#and her words are being used to make laws to discriminate trans people

[molsno]

hii so im kind of confused about the general inner workings of transmisogyny as an extension of transphobia and was hoping you could clarify. basically, transphobes & terfs in particular say that trans women are men, however they treat trans women differently than men, dehumanizing them on the basis of their gender. i always interpreted this as a form of gender discrimination that aims to define trans women as a lower or subhuman class, a third gender of “not quite men but undeserving of the title of woman”. does this conflict with the concept of bioessentialism, i.e. that trans women are fundamentally men? i see people say that “transphobes see trans women as men” but from experience that’s not quite true. men receive privilege and rewards for being men that trans women don’t. sorry if this is incoherent im just trying to get a better understanding of it

your understanding is pretty good to be honest. trans women are a separate gender class - an underclass to be specific - and transmisogynists are aware of this, even if they claim to see us as men. does this conflict with bioessentialism? not necessarily, but in some ways it does.

the thing is, though, logical consistency doesn't particularly matter to bigots. that's why basically all of the laws designed to oppress trans women, despite all of the fearmongering about how some technicality in how they're worded will result in them targeting cis women and other tme people, are ultimately only going to be enforced to the fullest extent against trans women. for example, tme people would rightfully be furious if a teenage cis girl was subjected to a genital examination due to the suspicion that she's trans and playing in a high school girls' sport. this would unambiguously be sexual assault, after all. but ultimately, she would be allowed to continue playing (not that she'd likely want to after something so traumatizing, but I digress), and she would probably (not certainly though) have some kind of recourse available to her due to the backlash this incident would cause. if this happened to a teenage trans girl, though, would anyone care? would there be outrage about this? she would have gone through the exact same kind of sexual assault, but the law in that scenario would be functioning exactly as intended. no form of recourse would be available to her. sure, you could make the case that a cis girl might not be able to sue the school district due to financial or other barriers, but a trans girl would have no ground to stand on, legally speaking; she would have broken the law, no matter how unjust and discriminatory the law is.

so violence against trans women broadly isn't recognized as violence against women because we aren't viewed as women. but we're not viewed as men, either. for another example, let's work through the lens of sexual assault again. if a tme person of any gender accuses a trans woman of sexual assault, there is little to no doubt that she will be viewed as guilty automatically, both by other tme people and by the law (the trans panic defense is still legally admissible in many places). in the best case, this will lead to her ostracization and isolation, putting her at higher risk for instability and suicide. in the worst case, this will lead to her imprisonment or death - REGARDLESS of if the accusation is actually true or not. the justification for this is that trans women are secretly perverted men who are trying to prey on innocent cishet people, but the basic idea underlying that premise isn't even something tme people truly believe! if they actually viewed trans women as men, then her guilt wouldn't be quite so certain. men can commit sexual assault every day and face no consequences for it, even when brought to trial with clear and damning evidence, because patriarchy ensures that men won't be held accountable for their actions. of course, this isn't always the case, marginalized men often do face intense scrutiny, many times involving violence. but even adjusting this analysis to account for additional factors such as racism, trans women still receive absolutely none of the same solidarity, leniency, or respect that men of the same demographics as them do.

fundamentally, trans women aren't treated like women or men in society. we're treated as a disposable and undesirable underclass of women that everyone else is free to abuse without consequence. any claims by transmisogynists about what gender they see us as is posturing. we are treated in unique ways as a result of our status as transfeminine. that's exactly what we mean when we talk about how transmisogyny is a unique form of oppression. bioessentialism certainly plays a part, but its contradictions are so obvious that it can only be understood as one piece of a much larger puzzle.

#ask #acelez #I know this post is absolutely gonna get backlash but at this point I'll take whatever they throw at me #thank you for being willing to listen I appreciate it #transmisogyny #my writing

[destinyc1020]

Everyone Z surround herself is evil? In what world is this anon living? Z is known as someone that has kept her circle extremely small and is known as a very warm, affectionate person. Anon mentions Hunter as if she's not known as one of the nicest persons in the fashion industry and Hollywood and has fought for trans rights at the highest levels since she was in high school (she was the lead plaintiff in an anti-discrimination lawsuit against the state of North Carolina. Some people wanted to cancel her for commenting "!" in a post from another trans activist regarding internal disagreements within the trans movement. She wrote a detailed post to explain her position.

And what makes JE an awful man besides being accused of being "pretentious" (that word again that is used to attack Austin)? She knew him for a whole year before dating him. She should have probably hired a private investigator to learn about why his previous relationships had ended, but how many of you go to those lengths before dating someone that you've known for a whole year?

Sam Levinson is a professional collaborator. He is not her buddy that she invites to her bday parties. And no one has accused Sam of abuse. He's been accused of being messy and disorganized and doing projects that deal with sex. Which is extremely common in Hollywood. The crew members that have complained have complained about his disorganization that leads to long hours of work, not abusive tendencies. So according to anon, Z can never work with someone that's disorganized and scattered brained

So anon, are Darnell, Zink, Claire and Law, which are the closest people to Z besides Tom, evil incarnate? Give me a break!

Whew!!! I'm not going to get into this conversation Anon lol... I think there are a lot of exaggerations being made here. I just don't wanna start any arguments in my inbox. 😅 Bottom Line, MY Opinion? : Z has a great small circle of close friends, family members and acquaintances in the industry, and I don't think she aligns herself with just ANYBODY.

With that said, I STILL think that Sam is questionable at best, and creepy at worst, but I just try to keep reminding myself that SHE knows him waaay better than I ever will lol... So, I just have to trust her judgement. I also think her mom and dad would definitely be telling her their opinions if they really felt that she was in some type of danger. Overall, I just hope she uses good judgement when it comes to him, and slowly distances herself from this man and stops talking about him that much in interviews lol. That's pretty much my view in a whole. He just gives me bad vibes.

[twilight-blaze]

when I went to reblog that last post I started talking in the tags a bit, but then it ended up as a lot more of a rant than expected and I'm not gonna just leave that on someone else's post

so I'm gonna put the rant here instead, because I need this out of my system.

I didn't really edit this, I just finished it, so this is not a well thought out and articulated post. it's just me pouring my thoughts and emotions into a post and maybe some of them make some amount of sense

I used to try to teach my parents about queer history and current queer issues. I used to want to teach them, to meet them more than halfway if I had to. but their response is always that I'm overreacting, or being too cynical, or being self-centered, and I can only take so much of that.

I brought up the AIDS crisis to my mother once (and only once, because of how it went over) and she said I was being over-dramatic for saying the queer population was left to die by a government that did not care about our lives, and said it was a cynical view of the epidemic to even consider that it was malicious in any way.

(that's about when I had to leave the room because of how upset I was. I never brought this up again. I don't think I could handle it a second time.)

when I told her about the gay panic defense and trans panic defense she said I was overreacting because, and I quote "it can't be that bad" (yes, really, those exact words) and "that could never hold up in court." she refused to believe me when I said it has, even when I offered to point to some specific court cases.

(this woman is a lawyer. she works at a law firm as a paralegal (she prefers that over being a practicing attorney) and therefore handles court documents frequently. you'd think a court case would be a compelling enough source in her eyes, but that would require being willing to read it, which she is not.)

if I bring up queer specific issues around my father, even when they're directly relevant to the current conversation, he'll tell me not to make it all about me. he also doesn't want to talk about anything political, and any queer history is politics above anything else to him.

if I bring those same issues up to my mother, she's told me to "stop bringing down the mood" (we were literally already having a conversation about hate crimes when she said that one. so talking about other hate crimes is fine but mentioning transphobic hate crimes is where she draw that line?)

she also told me "you shouldn't worry about the negatives" when I mentioned the higher rate of violence against trans people (also in a conversation where it was relevant, not out of the blue). and I get it, nobody wants to think about getting assaulted or murdered, but the unfortunate reality is that for me, experiencing some form of violence is more likely than not, so not thinking about it at all isn't really an option.

(telling her this did not make her change her mind on how I'm being "too negative." and then she brought out the "self-fulfilling prophecy" line and I realized that if she thinks I'm at a higher risk of hate crimes because I'm acknowledging they could happen to me and thinking about how to protect myself, then I should probably stop trying to reason with her about these things.)

and the thing is, my mother is constantly saying that she wishes she could do more to help stop human rights abuses and discrimination. my father is politically active in election season and donates to progressive primary candidates. both of them consistently vote for progressive candidates in every election down to the local level. they donate money to organizations they think will help. these are well-meaning people (at least on a societal level).

but they can't be assed to learn, so the only issues worth caring about are the ones they already know about.

they can't admit that queer rights weren't solved in 2015 once and for all because they never learned anything that suggested otherwise, so they aren't capable of recognizing that there are any issues to learn about.

they're "supportive," but only as far as that can go without putting in more than just a token effort.

and unfortunately at this point I don't think they'll ever be better than this. I don't think they'll ever do more than this. I don't think they'll ever even try to understand, because they're clearly not willing to put in any effort.

so I've stopped trying and putting in effort, too. I've accepted that the most support I'll ever get out of them is basically just lip service, that I'll never have parents who truly support me and my queerness, that I won't ever have parents who understand or even try to understand that part of my history and the history of my community. and I realized that even if there is something I could do to change their minds and get them to care, I don't think I can handle trying to get through to them anymore.

so I gave up.

#ash.txt #a well-ventilated tumblr post #I tried #I really tried #and it hurts that they wont #also how the fuck did this get so long? #how long has this been building up without me even noticing? #(shit I really need to get back into therapy huh)

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning!

Welp, let’s see what kind of links I set aside this week. I feel like is pretty varied. Enjoy! ☕️

Vice

People in Utah who visit Pornhub will now be greeted by adult performer Cherie DeVille asking them to tell their representatives to change their age verification law.

I’ll bet VPN usage just went through the roof. Hopefully all VPN service providers offered a discount to sign up this week. If they didn’t use the discount code “Utah” they blew it. 😆

The Verge

By Monday, CNN anchor Jake Tapper would ask his guests to respond to a statement made by Sen. Brian Schatz, the first — but not only — US senator on Bluesky. “Senator Brian Schatz, just, uh, skeeted, on Bluesky,” said Tapper live on air before reading the skeet out loud. 

So I mused yesterday on Mastodon that I thought the word skeet didn’t make sense but bravo to the person or persons who made it stick.

Well, someone clued me in on what skeet means. Darned kids and their made up words. 😳

Paul Lefebvre

I had recalled reading in the past that the Mac Pro CPU might also be upgradeable, but I had never looked into it before.

This is a fun read! There was a time when I’d repair and upgrade my own PC’s and I really enjoyed it. Apple has never been great at doing this but at least created a few Macs that could be opened and repaired or extended with other hardware. Give Paul’s piece a read it’s a nice little adventure and he’s improved an old Mac with a new CPU.

Like I said above Apple is horrible about creating a nice computer you can open and repair but it’s rare. Then once they do manage to make one they don’t make a way for you to really upgrade it. It’s a real shame folks dropped large sums of money on the latest Mac Pro only to have M1 and M2 based machines outstrip it.

Also, can someone take a Trash Can Mac and fill it with M2 Mac Mini guts? It might pose some challenges but I’d love to see one. The Trash Can is a beautiful artifact at this point and it would be nice to see it revived.

The Hollywood Reporter

Top Hollywood writers took to social media to express defiant support for their first union walkout in 15 years and showed their feelings about studios being unwilling to meet their contract demands.

Enjoy your scripted shows while you can. I’ve heard some shows have already shut down production.

Good luck to the Writers Guild of America. I hope you’re able to negotiate favorable terms. 🤞🏼

Vice

Adobe is warning some owners of its Creative Cloud software applications that they’re no longer allowed to use older versions of the software.

When you purchase software you don’t really own it, you’ve purchased a license to use it. That license can be revoked at any time but I’ve never experienced it.

For someone like me a really old version of Photoshop — pre Creative Cloud — would probably work just fine in a VM but folks who run small shops and don’t want to upgrade for their own reasons shouldn’t be punished. Just my horrible two cents on the matter.

Semafor

Zephyr, the only trans member of the Montana legislature, was barred from the House floor and gallery last week after facing backlash from Republicans during the debate over a bill that prohibits gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.

I really hope Zephyr is allowed back on the floor and is allowed to represent her constituents properly.

Good luck Zephyr! 🍀

Elizabeth Valentine Haste

Under normal circumstances, I would be forbidden from discussing this. In fact, I am bound by NDA not to disclose many of the specific details of my experience at Rune Labs, but thanks to Washington’s Silenced No More Act (RCW 49.44.211), my ability to speak about discrimination, harassment, or retaliation that I have witnessed in the workplace is legally protected.

I had the pleasure of working with Elizabeth — we called her Val — at WillowTree and she’s very good at her job and is a fine, fine, person. Hire her.

Val, if for some reason you stumble across this come back to WillowTree! 🙏🏼

Aarthi & Sriram’s Podcast

Anders Hejlsberg is special - he is someone we idolized since we were teenagers, heard whispers and stories about his prowess and feats in our formative years at Microsoft.

The man created four extremely popular programming languages; Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C#, and TypeScript. That’s a crazy wonderful resume!

To create a single language used my millions and millions of developer would be a once in a lifetime achievement but four time? Simply incredible.

Hey, if you have to work in JavaScript(sorry!) at least Microsoft was able to tame some of the ugliness of JavaScript and make it more productive.

Electrify America CEO Rob Barrosa’s Coast-to-Coast Road Trip

The above link will take you to YouTube for the video. It’s not that long and is a real joy to watch, at least for me it was. I will point out WillowTree works with Electrify America but I’d still think this was cool even without that relationship. It’s nice to see more and more electric charging stations crop up across America.

The route he chose to take was an interesting one. It takes home through Chicago on a more northerly path. Interstate 40 is a pretty straight shot across the country I’ve driven many times.

It makes me wonder if he took this route because I-40 doesn’t have enough Electrify America charging stations to get you across America?

One of these days we have to try the route he took. Perhaps spend some time in Chicago?

Amazon Prime Video Blog

The initial version of our service consisted of distributed components that were orchestrated by AWS Step Functions. The two most expensive operations in terms of cost were the orchestration workflow and when data passed between distributed components. To address this, we moved all components into a single process to keep the data transfer within the process memory, which also simplified the orchestration logic.

I love reading about teams improving performance of their software and this is a particularly interesting read because they also lower the cost of their service by 90%! That’s a crazy good improvement.

