#even though plenty of people other than cis women face misogyny

[garfieldbian]

october 2024. terfs begin to refer to themselves as MA (misogyny affected) and call anyone other than cis women ME (misogyny exempt)

#even though plenty of people other than cis women face misogyny

[cardentist]

Context: [Link] (highly recommend reading even if it’s long) I debated where I should put this, but with the length of this post I want to put @nothorses master post about transandrophobia right at the top [Link] if this post is too lengthy for you or you'd like to read more after chewing on this then I Implore you to open that link and hold onto it.

I don't want to call out this person in particular, I'm certain they don't mean any harm by it and it's not within our best interests to pick fights with people who have (in this commenter's words) Nearly all of the same beliefs with some minor squabbles who are willing to support each other anyways.

but it's exactly Because I'm certain this person means well that frustrates me.

years ago I would've said something along the lines of "this is no different from saying 'I'm not homophobic because I'm not afraid of gay people.'" that it's nitpicking Accurate terminology by breaking it into pieces and judging the words its made up of individually when they're obviously intended to be seen as a whole. trans Men face oppression for being trans Men in a way that cis men do not, just like trans Women face oppression for being trans Women in a way that cis women do not.

but that was a long time ago, the perspective has changed.

"trans men can't have this term because it's too close to affirming cishet white men when they say that they're oppressed for being men" was a talking point back when "transmisandry" was the terminology that was landed on. and while my thought process about that was the same I Understood the kneejerk reaction. because there Was a concerted effort by certain cishet weirdos to make "misandry" a term that made them systematically oppressed by women, and more specifically was used to Deny the existence of misogyny (very ironically from how they acted).

(that said, I have my own reasons for liking that term even if I do see the problems with it, I understand why it was chosen at the time. which I get into here [Link])

"transandrophobia" was coined Specifically to avoid that connotation, to Denounce the association and address that frankly (on the surface) Reasonable kneejerk reaction while still being recognizable and serving the same purpose.

but the talking point about it remained Exactly The Same, completely unchanged despite the change in association. because the point was never About it evoking something unpleasant (though that certainly helped with swaying bystanders in the conversation) it was about the absolute refusal to believe in the concept of people being hated For their manhood. in masculinity intersecting with oppression More than just as a neutral trait.

now, what I'm Not going to say is that the concept of androphobia is a systemic oppression that's upheld by the majority or any governmental body. not mine and certainly not any that I've heard of. but I will Also say that conflating the Recognition of a sentiment that real people express With systemic oppression is not only unhelpful (there's a lot of things that aren't systemic but still matter) but has Also been used to gate keep minorities by exclusionist groups Plenty of times before.

such as when people stopped being able to insist that asexuals don't experience trauma for being asexual At All and instead insisted that it wasn't Systematic and therefore they didn't belong in the queer community. no amount of studies, no amount of personal accounts, no examining of actual law and actual acts of oppression from governing bodies or places of work would sway them. because as long as they could say "It's Not Systemic" they could dismiss it out of hand. when, really, even if they were right it shouldn't matter. if someone experiences trauma they deserve to have the source of that trauma taken seriously no matter the underlying cause. they shouldn't have to Prove that it's important enough to justify caring about.

but to get to my point 9 paragraphs in from where we started, the idea that anti-masculinity or androphobia or anti-man sentiment or Whatever you want to call it Doesn't Exist is pretty ridiculous coming from within the trans community for Several Reasons.

terfs hate trans women because they're transphobic, but they Also hate trans women because they're radfems. a core tenant of radfem ideology Is The Demonization Of Men And Of Masculinity. they think trans women are dangerous Because They See Them As Men Trying To Infiltrate Women's Spaces. and Yes that is obviously transphobia, but the way they talk about trans women is Not magically disconnected from their view of manhood or masculinity or Men As A Group. though Undoubtedly they will side with cis men if it gives them the opportunity to attack trans women, in part because it Is that intersection of Both anti-man sentiments And transphobia And misogyny that has them frothing at the mouth to hate trans women.

(see this: [Link] for a more in depth discussion on radfem ideology as a whole)

and the thing is, someone might be tempted to say "well their hatred of masculinity is Obviously tied to trans women, so there's no point in acknowledging it as anything But transmisogyny." and in fact, that's not a hypothetical at all, it's the default relationship people have with this concept.

but this mindset affects everyone, Especially otherwise marginalized groups.

radfems seeing men as Inherently And Biologically Violent, as rapists and unthinking monsters, Absolutely And Undeniably affects how they treat people of color (Especially black people). white women stalking black men and calling the cops on them because they see their existence as Dangerous has been a Thing for as long as cops have existed (it's the Reason that cops exist) and has been Documented as a current issue in the wake of black lives matter and the murder of black men by the cops. it is an attempt from white women to have black men murdered, to cause violence to them without having to physically implicate themselves, all while using the perception of themselves as inherent victims (small and docile and innocent) with the perception of black men as monsters.

and it Should go without saying, but this Obviously Is Not Saying that black men inherently have it worse than black women. recognizing the oppression of one demographic within an oppressed group Should Not Inherently Mean pitting them against other demographics within that same group. we should just be allowed to point out an experience that some people can have and let that be a neutral (if important) statement. the things black women go through because of Their intersection of racism and misogyny are well and truly Horrific, I certainly don't need to prove that.

and In Fact, black women are victims of that Same intersection of racism and androphobia that we see both from terfs and from white people everywhere. because "womanhood" Almost Without Question means "White womanhood," to have black traits (or to have Non-White traits) is to be closer to masculinity in the eyes of racists.

when terfs post a picture of a cis woman and harass and mock them for Clearly being a trans woman who will Never fool anybody it's universally because the woman in the picture has traits that aren't traditionally upheld as the standard for white women. it's misogyny, it's androphobia, it's transphobia, it's racism. because these ideas Aren't Inherently Separate. they Build on each other and they affect Everybody, because people who think this way don't just turn it on and off like a switch when they're attacking the "intended" target.

and All of these ideas come together and inform the situation with trans men, both on this issue specifically and As A Whole.

just the same as we see that intersection of transphobia and misogyny and androphobia with how trans women are treated (combined, of course, with other relevant aspects of an individual) we see much the same with trans men.

the difference is that people inherently Recognize that what's happening to trans women is more than Just ideas of transphobia (more than Just wanting people to stay the gender that they were assigned at birth), but they recognize Only the misogyny aspect. so when the same conversation is turned onto trans men people don't know what to do with it, Especially when combined with the (unfortunately common) denial that trans men experience Misogyny either.

that complex web of interlocking concepts, and in some cases the Idea Of intersectionality At All, are Denied to trans men. who are then minimized For the perceived lack in complexity (in their oppression, in their identities, and in their lived experiences).

"why not just call it anti-transmasc sentiment then? people might take it more seriously." even Ignoring Everything I've mentioned so far, the Reason I'm not happy with this is because trans men Are attacked (harassed, oppressed, however you want to phrase it) Specifically For Their Identities As Men. and as much as I Also want to establish that behavior and sentiment As stemming from transphobia, I Also don't think we benefit by erasing or softening that idea to make it more palatable to people who don't want to believe it.

this was a response I got to that post I linked at the very top of this essay. I trust that anyone reaching this point has an idea of how silly this is in context, if they haven't read that context themselves. and in fact I wasn't going to acknowledge it at all (I only have this image on hand because I took it to have a laugh with friends). but it's a Convenient and Simple illustration of this exact issue.

the hatred of trans men in trans, queer, and activist spaces is informed and Justified by the hatred of men as a whole. because If you can convince people that trans men are Inherently a privileged group you can justify presenting anything they do as attacking those less privileged than them.

Men are violent, Men shout down women, Men are misogynists, and so a trans man pointing out the existence of his own oppression while actively acknowledging the oppression of nonbinary people and trans women (Only making the point that it's unhelpful to try to quantify this oppression as a tier list and use that to inform how you treat individual people) that trans man is Actually just a Typical Violent Man Exerting His Privilege To Oppress Poor Women.

it's, very ironically, a silencing tactic to avoid addressing the oppression of a minority group to the benefit of the person doing it.

a trans man's manhood is a weapon that is Constantly used against him, and I Might (Might) be willing to call that "anti-trans masc sentiment" if I didn't know where it Stemmed from.

the relationship between radfems and the queer community is, to understate it, Fraught.

for most people who consider themselves to be trans allies, it's Easy to see that terfs are, you know, Bad. to understand that they're a transphobic group and Therefore dangerous. but by-and-large that'd Main and Only thing that that's understood about them.

and to an extent, that's because people believe that that understanding is Enough. that it's Enough to dismiss it out of hand and refuse to look at or Think about what terfs have to say. which is Understandable.

the issue is that no matter how much they Believe that terfs are bad and wrong, they're Still Vulnerable to being influenced by radfem ideology, talking points, and Active Intentional Manipulation if they don't actually know the Details of what it is they believe and how to spot them.

as a Very basic example, people who Believe "terfs are bad because they hate trans people" but Don't understand "radfems are bad because equate men and masculinity as being Inherent Violent and therefore inherently harmful to women" can see something like "men don't belong in women's spaces" and Not Understand that something they may be genuinely trying to consider or understand Is Radfem Rhetoric.

that specific example is, at this point, commonly understood as a terf dog whistle. but it's largely Only understood as a stand in for trans women and called out as transmisogyny.

which is a problem when, say, someone looks at a trans man talking about his experiences is oppression and trauma and says "this Man is shouting down women! this Man is being misogynistic and stealing spaces away from women! this Man doesn't Belong!" and Not Understand That It's The Same Idea. Because the person being targeted Isn't being misgendered (Most of the time), the exact Same silencing and othering tactic is used Effective against trans mascs while not being Recognized as that At All by the majority group.

sometimes these things happen because people passively absorb radfem rhetoric, integrate into their own way of thinking, and then use it against other minority groups without understanding what they're doing. sometimes this is done Very Intentionally by terfs trying to spread their own ideology and break up and cause rifts between groups.

this is not a hypothetical, this is Repeating History that we see over and over again with exclusionists in queer spaces. masterposts at the time had Dedicated Segments talking about the ways these groups shared ideas between each other, between radfems, even when the individuals Don't hate the same people [Link 1, Link 2]

there were Documented Instances of terfs Admitting that they had secret aphobe accounts that they were using to try to indoctrinate ace and aro exclusionists into their beliefs. there's documented instances of terfs admitting that they got to that point By Being indoctrinated through ace and aro exclusionist beliefs and talking points. we had terfs Openly comparing their ideologies to exclusionists Explicitly to recruit them. [Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5]

Because if you're Willing to accept that these ideas Are True, that the Logic that terf ideology is based on is Sound, then you're More Likely to accept when that same logic is pointed at another group. they target people that you're more willing to hate to pull you into their beliefs entirely.

and some people will go on never hating trans people (or never hating trans Women or trans Men or Nonbinary People or Binary Trans People, whatever the particular poison they're drinking), but it doesn't suddenly become Okay when radfem ideology is being used to hurt groups that aren't common sense associated with it.

what's more, these exclusionists groups Hated when you pointed out that connection. would spit and yell and call you bigoted for Daring to make the connection, even when (at it's peak and Most Ridiculous) they were quite literally taking posts originally written by terfs and replacing "trans women" with "ace people." Word For Word. which means it Never got addressed, no matter who pointed it out or how obviously wide spread it was.

and it's Tiring to have to say "if you can't care about how this affects trans men then at Least consider how perpetuating this idea puts trans women in danger" But It's True.

if you let people perpetuate the idea that trans men are Violent, that they're Oppressive, that they don't Deserve to have their own spaces, that they Inherently talk over and erase other oppressed groups by talking about their own issues and asking for compassion, if you Let people say "this group of trans people is Inherently Lesser" Because They Are Men, Because Of Their Closeness To Masculinity, Because Testosterone Or Maleness Is Inherently Corrupting

the jump between Which trans group you think of this way is not as difficult as one would hope. and if we're Never able to address it for what it is, address it As radfem driven androphobia And transphobia And exclusionism then we're going to Keep creating spaces where people are vulnerable to indoctrination. to radfems, to terfs, to exclusionists, to Extremist Reactionary groups of all kinds.

and beyond all of That, as alarming and Important as it may be, it's Also worth noting that radfems (and even Terfs Specifically) Do use androphobia against trans men, even as they force feminine labels on them.

