New transgender news site: Transgender Report

Crossdreamers is experimenting with a new portal for transgender and nonbinary news based on the social media feeds of Jack Molay. 

The goal is to present selected headlines from various sources on a daily basis.

You can check out the new Transgender Report site here.

A spotlight on transgender and queer issues from the Crossdream Life forum

The Crossdream Life forum brings up a lot of interesting discussions of issues related to gender variance and crossdreaming. The Crossdreamer Sidebars blog (which has now gotten its own domain) presents some selected headlines from the last year or so.

A spotlight on transgender and queer issues from the Crossdream Life forum

Subconscious sex - what is it and how does it affect your gender identity?

A discussion of the concept of "subconscious sex", that which is partly or fully repressed by trans people denying or avoiding their own real identity, has led to some interesting observations over at Crossdream Life.

 This is how transgender scientist, philosopher and activists Julia Serano presents her term "subconscious sex":

"Subconscious Sex: a term I coined in Whipping Girl (pp. 26-29, 77-93) to describe an unconscious and inexplicable self-understanding regarding what sex one belongs to or should be. I felt the phrase was necessary to distinguish between these unconscious experiences and the more conscious way we make sense of such feelings (i.e., what we typically call gender identity)...

I purposefully used the word “subconscious” (which is ambiguous and rarely used in academic/research settings) to capture the vagueness of such feelings (at least as I experienced them) and to avoid making it sound like I believe that they resided in a specific gene or region of the brain. 

And I intentionally used the word “sex” (rather than “gender”) to reflect the fact that for many transsexuals (including myself) the desire to transition is often driven by sex embodiment (i.e., aligning our subconscious and physical sexes) more so, or in addition to, a sense of sex/gender affiliation (i.e., belonging to and being recognized as a member of that sex/gender). 

I also argued (in the cited passages) that cissexuals also likely have a subconscious sex, but they tend not to notice or appreciate it because it is concordant with their physical sex (and therefore they tend to conflate the two); this helps to explain the strong knee-jerk negative reactions some cis people exhibit toward transsexuals and the very notion of physical transition. See also intrinsic inclinations."

The term has helpful for a lot of gender variant trans people and crossdreamers, as it may be used to refer to what it is that is that they suppress or deny when they try to live up to the standards of a cisgender society  and present as the gender they have been assigned at birth. 

Good Transgender News

The current news cycle is depressing for anyone who cares for trans people and gender variance. 

Crossdream Life has set up an antidote: A thread containing nothing but positive news of transgenender and nonbinary relevance. It has already gotten quite a few readers.

It is also important that the loudest voices in the media or in the social web are nor necessarily representative of the population as a whole. It is complicated, but in most democratic countries the majority of people continue to be supportive of transgender folk.

Go to the Good Transgender News thread here!

Can trans and gender variant people use AI tools to explore and express their own identities?

Crossdreamers and transgender people  people have used a wide variety of tools to explore and express their gender variance throughout the ages, including crossdressing and cosplay, stories, drawings, games, "TG captions" and more. 

Over at CDL Anna Fields pointed out that modern artificial intelligence and AI tools may also be used for this purpose.  In that thread Paridae presents some of these tools, like 

• AI-generated virtual reality avatars.
• AI for creating the textures for the faces and handling the texture mapping part. 
• Apps for face swaps and feminization or masculinization of photos.
• Voice generators and more.

You can read more about this (and talk about your own experiences with gender variance and AI) here.

Image from a video by the Trans Academy.

Incels, transcels and transmaxxing and what this is it all about

 

Transmaxxing is a term from incel culture and it refers to the way som male-identifying incels decide to transition and live as women, as they think living is a woman is easier than living as a man. They also think that this will improve their love life and give them access to sex.

The underlying incel world view is that the incels are failed men who cannot live up to the masculine ideals of society and who therefore never will be happy or accepted as who they are. Nor will they be able to attract women. The term incel means "involuntary celibate".

Members of the incel community are often love-shy and introverted male assigned people who have a personality or a life experience that make them feel excluded from dating and courtship. This makes them extremely lonely and  it is probably the despair that follows from the idea of never being able to have a good relationship with a woman that brings them to the incel community. In the incel community their deepest fears are confirmed, and they take comfort in the fact that they are not alone.