#I used to be so dishonest for real | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

uber-gender · 11 months

Note

why is "chronosion" or whatever on thin ice? i view it as similar to how system members can have different ages from the body + singlets who are permanently age reg/progressed (or ageless or whatever else). is it the association/branching off of "transage" (and the association of "transage" with pedo/4chan crap or the community it harvested and being buddy-buddy with pedos and all that crap) that makes it uncomfortable? or something else im missing? (i assume its not the experience itself because you guys are 8-10 and 16-ageless but i might be wrong because i have bad theory of mind)

yeah, it's the connection between chronosian and "transage" and how people often use them interchangeably. the creator of chronosian is opposed to "transage" and other "transx/transid" identities, but we still suggest checking the op tags and blog when reblogging chronosian identities because mogai tumblr is infamously bad at research and respect.

additionally, at least to me (rev), the concept of "identifying as a different age than the body" in general is very unsettling when used outside of specific plural settings. the creator of chronosian explains in this post that neurodivergent people may identify as chronosian because of how we mature differently, and while they do provide disclaimers in an attempt to fend off ableists, I believe that the association is still potentially dangerous. the creation of microlabels for different expressions of chronosian identity also seems to me like a trivialization of the material reality of age. as a Claudia, I find it helpful to sometimes identify as an 8-10 year old, since my emotions and personality will never fully mature. however, I also identify as a 26 year old who is fully capable of harming others as an adult and is able to consent to sex with other adults. I think it is important even as a syskid or a regressor to keep a solid grasp on your real physical age, both for the safety and comfort of others and for your own self-concept.

HOWEVER, I do think that the basic terminology of "chronosian" is helpful, and would identify as it. also, ETMK is not as serious as I am about this and does not have any criticism of chronosian other than finding the word itself "sort of dorky". so that's what we mean by "on thin ice".

tl;dr, we are overall ok with chronosian as long as it is divorced from "transage", but one of us has some friendly criticism about it.

#rev.txt #i think it's the seriousness espoused by a lot of mogai tumblr that does not translate well to #this kind of identity.#as in a person who is genderqueer and uses xe/it pronouns needs to be respected since that is a very real and valid way of existing #but chronosians are their physical age despite using chronosian terms for the sake of convenience and transparency #and euphoria #i view it similar to how we will call ourself a boygirl and a female man because of our tenuous relationship with masculinity #but ultimately we are various flavors of man and sometimes need to shed the genderfuck aggression when in serious conversations about #intracommunity trans politics because neither of us are really even nonbinary #like etmk is a she/it mangirl but if you asked her if she's nonbinary she'd say no i'm a crossdressing faggot.#so we cant speak for real nonbinary people.#tag rant somewhat off topic sorry. what I mean is that age expression/regression/identity has a performative aspect that gender #does not always have. so using xenogender type categories for it can veer a little intellectually dishonest #f slur /#in the tags

1 note · View note

ariel26c · 1 month

Text

🎀Things I’ve learned about Shifting 🎀

1. Background noise doesn’t matter. I come from a Hispanic family household and let me tell you hun it’s freaking loud as hell. It’s like a zoo lol but guess what? I still shifted. At some point you will start to feel your CR kinda “fade away”. I have been in this state where I am in between my CR and DR. I can hear background noise from my CR but I still feel like I’m in a different room or I hear sounds from my DR as well. Has anyone experienced this?? Let me know, I’m curious 🤨

2. Have patience. Allow yourself to relax and naturally connect to your DR. Don’t stress about having random thoughts or having an itch or things like that. Have patience with yourself like seriously you got this babe. Sometimes for me it’s feels like it’s takes 1 or 2 hours until I feel fully connected to my DR. (It’s different for everyone btw) you may take less time than I do. Those things don’t matter if you decide that those things don’t matter.

3. Methods really aren’t needed. If you think about it all methods consist of the same thing usually. It usually consists of affirmations, visualization, subliminal audios, meditation, counting, blah blah blah. If you want to use a method, then do that but don’t force yourself to do a method that doesn’t resonate with you. If you don’t like counting, then don’t count. If you don’t like visualizing, then don’t visualize. Change things up a bit and listen to music that reminds you of your DR or do something that you think is fun.

4. Just because some people like to lie about their shifting experiences doesn’t mean that shifting is fake. Just like in every community there is going to be people that are dishonest or don’t have the best intentions but that doesn’t mean that shifting is a big inside joke. Don’t allow these people to discourage you from shifting to your DR or make you doubt in its existence. Don’t depend on other people's content to feel motivated or believe in shifting. Just KNOW it’s real and motivate yourself to shift. (even though motivation isn’t needed to shift)

5. Shifting is Real. I think we all should know this by now, but I don’t think people really fully understand just how REAL shifting is. I mean you are going to be able to use all of your senses. You will be able to taste food, see your reflection in the mirror, talk to people that may be considered as fictional in this reality, etc. The process of shifting is safe but if you are shifting somewhere that has violence or gore make sure you script your own well-being. High pain tolerance, no trauma, etc.

6. Time isn't important. Just because it's been 4 years or 5 doesn't mean you can't do it. Time doesn't apply to shifting because time is just man-made thing. We created the concept of time not the Universe. Don't blame the Universe for your "Failure". (Spoiler alert: it's not failure) You just need to realize that no matter what, it will happen. It is completely inevitable. Some people have shifted after 5 years so don't give up! It will be worth it.

7. You can't fail at shifting. When you do your method, you will shift to your DR or shift to your CR. You shift all the time. We are constantly shifting consciously or unconsciously. Manifestation and shifting are very much closely related. (But that's another discussion for another time) Just like how we are manifesting on autopilot we are also shifting on autopilot. So, when you do a sleep method, and you wake up in this reality instead of your DR you still shifted. (Just not to your DR) (Get it?)

