#like i know its because people refuse to think trans people (especially trans men) exist especially like in 2014 when i came out

[lightningfilledsaber]

What is it with people falsely thinking I am/have been a lesbian

#mud rambles #i love lesbians! ive just literally never once identified as one so im like... #huh..? #three seperate occasions as well #once in high school a classmate said she thought i was 'just a d*ke lesbian' #my incestual abuser falsely told my entire dads side of the family i was no long trans and was instead a lesbian #and my mom is convinced that at one point i was a lesbian when. again. i have never once publicly OR privately identified as a lesbian #ive always been VERY open about being multisexual and just being attracted to women AND men so i just. dont understand where people #are getting this #at least w my incestual abuser it was intentional. literally just being a huge transphobe and lying #but the classmate?? i literally had been dating another boy before #and im pretty sure my mom is confusing the time my lesbian aunt tried to relate to me being trans by talking about how she used to catfish #women by pretending to be a man online #literally cornered me like 'i was ashamed of being attracted to women and pretended to be a man to feel better too' #i was straight up like 'im not ashamed of being attracted to women ive literally been open about liking women since i was like 8- #-im literally just a man [aunts name]' #i was just thinking abt it recently because it's so bizarre to me #like i know its because people refuse to think trans people (especially trans men) exist especially like in 2014 when i came out #but it's just like. ive literally never once claimed to be a lesbian and have been very open abt being a man so it's kind of ridiculous atp

[genderkoolaid]

It’s weird because I love my non-binary and genderfucked siblings, I have two friends who have “weird” “cringe” genders and I love them and I think they do gender so well. But I’m scared that by “demolishing” the gender binary, I won’t get to be a binary man anymore. What does that mean? I want people to see me on the street and think “he/him”, I want people to think of me as heterosexual when I show affection to my girlfriend. I want to be a binary man, and I don’t know how to do that in non-binary world

Playing with gender and fucking with it is good and I fully support people doing that. But I do not want to be seen as anything other than Pure 100% man, I have been constantly called “they” as a way to undermine my masculinity and refusal to gender me properly by people who know my pronouns. I don’t want to be seen as anything other than a Man. I want to be associated fully with masculinity, I don’t want to seen as a lesbian, I don’t want to be seen as anything other than a heterosexual man. Not even that I don’t want to be seen as a lesbian, I don’t want to be associated with lesbians. I’m a trans man, I’m a MAN and my attraction to women is heterosexual, and I cannot accept ideas that tell me otherwise because that would cause me to misgender myself, and I’m tired of being seen like that When I say I’m a man I don’t mean “butch boy girl lesbian” etc etc, if someone wants to be that and fuck up everything, I appreciate it, but I feel uncomfortable with them saying they’re a trans man because when I say I’m a trans man I mean a MAN as in binary man

I think its very good that you started this by acknowledging that this is a product of fear and anxiety. Its important to understand that that is where this is coming from.

You are insecure about your manhood. That is not an insult. Its entirely understandable to feel that way, especially as a trans man. There was a post a little while ago where I talked about how trans men can fall into toxic masculinity, not because its a product of being a man, but because trans men more than cis men (solely in terms of gender) have their manhood scrutinized and devalued. Manhood is a rat race & trans men are fucked over from the start, so we have to try 10x harder to be seen as Proper Men. That leads to a constant pressure to perform "proper" masculinity to the fullest extent possible to try and avoid having your manhood discredited, which can be not only emotionally damaging but legitimately dangerous.

But you need to understand, and I say this with love: this is a you problem. It is not other people's responsibility to change how they identify to soothe your insecurity about your manhood. Other people's identity, in fact, means nothing about your own. Someone else using a label you use to represent a different experience does not mean you must also share that experience, or that you cannot use that label to describe your own.

You are, understandably, fearful that your manhood (which is already constantly being scrutinized and attacked), will be further devalued if "trans man" can also mean "lesbian". You share a community and a label with those men and as a result, their genderweirdness feels dangerous. They feel like a threat to your being. This is not dissimilar to how cishet men react to visibly queer men in their communities and families: "how will people think of me, as a man, if they associate me with a man like that? I need to stop him from being a man or make him be a man right in order to protect my own manhood." This is how the patriarchy functions; make every man constantly compete with each other, under the threat of violence if they fail. Its not your fault you feel this way- you are made to feel this way on purpose because of the patriachal panopticon that makes us self-regulate- but it is your responsibility to work on yourself and resist the urge to view other men as a threat to your manhood.

"Bi lesbians" existing does not mean that people will/should assume every lesbian is bisexual, and for men to use bi lesbians as an excuse to harass lesbians is lesbophobic but not the fault of bi lesbians. In the same way, "lesbian trans men" existing does not mean that people will/should assume every trans man is a lesbian, and people using lesbian trans men (or nonbinary people for that matter) as an excuse to misgender straight trans men is transphobic but not the fault of lesbian men. In both cases, lesbians who have felt pressured to be attracted to men and trans men who have felt pressured to be lesbians see this new fusion identity as a threat to their own as a traumatic response. That fear is valid, but we need to understand that its our own fear. Its not their fault that bigots tried to pressure you to be a certain way, and their identity does not mean that those bigots were justified in any way. Other queer people are not the enemy.

If you care about your genderweird friends- and I don't doubt that you do- its important that you recognize where this fear is coming from and take steps to confront & cope with it. I don't like when people use "fragile masculinity" as an insult; fragile masculinity is part of what keeps the patriarchy running, and men with fragile masculinity need the compassion that the patriarchy will not give them. So please know that when I say you are insecure about your masculinity, I'm not saying you are doing a Bad Thing. You have been made to have a fragile masculinity as a way of controlling you, and now you need to work on healing that in order to have productive and healthy relationships with other queer people (and people in general). You can't support other queer people while also viewing them as a threat to your own manhood, even unconsciously. It requires a process of strengthening your identity as a man and not letting anyone or anything make you feel like it can be taken away because you (or someone you are associated with) Did Manhood Wrong.

You might want to check out @gay-otlc. He's a straight trans man who's talked about the issues straight trans men face, while also being supportive of lesbian trans men, and his blog might help you out with dealing with these issues. In general when it comes to identity issues, I think its very important to see and interact with other people of your identity, especially those who are confident and able to confront/cope with bigotry in healthier ways. I wish you the best, anon.

#m. #ask box

[elifinchsart]

some Tillman and Mike gender headcannons/thoughts since i have them mostly coherently typed up and they are important To Me. these are not Universal Trans Experiences just my thoughts for these characters cw for discussing transphobia, dysphoria, fatphobia & bad parents

I think Tillman absolutely did not figure out he was trans until like his early twenties. My headcannon about his mom Harmony (Crab NPC from Discipline Era), her whole thing is control + image. (This led Tillman to also feel like he needs to be in control of his image but, unfortunately it’s easier to control a bad image than a good one)

But part of Harmony's image control was appearing as a perfect rich family so Tillman was expected to dress and behave very femininely. And his thought process went “I hate wearing dresses and getting dressed up like this and I don’t know why I hate it so much. It must be because something is wrong with me and it must be because I’m ugly” + that got mixed in with his weight because I think he’s just naturally chubby/fat. So that was one of those things that’s dysphoria that you don’t realize that’s dysphoria until later. Tillman absolutely he had the trans experience of I’m going to only wear baggy hoodies and beanies lol. Anyway this all manifested into him having a very antagonistic relationship with his body and food (esp bc Harmony is v the passive aggressive “Oh you’re eating/wearing that?” sort of parent. This is also part of the reason he was nasty as a teen/young adult because he was in a lot of pain that he didn’t realize was pain-just that everything was uncomfortable and pissed him off. Figuring out that he was trans, getting top surgery and going on hrt actually helped mellow him out a lot. Being able to just Exist in his body without dressing it up to impress anyone else helped him so so much.

I think Mike was also very helpful in getting him to a better place with his body and especially food as something that should be enjoyed not rationed out or brings misery. Mike loves to make food for people so they had a bit of a roadbump when they first started dating and Tillman refused to eat much of Mike made and they had to talk about it. Mike was very patient and not pushy for once and let Tillman come around on his own. Mike also hyping Tillman up as the hottest man ever helped too LOL. I think Tillman had a lot of apprehension about transitioning wrt still being desirable which is something I’ve def felt and I know other trans men have too

I think Mike had a lot of gender emotions growing up but they never fully formed into anything understandable for him because he was like “well I’m not not a man” and he didn’t really have access to like Knowing About “Weird” Gender Identities despite knowing a trans person (Jaylen) and she only ever had Jaylen to compare to and they have very different genders haha. And then I think in college and after she kinda was like well y’know men can be feminine, men can wear dresses, it doesn’t have to be a gender thing so I’m not going to think about it too hard. I think also she had this idea that maybe she was faking it or not trans enough or people would think he was doing it for attention or to seem punk. Also incredibly stupid logic but I think she was like “I don't want to look like I'm just copying Jaylen” which is a silly thing to worry about but nevertheless. And then Blaseball happens and again he doesn’t really have time to think about it. So its only post shadowing and in therapy that she finally talks to more trans and nonbinary folks about their experiences and starts to approach it from a “what makes me happiest” pov rather than “well I'm not miserable” pov because its a very Mike thing to try to avoid being too happy as a coping mechanism. And because of all this she gets to experiment and decides he likes having a lot of gender especially if it contradicts each other (she/her pronouns on masc days, he/him while dressed femme, beard + dress etc.)

#blaseball #tillman henderson #mike townsend

[theromanswerequeerwillelaborate]

Blue Eye Samurai and Gender

I posted this to my Reddit, but wanted to put it out here too. Honestly, would make a video essay about it if I had time.

TLDR: this show does really interesting things with gender from both a modern and historical perspective.

Disclaimer 1: I am a queer person who enjoys applying a queer lens to media. I think it reveals interesting aspects of a text that are fun to engage with. If you do not like that sort of thing either for being averse to LGTBQ+ topics or just do not like analyzing media because you prefer to just enjoy a show for its "hell ya" moments, that is not a problem. I would obviously disagree with you, but there is no "right way" to engage with media and we can be respectful of each other's preferences.

Disclaimer 2: This show is set in Edo era Japan, or at least a stylized interpretation of it. Applying modern concepts of gender or modern standards and categories relating to gender must be done carefully and with caveats. As an example, the British Museum recently recategorized the emperor Elagabalus as a woman due to how that individual seems to have identified themselves. While it is cool to see recognition of queer people in history, I do not think that it is historical to say that Elagabalus was a trans woman because the category of "trans" did not exist for Romans as it does for us today. There has to be an appreciation for the historical context in which a person existed, and applying our modern lens to things is ultimately a distortion that needs to be accounted for.

Right, that being said, this show does some cool things with gender.

