#> it is also true that trans people experience an equally fucked up and bad time in the medical field

[inkskinned]

you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.

(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)

but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.

(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)

there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.

(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)

you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.

(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)

you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.

in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.

but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.

they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.

it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.

#spilled ink #warm up #can you tell what i'm mad about today specifically #i will say that there are a LOT of things that go into this. like a lot. this is ungendered and unspecific for a reason #it isn't just sexism. it's also racism. and ableism. and honestly classism. #and before a healthcare professional reads this as a personal attack: i understand ur burnt out #we are ALSO burnt out. your situation is also dire. this is not an attack on you. #this is a commentary on the incredible amounts of bigotry that lie at the heart of capitalism #where people have to pay money out of pocket to be told to fuck off. #your job is important. so is our humanity. and if you cannot accept that people are fucking mad as hell #at the industry - you are probably not listening . #anyway at some point im gonna write a piece about sexism specifically in medical shit #but i don't want terfs clowning in it bc they can't understand nuance #> it is true that ppl w/a uterus are more likely to experience medical malpractice & dismissal globally #> it is also true that trans people experience an equally fucked up and bad time in the medical field #> great news! the medical industrial complex is an equal opportunity life ruiner :) #(if you find it necessary to go into a debate about biology while discussing medical malpractice #i want to warn you that you're misunderstanding the issue. because guess what. #cis MEN might experience this. particularly black men. particularly disabled men. #so YES having a uterus can lead to more trouble for you. but this happens a LOT. #instead of fighting those ALSO experiencing your pain.... try working WITH them. #which btw. is like. actual feminism.)

[genderkoolaid]

actually fuck it im gonna deconstruct this carrds shitty argument about bi dykes and stereotypes

"Every woman is attracted to men in some capacity, even lesbians." The implication is that lesbians can be attracted to men, which is LESBOPHOBIC.

Again: bisexual women who used to identify as lesbians until they found themselves attracted to a man can also be used to say that all lesbians are attracted to men.

"It's possible for lesbians to be in a healthy romantic or sexual relationship with men." This is blatantly LESBOPHOBIC, as lesbians are often pressured to enter relationships with men (compulsory heterosexuality).

This one is just fucking ridiculous. It is not up to you to define what a healthy relationship is for other people. To suggest that any relationship between a self-identified relationship and a man must be unhealthy deprives the lesbian of the autonomy to decide how they feel about their relationships. Even if the lesbian ends up not wanting to date or fuck men- there are lesbians who dated men and have nothing but fondness for the relationship, they just realized it wasn't for them. This is like saying its impossible for an asexual to have a healthy sexual relationship or for an aromantic to have a healthy romantic one.

"Bisexuality is a phase. Bi people always end up picking a side." The implication is that bisexuality does not really exist and that the bisexual label is just a temporary placeholder until they find their real identity, which is blatantly BIPHOBIC.

See the first statement but in reverse. This would suggest that lesbians who used to identify as bisexual- perhaps because of that compulsory heterosexuality that exclus love to throw around as the answer anytime a dyke does something they don't agree with- are being biphobic because they can be used as "proof" that bisexuals will always "pick a side." If we are judging the worth of person's identity based on how it can be used by queerphobes, we have already fucking lost.

"Bisexuality means that you're equally attracted to men and women." The implication is that you're no longer bisexual if you have a preference for one gender is BIPHOBIC. "You cannot be bisexual unless you date both men and women." The implication is that you're not bisexual anymore if you don't have dating history to "prove it", which is BIPHOBIC. "Bisexuality means that you're half-gay half-straight / part-gay part-straight." By supporting bi lesbians (and bi gay men or bi straight people) you're treating bisexuality as a modifier rather than a full identity, which is BIPHOBIC

grouping all these together because they are essentially the same argument: "bi lesbian meaning this which means that "bisexual" must mean that!!!!" which is not true. Bi lesbians existing do not mean anything for other bisexuals' definition of their identities, & the same applies for lesbians.

Some trans men define their manhood as being just like a cis man, but in a female body. They may transition and no longer identify as trans. Meanwhile, other trans men feel like their manhood is fundamentally trans, and while they and cis men may both be equally male, their manhood is fundamentally different to cis man's.

By the above logic, the second group is TRANSPHOBIC because they "say" that trans men can't be the same as cis men. Unless.... just maybe........ we consider that one label can be used to describe a multitude of experiences........

Of course, the creator of this carrd couldn't stand for that idea. Since their second argument as to why bi dykes are bad is:

"We have created these labels to understand ourselves and each other and to effectively communicate with one another. Once you abstract it to the point where it is impossible to communicate an idea to another person without them having to ask for further clarification, those labels lose their functionality and become useless."

Which is funny, because there are plenty of bi lesbians who are active in both their local bisexual and lesbian communities without issue. Because they can still effectively communicate; people, surprisingly, have the ability to understand abstract concepts and nuanced identities.

Not every asexual never wants sex; there are asexuals who enjoy sex. The fact that you can't assume every asexual is nonsexual does not pose this great, existential threat to asexuals who don't fuck. The fact that you have to ask people things about them & can't just assume based off of a single label is not the end of communication itself, actually. If "lesbian" tells you that someone is attracted to women, either in a WLW way or in a way that is rooted in lesbian culture, then all you have to fucking do is not assume that they never fuck or date men.

The problem is, of course, that most of these people are "anti-TERF" radfems who don't realize it, and they have gotten in their brains that if there is no special "women only" term then the entire fucking world will collapse into a blighted misogynistic hellscape. And of course they don't need to think critically about why they feel this way, they just know its bad... but they think trans women can be lesbians so it has nothing to do with TERFs and how dare you imply it does!!!!!

#m.

[tuningknight]

ranting abt trans stuff and misogyny and shit. damn

damn i got .. a negative comment from a radfem today. how i was centering and glorifying men's struggles and being misogynistic as a result. them complaining about how trans people have to "make conversations about misogyny about themselves."

that bothers me so much. it is about us. i'm sorry that conversations of misogyny can't be so simple of "men vs women" because we exist. i'm sorry that you're annoyed that we have to "nitpick" important conversations about misogyny to "be about us."

the truth is i'm adding on to how we're erased. you as a woman, born a woman, will never be erased from conversations about misogyny. i am, though. and misogyny is not the worst fucking axis of oppression that takes precedence over homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, etc etc.

trans men speaking on how we're uniquely affected by transphobia and misogyny, saying yes, men can experience misogyny; how we're always erased and hurt by cis women -- THAT IS NOT OPPRESSING WOMEN. it's not misogynistic to say certain women can be abusers and oppressors towards certain men.

once again they keep. fucking. acting like misogyny is the worst form of oppression. they'll go on and on about the violence women face daily everywhere in the world, they'll say how much being a woman is suffering. news flash, being a fucking trans man is also fucking suffering and filled with violence, absolute goddamn geniuses, you're not special from me, we're the same, so stop acting like i'm taking away from you. because i'm not. you just refuse to listen, and have an extremely goddamn binary mindset.

that belief that women are always, always the victim no matter what is actually regressive and compliant with the patriarchy. true feminism acknowledges the genders are equal and pushes for that. ergo WOMEN CAN BE ABUSERS AND MEN CAN BE VICTIMS. and is usually taken into context of another axis of oppression, like race or homophobia, and also the fact their manhood is not the "right" manhood for the patriarchy. it just fucking bothers me so much how they always pull that shit. of fucking course i know women have it bad so much, i fucking lived as one for FUCK'S SAKE.

like according to them if you're a woman -- even if you're racist -- you're pure because you're a woman, but if you're misogynist as a POC, then you're irredeemable and the worst? of course. if that's your view no wonder you think trans men simply speaking about how we face certain gender oppression -- that doesn't cleanly fit into feminist language -- is somehow misogynist.

i will continue to nitpick at women who exclude trans men. i will always stand up for trans people's struggles. fuck terfs, fuck tirfs, fuck radfems, you cannot erase me. i am not misogynist for talking about my own struggles, accept it or cope.

#vent #long

[codename-adler]

Dear Tumblr toxicity,

Hi. Adler here. We need to talk.

- TW: mental health issues, depression, bipolar disorder, self-harm, homophobia, transphobia, coming out, xenophobia, islamophobia, racism, implied sexual content, rape, non-con, addictions, abuse, parental negligence, depictions of violence, swearing (please message me kindly if I forget anything)

- What prompted this message: The release of Skam France S7 teaser (emphasis on teaser, will get into that below)

- Where I’m coming from: I will talk from the pov of a white, cis and queer 22-years-old woman (she/her); this is the pov that affects my experiences and the opinions I will share below; but my message comes from a place of deep hurt, and love

- What this is about: My goal is to share a recurring experience that has hurt me in order to spread a message of awareness, maturity, peace and love

- Central content: Skam France, Skam Wtfock, and Skam/remakes in general

From now on I will assume people have enough information for me to talk about the topics without explaining every plotline/character. There are plenty of wiki pages to help you out and I will gladly answer any (respectful) questions asked if a plothole bothers your comprehension of my message. I’m only making these assumptions in order to alleviate the text.

January 9th, 2021.

The francetv slash YouTube channel releases an unexpected teaser video for an equally unexpected seventh season Skam France. The video features Tiffany, a white, cis female teenager, going into labour from denial pregnancy just after winning what appears to be a gymnastics championship. Overall, the video and its release are very dramatic.

The character of Tiffany, also called Tiff, was previously seen on season 6 of Skam France as a bully who persecuted the main character, Lola, both at school and on social media. Outside of this characterization, nothing is known about her. It is majorly accepted that Tiff is not a liked character; she rather poses as one of the antagonists of Lola’s arc.

Now you know the details of what happened, in the most objectively possible way. 

Now I’ll speak for myself.

Before I went digging around for people’s reaction, here is what I initially thought of this video.

1) Shock: I thought Skam France was over, so... Big, big shock.

2) Excitement: I hold this web series very close to my heart. It has gotten me through depressive episodes, anxiety attacks, coming out to my best friend. To see this new development? It couldn’t bring me more joy.

3) Curiosity: I recognized Tiff immediately. I was intrigued as to what would happen to her to set off a new season in true Skam Fr fashion. As soon as she started gripping her stomach, I knew she was pregnant and wasn’t aware of it. Big, big surprise here again.

4) Numbness/Overthinking: As I stared at my screen, motionless, my mind went off. What did it mean? How did she not know? Who is the father? Do we know him? Will the baby survive? Where are the other characters? Will Lamifex be present? What? How? When? Why? Who?

5) Disappointment: No, I did not like Tiff one bit in S6. Yes, I sincerely wished for a season on either Jo (ambiguous and funny teenage girl, cis + white), Sekou (seemingly neurodivergent teenage boy, cis + black), and my favorite, Max (mysterious and grave teenage boy, trans + white) So why Tiff? It felt to me like a missed opportunity, but I did not lose hope.

So, these were the five stages of my emotional process. And then I made the terrible mistake to go look for the fans’ reaction. I didn’t even look at the YT comments, I didn’t go on Instagram, I went directly here on Tumblr. Why? I’m still asking myself that. From S1 to S6 of Skam Fr, I kept my love for the show to myself and only looked at ig and video edits. I tried once, and only once, to look it up on Tumblr, and was greeted by fervent agressivity, disrespect and hate. Why did I ever forget that after watching the S7 teaser? I still don’t know.

The reactions on this platform were wild. People are furious (I get that). People are disappointed (I get that). People are anxious (I get that). People are also verbally agressive, insensitive, hateful, disrespectful and bullies. I don’t get that.

Comments along the lines of “What she gonna do with a fucking baby?”, “Are we gonna watch the baby do nothing all fucking season?”, “Wowwww, teenage pregnancy, so new and relatable!” (note the sarcasm made in the comment here), “Who gives a shit about Tiff?”, etc. 

And then all the mistakes Skam Fr ever made flooded back onto the feed. The wlw misrepresentation, the whitewashing, the overdramatization, the dubious sex scenes between minors, all of it.

Let’s take a break here. Do I condone these mistakes? Nope. Am I a white-bully apologist? Nope. Did I forget every horrible action Tiff has made in the past? Nope. She manipulated a whole school against Lola, she profited from Lola’s mother’s death, she bullied her, harrassed her, pushed her deeper into mental distress. Tiff was a despicable character that I never once liked. The way she was played by the actress made it clear that Tiff was not intended to be a good guy. If I could replace her as the main of S7, I would, in a heartbeat. I’d choose, as I said, Jo, Sekou or Max.