I hope you found this post helpful! :)

#affirmations #desired reality #law of the universe #shifting #shifting realities #reality shifting community #reality shift #reality shifting #shifting community #shifters #shiftblr

1K notes · View notes

cy-cyborg · 14 days

Text

The Untrustworthy Fake: Disability Tropes

[ID: A screenshot of Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as he limps towards a crowd using a cane. In the picture, he has a brown top hat in his hand, and he's wearing a suit with a purple jacket, multicoloured bow tie and cream coloured pants. Beside him is text that reads: "Disability Tropes, The untrustworthy Fake" /End ID]

Tell me if this sounds familiar: A new character is introduced into a story with some kind of disability - usually visible but not always. Maybe they're a seemingly harmless person in a wheelchair, maybe they're a one-legged beggar on the street, or maybe they're an elderly person with a cane and a slow, heavy limp. But at some point, it's revealed it's all a ruse! The old man with a cane "falls" forward and does a flawless summersault before energetically springing back up to his feet, the wheelchair user gets to their feet as soon as they think the other character's backs are turned, the one legged beggar's crutch is knocked out of his hand, only to have his other leg pop out of his loose-fitting tunic to catch him.

All of these are real examples. Maya and The Three introduces one of it's main protagonists, Ricco, by having him pretend to be missing a leg in order to con people (something that works on the protagonist, at least at first), Buffy The Vampire Slayer had the character Spike, pretend to be in a wheelchair, until the other characters leave and he gets up, revealing it's all a ruse and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory introduces Wonka by having him slowly limp out into the courtyard of the factory, only for his cane to get stuck, causing him to "fall" and jump back up, revealing that he's actually perfectly fine. Virtually every single major crime show in the past few decades has used this trope too, from CSI to The Mentalist, Castle, Law and Order and Monk all having at least one episode featuring it in some way. Even the kids media I grew up with isn't free from it; The Suite Life of Zack & Cody sees Zach faking being dyslexic after meeting someone who actually has the condition in the episode Smarter and Smarter and the SpongeBob SquarePants episode Krabs vs Plankton has Plankton fake needing a wheelchair (among other injuries) after falling in the Krusty Krab as a ploy to sue Mr Krabs and trick the court into giving him the Kraby Patty Formula.

No matter the genre or target audience though, one thing is consistent: this trope is used as a way to show someone is dishonest and not to be trusted. When the trope is used later in the story, it's often meant to be a big reveal, to shock the audience and make them mad that they've been duped, to show the characters and us what this person (usually a villain) is willing to stoop to. Revealing the ruse early on though is very often used to establish how sleazy or even how dangerous a character is and to tell the audience that they shouldn't trust them from the get go. Gene Wilde (The actor who first played Willy Wonka) even said in several interviews that this was his intent for Wonka's character. He even went so far as to tell the director of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that he wouldn't do the film without that scene because of how strongly he felt this trope was needed to lay the foundations for Wonka's questionable intentions and motivations. His exact words are: "...but I wouldn't have done the film if they didn't let me come out walking as a cripple and then getting my cane stuck into a cobble stone, doing a forward somersault and then bouncing up... the director said, well what do you want to do that for? and I said because from that point on, no one will know whether I'm telling the truth or lying."

There's... a lot of problems with this trope, but that quote encapsulates one of the biggest ones. whether intentionally or not, this trope ends up framing a lot of actual disabled people as deceitful, dishonest liars. Now I can already hear you all typing, What?! Cy that's ridiculous! No one is saying real disabled people are untrustworthy or lying about their disabilities, just people who are faking!

but the thing is, the things often used in this trope as "evidence" of someone faking a disability are things real disabled people do. A person standing up from their wheelchair or having scuff-marks on their shoes, like in the episode Miss Red from The Mentalist isn't a sign they're faking, a lot of wheelchair users can stand and even walk! They're called ambulatory wheelchair users, and they might use a wheelchair because they can't walk far, they might not feel safe walking on all terrains, they might have unstable joints that makes standing for too long risky, they might have a heart condition like POTS that has a bigger impact when they stand up or any number of other reasons. Also even non-ambulatory wheelchair users will still have scuff marks from things like transferring and bumping into things (rather hilariously, even TV Tropes calls this episode out as being "BS" in it's listing for this trope, which it refers to as Obfuscating Disability). A blind beggar flinching or getting scared when you pull a gun on them isn't a sign they're faking their blindness like it is in Red Dead Redemption 2. Plenty of blind people can still see a little bit, it might only be a general sense of light and darkness, it might be exceptionally blurry or just the fuzzy outlines of shapes, or they might only be able to see something directly in front of them, all of which might still be enough to cue the person into what's happening in a situation like that. Even if it's not, the sound of you pulling your gun out or other people nearby freaking out and making noise probably would tip them off. A person needing a cane or similar mobility aid sometimes, but being able to go without briefly or do even "big movements" like Wonka's rolling somersault, doesn't mean they don't need it at all. Just like with wheelchairs, there's a lot of disabilities that require canes and similar aids some days, and not others. Some disabilities even allow people those big, often straining movements on occasion, or allow them to move without the aid for short periods of time, but not for long. Some people's disability's might even require a mobility aid like a cane as a backup, just in case something goes wrong, but that still means you need to carry it around with you, and unless it can fold down, it's easier to just use it.

Disability is a spectrum, and a lot of disabilities vary in severity and what is required of the people who have them day to day. This trope, however, helps to perpetuate the idea that someone who does any of these things (and many others) is faking, which can actively make the lives of disabled people harder and can even put them in very real danger, physically, mentally and even financially.

Just ask any ambulatory wheelchair user about how many times they've been yelled at for using accommodations they need, like disabled toilets or parking spaces. How many times they've been accused of faking and even filmed without their consent because they stood up in public, even if it was to do something like get their wheelchair unstuck or as simple as them standing to briefly reach something on a high shelf. I've caught multiple people filming me before, so have my friends and family, and it's honestly scary not knowing where those images have ended up. This doesn't just impact the person either, a friend of mine was filmed while standing up to get his daughter (who was about 4 at the time) out of the car. He was lucky to have stumbled across the video a few days later on facebook and contacted the group admins where it was posted to get it taken down, but had he not stumbled across it by chance, pictures with his home address and his car's number plate, his child's face and his face all visible would have just been floating around, all because a woman saw him stand briefly to pick up his daughter.

