#and of course the racialized misogyny

[thebadtimewolf]

@lesbiandiegohargreeves and @allkinds-oftrash:

you. i see ur tags. u r right...

yall opened the gates a little and i gave you water damage, im sorry for this

and his prev. hatred of donna is glaringly so... byherchoiceofhusbandtwice and how mickey is treated and how the dr is mimicking rose’s behavior in a boisterous way in his 10th self because thats how she acted towards princess gabe of the cheem and how she openly cheated on mickey and THEN giving martha the ONE SEVENTH DR ADAPTION WHERE HE IS UGH AND THEN THE MASTER (who quite frankly is mimicking the dr mimicking rose’s 2006 microaggresive racism but the master cranks it up to 3000) TAKES 80 FEET FORWARD PERSONALLY ENSLAVING MARTHA’S FAMILY (take note that martha’s blonde and yt step mother that her father was with is notably excluded?? martha’s brother and his fam escaped but. where is she? hm.) AS THE HELP (though jack is there its more like jack is very much implied to be ‘this is what i would do to u joneses too bad ur not immortal. jack will have to do.’ vibes).

#tv: doctor who #bw: out of ethos #{i can make a whole breakdown of all three writers in three words: antiblackness misogyny and copaganda ish (vigilantismish)} #{the way he described donna was very ... yikesarooney and ms. tate dropped kicked him via being the fave by performance} #{really turned his implied intention into a self drag} #{also the companion after donna was named penny who was also black but 10 fell for her but SHE wasnt interested} #{and then she got scrapped as soon as tate was available for s4 with a lil nod to it by the reporter with the same 1st name} #{yet personality wise was claire 'u be health ill be safety' pope. sidebar: i. a g a i n WE WERE ROBBED} #{not every day i get 2 anti [insert societal racial issue here] dt that are also very goodlooking with a gag over their mouths. hm?} #{oh good aint out yet. my bad still the one} #{I DO LIKE THE FACT THAT NOW CHIBNALL LOOKED AT TEN AND SAID: u were poc in abusive adoptive household} #{cont. of course u have internalized self hatred that you project onto others if not your self and this is about livin beyond it}

[ghelgheli]

hey you might've been asked this before sorry if so, but have you read or do you have any thoughts on A short history of Trans Misogyny?

I have read it! I have a few thoughts.

I think it's a strong and important work that compiles historical archives into sharp analyses of how "trans misogyny" (using Jules Gill-Peterson's spacing) is not a recent phenomenon but a globalized structure with centuries of history. I also think it's flawed, for reasons I'll get into after a quick summary for those who haven't had the chance to read it yet.

JGP divides the book into three main chapters, the first on the notion of "trans panic". There, she traces how variants of this anxiety with the trans-feminized subject have presented—to deadly effect, for the subject—in such different settings as early colonial India, the colonization of the Americas, the racialized interactions between US soldiers stationed in the Philippines and the local trans women living there, and of course the contemporary United States itself. In every case she analyzes this "panic" as the reaction of the capitalist colonial enterprise to the conceptual threat that the trans-feminized subject poses; we are a destabilizing entity, a gender glitch that undermines the rigid guarantees of the patriarchal order maintaining capitalism. Punishment follows.

The second chapter is my favourite, and considers the relationship between transfeminine life and sex work. I posted a concluding excerpt but the thrust of the chapter is this: that the relegation of so many trans women and trans-feminized people to sex work, while accompanied by the derogation and degradation that is associated with sex work, is not itself the mere result of that degradation inflicted upon the subject. In other words, it is not out of pure helplessness and abjection that so many trans-feminized people are involved in sex work. Rather, sex work is a deliberate and calculated choice made by many trans-feminized people in increasingly service-based economies that present limited, often peripheralized, feminized, and/or reproductive, options for paid labour. Paired with a pretty bit of critical confabulation about the histories of Black trans-feminized people travelling the US in the 19th century, I think this made for great reading.

In her third chapter, JGP narrativizes the 20th century relationship between the "gay" and "trans" movements in north america—scare quoted precisely because the two went hand-in-hand for much of their history. She emphasizes this connection, not merely an embedding of one community within another but the tangled mutualism of experiences and subjectivities that co-constituted one another, though not without tension. Then came the liberal capture of the gay rights movement around the 70s, which brought about the famous clashes between the radicalisms of Silvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson (neither of whom, JGP notes, ever described themselves as trans women) and the institutions of gay liberalism that desired subsumption into the folds of capital. This is a "remember your history" type of chapter, and well-put.

I think JGP is correct to insist, in her introduction, on the globalizing-in-a-destructive-sense effects of the colonial export of trans womanhood. It is, after all, an identity conceived only mid-century to make sense of the medicalized trans subject; and "gender identity" itself (as JGP describes in Histories of the Transgender Child) is a psychomedical concept conceived to rein in the epistemic instability of trans existence. This is critical to keep in mind! But I also think JGP makes a few mistakes, and one of them has to do with this point.

In her first chapter, under the discussion of trans misogyny in colonial India, JGP of course uses the example of the hijra. Unfortunately, she commits two fundamental errors in her use: she mythologizes, however ambiguously, the "ascetic" lives of hijra prior to the arrival of British colonialism; and she says "it's important to say that hijras were not then—and are not today—transgender". In the first place, the reference to the "ascetism" of hijra life prior to the violence of colonialism is evocative of "third-gender" idealizations of primeval gender subjectivities. To put the problem simply: it's well and good to describe the "ritual" roles of gendered subjects people might try to construe contemporarily as "trans women", the priestesses and oracles and divinities of yore. But it is best not to do so too loftily. Being assigned to a particular form of ritualistic reproductive labour because of one's failure to be a man and inability to perform the primary reproductive labour of womanhood-proper is the very marker of the trans-feminized subject. "Ascetism" here obviates the reality that it wasn't all peachy before (I recommend reading Romancing the Transgender Native on this one). Meanwhile, in the after, it is just wrong that hijra are universally not transgender. Many organize specifically under the banners of transfeminism. It's a shame that JGP insists on keeping the trans-feminized life of hijra so firmly demarcated from what she herself acknowledges is globalized transness.

My second big complaint with the book is JGP's slip into a trap I have complained about many times: the equivocation of transfemininity with femininity (do you see why I'm not fond of being described as "transfem"?). She diagnoses the root of transmisogyny as a reaction to the femininity of trans women and other trans-feminized subjects. In this respect she explicitly subscribes to a form of mujerísima, and of the trans-feminized subject as "the most feminine" and (equivalent, as far as she's concerned) "the most woman". Moreover, she locates transfeminist liberation in a singular embrace of mujerísima as descriptive of trans-feminized subjectivity. As I've discussed previously, I think this is a misdiagnosis. Feminization is, of course, something that is done to people; it is certainly the case that the trans-feminized subject is in this way feminized for perceived gender-failure. This subject may simultaneously embrace feminized ways of being for all sorts of reasons. In both cases I think the feminization follows from, rather than precedes, the trans misogyny and trans-feminization, and there is a fair bit of masculinization as de-gendering at play too, to say nothing of the deliberate embrace of masculinity by "trans-feminized" subjects. Masculinity and femininity are already technologies of gender normalization—they are applied against gender deviation and adapted to by the gender deviant. The deviation happens first, in the failure to adhere to the expectations of gender assignment, and I don't think these expectations can be summarized by either masculinity or femininity alone. I think JGP is effectively describing the experience of many trans-feminized people, but I do not think what she presents can be the universalized locus of trans liberation she seems to want it to be.

Now for a pettier complaint that I've made before, but one that I think surfaces JGP's academic context. In her introduction she says:

In truth, everyone is implicated in and shaped by trans misogyny. There is no one who is purely affected by it to the point of living in a state of total victimization, just as there is no one who lives entirely exempt from its machinations. There is no perfect language to be discovered, or invented, to solve the problem of trans misogyny by labeling its proper perpetrator and victim.