Now if they could stabilize the Amazon app on Roku that would be amazing. 😃

Jalopnik

The 2024 Trax is Chevrolet’s bid for the lower end of the new car market in the U.S. In fact, the Trax is now going to be the cheapest car Chevy sells in America, which brings the General hope that the new and improved version of its entry-level crossover can turn a first-time Chevy buyer into a lifelong customer.

Our daughter has a Trax and it’s a great little car I love to drive when I get the chance. It’s small and really zippy! It’s just fun to drive.

I hope this 3-cylinder model is a great success so Chevrolet keeps making it.

Hey, Chevy, while you’re at it how ‘bout you make the Trax into a World Rally Championship car? Seems like it would be a great fit!

Ars Technica

After using System76’s Pangolin as my primary work laptop for nearly six weeks, I can tell you this: If you need a 15-inch Linux-focused laptop, this is the one to get.

If I were to invest in a PC I believe I’d go for a System76 box. It seems they’d make for a great little programming box. Plenty of horsepower to handle C++ and C# dev tools and compiling.

Question: Why do all PC trackpads suck? I mean like really suck. Everyone I’ve ever used has been a real pain. The Mac, no doubt, has the best trackpad in the business.

News Thump

After Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a ban on abortion after 6 weeks, Taliban officials in Afghanistan have welcomed the move and praised the regressive thinking behind it.

I really hope this is true because we are seeing states in our Union beginning to turn into themselves into women and LGBTQ+ hating theocracies.

Seems fit the Taliban would praise them and DeSantis is a real piece of work worthy of export to Afghanistan. Maybe we can exchange him for some wonderful women looking to get a great education?

I hope you enjoy your weekend.

[flyingpochama948]

Talk show: Today were going to talk about Cancel Culture and why it's bad

Me: Oh?

Talk show: A good example of Cancel Culture is what's happening to JK Rowling

Me: *turns off TV*

#like bad example #she shouldn't have tired to cancel trans women first #and her words are being used to make laws to discriminate trans people #so yeah really fucking bad example #im all for ending actual cancel culture #piers morgan is a clown #shut up pochama

[nerdygaymormon]

The Pride Month We Know & Love

In 1969, the Stonewall Riots occurred. This is considered the beginning of the modern queer rights movement. At the time, it was called the gay rights movement and the word gay, while meaning homosexual, also was an umbrella term that included all of what we now call the queer community.

————————————————————

On November 2, 1969, a group of people proposed the first gay parade be held in New York City, both to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots and to be an annual reminder that we are in a struggle for fundamental human rights. They called on homophile organizations throughout the country to hold demonstrations the same day to show nationwide support. 

On June 28, 1970, the Christopher Street Liberation Day marked the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots with a march. Christopher Street is the road in front of the Stonewall Inn and the road participants marched down. The New York Times reported (on the front page) that the marchers took up the entire street for 15 city blocks. Marches were also held in Chicago & Los Angeles while San Francisco held a “gay-in.”

In 1971, marches took place in Boston, Dallas, Milwaukee, London, Paris, West Berlin, and Stockholm.

By 1972 the participating cities included Atlanta, Brighton, Buffalo, Detroit, Washington D.C., Miami, and Philadelphia, as well as San Francisco.

————————————————————

The first marches were both serious and fun and served to inspire the widening activist movement. There was a dramatic increase in the number of people organizing for queer rights. In 1969, there were 50 to 60 gay groups in the country. In 1970 that increased to at least 1500. In 1972 it was 2500.

Prior to 1969, the organizations called themselves the homophile movement. They focused on showing that gay people are respectable and politely asked for discriminatory policies to be removed. Their marches had dress requirements, age limits as to who could participate, and even the signs held had to be pre-approved.

The Stonewall riots with images of gays retaliating against police changed things and inspired new activists. They considered the movement an uprising and renamed it the gay liberation movement. We are gonna be who we are and live as we want, respectability be damned. Parades and festivals were to specifically to not have dress requirements or age limits. 

————————————————————

In Nazi Germany, gay men were prisoners in the concentration camps and their clothes had inverted pink triangles sewn on them to mark them as homosexual men (this also included bisexual men and trans women). This pink triangle was extra large so they could be easily identified from a distance. 

After the concentration camps were shut down at the end of World War II and prisoners freed, the gay survivors were not released but locked up in prison. Homosexuality was illegal in Germany. West Germany continued to imprison them until 1994!

In 1973, Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin, a German gay liberation group, called for gay men to wear the pink triangle as a memorial to past victims and to protest continuing discrimination. This pink triangle became a symbol of the gay rights movement and many displayed it proudly, but the symbol couldn’t shake its association with the horrors of the Nazis. 

Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S., urged artist Gilbert Baker, an openly gay man and a drag queen, to create a new inspiring symbol for the gay community to replace the Nazi symbol. 

It’s thought that Baker was at least partially inspired by the Judy Garland song "Over the Rainbow" (Garland being among the first gay icons). He also liked the idea of a flag, as that is a way of being visible. The rainbow flag was unveiled at the 1978 San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade. After the parade, hot pink was removed from new flags due to fabric unavailability. The murder of Harvey Milk in November 1978 led to a surge of requests for the Rainbow flag, which led to it being adopted by people around the country.

For the 1979 San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade, the organizers reduced the number of colors from 7 to 6 so that they could divide it in half and have 3 colors decorating one side of the street, and the other three colors on the other side. This 6-colored rainbow flag became the standard and quickly replaced pink triangles.

In 2003, a mile-long version of the rainbow flag was made by Baker for the 35th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, this recognized the rainbow flag as THE international symbol for LGBTQ pride, it can be seen all around the world.

On June 26, 2015, the White House was illuminated in the rainbow flag colors to mark the legalization of same-sex marriages across the country.

In June 2017, the city of Philadelphia adopted a revised version of the flag that adds black and brown stripes to the top of the standard six-colors to draw attention to issues of people of color within the LGBTQ community.

In June 2018 designer Daniel Quasar released a redesign incorporating elements from both the Philadelphia flag and trans pride flag to bring focus on inclusion and progress within the community.

————————————————————

But when did it go from Gay Liberation to Pride? 

Meetings to organize the first march in New York City began in early January 1970. Brenda Howard, a bisexual activist, is known as the "Mother of Pride" for her work in coordinating the march. She also originated the idea for a week-long series of events around the march.

She wanted to create a number of events to bring in people from out of town and wanted to unite the events under a label. The first idea was 'Gay Power,’ however gay activist L. Craig Schoonmaker didn’t like that suggestion. He explained, “There's very little chance for [gay] people in the world to have power...But anyone can have pride in themselves, and that would make them happier as people, and produce the movement likely to produce change."

Brenda Howard, L. Craig Schoonmaker and bisexual activist Robert A. Martin (aka Donny the Punk) are credited with popularizing the word "Pride" to describe the festivities in New York.

As the 1980s approached, there was a cultural shift in the gay movement. Just as the elections of Ronald Reagan & Margaret Thatcher indicated a conservative shift in their countries, activists of a less radical, more conservative nature began taking over the march committees in different cities. They dropped "Gay Liberation" and "Gay Freedom" from the names, replacing them with Schoomaker’s idea of "Gay Pride." This also coincided with the replacement of the more radical pink triangles for the more positive rainbow flags.

The word "pride" was embraced as it defies the bigotry and hatred against the LGBTQIA+ community. It also teaches people they should be proud of themselves rather than feel shame. Replacing shame with pride helps people to come out and to be more assertive about who they are and that they deserve the same rights as others. 

In 1999, President Bill Clinton issued a proclamation declaring that the LGBTQIA+ community and its allies would "celebrate the anniversary of Stonewall every June in America as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month." President Barack Obama issued a proclamation in 2009 declaring June LGBTQIA+ Pride Month. 

This is how we got Pride Month!

————————————————————

Part of the original ideas of parades was to bring queer people and queer culture into what was considered heteronormative spaces. Queer lives were seen as dissident and radical. 

Today Pride events have taken on a festive character and it’s fun to join hundreds or thousands of other queer people. 

Pride events still have some of the original political or activist character. Most offer some aspect dedicated to remembering victims of AIDS and anti-LGBT violence. Booths are often on hand with people collecting signatures in support of constitutional amendments or petitions for laws & policies to change.

Large parades often involve floats, dancers, drag queens and amplified music, and they usually include political and educational contingents, such as local politicians, and groups from LGBT institutions of various kinds, such as PFLAG. Other typical parade participants include local LGBT-friendly churches and LGBT-employee associations from large corporations. 

The Stonewall riots, as well as the immediate and the ongoing political organizing that occurred following them, were fully participated in by lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, and gays, from all races and backgrounds. Pride festivals and parades continue to be inclusive spaces. 

Historically these events were first named Gay, the word at that time being used to cover the entire spectrum of what is now called the queer. Today these festivals & parades are often called Pride.

#long post #queer pride #lgbtq pride #Pride month #queer history

[searchingforproofsthatimwrong]

THE JAMMIEDODGER VIDEO ABOUT JK ROWLING (as recommended by a very polite anon)

so I go point by point after the cut but in short: they should read more feminist theory, they are lying, they are not as coherent as they think they are but they make some points, notably about the rapid onset gender disphoria that’ll need to check in more depth later on.Most of their sources were unfortunatly either on points I already knew or already agreed with.  Also that woman ( the “cis” one not Jammy), should really stop thinking being born a woman is somehow a privilege.

So the video starts by saying three things I agree with :

1)      Biological sex is definitely real

2)      Women’s right and girls’ right need to be protected

3)      JK Rowling is entitled to like support and write whatever she wants

 So far so good. Except it then goes on to say that TRA agree with that. Now maybe most do but at least some don’t. Don’t lie to me, Jammie Dodger.  

They then go on to misrepresent what our problem with “cis” is. Are they going to spend that entire video about trans people at destination of the non educated on that subject without ONCE defining what a trans person is? They are aren’t they ?

“TRANSPEOPLE AGREE THAT BIOLOGICAL SEX EXISTS!!” 

see earlier but given the number of people who are saying “sex is a social construct” and “sex is a spectrum” and “a neovagina is just like a vagina”, you may at least put a “most” in your statement here. Anyway this is not the problem we have, we wouldn’t even discuss this if it weren’t for the brain dead morons who argue with us about it.

“my biological sex -the one I was assigned at birth- was female” 

is Jammie here telling me he knows biology exists but his sex WAS female ? It still IS female. You’re a female. Moreover you cannot say I know biology exists and I was assigned a sex. The entire “assigned sex” is a refutal of biology by implying doctors choose a sex for you. This is stupid.

Strawman. They are saying radfems have no argument against “gender identity is a real thing”. The lies. Gender identity is not a real thing it’s just gender stereotypes and gender is a tool of oppression for women, it’s sexist garbage. I also notice they don’t define gender identity, this is starting to be a pattern, this video is aimed to normies but the only thing they defined so far is terf.

They did 5 fucking minutes on “transpeople know that biological sex exists” I am already exhausted.

Oh my bad they defined “gender identity” as “the gender you know you are”. THANKS A BUNCH THIS IS SO HELPFUL . Define gender please I beg of you.  

“They know they are a man but their bodies don’t match” 

okay so you agree that man and woman are words that depends on your body right? Since it can “match”, they are not gender then ? Nevermind he then says that man is their gender identity. This is not making sense.

Ooooooh the floating head analogy never heard that one before, this is a stupid one because gendies also argue that their gender is innate (unless Jammie here specifically says he doesn’t think that I’ll act as if he agrees with that statement) so the good question would be if you were born as a floating head and never even had a body would you still be a woman? And my answer here as well as plenty of people I suspect is “men and women don’t make sense if we’re born as floating heads what are you on about?”

“transwomen needs women’s right too” 

I know you think that is self evident but I’ll ask what exactly are the women’s right transwomen need. Abortion? Affordable periods product ? The right to have places free of male? oh wait. They are male so they can never have that can they ?

“so feminism also needs to believe in gender identity”

 because if we don’t our feminism is only for females and we exclude males. Notice how they didn’t continue their logic by saying how THIS feminism excludes transmen and nonbinary? Because it does, but guess who actually need the women’s right of abortion for exemple?

“transmen don’t need women’s rights” 

I FUCKING CANNOT YOU STILL NEED IT WTF ARE YOU ON ABOUT. OK I need them to define women’s right asap

“well JK Rowling said she supports trans rights”

 funny how you can understand how those words are not a proof that she in fact does but you still started your video by “we support women’s rights !!!”

“adding [to Harry Potter] content that was LGBT+ friendly” 

she added things that were gay friendly. I don’t remember her adding trans characters.

“transphobic” = saying men can’t become women. Whoah. The hatred.

“the lack of belief [in gender identity] is what she wants protected”

 yes and ? Atheism, the lack of belief in a god, is protected. Gender identity existence only proof is some people saying it does exists, it is not a scientific reality in any way shape or form.

“His biological sex was previously female” 

BUT WE KNOW WHAT BIOLOGICAL SEX IS WE SWEAR; Damn they spend 7 minutes on “transpeople know biological sex exists” and then keep acting like they fucking don’t.

After that they point blank say that gender identity is more important than sex, having someone who passes as an exemple. What about transpeople who don’t pass? How much you bet this will never be discussed in this video.

Anyway they follow that with that : 

Which is true but defining what a woman is does affect women actually (I know weird right)  so it’s completely irrelevant to the discussion here.

“When a large group of transpeople are telling you something is wrong please listen to them”

 please afford women the same courtesy. We are a large group of women saying males are not the fucking authority on what womanhood is but we are told to shut up. Listen.

“we cannot take the behavior of the minority [online abuse] and group it onto the majority” 

I agree with that statement but the majority still didn’t condemn the abuse. Honestly the people in this video did -just before saying HOWEVER but hey – but it is pretty rare to see TRA actually confronting the people who abused JK Rowling online, they cheered them on more than anything.

It is very telling how they spend more time in this video saying people collecting screenshots of the abuse JK Rowling suffered were “not cool” than the TRA giving them a bad name by actually abusing JK Rowling. They even say Jammy was also insulted online so TERF and TRA are as bad as each other right ?? Being called delusional or idiot is not the same as death threats sorry Jammy. (I doubt the “freak” one was from a terf tbh but even then, this is not even comparable) I mean didn’t you get at least one person saying they were going to kill you ? Because I did, and I have ,like, 200 followers. I find very weird that the woman here said “I received sexual assaults threats and this is as a cis woman!” as if women weren’t the primary target of sexual assaults threats. Yeah it’s the misogyny. What’s new.  You really should stop thinking you are somehow priviledged even when you are being sexually threatened ffs. What gender ideology does to a mf.