Many people don't stop at just saying a nasty comment or taking a photo though, a lot of people, when they suspect people are faking, will get violent. I have many friends who have been pushed, slapped in the face, spat on or had their mobility devices kicked out from under them. I've even been in a few situations myself where, had I not had people with me, I think the situation would have turned violent.

There's even been cases where those photos and videos I've mentioned before have been used against real disabled people and they've been reported to their country's welfare system as committing disability fraud. While cases like this are usually resolved *relatively* quickly, in many parts of the world, their payment will be halted while the investigation is in process, meaning they may be without any income at all because of someone else's ignorance. If you're already struggling to make ends meet (which, if you're only living off one of those payments, you probably will be), a few weeks without pay can mean the difference between having a home and being on the streets.

Not to mention that when there's so many stories about people faking a disability in the media, especially when the character is doing it to get some kind of "advantage", such as getting accommodations or some kind of disability benefit, it perpetuates the idea that people are rorting the systems put in place to help disabled people. If this idea becomes prevalent enough, the people in charge start making it harder for the people who need them to access those systems, which more often than not results in disabled people not even being able to access the very systems that are supposed to be helping them. A very, very common example of this is in education where accommodations for things like learning disabilities require you to jump through a ridiculous number of hoops, especially at higher levels, only to have some teachers and professors refuse to adhere to the adaptations anyway because they're convinced the student (and usually disabled students as a whole) is faking.

Yes, the "untrustworthy faker" is a fictional trope, and yes, it does occasionally happen in real life, but not as often as media (including things like news outlets) would have you believe. However, when the media we consume is priming people to look for signs that a disabled person is faking, it has a real impact on real disabled people's lives. "Fake-claiming" is a massive problem for people in pretty much all parts of the disabled community, and it ranges from being just annoying (e.g. such as people spamming and fake-claiming blind people online with "if you were really blind, how do you see the screen" comments) to the more serious cases I mentioned above. It's for this reason a lot of folks in the disabled community ask that people leave this trope out of their works.

#Writing disability with Cy Cyborg #Long Post #Disability #Disabled #Disability Representation #Writing Disability #Writing #Writeblr #Authors #Creators #Writing Advice #Disabled Characters #On Writing #Disability in Media #Tropes #Disability Tropes #faking disability trope

463 notes · View notes

hero-israel · 6 months

Note

sorry if this is a dumb question and i understand if you don't want to answer but do you have links to posts explaining why israel isn't an apartheid state? i swear i read posts like that on your blog before but i don't know how to refind them

Israeli Arabs have legal equality with Jews. Same restaurants, same pools, same seats on the bus, same voting rights. I would favorably compare the treatment of Israeli Arabs with that of any minority group in any country on Earth.

The West Bank has a military occupation, with (pretty fast) checkpoints and no right to vote about the government running that military. Military occupations are bad and some of us have been against this particular one for decades. The anti-occupation movement hasn't gotten anywhere, they've just been stuck. Being stuck in a military occupation for X more years doesn't make it apartheid, just like being stuck in a bad marriage for X more years doesn't make you divorced. Meanwhile, the 2020 Abraham Accords showed that multiple Arab states were willing to accept this unchanging status quo and deal with Israel as it is. Those two factors - the stagnant, unchanging nature of the occupation, and the clear loss of interest in the Palestinian cause - combined to have the latest crop of awareness-raising college interns at some shifty NGOs try to force change by abracadabra'ing together a new concept of "apartheid" that exists solely for Israel. And it is working, just like "Christ-killer" and "stabbed Germany in the back" worked.

In 2010, Human Rights Watch published an extremely critical report on Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Dragged them up one wall and down the other. Yet there was no accusation of "apartheid" there. In the report, page 33, they cited a lawsuit by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel that had said it was apartheid for the West Bank military occupation authorities to ban Palestinians from driving on Highway 443 after repeated firebombings / shootings against Israelis. The Israeli High Court ruled that it was inappropriate to ban Palestinians from the road, and it re-established their equal driving access - they have had it ever since. The court also said that the accusation of apartheid behind that now-ended ban was dishonest, because the security concerns were not based on race; there were and are no "Jewish-only" roads anywhere, even when WB Palestinians were denied road access, Israeli Arabs could and did drive there. The HRW 2010 report included a long summary of that finding, without challenge. As bad as they saw Israel, they agreed it wasn't apartheid.

Then in 2020 came the Abraham Accords, so while nothing at all had changed in the administration of the West Bank, in 2021 HRW said it actually was apartheid. It really is that simple. The most famous legal convention banning apartheid specifies that it is race-based. HRW instead went with a different legal convention on apartheid, one that says it could be based on national origin if it involves discrimination among citizens of the same country.... and then they up and added their own twist to that, saying they will consider it apartheid if there is discrimination based on national origin AMONG PEOPLE WHO AREN'T CITIZENS OF THE SAME COUNTRY. In a very real sense, HRW declared Mexico is an apartheid state because Americans can't vote in its elections.

In 2022, Amnesty International followed with their own report, saying that not only was the military occupation now "apartheid," but that Israel itself had been an apartheid state ever since it was established in 1948. This moral perversion had the effect of saying Israel literally INVENTED apartheid since in May 1948 it didn't even exist in South Africa yet. It also said that Amnesty International - founded 1961 - had been looking at an apartheid the whole time but never recognized it. To make things even more dishonest, Amnesty said they "are not claiming Israeli conditions are analogous to South Africa," meaning anything that shows how Israel is different from South Africa doesn't count. They're using the South African word for the South African policy but it's actually not like South Africa at all so be quiet, neener neener no backsies.

I shouldn't have to take that seriously. Neither should anyone. Palestinians and their advocates should be ashamed to have to lean on such an obvious bad-faith lie.

