#i think trans liberation will start to happen when trans people can just 'be' in the same way which everybody else can

[uncanny-tranny]

The weirdest double standard is trans people can only ever "identify as" and cis people just "are," and the more time goes on and people start realizing this, I hope this will change

#trans #transgender #lgbt #lgbtq #ftm #mtf #nonbinary #at this point somebody saying 'you identify as male' to me is an instant red flag #because 'identify as' language is a good way to say 'well you just IDENTIFY that way that doesn't mean you ARE' #do i identify as trans? sure if you want to dig and dig at me to get me to say. but i also AM male and AM so much #this goes double for when somebody just assumes they know how you want to be referred to as #i think trans liberation will start to happen when trans people can just 'be' in the same way which everybody else can #when being trans matters perhaps but it matters in the same way people wear glasses or have grey eyes or are left-handed #being trans CAN matter but people amplify somebody's transness in often insidious ways

[tanadrin]

Imagine one day a new social trend starts spreading. It’s something unbelievably dumb. Not harmful per de, but truly silly to believe. Let’s say, I dunno, healing crystals start going mainstream. Everybody’s talking about their crystals. It becomes impolite to criticize people who believe in healing crystals. They become a big part of people’s personalities, and people on TV start talking about them, and one day years down the line politicians are debating funding for crystal-based medicine. And through it all you are sitting there going, what the fuck is happening. I thought we were all on the same page on this. You want to get along and be friendly and open minded but you cannot pretend to believe in healing crystals, this is nonsense, and when the topic comes up you refuse to lie about it. This eventually starts to have social consequences—they’re that popular!—but what can you do? You cannot pretend a lump of quartz can cure the flu or whatever. It’s just all so unbearably embarrassing.

I think what the centrist/liberal/center-left reactionary turn driven by culture war stuff feels like. And I think the key emotion is probably cringe. Not hate, not fear, though those emotions may reinforce the turn. I think in a lot of cases people who imagine themselves pretty open minded and flexible have as part of their worldview something they thought was bedrock social consensus—on the level of “healing crystals are silly woo”—so bedrock maybe that it didn’t even need to be a conceptual boundary they actually policed in their minds.

For instance, when she started her anti-trans turn, JK Rowling made a big show of not being really anti trans, just arguing that Some People Had Gone Too Far. She wasn’t a frothing religious reactionary, after all. And I believe that’s probably true! I think Rowling probably did have a mental model of sex and gender with a little bit of give in it—of the “we can humor the odd weirdo” type. But as the discussion of trans rights in the UK got more serious over her lifetime, trans people went from “the odd weirdo” to “a recognized minority,” and eventually this ran against a bedrock belief that on some level men are men and women are women and never the twain shall meet. To act otherwise was just too embarrassing. And she wasn’t going to embarrass herself in the name of political correctness.

Other people whose brains have been eaten by the anti-woke mind virus (as @eightyonekilograms calls it) have something going of the contrarian in them, who enjoys yelling “up yours, woke moralists!” or w/e. Im thinking of ppl like Glenn Greenwald here, or Dave Chapelle, people who seem not to feel alive except when people are mad at them. That’s a separate but interesting dynamic. And there are people like Graham Linehan who become totally unhinged through this process of auto-radicalization, moths drawn ever closer to a particular source of validation within their chosen reactionary subcommunity, until they are truly parodies of themselves. That is also an important dynamic, but it’s one that only takes hold after the initial turn has begun.

I think the role of that feeling of cringe, that refusal to entertain an idea because it is too embarrassing (even if it does actually have a decent body of research behind it, unlike crystals) is important to think about, because I am interested in how to get people over it. I know that feeling has affected my own thinking over my lifetime. I wasn’t raised particularly conservative, but I had to learn not to cringe at a lot of feminist thought before I could appreciate it and learn from it. I explicitly didn’t have that cringe when it came to gay people for whatever reason, so it never entered my mind that it might be a problem. I remember being surprised to learn when I was very young that some boys wanted to marry other boys, but my response was “huh. Go figure.” Because for whatever reason I had not picked up that this was something I was supposed to be grossed out by. A general doctrine of empathy, of trying to understand people on their own terms, can help forestall some of this stuff, but it’s not foolproof in either direction—I don’t want to believe crystals have healing powers if it becomes socially popular to do so, just because it is socially popular to do so! And if they do, I don’t want to not believe they do just because it is socially unpopular!

(Obviously the crystals thing is not a one to one metaphor for the trans thing, so don’t read too much into that. Maybe astrology would have been a better analogy. Also I’m not talking just about people whose reactionary turn is predicated on trans issues—I think this dynamic applies to everything from gay rights to the Tridentine Mass. But trans issues are a handy example bc, as the adage goes, somebody posts once about trans people and they never post anything normal again. I think the classic rapid-onset trans derangement syndrome is closely tied to the fact that gender norms are a really deep element of many people’s social-consensus-based worldview, and so challenged to that worldview are felt as really cringe.)

I’m curious if other people who grew more liberal in their thinking over time had a similar experience of having to overcome what was basically a feeling of embarrassment at certain ideas.

[unforth]

We are one Iowa caucus into the absolute shitshow that is going to be the US 2024 elections, and I'm already sick of seeing takes downplaying the risk that Trump and his fascist followers represent.

Look. Around 1900, my mother's grandparents immigrated to the Lower East Side of New York City. They brought with them children born in Europe (Poland? Ukraine? which country they were in depends on what year we're talking about) - we're not 100% sure they were THEIR children, even, but there were three, and they were young, and they came. But my great-grandparents had siblings, parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, huge families. And while my understanding is that an attempt was made to convince those folks to move to the US, none of them ultimately opted to.

They all kept in touch as they were able, exchanging letters and pictures, but through World War 1, through the 20s, through the Great Depression, through the worsening situation in Europe in the 1930s, my entire extended family who chose not to immigrate...continued to stay.

I think we all know how this story ends.

I have an entire family photo album of people whose names I will never know, because after every single one of them died in the Holocaust, my great-grandparents and grandparents couldn't bear to even label them. And they were PEOPLE, poor, vibrant, eager to maintain connections with their loved ones abroad. One was a Klezmer musician, and we have photos of him with all the different instruments he played. They're so real on the page, and they all ended in ashes.

And you know how that started? Fascism started with every inch allowed, with every well-intentioned moderate who tried to maintain a middle position even as the whole ground shifted right beneath their feet and even "middle" became extreme, every "no that change isn't coming fast enough, I want instant full improvement NOW" liberal who felt that doing nothing was better than accepting a slower improvement in the (truly awful!) post-World War 1 living situation in Germany.

Most of the members of my extended family also downplayed the risks. They never imagined that the worst could happen to them. They never fathomed how bad things could become.

And now I have their example always before me to know and to scream:

I KNOW HOW BAD THINGS CAN BECOME. I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO MY FAMILY THEN.

I WILL NOT LET THAT HAPPEN TO MY FAMILY NOW.

People look at me like I'm crazy when I say I've got our passports ready (and have had since before the 2020 election).

Look. I don't know what will happen if Trump is elected, but there's a very real possibility he will, and he's been extremely clear about saying what he'll do. He did a lot of the things he said he'd do last time. I expect he'll continue to do the things he says he'll do. And the things he say he'll do will lead to the deaths of more people than we can imagine - in the US, in Palestine, throughout the world.

Don't tell me there's a middle ground here. Don't tell me I'm over-reacting. Don't tell me the worst won't happen. Don't tell me the risk is mild. Don't tell me we're safe.

We. Are. Not. Safe.

The lives of dozens, hundreds, of members of family were lost in the 1940s amid the horrifying statistic "6,000,000 dead Jews."

I will not let my life (as a Jew), my wife's life (as a disabled woman), my son's life (as a biracial boy), my daughter's life (as a biracial trans girl), be part of the statistics that come from our a second Trump presidency.

If you won't vote like YOUR life depends on it, vote like someone ELSE'S life depends on it, because IT DOES.

And if you can't even do that much, at least shut the fuck up and stop spreading your poison around. You're wrong. The danger is real. Downplaying it now won't make your conscience feel any clearer when it actually happens, and comforting everyone else downplaying it will just make you that much more complicit.

#unforth rambles #politics #us politics #genocide #genocide tw #i don't know how to tag this #i wish the album was here instead of at my mom's #i want every one of you who think this doesn't matter #to stare at the smiling faces of my long-dead relatives #and see these people who were shot and stabbed and burned and raped and destroyed #who died in rebellion or despair in hopelessness or desperation #no matter how much or how little they fought #they're all ashes now and nothing will bring them back #i have no family in europe #not a single person survived #i won't let my family be the ones who stay too long because we don't take it seriously #and neither should you

[shapeshiftersvt]

M'Mothm'n.

Here's the thing about the Mothman. Even though he scared the ever-living shit out of the people who saw him, the speculation around him has become, over the years, actually very kind. What if he's only here to help? What if he's trying to warn us about impending disaster? What if that horrible feeling you got that something wasn't right, what if that was the Mothman telling you to look out, be careful, danger is coming, doom is nigh?

It's one thing to be a harbinger of doom; there are apparitions of ghostly black dogs all over the world that will give you that, red eyes and all. It's another to have one who actually means well.

