this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 180 points 4 months ago (5 children)

A few of my kids' friends are trans, and their parents give them a really hard time for it. And I can't understand why. As long as my kid isn't an asshole I don't honestly care how they look. I want a connection with them more than I want them to fit some standard I've set in my head.

I feel bad for their parents because their kids are awesome and they're missing out on it.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 4 months ago

My brother has been supportive of me being trans from day one. Like explicitly and openly supportive. His kid is trans and my brother is just not supportive of them at all. I don't get it he actively fights them on it. I don't get why he thinks it's okay to support me but then tell his kid they're not actually trans. There's something that some parents have where they refuse to see their kids in a different light than they expected

[–] [email protected] 43 points 4 months ago (1 children)

im cis af

i like my genitals and body shape and i consider myself lucky for having a brain that matches my body

but i don't understand why theres so much hatred for people who dont feel that way.

If i had a vagina instead of a penis, and a curvy lady body instead of my chunky man bod, would i not still be myself?

Worthy of respect, worthy of love, full of ideas and dreams and stupid jokes....am i not still a person in this scenario?

Its my body. i grew it myself.

I will do whatever i god damn well please with it, because its MINE.

Im not trans but im an ally and if yall need one more fist in the fight, lemme know

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I was never really anti trans, but I had a bit of trouble understanding the social aspects of transitioning when I was younger. "I feel like an alien in my own body; I would like to change it please" I got just fine, but who cared if society thought you were a man or a woman? Fuck society. As a cis male, I'd never particularly had to fight (or been particularly attached to) my gender identity. Til someone brought up a part of my identity that is dear to me, and asked me to imagine how it would feel if every time someone used a pronoun to refer to me, they were saying "You are not X".

That got through to me. It's a potent mix of rage and despair.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

I don’t understand it, either. But I realized it’s not my burden as a cis person. What is my burden is accepting and appreciating everyone for who they are, no matter what part of the LGBT+ spectrum they fall.

In the late 90’s, the battle was for my gay buddies. I remember one dude and his dad beat up a friend of mine. We knew he was gay and likely the dad found him and his son doing what gay people do and instead chose to beat my friend up. We went back to his house and threw rebar concrete through their windows and smashed up their cars. Statue of limitation is up, so it doesn’t matter about talking about it. Was also 15 at the time.

People who hate and commit acts of violence against others deserve what happens to them. Fuck those people who can’t accept someone because they feel like a prisoner in their own body. Did my fair share of shoving over the “I hate gay” crowd and will gladly fight these next group of assholes.

[–] Tar_alcaran 43 points 4 months ago

And I can't understand why.

Because some parents are assholes.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

You probably don't have a fundamentally authoritarian mindset. Being authoritarian in parenting is correlated to authoritarian politics:

[Prof. Jonathan Weiler] told me that the study of authoritarianism is several decades long and, interestingly, that over time the way social scientists identified authoritarianism evolved to asking questions about parenting. He said, “What makes these questions interesting is that they are not really about parenting, they are more about people’s idealized understanding of social order or social hierarchy. Asking about parenting is more a way to get people to think about this.”

Remember this when you see flyers or such that say "the government is trying to take away your parental right to decide what your child reads or learns". It's wrapped in the language of Freedom(tm), but the end goal is to tightly control what their child is allowed to do.

Fascism begins at home.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago

I'm an anarchist so that tracks

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

Pride and projection, with a healthy cultural component. It usually takes a generation for values to catch up. Not much different than the asian dad stereotype, except with a primarily physical component.

[–] [email protected] 77 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I'm not into spiderman comics or anything, is this canon?

[–] [email protected] 139 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I think it’s left intentionally ambiguous(or might vary depending on the series). They DO leave a lot of signs for Gwen being a supportive figure for transgender people. In Across the Spiderverse, she has a “Protect Trans Kids!” Poster in her room. Her dad has a trans flag patch on his uniform. Her superhero color palette is the trans flag. Pink, light blue, and white is always used when representing her.

Thats not even delving into how her story arc handles those themes/metaphors.

[–] [email protected] 100 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

IMO, whether or not Gwen is canonically transgender is irrelevant, because thematically the two are equivalent. Being spider-woman is allegorical for being transgender.

  • She knew she was different before anyone else did
  • The way that she's different would affect how others see her once they find out, very possibly putting her in danger, depending on who finds out and how hateful/vengeful they are.
  • She could theoretically quash that part of herself and live the way everyone expects her to, but to do so would be to kill a piece of who she is
  • She had to "Come out" to her dad (and not by choice, really. She only did so because she was caught with her new clothes.)
  • She wasn't accepted for who she was in that coming out, but knew it would be easier to live without her closest family member's support than to live without being herself.
  • She found a community of others like her, who all have unique but similar experiences and who are eager to support one another.