Nelson Mandela, who died in 2013, never once accused Israel of apartheid, and instead repeatedly said he supported Zionism and a 2-state solution. Mandela's lawyer, still alive, says the accusation is a lie. Mansour Abbas, leader of the Arab Islamist party that joined Israel's governing coalition in 2021, says the accusation is a lie. And if people want to bandy around NGO business cards, here is the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2017:

“The Red Cross was very familiar with the regime that prevailed in South Africa during the apartheid period, and we are responding to all those who raise their claim of apartheid against Israel: No, there is no apartheid here, no regime of superiority of race, of denial of basic human rights to a group of people because of their alleged racial inferiority. There is a bloody national conflict, whose most prominent and tragic characteristic is its continuation over the years, decades-long, and there is a state of occupation. Not apartheid.”

There's a lot more you can see about the shifty terminology, unreliable sourcing, and longstanding culture of antisemitism and racism within Amnesty International. People who can cite chapter and verse of why the Salvation Army, Autism Speaks, Chik-Fil-A and Harry Potter are problematic should not be shocked.

#israel #palestine #amnesty international #apartheid #antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #false accusations #european antisemitism #jumblr #human rights watch

481 notes · View notes

copperbadge · 19 days

Text

I got an anon message recently about a Radio Free Monday listing, which I'm reposting redacted in order to make a point:

Did you know [redacted] is just a scammer? Their story has been inconsistant and out right farcical. Nobody with their living situation would have been able to [redacted]. Get real, they are a an obvious fraud.

My job, in operating Radio Free Monday, is to do my best to publicize the needs of people in our community, and to do so neutrally, with discernment but without judgement. I try to catch obvious scams when I can, but when there is no absolute evidence of disingenuous behavior, I err on the side of compassion. You, anon, will lead a much happier and kinder life if you can learn how to do the same.

I don't actively direct funds; my readers decide when and how to give, and how much, and why. Undoubtedly there are people whose fundraisers I've linked to who have been scammers, but that's a reflection on them, not on me or on my readers who choose to give. A scam at the level of a tumblr fundraiser has such a high effort to payout ratio, as scams go, that I find it difficult to even get irritated by the idea, let alone risk someone losing out on help they need. On occasion I've been duped, but so what? Are you so concerned with never being fooled that you prefer to send bitter messages to strangers about months-old posts? Seems a bit desperate, no?

When I have evidence of dishonest behavior, I disqualify the listing or I discontinue linking the request. Statements like "this would never happen" or "this is just obvious" are generally speaking the province of people too lazy to look for proof or too insecure to tolerate uncertainty. It's the way right-wing YouTube influencers make their points, because they have no bottom to back it up and are only interested in pandering to fear.

If you have genuine concerns based in first-hand knowledge, come to me under your own handle with it. If you're just going to say nasty things about people neither of us actually know under anon, get the fuck on out of here. Come back when you've learned to act like an adult.

#radio free monday

167 notes · View notes

autolenaphilia · 11 months

Text

Transandrophobia isn’t real because misandry isn’t real. This is the basic truth of the matter.

The very structure of the word implies some kind of intersection of transphobia and misandry, which is impossible, because again misandry doesn’t exist. The phrase “transandrophobia” exists as a transmasc counterpart to transmisogyny, and it doesn’t work, because while misogyny is real, misandry/androphobia is not. The things that are described as “transandrophobia” which are actual instances of oppression are better explained as plain transphobia.

The antifeminism of transandrophobia theory

“Transandrophobia” theory often launders antifeminist concepts of misandry. Of course this is openly often denied. The defense is that transandrophobia doesn’t imply that misandry exists, but only describes transphobia directed at transmascs.

And it’s often disingenuous. I’ve come across numerous transandrophobia blogs that clearly believe in misandry. The very coiner of the word, says it’s caused by “the effects of irrational fears of masculinity and manhood“ (taking “androphobia” quite literally) which implies both the existence of misandry and also misogynistically dismissing women’s fears of men’s violence as irrational.

Of course they change the language around, using euphemisms for misandry. In fact transandrophobia is a clear evolution of the term “transmisandry.” Genderkoolaid and ey’s idea of “anti-masculism” that I criticized here is maybe the most obvious example of that on tumblr today.. The belief in some kind of systemic force that “negatively impacts men and masculine people on the basis of their manhood and/or masculinity.“ to quote genderkoolaid is as succinct a definition of misandry theory as any. And ey even outright admits that “antimasculism” is just another word for misandry. Other transandrophobia bloggers like the transunity blog outright use the word “misandry.”So for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to use “misandry” for whatever euphemisms transandrophobia people use, like “antimasculism”, “androphobia” or claims that “society hates men” or “there is a widespread irrational fear of men and masculinity.”

The use of feminist language like “patriarchy” common among transandrophobia people is either severely confused or outright dishonest. It’s a symptom of the terrible understanding of feminism on this site, as I lamented before. Patriarchy as a term that inherently implies male privilege, men are privileged for being men, not disadvantaged. Claiming the patriarchy oppresses men on the basis of their gender is a contradiction in terms. And belief in misandry is inherently misogynistic and anti-feminist.

How terms for systemic oppression actually work

Let’s however assume that the word “transandrophobia” just means “transphobia aimed at transmascs.” Then I don’t see why this word needs to exist. It contradicts most academic work on systemic oppression. New terms are generally not made just to describe “specific experiences of an oppression”. Instead they are created to describe meaningful intersections of different forms of oppression. Often these are intersections with misogyny, because that particular oppression affects about half the population. So misogynynoir describes an intersection of anti-blackness/racism and misogyny that black women experience, and lesbophobia describes an intersection of homophobia and misogyny that lesbians experience. And transmisogyny describes an intersection of misogyny and transphobia that trans women and transfems experience.

