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#because there were absolutely trans people in there- statistically with that high of a class number there had to have been
strawberrysodatown · 3 years
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u know, probably the most f*cked up thing that happened to me at BYU was in like my second ish year when I was in my human development class and my professor said some super transphobic stuff to our class of like 300+ people in a huge auditorium and me- even while being honestly transphobic myself- was appalled at what he was saying and I made a comment in front of everyone about how he was wrong and I tried to talk about my trans friends experiences that I didn’t even understand fully at the time- and he used the f*cking slippery slope fallacy on me and I just gave up because I did not have the energy to argue with a grown man in front of 300+ people. But I would have now. Every time I pass by that man’s office at work when I’m cleaning I’m silently just >:(  
#he was like: oh what's next people will start identifying as animals like where does the line end??#and in my head i was like: I know what slippery slope fallacy is sir I learned about it in middleschool shut the f*ck up#but I just kinda shrugged and sat down because OOF the pressure was intense and again- was kind of transphobic myself#in the way that I had no idea if it was real or not but I was also NOT OKAY with people being harassed about it wtf#i only hope that since then he's had some character development#because there were absolutely trans people in there- statistically with that high of a class number there had to have been#and to hear that????#yall i'm sorry I couldn't fight better then I'm so sorry#anyways other than that BYU wasn't really that bad for me#let's just say I'm glad I took all my religion classes before I figured out that I am a lesbian hahaaaa#it probably would have been a lot harder I honestly think God was protecting me by not letting me know for so long LMAO#honestly when I think about it that way my whole life makes a lot more sense#I don't think I could have handled the mental pressure if I had been aware of myself while being at school- i was already havin a rough time#there are a lot of moments as i was growing up like: why am i so different from everyone else and why does nothing romantic happen to me#and now I'm like: my dude you would have figured things out a lot quicker otherwise and your life would have been hell#I don't care if you don't believe in God- I do and I think they were watching out for me haha :')#and now that I'm tougher i have to go through mental health crisises NOOOOOW aahhhhhhh#i'll be okay
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anxious-ace · 3 years
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📂any rando FACE family hetalia headcanons you have /or individual headcanons for the face members! 😊
Absolutely
France/Francis:
The chef of the family
He is also the fashion designer
He will make sure that they are the most stylish family in the town
Definitely has a "kiss the cook" apron
Got absolutely black out drunk during quarantine and made out with a mannequin he uses for designing clothes
Hair stylist
Basically anything fashion and food is his domain
Helped style the kids' hair when they were younger, he even taught Matthew how to do it so he could help Michelle
Has some, interesting, things in his house 👀
He would've bought a wine filled bean bag chair if Arthur let him
PANSEXUAL, CIS GENDER, GENDER NON CONFORMING KING
Isn't allowed to drive, ever
Speaking of England/Arthur:
He is diabetic so his food is made with less sugar, no one else besides Francis, Matthew, Alfred, Michelle and the rest of the Kirkland family know
Matthew carries a med bag that has his insulin and other medication in it
Fun fact: insulin was invented in Canada so thanks to him, Arthur hasn't passed out from diabetic shock in forever
That's why his food is bland
He also panics while he cooks if he's cooking for someone else
He probably has really bad head trauma from that shooting star and all the wars he was in, so when he stands up too fast, he starts getting dizzy
He also trembles really badly when distressed or panicking, sometimes he can't even hold a pen
While Francis makes sure they're stylish, Arthur makes sure they won't die from the cold (yes even Matthew has to wear a coat even though he's the coldest country out of the entire Kirkland family)
The only trans uk brother
"My sexuality is mind your business"
He's bisexual
Canada/Matthew:
As I stated before, he gets silent during meetings or other settings that can cause anxiety, he's selectively mute and has really bad anxiety
He is a nature photographer
He and Michelle take absolutely amazing pictures together
He is afraid of heights, mostly being in a plane, because on 9/11, he was in one of the planes that crashed into the twin towers
He was going to visit Alfred for a bros day out
He was in the window seat and saw the inside of the tower as they crashed
He also hates heights in general (just looking at a tall building is enough to give him a panic attack)
Was afraid of heights before the 9/11 attacks, that is what made it worse, no knows why, I'm not even sure he knows why
(Hint: Arthur's brothers + tiny Matthew + edge of a cliff = disaster + life long fear of heights)
He is a medical professional with a medical degree
He and Cuba get high together and chat about pretty much anything
Can sew clothes, either entirely from scratch or patches up damaged clothes
When he plays hockey, watch out, he will slaughter you
Trans man who's sexuality is maple, just kidding he's pansexual
Can get pregnant
Where did you think the provinces came from?
Francis taught him to love all genders, he took that to heart
His romantic and platonic feelings for people get blurred together in some weird way
America/Alfred:
He's not as fat or dumb as everyone believes, and he knows it.
He works out more than anyone and all throughout school, he and Matthew were the best in their classes
Statistically, along with one the highest rates of obesity, America also has a huge rate of people with eating disorders, meaning he forces himself to throw up everything he ate at the end of the day
He has a pressure point located just above his stomach and below his sternum, if you hit it, the pain is so bad, he'll throw up everything, including stomach acid and even blood in rare cases
During the Civil War, he tried to saw himself in half, symbolizing the south trying to secede from the country, he gave himself a nasty jagged scar which marks where the pressure point is
Both he and Matthew have matching scars on their chests from the war of 1812, only they know how they got them
They've reconciled since then, but Alfred won't let Matthew or Arthur near a lighter again
He saw the 9/11 attacks, mainly the ones in New York, meaning he saw the plane that Matthew was in crash into the second building
He knew he was visiting, that's why he was in New York, he was going to pick him up from the airport, instead, he needed him to pick him up from the hospital that day
Can cook, but it's more of a home style, basically American barbecue (hamburgers, hotdogs, etc)
He is trans and can get pregnant
Where did you think the states came from?
He's bisexual but he is also just really friendly so his romantic and platonic feelings get blurred
Seychelles/Michelle:
The best swimmer in the family
Helped take care of the twins after the 9/11 attacks
Has a pet turtle named Shelly
Matthew or Francis does her hair
Can usually be seen barefoot on the closet beach
Probably playing with a turtle or swimming
Has a full on aquarium in her house
Her sexuality is women who can kick your ass but can also give some mean cuddles when you need it
"Lesbian of the ocean, what is your wisdom?" "The world is cold and hard, but girls are hot and soft."
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piracytheorist · 3 years
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So I went down some t*rf tags the other day to find which blogs I should block, as you do, and of course in order to avoid accidentally blocking people who were mocking the ideology or sarcastically agreeing with it, I actually read the posts there and scrolled down some of the blogs.
And with some of the things I saw... it made me understand how they reel people in. In some of the stuff they said, I understood them. I understood their struggle, and their anger, and I got how their feelings could make them burst out the way they do in their blogs. Also the fact that many of the blogs I scrolled down and blocked were by women between the ages of 15 and 19 didn’t help. That’s the exact age where you do the most reckless, the most emotional, and the least experienced thinking. It’s when you think of something and immediately think you’re right, because you’re not developed enough, neither mentally, nor emotionally, nor from the aspect of life experiences, to know better and reflect on how well developed your thoughts are.
And to see them act the same way older t**fs do, like in the ages of 26+... it’s fucking scary. It genuinely feels like a cult, where teen women, frustrated with the misogyny they experience, come to a website to vent out their feelings about that and find passionate adult women agreeing with and supporting them and saying that they’re in the right to hate men and trans women... it solidifies their at then immature thoughts.
Like, give me one (1) cis woman who during her mid- or late teens didn’t hate men, even for just a few months, in reaction to being treated as lesser just for having a female body. Just one. I specifically did. I was, for a couple of years actually, believing the bullshit going around that “Girls are more mature than boys”, that “Girls love truly, boys only want sex”, that “Women are statistically smarter than men” etc etc. But then you grow up, you reflect on those thoughts and you go like “Damn older people are right when they say that teenagers do stupid stuff sometimes”.
And that’s the thing with being a teenager; it’s the time to do mistakes, it’s the time to screw up, to vent out your frustrations, and when you grow older and have more life experience, look back at how you used to think and say “Wow, cringe. Good thing I grew out of that.” Absolutely not saying that everything teenagers do is stupid, if anything, most people start discovering themselves at that age. But that’s it; it’s a start. And on that road you’ll make mistakes, you’ll reflect, you’ll change your mind, you’ll learn, you’ll grow. The things that you start connecting with as a teenager which you keep on in your adult life also change, in the way that you look at them deeper, you understand them differently... it’s like with favourite films. Any movie you love as a teenager and as an adult, you’ll have a different mindset on the two occasions. Even if it brings you back to those times, you still have developed and you see it in a different way. Both ways may be positive, or fundamentally similar, but they’re still different, maybe one is the evolution of the first; it’s still not 100% the same. Because you grew up. It’s kinda sad, in a way.
So the issue I have with indoctrinating young women into the t**f ideology from so early on, is that it’s an ideology based on hate. By saying that women are only those who experience misogyny, you’re basically normalizing misogyny and abuse, and averting the blame. You’re saying that it’s expected from men to be misogynistic, and that women should band together against the oppression... instead of looking into why men are misogynistic and looking how you can inspire change in that. It’s victim blaming, basically.
By saying that “trans women are not women because they don’t grow up experiencing the effects of misogyny and patriarchy on themselves” (in a way that’s bullshit but as a cis woman I can’t expand on that, read trans women’s stories instead), you’re putting the responsibility of erasing misogyny on trans women. And again, you’re normalizing the abuse, and you’re defining your gender by the abuse you went through.