 “neither of these sides are innocent” 

oh come on, you cannot possibly means that the men who gave you sexual threats were terfs, this is ridiculous, you are just trying to excuse and diminish what people did to JK as per fucking usual.

 “persistent low level harassment” 

it hasn’t stayed low level tho. Stop trying to say you and JK are receiving the same abuse it’s embarrassing.

JK Rowling’s essay having real life effects on policies for exemple has an element of thruth ,even tho we disagree on wether or not this can be a good thing but your are deluding yourself if you think people assaulting transpeople are the sort of people whose views are in any way influenced by feminists. This is laughable. Also please stop with the guilt tripping, we are not responsible of the mental health of transpeople, we are not their therapists, sorry.

I love how they implied that the guy who forced GNC kids to behave as their assigned gender would somehow give a letter of thanks to a feminist. This is implying “terfs” want the same things as this maniac which is just a straight up lie, terfs absolutely adore GNC people and are mostly GNC themselves.

“What rights of women are actually being eroded by the inclusion of transwomen ?” I am glad you asked !! Well apart from the freedom of speech since “terfs” are losing their jobs and being deplatformed because of this, we have the inherent dangers of replacing sex by gender in what the law protects : https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/firing-mom-because-shes-breastfeeding-sex-discrimination this is a link to a story about a woman who was said being fired for breastfeeding was not sex discrimination because men can lactate. Do you see the problem ? Moreover there is quotas for women in politics etc….Women fought for their quotas and now males can have them, who do you think an employer would prefer someone who probably will be pregnant at one point or someone who never will ? and let’s not forget the right for women to have women only places :Women in prison are raped by the trans identified males in it .

“I cannot think of a single right that is removed from me”

 good for you maybe you should have actually researched radfems talking point before doing this video ? Your ignorance is not a good argument.  

“transwomen can use the women changing room because they are women” 

you keep saying that but apart from “they feel like women” you didn’t explain how they are women. This is the basis of this entire video and you never explained.  Also allowing any person who say they are women into the women’s changing room does not only allow transwomen does it ? It also allows lying freaks.

“You can protect cis women’s rights and transrights simulteanously” HOWWWWWWWWWWW, please tell me how to keep female only spaces (women’s right) while saying TWAW (transrights apparently according to them).

“transwomen can be the victims and cis women can do the voyeurism” 

true but did you forget we actually live in the real world and in that one males are much more likely to be sexually harassing people than women ? It is a brazen form of lying to tell women that since theoretically other women can also be creeps they don’t have to worry about males. Get a grip. Live in the real world for a change.

“It doesn’t reference transwomen but men pretending to be women” 

apart from “they feel it” you still haven’t told us what the difference is. You are aware nothing from an outside perspective distinguishes the two right ??

“there is no evidence of men pretending to be trans to enter female only spaces” and how would you know they are pretending ? This is the same problem again and again, if you define transwomen as men who feel like women then there is absolutely no way of verifying someone really is trans. And that’s a lie anyway since we do actually have proof of that happening?? There was that video making the room on radblr a while ago of a clear male pissing in the women’s bathroom saying (lying) that he was trans.

Yeah actually radical feminists would accept transmen in their bathrooms, but it’s not an easy question with an easy answer to know how to check they really are transmen. Although notice how they are again only talking about transpeople that passes ? I would feel safer with Jammy in my toilets than Hannah Mouncey for exemple :

  That is so obvioulsy a man in a dress.

“ If a transman with a beard and penis and balls can go into a women’s toilet and that is deemed okay because of his biological sex what is to stop a cis man from doing the same”

 I am sorry but are you saying a transwoman cannot have a beard and penis and balls ?????????? This is incredibly transphobic of you, you said that gender identity Is just feeling like a gender, how exactly does that mean transwomen cannot have beard ? If you want to know, radfem are arguing for a third toilet for transpeople, that’s our solution. What is yours ?

 Ok the next part is racist I’ll skip that thanks

On accusation of TERFery intimidating people and organizations “we haven’t seen these” again, your ignorance is not an argument, I am posting these on Tumblr where cryptoterfs arer numerous. Why do you think that is ?

Are they seriously saying Nike and addidas “accepted” transpeople because they “realized it was the right thing to do” ?????? Those companies employs slaves IN WHAT WORLD DO YOU LIVE IN??

“trying to make transpeople look crazy” 

the clownfish things were said online by real transpeople. We don’t need to invent thing to make transpeople look crazy, if there is  large enough group some people belonging in that group will say stupid shit .

“We support these rights”

 when speaking about women victims of abuse. This is a lie, the Vancouver rape shelter relief is often targeted by transactivists, recently a gofundme for it was cancelled because of transactivists, they are quite litteraly stealing money from raped women. This is not a small, inconsequential part of transactivism. 

“The trans-inclusionist views expand the meaning of women to include transwomen”

 It doesn’t expend shit actually since it excludes transmen and non-binary. If anything it reduces it.

They go on to say that transwomen deserves protection as women because of their murder rate. It doesn’t explain how being seen as women will help them here and anyway it’s a bold lie considering their murder rate is actually quite low. They also fail to consider how depriving transmen and nonbinaries of those same women’s right might be a problem.

Again they make the distinction between transwomen and men pretending to be transwomen without a way to identify which is which. This is starting to get repetitive and tedious. The problem is not that all transwomen are predators is that there is no way to see a difference until the predators acts, until a woman gets hurt, so accepting transwomen is accepting predators and saying transwomen feelings are more important that the women being hurt because of this. I disagree. The tiny tiny percentage of transpeople doing bad things is actually the same percentage as men doing bad things. If your argument could be used to say women only spaces shouldn’t exist at all because not all men are dangerous maybe you should reconsider your argument because I will not reconsider women’s right to have female only spaces.

“If you push transwomen out of female only spaces you push transmen in”

 Yes. I don’t even see where the problem is here.  Now why don’t we analyse the fact that if you push transwomen into female only spaces you push transmen out of them ? I don’t think transmen belongs in men’s prisons, do you ?

“Transpeople don’t dispute biology and don’t impact how female only diseases are treated” 

eat shit. They do impact this, every woman trying to say “female biology” get shit thrown at her faster than you can blink, stop lying to me Jammy. Do you think I would get called a bleeder, a fetus carrier, a motherfucking birthing body if transactivism wasn’t trying to erase sex ? Don’t you think the sentence “men can have periods” is not eroding biology ? Fuck off

Back to JK, Jammy is saying her disabling comment on her blog was not conductive to a conversation, I have to salute the straight face he says it with because do you really think a nice educated conversation would have taken place on JK Rowling’s essay ? They flooded her children’s book tag with porn for fuck sake.

“Thre is no explosion in young women who wishes to transition” sources ? Because it does seem to be true :https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jsm.12817

“the detransitionners rate is actually really low” hard to know but most people who transitioned did it not so long ago since transgender is a recent trend, we will have to wait and see to have a more robust number. But maybe they are right on that one, this is not going to be the one argument that changes my views unfortunately. 

“Does that mean we should stop people from getting plastic surgery then ?” 

lol you don’t know the radfem stance on plastic surgery do you ?

“There is more significant transphobia than homophobia” 

sources ? Because transition is used as converstion therapy in Iran so it is at least untrue in one country. 

“If transmen transition to escape womanhood why is there transwomen ?” 

You really didn’t research this did you ? the radfem answer is that transwomen are either gay men who have gender disphoria OR AGP (autogynephiles) read this if you want to learn more about it: https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-elephant-in-the-room

“why would people who have male privileges choose to give that up” 

you are assuming they lose their male privileges but I will need sources on that because most transwomen do not pass and are treated more as special men than as women.

“We have already shown you that transphobia is far more rife and damaging than homophobia” 

did I miss that part ? When ? You just said that ? Without backing it up ?

“anti trans narratives constantly contradict itself” 

No we do not, we are feminist so we OF COURSE we analyse men and women differently, this is an issue of gender which radical feminism posit as an hierarchy, trying to explain transwomen and transmen with the same arguments is doomed to fail because they were not equal in their relation to gender to begin with. Do you think black people trying to pass as white do it for the same reasons white people try to have more black features ? Of course not.

“What am I a lesbian or a homophobe ?”

 You are both, you are a lesbian in denial with a deep case of internalized misogyny and homophobia. You know yo can be both sexist and a woman right ? Well it’s the same here.

I heard “Simone de Beauvoir” and I knew they were going to be really fucking stupid with that “One is not born a woman but rather becomes a woman” quote and THERE IT IS! Please read the book. She is not saying male can become women if they try hard enough, she is saying basically the same thing JK Rowling’s quote said which is that “womanhood” as it is forced on women is alien and not natural and the point is that we should not accept it, it’s a feminist quote on femininity and I am so sick of men using it to say that they are women.

Transactivists acting as if sex recognition patterns don’t exists is exhausting so I won’t comment on “nobody checks if you have XX chromosomes before passing you over for a promotion” other than to say : passing over for promotions happens a lot when women are pregnant and after giving birth stop acting as if misogyny is unrelated to our reproduction capacities it is fucking insulting.

“transwomen will support [fights against tampon tax and FGM] too” 

FGM was a bad choice here considering transactivists tried to stop a bill against FGM .  I will need sources here actually since I never seen a transwoman fighting for women’s right in my life.

Ok I let a lot passes here because I’m tired but we are 48:40 in the video and fuck you “intersectional feminism” is not about males. It was for black women. It is not reductionist to say women are people with a vagina, this is just a definition, and one that applies to 50% of the population at that, there is litteraly no definition of woman that includes more people than that.

Imagine thinking “women are people with vagina” is reductionist but not calling women “vulva owners”. Please , I am begging for coherence.

“transwomen who experience greater abuse than cisgender women will ever experience” . 

This is revolting. I don’t have any other words. I am glad this is the end of the video because I would have stopped immediately if this was at the start. What abuse transwomen can experience than ciswomen cannot ? Because I would have thought forced pregnancy was horrific but maybe this doesn’t compare to being misgendered?

“most people are comfortable with transwomen going into women’s bathrooms” https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39147/bsa34_moral_issues_final.pdf

It says 13% of women are at least uncomfortable with sharing bathroom with transwomen, why are we ignoring their wishes? Because 0.1% of the population wants to ?  Whatever, the really interesting thing in this study is that for this question they defined “transwomen” as someone who has gone through all the steps to become a woman aka someone with surgery. I find extremely misleading that this is used for bathroom bills which defines transwomen as male identifying as women. Do you think the numbers would be the same if they specified the transwoman in question still has a penis ? Which is the case for most transwomen btw?

#anon #jammiedodgers #transgender #op is a terf #this took wayyy to long don't read this

[lesbianfeminists]

There’s More Than One Way to ‘Erase’ Women

On 28th May Hungary’s Parliament signed a bill into law which ends legal recognition for transgender people. The votes of rightwing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party pushed the legislation through by a majority in the context of a pandemic in which he is ruling by decree indefinitely. The changes to Hungary’s Registry Act will restrict gender to biological sex at birth, a status determined by primary sex characteristics and chromosomes. All other forms of identification are tied to birth certificates in Hungary so these too will reflect birth sex.

Trans advocacy and human rights groups argue that it will lead to more discrimination because Hungarians are required to produce identity cards on a frequent basis. This means that they will, in effect, be ‘outing’ themselves in everyday situations which may be humiliating, at best, and dangerous at worst. The government say they are merely clarifying sex within the law; a disingenuous claim in a political context in which the traditional family is increasingly being placed at the heart of a ‘white’, Christian nation.

Julie Bindel recently argued that it was unwise of Pink News to look at Orban’s policies in relation to transgender people in isolation. They should instead be conceived of as part of a broader attack on women’s rights and the rights of minority groups.

But Bindel’s advice applies equally to those gender critical feminists, albeit small in number, who are responding positively to the news from Hungary, on the basis that Orban recognises the immutability of sex. Whilst Baroness Nicholson might see no problem in adding Hungary to her list of causes for celebration, feminists shouldn’t lose sight of a much bigger picture.

In 2013, Orban introduced a constitutional reform which enshrined the idea of ​​the family as the foundation of the nation in the Basic Law. Although abortion was legalised after the Second World War, since 2013 the Constitution has stated that “the life of the fetus must be protected from the moment of conception”. Orban has yet to move on abortion but he publically supports anti-abortion organisations and in 2017 he opened The World Congress of Families conference in Budapest. The WCF is a United States coalition is a virulently anti-abortion organisation which promotes Christian right values globally.

By 2018, he was setting out his plan for a new “cultural era” which included amending the kindergarten curriculum so that it would promote a “national identity, Christian cultural values, patriotism, attachment to homeland and family”. (5) In 2019, the government announced a series of pro-natalist measures which included a lifetime income tax exemption for mothers of four children and free IVF treatment for married heterosexual couples. These policies aim to reverse demographic decline and curb immigration, at one and the same time. Orban argues that “it’s a national interest to restore natural reproduction. Not one interest among others – but the only one. It’s a European interest too. It is the European interest”.

In essence, he subscribes to the white nationalist “demographic winter” theory, which claims that the “purity” of European civilisation is in peril due to the increasing numbers of non-white races, in general, and Muslim people, in particular. Orban’s draconian measures against migrants and refugees dovetail with this belief system.

Such policies also cast women in the role of wombs of the nation, echoing the eugenicist policies of Hitler, who also provided financial inducements to bribe Aryan women into motherhood. As Anita Komuves, a Hungarian journalist, tweeted, “Can we just simply declare that Hungary is Gilead from now on?”

Homosexuality is legal in Hungary, but same sex couples are unable to marry and registered partnerships don’t offer equivalent legal rights. Orban’s government has made the promotion of patriarchal family values so central to its cultural mission and policies that anti gay rhetoric amongst politicians has become commonplace. Last year, László Kövér, the speaker of the Hungarian parliament, compared supporters of lesbian and gay marriage and adoption to paedophiles. “Morally, there is no difference between the behaviour of a paedophile and the behaviour of someone who demands such things,” he said. (9) In 2017 the annual Pride event was attacked by violent right-wing extremists hurling faeces, acid and Molotov cocktails at the marchers and police.