The lesbophobia example is especially pertinent to this discussion. The homophobia that gay men experience is often distinct from that lesbians experience, and homophobia against gay men is no minor prejudice, gay men have literally been murdered for being gay. Yet there is no “homoandrophobia” (to borrow an argument from this post by catgirlforeskin) and that’s because misandry/androphobia isn’t real. Men experience systemic oppression differently from women experiencing the same oppression, but that’s because of the absence of misogyny, not the existence of any misandry.

So a word like transandrophobia does imply an intersection between “androphobia/misandry”and transphobia. Otherwise it doesn’t have much reason to exist.

Misandry must affect all men in order to exist

I have seen claims that while “cis misandry” doesn’t exist, trans men and transmasc people are in fact oppressed for being men or masculine. And that’s how transandrophobia works

But that’s just transphobia. Misandry can only be real if it affects all men. Misogyny is a viable term because all women are oppressed for being women, even if they can also be privileged because of things like being cis, wealthy or white which balances out their oppression for being women (intersectionality is complex). I wouldn’t claim misogyny was real if it only affected a subset of women.

You can’t claim that men are oppressed for being men or being masculine, that it is some stigmatized gender or gender expression, when being a man and specifically a masculine man is what is expected of about half the population, and in fact men gain privilege for the successful performance of masculinity.

It’s true that trans men and other transmascs are systemically oppressed, and do indeed experience severe pushback if they express their manhood or try to transition in a transmasculine direction. But that’s because they are trans. Transfems experience a similar oppression for expressing their womanhood or trying to transition in transfeminine direction. That’s why the word transphobia exists.

Let’s make an example of a common bit of rhetoric among transandrophobia people, and see how it is all explained entirely by transphobia. Transandrophobia people talk about some general “hatred of testosterone” as part of transandrophobia, often dishonestly conflating transfems expressing their dysphoria with transphobic rhetoric about how testosterone ruins transmasc bodies.

But any idea about society hating testosterone fail to account for why the testosterone flowing through bodies deemed naturally male is seen as okay. In fact being “high-t” is seen as a positive in a man. It’s not even a prejudice against medical testosterone, being “low-t” is a fad disorder that cis men can easily get testosterone prescriptions for. And trying to lower your “natural testosterone” levels is something that’s actively hindered and gatekept, something I’ve experienced. I waited three years to get on t-blockers due to medical gatekeeping. In my country Sweden getting your balls removed legally and thus permanently lower your t-levels is something you have to petition the government for, something I’m trying to do.

Any kind of theorizing about a misandristic hatred of testosterone can’t explain this. It’s only so-called “cross-sex hormones” that are seen as bad, not testosterone in itself. And this is entirely explained by transphobia, not misandry.

It’s of course true that men are oppressed, but it’s never on the basis of being men. People who try to argue for misandry often use (often appropriatively) the struggles of oppressed men and try to argue they are oppressed because they are men. And transandrophobia theory is no different.

“Deserving a word”

The attitude among the transmascs who support transandrophobia theory seems to be “transfems have transmisogyny to describe their oppression, we deserve a word too.” Except again, transfems don’t have the term transmisogyny because we are very special girls who need a special word for our oppression, it exists because it describes the intersection of misogyny and transphobia we experience. It exists for the same reason as lesbophobia does, to describe an intersection between misogyny and another oppression. Gay men are not disadvantaged compared to lesbians because they “only” have the more general term “homophobia” while lesbians have the more specific word “lesbophobia.” And I don’t think transmascs would be disadvantaged if nobody accepted transandrophobia as a tern for their experiences.

You don’t need a specific word to talk about your experiences with transphobia, just as gay men don’t need a world like lesbophobia to talk about their experiences with homophobia. You can just talk about them, and use the word “transphobia” as a label for it.

And sometimes acknowledging that our experiences of oppression can be similar is useful for solidarity and community building. All trans people are negatively affected by transphobia, and that is the real “transunity.” theory.

Don’t end up like nothorses who once unironically listed “Misgendering over the phone,“ as an example of transandrophobia/transphobia only affecting transmascs.

Words exist in a context

Transandrophobia clearly exists as some transmasc counterpart to the transfem transmisogyny. It was even more obvious when the word was “transmisandry.” Words always exist in a context, and is often built by binaries. How someone who believes it defines transandrophobia does say a lot about how they define transmisogyny.

I’ve already described how if transandrophobia merely means “transmascs specific experiences with transphobia” it doesn’t have much reason to exist. But it also by implication diminishes and reduces transmisogyny. If transandrophobia only means “the transphobia experienced by transmasculine people”, transmisogyny is reduced by implication to only meaning “transphobia experienced by transfeminine people.” It’s another symptom of how tumblr discourse is uninterested in acknowledging misogyny, and in this case that misogyny is intersecting with transphobia in transmisogyny.

And well, if transmisogyny means “an intersection between transphobia and misogyny experienced by transfems” it does imply that transandrophobia also should describe an intersection, for why else does it exist. And we are back to it describing an imaginary intersection between transphobia and misandry, a misogynistic and antifeminist idea.

Who gets to define their own oppression?

Of course I am a trans woman, and I will of course get accused of hating transmascs, and robbing them of their ability to define their own oppression.

I would be more sympathetic to this argument, if transandrophobia theorists didn’t keep on constantly defining transmisogyny as the result of misandry. It is common in these circles for transmascs to reject any tme/tma distinction too. Literally going “I got mistaken for a trans woman once, that means I’m affected by transmisogyny.” There is absolutely zero respecting transfems rights to define their own oppression in transandrophobia circles, so why should I respect theirs?

Seriously, the “transmisogyny is actually misandry” claim just keeps happening. Genderkoolaid did it, the transunity blog too, and this dude who I literally found by browsing the “transmisogyny” tag spewing his misandry nonsense.

The problem with “transmisogyny is misandry, actually” is that misandry isn’t real, men are privileged for being men. Transfems experience oppression because we reject being men and performing masculinity. Men are in fact our oppressor class. When transmisogynists talk derisively about “men who wear dresses and say they are women”, they aren’t saying that being a man is bad (in fact they are often men themselves), it’s that “being amab and rejecting masculinity and manhood and claiming to be a woman is bad.” Its an intersection of transphobia and misogyny.