Off the bat, Mizu is depicted as embodying the social role of a man for the majority of the show. She dresses as a man and performs as a man in most social situations. This is necessitated for her by a number of factors. First, there is the in narrative need for her to maintain anonymity. If her pursuers and advisories see her as a man, she is able to better avoid them. Second, being perceived as male removes the bias that adversaries would have against her in battle. If they knew she was a woman, they would be less likely to be intimidated in a fight. Third, there were social barriers in the Edo period for women that Mizu needs to avoid to accomplish her mission. The most obvious example is working with Sword Father. Mizu binds her chest to seem more male while working with him. When Mizu leaves sword father, he refuses to allow her to reveal that she is a woman as this would be a socially-enforced taint on his work. In this context, it is better for Mizu to be genderless or to embody the gender of a man.

We can see this addressed further when Ringo reveals that he knows Mizu is a woman and she threatens him to not tell others. It is clear that Mizu sees the need to continue to be seen as a man to operate within her cultural context in the way that she wants to. When Mizu spars with Mikio, demonstrating her skills in a fundamentally masculine art, he calls her an "abomination." This mirrors the use of this term as it is repeatedly applied to her being of mixed ancestry. Mizu violates social norms by her mere existence and further violates them by being skilled in combat. While she can do nothing escape being of partially white ancestry, she can adopt the persona of a man to mitigate the degree to which she is perceived as an abomination, and so she does. Finally, in the climatic clash with Fowler, he discovers Mizu to be a woman, and perceives this as giving him power over her that he did not hold when they were on the equal footing of combat. The introduction of her being a woman to the scenario changes things and unbalances their dynamic.

Indeed, in most circumstances, a gender imbalance grants Fowler and other men power over women. This is seen most especially in the courtesans and other sex workers. As women and as sex workers, they are tools or things for the men to use as they see fit, to gain sexual gratification. The social norms of Edo japan dictates that women are subservient to men, and this expectation is often shown throughout the series. For this reason, Mizu sees the need to escape her woman-hood and adopt the guise of man. She transcends what should have been her social station through gender performance. We might draw a parallel to how she conceals her eyes with glasses. Just as the glasses cover an aspect of her that ought to ostracize her from society, so too does the guise of man cover her being a woman and allow her to step outside of societal limitations.

However, we can see Akemi's journey as a foil to that of Mizu's. Akemi begins her story very much trapped by the gendered expectation of her society. Her father plans to marry her off as he sees fit, and she is unable to exercise agency over her life except through placating him in a manner that conforms to gender expectations. She must play the role of a subservient daughter to get what she wants and marry Taigen. But this modicum of control is proven false when her father changes his mind and decides Taigen is unworthy and she is to marry the Shogun's son. The gendered role of subservience is seemingly proven too much for Akemi to overcome. She is trapped by it.

But then we see Akemi attempt to defy her father and strike out on her own. In that act, she finds the best way for her to actualize her desires is to again conform to a gender role, that of a courtesan. In that role, and using her sexual appeal as a tool, she is able to convince the flesh-seller to take her where she wants to go. This pathway of sexuality as a tool for agency is then reinforced Madam Kaji's business where we see sexuality as an area in which women can demonstrate power over men. It is arguable that the power they exercise here is not actual, as it is still within the framework of men receiving what they desire from the appearance of subservience to women, but the men still hold all the power in the exchange. They are the one's paying for it. It is a service and as such is something they engage with willingly and in the "real world" of day to day life women are still ultimately subservient to men. The momentary reversal of power dynamics in a way reinforces the status quo because the men chose when that role reversal happens and when it ends. (I would draw a parallel to Saturnalia ultimately acting as a reinforcement of slave/free power dynamics in ancient Rome.)

Nevertheless, Akemi has found one area in which she can exercise power. It is still within a system of patriarchy, but while she cannot escape that system she can find expressions of agency within it through her sexuality. We see this when she marries the Shogun's son and earns his trust and affection through her sexuality. The act of her doing so is framed as her backing off of an aggressive action and assuming the role of a subservient wife. Her tone of voice and word choice makes this clear. She embodies the role of the placating woman so as to better position herself to later exercise power. This is perhaps why she does not want to run away with Taigen at the end of the season. Akemi has found that she can be powerful by embodying her social role rather than by running from it. This is a clear contrast to Mizu who found power and agency by refusing the societal role of her gender.

To be clear, I am not about to argue that Mizu is trans. As I said above, that would not be historically accurate to label an Edo era person by modern categories. Moreover, while Mizu is clearly fine being seen as a man when it suits her, she never directly identifies as such. Indeed, in an exchange with Mikio, Mizu expresses that she has felt forced to embody manhood out of necessity and her mother's demands for secrecy. I am unsure if the creators of the show have commented on this, but I would argue that Mizu is cis-gendered who willingly violates gender roles of her society without that violation being part of her identity.

Finally, there are a number of points that we could find further aspects of gender being explored. Seki comments how he tried to be a good "mother" for Akemi, despite being a man. Taigen shows clear sexual attraction to Mizu despite it being ambiguous as whether he knows her to be a woman. Sexuality in general is an interesting topic for this show, as it is most often framed in terms of gendered power dynamics (as discussed above), and homosexuality only appears in contexts meant to denote sexual perversion. That and an inferred chemistry between Mizu and Akemi, but that is head-cannon territory.

I hope this is a good avenue for further discussion on this topic, and I hope we can engage in it respectfully and productively. Please, tell me your thoughts on what I have laid out and if there is anything I missed.

#blue eye samurai #media analysis #gender stuff

[bylertruther]

I think ppl mix up gnc with androgynous too! Its pretty easy to confuse in this era but the distinction is important

you're absolutely right, mal! i drafted a long post about this earlier this morning, but i'll copy and paste it below now that you gave me the opportunity to stand on my soap box again hehe. :p

gender nonconformity is not just a man painting his nails, a woman refusing to shave, or someone being transgender. gender expression and variance do not start and end at one's physical presentation, nor is it directly tied to your gender identity itself. cis people can be gnc, trans people can be gnc. you can be a man that dresses like a lumberjack and still be gnc. you can be a woman that wears makeup and still be gnc. you can transition and still be gnc after. gender nonconformity encompasses behavior, interests, and appearance, and it has to do with how an individual interacts with gender roles, which we know are based on stereotypes held at large by society—stereotypes that are still largely common today. and this is a modern definition, by the way, not one plucked from an eighties textbook. not everything is about physical appearances and just because people associate gender nonconformity with one rigid and specific thing does not mean that it is that thing. the same way that androgynous does not only mean a skinny white person that is either a butch woman or a man with long hair, gnc does not only mean said skinny white man painting his nails or said skinny white woman getting an undercut and letting her pits grow out. gnc does not HAVE to be ONLY how you groom or dress yourself. gnc has A LOT to do with behaviors and interests, and the world is not nearly as liberal as it is on tumblr.com lol. some people know better, especially as many millennials start to rear newer generations, but we're still not at an at-large cultural shift, and the gender norms discussed in psychology and psychosexual textbooks have not changed too much as a result. high levels of sensitivity and empathy are still presently seen as being aspects of male gender nonconformity. it is still something that many gay and nonconforming men, as well as their parents, state in studies and surveys about this. sensitive men still face homophobia and misogyny. american men are still expected to not show emotion, work hard, and be the big bad protectors. many people are starting to see that it's a load of bullshit, but it's still considered the norm! gender roles are culturally specific and i think it's just unrealistic to act like western culture, specifically and especially mainstream traditional american culture, doesn't promote the idea of the aggressive, red-blooded alpha male lol. i don't agree with gender norms bc i'm a dirty leftist but that doesn't mean that they don't exist and that society does not push them on everyone and punish those who dare to say no. some things have changed, but not nearly as many as people think and taking a look at how people vote or just talking to people outside of your immediate bubble will show you that pretty quickly. we're unfortunately set to wait a good while before the tides start to really change and we start seeing these less conservative views prevail. and until then... yeah, sensitive men are still assumed to be lesser men and gay and feminine and so on and so forth by young and old people alike in 2023. literally just look at the knee-jerk reaction that so many people have on here and twitter when you talk about how will actually acts on the show. i just. hewwo. gnc is not just looks 😔 and it doesn't automatically make you trans either. 😔 and unless some of you were raised in a literal bubble on a leftist commune somewhere, i know that you know that the world is not as kind and open-minded as you're acting like it is.

#asks #long post #mine #mal sends me two sentences and i send them an essay. amazing #starting to think some of u have never had coworkers who were in their 50s or interacted with someone from an immigrant family or #someone from the south or literally just anyone tht doesn't hold the same opinions and had a different upbringing / class as u lol #bc i'm only 24 and yet i saw this shit in my own lifetime. i hear ppl i go to class with and worked with say tht shit. not everyone is a #leftist with an open mind when it comes to gender!! literally look at the polls look at who we elect look at what sells and what doesn't #look at the comments literally anywhere look at how they treat noah after he came out look at how you guys talk about finn etc etc

[vtori73]

Ugh... I just, personally as a genderfluid person don't get how people seem to TRUELY believe trans masc/men are more susceptible to being misogynistic than LITERALLY anyone else. EVERYONE has the ability to be misogynistic, EVERYONE!!! I would argue cis people in general are more prone to being horribly misogynistic than any trans person, honestly. I mean... do y'all seriously forget how misogynistic white conservative women can get?

So why the fuck do y'all think trans masc/men are an extra special case that are somehow worse about it? Misogyny isn't stored in the testosterone or gender you know, if it were we wouldn't have sexist women but we do so what EXACTLY are y'all actually trying to say here???

Look, all I'm saying is the way people are speaking & treating trans masc/men feels & looks no differently to how people treat bi people, ace people, etc. It just feels like y'all found a new acceptable target to punch down or sideways at because why is it that trans masc/men seem to be singled out for supposed "bad" things they do that aren't at all limited to them BUT also at the same time are ignored anytime anyone brings up the specific oppression and problems they face. And what's extra "funny" about all this is that it all comes from the same place, terf/rad fem talking points that y'all REFUSE to actually learn from & finally move past!!!!

Again, this especially reminds me of talking points people use against bisexuals, specifically bisexual women, because of our assumed proximity to men we get treated like we're sapphic traitors regardless of who we are dating and are told we have to make sure we aren't prioritizing men even though ANYONE has the capacity to do that (romantic/sexual relationship aren't the only ones that exist you know) yet for SOME reason we are told we have to stay vigilant & watch ourselves & who we are with because we can put the fragile pure sapphics who don't date men in danger & that we are basically asking for it if anything happens to us because our our assumed proximity to men. It's all just so *screams internally* ...frustrating.