Skam France deeply lacks diversity and made mistakes when attempting to diverse the issues represented. This is not an opinion, it’s a fact. 

Poc representation is very, very low. Only one season has a woc of Islam beliefs as mc (Imane, S4) with poc entourage/family. Only 2 other characters not related to Imane were poc (Sekou and Sarah, S1-S2). These 2 characters were very in the background and served to further the mc’s plotline, they had no real content. (I am not a poc, and so my opinion does not matter here. If you are not poc, your “opinions” don’t matter here, this point is not for you to debate. These are facts.)

While I do not particularly find the wlw representation bad, I do understand how it hurts/bothers other queer women. From my perspective, the bar was very low regarding my expectations of the Lola/Maya pair (none of them died *yay* they had a happy ending *yay* they were not typically overfeminized or overmasculinized *yay* Lola  and Maya were respectful of each other, understood each other, accepted each other with all their flaws and their beauty *yay* I truly believed in their love and it gave me confidence and hope *yay* I ould really go on but this is not my main point so I’ll stop here) Regardless of my opinion on Mayla, I understand that to some queer women, it was bothering/hurtful. (If you are anything other than a woman / wlw, this point is not for you to debate. Keep your “opinions” to yourself, it does not matter here. These are facts.)

Like every remake of the original Skam where the S4 was given to Sana/Imane, the Muslim community was not represented at its best, at its most beautiful and respectfully. The character of Imane, although she is my favorite girl of the series, was not portrayed in a way that respected the majority of the Muslim community. (If you are anything other than Muslim, this point is not for you to debate. Our opinions do not matter here. These are facts.)

And so the same goes for the portrayal of sexual assault and child pronography in S2, of mental illness and homophobia in S3, of disabilities in S5, of addiction, transphobia, self-harm and neurodivergence in S6. Again, if you are not part of these communities, your opinions do not matter on these issues. These are facts that are not up for debate.

In other words, Skam France, as well as the original Skam, Skam Wtfock, Skam España, and probably all the others I haven’t watched in their entirety, are NOT perfect shows. They (maybe) tried their best to portray issues of the younger generations that are ugly, shameful, taboo, hard-to-swallow-pills. Of course they made mistakes. Of course they have to be held accountable. Of course they can and should do better. Of course it must be spoken about.

Here is my problem.

The so-called “fans” shamelessly SHITTING on the WHOLE show because of ONE TEASER TRAILER. (btw, this is where I get angry)

I am not talking about the fans making fun of the show and this season’s premise like “Better MCs than Tiff for S7: a romance between the car that almost hit Lucas S3 and the car that hit Arthur S5, or the school’s nurse, or Imane’s dad, or Elu’s rabbit” (that shit’s funny and I’d watch all of these).Or the joke about Wtfock and Skam Fr shaking hands while signing the same contract to disappoint the fans with white MCs (it’s funny cuz it’s trueeeee).

I am not talking about the fans criticizing the producers’ choice of Tiff as MC. There is a difference between shitting on issues and adressing/discussing them. I WANT to talk about how this season’s issue would have been so much better if a woc, specifically a black woman, had been the MC, because black women and doctors are a whole different level of issue than white women and doctors. Add on top of that an unplanned teenage pregnancy? It would have been IMMACULATE. I WANT to talk which wlw couple was better represented, Mayla or Croana/Crisana, and why is that. I WANT to talk about disabilities in black and poc communities. I WANT to talk about headcanons, AUs, to rectify the missed marks. I WANT to talk about our takes on seasons about Max, Sekou and Jo, instead of Tiff’s.

I DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOUR SHITTY, NEGATIVE, UNHELPFUL, HURTFUL COMMENTS.

Just because the protagonist is white, doesn’t give you ANY right to dismiss the issue that is unplanned teenage pregnancy. This is a problem that affects countries WORLDWIDE. Do you know how many deaths are related to minors giving birth? Do you know how many babies die at birth from these pregnancies? Do you have any idea the trauma it puts you through, to go into labor without even knowing you were pregnant in the first place, and then giving birth, and then having to care for a defensless human being? The dilemma of keeping it, or giving it away? The fear that lives in every person able to give birth, that one day they’ll become pregnant, because society turns sych a shameful look to that? No matter your ethnicity, your gender identity, your sexuality, your political stance or whatever shit you bring up to justify your disgraceful and downright degrading comments, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SAY THAT A MINOR GIVING BIRTH IS NOT AN ISSUE. 

You think the topic has been covered plenty before? Yeah, because shows like “16 and pregnant” and “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant!” are such good examples and show the reality with such an objective point of view! 

Bullshit. Teenage pregnancy is still a taboo, it still kills, and people are still morons about it. 

“Well I guess everybody is secretly pregnant now!” No, Jessica, but you wouldn’t know about it, would you? Because I wouldn’t tell you shit if you were my “friend” and I was going through it. The whole message of all the Skams is not that it presents super relatable issues of teenagers, although it is a big topic of the show. They present some issues that affect the youth in an authentic light, but that’s not it.

Tous les gens que tu rencontres mènent un combat dont tu ignores tout. 

Sois indulgente. Toujours. x x x

//

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

Be kind. Always. x x x

THAT’S THE MESSAGE. THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE SHOW.

And you all missed it.

All of you making dead baby jokes and death threats, degrading people who give birth, shaming teenagers for their pregnancies... Listen to yourselves.

“Well she deserves it, she was such a bitch!” No, Michael, you shit stick. Let’s rewind a bit for you, yeah? It was a GOD DAMN TEASER. We literally know nothing! Nothing at all! Why are y’all getting mad when we saw 3:25 minutes representing a whole ass season! Listen to yourselves. Y’all judge so fast for people pretending to love Skam and its authenticity and its motto.

You say Tiff is irredeemable?

Emma cheated on her boyfriend.

Manon lied and manipulated her friends.

Lucas was homophobic and prejudiced agaisnt mentally ill people.

Imane was homophobic too and went behind her friends’ back to get what she wanted.

Arthur cheated on his girlfriend too.

Lola dragged Elliot down with her in her addiction, lied, was verbally abusive, etc.

ALL THE MAINS ARE PROBLEMATIC.

Any guess why?

BECAUSE THEY ARE TEENAGERS. THEY ARE STILL GROWING AND LEARNING.

Yet we still loved them all. 

So don’t you dare tell me that Tiff deserves this, that her baby deserves to die, that teenage motherhood is irrelevant. Motherhood is not a curse in the first place, nor is it something to wish to inflict upon anyone. Motherhood is different for every single person and nobody except the person living with it can have an opinion on that. We don’t even know if the baby survived, for God’s sake!

There is no excuse for this kind of behavior..

It makes me so angry. Women are discriminated against in a fandom I thought was safe, again and again and again. 

I have to stop here because, well, this is just too much. There is much wrong with Skam (the original AND all the remakes), but there is even more wrong with the fans. I’m done.

You don’t support the show anymore? Fine, then don’t watch it! If I really am wrong, the number of viewers will go down and the show will die, just like you wished. There is no need to be vicious about it. 

I hope y’all are proud of your misogyny. 

Sincerely,

Adler.

#skam france #skam fr #skam fr s7 #fandom toxicity #toxic fandom #toxic fans #intersectionality #elu #skam elu #skam #mayla #skam mayla #lamifex #imane bakhellal #lucas lallemant #elliot demaury #lola lecomte #emma borges #manon demissy #arthur broussard #david hourregue

[baeddel]

@androfem​ has made a number of good posts about transmisogyny, addressed to a milieu I’m very glad not to be part of anymore. I wanted to run off of something they wrote in this one...

[2.5k words. transmisogyny, racism tw. epistemic status: Hawkeye Gough]

while hedging an argument in the second paragraph, they write “i’m by no means someone who can definitively say what tme/tma mean” (thus preparing us to hear a definition but to treat it as nondefinitive), but that they see the acronym ‘tme’ (’tranmisogyny exempt’) as “the most palatable attempt trans women and transfem nb people have made towards identifying whether other trans people are one of them or not, and other trans people communicating that as well voluntarily.” By palatable they mean to other people in their milieu, who they spend the rest of the post attacking over the reasons they found all the other terminology (casab etc.) unpalatable. Their criticisms are all quite good.

But - am I crazy, or, aren’t they wrong in this quote? The way I remember it, trans women did not come up with the term ‘tme’. This was something that tme people came up with themselves. The use of tme would eventually become imbricated with the disuse of casab, under the argument that casab requires you to ‘out’ yourself, and so on, which was its own controversy. But originally it wasn’t related to this reservation or at least I never experienced the two as connected. tme was something that, to us, came out of nowhere; it was something like an alien bacteria penetrating the atmosphere from the belly of an asteroid; it woke us up to a whole neighbouring discourse that we were unaware of. That neighbourhood was made up of cis women, trans men, and nonbinary cafabs who were beginning to grapple with the ‘transmisogyny question’. At the time, most people did not take the concept of ‘transmisogyny’ seriously; many people still believed that trans women had male privilege and so on. It was a huge surprise to us to find a whole emerging discourse of non-trans women who believed transmisogyny was real and took it seriously enough to invent their own terminology for describing it.

It’s possible you can trace the coinage to some trans woman somewhere. But at least, at the time that we encountered it, we understood it to be the self-description of non-trans women. A lot of trans women at the time reacted very negatively to this. One of the main criticisms was that tme was not a ‘coherent category’ - could we say that it tries to be too definitive, ie. a definition that overapplies? The anxiety was that it would collect the experience of subjects which cannot rightly be put together; trans men, cis women, cafabs, whoever else, do not all experience patriarhcy(!) in the same way. They all have different proximities to misogyny, emotional labour (when you were still allowed to say that), access to community, sexual access & availability, and so on. Later or earlier, I don’t remember, this same discursive device would be used by trans women against casab; we were derided for “treating casab like a coherent class.”

Androfem may be surprised to learn that this criticism orginates with trans women, if they weren’t there for this. The gesture returns, later on in their post, when they chastise others in their milieu for reading trans women’s arguments in bad faith. They caution that “the assumption shouldn’t be made that [a transfem is] completely unaware of or in denial about” all of the various nuances of proximity whenever she says “definitively” (emphasis mine) that “tme people aren’t affected by transmisogyny”. At this point, the taboo on definitions reaches a delerious extreme - Androfem’s peers take issue even with this tautology! And the solution Androfem proposes is not to take the claim seriously, but to secretly insert something that disrupts it, imagine some inapplicable cases, and so on, and, further, to assume that she is also doing it behind the scenes. Androfem identifies this obsurantism with transmisogyny; their peers cannot bear to take a trans woman seriously, so they will always send her work back and demand a new more palatable analysis. And we trust they are right to make this diagnosis; but this trans woman experiences it as the terrible return of her own native discourse. What we sowed in 2012 they now reap in 2021.

Why has this discourse progressed to such an epistemologically vicious place, where no statements about gender are possible? Baudrillard would enjoy watching our transsexuality become transpolitical. For whatever unconscious reason, whenever we are presented with a master signifier capable of rendering the transcendental field, we are immediately compelled to castrate it. Our destiny is to constantly throw discourses into indifference. Maybe. But the more direct lesson is that something went wrong with the method of analysis we employed to explicate transmisogyny in 2012. What went wrong?

Maybe we can begin with some statements in Androfem’s post and work backwards. They write that “tme people benefit ... from transmisogyny”, although they insert in parenthesis “(some more than others)”. This was an analysis we would have subscribed to in 2012. In 2021, we now want to ask: who benefits and in what way? Who benefits more, who less, and why?

It’s true that transmisogyny brings some profit. Growing up as trans girls we are often deployed as women are deployed; we become the older sister, surrogate mother, and secret girlfriend. Whenever our peers see us in the correct light and notice our softness (to borrow a Saxon term), they exploit it. For boys the profit derives primarily from our socially acceptable proximity in the enforced homosociality that children in our culture endure. The trans girl is a girl who you can have sleepovers with, who you can have in the boys locker room, and so on, and therefore have early sexual and emotional access to. Girls generally exploit it a little later on, when heterosexual relations are expected. The trans girl can be a special kind of boy, like a ‘gay best friend’, but who is sexually available. Both boy and girl cast their brief teenage becomings on their own special gendered Other who is capable of facilitating it by her difference. Contra Balzac, it is precisely her castration that allows her to function as a superavailable Other, not (yet) as an overproximate Same that makes us recoil.

