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#> this anon: but what are you doing to center trans women in this discussion
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no but why are trans women talking about transmisogyny such an offensive thing to you. you literally arent a trans woman and you dont experience transmisogyny. you can’t argue against that? it’s a literal fact that trans women are demonized and targeted more in society? you’re doing exactly what these “baeddels” are complaining about, doesn’t that make them legitimate? you are straight up offended that other people experience worse oppression than you. why. why do you think that is justified.
Why are you so concerned with who has it worse? Why is trans men talking about their lived experiences, their struggles with the cis-hetero patriarchy, and their feelings classed as "speaking over trans women." This discussion isn't a pie. I am not coming onto blogs talking about transmisogyny and inserting myself into the conversation because it's rude. You would not in fact be having this conversation with me if you hadn't been trolling through the transandrophobia tag looking for something to get mad about.
And where on earth have I ever gotten mad about trans women talking about transmisogyny? Get a life.
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triple-a-aro · 3 months
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thanks for turning on anon asks!! i dont want to get this linked back to my actual account where i try to keep things pretty discourse-free. what i wanted to say is that i really get where yr coming from with the falling into transmasc vs transfem thing??? i find myself going oh no thats a trans woman so shes not gonna like me a lot and then i feel really guilty abt it so its good to know that other transandro bloggers are aware of that whole thing. how do you keep yrself from falling into those thinking patterns?
No problem at all, anon! I understand that this can be a topic that you don't necessarily want. attention. on you. Perfectly valid to keep yourself safe.
This touches on something that I've been realizing more often for myself, though! When you are educating yourself on topics such as transandrophobia, the loud and vocal minority of transandrophobes are likely to speak up in comments and replies of posts doing so, which makes it seem like they're everywhere. Much like vocal transphobes, we must remember that this is a minority; most people may not have even heard of transandrophobia, but I'm sure they'd agree that "trans men experience oppression for being trans men that other trans people don't experience". Because that's common sense.
The other reason I find myself falling into that pattern is the centering of trans women in these transandrophobia discussions. A lot of it ends up with people arguing if transmisogyny is worse or not, and I think that misses the entire point. But if you see these transandrophobes going on and on about trans women having it worse (and some of those people being trans women themselves who are lashing out for whichever reason), you're going to start connecting transandrophobia and trans women.
Which sucks. It really fucking does. The brain is equipped to notice patterns, and it's going to emphasize in accordance to how transandrophobes emphasize.
So how do I personally stop this from happening?
I follow trans women. Feels like a no-brainer, right? But recently I realized I was not following any trans education that was run by trans women, mostly because I had been scared of researching into the blogs themselves in case I found bigotry towards trans men, and I am not in the business of digital self-harm. If anyone has any good blogs feel free to drop them here, and I'll reblog!
If I feel myself getting incensed, I step back If you find yourself getting really mad, step back and ask yourself: - Where is this anger coming from? (At transphobia or has it been construed somehow?) - Where is this anger directed? (At transandrophobes, or at trans women?) - Who has posted this? (TERF psyops do exist, and if a blog is posting inflammatory content, they might be baiting you) - Is this user in the same circle as other transandrophobes? (There was a ring of particularly nasty transandrophobes that I blocked for mocking trans men and suggesting corrective sexual assault, and I have not found as many since)
Go to irl queer spaces. While this is not going to be a solution for everyone, I find stepping offline and talking to irl trans women is beneficial. Make friends with trans people! This discourse is so terminally online, and the only reason I participate in it is because I do what I can irl and therefore my only contribution is not arguing over discourse.
I also interact with other trans men who are normal about trans women as well. I hope this helps! Media literacy is good to practice, and I'm proud of you for owning up to something very hard, anon.
If we have any other suggestions, pop 'em down in the replies or reblogs!
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elistudies · 1 year
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i do agree that women’s rights should be stood up for, they’re something that matter a lot to me personally as an afab individual, but labelling your beliefs as radical feminism connects yourself, whether you like it or not, with trans exclusionary beliefs. trans exclusion is the first step in a long like of planned oppression of anyone who isn’t a white cishet man, and it’s deeply depressing to see a blog i’ve followed for years align themselves with this belief. i’m unfollowing as i’m transgender, and i hope you come to a change of heart.
Hello anon. I would not know what else to label my beliefs: radical feminism? marxist? intersectional? gender critical? gender abolitionist?
perhaps the label that comes closest is Gender Abolitionist because, at the end of the day my belief is this: in order to get rid of the patriarchy, we need to get rid of gender altogether because gender is the root of the patriarchy, gender is how the patriarchy maintains control.
now, this is obviously a very revolutionary ideal, it will require completely disrupting the current status quo and angering a few folks. that's ok with me.
although I would love to go all in on a revolutionary approach to change the system (i.e. destroy the current system and start anew), it is simply not possible to do at the moment. however, there is still a combination of big and small things one can do to help the overall goal. In other words, strategies. therein lies the key: although my ultimate goal is to get rid of the patriarchy by getting rid of gender, i also understand that there are other steps we need to take in order to get there. one of these steps is supporting trans people. you might not believe this but irl I've done countless of activist and social justice work to help transpeople, from small things like hosting community gatherings to outright leading protests. there was a time when I myself felt dysphoric and questioned my gender, however I realized transition is not for me. but it may be for others and for that reason, I continue to advocate for better and safer gender-affirming care, all the while maintaining a critical eye on the power structures that we live under.
I also agree that the exclusion of trans people and their oppression is a product of the patriarchy and for that reason I continue to stand in solidarity with them. trans people and women both suffer from the imposition of gender. our goals and approaches to combating the patriarchy may differ but I know we all want to live in a world where our bodies do not dictate who we are, who we should be.
I will leave you with some excerpts from Dean Spade's Trans strategies of resistance where he gives a short description of the different methods of creating change. As you can see radical feminism is very much centered on the revolutionary approach but this does not mean that we can not use a combination of strategies at different times for different projects. in short, we must be adaptable!
Next i leave you with an excerpt from angela davis’s Abolition. Feminism. Now. In this introduction they propose a “both/and” approach towards remediating injustice while situating this approach in the context of previous methodologies such as transformative justice, intersectionality, and abolition.
i am always open to discussion, anon. i welcome any change of heart.