Yes there are the obvious direction that terf oppression of trans men takes. treating them like confused women and trying to indoctrinate and detransition them to Save them or Fix them (which, in itself, is a type of violence). and there's the Resentment of "the frigid uncaring woman trying to identify out of her oppression to instead oppress other women," which isn't a sentiment totally Removed from the issue with how trans mascs can be treated in queer spaces (quite the opposite really, punishing trans men for daring to Be men by equating them with privilege and thus treating them as both an outsider and a threat).

but there Are instances of terfs treating trans men as outright Predatory. as a threat to Them and as a threat to the "poor confused women" that get "manipulated" into "the trans cult" by the trans men they Couldn't indoctrinate.

trans men are vulnerable little girls that are too stupid to know what's good for them and have to be converted Saved, they're the poor lesbians being stolen away from the beds of Deserving radfems women, up until they're Too masculine. until they have beards, until their voices are deep, until they stop wearing makeup, until they're balding or their waste changes or or or-

then they've Mutilated Their Bodies, then they're Frightening, then they're Aggressive and Invasive and Need To Be Dealt With, then they're Ugly Men even as radfems try to deny it.

the feminine trans man is a mark, he's a damsel in distress that radfems want to isolate and indoctrinate. the masculine trans man is Frankenstein's Monster, he's an ugly brutalized image of masculinity, the picture of what radfems hate othered away from what they're a Picture Of by radfems' transphobia. Uncanny and hated just the same.

this isn't "worse" than what terfs do trans women, it's not "better" either, It's The Same, It's The Same.

transphobia, misogyny, and androphobia in a Melting Pot to create a horrific buffet of oppression and abuse. manifesting Differently in different situations and between different people, and yet Fundamentally Connected through the beliefs and ideologies at play.

taking away one of these terms used to Describe this phenomenon doesn't Help, it obfuscates the fact that these things Are connected. which Worsens our ability to Understand them and Address them.

these ideas are Important, not just for trans men but for All Of Us.

and while I'm here, I'd like to address the Other issue I have with proposed alternatives like "anti-trans masc sentiment," Even when proposed in good faith.

if we were to go back and reexamine the terminology for the queer community as a whole and assess if these terms are the most Efficient they possibly could be, would we change them? would we stop using a term like "homophobia" if softening it could make it more palatable? make it easier to introduce the concept to people on the fence? make it easier to ask people to address their own biases without alienating them? if we did away with terms like "internalized homophobia" and instead asked people to address their "complex relationship with gayness" would we be able to get More people to listen?

maybe we could, Maybe softening the term would instead lead to people taking these ideas Less seriously exactly Because it's less direct, Because it's soft, Because it deliberately seeks to Not draw a reaction from a reader. I genuinely couldn't say how this would play out in practice, though we'd probably see both reactions to a degree and thus endless discourse about its effectiveness as a term.

but that's ultimately overshadowed by the Bigger Picture (though, more accurately I could say that it also Informs that bigger picture).

and that's Unity. Cohesion. Communication. Community.

the point of creating terms like this is, of course, in part to give minority groups the vocabulary and perspective necessary to convey their experiences to people outside of said group. and this purpose is endlessly important of course.

but More than that it gives a Community the ability to open a conversation with each other, to take their experiences as Individuals and create a melting pot where they can get a bigger picture of what We As A Group, As A Community, Experience.

this is completely invaluable in every way. it's what allows people to find each other, to know they aren't alone. it allows people to move conversations forward, to unravel complex ideas in a way that Can Acknowledge a vast array of often conflicting and yet Connected experiences. to be able to Build a community together, when lacking a physical space to inhabit, we need Words to connect us. both in passing as neighbors and to Find as Strangers.

when you take a community that already has established terms and you try to popularize an alternative, Especially while encouraging people to Stop using the previous terms, you Split Up that line of communication. people who congregate around one term Won't be in conversation with people who congregate around another, which inhibits the community's ability to grow and deepen.

people who Dislike a term (because it's trying to take something away from them, because they've been told that it's morally reprehensible) Won't engage with it, so posts that are tagged with Only that term will not be found. and even If that term is (unrealistically) universally adopted over time There Will Be A Period where people are simply ignorant of it.

and this is Very Much So used as a weapon by people who Don't want these communities to unify. who Don't want them to talk to each other and Get Ideas. and the smaller, more tentative, less supported a group and term is the more Vulnerable they are to this tactic.

this was and Is used Regularly by exclusionists, though I'm most familiar with how it was used by ace and aro exclusionists Specifically.

they would argue Endlessly about how Anything the ace and aro groups coined for themselves was Bigoted Actually. "aphobe" was attacked by Insisting that it was a term used by autistic people to describe their oppression (a lie, and a ridiculous one at that. there's nothing bigoted about the same term being used for multiple purposes). and "Allo" faced An Endless Barrage of never Ever accepting any term, no alternative, because They Didn't Want Ace People To Be Able To Define The Group That Oppressed Them, because they didn't Believe in that oppression.

Exactly in the same way that transphobes tried to argue that "cis" was really an acronym for something bigoted and so "cis" should be abolished as a term. Exactly in the same way that people argue that "transandrophobia" is offensive Specifically Because they don't believe that trans men are oppressed for being Trans Men.

the point is that they will never accept a replacement term, no matter what. if there Isn't an issue with it (by coincidence or from a certain angle) they will lie to invent one. it's Already Happened with transadrophobia being the intended replacement for transmisandry.

because the Point is double. First to break up the intended target community to hinder conversation around an idea that you don't want to exist, to make it harder and harder for it to be found and (by extension) Understood and expanded upon. and Second to prevent communities from being able to solidify In The First Place.

this wasn't the only tactic that was used to hurt ace and aro people, but it Can't Be Denied that the affect that it had as a whole was devastating. it's been Years since this whole thing started, since it died down even, and the ace and aro communities have yet to recover.

it's Easy to fall into the trap and say "well if we just get the term Right this time then it'll be okay ! if we Fix It then they'll stop!" but it Is exactly a trap. the point of phrasing it like this, of making it about bigotry or about the term being Problematic, is Both intended to demonize the group for having the Audacity to create a term for themselves at All, And to take advantage of well meaning people within the targeted community to do the leg work for them.

it's about silencing, it's about destabilization, it's about Breaking Apart communities so they can't Grow.

"Meet me halfway," they say. you take a step forward, they take a step back. "Meet me halfway," they say.

#discourse #trans unity #transphobia #transandrophobia #transmisogyny #androphobia #transmisandry #it's been a while since I've used that tag #but it feels appropriate here #long post #Really Long Post #when I started this I didn't intend for it to be Even Longer than the post it's in response to #Engages In Toxic Masculinity By Being Incapable Of Expressing Any Concept Or Idea Without Writing A Peer Reviewed Essay #actually while we're here #can I just make fun of that anon I got a Little Bit #shout out to the Very feminist take that women don't type essays

[5typesoftrash]

I guess part of the reason I believe in radical inclusion is because it seems like there are two key concepts no one on here understands about systematic oppression.

First of all, it's not the FUCKING OPPRESSION OLYMPICS!!! Especially when it comes to queerness! Why are we defining the boundaries of our community around the suffering we've experienced and not around our shared pride? Why can't we be defined by the commonalities we have -- we are marginalized because we reject the standard family structure, arbitrary binaries, and gender roles imposed upon us by a queerphobic society.

(Here's a link to my Venn Diagram about that. I might write an entire essay on that post at a later date.)

And secondly, oppression manifests itself in a variety of ways. Let's take misogyny for example. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that physical and sexual violence against women isn't misogyny; it obviously is. But it's not the only kind of misogyny. Misogyny looks like my eighth grade science teacher (a cis woman) being repeatedly spoken over by in staff meetings by my geometry teacher (a cis man). Misogyny looks like my grandmother being told by a doctor when she went in for chronic pain that she's being 'dramatic and hysterical'. Misogyny looks like my mother, a woman who went to three different colleges for a total of thirteen years to get a doctorate in vocal performance, working four jobs and two volunteer positions and still making less than 40% of what my dad makes annually as a salaried worker who never finished his bachelor's degree.

So what does all of this mean to me? Well, the more I look into gatekeepers' arguments, the more I see people cherry-picking their facts. Gatekeepers consistently reference only the most extreme forms of oppression and then say that if you don't experience them, you're not oppressed. (Sometimes, even when you DO experience them you aren't oppressed, if they just don't like you.)

For example, something I see a lot is people saying that asexuals aren't LGBT because they aren't oppressed for their attraction (or lack thereof). These people often say 'no one's going to beat you up or kill you for being ace'. And while that is true, it overlooks plenty of other factors. For example, ace people are not taught about the existence of the label in sexual education, nor at any point do the teachers say hey, it's okay to not even want to engage in sexual activity. It's always assumed that students are interested in sex and will need to exercise incredible willpower to abstain.

But I'm sure you're thinking 'OP! We all know that LGBT sex education is sorely lacking, especially in the United States. Don't you have anything better than that?'

Well, lovely reader, I most certainly do. Ace people are also often denied or taken off of sometimes life-saving medications when they come out to their providers because doctors believe the medication is "suppressing their sex drive" (a real thing that has happened to several people I know personally). On top of this, ace people, like same-gender attracted people before them, face the prospect of corrective rape should they choose to come out publicly. Not to mention how pervasive the 'healthy sex life' narrative is in our society, which when combined with lack of acespec education, leads to many young aces feeling as though they are broken, alienated, or not like their peers in a very important way.

This is just one example; if you dig a little deeper into these issues you'll find many more that play a similar tune.