Agreed that "there is no perfect language to be discovered"! But JGP is clearly critical of TMA/TME language here. Strange, then, that less than ten pages later she says this:

this book adds the phrase trans-feminized to describe what happens to groups subjected to trans misogyny though they did not, or still do not, wish to be known as transgender women.

So JGP believes it is coherent to talk about "groups subjected to trans misogyny", which she thinks consists of the union of trans women and what she called "trans-feminized" groups. If this is to be coherent, there must be groups not subjected to trans misogny. So we've come around to transmisogyny-subjected and not transmisogyny-subjected. Look: you cannot effectively theorize about transmisogyny without recognizing that its logic paints a particular target, and you will need to come up with a concise way of making this distinction. But JGP dismissing TMA/TME with skepticism about "perfect language" and immediately coining new language (basically TMS/not TMS) to solve the problem she un-solved by rejecting TMA/TME... it smells of a sloppy attempt to make a rhetorical point rather than theoretical rigour. It's frustrating.

I have other minor gripes, like her artificial separation of "trans women" from "nonbinary people" (cf. countless posts on here lamenting the narrow forms of existence granted TMA people if we want recognition as-such!) or her suggestion that "a politics of overcoming the gender binary" is mutually exclusive from rather than necessarily involved with struggles around "prison abolition, police violence, and sex work". Little things that give me the sense of theoretical tunnel-vision. But I don't think all this compromises the book's strengths as a work of broad historical analysis. I would simply not take every one of its claims as authoritative. Definitely give it a read if you have the chance, especially for the second and third chapters.

#ask answer #jules gill-peterson #(i haven't been asked this before ty for asking <3 🐐) #note that this was mostly off the cuff except what i had taken pictures of bc i left the book in toronto for my mom to read

[drdemonprince]

I'm a trans guy and tbh I feel like I don't fully understand the transandrophobia debate. Based on my understanding of intersectionality & transfeminism, I think that trans men (largely) experience transphobia and misogyny, while trans women (largely) experience transphobia, misogyny, *and* transmisogyny -- I also think it's necessary to discuss issues that specifically affect men without describing them as forms of oppression or discrimination against men. But that's just accounting for intersecting identities (including both marginalized and privileged identities) rather than only accounting for intersecting oppressions, right? I feel like some people using the term "transandrophobia" either seem to be confusing these two concepts or mistaking gender essentialism for discrimination against men (though some just use it to describe a subset of transphobia rather than an intersection, it seems like). In any case, even though misandry isn't a real systemic issue, I can understand why some people feel like there's missing language or frameworks when it comes to discussing the ways men, and trans men specifically, are treated (and the ways they/we treat each other). I'm not sure what better alternatives are available, but I'm sure some are possible. I'm wondering if I'm misunderstanding something or if you have any other thoughts on this. Thanks!

It sounds like you understand this 1000% better than every sincere transandrophobia poster. Not every unique experience is a locus of oppression that needs a systemic oppression label -- but yeah, of course, it merits being talked about.

For example, lots of trans men have a hard time in coping with the shift from being treated with emotional deference and warmth by strangers, to suddenly being treated quite coldly or even in a mistrustful way by strangers. That is a real, painful experience -- and it's one that is wrapped up in damaging gender norms that do also negatively affect cis men. It's not androphobia, but it is a consequence of sexism and the gender binary that sucks, and it merits speaking about.

Where things get dicey and fucked up is when men (either cis or trans) take a painful experience like that and declare that it means they're actually more oppressed than women.

(And, as Lee ButchAnarchist often points out, women's emotions are even more policed than men -- yes men are denied tenderness and warmth from total strangers, but they are showered in affection and caretaking by the women close to them, and they are allowed rage a whole lot more than women, in general. so it's overly simplistic and sexist to say men are more societally emotionally repressed. this dynamic plays out among trans men too -- we are given a lot more latitude to be emotionally explosive. trans women, meanwhile, are told they're being "scary" if they have any negative emotion. This is all also racialized -- Black people of any gender are basically never afforded the chance to voice negative feelings in public no matter how much they police their tone.)

I think a lot of trans masc people have a sudden rude awakening that being treated as a man can be painful and complicated, and that the gender binary harms everyone, and that there is a social price to pay for the privileges of being deferred to, respected, and so on. They also don't want to acknowledge when they are being respected and deferred to -- owning up to having any male privilege feels dirty and wrong to people, which is silly because it's just a reality, it has no moral bearing on the person experiencing the privilege. And of course it's often an incomplete privilege because of sexism and transphobia. But it still happens. Particularly within trans spaces.

I don't think this conversation will move forward productively until more trans men are capable of acknowledging that many of us have privilege and that we are very capable of hurting other people, being sexist, and speaking over trans women. And that's why we gotta make this transandrophobia stuff just completely socially unacceptable in our spaces. It is exactly the same as being a Men's Rights Activist. There are real men's liberation issues! Any worthwhile feminism will also liberate men! There are lots of aspects of the gender binary and patriarchy that are harmful to men, and that's worth talking about. Same with transphobia. But we can't have that conversation when men commandeer it to talk about how actually women have it better and all that vile shit. That talk is used to silence women, trans and cis alike.

[rebellum]

nooo i wrote a whole RESPONSE to this but then tumblr app crashed and then I had to type the whole thing out AGAIN on my computer and then in that time period the op turned reblogs off. Since they turned reblogs off, I decided to cover up their name, in order to kinda respect that.

my response:

No. It is important to create new words in order to discuss specific phenomena. That’s why words like homophobia, lesbophobia, transphobia, misogyny, transmisogyny, exorsexism, and transandrophobia were invented. 

Sure, lesbophobia is covered under “homophobia”, but lesbophobia is an important word for describing how misogyny and homophobia affect women’s experiences of homophobia. Transmisogyny is covered under “transphobia”, but it’s useful to have a term that specifically describes how trans fems experience the intersection of transphobia and misogyny, not just for being trans, but for being specifically trans feminine, and the ways that expectations of womanhood, femininity, manhood, and masculinity factor into their oppression because of their assigned sex at birth, their presentation, and their gender. Exorsexism is covered under “transphobia”, but it’s useful to have a term to describe how transphobia affects specifically people outside of the gender binary. Misogynoir is covered under misogyny, but the term was created to specifically describe how Black women experience the intersections of racism and misogyny. Of course my explanations here are a little reductive, each one of these examples has much more to it than what I listed. 

In a similar vein, transandrophobia is useful for understanding how transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, and the meta-epistemologies of those discourses affect trans mascs, not just for being trans, but for being trans masc. Oppression, both systemic and on individual levels of discrimination and prejudice, works differently for people depending on the intersections of their identity (assigned sex at birth, assigned gender at birth, presentation, gender identity, race, culture, ability, etc). 

So transandrophobia is useful for discussing specifics like:

The idea of “lost lesbians” and “the trans cult tricking little girls into mutilating their bodies”

The rhetoric of violence around testosterone-based HRT. There is the incorrect idea that people who take T become more violent because they are becoming more masculine. 

This association of masculinity with violence, and how that affects trans mascs. For trans people regardless of gender, proximity to masculinity puts people in danger in queer spaces. People are treated worse if they are trans masc, trans fem and don’t pass well enough to the surrounding people, or nonbinary and not sufficiently ‘safely’ androgynous (skinny, hairless, and white, with no prominent secondary sex characteristics). 

How trans mascs are treated differently when they come out, or when they start to transition. Many people find that people are colder to them, they experience higher rates of abuse, and if they are trans men they are told to not talk about their experiences because ‘they are men and can’t possibly understand misogyny’. The voices of people who aren’t trans masc often end up being listened to more about trans masc experiences, than the people who have actually lived through those experiences. Like, people are shitty to trans people that are masculine specifically because they are masculine.

Corrective rape 

Many people, even in feminist and trans spaces, believe that a man’s gender cannot factor into his experiences of oppression. Eg believe that the fact that they are men is irrelevant to trans men’s experiences, believe that a Black man’s masculinity has nothing to do with how he experiences racial oppression, etc. There are even some vocal people who believe that men cannot be oppressed, and that trans men cannot be oppressed, specifically because being men means they CAN’T experience oppression. 

