#because this whole discourse is generated by internet robots who have only heard tell of wanting to fuck people

[hussyknee]

could it not also be considered androphobia that trans men don’t actually “count” as men when it comes to lesbians…???

What?

Policing the way you self-identify is inherently oppressive and queerphobic, and the particular way it's levelled at trans mascs is transandrophobic. Insisting that trans men can't be lesbians and that lesbians can't be attracted to trans men denies the fact that you can't pick most trans men out of a lesbian lineup, that being assigned female informs a lot of trans mascs' experiences, that they experience most of the same oppressions as women, and rejects the belonging they found in the lesbian identity while sussing out their gender (which may not even be a fixed thing). Like, fucking hell, you're attracted to what someone looks and behaves like, their aesthetic, their energy, their vibes. NOT whether they check the right gender box on a questionnaire. Male is an internal identity that can mean a lot of things. It has nothing to do with who's attracted to you or how you experience attraction.

Also like...the gender binary isn't real lol. Y'all think women and men occupy oppositional sides like a tennis court, and that all other genders fall into one or the other and never the twain shall meet. So that when a Man™ falls into the orbit of a sexuality that predominantly centers fems/women, or when that sexuality doesn't completely exclude all attraction to mascs/men, y'all have an entire cow about it.

Edited to clarify: I meant that the majority of trans mascs are pre-transition, not that no trans masc in any state of transition can look like anything but a woman. Begging y'all to remember that the vast majority of trans people are not medically transitioned because of socio-economic reasons, most are closeted to some extent and (can't find the stats on dysphoric vs. non-dysphoric trans people) some trans mascs don't/ can't even wear binders. And even cis gays mix up femme twinks and butch lesbians. Being able to be shielded among the cis gay community and its allies is one of trans folks's most important protections.

#transandrophobia #i'm deliberately not careful with the terminology #because this whole discourse is generated by internet robots who have only heard tell of wanting to fuck people #THIS COMING FROM AN ASEXUAL #i can only assume you havent met any queer people in real life and therefore cant even conceptualize the width and variation of human being #exclusionism #queer discourse #lgbtqia #knee of huss

[danipaniniwrites]

When social media becomes too "social"

Recently, I’ve been wanting to do a social media purge. It’s just always this strong urge to, as a bare minimum, delete all my social media applications on my phone and just live off of them for a while. The thing is, though, the more I think of doing it, the more I find myself not being able to do it. Social media has somewhat formed this sixth sense that has morphed into something that cannot be undone once you contract it. It’s that “fear of missing out” people call, that unsettling feeling that you won’t be able to catch the latest news of your world whether local or foreign, or the most recent activities of that celebrity or group that you fangirl/boy over, or maybe even the daily happenings of your friends as you tap on your screen and see who they’ve been with, what they’ve been up to, where they’ve gone, and how much fun they’re having as they live their lives to the fullest.

Do you know that feeling? Well, obviously, you’re not alone.

The first social media platform I tried swearing off from was Facebook. During the throes of academic life, Facebook just proved to be the ultimate distraction with its everlasting scroll of news feed filled with pictures of your friends, quotable quotes and Bible verses from your titos and titas, and videos ranging from those adorable cats and dogs, to those delectable recipes that are—let’s face it—not as replicable as they seem. It seemed easy enough at first as I rendered myself busy with schoolwork to even bother opening the app. Things got even more desperate when I started turning my notifications off, but that’s when I realized that I needed those notifications from my professors and the class coordinators who posted regular updates in our Facebook groups.

The next platform I tried—and, I’d like to believe, am still—swearing off from was Instagram. At the end of the day, everything I saw there just became too superficial. There came a time in my life that I was at the lowest of lows that I’ve ever been in and I’d find myself all alone in my room, a recluse from the real world but alive and kicking on the online world. I would open the app then open people’s Stories, tapping the screens endlessly, viewing these 15-second video or 10-second picture snippets of their lives. It reached a point where I would finish all the Stories that were viewable in one sitting and I would realize that about one or two hours have passed. Every single time I tapped the screen to view more and more Stories on end, I found myself thinking of ways to make my own Stories seem as good as theirs. I tried and tried but eventually came to the conclusion that I couldn’t. When I finally closed the app and let go of my phone, reality came crashing back and it struck me, at that moment in the lowest of lows of my life, that nothing right now was just that Instagrammable. Try as I may to think of pictures to edit and post, happenings to Boomerang into an artistic video, I just couldn’t. I thought, nothing in my life makes sense and is pretty at all right now, so why even put up a front online that everything is fine?

