#also yes she IS transed gender

[starbuck]

thank GOD for close friends you can discuss your kinks with…

#would also be interested in talking to other ace people to see if they have ‘kinks’ like mine #(i.e. - yes this scenario turns me on sexually but NO i would *NEVER* wanna incorporate it into sex) #(even if i DID want to have sex - which i don’t) #but like. am i going to tell you What my thing is? lol No. #you have to unlock like. level 7473747488558 friendship for me to be comfortable being THAT embarrassing in front of you #my one friend… we’ve known each other for over a decade… dated as awkward 12 year olds… both autistic… transed our genders in opposite #directions… #i would trust her with literally ANY infortmation about me #and god knows she’s trusted me with a LOT of information about her #cuz that’s just the kind of relationship we have - we can tell each other things like that #and i am SO grateful for that!!!!!!! #the lowdown is that SHE says i’m normal - but i disagree #cuz when y’all talk about kink on here - this shit is NOT what you are talking about - trust me #like. it’s very Sensible - but it IS weird still. that’s what i think.

[thedreadvampy]

ppl pulling the 'just let people enjoy Wizard Game' are often met with 'JKR funds anti-trans groups!' and that's. entirely true. but doesn't actually go far enough.

like if you're on team Let People Enjoy Wizard Game hey. did you know. that in my city RIGHT NOW JKR is sole funder and key board member of an unregulated private agab-policed rape crisis shelter set up specifically to Own The Transes

and which now sits on several gendered violence prevention boards alongside representatives from the (publicly funded and accountable) existing Rape Crisis Centre, against the staff of which her friends and followers have been involved in a years-long harassment campaign purely and explicitly because they run trans-inclusive support services and bc their CEO is a trans woman of colour.

(my friend works there and the pure volume of transphobic harassment has caused several long standing members of staff to quit. which I'm really fucking angry about bc I would not be here today if the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre hadn't been there to help me)

and that on those boards they're known for supporting increased police harassment and approaches that disproportionately criminalise trans people, unhoused people and sex workers and provably don't positively impact the issue of gendered violence.

what I'm saying is that yes JKR funds anti-trans groups but she is also pretty directly involved in materials worsening conditions for vulnerable people at a local and personal level too!!!! she's running an unregulated crisis shelter out of spite and using that to legitimise her political lobbying!!!!!! fuck you!

#red said

[katrafiy]

I think about this image a lot. This is an image from the Aurat March (Women's March) in Karachi, Pakistan, on International Women's Day 2018. The women in the picture are Pakistani trans women, aka khwaja siras or hijras; one is a friend of a close friend of mine.

In the eyes of the Pakistani government and anthropologists, they're a "third gender." They're denied access to many resources that are available to cis women. Trans women in Pakistan didn't decide to be third-gendered; cis people force it on them whether they like it or not.

Western anthropologists are keen on seeing non-Western trans women as culturally constructed third genders, "neither male nor female," and often contrast them (a "legitimate" third gender accepted in its culture) with Western trans women (horrific parodies of female stereotypes).

There's a lot of smoke and mirrors and jargon used to obscure the fact that while each culture's trans women are treated as a single culturally constructed identity separate from all other trans women, cis women are treated as a universal category that can just be called "women."

Even though Pakistani aurat and German Frauen and Guatemalan mujer will generally lead extraordinarily different lives due to the differences in culture, they are universally recognized as women.

The transmisogynist will say, "Yes, but we can't ignore the way gender is culturally constructed, and hijras aren't trans women, they're a third gender. Now let's worry less about trans people and more about the rights of women in Burkina Faso."

In other words, to the transmisogynist, all cis women are women, and all trans women are something else.

"But Kat, you're not Indian or Pakistani. You're not a hijra or khwaja sira, why is this so important to you?"

Have you ever heard of the Neapolitan third gender "femminiello"? It's the term my moniker "The Femme in Yellow" is derived from, and yes, I'm Neapolitan. Shut up.

I'm going to tell you a little bit about the femminielli, and I want you to see if any of this sounds familiar. Femminielli are a third gender in Neapolitan culture of people assigned male at birth who have a feminine gender expression.

They are lauded and respected in the local culture, considered to be good omens and bringers of good luck. At festivals you'd bring a femminiello with you to go gambling, and often they would be brought in to give blessings to newborns. Noticing anything familiar yet?

Oh and also they were largely relegated to begging and sex work and were not allowed to be educated and many were homeless and lived in the back alleys of Naples, but you know we don't really like to mention that part because it sounds a lot less romantic and mystical.

And if you're sitting there, asking yourself why a an accurate description of femminiello sounds almost note for note like the same way hijras get described and talked about, then you can start to understand why that picture at the start of this post has so much meaning for me.

And you can also start to understand why I get so frustrated when I see other queer people buy into this fool notion that for some reason the transes from different cultures must never mix.

That friend I mentioned earlier is a white American trans woman. She spent years living in India, and as I recal the story the family she was staying with saw her as a white, foreign hijra and she was asked to use her magic hijra powers to bless the house she was staying in.

So when it comes to various cultural trans identities there are two ways we can look at this. We can look at things from a standpoint of expressed identity, in which case we have to preferentially choose to translate one word for the local word, or to leave it untranslated.

If we translate it, people will say we're artificially imposing an outside category (so long as it's not cis people, that's fine). If we don't, what we're implying, is that this concept doesn't exist in the target language, which suggests that it's fundamentally a different thing

A concrete example is that Serena Nanda in her 1990 and 2000 books, bent over backwards to say that Hijras are categorically NOT trans women. Lots of them are!

And Don Kulick bent over backwards in his 1998 book to say that travesti are categorically NOT trans women, even though some of the ones he cited were then and are now trans women.

The other option, is to look at practice, and talk about a community of practice of people who are AMAB, who wear women's clothing, take women's names, fulfill women's social roles, use women's language and mannerisms, etc WITHIN THEIR OWN CULTURAL CONTEXT.

This community of practice, whatever we want to call it - trans woman, hijra, transfeminine, femminiello, fairy, queen, to name just a few - can then be seen to CLEARLY be trans-national and trans-cultural in a way that is not clearly evident in the other way of looking at things.

And this is important, in my mind, because it is this axis of similarity that is serving as the basis for a growing transnational transgender rights movement, particularly in South Asia. It's why you see pictures like this one taken at the 2018 Aurat March in Karachi, Pakistan.

