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IMPORTANT SITE REMINDERS ARE LISTED AFTER THIS RANT (so please read all of it in order to find the rules >:3)
On this mega I shall take the opportunity to rant about one of my favorite things: the Webnovel UNJUST DEPTHS!
Do you love transgenders?
Do you love communism?
Do you love queer romance?
Do you love killing fascists in a giant fucking mech?
Would a plotline with all of these things happening in a underwater retro-futuristic gundam setting intrigue you?
Especially if its actually really well written with good characters, rich worldbuilding, and a marxist leninist transfem author?
All of the answers should be: YES I DO or else I WILL BAN YOU
Since you obviously love all of those things then Unjust Depths is perfect for YOU yes YOU! It is DESTINY
The Imbrian Ocean is at a time of severe instability. The monarch of the vast Empire that spans its unjust depths (:3) is sick and nearing death, every territory of the ocean now vying to carve their own Destiny out of the chaos. From the Volk fascists 
, Zionists 
(they literally will not die why are they still here oh my god), The 'Anarchists' (social chauvanists) 
in Bosporus, and the monarchs 
of each vast noble domain, each vies for power and prestige no matter who they crush underfoot, but it would be a pretty depressing story without a bright light in the dark.
On the edge of the Empire sits the glorious Union! The (Soviet) Union 
is a socialist federation of three states (and one anarchist mountain 
)that were formerly slave colonies under the Imbrian Empire until they broke away in a fierce liberation war. They have spent the last 20 years since then building themselves up. Whether they be Human 
, Shimmi 
(Catgirls who usually follow a religion closely related to modern Islam), and Kattaran 
(a hybrid humanoid species with characteristics of sea life ranging from sharks to cuttlefish)building socialism side by side.
First lead under the revolutionary leader Dashka Kansal, then the Idealist Ahwalia who lead the country to near ruin in pursuit of building a utopia on pillars of sand, then under the scientific socialist 
leadership of the Grand Marshall of the Union, Bhavani Jayanskar (I love Jayanskar so much shes basically as if Stalin, Lenin, and Zhukov were rolled into the same person but was a black lesbian badass who wore the uniform REALLY WELL)(she aint the main character at all tho shes only in very few scenes i just love her so much). Under Jayanskar, the Union has been growing their economy to both eliminate hunger and give everyone a home 
, but also growing their military capabilities for the inevitable return of the Empire. The Union is alone, but with the people by its side nothing, not even Destiny, can snuff out true freedoms light. 
As war wages between the Empire and Republic (basically underwater USA) once more over the lands between them, the facade begins to finally crack...
And a border conflict between the Empire and Union escalate, and the dreaded reconquest begins.
Amidst this turmoil, lives our main characters (yes there are multiple and all of them are lovely). Each of whom I personally love dearly, and are very well characterized. Many are soldiers of the Union, some are scientists, some are divers (mech pilots), some are lost strands finding new meaning after joining this band of Brigands
All are Communists 
All serve the Union 
All would gladly give their lives to defending socialism 
but even they would have little inkling of the adventure set in store for them as the lands beneath the waves erupt in fire, fury, and revolt
Can these transgender badasses kick fascist ass?
Can they kiss? (oh my god please kiss ISTG THERE IS SO MUCH SHIPPING AHHHH ITS GLORIOUS)
FIND OUT HERE: https://unjustdepths.com/
please do or else I will pout incessantly
just try it pleeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase i need to talk to someone about it after Cromalin went AFK
(I miss her, she was a real one)
REALLY IMPORTANT RULES BELOW, MUST READ
Join our public Matrix server! https://matrix.to/#/#tracha:chapo.chat
As a reminder, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It's for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.
Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.
Can I ask how it helped you frame things?
sure! stop me if i've told you any of this before, but I transitioned over 10 years ago at this point, and I've always struggled with identifying as a woman, and I could never really figure out why. Like it would be patriarchal to take that label for myself or something.
I was talking to a doctor and she asked me how I identified and I stumbled all over myself. Am I a woman? What is a woman? Can I really call myself one if I was socialized male? Prove it? What does it really mean to be trans? Nobody has scanned my brain and looked at the white matter or whatever to see if I'm Really Trans, and I've never gotten a chromosome test, either! To other people, these answers may be easy, but to me, I was unable to really feel genuine inside the mainstream canon about gender.