Just as Orban has sought to eliminate the notion of gender identity within the law, so too has he gone to war against what he describes as “gender ideology”. In 2018 he issued a decree revoking funding for gender studies programmes in October that year. (10) At the time, this move was welcomed by some gender critical and radical feminists on the basis that postmodern feminism in the academy has contributed to a dogmatic sex denialism which is unable to analyse the basis of female oppression. (11) But, as with the changes in relation to the legal recognition of transgender people, Orban’s reasons were anything but feminist. As one government spokesman explained: “The government’s standpoint is that people are born either male or female, and we do not consider it acceptable for us to talk about socially constructed genders rather than biological sexes.” (12) Gender studies is seen as promoting too fluid an understanding of male and female roles in the place of a fixed social order in which women’s biological destiny is to be married mothers. The decision to withdraw funding from gender studies didn’t come out of nowhere. At a party congress in December 2015, László Kövér, one of the founders of the Fidesz party, stated:

“We don’t want the gender craziness. We don’t want to make Hungary a futureless society of man-hating women, and feminine men living in dread of women, and considering families and children only as barriers to self-fulfilment… And we would like if our daughters would consider, as the highest quality of self-fulfilment, the possibility of giving birth to our grandchildren.”

Orban’s war against “gender” also led to Hungary’s National Assembly recently passing a declaration which refused to ratify the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe’s Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.It was claimed that the convention promoted “gender ideology” and particular issue was taken with the section that defined gender as “socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men.” Hungarian politicians object to an understanding of gender which recognises that women’s ‘role’ can change, even improve (!), as societies change, an unwelcome thought to those wishing to uphold men’s power in the family and discourage homosexuality. As with a number of Orban’s other policy decisions, there was also a racist element to the refusal to ratify the convention. The fact that it would have afforded protections for migrant and refugee women was in direct contradiction to Hungary’s anti-immigration policies. As one far right, Hungarian blog put it:

“By refusing the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, Hungary, says ‘Yes!’ to the protection of women but ‘No!’ to gender ideology and illegal migration.”

(Women’s groups in the UK have long suspected that our government refuses to ratify the Convention as it would bind them to properly funding the VAWG sector.)

Orban’s concern about “gender” and “gender ideology” is shared by other states with a socially conservative programme for women. Some gender critical and radical feminists use this term, as well, which can be confusing when our respective analyses have so little in common. Here, it refers to a set of beliefs that conflate sex with gender and deny the material reality of sex-based oppression. This is a far cry from the definitions shared by the growing “anti gender” movements in Central and Eastern Europe.

These movements privilege biological understandings of what it means to be a man or a woman but only do so in order to insist that our biology should determine (and restrict) our lives.They want to hang on the man/woman binary because they believe that gendered roles and expectations, ones which place women below men, are determined by sex. In short, they deny that gender is a social construct. “Gender ideology”, as a term, has become something of a dustbin category, deployed variously to attack feminism, same sex marriage, reproductive rights and sex education in schools. Trump’s administration is engaged in an ongoing fight to remove the word “gender” from United Nations documents.

In this context, we need to remember that “gender” is still most frequently used as a proxy for women/sex in UN Conventions like CEDAW (The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women). The term is also increasingly – to our concern – conflated with gender identity with all the risks that this entails.

But that fact shouldn’t blind us to the main motivations of those who oppose the use of the word gender at UN level. When conservatives say they want to replace the term “gender” with “sex”, it’s invariably to oppose women’s equality with men and to enshrine patriarchal understandings of women’s place in society. Replacing the language of gender with the language of sex is, in their terms, a route to a biologically driven and restricted notion of reproduction as women’s only fate. Replacing the language of gender with the language of sex is not necessarily a feminist enterprise.

Unless we establish very clear lines between ourselves and rightwing, religious fundamentalists, we are in danger of being swallowed up and used by the most anti-women, global forces, the canniest of which offer themselves as ‘partners’ in the fight against gender ideology: witness several events hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a hugely powerful Christian Right think tank which has platformed radical feminists.

The Heritage Foundation has particular chutzpah. Whilst claiming to be an ally in the feminist fight to preserve female only spaces and sex-based rights, it opposes reproductive rights, lesbian and gay rights and any measures to counter discrimination against women, notably the Equal Rights Amendment. In fact, it blames feminists for the current state of affairs – though Ryan Anderson would never be rude enough to say so at their shared events. “Transgender theories are part of the feminist goal of a sexual revolution that eliminates the proprietary family and celebrates non-monogamous sexual experiences.”

When it’s not cynically partnering with (a small number) of radical feminists as ‘cover’, the Heritage Foundation enjoys the company of the Holy See, the universal government of the Catholic Church which operates from Vatican City State. (20) The Vatican has opposed the notion of gender since the early-2000s, arguing that males and females have intrinsic attributes which aren’t shaped by social forces. Recently, they published an educational document called “Male and female he created them”.

Woman’s Place UK has consistently stated an opposition to working with, or supporting the work of the religious right (and their female representatives). Not simply because it is strategically disastrous but because it is wrong in principle. (22) When we look at what is happening in Hungary it is well to remember that there is more than one way to ‘erase’ women. Andrea Pető, a professor at the Central European University of Budapest, commenting on the official reports that Hungary (and Poland) send to the UN CEDAW Committee, noted, “we see that they replace the concept of women with that of family, women as independent agents are slowly disappearing from public policy documents, behind the single word family.”

https://womansplaceuk.org/2020/06/18/womens-rights-under-attack-hungary/

#rightwing #gender

[a-room-of-my-own]

Hi! Did you see the NewStasteman interview with Judith Butler? The way she framed the whole debate about gender is so depressing, I cannot believe it... And that's without going into the Rowling debate, the more I read about it on Twitter and tumblr and the most depressed I get. How can womanhood be reduced to a feeling anyone can claim?

https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times

I had not seen it so thank you for giving me the opportunity to read it. She’s really manipulative and that’s pretty scary honestly. I picked up a few examples to show you 

“I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. (…) I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. (…)I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen.  

It’s “our” responsibility to act on something she cannot prove? It’s quite easy to observe that trans-activists are an active minority within the feminist movement. On the other hand, it’s much harder to prove than most people support modern trans-activism in all its implications. She doesn’t give any source, proof or figures to support her claim but ask people to fight for it, nevertheless. That’s faith, not fact. 

If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” [the problem of men claiming to be trans to access women’s space] we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life. 

Then again, no proof, when many gender critical bloggers have lists of dozens of examples of men using self-ID to access bathrooms, women’s shelters, women’s prisons, some of them sex offenders.  

The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. 

That’s a lot of words to call women who are afraid of men “hysterical”. #sorority 

Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. The fact that such fantasies pass as public argument is itself cause for worry. 

Word salad that could be translated like this: our priority shouldn’t be protecting women from men, it should be accommodating men, because #notallmen are predators, so it would be very unfair to them, uwu. Men’s concerns should always be considered while women who are afraid are irrational. 

I am not aware that terf is used as a slur.  

I’m 99% sure that’s a lie, but okay. 

I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women's spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? 

Women who want to have spaces without men should be called exclusionary, because we define women based on their relationship with men and how they include them. Suuuuure. 

If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists? My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples. 

We’re not the ones telling you can cure a psychological problem with cross-sex hormones and amputations, but we are the one pathologizing trans and GNC people. That’s hi-la-rious.  

My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived. 

Meaningless word salad > "women should let men redefine the word woman as they please"

Let us be clear that the debate here [between people who support JKR and others] is not between feminists and trans activists. There are trans-affirmative feminists, and many trans people are also committed feminists. So one clear problem is the framing that acts as if the debate is between feminists and trans people. It is not. One reason to militate against this framing is because trans activism is linked to queer activism and to feminist legacies that remain very alive today. 

TLDR: Real feminist can only be trans-supporters. 

Feminism has always been committed to the proposition that the social meanings of what it is to be a man or a woman are not yet settled. We tell histories about what it meant to be a woman at a certain time and place, and we track the transformation of those categories over time.  

That’s gender for you Judith, not biological sex. Social identities vary, biological sex is a constant. Saying that isn't essentialism.

We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings. It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women...  

“Women who are afraid of men are irrational” third instalment.  

Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity. The trans-exclusionary radical feminist position attacks the dignity of trans people.   

Men are whoever they say they are, women are whoever men say they are.  

One does not have to be a woman to be a feminist, and we should not confuse the categories. Men who are feminists, non-binary and trans people who are feminists, are part of the movement if they hold to the basic propositions of freedom and equality that are part of any feminist political struggle.  

Many feminists consider that men can only be feminist allies, so the debate is clearly not settled.  

When laws and social policies represent women, they make tacit decisions about who counts as a woman, and very often make presuppositions about what a woman is. We have seen this in the domain of reproductive rights. So the question I was asking then is: do we need to have a settled idea of women, or of any gender, in order to advance feminist goals?   

Does “woman” need to have a *gasp* definition? Judith is saying it doesn’t. You’ll notice that she doesn’t say that anything about “man” not having a stable definition. She believes it’s possible to fight against misogyny while having no stable definition for what a woman is. Laughable. 

I put the question that way… to remind us that feminists are committed to thinking about the diverse and historically shifting meanings of gender, and to the ideals of gender freedom. By gender freedom, I do not mean we all get to choose our gender. Rather, we get to make a political claim to live freely and without fear of discrimination and violence against the genders that we are. 

Word salad > “we don’t get to choose our gender but we get to choose it I am very smart"

Many people who were assigned “female” at birth never felt at home with that assignment, and those people (including me) tell all of us something important about the constraints of traditional gender norms for many who fall outside its terms.   

Many women have internalized misogyny and homophobia, which in turn had a huge impact on their sense of self and self-esteem, but that doesn’t mean they’re not women Judith. And I don’t think any woman who was forcefully married, who had her vulva mutilated for religious reasons, had to wear a veil since she was a toddler, or was sold as a child into prostitution ever “felt at home” with having been born a girl, you absolute unit.  

Feminists know that women with ambition are called “monstrous” or that women who are not heterosexual are pathologised. We fight those misrepresentations because they are false and because they reflect more about the misogyny of those who make demeaning caricatures than they do about the complex social diversity of women. Women should not engage in the forms of phobic caricature by which they have been traditionally demeaned. And by “women” I mean all those who identify in that way. 

That was going so well until the last sentence 

I think we are living in anti-intellectual times, and that this is evident across the political spectrum. 

JB, darling, just read your own word salad and get some self-awareness. 

The quickness of social media allows for forms of vitriol that do not exactly support thoughtful debate. We need to cherish the longer forms. 

Tell that to your supporters Miss I Wasn't Aware TERF Were A Slur.

I am against online abuse of all kinds. I confess to being perplexed by the fact that you point out the abuse levelled against JK Rowling, but you do not cite the abuse against trans people and their allies that happens online and in person. 

Kindergarten argument, but sure. Also, yet again, no proof. 

I disagree with JK Rowling's view on trans people, but I do not think she should suffer harassment and threats. Let us also remember, though, the threats against trans people in places like Brazil, the harassment of trans people in the streets and on the job in places like Poland and Romania – or indeed right here in the US.  

“Threats against JKR are bad BUT have you seen what’s happening in Brazil?”. I’m sorry what? Also, could trans-activist please stop instrumentalizing Brazilian stats, since they reflect the situation of prostituted homosexual transsexuals ?  

 So if we are going to object to harassment and threats, as we surely should, we should also make sure we have a large picture of where that is happening, who is most profoundly affected, and whether it is tolerated by those who should be opposing it. It won’t do to say that threats against some people are tolerable but against others are intolerable. 

NO ONE, literally NO ONE said that threats against trans people were acceptable. In fact, most, if not pretty much all threats, especially physical threats, don’t come from radical feminists, but from men. Basically, what she’s saying is “who cares about threats against JKR, trans people (men) matter more”.  

If trans-exclusionary radical feminists understood themselves as sharing a world with trans people, in a common struggle for equality, freedom from violence, and for social recognition, there would be no more trans-exclusionary radical feminists.  

♫ Kumbaya my Lord, Kumbaya ♪ 

It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society. 

All radical feminists are right wingers, sure. 

Anyway, it's terrible that this kind of article is taken seriously when it could be summed up as "women are irrational and hysterical, men can be women and redefine the word woman if they so wish"...

#Gender critical #Judith Butler #And that's sooo pompous #Way to hide the emptiness of your reasoning ma'am

[ummadum]

Why José Mourinho is problematic

I’m not a fan of José Mourinho and whilst I can come around to his tactics, I really doubt I will ever like him as a person.

Football is a very misogynistic, homophobic, racist and generally disrespectful place where people, especially powerful people, are not held accountable for their actions and words. This post is an accumulation of some of the very worrying things Jose has said and done over the years, that he has never acknowledged nor apologised for. I think that it’s important to keep these things in mind especially now, because the “José is a great person” idea is on the rise again. Whilst someone like Sergè, who also said some really disrespectful things, but someone who apologised for them and was willing to learn from his mistake, has his mistakes constantly brought up again, we are ignoring and burying all the things that are really wrong with our manager. 

And if the club have asked Sergé to acknowledge and apologise for his statements (the right move), then we should do the same with Mourinho, who was much older when he said those things and had and has a lot more power and reach. 

Homophobic

In 2012, as Real Madrid manager, Mourinho was caught on camera using “marocones” (which means faggot in English) to refer to the referees pre champion league match agains CSKA Moscow. 

This is a link to the video [x]  it’s about 20 seconds in.

The European Gay and Lesbian Sports Federation (EGLSF) released a statement [x] calling for action, which includes this:

Louise Englefield, Co-president of the EGLSF, an organisation representing over 17,000 lesbian gay bisexual and trans (LGBT) athletes across Europe, said: “Homophobia is unacceptable from anyone in football, much less from one of the game’s most senior figures. We are deeply disappointed that Mr Mourinho is casually using homophobic terms of abuse in his workplace. It is especially sad that these comments have been made during the International Football v Homophobia campaign week. This is a time during which the European football community should be joining forces to tackle discrimination and prejudice against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people . As long-standing partners of the FARE network, we call on UEFA to take action and impose appropriate sanctions.”

And yet nothing ever happened, no apology, no acknowledgment and no sanctions.

Racist

Josés stance on racism is an interesting one, because he has publicly stated that he is opposed to direct racism, yet does apparently not believe that there is an underlying structural racism problem in the world and in football.

