#because. VERY often. Misogyny can be... *tied* to a bit of a lack of imagination. Or empathy on behalf of a particular writer

[thedeadflag]

I’m so confused! I know it’s not your responsibility to educate me but in your post bringing awareness to the negative aspects of g!p fanfic you say

“Why do these g!p characters rarely if ever involve experiences reflective of trans/intersex women? Why are they so utterly cis and perisex-washed? Why do nearly all writers have zero idea that tucking is a thing? “

Doesn’t that answer your original question? The reason they don’t reflect those groups of ppl is bc g!p isn’t trying to represent those groups of people or else it WOULD be transphobic to limit them to one specific fetish right? it just refers to a canonically female character with the addition of a penis (I don’t argue the name “g!p” should be changed bc that’s a no brainer why that could be offensive). But the fanfic in general, how could it be harmful? I’ve noticed in my time reading it as a non binary person it’s given me great gender euphoria reading a reader insert where reader has a penis while being a femme representing person just bc that’s a reflection of my personal experience. I don’t see anywhere where g!p fanfic ever references or tries to emulate the experiences of trans or intersex people so how could it be offensive?

Sorry this is way too long I’m just very confused

I'm going to try and lay this out as politely as I can. It's after 3:30 in the morning here, so this could be a bit disjointed and rambling. More under the cut:

In real life, ~99.999999% of women with penises are trans women. Which puts us in a tricky situation of (A) being the only women with penises around for media involving women with penises to reflect back on, and (B) being in the lovely position of precious few people actually having had meaningful real life exposure to trans women, meaning (C.) all those stigmas and all that misinformation are going to purely affect us and it’s going to be uncritically gobbled up by the masses, since they don’t have any meaningful information to fill in the blanks with instead.

When we peer into the depths of femslash fandoms and see all these folks who aren't trans women writing about women with penises, and using cis women’s bodies as platforms for these penises, it’s the simplest thing.

I mean, some of those folks might actually be struggling and confused about why they’re into it, what the real appeal is, why they get off on it, why they might have some feelings about wanting a penis of their own…

…but from our vantage point, it’s really easy to gauge 99.99% of the time. We can generally see valid, legitimate yearning to have a penis pretty damn easily in a piece of art/writing, and we can also see when people who create this media are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization.

And 99.9% of the time, the creators are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization, and see trans women’s bodies as a perfect vehicle to tap into that, generally due to deeply held cissexist views that link us and our bodies and genitals directly to cis men, to maleness. As if penises are rooted in maleness and masculinity (which is absolutely not true).

And I have sympathy for NB folks (certainly TME ones who have reached out to me in the past about this) who might be struggling with that, but just because they’re non-binary, it doesn’t mean they get to appropriate our bodies and reproduce transmisogyny and trans fetishization in their attempts at feeling better. Shit doesn't work like that.

Because again, the only women with penises in this world, essentially, are trans women. Meaning any woman with a penis in media is a trans woman, implicitly or explicitly. Meaning that when people who aren’t us want to write us, intent doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter if it’s just the writer’s fantasy, it’s still going to attach a variety of messages directly onto us.

And more often than not, due to cissexism, those messages are linking us to maleness, to toxic masculinity, etc..

While I do want to believe they're a fairly small minority, a lot of NB folks in fandom spaces like g!p characters in part because they see penises as male and the rest of the body as female and think that duality is interesting and would be comfortable, and is a nice balance of “both worlds” or a nice position “between male and female”, but that’s a wholly cissexist, transmisogynistic view to have, and it’s one that absolutely cannot be supported without directing sexual violence against trans women and invalidating our entire existence. Certainly not all NB folks into g!p like it for that reason, but holy shit a fair bit of them do and it’s weird and wrong and fetishistic.

g!p emerged from the idea that women can't have penises, and drew on the transmisogyny and cissexism of tr*nny porn to structure that frame of desire and the core patterns and trends within these works. It's always been trans women's bodies being used as a vehicle, whether or not the writers of these fics are explicitly aware of it, because the trope itself still holds true to its original patterns and cissexism. It's not the name that's the problem, it's the content; changing the name would be a surface level change that wouldn't affect anything.

g!p objectifies women with penises (trans women). A woman with a penis is more than just a woman with a penis, but the use of the term and trope is literally to (A) remind people that women don't have penises, otherwise the g!p term wouldn't be needed if people actually accepted women with penises as women, and that (B) this is a story centered on a scenario where there's a woman with a penis, with key focus on that genitalia specifically. it's the drawing point, it's the lure, it's what everything is centered on. It is a means for folks to write lesbian sex while also writing about penis in vagina and getting off to it. It's also no surprise that the penises so clearly emulate cis men's penises in these works, that is by design.