And it also groups rather than splits, pointing out not only points of continuity in the practices of western trans women and fa'afafines, but also between trans women in South Asia outside the hijra community, and members of the hijra community both trans women and not.

To be blunt, I'm not all that interested in the word trans woman, or the word hijra. I'm not interested in the word femminiello or the word fa'afafine.

I'm interested in the fact that when I visit India, and I meet hijras (or trans women, self-expressed) and I say I'm a trans woman, we suddenly sit together, talk about life, they ask to see American hormones and compare them to Indian hormones.

There is a shared community of practice that creates a bond between us that cis people don't have. That's not to say that we all have the exact same internal sense of self, but for the most part, we belong to the same community of practice based on life histories and behavior.

I think that's something cis people have absolutely missed - largely in an effort to artificially isolate trans women. This practice of arguing about whether a particular "third gender" label = trans women or not, also tends to artificially homogenize trans women as a group.

You see this in Kulick and Nanda, where if you read them, you could be forgiven for thinking all American trans women are white, middle class, middle-aged, and college-educated, who all follow rigid codes of behavior and surgical schedules prescribed by male physicians.

There are trans women who think of themselves as separate from cis women, as literally another kind of thing, there are trans women who think of themselves as coterminous with cis women, there are trans women who think of themselves as anything under the sun you want to imagine.

The problem is that historically, cis people have gone to tremendous lengths to destroy points of continuity in the transgender community (see everything I've cited and more), and particularly this has been an exercise in transmisogyny of grotesque levels.

The question is do you want to talk about culturally different ways of being trans, or do you want to try to create as many neatly-boxed third genders as you can to prop up transphobic theoretical frameworks? To date, people have done the latter. I'm interested in the former.

I guess what I'm really trying to say with all of this is that we're all family y'all.

#transgender #third gender #hijras #femminielli #trans women are women #trans solidarity #trans rights #transmisogyny #transunity #transunitism #this is what trans unity looks like

[cardentist]

"yes trans mascs experience transphobia, but there's no such thing as trans mascs experiencing bigotry Specifically Related to them being men/from being related to men"

my mom, after some time sorting her feelings and sifting through trans resources, was accepting of my being a trans person. it took work, but it happened. she sought out trans media from trans people, she took initiative to inform other family members and put herself between me and them.

and she completely refused to even start the process of Maybe getting me on testosterone for 10 years, until I aged out of being covered by her health insurance and couldn't afford to do it myself.

Specifically And Entirely because she was terrified that testosterone was going to make me an angry, violent person. that it was going to, in her own word, "give me roid rage."

for years she made vague pantomimes about eventually seeing about transitioning, but That reasoning would still come up no matter how I tried to explain it to her otherwise.

I am not a particularly violent person, if maybe stubborn. but that didn't matter. what Mattered is that my mother had a preconceived notion of what testosterone does, what Masculinity Does, and that notion was an inherently negative, scary one.

and Because Of That I was denied access to resources That I Need for Years. something that has carried over into the rest of my adult life.

and I see sentiments like hers online, even and sometimes Especially in trans spaces, all the time.

this vision of men as inherently violent, of masculinity as inherently dangerous, and the onus placed in the laps of Trans Men (and often, on Trans Boys) to diminish and shrink themselves to Prove that they're non-threatening enough to be tolerated.

and it bares pointing out that this Isn't just something that affects trans men. trans Women are just as affected by this association with maleness as an inherently corrupting factor. and so to are butch women and nonbinary people presented as violent and scary.

likewise, I see Similar sentiments pushed at butches and trans mascs that it's their job to Protect other people within the queer community, that image of violence and anger filtered through a softer light designating their Use. you're Allowed to be a Scary Masculine Creature as long as you dedicate yourself to protecting the weaker frailer other (which is, you know. Sexist And Weird).

but it's like. people don't Want to think about different kinds of trans and gnc people having overlapping experiences, so instead people like to decide which Kind of people are allowed to have this experience and cut other sorts of people out of those conversations.

it's not about what a particular person's gender or presentation Is, it's how that person Is Perceived and the way that they're treated Because Of that perception. sometimes this transphobia that fears masculinity looks like a perception of scary men trying to pretend to be women, sometimes it looks like a perception of women Becoming scary men, and everything that lies in between (with combinations therein).

finding a term that is used to describe this is Useful not just for giving trans mascs a way to talk about their experiences without encroaching on other conversations about transness. but Also in giving us words to describe a specific phenomenon that Can affect All trans people (and gnc people, and genderqueer people, etc), but that is difficult for us to recognize as a shared experience because people seem to think that sharing experiences is either impossible or a bad thing.

#discourse #trans unity #queer unity #transphobia #transandrophobia #or #antimasculism #if you prefer

[cosmerelists]

The Rules of the Cosmere

And by “rules,” I mean tropes that crop up repeatedly in Sanderson’s books, that one could consider “rules” in a nonserious, please-don’t-take-this-too-seriously type way. 

Spoilers for pretty much all of the Cosmere!

1. Don’t feed the children

As seen in: Elantris, Oathbringer, Warbreaker

If you see a hungry, homeless child in a Sanderson book and you’re tempted to, say, give them food--don’t! Raoden tried that. And the poor child was horribly mangled by the men who wanted that food. Shallan tried it. And it turned out the child was being coerced into accepting the food by gang leaders--who ended up killing the child. Vivenna didn’t exactly feed them willingly, but the urchins did, like, beat her and steal her food while she was living on the street. So that wasn’t great.

Exception that proves the rule: Stump. She fed lots of orphaned children, and she was only almost killed. So the message is: if you want to feed the children, have a Lift around to protect you.

2. Once Marriage is On The Table, Breakups Don’t Really Happen

As seen in: Mistborn Era 1, Mistborn Era 2, Stormlight Achives, Elantris, Warbreaker

Once characters get to the point of marriage, be they engaged or in an arranged marriage or just solidly A Thing, it is rare for them to break up. Sometimes a breakup is floated--like when Adolin told Shallan she could go ahead and leave him for Kaladin or when there was Wax/Steris tension or when Zane tried to break up Vin and Elend--but in the end, the original relationship tends to hold strong. Siri and Susebron were married before they had even met, but they ended up happy together. Even “death” couldn’t stop Sarene and Raoden’s engagement--Sarene did try to marry someone else, to be fair, but that second marriage did not actually happen and the original marriage reigned supreme.