About coaching opportiunities for black coaches

In 2014, when questioned whether football needs a Rooney rule, which in the NFL ensures that ethnic minority candidates are adequately represented in the interview process for head coaching positions, he said this: 

When asked if he felt football was doing enough to bring in black managers and whether he felt a quota should be introduced, Mourinho said: “There is no racism in football. If you are good, you are good. If you are good, you get the job.” “If you are good, you prove that you deserve the job. Football is not stupid to close the doors to top people. If you are top, you are top.” [x]

At the moment of publication of this article, only two of 92 clubs in the top four divisions in English football had a black manager. And only four black managers have ever worked in the premier league. 

His statement warranted this lengthy response from the then FIFA Vice-President Jeffrey Webb. [x] Who points to a much larger problem of lack of enthnic people in power in football in general.

About Hair

“I want to push the young players on my team to have a proper haircut, not the Rastafarian or the others they have.”

I don't have the exact source but it’s mentioned in multiple “best of José quotes articles [x]  [x]

Misogyny

Dr. Carniero

The most obvious place to start talking about Mourinho and his issues with misogyny is his treatment of Dr. Eva Carneiro who was the Chelsea first team doctor from 2009 until september 2015. During the first Game of the 15/16 season against Swansea Dr. Carneiro and chief physiotherapist Jon Fearn were called into the pitch by the referee to attend to Eden Hazard who had gone down. It was towards the end of the match and Chelsea had already had Courtois sent off and were therefore down to 9 men. Under the laws of the game, the medical staff is only allowed on the pitch if the referee summons them and once they have been summoned it's their duty to attend to the player. Mourinho took an issue with both of them rushing onto the field, because it left his team temporarily with 8 outfield players and so he allegedly called Dr. Carniero “filha da puta” which translates to “daughter of a bitch/whore”. He says he didn’t use the female version, but that he said “filho da puta”  and that “swearing is a part of football”. This then led to a lot of discourse about whether it was actually abusive language towards a woman or not. 

The more damning thing happened later in the press conference. 

“I wasn't happy with my medical staff because even if you are a medical doctor or secretary on the bench, you have to understand the game.If you go to the pitch to assist a player, then you must be sure that a player has a serious problem. I was sure that Eden didn't have a serious problem. He had a knock and was very tired.My medical department left me with eight fit outfield players in a counter attack after a set piece and we were worried we didn't have enough players left.”

“You have to understand the game”, especially when aimed at a woman already comes with enough negative and misogynistic connotations. And there was no lack of “understanding of the game” in this instance, it was their duty to attend to the player according to the rules. Maybe he should have had a word with Eden Hazard about not feigning injuries instead.

But this is not where this ends. Following this incidence, Fearn (a Man) was removed from first team matches and Dr. Carniero was removed from all first team duties such as training sessions, matches and even entering the team hotel. And as Duncan Castles, one of Josés mouthpieces in the british press then reported: 

Mourinho is said to have held reservations about Carneiro’s role within the first-team squad since at least last year. While there is no question about her professional abilities, the Portuguese coach was concerned that the dressing room dynamic was affected by the presence of a female. According to a source, some players had expressed misgivings to the coaching staff about the set-up, arguing that it forced them to alter their usual behavior in a team environment.  [x]

The same women that had worked with Chelsea's first team for 6 years and under 4 different managers just suddenly became a problem with Josés arrival. Maybe there were some players that complained about her, but José should have told them to get over it. Sadly, I can’t link you to the original source of these quotes because the website does not exist anymore but here are some more articles referring to the same quotes. [x] [x]

Her dismissal went to court and she and Chelsea ended up settling the case. 

This whole thing ties into the larger issue of misogyny in football, this is an interesting article about how 2/3 s of the women in football face sexist discrimination. [x]

Montse Benitez

Rafael Benitez’ wife Montse Benitez made a joke, in 2015, about Rafa cleaning up Josés messes because Rafa just got the Real Madrid Job and she said “we tidy up his messes”, but afterwards added that it was understandable because there are only so many top clubs out there. 

The first part of his response is very much ok:

“The lady is a bit confused, with all respect. The only club where her husband [directly] replaced me was at Inter Milan, where in six months he destroyed the best team in Europe at the time.”

The second part however wasn’t:

“And for her to think about me and to speak about me, I think she needs to occupy her time — and if she takes care of her husband’s diet, she will have less time to speak about me.”

He told her to get back into the kitchen and that is such a backwards thing to say to women.  [x]

Generally Women 

In 2013, whilst complaining about Arsenal players complaining to the officials he said

“ you know they like to cry” and then added “Football is for men, or for women with fantastic attitude.”

José mourinho used being a woman as an insult to emasculate Arsenal players. Which is incredibly sexist. 

His post match tirade also includes some lovely xenophobia for good measure, which is a bit hypocritical coming from José. (I want to remind all Spurs fans that there was massive outrage after the United match, when similar criticism was aimed at Lamela)

"You know, they like to cry," Mourinho said. "That's tradition. But I prefer to say, and I was telling it to the fourth official, that English people – Frank Lampard, for example – would never provoke a situation like that. "Players from other countries, especially some countries, have that in their blood. So, if there is contact or an opponent is aggressive, they don't keep going. But this is English football. Foreign players are bringing lots of good things. They come here because they are talented. But I prefer English blood in football. English blood in this situation is: 'Come on, let's go.' Mikel's tackle is hard and aggressive but football is for men or for women with fantastic attitude. It's true."

[x]

Generally problematic things he has said

Him calling Wenger a voyeur is not included but he did end up actually apologising for that. 

2006: "Sometimes you see beautiful people with no brains. Sometimes you have ugly people who are intelligent, like scientists," [x]

Me being a scientist probably makes me even more annoyed with this statement, but honestly can we get rid of this stupid idea.

 2005: “Ricardo Carvalho seems to have problems understanding things, maybe he should have an IQ test, or go to a mental hospital or something.” [x] 

Statements against him that he took to court

A journalist for spanish newspaper Marca wrote about José during his time at chelsea:

“the type of person who would flee after knocking someone down"

A letter from Mourinho's lawyers then read:

"In our eyes this phrase is... degrading and was used in a manner which was completely unnecessary in the critique."

Chelsea also took action against a former Barcelona director after he posted the following on twitter during a match against Manchester City.

"It's lamentable the psychopath celebrating goals as if he was a player." 

[x]

Which is utterly ironic when taking all the things he has said about others into account.

A lot of these quotes are older, but judging from his recent choice of words, the constant emasculation of his players also shown in a documentary meant to make him look good, he might not be saying these things publicly anymore but the subtext and undertones still remain, therefore not really making it look like he has learned from his past mistakes and has become a better person in the slightest. Also, these quotes are just the tip of the iceberg of what kind of a human being José Mourinho really is. He is an incredibly manipulative individual that chooses all of his words, especially those to the press, really carefully and if these quotes are things that he chose to say deliberately, then I’m worried about what other opinions he has that he does not voice to the public. But if someone treats him like he does others he has an issue with it.

He can be an interesting individual to watch and his amount of arrogance can be fairly entertaining, but his general lack of respect for his players and staff shouldn't be overlooked especially in a world which is trying to move towards the future. And a footballing world at least saying that they are trying to remove discrimination from the game. 

I don’t want him to be sacked, but I would really like to remind people of the kind of person he is and for him to acknowledge these statements and apologise for it. But because this is football and Agueros actions with the lines-woman were dismissed because he is “a good person” I doubt that that will ever happen. 

#jose mourinho #spurs #my dislike for this man is rooted in real life issues #just because he is nice to your fave does not mean that he is a good person #can we please just not rewrite history and forget about his problematic past when he has showed zero signs of having learnt #Yes he says some funny things #but he also says some really really bad things that shouldn't be forgotten!

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: Your blog isn’t what I expected for someone who champions conservative values because it is very rich in celebrating culture and strikes a very humane pose. I learn a great deal from your clever and playful posts. Now and again your feminism reveals itself and so I wonder what kind of feminist are you, if at all? It’s a little confusing for a self professing conservative blog.  

I must thank you for your kind words about my blog and your praise is undeserved but I do appreciate that you enjoy aspects of high culture that you may not have come across.

My conservatism is not political or ideological per se and - I get this a lot - not taken from the rather inflammatory American discourse of left and right that is currently playing itself out in America. For example my distaste for the likes of Trump is well known and I have not been shy in poking fun at him here on my blog. Partly because he’s not a real conservative in my eyes but a .... < insert as many expletives as you want here > ....but mainly he has no character. My point is my conservatism isn’t defined by what goes on across from the pond.

Rather my conservatism is rooted in deeply British intellectual traditions and draw in inspiration from Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, Roger Scruton, and other British thinkers as well as cultural writers like Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Waugh. So it’s a state of mind or a state of being rather than a rigid ideological set of beliefs.

Of course there is a lot of overlap of shared values and perspectives between the conservatism found elsewhere and what it is has historically been in English history. But my conservative beliefs are not tied to a political party for example. I wash my hands of politicians of all stripes if you must know. I won’t get into that right now but I hope to come back and and address it in a later post.

As for my feminism that is indeed an interesting question. It’s a very loaded and combustible word especially in these volatile times where vitriol and victimhood demonisation rather than civility and honest discussion so often flavour our social discourse on present day culture and politics.

I would be fine to describe myself as an old school feminist if I am allowing myself to be labelled that is. And in that case there is no incompatibility between being that sort of small ‘f’ feminist and someone who holds a conservative temperament. They are mutually compatible.

To understand what I mean let me give you a potted history of feminism. It’s very broad brush and I know I am over simplifying the rich history of each wave of feminism so I’m making this caveat here.

Broadly speaking the feminist movement is usually broken up into three “waves.” The first wave in the late 19th and early 20th centuries pushed for political equality. The second wave, in the 1960s and 1970s, pushed for legal and professional equality. And the third wave, in the past couple decades but especially now, has pushed for social equality as well as social and racial justice. It is the first wave and bits of the second wave that I broadly identify my feminism with.

Why is that?

Again broadly speaking, in the first wave and overlapping with the second wave legal and political equality are clearly defined and measurable, but in the third wave (the current wave) social equality and social justice is murky and complicated.

Indeed the current feminist movement - which now also includes race and trans issues in a big way - is not a protest against unjust laws or sexist institutions as much as it is the protest against people’s unconscious beliefs as well as centuries-worth of cultural norms and heritage that have been biased in some ways against women but also crucially have served women reasonably well in unwritten ways.

Of course women still get screwed over in myriad ways. It’s just that whereas before it was an open and accepted part of society, today nearly all - as they see it - is non-obvious and even unconscious. So we have moved from policing legalised equality opporttunities to policing thought.

I understand the resentment - some of it sincere - against the perceived unjustness of women’s lot in life. But this third wave of feminism is fuelled in raw emotion, dollops of self-victimhood, and selfish avoidance of personal responsibility. Indeed it bloats itself by latching onto every social and racial outrage of the moment.

It becomes incredibly difficult to actually define ‘equality’ not in terms of the goals of the first wave of feminists or even the second because we can objectively measure legal, civil and political goals e.g. It’s easy to measure whether boys and girls are receiving the same funding in schools. It’s easy to see whether a man and woman are being paid appropriately for the same work. But how does one measure equality in terms of social justice? If people have a visceral dislike of Ms X over Mr Y is it because she’s a woman or only because she’s a shitty human being in person?

The problem is that feminism is more than a philosophy or a group of beliefs. It is, now, also a political movement, a social identity, as well as a set of institutions. In other words, it’s become tribal identity politics thanks to the abstract ideological currents of cultural Marxism.

Once a philosophy goes tribal, its beliefs no longer exist to serve some moral principle, but rather they exist to serve the promotion of the group - with all their unconscious biases and preferences for people who pass our ‘purity test’ of what true believers should be i.e. like us, built in.

So we end up in this crazy situation where tribal feminism laid out a specific set of paranoid beliefs  - that everywhere you look there is constant oppression from the patriarchy, that masculinity is inherently violent, and that the only differences between men and women are figments of our cultural imagination, not based on biology or science.

Anyone who contradicted or questioned these beliefs soon found themselves kicked out of the tribe. They became one of the oppressors. And the people who pushed these beliefs to their furthest conclusions — that penises were a cultural construction of oppression, that school mascots encourage rape and sexual violence, and that marriage is state sanctioned rape or as is now the current fad that biological sex is not a scientific fact or not recognising preferred pronouns is a form of hate speech etc— were rewarded with greater status within the tribe.

Often those shouting the loudest have been white middle class educated liberals who try to outcompete each other within the tribe with such virtue signalling. Since the expansion of higher education in the 1980s in Britain (and the US too I think), a lot of these misguided young people have been doing useless university degrees - gender studies, performing arts, communication studies, ethnic studies etc - that have no application in the real world of work. I listen to CEOs and other hiring executives and they are shocked at how uneducated graduate students are and how such graduates lack even the basic skills in logic and critical problem solving. And they seem so fragile to criticism.

In a rapidly changing global economy, a society if it wants to progress and prosper is in need of  valuing skills, languages, technical knowledge, and general competence (i.e critical thinking) but all too often what our current society has instead are middle class young men and women with a useless piece of toilet paper that passes for a university degree, a mountain of monetary debt, and no job prospects. No wonder they feel it’s someone else’s fault they can’t get on to that first rung of the ladder of life and decide instead that pulling down statues is more cathartic and vague calls to end ‘institutional systemic racism’. Oh I digress....sorry.

My real issue with the current wave of feminists is that they have an attitude problem.

Previous generations of feminists sacrificed a great deal in getting women the right to vote, to go to university, to have an equal education, for protection from domestic violence, and workplace discrimination, and equal pay, and fair divorce laws. All these are good things and none actually undermine the natural order of things such as marriage or family. It is these women I truly admire and I am inspired by in my own life because of their grit and relentless drive and not curl up into a ball of self pity and victimhood.

More importantly they did so NOT at the expense of men. Indeed they sought not to replace men but to seek parity in legal ways to ensure equality of opportunity (not outcomes). This is often forgotten but is important to stress.

Certainly for the first wave of feminists they did not hate men but rather celebrated them. Pioneers such as Amelia Earhart - to give a personal example close to my heart as a former military aviator myself - admired men a great deal. Othern women like another heroine of mine, Gettrude Bell, the first woman to get a First Class honours History degree at Oxford and renowned archaeologist and Middle East trraveller and power breaker never lost her admiration for her male peers.

I love men too as a general observation. I admire many that I am blessed to know in my life. I admire them not because they are necessarily men but primarily because of their character. It’s their character makes me want to emulate them by making me determined and disciplined to achieve my own life goals through grit and effort.

Character for me is how I judge anyone. It matters not to me your colour, creed or sexual orientation. But what matters is your actions.