I've come to honestly distrust a lot of the online queer community because of this, no, not specifically because of anti transmasc/men sentiment but because of this continued refusal to dig deeper and learn about/from the past & queer politics and finally learn to see the patterns of infighting and bigotry repeat themselves because NONE of this is new!!!!!! All of this basically has its roots in political lesbianism (if your queer & don't know anything about political lesbianism you should, but basically the gist is they were a group of straight women who infiltrated the lesbian community & kicked out anyone who wasn't basically a pure lesbian & spouted ideas about ANY involvement with men was a betrayal to each other/the group & very sexist puritanical beliefs/ideas on sex & the damage caused from that still lives on today. It just takes on a slightly new form when it gets exposed again & again but so few of you learn from this shit and seem to forget immediately what it once looked like and just happily continue the cycle because shitting on other queer people is easier & more fulfilling to yall than actually doing something productive for the overall community).

I've also said this before on a different post but y'all lumping in trans men with cis men to talk about how much "privilege" we have is not at all progressive especially since it's the only time you ever bother to remember trans men/masc people exist. Say it with me, trans men cannot and never will have the privilege cis men have because that is not how our whiteallocisheteropatriarchal society works. Trans people are not desired or wanted in our society & thus do not have or are given the same privilege that cis men get for being CIS, same with men of color, disabled men, etc. Can marginalized men punch sideways or down at people that are equal to or less privileged than them? Yes, but... that's not unique to us specifically, not even close, & honestly the people I believe we should be most concerned about leveraging their power over others & being a hindrance to the community/our liberation is any white queer person/ally, I mean even Silvia Rivera basically said this.

It honestly happens all the time too, especially in these vast instances of infighting because white people do not like acknowledging they have the capacity to oppress others and want to believe they have no privilege because of their other marginalized identities like being queer. It's no different from the allocishetero white people who do this in other marginalized spaces they are supposedly being allies in only the marginalized white people can't & refuse to see the privilege they have for being white because it didnt/doesn't protect them from the bigotry they face for their marginalized identity/ies. The white privilege they were promised at birth doesn't shield them as much as they were expecting it would and thus refuse to believe they have any at all because of it.

Oh, and also on a related note passing privilege isn't really a legit thing or is a concept I at least refuse to entertain. If you have to hide who you are in order to pass which is something that's not even accessible to all that many trans people in general it wasn't/isn't really all that much of a privilege to begin with meaning it's conditional and thus null in void. Personally I feel this is just white people pushing the blame off of them & their white privilege onto this so called "passing privilege.

...

(Read more below because the thoughts below aren't as articulated as I would hope so while I stand by them I'm probably not explaining them well enough for others to understand)

It's also a continued way to punch sideways/down at other identities and people they don't like & refuse to understand such as bi, pan, ace, aro, trans, enby & whoever else despite the fact that many seem to glaringly ignore a hole in their logic that if passing privilege is real legit concept then anyone who isn't allocishetero can obtain it, not just identities you THINK can pass more easily. If other queer people can choose to pass so easily then everyone else has the capacity to do so as well. It's not really all that different from the argument made by homophobes that gay people choose to be gay, if it's such a choice why would it be so much harder for you to ignore who you are to gain/maintain this so called privilege then? And, not to mention this concept can't exist in a vacuum, many other factors can affect "passing" that is hard/impossible for specific marginalized groups and will be heavily influenced by white patriarchal ideals. Those able to obtain this so called privilege the easiest would, again, be white middle/upper class people & yet this concept is used willy nilly on huge swats of groups that are full of a various individuals who can't really obtain or access "passing privilege" but are treated like they can.

Tbf, when I say this it's based more so on my location/the IS and some of this may apply less in other areas around the world but regardless i do believe anyone can gain passing privilege so long as you hide who you are which in my eyes makes it a useless concept then because having to live your life a lie doesn't really seem all that much of a privilege especially since it can and will be revoked if you get exposed and may even lead to extreme harassment or violence.

[indielowercase]

white trans woman refusing to discuss the nuance of race. being a white woman means they still have privilege over even cis black men and other men of color. when they refuse to consider that in these conversations that thats racism. openly talking about how they hate all men including other queer men/masc folks, men of color, disabled men all men who face bigotry at the hands of society makes them a bigot

being trans doesnt erase their whiteness and the only people i see using tme/tma have been racist white trans people funny how the trans women of color i know never use those terms and how its extremely common that those terms are used to harm and harass trans masc/men especially those who are not white and how trans men and yes even cis men still face misogyny at the hands of society. it goes hand in hand with homophobia. the tme/tma binary is also transphobic to people who are intersex and non binary

transmisogyny exists and is terrible and the solution isnt being horrible to other trans people who have different experiences cause again thats a very white and usually american way of thinking cause god forbid other cultures and how they deal with things exist

ok i'm back from sleep and work

so this is opinion, not proof. you haven't given me anything i could use to confirm this for myself. while i understand why you'd want to send these on anon, all that together makes me considerably less likely to take you on your word.

with just the info provided and gleaning from conversations i've read, it sounds like you're discussing her individual privilege over another individual in discussion on tumblr. this doesn't tell me anything about the actual interaction. saying a white trans woman has privilege over a black cis man is uhhhhhhhh questionable at best we'll say. she may have been racist, the other party may have been misogynist towards her. neither may have happened and one, the other, or both could have just been assholes. i have no idea.

your personal interactions with people aren't the only ones that happen, online or otherwise. i've seen very thoughtful discussions of tme/tma as tools in certain contexts to discuss structural (not individual) oppression of trans women that doesn't happen on a larger scale or systemically to people who are not trans women. then again i've seen it listed alongside other identity markers in people's bios (always tme not tma tho), which makes me feel weird because it's like saying "antiblackness exempt" instead of your race so like there's that. it's useful as a description of transmisogyny specifically but not as like an identity category that's fucking weird but that's also not how i've seen it used the majority of the time (this may be a personal experience difference between us)

i haven't seen it used as a cudgel against trans men. i have seen trans men use it in discussion while trying to claim transmisogyny effects them too (always within the context of discussion of transmisandry) which is something i don't understand at all. i'm a trans man in a pink collar job and while the pay gap for a man working in elementary education (me) or as a nurse (not me) effects any man working in that field, i think it would be weird and inaccurate to say we experience misogyny because of that. this sounds nitpicky but being effected by it vs being the target/experiencing a particular bigotry or structural bias feels like an important distinction to me. the structural forces of bigotry are used as a method of social control, yes, much like homophobia and racism. it's a tool used to make sure "we" aren't too much like "them" because being "them" is bad (because we treat them badly and also their identity category is incapable of doing anything outside of what we prescribe to it.)

or, put another way, white people aren't structurally effected by anti-asian racism because kids at comedian john mulaney's elementary school were racist to him because they thought he looked asian.

nothing here aligns with any terf ideas. someone saying they hate men does not a terf make. if you mean gender essentialist please say so instead.

i would like to say, you're damn right the solution isn't to be horrible to other trans people.

#anon #sorry for bringing up john mulaney that just felt succinct #pretty much all online hate i've gotten for being trans has assumed i'm a trans woman and immediately brought up my hypothetical genitals #that does not mean i have ongoing structural experience of transmisogyny #really not sure what to do with that last part those seem like broader ideas that need more space than we might have in this ask discussion

[a-dragons-journal]

i dont "kin for fun" but through tiktok i found out about the whole kin for fun vs actual otherkin... situation ig? im having a really hard time taking it seriously... maybe im just burnt out and bitter from dealing with the worlds current events, and maybe its because on tiktok the only people i saw mad about it were white people, but you're the most reasonable person ive seen talking about it (a lot of other posts have this odd tone that 12 year olds on tiktok saying kin is the worlds greatest opression and it weirds me out) so ig my question is just... why exactly does this matter? why does it matter enough to post about and care about and not just ignore? /gen

Hey! I don’t blame you for being a bit weirded out by it, we’re a weird subculture and we’re well aware of it! xD I appreciate you taking the time to actually look into it past your first knee-jerk reaction, especially considering burnout and the state of things.

I’m not totally sure if you’re asking why otherkinity matters or why the “kin for fun” being wrong matters, so I’ll answer both - they’re pretty well tied together anyway.

The short version:

Otherkinity is an identity. It’s who we are, we can’t choose to pick it up or put it down, and it comes with struggles - though no, ‘kin are not systematically oppressed (though we are pretty badly bullied and, at this point, pushed out of our own words and spaces).

What people calling roleplay/relating to/projecting onto characters “kinning for fun” does is steal our words, make them meaningless, and in doing so, make it difficult or impossible for us to find each other. If someone says “I kin [x],” I no longer know whether they mean “I am [x] on an intrinsic level” or “haha I relate to this character a lot”. I no longer know whether they actually share my experiences or if they’re going to turn on me and call me “crazy” as soon as they realize I’m not exaggerating or joking or roleplaying. It’s done massive harm to the community as a whole because it’s become difficult to tell whether someone is actually ‘kin or if they’ve misunderstood the whole thing - and because antikin rhetoric, which I’m seeing more and more in KFF spaces, hurts far more when it’s coming from inside what you thought was a community space than when it’s coming from self-labeled “antikin.”

There are other words for roleplaying and relating to and projecting onto characters. Hell, there are words for strongly identifying with-but-not-as characters/things, though usually KFF people don’t even seem serious enough for those to fit in my experience. I’m really not sure why these people are so determined to steal and misuse our words, words that were specifically created to mean something else, when they already have their own and are just refusing to use them. (Or, hell, if you don’t feel like those fit, make your own. We did. It’s your turn to put in the work. (General you, not you-the-anon, of course.))

An analogy, if that still doesn’t quite land for you:

Consider, for a moment, the transgender community. I am aware this is a dangerous thing to say, but bear with me. Obvious CW for hypothetical transphobia up ahead is obvious.

Consider if you were part of the trans community (I don’t know if you are or not), having finally found a word to explain why you feel the way you do about yourself, why your experiences don’t seem to match up with those of everyone else around you. Having found a community, a home, full of other people like you, people you never would have met if not for words like “transgender” and “gender dysphoria/euphoria” that were created specifically to describe your experiences.

Now consider if people suddenly stumbled across your community for the first time who were not trans themselves. They see community jokes and lighthearted posts out of context, because Tumblr and Twitter aren’t exactly conducive to making sure people find the Transgender 101 information posts first. They don’t bother to do further research, assuming they understand: ah, these people like to crossdress! They like to pretend they’re a different gender! This seems like a fun hobby, I want in!

They begin to post things like this. They post photos of them crossdressing and caption them “hi, I’m [name], and I trans men!” and things of the like. Suddenly the concept of “transing for fun” seems to be everywhere - and it’s not at all what being trans actually is, but these people either don’t know or don’t care. When actual trans people try to politely correct them, they’re accused of “gatekeeping” - and to be clear, this is not “nonbinary people aren’t real,” it’s “transgender means you identify as a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth, and you’re self-identifying as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% and telling us this is just a fun hobby for you, therefore you’re not trans, you’re crossdressing or doing drag or being GNC. That’s fine, but it’s not being trans - you have other words to describe that, use those.”

(Yes, I am aware these things have a history with the trans community - please just ignore that for the sake of the analogy and bear with me on the slightly simplified version of this. “Kinning for fun” does not have that same history with the otherkin community.)