The colors may be an indication that Gwen specifically is trans, or a hint to the audience that to be a Spider-person is an allegory for being trans. Her character was designed with the white, pink, and blue color scheme in 2014, so it's not all that unlikely that the color scheme was an allusion to the trans pride flag on purpose. Maybe a writer or character designer clarified somewhere exactly how intentional or coincidental this Spider-Gwen/Transgender connection is, would be cool to see if so.

At the end of the day, the story serves to make people more empathetic to others who have to weigh their identity against their safety, especially in cases where the facet of their identity in question could be intentionally kept hidden.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

But spiderman was always my favorite character as a kid, i seemed to really identify with the character.....uh oh

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago (1 children)

i think the ambiguity is the point

Gwen is a woman.

If shes a trans woman, shes still a woman. If shes a biological woman, shes still a woman.

They dont need to announce her sex assigned at birth, shes a woman either way

thats how i see it anyway.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

just fyi the opposite term for trans woman is cis woman. biological woman isn't really a thing, and it's usually used by transphobes so you might unintentionally send terfy signals when you say that. just to be clear I'm not accusing you of anything like that, just trying to help with the terminology.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

thats good advice thanks

i dont know any terf signals because i dont talk to those people

i accidentally run into fascist dog whistles on occasion for the same reason.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

(they're the same thing) :)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

now that one i knew

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ok - help us allies out here for a minute. So a “biological woman” is not appropriate anymore?

What do we call someone who was born a woman and identifies (I think this is the correct way of saying it?) as being a woman? Or vice versa with a male.

Cis man? Sounds like a terrible super hero.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

yes, it is cis man. i don't think it's a worse hero than biological woman. i mean, really, your superpower is that you're not mechanical? pfft.

mind that i am also just an ally so take it with a grain of salt as i may make mistakes here but here's what i know:

biological woman is just not a thing because woman is a social term, not a biological one to begin with. also has a slight undertone of "biological" meaning "real" which we wouldn't want to perpetuate.

the technically correct term would probably be "female", but I don't think trans men would like to be called either.

afab / amab (assigned female/male at birth) is more acceptable if needed. so, if a woman is afab she's cis. if she's not, then she's trans.

just keep in mind that trans isn't limited to women amab and men afab, as not only is gender a spectrum, but "biological sex" is too. anyway trans is more broad because it basically means your gender being anything different from what's typically associated with your assigned sex at birth.

any trans people want to correct me on anything please do so

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

wow, I missed a lot in the movie! Is there a precedent for comic artists putting fan theories/comics into canon? Would be kinda cool to see this story fleshed out. Although I guess it might retread story beats that we've already seen

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

she has a “Protect Trans Kids!” Poster in her room.

She had, until "anti-woke" people invaded her room and stole it. /s

[–] [email protected] 32 points 4 months ago

I don't believe so. Just a fancomic.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Maybe not precisely, but there was some veery coincidental trans colors during her "coming out as a hero" scene with her dad

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

If the trans community owns vaporwave, then it owns me. I know what I said.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's a very popular fan theory that Gwen is trans. I personally don't see enough evidence to agree, but it wouldn't be the most shocking revelation if they made her canonically trans.

To be clear, just because this can be a touchy subject, I don't care that people view her as trans. It doesn't upset me or anything like that.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The version we see in the movies isn't trans, but I'm sure there are versions of her in other realities that are.

[–] Sabre363 39 points 4 months ago

Thought it was gonna be r34 for a sec, but this is so wholesome and nice

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

How sad was it that my first thought was that this was a ploy by anti feminists to undermine the power of a female superhero by implying that they were secretly a man ☹️

Yes, I know there is a difference, between a man and a trans women, but people that do things like that generally don't.

[–] where_am_i -3 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Ah, so if you wanna dance instead of playing ball, you're a girl, and maybe need a gender-affirmative surgery. Wow, love this ultra-queer lemmy community.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

People tend to gravitate towards the interests of groups they identify with, consciously or unconsciously. In a society where dance is seen as 'feminine', people who identify, consciously or unconsciously, with a female identity are more likely to gravitate towards it.

This doesn't mean that men can't enjoy dance, and it doesn't mean that joining a dance class means you have to hand in your man card. It doesn't even mean that dance is inherently feminine instead of dance being feminine being a modern social construct. It's just a common kind of anecdote from trans folk - an attraction to hobbies, styles, or groups associated with their gender identity rather than their AGAB even before transitioning.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

ultra queer Lemmy community? I'm cisgender and heterosexual. it's just a comic that has a trans person in it. believe it or not looking at it doesn't make me queer.

in contrast for every comic like this the are hundreds of comics that only feature cis people. i don't think anyone turns cis or straight by looking at those either.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Username checks out. This is 196.

[–] non_expert 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Has it occurred to you that maybe the point is trans girls like girly activities because they're girls and not the other way around?

[–] where_am_i 1 points 3 months ago

if you accept the world view that there are "manly" and "girly" activities, you are the problem.