#if you try to come at me with terf rhetoric i WILL block without further engagement. That's it the end.

[vocalintel]

I don't want to pursue the topic at length but Rose of Versailles is not about "inherent womanhood". Rose of Versailles is explicitly about the abolition of traditionalist, conservative views of society and how this relates to the narrow societal roles that Oscar is forced into as a noble, a military officer, a man, and a woman.

The liberatory climax of the story ties Oscar's resolution to live as neither a man nor woman, but as themself (insofar as its necessary to use pronouns in reference to Oscar, which is an eternal point of contention). This is paralleled to the storming of Bastille and the freeing of prisoners. It is a complete rejection of both male and female societal roles, not an "acceptance" of innate femininity.

The reciprocation of Oscar and André's relationship is not about Oscar "giving in" to heterosexuality or "inherent womanhood". It is the end of a long, complicated arc wherein André finally learns to accept Oscar as a person rather than try to force them into being a woman.

I can accept that the majority of my fan theories and readings are from my own perspective, but that is literally the basic text of the work.

It is not about "inherent womanhood". It centers far more on how restrictive and unhappy the social categorization of gender makes Oscar.

Riyoko Ikeda wrote and published Claudine...!, a manga with an explicitly transgender protagonist about his troubles being misunderstood and prosecuted around this time. It is clear that she understood complicated matters related to gender identity, gender dysphoria, social gender, and so on and so forth. Riyoko Ikeda was well-versed on contemporary gender politics and an active Communist at the time Rose of Versailles was published, so it draws parallels between these themes.

#text #rose of Versailles #if you try to come at me with terf rhetoric i WILL block without further engagement. That's it the end.

[slysfreespeechspace]

To the Handmaiden Who Blocked me On Tumblr

Image by

prettysleepy1

from

Pixabay

I've followed your Tumblr for several years because you've pointed out ways in which the impetus for women to starve themselves to maintain bodies reminiscent of those of girls in their early teens is both misogynistic and racist. You have written about the ways that chronic dieting for women is tied into upper-class white women wanting to maintain a slender figure lest their bodies come to resemble the bodies of the black servitor class. You have written posts about the myriad of ways in which the diet industry promotes eating disorders.

Yet despite your education, intelligence, and claims of feminist ideology, there is complete cognitive dissonance when it comes to your support of trans rights activists.

The red flags went up when you first made the claim that the women who suffer most from eating disorders are trans women. No proof offered. You simply bought wholesale into the screed that Trans Women Are The Most Oppressed Of All In Every Way.

Still, I said to myself that you are an educated person well-versed in doing research. Certainly, it will become apparent to you that trans rights activists are trying to silence women with tactics such as claiming that words like menstruation, uterus, and vulva are violence against trans women. Surely an educated person such as yourself will see that using terms like "pregnant people" and "chest-feeders" is an erasure of women. Surely you will come to see that the TRAs TERF anyone who disagrees with them in the least way.

Well, that did not happen, and now I find myself wondering whether your research into the misogyny and racism inherent in diet culture isn't just more virtue signaling to earn yourself Woke Points. You refuse to examine the misogyny and violent rhetoric inherent in trans rights activism. You would rather throw women under the bus, blocking anyone who disagrees with the TRA screed, because "OP is a TERF! Block and stay safe! They might challenge the screed fed to me by my trans overlords! Can’t have too much to think!”

You might claim that the hatefully misogynistic screenshots of real words by TRAs and their allies found at terfisaslur.com are simply the words of a marginalized group punching back at their oppressors. What you fail to see is that this "marginalized group" is not punching back at their oppressors. Their oppressors are the same as our oppressors: the patriarchy. However, they are not lashing out at the men in power. They are lashing out at women, demanding subjugation and silence.

I was like you once. I chided women who pointed out fallacies in the TRA logic. I told myself that it was only fair that I should refer to myself as "cis" even though that term didn't sit well with me from the start. I told myself that these poor trans women were only behaving badly because of all their years of being oppressed. And of course, trans women are women! We need to be inclusive!