...And then the response to those attempted corrections, in some corners, turns into “wait, you ACTUALLY think you’re another gender? idk that sounds pretty unhealthy, maybe you should see a psychologist or something :\” and “you’re taking this too seriously.”

I imagine, in this hypothetical scenario, you’d also be pretty fuckin peeved.

(Obviously, in this hypothetical scenario, systematic transphobia would be an issue as well, which isn’t the case for otherkin - again, you’re gonna have to bear with me on the simplification for sake of analogy there.)

(EDIT: this is not an anti-MOGAI/exclusionist argument, this is “you’re literally telling me you don’t fit the definition,” explanation on that here)

The long version, which is probably still worth reading if you have the time and energy:

Otherkinity is... pretty core to who I am, who we as a group of individuals are. We live with being otherkin on a daily basis. Many of us spent a long time feeling different and disconnected and not understanding why until we found the otherkin community. Even people like me, who don’t share that experience and still had social connection - I’ve still had to live with weird differences that I had to learn to mask when necessary; instincts that don’t line up with human society well, feeling body parts that weren’t there and that no one else ever seemed to have, things that other kids grew out of because it was just make-believe for them and I... didn’t, because it was never make-believe for me to begin with. Oh, sure, I played make-believe too - I played warrior cats and house and all those things with the other kids, but there were things that weren’t play-pretend for me too. I didn’t have an explanation for it for a long time - it was just how I was, I was weird, and fortunately for me personally I was okay with that (many of those with species dysphoria or more trouble connecting with humans have more problems from that than I did).

And then I found the word “otherkin.” And suddenly everything fell into place, and I had an explanation for the things I’d been experiencing, and there were other people like me. Something I’d assumed didn’t exist. I found others who shared my unique experiences, who were talking about how to cope with the instinct to growl or snap jaws at people instead of expressing annoyance in a human way instead of just saying “that’s weird, don’t do that”, who were talking about dealing with phantom wings and tails, who understood me. I wasn’t weird, I wasn’t broken, I was exactly what one would expect from a dragon living in human skin. I found an explanation for myself. I found a home.

That is why otherkinity matters - it is who we are, it’s not something we can walk away from (certainly not most of us, anyway), and it’s something many of us need the support of the community to help deal with on a daily basis. Being a nonhuman in human society isn’t always easy, but it’s not something we can just magically stop being - it’s core to who we are, we (generally) didn’t choose to be this way, and we (generally) can’t choose to stop. Which is fine - the vast majority of us can cope with it just fine, with a little advice and help and space to be our authentic selves in. We found each other, we built this community from the ground up to make a space and words to make finding each other easier - or possible at all.

Thus we come to the second half of our story.

It was only a couple of years ago that the “kin for fun” trend started getting big. It had existed before that, of course, but it only started going mainstream two, maybe three years ago, from what I can tell. Suddenly people were treating “kin” like it meant relating to, projecting onto, roleplaying as, or just really really liking a character or thing - not being that thing, which is what it actually means. Not long after that, it became hard to tell whether someone saying “I kin this” meant they were that thing, that they were actually part of our community - or that they really really liked that thing and either didn’t know or couldn’t be bothered to learn that that wasn’t the case for us.

Not long after that, it became relatively commonplace to hear phrases like “otherkin are ruining kinning!!” and “you’re taking this too seriously” and “idk, if it’s that serious for you that sounds unhealthy. maybe you should get some help :\” (all directly quoted, or as exactly quoted as I can remember, from things KFF people have said to me or people I know).

It is a special kind of hell, I think, to be told “you’re taking this too seriously, that’s unhealthy” by people who are taking words created to describe your experiences, not theirs, and misusing them to mean something that you do for fun on a weekend instead of something that’s intrinsic to your being.

Perhaps more importantly, like I’ve said, it’s making it almost impossible to know whether someone who says “I kin [x]” is actually ‘kin or if they’re misusing our words to mean something else entirely. The entire point of words is to communicate ideas, and once you start misusing words to mean something totally different than what they actually mean, that communication falls apart and suddenly we might as well not have those words at all. Especially when the community is small enough and obscure enough that we’re starting to be outnumbered by the misinformation. We’re being run out of our own words, words we created to describe our experiences specifically - because we’re a small community that the wider internet can easily drown out by sheer numbers of people who either don’t know any better or don’t care to learn.

That’s the harm it does - the harm it is doing, right now. That’s why it’s important enough to post about. That’s why it matters - because we’re fighting desperately to hang onto our own words so that others like us can actually find us. Because we’re seeing young nonhumans go “this isn’t a kin, I actually am this” and screaming “No, I’m so sorry that this is what the misinformation has done to you, that’s exactly what otherkin means, you have a place here, please don’t let these non-’kin misusing our words drive you away from the very community you’re looking for and that you belong in.” Because we can’t even communicate effectively about our own experiences anymore except in semi-closed spaces like Discord servers and forums (and the number of Discord servers overrun with KFF people is absurd).

......This got very long. Hopefully it at least explained why it matters so much to me and others a bit better ^^; Thanks for hearing me out, and thank you again for looking into this beyond your initial knee-jerk reaction - I really do appreciate it.

(For further reading, if that text wall didn’t blow you out of the water completely, I recommend my “kin for fun” tag, which has more posts like this in both short and long form.)

#probably should've put this under a cut but oh well #otherkin #kin for fun #kinnie #kinning #rani talks #asked and answered #anonymous #rani talks A LOT apparently sbfldkngjlksdf #i have a lot of feelings on this #long post

[nothorses]

This thread on Twitter (also give @Azure_Husky a follow!!)

Linked Article Transcript below

Content warnings for transphobia against transmasculine people, including violence and harassment It's easy to say that transmasculine people get male privilege and face less oppression than many other trans people, but only if you don't actually listen https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/9/1877651/-There-is-a-hidden-epidemic-of-violence-against-transmasculine-people

I hear pretty constantly from transmasculine people about the violence they face from cis people and the erasure, condescension, and "suck it up, you're the oppressor now" attitudes they get from other trans people. 

We are failing the transmasculine parts of our communities. We are failing our brothers and masculine siblings. We need to get better at listening to transmasculine people's concerns and working together rather than fostering hierarchies of oppression within transness 

Once transness is involved, shit gets complicated. Simple responses of "misandry doesn't exist because men have the power" assume transmasculine people have access to the same privileges as average cis men when frequently they don't. 

One of the saddest things about being someone who talks about this is that i regularly get transmasculine people giving heartfelt thanks for the smallest mentions of their needs & concerns bc they're so used to transfeminine people ignoring their existence or being antagonistic 

We need to do better. I refuse for some of us trans people to base our fights for equality and justice by stepping on the needs of other trans people. 

I see transfeminine people I care about and respect who will sometimes share "let's make a world without men" type things and like I have had these feelings too, I struggle under misogyny and have a bunch of bad experiences with (cis, especially but not exclusively) men. *and*- 

- i've seen too many of my transmasculine siblings' hurt as they are constantly lumped into "just as bad as cis men" baskets (which I also have feelings about but is a larger topic I think) & have heard from too many transmasculine people who have spent years in denial bc of this 

I've heard from too many transmasculine people who have put off transitioning, tried to avoid accepting their gender, because they internalized the constant stream of this shit. And I love trans people too fucking much to keep letting it go. 

I get that for many of our communities there can be some incredible trauma around masculinity, either because it was enforced on us against our will or due to violence and/or sexual assault. And i don't debate the validity of that trauma. 

And also we can't extrapolate our trauma into "this segment of trans people, by virtue of their gender, is worth less (or worthless)". 

I mean if we want to dig into it, a lot of us transfeminine people get attacked by transphobes under the auspices of trauma regarding specific genitals or gender expressions or body types. And most of us can agree that their trauma doesn't mean they get to denigrate us. 

Honestly I'm tired. And also I acknowledge that my tiredness about this cannot be even a mild fraction of the exhaustion of the trans people targeted and erased by this must be. 

So I'm calling on y'all and asking you to please do better by *all* trans people. I get the joy and relief in venting about men. I do. We live in a misogynistic society and a lot of us suffer under the hands of a specific gender and sometimes we need an outlet. 

But at the very least please be aware of when your venting is in a public space where it *is* going to harm and affect others, and specifically other trans people (since I don't have the spoons to get into a larger discussion about cis men currently) 

Know that every time we make vent-jokes (or not jokes) about how everyone who is masculine is worthless to us, we are directly damaging other trans people, and possibly painfully forcing some to deny themselves or stay closeted because who would want to become The Enemy, right? 

And I feel like I *have* to keep talking about this because if transmasc people stick up for themselves, I see how often they get shot down as just another "not all men" concern troll or like they're trying to talk over feminine people 

Hell I've seen threads where a transmasc person starts the thread to talk about transmasc issues and *still* people have declared it derailing or speaking over others. How do we address their oppression if they aren't allowed to discuss it anywhere? 

So as a transfeminine person I've got allyship privilege here where I may be condemned as having internalized misogyny or being an assimilationist or something but at least I can't be seen as just another dude talking over women

(i use the binary language there thoughtfully bc a lot of these Us vs Them dichotomies tend to erase nonbinary people or pretend that all nonbinary people are centre or feminine of centre on the gender spectrum) 

Just. Do better. Please. Like. Just listen to transmasculine people with an open heart for a bit and hear the intense transphobia and discrimination they also face and consider the impact of your words on them. 

It sucks to see people who are generally caring and thoughtful about many types of oppression just.. Let it all go when a chance to lump transmasc people in with The Enemy comes up. 

Addendum: I've had a couple people express concern that I'm saying that transfeminine people shouldn't address when they are facing transmisogyny from transmasculine people and I hope that it is clear that isn't what I am saying at all. 

Transmasculine people can be transmisogynistic, absolutely! I've had experiences with that too. What this thread is about is the fact that for *some* people, transmasculine people as a whole are considered less marginalized by dint of their masculinity and it isn't that simple. 

So saying broad statements about transmasculine people isn't "punching up". Its horizontal violence if it's coming from other trans people or can be punching down if it's coming from cis people. That is what this thread is meant to address. 

By all means we should be discussing and addressing transmisogyny. But transmasculine people discussing the specifics of their own concerns isn't in and of itself transmisogyny. We do no one any favours by trying to silence that. 

This thread isn't about transfeminine people never speaking ill of transmasculine people or vice versa. Its about calling-in a specific subset of transfeminine communities for treating transmasculine people as a whole as disposable and The Enemy.

#trans #trans rights #transmasc #transgender #trans man #not horses

[thatfunkyopossum]

Why do those posts only ever mention trans women and (almost) never trans men?

Hm.... i notice it too. Its difficult to say, but dmab trans feminine people are, in my experience as a trans man, the most visible (and most poorly treated by outside society) trans subgroup.

