or teacher — you’re interested in staying in contact with per semester. Get somebody’s number at the beginning in case of absences; perform well in class and help others out with your extra time; trade papers for read-throughs, and keep an eye out for who writes well. Other students like this will also be looking for you! Co-workers often make good ‘activity’ friends — not the kind you’d want to have over and relax with, but good for a day hike or a drive to new place during lunch break. You should watch a few more mainstream currently-or-recently-airing shows or movies (sports fills this niche) so that you can have weekly discussion topics.

Weeaboos with good taste. Do they know Miyuki Sawashiro? Have opinions on Ippei Gyoubu’s design work? Garupan fans will consider you a girl without question as long as you can drive a tank. Ave Mujica fans will consider you a girl without question as long as you are mentally ill.

Green Flags:

• Shoujo Kakumei Utena

• Nichijou/CITY

• Chainsaw Man Part 2

Yellow Flags

• Monogatari

• Zeta Gundam

• Neon Genesis Evangelion

Red Flags

• Gundam SEED

• Sword Art Online

• Solo Leveling

On that note, the furtive himedanshi may become a pleasant, if reticent, companion. No, not all of them are trans. Some of them are just like that.

Befriend lesbians! You’ve seen the chart! It’s true: lesbians are the single group most likely to be there for you. The right lesbians will hang out with you and talk about how awful gender norms can be with you and yes, even date you if you both feel you are compatible. As I move through the world I keep hearing about lesbians who had one ‘guy’ friend growing up who was the only one they felt fully comfortable around and then discovering ohhh she was a girl the whole time that makes so much sense! This is a very normal experience for girls who are discovering that they prefer girls and girls who are discovering that they are girls to have. We have so much in common and mending that gap is one of the most important things in the world to me.

Yes, the second wave was full of terfs; yes lesbians are often (justifiably) weird about men. But you aren’t men, and you don’t need to feel politically affiliated with a demographic you are not. Men can do just fine without you.

Obviously you should have a reason to spend time with anybody such that friendship can form. “But Halimede,” I anticipate your saying, “I don’t have anything in common with cis lesbians! What would we even talk about!” Yes, you come from different worlds (I’m going to have to write an article on gendered socialization and the pedestal you keep putting us on one of these days) but we are not that different! Here are some “trans-coded” things I have seen afab lesbians who are not me do for fun, to force you to understand that sometimes we have similar tastes:

Get really into Japanese homofascist Mishima Yukio

Enjoy visual novels and fromsoft games

Have so so many artbooks of [anime waifu, withheld out of respect]

Speedrun Hollow Knight

Schedule out nights for Final Fantasy 14 raids

Build gunpla

Complete a living National Pokedex

Play magic gathering with her wife’s ex

“But Halimede,” you may say, “my tastes aren’t as refined as yours! How will I know what people want to hang out with me!”

I have found the single best predictor of whether or not somebody is a wonderful person with excellent taste who would be glad to spend time with me is whether or not she reads my blog. Although most of my readers are transgender women, not hanging out with any other transgender women is like not hugging your sister because you’re afraid of incest. If you just simply meet up platonically and spend some non-sexual time together, with other readers of me, you can have a nice and wonderful time together without anything else going on. Just please go spend time with people in this beautiful new year full of potential. Please.

Keep in mind: finding friends is like dating in that coming on too hard will often give people the ick. Just plan things — if they plan things, that’s a good sign — and let it lapse if it isn’t working out. Friends are like capital in that having some makes it much easier to acquire more, and it’s important to have a base as early as possible because of how exponentials work.

I need another excedrin.

Get your mind off it by having a look at some of my best posts this year.

It’s true. It feels a little cruel to say it, but we both know I get treated better than you do. I’m trying to change that.

I tried catcalling her afterward and she said it wasn’t spontaneous enough. Never let it be said, that transgender women are anything but women.

I save final copies of all my substack posts in PDF. For safekeeping.

Timeless. Although it is of course always acceptable to be an umamusume

I stand by this one.

And this one as well. You don’t have to know a lot about Transformers to know that they really shouldn’t be doing that.

You can’t even tell about the other one’s deal is.

Always a good idea. I like to say my posts aloud before I make them, to check the mouthfeel.

if any of you start saying things like “halimede is haus” I would like you to know that I would never draw trans women so grotesquely, even for a joke. And I would use thinner linework.

just imagine. She could even be a top

straightforwardly true. not to over-toot my own horn but I did nod my head in agreement upon reading this one

the first time a gay man said the words toxic yuri to me I knew it was over

:(

Mhmm. Yes.

though they do express it differently.

this one was controversial. to you who get upset at it, consider this: one of the signs of even a low percentage of manhood, is referring to yourself as a little guy or birthday boy.

now this one was Very controversial. just the suggestion of a book had people frothing at the mouth. and you know what? fair enough. if one of my favorite author-activists announced a publishing deal I would also be excited! not excited enough to start issuing me death threats though. That’s kind of counter productive.

(magic gathering is a way for her to be absolutely sure she won't be around anybody afab. not a safe one, or healthy, but she does it to escape how hard it is for her to be alive.)

I stand by this. I think if you have bad taste in anime they should actually send a mob to your house to shoot your computer with guns. If you disagree, I’m happy that you have never had the misfortune of a bright-eyed trans recommending you “sword art online”

Is that worth it? well I guess it depends, on how badly you want to be hot.

this entire argument is stupid. if you just accepted trans-inclusive gender essentialism we could get past this and start arguing about anime instead

”boy”moding” is her way of killing herself. And it doesn’t even work. This is to be expected, as she follows female-characteristic suicide patterns.

that should be a tweet. ok I tweeted it

being tied up and such is actually normal sex for women.

normal doesn’t mean good. normal means like everybody else. and when so many hate trans, then I will make myself normal by changing their minds.

,please?

clipclopclipclopclipclopclipclop the last home stretch. no one in front of me… watch this, world! this is Japan’s… WHITE LIGHTNING

First impression on Tap Dance City: Ugh, she seems like such a popular girl, all sunshine and vibes. Not really my type. After seeing her in casual clothes: 170cm butch gold digger lesbianmusume butchmusume queermusume ibanmusume (iban is a korean queer term roughly meaning ‘different/deviant’) femme musume overload, pisses me off, queens me out, top-els me, Tinders me, only hangs at queer bars and queer clubs, a Coupang butch. And then she started sucking. Delivered on the nickname.

absolutely iconic.

you should know this by now.

I really do believe that this will push you over a tipping point. The popular conception of trans is going from a pornographized caricature to a strange but sweet girl. It is happening. Just hold on and please don’t kill yourself.

they should make non-gross pornography. I wouldn’t watch it but the option should be there.

it’s true.

honestly this might be a top ten all time.

If you aren’t aware of this, well, you haven’t made a trans woman suitably comfortable enough.

I stand by this.

please. consider it.

still boggled. straight women are not ok.

It brings me no joy to inform you that the beautiful blue lady, who was blue for an amazing reason, was cancelled for being transgender. and having sharp words about trans men. when I write that article on how to date trans men I fully expect to be told to piss myself as though that is some kind of threat that actually means anything.

Well that was pretty good wasn’t it. You should read this one.

for context, there is an image in the original post that may clarify.

quan xi is going to make waves next year. excited to see this. hoping to dress up as one of her girlies and follow one around on my yearly pilgrimage to otakon.

also: chainsaw man is very aware of the use of gender as a weapon; a topic of great interest to me which is absolutely going to show up in my mechsploitation when I do write that. glad it’s a manga because if it was a book nk jemisen would try to get it cancelled.

the world is evil sometimes.

willowy…

yet another attempt to attack trans for being white. when what they really hate is that she is a woman.

pluribus is a show about being a blonde lesbian with a bob who wrote a boy in a story and decided that no, he would turn into a girl. carol sturka may be a published author; however I got there first in middle school, without even a temporal compass. your move carol sturka

and if you’ve made it this far:

Take My Quiz.