I find it surreal that we have gone from a world where Christian driven Martin Luther King envisaged a world where a person would be judged from the content of their character and not the colour of their skin (or gender) to one where it’s been reversed 360 degrees. Now we are expected to judge people by the colour of their skin, their gender and sexual orientation. So what one appears on the outside is more important than what’s on the inside. It’s errant nonsense and a betrayal of the sacrifices of those who fought for equality for all by past generations.

Moreover as a Christian, such notions are unbiblical. The bible doesn’t recognise race - despite what slave owners down the ages have believed - nor gender - despite what the narrow minded men in pulpits have spewed out down the centuries - but it does recognise the fact of original sin in the human condition. We are all fallen, we are all broken, and we are all in need of grace.

Even if one isn’t religious inclined there is something else to consider.

For past generations the stakes were so big. By contrast this present generation’s stakes seem petty and small. Indeed the current generation’s struggle comes down to fighting for safe spaces, trigger warnings and micro aggressions. In other words, it’s just about the protection of feelings. No wonder our generation is seen as the snowflake generation.

A lot of this nonsense can be put down to the intellectually fraudulent teachings of critical theory and post colonial studies in the liberal arts departments on university campuses and how such ideas have and continue to seep into the mainstream conversation with such concepts as ‘white privilege’, ‘white fragility’, ‘whites lives don’t matter’, ‘abolish whiteness’ ‘rape culture’ etc which feels satisfying as intellectual masturbation but has no resonance in the real world where people get on with the daily struggle of making something of their lives.

But yet its critical mass is unsustainable because the ideas inherent within it are intellectually unstable and will eventually implode in on itself - witness the current war between feminists (dismissed uncharitably as terfs) who define women by their biological sex and want to protect their sexual identity from those who for example are championing trans rights as sexuality defined primarily as a social construct. So you have third wave feminists taking completely different stances on the same issues. For instance there’s the sex positive feminists and there’s also anti-porn, sex negative feminists. How can the same thing either be empowering or demeaning? There are so many third wave feminists taking completely different stances on the same exact topics that it’s difficult to even place what they want anymore.The rallying cries of third wave feminism have largely been issues that show only one side of the story and leave out a lot of pertinent details.

But the totality of the damage done to the cultural fabric of society is already there to see. Already now we are in this Orwellian scenario where one has to police feelings so that these feminists don’t feel marginalised or oppressed in some undefinable way. This is what current Western culture has been reduced to. I find it ironic in this current politically charged times, that conservatives have become the defenders of liberalism, or at least the defence of the principle of free speech.

To me the Third Wave feminism battle cry seems to be: Once more but with feelings.

With all due respect, fuck feelings. Grow up.

I always ask the same question to friends who are caught up in this current madness be they BLM activists or third wave feminists (yes, I do have friends in these circles because I don’t define my friends by their beliefs but by their character): compared to what?

We live in a systemic racist society! Compared to what?

We live in a patriarchal society where women are subjugated daily! Compared to what?

We live in an authoritarian state! Compared to what?

We live in a corrupt society of privileged elites! Compared to what?

Third-wave? Not so much. By vast majorities, women today are spurning the label of “feminist” - it’s become an antagonising, miserable, culturally Marxian code word for a far-left movement that seeks to confine women into boxes of ‘wokeness’.

For sure, Western societies and culture have its faults - and we should always be aware of that and make meaningful reforms towards that end. Western societies are not perfect but compared to other societies - China? Russia? Saudi Arabia? - in the world today are we really that bad?

Where is this utopian society that you speak of? Has there ever been one in recorded history? As H.L. Mencken memorably put it, “An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.“

I prefer to live in a broken world that is rather than one imagined. When we are rooted in reality and empirical experience can we actually stop wasting time on ‘hurt feelings’ and grievances construed through abstract ideological constructs and get on with making our society better bit by bit so that we can then hand over for our children and grandchildren to inherit a better world, not a perfect one.

Thanks for your question.

#ask #question #feminism #personal #third wave feminism #society #culture

[leahclearwaterdefensesquad]

jessicajnp huge homophobe and ships jake x renesmee/is complicit in pedophilia/grooming in general

Hey anon, you are absolutely right! I just checked @jessicanjpa 's blog and WHEW. That's definitely one for the blocklist. Women who feel the need to point out they're "Christian moms" in their bios already set off alarm bells, for me at least.

I reblogged that post b/c obviously I want to spread the link to donate to the Quileute tribe, but I have deleted it now. There's other posts I can rb/make myself. You are so right, it's bad. I even took screenshots for proof.

TW/CW Homophobia, pedophilic shipping, being a complete self-centered bitch.

Proof of her supporting that nasty ass ship. jfc. I may come back and hyperlink these posts when I'm not on mobile.

And now for the homophobia. This is the ask she was sent where I think she first aired her shitty views.

"aNd OnLy tHe aCt nOtHiNg tO dO wItH tHe iDeNtItY" fucking dumbass karen is what she is.

"If you're enthusiastic about hateful ideology, please stay away from me" THE AUDACITY ON THIS BITCH LITERALLY ALL OF THIS MAKES ME ENTITLED TO SHOVE MY BOOT UP HER ASS!!! As IF homophobia in and of itself isn't already hateful!!!

"I prefer not to endorse or legitimize the act of homosexuality..." Literally everything you see from the link on the bottom does nothing to counteract this statement and Ik - I read the whole fucking thing.

I'll post the screenshots here so y'all can see the self-centered bullshit she calls an apology. Everything I underlined in red is more proof of homophobia or just outright stupidity. Then again, the whole thing is as well.

"... like I tried to explain before, I wasn't homophobic" I would like this @jessicanjpa to know that I am morally opposed to heterosexuality :////. I don't like to endorse it, I mean being str*ight??? What about the children!!! These ppl ship pedophilic ships for God's sake!!!! Their children get exposed to heterosexism and misogynistic gender roles as babies!!! I mean, I won't tell someone that is a cisgendered heterosexual - ugh, it makes me shudder just to say the words - that what they do is simply wrong, but it just - ugh, I just can't legitimize it. It's just too much for me!

... and I mean, if I were to force myself to reckon with the existence of heterosexuality and that I'm heterophobic, I would have to make it all about me and my journey of pseudo spiritual understanding instead of actually LEARNING that the views I still hold are monumentally stupid and harmful. And criticizing my jOuRnEy to understand the heterosexuality issue is just bullying >:(. Calling out and criticizing me out for being heterophobic is just. BULLYING!!! >:(((((

It's just that these people are so hateful!!! 😫 They try to pass laws to okay the discrimination of us gay, bi, and trans folks - look at the current news from here in the so-called Land of the Free! They still try to put us through conversion therapy and even murdering us for merely existing!! It's not like we do that to them - there aren't any laws forcing the str*rights to undergo conversion therapy or being told that they are influenced by the Devil (they are tho). Even though I'm trying to unlearn my heterphobia, I just can't get past these several things about even today's Heterosexual Movement😠!! I'm just me, after all!!! Why do I have to fear for my life in my own home just because they think it makes them proper Christians!!! 😓 I'm trying to unlearn y'all, I truly am!

One day, folks, I'll get there. I'll be able to not interact with a hetero and not cringe on the inside when they're affectionate in front of me. One day, maybe I'll reblog a hetero ship or fanart! One day, maybe I'll write Leah or Rosalie with a man instead of being a huge ole pussy slurping/girl dick sucking lesbian - actually no, that's a lie, that'll never happen.

If anyone doesn't understand why what I underlined (or anything else in those posts, for the matter) is homophobic, I'm not gonna hold your hand for you. Miss Jessica, you don't have to feel comfortable with us homosexuals (also, just say gay or lesbian for fuck's sake, and no, you don't deserve to be asked nicely), bisexuals, transgender people (including non binary ppl ofc), pansexuals, queer ppl, asexuals, or intersex folk. It's not your stupid journey that matters, it's that you think that being LGBT+ is wrong, no matter how you try to word it or what ignorant shit you spit up to justify it. Grow up, you conservative. We don't have time for your bullshit.

And I just want to thank anon real quick for letting me know the douchebag that I reblogged from. I never mean to purposely rb from the bigots so just lmk like anon did and I'll fix that. ❤

#jessicanjpa #personal asks #anon asks #homophobia tw #pedophilic shipping tw #please tell me y'all understand satire #long ass post #blocklist

[marginalized-family-groups]

Marginalized Children in the Face of a Broken Adoption System - Greer A.

    Throughout the history of the United States, marginalized communities have faced the brunt of racial discrimination and prejudice culturally, socially, economically, and politically. An important factor that has contributed to systemic racism throughout the course of the United States is the adoption process. Historically, adoption law has made it extremely difficult for children of color to be adopted by white people and for people of color to adopt white children. This dynamic created by our racist government has set back the foster care and adoption system decades.  

    The adoption process today is long and expensive and makes it difficult for those who struggle financially to engage in adoption. The process of adoption begins with a legal consent from the birthparents to relinquish their child for adoption (Adoption Center). After all legal and agency requirements have been met, a second consent to adoption must be granted to allow the adoptive family to finalize the adoption (Adoption Center).  In most states, a consent from the child is needed. (Adoption Center). Finally, in a court hearing, an attorney representing the adoptive family presents the case and files for an adoption decree in which they can now become the legal guardians of the child (Adoption Center).  A second finalization hearing occurs where the judge can ask final questions to the adoptive family, the child, the attorney, and the social worker (Adoption Center).  This is to ensure the child is being placed in a safe and loving home. This seems straight forward, right? Maybe for the average white adoptive couple. However, this is far from true for parents of color.  

    Every year, about 135,000 children are adopted in the United States. Excluding adoptions by stepparents, 59% of adoptive children come from the welfare or foster care system (Adoption Network). 26% of children who are adopted from the United States are from other countries, and 15% of them are voluntarily relinquished (Adoption Network).  It is important to note that 62% of children who are adopted are adopted within one month of their birth (Adoption Network). The majority of children who are adopted are babies, showing that older children are less likely to be adopted and are most likely seen as less desirable.  How does race play a role into these statistics? According to the Adoption Network, 73% of adoptive parents are white, 40% of adopted children, “are of a different race, culture, or ethnicity than both of their adoptive parents” (Adoption Network).

    The history of adoption places a deep-seated role in adoption policies and law today, greatly due to the presence of racism in the United states for centuries. In the work of Sarah Trembanis, A Darker Hue: Race and Adoption in Richmond, VA, Trembanis outlines the racially charged adoptive process. A Darker Hue seeks to examine how the issues of race and colorism intersect with African American adoptions and state policies during the 1950s and 1960s. The era of Jim Crow laws greatly impacted state policies in regard to laws surrounding the family. For instance, anti-miscenegation laws were common across the country. These laws banned relationships between men and women of different races and would not recognize them as legitimate marriages. Due to anti-miscenegation laws, these families could not be adoptive parents. In addition, religion was many times used as a guise for racism in law. In the state of Virginia, a judge refused to approve the adoption of a blue eyed and blonde hair child to Black parents. However, the reasoning for this was that this decision would protect the children’s inborn Catholicism (Trembanis 2017, p. 8). Trembanis (2017) discusses the “problem of the brown baby” as a public policy as early as the 1940s. Historically, few adoptive homes and orphanages were willing to take children or babies of African American or mixed racial descent. This was due to a variety of reasons. Trembanis argues that this was due to a lack of public funding or agencies that would take on black children, racial prejudice among a majority of white social workers, and a history of informal kin adoptions (Trembanis 2017, pp. 6-8). She also argues that there was a justified concern by African American adoptive families that social workers and the state would judge their families, lifestyles, and homes and would be unwilling to grant a legal adoption.  

    In 1959, in the state of Virginia, the infamous contested adoption case of David Alexander Rowe came to a head. David was born to a fourteen-year-old African American girl, Georgia Mae, who was working as a prostitute when she was impregnated by a twenty seven-year-old white father of two. Georgia Mae was arrested for prostitution and taken to jail while her white counterpart did not face any charges for eliciting sex from a minor. During her arrest, no family members were contacted despite her status as a minor. David’s mother was confined to an all-girls home until her eighteenth birthday after being released from prison. She requested that David be adopted by her aunt. This request seemed to be noncontroversial as the mother wanted him to go to a family member. However, the Virginia Department of Welfare denied this adoption as David was “too fair” to be adopted by a dark-skinned family member despite the aunt passing all home inspection and requirements.  

    While there has been an improvement in the policy and law-making surrounding trans-racial and cultural adoption, there are still many things to be improved. Katherine Sweeney organized and facilitated 15 in-depth interviews with white parents who were willing to adopt children in her pursuit in understanding how race plays a role in adoption choices. She found that parents who were willing to adopt children of color stressed an unwillingness to adopt Black children (Sweeney 2013, p. 44). There is a clear discrepancy between the available adoptive children and the willingness of White adopters to adopt children of color, particularly Black children (Sweeney 2013, p. 44). Racial classification plays an important role in this as well since multiracial children are classified separately from Black children as if multiracial children would not experience racism. Children who are waiting to be adopted are listed with their race, so adoptive parents are making choices based on race whether not it is a conscious thought process or not. White children, specifically infants are at the top of the hierarchy in adoption preference and are typically more expensive to adopt as they are usually adopted through private domestic adoption agencies (Sweeney 2013, p. 48).

    Race and racial discrimination are prevalent in adoption and has been for a long time. Systematically, the welfare and child protective services system continually fail children of color, leaving them stuck in a hurting and broken foster care system. The legality behind the adoption process makes it difficult for children of color to break through the oppressive foster care system. As we move forward as a nation, we must not forget about some of the most vulnerable and marginalized people in our country, our children. Creating racially conscious legislation and dialogue will enable us to benefit children of color instead of favoring a system that seeks to benefit the rich, white, and powerful.  

Word Count: 1184

[yurimother]

Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare - LGBTQ Review

Writing reviews is generally pretty simple for me. I set up the story of the work, discuss the characters and their dynamics, talk about the art, overuse the word “adorable” and then analyze about whatever romance or LGBT elements are present in it. However, Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare deserves more than that. This is not some fluffy schoolyard romance, it is an honest, powerful, and stupendous work of queer literature. I spent almost a full day slowly working my way through the original volumes in preparation for the English adaptation’s release and words can hardly capture the sheer power and raw emotion contained in this series. I feel perfectly comfortable in saying that Shimanami Tasogare is the greatest manga I have ever read.