The idea that trans men transition in order to try to escape misogyny 

Discrimination in reproductive healthcare 

A lot more, it would take ages to list the different kinds of transandrophobia

I also noticed you said “continue to feel its effects if they don’t pass”. But that idea is part of the issue: trans mascs continue to experience oppression for being trans masc when they DO pass. Even if someone is well passing, and stealth, they still directly experience discrimination for being trans masc through things like access barriers to reproductive healthcare, higher rates of abuse, sexual assault, etc. 

So transandrophobia (trans andro + phobia, not trans +androphobia as some people against the concept seem to believe) is, like other specific terminologies of oppression, really useful as shorthand for the specific forms of oppression people face not just for being trans, but for being trans masc.

#transandrophobia #transphobia discussion

[nekropsii]

More Reminders:

Karkat is a bootlicker. This is a prominent character trait. He’s rooting for the Alternian empire- yes, even though it’s ruled by a system that wants him personally dead- and really wants to be a part of its military.

Eridan has a “genocide complex” and is able to be roughly described as the troll equivalent of a white supremacist. This is one of the first things we learn about him.

The Beta Trolls are 13. All of them. This includes Equius. This includes Eridan. This includes Vriska. This includes Gamzee.

99% of Gamzee’s character is racial caricature. No, he is not intended to be a Dionysus parallel. He is intended to be a “satirization” of Black people.

Sapphic pairings have always held precedent over MLM pairings. They’ve always been more important to the plot, been handled with much more grace, and had more screen time. This isn’t a bad thing.

Doc Scratch is a child predator. This is an incredibly prominent character trait of his, and you’re way past due for a reread if you’ve forgotten. He has a particular fixation on, as canon puts it, “little girls”, and targets both Rose and Kanaya. Do I even have to bring up what he did to Damara?

Regarding the previous point, Rose and Kanaya both get very traumatized during the course of Homestuck’s story. They’re not well put together sophisticated “mom friends”, they’re 13 year olds just like almost everyone else is, and they’re going through hell. Rose in particular makes the effect all of this trauma has on her very well known. This is what Grimdarkness is.

Cronus is a child predator, too. During the course of the Openbounds and Ministrife, we see him unabashedly predate on three specific kids, and this behavior is made out to be extremely creepy. These three kids are Karkat, Tavros, and, yes, Eridan.

The Exiles were incredibly important to the plot, actually. You guys are just mean.

Almost every relationship in Homestuck is flawed in some capacity, that’s the point of a tragic drama. The main cast is literally nothing but traumatized and/or mentally ill 13-16 year olds. A good chunk of them aren’t even socialized, or grew up in an actively hostile environment. Or both. No shit characters mess up sometimes, or have unhealthy behaviors- it’s just natural in that situation. Some dynamics are substantially more healthy than others, but the main appeal of Homestuck is that everyone is flawed and damaged.

A good majority of Vriscourse was just people leaping at the opportunity to express pure, unabashed misogyny. I don’t think I have to elaborate upon this.

No, Jane is not a fascist, nor is she racist. She’s never been either of these things, that’s something that was invented out of left field by the Post Canon writing team. Being a fascistic racist was never within the scope of Jane’s character. No, it being “a result of her having grown up being fed propaganda by The Condesce” does not explain that plot thread in Post Canon for a single second, because Jane experiencing a major personality shift because of HIC literally already happened in canon with her going Crockertier, and she came out of that a stronger person. Never once has “racism” been on the list of problems she has.

Hemoloyalty is not intended to be a 1:1 metaphor for racism, nor is it intended to be a 1:1 metaphor for classism, or any other type of oppression. It’s not a 1:1 metaphor for literally anything, it’s intended to be flexible and contextual. This is not a bad thing, and is, in fact, a common storytelling method used by a lot of fantasy/sci-fi writers. Condemning Hussie for a lot of things in their writing is valid, but Hemoloyalty not being strictly analogous to only one type of real world oppression is patently not one of them. You do not know how metaphors work.

Official =/= Canon. No one is calling Pesterquest canon. You really shouldn’t be doing the same for Post Canon. The Homestuck Epilogues and Homestuck^2 are Official, but they are definitively not Canon. This is literally the first thing you learn about either of these projects. This doesn’t invalidate anyone’s enjoyment of any of these properties, of course, but it has to be stressed: Official does not automatically mean Canon.

#i said id make a new reminders post. here it is! #homestuck #homestuck meta #homestuck analysis #beta kids #beta trolls #alpha kids #alpha trolls #karkat vantas #eridan ampora #equius zahhak #vriska serket #gamzee makara #doc scratch #rose lalonde #kanaya maryam #cronus ampora #tavros nitram #the exiles #jane crocker #post canon #dubcanon #nekro.pdf #nekro.txt

[hazshit-hotel-hater]

What gets me with Vel is that we see she has a good rapport with her coworkers/friends. She may sometimes roll her eyes at the other two and their antics and of course when her direct business gets interrupted she gets frustrated, but we mostly see her on good grounds with the rest of the Vees. They respect her when it comes to serious business and in that last scene of the season they all look to be very much on the same page and in it together, smiling about their future... yet fanon (if it isn't infantalizing her as you've pointed out) is constantly projecting "angry black woman" stereotypes onto her.

It's gross and in my opinion clearly racially motivated that they see her as nothing more than a "bitchy" woman of color. While the fanon I've seen also has separate gross issues with Vox and Val they are at least allowed some nuance on occasion, but I just don't ever see that with Vel, she's just an angry woman rendered to the background in their eyes stripped completely of her professionalism, intellect, and cunning. She's one of my faves and it sucks so bad to see.

Hi. :) I wrote 5 paragraphs in response to this question and Tumblr so graciously decided to delete fucking all of it. :)

The Hazbin Hotel fandom has a serious racism problem and not enough people are talking about it. Aside from the infantilization of Velvette, other BIPOC characters are put into stupid stereotypes or treated like children because either Vivzie can’t handle writing competently or the fandom doesn’t know how to behave themselves. This is especially apparent for the women, but—and this is probably the only time I will talk about him in this way—Valentino is also suffering from this shitass issue.

Firstly about Velvette, just like how this said, Velvette used to be treated like a child in canon (now fanon) and is being portrayed as only a sassy angry black woman by the fandom. This is disgusting! I don’t think I need to say that! For some reason (misogyny) the Hazbin fandom just has this thing where they take a POC person or a woman—usually both—and decide to treat them like a child. Best examples being Niffty and Velvette being portrayed as Angel & Husk’s and Vox & Valentino’s children. Niffty is 22 and Velvette is in her 30’s. And of course they are both POC. I know there’s going to be someone accusing me of just whining about racism or being like “not everything is about race” but shut the fuck up because I’m busy talking.

I think the best scene to depict Velvette’s character—even though she hardly has any scenes. It shows that she will and can respect her colleagues but for other people, you either need to give her something she wants or her respect needs to be earned. She literally sings a whole song about it.

For other characters like Niffty I have a post for her in the works so I won’t spill it all here, but I can’t in good faith talk about the racism problem without mentioning Valentino. The fact Vivzie has made her worst character into the basic tall hot hispanic/latino man with the hot spanish accent stereotype. Honestly this sort of stereotype doesn’t bother me much, there’s a few villain characters I like with it like Alejandro from TDI, but Vivzie making this a big aggressive and dangerous POC person abusing a sad little white guy just grosses me out. It’s not like the situation would be any better if Angel wasn’t white, but it really does just leave that extra sour taste in my mouth.