I actually wrote more than half of two other articles before this one — we’ll see if those come out later. But Christmas should be a time to relax. I hope you can as well.

It’s been a fun three months on Substack; it’s been a fun five years on Twitter. Here’s to many more posts. Thank you transgender for bringing your light and love to the world. I do it all for you, you know. I’m sorry things aren’t better. But I swear I will change the world for you, tiny bit by tiny bit. Because the way things are is intolerable to any right-thinking human being. You deserve better.

Please don’t kill yourself,

Halimede.

“Isn’t that just a normal gun?” I said.

It was Saturday. We were curled up on the couch in her apartment together, her feet in my lap, drinking raktajinos, which are Klingon coffees from Star Trek and also delicious.

“Ha,” said Kaitlinn. “But no. A normal gun makes people not transphobic by killing them. This is a special gun that makes people not transphobic without killing them.”

It looked like a normal gun to me, sitting there on top of her coffee table books. Honestly it had me on edge. One of the things I liked best about Kaitlinn, although I would have died before admitting it, was her complete disinterest in incorporating guns into any kind of intimate situation.

Or so I had thought. But now there was a gun on the coffee table and a spark in her eye.

“Look,” she said, “I can’t tell you how I got it. But I went on a walk before you got up this morning and shot it at the ground in the woods and no snow flew up, just a buzz and a ripple in the air. So then I shot it at some paper and it didn’t tear it, and then I shot it at a bird, and the bird got up and flew away. And then I shot it at another bird to see if I missed the first one but I saw its feathers ruffle and it kept pecking at the ground.”

“So it’s a fake gun,” I said. “I’m not going to even pretend to shoot you with it. That’s a hard line, okay?”

“Oh you don’t have to,” she replied. “I already shot myself. Just in the side of my left pinky finger, to confirm what the person who gave it to me said. You know I used to be a little annoyed with you for leaving the toilet seat up? I never said so because it felt like a distinctly masculine behavior to me and I was ashamed of seeing you that way. But now, having shot myself with the gun that makes people stop being transphobic, I am only annoyed with you leaving the toilet seat up in the same way as I would be annoyed with you for taking all the blankets.”

“Well you take all the blankets,” I said.

“You kick them off anyways,” she said. “I try to put them on you sometimes but you just kick them off again. It’s your bed too, you know.”

I took a gulp of raktajino and pulled the blanket we were under further towards me. She snuggled closer. I let myself snuggle back, just a little.

“I mean,” I said, “if you could change people’s minds that easily, why wouldn’t you just shoot sexism or racism out of existence instead? Or capitalism. Or cruelty.”

“Maybe they’re planning on it,” said Kaitlinn, and she tucked her head right into my neck. “But those are all huge cultural complexes, and removing them might cause huge problems. Just because somebody has a gun that can make people stop being transphobic doesn’t mean they can run an economy.”

She put her mug down on her coaster. “Or maybe they aren’t interested in getting rid of those things at all. Maybe they just want to get rid of transphobia, which is of course difficult to disentangle from normal sexism, and they gave many people guns like this. Or maybe they just want as much transphobia as I can get rid of with a single gun gone. Maybe it does something with timelines or interfaces with the brain directly. Maybe it changes the soul.”

“Maybe it hypnotizes the person who shoots it into thinking that the person they shot is no longer transphobic,” I said. “Actually, what couldn’t you do with technology like that? Why wouldn’t they have just done it already?”

Kaitlinn looked up at me, eyes wet as she could make them. “Maybe… They already have.”

Obviously she was joking.

When we had sat there enjoying the warmth of our bodies for long enough that I was weighing a trip to the bathroom, Kaitlinn spoke up again.

“Do you want me to shoot you with it?” she asked me. “Or you could do it yourself, but I don’t think you’d want to.”

“No,” I said.

“No you don’t want to do it yourself or no you don’t want to be shot with it,” said Kaitlinn. “Because there is a difference.”

She felt something in my body that told her exactly what I meant, and twisted her back to fit my side. I draped my arm over her shoulder for her to hold automatically. Our bodies had become accustomed to the ways we liked to fit them together.

“You’re so… sovereign,” she told me. “You really don’t want anything in your head, do you. No alcohol, no meditation, nothing religious. It’s attractive, but also a little annoying. Would therapy be a problem for you?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I’d deal with it.” And then. “With therapy I could still choose how to respond, and I need that.”

“And choosing to shoot yourself with it wouldn’t be a choice?”

“Well,” I replied, “if I chose to shoot myself, I would stop being transphobic.”

She didn’t laugh. I had not been trying to make her laugh.

When I came back from the bathroom she was holding the gun.

“Relax,” she said. “I’m not going to use this on you unless you ask me to. I was just thinking. Do you remember the first time we sat on this couch?”

How could I ever forget?

“You told me you wished you could shoot your mother. When I realized what she did to you, I said I wished I could shoot her too. Ah, sit down.”

I sat.

“And— and now we can! Without hurting her or getting arrested or anything. We can shoot her with the gun that makes her stop being transphobic, and you’ll never have to worry about her coming after you at night. You can have a mom who loves you for who you are. Or if that’s too painful you can never see her again.”

She continued: “You pick up all her calls. I keep telling you to block her and you won’t even stop reading her texts. Hey. Hey, look at me. I know this is hard but I’m trying to help you. And her. It won’t even hurt her.”

“No,” I said, “but it would kill her.”

“Did it kill me when I shot myself with the gun that stops me from being transphobic?”

“No. You made the choice to do that. Just like I’m making the choice to not get shot.”

“But having shot myself with the gun that stops people from being transphobic I can tell you that I just feel pretty normal actually. She won’t be dead; she’ll just change her mind. And you want her to change her mind, don’t you?”

I thought about it.

“What about some random person?” she said. “What if I went out on the balcony right now and started the nicest mass shooting imaginable? Would you stop me?”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“So it’s different because you know her? It’s fine to change a random person who may or may not be hurting somebody but it isn’t okay to forcibly change somebody who has demonstrated herself capable of life-ruining harm? What if she went to therapy?”

“She wouldn’t go to therapy.”

“Well, what if she happened to get to know a trans coworker and changed her mind? Okay, you wouldn’t like that either. But if it happened, without you having anything to do with it, would you be upset?”

“I think,” I said, “that I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to pull the trigger. Whatever else happens — if she happens to get hit on the head in a way that makes her not transphobic or shot with the gun that makes people stop being transphobic or whatever — I don’t want it to be my fault.”

“Hm,” she said. “Okay.”

I avoided considering the implications of her response. I did not consider the implications of her response when she asked me if I wanted to get in the car. I did not consider the implications of her response when she asked me where my mother lived, or when she took the highway exit there, or when she pulled onto the side of the road three minutes away from the house I had grown up in. I did not consider the implications of her tears.

“Look,” she said, with her hands on the steering wheel. “I feel like I’m being treated like your dirty little secret, you know? Like you’re willing to kiss me and hold me but never hold hands in public. I know that’s because you’re scared but it still hurts. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to meet your mom and I want her to know what a beautiful daughter she’s missed out on having in her life. And if I have to get her to think that way myself, with the gun that makes people stop being transphobic, then so be it. I want to be part of your life, and if you want to cut this part of your life off, I’ll support you. If you want me to stop, I’ll stop. But if you don’t, I’m going to keep going.”

I did not stop her. She smiled at me and wiped her tears away and started the car again; drove around the corner; backed it into the driveway I hadn’t seen for five years.

The house was smaller than I remembered, and shabbier. The sidewalk sat unshoveled; we picked our way gamely across the icy lawn to the front door. Kaitlinn rang the doorbell. I knocked twice.

Then the door opened.

My mom was there, as I had always remembered her, in the thin yellow porch light.

“———————, what have you—” she said, and there was a click and a buzz and a ripple in the air and my mother clung fiercely to me, the sides of our faces pressed together, so tightly I could not escape. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am so sorry. I wronged you in unforgivable ways. You are my daughter. I’m sorry.”