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sanfielle · 1 year
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how are trans masc people inherently privileged? not all of us are cis passing binary trans men who have Male Privilege ™ and actively most of us face a lot of violence and hatred as well. why cant we be a united trans front instead of playing privilege war?
disclaimer: i am tme so my opinion and interpretation is colored by this, if any transfems want to comment please feel welcome to do so. this is probably the only anon i'll answer in my inbox because i feel it might be the only one in some good faith, and even if it's not, it at least asks concise questions i can answer lol.
acknowledging how transmasc - and all tme trans people, yes, this can even include amab nonbinary people if they don't identify with the transfeminine label - have privilege over transfems isn't antithetical to having a United Trans Front at all. our goals can still be united while we also acknowledge and tackle transmisogyny in our midst - if anything, we CANNOT have a united trans front if we ignore transmisogyny and don't allow discussion of it!
an overwhelming amount of SOCIETAL transphobia is directed towards transfems too. while it's undeniable all trans people experience transphobia on some levels (i'm fucking trans), if you look at the way society as a whole is thinking of us, you'll see the true target is majority transfem people, and we're either an afterthought or we've somehow been groomed by those evil transfem people into this ideology or whatever.
all the bathroom bills in the US, all the drag storytime stuff (which also affects gnc men ofc, but the concern is 'people with penises being feminine is inherently grooming kids', which also lumps in transfems with them), an entire hate movement founded around hating "men who think they're women" is DIRECTED at transmisogyny affected people - the boogeywoman is a gal with a cock.
the woman who coined the term "transmisogyny" (julia serano) says in her book whipping girl:
"when the majority of jokes made at the expense of trans people center on 'men wearing dresses' or 'men who want their penises cut off' that is not transphobia – it is transmisogyny. When the majority of violence and sexual assaults committed against trans people is directed at trans women, that is not transphobia – it is transmisogyny."
sure, that pity that us afab trans people get from these same bigots is infuriating - we aren't confused, we aren't stupid, we haven't been groomed into this, we aren't mutilating ourselves, we aren't mentally ill, etc, etc - but it's undeniable that being treated like a tragic, confused Wombyn or a poor baby girl who just wants to escape misogyny is not nearly as severe as being treated like a rapist just for having a dick and wearing a skirt regardless of how old you are.
especially when that is on a societal level - it's inescapable, it's been baked into our society since day 1. you may not be aware of it, i can't even be aware of it, but just because we can't see our own transmisogyny cooked into our brains doesn't mean it doesn't exist. we as tme people are the least equipped to identify it -- this is why we need tma people to have their own language about it, so that they can point it out to us. if you can understand a similar but unrelated concept of the difference between the intricate details of racism V colorism, this is the idea of it.
you don't even need male privilege to be privileged over transfems. i'm a tme nonbinary intersex butch lesbian! i'm a woman (heavy quotes)! i don't have any kind of male privilege at all and i literally never will! but i still have privilege over every transfem, no matter how cis-passing and conforming they are, because every 'man in a dress' joke will never be about me. there's never going to be a world where that's about me, or you, or anyone else who doesn't experience transmisogyny - hence, we're transmisogyny exempt.
so yeah, even being trans doesn't mean you can escape being transmisogynist (no matter what way that trans is short of being tma yourself, no matter how cis passing or binary you are, no matter your gender identity), and holding this privilege over transfems - just like being any other minority or experiencing hate and violence doesn't just let you off the hook for being bigoted towards others. letting transfems make language to talk about and point out transmisogyny in our spaces is vital to allowing us to understand each other and uplift all of us equally.
otherwise we're just building a space that transfems would never be safe in - destroying that goal for your United Trans Front.👍
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graytheory · 1 year
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this is serious question anon, i have a follow up (a long one, sorry). i don't 'identify' as radfem btw for various reasons (the teaming with/platforming conservatives, the mentally ill blackpillers, and unproductive myopic focus on trans people amongst others), i'm just curious because there are other kinds of feminism which focus on men's issues and it seems to be the only major type rn which doesn't.
i see your point with this but i was under the impression most trans men didn't appreciate being referred to as female and didn't want to be grouped in any way with cis women. i agree that anyone female is oppressed by the patriarchy and is directly harmed by misogyny on basis of being female, including trans men. but in that case, trans men are oppressed specifically (for example in terms of reproductive rights, being trans) because of the fact that they are trans men aka this is an intersectionality issue, not a men's issue in general imo. but to my understanding including trans men in feminism is considered problematic in some spaces when it is framed in a way that recognizes them as female because they don't want to be reduced to their reproductive organs. however conservatives and misogynists frame control of reproduction as a key axis of oppression and domination since forever and see both you and i as a walking uterus so i find it relevant to discuss...
yes, men can suffer from the patriarchy but they also benefit greatly from it on average. the reason the patriarchy is a stable system is because on average men have decided net benefit>net cost. the only men who suffer directly from sexism and misogyny are trans men. what other group of men did the rolling back of roe v wade affect directly?
feminism isn't a community or a club? it's a political ideology and/or sociological theory which exists to further the rights of female/AFAB/whatever term people and liberate us from the patriarchy. focus groups aren't 'divide and conquer' and 50% of the world is hardly tiny.
i have no issue with male allies (and many many issues with female traitors including the ones you listed) and i wish we had more, but oftentimes self-proclaimed 'male feminists' are not the guys who stood up for women in Iran and Afghanistan, not even the guys who will call out their friends' behavior, but instead MRAs who are just unhappy that not every political movement centers them. most cis men Do Not Care about misogyny (tbh a lot of women don't either until it bites them in the ass) and close ranks when shit hits the fan! the ones who acknowledge its existence and call out other men have female majority audiences and are seen as 'simps' or 'white knights.' for most men 'include me in feminism' doesn't translate into 'i will advocate for you and actively work against the patriarchy' it means 'tee hee free the nipple don't say against bad about men or i'll cry.'
i never? suggested separatism? not sure if you mixed me up with someone else? in fact i think most radfems would refer to me as a male reformist?