Then the cracks that appeared became too wide for me to ignore. You have done scientific research, yet you seem to buy wholesale into the claim that "biological sex is a social construct." Anyone who knows basic biology knows that such an assertion is patently false. You cannot even seem to wrap your head around the basic truth that the TRAs and their allies are conflating sex and gender. Humans are sexually dimorphic. There are males and females. The fact that intersex conditions appear in a minority of the population does not change this fact. Further, many intersex people seem to take umbrage at the co-opting of their condition by the TRAs and their minions.

Biological sex is an empirical reality. Gender is a social construct.

You blocked me to "stay safe." Yet, you were never in any danger from me. You are still in no danger from me. I am not going to reveal who you are. I'm not going to start a harassment campaign against you. I'm not going to doxx you. If you anger any of the TRAs whose backsides you're kissing, I'm not sure the same thing can be said. They will TERF you without a second thought, and once you are TERFed, you are fair game for their harassment and death threats.

Being gender-critical does not make me or anyone else dangerous to you or to trans people. Being gender-critical is not the same thing as being "transphobic." Questioning the TRA agenda is not transphobia. Pointing out the TRAs violent rhetoric is not "transphobic." Pointing out TRA misogyny is not "transphobic."

I want the same thing for transgender people that I want for everyone else. I want them to have the same opportunities for jobs, education, and housing that anyone else has. I believe they deserve to be treated with common decency.  I do not believe that they should be harassed, bullied, doxxed, threatened, or ridiculed.

I do not believe that the majority of transgender people are any kind of a threat. I have only spoken out against extremists with an extreme agenda.

You call yourself a "feminist," but when you throw other women under the bus in order to appear "woke," I say you are no feminist. You are a TRA handmaiden. Hopefully, you will one day open your eyes to the truth. These people are not your friends. The instant you express the least dissent, you will be in for a very rude awakening.

~Sly Has Spoken~

#handmaidens #tra misogyny #tra violence #gender critical #silencing of women

[arotechno]

The Origins of Aspec Discourse: History and Reflection

Disclaimer: If you’re an exclusionist, just block me. Don’t reblog this post or come into my inbox with your unwarranted opinion, because I will just block you instantly. This is an intracommunity post so aspecs can know our own history, and it is not about you or what you have to say about aspec people. We are beyond the point of civil discussion.

Disclaimer 2: I’m an aro blog but my asexuality is really going to come through on this post more than anything. I don’t have much info here about aros specifically. Given the amount of aro erasure that exists, this should not be a surprise.

On the Arocalypse server, we’ve been having a lot of discussions lately about the discourse, its origins, and its implications. As someone who found the aspec community before the discourse started and watched it tear my community--and myself--apart over the last few years, I feel the need to put all of these puzzle pieces together so that we, as a community, can know where we’ve been, and hopefully determine where it is we’re headed.

History and Origins of the Discourse

Because of the way tumblr’s search function works or has worked in the past, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact origin of the discourse. The earliest usage of the tag that tumblr will show me comes from 2014, and the post in question (which I will not link as I do not have the OP’s permission; you can find it yourself if you’re that curious) alludes to intracommunity discussion, nothing about the discourse as it is referred to today. The earliest instance of that comes from 2015, which lines up pretty precisely with my own personal recollection of when things really went to shit.

But it didn’t start then, not even close.

Courtesy of unofficial aspec historian @aphobephobe, here are a few accounts of the history of ace discourse, so I don’t have to restate it all myself (this should go without saying, but warning for aphobia throughout the links below):

(1) How the ace discourse stemmed from and evolved alongside other types of LGBTQ+/queer discourse

(2) A rough timeline/how the discourse escalated on both sides

(3) A history of the terms used to refer to non-aspec people

All of this is speculation, but the spark that truly ignited the first wave of ace discourse as we know it today may have been The Trevor Project’s addition of asexuality to its training materials and the firestorm that erupted from there. Aphobes and TERFs like galesofnovember were outraged that the Project would create suicide hotlines for ace people, and tried to convince them not to. Rightfully, aces and aros were horrified, and that is likely what ignited tensions beyond the existing invalidation and arguing.

