I deal with the pain and suck it up. Especially since I'm in the middle of a lot of it. I was in the Tumblr trenches back in 2013 and it genuinely fucked me up. I seriously considered transitioning because a lot of my peers made me feel guilty about being bisexual, androgynous and enjoying pervy things. I thought that transitioning would grant me some kind of "absolution" from this guilt. I didn't think of it at the time, but much of the attitudes I dealt with was the "trans+purity/puriteen/call out post" culture at the time. And I was well into my college years. Late 20's. It leaked into a lot of +18 fandom communities.

Couldn't enjoy straight romance, that made me a traitor. Also fetishizing myself somehow.

Double guys or gals? Apparently, fetishizing real men and women despite me being bi and dealing with fiction--as in, those characters are inability objects. Get outta here fujo/joshi(? I know we have himejoshi for derogatory word for yuri fans but I think that's not nearly as common. But then there's yuriko too. My knowledge is limited on that end).

Biological sex? Throw it out. It's a scam. I was bad if I believed in that and questioning otherwise.

Mentioning that I wasn't looking to make things political, wanted to do my own thing apart from canon sources while respecting other people also wasn't okay to the fandom "activists and allies" who were supposedly to have my back.

But if I said I liked characters being friends, that was homophobic and queerphobic, because that was "relegating queer characters to the 'best friend' role, which was problematic".

This persisted for almost a decade, and I was afraid of starting to take hormones because I didn't know how that would affect my health. I was already dealing with an auto-immune disease/condition that I now know is affected by my hormones.

Eventually I backed off from it and wanted to hear what detransitioners are saying. What they've said has helped me to back off from the ledge.

I'll add the caveat that I don't blame the creators who made the stuff, just the ideology that was pushed through fandom spaces. Creators in Japan by and large didn't know that was happening with their work, from what I've seen.

I learned to reconcile a lot of that and just...love what I love. I embraced my so-called degeneracy. 🤣

However, please don't think you need to be a degen to be happy with transitioning or detransitioning! I found a kind of self-confidence, but there will be people who will need more than that.

The stumbling block for me comes in with sexual orientation. I'm bi, so I'm going to say I'm attracted to men or women. And while someone non-binary would be a man or a woman, if they told me they were a non-binary man or woman, I'd find myself confused. Especially because the word is so poorly defined.

Maybe I'm just looking at it wrong, but fleshcraft sounds like something was ripped right off of Clan Tzimisce's book from Vampire: The Masquerade; that's the name of an ability with the same name.. I really do think it's just a parallel thinking sort of thing since that's relatively niche, but in this context of transitioning/detransitioning and real people being in the mix, it doesn't make it any less creepy to be "peddling fleshcraft to teens". 😑

It's tiring, but I try to wade through it as best as I can. One of the worst things I've ever seen in a fandom was where an actual MtF Japanese person was explaining why a certain character wasn't trans about a decade ago in Dangan Ronpa on Tumblr. And I saw people leave the fandom because of it. If you know, you know.

I love me some DR, but that was the day I discovered "activists and allies" and I haven't been the same sense. It's absolutely fine to disagree or have a bit of self-insert fun, but the moment you bring out "you're a bigot and we're gonna doxx you because you disagree with my trans headcanons", you've lost me. For people who are transsexual, I imagine having a herniated disk would be preferable to those claiming to speak on their behalf.

I've never heard of the lizard being used specifically as a symbol for detransitioning exclusively. I've seen it more as a universal symbol of survival and transformation. Tokagero from Shaman King and Iwai from Persona 5 have used lizards to that effect in a more positive way. Hajime Busuzima from Bloody Roar is a villainous example since he can transform into a chameleon and is a mad scientist.

Would part of this have something to do with the ideas revolving around fiction=real life, the lack of sense of self and individual choice?

That...sounds like buncha gobble-gobble, but this is what I'm looking at.

Due to the push that their fictional preferences and choices reflect their morality, and the conflicting messages around fiction from all that (people saying big boobs on a character is inherently "problematic/sexist/etc, and real girls wanting to get rid of their boobs to try transition to not fall into being "problematic"), they'd want to transition. But there's no one to tell them "that's fiction, don't look at that as tried and true guidebook for life".

Does that make sense? I may have it wrong or be going in with a half-formed thought.

It's a supplemental book for a clan in a vampire tabletop game. I don't even think they're too well-known except for maybe Andre in the PC game Bloodlines. Tzims can get pretty gnarly; if you've read The Hellbound Heart or watched the Hellrasier series, these guys would take tips from each other since they have the same....hobbies.

You're right, I just didn't lay it out at all as I should have. The fault is on me either way for not explaining where I was going, so I'll apologize, take the L and better explain. 😅

A lot of furs tend to be autistic/neurodivergent. I thought that may have extended to therians and the like to some extent as well, but I didn't say that. Brain went way too fast and I thought what I said had enough for others to follow.