As I’ve said many times before, if you’re only writing trans women’s bodies to showcase cis men’s penises, you’re not respecting the womanhood of trans women, and this ultimately has nothing inherent to do with penis-owning women, it has to do with (cis) men and their penises, because trans women are just being used as a vehicle to emulate them. When NB folks do the same thing, and imagining themselves as those g!p characters, they are ultimately embodying cis men, their maleness, and often toxic masculinity, in a way that feels safe and distanced enough for them, a shell that they often code as cisnormative due to their own unprocessed cissexism.

And trans women don’t deserve that.

You seem caught in the idea that if something doesn't directly perfectly reflect trans women, that it can't be linked to us., which ignores the long long history of media being used to misrepresent marginalized peoples and cast us in insulting, dehumanizing lights. You show a lack of understanding of the g!p trope and the long history of its usage across a few other names, even if the content and patterns remained the same. It shows a lack of understanding of tr*nny porn and transmisogynistic stigmas, which the trope draws heavily from.

I think we can all recognize that most 'lesbian' prn that's made does not represent actual lesbians, it's overwhelmingly catered to the male gaze. We can also recognize that this category of porn has led to a lot of harassment towards lesbians from cis men who at the very least want to believe lesbians are just like they are in the porn he watches, that lesbians just need the right man. Lesbians are being used as a vehicle for a fantasy that was created externally to them, and doesn't represent their realities.

It's the same kind of situation here. The way g!p fics play out overwhelmingly doesn't reflect trans women's realities, but they are inherently linked to us regardless, as we're the vehicles for those fantasies, as unrealistic and harmful as they may be.

g!p characters are built in our fetishized image that’s based on a deeply cissexist misunderstanding of us, of the gender binary, and of bodies in general.

I mean, when 99% of cis folks don’t understand how trans women tend to be sexually intimate… when they don’t understand what dysphoria is and how it works and how it can affect us physically and emotionally…when they don’t understand almost any of our lived experiences…then they’re not going to be able to accurately portray us even if they wanted to.

And I’ve read enough g!p fics where authors wrote those as a means of trying to add trans rep, but because they didn’t understand us at all, it wasn’t remotely representative, and it was ultimately fetishistic, even if there was an undercurrent of sympathy and a lack of following certain common g!p patterns there that differentiated it from the norm.

If g!p fics were at all about reducing dysphoria or finding euphoria, then it wouldn’t be explicitly tied up in the performance of very specific sex acts, very specific forms of misogyny and toxic masculinity, very specific forms of sexual violence and exertion of sexual power, etc.

But it is.

So the notion that creating g!p fics helps NB folks? Nope. It CAN certainly prevent/delay those folks from facing a whole boatload of shit they’ve internalized, and coddle them at the expense of trans women.

Because if it was really about bodies and dysphoria/euphoria, there would be a considerable push (allying with out own) to end our fetishization and to represent us in and out of sexual contexts with accuracy, respect, and care. Because they wouldn’t care what sex acts were performed and what smut beats were hit, they’d just want to see someone with a body like their ideal being loved, being sexual, connecting, being authentic, etc. Which very much is not the case in the overwhelming majority of g!p fics. That's what we want, and it's not what g!p writers want, it's nothing they give a shit about.

Like, a ways back I started doing random pulls of g!p fics from various fandoms and assessing them for certain elements to provide some quantitative clarity. I started on The 100 here, and did OuaT here. Never finished the 100 one since the results leveled out and stayed pretty consistent as the sample size grew, so I didn't really see the point in continuing any further after about 140 fics when the data wasn't really changing much at all.