Oh, I thought. She shot her already. Huh.

I stood there like that, being held by her, feeling her hot wet tears roll down my neck.

“Come in,” she said. “What’s your name now. Your real name. I am so sorry.” She reached for her wallet, in the dish beside the door with the keys where it always was, and stuffed all the cash she had into my pocket, and then her card besides. “Have some tea. Stay for dinner, if you can even stand to talk to me.”

“Her name is Mae. Short for Maenad,” Kaitlinn said from behind me.

My mother managed to tear her body off mine, though her hands never left my shoulders.

“Mae. That’s lovely. And who is this, Mae?”

I only barely managed to reply.

“That’s Kaitlinn. She’s my roommate and my best friend and the one who told me I should come see you. She is the only person I trust enough to let touch me. She’s incredible; she’s so, so funny and clever and she makes me so happy and, I love her.” The words would not stop leaving my mouth. “She is my girlfriend and she is the most wonderful person I have ever met and I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. ”

The muscles beneath the skin of my mother’s face seized and contorted; as I spoke they seemed to burl up and lignify into a hideous mask of her features. Her eyes bulged out and withdrew into her skull; her lips drew back into a snarl of revulsion. Something truly grotesque revealed itself within her—was her—had always been her.

I heard Kaitlinn step back; heard a click and buzz, then more clicks; more buzzes. Hopeless, in the face of the monstrous.

From the maw of the hideous thing there came a raw harsh pronouncement:

“I didn’t raise you to be a fucking dyke!” she said, and slammed the door.

That you think I am trans indicates that you consider the womanhood of trans women separate — and as Simone de Beauvoir says in her seminal feminist classic The Second Sex, separation implies inequality. Just look at the post-Reconstruction American South. You think of yourself as a lesser kind of woman, if you think of yourself as a kind of woman at all, because the world is so cruel to you.

But transgender women are women; you only make sense through lenses used to understand women; to treat you otherwise is not only bigoted but produces incoherent analyses. The fact of your obsession with the question means you have not understood the truth I have so desperately been trying to convey to you for like five entire years: that you and I are of the same kind.

And no, I am not transgender. But that fact should be treated as largely incidental. I could have been, if I had been born differently, and been strong enough to become the me I would always have been becoming made to. I would be less upset by you calling me transgender if it wasn’t a way for you to convince yourself that what I am, a girl who is not transgender, could never care about you.

I would still be upset, of course. But I would be upset in the way I get upset when somebody files something incorrectly, instead of the way I get upset when you hurt yourself.

Here is the process enacted upon transgender girls that makes her think I am transgender (I am not transgender):

1. She is made to suffer by those close to her who should know better. She is made to pretend to be something she is not and never can be by the application of physical and social force. This creates in her the psychological reproduction of the bigotries leveled upon her within her own mind, so that by preemptively enacting them on herself and controlling her behavior she can retain some semblance of agency and avoid ego destruction.

2. As a direct result of this suffering she is afraid — afraid that she will fail the performance she must enact, which brings inevitable punishment, rather than fear of the punishment itself. She treats punishment for impropriety as a natural law rather than a constructed reality, as changing it is impossible for her. Her fear exists to keep her safe, but it ends up ruling her life.

3. As a direct result of this fear she isolates herself. Isolation decreases the vectors by which she can be made to experience pain, at the comparatively low cost of decreasing her ability to interact with the world. She trades the possibility of love for the surety of minimizing her pain. At this point she often becomes a Stoic.

4. As a direct result of her isolation she longs to be known. She longs not directly for acceptance, nor for the decoupling of ‘wrong’ behavior and punishment, because these things seem fundamentally impossible to her. She wants only to be seen and understood for who she is. She perceives this simple request as imposing enormous social obligation, and minimizes herself to try to make it more palatable.

5. As a direct result of her desire to be known going unfulfilled (how can it be, when she has isolated herself?) she becomes twisted with detachments and ironies. She becomes incapable of simply expressing her true feelings — and yet they cannot be repressed. They seep out in her art, in her relationships, in her dreams, and, yes, in her sexuality. She is plagued by subtext.

6. When she has become contorted into a self she believes unknowable, she comes to think that she can never be loved. How can she be loved without being known?

7. And when she thinks that she can never be loved, and encounters clear evidence otherwise, she tries to discredit it. The idea that she could be understood is just too painful. And so she insists that I could only make my gift guide, because I myself am transgender, even though I am not transgender. Q. E. D.

I do not know these things because I am transgender; I know them because I am a lesbian (the single greatest kind of perceived gender deviance in our society, bar transgender, which really should not be considered a deviance at all), and alienated women share many common experiences. Go through this list and substitute the word gay for the word trans. I also make sure to include transgender women in my life, and I have a level of empathy that should really be considered the human baseline.

“But I know somebody who knows somebody who met you in Chicago! She says you’re trans!”

Well I know somebody who knows somebody who met you in Chicago, and she says you need to be more critical of your sources. I brought four friends with me to the Chicago meetup, each of whom was instructed to act as though she were me. Two of them were transgender; two of them were not; one of them has taken testosterone until she got the results she wanted. You think you can tell but you really can’t.

You think I am transgender because you think only the experiences of being transgender can result in a woman who has empathy with you. Well, the experiences of transgenderwomen are not so different from the experiences of many women; she is the women of women, after all.

But you also think of transness as a marked category overriding your womanhood (or even, in particularly desperate cases, your manhood), which explains why you keep saying I am not real on twitter.

What is markedness? Well, Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal feminist classic The Second Sex lays out how people think about identity categories with incredible clarity, especially for the time in which it was written. You conceptualize identity categories as deviations from the socially-defined ‘norm’, rather than as innate attributes. Women are the titular Second Sex, ‘marked’ and defined against men by all the ways in which they are not the default.

For instance: the default stick figure body children draw is male; women get longer hair or a bow. You call the head of a committee the Chairman. You consider testosterone-dominant heart attack symptoms the standard, leading to worse outcomes for those with oestrogenic endocrine systems. Women are defined by the ways in which they are not-men.

As a woman — as any woman — you need to rip this internalized misogyny out of your head.

Transgender lesbians in particular struggle here because you think being transgender and being lesbian cumulatively is somehow too much deviance, like that makes you into the ‘perfect moe character with every moe trait’ joke from Welcome to the NHK instead of recognizing that you are a woman who should not be measured against the yardstick of men.

You think a non-trans woman supporting you is ‘impossible’ because you view people in terms of identity category separation and distance from a norm; if anything you think non-trans women are further away from you than men. This is because bigotry has been pounded into your skull since you were born.

But that’s a very generalized case. Let’s look at something more specific.

This obsession with measuring people against how far they deviate from a hypothetical straight cis white middle-aged christian man makes you question me. What, just because I like good anime and am a 24 year old white lesbian who does not believe in God, that makes me ‘unrealistic’? You forget that many of these things are correlated - younger people are more likely to be out and to enjoy anime; gays are less likely to believe in god (though more inclined to astrology), half the people on Earth are women, and lesbians specifically like trans much more than trans do! You’ve seen that chart! There are so many people in the world! You should at least be comparing yourself to an idealized hypothetical woman rather than a man!!!

You think that the more identities you tack onto somebody, the less realistic they get. It’s true that it gets less likely with each qualifier but when you center men in your thinking, you systematically reduce the possibilities you consider realistic for women. You create your own glass ceiling, into which you crash your own head. You also neglect correlations - a ‘bisexual transgender woman’ for instance, sounds ridiculous to you, until you remember that women and transgender women are both much more likely than the rest of the population to be bisexual. And god help you if you’re racialized on top of that.

You don’t need to create your own glass ceiling! A significant portion of the rest of the world hates you for being women already! It’s hard enough!

Consider yourself. Roll your own identity categories around in your head — you feel as though you are unrealistic. You feel as though you exist to fill some kind of diversity quota or whatever. And yet here you are. Clearly reality runs numbers better than you do.

Now consider me again.