I'm going to be an Old Queer for a minute, now, and talk about gay politics in the USA as I watched it over the past thirty years. My experience is my own; my history is shared, but not universal. Sound off in a reblog if you saw it happen differently. I want your story, too.

There’s a certain line the right wing in this country likes to use against The Gays, one I’ve heard since I was a small child. It goes: queer people are threatening our way of life. Queer people are the pebbles that start the avalanche of apocalypse, the collapse of civilization as we know it. If marriage becomes something other than Man + Woman, or if Man and Woman become something other than we think they are, then we will lose everything we know and love.

The rise of the Respectable Gay in the 1990s was a pushback against this. “See,” cried Degeneres and Savage and all the rest, “see how we’re so very normal? We want to get married and buy a house and have 2.1 kids and a white picket fence. Our marriage doesn’t threaten yours. How could it? We’re just normal, ordinary, white, moderately wealthy, people. We're like you."

This move shifted the narrative across the 90s and 00s. Homosexuality was officially decriminalized in '03, and we got gay marriage in 2015, and every year in between there was another Influential Gay Person saying "I just want to get married, that's all." There were even commercials about it, remember? “Gay marriage is just like yours. Only gayer.”

But... in the mid-2010s this was already wearing thin. Transgender people, gender non-conforming people, gays who didn’t go in for two-person marriage, everyone in the greater LGBTQ+ umbrella who had thrown their support behind gay marriage and waited our turn to get our rights; we'd all been mobilizing, too. We'd been putting together our own coalitions, under the aegis of the greater umbrella or not. And, here's the crux: we were, in fact, threatening the right-wing Christian ways of life. Just by existing in public, by talking and writing and performing and living our lives during the Transgender Tipping Point, trans and non-binary people like me were challenging the foundational definitions of Man and Woman as exclusive, all-encompassing categories of humanity.

It wasn't just the right, either. Straight liberals who were totally on board with gay marriage would look at us and say, "um, wait, really? Really, like that? Do you have to?" The discomfort was palpable. This was my experience with my own family; they were fine with me dating and getting married, but a new set of pronouns was forcing something on them. It was hurting something intrinsic to their identities. It was, in a very real way, threatening them.

I'm happy and grateful to say that most of them learned to discard the parts of their own foundations that excluded me from existence. This is rarely easy for anyone. I'm honestly proud of those members of my family who have learned to look the Mothman in the eyes, so to speak, and think, "He's just here to help."

("Pop your hood up," I told this model, "and look at them. They should see their impending death in your eyes."

Layton is an incredible model, a great human, and they know and love the Mothman. They knew exactly what I meant.)

It can be awful, sometimes. When I'm unapologetically myself in public, I can walk past a line of protesters at Planned Parenthood and see the hostility rise up, the anger and revulsion and fear. And I do think it is fear, at the core of it. I think something in them knows that I'm just one of 2.6 million transgender people out here, living my life, casually being a harbinger of their doom.

Next time they come to Brattleboro, I ought to greet them with red glasses and a twelve-foot wingspan.

#mothman #cryptids #queer cryptids #the cryptid collection #the trans experience

[atlafan]

Carnal Attraction - Part One

a/n: sexology professor!harry is here!! Just a reminder, this is the only part being posted on here. The rest will be on Patreon. I can’t wait to know what you all think so far. This is going to be a good one, I think.

Warnings: talk of sexual acts, mentions of sexual misconduct

Words: 4.7K

Tumblr Masterlist I Patreon Masterlist

The world of academia is astounding. People stay in higher education for so many different reasons. Some go off to become medical doctors, others become doctors in specific fields like psychology or literature or philosophy. Some choose to stay in academia because they don’t want to sell their souls to industry work. Mavis always loved school. She was one of those kids that did well no matter what the subject was. She studied hard, wanting to take in more and more information. She was naturally gifted in the art of time management. Everything clicked for her. If something was puzzling, she’d figure it out.

There isn’t much she can’t figure out. Which is why she’s grown increasingly aggravated with her sexology professor. She can’t figure him out. She swears he hates her. He’s short with her, and less personable with her than he is with the other students. She’s never struggled like this with someone before. And he wasn’t even supposed to be the one teaching her courses!

When Mavis tells people she’s in graduate school for a master’s in sexology, they look at her funny. Furrowed eyebrows, puzzled facial expressions, etc. No one can ever piece together why someone would get an advanced degree in a subject like this. That’s because people can’t get their minds out of the gutter. In undergrad, Mavis majored in psychology, and minored in gender and sexuality studies. She eventually wants to produce literature and perform psychoanalysis on sexual behavior and sexual issues. She thought she wanted to be a psychiatrist, but that involves medical school. And as smart as she is, she’s rather squeamish when it comes to blood. So, then she thought maybe being a psychologist, some type of sex therapist would be good, but she honestly has a tough time speaking aloud about the various subjects. And sex therapy isn’t just for helping couples have better sex, a lot of it is helping people with history of sexual abuse recover and find ways to heal. Mavis doesn’t have the stomach for that. She cried too many times reading case studies about it in undergrad.

All that being said, she eventually wants to get her doctorate in psychology with a concentration in sexology, so when she found a graduate program to help get her started on that journey, she went for it. She could write about sexual disorders and the like all day. When she’s writing and researching, she’s quite helpful to others. She enjoys learning about sexual history, those were always her favorite courses. Learning about how trans people in the 1800’s used binders to hide their breasts, learning about how two opposite sex couples would get married, go in on a duplex together, and use the basement to sneak over to sleep with their same sex partner, learning about different gay and lesbian liberation movements, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and so much more was where her interest was. It all just fascinated her, it all astounded her, and a lot of it just made her downright upset. Tears would litter her textbooks as she read about people being beaten senseless until they were left for dead in the streets. She’d cry because all of it was happening not too long ago. She cried because it still happens today.

She’s quite empathetic, and almost too much to a fault. But she can’t help that she cares! She enjoys studying the psychology side of things, how the brain functions of these people work, how the brains of bigots function, if there’s a disparity between the two on scans or octopuses. All Mavis wants to do is hunker down in her own academic sanctuary and research and read and write and publish.

Mavis had been assigned an advisor over the summer, one whom she emailed with frequently to make sure she was taking the correct courses in the correct sequence. Her advisor recommended courses with one specific professor, Professor Amaro. Apparently, her classes were top tier, and she was a favorite amongst the other graduate students. No brainer – sign up for Amaro’s courses.

Except when Mavis showed up for her first day of Human Sexuality, a co-requisite for her Sexual Pleasure Education course, there was a man standing at the podium, hooking his laptop up to the HDMI cable so he could project onto the screen up front. At first, she thought maybe he was a TA just setting up for Professor Amaro. She paid it no mind. She found a seat in the middle front, and got her own things set up. It’s syllabus week, so there won’t be much to go over, but Mavis still likes to take handwritten notes. She pulled her agenda, a notebook, and her copy of the syllabus out, and set them on her desk. The classroom is small, only meant to hold about twenty-five people. Mavis prefers small classrooms. She’s not a fan of lecture halls with stadium-style seating.

“Is anyone sitting here?” A woman’s voice took over Mavis’ attention. The desks are set up for two people to sit at. “If it is, I can sit somewhere else.”

“Oh! No, go right ahead.” Mavis smiled. “I’m Mavis.”

“Thanks.” The woman says with relief as she sits down. “I’m Taraji, I use she/they pronouns.”

“Nice to meet you. I use she/her. Thanks for letting me know yours.”

“Nice to meet you too, and no problem. It’s something new I’m trying out. I don’t…I don’t always feel like a she, you know?”

“Totally get that.”

“Sorry, I hope that wasn’t too much info too soon.”

“No worries.” Mavis waves her off. “We’re going to be talking about some real shit in this class, it’s best to just be open and honest.”

“Agreed.” Taraji takes out her own agenda and notebook. “I hate that we have to take this course in conjunction with the sexual pleasure class. I feel like I’ve taken a million human sexuality courses at this point.”

“I know, it seems a little odd, but I figure there must be more high level stuff to discuss since this is at the grad level. And review isn’t always a bad thing, I like refreshers.”

“Well, aren’t you full of silver linings?” Taraji smiles. “We need more people like that in this world.”

The girls continue to chat while the class fills in. At 10:30, the man at the front closes the door and turns the projector on, revealing his screen. Mavis’ stomach drops when she sees Human Sexuality – Professor Styles – M/W 10:30-12:00 in big bold letters.

“What happened to Professor Amaro?” She whispers to Taraji.

“Beats me.” Taraji shrugs. “Maybe we signed up for the wrong section?”

“That can’t be it, this is the only section being offered.”

The man, Professor Styles, clears his throat to get everyone’s attention. He’s wearing a button up, but it’s not buttoned up all the way. You can see his undershirt. His sleeves are rolled up, revealing quite a few tattoos. Round glasses are on the bridge of his nose, and his hair is pushed back with a couple of curls falling forward on his forehead. He looks young. Who the fuck is this guy?