I like to be accurate when I'm describing things, and myself, so I was left frustrated with all of the popular queer and progressive descriptors. "Trans women are women" - yes ok, but what is a woman? I'm clearly different from the cis women I meet because of a vastly different life experience. What is a woman? Someone who is not a man? What is a man? A miserable pile of secrets? I have a lot of secrets. Or is it that a man isn't a woman? This kind of circular logic went around and around in my head, and the best answer I has was "A woman is someone who fits the gender role and expectations of women in society" which just seems really unstable as a foundation because society changes, different around the world, and fuck I don't want to just do what society tells me, and I don't want to try and cram myself into womanhood either, I want to be authentically me, instead of mediating my gender for cisheteronormativity.
Then, someone mentioned the Gender Accelerator here. I read it. I was accelerated. Suddenly, I found a foundation with which to understand all of these complicated feelings I'm having. Gender is a class structure, created to divide out reproductive labour. Of course it is! Three, five, etc. gender societies exist because they have unique ways of splitting reproductive labour! Finally, this integrated those questions I had about them for me!
And ... well, even "biological sex" is a construct. This fucking changed me. I'm an enby now. All my books have bright orange covers, I read about ace-spec identities for fun, and I refuse to label my gender except to be like "idk, demigirl maybe lmao." This one document answered all of my confusion about how to label my actions regarding transition and what felt right to me, which is why I recommended it here in this post. Maybe others would have a different experience, or not be able to relate. Maybe some disagree with my perspective, I'd love to hear it if so.
I dont identify at all with any masculine labels, I never did. But I could never really feel like I could claim the mainstream concept of "woman" or "female" either. So, I kinda just wasn't happy for years.
Okay sorry but
cutting in and yapping
Daily reminder 'under patriarchy men are default, women are defined by their relation to men'
This is incredibly based, I'm really glad to hear that this dorky manifesto was so good for you. It did this for me too tbh ✨
no apologies needed
spoiler
yeah, I get into this further in my reply to lilypad below, but this is some worms I picked up from the internet, my mom, etc.
right, yeah, that makes sense. i remember that bit now.
:) in more ways than one! my posting too, it was also... accelerated.
fuck yes
Thank you for writing up your thoughts! Theres some parts here that really make sense and parts that are a little confusing to me.
You said youd love to hear disagreements, and while I dont know if I have any of those, K do have thoughts i guess and ill put them here.
maybe shit opinions? Also super rambly... Talking about language and identity.
I dont understand this bit? Perhaps im misunderstanding and this is where you were at and not where you are at in your thought processes? Cause to my mind, a man removing themselves from that class and placing themselves in another class that is lower on the patriarchal hierarchy is inherrently non- or even antipatriarchal. Cause that system depends on its rigidity and punishes those who transgress, anyone who moves outside their class is engaging in non- or antipatriarchal movement.
Regarding womanhood, idk, i see the accelerators view as the one that makes the most sense, as a class under our gender system. And like, for myself, i wander between i guess woman, woman-adjacent, and agender/wtf-is-gender-stop-asking-me-weird-questions.
To me ig, woman is a label that is both applied to me by the outside world and that I apply to myself. Perhaps its cause I really like being femme, and the labour of the woman-class (under our gender system) is labour I do most often. I guess to me its not an issue of being a woman, but rather an issue of performing womanhood coupled with being seen as a woman. To be clear, the performance is not in a "person performing" kind of a way, but rather that the performance makes the person. And by "being seen", i perhaps could say it better as being recognized in/for your labour. Because its rooted in a class system concerned with perpetuating not just individuals but society, womanhood and manhood and any gender cannot exist in a vaccum or without being seen by others. Or I guess, it could be in the sense that one observes onesself? Like, thats what were doing when we apply labels to ourselves, were observing ourselves as we would another, just with the added benefit of knowing our internal states far better than anyone else could. But the performative nature of identity is supee important imo, and to me explains a lot of my thought and feeling about who&how I am.