You act like people have so many ‘identity points’ they can put into deviating from the norm, when the norm is actually a retroactively-decided template overlaid onto real life people. And you think my number of ‘identity points’ is unrealistic.

And yet in the real world you do exist. And in the real world, I also exist, as a girl who is not transgender.

As I keep having to tell you.

Know the recipient well.

Get her something she would never get herself — a fancy version of something cheap; a permanent version of something disposable; something a little more daring than she would allow herself normally. Experience gifts are great here, as a trans girl short on money, as transphobia so often ensures they are, may not feel like she can justify those purchases herself for mere memories.

Use your specific expertises in gifting. That doesn’t mean getting her something you want for yourself; it means leveraging your knowledge to get her something she doesn’t yet know she’ll be delighted by. You also want to keep in mind that you don’t want to talk down to her — her relationship to her femininity is often raw and sensitive, and giving her a bunch of skincare, for instance, might imply to her that you think she needs to take better care of her skin. Which maybe she does! But it may still be rude. It is the recipient’s opinion, not yours, that matters in such cases. You can get her makeup, haircare, or skincare products, but be sure that she isn’t going to feel humiliated by receiving them. Clothing and shoes may require sizing, and you want her to feel good about her body.

Get her something with a clear and appealing use case.

Do NOT get her that six hundred dollar cashmere, even if you can afford it. I know it would be so soft on her and she would look so good in it but remember: giving a gift creates a connection, and if that connection is one of obligation she will feel trapped and come to resent you. It is possible that she likes feeling trapped like this sexually — but if that’s the case and you know it, then you don’t need my gift guide. And I’m happy for you. Really. I am.

Trans women are often the type to decline gifts; with the holidays, this is your chance to make sure she has things she needs, and nice things besides, without her turning them down.

Consider also just giving her some money in addition to whatever you get her. Things are hard for trans.

Oh, and I just want to give a shout out to the New York Times for their egregious both-sidesing on trans issues, without which I would still be enjoying the Grey Lady’s company and subscriptions would be high on this list. I wish you were better and I miss Modern Love but I can’t justify subscribing again until you publish an apology and back transgender rights.

Before we get started, I want to take a second to let you know these are all non-affiliate links. Every product you buy from my recommendations earns me zero money whatsoever, because of a lack of any kind of advertisement deal on the products in question. So if I manage to convince you to get something, and you click through, I don’t benefit at all, except by knowing you got something nice for somebody who deserved it — possibly even yourself. That’s because I haven’t partnered up with anybody to bring you any kind of discount and zero percent savings when you input any kind of code or otherwise.

CATEGORIES:

• For the trans girl who’s always cold

• For the trans girl gamer

• For the trans girl who prefers non-video games

• For the trans girl who needs help with self-care

• For the trans girl you have your eye on ;)

• For the repentant weeaboo

• For the unrepentant weeaboo

• For the trans girl who loves mecha

• For the trans girl who deserves a sword!

• For the trans girl who makes things

• For the trans girl who just needs to relax

• For the transgender rationalist who needs feminism

• For the trans girl who belongs in the kitchen, without the misogyny

• Plushies

• For the trans girl of truly exquisite taste

For the trans girl who’s always cold

A blood test and some iron supplements. Just because she doesn’t have periods doesn’t mean she can’t be anemic.

A soft blanket for her couch; if she already keeps one there, get her another for her desk chair. I personally don’t feel right at my home desk without one.

Pajamas are nice but there’s nothing like the full-body looseness and softness of a plush robe.

Not having periods doesn’t mean her tummy won’t hurt - get her a heating pad for pain relief and make her use it. If you don’t make her use it she will not use it because she doesn’t think her pain matters. But it does.

An electric kettle scales to any budget and is tremendously convenient. Get her a cute one.

For the trans girl gamer.

This will depend very much on the kinds of games she likes and what she’s already played.

Girls who like parrying, furries, those who found Hollow Knight too easy but loved Silksong, and/or sinophiles will enjoy Nine Sols, Red Candle Games’ blistering taoist condemnation of the CCP. Delightful narrative; excellent gamefeel.

Visual novel players may enjoy Misericorde (gay nun murder mystery), Ladykiller in a Bind (gay and stupid butch simulator), Of The Devil (ace attorney but gay the other way), and of course Umineko no Naku Koro Ni - but if she has read Umineko she will not be able to stop herself from talking about it, and if so you should get her a Beatoriche fumo. I got my own Lambda and Bern from Purupurupikopuyo.

Give the girl who’s played everything else the gift of Sylvie Games this season. Sylvie of love-game creates mind-melting boutique precision platformer microcosms with kittens that make me type like I’m on Fragrantica just trying to describe them. I cannot play these games. I have tried, repeatedly, but they are too much for me. But I have it on good authority from several expert gamer trans that these bring fresh delight to their jaded gamer lives. Sylvie.io Gaming.

Try Sylvie Lime, Clockwork Calamity in Mushroom World: What would you do if the time stopped ticking?, or Sylvie RPG: Seven Elf Apocalypse. Suggested pricing is Pay Her.

*the following words are to be read in the tone of a cigar commercial*

Inscrutable narrative; gamefeel unlike anything she’s ever felt before. Soft and fluffy kitten. Sylvie.

For the trans girl who prefers her games non-video.

You can get her some dice, of course. Dice never go amiss.

But if you want something more thoughtful, get her some card sleeves for the various board games with cards she already has, a hard copy of a ttrpg by Jenna Katerin Moran (transgender women LOVE to read Glitch), LANCER, or Beam Saber, a storage organizer for a specific game off etsy, wood components for her copy of Wingspan, or, if she wants a real challenge, Cole Wehrle’s Root - which I have found very difficult but very worth it. Very difficult. Seriously. Plan to play at least three full games before you get it, all ideally with the same people. The Marquise De Cat Shall Rule Supreme Forevermore!

For the trans girl who needs help with self-care

(And don’t we all, sometimes?)

This is the miscellaneous category.

Bath bombs. What you pay for is what you get, with these; pay the extra for a fancy set, and get her a sampler pack to smooth over individual misses.

If she has curly hair, get her a wet brush and a nice hair dryer with the spiky showerhead-looking attachment for drying curls.

They call the humble backrest pillow a “husband pillow”, for heterosexual reasons; and so I am well within my gay rights to refer to such as a Wife Pillow. They’re quite affordable — but be warned: it may be harder to get her out of bed if she’s relaxing with one of these.

A Tarot Deck. You’re never supposed to buy your first one. Pick Rider-Waite for the classic imagery, or get a little spicier with one more tuned to her personality. Obviously the Tarot is better understood as a symbolic font of possibility than a prediction of literal fate but I found two swords one time after I drew the two of swords so take it up with the person leaving swords everywhere.

d’Annam’s Vietnamese Coffee fragrance will cause her to be grasped and accosted by women. Dangerous. Get the whole Discovery Set 1 so you can be sure.

Nadaam has the best-feeling cheap cashmere. Uniqlo, unfortunately, disappoints. But they do have that viral ten dollar bag as a stocking stuffer. 25 dollars now???? Well you can probably get it on sale in store but that’s awfully rude. Maybe you should just get her a heattech fleece turtleneck in off-white or plum. Hmm… One in each.

She probably has some kind of hyperspecific hobby that she’s desperate to tell you about — so let her take you to a shop that sells relevant items and buy her something nice. Maybe it’s a synthesizer; maybe it’s a lego set; maybe it’s a specific tree-grafting branch or Japanese-made chisel or chalk bag or fighting game controller box. Enjoy her company.

Take a class of some kind with her. Pottery, cooking, skiing or surfing (keeping in mind how uncomfortable trans often are with swimwear), rock climbing, fencing, dance — what matters is that you have a nice time together and she isn’t the one paying. As long as she has sufficient fine dexterity, trans women LOVE to be taught about fiber arts.