Society at large seems to pretend trans men don’t exist (to the point where i wonder how many average people seem to even know that trans men do), and often it parades around trans women like circus freaks for the entertainment of cis folk, het or LGB.

Trans men and women are treated somewhat differently from one another. My theory is the treatment of trans women is notably more violent and aggressive, so socially progressive spaces focus on trans women. It could also be in part due to trans women being vocal about not being heard at all, and the community severely overcorrecting.

Another perception that i’ve seen (even from other trans men) is that trans men aren’t deserving of the same attention as trans women, because we as a group have contributed little if anything to the fight for our rights. I can’t confirm... or dispute this. In all of my time on this website, approaching 10 years now dear god, i have no recollection of people championing trans men. I have no memory of our history being spoken of.

Even the history we do have is stolen from us by cis women who refuse to believe that not every “woman” who dressed up as a man for his whole life is actually a woman. Or often if they do, they deny its importance. You can hear yourself if you listen to the podcast Sawbones (which is good but... unkind, to trans men and nb folk) in the episode on Dr James Barry, a man who lived his entire adult life as a man, and was only revealed to be dfab after his death when his wishes were directly violated and his body undressed, Dr Sydnee McElroy, a cis woman, say that it doesn’t matter if he was trans or actually a cis woman.

It does matter. It does. The word transgender was born to describe an experience that we have lived for millennia.

Another contributing factor could be an unfortunate side effect of most people’s perception of how to treat trans people, then mixed with feminism’s perspective on the opinions of the catch all term “men.” Note, i AM a feminist.

You know the dance. Do not refer to trans people in the past as “when they were a man/woman”. Do not say “when he was a she” or “when she was a he”. Do not do this. You know the phrase: they were always their gender.

The reason i bring this up? Is that cis people (especially cis women) and trans women, which i have experienced first hand from both, rationalize it like this: if trans people have always been their gender, and trans men are men, then trans men have always been men, so trans men have exactly the same societal perspectives and behavioral issues that cis men have, and should be treated exactly like cis men.

And if trans men are basically cis men, and cis men can’t talk about the experiences of women, trans men can’t either. If cis men don’t know about the consequences of living as a woman, trans men don’t either. If cis men talking about what they think and they feel takes away from the voices of women in feminist discourse, then so does trans men talking about their feelings. So trans men, and cis men, are men. And men are unwelcome. We’re tired of the voices of Men, and all that that entails.

So the consequence is trans men cannot speak. We cannot share our experiences about being treated as women. We cannot, essentially, share our experiences BEING women and girls. Trans men share in the traumatic experience of being born a woman, to society. We share the childhood violence that is performed against girls. We know it. But it is denied. If we acknowledge it, we weaken the idea that trans people were always their true gender. So we stay quiet. Our unique trauma and perspectives are lost.

The consequence is the voices of trans men fade from the record, and we cannot engage with our community without being treated as a Diet Cis Man. We cannot engage, so many of us withdraw. The experiences of trans men are not shared, because theyre not respected.

The consequence is we are forced to stay quiet by every community we’re in, and people quickly forget that we’re even there, let alone that being a trans man is still massively traumatic in this society.

The consequence is they don’t think we’re worth mentioning.

#trans #trans man #trans men #i felt less alone when i identified as an aroace woman than i do now that i know im a gay trans man

[pattern-recognition]

i don’t know if it’s internalized transmisogyny, my having spent a long time living with cis women, or just my own anxiety and mild agoraphobia but the prospect of a relationship with another trans girl sort of scares me. I think i blend in relatively well, but regardless i’m consistently hyperaware of every social situation i’m in, to a sometimes exhausting degree, and i fear that traveling in a pair would feel like lighting a fire in enemy territory, a beacon for hostility. it makes me feel like a particularly egregious hypocrite, though, because i criticize straight men for similar behavior, for their refusal to ever engage with a trans woman not so much because they see us as men, though that’s often the case, but because they could never allow the gaze to view them and us as entwined, equivalent, and unrepentant. i hate to say it, but living around cis people, especially my friend group of mostly cis girls, is extremely comforting in its own peculiar way; like i’m a brood parasite in a foreign nest or shrouded in a smokescreen. Whenever i see another trans woman i feel like i’m catching a glimpse of another rare, endangered animal; us two some of the last of our kind, but with solitary, presocial instincts that make a more prolific population an impossibility, even without the predators. something more might be made by coming together, a new clan, a new pact, but simultaneously it opens up the danger to lose what meager existence has already been scraped out if two birds are hit by the same stone.

[rwbyconversations]

The Scarlet Letter: Let’s talk about RWBY’s male LGBT rep

I have been sitting on this post for nearly four weeks waiting until the 15th due to the Before the Dawn spoiler rules.

So let's start with a blunt statement: RWBY's male LGBT representation has not been good. If the series' handling of female LGBT rep is good (which... well there's worse shows) and the general standard for how you write LGBT characters in a show like this, its handling of male rep has been... how not to. And Before the Dawn kinda solidified the idea in my head that the show's handling of its male LGBT cast just isn't good enough, either by the standards of when RWBY began in 2013, or today in 2020 when compatively massive steps have been taken over the past decade to show a more diverse list of characters... or at least a more diverse list of female characters.

I don't wanna make this a pissing match over how over-or-under-represented male or female LGBT characters are, but I feel like it's safe to say that the majority of the trend-setters for modern romances, especially in western animation, have been between women. Korra and Asami from Korra, Chloe and Max from Life is Strange, Marceline and Bubblegum in Adventure Time, (insert the relevant Steven Universe characters here, never watched it), and more recently, Adora and Catra in She-Ra and Luz in Owl House.

Compatively, while studies have shown that in general male LGBT characters get more appearances on a purely numerical level, in general they're more one-off characters there to pad a roster, or played more for comedy (see Josh Gad in the Beauty and the Beast remake or the gay guy in Avengers Endgame that was more notable for how hard China and Russia snapped him out of existance). The only big male-LGBT focused media I can think of from the last decade would be Yuri On Ice, Moonlight, IDW's Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye (Chromedome/Rewind best pairing fuck you Roberts for issue 16) Love Simon, and the anime adaptation of Banana Fish.

So it's no surprise that RWBY basically follows these ideas. It's big romance is (unless the writers are very stupid) going to be between Blake and Yang, their first out character was Ilia, Coco got sent to the Book Dimension where she confirmed "I use my sunglasses to perv on women without their knowledge" which uh... yeah you can definitely tell RWBY is written by men... and Volume 6 had Saph and Terra being a good example of an LGBT couple without any real drama. In the last three years alone, the show has drastically increased its lesbian and bisexual characters, alongside even including its first out trans character in May Marigold (albeit only revealed on Twitter). In general, these depictions of sexuality have been pretty OK. Would have liked it if Ilia wasn't immediately written out of the show after Volume 5 as it made her feel a bit more disposable than intended but whatever, subject for another day.

RWBY's male rep though is a bit spottier. There's the plant bois in Volume 5's premiere, we nearly had Pilot Boi until some last-minute revisions, and... Scarlet.

Why Scarlet's a bad launchpad for male LGBT rep

I don't like Scarlet or how his sexuality has been handled. Scarlet's homosexuality wasn't revealed in the show, or by the writers, or even in anything that's actually canon. He's confirmed gay in his sole of dialogue in a non-canon fan anthology, where the manga's Twitter team had to say that Miles suggested the idea and approved of it.

In short, Scarlet is Dumbledore'd, where his sexuality is revealed in out-of-show material and in a way that doesn't make it supremely obvious (Miles himself never commented to confirm this so this news was limited in how far it could spread. I'm genuinely curious how many people still don't know Scarlet's gay), and Scarlet himself is a nothing character who was written out of the show after Volume 3 and only reappeared in Before The Dawn, half a decade after he vanished. Compared to Ilia, as this came out after Ilia's entire arc in Volume 5, it's not a great starting point for mlm rep. But things would have been forgiven if it had gotten better, if the show did have more male LGBT characters introduced, even just on the Saphron/Terra level of just being around for a few episodes before leaving. Then it would have been a misfire but then we could all say "Things got better."

It... didn't. Which is why when Before the Dawn released in 2020, a full two years after Scarlet was first confirmed gay, while the franchise had more than doubled its wlw rep, Scarlet remained the one male character in the entire franchise who had a name and liked men. I remember vividly a fake leak for After The Fall which claimed Yatsuhashi would come out to Velvet and admit to having a crush on Fox. And I remember as well how many people were disappointed when it was said to be false, because it would have been nice for Yatsuhashi's character, especially after the fleshing out he gets in the CFVY books. If Yatsu had come out as gay in the books I'd like his writing enough to say he's a good case for rep, albeit with the caveat of "This is all in side material." But in reality, the leak was fake and Coco was confirmed gay instead.

Unfortunately, Before the Dawn proceeded to ruin Scarlet and made me at times feel genuinely uncomfortable as a queer man! Let's talk about that.

Before The Dawn is crap and Scarlet's writing is borderline offensive

I hate Before the Dawn. It's... bad. I read it while on a vacation and the only solace I had about the entire thing was that I'd bought an M&M chocolate bar. The bar was finished before the book. That bummed me out. It's not a very well written book, the prose is very Early 2010s YA Writer, none of the characters are memorable and there's various Fun Incidents like "NGDO using children as bait for Grimm," and "Neptune's hydrophpobia being used as a threat to torture him and the scene is played for comedy."

Theo was cool. I can't wait to see him as written by good writers, he should be a highlight of the Vacuo arc.

I had two hopes for Before the Dawn- "Don't be bad," and "Let Scarlet and Sage be well written." I'd liked how After The Fall had handled some of its characters (barring, y'know, Coco perving on women), especially Fox and Yatsu who were surprising in how much I liked them. I was looking forward to seeing Myers give Sage and Scarlet similar treatment- two relatively nothing characters meant he'd have a blank slate to write them however he wanted, he could give them unique personalties and if nothing else it could be cool to see their Semblances.

And then I read the book. (Sage fans I am so sorry for you, you got baited harder than Johnlock fans)

Scarlet's a giant dickhead in the book. It's his sole character trait and his inner monologues go on, and on, and on about how much he hates Sun, how he revels in mocking him. Most of his dialogue is sarcastic put-downs about Sun and how lame he is, and Sun is never properly allowed to defend himself or point out how going with Blake meant he was able to help save Haven Academy.

(hey remember when Sun in Volume 6 expressly says to Blake "I was a bad leader for ditching Neptune and the others, and I need to work on that" only for Before the Dawn to have him staunchly refuse to accept that he let the team down? I don't think Myers did but I do)

Scarlet being a ratty bitch would be one thing if, again, the franchise had done more rep. He'd still be a badly written character, but it wouldn't sting as much. But because Scarlet is still the only expressly confirmed male LGBT character in canon (the book teases that Nolan is gay but there's never confirmation either way beyond him smiling at Scarlet), it means that he has to represent that entire ideal. So when the one gay man in Remnant is being an asshole and a snide loser, that means that by extension, this is how the franchise sees gay men. And that fucking sucks! I wanted to come out of Before The Dawn singing its praises, I wanted to like the book, but it was a massive letdown, especially coming off of the other big 2020 RWBY controversy involving gay characters.