This relation of the tme to trans women dominates in the Bay Area of California, where trans women have resumed some of our traditional roles as temple functionaries. You probably have some homeless or recently homeless or about-to-be homeless trans woman (lets say she is ‘having to be homeless’) in your overcrowded apartment who will always be there to help you process your gender feelings and is probably down to fuck if you can get over yourself and make a move on her.

But these wages of transmisogyny are transitory and marginal. While most trans women will have encountered some of these kinds of exploitative gendered relations, it is by no means a universal experience of tme people. And, whats more, it is possible to have these relations, with the same benefits, which are not exploitative. I have known many cis girl-trans girl couples who got together under the bonds of enforced heterosexuality because of the profit each had for the other - the trans girl is not threatening, better about her boundaries, and so on, perhaps because of her own experiences of sexual exploitation; the cis girl, for equally contingent reasons, just ‘gets it’, and doesn’t try and make a man out of the trans girl - and when the trans girl realizes she is trans and comes out to her partner, the two track an escape route from heterosexuality together. There is no reason to expect it to always go one way, exploitative, or always the other, emancipatory. Is the cis girl ‘benefitting from transmisogyny’ in this scenario? Is she perhaps benefitting less than others, or more than others? I think that we cannot easily analyze every relation between person and person in terms of cost and benefit; even when we are bound by structures of domination, we cannot already anticipate the outcome. At the same time, if such experiences are rare, we aren’t surprised, because we know that the desiring-situations are staged in a certain way that makes discovering these kinds of escape routes difficult.

But simaultaneous with these occasional benefits, 1. transmisogyny is usually damaging to a trans woman without bringing any profit to her persecutor, and 2. transmisogyny is usually damaging to a tme person as well. Don’t you think so? Superficially, it acts as a limit on your presentation; all cis men growing up experience limits on their behaviour, backed by punishments, to prevent or destroy whatever might seem transsexual in them. Maybe it plays a similar role in the upbringing of cis women, trans men, cafabs, etc., in ways that are waiting to be articulated? On a deeper level, transmisogyny - as the hygeine of gendered categories, the social governance of presentation, etc. - plays a crucial role in the overall desiring-situation of oppressive heterosexuality; it creates a series of taboos, anxieties, myths and harsh realities which, in some indirect way, help to maintain heterosexuality’s renewal in each successive generation.

I think some harm was done by a too-ready application of frameworks developed to analyze white supremacy to the question of gender. The progressive leitkultur in those days was still the ‘invisible napsack’. While for transmisogyny the benefits are merely occasional, there are universally accessible wages of whiteness. White people enjoy a distorted labour market; the deterritorialization of black neighbourhoods creates (barely) affordable apartments for (eg.) white students [the scenario with the Oakland enaree we described implicitly takes place in one of these apartments]; and, most generally, there are habits of prosociality between white people which are difficult to break that continually renew the same distribution of wealth, status, care and intimacy [Eldridge Cleaver referenced Harry Golden’s gag about ‘vertical integration, horizontal segregation’ (pg 67) as a good description of race relations in Folsom; we find it to be a good description of race relations in the trans community as well].

When we tried to apply these readymade frameworks to transmisogyny, we found it difficult to construct relevant categories. Transmisogyny could not be domesticated to a form of exploitation metaphorized in economic terms. Therefore, every further demand for a ‘materialism’ that could clearly enumerate the relationships of exploitation would be frustrated, finding only edge cases and anecdotes. There was no underlying machinery that always produced this or that outcome. Therefore, each category was “incoherent”, too definitive, unable to capture what we took for an underlying system that was just out of reach. But the problem was only a misplace of focus. Transmisogyny is not really a system of exploitation; it’s the nightmare of a patrilineality that cannot enforce its borders. It is necessary therefore to move beyond categories like oppression and privilege, bigot and victim, exploited and exploiter, and deal with the domination that captures both ‘tme’ and ‘tma’ in its ruses. Now we can answer some of the old warhorses; CASAB is not a class which we can say anything about, nor is tme or even tma; it is rather the residue of a paternal subjugation, a ‘weight of dead generations’ that everyone confronts moments upon their exit from the womb; a universal coercive sexuation which we cannot help but encounter, combat or obey, enforce on others and despair in our private moments. Everyone, everywhere, is aware of the problem; and the exit is waiting, somewhere, as yet undiscovered, for anyone to seize.

So much for the riddle of 2012. In 2021 the situation is not really the same. Androfem’s milieu were not socialized by anti-revisionist parties and do not metaphorize their experiences in economic terms. Their platform is a sort of legalism. They enter into a discourse which has been a continuous bloodbath for twelve years (the relevant year for them is not 2012 but 2009, and the website not tumblr but wordpress); every discussion has already been had; what is necessary now is only to enforce the common law precedent. They are obliged to accept the existence of transmisogyny because it was already accepted before they got there; they don’t really understand why and are not curious about it. They are not gender abolitionists, but inclusionists. If they had lived thirty years ago they would probably have been exclusionists and thirty years before that, inclusionists again. Every conversation begins with some pious disavowal, ‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation again...’ Everything has already been tabulated in their stare decisis; asexuals are not lgbt, queer is a slur, cottagecore is colonialist, and so on. What motivates them is primarily some irrelevant triviality like whether this or that fanfiction is normalizing abuse or whatever. It is thus easy to see why Androfem argues that the old taboo on being definitive is transmisogyny; in their milieu it is a strategy for rendering the anti-transmisogyny laws unenforcable. If the law is ever invoked there is a loophole; look here, you missed this nuance...

Much of that milieu - from my own experience with it - is dominated by TERF cults that essentially run friend groups as front organizations; they start off siccing teenages on each other over shipping drama and soon encourage mobbing trans women undesirables. These networks were active on wordpress in 2009, they were on tumblr when I joined in 2012 (where they were able to leverage irl connections to intimidate members of my friend group who were organizing), and they are running discord servers and stalking tumblrs here in 2021. [If anyone from that scene is reading this far and this sounds at all familiar to them: I’m sorry but, yeah, you’re in a cult. You’re better than this! The fandom drama commentariat is not really worth trying to reform. Sauve qui peut!]

These are normally crypto-TERFs who are ‘officially’ inclusive of trans women and, in fact, their friend-group cults are usually full of trans women. Trans women, we have to say, make the most ruthless transmisogynists. To this extent we must disagree with Androfem when they say that “the smallest demographic in [TERF] communities are transfems”; in my experience transfems have sometimes been the most numerous, and it is precisely because TERFs are organized around transmisogyny. The reasoning behind this paradoxical outcome is understandable only in terms of dianetics and thetan space operas.

Anyway. I have sometimes felt that transmascs need some kind of Prince of their own; someone who is able to articulate his own transsexual line of critique in the face of trans women’s well-known and well-settled one, but with the minimum amount of ressentiment; who can hold his own against transfeminine parochialsm and not cave to cheap attacks, but also not make them, and not become parochial himself. I think that ‘tme’ is at its most valuable as an organizational principle when only someone like Androfem can “definitively” articulate it. It has to be a space for tracking the escape from my own desiring-situation on my own terms, in my own style, by my own design; bathed in my own light... But to be capable of accomplishing this it needs to become a break with all previous discourses. One that is open, flexible, and forward-looking; a dangerous gambit which is definitive and unprecedented...

[idiealotdontworry]

the aggression towards trans men on here is so fucked. ppl are really out here telling us we're not allowed to have words for our unique experiences, that we don't even have unique struggles. you literally can not fathom a world where your bioessentialist idea of men = oppressor isn't true. it's so bad that you're out here telling us the extent of what we face is "just misdirected misogyny" and not specific, targeted hatred towards us for being trans men. not just trans, but trans men. ok.

like yes trans men deal w misogyny... it's not misdirected. misogyny affects everyone + we are among its primary targets. we also deal w a specific form of targeted hate, unique from (but not mutually exclusive to) misogyny. but you can't accept that because accepting that means accepting a non-white, anti-colonialist view of gender. it means taking us seriously + stepping aside occasionally to let us speak. n you can't have that cuz it hurts your ego.

every time we try to come up with a word for the shit we face, it's met with intense backlash from other trans people. transmisandry? bullshit, apparently. transandrophobia? too long, shut up. if we just call it "transphobia"? yall mad cuz we're not inclusive enough.....about our own experiences. fuck off w that transparent bullshit lmao. you just hate trans men...for being trans men. wow, shocker.

it's really similar to the way some of you just... decided hating gay men is ok? because they're men???? you can't fathom the idea that someone's identity as a man doesn't automatically grant them privileges equal to cishet white guys. gay men are hated for being gay men. trans men are hated for being trans men. men of color are hated for being men of color. it's all connected and it's all on purpose and it's all institutional. if you refuse to believe us, that's on you.

also... trans men? you don't have to deal w this shit. you don't have to believe people who tell you the shit you face isn't important enough to have a word for. you don't owe kindness to people who want to silence you. it's not about wanting to feel special. it's about the fact that we fucking deserve to talk about what we deal with, to have words for those experiences. Anybody trying to deny you that basic amount of agency does not fucking care about u.

all this goes 10000x for trans men of color. you Don't have to let white people tell you what your gender means for you. they've done that fucking enough. we deserve better.

#personal #trans #transgender #lgbtq

[lilkrumpja]

An open letter to the admins of a facebook group about Romani “education” who so kindly informed me that romanipen was “often misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic and promoting of rape culture” as well as some other -ics that I’m not even going to legitimize:

It finally happened. Romani discourse got me to delete my facebook. It wasn’t even the “fauxmani police” you guys constantly bemoan either, it was YOU.

First, hello. I am a transgender person. Sorry I didn’t herald this information with a huge banner on my profile pic or make dozens of tiktoks about it, but I am. There is a good chance I’ve been out and medically transitioning longer than you’ve known you had Roma heritage. But while we’re on the topic of allies attempting to educate people on their own marginalization like we don’t already know better than you ever will -

I believe the words used were “we need to adapt, or we will die”.........first off who is we? Roma got by for centuries without you. Without all of us. Nobody needs your advice. This may hurt your feelings, but people who are reconnecting to Romani culture for any reason need to remember their place within it. It doesn’t matter why any of us grew up outside the culture. The fact is that we DID, and if we’re not coming from a place of learning, we’re abusing the work done by the people responsible for everything we know about being Romani.

When people who were raised Romani ask you to keep traditions, it’s because they are the only truly tangible thing that connects us as a culture anymore. You also say repeatedly that we are not a monolith, and that’s quite true. Which is why nobody is asking you to keep every single tradition you know to be practiced by Romani. But refusing to listen to those in the culture who have gone out of their way to help you reconnect and learn? What do you want to get out of being Romani, exactly? Permission to put it in your bio on social media? An opportunity to condescend to people? Pretty scarves? Absolution of your white guilt? That’s called a costume.

As I mentioned previously, I’m a trans person. I was out to my Roma family and faced my share of rejection for it. Do you think I don’t know about conservative values within the culture? Do you really think I’m advocating for excommunication or repression when I suggest you should hold some traditions? Or did it really not occur to you that maybe I was referring to the way you wash your dishes or something equally innocuous?

Where the hell do you get off being raised English and criticizing Romani who are mistrustful of outsiders, exactly? Why does this continually need to be explained to you? Why do you think centuries of violent history magically don’t apply to you just because you have heritage? Why do you think there’s something about you that distinguishes you from anyone who could be lying about even having heritage at all? There’s not a radar and none of us are special. Sorry if that hurts your feelings. It’s not fair, but it’s the truth.

And don’t bring me more shit about your therapists and behaviors and thriving. I don’t care, and the argument doesn’t do what you think it does. You know there are laws right now that affect our people worldwide. Your therapists don’t know how many lashes you took for speaking Romanes. You have not BEEN HERE for the centuries of slaughter. You don’t have a right to criticize certain behaviors. You look like the xenophobe. Don’t even attempt to discuss anti-lgbtq+, sexist or xenophobic ideals within romanipen unless you plan to immediately follow up with the fact that colonialism and white supremacy were what injected them there in the first place. Then take a look at your role as a white settler within your own country and ask yourself if you should really be throwing stones.