Exception that proves the rule: Elend’s first engagement did not work out. Vin killed the fiancée. So it is slightly riskier to be engaged if you’re not a viewpoint character, if you’re secretly evil...or if you’re in Vin’s way.

Although...did Elend and Shan actually break up, or was their engagement only canceled by Shan’s death? I guess either way, it didn’t work out!

3. Your enemy will save you...if the sexual tension is high enough

As seen in: Elantris, Rhythm of War

Perhaps appearing in two books isn’t quite enough to call this a rule...but if I had a nickel, etc. Hrathen was Sarene’s enemy...but in the end, he kinda fell for her and ended up killing himself to save her. And in a strangely similar manner, Raboniel used her dying moments to save Navani...after Navani was the one to kill her. Then there’s Lewshi and Kaladin--neither sacrificed themselves to save the other, thank goodness, but Lewshi does help save Kaladin and/or his men on several occasions and their romantic tension is off the charts.

Exception that proves the rule: Even sexual tension doesn’t seem to be enough for Moash to not try to drive Kaladin to suicide. 

4. Your fave is (accidentally) queer

As seen in: Stormlight Archive, Mistborn

Sanderson has a tendency to write characters that he innocently believes to be straight...until readers point out how incredibly not-straight they are. Take Shallan, who is as bi as the day is long--which Sanderson admitted, I believe, once it was pointed out to him. Veil is canonically into women, at any rate. And Sanderson has said that both Shallan & Adolin would be open to adding Kaladin as a third, so Adolin is presumably bi as well, to no one’s surprise. Many readers--me included--read Kaladin as some flavor of ace, although again, that seems to be unintentional, canonically speaking. There’s also Lewshi, a woman inhabiting a male body, whose transness is not really talked about as such but is very present. And in Mistborn, there’s Wayne and his gender-fluid SO MeLaan, a queer relationship that I don’t think is ever really identified as such. 

And yes, there are also canonical queer characters in actual queer relationships, but so many more seem to be accidentally queer.

Exception that proves the rule: Sanderson insists that Moash is canonically straight...somehow.

5. Don’t trust the underling priest!

As seen in: Way of Kings, Warbreaker, Elantris

If there are suspicious things going on, look no further than your nearest, seemingly loyal underling priest. In Way of Kings it was Kabsal, who turned out to be an assassin. In Warbreaker, the seemingly helpful and awkward Bluefingers tried to sacrifice Siri on an altar. And in Elantris, while Hrathen never exactly trusted Dilaf, he did believe that he had him handled...which turned out to be a mistake, and Dilaf ended up being one of the big bads. The big bad? It’s been a while since I read Elantris.

Exception that prove the rule: Kadash seems like a good dude. I will be genuinely shocked if he tries to, like, murder Dalinar or something.

6. Hoid is there

As seen in: All of them.

Hoid has a supernatural ability to be present at all important moments in the Cosmere, so he can expect to find him in whatever book you’re reading. If there actually are Cosmere Rules, this would have to be one of them.

Exception that proves the rule: I don’t think he’s in all of the Arcanum Unbounded stories--like Shadow for Silence or Sixth of Dusk. So maybe if your story is short enough, you can escape Hoid?

It could be the only way.

#cosmerelists #cosmere #stormlight archive #warbreaker #elantris #arcanum unbounded

[captainzigo]

hey hi hello , as a fellow trans girl pony enjoyer i love ur art and posts and the like!!

do you have any headcanons abt how HRT affects ponies? personally when i transitioned i made my self insert OC have a lighter coat & mane color and changed her name a bit so she transitioned with me :) the hormones been brightening her up quite a bit

:3 yes! i think it changes your cutiemark

on the left that’s marble pie from the show. pinkie’s sister. and that is octavio pie on the right. pinkie’s brother. from the silly pony life show. identical in design to marble, and not mentioned once in any of the many friendship is magic episodes about pinkie’s family. that’s because these are before and after transition pictures. i doubt anyone thinks of pony life as canon, but if it were then what im saying would be straight up canon. like not even headcanon.

one of the reasons people headcanon trixie as trans is she uses some animation assets normally used for the boy ponies. the only one i remember is her irises, but i seem to remember she may have also had a bigger horn? i don’t know if there’s any headcanons to form from that lol. but i like coming up with really alien biologies. like maybe some ponies wear contacts as an affirmation thing? that’s weird but it’s kinda cool to me. also possibly getting horns reshaped somehow

also i think they probably do transitions with magic. or maybe they do it with potions. but whatever they do its all fancy and whimsical like the rest of the stuff they do. when trixie and twilight had that magic duel they said no one can do the spell that “turns a mare into a stallion” but that’s not really what gender affirming procedures do anyway.

Prickly Pear, my oc from my profile. was just an oc long before i started using her as a sort of sona. i will not be revealing her assigned gender. but i did draw an actual sona one time and that bitch definitely used to have a different cutiemark. probably something i hate but was still kinda good at. like choir

man i drew her a while ago. her proportions are weird. although i guess i do have a lot of ass in real life so maybe that’s fine

i realize now i talked mostly about affirming procedures and not just hrt, but close enough. i think your cutiemark changes magically when you redefine your own identity for yourself. also this is just a headcanon i have. i’m not denying the transness of ponies who’s cutiemarks stayed the same through transition.

#mlpfim #my little pony #ponysona #octavio pie #marble pie #transgender #trans headcanon

[keithbutgay]

vat7k headcanons?

oh my gosh my time has come (you will probably regret this)

so first off imma reference my like three other posts i've made on the topic because i'm a nerd

starting with lgbt+ headcanons-

hugo is genderfluid and likes men i don't make the rules (he/she/they)

i am very much a trans varian truther. in my mind they use he/they pronouns and is also very biromantic

transing nuru's gender too- i love transfemme nuru (she/her) and also she's a lesbian definitely

yong gets the aroace nonbinary treatment

okay moving on to headcanons about languages-

its canon that varian speaks like three languages but i headcanon that he is fluent in coronan, saporian, and is learning the dark kingdom's language

hugo definitely knows so many languages because he gets around. i like to think he's fluent in ingvarran, coronan and bayangoran

i love the idea that yong is still learning coronan and that hugo sometimes has to translate for him or they repeat things for him sometimes because varian talks too fast or they use an unfamiliar word or like accents trip him up

on a seperate note in my mind coronan is german, bayangoran is mandarin, ingvarran is farsi (based on this post)