So THAT is why I'm radically inclusive.

#rad inclus #radical inclusion #radically inclusive #being rad inclus saves lives #queer #lgbt #aspec #ace #aro #acespec #arospec #asexual #aromantic #oppression #gatekeeping #exclusionist rhetoric #misogyny #misogynistic #fuck gatekeeping #fuck exclusionists

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Why is it that people seem to always support trans women more than trans men?

 Lee says:

If you’re part of an online forum community that is primarily transfeminine, for example, then there’s going to be a lot of resources for transfeminine people.

But if you’re part of an online forum community that is primarily transmasculine, for example, then there’s going to be a lot of resources for transmasculine people. 

And just as there are particular online spaces and communities that tend to be predominated by a certain group, there are also IRL ones that are primarily transmasculine or primarily transfeminine even if they are not explicitly defined as such. 

If you feel like you aren’t being supported enough in the space you’re currently in, see if you can find a community that does focus around the resources you’re looking for! 

As an example- you may have noticed that the transmasculine post-op community on Tumblr is pretty small. There definitely are multiple bloggers out there, and I think I actually follow all of them, but this isn’t really a thriving hub of phalloplasty information or support, or a large community of transmasculine folks who are post-op and post-transition (Thanks, Tumblr NSFW ban!).

So instead, I seek out the spaces where the community I want to be a part of actually is gathering. Now I’m part of many different transmasculine lower surgery groups on Facebook (over 20 of em lol), I’ve attended IRL transmasculine lower surgery support group meetings in person, and now I’m in two different Zoom-based transmasculine bottom surgery support groups. 

I also believe that if you want to see more of a particular thing, you should be a part of putting that thing out there! So I still maintain my transition sideblog here on Tumblr, where I will eventually document my phallo when I get stage 1 in May. And that’s how I support the transmasculine community, in my own way. So if you want to see more supportive posts for transmasculine folks, start typing!

We also have to remember that uplifting transfeminine doesn’t automatically occur at the expense of support for transmasculine people. We aren’t trying to tear each other down, so being resentful of the transfeminine community for the people who support them isn’t a good look. Transfeminine people can never have “too much” support!

I do think that there are certain spaces online that tend to focus on positivity and support for transfeminine folks, and there’s nothing wrong with that- again, yes, transfeminine people do deserve support! Transfeminine people often face the brunt of society’s violent transphobia, and it’s important that we recognize the way that trans women specifically are targeted more than other groups are. 

Trans women are often hypervisible and a lot of transphobic movements are aimed at them as a result; bathroom bills because transphobes don’t want “men” in women’s bathrooms, banning trans athletes because transphobes don’t want “men” to take over women’s teams, trans people being banned from gendered homeless shelters because transphobes don’t want “men” to sleep in the same room as women, and so on. When you listen to any of these politicians who support these gross things, you’ll hear them constantly talk about the “danger” that trans women pose (while insisting on gendering them as “men” and refusing to recognize that they’re even women). Trans men aren’t even an afterthought.

Being culturally hypervisible in the media means you’re the target of a lot of hate and the recipient of a lot of support, which is all happening at the same time. On the other hand, the transmasculine community at large is less visible in the media which means we often slip under the radar as a community which of course does tie into the erasure of the community. Transmasculine people more often slip under the radar on a personal level too, because many transmasculine people are able to pass by at least 5 years on testosterone and many choose to go stealth as soon as they’re able to.

That doesn’t mean that all transmasculine people can pass or want to pass, or that transmasculine people don’t face transphobia and violence either, or that the vitriol targeting trans women doesn’t invalidate us as well or affect our rights too, or that we shouldn’t get to share our experiences or ask for support. 

We can and should talk about transmasculine people’s experiences as well, and transmasculine voices shouldn’t be erased. Studies have shown that suicide attempt rate for trans boys is approximately 20.9% higher than it is for trans girls, for example, and there are many similar statistics showing that trans men struggle in many ways and face a lot of discrimination, which of course deserves acknowledgement.

Experiencing discrimination and subsequent mental health struggles isn’t something that should be glossed over, yet there are many pseduo-progressive folks in the LGBTQ/feminist communities whose posts can sometimes come across as “men are bad and trans men are men so they’re bad!” When you point out that there are plenty of marginalized men out there who need support, people are quick to say “Well, I’ll support you for being trans but I don’t need to support you because you’re a man since men have privilege and therefore perpetuate oppression!” But in the case of trans men, supporting someone for being trans is the same thing as supporting them in being a man, you can’t separate the two.

And you can spend all day talking about in what situations transmasculine people have access to male privilege and in what conditions the privilege applies and so on, but that is a separate conversation from the point here, which is everyone deserves support and that includes trans men (and gay men, and disabled men, and Black men, and Indigenous men, and Asian men, and so on). 

Things like body-shaming men for having neckbeards or small penises is seen as okay even though body-shaming women for having body hair or having small breasts is recognized as misogynistic. Sometimes folks respond by saying something like “you can’t oppress your oppressor” which... makes no sense in this context. Making people feel that their bodies are bad goes against the whole body-positive feminist movement, and that’s true no matter which people you think you’re targeting. 

It’s also pretty obvious that being a man doesn’t inherently make you a bad person, but a lot of the hate and anger directed at men (whether it’s posted as a joke or said seriously by someone who went through trauma) can make it difficult for trans men to recognize that they’re men because they don’t want to become the thing everyone hates. 

So how do we navigate allowing marginalized people to vent about groups who have privilege without causing collateral damage to other oppressed people? 

Some people have tried to solve it by saying “I hate only cis men, not trans men!” but then of course you’ve created a new issue which is the arbitrary distinguishment between a cis man and a trans man. A trans man can be just as misogynistic as a cis man, and being trans doesn’t mean anything about who you are as a person, all it says is something about the gender you were assigned when you were born.

When you say that you only hate cis men, you’re implying that you don’t hate trans men because you think they’re different than cis men in some way in their thoughts/behavior/actions which is a transphobic assumption. 

Or you’re saying you know that trans men and cis men can be identical in their thoughts/behavior/actions because they’re all men, so the reason you don’t hate trans men is ... ?? because they had certain genitals at birth (which they may not have anymore) ?? And that’s also transphobic because it’s saying you hate people solely because of their bodies which they can’t always control or change and implies having a particular type of body is morally wrong somehow or that your body makes you a bad person.

When someone makes a point of telling a trans man that they hate men, it’s sometimes a deliberate transphobic tactic used to make the person feel like having a male gender identity is inherently bad and makes you bad because it’s who you are, so the only way to become a good person is to not be a man which means not being transgender. And this is some how TERFs try and convince trans teens who were AFAB to re-identify as women instead of embracing being men. It’s hard to embrace being something that people have told you is problematic so people try to repress their feelings and ignore who they are.

Yet folks who don’t say “I hate all men” and instead say “the patriarchy sucks but it’s okay to be a man and not all men are bad” have found that statement controversial too. 

Even that phrase, “not all men,” is a red flag because it’s primarily used by the “men’s rights” folks who try and defend their misogyny and push their anti-feminist agenda while denying the ways that they personally benefit from the system. All men benefit from the system of patriarchy if they are recognized as men by the system, but that doesn’t mean every individual man is personally responsible for actively perpetuating oppression or that every man is a bad person.

So when someone points out the ways that men are taught to hate themselves by people who are constantly bashing on men in hurtful ways, or the struggles that men face (even if they aren’t struggles unique to men), there are people who just freak out because they think that acknowledging this is in some way trying to say that men can’t be oppressors, or that pointing it out is somehow delegitimizing women’s experiences or part of a pushback against women’s rights because the MRAs have tried to stake a claim over the entire topic.

So any nuanced conversation about ways that we actually can support men and break down oppression and uplift marginalized folks has been silenced because this toxic group has dominated the conversation and nobody wants to accidentally seem like they support those things, so they don’t support anything that focuses on men at all.

Similarly, when someone posts about something that affects trans men people (usually cis people TBH) often will respond with “trans women have it worse with that issue, and everything else too!” which isn’t a helpful response because while it’s important to recognize the way that trans women face multiple axes of oppression, uplifting trans women in a way that makes it impossible for another marginalized group to have a conversation doesn’t help anyone. It’s okay for some posts to not be about or for trans women without starting to play the Oppression Olympics games because transmasculine people also need support and space and allowing transmasculine people to talk about their experiences doesn’t mean that transfeminine people are being ignored.

All that being said, I would argue that people definitely don’t always support trans women more than trans men, and I wouldn’t even say that people usually do so. It very much depends on the space you’re in. While I do believe that there are a lot of positivity/supportive posts about trans women on Tumblr, this is, in many ways, a direct reaction to counter the large volume of hate that’s also actively being directed at trans women on Tumblr. And while there are plenty of “love trans women!” posts, there is also an issue with the lack of practical resources and material support for trans women because most of the content does not go beyond the surface level heart-emoji type post.

So in what I’ve noticed on Tumblr specifically (as this varies depending on the platform you’re using and the space you’re in), there can be more vocal (aka performative) support for trans women but it mostly tends to focus on their identities saying they’re valid women and so on but doesn’t give them much information or material support or anything else that I would deem a useful resource, whereas there might be less support for trans men in terms of “gender identity positivity for being male” but there’s more practical resources and information that they can use to aid in their transition.

Again, whatever you do, don’t complain that transfeminine people have too much support- that’s not the same thing as saying that you’d like more support for trans men struggling with X issue.

And yes, while we do have many things in common, there are some differences in the struggles the community faces and the experiences we have, and it’s okay to want to talk with other folks who are going through the same thing. That doesn’t mean that you don’t care about transfeminine people or that you think they should have a smaller platform or something, it just means you’d like support for your identity and transition (which is wholly unrelated to how much support there is or isn’t available for them).

So if you are looking for more support for trans men and feel like you aren’t getting what you need in the online or IRL spaces you’re currently moving in, you should try finding the spaces that are meant to be supportive communities for trans men and join them, whether they’re specific blogs, Facebook groups, Discord servers, or in-person/on-Zoom support groups, and also do what you can to create the support you want to see for your community!

#Lee says #not really sure what to tag this as #transphobia #discourse #suicide m #Anonymous #trans #transgender #nonbinary #lgbtq #lgbt #transgender teen survival guide #transgenderteensurvivalguide #TTSG

[all-things-lgbtqia]

JK Rowling continues to spout TERF ideology, continues to say she’s not a TERF.

JK Rowling, best known as author of the world-renowned Harry Potter series and the decider of who is and isn’t gay, took to Twitter within the past 24 hours to make what I can only assume was supposed to be a joke in response to a Tweet about efforts to help create a more equal world “those who menstruate” in a post Covid-19 world, saying that “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people.”

When called out for her erasure of trans men, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people - all people who can be assigned female at birth but do not identify as women - Rowling went on the defensive, criticizing the idea that “sex isn’t real”.