Those of us reconnecting have very limited tools for education, and the ones we possess came to us through extreme risk for the ones that left them to us. They sacrificed time and safety so we could learn. They faced potential expulsion for the sake of educating us. Where is your respect for that effort? Where is the acknowledgement that everything we know about our Romani selves we know because of them? Telling people “I’m Romani” and comparing ourselves to photos of women on google doesn’t do a fucking thing for them or the culture.

Like, go to fucking college. Congregate with unmarried men on your period. Go be fucking gay. Shave your head and wear pants and literally do whatever but quit trashing the entire concept of upholding any semblance of Romani tradition as a points system that you are losing or some anti-individuality steamroller. Act remotely grateful that Roma put themselves at risk to teach you anything at all. Accept that you have learning to do.

Y’all can interact with this however you want but don’t expect a response. I don’t feel like hearing your side yet again about all your disadvantages when you actively ignore those of others to excuse your lack of willingness to fall back and listen. I just didn’t feel like making a whole new facebook account and applying to your group just to get this off my chest. I’m willing to be the bad guy if it means you start listening to people who have lived experience in something you’re interested in ✌️

#Romani #romanipen

[ltleflrt]

So I was having a conversation on Discord about omegaverse tonight, and my brain won’t shut up about it, because as usual I come up with my arguments after the discussion is over.  I should have been asleep 3 hours ago, but it’s hot and I can’t unwind, so I’m going to stay up EVEN LATER while the a/c brings things down a few degrees, and I try to get these thoughts out of my head.

I was pro-omegaverse, and trying to explain why *I personally* like the genre, and why I think even with it’s problematic origins and frequently used elements, it’s still a cool genre.  I was essentially having 2 discussions, but they were both using my answers to their questions, even though I was usually addressing them 1 at a time.  That happens when you’re in a Discord chat, and I wasn’t @ing my answers to them, since we were all in the room together.  And I think that cunfuddled the discussion and my thoughts.  So here’s a breakdown.

Issue 1. Biological Essentialism is gross and rapey.

Answer:  Yes, it is.  But so what?  Some people like pure rape-fantasy.  Is it healthy?  That can be argued either way, and it definitely depends on the person writing, or the person reading.  People like gross and rapey stories to get their rocks off.  Whether we like non-con or not, rape fics should be allowed to exist because some people like it.  It doesn’t matter if I think their reasons are valid.  As long as they’re not actively trying to harm someone, let people get down and dirty with their rapey fantasies.

Also, the whole biological imperative to mate isn’t that far off from Soulmate AUs.  Truemates = Soulmates.  Whether we like Soulmate AUs or not, are we also arguing that they shouldn’t exist because they’re problematic?  No, we’re not.  Soulmate AUs are romantic for a lot of people.  Let people have their uncomplicated, fluffy, 1 Destined Love stories.

Something to keep in mind though, is that not all omegaverse fics use the true mate trope.  And quite a lot of fics have characters with a lot more self control during their mating cycles than what you’d find in the short smutty one shots.  It’s common for them to avoid each other during heats, and only share their mating cycle as an act of love, trust, and devotion.  After they’ve been dating for a while.  (I love it when the alpha brings over snacks and water for the omega, and immediately hightails it out of there once they get a whiff of their sexy love interest.  “Take care of yourself, text me when you feel better, loveyoubye! *nyoooom*”)

Issue 2. It’s transphobic.

Answer:  This one is harder to argue, because yeah.  It can be.  But so can non-omegaverse.  Transphobia is, unfortunately, everywhere.  Exploring human gender through non-human gendered beings isn’t a bad thing though.  Cis people should be allowed to explore those things too.  This is step 1 to fighting the Patriarchy.  Questioning it.  Someone may come out of the experience still cis, but they’re going to be more open minded to trans people.  Not to mention, all the trans and enby folks who probably figured themselves out through the gender exploration to be found in omegaverse.

Now, if someone’s into omegaverse and they tell you they won’t read a story about a trans character?  Red flag.

Personally, I like the gender exploration in omegaverse.  Not just in the hormonal stuff, although I do kinda love the idea of seeing cis male characters suffer cramps once a month lol... but I like the stuff about social inequality that women have to go through mapped onto a male character.

I brought this up in the chat, and my use of the term “women’s issues” raised a terfy flag I think, which upset me and made it harder to make my point.  Cuz if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s terfy.  But I do see women’s issues as also trans issues.  Trans Men are treated differently after they start to present as male.  There’s a marked difference between their treatment as a woman pre-transition, and as a man afterwards.  And they still have to be really careful about accidental pregnancy.  I cannot fathom how awful the dysphoria would be for them if they get pregnant.  Trans Women are treated horribly pre-transition if they give any hint of feminine interests.  There’s a reason “girly” is an insult, and it’s because Toxic Masculinity Is The Worst.  And then when they transition?  Hooooboy, gods bless those ladies because Trans Women are treated worse than Cis Women on the social pyramid.  And Enbies?  Oh you sweet things, how the hell do you deal with the rest of us bastards? 

When I say that I am interested in seeing the characters I like deal with women’s issues, I am talking about social inequality, not just periods and cramps (although that a little bit too, because I wish a cis man could just fucking UNDERSTAND why I need a goddamn nap okay? lol), but also sexual health rights, including birth control, including the right to choose whether or not to take hormones, the right to equal pay, the right to equal education.  Feminism, for me, includes trans and enby folks at the table. 

But anyway, the characters I like right now just happen to be men.  I see Dean as a man.  That could mean he’s a trans man too, because trans men are men, yo.  Castiel I see either as a man or non-binary.  So if I want to put them through “women’s issues”, I have to plunk them in a special universe for that.  No one is writing Matriarchy AUs, so Omegaverse it is!

(Side note: If my OTP were f/f, I’d still like omegaverse.  And I could see lots of interesting ways to use all those same tropes for 2 female presenting characters.  So it has nothing to do with genitalia.  Unless it’s smut.  But I swing all the ways, so still not an issue for me lol)

(Side note part deux: I like to read trans stories too.  They have unique things about them that cannot be found in stories about cis characters, even in omegaverse.  And when I see Dean and Cas as men or enby, I’m not putting down people who like them gender flipped.  I just see myself enjoying Trans Woman Claire dating Enby Kaia, more than I’d like to see Dean or Cas written as cis/trans-women.)

Issue 3.  Internalized misogyny!

Answer: This is an argument used against women shipping m/m in general, and has nothing to do with omegaverse.  It just so happens that omegaverse was created for m/m pairings.  But there are TONS of reasons we ship more m/m than any other pairings, ranging from those are the most interesting characters presented to us, to--yes--internalized misogyny.  But I’m tired of that one.  Internalized misogyny is rampant, and telling women that their fantasies are problematic isn’t going to cure them.  There’s better ways to go about it. 

Omegaverse now covers m/f and f/f pairings as well, sooooo... yeah, this one just doesn’t hold water like it used to.  We just need to yoink the media out of the hands of the cis-men who are mostly in charge, and make them give us more compelling women to ship.

Issue 4: That’s not how human bodies work.

Answer: They’re not human lol!  Okay but real talk here.  This issue actually sounds transphobic to me, because it strikes very close to the XX vs XY chromosomes argument.  Omegaverse characters have intersex variations.  Alpha females and Omega males can have both a penis and a vagina in some fics.  It depends on how the author wants to write it, of course.  I usually go with the (horrifying) cloaca for omega males, and the (hyena inspired) psueudo-penis for alpha females instead, but to each writer their own lol

But again... not human.  Let wet buttholes be a thing, lube is expensive and sometimes the bottle gets tangled in the sheets, and you have to stop what you’re doing to find it and... anyway, convenience in fantasy sex is nice lol

In Conclusion: 

Personally, I only like non-traditional omegaverse.  The stuff that subverts the “problematic” tropes.  I was asked what I liked about the genre, and when I explained, it devolved into discussion of the topics above.  But I think what was forgotten in that discussion, was that I kept saying I don’t like the “problematic” things.  I like flipping the tropes.  Which I like in general, when I’m looking for things to read.  I mean, how many Castiel Thinks He’s Straight fics are there?  Not many!  So I wrote one!  Because flipping tropes is my jam! 

I don’t like Soulmate AUs, but with the proper twist I can still enjoy it.  I don’t like Highschool AUs, but I’ve read some that touched me so deeply I still think of them years later.  There’s always someone subverting the tropes I don’t like and turning them into something I do like.

And yet even though I kept saying I liked the subversion of the genre, the discussion kept coming back around to the parts of omegaverse that I *don’t* like.  I will still defend anyone’s right to like the parts of it that aren’t for me though, so I argued away XD

And? Sometimes I like the dark problematic stuff when I’m in the mood to get my rocks off.  Don’t judge, you’re all a little weird in some way or another ;D

Anywho, now that I got this stuff off my chest, hopefully I can sleep.  It has also cooled down by like 4 degrees, and I no longer feel like I’m going to melt in my sleep.  Tomorrow is going to suck, because I have to get up in 5 hours.  Yay!

#ltleramblings #i enjoy thinking about these things #i was enjoying the discord discussion #i just couldn't keep up with 2 people at once #especially 2 people who are much better at thinking on the fly than i am lol

[faemytho]

If you're not too busy, I need some LGBTQ+ related advice. I was talking to someone earlier today, and I mentioned the topic of transgender people. I gave an example of "just because someone has the chest and (other parts) of a female doesn't automatically make them a woman", but they said it didn't make sense. They're older than me, so they know what a transvestite is, and they told me their work involves understanding brain development, but they only think of this as an opinion, (1/2)

(2/2)not an identity. I don't want to accuse them of being a t**f, but I don't know how to prove my point without simply calling it intuition. As someone who was a she/her but isn't anymore, do you know how to/if you can help me/anyone else that can have this problem? 

-

(here’s a good post that debunks the ‘gender is in the brain’ myth)

Note that I am not a professional, nor do I claim to speak for all trans people, but I am a trans person and I have a lot of experience with other trans people (I think I can count on one hand the amount of cisgender friends I have). So here’s my essay. Clowning in the notes will get you blocked on sight.

Also I’m not typically an advice blog but sure, I can answer this. Your friend actually is spouting t**f rhetoric, but that doesn’t necessarily make them a t**f. They probably genuinely do not understand the difference between sex and gender. So let me tell you, there’s a huge difference.

Gender as it pertains to our biological sex is a social construct. In other words, “sex=gender” is an incorrect formula. It’s not true.

As far as gender identity is concerned, it’s important to stress the fact that feeling an inherent sense of ‘this is incorrect’ when a trans person’s gender is associated with their birth sex.... is not an opinion. It’s not a choice a trans person just decides to make, nor is it a choice they even can make.

Thinking from this standpoint through a logical lens, if trans people could choose their genders, they likely would not exist as “trans people” if they could just choose to be cisgender. So why do so many trans people exist if it’s all just “a choice”? Do they choose to be part of an oppressed group that has no set in stone protections (in America) so they can make themselves targets of discrimination so they can wallow in self-pity about how they’ve reached rock bottom because of how discriminated against they’ve been? Why would they do that, that’s stupid. That is what makes no sense to me. It’s illogical, so why would people choose to do it?

Because it’s not a choice. Sex and gender identity are not the same; they are far from it. It has been proven before and it can be proven again.You can’t chose your sex, and you can’t choose your gender identity either.

A personal experience of mine, I used to know a trans person who encountered a xenogender label they absolutely adored. It catered directly to their special interest, they said it was a fantastic label with a beautiful flag and a beautiful definition... but it wasn’t their gender. They wanted so badly to identify as this gender but they couldn’t, because it just didn’t match their gender identity. “It’s not me, no matter how badly I want it to be.” It would be just as bad as forcing themself (a trans person) to identify as the same gender as their assigned sex at birth. It wasn’t them.

And that was that. I’ve actually encountered several labels like that myself; where I just loved them to death but I couldn’t identify as them because they weren’t me. Because it would feel wrong if I just decided, “you know what? Fuck it! I’ll use this label!” It would feel just as bad as being forced to be a gender I am not.