Interestingly, I don’t remember seeing any of this in 2013 when I joined tumblr, or in 2014 when I first discovered asexuality and aromanticism. Most of the people who were involved in 2010-2012 era discourse aren’t involved anymore, often due to burnout. The second wave, the one we’re living in right now, is the one I remember kicking off in 2015. This wave was likely sparked by the #GiveItBack campaign. After GLAAD insinuated that the A in the LGBTQ+ acronym stood for ally, aspecs pushed back against this and campaigned for GLAAD to correct its mistake. The organization listened, and this may have been the catalyst for renewed hostility between aspecs and non-aspecs. The rest is history (detailed recollections of how anti-aspec arguments evolved can be found in link 1 above).

Reflection

Over the last four years, I have watched ye olde discourse come back with a vengeance seemingly out of nowhere and take what I knew to be a welcoming community on the rise and eat it for breakfast. We talk about the Aro Renaissance and us coming back from the dead, but the truth is there’s been a target on our backs from the beginning. The arguments have just devolved, worsened in hostility, become circular. While 2010-2012 era discourse reads to me as less organized and less widespread, 2015-present era discourse comes across as the same systematic, formulaic discourse that tumblr is famous for; there is no nuance, and everyone involved is left feeling emptier than they did going in.

That’s not to discount its profound impact, especially on young or questioning aspecs; on the contrary, the discourse seems to have actually worsened over the years. I don’t know when dealing with this became an everyday struggle for aspecs, but no matter how hard we try to pretend we’re pushing through it, it always seems to come back down on us, harder.

The arguments involved in the ace discourse have devolved so much and become so repetitive that all potential for reasonable discussion was thrown out the window ages ago. I don’t mean to imply that the discourse was ever well-intentioned, but in the beginning there could have been some kind of mutual understanding. But those days are long behind us now.

Over time, the discourse has spread beyond tumblr. It isn’t just about tumblr drama anymore, and even the language we use to describe the discourse has changed over time to reflect that. In fact, if tumblr’s search function is to be believed, the earliest usage of #ace discourse wasn’t until 2014-2015. Tumblr has a tendency to wrap these kinds of conflicts up into neat and tidy bows, where someone could ask you for your opinions on x, y, and z discourse and you could be expected to have an answer. In 2015-2016 or so, no one even used the terms exclusionist or inclusionist, at least not as widely as they’re used now. We called people who were arguing against aspecs “ace discoursers”. Now, the exclusionist/inclusionist dichotomy, to me, suggests several things.

(1) The argument has devolved into a never-ending debate over whether or not aspecs, by virtue of being aspec, are part of the LGBTQ+ community. When you ask somebody about ace discourse, that is what they’re going to think of. But that angle destroys all of the nuance and ignores the seven or eight years of baggage that this “debate” carries with it. The discourse has never been just about who’s LGBTQ+ and who’s not. It has roots in prejudices that go so much deeper than that. It’s based in arguments that go so much deeper and get so much nastier than that.

(2) It turns the ace discourse into a piece of identity politics that you can be expected to have a stance on, regardless of your involvement. A lot of aspecs don’t want to come anywhere near the discourse or call ourselves inclusionists because it reduces our struggle to just exist in peace without being mocked, scrutinized, erased, and harassed at every possible moment to an opinion that can be changed if you debate with us enough.

(3) It makes it easier to treat the two sides of the discourse as equal. Most people involved in the discourse now weren’t involved in 2010-2012. Exclusionists are able to assert their cause as a noble one by presenting us as being on equal footing and claiming their goal is to protect the LGBTQ+ community while ignoring both the community’s history and the history of the complex and long-running discourse that they have stumbled into, one based explicitly in TERF rhetoric. Going back to my first two points, this isn’t a simple cut-and-dry “debate” between two equal sides. There is a history here that the exclusionist/inclusionist dichotomy sweeps under the rug in order to package it as something either more trivial (so aspecs are easier to mock) or as something more digestible for the uninitiated (so the discourse continues to spread beyond tumblr).