Yeah. We're doing this.

Clover and Fair Game: Technically not queerbaiting. BUT:

Let's pre-empt this: Clover wasn't queerbaiting, and Fair Game, while cool and I dig it, kudos to them for becoming one of the top 5 RWBY pairings on AO3 in one year that's fucking impressive (I say with mild malice as an IronQrow main), never had a chance. The writing never seriously boosted it barring one interaction which was flirty (them talking in the lobby of the Schnee Manor), and everything else was out of show boosting through the social media teams and CRWBY hyping it themselves by saying they liked it. If you wanna blame people, blame the animators who went off-script with stuff like Kim Newman adding the wink as a deliberate nod to the Volume 4 waitress, or the social media team deliberately using the same policies for Fair Game as they do for Renora and Bumblebee.

It wasn't Eddy's fault that things escalated, and he himself has said that in retrospect, he should have warned people that this never had a shot.

But I can't blame the Fair Game fanbase. Because Fair Game took off like wildfire. It came right as the fanbase began seriously asking for more male rep, Qrow's pretty hot, and the Clover wink came right after the Great IronQrow Reawakening of November 9th, 2019. The rocket was primed, and they rode it to the moon. Finally, to these people, after seven years RWBY seemed to be doing something with mlm rep in show. People started getting into RWBY just for Clover and Qrow's interactions. And if heroes were boring, Watts and Tyrian also had a fantastic dynamic that made Nuts and Volts one of the more popular villain ships overnight. Things seemed to be turning around! RWBY was remembering that gay men existed! You could hear the choir sing!

... And for those people, that meant that episode 12 hit like Truck-Kun.

People got pissed. People were horrified. And it didn't help that some members of CRWBY had said in the build-up that episode 12 would have some shots that made them nauseous (probably the Tyrian thumb thing) Out of context, it looked to these fans like CRWBY were basically laughing at their suffering, like they were saying "Lol, you thought you had a chance, get fucked, I hope your vomit burns on the way up."

Yeah, Fair Game was never gonna be canon, and I think some people ran too far with it. But in the wider context of how desperate RWBY's mlm community had gotten for basic crumbs of content? I can see why they'd run with what they had. The writers aren't at fault for what happened, but CRWBY didn't help matters. And that desperate mix of what felt like official backing from the crew, jokes about how cute the ship was, and the hope that finally the show would have onscreen rep? I can see why people ran with it.

So why is the show more lackluster in depicting mlm characters?

Money. Let's be honest, most RWBY fans don't care if the show doesn't have good male rep. I'm willing to bet some of you reading this won't care and just dismiss it as not being that big a problem. I don't think the writers care if the show doesn't have good mlm rep because they're not poaching that market. They're after what they see as a bigger, more lucrative market, which in this case is female LGBT rep. That gets people buying games, watching shows, raising awareness and boosting awareness of your property, which means you make more money. In short: Two women kissing hits more markets and generates more attention than two men.

Am I saying that Miles, Monty and Kerry deliberately sat down seven years ago and said "We're not doing gay men because it won't generate enough ad revenue and traffic to be worth the loss in revenue from homophobes?" No, that's silly. But I'm saying that it's less important for them, and it shows in the things that are small and add up. Things like Miles not verifying Scarlet's sexuality or retweeting the manga account's confirmation to spread the message (compared to how he enthusiastically confirmed Ilia being a lesbian himself during the Reddit AMA). It shows in how Pilot Boi would have been the first mlm character only to die in his second full episode until M&K were told about the Bury Your Gays trope. It shows in how Shannon believes that Ozma is "megaqueer" and Miles jokingly laughs it off instead of confirming it, leaving it to just be Shannon's headcanon. It shows in how actor shipping is compared between the mlm and wlw ships, where Arryn and Barbara's frequent pushes for Bumblebee are seen as "official confirmation that it's endgame" while Michael and Kerry saying they enjoy Seamonkeys is treated as "well it would be cute if they did it, but they're never going to."

I'm not gonna say anything like "CRWBY are gonna have Qrow end up with a woman like Robyn out of spite against the bad apples of the Fair Game crowd." I'm not gonna say that I don't think CRWBY cares about male representation in the series. It is, however, definitely a low priority for them, and because that leads to gaffes like Scarlet's writing in Before The Dawn being offensive in his depiction, it only makes the contrast between the sexes all the more painfully apparent.

I'm kinda tired of waiting for Rooster Teeth to show that they do care about mlm. I'm kinda tired of RWBY's male rep being written like it came from a 1993 time capsule where I have to enhance the screen to see a guy holding a sign of Sun's abs or be content with the only onscreen rep still being the plant bois in Volume 5. I'm tired of how often the crew dances around answering basic questions about sexuality (and age, and birthdays, and heights, and so on) by treating it as a spoiler question, as if just wanting to know what way people swing would ever be a spoiler. I'm just... tired of all this. When the best mlm rep in Rooster Teeth's history remains the two dads in Camp Camp who show up in a few episodes, that should say something really bad about your company and your biases (To say nothing of the recent Red vs Blue seasons and their blatant queerbaiting for Grif and Simmons and the whole can of worms that is Donut).

I'd like to not feel like I'm borderline unwelcome because I'd like to see two men in this show kiss, and that the sole thing that represents people like me in this show is some British twat who complains about sand.

I'd just like to feel like my sexuality isn't a joke to Rooster Teeth (or at the very least, be like Donut and have it be a funny one). But at this point after the last few years? I feel like a very uncomfortable punchline to them. And it just sucks.

#rwby #rwde #fair game #queerbaiting #rwby before the dawn #mlm #lgbt #rwby analysis #Rooster Teeth #clover ebi #scarlet david

[sunburstbacchae]

People of Divine Inspiration

Retelling of Aesop’s Fable 517 by KJ Denisen

Many have asked over the centuries why Queer people exist, lots of cultures having different myths on the topic, and many are similarly shocked to hear an answer has been told in ancient Greek folklore. They didn’t have all the words for trans and gay people, but the fabulist Aesop still managed to spin a tale about the origins of their existence. While some mythologies have stories of two-spirit people and some have stories Mesopotamian heroes, the Hellenics have the myth of Prometheus & Dionysos.

Long ago, during the new age of humanity and from the clay of Gaia the Great Mother Earth, the latest designs of the human body were being sculpted by the Titan Prometheus, titan of forethought and crafty console. Many ages had been led by the design of Prometheus, from the last age which ended in the great flood, to the age of women with the creation of Pandora, to the very first age of men that ended with him stealing fire from Olympus to save humanity from the cold and wild. Such lengths he goes for humanity have gotten him in a bit of trouble with the Theoi. After stealing the hearth-fire for many years he was shackled to Mount Kaukasos by King Zeus, subject to having his liver torn out each morning by a hawk only to have it grow back again in the night for the cycle to continue. He was liberated from his fate by the hero Herakles and now lives his life with a shackle around his ankle, carrying a piece of that mountain so Zeus could boast he’s still shackled to it to this day. Even now, dragging that stone with him, Prometheus still sculpts humanity, age by age, for the project of humanity and our lives thereof is still and forever dearest to his heart.

The newest age he intended to make with practicality in mind, having become wise by the three ages that proceeded. The first age of humanity created creatures with all the parts they needed; four legs, four arms, two heads and two sets of genitals. Before the age of women these people were split in half, creating beings with one or two of each part that now wander around spending their life trying to reconnect to their other half. Prometheus intended to make reconnection easy and for both spirits to compliment one another nicely. Men would have the phallus, the bodies for action and a heart for women while the women had the yonic, the minds for planning and a heart for men. The spirit of all was the same to facilitate this desire, an attraction to complementary opposites. This would create pairs that not only helped the other survive but fulfilled and enabled the humans to thrive with their other half. Such specific design was a labor of love, but a labor nonetheless. Never before had Prometheus put so much time and attention to detail into a project of his and he trekked restlessly to its completion.

Such a tired fate, however, was never unnoticed by Dionysos, the great Olympian of wine, theater, divine madness and festivities. Dionysos was a son of one of Prometheus’ very creations, the mortal princess Semele. He ascended from demigod to godhood like his half brother Herakles, though the two are rather opposites in persona with Herakles ascending to divine status through the pursuit of virtue and Dionysos ascending because he took rules as a light suggestion. He was worshipped by humanity, befriended by daemons & gods alike not only as the blurrer of lines, but for being the soother of worries, the liberator from stress and my goodness did it seem to him like Prometheus needed to be liberated from his workload. To a being older than the Olympian rule, the very youngest of the Olympians called to him.

“Great Prometheus, you’re going to keel over if you don’t take a break from your work. How long has this project been going on? You create humans and release them as they are made, but have trekked forward so long the new age of men has been going on for centuries. Your creations have had children, their children have had children. Europa has won the heart of Zeus and founded continents. Herakles has risen and fallen and ascended to Olympus. One of your earliest creations was the very woman Semele who gave birth to me and I’ve been wreaking havoc and shaking up the lives of mortals and spirits so long I hardly remember my own age! If you’re going to continue for even a fraction of this frankly ridiculous amount of time, the least you can do is allow me to show my gratitude for creating my wonderful mother and the many mortal women and men I’ve pursued romantically. Come now, put down your sculpting tools and rest your aching hands to have dinner with me. I’ve many fountains of wine to help ease that tension in your shoulders and mind and banquets to go with it from the harvest of lovely Demeter.”

Prometheus was shocked at the bold young Olympian and his invitation; most simply left him to his work thankless.

“Has it really been so long? My hands seem calloused and arms almost numb, yet unsure what to make of motions that do no work. Perhaps you’re right, little Olympian. I still have a long way to go until I’m complete, but I keep trying to make the perfect human, keep thinking the right one will be just after this load, but still there’s always something to improve upon. It feels like I’m stuck in a loop, so focused on making it perfect I just can’t finish it. Perhaps a break and some wine will clear my head. Maybe then the exact piece I’m missing will come to me, if only I relax and let it come. Lead the way, Dionysos.”

Dionysos led Prometheus away and brought him to one of the many banquets the cult of the Eleusinian Mysteries set forth in honor of his friend, Demeter, and Kore-Persephone, Dionysos’s mother of a past life. Trailed on by his retune of Maenad Nymphs and lustful Satyrs, accompanied by the god Pan and Titaness Rhea, gods of the wild nature, Dionysos became a good host to Prometheus, crowned him in wreaths of ivy and gifted all the wine and fresh food one could ask for. The band of Bacchae danced and sang of riots and revels until Helios the sun peeked over the horizon and it was time for Theoi to be sent back to their duties. After the party, Prometheus came home on an unsteady foot from all the wine he had drunk, giggling to jokes he had told himself and scarcely trying to remove the ivy still wound up in his hair.