Lastly, media influences people. I've read countless posts and comments from people who use fanfiction as a sex ed guide, in essence. Which is ridiculous, but I also know sex ed curricula often isn't very accurate or extensive in a lot of areas, so people take what they can get. Representation in media can be powerful, and when it overwhelmingly misrepresents people, that's also powerful. Just because fandom is a bit smaller than televised media, it doesn't make that impact any lesser, certainly not for those whose primary media intake is within fandom.

Virtually all trans representation in f/f fanfiction is misrepresentative of us. That has a cost in how people understand us, how people react to us, and how people treat us. Not just online, but in physical spaces, and in intimate settings.

I invite you to read that post you referenced again, or perhaps this longer one which is a response to a trans guy who seemed to feel something similar to you with this trope.

All I can do is lay it out there and try to explain this. It's up to you how you handle this. All I know is whenever there's a big surge in g!p in a fandom, trans women generally leave it en masse, because it's a very clear and consistent message that we're not valued, respected, and that people value getting off on us over finding community with us.

#g!p #creative responsibility #trans fetishization #trans representation #intersex fetishization #intersex representation #genitals tw #genital mention tw #intersexism #transmisogyny #fandom meta #long post #cissexism #t slur tw #media representation #media literacy

[cardentist]

this isn’t a proper discourse post, I Agree with a lot of what the op said but there’s specific things about it that get under my skin in a way that makes me want to talk about it, but I don’t want to engage with that post both because I don’t want to speak over the point that’s being made and frankly because I don’t want to be misinterpreted because of the point that’s being made in it.

so for context, I’ll just say that it was a long post about how a lack of engagement with women characters in fandom spaces is tied to misogyny. just be aware that I’m responding to something specific and not criticisms of this in general. (feel free to dm me if you want to see the post for yourself)

the rest of this is going to be rambly and a bit unfocused, so I want to get this out the door right at the top: it is not actually someone’s moral obligation to engage with or create fan content. all other points aside, what this amounts to is labeling people as bigoted for either not creating or engaging with content that you want to see, and while the individual may or may not be a bigot it’s not actually anyone’s job to tailor their fandom experience to cater to you. 

fandom is not activism. it’s not Wrong to point out that a lack of content about women in fandom is likely indicative of the influence of our misogynistic society. and suggesting that people examine their internalized biases isn’t just fine, it’s something that everyone should be doing all the time. but saying that it is literally someone’s “responsibility” to “make an effort” by consuming content about women or they’re bigoted is presenting the consumption of fan content as a moral litmus test that you pass and fail not by how you engage with content but by not engaging with all of the Correct content. 

judging people’s morality based on what characters they read meta for or look at fanart for is, a mistake. it Can Be Indicative of internalized biases but it is not, in and of itself, a moral failing that has to be corrected.

if you want more content to be created about women in fandom then you do it by spreading content about women in fandom, not by guilting people into engaging with it by saying that they’re bigots if they don’t. you encourage creation Through creation.

okay, now to address what Mainly set me off to inspire this post.

this post specifically went out of it’s way to present misogyny as the only answer for why this problem exists in fandom spaces. and while I absolutely agree that it’s a Factor, they left absolutely no room for nuance which included debunking “common excuses.” which, as you can probably guess, contained the things that ticked me off.

first off, you can’t judge that someone is disconnected from women in general based on their fandom consumption because the sum total of their being is not available on tumblr. 

people don’t always bear their souls in fandom spaces. just because they don’t actively post about a character or Characters doesn’t mean that they see them as lesser or that they don’t think about them. the idea that you can tell what a person’s moral beliefs are not based on what they’ve said or done but based on whether they engage with specific characters in a specific way in a specific space can Only work on the assumption that they engage with that space in a way that expresses the entirety of who they are or even their engagement with that specific media.

what I engage with on ao3 is different from what I engage with on tumblr, youtube, twitter, my friend’s dms, and my own head. people are going to engage with social media and fandom spaces specifically differently for different reasons. you can’t assume what the other parts of their lives look like based on this alone. 

second off, there can be other factors at play that influence people’s specific engagement with a fandom.