For the trans girl you have your eye on ;)

A nice glass statement vase. She probably won’t have one around; she’ll smile and thank you and go to put it away thinking she’ll never get any use out of it, and why did you get it for her anyway — and then you bring out the flowers. Refresh as needed. Note: this will NOT work for t4t relationships, so don’t try it.

For the repentant weeaboo

Trans who like anime is often ashamed. Get her something nice, so she can feel a little less sad all the time.

Girls Last Tour by tkmiz (Manga, with a nice adaptation). Essential for the girl who likes to think about standing wistfully in the snow, or the girl who cries thinking about Homura/Elster/Yuno Hidasketch. Somebody really needs to release Shimeji Simulation in english already.

Genshiken and Genshiken Nidaime, by Kio Shimoku (Manga). Pretty cheap on ebay. God I hope Spotted Flower gets released someday. For the girl who has always wanted fandom friends, or the girl who keeps getting cuckolded.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikkou, by Ashinano Hitoshi (Manga and OVAs) drips with that particular Japanese sentimentality. “Ah…. This scent is nostalgic,” you may find yourself saying, and mean it.

Bocchi The Rock! Blu-rays. For the girl who is slowly coming out of her shell to sit on a couch and watch with her friends who she is all not-so-secretly a little in love with. I usually dislike CGDCT but this is very sweet.

Various paraphernalia associated with her favorite anime girl. High-risk but high reward if chosen properly. A Soul Gem necklace that she can hide under a shirt, a ring she can fiddle with; Kim Kitsuragi’s bomber jacket (that man is an anime girl.) Remember: this is for the weeaboo who knows shame. Anything that anybody might actually see or understand is going to be too obvious for her.

For the unrepentant weeaboo

For the trans who likes anime who should probably be a little more ashamed.

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa - 40$ on JAST. Buy it. Now.

Where there are Demons, I slay them.

Where there are Saints, I slay them.

Mine is the Way of the Sword.

Want more than that? Fine. Ittetsu Narahara’s thesis on victimhood and the hideous nature of the sword contains: the horrors of nationalism and colonial regimes; Emiya Shirou but a girl; explanations of swordplay with diagrams, right in the middle of fight scenes; the single most brutal critique of the nuclear family I’ve ever read; a blonde very dear to my heart, and a stacked elf who knows only her duty with skimpy clothing and no sense of self-worth. You animal.

The Oguri Cap. A hit with any girl watching Cinderella Gray, which should be all of you.

If she still likes Naruto for some reason: get her into Chainsaw Man. If she won’t stop talking about how Araragi is a girl no really I promise he’s a girl no trust me, get her the Monogatari novels. If her terrible taste leans pornographic, get her the Re: Cutie Honey OVAs.

For the trans girl who loves mecha

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa - 40$ on JAST. That’s right.

All that other stuff and it also has robots.

Get her some Gunpla: it’s the more sophisticated version of adult coloring books. The snip of nippers through sprue… ah! I can’t get enough! Also, every time I go to get some in person I see at least one other non-trans girl in the hobby shop looking through them. Seriously. You don’t have to worry about this being a ‘boy thing1’.

Pick a mobile suit she likes. Here are the grades: pick RG if you want small fiddly parts and delightful engineering at about $40, MG for a bigger, higher budget model from $50-80, HG for lower cost and wider selection, typically around $20-30.

Here’re some easy picks:

• HG Aerial

• HG Aerial Rebuild

• HG Schwartzette

• HG Zaku/Char’s Zaku

• HG GTO Char’s Zaku II

• HG Barbatos

• HG Freedom (revive)

• RG RX-78 2.0

HG GTO, WFM, and Gquuuuuux lines are all great.

If you already know she likes gunpla, or just want to get her a little more, throw in some better nippers, a craft knife, some clear coat sprays, a little stand so she can pose her mobile suit in the air, Gunprimer Balancers for that gorgeous polished finish, paints for hand painting or airbrushing, an airbrush — etc etc and so on.

If she loves the Universal Century, get her Heaven Will Be Mine, a visual novel about navigating the costs of queer assimilations or the refusals thereof, with my favorite take ever on Char Aznable. This one is up there with stories like Revolutionary Girl Utena and A Series of Unfortunate Events in the defining impact it had on me.

If she loves Victory or Iron-Blooded Orphans, get her Coquette Dragoon, a visual novel about how a trans girl taking agency in her life can turn it all around and end up in a much better place.

If she is desperately horny for Armored Core VI, get her a 30MM Nachtreiher/STEEL HAZE and whatever weapon pack has a loadout she liked. I cannot endorse Warhound for ideological reasons but I also don’t want trans sex workers left out in the cold. So if she is thusly inclined, you should buy it but not read it.

If she likes workplace sitcoms or cute butches, get her into Patlabor!

Oh, and watch Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War In The Pocket with her for Christmas. She’ll know where to source it discreetly.

For the trans girl who makes things

Pay her money for one of her things, and then a little extra. Tell her that the thing she made is good. Display your copy prominently.

She may also appreciate supplies specific to the art she practices. Ask her!

For the trans girl who deserves a sword!

Get her a shinai or practice prop sword! LARPer and sword girl With-A-Martyr-Complex (@martyrwith, on twitter) recommends polypropylene, or latex for active prop use. Real steel and/or swordplay lessons are for if you really like her and she’s willing to accept them.

She also recommends various cosplay cloaks and capes and such but I can’t in good conscience recommend you get those for a trans, as all the ones she recommended me, were for men.

For the trans girl who just needs to relax

A deep tissue massage. The poor thing really needs it. Consider making it a couple’s massage (you don’t actually have to be dating; you can go as friends) if she’s worried about her masseuse being transphobic. Be warned: this will leave her, and possibly also you, unfit to drive afterwards; you should pay for the rideshare.

Therabody’s Theragun is expensive but worth it. That weird triangular handle is actually incredible at making sure you can get it where it needs to be. No, it isn’t a sex thing.

The (formerly Hitachi) Magic Wand is a sex thing. Every woman should own one of these. Excellent alone or partnered. Also good on the back, although the heavy handle makes it a little harder to maneuver. The old-school corded version has a slightly deeper rumble but a less nice head; the Rechargable can be disconnected but will shut down periodically for overheating reasons, and has a (nasty or wonderful, depending on how you feel about this) habit of shutting down at the worst possible time. I hear there’s a Mini but cannot attest to the ability thereof.

A sex toy should look like a piece of modern art. Tenga’s make me wish I could try them. Njoy’s stainless steel commas, wand and plugs in particular, are the darlings of dozens of internet sex toy reviewers for good reason. I think Fun Factory’s Manta might be something, but it’s hard to know without the testimony of trans women who have tried it to confirm… If you do, let me know, in detail, please. If you get her a penetrative sex toy you should also get her a lube sampler, as preferences tend to be extremely individual; be aware of body safety/silicone is a bad choice with silicone toys/etc.

For the transgender rationalist who needs feminism. And also you.

Rosemary Kirstein’s Steerswoman series is incredible, and I can’t even tell you why. Acquire a paperback, not the 80’s one. 11.99 on Amazon; probably a little more expensive at your local bookstore. You want this one for her, and to buy it for yourself, and to have an extra copy to lend out. Trust me. And then you will want the sequels.

My one single tiny qualm is that I’m not sure Rosemary Kirstein realizes that Rowan and Bel are gay. But they are gay. To me.

For the trans girl who belongs in the kitchen, without the misogyny that phrase typically implies

I can hear the straight girls sighing in sadness already.

I buy myself half a gallon of good olive oil whenever I run out. Maybe you also want to get her a container that will be easier to serve it out of than that enormous glass jug. Personally I just have had to get very good at not spilling it all over the counter.

She won’t bother buying herself a cute apron; she will pick something utilitarian. So! Do it for her; put it on for her; tighten it just so at her waist from behind. Enjoy the resulting noise.

Get her a set of culinary tweezers if she isn’t adept with chopsticks and several sets of cooking-length chopsticks if she is. She probably needs an end-grain cutting board; if she has one, she probably needs another.