Like, fuck no. I was bullied for more than half my school life. It has impacted me greatly, many of the emotional scars I carry them still, my character has been affected by the abuse I went through, but by fuck no does it define me. I choose to try to be kinder. I choose to see abuse as wrong. I choose to be an educator so that I can help bullying stop being a thing in the schools I’ll be teaching. And not because I feel ashamed, or that I pity children who are being bullied, but because I want to make this world a better place, because I believe in teaching the younger generation into not perpetuating any kind of hateful ideology.
That’s not what t**fs do. They just say they hate men and perpetuate the idea of female supremacy... as if women, even women who are privileged in every way other than having a female body, can never do wrong.
Like on one hand, they deify JKR who said that “I am not a victim, I do not pity myself and I’m growing out of my trauma strong” in a very, very victim-shaming way, and on the other hand they define their femininity on the fact that they’re victimized by the patriarchy. Make it make sense.
And in general, it is still an ideology based on hate. When you take a group of people that are struggling both on the inside (either through gender dysphoria or through the pressure of not feeling free to express themselves) and on the outside (either because they’re bullied if they act “out of the gender norm” or because of transphobia if they come out), and you hate on them, when you put the entire responsibility of erasing unrealistic expectations on beauty and appearance for women on that specific small group that’s in a fundamentally disadvantageous position... bro I don’t know what you call it, I call it targeting. You have your frustrations with the patriarchy and sexist men, and because those people won’t listen to you - mostly because they’re privileged and assisted in that by the system they create - and you take it out on a group of people that’s just trying to live their lives in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone.
Like, I saw someone being upset by people comparing t**fs to nazis because she’s Jewish and I’m like... how the heck can you not see the similarities? How can you grow up Jewish and not see that it’s wrong to target an entire group of people, massively hate on them, say that they “have an agenda” just because they want to be themselves and aren’t hurting anyone? How can you not see that cherry-picking the unkind or misled ones and defining the entire group by those few people is wrong?
In fact, how can you not see that “trans women are perpetuating Hollywood’s beauty standards for women” has the exact same basis as “immigrants of colour are stealing white people’s jobs”?
And you may say, “Lillpon, you’re doing the same with t**fs right now. You’re going out there and blocking them after having said you hate blocking people” and I’ll say, I am not hating on them. As I said, I’m scared by seeing how many of them are teenagers, but at the same time, it’s telling. It’s a cult-like mentality, it finds people who are frustrated with how they are treated, who feel wronged, who feel they’re in an unjust world, and it takes those feelings and targets it to one specific group or characteristic. For t**rfs, that’s the XY chromosome set. For neo-nazis, that’s non-Caucasian races. The whole “finding young people who are alone, who see that the world is unjust, who feel no-one listening to them and indoctrinating them to an ideology of hate” is point-blank exactly how neo-nazi groups work. Here is a very interesting TED talk on the matter by a former neo-nazi, if you’re interested.
Also, I never said I hate blocking people, or that I think it’s wrong. I just don’t think it’s something to be proud of, and in fact I’m not proud for blocking those people, I even feel a little guilty as I understand how many of them are just victims of indoctrination.
You’ll say, “But Lillpon, a lot of neo-nazis are spoiled, privileged white men! How can you know how privileged t**fs are??” And to that, I’ll turn communist and whisper in your ear, “The privileged are few. They’re the minority. And they depend on the lower classes fighting against each other so that people forget that it’s the privileged who make all the laws and standards that hurt all the lower classes.” To that extent, you can never, never know who truly hides behind the blogs and twitter accounts with “r*dfem lesbian” on their bio. There are many occasions, especially on twitter, where accounts that claimed to be queer poc were found out to be run by straight white men.
... So, who can guarantee that everyone running a blog with “r*dfem lesbian” on their bio is actually a cis, lesbian woman? And again, on its basis, it’s the same.
Neo-nazism is putting the blame on people of colour; that not only causes a rift between neo-nazis and poc, but also between neo-nazis and white people who oppose them. It’s in fact a pawn so that the white people in power - the people who are responsible for the problems poc and lower class white people face - can avoid having everyone against them. They give poc and less-racist lower class white people a scapegoat.
T**f ideology is putting the blame on people born in male bodies - absolutely no matter what their character is. Again, that causes rifts between t**fs and cis men, t**fs and trans people, and t**fs and cis women who support trans rights. Instead of focusing on seeing how we can stop cis men from being sexist - which of course will inconvenience the men in power who rose so high because misogyny is holding women back - we’re fighting against each other. It’s again, a pawn, a scapegoat, to distract us from blaming the one who’s truly to blame.
If anything, if you’re a t**f, the fact that what you do is helping the white men in power - because absolutely nothing you or your friends can do can affect them in a negative way - should be a reason by itself to not be a t**f. But what do I know.
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star-anise · 5 years
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why would your social environment affect if you identify as a woman or nb?
I don’t know if you meant it to be, but this is a delightful question. I am going to be a complete nerd for 2k+ words at you.
“Gender” is distinct from “sex” because it’s not a body’s physical characteristics, it’s how society classifies and interprets that body. Sex is “That person has a vagina.” Gender is “This is a blend of society’s expectations about what bodies with vaginas are like, social expectations of how people with vaginas do or might or should act, behave, and feel, the actual lived experiences of people with vaginas, and a twist of lemon for zest.” Concepts of gender and what is “manly” and “womanly” can vary a lot. They’re social values, like “normal” or “legal” or “beautiful”, and they vary all the time. How well you fit your gender role depends a lot on how “gender” is defined.
800 years ago in Europe the general perception was that women were sinful, sensual, lustful people who required frequent sex and liked watching bloodsport. 200 years ago, the British aristocracy thought women were pure, innocent beings of moral purity with no sexual desire who fainted at the sight of blood. These days, we think differently in entirely new directions.
But this gets even more complicated, in part because human experience is really diverse and society’s narratives have to account for that. So 200 years ago, those beliefs about femininity being delicate and dainty and frail only really applied to women with aristocratic lineages, and “the lower classes” of women were believed to be vulgar, coarse, sexual, and earthy, which “explained” why they performed hard physical labor or worked as prostitutes.
Being trans or nonbinary isn’t just or even primarily about what characteristics you want your body to have. It’s about how you want to define yourself and be interpreted and interacted with by other people.
The writer Sylvia Plath lived 1932-1963, and she said:
“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars–to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording–all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery.”
She was from upper-middle-class Massachusetts, the child of a university professor. A lot of those things she was “prohibited” from doing weren’t things each and every woman was prohibited from doing; they were things women of her class weren’t allowed to do. The daughters and sisters and wives of sailors and soldiers, women who worked in hotels and ran rooming houses, barmaids and sex workers, got to anonymously and invisibly observe those men, after all. They just couldn’t do it at the same time they tried to meet the standards educated Bostonians of the 1950s had for nice young women.
Failure to understand how diverse womanhood is has always been one of feminism’s biggest weaknesses. The Second Wave of feminism was started mostly by prosperous university-educated white women, since they were the people with the time and money and resources to write and read books and attend conferences about “women’s issues”. And they assumed that their issues were female issues. That they were the default of femaleness, and could assume every woman had roughly the same experience as them.
So, for example, middle-class white women in post-WWII USA were expected to stay home all the time and look after their children. Feminists concluded that this was isolating and oppressive, and they’d like the freedom to pursue lives, careers, and interests outside of the home. They vigorously pursued the right to be freed from their domestic and maternal duties.
But in their society, these experiences were not generally shared by Black and/or poor women, who, like their mothers, did not have the luxury of spending copious amounts of leisure time with their children; they had to work to earn enough money to survive on, which meant working on farms, in factories, or as cooks, maids, or nannies for rich white women who wanted the freedom to pursue lives outside the home. They tended to feel that they would like to have the option of staying home and playing with their babies all day. 
This is not to say none of the first group enjoyed domestic lives, or that none of the second group wanted non-domestic careers; it’s just that the first group formed the face and the basic assumptions of feminism, and the second group struggled to get a seat at the table.
There’s this phenomenon called “cultural feminism” that’s an attitude that crops up among feminists from time to time (or grows on them, like fungus) that holds that women have a “feminine essence”, a quasi-spiritual “nature” that is deeply distinct from the “masculine essence” of men. This is one of the concepts powering lesbian separatism: the idea that because women are so fundamentally different from men, a society of all women will be fundamentally different in nature from a society that includes men.
But, well, the problem cultural feminism generally has is with how it achieves its definition of “female nature”. The view tends to be that women are kinder, more moral, more collectivist, more community-minded, and less prone to violence. 
And cultural feminists tend to HATE people who believe in the social construction of gender, because we tend to cross our arms and go, “Nah, sis, that’s a frappe of misused statistics and The Angel In the House with some wishful thinking as a garnish. That’s how you feel about what womanhood is. It’s fair enough for you, but you’re trying to apply it to the entire human species. That’s got less intellectual rigor and sociological validity than my morning oatmeal.” Hence the radfem insistence that gender theorists like me SHUT UP and gender quite flatly DOESN’T EXIST. It’s a MADE-UP TERM, and people should STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. (And go back to taking about immutable, naturally-occuring phenomena, one supposes, like the banking system and Western literary canon.)
Because seriously, when you look at real actual women, you will see that some of us can be very selfish, while others are altruistic; some think being a woman means abhorring all violence forever, and others think being a woman means being willing to fight and die to protect the people you love. As groups men and women have different average levels of certain qualities, but it’s not like we don’t share a lot in common. The distribution of “male” and “female” traits doesn’t tend to mean two completely separate sets of characteristics; they tend to be more like two overlapping bell curves.