“Morning, everyone.” His deep voice fills the room as he rounds the podium to stand in front of the desk attached to it. He leans back against it, gripping the edge behind him. “I’m Professor Harry Styles, I prefer to be called professor, so please try to remember that. I’m sure you’re very confused as to why I’m standing here and not Professor Amara.” He pauses to take a sip of water from his Nalgene. “I quite literally found out the other day that I would be taking over her courses. To be transparent with all of you, Professor Amaro is under investigation for sexual misconduct with her patients. As many of you know, a lot of the professors in the psychology department have their own practices outside of academia. Summer is when Professor Amaro picks up new patients. There was someone undercover seeing her for therapy, and she was caught taking advantage. It’s extremely disappointing. So, not only will she be losing her licensure, but she has been let go from the institution as well. We do not condone the abuse of patients. We also do not want someone so unethical being the one to teach our future therapists. How many of you are in here as part of the clinical licensure program?” More than half of the class raises their hands. “Right, I thought so. I usually teach undergraduate courses, but I’m fully prepared to teach at the graduate level just the same. I know many of you have already taken different iterations of Human Sexuality, but this course is integral for you so you can fully get what’s needed out of the Sexual Pleasure Education course. It says 10:30 to noon up here, but I’ll typically only be keeping you for about an hour, if that. Many of you have research and other time consuming things to do, and I want to be cognizant of that. I am also working towards my PhD, I’m about two years into my program and research.” He pauses again, knowing he just word vomited. The class is stunned with the bomb he just dropped about Professor Amaro, and they’re whiplashed going from that to the basic information about the course. “Any questions so far?”

“I have one.” A brave soul in the back raises their hand. “Which undergraduate courses do you teach? Will you need any TA’s since your load just got bigger?”

“Great question, thank you for asking. I will end up needing TA’s, but I have to wait to meet with the department chair to see what our budget is. I teach the undergraduate intro to gender and sexuality studies, and I also teach some of the higher level special topics courses. This semester I’m teaching the history of feminism, which is one of my favorites to teach, and I’m also teaching the film history course that focuses on how sex has been depicted in film since its start to the present.”

“You’re teaching a course about feminism?” Another person asks.

“Yes.” Professor Styles smirks. “It’s one of my main focuses of study. I may not be a woman, but I am a man that believes in equity and equality. Plus, I’m a huge history buff, so I enjoy teaching about how the movement began and how feminism has transformed over the years, both the good and the bad of it.”

Mavis swallows thickly. She’s a history buff too. Maybe she could be a TA for one of his classes. The extra money would be nice, and so would the bit of teaching experience if she were allowed to give a lecture or two.

“Let’s focus on this class. We’ll be going over a number of topics, and at times you may feel the need to giggle because of nerves. We’re going to discuss endorsement, communication, fantasy, masturbation, homosexuality, bisexuality, desensitization and resensitization, female and male sexuality, sexual enrichment, special problems, therapy, and cultural expression. So, this gives us a base for what we’ll be discussing in the co-requisite course. Now, I’m going to do something that I do with my undergrads, I’m going to say a ton of words and phrases that you’ll feel the need to giggle about as we discuss certain topics. This is your only chance to laugh. If you do it throughout the semester, then we’re going to have a problem. If you become a sex therapist, you can’t laugh at your patients. We’ll get into why these words make us feel nervous, and why we feel the need to laugh when we hear them.” He grabs the remote for the projector and clicks it. Everyone gasps and starts laughing when they see many words and phrases appear. “Alright: penis, vagina, pussy, cunt, cock, dick, mutual masturbation, anal, penetration, fingering, eating out, going down, blow job, hand job, sucking someone off, breasts, boobs, nipples, fetish, BDSM, whips, chains, handcuffs, threesomes, orgies, condoms, contraceptives, birth control pills, IUD, sex toys, dildo, vibrator, cock ring, lube, dirty talk, dominant, submissive, daddy, baby talk, douching, porn, clit, clitoris, prostate, prostate orgasm, orgasm, vaginal orgasm, stimulation, fucking, fisting, getting wet, wet, come, precome, squirt, squirting, ejaculation, and sex.”

The entire class is snickering and giggling and laughing, even Mavis. Hearing all of those things back to back and watching the words dance on the screen in an animated fashion is hilarious. What a fun approach to getting people more comfortable with these terms.

“There are many more words and phrases, obviously, but these will be the ones we use more often.” Professor Styles explains, smiling fondly to the class. “If you’d like to be considered for a TA position, please come up to me after you’re dismissed. “Any questions?” No one raises their hand. “Great, then you’re dismissed. Enjoy the nice weather.”

Mavis and Taraji exchange contact info, and agree to meet for coffee tomorrow morning before their sexual pleasure course. A few people go up to Professor Styles to tell him they’d like to be a TA, and he takes down their information. Mavis is the last in line, the last student in the classroom with Professor Styles.

“Name?” He asks, not looking up at her.

“Mavis Ashford.”

“Alright.” He looks up at her now, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Do you have a preference?”

“I’d love to help out in the feminism course or the film history course. I like the historical side of things when it comes to studying this content.”

“Great, those are usually the ones I have trouble finding help for.”

“Really? I’m surprised.”

“Since a lot of you are here to become licensed therapists or psychologists, not a lot of people are interested in the theoretical aspect of things.”

“Well, I definitely do not want to be a therapist. I want to do research, eventually get my PhD, like you, I suppose. I’m sad about Professor Amaro, I heard so many good things about her.”

“None of us knew about any of it. She hid what she was doing well. She had been doing it for years, supposedly.” He sighs and takes his glasses off, putting them into their case. Mavis catches how green his eyes are, almost like sage. “Did you have any other questions? I need to get across campus to my office so I can take some time to edit the Canvas courses a little more.”

“Oh! No, sorry. Guess I was just curious to know how long you’ve been teaching for. You mentioned you were in your second year of your doctoral program, so-“

“There’s a bio page for me. My listing lives under the Psychology department. I’ll keep you in mind for my special topics courses. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow.” Mavis watches the very flustered, unorganized man leave the room in a rush. His papers were all over the place, and he just shoved all his things in his bag. How chaotic. Maybe if she’s able to become his TA, she could help him with that.

**

Since Monday went so well, including Mavis’ other courses, she’s excited for Tuesday. She meets Taraji for coffee, as planned, and then they head to class. A course about Sexual Pleasure Education at 9AM is wild, but if coffee doesn’t wake the class up, the content of the course sure will. Harry is at the podium, connecting his computer, just as he did yesterday. Mavis and Taraji sit at the same table they did yesterday. The class eventually fills in, and Harry turns the projector on.

“Let’s see, did I scare anyone off since yesterday?” He asks out loud, but it’s more for himself, as he checks off names on his attendance sheet. “Great, you’re all here.” He smiles. “I know you’re probably thinking how I could have possibly memorized all your names already, but I haven’t. I just have your student ID pictures next to your names on my sheet.” He leans back against the table, gripping the edge of it, same as he did yesterday, and scans over the class. “Welcome to Sexual Pleasure Education. In this class, we will discuss strategies for improved sex life, sex aids, sexual approaches, and male and female pleasuring. We will also be stressing the value of various body work techniques for persons intending to work in the field of sex therapy and counseling. Lastly, we will discuss sexological exploration of objects which have been created in response to sexual desire and experience.” He pauses to take a sip of water. “Basically, this is sex ed on crack.”

“Professor Styles?” A girl in the back raises her hand, and he nods for her to continue. “So, are there going to be, like, demonstrations in class?”

“Yes. Most people learn best by doing. And it’s important for you to know what you’re talking about if you end up becoming the type of therapist that has to make recommendations for couples. The conversations we’re going to have in this class are going to feel awkward and taboo. There are going to be days where we look at various sex toys and how to use them, and why people use them.”

“I sort of meant, like, is anything going to be demonstrated on an actual person?” The same girl asks.

“Considering that this isn’t a tantric sex workshop, no.” He smirks. “We’ll look at various anatomical diagrams to go over specific areas where people find pleasure and how best to get them to feel it in those areas.”

“Professor Styles?” A boy in the front raises his hand, and Harry nods for him to continue. “I know this isn’t technically a psychology course, but are we going to get into kinks and why some people have specific ones or like using specific objects?”

“Yes and no. We’ll discuss the psychology behind kinks in our Human Sexuality course. What we do on Mondays and Wednesdays will be more theoretical, and what we do on Tuesdays and Thursdays will be more practical. Great questions so far. Anyone have anything else?”

“Will there be trigger warnings?” Taraji asks. “For both classes?”

“Yes, when we get into some of the heavier topics, there will be trigger warnings. I’m working on updating the syllabus so you’ll all know when to expect those. If the topic is so heavy that you don’t feel as though you can come to class, please let me know so we can have a one-on-one session so we can go over the material. I can meet in-person or on zoom.”

“Thank you.” Taraji smiles softly.

“Are we going to be talking about our own personal sex lives in class?” Another girl asks.

“That depends on how comfortable you feel. We may share anecdotes, and we may not. If you become a therapist, remember that what might work for you, might not work for others. However, your patients will ask you about your personal experience with some of the things you recommend to them. I’m not saying you need to shove a butt plug up your ass in order to have a frame of reference, but sometimes it helps for your patient to know you’re a real person. Just don’t cross any hard boundaries. We all know that many patients tend to experience romantic feelings towards their therapists. That can happen twice as much with sex therapy. You need to make it clear right from the start that even though it’s a safe space for them, things will still be professional. No one is to ever take their clothes off during an appointment. That’s what leads to things like what happened with Professor Amaro to happen. Respect will be integral to this course, as well as not kink-shaming. You may find something weird that someone else may love, and vice versa. You don’t have to agree, but please be mindful of how you speak to and about others.” He drums his fingers behind him as he takes another pause. “All of that being said, if we do discuss personal sexual experiences, you need to speak about them educationally. I don’t want to hear things like, ‘this one time I was fucking this dude and he,’ blah blah blah. Okay?”