“Transandrophobia” is seldom just talking about the difficulties of being transmasc, it wants to redefine how transfems think about their oppression as well. And it does so in misgendering and transmisogynistic ways.

The transandrophobia theorists generally ignore the existence of transmisogyny, especially in queer communities. In fact it often implies or outright states that transfems are privileged in the trans/queer communities for being women or feminine, which is bizarre. In reality, Transmisogyny is rife in queer spaces, with “crazy trans woman syndrome” being common.

And it’s not like transandrophobia discourse is immune to that particular syndrome. Transmisogyny-exempt privilege dynamics remain very much in play. Transfems tend to get accused of being transandrophobic. The accusations are framed as “lateral aggression” not oppression, although the tone of these posts suggests “lateral aggression” is another polite euphemism word swap game like misandry for “androphobia.”

It feels like the antifeminist, and specifically anti-transfeminist roots of the whole transandrophobia idea coming to the forefront.

#my writings #transmisogyny #misandry is not real

881 notes · View notes

caraphernellie · 2 months

Text

wip !! here's a moodboard <3

fake happy // e.w.

ellie williams is a freak, and that's just a fact. others deemed that she is not to be trusted from the moment she was born. in a world where everything is real and raw, it's hard to lie. but ellie doesn't quite fit into the category of 'real and raw.'

everybody's moods are displayed above their heads like little emoticons - there's no fake, there's no lies, there's simply emotion. except for ellie. nobody could figure out why ellie's feelings were not displayed. she'd been seen by every doctor, every specialist, every psychiatrist, and psychologist, and none of them knew what could cause this. and so an assumption was made that she doesn't feel anything.

nobody knows how she feels at any given moment, and in a world where people are spoiled with honesty, nobody wants to believe ellie isn't dishonest. nobody wants to be played by her.

somehow surviving life up to college without ever even having a friend, ellie's accepted that she's in for a lonely life. the only person she has is joel, and well, even he can be misunderstanding at times.

and ellie's sure her professor must hate her, because he partnered her for a project with the one girl who is always happy, without fail. the girl whose mood above her head is always, always, always a yellow smiley face. ellie would even say she's jealous, that she hates you, but she can't help but feel herself smiling whenever you're around. you're like a ray of sunshine. if sunshine knew how to lie.

ok ok ok so. i feel a little bit crazy and like nobody is going to like this fic but i kind of want to write it. this is just me posting to see if anyone actually would read it 😭 not like that would motivate/demotivate me but idk. im curious paramore inspired fics first of all, the best ones. secondly, i feel like maybe years ago i read a fic with a similar premise which inspired this but it's also mainly inspired by the music video for fake happy by paramore. and also, i always write fics about reader having the 'i can fix her' mentality for ellie so this time it's ellie saying 'i can fix her' about reader. this one would be for my fellow sad/anxious girlies who love big hurt/comfort vibes. it would be an angsty ride but not without lots of comfort :D two people who are very sad falling in love and helping each other with their issues? i think yes. this fic would be very? angst and hurt/comfort and some fluff idk if there'd be smut ... anyway this was more a way for me to brainstorm for the idea (by making the moodboard and blurb) i have yet to do literally any plotting or writing for it..

from the river to the sea, palestine will be free 🇵🇸 i stand with palestine, and for that reason, i require everyone on my blog to keep themselves educated and participating in the fight for palestine's freedom. here are some links to educate yourself- 1, 2, 3. the last of us part 2 in particular is a game with zionist background. do not support neil druckmann by buying any of the games and please continue to engage in your media with critical analysis!! stay educated. !!! i urge you to participate in the global strike for palestine from february 18th - 25th !!!

#⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ rambling #ellie williams x reader #tlou2 x reader #ellie williams x fem reader #⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ fanfic #fem reader #ellie williams x you #ellie williams x yn #wip #ellie x reader #ellie x fem reader #ellie x you #ellie x yn #petal's ideas #moodboards by petal

167 notes · View notes

nightlyteaandpaper · 9 months

Text

Unseen Labor: Exploring the Undervalued Contributions in Feyre's Cabin

Feyre did not do all the work in that cabin, and I think it is dishonest to say she did. She did the physical labor, but that is not all there is to keep a household functioning. Feyre has told us she does not know how to cook, so who was cooking in that cabin? I know it wasn't her damn daddy.

Feyre has never mentioned cleaning ANYTHING in any of these books, so who cleaned the cabin? Who decorated the cabin? Who washed the clothes? Who mended the clothes? Who provided healthcare to the sick members of the family? Who taught basic life skills to the best of their ability?

No, Feyre doesn't see any of this stuff mentionable (therefore, the audience doesn't think about it) because SJM has some weird mid-late aughts hang-ups about what tasks are "traditionally feminine." She sees no value in these tasks, and she places no value on these tasks; thus, she never mentions them happening. But if the audience learned that while Feyre was hunting all day, Elain was cleaning the cabin, Feyre's sacrifice would not be seen as so great because our response would be, "Well, that is what a family does. The youngest just happens to be the best at hunting."

If the audience found out that while Feyre was hunting all day, Nesta was planning meals, cooking, mending clothes, and providing half-ass health assistance to their father, we would say, "well, it seems like everyone carried their weight." We will not see it as a huge sacrifice.

But no, SJM does not mention these things, despite them being very real objectives and responsibilities that come with taking care of a household.

#writing #books & libraries #sjm #sjm books #anti sjm #sjm critical #sarah j maas #acotar fandom #feyre archeron #feyre darling #feyre acotar #anti acotar #anti feyre #Traditionally feminine things are just not things to shy away from #nesta archeron #elain archeron #Their father was a whole asshole and I think we need to say that more often

418 notes · View notes

creature-wizard · 7 months

Text

What is the New Age to Alt Right Pipeline, and how do you stay out of it?