they specifically brought up the magnus archives as an example of a show with well written women. which while absolutely true, does Not mean that misogyny is the only option for why people wouldn’t engage with content about them as often. for me personally? a lot of fan content is soured because of how it presents jon. I relate to him very heavily as a neurodivergent and traumatized person, and he faces a Lot of victim blaming and dehumanization in the writing. sasha and martin are more or less the only main characters that Aren’t guilty of this, and sasha was out of the picture after season 1.

while this affects my enjoyment of fan content for these characters To Some Extent on it’s own (I love georgie, I love her a lot, but I can’t forget that she looked at someone and told them that they were better off dead because they couldn’t “choose” to not be abused), the bigger issue is fan content that Specifically doesn’t address the victim blaming and ableism as what it is, even presenting it as just Correct. 

this isn’t exclusive to the women in the show by any means, this is exactly why I avoid a lot of content about tim, but it affects a lot of the women who are main characters. that isn’t the Only reason, there’s more casual ableism and things that tear him down for other reasons (the prevalent theory that elias passed up on sasha because he’s afraid of how she’s More Competent In Jon In Every Single way. which comes with the unfortunate implications of jon being responsible for his own trauma because he just wasn’t competent enough to avoid it) but that’s the main one that squicks me out.

of course not all fan content does this, and I Do engage with content about these characters, but sometimes it’s easier to just stick with content that centers on my comfort character because it’s more likely to look at his character with the nuance required to see that it is victim blaming and ableism. 

it’s not enough to say that the characters are well rounded or well written and conclude that if someone isn’t consuming or creating content about them then it has to be due to misogyny and nothing else.

there’s also just like, the Obvious answer. two most prominent characters are two men that are in a canonical gay relationship, which draws in queer men/masc people on it’s own but the centering of their othering and trauma Particularly draws in traumatized queer people that are starved for content. georgie and melanie are both fleshed out characters in and of themselves, but their relationship with each other doesn’t have nearly as much direct screen time. and daisy and basira have a lot more screen time together and about each other, but their relationship is very intentionally non-canon because of its role as a commentary on cop pack mentality.

people are More Likely to create content for the more prominent relationship in the show and be drawn into the fandom through that relationship in the first place. I have no doubt that there Are misogynistic fans of the show, but focusing on the relationship and the characters that make you happy isn’t and indication that you’re one of them.

which brings us to the big one, the one that sparked me into writing this in the first place (and the last that I have time for if I’m being honest). the “common excuses” section in general is, extremely dismissive obviously but there’s only one section that genuinely upsets me. 

without copying and pasting what they said directly, it essentially boils down to this: while they recognize that gay and trans men are “allowed” to relate to men, they’re still Men which makes them misogynistic. Rather than acknowledge Why gay and trans men would engage with fan-content specifically that caters to them they present it as a given that it’s 100% due to misogyny anyways. they present queer men engaging with content about themselves as them treating women like they’re “unworthy of attention,” calling it a “patriarchal tendency” that they have to unlearn.

being gay and trans does not mean that you’re immune to misogyny, being a woman doesn’t even mean that you’re immune to misogyny, but that’s engaging in bad faith in a way that really puts a bad taste in my mouth. 

queer men aren’t just like, Special Men that have Extra Bonus Reasons to be relate to boys, they’re people who are more likely to Need fandom spaces to explore facets of themselves. and while you can Relate to any character, it feels good to be able to explore those aspect with characters that resemble you or how you see yourself.

when I first started actively seeking out fandom spaces in middle school I engaged with content about queer men more or less exclusively. at this point I had no concept of what trans people were, and wouldn’t begin openly considering that I might be a trans person until high school. I knew that I’d be happier as a gay man before I knew I could be a gay man, and that’s affected my relationship with fandom forever. 

I engage with most things pretty casually, reblogging meta and joke posts when I see them, but what I go out of my way to engage with is largely an expression of my gender identity and sexuality. I project myself onto a comfort character and then I Consume content for them because that was how I was able to express myself before I knew that I needed to. it’s not that girl characters aren’t “worthy” of me relating to them, it’s that I specifically go to certain fandom spaces to express and work through my gender and sexuality. that’s what I use those fandom spaces For.