WARNING: this review contains spoilers for all four volumes of the manga

Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare is written and illustrated by Yuhki Kamatani, who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community themselves and identifies as X-gender and asexual. Their illustrations are breathtaking. All the characters designs are distinct and the environments are detailed. But careful use of visual storytelling and employment of gorgeous surreal imagery is nothing short of artistic genius. These striking moments (literally) illustrate the characters’ emotions in ways far more complex and powerful than words ever could.

For example, the four pages which close the third chapter begin very minimally, with no background and only close-ups of character’s faces without words. Suddenly, it explodes into a visual representation of the protagonist's feelings, his realization, his fear, his overwhelming panic, and his confusion. Excerpts such as this are visceral, brutally effective, and hauntingly beautiful.

No matter how much praise I have to offer the remarkable illustrations, it is nothing compared to the commendations I give the story. It begins just as protagonist Tasuku Kaname stands over a bridge, contemplating jumping. People are making fun of Tasuku at school because of a rumor that he is gay and he believes his life might be over. However, he does not jump after he sees a strange girl in the distance leap from the window of a drop-in center.

Rushing over, he finds that this girl, called Someone, is the mysterious owner of the drop-in center. She tells him that the center is a gathering place for LGBTQ+ and that he can tell her anything, but that she will not listen. Soon Tasuku begins spending his summer at the center, working to fix up an old house with some of it other patrons, and learning everyone’s story. Each of the people at the center has an LGBTQ+ identity. In small arcs, which naturally cross and interweave with each other, Tasuku comes to better understand them and their identity as they work to navigate the world as a queer person.

One of the first stories told is that of Haruko Daichi and her wife Saki. Although they have not been able to get hold a ceremony, they consider themselves married. Haruko used to be guarded and quiet, lying to herself about being happy. When she finally came out and told her parents that she was a relationship, their relationship fell apart, a story far too common in the LGBT community. However, it is in this community that Haruko found solace and acceptation, thanks to participating in online forums and circles she accepted herself.

In one of these online groups she meets Saki, and they fell in love. Haruko’s greatest wish it to have a real wedding celebration so that everyone who knows her and Saki can celebrate them and their love together. Saki, however, feels differently. Although she is very much in love with Haruko, she does not want to risk starting fires by publicly coming out to her parents and relatives or holding such a brazen display of their love. This fear is held by many queer people, “how will I be seen if I come out? No one will accept me.”

Volume two of the manga follows the story of Shuufi Misora, a young child questioning their gender identity. At the center, Misora dresses as a girl, wearing dresses, makeup, and wigs, but outside they present as a boy (the gender they were assigned as at birth). They are initially somewhat hostile towards Tasuku, who is kind and compliments Misora regularly on their clothing while at the center, but one day asks to go to his house.

While there, Misora asks Tasuku some questions about being male and expresses their fear of their voice changing and getting body hair. Tasuku asks them, “do you want to be a girl?” Misora tells him that they do not know, but more than anything they feel so isolated and misunderstood. Before they can leave, Tasuku takes their hand.

After this, Tasuku encourages Misora to live as a transgender woman and eventually pushes them to go outside while presenting as feminine. The two go to a festival together and enjoy themselves. However, when someone gropes Misora’s butt, Tasuku remarks in an offhand comment that they did it because Misora looked cute. Misora, feeling angry, confused, and pushed by Tasuku explodes into a homophobic tirade, shouting at him before running away. After that, they do not return to the drop-in center.

Tasuku pushed Misora too much to come out, to take on the identity of being transgender. But, nobody can force a queer person to accept their identity or come out before they are ready and sure of their identity. Misora was still questioning themselves and Tasuku’s attempts to put them into a box and have them live a certain way was happening too quickly. I think that this is the chapter during which I broke down crying at the end, it resonated with me so deeply (it was two in the morning at this point and I had been up all day translating the Japanese text). I remember how much I struggled with my sexuality before coming out as queer. I think that the words a colleague once told me years later apply best, “ everyone comes out at the perfect time for them, there is no 'too early' or 'too late', just ‘ready’ and ‘not yet.’”

Volume three tells the story of Utsumi. He is extraordinarily kind, gentle, and charismatic. One day, while working the renovating the house with several volunteers, a woman comments that she knew him in high school, but that he presented as female back then, revealing him to be a transgender man. She asks him to attend a high school reunion, which he does and encourages him to speak at her daughter’s school. It becomes clear that she is a problematic ally, seeing queerness as a sort of illness and believes that he should work to teach everyone else about his identity.

Utsumi responds that she is reducing him to being only a trans man and that this is only one part of his identity, that he is so much more than that. Often allies want queer people to act as the voice and teacher of their identity and reduce that person to only being the token gay or token transgender person. They are not given the freedom to be their own person. This is what she is trying to do to Utsumi. However, he refuses and after that, she no longer interacts with the group.

In the fourth and final volume, the story of Tchaiko is told. He is the elderly visitor of the center and enjoys playing compositions by Tchaikovsky for everyone to listen to. He is gay, and his partner of thirty years, Agawa, is passing away. Agawa left his family, including his son to live as a gay man and be with Tchaiko. Unfortunately, he was not able to have both a child and live as who he was, and was forced to make a decision between the two.

Fortunately, Agawa’s son has begun to visit him in the hospital room, but while he is there Tchaiko stays away, as the son is not aware of their relationship. Tchaiko however, does not resent this, and loves texting Agawa and visiting while the son is not there. However, he acknowledges that, as he is not legally a member of his family, he cannot be there while Agawa dies. The legal rights of gay couples is a long source of grief for many.

I recall my friends getting ready to move to England with their two young children. They were married legally in the State that we live in (Massachusetts) but they had no federal rights and one of them was soon to be deported. Luckily for them, same-sex marriage was legalized across the country just weeks before they were to be evicted, and they were allowed to stay. The story I tell is a victorious one, but for so many people and their partners, they have so much tale. The law and discrimination keep them from experiencing every aspect of their life together.

Through Tchaiko, Tasuku learns of Someone’s past. He describes her as a person who wanted to live in isolation. In the past, before adopting the name “Someone” she tells Tchaiko and Agaway that she is most likely asexual, but that she is unable to find a place where she belongs, that whatever she does she cannot explain her identity.

The two men comment how strange it is that nobody is allowed to just live their lives in solitude, to live without having to explain, educate, and identify oneself, to just be “somebody.” It is at this moment that Somebody realizes that this is exactly what she wants. She takes the name Somebody and chooses to let go of labels and lives the way that she wants to.

I can hardly explain how much I identified with Somebody. I am not asexual, but I never found that labels worked for me, that I needed to be able to identify myself as straight or gay or fit into any of those boxes. For that reason, I do not identify my sexuality. I am queer, as a person who falls under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, but no more than that.

This final volume begins to bring about resolution to many of the conflicts and issues introduced in previous chapters but I will not go into detail about those here. Just know that I found each solution to be believable, well written, and satisfying. What I really want to talk about, is Tasuku’s journey and his relationship with Tsubaki.

Tsubaki is Tasuku’s classmate, whom he has a crush on. Tasuku struggles so greatly with coming to terms with these feelings and is helped greatly by his friends at the center. But these difficulties are exacerbated when he and Tsubaki become friends. His situation quickly takes a turn for the worse as Tsubaki starts to toy with Tasuku. Soon he begins making homophobic and transphobic remarks about the frequenters of the center. Tasuku stays silent, standing there tortured and wounded by his friend's hurtful remarks.

Things only get worse when Someone starts talking to Tsubaki about his sexuality, acknowledging that he is repressed and lashing out. Tsubaki angrily dismisses the idea. Finally, he confronts Tasuku, acknowledging that obvious fact that Tasuku is gay and verbally assaulting him and the center. And then, in what is absolutely my favorite moment from the wonderful manga, Tasuku stands up to him! He confesses his sexuality and affection for Tsubaki, tells him how much the center means to him and how much good it has done, and that what Tsubaki is doing is wrong. “I want you to know that what you’ve said has hurt me. It’s not like I want your sympathy or apology! I just don’t want you to hurt anyone else!”

My. God. YESSS!!

This is such an incredibly powerful moment, to see the struggling Tasuku stand up and tell off his friend, the person that he loves. To tell him that his actions are hurtful and wrong. This was such a triumphant moment for the character. The sheer number of people that I, that every queer person encounters in their lives that hurts us and that we want to tell off. Seeing this was cathartic and affirming for me in so many ways. Not only do we see Tasuku take this stand, but Tsubaki listens. He understands and realizes that his actions were ignorant, and hurtful, and cruel. After this, he begins to hang around the center more and become more accepting of the others and himself.

Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare expresses so many realistic and relatable stories of LGBTQ+ people that are told so beautifully and fully. If you are a queer person you need to read this manga, if you are questioning you need to read this manga, if you are an ally you need to read this manga, if you are a parent you need to read this manga, if you have no idea what LGBT life is like you need to read this manga.

Yuhki Kamatani has created the most honest, emotional, and affirming portrayal of living as an LGBTQ+ person that I have ever read in a manga. My feeble attempts to analyze it and express my appreciation here are laughable. My advice, get your hands on a copy right away!

To try and quantify this work with categorical scores would be nothing but insulting so I will end with only the overall rating: 10/10

Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare Volume 1 is available now in at major North American retailers digitally and in print and volumes 2-4 are available for pre-order

Support yuri and LGBTQ+ content, news, and reviews by funding YuriMother on Patreon

All images are used for review purposes only and are owned by Yuhki KAMATANi, Shogakukan, and Seven Sea’s Entertainment. Please support the manga’s official release

#reviews #our dreams at dusk #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtq+ #manga #anime #yuri #yaoi #queer #wlw #mlm #trans #transgender #representation #asexual #gay #comic #comics #graphic novel #seven seas

[uncloseted]

tw: transphobia😭 hi I'm a radfem cisgirl (I hate using "cis" and "trans" words but here I need to for the sake of the story) I've got a friend from ny highschool (we're in college now) who's also a radfem and is always sharing great feminist stuff. Yesterday, she shared the comment of a girl saying "this fight for abortion (it is illegal in my country) is for men/people with vaginas too!" and mocked it. I preferred not to make up any opinions about her because of one single post. But today, she shared a picture of Miss Spain 2019 (a trans girl) who talked about her experience with sexism, and mocked her too. This time, it was obvious to me she was just being transphobic trash. She received lots of backlash and deleted the post, but instead made a new post complaining about people caring about transphobia but not about sexism (a very stupid post, if you ask me). This time, along with some comments from other girls respectfully telling her to stop being cruel and mocking towards trans women, she received a lot of support from other TERFS (although these TERFS said they hate being called TERFS just for being honest and brave lmmfao). They said that transwomen don't belong in radfem because they just suffer from discrimination, not oppression, and listed some reasons why: according to them, trans girls don't suffer: obstetrician violence, forced pregnancy, feminicide, child marriage, genital femenine ablation, glass ceiling barriers, being implanted "maternal sense" while kids, getting their ears perfored while babies, among other stuff, and that differentiate ciswomen biological reality from trans women biological reality isn't transphobia. Other girls said they knew transwomen who were mean to them, using derogatory terms to refer to ciswomen and they were mean and cruel, using this argument to generalize about all transwomen smh.

I'm just so stoned that people could be so cruel to transwomen and set them aside from the feminist fight when they suffer from already being excluded from so many things. It sickens me that some people don't belive trans people exist and treat them that bad, specially trans girls. I wish I could debunk the info this TERFS are spreading because it's so dangerous and enables transphobics to keep harming transpeople and I find that unbearable, but I am not as informed as I should be to debute all their lies at once. Could you help me?

So starting with the question of transwomen in radfem spaces, I don’t think many (if any) transwomen would say that they experience the exact same type of discrimination that cis women do.  There’s often this idea that “trans people don’t believe in biology”, but that’s a bad faith argument.  Trans people understand biology very well, often more than their cis counterparts do, because it’s such a big part of their identity.

Yes, transwomen don’t suffer obstetrician violence, forced pregnancy, child marriage, genital feminine ablation, etc. (I can’t even find any articles on the ear thing).  They do experience femicide, at way higher rates that cis women do. Transwomen are women, and they’re discriminated against in their own way; sometimes that’s because they’re women, and sometimes that’s because they’re trans.  Transwomen are largely supportive of fighting with cis women to rid the world of discrimination for all women, cis and trans alike.  

By contrast, TERFs seem to think that because transwomen sometimes suffer a different type of discrimination than cis women, they can’t be “real women”.  But that argument makes no sense to me.  The vast majority of affluent, white, straight, cis women will never suffer the violence that is apparently so central to the cis female experience.  They’re extremely unlikely to experience femicide, child marriage, genital mutilation... and yet they can acknowledge that those issues are feminist issues, even though they’re not universal to all women.  Why shouldn’t the discrimination that transwomen face also fall under that umbrella?  And if they can accept that women who have had hysterectomies, or women who have chromosomal differences, or women who are intersex, or women who present butch are all women, why shouldn’t transwomen also fall under the umbrella of womanhood?

Further, is that really all that womanhood is to TERFs?  Experiencing the trauma and discrimination that so often accompanies being a cis women?  I don’t think inclusion to a group should be predicated on the amount that one has suffered or how many “oppression points” they’ve amassed. And I don’t think being a woman should be predicated solely on biology, especially given that we never really know what kind of biology a person has just by looking at them.  What “being a woman” is is a metaphysical question that derails the discussion of trans feminism, and it’s a question that I don’t think a lot of TERFs actually have a good answer to.  It’s just an easy way to put the burden of proof on trans people and trans allies and waste our time (but if you’re interested, I do have an opinion on this. I just think it’s best saved for a different time).

In terms of trans people being oppressed, there’s all sorts of data to suggest that trans oppression is very real.  In the US, trans people were banned from serving in the military under the Trump administration, a decision that was only overturned a few days ago, and the Trump administration also reversed the Obama- era Title VII policy that protected trans employees from discrimination.  Trans people are overwhelmingly lacking legal protections- there are no federal non-discrimination laws that include gender identity, and in some states, debates over limiting the rights of trans people to use public bathrooms are ongoing.  

About 57% of trans people faced some type of rejection from their family upon coming out.  Around 29% of trans people live in poverty (compared to 11% in the general population and about 22% in the lesbian and gay populations), and that number is higher for trans people who are Black (39%), Latinx (48%), or Indigenous (35%).  27% of trans people have been fired, not hired, or denied a promotion due to their trans identity.  90% of trans people report facing discrimination in their own jobs.  Trans people face double the rate of unemployment that cis people do (about 14%) and about 44% are underemployed. This is despite the fact that a reported 71% of trans people have some level of post-secondary education- actually higher than the general population, which is about 61%.  It’s often cited that women earn 77 cents on the dollar compared to men, but that statistic doesn’t even exist for trans women.