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So, like I said, I grew up largely in rural, working-class Western Canadian society. My relatives tend to be tradesmen like carpenters, welders, or plumbers, or else ranchers and farmers. I was raised by a mother who came of age during the big push for Women’s Lib. So in the culture in which I was raised, it was very normal and in some ways rewarded (though in other ways punished) for women to have short hair, wear flannel and jeans, drive a big truck, play rough contact sports, use power tools, pitch in with farmwork, use guns, and drink beer. “Traditional femininity” was a fascinating foreign culture my grandmother aspired to, and I loved nonsense like polishing the silver (it’s a very satisfying pastime) but that was just another one of my weird hobbies, like sewing fairy clothes out of flower petals and collecting toy horses.
Within the standards of the society I was raised in, I am a decently feminine woman. I’m obviously not a “girly girl”, someone who wears makeup and dresses in ways that privilege beauty over practicality, but I have a long ponytail of hair and when I go to Mark’s Work Wearhouse, I shop in the women’s section. We know what “butch” is and I ain’t it.
But through my friendships and my career, I’ve gotten experiences among cultures you wouldn’t think would be too different–we’re all still white North Americans!–but which felt bizarre and alien, and ate away at the sense of self I’d grown up in. In the USA’s northeast, the people I met had the kind of access to communities with social clout, intellectual resources, and political power I hadn’t quite believed existed before I saw them. There really were people who knew politicians and potential employers socially before they ever had to apply to a job or ask for political assistance; there were people who really did propose projects to influential businessmen or academics at cocktail parties; they really did things like fundraise tens of thousands of dollars for a charity by asking fifty of their friends to donate, or start a business with a $2mil personal loan from a relative.
And in those societies, femininity was so different and so foreign. I’d grown up seeing femininity as a way of assigning tasks to get the work done; in these new circles, it was performative in a way that was entirely unique and astounding to me. A boss really would offer you a starting salary $10k higher than they might have if you wore high heels instead of flats. You really would be more likely to get a job if you wore makeup. And your ability to curate social connections in the halls of power really was influenced by how nice of a Christmas party you could throw. These women I met were being held, daily, to a standard of femininity higher than that performed by anyone in my 100 most immediate relatives.
So when girls from Seven Sisters schools talked about how for them, dressing how I dressed every day (jeans, boots, tee, button-up shirt, no makeup, no hair product) was “bucking gendered expectations” and “being unfeminine”, I began to feel totally unmoored. When I realized that I, who absolutely know only 5% as much about power tools and construction as my relatives in the trades, was more suited to take a hammer and wade in there than not just the “empowered” women but the self-professed “handy” men there, I didn’t know how to understand it. I felt like I was… a woman who knew how to do carpentry projects, not “totally butch” the way some people (approvingly) called me.
And, well, at home in Alberta I was generally seen as a sweet and gentle girl with an occasional stubborn streak or precocious moment, but apparently by the standards of Southern states like Georgia and Alabama I am like, 100x more blunt, assertive, and inconsiderate of men’s feelings than women typically feel they have to be.
And this is still all just US/Canadian white women.
And like I said, after years of this, I came home (from BC, where I encountered MORE OTHER weird and alien social constructs, though generally more around class and politics than gender) to Alberta, and I went to what is, for Alberta, a super hippy liberal church, and I helped prepare the after-service tea among women with unstyled hair and no makeup  who wore jeans and sensible shoes, and listened to them talk about their work in municipal water management and ICU nursing, and it felt like something inside my chest slid back into place, because I understood myself as a woman again, and not some alien thing floating outside the expectations of the society I was in with a chestful of opinions no one around me would understand, suddenly all made sense again.
I mean, that’s by no means an endorsement for aspirational middle class rural Alberta as the ideal gender utopia. (Alberta is the Texas of Canada.) I just felt comfortable inside because it’s the culture where I found a definition of myself and my gender I could live with, because its boundaries of what’s considered “female” were broad enough to hold all the parts of me I felt like I needed to express. I have a lot of friends who grew up here, or in families like mine, and don’t feel at all happy with its gender boundaries. And even as I’m comfortable being a woman here, I still want to push and transform it, to make it even more feminist and politically left and decolonized.
TERFs try to claim that trans and nonbinary people reinforce the gender identity, but in my experience, it’s feminists who claim male and female are immutable and incompatible do that. It’s trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer people who, simply by performing their genders in public, make people realize just how bullshit innate theories of gender are.. Society is going to want to gender them in certain ways and involve them in certain dynamics (”Hey ladies, those fellas, amirite?”) and they’re going, “Nope. Not me. Cut it out.” I’ve seen a lot of cis people who will quietly admit they do think men and women are different because that’s just reality, watch someone they know transition, and suddenly go, “Oh my god, I get it now.”
Like yes, this is me being coldly political and thinking about people as examples to make a political point. Everyone’s valid and can do what they want, but some things are just easier for potential converts to wrap their minds around.. “I’m sorting through toys to give to Shelly’s baby. He probably won’t want a princess crown, huh?” “I actually know several people who were considered boys when they were babies and never got one, and are making up for all their lost princess crown time now as adults. You never know what he’ll be into when he grows up.” “…Okay, point. I’ll throw it in there.” Trans and enby people disrupt gender in a really powerful back-of-the-brain way where people suddenly see how much leeway there is between gender and sex.
I honestly believe supporting trans and enby people and queering gender until it’s a macrame project instead of a spectrum are how we’ll get to a gender-free utopia. I think cultural feminism is just the same old shit, inverted. (Confession: in my head, I pronounce “cultural” with emphasis on the “cult” part.) 
I think feminism is like a lot of emergency response groups: Our job is to put ourselves out of a job. It’s not a good thing if gender discrimination is still prevalent and harmful 200 years from now! Obviously we’re not there yet and calls to pack it in and go home are overrated, but as the problem disappears into its solution, we have to accept that our old ways of looking at the world have to shift.
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Bisexuals and Queer Youth in Canadian Classrooms
One of my guilty pleasures back in the day was the TV show, Glee. This TV show followed a group of students navigating the difficulties of high school with the support of a Glee club, kind of like a choir but nerdier. There were a few different depictions of queer youth in this TV show. In the earlier seasons I recall two prominent examples. The first was Kurt Hummel, a fashion-loving, musical-singing, stereotypical gay boy who was bullied by the popular kids. He was shoved against lockers and called names. He was one of the first members of the Glee club because he had nothing to lose: he was already unabashedly who he was. The other example was Santana Lopez who was a popular cheerleader and took much longer to come out. In contrast to Kurt Hummel she was the instigator of much of the bullying in the show. Among other queer characters, Brittany Pierce is another popular cheerleader and a bisexual girl. Brittany is casual and comfortable with her bisexuality and is romantically involved with Santana who struggles to accept her own lesbianism, despite her popularity and social dominance. These are common characterizations of young, queer TV characters. But do these characterizations represent the experience of queer youth in schools?
I was intrigued when I came across a 2011 report written by Canadian researchers about the experience of queer youth in Canadian schools. When reading the report, Every Class in Every School: Final Report on the First National Climate Survey on Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia in Canadian Schools I was originally intending to write a post on the sections that specifically addressed bisexual youth experience in Canadian schools. However, after reading the report I felt it would not be doing it justice to only address the sections discussing bisexuality. I wanted to bring to light some of the really interesting findings in their research and provide a wider context for any bisexual-specific sections.
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The first thing that struck me was the impressively large scope of the project: both in number of individuals surveyed; the number of issues covered in the report; and the future implications. The survey included over 3700 students from across Canada. Responses were gathered from an open-access online survey as well as through in-school sessions with randomly selected school districts. (13) Issues addressed in the report include homophobic, transphobic, biphobic and sexist comments; verbal, physical, sexual and other harassment; distress experienced by students; feelings of safety based on different areas of the school building; predictors of school attachment; responses of teachers; students’ awareness of school’s anti-homophobia policies; inclusion of LGBTQ topics and individuals in curriculum; etc. The scope of this project is also captured in the title Every Class in Every School. I have heard previous estimates of the LGBTQ population put at less than 5% of the population. According to this study, and a similar large-scale study conducted in BC in 2007, the rate of students self-declaring as LGBTQ is 14%! (22) In other words, there are very few classes in Canada that don’t have an LGBTQ student in them. These issues impact far more Canadian youth than many previously thought.
Bisexual Youth
The title the authors originally chose for the study only named homophobia in schools. However, based on the findings that “school climates for bisexual and trans students are equally – and in some ways even more hostile,” they chose to change the title of the study to include biphobia and transphobia. (135) In a section entitled Bisexual Youth the authors reject the false assumption that “society in general tolerates lesbians more than gay males, and that being a lesbian or a bisexual female is even trendy” (25, 86) with some striking statistics. The authors highlighted responses separated by female bisexual, lesbian, male bisexual and gay youth respondents. Six out of eight of the measures indicated that on average female bisexual and lesbian youth, i.e. female sexual minority youth, are more vulnerable in school settings. Female sexual minorities had a higher rate of physical harassment about being LGBTQ; experiencing mean rumors or lies about being LGBTQ; feeling unsafe at school because of actual or perceived sexual orientation; feeling generally unsafe at school; not knowing anyone out as LGBTQ at school; and not knowing of any school staff members who are supportive of LGBTQ matters. Specifically, out of all four of these LGBTQ subgroups, female bisexual youth had the highest rate of physical harassment about being LGBTQ; experiencing mean rumors or lies about being LGBTQ; skipping school due to feeling unsafe; feeling generally unsafe at school; not knowing of anyone out as LGBTQ at school; and not knowing of any school staff members who are supportive of LGBTQ matters. It strikes me that the measures where bisexual females fare the worst can be some of the most invisible, for example having lies spread about you; feeling isolated because you don’t know other students or teachers who are out or supportive of LGBTQ; and skipping school. Sadly, the rates for vulnerable youth are not just marginally higher. Three out of 4 female bisexual youth feel unsafe at school compared to only 3.4% of non-LGBTQ respondents! (85) That is a huge gap. The picture painted here for bisexual youth and female sexual minorities is absolutely nothing like the portrayal in Glee. These lesbian and bisexual female youth were not cheerleaders, at the top of the social-food chain at school, reveling in the trendiness of their sexualities. Female-sexual minorities were actually far more at-risk than the average student, even the average LGBTQ student.