I guess an issue in what Im saying is that our language isnt suited to describing gender in this way; we speak of being a man/woman/enby/etc., but we should rather (imo) speak of it in a non-stative or otherwise transient way. Idk the verbs to do that without being clunky. Gender fluidity can kind of be used this way, but because of our language its still spoken of in a stative manner, and using it in that way feels wrong, because its misappropriating a stative label to describe a nonstative experience.
reject markov chain interpretations of self, we cannot divide a person infinitely into a series of states, we are not a computer!
This one was primed into me before I read the accellerator. I understood it as "sex is inherrently nonbinary and is a phenotype; its best thought of as a bimodal distribution of traits". None of those traits are inherrently male/female. The missing part for me was that sex arises from gender, not the other way around. The accelerator brought me further into understanding this better. Like, imo we can re-sex ourselves. For a binary example, a penis can be a deeply feminine sexual organ, a vagina can be likewise a deeply masculine sexual organ, depending on how we apply gender to it.
Ok that got real rambly, and idk really how to conclude this, so uhhhh ill close by saying gender is fucky and we should roam free among the hills and plains of it, not be confined to penns and fenced in areas.
damn i fucking live for posts like yours, let me get in there
there's gonna be some brainworms discussion here
So, this was a reference to a moment I enjoyed from Orange Book, but it is honestly something I've felt. This is some Janice Raymond shit that I've internalized from being on the internet most of my life. I am working on this (which is why I'm reading Orange Book and why I enjoyed being accelerated so much), but it's stubborn, and I do have this feeling of "invading women's spaces" in changerooms etc. I simply do not go to women's spaces.
I was in the hospital a few years ago due to gallstones (ow btw), and I was in the ER at first, but eventually they moved me to a surgical ward, and I honestly did not know until I saw it on a form somewhere that this was a capital W Women's space. I felt uncomfortable - I don't belong here, I'm not a "real" woman, do they know I'm trans? Do I pass too well? Was the change in my forms too successful?!
Everyone was very nice. And they all knew. It was meant to be gender affirming, and while I appreciated having my stated gender validated, and everyone was very very kind (I was emotional at a couple of bits because I was scared and they were so reassuring) I felt more at home in the ER where gender wasn't a factor.
Maybe I felt this because of brainworms. Maybe I felt this because I don't really see myself as a capital W Woman. It's hard to tease all of it apart.
Honestly, I'm not sure where I'm going to end up, but I think you're really getting into the direction I'm leaning here:
This 100%. It's hard to say I am "being" anything except me. What is being, anyway? All gender to me feels like a performance, I like acting a certain way, I like dressing a certain way, but that's not a statement of being. My true self is kinda meek, my voice apparently sounds really fem (according to Partner) even when I'm not trying (I never try anymore), my mannerisms are "cute," apparently. But that isn't a statement of being, I just kinda fit the role of "woman" more naturally.
Learning that agender people can still present fem has been a revelation. Maybe that's where I'm leaning, due to all of this.
Yeah, agree.
huh... i'm not sure why that seems so weird to me. maybe this is just a me thing, i have trouble with labels without specific criteria. Autism? I can check off the boxes. ADHD? Literally diagnosed. Gender? I have to decide for myself, and the labels are fuzzy, and I get to just pick whatever.
If I have to pick something, I will pick nothing, at least today, lol.
Yeah, that makes sense to me. I feel like my entire life has been a performance due to masking though, so right now I'm trying to go deeper and figure out what's beneath. The core identity of me, if I'm being real, that's beneath any concept of gender.
YES OMG THIS FR FR. I think this suits me better, "being" hurts my head. I'm "doing" woman at work (but more like "tomboy"), I'm "doing" non-binary femme online, I'm "doing" agender to my parents (this is a compromise for them), and sometimes I "do" ultra-femme at home. I never do anything on the male end anymore, but that's just me.
I was literally just about to say that I don't really like the label "genderfluid" because it's too restrictive, myself.
speak for yourself i'm rewriting myself in Rust
totally, good point!
I Changed My Sex Last Year? (idk this reminded me of another post)
yeah, I won't get into this but I'm struggling with my born-in uh physical attributes at the moment as I plan for bottom surgery. How much is framing? How much is actual dysphoria? What if my particular discomfort is about the incongruity with the role I'm expected to play?
lol, just like me fr fr
agree, i don't want to put whatever's going on in here into a box anymore.