The class makes a collective noise of agreement that makes Harry very happy.

“I’m hoping to have the courses updated to my liking by next Monday. I should also know by then about TA positions for my undergraduate courses. Do we have any other questions right now?” No one answers. “Excellent. For tomorrow’s Human Sexuality class, I’d like you all to fill out these surveys.” He starts handing out papers row by row. “They’re to give me a pulse check on what you already know a lot about, and the areas you need a bit more information on. It’ll help for Thursday’s lesson in here as well.” Once all of the papers are passed out, Harry goes back to the front of the room. “If no one else has any questions, you’re all free to go.”

Everyone begins packing up their things. Mavis is stuck looking over the survey questions. Her cheeks are beat red, she just knows it.

“You coming?” Taraji asks her.

“Um, yeah.” Mavis blinks and starts packing up her things. “I just have a few questions for Professor Styles. Wanna get lunch later?”

“I’d love to. Text me later.”

Mavis nods to her new friend, and goes to the back of the line of students that have questions for Harry. Just like yesterday, it’s the two of them alone in the room. He doesn’t look at her as he stuffs his papers into his bag.

“Have you ever thought to use an accordion folder for all of that?” She asks him.

“You waited in line just to ask me that?” He looks up at her, taking his glasses off and putting them into their case.

“No.” She laughs sheepishly. “I just had a few questions about this survey.”

“Alright, shoot.” He tells her, crossing his arms over his chest loosely.

“The first question says to list five common sex toys that I know of.”

“Correct.”

“Then the second questions says to explain the function of each of the toys.”

“Also correct.”

“What if you’re not familiar with well-known sex toys? Is it okay to look up the functionality?”

“No, just give your best guess as to why someone would use it.” He looks at her, studies her. He has a question of his own to ask, but it could come off as inappropriate. “I’m going to try to phrase this in the most professional way possible…do you not have much, um, first-hand experience with sex toys?”

Mavis’ eyes widen. All she can do is shake her head no. Harry nods in understanding, not being the least bit judgmental.

“It’s not that I haven’t wanted to know more about them, like, I know a lot about the history of them, the…the theoretical side of things, as you mentioned before. But in practice…I guess that’s where I need to learn more.”

“That’s fine, you can just say that on the survey. You can keep it anonymous too. I didn’t leave a space for your names at the top.”

“So, it’s not a big deal if I haven’t personally done some of the things we’re going to discuss.” She says for clarification.

“Perfectly fine. You could be a virgin for all I care. You just need to be able to discuss and write about these things knowledgably and eloquently.”

“Well, I’m not a vi-“ She’s about to scoff, but he raises his hand to halt her from finishing her sentence.

“I don’t need to know the particulars of what you have and haven’t done, Miss Ashford.”

“You just said we need to be able to discuss these things, though.”

“Yes, as a class, when other people are around. Not when you’re in here alone with me. Someone could get the wrong idea about why we’re having this very conversation.” He slings his bag over his shoulder. “Don’t over think it, it’s just a pulse check.”

He leaves her there, sweating. Did he think she was coming on to him? Did he think she was flirting? She wasn’t! She would never do something like that with a professor.

**

The rest of the week goes by smoothly. Mavis makes sure not to ask Harry any questions after class. In the second session of Human Sexuality, they went through all the changes Harry made to the course Canvas page and to the syllabus. They did the same for the second session of Sexual Pleasure Education. Pretty easy stuff that the students are thankful for. The other courses Mavis is taking are research methods and a high-level sociology course. So starting off on the slower side is a major bonus. Harry lets them know that he’ll post a paper on his office door on Friday with who has been selected as TA’s.

Around noon on Friday, after a work out and a hearty breakfast, Mavis makes her way to the building Harry’s office is in. She takes her headphones out as she gets inside, and makes her way upstairs and down a hallway until she gets to the psych department office suite. His door is closed, so the paper is easy to read. Her eyes scan over it, and she’s taken aback when she doesn’t see her name. Four students were chosen: Eric, Alyssa, Mohamed, and Liza. Mavis frowns deeply. How could she not have been chosen? She spoke to Harry directly about helping with his higher level courses. What made these students better choices than her?

She hears the squeak of a sneaker skidding, and turns her head in its direction. There Professor Styles is. He looks rigid, almost like he had stopped short and was about to turn around. He sighs heavily and makes his way down the hall.

“Miss Ashford.” He nods and unlocks his office door. “I would have thought you would have been here first thing this morning.”

“Why didn’t you just email the students that got selected instead of making all of us come down here?”

“Because I didn’t make my decision until very late last night.” He tells her, opening his door and setting his things down on his desk. His office looks like a tornado hit it.

“Still, you could have emailed-“

“Miss Ashford, what is it that you need? I don’t have office hours today and I’m very busy.”

“I want to know why I wasn’t selected. I told you how much I love the history courses, I could have been a major help.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but I didn’t think you were the right fit for what I needed.”

“You came to that conclusion from only a week of knowing me?”

“I know the four students I selected better. I had them in my courses as undergrad students. They already know my teaching style and the learning outcomes of the courses.”

“Again, if you knew-“

“You need to go now.” He tells her, taking a dominant step forward, making her take a step back. “Don’t take it personally.”

“How can I not when you just told me I wasn’t the right fit?” She pouts, and she swears Harry’s eyes flicker down to her mouth, only for a millisecond.

“Mavis, I don’t feel comfortable with us being alone like this. There’s no one else in the office right now, I’m one of the few instructors that actually utilizes their space on Fridays.”

“But if you had office hours, I’d be alone with you.”

“Yes, with the door open, while other people are around.”

“Are you afraid of someone accusing you of doing what Professor Amaro did? I feel like you’re being overly cautious…with me.”

“You ask a lot of questions, and it’s annoying. You’re annoying. That’s why I didn’t select you. I don’t have any desire to be around you more than I’m already obligated to.”

“Are…are you allowed to speak to me like this?”

“Maybe.” He shrugs. “Or maybe not. Who’s to say? It’s your word against mine, right? No one else is here. Are you picking up what I’m putting down? I already told you I felt uncomfortable, now please go before I have to call campus police to escort you out.”

Mavis is stunned, and about ready to cry. Harry rolls his eyes when she doesn’t budge, so he goes into his office and slams the door in her face. What the fuck is his problem?!

**

#carnal attraction #harry styles #harry styles imagine #harry styles fic #harry styles x oc #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles fluff #harry styles angst #harry styles smut #harry styles au #angst #fluff #smut #fanfic #fic #harry styles fanfic #professor!h #professor!harry #sexologist!h #sexologist!harry

[redditreceipts]

I've been a very staunch supporter of trans ppl for years. I have learned to swallow my discomfort around some of the things said in those circles. When they said it was transphobic for lesbians to not like dick, I bit my tongue. I told myself, "this is just the loud minority" and to be fair I do think that is the minority but still ... as a lesbian I wasn't even able to talk about people who argued that because "it never happens. No one says that. That sounds like a transphobic lie." And I hate the constant assertions that gender is real, innate, and that everyone feels it. I can't describe my own experiences with growing up as a woman without someone telling me that maybe I'm nonbinary ... no thanks I tried that for a while. I respect everyone's gender, or I want to, but apparently doing that also requires me to put that oppressive structure onto myself and act like it's liberating.

The final snapping point for me was a trans woman telling me that I'm privileged for being a cis woman because I've never experienced dysphoria ... except I have. I grew up with intense thoughts about my body and hating my vagina and breasts. It was never that bad but I would often imagine mutilating. I'm in a better place now but I still feel some discomfort over my body sometimes. And when I expressed this to her, she asked me if I was really cis or was still questioning ...

They act like misogyny doesn't exist or something. I just ... I disagree with a lot of radical feminists beliefs or at least I think I do. But for years I have felt like radfems were the only ones even talking about misogyny anymore so idk

Anyway what I wanted to say is that I really like your posts and perspectives and thanks for this blog. I want to learn more and question more and your blog has become a helpful resource to help me start thinking critically about some things

Hey :) thanks for writing to me and sorry for the late answer. 

And yeah, you are totally right. I have also spent such a long time justifying gender ideology because I really wanted it to be right. I’ve excused so much weird behaviour with weird mental gymnastics because I didn’t want to accept that I had been wrong for such a long time. 

The entire “that never happens” thing - and then you show them an occasion where it happened, and they say “well, it doesn’t happen that much”. And yeah, people have suggested me being non-binary as well. I mean, by strict gender definitions I am non-binary because I don’t identify as a woman lmao. Just as the “you’re uncomfortable in your body?? what about fucking cutting it up??!!!!” thing. 