Also I don’t need to explain why 90% of the POC cast being fucking grey or purple or blue is bad right.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin critical #hazbin hotel criticism #hazbin hotel critical #tw valentino #cw valentino #hazbin velvette #hazbin hotel velvette #velvette #hazbin vees #hazbin valentino #valentino hazbin hotel #valentino #hazbin niffty #niffty hazbin hotel #niffty #tw rape mention #cw rape mention #cw sa implied #tw sa implied #tw sa mention #cw sa mention

[communistkenobi]

ive never seen any star trek stuff before i started watching tos recently, and ive been liking it a lot but the level to which i like it is definitely not proportional to how good i think it is. like its good but its also kinda shit in a lot of ways, they had kirk say the gender binary is a universal constant, most of kirks Blonde Love Interests Of The Week show zero agency in the romance or sometimes the plot in general, they constantly defy the "dont fuck with alien cultures" rule bc Other Cultures Are Weird And Need Us To Fix Them, and also its just kinda dumb sometimes! i like it mostly because A) the character dynamics are really fun and B) i love seeing the 60s bleed through the script and getting to psychoanalyze the writer based on the thematic storytelling ("this is about the cold war. this is also about the cold war. this is- yup you guessed it the cold war, theyre feeling anxious about nukes again this week. this ones about the writer hating religion. this ones about integration. surprise twist this ones an implicit criticism of solitary confinement. this ones about the cold war again but this time its a really weird but ballsy take"), but its still very much a show from the 60s written by incredibly flawed people so of course its going to be flawed? its been interesting to watch it as a shadow on the cave wall of american politics from that era and ive been having fun but idk why anyone would try and say its not politically fucked in a lot of ways. like its fine you can like this old show and also admit that the writers were not actually all that enlightened about colonialism

I really really like the show! and honestly I genuinely like that it’s openly a piece of American Cold War propaganda, I think it’s very interesting and entertaining as a living historical artefact. I’m less interested in critiquing any one part of it because I feel like the misogyny and orientalism and ableism and etc are not flaws grafted onto an otherwise uncompromised whole, they are an integral part of what tos is and what its place is in the broader popular culture. Like I do not think you can subtract any of those qualities and keep tos enact at the end it, because those gendered and racial and abled assumptions are baked into it, as they are in a lot of sci-fi. And I find the reactionary and bigoted elements just as compelling as the good parts, not because they don’t offend my political sensibilities but because I want to appreciate “the whole text” for what it is and what it does. For me they aren’t things to be ignored or blocked out, they are part of how I enjoy the show and how I understand it as a piece of art.

obviously nobody is required to engage with it in the same way, and if those things are deal-breakers (or even if you want to ignore them) then that is completely fine, I’m not your dad etc, but I think part of why I’ve been getting so much pushback from people about bringing these things up is because they are primarily invested in it as a character drama with the word “socialist utopia” pasted on top of it, and so they are engaging with tos is an idealised expression of their political values. Which isn’t novel, that is like the default mode of engagement with art online (and I am not exempting myself from this), but if you bring up the racism or colonialism or misogyny most people invoke “but it’s socialist!” as a blanket defense, as if that’s at all responsive to any of those descriptions of the show.

anyway I ALSO really like the show as character drama, legitimately Kirk and Spock are really fun characters and I’m very invested in them individually, but my main enjoyment of Star Trek is that it’s American mid-century space-race propaganda, and a lot of it is deeply reactionary as a direct consequence

#asks

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

im thinking abt this post by @chuplayswithfire. thinking and considering and pondering.

people deny that ofmd is saying anything about homophobia by just denying that there's homophobia in the show at all. which is stupid, obviously, but i think people deny the existence of homophobia in ofmd for a few reasons:

homophobia is not depicted with Extremely Blatant Modern Slurs that are super recognizable to a modern audience

the existence of gay people is never questioned and nobody ever expresses shock or surprise when they learn someone is gay

ofmd doesn't bother with depicting your classic "gay sex is bad and unnatural" homophobia, and

a lot of the homophobia in ofmd is specifically about prejudice against effeminate men, which is more complicated than just Gay Sex Bad homophobia bc it intersects with misogyny and gender roles and masculinity to the point where you can't really separate any of these topics

but racism in ofmd is different because you can't deny that it's there. british soldiers call Black men "savages" and "slave" in the first fucking episode. but despite the fact that ofmd shows racism, there are still people saying ofmd isn't saying anything about it and that it's stupid for fans to analyze race in a silly romcom

i can't help but think abt how shows set in some historical time periods (or even like, high-fantasy settings) get blasted for being "historically inaccurate" for having characters of color—especially when the show doesn't have those characters face any racial biases. a neutral depiction of POC existing in a historical time period without being called slurs stands out to white viewers. they notice it, and it makes some white viewers uncomfortable.

but when POC are in "historical" shows and are getting called slurs, there's less of that discomfort. it doesn't stand out to white viewers quite the same way. there's probably still gonna be a few fucking morons who say shit like "um, Black people didn't exist in europe in 1411," but white people get less worked up as long as racism is being depicted as what they think is "historically accurate"

i feel like for the people who think it's stupid to analyze race in ofmd, they see the depiction of racism as neutral. it doesn't read as anything other than "well, that's how it was at the time." racism in ofmd isn't a theme, it doesn't mean that the show has anything to say. the racism just there, because of course it is. the existence of racism goes unquestioned.

and i think the fact that the racism in ofmd didn't stand out to people comes from the same place that has white viewers going "why is this character of color not facing bigotry in this show set in the 1920's? that's historically inaccurate!" many white viewers become uncomfortable when the bigotry they expect to see portrayed isn't there. so in ofmd, when the expected bigotry is there, there's no deeper meaning to it than "it's 1717, racism is supposed to be there"

#mine #txt #og #ofmd fandom crit #ofmd meta #meta #this is getting my meta tag bc the first bit is analyzing homophobia in ofmd #the rest is just analyzing how people in my society respond to media #a lot of white ppl get mad when their “historical” shows don't have racism in it #it's similar to how a lot of men get mad when their “historical” shows don't have sexism in it #and i think in both cases this happens bc ppl learned to anticipate those forms of bigotry being in those stories #and when u anticipate something being there and then it isn't. it's surprising. possibly disorienting #but then when ppl respond to that surprise/disorientation with anger. THAT'S where it's REALLY telling #“i expected bigotry and the lack of bigotry makes me mad!” oh? so you admit that you're comforted by portrayals of bigotry?? interesting #why do you enjoy seeing that on tv. why does a lack of bigotry upset you. tell me more.

[a-faggot-with-opinions]

very frustrated with the way people see "transandrophobia" and say "lol just that word tells me these people don't understand intersectional feminism" when all the language we have surrounding oppression only sounds "right" because it's been around for a while and been normalized. Idk if this example will land because it's not a good direct comparison, but when I was a kid (and like, now, tbh) people would say "feminism" and everyone would yell "oh so you only care about WOMEN? FEMALES? what about now X and Y affect men, huh?? You want female supremacy, etc" when feminists were absolutely already discussing how patriarchy affects men and (the ones I was around) were very clear that their goal was equality between "the sexes" (my experience, the feminists I was around). There was the whole "I'm not a feminist bc i don't believe in female supremacy, I'm an egalitarian" thing.

I think that "transmisogyny" is like... a lucky word in that it's pretty catchy and the words it's built out of are currently widely used (even if maybe people define them a little differently in different circles). At least in my language context, it just makes sense (it's intuitive that it's describing the intersection of misogyny and transphobia). Any attempt to make up a single word that describes that intersection in the context of transitioning toward masculinity will run into the issue that there's not a word for when men experience oppression in a specific way due to their gender, because white men don't experience oppression due to their gender.

Honestly, I do feel like it would be useful to have words or at least common phrases to describe how men are marginalized by systems of oppression. People try to draw comparisons between language around racism and language around transphobia by saying things like "Black women experience misogynoir but Black men just experience 'regular' anti-Black racism," and while I think the direct comparison between transphobia and racism isn't very useful, I think distinguishing the experience of racism depending on what gender you're being assigned in the moment is useful, actually. Because non-white men experience racism, and the intersection between racism and one's perceived gender is inextricable.