Other Vulnerable Groups
As mentioned, I would not do this report justice if I only discussed the findings relating to bisexual youth. I will also highlight trends with other LGBTQ or LGBTQ-associated respondents that I found notable:
·       Trans Youth – Reading the responses by trans youth was heartbreaking. Consider that 2 in 5 trans youth have been physically harassed or assaulted (!!) because of their gender expression (more than any other sexual minority or non-LGBTQ students); almost 8 out of 10 trans youth indicate feeling unsafe in some way at school (85)*; and 9 out of 10 of trans youth hear transphobic comments daily or weekly. (23) On top of these abysmal statistics, trans youth were the least comfortable talking about LGBTQ matters with teachers, principals, counsellors, school coaches, classmates, parents, other relatives and even close friends. (101) Trans. Youth. Are. At. Very. High. Risk. Regardless of a teacher, administrator, or school board’s stance on the “LGBTQ lifestyle” I imagine everyone can agree that an environment of fear, and harassment is unacceptable for anyone.
·       Female versus Male Sexual Minorities – Female sexual minorities reported much higher rates of verbal and physical harassment and feeling unsafe at school than male sexual minorities. Oddly, female sexual minorities seemed to attribute feeling unsafe at school to sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation more than twice as often than they attributed these feelings of lack of safety to their gender or gender expression.** Essentially, if you are a female sexual minority you are especially vulnerable in school environments... And even if you don’t realize your gender puts you at higher risk, statistically it does. Again, this goes against the stereotype that queer females are somehow less vulnerable. It is important for teachers and administrators to know who the most vulnerable youth in their care are to respond appropriately.
·        Youth with LGBTQ Parents – One vulnerable group that I had not previously considered were students who had LGBTQ parents. Students with at least one LGBTQ parent were more than double as likely to feel unsafe at school which led more than three times as many to have skipped school because of feeling unsafe. (88, 89) These youth noticed a lot more of the homophobic comments made in school. They also experienced far higher rates of verbal and physical harassment because of the sexual orientation of their parents and their own perceived sexual orientation. One participant wrote “I am not out about my family members because people are so stupid that they think that if you know someone who is LGBTQ then that means you are too.” (62) Similarly to other vulnerable groups, youth with at least one LGBTQ parent were less likely to feel comfortable talking to teachers, counsellors, classmates or close friends. (104)
·       Ethnicity – A theme amongst youth of colour was that they were a lot more susceptible to feelings of isolation. (100) Almost half of youth of colour reported knowing no teachers or staff who were supportive of LGBTQ students, a rate higher than their Caucasian and Aboriginal counterparts. Youth of colour were less likely to know of open LGBTQ students or have friends who were open about being LGBTQ. Youth of colour also reported lower rates of comfort with discussing LGBTQ matters with teachers, coaches, classmates, parents, or even close friends. Youth of colour were less likely to report that staff or classmates intervened when homophobic comments were made. (112) These trends held for LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ youth of colour. (104, 105) I was a little surprised at how few conclusive findings there were regarding Aboriginal youth. Sometimes Aboriginal youth seemed to respond more similarly to Caucasian youth and other times more similarly to youth of colour.
·       Regional Variation – The regions within Canada surveyed were the North, Atlantic, Prairies, Ontario and BC. Quebec was excluded because they had a separate study. There was regional variation on a variety of the youth’s responses. Youth in the North were 50% more likely to report feeling unsafe at school than youth in the Atlantic provinces.*** (82) When it came to comfort in speaking to teachers, coaches, classmates and parents, again the Atlantic provinces came out on top, with students feeling more comfortable. BC students reported the highest rates of staff’s effectiveness in addressing anti-LGBTQ harassment and in seeing their school communities as supportive of LGBTQ people. There was significant regional variation in students reporting the presence of Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs): less than 5% of students in the North and in the Atlantic provinces reported a GSA compared to 14% in the Prairies, 37% in Ontario and 40% in BC.**** (127) Keeping track of these regional variations and the corresponding policies and cultural attitudes in different regions can give us queues to helpful ways forward.
·       Intersectionality – Most of the above point to the importance of intersectionality. Risk factors that overlap don’t just make someone a bit more at-risk. They often make someone way more at-risk. For example, if you are a trans youth and you are living in a region of Canada with very few GSAs or supportive teachers and staff, life gets a lot harder not just a little bit harder. Something I found interesting though was that individuals with intersecting vulnerable identities were more likely to experience harassment related to other areas of life. This is a whole other aspect of intersectionality. For example, students with one or more LGBTQ parent were three times more likely to be physically harassed or assaulted due to their religion, race or ethnicity. (65)*****
Religion
I grew up in Alberta and attended a Catholic school for a few years. In Alberta there are two separate school systems: the public and the Catholic school system (which also receives public funding). With a bit of assistance of my nearest search engine I gather that six of the thirteen provinces and territories allow faith-based school boards to be publically funded (AB, ON, SK, NWT, YK). Knowing how prominent these schools are, how many students attend them, and that certain officials from the Catholic divisions appeared willing to participate in the survey, I was appalled to read that they were “instructed not to participate by their governing Bishops’ councils” because “Catholic schools should not be involved in activities that affirm the viability of a ‘homosexual lifestyle,’ such as filling out a homophobia survey.” (132) The argument went that generic safe school policies protect all students equally. Sadly, all of the evidence in this report shows otherwise. Knowing that LGBTQ students are being verbally and physically harassed at exceptionally higher rates, but that this kind of harassment is reduced significantly with simple actions taken by schools is hopeful. However, in cases, such as this one with the Catholic school boards, it is also infuriating. It is one thing for teachers, and staff to inadvertently create unsafe environment for students but to be willing to hear ways to improve this environment. It is another thing to stick your head in the sand, and avert your eyes from abuse occurring to youth in your care in the name of your faith. Unfortunately we know this isn’t the first time this has happened with the Catholic church. But when will it be the last?
But It’s Not My Problem!
As I read through descriptions given by students of their attempts to start GSAs, I was struck by the tendency of staff to either not see it as a pressing issue or to not want to rock the boat. The problem with this is that the visibility of the objections to “affirming the viability of a homosexual lifestyle” ends up trumping the invisibility of the far more vulnerable youth who are in distress because of social isolation; verbal, physical and sexual harassment; and who are far less likely to feel like they are a part of their schools. Parents, administrators or, unfortunately, church officials, have the impunity to state their opinions on homosexuality and then walk out of the classroom. Students, however, are forced to stay in those same, sometimes dangerous, classrooms. Check out some of the responses by students who wanted to start GSAs:
·       “I tried to start one, and approached staff to ask for assistance and help. I was told that in theory, although it was a nice idea, they believed that a) our school probably didn’t have enough interest ‘in that topic’; and b) there wasn’t a budget for it.”
·       “I attempted to start a GSA in my school, but the principal simply replied, ‘I do not think that many students would be interested. Also, most people may find it offensive.’”
·       “There were obstacles from the administration for fear of backlash from parents or ‘creating a problem where there wasn’t one.’ Though generally supportive, they were afraid of explicitly queer events for fear of ‘giving bullies ideas.’”
This reminds me of an interview with an occupational therapist who discussed a similar problem with healthcare providers. Some healthcare providers see themselves as open to LGBTQ folks because they are willing to provide the same services to LGBTQ people without discrimination, but because they don’t know of any of their patients being LGBTQ, they do not see the need to, for example, educate themselves on LGBTQ relevant healthcare, create inclusive forms, or put up rainbow flags in their offices to signal acceptance. The problem with this is that some LGBTQ people will not be willing to disclose their gender or sexuality in an environment that does not provide signals of acknowledgement or acceptance. Maybe these healthcare providers do have queer patients but they don’t even know! Similarly, these schools may not see the demand for GSAs because LGBTQ students are not currently out. It is unreasonable to expect LGBTQ folks to out themselves in potentially unsafe environments simply to gain access to the same quality of education, healthcare, and so on.
These are CHILDREN
Of course I knew I was reading about youth as I was reading this report. However, it really hit me when I read the Ethics Protocol section of the report. The challenge of collecting data ethically was a question the researchers needed to face: would they ask students under 18 years of age to put themselves in harm’s way to seek permission from parents to participate, or otherwise deny them the benefits of participating in research? Ultimately the Ethics Committee agreed that “LGBTQ adolescents who lack a supportive parent or guardian to act as mature minors able to provide their own consent” lest they be exposed to the scholarly documented “reactions of parents to disclosure of LGBTQ identity.” Reading the list of references following that statement on the adverse “reactions of parents” leaves a lump in your throat. Studies from 2005, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2001, 2008… All studies outlining how cruel your own family can be if you disclose your sexual or gender to them. It’s easy to forget how vulnerable you are as a youth: your parents, teachers, and other adults are expected to be your caregivers. Often these adults make many of your life choices for you until you are old enough to legally decide for yourself. Yet here they are: students being clearly targeted for verbal and physical harassment, without supportive adults around, and yet still dependent on these adults for something as simple as filling out a survey.