And for disagreeing with feminist beliefs, the thing is that being a feminist is not a package deal. You are not being some sort of heretic if you disagree with certain things, and I know that I am most probably wrong on a lot of stuff myself. If I wasn’t, I would be the first person who is always right in human history. And yes, even in feminist spaces, there is sometimes some sort of imperative to follow every single belief or you are not a “real feminist”. But being a feminist is not an identity, it is an action. It is an action towards yourself, in the workplace, in interaction with other women and men, in your consumption, in your voting, in how you support women in your personal life and how you do political action. So yeah, I would say that it is less important whether you follow every rule of the radical feminist catechism and more important to support women in your life (which includes yourself). At least, that’s my opinion. 

So if you want to learn more, you can look into literally anything Julie Bindel says on Youtube, I really like her perspective. And cool that you’re here! 

[sweaty-confetti]

more support for detransitioners. understanding gender affirming care regrets is beneficial to all of us. it’s very easy for us trans people (including myself, i am not some perfect unbiased guy) to assume that all detransitioners are TERFs or transphobes but this is simply not true and also a self fulfilling prophecy.  

detransition is just as isolating of an experience as transition and in queer circles can be more so due to the knee-jerk reaction of many queer people to assume that detransitioners hate trans people or think that gender affirming care should be banned. thus they are shunned. but by assuming this, we inadvertently cause this to happen. there will always be detransitioners and we need to make room for them especially considering many/most are queer or still have a complex relationship with gender, not to mention that our community is built upon acceptance.

when trans and queer people shun detransitioners in fear that they’re terfs of transphobes, it offers an easy oppurtunity for terfs and transphobes to go, “those awful trans people, they’re small minded and then shun you. come join our ranks and we will liberate you from Gender Ideology™” and this hurts all of us.

it is not out of the question that detransitioners can be transphobic, but immediately assuming that they are harms queer people and other detransitioners. it’s an easy reaction and a mistake that i have worked hard to stop making, and i do not think it is an entirely unfair guess to make - but here is the important part - with reason. meeting someone who has detransitioned and immediately assuming that they are transphobic is dangerous. however obviously if they start spouting questionable conservative/transphobic nonsense that is a normal thing to assume. 

terfs/transphobes use detransitioners as a tool to blame the trans community, and many of us fall for it. in turn we use detransitioners as a tool to blame transphobes. the cycle needs to stop. 

TERFS, transphobes, etc. do not interact with this post. this is not a discourse post nor are you not welcome here. you will be blocked.

#long post #transphobia tw #detransitioner #pro trans detrans #trans liberation #hrt #detrans #ftm detrans #mtf detrans #not kink #trans positivity #detrans positivity #trans positive detrans #terfs fuck off #terfs do NOT touch #TERF tw #terfs are not welcome #mtf #ftm #nonbinary #transgender #gender affirming care #transmasc #transfem #transneu

[rongzhi]

How would you describe the attitude towards trans people in China? ((I ask this as a trans person who would like to work there as an expat))

I don’t live in China so I couldn’t tell you with any certainty what to expect in real life anyway. But, you asked, so I want to at least take a stab at it, even if I just end up rambling about other things.

I expect you know it’s already hard enough to be trans in the west, even in the supposed liberal utopia of major cities. Now think about moving to another country and having to start out with no real support network. Now on top of that, while recognition and acceptance of queer identities, particularly gays and lesbians, in China has taken strides forward in recent years, it’s still not on the same level with the same sort of sensitive treatment as what you could say many have come to expect in the West (depending on where you live). The official government stance on LGBT issues is a tepid “uhhhhhhmmmm 🙈🙉🙊” (“Laws protect all individuals from discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, etc, but until something happens don’t look at us for nothing 🤐. Please clap.”), so most LGBT education/awareness largely comes through local grassroots efforts (slow and frequently hampered) and online/global media exposure (tho this also requires a level of voluntary engagement).

So, I’m not trying to spook you, but I wanted to make that clear first, that merely moving to another country as a trans person is no enviable task. If you do immigrate to China or live there for a period of time, you will of course at least have some level of privilege as an English speaking (white?) foreigner, so that might help, especially if you plan on hanging out with other expats anyway. Living in a major city would also help, which is really just to say, city folk anywhere are always going to be more open-minded and so I guess this finally brings us close to more of an answer to your question:

Based on my limited observations, I feel like the attitude toward the every day trans person trends negative compared to the west, perhaps largely due to lack of understanding (why would “choose” to be trans, how could you do such a thing, etc). It is not illegal or anything, and HRT/gender reassignment surgery is available in China, medically speaking, but again, I sense that the knowledge/understanding disparity when it comes to transgender identity is pretty high and therefore acceptance is inversely proportional to that. Discussion of the topic that I have seen has never really been that nuanced. Young people are more likely to accept and support LGBT+ individuals in general, but that’s “in general (like, I supsect that it might be more for LGB support versus trans support, as typically LGB issues receive greater attention than trans issues).

On the more neutral/positive end, there will be people who say “as long as they’re not hurting anyone”/ “a person has to live for themself/respect each person’s right to make their own choices in life” and that sort of thing, but I’ve never seen anything pro trans or pro gender revelations per se (this is true by and large in the West as well I think, so no big diff there), and anecdotally, I’ve seen a lot of those comments toward trans people of like “oh but you used to be so pretty/handsome, why would blah blah blah”, and more emphasis seems to be placed on passing, like I guess the more successfully you transition to the opposite gender (ftm or mtf) the more respect you deserve (as if transition should be the goal) (like if you botch it, visually speaking, you might as well have not even bothered) (but I guess this is also true in mainstream thought in the west), and even if you pass you might still get hit with the “can you believe they’re actually a _?”/ "wow I have to be more careful" treatment.

I guess it’s worth noting Jin Xing, a popular trans celebrity/TV presenter in China, is also highly respected, even amongst older generations (which is cool). To many, she “already counts as a real woman” (to quote a comment I saw once) because she’s seen as dedicated to being herself (a woman), and is a wonderful mother to 3 adopted children. People respect her because she worked hard and she has an attractive personality, but at the same time, she’s also high profile enough that the disrespect can get drowned out by the admirers, so she's not a typical case of the trans experience in China obviously.

TLDR

Soooo. I don't live in China so my perspective is limited (I can't emphasise that enough) and only my own opinion based on discourse/exchanges, commentary, depictions, etc, I've witnessed on the Chinese web (douyin, bilibili, zhihu, and douban forums for the most part).

I don’t know how rude anyone would be to your face. Being a foreigner/expat (I said “(white?)” earlier because I feel like “expat” usually refers to white people) might afford you some extra privilege or at least a wider berth from dealing with assholes. As of right now, my impression of the general attitude toward trans people is: improving but still behind and still with the focus on successful transition. Lots of awareness is still needed but efforts to increase it are slow and hampered.

---

Aaaaah this turned out way longer than I'd hoped 😬 and I always feel like I'm typing up paragraph upon paragraph of unintelligible nonsense but I hope this give you some food for thought, since you asked for my take. I expect you're already quite sober to the realities of We Live In a Society™ as a trans person, so apologies if I sound too pompous or lecture-y at any point.

#text #answered ask #long post

[saturns-kiss]

Talk about:

How Sex based oppression is real even if you consider it terfy all that diminishes actual struggles and we get nowhere.

How Dylan Mulvaynes song is misogynistic and people trying to like it out of spite and justify it due to alleged transphobia allows TRAs to get away with things like this and only allows more misogyny to happen.

The sham of womanhood (a tool to sell more from corporations, and womanhood is no shared experience and it is harmful to believe so.

How the belief that radfems are partners with the far right is harmful and is seen being spread to more trans people and their allies. This couldn’t be further from the truth and only allows the radical liberation of women be reduced down to well they work with the right (which isn’t true) and all our ideas go down the drain due to brainwashed individuals.

How radfems are critiqued on the actions of a few individuals who claim to be radical feminists, this is used as talking points from the TRAs during debates and when trans women and their crimes are brought up they will tell you not to judge a whole ideology based on the few. This grace is obviously not given to radical feminists

Why do people get mad when women boil down what it means to be a woman by their struggles. Shouldn’t that be seen as a cry for help instead of what they think is ‘taking away what it means to be a woman’? If someone is oppressed all day every day based on something they can’t change since the start of time then yes I do believe women will end up basing who they are around these struggles since who they are is the reason they face these struggles.

How I hink more radical feminists should speak about religion without being afraid to hurt a few people. When I say religion I don’t only mean Christianity, I mean all religions especially the other Abrahamic religions. I grew up with Islam and still pretend to practice it since I will literally be killed if I attempt to leave it in the country I live in.I’m only 15 and I can tell that religion hurts women while the grown adults believe it benefits them. Religion is used as a tool to oppress and it has brainwashed every where and infiltrated every corner of the earth.

How when women say they hate men. I personally believe it is completely justified to hate your oppressor. When the men come out of the woodworks to claim that they don’t hate women,what about them?, not all men! To that I reply why haven’t you done anything to help stop misogyny, if all you do is claim to not hate women and you still run in anti feminist circles and don’t speak about the oppression of women(which life would be a lot better if those men actually attempted to do anything for us) then by definition you hate women.

Mens place in feminism and what they should do and what it means for women.

How most of the violence committed against trans people are done by men and the blame is placed on radical feminists for some reason. The reason many men hate trans people is due to misogyny the very same reason they hate women. I think there needs to be a difference established between these acts of violence and why they are done or else we get nowhere and trans people and their allies can use it to justify their claims of how they are being killed (which I don’t deny) but all it does is allow them to deflect every sort of criticism since there is no difference in The Who’s and why’s of the violence against them.

