That shitty moment when you’re searching for some humor on the internet and come across transphobic commentary.

• When: Friday, February 10, 2012, 10pm - 4am
• Where: The Wreck Room, 940 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn, NY

ORIGINAL PLUMBING Presents…

A PRE-VALENTINE’S SINGLES MIXER: Devoted to QUEER and TRANS people who wanna do it with each other.

+ PARTY GAMES THAT WILL ACTUALLY FACILITATE YOU FINDING A DATE (if you want one)
+ LOVE LETTERS
+ ROMANTIC JAMS
+ BIG GAY PHOTO BOOTH
+ DRINK SPECIALS
+ DJ AVERAGE JO
+ DJ MERKIN MUFFLEY

$5
21+

Located at WRECK ROOM in scenic Bushwick, Brooklyn. (L Train to Morgan Ave. J Train to Flushing)

littleelk:

genderqueer:

xavieralexay:

Thoughts of Detransitioning - Postgender

Introspection into their life. Their transition, gender, society and privilege. Choices they have made, the effects those decisions have made and issues subscribing and relating to the male identity.

Very interesting imo.

A thoughtful video about deciding to transition and how it isn’t always obvious whether it’s the right choice or not: Carson feels that due to his age, an unaccepting family/profession, and a non-binary identity, transition might not have been the best thing for him — a brave thing to state.

The video also touches a bit on how transition isn’t an all-or-nothing, black-or-white process: there are alternatives if the negative consequences of transitioning are too strong for somebody.

DETRANSITIONING.  The thing I went scouring the web for years ago.  The thing that nobody ever talked about.  The thing I wanted to know everything about.  The how, what, why, all the feelings.

I had been on hormones for over a year before I broke down and let the questions out of the prison cell in my mind and gave them validity.  I wanted to question physical transition and that was scary.  I couldn’t find anyone else to talk to about it nor could I find much of anything about other people talking about it.  Trans people wanted to stay in their safe bubble where transition was the goal and the answer.  I almost wanted to stay in that bubble too because it seemed safe, but I couldn’t shake the misery enough to deny it and stay.

Most of the time people told me trans people ‘just knew’ and ‘it was right for them’ and I read the same story over and over and over about ‘I always knew I was a girl because I liked barbies and pink and played with other boys and then I transitioned and it is perfect because I can play with barbies and wear pink and everyone reacts to me like they should sparkle sparkle etc’ which is all well and good but.  I wanted to see my story in someone else I guess.  I wanted to see someone who sat back and thought ‘wait, why am I doing this again?’  because it was all I could think and feel.  I almost thought people would think it would make trans people ‘look bad’ if they talked about ‘it’.  About anything other than the perfect transition as a goal, and about how anybody who was ACTUALLY TRANS could want anything other than that. About anything other than ‘knowing I was this way from birth’.  About transition itself raising more questions with progression as opposed to being the answer.  About apprehension and doubting and whatever was out there in the darkness with me.  I wanted it.  

I couldn’t find it.  I couldn’t find a community for it.  There was tons of support for people who were trying to and actively accessing medical transition.  But once you were in the thick of it and had questions, there wasn’t much.  I assumed that if those people existed, they weren’t coming back to trans spaces to talk about it. Why would they I guess?  Or I assumed I was one of the only ones, because that was sure how people made me feel.  Like I failed?  Like I was failing.  Failure to transition.  Because that’s what detransition seemed to be viewed as.  A failure to transition.  Negative.  It was talked about very negatively.  It was also suggested that people who fell into these realms were ‘not really trans in the first place’.  They just made the wrong choices, and aren’t like the trans folks who are happy with their transitions.  Othering.  Shaming.  Dismal.  

Since then I’ve learned about a lot of stuff (not being binarily-identified, for one) and all sorts of things.  I remember stopping hormones at that one point, years ago when I just couldn’t find the conviction to keep going when it meant nothing to me.  If I couldn’t answer myself as to why I was doing it, why keep going?  Was it really just for the gratification of the clerk at the bank calling me ‘sir’, and what weight did that really carry for me in the grand scheme of things?  All that happened upon the cessation of testosterone was that some of my masculine features diminished.  During those years, a lot of people came up to me in person to comment on my ‘detransition’.