Change is Possible
Despite all of these depressing statistics there is a strong message of hope in this report. Generic safe school policies that do not include specific measures on homophobia are ineffective at improving the school climate for LGBTQ students. (115) But in schools with safe school policies that explicitly address homophobia and where students are aware of these policies LGBTQ students and students with LGBTQ parents were:
·       More likely to feel like they are respected as a part of the school;
·       More likely to feel like they can talk to teachers, principals, counsellors, coaches and classmates about LGBTQ matters;
·       Less likely to be exposed to homophobia and transphobic comments;
·       Less likely to be targeted by verbal and physical attacks;
·       More likely to report incidents when they are targeted; and
·       More likely to find their teachers effective in addressing incidents. (115)
Other factors that were indicative of a more supportive and less abusive environment for LGBTQ students was the presence of GSAs and respectful depictions of LGBTQ examples in the curriculum. (128) Another very hopeful finding was that 58% of non-LGBTQ students were distressed at homophobic comments. (137) The authors ask the brilliant question: what can adults do to activate this silent majority “in finding the courage to move from being distressed and ashamed bystanders to becoming allies who intervene in abusive situations”? (137)
One of the first things you learn in any sort of statistics class is that correlation is not causation. For this reason, I’d be curious to know which came first – the chicken or the egg. Were the school climates that were the most tolerant and supportive of LGBTQ folks the most likely to implement these policies and create GSAs? Or did the policy implementation truly change the environment? What we can be certain of though is that it is possible to create micro-climates where LGBTQ students feel safer. We do not have to wait for all of society to be on the same page. We can make our youth safer today.
Dorothy
xxoo
References and Notes
Taylor, C., & Peter, T., with McMinn, T. L., Elliott, T., Beldom, S., Ferry, A., Gross, Z., Paquin, S., & Schacter, K. (2011). Every class in every school: The first national climate survey on homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in Canadian schools. Final report. Toronto, ON: Egale Canada Human Rights Trust.
*Compare almost 8 out of 10 trans youth indicating feeling unsafe in some way at school to only 15% of non-LGBTQ youth. (85)
**Percentages of students attribute feeling unsafe to gender versus sexual orientation in the graph below (87).
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*** Specifically youth in the North reported feeling unsafe 62.4% of the time and students in the Atlantic reported feeling unsafe 42.1% of the time.
****Gay-Straight Alliances, as defined in the report, are “official student clubs with LGBTQ and heterosexual student membership and typically one or two teachers who serve as faculty advisors. […] Some GSAs go by other names such as Rainbow Clubs, Human Rights Clubs, or Social Justice Clubs. This is sometimes done to signal openness to non-LGBTQ membership (though, of course, some of these are not GSAs and might not address homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia), and sometimes because ‘Gay-Straight Alliance’ seems problematic in that ‘gay’ does not necessarily refer to lesbians or bisexuals and trans identities are not explicitly encompassed by the expression. However, using the acronym ‘GSA’ to represent any student group concerned with LGBTQ matters has become commonplace.” (19) Thank you to the authors of the report for acknowledging “gay” does not encompass all LGBTQ identities!
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aridara · 5 years
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So, apparently, @terfslurring​ didn’t like it when I called out her “Trans people reject the biological reality of sex and want to impose gender roles on everyone!” bullshit, and decided to write me some responses. By reblogging a completely different thread that wasn’t about trans people (it was about abortion), but whatever.
So I decided to answer them here.
First post: two quotes from Andrea Dworkin. Which have nothing to do with the argument at hand. Next.
Second post: A pamphlet about “How to spot MRA ideology”. Which basically tries to claim that Men’s Rights Activists and trans activist are somehow the same thing. Which is patently ridiculous.
For example, the first page claims that MRAs:
... Are anti-feminist. (True.)
...Focus on issues that, according to MRAs themselves, discriminate against men. (True in the sense that MRAs do claim that those issues discriminate against men; whether those issues actually discriminate against men or not is another issue entirely.)
...Often use the term “TERF” against feminists. (False. MRAs don’t care about whether feminists are against trans people or not.)
The second page claims that MRAs often label themselves “Trans Rights Activists”, or “TRA”. Which is completely and utterly false: the most cursory exploration of any MRA website (for example r/mensrights, A Voice For Men, Heartiste...) will show that MRAs are openly against trans people, frequently vilify them and declare them to be mentally ill, openly advocate in favor of forcibly institutionalizing trans people to “fix” them, etc.
There’s more lies in that pamphlet, like the lie that trans advocates deny the existence of sexism or the lie that TERFs do not claim that “trans women are violent predators, pedophiles and rapists”. But really, just the fact that the pamphlet tried to conflate a pro-trans group with a very anti-trans one is enough to dismiss it as total bullshit.
Third post... Oh, boy, I’ll need quotes for this.
Gender Critical Feminism
is a term used by those in the feminist community who consider gender a harmful social construct that is confused with -but distinct from -biological sex.
The World Health Organization defines gender as “the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women”.WHO: gender equity, human rights
Except that trans people are talking about gender identity, not gender roles.
Gender identity (which is what most people and especially trans people and advocates refer to when they say “gender”) is, by definition, self-determined. You decide the label of your own gender identity, and how to express yourself; nobody else can do it for you.
Gender role (which is what pretty much only trans-exclusionary feminists refer to when they say “gender”) is the idea that people should act in a certain way depending on what genitalia they have. By definition, you’re trying to tell other people what to do.
Trans advocates advocate in favor of letting everyone express their own gender identity however they want. TERFs falsely claim that trans advocates are in favor of imposing gender roles on everyone, whether they want it or not - which is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what trans advocates are doing.
Gender critical feminists believe the definition of “man” and the definition of “woman” should be based solely on biology, rather than on “masculine” or “feminine” personality traits or an innate sense of gender identity.
They recognize those with XX-chromosomes, ovaries designed to produce large egg cells, female genitalia, and a relatively high level of estrogen and progesterone as biologically female. They define “woman” as an adult human female.
They recognize those with XY-chromosomes, testes designed to produce small sperm cells, male genitalia, and a relatively high level of testosterone as biologically male. They define “man” as an adult human male.
Intersex people, who represent less than 0.02% of the entire population are those whose chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, and genitals do not conform to the biological binary of female or male bodies. Gender critical feminists recognize intersex people as a distinct group of people with an empirically diagnosable medical condition.
Alright. So, as I’ve repeatedly stated, pretty much all transphobes do three things.
1. They claim that there’s only two separate human sexes (plus eventually a small amount of exceptions, tiny enough to be ignored). According to Terfslurring, “gender critical feminists” fit the bill.
2. They claim that sex must be determined by looking at specific sex-determining characteristics. Again: according to Terfslurring, “gender critical feminists” fit the bill - they look at chromosomes (XX versus XY), gonads (ovaries versus testicles), genitalia (I suppose vagina versus penis), and hormone levels (high estrogen + progesterone versus high testosterone).
3. They believe that making everyone determine everyone’s sex in the “correct” way (see the above) is VERY important. This is blatantly obvious - whenever goes against the “there’s only two separate sexes” claim (for example, by saying that sex is a spectrum), gender-critical feminists actively oppose that someone and claim that they’re wrong. Likewise, whenever someone goes against the “chromosomes/gonads/genitalia/hormones determine a person’s sex” claim (for example, by respecting a person’s chosen identity, regardless of their genitalia), gender-critical feminists actively oppose that someone and claim that they’re wrong.
So, here’s something fun that I want to point out: transphobes love to claim that their beliefs are absolutely correct and precise, and that whoever refuses to determine people’s sex in the “correct” way must necessarily be in the wrong.
This also applies to the transphobes themselves. They don’t get to viciously attack anyone who goes against the “there’s only two separate sexes” claim when THEY THEMSELVES go against that same claim.
For example, let’s take everyone on the planet and divide them like gender-critical feminists want me to.
Everyone who has XX chromosomes, ovaries, a vagina, an uterus, and high levels of estrogen and progesterone will go in the “FEMALE” box.
Everyone who has XY chromosomes, testicles, a penis, and high levels of testosterone will go in the “MALE” box.
Everyone else will go in the “EXCEPTIONS” box.
Here’s the problem: the exceptions are way, way, WAY more than 0,02% of the human population. So, I can’t ignore them.
But if I can’t ignore them, then I must accept that there aren’t just two separate human sexes.
And if I accept that there aren’t just two separate human sexes, gender-critical feminists will declare that I’m wrong.
Conclusion: according to gender-critical feminist theory, gender-critical feminist theory is wrong. So, I’ll throw it out.
Moving on.
“Cisgender”
The Oxford English Dictionary defines cisgender as “denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity conforms with the gender that corresponds to their biological sex; not transgender.
”Gender critical feminists object to the idea that their “self-identity” “conforms” with the feminine gender role they were assigned at birth. They reject their assigned gender traits and roles as a form of oppression, and do not “self-identify” with them at all.
This is more of that thing where trans advocates talk about gender identity, and gender-critical feminists talk about gender roles.
On the plus side, it means that gender-critical feminists have absolutely no argument against gender identity.
According to trans-inclusive feminists, being cisgendered means that biological women and girls have “cisgender privilege” which is defined as the “set of unearned advantages that individuals who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth accrue solely due to having a cisgender identity”.
Gender critical feminists do not believe that both being biologically female and knowing you are biologically female makes you a member of a privileged class. Nor do they believe males who identify as female are more oppressed than actual females.
What follows is a long list of statistics about issues that women face due to sexism. I’ll spare you, because I don’t actually object to those statistics.
What I do object to, is Terfslurring’s claim that transphobia - which is oppression from cis people (men or women) against trans people (men, women or otherwise) - doesn’t exist because sexism - which is oppression from men (cis or otherwise) against women (cis or otherwise) doesn’t exist. Which makes as much sense as claiming that racism doesn’t exist because sexism exists.
Likewise, Terfslurring is trying to imply that cis women can’t be transphobic towards trans women, because cis women are victims of sexism from men. Which makes as much sense as “white women can’t be racist towards black men, because cis women are victims of sexism from men”.