How every radfem is a terf (or at least the majority) but not every terf is radfem. This one goes hand in hand with the last point. Most women terfs I’ve seen (most not all) are just people who are obviously confused and upset about their sudden and obvious deprivation of rights which makes a lot of sense. They are completely confused about the trans ideology suddenly being accepted without any explanation or care of what they have to say about it, it also stems from the lack of education trans people have provided about the trans ideology (which is quite literally how they exist). This is why you usually hear the ‘women are people with vaginas!’ Or ‘Women give birth!’ argument since they quite literally know no better since not everybody knows details about sex and gender. This also goes hand in hand with the lack of and inconsideration of sex education for women which is another good topic.

Lesbian erasure and the manipulation of lesbians by trans ‘women’ to think that they should be included in everything lesbians do (lesbian dating and sex and lesbian spaces) or else they are a disgusting fascist.

How sexuality and personality have become interchangeable within the trans community and the effects it will have people who are actually lesbian,gay,bi etc. it would force all sexualities to become inclusive to things that go against the biology and psychology of who they love (like lesbians having to include penises and gay men having to include vaginas)

How men are completely kept out of the new revolutionary inclusive language made by trans people (mostly trans women). People are pushing for women to be referred to as: people with vaginas, chest feeders, birthing people, people who menstruate etc etc. where is this language for the men? Absolutely nowhere to be found. This is usually trans ‘women’ and their internally misogynistic henchmen the trans ‘men’. Which again falls under men policing women.

Male lesbians?????

More will added once I think of them. Feel free to post your own takes on these subjects these are just the main questions I have as a learning radical feminist who once fell prey to anti feminist cults (religion) and the TRA movement( I thought I was gendefluid lol)

On this page I’d like to go through these one by one. I love to learn about different views and opinions and if anyone knows good feminist book recommendations feel free to tell me I’m still very much learning about this type of feminism and am always open to the idea of learning more!

#radfem #radblr #radical feminism #terfblr #lesbian #important #radical feminist safe #radical feminists do interact

[old-school-butch]

here is my second anon, on same-sex attraction and the fuckery i've experienced around it in the trans community. i wonder if any ex-TRAs and TIFs will recognize this, or if it's only me who managed such a convoluted mental somersault? also, please forgive me for venting in your inbox, i have no better place. but alas.

i thought myself a gay man for 10-ish years. and yet i had... very clear sexual attraction towards women, clear enough that i've genderswapped 80% of my fictional male crushes so they would have breasts and vaginas, while still considering them "men" because i kept their he/him pronouns. seeing females as men allowed me to tell myself i was only attracted to males. i think a mix of biphobia and lesbophobia, stirred into gender-think. i was only allowed to love women if they were actually "men". because it was ok to love men.

i had crushes on girls as a teen and i'd always feel gross and predatory when i shared the locker rooms with them. i remember so badly wanting to sneak looks at my crushes but doing all i could not to. bc i "knew" that it was wrong. however i never developed into accepting this same-sex attraction as normal, because i got swept up in genderism, and became a "man" and... all my attraction towards women suddenly felt EVEN MORE predatory and violating. i swept it away as male gaze, objectification, leering, still predatory. etcetera etcetera. genuinely did all i could to suppress/explain away my obsession with female bodies. i centered my male attraction, and as the trans movement is very male-centered to begin with it was only encouraged. people (straight females) calling themselves f*gs left and right. every time i started thinking about breasts (i'm boob obsessed for real) or having sex with women i pushed it down as male depravity. i also thought me wanting to fuck women had been conditioned into me by advertising. like, yes, of course everyone wants to have sex with women bc they are trained by society to want this :)) logical. this totally happens to all female people. oh you love the smell of pussy? advertising taught you this. -_-

obviously as a TIF, i felt somehow that male identity and pronouns was a prerequisite to be fully human/be the way i was inside. misogynistic as fuck. it seems i felt this for other women, too. you told me i'd feel the weight of the harm i'd done along the way, when i sent the first anon; this is a heavy one. having viewed women and myself this way for so long. and having written off my same-sex attraction (i salivate when i see bare chested women lol) because, well, i'm a "man" and i violate them with my eyes.

the power dynamic between TIFs is funny/tragic too. ssa ones being treated as if they're straight males and culpable for everything those do. osa ones being the ones with more social capital. bisexual ones centering males bc well, the whole movement shits on women and you don't wanna be "straight" or bi ending up in a "straight" relationship. a lesbian TIF just enters a world in which her attraction (which she's likely felt predatory for her whole life already) is REINFORCED as bad. because now she's a straight man. and when a real heterosexual male is not accessible to shit on, she will be the target of the "gay" ones. god, the trans community is such a complicated type of homophobia...

i feel so good now to be out of it. i've been butch my whole life, i had a buzzcut since i was 14, up until my 20s. tomboyish always. now i have a long braid, and i considered cutting it off when i peaked, but i can't bring myself to do it. i miss my breasts very much and my braid is a body part as well, one that i can still hold on to. i can't let it go. it means something to me, i suppose, symbolically. but i don't feel like i'm a man anymore, and my attraction towards women is not to blame for their oppression. it is so liberating. i no longer feel like i'm degrading or harming women by being attracted to them. and most of my friends who dropped me were osa TIFs, binary and nonbinary... they have a lot to lose if they should give up that identity. they'd get booted out the "queer" community, lose the oppression they built their identity on. it's weird looking back at them. ah, i ramble so much, but thank you, even if you don't end up posting this, for having a space open here to go to. it feels so valuable, and it helps to read others anons.

Oh, I've definitely read wilder somersaults. It's amazing how confusing it is when reality is upside down. A lesbian becomes a gay man, or a straight man depending on the identity of the women she's attracted to. All nonsense, but I do wonder if it allows people to contemplate relationships they had rejected previously. Like, if you're a straight man who decides he's a lesbian but then meets another TIM then you're supposed to also include him, or women might have idealized views that relationships with men might not be so bad if you can escape 'being the girl'. Women, according to the stats, are the most likely to twist ourselves into these pretzels, of course, female socialization at work. So, we must forgive ourselves and each other for our roles in all this.

I'm glad things are working out well for you. There are times when I feel isolated being gender critical, but then I remember the headache-inducing mental repression I had to endure to make myself believe all this and I feel much more free and real.

[the-paper-monkey]

Hello! I noticed you recently used the radfem tag on a post. Being a HP author, are you aware of the message this sends considering the source content for this fandom?

I debated whether or not to answer this, as I am well aware of the hornet's nest I'm kicking—particularly on this site. However, I believe the contemporary rhetoric that assumes one's support of 'x' means they must believe 'y' to be reductive, dishonest, and particularly troubling when it comes to silencing the voices of women. It's the very same false equivalence that has led large swathes of the population into claiming that support of Palestine = antisemitism (including, ironically, JK Rowling).

I consider myself a radical feminist and I won't censor that simply because I also happen to like a magical school kid's book series written by a conservative moron. Does this mean I agree with everything every single radical feminist has ever said? No. But I believe that sex-based oppression is alive and well and can be seen most prominently in law-enforcement response to rape and domestic violence, abortion rights in many countries, access to maternity leave, research into women's health, household labour distribution and the commercial objectification of women (be that advertising or pornography).

Does this mean I think sex-based oppression is the only form of oppression? No. Does this mean I associate myself with TERFs? No. Was the radical feminist movement without flaws? Also no. Just as the socialist movement did not adequately address the disadvantages women faced in the 60s and 70s, the second-wave feminist movement failed to address the unique struggles of non-white women and queer women. There is always room to grow from the starting point of a movement created ~60 years ago. Intersectionality is critical. But we have not progressed as far as most would like to pretend (looking at you, America), and the way that women hasten to distance themselves from the 'harsh' type of feminism is partially at fault for this, in my opinion.

Without radical feminism, we would not have had the Women's Liberation Movement. Without radical feminism, we would not have abortion rights, access to credit, equal pay protections, etc. The demonisation of a branch of feminism that was so critical in fighting for the rights that modern women enjoy today is harmful and something I am very suspicious of. I mean, we're at a point where I can't even use the tag radfem without having people in my asks sending messages like this? Really? If there is something that I have reblogged or posted that you disagree with, then I am always open to a good-faith discussion, but I don't respect this style of internet discourse that strikes you down as guilty by association.

(Also, since I know that's what you're getting at — my opinion on TERFs is that they've done a great disservice to radical feminism and have gotten themselves worked up about something that is a non-issue outside of their corner of the internet. My question when people come to me IRL with anti-trans rhetoric is always, "have you ever actually met a trans person?" and the answer is always no...)

While I don't agree with everything said in it, this is an interesting article from Dr Charlotte Proudman which I recommend you read: Being a radical feminist means being a trans ally at the same time.