So much of racism is about stripping away the culture (and therefore any cultural experience of gender) of a racialized group and then applying White gender expectations. Of course, non-White people can never live up to those expectations because our physical, racial features aren't the norm. This is inherent to racially othering people, and while there's plenty features of racism that don't appear to be gendered... it really is heavily tied up in it. There's no "pure," "base" racism that doesn't rely at least in part on the idea that the racialized group is failing White gender, or is more likely to and therefore must work harder (assimilation), because you can't pick racism apart into several neat boxes that aren't deeply interconnected.

I am not Black so I won't try talking more on Black people's experiences, but I really do think. I'm Chinese, and I think it can be really hard to talk about anti-Asian racism because people assume it's the same for asian men and women, when actually the gendered distinction is really important and I don't think (as someone who's lived as both and is to this day perceived as both depending on context, despite the fact that I have transitioned) that Asian women experience the intersection of anti-asian racism + misogyny but Asian men experience "just anti-Asian racism". We (Asian men) experience it in a way that's very tied up in that we are Asian MEN. It's a big part, historically, of USAmerican anti-Chinese sentiment, the stripping away of Asian masculinity, the feminization of Asian men and our inherently undesirability since it's impossible for us to truly be masculine. These stereotypes are shifting and obviously more complex than just that, fetishization is also a big part of modern anti-Asian racism (especially online from what I've seen). Notably, many Asian men are clearly not feminine, at which point we can still fail at manhood by being labelled hypermasculine (aggressive, unintelligent, incapable of reason and culture, only useful for potential as manual laborers). Racism working as intended so we can always be told we're failing gender.

Disclaimer that I specifically didn't talk about Asian assimilation in USAmerica or our "model minority" status here and all of that affects the framework I laid out above. I am also not trying to compare how different groups are affected by racism, I just didn't think it's my place to make this example all about anti-Blackness since it's really not my place.

I guess my point is that saying intersectional language is only valid when you're using to say one is oppressed by all applicable systems of oppression makes it harder to discuss intersections of privilege and oppression without it seeming like you're attempting to dominate the entire conversation. Tying it back: if trans men & transmascs were to only use "transphobia" to describe our experiences while trans women & transfems use "transmisogyny," we would surely seem to dominate the conversation about transphobia in general and give the implication that transitioning towards masculinity is the default, usual way to be trans.

sorry for the length and I don't think I was as clear as I hoped, I can't make it any briefer without like, an editor. I'm really only talking about my frustration with the dismissal of "transandrophobia" due to it's etymology and diving into my issue with the common arguments I've seen made against it on an etymological basis, not trying to make an argument about whether trans men experience misogyny and transphobia bc we, as a group, obviously do. Regardless of if some of us usually don't.

^^^

#asks #transandrophobia #long post #racism

[aronarchy]

[CW: transphobia]

Transmisogyny is misogyny, transphobia is patriarchy.

The only main difference is that trans people are more oppressed than cis women so while cis women have gotten relative progress from feminism trans people are often left behind by cis feminists, and “progressive” transphobes will even naturalize patriarchal gender roles and definitions and manufactured constrictions, specifically bringing them out or bringing them back when it comes to defending transphobia.

This dynamic is especially exacerbated by racism, colonialism, Orientalism; the cultural imperialist Western gaze targets racialized trans people and even cis women and queers to naturalize or essentialize the patriarchal oppression they experience, treating it as an arbitrary cultural quirk occurring because of happenstance which must and/or can only be preserved, rather than a historically contingent form of oppression with specific material causes and consequences which can and should be overthrown. The relativist authoritarian often chastises consistent anti-authoritarians for supposedly being racist, white-privileged, disseminating “Western” viewpoints, etc. (erasing the non-white/Western intersectionally marginalized people who are the most harmed by such discourse, of course), but don’t be fooled: they’re the ones leveraging structures and ideologies originating in Western imperialism (the notion that The East and The West are ontologically different in grand historical ways, that nothing “Western” can be related to anything “Eastern” and vice versa, that The East is static and unchanging and underdeveloped, that The East’s cultures, values, practices, etc. are mysterious, exotic, inscrutable by The West, and so on), and when we expose this we peel away their façade (an important step that they always struggle to prevent by any means possible). (I don’t just say this in a vague abstract online discourse way; these dynamics also pop up in day-to-day personal political contexts, often the mechanism of violence/abuse; they are behind a great deal of material oppression in the real world today and have left a great deal of trauma upon marginalized people.)

It doesn’t occur to relativist transphobes that if someone doesn’t consider themself a woman / man because they feel they aren’t allowed to identify as or be one because they don’t fit the cissexist standard of having to be able to give birth (and fulfill the hegemonically defined (subordinate) wife role) / impregnate (and fulfill the hegemonically defined husband (patriarch) role), then that might possibly be a result of internalized patriarchy/misogyny/(cis)sexism and not an ideal state, and their mental health and self-image might improve and they might be living lives more closely in alignment with their internal selves if some friend went up and told them it could be an option. This is liberal choice “feminism” but specifically a version targeting trans people and transphobic oppression under patriarchy.

If a (white) infertile cis woman / cis man vented about feeling like they’re a failed Other rather than a real woman or real man because they can’t give birth / impregnate and the society around them says Real Women / Men are people who can give birth / impregnate (respectively), would people like this say as readily that it’s true they really are an ungendered unwomanly / unmanly Other, despite their own desire to be a woman / man and feelings which align with that? Or likewise for other forms of gendered nonconformity among cis people. (Much less likely, I think.)

Would they say, “cis women without children” is a whole separate gender from “cis women with children,” a third gender after “cis women with children” and “cis men with children”? Then “cis men without children” as a fourth gender. What about married with children versus married without? Then split the above into eight. Some trans people do get married, either while closeted, as an attempt at conversion or punishment by family or society, while passing for their correct gender (if they have a gender from the binary), or with updated laws which have assimilated trans people more. Trans people can have children too, even if not in the same patriarchal way which secures intergenerational patrilineal inheritance. More gender-categories for them then? (It’s obvious where this leads: there are in fact as many ways to be women and men as there are women and men, and different gender roles and social gender locations are assigned or designated in a gradient or internally distinguished way for all gender differences or social role differences, but there are some general categories which could be broadly termed different “genders” which group together, and thus it would be irrational/illogical and arbitrary to exclude trans women from womanhood or trans men from manhood under such a linguistic system.)

The transphobic takes above prioritize what “society” says, what other (cis) people surrounding someone says about what gender is, what their gender must be, as if what they say matters so much in defining us (or even at all), and then also equates the viewpoint of oppressive surroundings with the viewpoint of the oppressed individual (as if the oppressed will always just bow down and accept their oppression). That is not how we define gender or determine what anyone’s gender is, because that literally goes against the whole point of transness in the first place, which is that we define our own identities, we say what our genders are, we don’t limit ourselves by a cissexist society which constrains people by setting rigid inaccurate definitions; the subversiveness, the contradiction with surrounding norms, is literally the point; it wouldn’t be transness if there were no preexisting cisness (top-down/nonconsensual gender assignments) to struggle against in the first place.

It’s especially nasty to imply that Western trans people identify as “really” the gender they feel they are because the West’s social definitions of gender uniquely recognize that women don’t have to be wives, childbearers, and mothers (for patriarchs) and men don’t have to be husbands (patriarchs) and property-owning child-investing patrilineage-obsessed reproductive futurists. That erases the fact that there’s rampant institutionalized socially prevalent patriarchy in the West too; many people do believe that still; the point is, no society, no culture is a monolith. But it’s very obvious why sweeping portrayals of white, Western PoVs highlight the “progressive” parts while sweeping portrayals of non-white/non-Western PoVs highlight the “regressive” parts (racism, Enlightenment teleology). (And yes, people oppressed by racism can also be racist themselves.)

That also implies that trans people and our feelings and desires are dependent on cis people and their choices. That none of us will think against the grain until cis people create the conditions which allow for it. This prioritizes cis feminism and cis women’s rights over that of trans people, telling us they’ll always come first, we’ll always need them (though they won’t ever need us), if they’re not class-conscious yet then there’s no scenario where we might be more class-conscious already, which erases how we’re actually pressured to know much more about feminism than them, to understand their issues and ours and to be able to argue perfectly for both our rights and theirs in order to be relatively tolerated. These notions are only legible because of cissexism.