As much as the night still lingered, he was still much more of a workaholic than an alcoholic and attempted to get back to work straight away after coming home. Unsteadily and with broad strokes he continued his work with the humans, growing increasingly frustrated that his hands refused to cooperate with where his eyes wanted them to go, knocking over glaze and brushes, staining blueprints and notes willy-nilly, bringing the poor titan to such frustration he was afraid he was going to weep.

At some point in his haze, he accidentally put a phallus on one of the women he created. When he caught this, he stopped and stared for a moment and found it so amusing he began mixing up the parts of all the humans he was working on. Women with phalluses and men with yonis and even some unlabeled bodies with either or both. Men with the gentle mind of wise Athena, women with the active mind of Ares and some with both or neither. The gentle hearts modeled after Aphrodite mixed up every which way so some had hearts for men, some for women, some for both. Some had more than one heart within them and found themselves to have too much love for just one person and some with blank hearts unable to be struck by the bow of Eros at all. In such a chaotic stupor he didn’t have the forethought he usually would to wait until he sobered up and brought these humans to life immediately, sending them off into the world. Still laughing, face red, he collapsed over his desk into a strange yet peaceful slumber.

When he awoke and saw the mess over his desk he recoiled and dread whatever he had done the night before. Going out to see his creations he found the batch of mixed-up humans and panicked, knowing he had just brought to life a bit of a chaotic mess and worried how well they’d fare in the world. As he lamented his fate, Dionysos reappeared, coming to check on his most likely hungover new friend and saw what he was fretting over. Dionysos’ eyes grew starry for these interesting humans and the still distraught (and now a little confused) Prometheus explained what happened the night before, lamenting that he may have to take them apart and fix them all. Dionysos stopped him in his tracks.

“Oh please Prometheus don’t take them apart! These humans of my divine inspiration are such delightful creatures, all so different and intriguing, they may all be let into my retune. Those with minds so different they can bend the fate of people and make room for new grounds in society. Those with hearts so full they match my Polyamrous spirit or so unmarked as to have more room for family and friends. As for those mismatched between the legs, they will Patroned by me especially for I remember being raised in the guise of a girl under one of my many foster mothers, Ino. Those women in the bodies of men, those men in the bodies of women, and those of either or neither I will guide to let humanity delight in the act of creating themselves. The way we grow grapes and not wine, the way we gift milk and not cheese, I will show them how to mix themselves, change themselves and even tear themselves apart to be put back together a more true version of their soul. I have seen them, and soon they will see me.”

Prometheus found inspiration in the young Theoi’s words. Perhaps he’d been so caught up in making them perfect he hadn't been able to accept them as they were. With this in mind he completed the last and biggest group of humans. All spirits still call for their complementary, but now each in ways the other cannot. Every pair or group brought together by Aphrodite now had a unique relationship, more than the sum of its parts. Pairs of smart and strong men, pairs of yonic and phallic women, groups of balanced hearts and souls and single humans complete within themselves. Even within that batch creating the strong and cunning woman Ariadne, who’d go on to wed Dionysos and ascend to the status of goddess by his side. While Prometheus made the simple pieces of common society, it was always Dionysos who specialized in thinking & creating outside the box.

#komet posts #hellenic polytheism #informative post #dionysus #dionysos #prometheus #hellenic pagan

[eelsfeelgross]

Conclusions: Trans Activism v. Radical Feminism, a first-hand account

This is current stance after a lot of direct investigation on both radfems online and trans activists online. No group is judged based on the observations, rhetoric, or propaganda of any outside group, but from my own first-hand observations in combination with objective knowable facts such as actions known to be committed in public record by the likes of criminals or celebrities. However, the bulk of this is based on what I have seen, what I know to be true because it’s been done before my own eyes. While my conclusion may lack information on the more nitpicked aspects of things, I believe their overall impressions still hold true with the amount of experience I’ve had. Keep in mind: this is not my only account. I have dipped into the radfem community before, each time from a different perspective, at a different time, and with open eyes ready to receive whatever I was given. The same is true of the trans community.

Trans Activism

I want to make clear that these conclusions were mainly drawn from my direct experience with the trans community from within. I am not relying on critics of the trans ideology to tell me any of this, though they often echo the same concerns and observations.

The trans community has a serious problem with misogyny, homophobia, and sex denial. They employ magical thinking and emotional pleas to justify their conclusions and commit to arguments of definition that are ultimately lacking substance. However, while lacking rational, they are abundant with emotional reasoning and can be incredibly powerful rhetorical tools in convincing others to believe them without the necessary evidence of anything claimed.

This is especially prevalent when discussing sexual biology and sexual orientation. They consider self-harm to be the fault of other people, even in adults, and use this as a manipulation tactic to make it seem as if they’re being killed at higher rates than their general demographics. This plays hand in hand with the appropriation of statistics around things like racial violence or violence against sex workers to make it appear trans people, particularly white heterosexual (attracted to the opposite sex) trans women from the middle class of Amerca who aren’t victims of prostitution, are under much more persecution than their lived experiences actually reflects.

This has grown into a political ideology not dissimilar to a religion, but without the usual trappings we associate with a religious group. It requires blind faith in the concept of gender and the “life saving” virtues of expensive hormone treatments and plastic surgeries without proper regard for the risks and consequences of these procedures. Challenging the dogma or asking critical questions is considered a sin itself, even when done with excessive caution for other’s feelings. Violence towards known dissenting groups is considered not just ok, but admirable. Expressions of this desire for violence against the out-group is seen as virtuous to the point that doing it too much will be taken as virtue signalling rather than a sign of deep-seeded anger issues as it would for any other situation. Self-identity is their belief system, and public shame are their tools of punishment to control those within the belief system. Due to sex denial, females suffer especially in this paradigm no matter how they identify or what presentations they choose.

However,

Radical Feminism

Once again, I want to make clear that these conclusions were mainly drawn from my direct experience with the radfem community from within. I am not relying on critics of the radical feminist ideology to tell me any of this, though they may echo similar observations.

Radical feminism, as it exists today in action and not in theories from the 1990s, has a huge problem with transphobia, homophobia, and racism. The focus has shifted almost entirely from protecting women to attacking trans women, understandable on some level but counter-productive to all but the individual ego. There is a preoccupation with what women are “allowed” to do, rather than whether their actions and the consequences of those actions actually benefit the cause of anti-sexism. People feel entitled to be nasty, hurtful and even downright transphobic and homophobic if it means hurting their “enemies” somehow. I’m not sure if they fail to see the big picture or have just given up on caring, but it makes all their pleas for compassion and an end to the trans community’s homophobia seem pretty disingenuous.

This focus on “women deserve more as reparations”, when self-applied to the individual, does nothing to combat sexism as these self serving actions often do little to stop sexism and everything to benefit the individual currently existing within a sexist system. It totally ignores the vital role women play in perpetrating sexism through the generations, from mother to daughter or sister or sister or peer to peer through an intricate web of social pressures.Its not totally ignored mind you, but it is conveniently unaddressed whenever addressing it would prevent them from acting aggressive and toxic toward someone else. However others in the community who aren’t personally benefitting from this at the time will notice, thus leading to endless pointless arguments as the egos clash.

This hypocrisy undermines all attempts at broadening their reach to a new generation of women. Similarly, this toxic attitude undermines all opportunity for organization and real activism which requires a certain level of tolerance and the ability to give basic respect to those you don’t like or agree with. All those who do not tolerate such behavior will simply assume radical feminism must be a hate movement because all they see is vitriol and toxicity, no matter how justified the perpetrator feels about it or the underlying motivators. They will not take the time to read theory because they’ve already seen the practice and they have the sense to know it’s bad. Then when these newcomers see this bad behavior for what it is, they’re belittled or deprived of their agency for their decision to turn away from your movement, called things like “handmaidens” and accused of being either selfishly misogynistic or plainly brainwashed, driving them ever further away. The refusal to take responsibility for your own image and the consequences of your behavior under some false impression of ideological purity justifying it only further cements this takeaway outsiders have.

The most egregious example that comes to mind is the “queers” issue. Radfems are adamant about queer being slur, and they’re right. I myself grew up having queer flung at me by violent straight men and I’m not even that old. I feel no joy in the sanitation and generalization of the term. That is not reclamation, that is erasure and appropriation of pain. Most radfems agree on this wholeheartedly. That is, until you decide to spell it “kweer” and start flinging it at trans people who fit a particular homophobic stereotype: strange appearances, unorthodox body modifications like piercing and colored hair, unwashed, perverted to the point of being predatory, self important children who are just playing pretend to be different. All these qualities call back to the stereotype of queers, gays, and it is deeply intrenched in homophobia going back generations. And yet, while radfems would condemn the trans community for the appropriation of queer and its homophobic implications, they have no problem employing it as a slur when it suits their own toxic impulses.

Some even seem to believe that misspelling the word or being homosexual themselves absolves this. It does not. Anybody without the blinders of radfem internal rhetoric will quickly see past this nonsense. If the trans community came back and started calling radfems “diques” and associating the term with severely lesbophobic stereotypes like being unwashed or too ugly to get a man or any of the other countless stereotypes around the slur “dyke”, radfems would be rightly livid. Making a point to only target straight radfems with this insult would not make it any different. But addressing these kinds of hypocritical positions has become a taboo within the radfem community, yet another spark to relight the fires of senseless infighting.

This is the worst example I’ve personally seen, but it is not the only one. There’s also the tendency for radfems, desperate for others who are gender critical to connect with, to make alliances with right wing conservatives despite their racism and homophobia simply because they’re also transphobic but for completely different reasons. And also a tendency to be much more forgiving of misogyny coming from these new “allies” that will glady destroy you too once trans people are out of the way. But I will not labor my point any further by bringing up everything all at once. Regardless, for those who harp on and on about getting to the root of the problem, the moment anyone suggests you try getting to the root of your own problems, taking accountability and making changes, all that self-righteous posturing seems to go out the window just like it does in the trans community. You’ve become a reflection of what you hate in an attempt to combat it, and it will be the death of your movement if you don’t make a serious effort to reform these behaviors and distance yourself from those who employ these forms of rhetoric.

It’s a harsh fact, but the world at large does not care what you deserve, just like sexual biology doesn’t care about your personal feelings about your sex. It just doesn’t. That’s why patriarchy exists in the first place. It is your job as a social movement to use your words and actions to convince them to care. That is what the trans community has managed to do successfully, in my opinion often for the wrong reasons but successfully nonetheless, but such things do not stroke the ego of the individual radfem and therefore simply doesn’t happen in an organized, ideology-wide manner. Small islands of rational stand isolated in a sea of this pointless vitriol, and alone they are hopeless against the attacks against radical feminism born from the trans community and their sex denial that leads to egregious misogyny.