The term "New Age to Alt Right pipeline" refers to the way alternative spirituality and healthcare often serves as an entry point to far right radicalization. While many people are dismissive that such a thing could even exist, plenty of people in occult and witchcraft communities can confirm that it is very much a real thing. Having studied far right conspiracies myself for awhile now, I can personally confirm that a number of people involved in alternative spirituality, including ones who consider themselves progressive, are spouting off the very same conspiracy theories used to justify persecution of the Jews throughout the Middle Ages to the Nazi regime.

Even if you don't reckon yourself a New Ager, you are still likely to come across this stuff because there's no hard and fast place where New Age ends and witchcraft, neopaganism, or whatever begins. While the core and arguably most defining belief of New Age is that the Earth is on the cusp of entering a new cosmic cycle, there's a significant amount of overlap between things New Agers are into, and things that other people are into.

For example, someone interested in Wicca might start researching the Goddess, and from there very quickly encounter conspiracy theories claiming that everyone was monotheistic for the Great Goddess back before The Patriarchy Tee Em invented a male god for people to be monotheist for. From there, it's just a short matter of time before they start coming across materials claiming that the Jews are responsible for the creation of this god, and also responsible for the Catholic Church, and so on. (Pro tip, the Roman government was responsible for the Catholic Church.)

The best way to keep yourself safe from this isn't to simply avoid all material that might potentially contain far right ideas and conspiracy theories. Rather, it's to learn what they look like. Here's a few things to watch out for:

The grand conspiracy narrative: The exact details you'll hear will vary depending on who you're listening to - every conspiracy theorist tailors and re-tailors the grand conspiracy narrative to suit their own agendas and beliefs. The key details to watch out for are claims that there's this secret group that's been pulling the strings behind the scenes for a long while now, and that their agents are working everywhere to make sure the people stay deceived.

To be blunt about it, literally every conspiracy theory about a New World Order, a shadow government, generational satanists, satanic bloodlines, reptilian bloodlines, and so on is a riff on the material found within The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a czarist hoax used to justify violence against Russian Jews, and later on, the Holocaust. There are no exceptions.

During the Satanic Panic, many people claimed to have been part of such a conspiracy. Investigations failed to turn up any real evidence, and those pushing these claims always turned out to have a history of dishonest behavior, or had been subjected to hypnosis by someone with a history of dishonest behavior and/or a gross disregard for medical ethics.

If you see someone claiming to have been part of something like this today, your best assumption is that they are lying to you, or are extremely confused. End of story.

Great Goddess conspiracy theories: Back in the mid-19th century, Eduard Gerhard proposed that people all used to worship the Great Goddess, until patriarchy came along and replaced her with a god. There's literally no evidence for this whatsoever, but a lot of people who believe that patriarchy is part of a grand conspiracy still believe this one. You'll often see it in conjunction with stuff about the "divine feminine" and womb magic among those who believe that patriarchy is part of the grand conspiracy.

Claims of mass ritual abuse and murder: An allegation that goes back to blood libel and the witch trials, far right conspiracy theorists often claim that there is an underground network of cults practicing ritual abuse and human sacrifice. This was the kind of thing that people were put under hypnosis to try and remember during the Satanic Panic, based on incorrect beliefs about how memory worked. (In reality, going under hypnosis to try and recover lost memories mainly results in fabricating completely new ones, because hypnotic visions basically work just like dreams.)

Claims of mass mind control: Not many people realize this, but this one goes all the way back to the witch hunts, when alleged witches were accused of ensnaring people's minds with their diabolical spells. (Yes, the witch trials were fueled by conspiracy theories!) Today's conspiracy theorists claim that the conspiracy uses things like music, movies, implants, subliminal messages, drugs, medications, 5G, extreme tortures, and more to put people under total mind control. The whole Project Monarch conspiracy theory is part of this; and a number of people were also put under hypnosis to "remember" being part of Project Monarch during the Satanic Panic.

Anti-pharma/anti-vax conspiracy theories: During World War II, Nazis demonized pharmaceutical drugs as "Jewish science" so they could push cheaper herbal remedies, which were largely ineffective. If you see somebody claiming that pharmaceutical drugs or vaccines are created by the conspiracy to keep people sick or make them easier to control, know that it's a redux of this old bullshit. Today's anti-pharma and anti-vax conspiracy theories often go in conjunction with claims that stuff like crystals, energy healing, and quantum healing technology can replace conventional medical care.

Claims to know the real cause of your medical or psychological symptoms: During the early modern witch hunts, strange symptoms were often blamed on the curses of satanic witches. The Satanic Panic picked this one up and modernized it through a psychological lens, claiming that seemingly inexplicable symptoms were evidence of suppressed memories of ritual abuse. Meanwhile, believers in alien abductions claimed it was evidence of suppressed memories of alien-related trauma, and neopagans and New Agers claimed it was evidence of past life trauma. All of these people have used hypnosis to help people "remember" these supposedly lost memories, and due to the nature of hypnosis (again, hypnotic visions work like dreams), all of them found "evidence" to corroborate literally anything they wanted to find.

Other modernizations of this old witch hunters' canard include claims that your strange symptoms are caused by things like 5G, chemtrails, chemicals in the water, food additives, sound frequencies, or such. Now this isn't to say that there's never been toxic food additives, or that certain sound frequencies can never cause harm; the key element is when these people claim that this stuff is done as part of a grand conspiracy.

Meanwhile, New Agers claim that your strange symptoms might actually be "ascension symptoms." For the record, numerous dates that ascension was supposed to happen on have gone and went, and we're all still here in 3D. So I'd recommend not holding your breath for this one, either.

Claiming the conspiracy is responsible for everything bad or wrong in the world: Conspiracy theorists will blame the grand conspiracy for literally anything they find unpleasant or objectionable to the conspiracy. This can include claiming that movies they found confusing, emotionally difficult, or ideologically challenging were deliberately designed to harm people or put them under mind control. They might claim that things like long wait lines are intentionally engineered to frustrate and exhaust people in order to make them easier to control. They might claim that horrible accidents or disasters are actually "programming" to make people accept the lie.