@ the person who reblogged... uh... women are shamed for their self-expression as well so that's not gender specific, if that was the worst of my issues i'd be grateful... and... i'm black, actually... the reason the 'men-specific issues need to be centered in feminism, feminism is for everyone and misogyny is directed at no one in particular' thing bothers me so much is because the constant derailing reminds me of when 'reverse racism' became trendy because white people felt like black activism was 'excluding' them and 'what about white lives,' and were constantly bringing up irrelevant discussions about classism as another axis of oppression so they could claim only rich white people benefit from racism and white people who 'pass as POC' whatever that means experience racism. it's made frank discussions about racism impossible. the rhetoric is eerily similar and a lot of (well-meaning) people parrot it unthinkingly and it's worrying in an era of anti-feminist backlash and the rise of MRAs (who btw are not advocating for the rights of trans men). saying the patriarchy oppresses everyone is like saying white supremacy or homophobia or transphobia or classism oppresses everyone (spoiler alert: it doesn't).
yes in a lot of cases white women have power over POC men but i really dislike how in online discussions of intersectionality people tend to forget black women exist even though a black woman literally created the concept of intersectionality. seriously. it's like we're an afterthought. yeah POC men are discriminated against in a way that is specific to their race/sex but they also benefit from patriarchy. that is intersectionality, the relationships between various identities are multifaceted. under patriarchy, white AND black AND other POC cis men have power over black women, but i rarely see misogynoir discussed in mainstream leftist circles (unless we bring it up) even though black women suffer so so fucking much under patriarchy and white supremacy because we can't even count on black cis men (or even white and other POC women half the time) to ally with us. to that end, what about Iran and Afghanistan where POC men are stripping POC women of their rights? what about South Korea and their MRA president? countries outside of the Anglosphere exist and so do black and POC woman and misogyny against us matters even if it's not committed by white men. if we're not in the mood to entertain or better yet center white and POC men's issues in the sphere of feminism after dealing with misogyny from them that's our business and you can't call POC women racist for feeling that way. people can advocate for more than one sphere of activism at a time.
i can't speak to being LGBT+ because i'm cishet. however, cis men's issues not being centered in feminism doesn't mean sex is the only axis of oppression. the ERA never passed in the US, and in post roe v wade america you cannot seriously say patriarchy has no winners aside from rupert murdoch with full chest. look up the stats on men's opinions on feminism and gender inequality. if cis men want to fight against patriarchy (most of them do not and actual allies are few and far between) i'm all for it but feminism is literally not about cis men's issues by definition. 'fem' aka female is in the damn word. we can and should fight sexism and racism and homophobia and transphobia and classism and etc etc etc and there should be allyship across movements but at the same time but definitions are important.
Hi Anon! I will do my best to reply.
Some trans men are female. Some are not. There is no universal "all trans men feel this way about what sex they are". A fact though, is that most trans men will need "female health" resources for their whole life. Most trans men experienced sex-based discrimination and misogyny before they came out, and most continue to experience it after they come out, whether or not they pass. Most trans men will face medical sexism and misogyny. - I don't know in what spaces trans men being in feminism is considered "problematic" - certainly not within the queer circles I am in. I bet radfem-leaning queer spaces might have issues, specifically "tirf" spaces, and some radfem transfemmes. But that is, on the whole, not the trend for the majority of the queer community. Trans men are accepted in feminism, and it matters to us. Not, trans men do not want to be reduced down to our reproductive organs, but neither do cis women feminists, either - except for the radfems, who seem very intent on reducing everyone down to their birth sex. -
"the only men who suffer directly from sexism and misogyny are trans men." Incorrect. Queer men of all kinds are routinely victims of misogyny and sexism. There is a reason femme gay men are so mocked in society - and it's misogyny and sexism combined with homophobia. "Men acting like women" suffer greatly in our society, no matter if they're a little boy who toe-walks because of a disability, or an effeminate adult man. Plus, the ways the patriarchy abuses black men and men of color is a whole other discussion not directly linked to misogyny/sexism. -
Yeah, half the world isn't tiny, so why are you excluding them from feminism? I also always love the underlying assumption here that every single afab person on the planet is inherently a feminist. They're not. And many afab people are anti-feminist. So if an amab person wants to join the cause, I say let them. Makes more sense to me than excluding them does. -
I do not personally care what reasons an amab person has for first becoming a feminist. I do not care if their reasons are completely selfish - once they are in the movement and learning feminist theory and fighting to take down the patriarchy, does their initial motivation really matter? No, it doesn't. -
You're on anon and I only check this inbox like once a week. I have no idea who you are at this point. I will say that many radfems are separatists, so I may have been referring to those movements as a whole and not specifically addressing you. -
I don't really know who you're referencing here. I will say "include men in feminism" does not and has never meant "center men" and I don't know why y'all always assume that's what it means. The words don't eeeeven mean the same thing. - Include does not equal center. -
Those specific examples are for discussing the power white women have over black men to showcase how gender is not the end-all-be-all of oppression and how other factors matter. I could just as easily say an abled woman has power over a disabled man, or a rich woman has power over a poor man. That specific example gets used a lot because most American radfems are white women who are incredibly racist and use feminism as a shield against racism. I've seen some horrific examples of white radfems defending a white woman being incredibly racist against a black man, and the radfems say "I didn't see race, I just saw a woman defending herself against a dangerous man" - when the man in question was doing absolutely nothing at all. -
Cool. So don't. Again, "include" does not equal "center", it never did, and it never will. Stop thinking that's what I'm saying, because it's literally not what I said.
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pinkfey · 1 year
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i mean irt the Troll Post tm i doubt that was the intention of the op, their point rings true, if we don't respond to twitter trolls they won't respond to us. just math idnit
okay like.. i can understand where you're coming from with this but u have to see how privileged of a take it is, right? like you must realize some people do not get the luxury of ignoring those who harass us. and trolls do harass people. to ignore harassment is without a doubt the worst advice u can offer.
just a couple months ago i was sent a barrage of about eighteen graphically sexual anons back-to-back for saying i think people shouldn't support a//vatar the way of water. you know what i did? how i handled it? i ignored them. you know what happened? they kept coming. and i had an emotional meltdown. for weeks i didn't feel the same. later, i made a poll asking people what they would have done in my place. they said i did the right thing—i should have ignored them just like i had. funny, right? that's when i knew that the problem was not how i would have responded, it's that these people felt comfortable enough online to do that to me.
and this is extremely small in scale when looking at, for example, black and brown educators who deal with an incessant flux of racism at all times, just for offering an intersectional education and perspective. recently, one of which had a breakdown online, which was met with further racism. but apparently they should just ignore those comments and videos, right? god forbid they show vulnerability online; "what were they expecting? it's the internet."