Here’s the thing, Rowling: sex is real. Trans people know this. That’s kind of what makes most of us trans. Their biological sex, which is a real and tangible thing, does not match the identity they see for themselves, which is also real although it can be a lot harder for us outsiders to see. This is why many trans people opt for modified clothing (such as binders and gaffs), hormones and surgeries to make the exterior body match the internal sense of gender. Granted, many trans people will not do this, and they are not obligated to do so, but the vast majority of us will opt for such measures, not just to make ourselves more comfortable in our skins, but also so people like you don’t keep misgendering us and then pretend to be the victim when we call you out on it (which you’re doing right now). Absolutely no one is arguing that biological sex isn’t real.

She then goes on to say that saying women like her, “who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades”, hate trans people “because they think sex is real and has lived consequences - is a nonsense”.

Like I said Rowling, sex is real and absolutely no one is saying otherwise. You’re the one who keeps saying it. You said it during the Maya Forstater debacle and you’re saying it now. “Woman” is not a term that refers to someone who is biologically female. An overwhelming amount of the time it does, but not always. “Female” and “female-bodied” are somewhat controversial terms when it comes to afab transgender people, but they always refer to someone who is biologically female. “Afab” is an acronym for “assigned female at birth”, which can even refer to cis women. So as you can see, there are better terms to refer to someone with female reproductive organs than “women”. And believe it or not, a lot of those “lived consequences” are often the same for a lot of afab people. Not everyone has the privilege to transition at 6-years-old, before the horrors of the real world affect most of us. Many afab trans men (I would like to quickly acknowledge that some trans men may be biologically intersex), non-binary and gender-nonconforming people will have lived as females or a somewhat “female experience” up until they come out of the closet and begin their transition, if they do so at all. Pre-transition afab people are still subjected to the same amount of sexism, misogyny, sexual harassment and general dangers that come with being a woman because even though they are not women, society sees them as women. And yes, these people will even menstruate, because they have a female reproductive system (although it is worth noting that some people born with these parts may not menstruate at all, because biology is weird and sometimes things don’t function the way they’re supposed to). And on top of all that, trans women will also face the same hazards during and after the main stages of their transitions. In fact, statistically speaking, transgender women are even more likely to experience male violence than cis women, so let’s not pretend they aren’t involved in this whole conversation at all.

And just a quick sidebar, like I said, some people with female reproductive parts don’t menstruate because their body just never kicks that system into gear. If a cis woman never menstruates because she’s one of those people, is she no longer a woman, J?

I would also like to take the time to comment on how she pretends trans people don’t exist when she wants the spotlight and only references them when she gets called out for it. This is a lot like the, “I can’t be racist, I have black friends” “argument”. We’re not tools that you can use and then put back in the closet when you’re done (only we can decide if it’s time to go back in the closet, and I would rather not do that again, thank you very much). We’re not accessories you can flaunt to show how accepting you are. We exist even when you’re not making exclusionary remarks and pretending that the issue at hand is exclusive to cis females only.

She goes on to claim she would support trans people if we are discriminated against. I don’t have a Twitter account so I can see only very limited Tweets online, but so far I haven’t seen her comment on the proposed UK bathroom bill that would force trans people to use the bathrooms that correspond with the sex marker on their birth certificates. If she has commented, let me know and I will update this section of this post appropriately.

She tries to justify herself by saying she is well-read in scientific journals and transgender experiences, so she knows the distinction between sex and gender. But if this was the case, she wouldn’t still be using “woman” to refer strictly to cis women, and she certainly wouldn’t be using it to describe all  people who menstruate.

She says, “Never assume that because someone thinks differently, they have no knowledge.” And she would make a good point, if saying that only women menstruate and implying that if you menstruate you are a woman, plain and simple, wasn’t TERF rhetoric. Listen, you can know all about a subject as complicated and relatively new as gender identity, but knowledge and acceptance are two different things. Just because you major in Africana Studies and can name just about every major figure in black history doesn’t make you less racist when you clutch your purse tighter when you see a black man jogging down the street. Having a degree in Women’s Studies doesn’t make you any less sexist when you tell a woman to make you a sandwich because you disagree with her opinion. And reading scientific papers about transgender people and what it all means doesn’t make you less transphobic when you make sweeping claims that only women menstruate, and that transgender people don’t understand the struggles of being a woman.

In what is her most damning move so far, Rowling then Tweets out, “‘Feminazi’, ‘TERF’, ‘bitch’, ‘witch’. Times change. Woman-hate is eternal.” One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong...

I get it, there are plenty of terms and phrases used with the intent of shutting up women you don’t agree with. TERF is not one of those terms. TERF is in the same category as racist, misogynist, neo-nazi, etc. NOT the same category as women-silencing words like ‘bitch’ or ‘feminazi’. A TERF is a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, someone who discredits the existence and experiences of transgender people (primarily trans women) because they feel like it (the transgender experience) doesn’t belong in discussions of women’s rights, or even that it threatens their identity as women. Sounds kinda familiar, doesn’t it? Calling someone a TERF is not a silencing behavior, and you’d figure a feminist would understand this. Calling someone a TERF is calling them out for behavior, while also letting the transgender community know that this is not a safe person to be around. If anything it’s a warning label. 

And look, don’t take this all to mean I hate women. I don’t. I only hate it when we pretend that an issue such as menstruation is exclusive to cis women. It isn’t. Women’s issues typically aren’t restricted to cis women. Trans women will experience violence and hate, usually at a disproportionately high rate when compared to their cisgender sisters. Trans men will often experience discrimination pre-transition, and maybe even post-transition from people who still see them as women. Not only that, but trans men typically experience the issues that come along with being biologically female (again, those that are afab). Most transgender men will menstruate and experience all the absolutely wonderful symptoms that come along with it. Some transgender men even get pregnant and have babies. No one is arguing that women have it easy. Transgender people - regardless of if they’re trans women, trans men, non-binary, agender, gender fluid, or gender-nonconforming - don’t want to erase women’s experiences throughout the years. We just want to live our lives in peace like everybody else. I just wish Rowling would stop pretending otherwise.

Is JK Rowling a terrible person? I don’t think I can go that far. She has made some serious contributions towards the acceptance of LGB (although notably not T) themes in children’s media, supports the Black Lives Matter movements, and even showcases fan art from very young fans on her Twitter. Although, she did share an article talking about the lesbian experience with discrimination and erasure, which is very important (hell, I admittedly don’t come across a lot of lesbian content on my Tumblr feed so I don’t get a chance to reblog a whole lot of it), but it also says that “ask my pronouns” is decidedly anti-lesbian, and paints the entire LGBTQIA+ community (referred to as “LGBTQ” with the quotes) as greedy, money-hungry, well-supported, and even predatory against children. Is this just a subject I’m not all that knowledgeable in? Perhaps, but I have a really hard time taking your arguments seriously LGBTQIA+ community is decidedly predatory against children, but I digress. I will say, however, that I am just disappointed. I’m disappointed someone who has been all about standing up to bullies and fighting against oppression has been using her platform to side with bullies and take part in said oppression. I’m disappointed she lumps “TERF” in with “Feminazi” and other terms designed to discredit women with opinions. And above all, I’m disappointed that she claims to offer us support when her actions support just the opposite. But, after all we’ve seen over the years, I can’t say I’m surprised.

#JK Rowling #rant #transphobic #terf #menstruation #terf ideology #transphobia

[valehirvas]

Do you feel there are instances that are specifically "transphobia" instead of something like homophobia or misogyny? Like, i feel you've seen both the GC and QT sides takes on the application of that word (including takes such as "transphobia ain't real" and "transphobia is everywhere"), so what IS actual transphobia to you? And what are some things that are labeled as such but in your opinion is something else? (just in case, don't worry abt long answers! I love ur takes with other ppl).TYSM

I think transphobia as a phenomenom is primarily a combination of homophobia and misogyny - it all comes back to people fearing and loathing individuals who break gender norms. That doesn’t mean it’s not a real thing, though; ultimately homophobia tends to come down to misogyny, too, as it’s about men who lower themselves to the level of women, and women who deny their true purpose of being vessels for a man’s pleasure and offspring, and I highly doubt that anybody around here denies that homophobia is real. The same goes for transphobia. It exists. It is its own distinctive combination of prejudices and hatred that targets a specific subgroup of people as well as those who are perceived to be a part of said group. If transphobia wasn’t real or distinctive, we wouldn’t have words like “tranny” to show for it. We’d just be called the usual homophobic/misogynistic slurs. Instead, we’ve got plenty that very deliberately target us as trans individuals - not gay people, not women, but something “in between”, something despicable, ruined and freakish.

So yeah, we’ve got slurs. We’ve got my lovely combatants here on Tumblr mocking me for my “mutilated” body, my “arm penis” and my “axe wound”, both of which I apparently have at once. These are very specific forms of abuse targeting me as a transitioned trans person - not homophobia, not misogyny.

It’s a wide subject. There’s the kind of violence that primarily straight men dish out for us: corrective rape, “trans panic”. There’s medical malpractice and neglect such as doctors and nurses refusing to treat a patient because of their trans status, sometimes leaving said patients to literally die from a lack of care. There’s emotional abuse and ostracism, bullying, sexual violence because trans individuals are seen as a fetish, as pornish and always available. Job discrimination, housing discrimination.

Then there’s the wide array of things that are frequently claimed to be transphobia but really, really aren’t, like mean old gays not having sex with us. It’s been said a thousand times but you don’t do activism with your body and accepting, even defending a person’s humanity and rights does not equate to inviting them in as a sexual partner. This is ridiculous and disgusting. Purposeful misgendering falls under emotional abuse - this is prevalently used as a harassment tactic - but casual misgendering like a stranger referring to you with the “wrong” pronouns, or being perceived as your birth sex, is not transphobic. People owe us basic human decency, nothing more than that. It is very easy to spot the line where misgendering becomes a form of abuse and where it is innocent, and as people who simply are gender nonconforming, we have to cut the slack to other people in how they perceive and refer to us. It sucks sometimes, but it really isn’t that hard to forgive and forget. Most people mean no harm. I always assume best intentions when facing misgendering; it’s the other person’s right to read me as female, they don’t know me and they don’t owe me the time of the day to figure out. Furthermore, I’d rather not be asked in a casual setting. It’s easier to get out quickly than give details of my personal identity, medical history and sexuality to a stranger for no real benefit.

What else is there. A lot of things, really. GNC men and women being GNC and even “passing” as the opposite sex while not being trans is not transphobic. Everyone has the right to appear, dress and behave as they feel comfortable; clothing and gender play are not reserved to trans people only. We are not the sole heirs to the genderbending and genderblending lifestyle, even if we probably are the most hardcore participants in it. Besides, the fact remains that gender is a harmful construct: the more people we have breaking through the boundaries, the better. And no, evil cis people are not in fact stealing our only means for validation when they dress contrary to their assigned gender role. They’re helping us. Not everything is about our validation. Trans people have the right to live unharrassed, and in order to achieve that, we as a society have to build a world where everyone can dress and behave as they wish. Only then can we really be at peace. Sorry about your euphoria and validation, buddy, but they’re the sacrificial lamb on this altar. We all often have to give up something for a better world - progress is not painless.