DETRANSITION.  It didn’t sit right with me when people would stomp up to me and casually talked about MY CONDITION, totally perceived by them and unprompted by me, like they knew the basis for my decisions or what I was going through.  All they could see was ART’S FACE/BODY/WHATEVER LOOKS MORE FEMININE so THAT MUST = ART IS FEMALE AGAIN OK.  People started using female pronouns for me without even asking.  As irritating as it all was, I couldn’t help but find it horribly interesting, like some sort of tragic sociological study where I was the inadvertent independent variable and the people I interacted with were the subjects and Conservative Lancaster County was our rat cage.

And here was the best part.  The one trans girl in the area just completely reverted to using female pronouns for me and when I said something about it she was like ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t get past the way you look now.  I mean.  And your boobs.’  Thanks.  I was often talked about this way, and people saying things like ‘well, you don’t identify as male anymore, obviously.  IMEAN I’m right, RIGHT?’  the thinking to check with me as an afterthought, and sometimes completely ignoring my answer that was the complete opposite of what they said so they they could prove a point.  I was used as a device often, to convey ‘the nontraditional’ regardless of the fact that I failed to ever make any claim to embody or stand for these things.  The fact is is that people put me there because I wasn’t following the path of transition or adhering to projecting the physical gendered characteristics they thought I should have been to seem ‘genuine’.  They read me as abnormal.  (not to say that appearing androgynous, whether intentional or unintentional, is abnormal or undecided.  I find that people just react to it that way more often, as if it’s less grounded than a traditionally binary appearance.)

Fuck, I guess you can’t transition if you’re lazy because people’s perception to how well your transition has gone seems to be how much effort you actively put into physical transition and passing.  If it were a math equation, trans cred would be directly proportional to passing ability.  I slept though class.  I GOT AN F.  I spent more time eating Waffle Crisp cereal and not passing, sorree guyz.

I didn’t find that the word ‘detransitioning’ was necessarily the right word to express how I was feeling or even what I was doing, and I found myself to be actually quite offended by people’s decided interpretations of me.  They implied that I was going back on something, mostly because THEY were based heavily on the imagery of my body’s apparent femaleness(I feel like this is a better word than femininity used to describe a physical body), and were very lacking in knowing anything about my actual identity, experience, and thoughts on gender.

It’s strange that people view transition as a straight, oneway arrow, and that anything that slightly deviates is ‘alternative, dabbling, trying out, confusion,’ or detransition.  Transitioning backwards.  How is it backwards if you’re still going forwards, figuring out what was right for you all along?  There are a lot of different ways to get there.

But anyway, I don’t really know what to call it, so I’ll stick with ‘detransition’ here because it’s in the title.  I’m always really thankful when people openly talk about this stuff, and I find it very important to reach out to others and also to talk about it so we can better understand what effects these variables (society, upbringing, age, geographic location, etc) have on us and our compulsions, drive and reasoning to transition, and how that ultimately may effect our outcomes.

THANK YOU FOR BEING BRAVE.  Thank you for people opening up and talking about these issues.  I had been waiting in the darkness for years.

Sometimes I find myself expecting every bare flat chest I see to have surgery scars. If there are no scars, I think to myself, “Wow, that’s one hell of a peri job - I wonder who the surgeon was? Ohhh…right.”

MC and I at “Hey Queen”

boredangry:

funkyfest:

On Trans Men and the Word “Tranny,” or: Cut Your Entitled Bullshit Out

“Tranny” is a word that a lot of people think is subversive, cool, and theirs to use. Interestingly, many of those who most ardently defend their right to use it are those least connected to its violent history as a slur used against transgender women. The word is deeply bound to regulating and insulting femininity and womanhood, and has historically been used as a slur against people who were assigned male at birth or are read as men, but who present in ways that are read as female or feminine. In popular culture, it is often used by gay cis men and cis women via terms like “hottrannymess,” a descriptor of disheveled and failing femininity. Plug the T word into an image search engine. Call me when the results are overwhelmingly masculine presenting individuals. I will be sitting in a corner holding my breath and counting the seconds.

Now, being transgender is never a walk in the park, unless it’s a walk in the park that involves verbal harassment.  But, please, let’s not pretend everyone is on equal ground. We’re not. Vectors of access based on race, class, citizenship status, ability, ETCETERA, all have a huge impact on a person’s ability to, like, not get incarcerated and murdered and shit. But let’s not forget that thing those annoying old feminists (Boo! Hiss!) always bring up: gender. Here’s the thing about identity: walking down the street, or in the club, or pretty much anywhere but your radical queer vegan potluck, no one gives a shit about ~how you identify~. Interpellation don’t give a fuck, broskis, if you’re read as a man you have male privilege and not amount of “but I’m trans!” or “I’ve never experienced male privilege!” is going to get you out of that.