this is exactly how stupid people like OP sound when they get upset at others for responding to and combating aggressive bigotry and harassment instead of "playing it cool" and "ignoring them"—like victims of racial and sexual harassment both online and offline have been already forced to do for years.
so do NOT try to justify OP's point. according to them, the oh-so-precious early forum culture would never have had to have this discussion, right? because the early internet they're remembering with such fondness was created by and for white men. and the very trolls they're telling us to ignore are those same white men who advocated for "ignoring the trolls." OP is spewing the same white-centered shit that made the internet unsafe for people of color, for women, for trans people all those years ago and continues to today.
do NOT dare to tell me it's better to criticize responding to harassment instead of tackling the problem of harassment itself. demand to be better. always combat right wing rhetoric. never ignore bigotry. NEVER continue to allow the internet to be a place where they feel comfortable driving people to their breaking point with no consequence.
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hard--headed--woman · 8 months
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did not want to publicly reply to the poll! But I don’t think about/ talk about trans issues often. I support trans ppl, I have trans friends. my feminism just focuses on female issues. Sometimes trans ppl are effected by those same things, I just don’t discuss those issues in a way that centers trans people.
tldr I am a female lesbian, radical feminism is very important to me, but technically you could call me a TRA! I don’t see them as mutually exclusive.
hey anon, thanks for sharing this ! it's very interesting !
i think i was kind of like you before, except that i never really believed in gender ideology, i just... was blinded ? or pretended to ? i don't know how to explain this, i thought i believed in this ideology and then realized i never did and was just trying to force myself to. i already had all the other radfem ideas back then. i too have trans friends/trans people i hang out with very often, i don't think being gender critical means i can't like trans people.
your experience is interesting ! it's cool to see people like you - who support trans people but focus on females when it comes to feminism, have radical ideas, and (i guess) probably have criticisms about both trans activism and radical feminism. i appreciate the nuance tho i am 100% gender critical and a radfem. we need more people like you on the gender side. and i'm curious, when you say "i support trans people", what does it mean exactly ? like do you think trans women are women and trans men are men, or do you think they aren't but we should use their chosen pronouns to support them etc ? or something else ? i'm just very curious ! i rarely see people like you - most people i see are either 100% gender critical or 100% "terf die challenge!" so !
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yeehawfolk · 2 years
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you cant in the same breath argue for the right for oppressed demographics to create language to describe their oppression and act like tme/tma (language created to describe transmisogyny) is just binarizing identities.
Do we have the right to create that language, or do only you have that right?
TME and TMA don't work for a lot of reasons, but one thing I want to make you aware of is this: Trans men and women's oppression can't be neatly sorted into the boxes of "faces transmisogyny" and "faces no transmisogyny" because people's identities can't neatly be sorted into what kind of oppression they face. Some trans men are GOING to have overlap with transmisogyny directed at trans women, especially if they're more androgynous or present more feminine. Because bigots don't use discretion when harming a group they hate. They won't take into account that maybe that cis woman has a naturally wide jawline, they'll call her a tr*nny and move on. They won't take into account that that feminine trans man ISN'T actually a trans woman trying to pass, they might beat the shit out of him just on virtue of the fact they read him as 'a cis man wearing a dress'. They don't take into account NB indenties at all, in most cases.
It's not the issue of creating language to describe your oppression, its about how instead of allowing folks to discuss issues that intersect with one another, its about how TMA/TME have become a label for the automatic non/validity of intersectional voices (via the thought process that TME individuals cannot weigh in on transgender issues that center around feminity or issues that involve trans women because they don't experience transmisogyny. Which there's so much wrong with that line of thinking I don't know where to begin.)
Bigots don't discriminate between identities. They pass a judgement on someone at a glance, and they will oppress them accordingly, regardless of whether they are right or not.
TMA/TME boils down a lot of the way different identities interact with one another and how bigots actually view us to a very 2 dimensional discussion and ignores an entire grey area of completely valid voices that are actually affected my transmisogyny, but have been labeled TME because TMA/TME only really work under the assumption that trans fems are the only ones who are TMA, which once again isn't true.
This might be a bit rambling and not make much sense bc I'm still recovering a bit from the Covids and my brain is scrampled egg. But I've read a lot about it from trans fem folks, and I've seen quite a few of them have the same views as I do. I am in no way policing someone's use of it. I'll try to dig up some posts about it I've seen around, anon, when I'm a little less tired. I've been sleeping a lot since I got Covid and being sleepy makes my mind a lot slower.
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nonegenderleftpain · 2 years
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I love that you'll accuse me of transmisogyny and not give a single example lmao ✨
Anyway, when we trans guys talk about transmisandry, this is the kind of response we get. And I'm going to address it, even though this anon has been blocked. I don't hold discussions with people who will baselessly accuse me of bigotry.
First, I have made several posts on why I continue to use the term transmisandry while the community at large has moved to the term transandrophobia (and people like this are part of that reason), so I won't rehash that here. I will reiterate, however, that controlling what vocabulary people use to discuss their own oppression is what we call "tone policing." When you take energy away from our conversation to attack what words we use to express it, you are doing this for a reason. And that reason is to prevent us from being allowed to discuss it at all.
Secondly, discussing the oppression transmasc folks face is not transmisogyny. It has nothing to do with trans women, it is not negating their struggles, it is not silencing them, and it is not attacking them. A person can care about more than one thing. Having a conversation about my own struggles does not make me a bigot for not centering others in that conversation.
I love my trans sisters so much. I have fought for them and with them for years, with my boots on the ground. And I trust that any trans women I do offend or hurt have the agency to tell me that themselves, without some random anon white knighting for them. I respect them enough to not let others speak for them, especially not to use them as a tool for lateral aggression to separate our community.
I will not stop discussing the oppression trans men face. I have thicker skin than you seem to think, and I am here to be a shield for those of us that don't. Those of us who won't speak up about the transandrophobia/transmisandry they face because of people like this, so ready to brand them as transmisogynists with no evidence or reason. I did not become an activist just to have some coward on the internet scare me away from my work. Bullying is not activism, and you will get nowhere with me saying these things.