That’s a lot already. Either way, thanks for the kind words!

[freedom-of-fanfic]

how radfem lite rhetoric echoes the social effects of misogyny

@rainbowloliofjustice wrote a quality post about absurd and condescending it is to judge women for their life choices, as if they didn’t actually choose those things for themselves. and it struck me that the things they described shared a consistent message.

(vocabulary note: 

‘women’ means ‘women’ - trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise

‘(perceived) women’ encompasses (1) women, trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise, and (2) anyone that others - radfems, etc - mistakenly perceive as women (nb afab, sometimes trans men, etc)

‘women and/or people presenting as women’ encompasses (1) women, trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise, and (2) anyone of any gender who chooses to present as a woman for whatever reason, not limited to genital arrangement.)

so ….

you know how I’m always on about radfem lite rhetoric? as in: people who don’t even like non-intersectional radfems, much less their subgroups (terfs & swerfs), will say this stuff without understanding the buried connection to radfem thinking?

the examples rainbowloli used are all that kind of rhetoric - or closely tied to it.

‘f-o-f, you’re trying too hard. it’s women looking down on other women for their choices because of internalized misogyny.’

well the funny thing is, nonintersectional radical feminism totally encourages (perceived) women to look down on other (perceived) women for their choices.  The difference is only that:

radfem rhetoric judges (perceived) women for what they see as ‘catering to men’/’the patriarchy’ too much*

misogyny judges (perceived) women for not catering to the patriarchy enough(or not doing it ‘the right way’).

(*’catering … too much’ should be read as ‘doing something that might conceivably please men, even if it also pleases the (perceived) woman doing it.’)

In short: both radfems & patriarchal social structures try to control and police the behavior of (perceived) women.

That’s why radfem rhetoric can easily flourish among the unaware: the behavior it encourages replicates the behavior encouraged by patriarchal/misogynistic social structures. It’s only the reasoning that’s changed.

Let me demonstrate:

“Wow, I feel so sorry for women dating ugly dudes like girl you can do so much better.”

this is closest to internalized misogyny. In general, when a woman is seen as significantly more beautiful than her partner we assume the guy is somehow buying her affection, and we judge her for being bought off. that’s internalized misogyny.

But lop off the ‘ugly’ in the middle of that sentence and you’ve got word-for-word radfem rhetoric. ‘I feel sorry for women dating dudes like girl you can do so much better.’ because dudes are always hopeless, self-centered trash and women are always attentive, woke angels. That poor silly woman. she needs to find a good wife who will make her happy. Dating men is an act of catering to the patriarchy.

and no: neither misogynists nor radfems consider that maybe the woman is happy with the man she’s dating, nor are they willing to respect her choice to date whomever she likes, for whatever reason she chooses.

“I feel so sorry for girls who spend hours doing their makeup and they can’t catch a break from the patriarchy.”

as is often the case, there’s a grain of truth in here. Dress codes & appearance standards for (perceived) women in client-facing jobs are often more strict than those for (perceived) men, and certainly more expensive to maintain (jobs that require women and/or people who present as women to wear makeup should have to pay for it. just saying). Plus, those standards are often set by (cis) men who are in positions empowered to make those calls. There’s also plenty of internalized misogyny involved in the social perception that anyone who is and/or presents as a woman must maintain their appearance at a certain standard to attract a (male) mate, whereas men are seen as capable of attracting a woman via qualities other than appearance.

But the idea that all people who present as &/or are women are forced or brainwashed into a makeup & beauty regimen purely at the behest of men/patriarchy is both an insult to free will and too narrow a look at daily primping. Plenty has been written by others about how applying makeup often isn’t about men/attracting men at all. and men and/or male-presenting people are also under social pressure to meet certain beauty standards to be seen as attractive (though perhaps not to the same degree).

‘women are forced to do [thing] by the patriarchy/the only reason women do [thing] is because of patriarchy,’ where [thing] is something that women and/or female-presenting people choose to do for many reasons, is a radfem dog whistle. 

The underlying assumption is that any (perceived) woman who says they do [thing] for a reason other than ‘i’m forced to do it for the pleasure of men’ must be a brainwashed victim of internalized misogyny; the only way to truly free oneself of patriarchal brainwashing is to submit oneself entirely to a husban– I mean, the radfem worldview.

And the third statement has the same energy:

“I feel sorry for women who enjoy [insert thing] because they’ve been socialized to enjoy it.”

Here’s another statement that presumes that women only do [thing] because they were tricked or brainwashed into it. Here, the word ‘socialized’ stands for ‘taught by patriarchal society’ - i.e. (perceived) women only enjoy [thing] because men & misogyny taught them to enjoy it.

and hey: our society is patriarchal. and hey: that totally does influence how women are socialized and how women think about themselves and others in negative ways. but this statement once again takes it too far: it posits that women functionally have no free will and are more or less mind-controlled by the influence of patriarchy into all their likes and dislikes.

If you’re having a hard time seeing the radfem influence, insert ‘giving head’ for ‘[insert thing]’, and ‘taught by men’ for ‘socialized’: ‘I feel sorry for women who enjoy giving head because they’ve been taught by men to enjoy it.’ because to a radfem, (perceived) women doing anything that gives pleasure to a (cis) man cannot possibly be a pleasure to herself as well. It’s impossible for a (perceived) woman to choose such a thing of her own free will.

And no: radfems do not respect that some people they see as women enjoy things that they find reprehensible or disgusting. instead, they see that perceived woman’s enjoyment of what they hate as traitorous to the cause of womanhood. These traitors - who are also victims - must be rescued from their own desires, even if that means screaming at them daily about how terrible they are and how they’re hurting and betraying their fellow women and how they’re harming themselves. (because screaming at (perceived) women about how terrible they are isn’t at all a carbon copy of the behavior of misogynists towards women.)

The takeaway is this:

When you see a blanket statement about how women* are forced, tricked, coerced, trapped, etc by patriarchy, men, or misogyny to do [thing], please consider whether or not it respects autonomy/free will before resharing or agreeing with it.

It’s true that patriarchy influences the lives of people of all genders, and that much of that influence isn’t for the better. it’s true that it particularly harms anybody who isn’t a cis man (and even cis men, if they don’t perform masculinity to satisfaction). but arguing that patriarchy robs people, particularly (perceived) women, of all their free will is a step towards trying to control the actions of those (perceived women) for their own good - and that’s gateway radical feminism in a nutshell.

*in this context, ‘women’ often means ‘afab’ (as in, exclusionary of trans women + erasing trans men/afab people off the binary). Sometimes it means ‘afab people & trans women’ (erasing trans men & afab ppl off the binary. radfems usually consider trans men as sharing the disadvantages of women b/c of presumed genital configuration & afab nb people to be misguided GNC women.)

if this sounds transphobic & gender essentialist ... that’s because it is. b/c radfem ideology naturally points towards becoming a transphobic exclusionist.

#transphobia #radical feminism points towards transphobia #radfems again #radfem lite series #misogyny #transmisogyny #gender essentialism

[deliadexaerisofficialuniver-blog]

What trans people are actually saying to transphobes if you’d be so kind as to stop twisting it/shoving words in our mouths/literally contradicting what we’ve already actually said

Basically it’s this: When transphobes on Tumblr talk about justifying misgendering trans people on the basis of not wanting to date someone with a certain set of genitals, and try to invalidate other non-transphobic straight and gay people’s orientations on the basis of the fact that many would date, have even sought out, have dated, or are dating trans people, I always see it coming down to them acting like trans people are saying that the only way to not misgender a trans person is to fuck them... Like they act as though some trans person has actually come up to them and said “fuck me, or you’re a transphobe,” and okay, you can make up whatever bullshit you want, but I just don’t see it happening. I see trans people saying “just because you don’t want to fuck someone doesn’t mean that their gender is invalid.” Y’all act like we are trying to say you can’t say “no,” when, IDK about other trans people, but I feel like being able to say “no” for *ANY* reason, and have it respected is fucking important. If how I should have been able to say “no” to my ex wife when I wasn’t in the mood without guilting is a fucking issue, you should absolutely be able to say “no” to someone you’re not even in a relationship with without it being dissed. The problem is y’all act like some trans person actually came up to you, and was like “you like *insert gender*, and I’m *insert gender,* so you have to fuck me, which would be a ludicrous expectation regardless of whether a person was trans or cis no matter what their gender was (even if entitled cis dudes often do seem to act like it should be that way with straight women, but yay, the joys of misogyny...) all you said was “no,” and they flew off the handle and got all pressuring and rapey at you, and acting like you have to fuck them, otherwise you’re being a violent transphobe, when we all know that’s not what happened. I can’t even imagine such a scene, it’s such a stretch of the imagination. We all know you’re just pissed that someone you aren’t into has the audacity to identify as the gender they are without having the bits that the binary says define whether or not a person is “allowed” to be that gender. I’m not gonna act like no trans person has ever expressed interest in a transphobe and been rejected, but here’s the thing: When you reject a trans person, and choose to go further and intentionally misgender them, like legit say to a trans woman “No, I don’t date men,” (Read “ No, You’re a man.”), or to a trans man “No, I don’t date women,” (”No, You’re a woman,”) which *is* something that actually happens, first off, that trans person is immediately going to lose interest, so taking literally anything they say after that point as though there were any interest remaining at all is a *huge* misinterpretation. Literally nothing a trans person says after you misgender them is coming from a place of interest or attraction. If they naturally respond by correcting your misgendering, you shouldn’t read a trans woman’s “Excuse me, but I’m a chick,” or a trans man’s “I’m not a woman, you ass,” as “But you should date me,” because that is not the intended meaning at ALL, you should take it as “Wow, you’re an ass and you literally did not have to misgender me to say ‘no thanks, I’m not interested,’ ‘no thanks, you’re not my type,’ or literally any other version of ‘No’ which would not be violent.”

The act of saying “no” isn’t what’s transphobic, not being interested is not what’s transphobic, and none of us are trying to imply that it is. The act of misgendering is what we are saying is transphobic.

Even when you choose to misconstrue a statement as simple as “It’s normal for straight men and lesbians to be attracted to trans women,” you’re entirely missing the meaning and tacking what you *want* it to mean on so you can *act* like trans people are saying you’re not allowed to have a preference as to which men or women you do or don’t want to date, when that’s not being said at all. It’s not even remotely intended to mean “You are a lesbian or a straight man, so you should be attracted to every trans woman on the planet, or else you’re a transphobe,” it is intended to mean: “Hey, sometimes when cis people are attracted to a trans person, they freak out when they find out we’re trans, because society told them that it’s not normal, or even for example, makes them gay if they’re a man attracted to a transgender woman, and choose to respond to us for their attraction with violence that sometimes even ends up in trans people getting murdered because society taught them that it’s not normal, so we’re affirming that it is normal, so that less instances of a cis person being attracted to a trans person of the gender they are attracted to will end up in someone being subject to an act of violence like being misgendered, outed, beaten, or even murdered for a normal attraction that’s not our fault, or a ‘lie’ or a ‘trick,’ or a ‘trap,’ and would kindly appreciate if you would stop reinforcing the idea that a cis person *should* feel ‘tricked’ or ‘lied to’ for finding a trans person attractive, by saying that our gender *is* a lie, so that trans panic murders and beatings, and other violent responses to instances of a cis person being attracted to a trans person could, you know, stop happening.”