I imagine that I’ll need this crutch less when I’m allowed to transition and if I ever find a relationship situation that works out for me. but also like, why should I? it’s not actually hurting anyone for me to explore my gender and sexuality through fanfic until the end of time. nor does it hurt anyone for me to focus on my comfort characters. 

fandom is personal comfort and entertainment, not a moral obligation. people absolutely should engage with women in media and real life with more nuance and energy than they do, but fandom spaces are not the place to police or judge that. 

#discourse #I've been writing and rewriting this for 4 and a half hours instead of going to bed before 9 am #I already know that absolutely no one is going to read this so I don't know why I did this to myself #also I couldn't find a place to fit this in so I'm just gonna say it here #sometimes people just engage with fandom based on characters that they find attractive #and if that means boys then that means boys #it doesn't have to be more complicated than that

[lifestreamsblog]

Why Gaming is Slowly Becoming a Chore

(In this article, I’m not going to link to examples and / or articles, so you will have to use your own imagination and / or knowledge.)

It’s really hard for me to enjoy gaming these days.

And no, it’s not because of the AAA Games Industry causing their own bubble burst.  And it’s not because I don’t have access to my favourite consoles. And it’s not because I don’t have games that I love (and no, it’s not even because I have too many games that I love).

It’s because of two factors:

I prefer to play games with (or for) other people in my life

The games fandom and industry is full of nostalgia, toxicity, misogyny, mindless hatred, misdirected anger, unforgivable hypocrisy and rampant misinformation

This sort of garbage is enough to make any gamer girl completely uncomfortable...

I Prefer to Play Games with (or for) Other People in My Life:

This is perhaps one of the most difficult things about gaming for me, as what I play generally is tied to what other people in my life play.  For me, gaming is a purely social experience, whether that’s playing multiplayer games...

...or playing single-player games with other people around watching.

This is difficult when you’re truly in love with one particular console, while other people in your life drift to another console.  Forgetting the issue of console loyalty for a moment, it has to be considered that gaming is an expensive hobby.  And when interests in your social circle shift, it can be difficult to keep up, especially if you truly enjoy one console versus another.

I’m a huge fan of the Nintendo Switch.  And for a long time, so was everybody else in my life, including my fiancée, who was perhaps the single-most-important person in my life, as well as the person I played games with the most.

Recently, my fiancée has become much more interested in the XBOX ONE, which has made things difficult for me, as I was only able to get one after our household’s federal tax return came in.  This meant that for months, I wasn’t able to play games with her nearly as often as I would have liked, which really made me depressed, even though I tried--likely unsuccessfully--to hide it.

Of course, I have my own XBOX ONE now, so I should feel happier now that we’re able to play more games together, right?

Well, the truth is that there was something truly magical about our experiences together on the Switch and while the XBOX ONE has offered both of us some amazing experiences thus far, it hasn’t matched the magic I felt when we played games together on the Switch.

Another thing that doesn’t help is that the Switch almost seems like an afterthought in conversations not just with my fiancée, but with everybody else in my household.  Instead of discussing the games getting Switch versions, we’re discussing the PC and XBOX ONE versions instead. It doesn’t help that games like Octopath Traveller are no longer Switch exclusives, which leads me to feel even more alienated, as everyone seems so excited that a game that made Switch very special is--all of a sudden--going to a “more powerful platform.”

This is a lot more hurtful to me than I likely let on...and really, the only time I’ve ever discussed feeling this way is right now, here in this article.  The fact that I’m not able to articulate my feelings as well as I would like makes things even worse.  In the end, I love my new XBOX ONE, but I really wish that the Switch didn’t get all but the boot simply because we got Microsoft’s latest and greatest system...

The Games Fandom and Industry is Full of Nostalgia, Toxicity, Misogyny, Mindless Hatred, Misdirected Anger, Unforgivable Hypocrisy and Rampant Misinformation:

I don’t suppose this one needs much explanation, but I absolutely want to discuss how it’s making gaming more difficult to enjoy for me in particular.