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itsclydebitches · 3 years
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Was planning on making this my own post, but I thought you would be more suited to discussing this sort of topic. Something I've noticed when it comes to the more prominent/important/strong female characters (Nora, Pyrrha, Penny, Robyn, Emerald, Sienna) is that RT often has the tendency of giving them masculine allusions (Thor, Achilles, Pinocchio, Robin Hood, Aladdin, Shere Khan) as if they are unable to stand on their own as characters unless they have that connection to a male character. 1/3
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It is worth discussing! Yeah, I hesitate to call it a pattern just because, as you say, Team RWBY themselves are an exception to the rule  — and as the title characters of the story, they’re a pretty big exception. We also have good women allusions turned into good women characters (Glynda with The Good Witch, May with Maid Marian) and bad women allusions turned into good women characters (Winter with The Snow Queen — I don’t think she was ever meant to enter full antagonist territory, but that’s another post). So it’s not just a matter of saying, “RWBY models their strong women after male inspirations and turns all female inspirations into male characters.” It’s not that simple. But the fact that it’s not simple doesn’t mean there’s nothing there to unpack because I definitely understand the feeling you’re pointing to, anon. Team RWBY feels like it has the most thought put into it in terms of changing up these allusions, specifically when it comes to subversion: the little girl in a red hood who previously needed a hunter’s protection has become the hunter herself, Belle overcomes both her Gaston and the now evil Beast, Snow White extracts herself from her own abusive situation (with a little help from the Dwarves still), and Goldilocks is no longer lost and in need of basic necessities, but can rather punch her way out of any establishment  — like, say, a club. The execution of these themes aside (how Adam was handled, turning Jacques’ arrest into a joke, etc.), there’s a commonality here that works. Or at least, it works for me. Yet when we expand the allusions past our title team, things get... very messy. That’s when we start to hit on these concerns. 
I’d say the problem stems primarily from that lack of thought, not the act itself of turning women characters into men or vice versa. Meaning, as I’ve said in the past, RWBY’s use of allusions is terribly unreliable nowadays, and that’s not just in terms of plot expectations like, “Why did Penny have to become a flesh girl because Pinocchio, but Ironwood didn’t stay good because Tin Man?” It also includes these questions of why these changes were made and what sort of messages they send. As you lay out, why are so many of our heavy hitters  — the most talented huntress, the lightning-immune smasher, the Maiden android, etc.  — based on men? Why are many of the effeminate and “weaker” men  — Jaune the untrained, Ren the emotional councilor, Oscar the kid who wants to talk it all out  — based on women? Again, I don’t intend to sling any hard accusations, but rather to point out what’s likely a subtle, unconscious bias. To provide another example, I’ve seen talk recently about how RT (again, unconsciously) depicts the faunus, where all the good characters have culturally established “good” animal features and all the bad character have culturally established “bad” features. It’s cat ears, rabbit ears, sheep ears, monkey tails, dog tails, and beautifully changing skin color vs. scorpion tails, spiderwebs, bull horns, tiger ears, bat wings, and crocodile scales. Is it a perfect 1:1 divide? No, Ghira has panther claws and Fennec has fox ears, but there’s enough there for us to go, “RT tends to give the good guys cute features and/or features we associate with safe animals, whereas the bad guys tend to get ugly features and/or features we associate with dangerous animals.” I feel the same way here, that there’s a bit of a trend at play, with the caveat that there are more complications simply by virtue of these allusions being, well, complicated. But there’s enough there to make us stop and think, “What were RT’s intentions with this? If they just chose something based on the rule of cool, what might those inclinations tell us about gender norms in America?” Meaning, when someone goes, “Idk, we just thought it would be cool to change this up” there’s a lifetime of media consumption driving that choice. It’s not actually random, but based on whatever has been normalized  — unless you actively counteract that by thinking through what you want the change to do. 
Unconscious biases are always at work. When we analyze something like this it’s often not a matter of saying, “The author is [insert accusatory term here]” but rather just, “The author is falling into expectations, patterns, and normalized decisions based on the culture they’ve grown up in.” Which includes things like thinking, “Well, if this character is based on a male god, she must be crazy strong. If this character is based on a woman fighter, he’s probably more emotional.” Such biases may be driving a lot of decisions because, as said in the past, I really don’t think RT is putting much thought into these allusions, if any at this point. For me, Penny was proof of that  — the inability to see how following her allusion utterly destroyed her character growth  — but even if we don’t agree about Penny, what about Salem? Far from just using her name, this volume gave us a blatant reference to the events of Salem Trails in the 1690s. Namely, the burning of the witch. 
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Except references like this can’t just look cool. This isn’t a video game Easter egg with no real connection to the story, it’s a cinematography/plot choice that carries meaning. So what is that meaning? Well, the thing about the women on trail at Salem is that they were innocent. This is what that reference says: “Hey, remember that real life event where women who weren’t witches were horrifically killed because others thought they were evil? None were actually burned, but culturally we tend to think they were. So that’s the image in our collective mind: innocent women on fire.” Except... Salem is actually a witch. Salem is evil. Salem is guilty. Or at least, the questions surrounding the extent of her guilt  — How much responsibility does she hold in comparison to the Gods? How much agency does she still have after the grimm pool?  — has not been acknowledged by the text. Yang just yelled at Salem for killing her mom and Oscar is about to blow her up. This is not a “Question Salem’s humanity” scene, it’s a “Kill the witch” scene... yet it uses an allusion that is contrary to what the moment is trying to achieve. So what are we supposed to take away from this? Do we adhere to the subtext and believe that Salem is innocent somehow, ignoring what the actual text says, or do we uphold the text and in doing so undermine the reliability of every other allusion in the show? If we can’t trust Salem’s, why would we trust, say, Penny’s? 