Trans people whose gender includes one (or both) genders from the binary are only treated as not being “allowed” to be “properly” considered as people of that gender because of cissexism. This denial is a form of oppression and social subordination, not something neutral or good or just naturally occurring. It’s cruel and it’s wrong. Notice how such discussions about “difference” never say that, e.g., “cis men are Different(tm) from trans men because they occupy different social niches, and trans men are more manly than cis men, because cis men don't fit into our/the Paradigmatic Image of What A Man Is(tm) and we only begrudgingly acknowledge cis men as probably ‘men’ in some way because of their self-identification but that won’t alter how we fundamentally categorize ‘men’ and we couldn’t possibly put forth a cis man as Paradigmatic, Archetypal, or Representative because smh he’s cis not trans, we couldn’t do that, that doesn’t intuitively make sense, a Man(tm) is a trans man unless otherwise specified?” (or likewise for women). Which makes it clear that this is about a power imbalance, a hierarchy placing cis people above trans people of the same gender and prioritizing cis people, which pushes out trans people from equal recognition and epistemic authority. (And no, the “unless otherwise specified” is not good enough, it’s still implicit misgendering; it’s just a half-assed attempt to cover the problems with your ideology; we want more.)

There is a (very obvious) reason why, despite having very different contexts at times, all patriarchies share certain common characteristics (patrilineage; intergenerational private property/power transfer of some sort; socially-mandated, enforced, or disproportionately incentivized binary heterosexual marriage/the couple-form; child-ownership by the patriarch; rigid definitions of “woman” as childbearer and mother and “man” as the one who possesses/owns the children (and “girls” and “boys,” respectively, as future “women” and “men,” requiring coercive socialization/indoctrination); condemnation of autonomous deviation from the prescriptive binary definitions of gender (in desire, in self-regard, in private or public identification/claiming, in differences or alterations in aesthetics/appearance/biological sex characteristics or role performance); etc.). Of course it’s not just arbitrarily landing on that every single time. These are social structures which arose from a historical process during which children, women, and queers were domesticated or forcibly excluded (as colonialism is imposed through an initial conquest and then ongoing counterinsurgency), relatively stabilizing after the patriarchs won the battle.

There is no reason why “man” or “woman” (or male, female, wife, husband, mother, father, boy, girl, masculine, feminine, gender, sex, “two genders,” “third gender”) would be terms any more transhistorically relevant, self-evident, coherent, or applicable than “transgender,” “nonbinary,” “trans woman/man/girl/boy/female/male,” etc. (And for that matter, “transmasc(uline)” (and “transfem(inine)”) shouldn’t be treated as “safer” terms to slide in third-gendering of binary trans people to avoid using the words “trans man” or “trans woman”; there’s no reason why they would automatically be more accurate either.) The people who would be called “trans” here today have existed and will exist in every society, and there will always be trans people under any patriarchy, and some language that would apply (whether a word or set of words or phrase or set of phrases or way of describing) to denote people rejecting or not aligning with their birth-assigned gender, so long as gender is assigned at birth. There will always be resistance, at least somewhere, sometime, when there is oppression. You will never have 100% internalized acceptance of cissexism. It’s time that relativists recognized this.

#OP #transphobia #misogyny #sexism #cissexism #patriarchy #gender #gender theory #feminism #transfeminism #intersectional feminism #racism #orientalism #anti relativism #transmisogyny #transandrophobia #anti-transmasculinity

[shrimpmandan]

I have a significant distaste for the whole discourse surrounding terms like TME and TMA-- my thoughts in a nutshell is that these terms are good for discussing their relevant forms of trans oppression-- but it's really, REALLY fucking irritating seeing people act like that's all transphobia or even oppression as a whole boils down to. Like, to the degree that I saw a tweet earlier today (which may or may not have been bait, but the point stands is that at least a few people were agreeing with it) about how the idea of white trans women having power over black trans men is ludicrous because... transmisogyny? Even though anyone with a fucking hint of racial awareness can understand how much more violent the oppression against POC trans people is on the whole?

Even ignoring all that, we still face... regular misogyny. It is not wild to say that. We're taken less seriously than our cis counterparts, whether it's because we're physically smaller, or because we were born women so we're still treated as just being silly women. The general view of trans men among TERFs and other transphobes is that we're stupid mentally ill girls being taken advantage of-- and everyone knows that girls can't make decisions for themselves! You want to be a real man? That's silly. Prove how "manly" you are to me and maybe I'll humor you, you silly bitch.

And of course, many of us have also experienced misogyny growing up. My mom would openly berate fat women because of her own weight insecurities. She told me that no man would ever want me if i didn't shave. She implied that I must've been attracted to the man who groomed and sexually exploited me-- that I must've wanted it to some degree. My stepdad frequently leverages my identity against me and tries to run me through "tests" that are filtered through his very rigid, outdated views of how a man should act. When I first was experimenting with my gender, he also made comments about how I was using a "male ruse"-- tricking and deceiving people. So many of my interactions with people who know my birth sex have been dripping with condescension, if not outright malice. This is misogyny. Calling it transandrophobia is also entirely fair, though ultimately, both transfeminine and transmasculine oppression are rooted in this same misogyny. We just get hit with different ends of the stick based off of how we're perceived by people.

#transphobia #transandrophobia #transmisandry #transmisogyny #lgbt discourse #trans discourse #misogyny

[faif-girlcel]

Been playing Mass Effect lately and have to say it's so interesting how paragon Shepard is the definition of a "good cop". You're upholding a racially hierarchical regime where some aliens are explicitly stated to be seen as lesser and incapable of self governance despite being literal spacefarers with their own personal governments, and the actual emphasized incompetence of those supposedly "capable of governing", the council allows for all sorts of excesses and brutality among it's guard seemingly, and chooses on whims whether or not to aid certain species in their struggles based on favoritism, there is, from the councils perspective, *literal* slave labor used on the citadel that they're indifferent to because again, lesser species (they don't know that the keepers are designed to upkeep the citadel they just see them as an alien race to take advantage of at 0 cost), there is seemingly overt misogyny present among most races that is in no way tackled or challenged, limitations on free speech, genocide apologia from the highest ranks and engrained into educational databases, and throughout all of this, Shepard can't offer any institutional critique, despite being the good guy hero jesus person, because she's incapable of analyzing the system she exists in and actively serves and furthers. sure she criticizes individual actions of the council and can be rude to them, but ultimately she remains beholden to them, and carries out their missions, choosing to resolve them as a good cop or bad cop, which again maybe individually means saving a life or committing police brutality, but she still ultimately reinforces a system built upon extremely blatant oppression and never seriously questions this, not even when she leaves and joins Cerberus briefly.

And then there's the crew, barring Liara (who incidentally is the crewmate least linked to the military, and who,, is less excluded from this list in ME2,, but i wanna focus on 1) Mass Effect 1 feels like Bad Apple fixer simulator, you start with

Garrus: genocide apologist (thinks the genophage was justified) who LOVES extrajudicial murder

Ashley: groomed into being a would-be klan member

Tali: zionist who hated AI before it was cool (in a genocidal way)

Wrex: war culture mercenary super chill on war crimes

Kaidan: shown as the other "good cop" and generally the most reasonable person barring Liara, but also he did just murder someone in boot camp in a fit of rage

Through your actions, you can fix them! You can make the bad apples good apples (kinda) but like,,,,

2 of course moves away from this theme a bit while still never properly tackling corrupt institutions in a way that undoes the actions of the first game, but its focus is elsewhere and the crew is more diverse in its outlook

Ultimately i just find it interesting how Mass Effect is a game showcasing how a good apple or whatever is capable of making individual changes for the better but is ultimately still a tool of an oppressive system and can't do anything to fundamentally change that, even if they're the most important good apple in said system.