AND LET’S JUST GET SOMETHING GAY: Being told you have a privilege is not the same as being judged, condemned, or rejected, at least not if you are talking to rational humans. What it actually means is that the world is easier for you to navigate than it is for other folks and that you might have some blind spots with regards to understanding where these folks are coming from. And when someone tells you “hey, you’re being hurtful,” it IS NOT the time for you to repetitively bark out “But that’s just like, your opinion, man.” Don’t be surprised if shit gets real when you respond aggressively to being called out. (And to be clear, telling people to “suck your dick,” and “shut the fuck up,” and calling them “lying little shits,” then complaining that they’re acting aggressive and being critical? That’s hella bullshit.)

Let me say again, privilege often is about how others read you, not what you have to say about yourself. In many cases it is conditional, it is dependent on your trans status being concealed and if you aren’t super masculine you might get read as a gay and therefore experience homophobia. But ask yourself some real questions: Are you white? Are you relatively economically stable? Do you have health insurance? Do you live in an urban area? Do you have a place to live? Do you engage in criminalized activities (such as drug sales and sex work [which is where the T word became popularized]) in order to survive? What is your citizenship status? On the street, are you read as a man or a woman? Look at the stats on whose names are read on the Trans Day of Remembrance. How many of them are white men? How many are women of color?

BECAUSE OH RIGHT, MISOGYNY IS STILL A THING AND BEING TRANS IS SUBJECT TO DISCOURSES OF POWER OUTSIDE OF TRANSPHOBIA.  Just because you’re trans does not exempt you from the patriarchal binary gender system. You’re still a dude in a very dude-positive/lady-negative culture, and the queer community is no more immune to that than you are. It’s not to say that you don’t face oppression as a trans man. Health insurance that covers medical interventions, changing government documentation, employment discrimination, and yes, harassment and violence, can still be terrible realities for you. But your oppression is CATEGORICALLY different from trans women’s. They deal with not only transphobia but misogyny as well, and are more often criminalized and harassed by the police. Keep in mind, due to relatively lower levels of visibility in U.S. culture, trans men are often perceived as either cis gay men or cis lesbians, and discriminated against as such (for example I have often been called a fag and a dyke, but never a tranny). Whereas trans women are often explicitly read as TRANS, and are typically discriminated against for being trans with the contentious word at hand. This difference in trans visibility is influenced by the hatred of women and the hatred of femininity in our culture. Generally speaking, for a body marked as female to embody masculinity is less shameful than for a body marked as male to have a feminine or embodiment. See the relative acceptance of tomboys (until a certain age, at least) versus the intolerance of boys who are “sissies,” for example. For a “woman” to embody masculinity in male supremacist culture is, while still frowned upon, more readily understood. But if a “man” does not claim “his” historically mandated privilege of masculinity and manhood, it is confounding. It is dangerous. It must be stopped.

Look at the difference between portrayals of trans men vs. trans women. Trans men might have less visibility, but in both the mainstream and in queer communities, we are seen as radical, desirable, brave, and cool. Even the media gives us Thomas Beatie, a dad, and Chaz Bono, a regular dudebro with a prime time special about how much of a regular dudebro he is, misogyny and all. And trans women? In radical queer spaces they are often accused of being backwards and conservative, of “reifying the gender binary.” In popular culture they are at best jokes and at worst deceitful and dangerous. While trans men complain about visibility, many trans women live lives that are barely conceived of as life at all; they are inherently precarious and therefore violence against them is of little consequence and is often encouraged. Precarity: think about that word before claiming you are “equally marginalized.”

Technically, yes, people can ~identify~ however they want. Technically, yes, people can use whatever language they want. But the wild thing about free speech, is that you can say however many hurtful things you want and I can say that language doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and people should be able to let you know you’re being hurtful without being told to suck in dick in reply. (Which, is such a cartoonishly masculinist response to being called out for misogyny, I could cry. But then I’d probably get told to man up.) The word “tranny” is about so much more than transphobia, and it’s blatantly ignorant not to acknowledge its ties to the regulation of femininity and the objectification of trans women.