RWBY’s allusions are all over the place and yes, I think that lack of consideration extends to who they randomly decided to genderbend. There’s no acknowledgment of  — let alone engagement with  — how many of these characters and historical figures were trying to pass themselves off as another gender, nor does RWBY acknowledge how the need to do so feeds into our current and historic assumptions about gender as a whole. Why does the man dress as a woman? To keep himself safe and seen as a non-threat. Why does the woman dress as a man? To gain access to places previously barred from her and to gain the respect she otherwise wouldn’t be afforded. And, of course, in 2021 there’s the expectation that media will include trans characters, GNC characters, non-binary characters, cis characters uninterested in practicing traditional femininity/masculinity, etc. None of which RWBY tackles outside of May, a woman who references a systematic transphobia we otherwise never see in the show. May, as a minor character, is great and I am in all honesty thrilled that she exists in the RWBY canon. However, the rest of the show is built on an anime conception of gender  — combat skirts and bare midriffs in the snow  — while nevertheless engaging with the very complicated question of how you re-imagine canonically/historically gendered people. As a “girl power” show, RWBY has opened itself up to questions like, “Okay, it’s great that you made these four fairy tale girls kickass, but can we talk about making Joan of Arc into a bumbling guy whose presence as a blonde, blue-eyed, sword-wielding man taking up lots of important screen time has generated accusations about this being a male-centered show?” It’s not a “RWBY is horrible for doing this!” issue, but a “RWBY is deliberately playing with gender and marketing itself as a progressive show, so... let’s figure out what these individual choices are actually implying and whether or not we consider that progressive.” 
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gascon-en-exil · 3 years
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It's still somewhat astounding to me that a single offhand comment about trans headcanons for a Three Houses character got me a torrent of verbose anon hate, all presumably from one very loudly opinionated person. I'm not going to bother responding to those directly or any of the many that will assuredly follow - although I am old enough to be amused by the thought that the same whining the troll makes about trans headcanons contributing nothing to fandom could have been ripped right out of 2000s-era discourse, except back then it was about gay headcanons/fic - but a combination of candor and spite has nonetheless prompted me to put my current project on hold for a moment and talk a little about why I would have trans headcanons at all, and more specifically the kind that I do.
I have in the past suggested that, while I generally identify as cis, my gender has become more fluid in certain circumstances over the past half decade or so. Sexual circumstances, to be precise, to the point that I do now describe myself as "genderfluid in bed" for men who display an interest in such things. The common term for that is feminization kink, and for the men who are into that it usually manifests in little more than a desire to see me in lingerie and/or the use of associated wordplay during sex (ex. calling my hole a pussy/cunt, expressing a desire to impregnate me). I can understand why that might be appealing for some men; gay men collectively have a bunch of hangups with regard to straight men, and while that more often manifests through lewd fantasies of celebrities or watching porn where allegedly straight guys jack off for the camera I can also see in encounters with those men a desire to in essence RP as straight men fucking women. I get that from some bi men too, men who have explicitly enjoyed my natural androgyny and in some cases have even used their sexual experiences with cis women to add some extra flavor to our time together. Obviously this isn't a thing for all or even most gay/bi men - and guys who are looking for more masc partners are unlikely to start talking to me in the first place - but anecdotally speaking there are men of varying self-identified orientations who are into feminized AMAB sexual partners.
Now of course this comes to what is probably a more salient question: am I into that, or is it just one of several types of kink I'm willing to engage in because it broadens my appeal? There's no shortage of that in my sexual CV; I've let men suck on my toes, piss on me, tie me up, flog me, on occasion done all of the above to them, and more - but I'm sufficiently aware of my own interests to know that none of those things really turn me on. Feminization however I do like, so much so that I've noticed that I'm more genuinely attracted to men who treat me in what I perceive to be a feminine way, who take the lead in social situations and in intimacy and who enjoy the contrast in our bodies (these men almost always being bigger, hairier, and hopefully more well-endowed). The concept of treating me as feminine alone carries a ton of culturally specific baggage. The French are traditionally perceived as a more feminine/effete culture in the English-speaking world. Créole women like my female relatives and ancestors are notorious for the way they control their husbands, lovers, children, and (back when we had them) domestics while still constrained by the bounds of patriarchal society. It is through them that I learned most of how I conduct myself around men both in and out of bed, that the easiest way to control a man is to appear to be controlled by him while simultaneously enslaving him to his passions - passions that I intimately understand because I too have a dick. Most of my sexual partners come from backgrounds very different from that, so they have trouble understanding how I approach sex even if I'm trying to form an actual relationship with them. Still, some of them try, and I enjoy it when they do.
I've had trouble opening up about this before on my blog, not because of any trolls (although pissing off trolls is always fun) but because I've never been quite certain of how welcome talking about this would be. Most of the content and resources by, for, and about trans women online I've come across has concerned lesbian trans women, or otherwise centered around trans women's relationships (sexual or otherwise) with other women. As someone who still conceptualizes my gender identity first and foremost in relation to my sexual availability to men, those resources are unsurprisingly not going to speak to me very well. General trans content on Tumblr and other fandom spaces is similarly of little personal appeal, with the users skewing heavily AFAB and therefore more likely to feature trans men. I fully understand why that is, and on occasion I've been known to enjoy M/M porn where one character has a vagina with no explanation. God knows I've fantasized before about having an orifice that lubricates itself, doesn't need to be flushed out before sex, and is naturally built to take a cock. The philosophy behind most trans headcanons does elude me a bit though, as it seems to me like it'd be easier to keep a character's canon AGAB and change their gender identity rather than the reverse. Apparently that approach is much less common, but I can safely say that all of the handful of trans headcanons I've had involve canonically cis male characters imagined as trans female and sexually involved with cis male characters - big surprise there, right?
I get the impression that my perspective could easily be considered antiquated in several ways: that I emphasize sexual activity over the more nebulous sexual attraction when it comes to discussing orientation; that I prioritize my sexual activity over my gender identity; that I believe there exists a liminal space between fem cis gay men and straight trans women, and that there is historical precedence for such a space in pre-modern/early modern queer communities; and that to the extent that I've internalized a feminine gender identity I do so in the context of my relationships with men. Again, a lot of that comes down to culture, to the myriad ways in which queerness in New Orleans has retained its own history and character independent of other queer cultures in the English-speaking world. Maybe some of it sounds outdated, or misogynistic (I've seen that criticism lobbied at drag queens, and it would probably apply here too), or most bizarrely of all transphobic...but it's all nonetheless a part of who I am, and at the end of the day the only people whose opinions on this subject really matter to me are the men who want to take me to bed. To quote a particularly fitting verse from "Sugar Daddy" of Hedwig and the Angry Itch:
So you think only a woman Can truly love a man? Well, you buy me the dress, I'll be more woman Than a man like you can stand
Indeed.