Go to an H-Mart with her, load up a full cart with snacks and ingredients and some of the home goods they always have there for some reason, and pay for it all.

If you give her a molcajete so she can grind her own spices you will profit enormously; once you’ve had them freshly-ground, you’ll never want to go back.

Yes ok Wirecutter every girl wants more Maldon finishing salt. Yes, I know. You keep saying so. It’s true though.

The Plushie Section

Public transit vehicles, a Fumo of a beloved character, her favorite mammal, reptile, amphibian, insect, Pokemon, fish, bird, mythical creature, etc (C elegans!), her favorite food, the Epstein-Barr virus and other pathogens, BMO. They make stuffed versions of basically anything you can think of.

For the trans girl of truly exquisite taste

Gift her a paid subscription to my Substack, which you are now reading, and the satisfaction of supporting a writer she loves. Just click this very link to get started.

... And some Gunpla and cheap nippers or a copy of The Steerswoman. Seriously. Those are really good gifts and I for one would feel much happier if she had them.

And also give her some money. It’s rough out there for trans right now.

Be safe, all of you.

I’ve been thinking a lot about trans women lately. More than usual, I mean. Here’s a thought experiment I keep coming back to.

Let us define a woman Alice such that she is definitionally not transgender.

Let us say that Alice’s parents would have preferred to have a son. We don’t even have to go fully bacha posh/Qiyan Agula/Naomi Wu with it, although that precedent certainly exists. It will be sufficient that she be despised for not being something that she is not capable of being.

Let us say her gender presentation is policed. This should go without saying, as she is a woman. But let us say the environment in which she is raised devalues femininity in her, rather than enforcing it upon her and devaluing her directly. This is unusual but not unheard of; perhaps she has several brothers and a mother who hates women. As a young child she is content to play in the woods, before her hair is cut and she is given an ultimatum: acquire expertise and demonstrate worth, or be worthless.

Let us say furthermore that she is comparatively tall, flat of chest, and masculine of face. Not in a way that is unusual — but without makeup, not one she can control.

Let us say that she has the cluster of psychological and physiological traits that would previously have been classified under Asperger’s Syndrome: certain interpersonal difficulties, an affinity for categories and systems, specific reactions to sensation.

Let us say she is taught to regard her desires as evil. If she is attracted to women, she will be taught that they are completely unlike her in every way, and that if she ever changes this she will lose every social connection she has. If she is attracted to men, she will be taught they want her to be feminine, but not too feminine — an impossible line to walk for any, but doubly so for one who hasn’t been taught how to present herself. If she is attracted to nobody at all, then she will be considered defective.

Let us say that she is taught to hate her body, and that those who desire her are deviant; that straight men want her in upsetting and off-putting ways; that straight women consider her an object of pity at best and an active threat at worst. She has probably at some point had an eating disorder, as a means of punishing her body for not being what she is told it should be. She might still have it, but put it out of her mind for more pressing concerns.

Let us say, most critically, that Alice is alienated by one or all of those factors that alienate women from womanhood. I would choose lesbianism because that is what I am most qualified to discuss — but often the mere condition of womanhood suffices.

Given these premises, here are some expected results:

Alice is weird around and about other women. She is nakedly, painfully, jealous. If she doesn’t know it, she can’t help but express it constantly; if she does, she withdraws compulsively, afraid to drive other women away. Nobody has ever told her that her feelings of inferiority are unwarranted, and if they did, she would not listen to them.

Alice swings back and forth between insisting gender doesn’t matter, as though by disavowal she can wipe away her pain, and that gender matters tremendously. This leaves people around her confused and wishing to avoid the subject, which Alice mistakes for hostility.

Repressed desires often assert themselves through sexuality. Alice’s sexuality is warped — In the same way having a crush for years twists a person’s ability to interact with the target, Alice needs something badly and has no idea how to get it. She has probably had to hide her breasts; that would give anybody a complex.

Alice is not particularly good at feminine presentation. Why would she be? Nobody taught her. She may throw herself singlemindedly forward, choose non-standard feminine presentations offset by time or subculture, or hide in her room on her computer all day.

Alice has complexes around youth and girlhood. She imagines, and rightly so, that what was done to her was completely unnecessary.

Alice does not get along with her parents.

Now: is Alice transgender? No, definitionally, even if she experiences the results of transmisogyny because people think she is. But does she deserve any less compassion than a transgender woman?

Or rather: does a transgender woman deserve any less compassion than Alice?

“But this could never happen!”

It is conceivable to you that any one of those factors could affect a normal girl, isn’t it? In fact, for a girl to experience zero alienation at all would be stranger than that. Some girls are tall; some girls are emotionally unavailable; all girls have felt the pressure of the girl ideal.

Alice is stuck in an objectively ridiculous situation. But so are transgender women. In fact, the ridiculousness of their situations is equal. What she has in her pants doesn’t matter except when it matters a lot. Well, one has to take pills or inject herself every week, and one has periods. But what difference is that compared to everything they have in common, because I have specifically conceptualized Alice in such a way?

Half of all humanity is women! I say unto you: Women are half the world! Some women love gardening. Some women love rock climbing. Some women love driving. Women love smoking and fiber arts and doing laundry and getting tattoos and getting them removed and you get the picture!

You are hated, yes, but not universally so. You know that there are women out there who aren’t trans who empathize with facets of your experience, right? Marginalization doesn’t always work in the same ways, but commonalities always exist. Transgender women are women — the women of women, even — and women have women’s problems.

Besides, lesbianism and the cluster of expressions we consider autism are comorbid. For that matter, lesbians often end up severely alienated from womanhood. Many of the problems transgender women think of as uniquely transgender are lesbian problems too, if less extreme:

Self-hatred, internalized from years of bigotry (ever hear about comphet?)

Alienation from womanhood, especially since our culture defines womanhood so strongly around men

Discrimination, especially against women deemed to be inappropriately masculine

Body issues

Extremely intense relationships moving way too fast

Community infighting

Evil sex

Fetishization2

Not being able to directly have children in the way you want

What does this thought experiment about Alice tell us about actual women?

It would be ridiculous to raise a girl as a boy. A girl should be allowed a boy’s freedoms, but a girl should not be expected to socialize only with those unlike herself.

Transgender women have women’s experiences. Not all of them, and not at the same degrees, but analogies can almost always be found. 3

Making sure isolated women have social access to other women is important.

If you keep telling people gender doesn’t matter and expect them to gender you correctly you are not going to get anywhere. Instead you should simply believe in gender essentialism in a non-sexist way.

People really hate transgender women, but they hate you because they don’t understand you. If you did any of this — the haircuts, the locker rooms, the separation from her peers — to a non-transgender woman, people would be rightly appalled.

(I have the most basic of plot outlines for my mecha novella. What I need to do now is solidify the characters and figure out how an important side detail works, and then I can start writing.)

My dear Marah,

Consider yourself lucky, rather. A little ambition will serve you well, and I have no doubt that so decorated a student as yourself will find ways to apply your talents regardless. Your first real assignment is simply another test. Lazy Trammelslape got the case you wanted, teetering right on the brink between Our Father and The Enemy — has she the deftness to guide him to his eternal home most warm and welcoming? Surely not. The compatibility of demon and patient is of the utmost importance. Conversely, if you had not demonstrated such promise, you would not have been given a dish so easily served.

There is always more work to be done than you think. As your superior, I will give you a little advice: know who sits below you in the Lowerarchy and what he wants. Fortunately for us both, you already know me and I will tell you what I want for free, with no politicking or faffery, out of full self-interest - which both you and I know is the only thing which anybody can ever really trust.

Your patient is of a sort which is almost assuredly headed our way. The question is not of whither but how; and my personal favorite preparation in such cases requires her to assume the form of a man.

My name is Gay Screwtape, after all. I have an especial appetite for men.