Would I benefit from identifying as a man? The answer is yes, I would! We live in a patriarchal society, I would reap a ton of benefits by identifying as and presenting as a man. But I don’t, because the idea of being male is inherently incorrect to me. I can’t choose it, even if I wanted to.

I love the female label. I love feminine things. I love them a lot, but I don’t love them when they’re used to refer to me. I can’t force myself to be female, nor would I want to, because it’s not what fits; it’s incorrect. It’s incongruent with me.

Here’s a roughly paraphrased transcription from one of my textbooks:

Biological sexes are the genitals and sex characteristics one is born with (when those sex characteristics may not fully match up as entirely of the male sex or entirely of the female sex, that person is considered intersex). Gender identity is defined as one's innate, inner sense of being male, female, something other, or something in-between. Gender expression is how one chooses to present themselves to themselves or others, which includes their appearance, dress, mannerisms, and speech patterns. Gender expression and gender identity do not have to match.

Here’s something you can choose: Gender expression. Dressing in drag, for example! Let’s break this down.

Transvestism is the practice of dressing in a manner traditionally associated with the opposite sex. (Why do we associate clothes with specific sexes? Why have we given specific clothes a sex assignment? Clothes are clothes; they can be worn by anyone regardless of sex and it’s not going to change someone’s sex. If women can wear pants and suits, why can’t men wear skirts? It’s actually the misogyny and toxic masculinity, but that’s a whole other rabbit hole).

Your appearance, your clothes, your personality, and even the way you talk, those are all things you can consciously influence and change. Expression is something you can change, but gender identity is not. An identified woman in a suit is still a woman. An identified man in a dress is still a man.

Food for thought. An intersex person exists, and stands before you. How do you answer the question, “What’s their gender?”. It cannot be answered by applying the “sex=gender” formula. Their sex is intersex; they are not completely, entirely, or just male or female. If one is supposed to go off of biological sex, how then do you determine their gender?

Logically? The “sex=gender” formula holds no weight. It just simply isn’t true. Another example. We insist on giving non-human characters genders, even when there is no biological component to go off of.

Wall-E and Eve, for example. They may be male and female coded respectively, but they don’t have any biological sex; they’re robots! How then does the “sex=gender” formula hold up? There’s no “sex” variable to equal the “gender” variable. So then it stands to reason by this formula that as robots, they have no gender, yet we insist on calling Wall-E a boy, and Eve a girl. Why would we do that if we, hypothetically, intend to uphold the “sex=gender” formula? They have no sex, so why would we call them male or female?

Because “sex=gender” is not true. What parts you were born with do not define whatever gender you may end up being.

There is a desperate need to differentiate between the female-sex, the female-gender, the male-sex, and the male-gender. They are not co-dependent; and they can exist without “matching up”. They don’t even have to exist in a person at all; take me, I’m trans-nonbinary person and I use a ton of xenogenders, but male and female? Those aren’t me. Would identifying as one of those make my life easier? Sure would! But I refuse to live as someone I’m not; I can’t live as someone I’m not.

Your friend should also probably come to terms with the fact that there are 7 billion people on this planet. The odds of all 7 billion+ of us fitting into one of two categories? Statistically, very unrealistic. We are unique individual people, with our own experiences and our own thoughts and beliefs. Why wouldn’t our genders adhere to our individuality? Even our biological sexes don’t adhere to a binary; they live on a spectrum, and anything within that spectrum isn’t entirely male or entirely female! Our sexes are as individual as each of us.

My experiences with my body, and my gender, are going to be different than anyone else who may even use the same label as I do! That’s just how it is. Our sex does not define our gender. Our gender identities cannot be chosen. We are who we are, and that in itself is pretty unique.

#queer stuff #queer support #fae rants #fae rambles #ask #anonymous

[flirting-with-psychology]

100 good questions to ask your friends at 4:02 am when you can’t sleep (can also function as an asks list)

Are you bothered by your cosmic insignificance? Maybe just a little bit

Do you mourn for a place or person you’ve never known? I mourn for the college experience I didn’t quite manage to have, and for the utopian life from the end of The Good Place that is impossible to get in real life

Do you really think there is somebody for everybody? Hopefully

Do you place any value in gender roles? Anyone can do whatever they want but I do associate some things with gender

Do you have to be related to be family? I don’t consider non-relatives my family

Are your platonic relationships just as valuable as romantic or family ones? I have always put a lot of weight on romantic relationships

Are you in love? Do you want to be? Not quite but I want to be

Do you think you can put love into categories (family, platonic, romantic, etc.) or is it just one general sensation? I can put it into categories

Would you be happy with a life without romance? No

Are you always going to be a little in love with somebody? Yes, probably Captain and Candy Cane

Would you change your appearance if you could? Yes, but not surgically

Do you have the feeling you’ve lost something you might have had in another life - whether it be a person, a place, a world, a language, etc.? I feel like I could have had a different life experience if I was born a decade or two sooner

Do you believe in reincarnation? No but I wish I did, there are definitely things I want a second chance at

Would you want to be reincarnated? Yes

Do you think you’re special, or just another person amongst billions? Can you be both? I would like to be special but probably not

Do theoretical ethical debates have any value? Is it important people discuss ethical dilemmas, e.g. the trolley problem? Yes, they are interesting and can often lead to real-life scenarios

Did you have imaginary friends? Do you still have them? I did when I was a kid. I still like to make up characters but I don’t consider them imaginary friends

Are you religious? Do you think your religion is ‘correct’? I am not religious, and I think it is most likely that there is no god or spiritual force

If you aren’t religious, do you wish you were? Why? I don’t really wish I were but sometimes I can understand the desire to believe your life will have a guaranteed happy ending

Do you want a grand adventure? Yes

Do you have somebody, whether it be a friend or stranger, who you think you could have loved if the circumstances were different? Yes

How long does it take you to fall in love with somebody?Is the sensation of ‘falling in love’ or ‘being in love’ better? I’m not sure where exactly like turns into love, and I have never experienced being in love in a relationship

Is love about convenience or something more? Can it be about both? It would have to be about more than just convenience

Do you think you really understand your gender and sexuality? I have not really questioned it much. I am a cis girl and I am happy being a girl, but I think if I were born a boy I would probably be happy being a boy too. I am mostly straight but maybe just a little bit bi, although I don’t think I would have romantic feelings for a girl

How fluid is your concept of gender and sexuality? Not too fluid but idk

What’s the most life-changing choice you’ve made so far? Probably where to go to college

Are you afraid of growing old? Yes

Would you want to live forever? How about for a billion years, a million, a millennium, a century? I think I would get tired and lonely living forever, but a few centuries would give me enough time to try things

Do you believe in some form of god/s? No

Are your choices fated or of your own free will? Free will

Do you have a hunch about how you’re going to die? Lately I’ve been fearing dying of covid, but hopefully not

Do you believe in star signs? No

How old do you have to be to be considered an adult? Legally 18, socially probably like 30

Was your childhood happy? I think so

What are you missing from your life? A passion

Have you ever met someone who had a very similar personality to your own? Did you get along? Not any more so than regular friends

Do opposites attract? Not really

Is your life what you expected it would be five years ago? No, even if you take out the pandemic I still thought I would be doing something interesting with my career

Do you know what you want out of life? No

What makes a person ‘good’? Are you a ‘good person’? I guess if they help people? I would not necessarily say I am a very good person but I think I am more good than bad

What fundamentally matters do you? Love and fun

Is freewill an illusion? Not spiritually, but maybe capitalistically

Do you create art? How do you define art? I make jewelry and other crafts, and videos. Art is stuff that is there to be entertaining or beautiful, rather than just utilitarian

How often do you lie? Is all lying inherently bad? Are you generally truthful? I rarely lie and I usually disapprove of lying but in some cases it can be ok

Do you want to be remembered after your death? What for? Something I create

Is true world peace ever possible? Idk. Not looking like it

Do you have to suffer to truly understand the human condition? What is the human condition? How can you really experience it? Who the fuck knows. Everyone experiences things differently, even if you suffer the same thing

Are you free? Will you ever be? Can anyone be truly free? I am legally free but not free of capitalism

Do you hold yourself to higher standards than you hold others? Yes

What do you expect from a friend or partner? Someone with a sense of humor who is easy to talk to, and romantic for a partner

What question could you ask to find out the most about a person? No idea

Do you justify all your beliefs or have you just inherited/absorbed some? I’m sure I have abosrbed some

Which beliefs do you have that is most likely to be wrong? Idk maybe still supporting Harry Potter even though I don’t agree with JK Rowling’s anti-trans beliefs

Can human really understand the complete nature of the universe, space and time? No

Is a conscious what makes someone a person? Probably

What do you think about artificial intelligence? It’s kinda cool but I don’t understand how it works

Do you thinks humans are obsessed with escapism (books, video games, movies, etc.)? Are you looking for an escape? Do you think that’s a bad thing? Yes but it’s not a bad thing

Are we eventually going to ‘run out’ of new combinations for music, art, language, etc.? Is there a limit to human creativity? I doubt it

What do you think the next era of music will be like? Who knows, I barely even listen to this era

What do you think the next era of fashion will be like? Masks will be incorporated into it

Do we live in tumultuous times, or do they just seem so strange because we’re living in them? It’s hard to say

Would you want to meet a clone of yourself? Would you like them? No, and I probably wouldn’t

How confident are you, really? Not very

How consistent is your perception of time? Not very

What age should people be allowed to vote? Should children and teenagers be allowed to vote? 18 is probably a good age, I think it’s hard to make an informed decision as a kid. I know I would either want whoever my parents wanted or whoever was more attractive

How do you feel about the idea ‘an eye for an eye’? Probably not a good idea in general

What’s the worse thing a person can be? A murderer

How do you feel about monogamy? I would like to have it

Can you be in love with someone and still fall in love with someone else? Probably

What’s the tragedy of your life? Losing all my potential

Would your life make a good play? No it would be hella boring

Should people be prosecuted for crimes that weren’t considered crimes at the time? No

Would you fight for your country? Do you feel a sense of loyalty to your nation? I feel some loyalty I guess because it’s home, but I would not fight

Do you believe in gender equality in every aspect? I believe in equal opportunities but not forcing people to act a certain way

Do we have a moral obligation to care for others? To what extent? I think as a society we need to take care of people and probably set up government resources to do so, but the specific people who do that should be the ones who feel fulfilled by it

Do you crave approval and/or praise? Yes

Is there comedy in all tragedy and tragedy in all comedy? Idk

Are you ever going to be satisfied? I hope so but knowing me, probably not

When you are sad, do you listen to music that conveys your emotions or music that makes you happy? Music that conveys my emotions

Is your music organised by mood or sensation or do you just listen to everything at any time? Most of the time I just shuffle it but I do have some playlists

Would you marry a friend if they needed you to (e.g. for citizenship)? Probably not

Are you a deep person? Eh

Given the chance to live your life on Mars, with no hope of returning to Earth but with the promise of scientific discovery and glory, would you take it? Not unless there was already an established society on mars with opportunities for entertainment and community interaction

Are you who people think you are? Not really. I think I am more extroverted than people think (even though I’m really an ambivert), and a lot of people think I should do sales or customer service which I hate even though I’m ok at them

Do you think you would be happier if you had been born a different gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality or religion? I might be happier if I was a boy, but only if I was an outgoing boy. And I might be happier if I was in one of those happier-on-average countries

What’s your toxic trait? Are you trying to improve yourself and fix it? My toxic traits are stubbornnes, procrastination, and lack of motivation, which are by nature extremely hard to work on

Do you anger easily? Maybe a little but I also let go of it easily

Are you a jealous person? Yes

If you lost all your memories, would you have the same personality? I assume not

Given the chance to reset your life (with none of the knowledge you currently have), would you take it? Maybe

Is hate as strong as love? Who do you hate? No. I hate Mitch McConnell

Do you speak multiple languages? Which do you dream in? What language would you want to learn? I only speak a little french and italian, I am not fluent. I dream in English. I might want to learn Gaelic

Do you draw meaning from your dreams, or do you disregard them? Sometimes I draw meaning

How would you describe yourself when you love? Do you love forcefully, unconditionally, gently, quietly, desperately? Probably desperately lol

Is unrequited love real love? I think so

Is your perception of yourself similar or the same to how others perceive you? Idk

Are you overly analytical? Yes

Do you ever feel that you are really a terrible person, and only act good out of societal or some other obligation? Occasionally

Do you believe in magic? Are you superstitious? No, but I wish it was real

What belief do you have that isn’t logically grounded, but you still firmly believe in? That I’ll end up with an interesting or exceptional life. Idk if I firmly believe it but I would like to believe it, because the alternative is depressing

#survey

[theratopia]

The P Word

Welcome back, Therapals,

Our subject for the week came to my attention while listening to the Patreon exclusive part of episode 183. Even though those who are not subscribed might be missing a little bit of context, I still think it's very important to discuss.