Sometimes I wonder how much of our collective aspec history got lost in the mix. I wonder if we became so focused on defending ourselves that we forgot how to make ourselves better. Sometimes I fear that somewhere along the way we lost some aspect of our radical and unapologetic origins in order to seem unimposing. There are a lot of discussions that get started now that would have been resolved years ago had none of this happened and put our community development on hold. Imagine where we could have been by now. I can only hope that, with the knowledge of how we got to this point, we can make it to wherever it was we were going.

I was reluctant to make this post, as staying quiet has always felt safer than speaking my mind. But I have been silent for four years, and I could not watch this go on anymore without saying something. Perhaps I needed the closure.

Making a change takes courage and it takes solidarity, and I think that might be what the aspec community needs most of all right now.

If anyone else has further documentation to contribute to the cause, especially if you were around 2010-2012, I’d really appreciate that. For now, I’m going to retreat back into the shadows and go back to not touching the discourse with a 10-foot pole.

#aro #aromantic #ace #asexual #aspec #disk horse #aro history #ace history #long post #i am going to regret this post #salt

[dj--horse]

Anonymous said to dj--horse:

Hi, I'm not active in discourse discussion and stuff but the other day I noticed on my dash a post that seemed fine except one TERF-y comment about "keeping bathrooms a safe space" and searched through OP's blog to confirm they were a TERF. I blocked and didn't interact with the post, but I was wondering if you think I should do anything else in the future? Is it beneficial to like reblog posts and call out the behaviour or something else? Or do you think it's best to just block and move on?

I think it’s fine to block the post. Instead’ve focusing on “did I do enough” I think perhaps it’s important instead to focus on what you do, rather than how much. Instead, maybe you block them but reblog a post about IDing TERF rhetoric. Maybe you send the reblogger you follow a small anon ask letting them know “bathroom safe space” was a dogwhistle. But keep in mind by IDing the post, you have already kept it at least from spreading a little farther, and that’s good. The biggest problem this site has with TERFs is people furthering TERF posts without realizing it, so not furthering the post is a start. It’s a small thing, but I don’t think small means meaningless or “could be better” all the time.  We can’t always go to the maximum for every post or every incident, and I think personally that’s perfectly reasonable. 

What is a good idea for doing “more” also imo depends on your own boundaries and comfort level. I know some people aren’t comfortable throwing themselves into discourse that could get them harassed, and I really don’t think that’s wrong. I myself am by no means a hugely confrontational person, so I try to focus more on circulating posts on identifying TERFs and their ideas than arguing with them, because for me it’s more comfortable and I think it’s plenty helpful. Some very wonderful people spend a lot of their time arguing against TERFs and pointing out these posts, and I will thank them endlessly for their work, but it is exhausting work not everyone can do. 

If you wish to do something like that but less exhausting, a lot of those anti-TERF blogs argue or point out with the intention of educating others, so I think you can perhaps do similar things by circulating posts about identifying TERF rhetoric and radfem politics in an attempt to better educate people/followers in general about how to identify these posts. TERFs aren’t always obvious, and even a non-TERF can accidentally use TERF or SWERF rhetoric without realizing it. Blogs like @rfidblocking point out some of these common ideas that get circulated, and it’s a great place to learn more, and I’m sure they have some good posts you will find worth reblogging, too. 

So my advice is: you’re fine, and I think focusing on education through reblogs is also a perfectly good and valid way to go about trying to negate the harm circulating that post does. So do circulating posts supporting inclusionism, support for trans people, and other positivity posts.

(My end note:

And as always with activism, please do not push yourself into things like internet debates if they make you extremely anxious or you find them negatively affecting your mental health. I’m not trying to say you should avoid activism altogether, mind you, but just that there are plenty of ways to contribute without stressing yourself out, and I think we should seek to listen to ourselves about that. It doesn’t mean we should always avoid conflict, sometimes we may have to get into it to defend those who are being affected even more negatively than we are by some discourse. But overall I think it’s good to conserve our energy for those times by seeking to focus on what we can do little by little, so when the time comes we can be there for others. Just adding this on because I think the internet already contributes so much stress to us already, and if we can minimize that while still being productive and helpful, I think we owe it to ourselves to do so.)

#fuck terfs #ask