one of my favorite possible vat7k storylines is when hugo finds out about varian's past and i love the idea that he found out because of a wanted poster they found- perfect angst potential. on that note, i also believe that the rest of them would have heard about varian (the alchemist) when he was still wanted for example

hugo would have been told about him from donella, whether he was always told to be better and be like varian, or that he admired varian and thought he was really cool and dreamed of working with him

nuru had heard about him through horror stories about the kidnapping and attempted murder of the royal family. she most likely would have been scared of varian when she found out, not trusting him not to hurt her

i honestly think yong wouldn't understand. i don't think his parents would have told him if they even knew, and he would have been like seven at the time, so

hugo was varian's bi awakening except not really. he had liked guys before that but hadn't realized that was what he was feeling

they definitely met cass while on their adventures and she definitely had a girlfriend

ruddiger and prometheus hate each other

hugo is extremely jealous of ruddiger as well. ah yes him, his boyfriend, and his boyfriend's raccoon that's taking up all his attention

firmly believing in hugo showing up one day with period products because he might be a loser but he's not a jerk and nuru not knowing how to tell him she's trans while varian (also not out) comes up and just takes the pads being like 'thanks i needed these'

varigo-

t4t obviously

also they're both neurodivergent i dont make the rules

they hate each other but like not

like in the sense that, if they were asked if they liked each other, they would be like ew gross no i hate this man

and then at the end of the conversation varian kisses hugo on the cheek and is just like see you at home babe and everyone is like w h a t

they argue nonstop, to the point of being violent, and then someone changes the subject and hugo's in varian's lap

obsessed with that one au where they were in prison together

also obsessed with hugo dropping the piano on eugene's head

this entire post

might add to this later but here you go have fun!

#vat7k #varian and the 7 kingdoms #varian and the seven kingdoms #varigo #hugo vat7k #varian vat7k #nuru vatk #yong vat7k

[solisaureus]

I’ve noticed you criticised the barbie movie multiple times for its misogynistic portrayal of femininity and if you don’t mind I would like to understand your point of view more? I have a hard time really grasping why the movie came out as a message that traditional stereotypical femininity is the correct way of showcasing womanhood in your opinion. Yes, it’s shown through the aesthetic of barbies, but I don’t think it pushed that vision as superior? Would love to know your interpretation and the reasons for it! 🫶

Oh jeez. Are you sure you want to know lol

Disclaimer before i start bitching: I enjoyed the Barbie movie on a level of pure entertainment, the music and costuming and set design were fun, and Ryan Gosling certainly put everything he had into the role of Ken. The astronomically high budget was apparent from every angle.

However. I am extremely frustrated by its messaging and even more frustrated by how often I see otherwise progressively-minded people herald it as a feminist masterpiece. This movie was Not Feminist. Here are some reasons why I think that:

First and foremost, it is a transparent marketing venture. This is Mattel and the Barbie brand rehabilitating their image and inserting themselves back into the cultural mainstream. This movie was made primarily to profit a brand and market products. Any art or meaning that it conveys are entirely secondary.

The adherence to the idea that identity politics are liberating is clear throughout the film. Barbie is feminist because a woman is president, Congress and the Supreme Court are women. I won't get into how much of a shallow, weak fallacy this is but you can easily google it.

There is a pervasive message that womanhood=hyper-femininity. Not a single one of the Barbies is even remotely gender non-conforming. The one female character who was even slightly less feminine was Sasha, and by the end of the film she starts wearing more feminine dresses and accessories. They never had to say outright that hyper-femininity was the superior way to be a woman. There was simply no alternative in their perfect gendered utopia. This is also a standard that Barbie (the brand) has been criticized for pushing onto young girls for decades.

There is a clear message of bioessentialism. When Barbie loudly announces that she doesn't have a vagina in response to being catcalled, the joke is that she's a doll (a Barbie doll which famously do not have sex organs), not a human. At the end of the film, when Barbie decides she wants to become human, her first big step of womanhood is going to the gynecologist. Barbie's womanhood and humanity are tied to her having a vagina.

There is absolutely no room for queerness and transness in the utopia of Barbieland. Barbieland is dominated by a heavily enforced gender binary, and at no point are queer or trans people acknowledged onscreen. I've seen some people argue that Alan was the "nonbinary option," and that's fine if it's their headcanon, but I would caution against giving the producers credit for that. Let's be clear, Alan is a man -- a man that doesn't feel as served by the patriarchy as other men, but that could mean many things. If the writers wanted to make Alan nonbinary they could have easily done so. I can't imagine that with everything else going on in this movie they would've felt stifled by that creative choice. I don't need Barbie to be a queer story, but if it's going to tackle the patriarchy in its central thesis, then it feels really intentional to exclude queer and trans people.

There's an uncomfortable theme of motherhood being the peak of womanhood. In fact as I recall there's a spoken line that says "Mothers stay in place so that their daughters can look back and see how far they've come." Is the implication here that a woman stops growing as a person as soon as she becomes a mother? How is that feminist?

One of the climactic moments of the film is when Barbie gets depressed by the Kendom and gives up as soon as things get a little bit difficult, and Gloria gives her a rousing speech about the unfair expectations of women that spurs Barbie back into action. How is it feminist for the white heroine to rely on the Latina supporting character to do all the hard work and coddle her? How are we supposed to think positively of Barbie after this?

This isn't directly related to feminism but the whole portrayal of Mattel executives as clueless bumbling fools seemed really insidious. These represent real people that are not harmless or incompetent.

The whole bit about Depression Barbie struck me as shockingly ableist. It contributes to so many negative misconceptions about depression, such as like...that it's the same thing as disappointment regarding a failure (which is the thing that launches the whole bit in the first place. Barbie is "depressed" because she couldn't reverse the Kendom). Depression is blatantly reduced to some weird shabby, (literally) marketable aesthetic with this scene. Look at this haha hilarious hashtag relatable funny #bit about Depression Barbie! She has messy hair and wears sweatpants and eats ice cream and watches BBC pride and prejudice! Depression is a catastrophic, life-threatening disease. People die from it every day and it ruins the lives of countless others. This joke was horrifically ableist and disrespectful and perpetuates harmful misinformation about what depression is.

This Letterbox'd review points out many of my other criticisms and disappointments with this movie.