#sex-based oppression hurts women globally every single second of the day and saying that should not be controversial #this is probably the only post i will make on this topic as this is a voldemort fan blog not a feminist theory blog... #politics #TERFs pls touch grass #but also you better think really hard before you start accusing feminists of being TERFs by association #asks #anon #i bought my harry potter books second-hand in 2007 and i highly doubt my gay voldemort fanfiction is supporting JKR as much as u think it i #as ive said before - i am not JKR's keeper #thank you #radfem

[somescenecatholic]

ALL TUMBLR PPL PLEASE REPOST THIS ANYWHERE U CAN! THERE NEEDS TO BE MORE PROTESTS ABT THIS BC IT'S PRIDE! This can't go on for any longer. TW: p0l1c3, h0m0ph0b14, tr4nsph0b14

Qween Jean, a Black and Trans community leader was arrested at a PEACEFUL march for Trans Liberation on May 31st, 2023. AS SOON AS THEY GOT THERE there was lots of police and they arrested Qween Jean. I'm not sure if she's out yet as I can't find info on tht. On instagram it says to bail support at 7th precinct 191/2 Pitt St, New York, NY, 10002

This can't keep happening, there needs to be nationwide peaceful protests abt this!! Demonstrations need to be everywhere!!!! IT HAS BEEN 53 YEARS SINCE THE FIRST PRIDE PROTEST! I say protest bc PRIDE STARTED AS A PROTEST! It can ONLY be a parade when we truly get our rights. We can't celebrate until we see our victory. Like, our victory is in the bag bc good ALWAYS wins but we need to take ACTION!

ALSO, ANOTHER THING! NOTE HOW WHEN THE NYPD GOT KICKED OUTTA PRIDE, THEY STARTED ARRESTING AND STUFF! If they actually cared they would let this go on. They would actually do smth and hold their own protests for police brutality and etc to stop. Ik there are good police out there who are actually helping out the communities but lets be honest, the system is screwed up. There is far too much corruption. You KNOW it's bad when even little kids are scared of the police! No, not bc they may look intimidating. But because they are literally scared for their life. Same thing with guns. I was walking home from the bus stop when I was in like 6th or 7th (i forgot) and I thought I saw a gun in someone's car tht was parked in front of me and I was scared to the bone. Thankfully it wasn't a gun, it was smth else.

Anyways I'm getting kinda off topic. But yk what I mean right? (if u got any questions, do ask, my dm's and comments are always open! ^w^)

I'm just so sick tht the stuff tht should be in HISTORY BOOKS is happening right in front of my eyes. Like there have been sm protests and stuff against this for FAR, FAR longer than I have been alive!!! (Ik im only 16 but still this is a srs outrage)

It srsly sucks that this is the world I gotta grow up in.

SO THAT'S WHY WE GOTTA CHANGE IT!

Any action u do can help the world change fod the better. Never miss an opportunity to do good! (big or "small")

SOOO! If u can, go to a local protest! Try to put ur community first, yk? Also, reblog this post and spread awareness about these kinda issues. I'd love to go to a protest buttt I do not have supportive parents and I don't have a car. ALSO, remember tht every act of kindness counts. And dont just keep it to ur friends. Support good local businesses, give compliments to everyone u meet, cheer ppl up, listen to others, donate to GOOD, TRUSTWORTHY charities, do NOT give canned food to food banks bc they need actual food, so give them money, and give homeless ppl money too yk? Ppl are like "WHAT IF THEY SPEND IT ON DRUGS AND STUFF?" Well ofc yea tht's a possibility but who says they won't spend it on what they need? Yk? Basically be a good person, support queer ppl and poc ppl, etc. The world needs sm more kindness. People say "HAH friendship, love, and kindness is such a simple concept tht's not needed". The fact tht it's simple says everything. If we had more of tht, all these issues would cease to exist.

Also, another thing:

PROTEST SAFETY RULES!!

Take water and stay hydrated! If someone doesn't have water and u have some to spare, waterfall it.

Keep face masks and switch your phone to airplane mode. This is a surveillance country. They know how to find you. And if u take pics, make sure tht ur location is extremely hard to pinpoint.

If a police officer arrests u, know ur miranda rights and STAY SILENT AND BE CALM! They will use what they can to take it against u. You have to think a stairway ahead of them. They can't say anything if u don't say anything! And justice will be served so dw, God's with you. Also, yes u can say ur manners like thank you and excuse me.

Again, please repost this everywhere u can.

Remember,God loves u ALL, no ifs ands or buts. ACAB and love is love. Trans rights are HUMAN RIGHTS!!!!!

You matter and the right to speak and protest is a human right. This is our world and we have the power to change it!

(also please tell me if I got anything wrong in this post)

#acab #pride parade #lgbt pride #poc alt #queer poc #people of color #queer tumblr #queer community #mogai #very important #please reblog #rawring 20s #scene revival #scenecore #scene kid #scene #rawr means i love you in dinosaur #rawring twenties #all cops are bastards #this is america #america #the usa #the right to speak #protests #current events #injustice #safety #protest #take action #activism

[foreverdolly]

I see the direction that the United States is going in, and anger doesn't seem to touch the magnitude of raw emotion that I feel. This isn't an issue of "red or blue" anymore. This is an issue of morals and hypocrisy. You claim to be pro life but have done nothing to protect the children that are threatened every day just by going to school. You double down on trans and gay laws merely because it's "other" to you and makes you feel uncomfortable, whilst the Willow Project is going to make it impossible for people of my generation to even think about bringing children into this world. You are attacking the legitimacy of inter-religion, inter-racial and gay marriages, whilst our people are dying. You call us "liberals" and try to make us out to be a bunch of no-good, uneducated hippies, when in actuality we are trying to stop the countless deaths that your party has inspired. How loud do we have to yell? How long do we have to fight?

These radical Christian Republicans would rather see trans children ostracized (some have even gone on record saying that they need to be eliminated) than protect innocent students. How many lives have to be lost in mass shootings for you all to care? How many times does this have to happen for you all to start paying attention to the things that really matter?

Drag queens. People of color. A woman's choice. Life saving gender reaffirming care. Oil.

This is what you are all worried about? This is what you deem worthy of your time, meanwhile more children will lose their lives merely going to school. Teenagers will be forced to carry the fetus of their SAers to full term or DIE trying to help themselves when no one else would. The world is BURNING and all you can do is point fingers and continue your heinous smear campaign of the civilians that are trying to make a difference. What happened to religion staying out of the government?

This is the world that Christian Republicans want, right? Newsflash- it is a fact that you are ten times more likely to be a shooter if you are cis and two times more likely to be a victim of said shooting if you are queer.

The problem was never us. The problem has always been you.

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

Apparently if you dare to be a sane person and say the truth for what it is - you're Hitler. Despite all historical evidence, the far left opinion on Hitler seems to be very high.

Anyway, hi! I stumbled onto your blog very recently and it's a gulp of fresh air after being exposed to Tumblr's ultra-woke accounts. I used to be on the left too, but their narrative was becoming more and more insane until I started to question it and disagree, and it's people and blogs like yours that helped me to see the hypocrisy and doublethink that seems to be so present in the far-left spaces (far-right too, but I think both of those extremes are very harmful and dangerous.)

You give an impression of being an intelligent, reasonable person and from what I've seen, your arguments are firmly based in logic, common sense and objective reality. How do you think, is there any hope we'll be seeing the end of current woke agenda soon? From what I understand, there seems to be a culture war going on (especially in US), but more and more people are waking up and also the companies are getting rightfully boycotted after pushing the woke narrative (like BudLight, Target, Gillette etc), but I don't know if it really means anything or changes things. I find you an interesting person to talk to and wanted to know your thoughts.

Keep doing the good work and don't pay attention to clowns! They know they have nothing to defend their position with, and so are getting aggressive and angry.

That's very nice to be told, so thank you.

I honestly still don't think of myself as left or right; I largely just see those two labels as being magnetic polarities for evolutionarily-created character traits that the great majority of the population will always tend to fall into (the creative, utopian, collectivist types blindly worshipping never-ending "progress" and the traditionalist, conservative, religious types, suspicious of change but responsible for protecting and maintaining the fabric and narrative of society).

I was more left-leaning for many years, and still feel sympathies in that direction, so I don't wish to "smash the left!" or "smash the right!" because, when working healthily, both those polarities represent necessary parts of human existence and experience that could - theoretically, at least - harmoniously complement each other and make for a better world, if only each were to recognize they need the other.

But having said that, it really is impossible right now to not conclude that over the past 10, 20 years the entire mainstream Left has gone completely insane, and is now utterly adrift from reason, sanity, humour, common sense and any lucid conception of human decency. So that's something that needs to be fixed - hopefully by the left itself - and there are some glimmers of that beginning to happen: the madness of the trans issue , especially, seems to have been a step too far for many, splitting the entire feminist movement down the middle and waking many liberal parents up to the mutilation of their children being terrifyingly (and mandatorily) celebrated and applauded everywhere they turn. And the openly racist hatred and vilification of the straight white male trade unionists who were traditionally the backbone of the left wing parties has got to be making some drift away and wonder who those parties are really serving now. And surely even the most liberal art lovers can tell that all movies and books and TV shows and art exhibitions today have collapsed into empty, soulless, worse-than-mediocre propaganda.

As to whether there is any definitive end in sight, I don't know. Like I say, there are signs, but on the other side of that tabletop there is the relentless indoctrination of children, and the ever-expanding or tightening net of technology, and these two things I find make it especially hard to predict the future world with any confidence.

But the bases of power behind both require money and public silence to continue: if enough people stop giving woke corporations money, they will cease their allegiance to that deranged course of action or else die off, and if parents take their children out of schools that are indoctrinating them into destructive far-left insanity, then the schools will either stop pushing that agenda or die off. And things like that do seem to be happening in some places, so that gives me hope.