Worth noting maybe this'll change in Mass Effect 3, which i have yet to play as im in the process of finishing 2 currently (im a dragon age girl) but idk i like how it's handled at first i was iffy on it but no it's actually pretty cool.

Also sorry if this is super retreaded ground im new to mass effect discourse this is just my takeaways from it lol

#mass effect #politics in videogames #bioware #police #maybe stating the obvious

[lilithfairen]

https://twitter.com/judgmentalthe/status/1667306032174104577?s=46&t=9MJEvRJsmz4hF6_6P4quvQ

Of course Critter is pissed off about someone calling out Fixing RWBY on being a pile of crap. As someone who's part of the team making it (and not getting paid a cent by the parasite in charge), she's effectively a full supporter of everything in Fixing RWBY. Of women being told to Stay In The Kitchen so men can do the fighting instead. Of white-male self-inserts spouting racist bullshit about PoC characters. Of queer characters having their roles in the plot minimized while a straight white man gets to be ship-teased with the woman he racially abused.

Of course, as we all remember, this is the misogynistic loser who thinks Ruby is a horrible person for fighting back against an assassin trying to kill her friends and kidnap her. So who really gives a crap about what Critter thinks, aside from people who just want to feel validated in their shitty misogyny and hate?

#fixing rwby #rwby critics

[toongrrl-blog]

My Style Analysis: Devi in Ben's Dream Part 2

Alright folks we are gonna take another ring around the rosy everything Ben got thinking of this dream.

One thing I kick myself for despite the fact that both Stranger Things and NHIE are Netflix productions is why I didn't see it sooner.

Devi is likely dressed in an updated version of Princess Daphne from the classic arcade game Dragon's Lair, a Don Bluth production.

Yes the archetypal Damsel In Distress whose character design was based on Playboy pinups, who looks like she'd fall out of her lingerie (lots of fashion tape must be used) and part of the Dumb Blonde stereotype that was used do demean conventionally attractive women AND women who didn't fit the mold regardless of physical appeal. And her Knight In Shining Armor? Dirk.

Despite fitting the archetypal notion of the Knight, Dirk is not drawn as desirably as Daphne, part of the reasons many feminists found the games to be sexist (with Space Ace being a marginal improvement given that Kimberly, a redheaded Daphne, is sassy and spunky and is able to take initiative in saving the day) and Daphne is a passive figure in all this.

Now what about ST2 and NHIE? Well....

In the opener to the 2nd Season of the highly popular sci-fi period piece, the boys (Will Byers, Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, and Lucas Sinclair) head over to a 1984 perfect arcade where Dustin tries to best Lucas's high score at the game only to have Dirk killed by the dragon and Lucas gloat about being able to save the blonde beauty. Why is this important?

Because New Girl in Town Max Mayfield ("Mad Max") beat Dustin's high score on Dig Dug and soon Lucas and Dustin are both in competition for the acerbic tomboy's feelings, thus marking a foreshadowing of who gets the girl.

It's Lucas, of course. But despite time zones, episode by episode conflicts, and decades separating the couples, Lumax and Benvi do have a lot in common. Buckle up because we will be talking about how Western Society treats difference in ethnicity, heritage, race, and appearance and gender.

One thing to make clear that the image of the Knight in Shining Armor and the helpless Princess is often obnoxiously Eurocentric, especially of the Gallic or Anglo persuasion. Princess Daphne is tall, leggy, slim and curvaceous with long, blonde hair and blue eyes with a voice high on helium and a babylike demeanor, a kind of innocence attributed to respectable European women that Karens have exploited for generations often to damaging effects; Dirk is meant to stand in as traditionally masculine but hapless enough to be relatable to the (assumed) male players of the game, all he has to do is save the girl to have any shot with her leading to the unfortunate implication that young men are entitled to the opposite gender, especially the ones considered the most desirable but he isn't classically handsome, historically men have been able to get away with not living up to beauty standards by being able to be identified with their talent, intelligence, heroics, finances, economic savvy, work ethic, virility, strong character, sense of humor, or being a decent person. And of course it's been said (and proved) that white men can get away with being mediocre and still scale the ladder of society, whereas his conditionally white and racialized counterparts have to work harder to even take their steps on an often more perilous ladder.

Historically in our society, both members of the Black and Jewish Diaspora have had a....hard time of it: often as targets of derision, fear, violence, and disdain for the jobs they were sentenced to do (often in less "respectable" areas) and this also affected how (and this is not to take away from how insidious anti-Black and anti-Semite misogyny is, go ask Meghan Thee Stallion and Elana Steinberg) men of these groups were depicted: either desexualized and non-threatening to the point of being humiliated or over-sexualized and "out to take our wimmin" and scapegoated because won't someone please think of the children?

Sometimes if they were "lucky", they got to be "the best friend" to the less ethnic white guy who presents as WASPy. They could be attractive (if not more) or charming (if not more) or compelling to watch (if not more) as the hero but don't get the leading man treatment or are the replaceable awesome love interest who are moved aside for the more flawed and relatable white character (look at Courtney B. Vance in Sex and the City); there is also ugggh beauty standards that favor Eurocentric gentile features over non-European features. Dirk is drawn in that classic homely cartoon guy style while both Lucas and Ben are more conventionally desirable to their girlfriends (and many fans of their respective shows) but while Dirk is entitled to Daphne's affections (and by implication, her body), both Lucas and Ben (who are both younger than Dirk) have to not only save the girl but they also have to gentle their way (a term I learned as a kid) by being more emotionally available and being there for their girlfriend's vulnerabilities and be willing to risk heartbreak. Both @urspopinionsareshit (on masculinity and anti-Semitic tropes) and u/absentminded88 on Reddit (on Lucas Sinclair and tropes focusing on African American masculinity) have wrote extensively on these topics but my point still stands that often men of both diasporas were often overlooked as paragons of ideal masculinity.

Now it's one for the ladies!

I picked these because Max and Devi have something that poor Daphne lacks: illuminating friendships with other women and looks like I will have to toss a wet mildew blanket into the party.

Let's talk feminine stereotypes and difference! *dodges tomatoes*

It's quite a stretch to suggest that both Max and Devi don't fit a conventional eurocentric blonde beauty as both Sadie Sink (who's also a model) and Maitreyi Ramikrishnan are both pretty girls with expressive eyes with slim figures but yet many women of color and redheaded women were often not considered paragons of beauty (if they weren't being over-sexualized as homewreckers and temptresses) and often not considered feminine due to depictions of their "fiery" tempers at best or being seen as castrating harpies. Max and Devi both struggle with their society's view of how girls should behave, have dealt with trauma, not taking shit from boys or authority figures or even other girls, chafing against certain expectations put on them while trying to navigate femininity away from their mothers (who they have strained relationships with) and with the help of mass media (eep). But ultimately both girls find empowerment in their relationships with other women, finding out how capable they really are even with threatening a man with a weapon or destroying his skateboard, and in their own self-expression and put-upon uniqueness. Whereas Daphne existed to look pretty and adore Dirk (and by extension the assumed cis male player), Max and Devi have agency and ideas with formidable personalities that intimidate their peers and do-nothing adult authority figures. If they need saving, they at least try to resist and are capable of it.

This initiative is reflected in the dream: Devi declares her academic accomplishments and capability are superior to Ben's and that is a turn on for him, she manages to Jedi mind-trick his shirt off, and declares she will take charge of their lovemaking. Perfect combo of sensuality, brains, beauty, and gumption.

Both Lumax and Benvi prove that there is an appeal towards seeing couples not fall into strict gender roles where one is more capable than the other and one has work hard to meet a trophy wife standard and about thirty years after Daphne and Kimberly of Space Ace, we have seen the sassy, vocal, independent love interest role evolve from love interest to being the protagonist/main character of her story.