“Why do people say "grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.” - Betty White

Pardon my ignorance, but why the fuck is "pussy" used as a synonym for "coward" in English? I never really understood this concept, and I honestly think we need to start thinking about how the use of language can cause some unintended damage. I mean, the entire field of mental health deals with how words are spoken and interpreted to tackle several issues.

To me, it sounds like nails on a chalkboard when I hear otherwise inclusive and well-mannered men use the slang that happens to be a colloquial term for the vulva as a derogatory term in reference to another man they deemed inferior. The use of the word is objectively false. Correct me if I'm wrong, but no other part of the human body is able to naturally stretch itself up to 10 cm - almost 4 inches for you imperial heathens - to let out a brand new human being. So, please save the jokes about a big pussy being a bad thing because if it weren't, you could have choked on the way out. And speaking of size, we should also bury the stupidity that it is referring to a large pussy as something that got stretch from “a lot of use”, further shaming women for their pearls-clutching audacity of being sexually active or, the horror, becoming a mother. It sure does help a lot the myth of virginity and purity, guys, thanks. Or how a woman's worth is undeniably linked to her sexual history, which should be void. Check your calendars, it’s 2021.

Ignoring blunt reductionism for the sake of the argument, the pussy is actually amazing, very strong, and comes in all shapes, sizes and colors. The pussy has its own ecosystem that protects itself and the whole body, like a proper heroine. Unfortunately, the culture of hatred for everything considered feminine has worked for centuries to convince us that people who have pussies are dirty, impure, not worthy; they are less than human. Pussy, the biggest shame.

The conversation is also tricky because it’s hard not to alienate trans folks when talking about it. We tend to say "women" as a shorthand for people who were born with pussies, so I am sorry if sometimes sounds like I’m falling into the trap of gender conformity. But I guess this is another head of Hydra. Calling a man "pussy" as an insult is a great way to reinforce gender roles whilst making sure you let your internalized misogyny shine through. Ugh.

The pussy also features the ability to experience multiple orgasms as many times as possible. A true hard worker of human pleasure. In theory, the number of orgasms that a pussy can experience is infinite. It's not even that hard, you just need to know what you're doing. What they say about pussies taking longer to climax is but a myth perpetuated by people who didn't do their due diligence. Nerve endings to get stimulated and create massive amounts of pleasure are abundant - twice as many as nerve endings on penises. The pussy even supplies its own lubricant. You don't need an instructions manual, just a healthy measure of curiosity. Perhaps a bit of bravery, like every pussy is born with.

Since we are talking about levels of sensitivity, it is important to talk about pain. The pussy needs maintenance. Actual medical supervision. I could open a side note to discuss Brazilian waxing, but that is a completely optional, personal and merely aesthetic choice. No vaginally endowed person can escape the discomfort of invasive procedures that are needed on a very regular basis. We have no option and there is no effort at all devoted to trying to make them the least bit less distressing. I kid you not, the instrument still used for pussy care dates back to 1300 BC.

All of this to say that we need to let these gender-based insults die. Or at least not make the mistake of passing them on to the younger generation. No pussy owner should feel ashamed of their pussy. And penis equipped people should learn that they are equal, not better, not superior just because their genitals present differently.

To finish it off, the best feature of the word pussy is triggering conservative buffoons, like that guy who shall not be named but for some reason decided to make a fool of himself by shaking his fists at the sky against the gloriousness of a good moist box.

Triple hugs,

Mayor of Theratopia

#wap #podtherapy #pword #feminism

[im-the-punk-who]

Idk if ur the right person to send this to so feel free to ignore if you aren't but I'm beginning to realize that I might be a trans guy after years of thinking I'm enby and I'm really struggling with that? I've received a lot of the messages over the years about how men are bad and violent and I've also experienced a lot of gender based violence before I was out. I know intellectually that there's nothing wrong with manhood and yet I'm still really struggling. Idk do you have any thoughts on learning to accept your own manhood

Okay! Sorry this took a few days to answer but this is...definitely still a complicated thing for me, too.

First off I wanna say that whether you end up identifying as a binary trans man or somewhere in between that and nonbinary, that is very cool and valid and all of this can apply no matter where on the spectrum of masculinity you ultimately end up falling.

I saw a post which explains the basic thesis of what I'm gonna say, which is that your gender does not equal your morality. 

Tumblr in particular really likes to go hard on the misandry and it can be really hard not to internalize that. Especially when it comes in the form of so many jokes, and especially especially when some of it does line up with experiences you’ve had. The biggest thing to realize, is that just *being a man* doesn't make you inherently violent or toxic or bad. All of the things that Tumblr and feminism in general tends to equate to “being a man = bad” are things that are learned or encouraged over time, no matter how much terfs like to insist they are traits inherent in being born with a y chromosome. 

(And yes, these misandry arguments ALL have their basis in gender essentialism and in arguing why trans people can’t exist.)

As this relates to trans men, it becomes akin to walking a tightrope our entire lives. In both society at large and LGBT spaces we're made to fit as close as possible into gender norms to avoid violence or oppression(or the insistence we’re really just lesbians or self-hating cishets). But we also have first hand experience of the ways in which men are *socialized* to behave being harmful and don’t want to perpetuate them and be labeled a ‘bad person’. So we have to constantly walk this line of, I suppose trying to act manly enough while also trying not to cause waves (And, AS A NOTE, does that sound eerily similar to the argument most feminists say is purely a feminine experience? Is it almost like the very system that seeks to free cis women through hatred of men perpetrates those exact same systems onto other marginalized communities?)

And I will say, this is something I still struggle with. A lot. It's not going to be something you can take a magic pill for and never have to worry about again. I started transitioning almost a decade ago and I'm still trying to find the balance. Cis men can spend their *whole lives* trying to find that balance. I know quite a few - in case it feels like this is a purely trans experience. Reckoning with the way that male privilege has socialized men to harm at the same time radical feminism has socialized everyone it can that all men intentionally cause harm is a universal experience among men who are aware of it. 

It's not easy, and I guess just...if you feel like you're struggling on that front as you continue your gender journey(Laynie i hate you i hate you i hate you) try to remind yourself that you're not alone. And that what you’re fighting against is a systemic socialization, not something inherent in yourself. You’re going to screw up - that doesn't make you a bad person or a bad man.

I listen a lot to Brene Brown. 

I know people are probably sick of hearing me talk about her, but she is a shame researcher who honestly helped me a LOT in realizing why I was feeling so bad about parts of my personality or my gender expression. She’s excellent. If you find you’re having a lot of trouble reckoning with being this thing you have perceived as bad for a very long time, I highly recommend listening to some of her ted talks and other speeches. Most of them are on youtube. 

For a long time I was trying to base my gender off of what I thought people would love. I went over the top, dressed in popular styles, was WAY more feminine than I actually feel, and tried to make myself as unassuming as possible - in part because of childhood trauma but also because I was genuinely ashamed to be a man(particularly a gay man) because I had internalized the idea that men - especially gay men - were woman-haters. (And, because I hated *myself* as a woman, I thought that I also hated women, and I thought that I must be one of those Bad Gays.)

But once I stopped trying to do that? Once I was like ‘no I’m actually a gay-up man’ and stopped berating myself for not liking my feminie body and hating the parts of myself that I didn’t identify with but felt forced to perform? Once I started looking at what made *me* happy and not other people? It became so much easier to not feel those things. 

SO I guess, what I’m saying is that the best way to deal with internalized misandry is to try to forgive yourself, and recognize that the things that men perpetrated against you and that people say are ‘toxic male traits’ are not *inherent* to being a man. They are things that are taught to men(both cis and trans) by society. And also that like, these are also things that are not just inherent to men. Any toxic trait that a man exhibits a woman can too - and yeah there’s a discussion about how the general power imbalance between men and women makes it less likely a woman would cause as much damage but honestly? If you’re on tumblr you’re most likely in female dominated spaces where arguably that isn’t true, especially with the number of fucking TERFS on this website. 

Also....you do not inherit cismale privilege just by identifying as a man. No matter how far you take your transition, you are *always* going to be at a different level of privilege from a cisman. Even if you transition as far as you are able to right now and live and pass as a cisman for the rest of your life, you are not a cisman and that is going to affect how you move through the world.

(That doesn’t mean you are not a *man* because you are not cis, btw. Just that there are things that cismen don’t have to worry about that are going to affect your life - things like ovarian cancer, breast cancer, hormonal dependence, corrective abuse, medical shortages, physical differences that out transpeople - there are a hundred things that trans men have to experience throughout their lives that cismen are never, ever going to deal with. And yes, this goes for transwomen / cis women as well.)

Something that helped me become comfortable living as a man was to look at specific traits of the men in my life. Why did I feel comfortable around this man, but not others, what red flags physically or emotionally did this behavior set off in me? And then focusing on those specific *behaviors* rather than the men themselves. If you can separate the individual traits from an overarching idea of 'manhood' that might be helpful in feeling like you can inhabit manhood without being toxic. 

Basically, my best advice is to tell yourself that what makes you a man does not make you inherently toxic. In fact what makes *all* men, men, does not make them inherently toxic. Men are not trash just because they’re men, and the fight against misandry *is* a fight for marginalized people. It hurts transmasculine people in exactly the ways you are hurting. No matter what TERFs say - no matter what male-critical or whatever they’re calling themselves to not have to call themselves TERFs say - men are not born evil, or bad, or trash. 

Toxic masculinity is a learned behavior. It is not something you are given the day you start identifying as a man, and it is not something you have to perpetuate. 

Calling it anything else does a disservice to everyone who identifies as masculine of center but especially trans men, who have to reckon with this exact knowledge that in affirming who they are, certain people are going to hate them and call them monsters and tell them they are trash and unworthy of loving without hurting. 

And that shit just isn’t true. It isn’t fucking true! Men are not toxic just because they are men, and you are not a bad person just because you are a transman. That’s, I suppose, the best advice I can offer you. I hope it helps, and I also just want to reiterate that I hope you find affirmation in whatever you end up deciding. <3 <3 <3

#milo answers #gender #queer tag #transmasc #anon i hope you see this i know its a few days since you sent it #anon #Anonymous #long post

[rpbetter]

Hi Vespertine. Sorry to add to the pile, I promise I will send in some writing related things to compensate later. I also misgendered that user in a comment by accident with she/her. I blocked them, but they still looked at my blog, and they made a post that said by using the wrong pronouns, which they thought was intentional and meant to hurt them, I purposefully called them a hysterical woman stereotype. Obviously that wasn't true. I was just going off a comment someone else made on my blog where they used she/her, and I thought I had to correct myself. It was a case where good intentions, even if I was not happy with the user's behavior or expected to talk to them again, I was still going to use the right pronouns, but my intentions were warped by someone with an agenda. I'm sorry to hear you're getting the same heat. I didn't use my rp blog to interact with the user or talk about them because I was sure something like this would happen, either by them or other people like that callout blog, and I think other people had the same idea. I dodged a bullet there, but I'm still paranoid. I'm paranoid I'll hear a notif and see my rp blog in a callout for this, because someone hunted it down, or a callout for trying to talk to the person who started all the drama. Nobody should be scared to talk about someone on their own blog. Nobody should be scared to talk openly, in general. Nobody should be called out for trying to talk with someone either. This culture of fear is so disturbing to me.

Hey there, Anon!

Oh, I would love that, but you totally don't have to, of course. Don't feel bad for adding on, I'm here for anything at all, and honestly, with the job I'm doing IRL right now, it's really hard for me to concentrate well enough on finishing any of the advice posts (at least, to be the quality y'all deserve). It's a hot topic, it's included so, so, terribly many people in the RPC. It's also one that's generating some great, needed conversations. So, it isn't like you're adding to anything bad, annoying or distracting me, or contributing to the inflammatory side of this.