Honestly, overall, this movie felt like it was priming a generation for tradwife messaging. If I'm being completely tbh honest. This movie was funny but it was NOT progressive. Even the valid feminist points (like Gloria's invigorating speech) was extremely basic, surface level, white, cishet feminism. And in 2024 I really don't think that deserves any applause from progressive audiences.

#robin text #warning long rant ahead #anonymous #ask

[redditreceipts]

https://www.tumblr.com/genderkoolaid/736795285384216576/

🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

The only coherent, non-rabidly misogynist and factually right thing OP say in this whole thing is at the very beginning when she recognized transgenderism as a completely made up modern human concept XDDDDD

Okay, let’s go through this word by word:

you can piss of both because it's just blatantly wrong and stupid. I could also say "the earth is flat" and piss of the catholic church and trans activists. what have I proven? nothing.

correct so far lmao

well yeah, everyone shares common experiences with trans and genderqueer people, because nobody identifies and behaves 100% according to their assigned gender at birth

woah, if I didn’t know that this was a gendie blog, I would think that this is a terf lmao. yes, some women are trans (aka trans men), and some men are trans as well (aka trans women)

I mean yeah, if you define “transphobia” as “opposition to gender nonconformity”, she sure as hell lived through transphobia. it’s just a bullshit definition, because being gender non conforming does not imply being trans. the thing with these definitions (i.e. defining trans as “not identifying with your gender assigned at birth” or defining transphobia as "an opposition to gender non-conformity") is that in this type of analysis, there is simply no space for gender non-conformity. every type of discrimination a gnc person experiences is transphobia, and every gnc person is trans or genderqueer.

yeah, maybe she just wore this type of clothing because she liked it. maybe she thought it looked stylish. maybe it suited her best. maybe she had sensory issues with skirts and dresses. maybe she really got a message from God. maybe she wanted to protect herself from sexual violence. it literally doesn’t matter, because she should be able to wear whatever she likes for whatever reason

good for her that she stood by what she wanted to do and started wearing the clothing she liked (which happened to be associated with the male sex in that time). and yeah, the society of that time was sexist, so they probably wanted to punish her for crossing gender roles

i mean, many gnc women wear clothes that are typically associated with the male sex for very different reasons, not just as a means to an end. women have always seen things that defy the patriarchy as vital to their soul, like loving other women, abortion, wearing certain clothes, doing certain trades etc. all of these things could have gotten them killed at one time or the other. you just pick “wearing masculine clothing”, because for you gender is just about fashion statements. 

also, nobody presents as cisfeminine, because femininity is an unreachable standard imposed by patriarchy, and “cis” would imply a total identification with that absurd standard. everyone is gnc in one sense or the other, some less and some much more, so there is really no inherent transness about Jeanne D’Arc. 

no, I don’t care about what the Catholic Church says, and we also don’t know whether Jeanne D’Arc actually heard some divine commandments or whether she just had mania or schizophrenia or something. It doesn’t matter at last, because “genderqueer” is not a useful analysis of anything. the human condition is one of being “genderqueer”, because at least for women, it is considered genderqueer to not shave - our natural bodies are “genderqueer”. you’re “queering” something that didn’t exist in the first place - a happily gender-conforming woman. Jean D’Arc is "genderqueer" because she did what she wanted, like every woman who does what she wants is "genderqueer". every free woman is “genderqueer”, every happy woman is "genderqueer", every courageous woman is "genderqueer". 

so in conclusion, this is not per se wrong, because gendies will just define any word how they like it and don’t do any analysis in the end, because the definition of things like “genderqueer” or “trans” is constructed in such a way that it always confirms the point the author wants to make. but because of its tautological nature, we don’t learn anything. 

but the huge problem with this type of analysis is that the language of “her gender expression”, “her masculine gender expression as vital to her soul”, and the individualised analysis of an experience that fundamentally, all women share to varying degrees: the inability to remain both a whole human and to submit to patriarchal demands. You can’t be gender-conforming and be a full autonomous member of society. And in that sense, being “trans” or “trans-adjacent” is an emotion that every woman shares, some more and some less. The thing is that gender roles were never meant to produce a woman that fulfils them completely, they were only ever meant to occupy women’s minds enough so they don’t start a revolution. 

But why do we have to call that very natural impulse “genderqueer”, implying that feeling like this distances you from womanhood in any way? Feeling like patriarchy is restrictive is the most female thing anyone could experience, and is a confirmation of Jean D’Arc’s womanhood. 

#radical feminism #radfem #radfems please interact #radblr #radical feminists do interact #radical feminists please touch #gender critical #terfblr #gc feminism #gc feminist #gender abolition #radfems please touch #radfem safe #listen to trans women #misogyny #reddit #feminism

[moxpunk]

So, my tabletop group just wrapped up our multi-year Zelda: Reclaim the Wild campaign, and I just wanted to write about it for y'all. This is going to be long and rambling.

To start things off, I made my gal Forota a Gerudo princess (who was also a twin) that transed her gender and abdicated the throne so their non-binary sibling could rule because she just didn't ruling over people. Were they originally named after Kotake and Koume? Absolutely. Were they both destined to be the new-age Ganondorfs because they're both AMAB? Also yes. It's the other reason my gal left her position: she was terrified that because she had a penchant for fighting and strategy and commanding groups meant that she would take on Ganondorf's brutalistic traits.

Because she had a history of being royalty, it was very easy for Forota to find an adventuring position with Queen Zelda (Zelda was finally a queen in our game). The task was to help settle Old Hyrule, which Forota didn't really agree with, but figured she could do a better job than the entire Hylian Army in helping rediscover things. Along the way, she met with a whole party of other adventurers who explored Old Hyrule by her side.

Through all the adventures, a big theme our game took was defying the powers that be and unique relationships with destiny. Personal destiny, the ordained destiny of a culture, the destiny of The Princess, The Warrior, and The Demon.

Turns out, the whole adventuring party had been deigned by Hylia to all collectively take on the soul of the Courage part of the Triforce. We, uh... found a dead Link in the Spirit Temple, where we grabbed the Master Sword and had a fun mechanic where each party-member could only make a single strike with it before it had to be passed to someone else until the whole party got a swing. The Spirit Temple was a huge turning point for a lot of our characters. Cerra, Forota's girlfriend, a Sheikah gravetender, denied her destiny to die in the Spirit Temple. Forota found a new destiny to help raise the Gerudo (who have been splintered into three separate kingdoms in Old Hyrule) from their scorned position of living in the desert. It was... really cool, all said.