#women in media #men in media #race in media #never have i ever #stranger things #dragons lair #don bluth #gender roles #white privilege #beauty standards #lumax #benvi #lucas x max #devi x ben #lucas sinclair #max mayfield #devi vishwakumar #ben gross #caleb mclaughlin #maitreyi ramakrishnan #sadie sink #jaren lewison

[mueritos]

I sent your post regarding destigmatizing transmasculinity to everyone I know because it hit the nail on the fucking head without diving into weird "Therefore, it is trans women's fault" rhetoric that I see a shocking increase of on this website. However, I do notice a lot of discourse regarding the relationship between gender and race being led primarily by white trans people who have fundamentally different interactions than I do, and I've had plenty of arguments about how no, black transmasc people don't have privilage over black transfem people because being percieved as a gnc black woman or a black man are equally dangerous (speaking as a butch black transfem). Thoughts?

First off, thank you for reading the post and sharing it. My main reasoning behind the post was because I was also frustrated by the white dominant ideology regarding trans identities, especially in regards to gender and race (and in how they use trans women as a scape goat for transphobia and colonialism). Gender is racialized, and unfortunately white trans people view their gender as outside of race because they already epitomize normalcy in terms of race. I want to also make it clear that I don’t speak for Black folks, and I’m simply relaying information of what I have learned over the years of interacting with Black communities, the history I have learned in my courses with Black professors over the years (both focusing on queer theory and Black history in the US), and the books I have been reading for my own research. If i have any information or ideas incorrect, I would be happy to adjust them accordingly ^-^

The lack of critical gender reading is also another issue within the community in terms of why we have so many issues with white trans people speaking over BIPOC trans people, especially Black trans people. I find that white queer people seem to only read about white queer people, and never want to explore outside of that. No Audre Lorde, no Bell Hooks, no Ida B wells, no Sojourner Truth, no June Jordan, no Marsha P Johnson or Slyvia Rivera, no Essex Hemphill or Arturo Islas, nothing. Race is already difficult to grapple with for white people, and they believe our shared queerness is enough to unite us all under the same struggle of sexual and gender oppression. This isn't true obviously, and quick historical knowledge about the history of ballroom, urban culture in cities, the policing of BIPOC bodies and identity in bars/clubs/street corners, even going further with the women's suffrage movement being anit-Black and saying that they supported all women (many suffragists tokenized Black women), but did not want Black men to have a vote/power, etc.

The history of the US has always made gender racialized. From the moment Columbus stepped foot into the Americas, thought the Natives were “sodomites” and “hemaphrodites”, they thought them overtly sexual and called them animals for their lack of clothing. The same was applied to Black people in the US; their dehumanization was racialized just as much as it was gendered; Black women were seen as “jezebels” to justify the sexual violence against them, and Black men were viewed as “beasts of burden” to justify the labor and the hypersexuality imposed onto them. Everything that gender is today has ALWAYS been because of white people. Theatre in the 20s and 30s used Black face to show “pansy” behavior against “normal heterosexual behavior”, making it clear that normal = white (my sources here are based on Michael Bronski’s A Queer History of the United States). This is quite literally not that hard to understand, but unfortunately white ideas about “male privilege” and misogyny fails Black communities, especially trans Black people.

Male privilege seems to only exist at it’s rawest form in white cisgender heterosexual men. White cisgender gay men are close after; historically they have always been able to obtain employment and housing and resources at rates much higher than even white lesbians throughout history. Anyone outside of this scope, however, does not have male privilege, and even Brown men, despite living and participating in the patriarchy (like we all do), don’t experience male privilege the same way white men do. Sure, maybe Brown and Black cisgender men will not have much trouble getting employment compared to Black and Brown women, but the rates at which they are policed, both by institutions and society/people, also places them at a disadvantage. BIPOC men experience a racialized manhood, one that inherently has already failed them on account of not being white.

This is why intersectionality is important, and white people just don’t have a good grasp on it, no matter how many times they watch Kimberle Crenshaw’s TEDx talk (lol). When your gender isn’t racialized, you have no reference for what a racialized gender feels like. Yes, female presenting and GNC presenting and “non-passing” BIPoC individuals face more discrimination and oppression than BIPOC men, but not all BIPOC men are cisgender, heterosexual, monogamous, or “male” presenting. I always say no bigot is going to ask what identity you are before calling you a slur, and the same is just as true for BIPOC queer people. No racist is going to make sure to ask if you’re Black or mixed before calling you the “correct slur”, many of them see anyone who is outside the white heterosexual cisgender norm and go with the first slur they can think of. THAT is why there is no clear hierarchy in terms of how much oppression you face according to your identities when you’re a queer BIPOC. Yes, colorism, yes cisgender privilege, yes heterosexual privilege, yes, this is why intersectionality exists, but I don’t believe oppression should always be quantified when it comes to racialized gender and sexuality. BIPOC queer people are already well versed in intersectionality; we already care and cherish for each other based on our shared struggles. I’ve quite literally heard more discourse regarding transmasc vs trans femme privilege from white queers than from BIPOC queers. THAT says enough about the difference of where our respective communities are at. BIPOC queer people are already leagues ahead when it comes to intersectionality; white queer people are still stuck quoting Kimberle Crenshaw on their email signatures. 

I’m not sure if I answered this to the fullest of my abilities, but I wanted to make the effort to give you my thoughts. I thank you for such a wonderful question. I am not the first or last person to talk about this, and I encourage anyone who wants to do more research to look into the various authors I have mentioned, as well as BIPOC creators online. I also recognize that non-Black folks have their duty to learn about this as well, and if I can contribute to that conversation for other non-Black people so that they are more compassionate and understanding to Black experiences, then I’m grateful to have expressed my thoughts. (ps, if there r any spelling mistakes, im sorry, but I dont proofread my asks before sending them off)

Like I mentioned before, I’m happy to adjust and correct myself, This is a very complex issue and takes relearning years of history. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

Have a great day my friend!

#muertoresponds #trans stuff #discourse #trans discussion

[communistkenobi]

There’s an extremely pervasive idea that bigotry is the territory of the working class, that the unwashed masses are to blame for overt expressions of racism, antisemitism, misogyny, etc. These are “low class” opinions. This is sometimes given a progressive patina by isolating it to the white working class, or even white working class men. But I think those identity qualifiers, far from attempting to add an intersectional analysis to reactionary thought, are primarily there to act as shields for the person wielding the critique - that while they acknowledge that “at least some” working class people are racial or sexual or ethnic minorities, and they certainly cannot be blamed for the discrimination they face from their peers (or even more outlandish, that minorities cannot themselves hold bigoted beliefs), the origin of bigotry still resides within the working class - to which, of course, they certainly do not belong, and are therefore not bigoted themselves.

I bring this up because Adorno identifies a specific flavour of antisemitism that is primarily used by the middle class, and it’s an expression of antisemitism I see extremely often in far right circles:

To the anti-Semitic members of the middle class, the imagery of the Jew seems to have a somewhat different structure. The middle class themselves experience to a certain degree the same threats to the economic basis of their existence which [they perceive to] hang over the heads of the Jews. They are themselves on the defensive and struggle desperately for the maintenance of their status. Hence, they accentuate just the opposite of what workingmen are likely to complain about, namely, that the Jews are not real bourgeois, that they do not really “belong.” […] To the middle-class anti-Semite, the Jew is likely to be regarded as the misfit bourgeois, as it were, he who did not succeed in living up to the standards of today’s American civilization and who is a kind of obsolete and uncomfortable remnant of the past. (emphasis mine)

The general antisemitic conspiracy that Jewish people secretly control the world is not uniquely middle class, but the particular expression of it in places like Qanon definitely are - that the “bad” misfit bourgeois are preventing the real, manly, American bourgeois from controlling society and the state.

Which is part of why you should always be suspicious of people claiming that poor people are the reason bigotry still exists, that this kind of unacceptable view of the world is relegated to the working class (among the many, many other problems with that claim). And I think you should especially be critical of any coverage of Qanon/alt-right movements that focus on these movements’ ability to “tap into” the economic concerns of poor people. To be sure, the working class has ample capacity for a wide range of bigoted beliefs, but those beliefs are not particular to them as a class, and currently the dominant expression of antisemitism in North America seems to have a distinctly middle class character.

#the authoritarian personality #book club #antisemitism tw