54% of trans people have experienced intimate partner violence (compared to about 24.3% of cis women), 47% of trans people have been sexually assaulted (compared to about 18% of cis women), and about 10% are physically assaulted in a given year. 

About 22% of trans people and 32% of trans people of color in the US have no health insurance (compared to about 11% of cis women), and 55% of trans people who do have insurance report being denied coverage for at least one gender affirming surgery.  29% of trans adults have been refused healthcare by a doctor or provider because of their gender identity.  In one study, 50% of trans people said that they had to teach their medical providers about trans care.  Trans people are four times as likely than the average population to be infected by HIV.  41% have attempted suicide at one point in their lives, compared to 1.6% of the general population.  

20% of trans people have been evicted or denied housing due to their gender identity, and trans people are four times more likely than cis people to be homeless.  Only 1/5 of trans people report that they have been able to update all of their identification documents, and 41% have a driver’s license that does not match their gender identity.  22% of trans people report that they have been denied equal treatment by a government agency or official, 29% reported police harassment, and 12% reported having been denied equal treatment or harassed by judges or court officials.

75% of transgender students feel unsafe at school because of their gender expression, 60% are forced to use a bathroom or locker room that does not match their gender, 50% were unable to use the name and pronouns that match their gender, and 70% of trans students say that they’ve avoided bathrooms because they feel unsafe.  78% of trans students report being harassed or assaulted at school.

And these are all statistics that focus on trans people at large.  The discrimination is worse for transwomen and especially transwomen of color.  All of that certainly sounds like systemic oppression to me.

Every person who chooses to be a TERF perpetuates this discrimination.  It’s just bigotry towards trans people, plain and simple.  And for what?  A reactionary fear that all transwomen are secretly sexual predators and all transmen are confused girls who don’t know better?  Unfortunately, men can be sexual predators just fine without having to jump through the convoluted hoops trans people go through to be recognized as their true gender identity, and transwomen are way more likely to be sexually assaulted than they are to be sexual predators.  There are no reported cases at all that transwomen are dressing up as men to assault women in bathrooms.  There aren’t even statistics on how frequently trans people are sexual predators. And transmen are just as capable of making informed, thoughtful decisions as cis women.  

TERFs shouldn’t be pitting themselves against trans people.  There’s just nothing to be gained from doing that.  They should be working alongside trans people to fight the patriarchy and the discrimination that cis and trans women both face, regardless of what that discrimination entails.

Last thought.  Not to be a stan or anything but if you’re interested in learning more about these issues, Contrapoints has a number of really good videos on the topic of TERFs (including one that just released today!). They delve a bit deeper into the actual questions that TERFs often bring up and provide some nuanced answers.

#Anonymous #effys-closet #effys closet

[robin-blogs]

-19.11.2020- Stonewall Protest Clothing along with Edwardian Fashion trends and J.K Rowling being a TERF

As a direct result of my One-to-One call this week I have decided to try and make a series of Stonewall and Pride protest clothing to reflect my research and passion for Stonewall. I started to sketch down some ideas I had and after I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do I started to look through my old clothes and clothes I didn’t like anymore to see which ones I could freely use. I came across two denim long sleeved shirts I bought two of a few years ago. I hadn't worn them in a while and I still liked the look of them. After putting them on I remembered why I stopped wearing them, it's because they no longer fit me. I thought I’d still use them even if it was just to test media on. Since my denim shirts no longer fit me, I hope to try and edit the sleeves to be wider so the shoulders would fit, this is because I want to try and build my confidence by actually wearing this to the nest pride event I go to. I also want to try and experiment by using different materials and cut up shirts to create a kind of patch up shirt. Since I have already painted on one of my two denim shirts, I might try and experiment with the second one by using a range of materials to extend it so it is no longer too small for me. I also want to experiment with adding more pockets to it as something I find with all my clothes is how none of them have pockets on. As a result of this I researched and looked into how to extend a shirt that is too small as a place to start. I found this quick and simple video online, although it has no specifics such as measuring, I find that more fun as It allows me the space to experiment and find thing like that out for myself along with learning form any mistakes I make.  

EHow (2017) How to Make a Shirt Bigger [online video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrl4aeqluwE  [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]

As seen from the images of the jacket I have done so far, I added a wide range of deigns both relating to my own identity and my research into Stonewall. For example, I painted in bold text on the back that “THE FIRST PRIDE WAS A RIOT” as a direct response to the actions that took place in the beginning of the Stonewall Uprising on the 28th of June 1969 in which black trans women, gays and queers all stood up against police brutality in the form of night long riots. I wanted to write this to show how as much as I love Pride marches now in current day, with less fear for my life compared to queer people over 50 years ago, the same statement still holds strong. I never want to forget what others in my place had to do years ago just to stand up for themselves. They had no choice but to stand up for themselves and help their fellow brothers and sisters to fight against hate and brutality to give us the Pride we have today. This isn't to say the world we live in now is perfect; far far from it. We still have a long way to fight and stand up against, but I will never forget how others had to fight and endure being killed, attacked, brutalised and ignored for centuries.  

Another aspect to Stonewall I added to this jacket was a broken bottle painted onto the pocket with some stones surrounding it. This was a reference to the multitude of weapons used against the police; such as glass bottles, pennies, stones etc. I also want to try and add a custom sewn title above the pocket that says something like “always carry stones”, or “store stones here” as a reference to always being prepared to fight against brutality.  

History (2019) What Happened at the Stonewall Riots? A Timeline of the 1969 Uprising [online], June 1st, 2020 Available at: https://www.history.com/news/stonewall-riots-timeline [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]  

Daily Beast (2019) The Stonewall Riots: What Really Happened, What Didn’t, and What Became Myth [online] Available at: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-stonewall-riots-what-really-happened-what-didnt-and-what-became-myth  [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]

I additionally added “FUCK TERFS” in bold capitol text on the back as a mix into fighting back modern oppression along with Stonewall. “TERF” stands for “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist” and one modern example of a TERF is none other than JK Rowling.  

Here is a rundown of an Essay she wrote to go along with her tweets I will be writing about below:  

Jammidodger (2020) Responding to JK Rowlings Essay | Is It Anti-Trans? [online video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Avcp-e4bOs [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]

She recently took it upon herself to be the Queen of being the complete opposite of a feminist while still trying to hold the views of one. She started this off by tweeting “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.” Twitter (2020, line 1) Just. Wow. Something that makes me laugh about this is how she writes “I know and love trans people, but” and you can already see the hole she's digging for herself. She claims herself to be a feminist but she disregards trans women as being real women by saying this in a tweet” ‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” Twitter (2020, line 1) By saying this she is not only disregarding all trans identities, but also cis women as well. Not all cis women can menstruate, many have issues with their ovaries, have lifelong medical conditions, there are cis women who go through the menopause and no longer experience periods later in life. Are other fellow cis women like her suddenly not ‘real women’ now they can't menstruate? Speaking personally as a trans man, I menstruate, but I'm not by any means a woman, nor will I ever be. I still have to use menstrual products, as I'm a person “who menstruates” Twitter (2020, line 1). Additionally, having her present her opinion in this way by saying things like “woomud” Twitter (2020, line 3) instead of just flat out expressing her opinion of just women menstruating feels so painfully immature. She states to be for the women and stand as a feminist, yet she disregards most women in the same statement. You simply can't label yourself as a feminist when you don’t stand for all women; and yes, that includes ALL trans women. In the same Twitter thread, she then goes on to say this: “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.” Twitter (2020, line 1). After immediately reading this I noticed how she said “if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans.” Twitter (2020, line 3) She states how she would stand with us if we were actually discriminated against; while ironically discriminating against us. I then went to find another Tweet she posted talking about people who de-transition to find this: “JK, two cops in the US are being charged with felonies for doing their lawful job of beating the shit out of a trans woman! Maybe you can use your wealth to defend these courageous warriors in the fight against trans people.” with a link to this article about it:

KCUR (2020) Charges Against Two Kansas City Policemen Upgraded To Felonies In Beating Of Transgender Woman [online] Available at: https://www.kcur.org/news/2020-07-24/charges-against-two-kansas-city-policemen-upgraded-to-felonies-in-beating-of-transgender-woman [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]

Trans women of colour are still to this day being attacked and beaten by police just like in 1969 before the Stonewall Uprising and she has the nerve to say she would stand up with us IF we were discriminated against just on the basis of being trans. Is she blind to the multiple attacks on black trans women? How still in 2020, 51 years after Stonewall began, the very same people who helped the uprising are still being targeted and killed on the very basis of being trans?  

I'll leave this tangent here before I run myself into next year talking about her. My main point was to show how TERF’s are still undoubtably still an issue clearly not just hurting LGBTQ+ rights, but also women's rights; ironically by other women. I felt a strong need to add this statement as it helps stad up against people like JK Rowling who are so adamant to be against her own gender and minority of people who suffer enough already with standing up for women's rights. I wanted to show how; speaking as a trans man; I still stand up for all women and I see myself as a feminist. Ill speak up against TERF’s like JK Rowling, I'll stand up against transphobia and misogyny, I'll stand with my fellow trans brothers and sisters and I won't stand down to oppression

Twitter (2020) J.K. Rowling [online] Available at: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269389298664701952  [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]

Twitter (2020) J.K. Rowling [online] Available at: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269382518362509313 [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]  

Twitter (2020) J.K. Rowling [online] Available at: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269407862234775552  [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]  

Twitter (2020) Jami [online] Available at: https://twitter.com/jamiblakeley108/status/1289612019683876864 [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]

Something I want to go forward with when thinking about this idea is to create a version of this on a leather jacket. I remember my girlfriend having a black leather jacket she used to always wear when we were first dating, she stopped wearing it because it didn’t fit her anymore and she got a new jacket anyway. I hope to try and see if she still has it so I can use it for this idea instead of it being thrown away. I want to try and create some custom patches for the leather jacket to make it last longer and be more sustainable. This is also why I decided to use acrylic for my denim shirts so if I ever go outside wearing them when it's raining, they won't be ruined// bleed. I have always loved the aesthetic and look of leather jackets with thick patchworks and pins all over them as a way of expressing yourself, I remember seeing a handful of them at pride a few years ago and immediately falling in love. I also want to try and build up the confidence to wear things like that as I have always wanted to but I always feel too afraid.  

I have additionally always wanted to make and sew my own shirt. I have a large amount of black fabric I bought last year at a fabric sale that feels perfect for a long-sleeved shirt. I’ve never made myself a shirt or any clothing from scratch before so I will also look up a range of tutorials along with looking at shirts I already own that fit me comfortably as a frame of reference to use throughout my process. I will also be using this same black material, along with some others to try and extend my denim shirts. I also want to make them look as gay as possible fashion and aesthetic wise. As a result of this I looked into a YouTube video by a YouTuber by the name of “STRANGE AEONS” which I have referenced below:

STRANGE AEONS (2019) How to Dress Gay [online video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5a28rXkGV0  [Accessed: 21st November 2020]

Although this video is more centred about how lesbians dress, I still felt as if it could help me with some inspiration to finding a style that helped me express my queerness in the best way I could. Something I find funny and oddly ironic about this is how currently when a lot of people see or think about lesbians, they think checkered plaid jackets and short hair; and before I had my own realisation of me being a trans man, I was fully accepting myself as a lesbian woman. And as a result of this I adored people who were allowed to have short hair, and I wore (( and still do )) a wide wardrobe of plaid jackets. It’s a typically seen lesbian fashion trend that I still love to wear today, so even though this video inspiration is more focused on lesbian women's fashion, I still very much connect with it. 

After looking for a while to try and find the fashion of clothing, I finally found out it was Edwardian fashion. I found these images a while ago on Pinterest and didn’t save the link, but I will still show the images here as inspiration:

As a result of now knowing the Era they were made in, I went looking on Pinterest to find more Edwardian styles of both male and female fashion to see what I could find. I came across a wide range of pieces I found to be very visually interesting and made me want to experiment with textiles more such as these:

Pinterest [Green Edwardian Style Lace-Up Hooded Jacket] [online image] (n.d) Available at: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/202662051954617029/  [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]

Pinterest (2011) QutieLand News Update – New Products (21/12/2011 Update) [online image] Available at: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/391602130093864910/ [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]

ArtStation (2015) Victorian Guard WIPs01 [online image] Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/K3xD4 [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]

Twitter (2019)  軍服のエロス by Aldo Vicente [online image] Available at: https://twitter.com/dadakomachi/status/1203703713887473664  [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]

There was additionally another video by STRANGE AEONS that went more deeply into the history of lesbian fashion from around the 1800’s which I also found to be inspiring as a wide range of lesbians would wear traditionally male attire to present their sexual identity. I also find it interesting to try and have this same effect by making myself look as masculine as possible ((such as binding, packing etc.)) while also wearing traditionally female attire mixed from a range of time periods; such as modern day and Edwardian; would be an interesting twist and experiment to go forward with in my identity and fashion.

STRANGE AEONS (2018) THE HISTORY OF LESBIAN FASHION [online video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvKCMyLvt1E&t=316s [Accessed: 22nd November, 2020]

As a result of finding another source of reference for my own love of different fashion, I'm very intrigued to try and make a mix of both the male and female fashion of the Edwardian Era as my own statement on my identity and queerness as a modern trans man. I never get into any fashion, so finding a mash-up of styles I really like feels so fresh and new for me, so I'm incredibly exited to start designing my own kind of clothing to try and make by hand along with adding a queer and trans twist by hopefully adding some more modern ideas of trans men, such as the trans flag and references to stonewall, which was after the Edwardian Era of fashion.  

While looking into these different fashion trends, I feel as if I got wildly off topic from my original denim jacket design. I still plan on finishing and experimenting with different textures and research into Stonewall for my queer fashion idea, along with possibly mixing it with a range of Edwardian and Modern fashion. Although I went in many different directions in this blog post, I am very excited to start my research into different fashions along with looking more into Stonewall and queer fashion across the years. 

Overall, I am very happy with all of the research and work I put into this idea that I was honestly intimidated by! I’m not the kind of artist to work with textiles and fashion clothing, but painting that jacket made me feel so inspired to see what more I could do. I will be sketching out some designs for clothing I want to make and I will make a separate blog post about it in the future talking over my process and listing any other references and images I use.