Along the way, we met with a whole bunch of different cultures and fun characters. The Deku scrubs were all hyper-capitalists because an evil fairy was demanding all of their rupees. The Zora were all fed into a demon-machine, leaving only children on a single island. The Tokay were absolute trade-gremlins that raised hell with both the Zora and the Deku. The Sheikah knew the dark secrets of the kingdom, and were happy to murder anyone that stumbled on those secrets (that "anyone" also included the party!). The Gerudo were split into a warring kingdom, a political-usurping kingdom, and a fucked-up mushroom-fairy kingdom and they were the coolest motherfuckers. The Rito wished for flight and sought to do so through warfare. The Gorons were subjugated by the Rito, and we helped break their chains.

As we ventured more and more, we began to run into Hylia herself on occasion, and she was the biggest bitch. She demanded perfect subjugation beneath her, and nearly killed Forota when she spoke out against her. As time went on, we realized that maybe Ganondorf had the right idea trying to defy Hylia and the Hyrulean Kingdom.

It all culminated when Ganondorf showed up when we obtained the final shard of the Triforce, and Forota just finally walked up to him and went "I disagree in how you've done your work, but I'll fight by your side to take down Hylia." She had accepted both parts of her destiny, realizing that fighting alongside Ganondorf and using his forces of monsters for good against an unjust Hylia would be how she could redeem the Gerudo's past. He helped repair an ancient crown gifted to her in the Shadow Temple, and allowed her to command 1/10th of his monster army in the final assault against the Sky Islands (an idea our DM came up with long before the first Tears of the Kingdom was ever shown, he took it from Skyward Sword).

Our Zora caster, Hretha, was stolen by Hylia and kidnapped to the sky, and tonight in our final session we helped save her and finally take down Hylia. We gathered the Triforce and the Reversed Triforce that Ganondorf had gathered, and wished upon the Resversed Triforce to strip her of her goddesshood and upon the Triforce to break the cycle of Link, Zelda, and Ganon reincarnation. Now, Hylia gets to sit-in on diplomatic meetings while people essentially child-glove speak to her like "You don't imprison someone in the Golden Realm forever if you disagree, you talk it out like a normal person."

Forota got a lovely send-off. She got married to Cerra with a big wedding officiated by both Zelda and Ganondorf in a huge show of peace. Then, when celebrations had subsided, Ganondorf pulled Forota aside and told her that his tie to the cycle may have been broken, but his immortality remains intact. To find his humanity, he needs a general by his side to travel to the Underworld to kill six-billion demons. Forota, overjoyed that she gets to fight alongside the man she dreaded she might have become, happily accepted. She comes to the surface on occasion to hang out with her wife who is now Zelda's right-hand woman.

I plan on doing a follow-up campaign set about 10 or 20 years after this one, where all of our characters can make cute little cameo appearances. Also, it'll be a fun way to bring in some of the Zonai stuff and other mechanics the Reclaim the Wild devs are cooking up in their Discord.

I know this was long, but it was a long adventure! Thank you guys for reading my fun little ramblings, feel free to send me some asks if you have questions you'd like me to write about!

#moxie heritage posts #the legend of zelda #reclaim the wild #tabletop rpg #zelda

[vampire-wizard-solidarity]

i think there’s an interesting bit about how magnus vs alex are perceived with the way alex is often perceived as more cold and closed off despite both of them displaying a similar level of bitterness (which is only natural, both of them are homeless kids who die brutal deaths).

part of this, of course, is that the narration is told from magnus’ pov, fundamentally he doesn’t read as closed off as alex because the readers have direct access to all his thoughts and backstory without him having to say it out loud to another character, but i think there’s an interesting bit of difference between them: alex is trans. any trans person will tell you that telling anyone you’re trans leads to this awkward bit where you’re expected to explain yourself, share a bit of highly personal information and disclose the intricacies of your identity even if you don’t want to. and alex has to state her transness in order to be respected, she can’t go stealth because she’s not a binary trans person. he has to yield some sort of explanation, even if it’s as simple as “use she/her until i tell you otherwise”. even when he presents as different genders he doesn’t do so in a cisnormative way, there is no way for you to not misgender him without him fundamentally disclosing a personal bit of information about himself.

and, combined with her homelessness, this creates a kind of inherent disclosing of information about that, as well. once you know she’s homeless and trans there’s already a mental link between those two events regardless of whether that’s fully accurate or not. even magnus himself makes this link, saying that yes, plenty of homeless queer kids are homeless because their parents kicked them out. for magnus, it’s relatively simple to keep the reasons, realities and traumas of his situation private: it’s considered generally bad social practice to casually inquire about the specifics of the traumatic experiences of one’s life, so he has relative control over the information he discloses to other people.

alex, fundamentally, does not have that privilege. she has to tell people she’s trans to not be misgendered, and she understands fully this will not only lead to further questions about her identity but also an inherent disclosures of her trauma. her entire introduction is about how everyone around her makes assumptions about her based on the little information they get, and how much she doesn’t like it. i think it’s an important bit to consider that her situation inherently leads to her implicitly having to disclose deeply personal, traumatic information about herself and there’s nothing she can do about it.

alex reads as more closed off because she’s closed off in a different way to magnus. she has less control over how much information about herself she keeps private than him because her existing comfortably in a space means she has to disclose information about her that will lead people to knowing more than she probably wants people to know upon them just meeting her. she is forced to provide explanation of herself almost immediately after meeting a person in order for them to have the ability to engage with her basic personhood.

so, of course she’s more ‘cold’ and ‘brash’ than magnus. while magnus can relatively successfully keep from commenting on or disclosing certain topics, alex has to, and so she does it in the most pragmatic, authoritative way possible. while magnus can tactfully avoid talking about himself (regardless of whether he chooses to do it tactfully or not), alex has no such ability, as doing so would only lead to more questioning. she has to do it curtly and directly because that’s the only way she can cling onto her privacy and retain some control over how much of herself she discloses to people. and of course that makes her come off as more bitter, anyone would be bitter if the only way to avoid being hurt by other people was to almost immediately disclose personal information about oneself, regardless of whether you want to keep it private or not.