I can’t begin to number just how many “reboots” and “remasters” of old games and franchises are being released these days.  It’s not just in gaming, but in all of mass media.  It would seem that people who grew up in the 80s and 90s would like to have those eras come back in full force, forgetting just what it means to have actual “progress.”  It’s like these people have never heard of “trying something new” before.

It’s fucking stupid and completely uncreative.

And this mindset also leads to the next set of issues:  toxicity and misogyny.  Men who think women are objects to fulfill their own needs...and people who think all Muslims are terrorists, all LGBTQ people are sick and all black people are criminals are rampant within the gaming fandom.  And these people act so entitled that they come across as if they are in the right for demanding women jump on their dicks while claiming that all people not like them are evil and criminal. It creates such a horrendous atmosphere that I dare not ever join in any kind of live chat. 

And this whole situation surrounding the misogyny, specifically, creates an aura that drives many women in gaming to extreme sex-negativity.  One of the many reasons SONY recently decided to block sexual content from all future games is in the name of not wanting to offend their women gamers.  Not only was this a disingenuous move, it shows just how this situation stifles sex-positive feminists such as myself, who have found empowerment in franchises like Senran Kagura and Hyperdimension Neptunia, both of which have sex-positive content and both of which have huge lesbian fandoms that far outnumber the male fandoms.

And both of which will now suffer content blocking from SONY because of sex-negativity rooted from misogyny-based trauma.

Way to remove representation and relatability for people like me, folks!

It makes me want to puke.

Then there are the fandoms.  The fandoms are full of people whose brains are so stuck in how long they’ve been following a particular company or franchise that they don’t often understand what’s happening right in front of their faces.

Like when Nintendo fans claim that there is no third-party support for the Switch.  Or that Nintendo may--one day--become like EA or Activision.  And how about the Nintendo fans who think the Wii U is a huge, steaming sack of shit simply because it didn’t sell an obscene number of units?  And then there are the Nintendo fans who don’t shut up about Pikmin 4, Metroid Prime 4, Animal Crossing: Where’s Our New Game? and more.  And the Nintendo fans who think Let’s Go! isn’t a real Pokémon game and that a lack of Nintendo Directs in any given month means Nintendo is ignoring their entitled asses and I could go on and on and on.

And then there are the general fans.  The general fans who complain that games aren’t hard enough and that everyone who wants easier game modes are complete and utter idiots who don’t deserve to play videogames.  And then there are the fans who think that if you don’t have the right graphics card or right PC rig that you’re a total imbecile who shouldn’t be in the same room with gamers.  And gatekeeping gatekeeping hatred hatred shittalk shittalk blahblahblah.........

And some of these fans complain about all of the above and more!  Yes, even Nintendo fans fall into the general fans category sometimes.

These people are a pure delight, aren’t they?

The games community is so unwelcoming, hostile, bitter and full of shit that it makes me feel really alienated when I’m already struggling to enjoy myself amongst other people in my life.  And it leaves me feeling as if I have no voice whatsoever.

It just makes me want to break down into sobs...

Sometimes, I wonder if things will ever improve.  Sometimes, I sit with my thoughts and let them brew inside of me for days, weeks and months on end.  People in my life can often tell I’m unhappy, but I don’t always speak up enough about how I feel.

In Grade 8, I had an English teacher who helped me with my writing, which--at the time--was atrocious.  I couldn’t even string together a proper sentence.  And my last paper I wrote for him wasn’t much better than the first.  When he gave me his remarks, I burst into tears.  He just handed me a box of tissues and waited for me to calm down a bit before saying this:

“Never stop writing.  Promise me that.  Because one day, you will improve.  And when you do, you will be able to tell the world how you feel.”

I never forgot that.  And because of him, I developed my now-strong writing skills.

Even though I have had trouble speaking up about how I feel regarding these issues previously, In the end, the most I can do is try my best to speak up now, which is why I wrote this blog post in the first place.  While some of you may stumble upon this from the broader internet, this piece isn’t for you, but rather for those in my life.

This is me trying to open up a bit more.

And I know this article isn’t my best work and that it’s full of rambling and subject-switches, but I’m very depressed and this whole piece reflects that mood, so I’m going to leave it--for the most part--in the imperfect state it’s currently in.

#gaming #depression #struggle #fandom #community