Some trans women like the word! But that’s their choice to make. Why Not Listen To What They Have To Say About It. It’s a powerful, painful word, and at the end of the day, take a step back from your desire to be subversive and look at how using that word makes you complicit in the hurt it causes. The word is about a lot more than bruised feelings; I’m talking about trauma. As a man in a male supremacist society, trans or not, you really don’t get to say what is and isn’t sexist, and claiming and identifying with a word that is used to dehumanize and justify violence against women is a pretty fucked up thing for a dude to do. You can’t just say you’re a trans activist and then throw the other half of your community under the bus.

daaaaamn, bullseye

This about sums up why I don’t use or identify with the word “tranny”.

Haha. I think I’m down to only two pairs of “LEO” underwear. They’re not the best quality and the waistband on one of them got really stretched out.

Here’s how Fleshjack’s Jason’s Dick looks strapped on with the Aslan Pleasure Principle (left) harness and with the Spareparts Joque harness (right).

Usually when I’m searching for a realistic silicone cock to purchase, I peruse through the selections of Vixen Creations, Tantus, and Good Vibrations, as they are brands that are well-known and trusted by many people for their superior quality. One evening, I was feeling adventurous and decided to search “realistic silicone dildo” on Google Shopping and was thrilled to come across a new, unexpected manufacturer of realistic silicone cocks: Fleshjack by Fleshlight. I had known that Fleshlight produces the original Mr. Limpy soft packer and the popular Fleshlight masturbation toy that I always wind up sticking my fingers in when I’m in Babeland, but I had no idea that they had a division that produced super realistic silicone cocks!

When I entered the website, I clicked on the Fleshjack Boys link and found that there were 11 different realistic cocks to choose from. Each cock was a detailed, exact silicone replica of one of the Fleshjack Boys’ cocks. There were about 10 images of each cock - 5 with the model holding it and 5 of it alone from different angles. I meticulously browsed through the listed dimensions and images in order to find a cock that would work best for my partner and I. Most of the cocks were very large - which would not be comfortable for MC - so I selected one of the smaller ones, Jason’s Dick.

The cock arrived at my apartment in discrete packaging. I opened it up and marveled at the details of the cock; this was definitely the most realistic silicone cock I had ever beheld. When I handled it, it felt rigid enough for my liking, unlike some of the VixSkin cocks I’ve used. It was the first cock I ever had with balls at the base.

Since receiving this cock, I’ve used it for penetrative sex (while wearing my Spareparts Joque harness) and to receive oral sex. My experiences have been enjoyable so far. While the texture of the cock doesn’t feel as realistic as the VixSkin cocks, I find that other aspects make up for that. The two most important factors for me, aesthetics and rigidity/firmess, are both above satisfactory. I love that I can fuck really fast without it bending and falling out of my partner, and that when I look down, I see something that looks like it could be attached to my body. My partner has positive feedback about this cock, as well. While it is slightly larger than what she’s used to, she enjoys the smooth but noticeable texture that is created by the veins and crevices of the cock. She said that it’s not too slippery or too “grippy” and has a nice medium texture. Like myself, she is also a fan of the firmness that allows for fast, reliable penetration.

While I have mostly complimentary things to say about this cock, there are some things I would change if possible. For one, it would be great if the cock had a  flared base behind the balls, like the Goodfella, as this would make it more harness compatible. During penetrative sex, there were a few times I had to reach down into my harness and adjust the position of the cock and balls; I think a flared based would help keep the cock in a more stable position. I should also mention that the top of the base of the balls has the signature of Jason Visconti, the model, embossed on it, which doesn’t bother me but might bug other people. My next issue is with the coloring of the cock. I noticed that all of the Fleshjack Boys appeared to have light skin tones, which resulted in their cock replicas being mostly the same color. This is unfortunate for multiple reasons. Why not have more diversity among the Flesh Boys? Doing so would also allow for the creation of cocks that would be more suitable for people with darker skin tones who want a realistic silicone cock. My last comment is about the marketing of the FleshJack Boys’ cocks. It seems like they are solely geared toward gay cisgender men. It would be great if the company acknowledged that there are a variety of people outside of cisgender gay men who might find these cocks appealing, such as female-assigned-at-birth folks who like to wear a realistic cocks or people who like to penetrate their vaginas or anuses during masturbation with realistic cocks.

Overall, this is a superb realistic cock that makes an ideal prosthetic during sexual activities. It sells for $50.96, which is a very competitive price for a cock of its appearance, size, and material. I must also add that Fleshlight’s customer service is excellent. I hope that by writing this review that other people who love wearing realistic silicone cocks will have another option to chose from when searching for an ideal cock.

(More photos under “Read More”)

Read More

mchalfpenny:

Taken with instagram

MC just took an instagram of the cock I’m about to review.