#mcga #alex fierro #magnus chase #alex mcga #magnus chase and the gods of asgard #analysis #my hot takes #meta

[cock-holliday]

There’s a piece of discourse I saw a few times a few years ago that boiled my blood, but it didn’t reach very far at the time so I didn’t want to draw more attention to it, but I’ve been seeing it again, which is:

A cis woman attacked in the bathroom for being assumed trans is NOT the victim of transmisogyny or transphobia because she’s not trans (not an uncommon piece of discourse), BUT any attempt she makes to distance herself from trans people, saying “I’m not trans/I’m female/I’m a woman/I’m AFAB” is the actual transmisogyny. So in a scenario where a woman is attacked, that’s not bigotry, but trying to protect herself is, because the distance “throws trans women under the bus.”

It angers me incredibly for a lot of reasons.

1. We have enough cis enemies without pretending someone who shares our experiences is committing violence against us for having experienced it.

2. The lines between gender nonconformity and transness is a blur! The existence of transphobic butches will always be ironic. Gnc folks who gender police are always also policing themselves! Because gnc people will always be targets of transphobia like any trans person is. We cannot convince every gnc person (or every trans person) of their shared struggle, but to shut the door on them entirely as outsiders ‘stealing the clout’ of obscene violence? Gross.

3. Have you never gone stealth when faced with physical violence? I’ve been cornered in the bathroom and I have no issue fighting and I still just dig into committing to passing as the gender that “belonged” in the bathroom. I avoided a fight by implying I was cis. I’m not. Why is that different than a cis person going the route that keeps them from being beaten and jailed and sexually assaulted? Is it different? Am I a traitor to us all for not saying proudly “yes I am a tranny” and martyring myself for it?

4. The idea that the “real” victim of a situation of violence is a hypothetical person from our community and not the very real person being beaten is…an appalling way to analyze oppression. There is nothing good about such violence, yet it can be a bridge to solidarity. I have faced violence for my transgressive gender. SHE has faced violence for her transgressive gender. How does that not make us kin?

edit: this has been sitting in my drafts since before Nex Benedict's murder. Nex was NOT a cis woman, but the dogshit takes by even other trans people has been making the rounds and I'm seeing this take AGAIN, twice sprouted in as many months.

How the fuck do you see our siblings dying as a chance to take potshots at each other and try to revoke trans cards and move the goalpost of who the "true" face of bigotry is? Deeply unreal

#LJsm #transphobia #soooo sick of this

[brnineworms]

My thoughts on the trans rep in "The Star Beast"

This episode is haunted by the spectre of Good Representation™. Representation is a topic too expansive and nuanced for me to interrogate fully, so I'll just say I'm sceptical of the approach and the way it reduces trans (or otherwise marginalised) characters to plot points or blandly by-the-book portrayals. Also the idea that any single character can accurately represent an entire demographic is tenuous. Anyway.

Throughout the episode there's a huge focus on how beautiful Rose is, which is... I mean, I'd hardly be the first person to point out how Weird people (cis people especially) can get about how trans people look. And I get that this is probably a deliberate attempt to counter transphobia, to stress that trans people are cherished and deserve the world. It is a sweet sentiment I suppose, but it can come across as a bit... insincere? patronising? fetishistic, even? You have to recognise that correlating a person's worth with how beautiful you think they are is problematic in and of itself.

I actually really like the scene where Sylvia is stumbling on pronouns and worrying about whether or not it's okay to call Rose gorgeous. It's cute. It's genuine. I wasn't sure about the boys on bikes scene that preceded it – I thought deadnaming Rose was a clumsy way to establish that she's trans – but I've watched the episode again and my opinion has softened. I think it works well to have the malicious misgendering side-by-side with the accidental misgendering, showing that, yes, there is a difference. I know this already, but cis people who get confused about terminology and etiquette might benefit from watching this.

Speaking of pronouns... haha. Yeah, I did not like the "are you assuming he as a pronoun?" "my chosen pronoun is the definite article" exchange. Very awkward and nonsensical. It could have worked with some tweaking, but as it stands it feels more like a transphobic joke than actual dialogue. Ditto "male-presenting Time Lord."

Side note: why are some people so thrown off by the Doctor's gender? It's really not that complicated. The Doctor's pronouns vary depending on whether we're talking about an individual incarnation or the Doctor as a whole, encompassing all incarnations. If we're talking about a specific Doctor, they've all been he/him so far except for the Thirteenth and Fugitive Doctor (both she/her). If we're referring to all Doctors as one entity, it makes sense to use they/them since they're not consistently one gender or another. The Doctor is technically nonbinary I guess but only because they have the ability to regenerate into any gender. They're genderfluid only if you squint.

ANYWAY.

Is Rose nonbinary? Again, the "binary, binary, nonbinary" line just felt like a joke. Plus it doesn't make a lot of sense as a plot point/reveal. Rose's gender shouldn't actually be relevant because what's important for the meta-crisis thing is that she's Donna's offspring. There's also the fact that Rose had been presented as a trans girl until that point – no indication that she's nonbinary. Yes, it is possible to be a nonbinary girl, but it seems more likely to me that RTD just thinks nonbinary and trans are synonymous. Which is not the case.

The thing is, as I've alluded to already, Rose is an example of trans rep written by cis people for cis people. RTD's heart is in the right place, for sure, but he doesn't really know what he's talking about. I would say I appreciate the effort? But I don't know what the effort was in aid of exactly. I suppose it's nice for cis people to be told it's okay to stumble on pronouns sometimes, and to be shown that transness isn't a horrible and scary thing. I dunno. It's frustrating that trans people in life and in fiction have to educate and inspire and reassure cis people all the time... but we live in a society, don't we? And I'm sure there will be plenty of young trans people thrilled to see someone like them on TV, even if the execution could have been better.

#doctor who #doctor who spoilers #the star beast

[sourcreammachine]

the nefarious wizard cast a spell over the whole world. all the cis people suddenly change sex, PSCs, SSCs, hormones, chromosomes, everything. fuck it, the wizard also gives them gendered aspects too, doing their hair and giving them silly new clothes and what.

all the men are still men and all the women are still women because gender is not sex. robert is still robert, he/him, regardless of what his new body has to say about it. kate is still kate, she/her, just covered in fur and packing a killer thang.

some people would commit to the bit. some people who knew they were eggs would go whole hog and change gender - and people who didn’t know would find themselves more comfortable changing their gender too. people might spend a very long time thinking.

but derek would probably get his hair cut to something he’s more comfortable with, and wear his old wardrobe. a lot of women would honestly find liberty in shaking off old, malegazy aspects of their gender presentation, but that done, most’d still present feminine despite their different bodies, because their gender was feminine before, and that’s what they know, and that’s who they are, that’s who they became, and that’s not changed. they were cis before the wizard, and they retain their gender after the wizard. because their gender is not their sex.

the rates of transness would skyrocket as people reevaluate their genders in respect to their sex. but seeing as the gender-sex correlation is a social thing, many would come to understand their gender, and conclude that yes, i am a man, no matter what the wizard has to say about it, and yes, i am a woman, just one with wide shoulders and stubble, and yes, i am an enby, because none of this bullshit affects who i am.

and all the preexisting trans people would sigh at captain obvious, but at least people’d understand that now. and in time genders would come to morph and change and maybe even collapse entirely, but only on account of the understanding. they could do that without no wizard, if they get given understanding.