Then there’s a bunch of lies that aim to absolve TERFs from their transphobia. I’ll just give you the highlights.
Despite claims that “transwomen are women” gender critical feminists note that laws based on gender identity allow any predatory male to claim a female identity and gain access to vulnerable women in shelters, locker rooms, restrooms, and prisons. 
Except that those laws have NOT helped predatory males to gain access to vulnerable women. For example, the “If we let trans women in women’s bathroom, predatory men will assault women in bathrooms!” panic? A complete fabrication made from homophobic groups.
Lesbian feminist Janice Raymond is frequently accused of having “blood on her hands” for single-handedly denying government funding and insurance coverage for transgender surgery/hormone treatment.
According to The Terfs.com “It was only after the NCHCT [National Center for Health Care Technology] published Raymond’s bigotry in 1980 that the US government reversed course in 1981 and took up Raymond’s views and rhetoric.”48
But the US state and federal government had never funded sex change procedures, so the accusation makes no sense.
This is false. Before 1981, the USA did fund trans care. The USA changed their stance after the OHTA Report was issued.
Still, trans activists claim a single sentence by Janice Raymond included in the 15 page NCHCT report (“transsexual surgery is controversial in our society”) caused the US state and federal government, under the Reagan administration, to reject government funding for sex change procedures. 
False. The NCHCT asked Raymond to write a report about the ethical and social aspects of trans care.
The USA state didn’t “reject government funding for sex change procedures” because of the NCHCT report, unlike what Terfslurring is claiming; it did because of the OHTA (Office of Health Technology Assessment) report. The OHTA report made three claims - one of which was that ”transsexual surgery is controversial in our society”. Two sources were used to back up that claim:
Raymond’s NCHCT report, which was about the ethical and social aspects of trans care (NOT about the economical or experimental aspects). The entire report - not a “single sentence”.
A review of Raymond’s 1979 book, “The Transsexual Empire, The Making of the She-Male”.
Along with allegedly denying the existence of transgender people, gender critical feminists are accused of being responsible for the high murder rate of transgender people even though transgender people are overwhelmingly murdered by men...
Except that gender-critical feminists promote the same “trans women are violent rapists” mentality that those men use to justify their attacking - and killing - trans women.
...and have high rates of involvement in the extremely dangerous sex trade.
44% of black transgender people and 33% of latino transgender people have experience in the sex trade. People involved in the sex trade are 18 times more likely to be murdered than others of their same race and class.
Funny that 1) you haven’t confronted statistics between cis and trans people;
And 2) you actively refute any testimony from transgender people. Including those black/latino trans people in the sex trade - especially when they try to tell you that, having experienced both sexism, racism and transphobia, they can tell the difference between the three.
But no. You just immediately assume that they don’t know what they’re talking about, and that all transphobia is just misguided homophobia/sexism/whorephobia/anything-that-isn’t-transohobia. Old tactic.
Despite this, trans activists rarely blame male sex buyers (or males in general)...
This is blatantly false. Just look at how often they talk about male transphobic groups.
Also, “male sex buyers”? ...Why do I suspect that you’re also against sex work (not “sex trade”, I’ve said sex work)?
There’s more, but frankly, I had enough.
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Sex Work & General Labor
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Although in previous weeks we have begun to tackle the side of White Feminism that is problematic because of its tendency to infantilize and misrepresent the women of the global south, the ideology also alienates women on the basis of class as well as race and religion. The stigma surrounding sex work, which exists to this day in the mainstream as well as within some feminist discourse, is a perfect example of the superiority complex that middle and upper class white women employ when evaluating the choices and experiences of lower class women. In fact, Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminists (SWERFs) and the rhetoric that they lean against have become such a large fixture in feminist discourse that I was able to find a bingo sheet listing their most commonly used catchphrases. Although literally every could be addressed in its own essay, I will be focusing for the purpose of this post on “self respect”, the “whorearchy”, and the notion that sex workers are “too brainwashed by the patriarchy” to understand the ethical implications of their own actions.
Firstly, the notion that sex workers cannot have self respect is justified using the exact same logical structure by which white feminists claim that Muslim women and housewives must also be acting based upon some deeply internalized self-hatred. As I covered in the last post, the idea that any person has perfect autonomy is a self-aggrandizing illusion to begin with, but to make such sweeping generalizations about the nature of sex work is in itself problematic. Sex work is, at the core of its functionality, work; a way to make money. White feminists would be loathe to say that anyone who shows up and does what their job for a paycheck has no self respect, especially considering the movement’s fetishization of “career women” and the notion of capitalistic success as a measure of independence and value. Imagine, for a moment, the absurdity of making such unfounded, large-scale claims about any other line of work. We do not jump to make character judgements about anyone we know to be involved in manufacturing as a general industry, so why is the practice deemed acceptable in discussions about sex work?
The manufacturing analogy leads to another kind of value judgement that SWERFs foist upon the sex work industry; the so-called “whorearchy”. Whenever legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution is being debated as a political issue, it is always the same demographic of women who are allowed to testify about the importance of their work. A high-end escort operating out of the Upper East side, perhaps, or a green-haired dominatrix from Portland. The common theme that unites the women at the top of the whorearchy, those whose participation in the industry, though still taboo, is considered the least demeaning, is that they are almost always conventionally attractive white cis women who are well-educated and articulate enough to be considered worthy of journalists’ attention. Far from being statistically representative of sex workers, these women represent the upper echelons of the pay grade, often having gotten into sex work after growing bored of their old “respectable” jobs. If they were manufacturers, they would be the artisans; the jewelers and carpenters who own their own firms and enjoy the privilege of working for themselves at a substantial profit.  
However, as we know, most of the world’s manufacturing is not done by freelancers or artists, and occurs not in studios but in factories and sweatshops across the globe where the workers are able to exercise far less authority not only over the duties that their job entails, but also over the choice as to whether to do that job at all. The exploitation of labor, sexual or otherwise, by individuals, groups, and corporations, continues to be a massive problem that absolutely warrants our attention. But unless one is to take a radical view of labor in general, it is not the principle of work itself that generates oppression. Many people who are given the privilege to choose their work freely claim to love their jobs, and some of those people are sex workers. Human misery, conversely, is generated by the absence of options. Although there is no data to support this claim, I would hazard a guess that people forced into the sex trade are no more or less miserable than people who have forced into agriculture, or manufacturing, or drug smuggling, or anything else. Sex work is not uniquely problematic; the real issue is coerced labor and the poverty that it both feeds off of and results in.
And so, finally, we come to address the notion that sex workers are victims of patriarchal brainwashing. We have already established that sex workers are not victims, or at least not to any greater degree than the workers of any other industry, but there is still the problem of their alleged complicity in the patriarchy. It is not entirely clear, when one reads SWERF rhetoric, whether sex workers are pathetic victims of patriarchy or evil agents of it, or perhaps somehow both. But the idea that sex work is inherently demeaning and patriarchal rests entirely on the idea that sex itself is inherently demeaning and patriarchal, a doctrine that many feminists reject. Although Western culture has created a narrative of sex as something that is done by men to women, many people inside and outside of the sex work industry do not subscribe to that antiquated and extremely limited worldview. In fact, not all sex work is heterosexual, and much of it, at least when sex workers are given the ability to engage in their work freely and legally and therefore are not forced into dangerous situations, has a foundational focus on the principles of consent and bodily autonomy. In fact, BDSM practitioners tell anyone who will listen that the community’s core values are based in establishing a practice that is “safe, sane, and consensual”- a far cry from the SWERF depiction of sex work as dangerous, unsavory, and invariably exploitative.
This is not to say that the industry is free from problems; although the “whoearchy” does not exist as the SWERFs imagine it (as a totem pole of humanity and respectability), there are indeed divisions between sex workers that govern who makes the most money, who has the most control over their own terms of employment, and who enjoys the most protection under the law. Predictably, the stratification that exists within sex work is pretty much an exact replica of the stratification that exists within society at large, with the vast majority of the disadvantages being handed off to sex workers who are trans, disabled, impoverished, black, queer, HIV positive, or belong to any number of other disenfranchised groups. And so, rather than sit back and make abstract claims about what I think would be best for the global community of sex workers, my recommendation is the same as it was for addressing the issues that specifically affect Muslim women; instead of talking over them, why don’t we just give them a chance to explain their own situations and desires and act in solidarity from there?
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chriswhitewolf · 4 years
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Okay so this is really only because it occurred to me earlier today, and it's relevant to the issue of Transphobia in our society.
I will start by saying that I am not Transgender, I am CIS, and that this is something that happened to me that I feel works as a relation point for other CIS people who don't really understand the feeling of being in the wrong gendered body.
It was July or August of 2016, and fifteen year old me was on vacation with my family. My parents (mom and dad) and three brothers and I were staying at a remote cabin in the woods somewhere in California. I was starting 10th grade in a few weeks, and was excited to be in a new building (my district had 9th graders in the jr high building).
I was on a short hike with my mom through the woods around the cabin, when I brought up this topic. I told my mom that, after having spent almost a full year internally debating this (does it matter? What are the reprocussions of this?), I was going to start going by my middle name as opposed to my first. And of course, my mom asked why.
I explained that "Sydney" (my first name, which I had always gone by) didn't feel...right. It didn't feel like who I was, and it honestly caused some discomfort to me. My middle name, however, was the opposite. It fit, and I felt more like a Christine than I ever had a Sydney. There was a few moments of silence as we walked through the trees, before my mom responded.
"We've already registered you for school," she said, "So you'll have to inform your teachers of the change personally."
I beamed. So what if I had to tell each of my teachers on the first day of class that I went by Christine. I WENT BY CHRISTINE. That's what mattered, and having that be a reality was like finally having the sun rise after a lifetime of just the moon. My mom and I finished our hike and returned to the cabin where the rest of our family was. Because I suffered very severe anxiety disorders, my mom helped me break the news to everyone else.