Is misgendering a trans person the same as murdering a trans person? No, but it’s still an act of violence. You’re attacking that person’s identity and personhood. You are outing them to other people around who may commit physical violence as well, but even in the absence of physical violence, social violence is still violence as well. It’s literally an intentional addition to the exisiting societal pressure to try to convert trans people out of our authentic genders and into the gender you want us to be in order to make the world fit your cut and dry false binary of penis = man and vagina = woman.

You want to talk about conversion therapy? Cool. Creating an environment of constant misgendering is literally one of the primary aspects of attempts at transphobic conversion therapy. My parents pulled that shit on me. Literally any time you misgender a trans person, you are attempting to convert them out of being trans, you’re literally just another brick in the transphobic wall that tries to keep us from transitioning, or even simply living in our identities authentically without finding them under constant assault. Trying to convince a trans woman that she is a man, or a trans man that he is a woman is a direct act of violence, and a denial of the fact that their gender is valid. It’s a psychological assault on someone who’s already spent an entire life being told that their body makes them a different person than who they are inside, and had to work past year upon year of transphobic indoctrination to finally be able to accept themselves, and not fear being themselves. It’s an attempt to shove them back into the closet and dictate who they are “supposed” to be for your transphobic “comfort.” Trans lives are more important than whether or not a cis person feels discomfort at realizing they are attracted to us.

Meanwhile, I can’t think of any example of homophobic conversion therapy trying to use “Okay, you like women? Date this trans woman.” in order to “get the gay out,” which would be *incredibly* illogical considering that the goal of conversion therapy is to get gay people to date cis men if they’re women, or cis women if they’re men, or that a trans person tried to say that lesbians should try out cis men, or gay people should try out cis women. Come to think of it, I can’t think of a time that a trans person has tried to say that people who like women have to date trans women, or that people who like men have to date trans men regardless of whether they are gay or straight, just that it’s normal to be attracted to us, and we’d appreciate it if y’all could learn how to say “no,” without having to add a misgendering on top of it to justify it. You don’t have to justify it. You literally can just say “no.” “But, I said no and I got pushback! (They asked ‘why’ or were like ‘but come on...’ or any other example of pressuring.) ” Okay... That makes the *individual* you’re rejecting an asshole, regardless of gender, and has nothing to do with them being trans. Some women are assholes. Some men are assholes. Doesn’t matter if they’re trans or cis. You still don’t have to misgender them. You can say “I’m just not interested.” You can say “No means No.” You can even just say “What the fuck’s you’re problem, I’m not interested, and I don’t owe you a reason, now fuck off!” If they keep pushing it, they’re, again, being an ass, and you have every right to act like they’re being an ass, but this doesn’t include misgendering them, or otherwise being violent. If someone won’t go away or leave you alone, you have a right to be left alone, get help. If someone invades your space, that’s fucking violent, and you have every right to defend yourself. None of that requires misgendering. The problem isn’t that trans people are trying to force anyone to date/fuck us, we aren’t saying that anyone at all has to, not to mention that plenty of people are already dating/fucking us regardless of your disinterest. The problem isn’t that you’re not allowed to say “no,” you fucking *SHOULD* say no to anyone you’re not attracted to, even if it’s just because you don’t like something about their face, or the way they laugh, and wouldn’t be able to stand dealing with it every day. The problem is that transphobes just aren’t interested in any change in behavior which requires them to stop misgendering us in order to stop being a part of the problem. Y’all act like saying “no” to trans people requires being able to misgender us. It doesn’t. You’re just a transphobic prick who wants to be able to misgender trans people in the hopes that we will convert to being cis. Ain’t gonna happen. Not sorry. Trans women will continue to identify as women. Trans men will continue to identify as men. Plenty of people who like women will continue dating trans women. Plenty of people who like men will continue dating trans men. Be as pissed about it as you want, it’s not your life. Reject as many trans people as you want, you’re a transphobe, you’re literally saving us from making a mistake. Just quit acting like you have to misgender us in order to say “no,” and yeah, expect us to get indignant at being misgendered when you make the choice to misgender us, but if you think that indignance is coming from a place of trying to pushback at your rejection once you’ve made it clear that you’re a transphobic asshole, you’re delusional. No trans person wants to date a transphobe, we just want you to quit misgendering us. You can make a choice not to misgender a trans person without having to date or fuck them. It’s really not that hard.

#trans #transgender #transphobia #terfs #tehms #Haven't personally been rejected and misgendered lately #just sick of seeing people harassing us and acting like we're asking for anything more than to stop misgendering us

[weaselle]

PSA for white cishet men

Okay, so, especially for a lot of you young’uns who are getting the bulk of your social input from the internet (but also for anyone else) If you are white, cishet, and male it can seem... all of society is rallying against you. And I want to address that with you right now. The below post mentions some identities more than others, but is equally relevant in terms of racism, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, transphobia - all the phobias and isms. A large portion of society IS rallying against whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, etc, ... and it is important that they are. And this does not make you a bad person for being those things. First, my credentials. I am white-passing, cishetman-passing, and have never been treated as anything else in my life. I am also 1/4 Japanese and some kind of nonbinary that, if I could go back 25 or 35 years and help young me understand more, would likely be a trans woman and a lesbian today. And even though I am not 100% white, 100% male, or 100% cishet, I have moved through society as if I am all of these things, even spending decades trying my best to identify as these things. And, importantly, I have experienced a full measure of all the privileges, advantages, social indoctrination and special treatment that come with those things.  I want to reach out to those white cishet men who are pushing back against what they feel is unfair assignment of negativity to parts of their being and identity they have no control over. Especially when I was young, I have felt that terrible self hatred and helpless desperation that can happen when you are a decent person trying to interface with yourself about what it means to be white, straight, cis, male, etc in this society today. Unfair assignment of negativity to parts of people’s being and identity that they have no control over is exactly the issue, and if you feel it is being applied to you, the first thing you have to understand is that this is a natural, normal, and necessary part of correcting a millennia-long imbalance. Unfair assignment of negativity to parts of people’s being and identity that they have no control over has been happening to everyone without our white male cishet attributes for hundreds of years, with much more visceral consequences for them than us. You may feel that white people are cast in a bad light right now, but there were literal lynchings of black people only 10 years before I was born, and black people still die unfairly at the hands of white people only because of the color of their skin. You may feel that cishets are cast in a bad light right now, but a few years ago in my city a young person publicly perceived as male was set on fire on a bus for wearing a skirt. You may feel that men are cast in a bad light simply for being men but U.S. rape rates of women are astoundingly high... as well as things like, my mother was not allowed to get a credit card from a bank without permission simply because she was a woman. Let me be clear. As an adult woman, THE BANK required her to have written permission from her father or husband to apply for a credit card. Men have had and still have unfair access to real social power and advantage. White people have had and still have unfair access to real social power and advantage, cis-hets have had and still have... etc. This “cast in a bad light” thing, the assignment of negativity to whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, and other identity markers you have no control over? The more sensitive you are about it, the more likely it is that you haven’t experienced the kind of visceral consequences for that negative value that others have. It can be easy to be sensitive about it, but this “cast in a bad light” thing isn’t preventing straight white men from being paid more, being promoted to CEO more, etc etc. And while YOU may feel that men are currently cast in a bad light, that’s not as true in society at large as may seem if you are white and male and NOT a CEO, and face plenty of adversity in your life. So yes. “whiteness” and “manhood” and “heterosexuality” are all concepts that are being assigned negative value right now. What you are feeling is society PUSHING those concepts out of their centralized place to make room for everybody else. When, due only to who you have been born as, you feel that push, it is not the fault of the people doing the pushing, it is the fault of our ancestors that made such pushing necessary. And it is necessary. Your feelings of self worth may well just be a casualty in society’s fight for this change. But they don’t have to be. We don’t have to feel bad, or attacked - sometimes it’s just hard not to. But nobody is specifically setting out to make us personally feel bad; that’s our own issue to deal with. What is happening in American Society (and Modern Western Culture in general) regarding these attributes, is much larger than our personal experience or lifetime. And it is far from over. YOU may feel that you have arrived on the shores of equality for all, but this society has not, and that push NEEDS to continue happening. So, while not everybody is going to be able to parse this in such terms for you, let me re-assure you. We are not trying to tell you whiteness itself is bad. It’s okay to be white. But nobody is going to feel like they have to tell you that it’s okay to be white, because politicians and banks and police in our society already reenforce that it’s okay to be white, in ways that matter more than somebody’s feelings. Similarly, most people are not trying to tell you maleness or heterosexuality is something you need to be ashamed of, but they won’t feel like they have to reassure you of that for the same kind of reasons. And some people WILL tell you that you should be ashamed of those things, and that is because THEY have been made to feel ashamed of THEIR sexuality, gender, or race. Understand that and move on from it. What is being fought against is not your literal skin color or sexual orientation or gender, what is being fought against is the concepts of the “white” “cis/het” and “male” values of these attributes as they currently function in this society. Almost everyone understands that many white/cis/het/men are good people trying their best. And, this is very important, you can be both. You can be both a good person who is worthy of love and admiration and who tries their best and who would never knowingly be a bigot, AND participate in bigoted ideology. In fact we all do. Let me give you an example of how I have been both. Now, I have made it my life’s work to be as good and humane a person as I can be, and I would never KNOWINGLY do racist things. When I was young, in my twenties, I would have told you unequivocally that I was not racist. I would have been wrong. Just one way I was wrong is something I didn’t learn until I was in my young 30′s, and it was startling. See, sometimes in this life, when scared, or in an intense situation, or even as a joke, we act “tough”. And, I forget what it was that prompted me to examine this, but, I discovered that on those occasions, when I was acting “tough”... what I was really acting was “black”. My hand movements, my body language, my vocabulary and pronunciation... when I felt like presenting myself as tough, these all became rough copies of stereotypical black culture. My hands would move like I was in a rap video, my head movements the same, my pronunciation of words like “motherfucker” changed, my use of black vernacular increased. And I was totally unaware that this is what I was doing when I was trying to act tough. When I sat down to unpack that, I realized that I wasn’t acting like black people I knew (which were too few, having grown up in a little white-bread California town) I was acting like black people from movies and TV. The only conclusion I could reach was that through this media, society had taught me that black people are dangerous, so when I wanted to be scary and tough, that’s what I acted like. But before I made myself look into this, I NEVER would have realized that on some level I thought black people were scary, and I had NO IDEA I was doing this clearly racist thing. The fact that I WAS doing it didn’t make me a bad person... just ignorant of my own racism. Especially if you are young, in your teens and twenties, and white, watch the white people around you when they act “tough”. It won’t be every one of them or all the time, but it will be a lot. When you’re looking for it, it’s really obvious. These days, I know my own toughness, and I never have to do any acting about it. These days I know that tough looks like being in a U.S. Air Force interrogation room in Germany and being clearly scared as shit but still repeatedly saying “I would like to continue to be cooperative, but if the questions are about my friends on base, I will not speak without a lawyer”. These days, all my toughness comes from inside. But, I know there are other things I do that I am not yet aware of that are just as racist. And homophobic. And misogynistic. And ableist. And just, informed and nurtured by my bigoted society in general. When you hear “all white people are racist” it does NOT mean the people saying it think you specifically are going around doing evil racist things on purpose. It means that when a white guy is in charge of hiring, he will pass over applications of qualified people if they have black-sounding names. They did a study to prove this. They passed out hundreds of resumés with identical qualifications but 1/2 with white-sounding and 1/2 with black-sounding names at the top. So, same resumé, one says “Cindy” one says “Lakisha”. White names got way more call backs. And most of the people sorting the resumés aren’t doing that on purpose, they’re not some comic book villain chortling “not this black-ass motherfucker” and tossing resumés in the garbage, they are normal white people who don’t think of themselves as racist and don’t realize what they are doing because they don’t understand the way they have been conditioned by our society to make subconscious associations about black names and black people. SUBCONSCIOUS. That’s the crux.  Because we KNOW you’re probably a good person doing your best. But how can you possibly answer the question “tell me the things you do that you don’t know you do”? That’s why it’s so important that you don’t take this all personally, but allow other people to give you insight into the ways you have been indoctrinated into participating in a bigoted society. But when you push back against that then we DON’T know you are a good person doing your best, we have to guess if you are or not. Because some people who push back against that are people who just haven’t matured into the concept yet.... and others are dedicated, purposeful bigots. In my next post about this, I will use a parable to help you get over your white guilt and associated internalized issues.