Hell, it's got to be really nice for some of the people in messages I've received to see proof that they weren't alone in this experience. I can keep publishing the hate anons for exactly that reason, and I can promise people they aren't the only ones (in this or in any such horrible behavior), but it's different to see it coming from a third party! So, thank you for that.

Though, I am deeply sorry that you were treated to more than a ringside seat in this debacle.

It's not very encouraging to be thoughtful and respectful of other people when literally nothing you can say or do will result in anything other than more twisting of your words, and that's a big problem I have with this shit. Things like actual transphobia, intentional misgendering, actual infantalization and shit treatment of ND people, actual harassment, etc. etc. etc. matter. It's just more trivializing of real problems for the sake of blowing nonexistent bullshit up, and that is immensely disgusting to me. The fact that you damn well know someone out there has had the reaction to this behavior of, well, fuck you then, fuck trans people is really upsetting.

Like, yeah, let's be real, if you require social rewards to do the right thing, you have some problems lol but at the same time, you know who does require social rewards to develop themselves? Young people. And the RPC is largely comprised of people in their early twenties who, for a variety of possible reasons, are still at that point

Furthermore, no, it's not anyone's job to be good representation at all times, especially when that performance comes at a cost to themselves, but maybe don't go out of your way to be the person that is the necessary push in the wrong direction of someone's formative experience with people of your community. If it's costing you nothing to not clown on serious issues, but is costing the entire world another bigot for you to clown on serious issues, the choice should be a bit obvious here. Whenever you're in a safe place - physically, emotionally - and capable of that kind of logic, exercise it, damn.

It's definitely a better course of action than playing out skewed activism by vilifying innocent people, more worthy of one's effort than losing their collective shit over a very easy mistake. One that I'd say was even less avoidable in your case. AGAIN, how, exactly is anyone supposed to know this shit when they're blocked? When they aren't subverting the blocks they, themselves, put in place? I know for a fact none of them are looking at the information of the people they choose to try to drive out of the RPC, but everyone else is supposed to make zero reasonable assumptions, check and recheck blogs they have made an effort not to visit for good reason. Sounds absolutely reasonable and sane!

So, you know what? I'm going to be even more offensive here and talk for a moment about why these mistakes are reasonable.

When we see a post and reblog it, it's not unreasonable to assume that the OP had knowledge we didn't. Since we blocked the offending party, but they're discussing them. OP uses the incorrect pronouns, we end using the incorrect pronouns as well. This is not malicious intent. It isn't intentional at all, it's just having a discussion. A discussion that wouldn't have even transpired if they hadn't taken it upon themselves to (what a coincidence) take personal issue with a RPer they repeatedly took out of context and decided to shame for it, before proceeding to get an even bigger stick and pot.

When we decide to block a blog, it's our responsibility to stay off of it. Not go looking at it for any reason. That is now off-limits. When someone blocks us, it's also our responsibility to respect that decision, no matter how outrageous it was, no matter what we might need to verify. That's the issue with blocking when we don't exploit how easy it is to get around blocking on tumblr; we've cut ourselves off from any further meaningful communication, including passive communication like rules and posts. Kind of like how you cannot expect an apology to mean a damn thing when you've blocked everyone you harassed, then made that apology in a post on your blocked blog. Don't put up walls you expect people to see through, then get upset when they can't see through them.

As a community, the RPC is primarily afab. That's never a problem to bring up when someone wants to be angry about their female muse not getting equal attention and so on, but it's a problem to discuss any other time, about any other problem. Dealing with the things that we're socially raised to ascribe to as afab people is that problem. It's reflected in our behaviors, interests, and speech. We may not want to live in a gendered world, we may eschew that, but we were raised in a gendered world and it shows. One which has a lot of complications for being that, like almost everyone feeling safer around afab people by default of the All Men Are Bad, All Women Are Harmless bullshit.

We not only know that the RPC is primarily afab, we tend to assume comfort, especially in hostile situations, by assuming those pronouns in others.

And it so does not matter how much any of us like it, some people have more masculine or feminine tones. Even in text. That means neither that someone's gender identity should be disregarded nor that this text-based presentation is correct, but like every other unfair thing that exists, it's a thing. Like you, Anon, you genuinely come across in tone as primarily neutral, slight lean toward masculine. Even if I wasn't inclined to do so, not knowing you and all, I'd use they/them for you instinctively because that's what your speech is giving me. That isn't any more unreasonable than ascribing another set of pronouns based on the same information.

Oh yeah, I know, lurkers, the difference is that they/them is the appropriate choice when one does not know. I know that logically, but people aren't always operating like robots, weirdly enough. We default to a lot of instinctive behaviors, and we aren't always operating at the top rung of cognition either. Being human works like that, it's really that simple and not malicious if you're not reading that into it.

As we're all aware, it is being read into, and your experience is exactly why; you now feel worried every time you get a notif, you've been outed as a supposed transphobe, and while it is incredibly fortunate you stopped this from transpiring on your RP blog, it still transpired somewhere and has had a negative effect. If they find they correct thing or set of things, they can get so many more people to dogpile you over it. Get enough people to do that, make someone miserable enough, especially people who are already going through a hard enough time already, they'll leave.

It is a terroristic act, and it has the effect of all terroristic acts; people are afraid to exist outside of shifting bounds (that shifting is a part of the terrorism). They can't have an opinion, write any muse/topic they wish, be honest on their own blogs, support the "wrong" topics, muns, or blogs. Attacking people for a mistake, not allowing them to address it either, just furthers all of that. It's showing the community what happens when you aren't on the "right" side, even if that isn't even the case. They certainly turn on their own quickly enough.

So, of course, it's a culture of fear and it is disturbing as hell. No one has any right to make someone feel unsafe over fiction or a hobby or a difference of opinion. Everyone has the right to say whatever they want on their own blogs, to talk openly, and yes, to try to talk to others without feeling at risk.

Even if what someone says is genuinely unpleasant. This isn't the way one handles it. By all means, have a problem with something, have a problem with someone, but grow up and talk to them openly, without bringing everyone you can dredge up to join in. I have no issue with people arguing, I have an issue with bullying. If it's your whole goal to harass people without consequences to the end result of deactivation and lockstep behavior from everyone else, that's what you're doing, folks. Bullying.

If you can't win an argument, especially one your own ass began, in any other way than this, you're not engaging in an argument.

#vespertine #answered #anonymous #callout culture #rp harassment

[werevulvi]

What incited you to become a MRA, what did you learn from it (good neutral or bad) and what got you to wake up and finally cease to be one?

This became a really long-winded answer, because I’ve apparently a lot of thoughts/feelings about this, which I probably haven’t really gone over with myself before. But here’s my rant: Well, before I became an MRA, my opinions on sexism and feminism were pretty much only "gender equality would be good of course" and I did not think women necessarily had it worse than men, but I noticed there was some obvious injustices in both directions. So I was in a position that could very easily be swayed in either the feminist or MRA direction.

What led me down the MRA direction (at that time, roughly year 2016-2017) was discovering MOGAI/tucute microlabels (like noun genders, neo pronouns, stuff like pansexual, demisexual, etc) on tumblr and vehemently disliking it. I had truscum opinions without knowing it back then. Meaning I was pretty certain there are only 2 genders based on 2 sexes, being trans was a medical condition, and everything else was bullshit, pretty much. And so, discovering my "opposition" online (which I previously didn't know existed) led me to consume a lot of basically "anti-SJW" content.

And as you may or may not know, most "anti-SJW's" on youtube at that time were anti-feminists, MRA's and MGTOW's. So I was informed of those opinions without having directly searched for them. It just kinda came with the territory. I watched a lot "Sargon of Akkad", "Bearing", "Dr. Randomercam", "ShoeOnHead", "Undoomed", "Prince of Queens" (rest in peace), etc. Most of them were not self-declared MRA's, but their opinions kinda moved in that sorta general direction.

Back then I was very strongly identifying as a man and grasped at anything to validate my male identity and mitigate my dysphoria. Kissing men's asses became my method of basically trying to buy my way into manhood. I idolised men, worshipped them even. I didn't need to be convinced that men face discrimination on the basis of their sex too, because I already knew that, but learning about the suicide rates, falsely accused rapes, etc, was extra compelling. I've not talked about this at great lengths before, but I've actually been falsely accused of rape myself once, by someone who mistook me for being a cis man (luckily it didn't lead to anything), I've been laughed at by men for admitting to being a sexual abuse survivor as they assumed I'm male too, and I've been harrassed much worse for appearing as a gnc man than I ever was for appearing as a gnc woman. This I concluded as forms of misandry (and I still do.)

(I wanna squeeze in somewhere around here, that my transition gave a fairly interesting view on gender, as sorta being able to see how both men and women have it "from the inside" so to say, as I've been treated differently as a man post-transition vs as a woman pre-transition. This experience has influenced my views on gender and sexism pretty heavily. My own experiences of essentially both misogyny and misandry.)

My own experiences with misandry of course served as fuel for my becoming MRA opinions. And then eventually I found the website "A voice for men" and the documentary movie "The Red Pill" and after that I was a self-declaired MRA... for a while.

Until came my detransition, mid 2018. This changed my views on gender drastically. Both gender in regards to identity vs sex, and gender in regards to oppression vs privilege. In my early detransing, I was approached by a few radfems on youtube, and curious as I am, decided to look into it. I was back and forth between MRA and radical feminism for a while, while I was learning as much as my constantly overworked, autistic brain would allow me, and about 6 months later I had come to the conclusion that I do agree with majority of radfem and it's basis, but still sorta cared about men's rights on the side (for example still supporting their safety being gnc, their mental health, etc) but no longer considering myself an MRA per se.

During those 6 months I did also start seeing that a lot of what the MRA's spout is misogynistic, and they are factually incorrect about men being more oppressed than women. However, after a couple of years taking a deep dive into radfem, I realised that as an ideology it's almost equally flawed as MRA, and in rather similar ways even. So I ditched that too. Although I still consider myself somewhat gender critical (bio sex is still important and real, and so is critical thinking) as well as still totally for female rights (basically sex-based feminism) but not in the rigid way radfem is. I dunno its conclusions are rather fucked sometimes, and sometimes a little delusional. I'm not a fan of equity, communism or collectivism, which I later on noticed runs pretty heavy through radfem. I'd say I'm more of a gender critical libfem who supports men's rights as well, nowadays.

I've been through so many different ideologies by now, that I feel like at core they're all kinda the same shit. They're all flawed. I'd rather just have whatever opinions I think is right/good/logical regardless of which ideology that opinion comes from. I don't wanna fight or debate. I only care for peaceful, actually meaningful discussions. I'm done with being part of hiveminds by now. I need to prioritise living my life, having fun, learning to be functional, petting cats, going swimming, having a lot of sex, transitioning, and finding my own happiness. Not politics. I've never been the activist type, and I think I just got drawn into it because of guilt. Because people started saying "if you're not a feminist, you're a bad person" and at first I rebelled, but then I fell for it. Now I'm just dropping my battle axe altogether. Because no ideology can ever determine whether some one is a good or bad person. I've learned now that having the "right" opinions is not what matters.

What I learned from being an MRA... that men are not evil. That they are human with a full range of emotions, a need for vulnerability, sometimes victims of awful crimes, sometimes traumatised, etc. I learned that my fear of men (due to my own trauma) is not rational and should not dictate how I judge male strangers. I also learned that some men are never gonna return that same empathy and respect to me as I offer them, because I'm bio female. Those are not the same men, and they should not be treated in the same way. I learned that in many ways I'm surprisingly not that different from men, but that I'll also never truly know what it's like to be bio male or grow up as a boy, but that's okay. Although, living as a man probably taught me more about men, than being an MRA did. It more so solidified what I had already found out to be true.

[gardensandruins]

not sure if you realize this but I read the medium article about the Salvation Army and they didn’t kick out the transwoman; they said he would have to be housed w the men and not the women and so the transwoman chose to sleep outside . So if you’re a TERF , those r jus the facts of the matter . I personally don’t find it transphobic

Thank you for telling me this. I looked it up and you’re right that the story is wrong but it seems that it’s even more ridiculous than what you think. Source here. 