At that time, my bothers were 17, 16, and 11. Other than my explaining again that Christine was just who I was, and Sydney didn't feel right or comfortable, that was that. Of course, we acknowledged that none of us would suddenly switch and never call me Sydney again, but I said as long as everyone tried to remember, and didn't get angry when I (or another family member) gently corrected the name, it was just fine.
So, a few months later I'm in the middle of first semester of my Sophomore year of high school. I'd told all my friends, teachers, and any classmates who didn't know, that I was Christine, not Sydney. For the majority, everyone was very kind and took the news in stride. One of my friends, upon hearing the news, immediately swore to not mistake my name. Was absolutely certain he wouldn't mess up and call my Sydney, because that's not who I was. (I thought it was funny, but he went like four months before slipping !once!, And then bemoaning his mistake and apologizing overly much)
Discussions among my friends became riddled with myself or someone else correcting a friend who used my dead name. If I didn't catch the slip up quickly enough, another friend would jump in and calmly go "Christine", to which the speaker would then respond "Right, Christine, sorry" and continue.
But there was one friend (not a great friend, really), who was adamantly against the change. I couldn't understand why it was such a big deal to him that I use my given first name. This friend, just a while after I told him and everyone of the change, came up to me in private and demanded, yes, DEMANDED, that I give him a valid reason for changing it.
Now, aside from the overall "Sydney is uncomfortable and Christine is who I am" (which he said was not valid), the reason for my name change was INCREDIBLY personal. I think there are maybe four people, besides myself, who know the story behind that reason. I informed said friend that Christine was just right, it was me, and Sydney simply wasn't anymore.
He did not take that well. He told me, and I'm paraphrasing here, I mean it's been four years, "If you can't give me a valid reason, then I refuse to call you Christine. You ARE Sydney."
I was mad, of course, and disappointed in him, and also felt rather violated. What right does he have to my msot personal moments and stories? Why should I be expected to share a very vulnerable and personal experience with him before he is expected to address me as I am?
I brushed the issue off, and started avoiding him more. Every time we did talk, be it alone or in a group, he would outright refuse to use my preferred name, which I'd been going by for almost half a year at this point. So I talked to him less, and he slowly became less integrated in my close group of trusted, genuine friends.
Then he went a step further.
It was in the school cafeteria one morning, about fifteen-twenty minutes before first bell, and one friend of mine, Caleb, who wasn't really close to me but was very kind, was introducing his new friend to our group. My closest friends were there, as was the not-friend who refused to use my preferred name. As Caleb introduced this new girl to me, I held out my hand with a smile, and shook her hand as I introduced myself.
"I'm Christine, it's nice to meet you!"
She responded likewise with her name, when not-friend pushed his way between our handshake with these words, which I will never forget.
"She's not Christine. She THINKS she's Christine. She's Sydney."
Like da fu?? I'm sorry, but I spend a full YEAR debating on how people might react to the name change and agonizing over not wanting to be yelled at or ridiculed for it, and I've now been using my name for half a year. Sydney is my dead name, it's not my name. But here you are, with your stuck up attitude and ludicrous ideas on your entitlement into my personal life, interrupting my introduction to inform this new friend that I changed my name, SIX MONTHS AGO, and that Sydney is my dead name.
And I know this is long af, but here's another short thing from that year to think on. I was in band class when a boy, who I'd never talked to and who's reputation wasn't great, came up to me as we were putting our instruments away. In short, he clarified that Christine was not my name at birth, and then asked,
"Isn't that disrespectful to your parents? Changing the name they gave you?"
But he said it in this "I'm right and you're being dumb and rude" tone. To diffuse the situation, I responded with two things.
First, I told him it was my life, my name, and I had no obligation to my parents, who chose my name before I had become who I was. They chose a name that had no basis on who I was as a person.
Second, I was unnecessarily kind in telling him that Christine was, in fact, my given middle name, and that my parents had no issue and had never had issue with me using it, because they understood that I was my own person, not their puppet. (I didn't actually add that puppet part cause that would've been very passive agressive and might've started a verbal fight.)
But here's my point. If you were born with a name that, as you grew, you started to hate. A name that made you uncomfortable every time someone called you by it, wouldn't you want, and actually need, to change that name?
Would you willingly choose to go by a name that sent a cold chill of 'ick' down your spine everytime you were called it? For life?
Probably not. If you were that disturbed, that uncomfortable, with this name, you'd feel like you had to change it for your own sake, sanity, and comfort/happiness.
That's how I see Transgender people as feeling. Again, I don't have personal experience with being Transgender, and this is just my understanding of that feeling.
But can you image, that you were so uncomfortable with your name that you change it to something that doesn't set off those feelings, only to have like half of everyone you meet (parable statistics here, don't quote that as a transphobe number) tell you that you can't use that name because it wasn't the one you were given as a two-hour-old infant?
Can you imagine how you'd feel if you went through life with people screaming at you that you are not your chosen name? That you are and will always be the name you were given at birth? That you have no right to ask or expect people to give you the basic decency of using a name that doesn't make you feel gross in most senses of the word?
That's what's happening in our society with Transphobia. People are out here on social media and in the streets, screaming at people that they are not themselves and cannot be themselves, because that wasn't who other adults decided they were at birth?
The child was like two hours old, it couldn't even SEE. Babies do not actually have the ability to see things that aren't very, very close to their faces until a good while after they're born. (I believe the number was about two weeks, but I'm not sure and don't want to research it just for this.)
But totally different people, who are not this person and at the time had no knowledge of who this person really was, gave the infant a name that, *gasp*, they don't absolutely love twenty years later.
That Trans person was born with a genetic code that gave them a kind of genitalia before they were even born. They couldn't see, they couldn't think, they'd never even taken a breath. They were, by complete chance, given that specific chromosome set. That doesn't mean they'll grow up to be that chromosome, or to be defined by that, or to not be incredibly uncomfortable being referred to as that gender.
They know they weren't born male or female, that's why they transition. They're perfectly aware that they will never be biologically the gender they associate as. A Transwoman knows she will never have been born a woman.
She's still a woman. Same for Transmen.
Just because they aren't the same as you, or they don't believe and feel and think the way you think they should, doesn't mean they aren't right. You aren't them, you don't know them. You can never know what it's like for them, to be them.
You can't pretened to know someone better than they know themselves just because their beliefs don't match yours. Stop telling Trans people, or any LGBTQ+ people, who they can and can't be. You aren't them, you don't know them, and you. Don't. Own. Them.
You cannot control them. They aren't your property, and they aren't your puppet.
They are themselves. And if you can't handle living in a world where every single person doesn't agree with you perfectly, then that's on you for being a jerk.
We are not meant to be the same, nor are we meant to agree on everything. That's the POINT, y'all.
Don't be a dick.
This has been a PSA.
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thehalfbreednation · 4 years
Text
Rape Culture, U.S.A.
I’m. Fucking. Mad.
This is not the original idea I had for my second piece, but as life so often does when you make plans, certain events have unfolded to make anything I meant to say before seem pretty fucking irrelevant. I’m hurting. I am hurting to the point where I can barely see straight or think past my next move, because if I let my guard down for even a minute, I think I’ll probably lose any semblance of control I have gained on my emotions. I’m done. I am done pretending to be OK.
Rape Culture USA
Show of hands how many women currently reading this have been raped or sexually assaulted? Probably quite a few of you. I have. I have been molested, I have been taken advantage of when I was too drunk to see straight, and I have been coerced into consent for fear of my safety. In fact, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center 1 in 5 women have reported being the victim of some sort of sexual assault. That’s 20% of the women you know. Twenty fucking percent.
We live in what is affectionately known as a “rape culture.” What does that mean exactly? According to the Marshall’s Women Center rape culture can be defined as:
An environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture. Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women’s bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women’s rights and safety.
Flattering description, huh? But all too accurate. All over the country we learn about different college campus scandals, from MSU to Penn State. Coaches and students who are successful or have high potential get their transgressions swept under the rug in order for a winning season. Brock Turner was given a light sentence for intentional drugging and raping an unconscious girl because he had “an outstanding previous record, and a very bright future.” Our teen movies and dramas highlight partying in excess as the golden rule of youth and acceptance. The idea that “boys will be boys” is overused and often oversimplifies the things we let our young men get away with. Our concern in society is not for the trauma of the women and victims, but for the young men who were swayed to act so foolishly out of ignorant adolescence.
And it doesn’t end there. Did you know the average woman who goes on a first date plans it with coordinated precision of a black ops mission? It’s not about the date. We could care less where you take us, we just want to get home alive. Someone knows when I arrive, will check in through out to make sure I’m still breathing, and I will text again when I leave and finally when I arrive home and have locked the door. These are the precautions the AVERAGE American female has to take to protect herself. All over the US bars have secret menu’s for women in distress, so that they can ask for help without alerting their would-be attacker.
Is it any wonder the president of the United States of America has been elected despite his obvious lack of respect and objectification of women? He is the walking validation every man needs to believe he is well within his right to use and abuse a woman without a thought to the potential consequences.
Victim Shaming
I recently had a friend end up in a date rape situation. While out with friends, and under the influence, she was taken advantage of. What’s sad is, that even as I write this, I can think of multiple women I’ve met who this story applies to. Myself, among them.
The first thing out of her mouth was, “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have put myself in that situation.”
Fuck. That.
No. No. No. I should be able to get drunk off my ass and do the Macarena naked while walking backwards in the middle of street without having to worry about getting assaulted. Is that behavior appropriate? Of course not. But does that behavior give anyone the right to put their hands on me in a way that I don’t consent to? Absolutely fucking not. But we hear it. Every. Day.