#196 #queer #trans

[stackslip]

the thing is i don't think fujimoto ever really likes to "make fun of" his characters or of particular classes of human beings. oh he likes to tease his characters and poke fun at them and make them suffer in a schadenfreude way, and he'll make the occasional one-page character whose sole purpose IS humorous (like that one dude in the international assassin arc who tries hard to introduce himself to the cast before being murdered by quanxi five panels later, or that one guy who's like CHAINSAW MAN DOESNT EXIST AND IS A USAMERICAN PSYOP). but like........ idk how to explain this but fujimoto is deeply, truly empathetic towards his characters and the very human aspects they represent. yes poor kobeni suffers (no grievous harm, mostly slapstick absurdist situations), but she's also a direct mirror to denji and it's her own decision to leave her abusive family whose demands had pushed her into shitty jobs that sparks the emotional climax of park 1. asa is pathetic and fujimoto pokes fun at her but she's also writen in a way that's so heartwrenchingly vulnerable and human, to the point it's hard to NOT relate to her suffering and struggle to forge connections. denji can be whacky and empty-brained, but the abuse and loneliness he suffer are portrayed with incredible intimacy and care. harumi rn is still mostly a joke but there's already hints at his vulnerabilities and how he uses chainsaw man to try to get others to like him at all.

idk! people call him a sadist who likes to make his characters suffer for nothing but i fully disagree. even in fire punch, by far the bleakest of his works, fujimoto's compassion for his characters and for their flaws shines through. fucking togata is a sadistic son of a bitch and a bit of a memelord until he gets humanized through--his transness, of all things. that moment togata is screaming at agni and talking about his gender dysphoria is one of the most raw but also most compassionate moments in the manga, and it's for a guy who until then enjoyed using human heads as footballs and purposefully dehumanized people through his camera and his "art"!

#eli talks

[cardentist]

apparently there's discourse (not in the bad way, just the discussion way) surrounding lich and trans headcanons because of how he talks about michaela in the books

so here's my opinion as a trans person (other trans people are allowed to have different opinions but this one is mine):

I believe that mothy himself is well meaning about his trans and gay representation, but is unfamiliar with what We'd consider problematic. I'm not familiar enough with either mothy or the general culture of japan to say if this is the result of mothy himself being out of touch, or japanese queer culture just being different from the US's. but either way this is my read on the situation.

and so I engage with evillious with that in mind. it's a series that means well but has problematic elements. and that doesn't have to be a Bad thing, it's just something that needs some awareness while taking it in.

so when mothy writes lich openly acknowledging and accepting that michaela is his sister but then Also has him refer to her with her dead name I don't see that as mothy intentionally portraying lich as transphobic or unaccepting of her. it is, after all, how mothy chose to reveal that she was a trans woman in the first place (introducing us to "lich's brother michael" and having it revealed that she was michaela all along, and having lich acknowledge her as his sister now).

and I think there are two ways to go about this with this understanding.

we could simply gloss over the issue, because at the end of the day we're not going to be able to sit mothy down and explain why it can be hurtful to trans people. we don't have that direct communication with him. and it's not being written with the intent of being read as malicious on lich's part, so it's simply easier to smooth it over.

Or we could translate mothy being well intentioned but misinformed onto lich as a character trait. this works best within the context of him having to learn what he's doing wrong and grow, but obviously it's up to personal interpretation.

as for trans headcanons, there's nothing wrong with that in the first place. trans people are misinformed sometimes, nobody comes out of the womb socially conscious and fully aware of modern sensibilities.

having lich realize that they aren't a man could be tied into lich gaining a better understanding of transness. having lich be transmasc already and just not knowing any better because He doesn't mind these things and hasn't stopped to think that other people may feel differently. having lich be whatever flavor of trans you want in whatever way you want just because it's fun and you'd like to. it's all fine and doesn't hurt anybody

I would Also like to point out that levia has been making fun of behemo for wearing dresses and make up since she was introduced as a character, and people tend not to call her transphobic or highlight this as transphobia.

yes, there is more ambiguity in behemo's case as mothy has never stated outright what behemo's identity is, but calling someone you interpret as a man disgusting or weird for wearing dresses Is Transphobia (and was specifically highlighted As transphobia/bigotry that behemo has faced during barisol's child) regardless of what that person's gender actually is.

I personally like levia a lot, just like I like lich and behemo and michaela, and Personally I think they're all trans Because I like them. and I'm not saying that we should Start defining levia's character by this trait.

but I Am saying that it's an obvious double standard to hold lich as a character accountable while Not doing the same for levia when arguably levia is intentionally written as being harmful while lich isn't.

anyways, I think it's funny if levia realizes he's a trans man that still likes to wear dresses and make up, and I think lich is seth's boyfriend and banica's girlfriend and eater's -̴̱͔̫̭̎̆͆-̴̠͚͘͜-̶̺̰̙̦͗-̸̡̻̽̅-̴̢̹̰̠͐͑̃̈̑friend, and equally trans no matter what

(also potential lich and carlos dynamic intrigues me but I think it's much funnier if they aren't dating each other. banica's husband and banica's girlfriend silently and awkwardly eating brunch together because they figure they're supposed to hang out but between the two of them there isn't one drop of social intelligence)

(they do this every day, it never gets any better)

#evillious chronicles #evillious #ec #lich arklow #levia barisol #discourse #not really but you know #I haven't actually been looking in the evillious tags but I have a friend who has who's been talking about it with me #so this isn't vagueing anyone in particular and you're allowed to feel differently about it #I've been thinking about the way that I feel about it and why lich's writing doesn't bother me #despite the way that it could in a different context