[hotelconcierge]

HYPOCRISY IS BAD, BUT YOU’RE WORSE

“I like the Walrus best," said Alice, "because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters.” “He ate more than the Carpenter, though,” said Tweedledee. “You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise.” “That was mean!” Alice said indignantly. “Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus.” “But he ate as many as he could get,” said Tweedledum. This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, “Well! They were both very unpleasant characters—” (Through the Looking-Glass)

This is a moviepost—extensive spoilers follow for Death Proof, Jackie Brown, and Inglourious Basterds—and I wrote it mostly because I wanted to talk about some movies. But first, a topical tie-in:

There is always an outside that a person considers unworthy of life...The individual progressive or racist may never say that the outside is unworthy of rights, but they feel it. This is what is meant by that line from Inglorious Bastards when the character of Lt. Aldo Raine says; the "Nazi ain't got no humanity. They're the foot soldiers of a jew-hating, mass-murdering maniac and they need to be de-stroyed!"

Here we have a thirst to destroy the perceived inferior, except instead of a racist seeking the end of Jews it is the progressive liberal seeking the genocide of racists. That's irony.

And understand what is happening here. Aldo Raine is really a proxy for Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is the one speaking, not Brad Pitt. The man is very left-wing and he wrote the script. That move is essentially an exposition of the directors [sic] politics.

The above quote is taken from The Anti-Puritan. Exactly what it sounds like: dude read three Moldbug posts and now thinks he can write. The specifics of this guy’s bad opinions are not that interesting—would you believe that even the videogame industry has been corrupted by cultural Marxism?—but perhaps something can be learned from the framing:

A climate scientist drives to an important summit on global warming. On the way there, he fills up his tank with gas. The only reason oil companies are in business and climate change is occurring is because of people like him who fill up their tanks with gas. Their payments make climate change possible. The payments are the reason Exxon, Shell and BP exist.

A feminist complains about the cis het patriarchy. Her boyfriend, whom she spreads her legs for, is tall, strong, confident, manly, and "dominant" in every way. Fucking dominant men is the reason they exist, the reason they will continue to exist, and the cultural incentive to become dominant...She and billions of other women perpetuate "the patriarchy" with their sexual choices. Patriarchy exists because of them.

A college professor complains about McDonald's. She has eaten fast food from a burger restaurant recently. She, and millions [of] others, are the reason McDonald's exists. (Source)

Let’s accept that there’s a lot to unpack here and move on. Focus instead on the form of the argument: tu quoque, again and again. The feebler the discourse the more accusations of hypocrisy (Bush Lied, Barack Hussein’d) because hypocrisy doesn’t require knowledge of anything but pre-algebra logic. Even a child can identify a contradiction: “But mom! You said—!”

This is precisely the skull malformation that has constricted discussion of the protestors who identify as “Antifascist Action” and are derided as the “alt-left.” Antifa has already become a perennial non-issue where all opinions are based on anecdote and there are plenty of anecdotes to go around; no one has skin in the game, anyone can upvote, and measurable achievements are dwarfed by spikes of indignation like hypertensive hemorrhages into America’s brain. If you don’t believe me, you haven’t been watching the stock prices of PP, NRA, PETA, and BLM.

Antifa now faces the two attacks that were long ago formulated against other activist groups. One: antifa is composed of violent morons who carry upon them body and pubic lice species yet to be classified by science. Two: antifa is counterproductive to their stated goal, e.g. getting to whack-a-mole pamphleteers is actually a powerful incentive to suffer for fashion.

I suspect both criticisms are true, but whatever—does the first imply the second? Is violence bad even when it is effective? Because if it isn’t, then claiming that “antifa are thugs too!” is worse than useless. Your opponent can simply reply, “So what? Nazi ain't got no humanity.” And now that you’ve cried wolf, that guy won’t listen when you claim that, in this instance, violence might not work. So you better be damn sure about your answer: what price should be paid for the sin of hypocrisy?

There is always an outside that a person considers unworthy of life...

Quentin Tarantino has dedicated his career to answering this question. 

QT has seen too many movies for it to be any other way. If you consume enough art across epoch and genre, you can’t help arrive at the Susan Sontag #redpill that content doesn’t matter all that much. All art is genre fiction no matter the pretensions and our lizard brain judges accordingly. Sure, thematic analysis is fun to play with after the fact, but if a movie has the right tropes in the right places—femme fatales, tough muchachos, pretty pictures, happy ending—well, you can convince yourself of just about anything.

Take, for example, Death Proof. Genre: exploitation/slasher. Synopsis: hot babes go for a night out, ex-stuntman stalks and runs ‘em down in a death-proof car; stuntman rinses and repeats with another girl gang except they turn the tables and Mortal Kombat his thoracic spine. Rating: extremely badass, you should check it out, anyone who tells you different is a pleb.

Namely: some people complain that the movie has too many scenes of girls talking and that their QT-isms are an unrealistic depiction of an actual group chat. The characters bicker lewdly, if that’s a thing, alternating between weirdly masculine sex-as-status teasing and pledges of undying affection, the verbal equivalent of a catfight, which is maybe how a creepy foot fetishist would imagine female dialogue, but...

Nope, still pleb. Tarantino wasn’t the first guy to invoke this trope, it’s part of the DNA of the slasher genre, as old as Jamie Lee Curtis getting razzed for her virginity in Halloween. Misogyny, maybe, but also content is a spook. Slasher movies have to fill 70 minutes before the eponymous slashing, and they also have to make you care about the outcome of said slashing without humanizing the characters so much that you get all Marley and Me when they die. 

What’s the secret? Status games, the less nuance the better. Boys would watch paint dry if you said it was a grudge match. Catfighting is no different than the elaboration of powers in a shonen manga or the suspicious glares exchanged between heist movie protagonists: it creates tension. Different value systems have been described, there can only be one, now you’re rooting for process of elimination to reveal the truth. No—you identify with that process. Hail Gnon. You could make a movie with men playing status games and being killed off by women and men would still find it hot; I know this because of female horrorcore rappers but also because this movie is called Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and it’s 10/10. Incidentally:

This is referenced again in the final scene of the film, in which the viewer cheers on our group of heroines as they beat to death a pleading, injured man.

Here’s the hot take: tote bag feminists are wrong to think that drawing boobs on Powergirl is a male attempt to diminish her power. On the contrary, the more vampire slaying the better. Sexualization is an attempt to gain access to female power: if she wants The Phallus badly enough, she might just lend her power to you. Obverse: men are idiots for thinking that the existence of rape fantasies means that women secretly want to be raped. There’s an image floating around the manosphere about that terrorist with a heart of gold, Ted Kaczynski, who was gauche with ladies in the free world but deluged in love letters upon his incarceration. Before you can say medium = message, someone tragically rendered celibate by their 23andMe results will point to this as proof that women “only want serial killers.” Newsflash: Kaczynski is serving eight life sentences without possibility of parole. Do you think the fangirls didn’t know that? Rape fantasies (theoretically “hot”) are qualitatively different than being raped (“unimaginably horrific”) because you construct the former, can turn it off at any time. The fantasy victim is assaulted by a terrible power, but the person who selects and controls that power is...

Of course it is, cough, problematic, that slasher movie girls display power through HPV vaccinations while male zombie apocalypse survivors soliloquize on whether suicide is inevitable in the absence of God. But once you sexistly set up that women should be valued by their sin, the wages = death equation is not in and of itself misogynistic. No, it’s just inevitable: sex-as-status tension can only be relieved in two ways and one of them is frowned upon in theaters. Film crit cliché and Kraftwerk song, I know, but: watching a movie renders you impotent—you can’t interact with the sexy image on the screen—except through what the camera will allow.

That’s why you are complicit in the murders that occur in the first half of Death Proof. The ex-stuntman—old, a teetotaler, star of TV shows long forgotten (and played by once-famous Kurt Russell)—is as impotent as you are, capable of getting a deleted scene lap dance but zero penetration, and when he gets in his car to commit vehicular homicide x4, he looks at the camera and smiles. Because you’re right there with him, waiting for the money shot. It would be nice to fuck, but you’ll settle for a murder. Except when it actually happens, played four times for your amusement, it’s horrible—a face melted off by a tire, a wet leg flapping in the street. Throw in a Wilhelm scream. Wasn’t that what you wanted? Are you not entertained?

It’s all perspective, my man. For all the short shorts and naughty words, the girls plan and backup plan ways to prevent unwanted sexual advances; two of them have boyfriends and one is texting a crush trying to seal the deal; they discuss and decide against inviting the opposite sex to their lakeside vacation. But that’s not what you see from the outside. That’s not where your attention is drawn, wandering the club and editing your .jpg of grievances. For you, dancefloor means sex, choker necklace means slut, and being a slut means she would never sleep with you. That’s a personal insult. And that means that nothing else matters.