I’m not gonna lie, but on Instagram, some people just make it so easy to manicure their lives into the most perfect version they could become. Filtered photos, curated profile grids, relevant feeds; all of these blurred into each other. I mean really, some people can manage to make a bunch of leaves look like a piece of art like how?????? It’s very unlike Twitter, the only platform I couldn’t really give up with its constant updates on anything and everything. By anything and everything, I also mean those brutally honest opinions to the point that everyone is “woke” about every single social issue or just plain sad as people voiced out their rants to nonexistent ears.

Things eventually got better, of course, and went back to as normal as things could be in. Unfortunately, try as I may to avoid Facebook and Instagram, graduation season came abound and us graduates were somehow duty-bound to post every single graduation photo we had and give our “heart reax” to every single graduation pic and say “Congratulations!” and “Padayon!” to all my fellow graduates. It’s not supposed to take too much of your time and effort, considering that this can all happen while you’re lying on your bed, but I’m not gonna lie that time period was socially draining. I know we’re all obligated to say our thanks and show our gratitude, especially to family members and teachers of time gone by who comment out of the blue, but personally, there’s this nagging voice inside my head that keeps reminding me that every single thing that you see online is pretentious, superficial, ostentatious, a front.

In my downtime, I got to thinking why I thought of social media that way. My personal realization made me understand that it’s when social media gets too “social” that it becomes too toxic. This topic, I swear, has been discussed so many times to the point of cliche but there’s a reason why it’s still relevant. Social media has integrated itself into our lives so much so that our every move is now defined by it. We look for activities that are share-worthy on Facebook. We go to places that are Instagrammable so we have something to flaunt. We “stay woke” and expose various issues from the trivial to the political to make sure they are heard on Twitter. Marketing strategies are patterned on people’s social media activities. Companies are spouting out tactics that make their online presence more notable. I could go on and on and on and man, it gets too tiring.

Social media gets too social because too many people tend to overshare everything in their lives, making sure that their online presence is heard, seen, and felt. We all, individually, have become our own personal brand that we strive to keep up through the impression and following we have online. We become too defined by numbers and impressions and engagements that sometimes, you can’t really tell what’s real and organic from those that are automatic and robot-like in response. Do they give those “heart reax” because it made an impression on them that it deserved more than a mere like? Or is it because it became that person’s automatic response because hearts make people feel more better than thumbs?

The whole point of this discourse is that I may just be mourning the gradual degradation of genuine human connection and interaction due to the rise of technology and the Internet and social media. It’s sad because I see it in my own family, in my own house. I see it in the eventual dwindle in even the smallest interactions between my friends as we sit side by side and we resort to facing our phone screens because we’ve run out of things to say. I see it in myself as my growing envy over how people’s lives are just generally better that I believe I’m too incompetent and incapable to achieve these things when in fact, I can. I just have to turn off the notifications, put down the phone, close the browser windows, and get up. It may seem like it’s easier said than done, but it’s a start.

At this point in my unemployed life ((goddammit HAHAHUHU)), I’m just starting to get fed up with my current system. I know I need to do something. It’s ironic to note as well that I’m sharing this through a social media platform but heck, it’s the only way to get the word around. If you’ve reached this far into my post, then I hope this serves as a gentle nudge and a little reminder that face-to-face interactions still trump any other kind of interaction, especially those of the social media kind. We are more than our Twitter personas or Instagram feeds or Facebook profiles. We deserve real social interaction and not the “social interaction” we get a sense of from social media. We deserve true eye contact and the hidden meanings behind our nonverbal languages. We deserve more than the hidden disconnect we feel as we connect with everyone on the Internet.

This won’t be the last of me talking about the thrills and woes of social media. As long as people are on it, people are going to talk. And that’s what I’m going to do too.

Stay awesome, nerds. ✨

#social #media #social media #internet #rant #i hate the internet #i hate the system #facebook #instagram #twitter #tumblr #pinterest #snapchat #woke #stories #story #ig story #nerds #blog #personal #opinion #personal blog #danipaniniwrites