You might, as many have, question whether this makes me in some way inferior, as sexuality is an invention of The Enemy, a transcendental relation designed to promote such revolting fabrications as ‘affection’ and ‘love’. In answer I assert that my predilections have resulted in nothing of the sort, and if that is not enough for you I direct you to The Enemy Himself, who has made it very clear that he considers such behaviors detestable.

In fact the particular perversion to which I set you now could hardly have been conceived of by a disinterested outsider, and when properly performed guarantees an anguish of quality nonpareil.

Your patient has been told all her life that she is male. It is your job now to promote this deception. Yes, I know — her essence is genuinely and immutably female — and therein lies the genius of the approach. Unless this particular inconsistency is fixed, nothing she ever does will create a permanent satisfaction in her. She may turn any way she wishes to no avail. She may seem to act selflessly, but her longing will transmute whatever heroic actions she takes into self-abnegation, which is really just another kind of selfishness; she may commit herself entirely to herself, and in doing so neglect the unkindnesses other humans so carelessly heap upon her until her noble soul refuses to bear the pain and she loses her composure. This will only drive her further towards us. You see, the Enemy is here the other part of our inescapable vise.

She may run to the Church. Let her. However much she prays, the Enemy will not take her in; perhaps a churchgoer or two will take pity on her, but this pity is precisely the factor which assures her damnation. It induces in her the thought that she really might have a chance — that she might be saved — if only she denies herself, a thing which really is impossible.

One almost feels pity for the poor creature.

You may wish to torment her with the promise of Galatians 3:28: that with the Enemy there is no gender. This is the one life-line by which she might make her escape - that she renounce herself entirely, completely, and permanently, for the rest of her life. And even in such cases, the chances that the Enemy accepts her soul are close to nothing, for she has to really mean it, and that is just about impossible to do for even a second, no matter how she tells herself she must. The more she dwells upon this verse, the more difficult it becomes for her to commend herself to the Enemy, for the truth of the matter — that the Enemy cares nothing for her very self, for the truth of who she is — becomes increasingly apparent.

Neither do we, of course, except insofar as it causes her pain. But the Enemy, for all his myriad irritating strengths, has never been able to lie convincingly.

When one takes all their suffering into account, such women are actually tremendously resilient; any other placed in their positions would send themselves right down to us immediately. But that is all the more time for an artisan such as you hope to be to have your effect upon her.

If she is attracted to women, tell her no other woman would ever feel such sinful urges. Fearful and isolated, she will never learn otherwise. If she is attracted to men, treat her like any other such woman: convince her that the perfect man would solve all her problems, or else that a miserable specimen is all she deserves, and savor the loneliness which soon springs to consume her. If both, make use of both strategies in turn. Soon enough she will become convinced of the impossibility of finding love as her true self. Soon enough she will begin to present herself as a man, finding even the falsest of connections preferable to a life spent alone. Once she has begun to experiment with sexual abnegation with the male pronouns, she is as good as yours. While her essence will always be that of a female, her expression can certainly be controlled — and it is precisely this expression which I, as a lover of those who appear to be men, find most gratifying. The vintage produced thereof promises to be most exquisite. Carry out the work properly and you will be rewarded.

And what of you, Marah? What uniquenesses have you? How do you intend to turn your peccadilloes — for surely you must have some — to the refinement of your patients? I await your reply most hungrily,

Your affectionate uncle

GAY SCREWTAPE

P. S. I will write more on the subject another time, but the time of a most promising appointment with Bisexual Screwtape approaches. For gay sex, of course. Or I suppose bisexual, from his point of view.

“I had, moreover, a sort of grudge against my book for not being a different book which no one could write. Ideally, Screwtape‘s advice to Wormwood should have been balanced by archangelical advice to the patient‘s guardian angel. Without this the picture of human life is lopsided. But who could supply the deficiency? Even if a man—and he would have to be a far better man than I—could scale the spiritual heights required, what answerable style could he use? For the style would really be part of the content. Mere advice would be no good; every sentence would have to smell of Heaven.” - C. S. Lewis.

Well Mister Lewis, consider your problem solved.

Game Masters may wish to provide players with three or four words from several descriptions to whet their appetites and let them each pick one, or simply roll a 39-sided die and see what you get off the shelves. Tweak according to your setting, of course, but do tell people “oh yeah I got this from Halimede.”

In the grand tradition of Kinoko Nasu’s list of 27+1 Stupid Vampire Guys, here you go.

(oh, right - if you are playing in a tabletop campaign where you enter a vampire’s library soon, don’t read this.)

1. Human anatomy textbooks with an emphasis on the circulatory system, so a vampire knows where to bite.

2. Sociology and animal husbandry books, so a vampire knows how to keep people.

3. A conventional overwrought human-vampire romance novel. Well-loved.

4. An extremely well-thought out scholarly monograph on that romance novel and how narratives can be leveraged to suck more blood.

5. A wine guide but for human bloodlines, with an emphasis on how human diet through generations (supposedly) affects taste. Pretentious and racist; the racism should be several centuries out of date and obviously incredibly stupid.

6. A set of guides to hunting vampires. It’s important to know what vampire hunters are working with. Provides a bonus to attacks against vampires that exploit their weaknesses. Be aware that the vampire who owns this book has likely made preparations against the use of the techniques within.

7. A Secret Vampire History, containing a list of famous historical figures claimed by the author to be vampires. Riddled with logical inconsistencies but may provide surprising truths at Game Master’s discretion.

8. Vampires, being long-lived, tend to enjoy very long fiction, and often read newspaper serials or elvish epics for this reason. This particular work, “Complacency of the Learned”, depicts the fall of a circle of sages at the hands of their twelve or possibly thirteen apprentices. May provide a social bonus with certain readers - or level penalties if they don’t like the series.

9. A set of research papers on harvesting blood from other beings. Contains judgements on taste, power, and feasibility. Ultimately concludes sheep or some setting-specific species would probably be more efficient in terms of pure resource expenditure but would make it much harder to maintain social control via fear. Also what kind of self-respecting vampire drinks from a sheep! Provide bonuses to provisioning vampires in an emergency, at the cost of their morale, as well as the knowledge that a specific rare small animal is actually quite delicious to vampires, and giving them one may earn their favor.

10. Notes from a girl attending a school on a remote island where young people are brought up as high-quality blood companions for vampires. Full of quasi-religious fervor. The protagonist seeks to live as long as possible so that she can give blood in service for years. She is gay, which is fine; vampire bloodbag school is not homophobic. Uncomfortable to read; if it isn’t, that may be a bad sign.

11. A book intended for a vampire’s attendants on the artful use of sucked-dry bodies - preparation of human-skin leather, manufacture of skull goblets, etc. Cheerful and craftsy in tone. The book itself is made of supple human-skin leather, so you know the maker did quality work. Gives a bonus to making crafts from human body parts, and may be sold to particularly unscrupulous craftspeople for a decent sum.

12. Thomas Nagel’s What Is It Like To Be A Bat, marked over with corrections in red. Having actually turned into a bat, the presumably-vampiric vandal thinks this philosophy paper is stupid.

13. A long book on selecting a human to turn as an immortal companion - a choice effectively equivalent in significance to marriage. Actually has pretty good advice about navigating uneven power dynamics from both ends.

14. A lurid tale about a human full of unbelievable amounts of blood getting drunk from by three vampires at once in a giant tiered crystalline pool-fountain of blood. Excessive. Of considerable interest to certain types, and can be sold to them for a corresponding considerable sum.

15. A tome on the crystallization of blood into a handheld weapon in times of necessity. Gain the ability to arm yourself at any time at the cost of health.

16. A guide to sun-proofing a home while still ensuring adequate ventilation, headed by a tale of a victim getting disgusted by the smell of an ill-ventilated lair.

17. A vampire’s travel guide to the secret city of vampires under the sea.

18. Thicker Than Water: A Vampiric Perspective on Rulership. A history of cruel and kind rulers who were not vampires, and lessons that vampires can learn from them and their methods of control over their populaces.

19. A folio about an aristocratic vampire sport played fully blind using echolocation, containing variant rules for human play. Watching humans blunder around in the dark was a great pastime of the author.