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fairycosmos · 3 years
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are u doing that “everyone should be bisexual for moral reasons” thing or did I misunderstand that anon and your response
yeah you did misunderstand. we were talking about ideology not sexuality e.g terfs shaming trans women for having penises and rad feminist activism that centers on having a vagina. sexual orientation is a completely different thing and it's not what we were discussing at all or at least it's not what i was discussing lol
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You decided to poke your Italian looking ass in a discussion obviously about Black women to protect a white person and then babbler on about white cis women
All the Black womens comments took issue but here's your anti-Black ass to act as if because you don't and your saying something means those Black women that didn't like how philosophy tube brought up Black women isn't an issue
The entitlement and authority you think you have over Black women is disgusting. In a discussion about Black women you used not being white to defend whiteness
Italian looking ass is the funniest insult I've ever seen.
I will once more say that;
a) all Abigail did was share papers black women wrote about their relationship with gender. Point blank, and the majority of the women tearing her apart were white. If centering our feminism around bipoc women, especially tma black women, and sharing the work black academics have written about the subject is anti-black I don't know what to say. It seems like you only want us to value the words of black cis women in this conversation. That's inherently transphobic and I will always hold the opinions of trans women on gender in higher regard than any cis person's.
b) The concept of sex and gender transphobes perpetuate is innately White Supremacist and focused on White Colonizers. You are defending the beliefs of white people over the many indigenous cultures that have openly included gender fluidity long before a white man laid a foot on our continent. This conversation will always include indigenous people because You are saying that our culture and practices are not as valid as those of white people. You're upholding white supremacy and using your role as a non-white person to do so.
You're on anon and don't stand by your statements enough so to attach your name to them. You know the way you treat trans people is vile.
The many black trans women in LGBT spaces would agree with Abigail as shown in the papers she referenced. This is known. I'm not going to disregard what our most vulnerable sisters believe because a cis terfy anon told me to.
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thefudge · 4 years
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so, there’s been a couple of messages in my inbox from an anon in continuation to the jk rowling discussion and i haven’t had the time to respond until now so i’m gonna add more thoughts under the cut
i’m glad you found my take balanced enough, and yep, i agree, it’s a shame that open discussion is so fraught these days... but it would help a lot if JK stuck to her main points about the importance of debate instead of dog-whistling, as i mentioned in my other post. i do think the term TERF is thrown around way too liberally and a particular brand of cis progressives like to dominate the discussion, even to the detriment of transpeople as you pointed out, but it’s also important to make sure which people want an honest discussion about gender dysphoria and which have another agenda. this is why twitter and tumblr are not great environments for such discussions....and i hate it. also! something to be cautious of is the mild-mannered and reasonable discourse of people like JK, who insert fair points in their speech but also hide some nuggets of narrow-mindedness behind really pretty words. my ultimate take on JK is: you care deeply about women’s rights? treat your female characters better, support the women around you, but also take them to task. don’t just blindly support maya forstater without actually looking into the facts (like her trial case etc.). make sure you apply the same kind of critical “nuance” to all the women around you, trans or cis (and also i hope she studies up more on gender and sex). 
as for the amount of support and vitriol she’s getting online: i think it’s dumb to stop working with her and cancel her books and movies because that will just play right into her arguments that we’re all extremists who want to "deplatform” women and she’d be right. every time we cancel a celebrity for their “discourse” we just make sure the echo chamber grows bigger (and they still profit off it btw).  i still think she will be fine, but we’re not doing transpeople any favors by placing her on the virtual guillotine. we “punish” JK and call it a day and go “here, this is what we did for you, trans ppl!”. i do think celebrities who actively cause damage and harm need to be shut down immediately (and i mean actual crimes), but in many other cases (JK included) the best course of action is to ignore them, instead of making them the center of our arguments. and by ignoring them i mean going “okay, this is her opinion? i can see what she’s going for, but it’s flawed” and we move on. the only reason why authors these days have such an impact on their audience is because they’ve made themselves readily available online and JK is a special case because for decades now she has been THE author for millennials and gen z. and once again, online culture has made everything ride or die, when... it doesn’t have to be! we live in a far more complicated world than a few words online can sum up. but we’re stuck here so we have to make the best of it.
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iredreamer · 5 years
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Hi just wanna say I've really enjoyed reading your asks & all your inputs on Ann(e)! I have 2 questions which I haven't found any answers to: 1. Does Anne Lister speaks fluent French? On that note do we know if Suranne Jones is fluent in French as well? 2. We know it was never mentioned but we label AL as a lesbian. Could she be trans considering there was no definition of it either? Did she ever mentioned any discomfort with her female form? (There was 1 scene in the show about her "vessel")
hey :D thank you so much!!! And now, about your questions…
1– When she was in Paris in 1824 she studied French and she was not fluent back then: September 3, 1824 > “I have nothing proper to dress in & cannot speak the language at all & feel as if I could not get on.” September 4, 1824 > “If I could speak the language well I could get on agreeably enough.” 
She took French lessons from Madame Galvani for years: September 11, 1824 > “Mme Galvani’s manners are good & I like her manner of teaching French very much (…) I see I have much to learn, much difficulty of pronunciation to surmount but I shall not despair.”  September 14, 1824 > “At 12–20, Mme Galvani étoit arrivée chez moi a restoit [arrived, she stayed with me] 1½ hour … read aloud & I read after her. Asked if she thought I could ever get the French accent perfectly. Yes! She thought I could as perfectly as any English person.”
She studied French at least till 1828 (from what I’ve read) and in 1832 she used to read “five or 6 pages of of French vocabulary” in the morning. At some point I guess she became pretty fluent since she used to read entire books in French and used to correct the letters Ann Walker sent her that were written in French. So I guess her French was pretty good in the 1830s.