This isn't to say that governments never do genuinely malicious shit, or that brainwashing doesn't exist. The thing here is that conspiracy theorists frequently attribute nearly everything they find strange, confusing, or unpleasant to the schemes of a grand conspiracy. They often act like if it wasn't for the grand conspiracy, we would be living in utopia.

Dehumanization of the Other: Conspiracy theorists often talk as if the masses aren't quite human, calling them "NPCs" or "sheeple." Sometimes they literally believe that other people aren't truly human. You'll find various conspiracy theories claiming that certain people are actually animal hybrids, AI-controlled clones, malicious aliens pretending to be humans, holographic projections, or something similar. The key thing to keep in mind here is that dehumanization is a crucial step toward genocide, and the far right wants to do genocide on anyone who doesn't do what they say, or doesn't fit their idea of what humanity ought to be like.

Individualist outlooks on life, metaphysics, etc: Today's far right is all about that Western individualism; they tend to be capitalists and libertarians, and think communism is an invention of the conspiracy. Their metaphysical views tend to reflect this, and they often subscribe to some form of worldview in which everything that happens to you is your fault, and expecting anyone else to take any kind of responsibility is just victim mentality.

With Christians, this presents as the belief that bad things happen to you because you're not right with God; if you got right with God, he would bless you with health and abundance.

With New Age and New Age-adjacent types, this often presents as stuff like the Law of Attraction and the Law of Assumption, where everything that happens to you is a consequence of the way you think. It can also present in the belief that if anything bad happens to you, it's your karma.

Stuff like the Law of Assumption is pitched as this super empowering way to get everything you want, but in reality it functions to make people feel responsible for the suffering they experience under capitalism and silence criticism of systemic issues.

So yeah, keep your eyes open for all this stuff, and if you see somebody out there pushing it - be wary!

Links for more info:

"How can I be a witch/pagan without falling for conspiracy theories/New Age cult stuff?" starter kit (I put a bunch of links to other posts and resources here earlier; no need to copy/paste them all here.)

Incomplete list of far right conspiracy theorists and con artists claiming to be occult experts and/or cult survivors

Hypnosis is unreliable for memory recovery, and this is one way we know.

False past life memories among the starseed movement

Hitler's Contribution to "Alternative Medicine"

#new age to alt right pipeline #radicalization #paganblr #occultblr #witchblr #conspiracy theories #conspiracy theory #conspiracism #new age #critical thinking #discernment #spirituality #conspirituality

251 notes · View notes

gatheringbones · 6 months

Text

[“When I first came out as a lesbian in 1971, identity politics were so pervasive that this modality didn’t even have a name; it was simply the sea in which every queer sank or swam. One of the key assumptions of identity politics is that we can reveal in one grand social drama of coming out the absolute inner core of truth that makes up one’s “real self.” Coming out is seen as a process like peeling away the layers of an onion or the petals of an artichoke. Identity politics also assumes that your political allies will have to be people who share your identity because nobody else could understand your oppression or really be committed to fighting it; that people who share some aspects of your sexuality but not others are either afraid to come out or traitors to the cause; that it’s not possible for someone to change the way they label themselves without being dishonest or cowardly.

Now I see queer politics quite differently. I know from personal experience that I can’t trust somebody just because their sexual preferences or their gender identity resembles my own. I know we can make allies who are indignant about injustice even if it does not impinge directly upon their own lives. I see coming out as a lifelong process that proceeds as I become ready to understand and accept aspects of myself which bear lessons I need to learn at different points in my life. Each new coming out does not recreate me as a whole new person; I think some people view it this way, but this is crazy-making and too compartmentalized for me. It’s more like being able to see each and every spoke of the wheel that makes up my being, or like opening up and furnishing another new room of my soul.

I wonder what coming out would be like if we were not forced into these defensive positions of tribal loyalty and us-them thinking. What if we could say to a friend who was embarking on a new coming out, “I love you, and so I must also love this new aspect of yourself. Because I care about you I want to know more about it. Let’s both learn from this.” Instead, what usually happens is a great deal of indignation, betrayal, and rejection. I think this is because a person who is coming out threatens the identities of former acquaintances, partners, and coworkers. If someone else’s identity can be fluid or change radically, it threatens the boundaries around our own sense of self. And if someone can flout group norms enough to apply for membership in another group, we often feel so devalued that we hurry to excommunicate that person. This speaks to our own discomfort with the group rules. The message is: I have put up with this crap for the sake of group membership, and if you won’t continue to do the same thing, you have to be punished.

We seem to have forgotten that the coming-out process is brought into being by stigma. Without sexual oppression, coming out would be an entirely different process. In its present form, coming out is reactive. While it is brave and good to say “No” to the Judeo-Christian “Thou Shalt Nots,” we have allowed our imaginations to be drawn and quartered by puritans. I believe that most of the divisions between human sexual preferences and gender identities are artificial. We will never know how diverse or complex our needs in these realms might be until we are free of the threat of the thrown rock, prison cell, lost job, name-calling, shunning, and forced psychiatric “treatment.”

I do not think human beings were meant to live in hostile, fragmented enemy camps, forever divided by suspicion and prejudice. If coming out has not taught us enough compassion to see past these divisions, and at least catch a vague glimpse of a more unified world, what is the use of coming out at all? I have told this story, not to say that anybody else should follow me or imitate me, but to encourage everyone to keep an open mind and an open heart when change occurs. The person who needs tolerance and compassion during a major transformation may be your best friend, your lover, or your very self. Bright blessings to you on the difficult and amazing path of life.”]

patrick califa, from layers of the onion, spokes of the wheel, from a woman like that: lesbian and bisexual writers tell their coming out stories, 2000

#pat califa #bi literature #lesbian literature #trans literature #history stuff

259 notes · View notes