The thing that ideally needs to happen more than anything else is for the woke to wake up, out of their conditioning and relentless corporate brainwashing. But if the events of the past 10 years have not been enough to open their eyes to the fire directly raging in front of them, it's hard to imagine what kind of superpowered espresso machine it would actually take to clear the fog and snap them back to reality.

Hearts and minds, though. Hearts and minds. One soul at a time.

[puckgoodfaggot]

Congrats on becoming a jew!

Out of curiosity, how long has the process taken you/ can you talk about the process for you as a whole?

thank you!!

the formal process has taken about a year and a half, but i also had about a year before that of individual reading and rumination on conversion and asking friends who had converted/were converting about it. also, i think it would have probably been a little longer but my rabbi is about to go on maternity leave for a year and we both agreed that i'm ready now. after going to a shabbat service at a bigger synagogue just to see how it felt, i asked around on a trans discord about trans friendly synagogues and was pointed to the one i go to now. i shot the rabbi an email to see if we could meet for coffee, and they answered all my questions about the conversion process and book recommendations and also like, questions about why bad things happen etc etc. the requirements for conversion for liberal judaism were that i take part in a year-long adult education course, live a year of the jewish calendar (as in actually taking part in a full year of holidays with the community and going to as many shabbat services as possible), continue meeting with the rabbi to talk about questions and also how i was feeling about the process, and write two essays for the beit din, one which reflected on what judaism means to me and one that was a research paper on any element of judaism i chose. i also found it helpful to try to read the weekly torah portion as often as i could and reflect on them and read other people's reflections on them, to keep a journal of my emotional journey and the experiences that i had with different holidays, and to read up on conversion and judaism in general (your bookshelves and to-read lists will fill up FAST if you start converting; i have so many books that i want but i havent even finished what i have). from here, it's just going to be meeting with the beit din (a panel of rabbis, essentially) next week and answering their questions about my journey, and then going to the mikveh, which is a small pool of water for ritual immersion and is the final step in conversion.

some other denominations of judaism may have other requirements (like wanting you to be further along with hebrew than i am, or the process being longer, or requiring a certain level of observance if you're going to be orthodox or conservative) and if you're a cis man you will have to either be circumcised or do hatafat dam brit, which is taking a drop of blood from where you were circumcised before.

if this is something you're really curious about, i would recommend starting off your readings with 'choosing a jewish life' by anita diamant. it gives a good overview of what to expect, and it's not a huge tome like 'essential judaism' or 'the honey and the sting', which are both chunky (but useful). i would also say that books are great, but finding a synagogue at which you feel at home is essential. you need a space that feels safe to be vulnerable, you need a rabbi who you feel comfortable asking difficult questions, and you need a community of people you enjoy. one of the folks at mine always (jokingly) says you cant be jewish in isolation, only when you're in community with other jews. you gotta find that community.

okay, i will shut up now cause this is long asjkdglsdkg. but if you ever have more questions about this, i'm an open book!

#kam does judaism #long post

[quinnfabrayapologist]

terfs: femininity is evil and must be abolished from society in all its forms for the female sex to ever be liberated

you: this means terfs love femininity and think women ought to follow the rules of femininity :) i am very smart

Except the most prominent TERF figureheads are actually super pro femininity, as is the average TERF. Like... to such an extent I'm a bit alarmed you don't notice.

There have been multiple instances of butch lesbians and GNC women being harassed in bathrooms by TERFs because they don't look feminine enough:

Butch lesbian opens up about 'increasing harassment' she faces when she uses public toilets (inews.co.uk)

Woman, 22, barred from ladies toilets in M&S after staff mistook her for a man  | Daily Mail Online

Butch Woman Are Facing Transphobia In Public Toilets (refinery29.com)

And TERFs just straight up wanting butch women out of their spaces for the same reasons:

The most prominent figureheads of the anti trans movement in the UK include Baroness Nicholson, who is a member of the House of Lords, and is homophobic and anti choice:

She also links gay marriage to trans existence. Basically she's transphobic because she's homophobic. She also personally engaged with me RE the abortion thing and said that dropping the limit to 12 weeks was intended to stop 3rd tri abortions, which a) start way after 12 weeks, b) are 1% of all abortions, and c) happen either because there was no abortion access in 2nd tri or because most brain development happens in 3rd and so the parent(s) found out the foetus wasn't viable in 3rd tri. She wants to force people who have found out their foetus will not survive outside the womb to be forced to carry to term and birth a stillborn, instead of aborting it weeks earlier.

Kellie-Jay Keen, meanwhile, everyone's favourite tomato soup flavoured hatemonger and far right mouthpiece, has said that teenage girls shouldn't have access to birth control, and that Gillick competency should be revoked. Gillick is meant to assess medical competency in teens, meaning that teenagers in certain situations can make their own medical choices. I personally have Gillick rights to thank for me not becoming a mother at 13 years old, following my being gangraped by my 'boyfriend' and his friends, and Gillick competency letting me get an abortion. If not for Gillick, my dad would have made me see through the pregnancy, and Kellie wants Gillick gone because if teenagers can get birth control, they can get puberty blockers. Funny enough, my pregnancy was also following precocious puberty, where my GP recommended that I, a cis girl, take blockers, and my dad refused. Cis kids actually make up the majority of kids on blockers due to precocious puberty, and they get blockers without issue in most cases, it's just trans kids that have these issues getting a normal medication.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP🌹🏳️‍🌈 on Twitter: "Veil slips: Kellie-Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker) says girls/young women shouldn’t access reproductive service without parent permission. Rolling back women’s rights. That’s what “gender critical” is folks - first they come for trans then they come for you. https://t.co/TkWsLTc1eM" / Twitter

She also talks, in this clip, about how 'parents need to take back control of their children'. At several rallies she's said (incorrectly) that 'her side' are older women, and the women on the pro trans side are all young, and that the young women 'will become us' as in older conservative bigots. Not only is this blatantly incorrect, given the sheer number of pro trans older people who exist, but it is yet another reason that Kellie doesn't want kids to have rights. Because she thinks anyone under 40 will grow out of being empathetic to minorities.

This tweet was in response to a cisgender woman with short hair going to a rape survivor's group wearing jeans. This caused a TERF in that group to assume she was a trans man and try and get her kicked out, and then the TERF was barred instead:

Again, this woman had short hair and wore jeans. That's it.

Here's another TERF saying that as her trans daughter is in STEM, she's a man. Pushing that fake narrative about how girls can't be scientists like any good feminist would:

Meanwhile, here are 2 garden variety TERFs offering a list of things that help them ID trans women:

Note the second one, which lists feminine face, gait, demeanour, and voice. Because according to this person, there is a certain way to look, act, and speak feminine. And I had to throw in the first one because it lists 'skin lightness' and 'skull size' as a feminine trait. TERFs never beating the racism allegations.

And speaking of racism allegations, here's Sharron Davies, star of the TERF movement, saying that all of the WOC who won at the Olympics are really men:

And someone saying the quiet part out loud here:

And here's another famous TERF showing what her priorities are in the wake of Roe v Wade:

And on a personal level, here are a list of reasons TERFs have told me, a cis woman, that I am really a trans woman and lying about the cis part:

My nose is too big

My jaw is too square

My chin is too prominent

My forehead is too large

My shoulders are too wide. The person who said this also asked if it was hard to no longer be able to 'play linebacker on the men's team'. I am told this is related to rugby.

My most worn outfit is a button down shirt and jeans. Apparently I have a 'prominent bulge'. So for a cis woman my dick is huge.

My necklines are too high

My necklines are too low (and no woman would show that much of her breasts)

My teeth are crooked

I put 'MA' in my twitter handle after graduating my Masters and no 'real woman' would brag about her academic achievements.

I am a PhD student. This was somehow enough of an indicator that I was trans for someone to call me the t slur.

I argued, at length, in favour of trans people. Apparently a real woman wouldn't argue as much as I did, and the fact I was persistent in pushing my points indicated that I was a man.

I was on the radio, and my voice was low and raspy.

I stood next to a friend, also a cis woman, in a photo, and I was larger than her (because she's a UK size 6 and I'm a UK 10)

My clavicles are straight????

TERFs are strictly enforcing femininity at the expense of women's rights, like the right to healthcare/birth control/abortion. They are showing open contempt for women who don't fit their loose, objective ideal of what a woman is, and making GNC cis women feel that bit less safe in women's spaces because they don't look the way TERFs think they should. They are most likely doing this because the money and power behind the TERF movement is conservative men, including groups like CPAC, who sponsored Kellie's latest tour.

You personally might love birth control and abortion and defying gender roles, and good for you, but if you're a TERF, a radfem, a GC, whatever you want to call yourself, you've aligned yourself with a movement that want women back in the kitchen and back in the alley, staffed by conservatives and keyboard warriors who are just waiting for someone, anyone, to stick their head above the parapet and do something 'unwomanly' or 'unfeminine' so they can invalidate your entire life experience and argument. I, as a woman, very simply refuse to let a bunch of racist, anti choice, conservatives speak for me. If you want that, best of luck to you, but I won't stop calling it out when I see it because I refuse to lose my hard-won rights to appease a radical minority of bigots.