Which is insane. This isn’t an argument for or against promiscuity, the point is you don’t even know promiscuity looks like. You know symbols, and for that matter, why those symbols, where did you learn those? Brazzers? If you’re gonna be mad at a thing you should at least be mad at the thing itself, not at whatever fucked up fetish you’ve imposed on reality.

There’s a scene midway through the movie where QT tips his hand. The second girl gang is lounging in a car, one of them dangling her feet out the window. The ex-stuntman approaches, you assume his perspective, and maybe because it’s an old grindhouse film...

...but the color goes out, and everything is black and white.

Which, speaking of:

Jackie Brown is first and foremost a movie about being extremely cool all the time (you should watch it). The plot is an excuse: briefly, Pam Grier (airline stewardess), Robert Forster (bail bondsman), Samuel L Jackson (arms dealer), Robert De Niro (ex-convict), Bridget Fonda (stoner surfer chick) and a couple Feds each try to nab a briefcase holding $500K.

Jackie Brown is secondarily a movie about how race shapes each and every human interaction, but that description makes it sound like a Very Special Episode, and that couldn’t be more wrong. The movie is gleefully amoral, in fact lapses from pure MacGuffinism are treated as intolerable weakness, e.g. Jackson to De Niro:

ORDELL: You know what your problem is, Louis?

Louis doesn't say anything, he just puts his hands in his pockets.

ORDELL: You think you're a good guy. When you go into a deal you don't go in prepared to take that motherfucker all the way. You go in looking for a way out. And it ain't cause you're scared neither. It's cause you think you're a good guy, and you think there's certain things a good guy won't do. That's where we're different, me and you. Cause me, once I decide I want something, ain’t a goddam motherfuckin' thing gonna stop me from gittin' it. I gotta use a gun get what I want, I'm gonna use a gun. Nigga gets in my way, nigga gonna get removed. Understand what I'm saying?

Apparently not, because De Niro later makes this mistake and gets popped.

For these characters, race is just another weapon. When Jackson meets Forster for the first time, he lights a cigarette, puts his feet up on the desk, and taps out the ash in a partly full coffee cup. Then he points out a photo of Forster with a black employee. “Y’all tight?” “Yeah.” “But you his boss though, right?” “Yeah.” “Bet it was your idea to take that picture too, wasn’t it...?” In their second encounter, Jackson, trying to get bail for Grier, pulls the same trick:

ORDELL: Man, you know I'm good for it. Thousand bucks ain't shit. 

MAX: If I don't see it in front of me, you're right. It ain't shit. 

ORDELL: Man, you need to look at this with a little compassion. Jackie ain't no criminal. She ain't used to this kinda treatment. I mean, gangsters don't give a fuck - but for the average citizen, coupla nights in County fuck with your mind. 

MAX: Ordell, this isn't a bar, an you don't have a tab. 

ORDELL: Just listen for a second. We got a forty-year-old, gainfully employed black woman, falsely accused - 

MAX: Falsely accused? She didn't come back from Mexico with cocaine on her?

ORDELL: Falsely accused of Intent. If she had that shit - and mind you, I said "if" - it was just her shit to get high with. 

MAX: Is white guilt supposed to make me forget I'm running a business?

But Forster—male lead, the “good guy”—plays his version of the race card and flips the script.

Example 2: Bridget Fonda, surfer gal, plots to betray Jackson, who “moves his lips when he reads,” "let's say he's streetwise, I'll give him that.” But Jackson knows that she sees him that way, it makes her predictable, which is why he can keep her around: “You can’t trust Melanie, but you can always trust Melanie to be Melanie.”

That’s not the half of it. Jackson talks a soon-dead man into getting in the trunk of an Oldsmobile, houses a homeless addict in Compton and tells her it’s Hollywood; he lies effortlessly, and when drafting your fantasy friend group you should be aware that people who lie effortlessly do it because it’s fun. Threatening someone gets you an automaton who will system 2 your demands and nothing more. Deceiving someone gives you control over that person’s soul. So Fonda’s stoned delusions of manipulating him—which in fact make her easier to manipulate—are part of her appeal. Translated: “She ain't as pretty as she used to be, and she bitch a whole lot more than she used to...But she white.”

Except Fonda is manipulating him. She’s spent her adulthood as the side piece for Dubai businessmen and Japanese industrialists who—though she doesn’t even speak the language—get off on the fact that she’s a haughty blonde who thinks she’s better than them, thinks she can manipulate them. But since they’re paying for rent and weed, doesn’t that mean...?

Example 3: Pam Grier as Jackie Brown.

From more Sam Jackson than Sam Jackson to mumblecore for Medicare, Jackie outsmarts everyone and it’s not even close. The Feds lean into their uniforms but she doesn’t miss a beat: urbane dinner guest in one scene, “panicked, defensive, unreasonable black woman” in another. Of course the movie ends the way it does, of course. Jackson steps into a dark room. Jackie screams “he’s got a gun!” And a cop pulls the trigger. You can’t always beat the system, but if you try sometimes, it just might beat who you need.

Why does Jackie win? The canon explanation is that she’s an airline stewardess: her job is to tell people of all origins what they want to hear. The meta explanation is she’s played by blaxploitation star Pam Grier. The gimmick of Grier movies like Coffy and Foxy Brown is their exaggeration of the audience’s favored tropes re: sex and race—say, hypersexuality and fashionable/wearable blackness. But the punchline of these films is that on-screen, Pam Grier with an afro is disguising herself as an high-class escort to fool the baddies: “The gentlemen you’ll be meeting this evening have a preference for…your type.” And then she kills them.

So it’s true that these films let you "exploit” a caricature, but the flip side is that anyone who can turn that caricature on and off gets to exploit you. And that seems to be Jackie Brown’s realist take: not that racism is the Original Sin for which Thou Must Atone—because everyone sees race and is selfish besides—but rather that it makes you a sucker. And the flip side: by capitalism or by meme magic, the world will always conspire to show you what you want to see. Choose wisely.

If Jackie Brown accepts that racism is inevitable, Inglourious Basterds sets out to prove that it’s also kind of fun.

It’s telling that Inglourious Basterds posters are push-pinned on the walls of fraternity houses right next to Scarface and The Wolf of Wall Street. Three movies, three sets of protagonists who happen to be amoral, masculine, and white. Sounds like a diss, but who are creatine-chugging white boys supposed to look up to? Chris Pratt? You can just tell that guy was grown in a test tube. There’s a reason Tarantino movies are popular and there’s a reason I’m talking about them instead of Buñuel or Tarkovsky and it has something to do with “making intensive use of a major language” and the twenty-somethings desperate to identify with a character named “Bear Jew.” And the above scene is indeed, “sick af.” Goes off without a hitch except when the Nazi says that he got his medals for bravery, and then there’s a split-second of—what, annoyance? Like, stick to the script, asshole. You’re sure as hell gonna get it now.

But I’m sure you’re aware that’s the joke, that once you got Ennio Morricone in the background you can justify anything. The Basterds “ain’t in the prisoner taking business”; they scalp the dead and maim the witnesses they leave alive. There’s no panorama of concentration camp horrors, no humanizing backstory, no evidence of any softness save boyish joy in the art of cruelty. Halfway through the film a young man celebrating the birth of his son is shot dead after surrendering in a Mexican standoff; the Basterds shrug and move on. At the climax of the film, a movie theatre full of Germans is exploded, shot, and burned to death. The modern viewer can’t help but cheer.

The opening chapter, Colonel Hans Landa vs. the outgroup under the floorboards, sways your sympathies in the opposite direction. No, it doesn’t make you hate the French or the Jews. But the tension—the silence and the ticking and the mounting requests and insinuations—is so unbearable that you can’t help but wish for someone to pull the Band-Aid. And the camera can’t do that. Only characters can. Only the character driving the action, and Landa drives the action in his every appearance. Something has to happen—and like the man onscreen, you cave.

Hans Landa alone seems to understand that he’s in a movie, which is perhaps why he’s so polite, so witty, so manically overacted. Perhaps this is how he sees through the Allies’ tricks and disguises: he assumes everyone else is an actor as well. And perhaps this is the apologia for his crimes: he’s just playing a role. The Basterds loathe the Nazis, but Landa bears no animosity towards the Jews, can empathize with them quite easily—it’s just, he likes to play detective and the Nazis were hiring. Is that really worse? Didn’t both the Walrus and the Carpenter eat as many as they could get?

And so, near the end of the film, when Landa cuts a deal to exchange his Hugo Boss for Levi Strauss, he asks of his prisoners the one question that would matter to a character in a period piece: “What shall the history books read?”

Landa’s argument, of course, is a load of shit.

In Inglourious Basterds, every disguise fails. The British film critic-turned-agent is unable to play the Nazi he’s seen on-screen. The German actress is revealed to be an Allied spy. The vengeful Shosanna is revealed as a sweet Jewish girl; the baby-faced Nazi lusting after her is shown to be a monster. The propaganda film burns. Only Lieutenant Aldo Raine and one Basterd make it out alive, and that’s because they’re American, i.e. monolingual.

Perception is a slave to narrative, but narrative has zip zero zilch nada to do with reality. The author is dead. Was Triumph of the Will a “good movie,” technically proficient and even emotionally moving? Absolutely. Could the director’s intentions have been “good,” apolitical, an attempt at beauty but nothing more? Unlikely in this case, but possible. But was Triumph of the Will “good”?

This is the obvious yet unswallowable truth: sometimes good people do bad things. “Nazi ain't got no humanity”? How many films have Nazis with wives, mistresses, children, pub games, medals for bravery? And yet Lieutenant Raine’s opening polemic is correct: the foot soldiers of the Third Reich worked for a Jew-hating, mass-murdering maniac: they needed to be destroyed. Reality isn’t Disney, where internal beauty works its way external. Reality isn’t even so kind as to match intentions with consequences. The American (Union) soldiers fighting against the Nazis (Confederacy) may have been motivated by every bit as much hatred and bloodlust, and yet they were necessary, they were the good guys. FYI—that’s irony.

“So you’re saying we should punch the alt-right?” Are you an idiot? The Nazis weren’t bad because they were Nazis, they were bad because of the things they did. If you actually think that punching a teenage Kekistani is going to bring down the New World Order, go ahead, but stop pushing the pillow of identity over the mouth of reality.

The goal of the System, the sum of vectors going both left and right, is to keep people arguing about abstractions of violence so they won’t deign to consider the ugliness of pragmatism. The radical left will asseverate that violence is justified, refusing to question whether their particular brand of protest is effective; the alt-right will keep rallying against cropped image lunatics, the finest examples of white genocide the media has to offer, never seriously considering that sometimes people lie on the internet; and “““centrists””” will deduce that since violence is never okay, since everyone is so irrational, nothing can be done. But that’s still a perspective: it’s the perspective of the camera.

Fuck that. This essay is a condemnation of anyone who thinks that the hypocrisy of the outgroup disproves their complaint, of anyone who thinks that good intentions are enough to absolve you from sin:

You don’t get to forget what you are.

[unproduciblesmackdown]