(All the 1824 diary entries are from No Priest But Love by Helena Whitbread)
2 – She was a lesbian. She never expressed the desire to be a man or to be raised as a boy. You have to keep in mind that back then gender roles were very strict and it’s only normal that she didn’t feel always comfortable in her body. She was bound by gender norms and social norms that didn’t fit her and she didn’t feel comfortable with them. That doesn’t mean she was trans. She was gender-nonconforming, just like (more or less) every queer person in a straight society. She didn’t recognize herself in the image that society painted of women and so she gravitated towards a more “masculine” way of presenting herself. She always ignored gendered prescriptions and she perceived herself (and was perceived by others) as “masculine” because that helped her do what she wanted and cultivate her interests (for example study science and the classics, something women were not allowed to do). In her diary she writes about how people would mistake her for a man (because of how she walked and acted) and how she was annoyed by it. She considered herself a woman who loved women, that’s how she writes about herself and her sexuality when talking about her lovers. She used to take notes in her diary every time she came across a reference about female homosexuality in the classics she read, and when she visited the Ladies of Llangollen she recognized herself in that kind of dynamic, this shows that she did know who she was and she had a sense of “lesbian identity”. She was a lesbian. She was a stone butch. All of this is explained in great detail in Moving between Worlds: Gender, Class, Politics, Sexuality and Women’s Networks in the Diaries of Anne Lister 1830-40. It’s a great read if you’re interested about this matter, it has a couple of chapters that explore Anne Lister’s lesbian identity with some interesting extracts from her diaries.
One of her most famous quotes is maybe this one: “I’m neither man nor woman in society, but the link between the two.” And, as you see, she’s talking about her place in society (a male-dominated, male-identified, and male-centered society), she wasn’t seen as a woman because she didn’t conform, but she also wasn’t seen as a man because she wasn’t one.
It’s interesting how in the show Catherine Rawson says “Well, apparently she’s a bit like a man.” and Ann Walker replies “No, I’ll tell you why they say it. Because she’s unusual and singular and clever, and because she doesn’t conform to the way people think a woman should look or think or be. That’s why.” I really think Ann is answering to your question here. It’s a great dialogue that subtly explains to you why people saw her as if she was (or wanted to be) a man when in reality she was just challenging and refusing the image society had of women to build her own (even tho she wasn’t doing it consciously).
To close this answer I just wanna point out that feeling uncomfortable with your female form doesn’t always mean you’re trans, society can make you feel uncomfortable with your body when you don’t conform.
I hope I answered your questions :) and I’m sorry if I seem too passionate in the 2nd answer but I really don’t understand why it’s in doubt that she was a lesbian. Historians have read her diary, they have read every single thought she had, and they are sure she was a lesbian, so I don’t understand why this is still discussed.
Talking about the show, it makes it pretty clear that she’s a lesbian, she’s always annoyed when someone mistakes her for a man and the way she talks about her discomfort clearly stems from the fact that she’s a different kind of woman from the one accepted by society.
Oh and Suranne is not fluent in French. Maybe someone who’s French can tell us how good her French is in the show :)
EDIT: 
french-cosima replied to your post:
French person here! To reply to the anon’s question, Suranne is only reciting the French she learnt, and probably only learnt by ear because even as a native I could hardly make out what she was saying, so no, she’s not speaking French ;)
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fansplaining · 6 years
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I love how frequently you guys talk about fan studies (and to people who, er, study fans), but I've noticed that so much of your fan studies discussion was just... you guys talking about the CONCEPT OF fan studies, rather than actual fan studies. I would love to hear you guys dive a little deeper. What are some of these studies? What do they study? The discussion currently feels stale and superficial, and it's frustrating for me as a listener.
Hi anon! Elizabeth here. So…Flourish and I are a bit confused by this, especially after the most recent episode, when I specifically talked about the work of a whole bunch of fan studies scholars at the FSN conference, including:
Tom Phillips on women’s wrestling fandom
Briony Hannell on SKAM and teenage female Muslim fans (I didn’t name Briony in the conversation, MY BAD, though we do in the show notes)
Kathy Larsen on “Bundy erotic fanfic,” the political as fandom and fandom as political (this paper, like many of them, is in progress, so I’m not finding anything on it online with a quick search)
Cecilia Almeida Rodrigues Lima on shipping/activism/representation re: Brazilian f/f telenovela couples (we’ll hopefully be having her on to talk about this further—as you know we’re very into this topic)
Emily Roach on antifandom and tinhatting
Obviously since this episode was meant to be an overview of the whole conference, we couldn’t go into any of these in great detail (though as we mentioned, the conference was heavily tweeted, so following the link in the show notes will give you a fuller sense of their presentations through the many, many tweets). 
But we’ve also had a number of scholars on who talked about their work in-depth, and that’s why I’m particularly confused about this ask. Some define themselves as a part of fan studies, and others do not, though all their work touches fandom in some way. Just for reference, that includes (and is possibly not limited to, if I’m forgetting anyone):
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas on race and children’s literature
Evan Hayles Gledhill on fans through history, in particular 19th century female fans
Casey Fiesler on fans mourning online (this was for a specific topic—we’d like to have Casey back for a full ep to talk about all her other work) 
Ludi Price on how fans organize and tag information
Rukmini Pande on race and fandom centering whiteness in shipping (Rukmini is another person we’ve had on to discuss specific topics and who we hope can join us again)
Rukmini Pande and Lori Morimoto on shipping and activism
Stephanie Burt on…a lot of things haha, but especially fan taste cultures and (how fans engage with) trans representation in media
Lori Morimoto on transcultural fandom
Whenever we talk about “fan studies” as a whole, it’s true, there’s likely to be a bit of discipline talk—this is the nature of academia, in my experience, and yeah, sometimes in grad school I got frustrated that we spent so much time defining our field (which I’m sure I’ve mentioned on the podcast was possibly more amorphous and big-tenty than fan studies). 
I think for the last episode in particular, you can understand why we’d be discussing the field itself, fresh from their annual conference. Our conversation with Lori also spent a good deal of time with the field itself, because Lori is doing a massive amount of work trying to get scholars and fans to talk to each other, which inherently is more about fan studies and fandom as whole units than any subset or focus. 
But taking stock of the field and what it encompasses matters as much as the content of these scholars’ work, in my opinion. Who gets to study fans? What work counts as “fan studies”? As you can see from the last ep, this has very real consequences: when a conference is overwhelmingly white, for example, or weighted towards male speakers, what sorts of fan experiences are likely to be overlooked and under-discussed? It’s analogous to discussing patterns in whole fandoms or across fandoms—we might see a racist incident in one place, but there’s a massive amount of value in looking at this in the context of “fandom at large,” as spurious as that term might be haha. 
If we misunderstood this ask, apologies! Please help us understand what you meant? But it’d be a shame to suggest that the scholars we’ve had on aren’t discussing their work…
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