Bier’s sympathetic rumor had become conventional wisdom by Thursday’s Council meeting, and a subsequent press release by Equality Texas was headlined in part, “Her death can be directly attributed to lack of shelters accepting of transgender homeless.”

In fact, a somewhat embarrassed Bier says now, that’s not true. She says she had confused a story she’d heard about another transgendered woman’s bad experience at a local shelter with Gale, and that she has since contacted both the Salvation Army and the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, and learned that both shelters do what they can to accommodate all homeless people, regardless of gender status although they do have to adjust accommodations to particular circumstances. “I think I was trying to call attention to the problem of trans women accessing services,” Bier said.

Although we’re still inquiring, there is in fact currently no evidence that Gale was ever refused shelter, or indeed that she had ever requested it.

It expanded that you were right that Gale was told to go to the male shelter but ultimately refused to. It also has no connection to the salvation army as Gale was found in front of a church instead. 

This story is insane. I guess Gale wanted to die a martyr? I would go almost anywhere to be out of the cold in a life or death situation, even if it meant there was a chance I could get hurt because at least I was alive. But we will never really know what Gale was thinking at the time and the incorrect information isn’t helping anything. 

It was a friend that started everything so it may have been their idea to start this. 

Marti Bier, a policy aide for the Austin City council memberRandi Shade, directly attributed Gale’s death to the Salvation Army,saying, “Something Jennifer would never talk about, but was a realityfor her, is that she is a transwoman living in a transphobic society.Homelessness in the trans-community is a really big problem, and onethat goes ignored. There are no laws in Texas protecting transgenderpeople, whether from job discrimination, housing discrimination or hatecrimes,” and “The Salvation Army would not let her in there unless shewas grouped with the men. They would make her use her male birth nameand completely disregard, and disrespect, her identity as atrans-woman." 

Bier later partially retracted those comments, saying "So what Iwrote the other day about trans-services may not have been entirelyaccurate. I have since spoken with people at both the ARCH and theSalvation Army here in town to learn what they do for homelesstransfolks. It turns out the ARCH, while a men’s only shelter, isactually pretty educated on the issues and accepts people as theypresent themselves. While this wouldn’t have helped Jennifer Gale exceptfor day-sleeping, it is certainly respectable. They will also providefor privacy in the restrooms/showers for transfolks. The Salvation Armyon the other hand… they do apparently have a policy ofnon-discrimination and they do not turn trans people away, but I’m notfully sold on their ability to actually understand the issue. If theyare not full they will give trans people privacy (maybe they haveprivate quarters of some sort), but if full and they are in an overflowshelter situation, as they were Tuesday night, I am under the impressionthat they will assign people according to their anatomy.”

He literally lied! Everything he said was factually untrue but he doubled down on it when he found out that they were inclusive. What the fuck…

#salvation army #ask #Jennifer Gale #Marti Bier #texas #ARCH #Anonymous #corrected information #radfems please interact #radfem #terf #merf

[wykedtrolls]

a dissertation nobody asked for, ft. my dysphoric trans ass (on the subject of truscum, cisgender medicine, and stupid assholes)

BOY HOWDY DID THIS GET LONG

I know that nobody asked for this post, and definitely nobody needed it, but you know what? Fuck it. You’re getting this post anyway.

Very recently someone in the community outed himself (himself, because I’m aware that he uses he/him pronouns and am not a piece of shit who will misgender someone under guise of offering anonymity. Cough cough.) as a transmedicalist. A truscum, if you will, because we all know that they mean the same thing and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is a bitchcoward and a bigot.

Very disappointing, yes, considering the amount of transgender people* I know exist in this community, myself included. Disappointing, frightening, and rage-inducing. Particularly because this revelation followed an encounter said truscum had with a close friend of mine. Which I admit might make me a little biased but shhh. Neither me nor my friend(s) started this. The contents of that conversation had between the truscum and my bro should have been handled privately like an adult but- hey, since we’re putting all this shit out there now, guess I get to put in my two cents! Awesome!

And because we apparently like to bring science into shit, let’s get a lil scientific up in this bitch.

*Note: transgender from here on will be used to refer to as the umbrella of non-cis gender identities just for context and ease of reference. And also because that’s what it is, fuck off.

So, guys. Let’s talk about dysphoria.

PART 1. SEMANTICS

Dysphoria. Most of you have heard of it, particularly those among us (both within and outside of the fantroll community) who happen to be transgender.

But what does it actually mean? Let’s look a little closer. Dysphoria, as defined by Merriam-Webster:

dysphoria (noun)

dys·​pho·​ria | \ dis-ˈfȯr-ē-ə  \

Definition of dysphoria

: a state of feeling very unhappy, uneasy, or dissatisfied

— see GENDER DYSPHORIA

But this is just semantics. Let’s look at it, and gender oriented dysphoria in particular from a mental health perspective-

“Gender dysphoria is the feeling of discomfort or distress that might accompany a difference between gender identity, sex assigned at birth or sex-related physical characteristics. This type of distress doesn't affect everyone who is transgender.

Gender dysphoria is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), a manual published by the American Psychiatric Association to diagnose mental conditions. Gender dysphoria is a diagnosis that is given to individuals who are experiencing discomfort or distress due to the difference between gender identity, sex assigned at birth or sex-related physical characteristics.”

This is from the Mayo Clinic, a nonprofit academic medical center based in Rochester, Minnesota, lauded as the best hospital in the nation for 2018-2019 by the U.S News and World Report. Do with that information what you will, but most would consider the Mayo Clinic (while not a good replacement for proper doctor’s visits and medical treatment) a pretty credible health resource.

But we’ll come back to this.

For now, let’s look at another definition. That of the word ‘opinion.’

PART 2: FACTS VS. OPINIONS VS. BELIEFS VS. PREJUDICE

opinion (noun)

opin·​ion | \ ə-ˈpin-yən  \

Definition of opinion

1a : a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter

We asked them for their opinions about the new stadium.

b : APPROVAL, ESTEEM

I have no great opinion of his work.

2a : belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge

a person of rigid opinions

Opinions are inherently biased. It may be influenced by facts, but opinions in and of themselves are not fact. To borrow and paraphrase from Fowler, H. Ramsey. The Little, Brown Handbook. Boston: Little, Brown, 1986.:

When forming personal convictions, we often interpret factual evidence through the filter of our values, feelings, tastes, and past experiences. Hence, most statements we make in speaking and writing are assertions of fact, opinion, belief, or prejudice. The usefulness and acceptability of an assertion can be improved or diminished by the nature of the assertion, depending on which of the following categories it falls into:

A fact is verifiable. [Determinable by] ...researching the evidence. This may involve numbers, dates, testimony, etc. (Ex.: "World War II ended in 1945.") The truth of the fact is beyond argument if one can assume that measuring devices or records or memories are correct. Facts provide crucial support for the assertion of an argument. However, facts by themselves are worthless unless we put them in context, draw conclusions, and, thus, give them meaning.

An opinion is a judgment based on facts, an honest attempt to draw a reasonable conclusion from factual evidence. [Opinions are] potentially changeable--depending on how the evidence is interpreted. By themselves, opinions have little power to convince. You must always let your reader know what your evidence is and how it led you to arrive at your opinion.

Unlike an opinion, a belief is a conviction based on cultural or personal faith, morality, or values. Statements such as "Capital punishment is legalized murder" are often called "opinions" because they express viewpoints, but they are not based on facts or other evidence. They cannot be disproved or even contested in a rational or logical manner. Since beliefs are inarguable, they cannot serve as the thesis of a formal argument. (Emotional appeals can, of course, be useful if you happen to know that your audience shares those beliefs.)

Y’all get what I’m getting at, right?

Oh, but one more thing I’d like to add- And I think this one is important.

“Another kind of assertion that has no place in serious argumentation is prejudice, a half-baked opinion based on insufficient or unexamined evidence. (Ex.: "Women are bad drivers.") Unlike a belief, a prejudice is testable: it can be contested and disproved on the basis of facts. We often form prejudices or accept them from others--family, friends, the media, etc.--without questioning their meaning or testing their truth. At best, prejudices are careless oversimplifications. At worst, they reflect a narrow-minded view of the world. Most of all, they are not likely to win the confidence or agreement of your readers.”

We’ve all encountered our fair share of these sorts of prejudices, disguised as “opinions.” Because isn’t that a much sweeter word for what it is? It’s not bigotry to delegitimize the experiences of other transgender people, it’s just an opinion. Like which is the best ice cream flavour, or something equally harmless.

But when your opinion involves the dehumanization, invalidation, exclusion and harm of other people… Well, that’s not so harmless, is it?

Racism is prejudice influenced by opinions and beliefs. Transphobia is prejudice influenced by opinions and beliefs. They are not fact, they are not based in rational thinking, and in many cases they cannot be argued because these prejudices are willingly cultivated and held.

‘But, Eli!’ I know at least one truscum who may or may not be reading this might cry, ‘It’s a scientifically proven fact that transgender people need to have dysphoria to be trans!’

To which I say fuck you, this is why that isn’t true.

Let’s go back to the definition of gender dysphoria, shall we?

“Gender dysphoria is the feeling of discomfort or distress that might accompany a difference between gender identity, sex assigned at birth or sex-related physical characteristics. This type of distress doesn't affect everyone who is transgender.”

MIGHT accompany a difference between those things, and DOESN’T affect everyone who is transgender. Interesting take coming from a scientific source, right? It’s almost like transmedicalist/truscum thinking is based off prejudice, rather than opinion; much less fact.

Especially considering dysphoria wasn’t even a word we (we meaning transgender people) chose for ourselves in the first place. It was picked by the American Psychiatric Association’s board of trustees to replace the term “Gender Identity Disorder” (GID)

Disorder. A sickness. Because Western medicine, practiced primarily by cisgender people (be they medical experts or not) has never been kind to transgender people. The word doesn’t mean what transmedicalists or truscum think it does. It doesn’t make you more valid than our fellow trans siblings just because the perceptions held by you or others of what your body and gender are worth make you miserable.

Wanna read up a little more on this? Check out these links: 

THIS IS WHAT I WISH PEOPLE WHO IDENTIFY AS ‘TRUSCUM’ WOULD TRY TO UNDERSTAND. 

Not All Transgender People Have Dysphoria – And Here Are 6 Reasons Why That Matters 

Transgender People, Gender Identity and Gender Expression

PART 3: THE COMMUNITY (™)

If you’re dysphoric, my heart goes out to you. I’m dysphoric too. Dysphoric enough to transition despite the medical costs- because I was tired of feeling trapped in other people’s perceptions of me. But you know what? I love that there are transgender people who don’t feel defined by this persistent sensation of wrongness.

You shouldn’t be defined by that. Even dysphoric trans people know (or should, for the sake of their health) that your unhappiness isn’t the only thing that makes you transgender. In fact, in the least unhealthy cases, it’s only the smallest fraction of the gender experience. Being transgender and exploring your gender identity consist of a broad spectrum of emotions. The fact that some of us (US. WE are a community, and have to treat each other as such) get to snip that little fraction out of the spectrum is beautiful.

We’re made stronger by how different we all are, not weaker.

PART 4: IN CLOSING

Whether you’re dysphoric or not, whether you identify with a gender binary or not, you are worthy of celebration and validation and love. All of us have it rough- frankly speaking, cisgender people as a whole barely tolerate us even when our identities do follow the narrative most commonly accept us. It’s not our place to judge, or shun, or invalidate one another.

And as both a personal goodbye and a TL;DR to truscum who like to treat gender identity like a competition, like something you get to gatekeep and police, fuck you. Our identities are ours to decide, our experiences to forge, and if that happens to not include transitioning or dysphoria, no matter what your reasons are that doesn’t make you less valid.

Fuck you, for painting your bigotry as an opinion. Fuck you for hurting the feelings of other transgender people. And fuck you for making posts trying to paint yourself as anything other than an asshole so full of internalized transphobia and misery that you can’t look past it to respect other people and act like that’s only your opinion UWU

Anyway, trans rights.

#ooc #jesus this is so long #nobody's gonna read this #But I'm PISSED #trans rights #I hate terfs #And transmeds/truscums #All those motherfuckers #fuck that