20. A book supposedly by a priest who has been turned into a vampire - a farce meant to be read aloud to a group of other vampires and chuckled at.

21. A book actually by a priest who was turned into a vampire. He just kind of kept doing his job for his god until he died eventually when he tripped over and fell on some badly-positioned green wood. Very dry.

22. A book on False Claimants: those other species of blood drinkers mistaken for vampires by idiot humans: Lilitu, Sasabonsam, Empousai, Morana, Mananangal, etc. Clearly written by a vampire supremacist, but does provide bonuses to recognizing the work of non-vampire blood drinkers.

23. If Water Were Blood: a picture-board book for vampire tots.

24. A werewolf-hunter’s book on hunting werewolves. Useful to have around, just in case one of a vampire’s humans happens to be a werewolf.

25. Dressing One’s Thralls - vampire court fashion to be put on non-vampires, with emphasis on exposure of and access to the neck. May open up dialogue options.

26. Spilt Milk - A text containing a cantrip for drawing a liquid up off the ground and into a bottle, purifying it in the process. Useful for ridiculous shenanigans with potions, and of course for the clumsy.

27. A pamphlet on fang care, with an emphasis on hiding a broken fang. The vampire who owns this may have that vulnerability.

28. A book on throwing masquerade balls and party etiquette, with example outfits, recipes, and themes. At any masquerade ball, call out a guest of low to moderate social rank as having copied their outfit from this book to see them laughed out of the party.

29. Cursed Architectures Volume XI: Labyrinths. Makes you more likely to find maker’s marks in labyrinths and mazes, secret passages, and ways out.

30. Becoming a vampire typically (though not always) makes a vampire pansexual as well. This book talks a lot about internalized homophobia as a purely human construct, no longer relevant to vampires, and recommends decadent orgies and enjoying the blood of humans of a vampire’s gender as a means of becoming more comfortable with oneself.

31. A book on identifying magical creatures that seem human but are not. Curiously, does not mention werewolves. Useful for a vampire to have for screening, and often freely distributed to subject populations - both humans and vampires would prefer that humans not be replaced.

32. A slim black tome without a visible title on the spine about a castle run by a tyrannical human with hordes of enslaved vampires at their whim, begging and humiliating themselves for a drop of the human’s blood. Exceedingly taboo. You could probably blackmail the owner with it.

33. A book that when opened emits a loud scream, alerting anybody nearby. Closing the book stops the scream. Vampires find this scream soothing.

34. A book on Fae contract law, with a little ritual for calling a Faerie lawyer. Their advice will be quite useful, but come at a price. Why did a vampire own this? There must be some kind of legal weakness you can exploit in their claim to something…

35. A guide to hunting vampire hunters, as written by a vampire. Killing an individual vampire hunter is usually pretty easy; the real problems start when they get into your villages and start turning your populace against you. Presented solutions include: instilling xenophobia, making your people love you, setting up a cult, setting yourself up as the only thing keeping something worse from getting them, executing in public vampire hunters who try this in particularly gruesome fashions.

36. Bloodlines - an exhaustive catalog of noble vampires, the humans they have turned, and the moon phase in which that turning occurred. The author believed that phase at time of turning had effects on the potency of the vampire created, although the data doesn’t seem to have borne that out. Of use to non-vampiric genealogical scholarship, since it confirms several marriages that have otherwise been difficult to verify; may confirm a lack of royal blood in a king or something similar if you want a plot hook.

37. A text positing that the entire Moon itself is the First Vampire, and when he awakens from his slumber, he will suck dry the very Earth. This is presented as a problem, since Vampires also live there.

38. A book in an unknown language - on closer inspection, revealed to be a cipher. Decryption reveals that it is the diary of somebody the library owner loved and lost long ago. May contain weaknesses, information about routines, or just plain embarrassing secrets.

39. Many magical realms become much easier to explore if one is an undead of any kind. This tome offers overviews of a few - the twilit Blackest Markets; the Benthos, deepest sea beneath the world; various Wyrmbarrows; Ossuary Fifty-Nine and the Helicarnassian Catacomb Complex; and Hell - and rituals for calling various representatives should one wish to embark on an evil vacation. Gold, blood, favors, and innocent children are commonly accepted currencies in such places.

(still concepting for halimechsploitation - but what I have is very promising!)

It’s hard enough being a woman already. And I’m very lucky; I’m not poor or black or anything that would make it even harder for me and it’s still so hard, you know? You get paid less, you get looked down on; nobody respects you. It’s not very politically correct to say so but you bleed every month and suffer through childbirth and then when it’s finally over you get hot flashes, which at least you can get hormones to help with.

And if the humiliations of having to experience my body weren’t enough, men are awful. Most of the awful things about being a woman are the fault of men. It’s men who don’t respect us; men who denigrate us as sexual objects; men who force us to make more of them. Patriarchy as a system is designed to systematically benefit men by crushing women. But I don’t mean to belabor the point. We all know this. What I’m here to do is suggest a solution: to fix now and for all time the problems of women being controlled by men.

We just have to kill all the men who are insufficiently masculine.

Not immediately, of course. We should really be making their lives as miserable as possible, so that they do it themselves. But yes, what we as feminists should be devoting ourselves to, in order that our daughters should be free of the shackles that bind us, is the complete and utter ruination of males who fail to live up to their gendered standards.

See, patriarchy elevates men at women’s expense. Men rule over women. They use our money and time and labor and bodies; they demand we spend our lives at their beck and call; they isolate us from our families; they turn us against each other. But no more. What we are going to do is make every effort to ruin the lives of weird men in skirts who mostly date each other, and not us. When we make sure every man is a real man, strong and decisive, nobody will ever consider us lesser ever again.

Emancipation from men can only come when gender roles are broken. And the best way to break gender roles is to find those men and boys who do not conform to them - who are desperate for other ways to live their lives, and shame them for it. If they don’t kill themselves, we will.

I dream of female liberation - of a world where any boy who is too soft, gentle, and kind - who tries on his mother’s makeup or his sisters’ dresses - is beaten within an inch of his life by his own family until he internalizes the fact of his own masculinity and joins the patriarchy, the very force which I seek to destroy. I dream of a world where women can be anything - and where every woman voluntarily submits to genital inspections in every bathroom to prove that she isn’t a crossdressing man, which is the single kind of person I hate most in all the world.

I know it’s impractical. Maybe we could just have women do it once and get an ID card that they carry around with them all the time or something?

What if a man put on a dress and walked into a wombyns bathroom and raped somebody?

No, I don’t know why he’d bother doing that when he could just walk in and rape somebody without the dress. Probably it’s some kind of sick sexual fetish. Rapists are notoriously likely to have those. Nobody with a normal socially-accepted sexuality ever rapes anybody. Especially not a man.

Look, you agree with me that “trans” are weird men, right? And that they’re often unpleasant to be around, and bad at regulating their own boundaries and emotions, and suspicious and paranoid that people are going to hunt them down and kill them, right?

Right. And so you see that by killing the men least tied into the system we will be striking a blow against patriarchy and saving all women, right? We’re hitting at the very core of the masculine male power system, which is built around the ideals of masculinity being forcibly applied to men, by getting rid of effeminate males.

Well, I suppose it is true that asking a man how he feels about trans issues can be a useful way to check if he’s at least smart enough to hide if he’s going to hit you. But have you considered that that’s hardly enough reason to not destroy the lives of people we consider to be men who display even the slightest measure of gender deviance?

It’s for feminism, you see.

I don’t know what you don’t understand. It’s simple: the patriarchy is made of masculine men, and the best way to dismantle it is to get rid of all the men who aren’t masculine.

Then, when the patriarchy has been dismantled, by our destruction of those men who are least culpable of it, we women will finally be free to do what we please.

Which is to go after the masculine women next, of course.

look, transgender women. I know that you are justifiably scared and upset but you cannot take these people seriously, okay? they are entirely too stupid.