“She obviously wants that attention if she’s dressed like that.”
“She was all over him, how did you think he would react?”
“She was asking for it.”
“Who would honestly put themselves into the position for her.”
And my personal favorite, “If it was so bad, why didn’t you leave?”
Until recently in Washington state you could use fear and disgust as a defense to get out of killing a trans-person. In most of these cases, the trans-person who was murdered was transitioning from male to female. I often wonder, how many of these women, after being violated question their transition? It’s hard enough to live in this world as transgender, without realizing as a woman you are subjected to a whole different subset of violations and rules for safety.
Doctors offices have coded pens for women who are doing urine samples. If you are in a domestic violence situation, and your partner is present, you can use a different color pen to quietly alert the staff. Recently a woman in Florida was being held hostage by her boyfriend and was only able to get help by convincing him to take their dog to the vet. While checking in, she slipped the receptionist a note asking her to the call the cops and explaining that her boyfriend was armed.
And why do we have to go through all this secrecy? Why do we have to have a secret network of friends and/or entrust our safety to strangers? Because we live in a rape culture, women are guilty until proven innocent. From Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh to the teacher in the Midwest who mentally and emotionally abused his victim by placing love notes in her dogeared version of Twilight, again and again we watch society tear apart these women before thinking twice about the transgressions of the men involved. Again, and again we see these women’s character put under the microscope even more so then the accused. And for what? A slap on the wrist if there is a conviction? The humiliation of being dragged through court process and potential media attacks, regardless if you see justice or not.
Is it any wonder so many women remain silent?
And please don’t forget the men and children, too
Currently the Epstein story is getting rave reviews on Netflix. There’s also a current movement to get MAP’s, or Minor Attracted Persons, added to the list of different sexual orientations. The same 2010 study that found 20% of women had been victims of sexual assault also found that 1 in 71 men are also victims. Again, with children and men, these cases are often not reported. Not only because children have so few people to turn to, but in culture that shames victims of rape both children and men are often too afraid to speak up. Too ashamed. It is not just women who are victims of abuse and sexual violence, we’re just the most common.
Change must come. NOW
All around us groups are uniting to fight the systematic racism and oppression of different minority groups and classes in the U.S. In order for us to reach a state of true equality, WOMEN MUST HAVE A VOICE IN THIS FIGHT. Not just for our protection and safety, but also for the rights to our bodies. For the right to speak and be heard when we are victimized. To rid this country of the idea that a woman is only worth what her body has to offer, not her mind or her character.
There can be no equality, unless we are all equal. That includes ALL women, regardless of how you were born or the color of your skin; the size of your dress or the years you have earned through your willingness to survive in this hateful world. I see you, beautiful. I hear you, and I fight for us, too
No Justice. No Peace.
End Violence Against Women Now.
 Domestic violence and sexual assault are not OK, and it’s not your fault. Free resources for those of you so desperately needing help:
https://www.rainn.org/about-national-sexual-assault-telephone-hotline
https://www.nsvrc.org/organizations
https://www.thehotline.org/
 Major Sources Cited:
Three Women, Book by Lisa Taddeo
https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor-attracted_person
https://www.marshall.edu/wcenter/sexual-assault/rape-culture/
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/27/us/florida-woman-escape-note-trnd/index.html#:~:text=Woman%20slips%20note%20to%20veterinary,rescue%20from%20boyfriend%2C%20police%20say&text=A%20woman%20in%20Florida%20is,staff%20at%20an%20animal%20hospital.&text=The%20note%20that%20Carolyn%20Reichle,read%3A%20%22Call%20the%20cops.
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eydisian · 7 years
Text
Motivation behind the setting
i hate the stock standard “medieval fantasy” british/west europe castles n forests garbage. it’s fine, and i can tolerate it i guess, but it just fails to excite my imagination as much as i’d like. maybe it’s a side effect of boring DMs and bad authors, but traditional medieval settings are just not interesting enough, to me. plus i know them like the back of my hand already, there’s nothing new about the setting that could jump out at me in a game.
so Eydís, and the surrounding countryside, are heavily based on turkish islamic and hindu architecture & culture. as a white person, much of my understanding is incredibly limited but by choosing a culture i’m unfamiliar with, i’m forced to research and learn! this has honestly been the most exciting part of it for me, looking up culturally and historically accurate fashions, learning more about monuments and historical buildings, figuring out what the core social values and etiquette are, and so on.
adapting that to a homebrew setting with particular adjustments to account for the really white-centric bullshit that D&D itself was built upon has been... interesting. because a lot of the adjustments i’ve made to eliminate racist and sexist allegories (back in 2e and again in 5e), such as removing drow as a “race” entirely and adapting them as a strange mythology, have been easy enough of a call to make, but others are not. a lot of the more “monstrous” races like hobgoblins and orcs have always carried a lot of physical traits that are undeniably there because of anti-black racism.
drow had the “black skin” and “violent feminist matriarchy” two-for-one whammy, hence removing them from my setting entirely, because there’s no easy way to adapt them to a more modern, less sexist, less racist interpretation. (if, in the future, i come up with a decent answer, i already have a plot that will allow for their future inclusion... just not right now). either they’re literally dark-skinned “black” elves and thus its a “the black people are evil” trope, or they’re black-colored white-people elves which is blackface, and in either case they’ve got that “kill all men” and “women are above all others” thing which, in a trans-inclusive setting, gets messy real quick even without the obvious anti-feminist bullshit going on.
orcs and hobgoblins, of course, have the broad-face, broad-nose, kinky hair texture thing which is clearly description of black americans and others of african descent. so what do you do with the “all hobgoblins are evil green/grey people” thing? i don’t know. make them more inhumanly monstrous, i suppose, to remove any traces of connection to a human race? i’m tentatively trying that out. but orcs, and specifically half-orcs, are a playable race with a negative intelligence stat adjustment. what that says is “black people are less intelligent than the other races, that is to say, white people.”
so i’m going to impress upon my players that intelligence is not IQ or education. a low-intelligence character is not stupid, but possibly had less access to certain kinds of education compared to more intelligent characters. by shifting intelligence from a raw, born-into-being ability, (and by extension all stats being earned rather than given), it says more about the character’s history and upbringing than about the entire race. so perhaps those of orcish descent are not simply less intelligent by nature, but have trouble being accommodated in primarily human-sized classrooms.
maybe they just really hate math and science but are still competent readers who enjoy a good piece of literature. maybe it’s the reverse. maybe they have poor memory skills, despite a wonderful and enriching education. maybe its a reflection of a cognitive difficulty not related to knowledge, but more like trouble focusing or studying. all of these things would absolutely explain why a “low-intelligence” character would have done poorly trying to be a wizard (which requires extensive study) or has a spell-casting penalty (you need to focus and remember proper order of steps).
i really, really enjoy the incorporation of ability statistics into character backstory, because people often take for granted the numbers as “my character was born naturally talented this way.” none of us were born with an intelligence score of 18. but the people who went on to grad school have an 18 (or higher!). body builders and the olympic strongmen (and women) weren’t born with an 18 in their strength score. they had to work hard for it, and keep training to maintain that strength. think about that.
and now we come to gender and sexuality and all that jazz.
so, clearly if i’m having everyone randomize their skin color (all races have the full spectrum of human skin tones... so a dark-skinned blonde elf might be colloquially called a drow elf), gender itself should be open to interpretation as well. in Eydís, gender and sex have a roughly three-way equal split. 33% of the population is cis male, 33% of the population is cis female, and 33% is everything else: intersex, transgender, nonbinary, etc. while yeah, that does mean there’s a 2/3rds majority to cis people, a 2/3rds majority seems to fit a lot better than the very vast (apparent) majority of the real world. that said, other countries may have varying amounts of gender diversity just like they may have varying amounts of racial diversity. Eydís itself is a cultural megahub, and it makes more sense to have a larger and more equally distributed mix of people (including those we consider minorities irl).
enough about the people of Eydís at large. let’s get into the technical crap.
Eydís is the capital city of the country of Adylae, an arid to semi-arid south-eastern country. Eydís itself resides on the eastern coast, settled on top of a cliffside peninsula. the city is the seat of the royal family, though most of the workings of the city itself are run by a parliament of council members elected by their respective guilds. these guilds in turn are run and populated by the tradesfolk of the city. the royal family and their advisory table take care of national and international concerns, entrusting the capital to the parliament. the division of rule in this way allows for ease of function for both parties, and it is only during times of great duress that either group involves themselves with the business of the other.
the largest monument in Eydís is the Hall of All Gods, a multi-theistic centre that predates the city by a good 100 years. it was built with the intent to end a centuries-long religious war that shook the continent by providing a place where all gods were represented equally. in truth, “evil” religions are not allowed a space of worship within the Hall because it contradicts the doctrines of all the others (those considered “good” or “neutral” by mechanical standards). anyone of faith who is not currently represented in the hall may approach and request an altar space to set up. many religions share rooms, as their significant natural symbols are the same (sunlight, trees, water, moonlight, fire, etc) and while it is meant to be a place of peace and equality, there is often tension and dissent, particularly where religion spills over into the realm of politics.
Eydís itself is surrounded by a thick wall with three western gates allowing entrance into the city. the wall itself is approximately 150m high and between 50 and 100 ft thick. the city proper is actually elevated above two previous levels of construction, as space within the walls is limited. most middle-class residents live in the central residential district, though there are also apartments and homes outside of that. the eastern district is where the estates of noble and notable families reside, along with the palace itself. the main entrance to this district is through the Hall square, and other entrances are gated and guarded.
below the main level is the undercity, where most of the poor live and work. very little sunlight reaches this level except through wells and skylights. some of this level, and the sublevel below it, are flooded to provide a sewer and waterway system to the city at large.
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