Conclusion

When it comes to the underlying theory, the ideological core, I find that radical feminism has the best chance of growing to become a social movement for genuinely good change in the world, particularly for women and women-loving-women specifically. Trans ideology, in my opinion, is inherently flawed as its core tenants require faith in what one cannot prove and a rejection of science that doesn’t support said faith.

Trans ideology as it exists in 2020 is more akin to religion than science, and has proven its capability to do harm through its use of magical thinking and distorted points of view that constantly shift and change to make space for the core trans ideology to be “correct”. Core ideas such as: sex is either fake or less relevant than gender, that gender is an objective fact of the human psyche, that others failing to fix your own poor mental health are responsible for your harm or death, that transition is always a good idea if someone wants it and no gatekeeping should be performed regarding using plastic surgery to treat mental discomforts, and so on. Remove all these ideas, and the whole thing falls apart.

Meanwhile, removing the toxicity of the radfem community as it exists now will not destroy its underlying core beliefs. Its just that the current people who advertise themselves as radfems and take up that mantle do not actually follow the core ideology of their own movement when it doesn’t benefit them. It has been infiltrated and run amok with bad faith actors who abuse the movement for personal gain, whether they are aware of it or not. And with their combination of being excessively vocal and lacking any shame for their misdeeds, more and more are drawn into their toxic games to the point that the ones who actually speak to the spirit of the core theory get drowned out or attacked to the point none will associate with them openly. The ones who actually know the theory and practice it end up effectively shunned from a community that widely hasn’t even read the theory and thinks hating trans people and thinking pussy = superior makes them a radfem. And thus, by allowing this, that is what radical feminism has become in practice. No amount of appealing to that core philosophy will matter if the actual people don’t apply that theory properly.

So my conclusion? Radical feminism has the greatest potential for good, but it is grossly unrealized and will remain that way without radical internal changes. However, if anyone is equipped to get to the root of the problem and make a radical change it should be radfems. Or at least, the good faith radfems who aren’t abusing the movement, of which I’m convinced have become the minority of radfems in the present day. Perhaps it is time for feminism to once again branch off, not to try returning to the 2nd wave but to set the stage for a true 4th wave as many have talked about. A 4th wave that is based on the foundations set by 2nd wave feminist thinkers, but forward thinking, self-critiquing, and not limited by the hangups of the last wave. I guess only time will tell what radfems value more: their egos in attachment to the idea of identifying as a radfem, or the effective dis-empowerment of patriarchy through organized effort at the expense of satisfying your personal vendettas against all men.

#radfem #radical feminism #trans activism #terf safe #terfs do touch #guilt tripping or baseless accusations = ignored #who am i kidding nobody is going to read this #nuance is dead and im wasting my time #RIP feminism i guess

[kainumbernine009]

I literally cannot do anything else until I get this out.

I’m... really not okay.

And when I say that, I’m not mentally unstable. I say that because I’m tired of waiting on empty promises, I’m tired of never having money in our account, I’m tired of living in a fucking city where half of the white people fucking worship the ground Trump walks on, and where most of the gay community has so much messy drama that it’s worse than middle school. And I went to a rough middle school.

I never talk about my past, because I don’t like to. It sucked. HARD. Being and only child in my family was nothing less than torture, especially as a closeted queer person. We grew up in the white Christian part of Nashville that dominated Music Row in the 90′s and early 2000′s. I played basketball with Alan Jackson’s daughter, and being around famous people was just no big deal. But, my parents decided to leave Nashville after my dad lost his job at TPAC, and we moved down south an hour to the town where the KKK got started (Pulaski, TN).

I had maybe two non-white people in my private Christian school growing up. I was never afraid of Black people, but my parents showed their racist asses quick when we moved there. The KKK has never left America, guys, no matter how many articles you read or studies you do. From 2005 to 2009 I saw a white town show its very worst to the Black community. I’ll never forget the first time I saw a march for “White Christians for Purity” the summer before Obama got elected. The disgust I felt inside was palpable. I had all kinds of friends in school, and I didn’t give TWO SHITS who they were or what they looked like... but I saw children my age, being brainwashed by their parents, that “white” is “right.”

Ever since then, I have been learning and growing about the issues of race. I remember my white classmates using the N word and getting away with it. I remember hearing about the principal at the high school punishing all the Black kids but not the white kids. I remember being invited to a church south of town that was a historically Black church, and how nice the ladies were to me for coming.

But I’ll never forget the racism that the religious groups promoted there, especially First Baptist Church and the 12 Tribes. I’ll never forget how FBC told me that my friend was going to Hell because she killed herself. I’ll never forget my mom telling me not to marry a Black man because of “impure genes.” I WILL NEVER FORGET THE INJUSTICES I SAW WHITE PEOPLE DOING TO BLACK PEOPLE THERE. NEVER.

And thank God, I have shaken the burden of religious guilt, but I still fight against this mentality. I live in a place that’s usually not even 10 minutes away from Trump-humping, sister-fucking, meth-addicted Confederate cunts in any direction. And we’re even closer to the rich white people who silently supported him, upset that their taxes would go up because of Biden.

And in the past four years since Trump got elected, I’ve gotten married, graduated college with honors, started my own photography business, and was making more than my husband there for a minute. I did my own taxes, marketing, editing, and everything. And then I came out as trans.

I lost everything.

I lost my studio. I lost friends. I had rumors started about me. I had people post hate messages on my wall. I had people at my drag shows tell others not to tip me, for whatever fucking reasons. I’ve had bosses give cis people jobs over me, and I’ve had government workers give me second looks when I hand them my license.

It. Fucking. Sucks. To. Live. Here. Like. This.

Oh yeah, did I mention I’m also a witch/medium? I’ve talked to dead people before and have told their relatives things I shouldn’t have known otherwise about their grandparents. Like, this information doesn’t even exist on Google. And I’m attuned to reiki. I’m always aware of what’s happening on at least SOME metaphysical level. This is a gift that I’ve had to go through life developing and learning about myself, with no one’s help but me.

I didn’t even know until I was an adult that I have autism and ADHD.

I’ve taken bullets from people who were about to kill themselves. I’ve yelled at 5th grade music classrooms for doing racist dance moves and appropriating Native Americans (I have a degree in Music Education K-12). I’ve consoled kids in classrooms who suddenly have panic attacks. AND I’ve told horny teenagers to stay in their fucking lane and respect the girls around them. I’ve apparently been an inspiration to those around me, but inspiration NOR exposure pays the bills. I’ve already had COVID, and so has my husband, but I knew that after graduating college that I would never have a fulfilling life being a music teacher in Tennessee’s public schools.

And now that we have COVID, and an orange, small-dicked, pedophilic, rape apologizing, dirty, crusty white president who STILL REFUSES TO CONCEDE, who is DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR HAVING HIS FOLLOWERS SEND DEATH THREATS TO MY FAMILY, I really don’t know what the fuck else to do other than go burn down all the houses I know of in North Georgia that belong to these Christian sex cult pedophiles and call it a day. My girlfriend unfortunately was born into one of those families, and I know just how bad it can get. In fact, her dad’s lawyer threatened me with blackmail earlier in November, so that was fun!

And now, on December 11, 2020, I’m still sitting here in the same fucking house, doing the same fucking things I’ve been doing all year - trying to get a job and failing horribly. I’M SICK AND TIRED OF THIS COVID BULLSHIT AND OUR INCOMPOTENT CUNT OF A PRESIDENT! And there’s only ever one other person I’ve ever called a cunt... my own mother.

I’ve lived in many places. I’ve met many different people. I’ve made mistakes, and have grown, but there’s one thing for damn sure that I always make sure to do, every single fucking day.

I ALWAYS try to do better.

In addition to this, I treat everyone with the same amount of respect, unless they have done something directly to me to negate that. If I know that someone believes in something that directly harms me or my family, I don’t even associate with them. I don’t spend my energy on things that don’t need it. And everyone else should, too.

The problem with some of y’all is that you care about the wrong things. Like will Becky text me back or did I get front row seats to that concert, or did I slave my life away to capitalism just so that I can own a Mercedes and have my friends jealous. I’ve had way too many dear death experiences to know that EVERY single fucking day is a gift. EVERY day.

I don’t want to be remembered first for the art I create. I want to be remembered for my character. I want to be remembered as the courageous person who never backed down in the face of adversity. But when you live in a place that already hates you and that is against you, that’s really fucking hard. Trust me. My marriage went from a cis straight passing couple to a white gay passing couple. I’ve seen how people’s attitudes changed around me as I transitioned. I know what it feels like to slowly lose a piece of your privilege you were born with.

So yeah, I kinda get a little fucking upset when I see people saying All Lives Matter, or when I see doctors refusing to treat trans patients in pandemics, or when I see cops YET AGAIN harassing Black people only a few blocks away from my house for no other reason than racism. And at this point, anyone who thinks they know me but only knows what people think they know about me can suck my entire ass and eat ten dicks. I don’t give a FUCK about who you are or what you’ve done. If you treat me or other people with no respect for no reason other than to be an asshole, you’re just plain shit. If you SERIOUSLY believe every little rumor and lie that someone tells about me before meeting me, fuck you AND the horse you rode in on.

What I can’t stand is people doing or saying things just to get a rise out of me or others. I thought we left petty shit in high school. Some of the people that “know” me really need to fucking grow up and grow a pair and either say what they want to my face, or stay mad. I’m tired of playing fucking petty games with y’all. We have a whole ass pandemic to solve.

So here’s the ultimatum... if you agree that Black Lives Matter and that queer people deserve basic human rights, EVEN THE ONES YOU HATE, then that’s the bare minimum to even be a decent person. If you can’t even do those things, then I don’t fucking know what else to say to you.

So NBC, maybe not have John Mulaney joke about my license debacle with my gold van on SNL, and Seth Meyers... maybe HIRE ME INSTEAD of Mulaney because clearly y’all don’t know about the south as much as I do? Oh, and that gazeebo joke with Lee University... I caught that. I may have autism, but I’m not a fucking idiot. I mean. I’m funny when I’m given the chance. And yeah, I’m on a watchlist, but who the fuck isn’t these days? At least all my secrets are out for the world to see, and I have a bangin’ tattoo.

I’m tired of everyone being like “omg, I’ve seen what he can do, it’s fantastic!” or “omg you’re so funny haha” and bragging on me and then NOT FUCKING HIRING ME. I’m TIRED of waiting on something that’s clearly at this point never coming.

I don’t even have testicles, and my balls are bigger than most of the cis men I have EVER met.

So, if you want to help me, or hire me, or get me out to an audition... I’ll be there. But until then, I’m so fucking MAD at some of these producers. Yeah, my mom is a cunt, but she worked in various forms of digital production from the 1980′s until she retired this year. She taught me SO MUCH about directing, writing, shooting, and more. I know how these things are supposed to run behind the scenes. I know what the fuck I’m doing, and I don’t take constructive criticism like a bitch. I actually WANT to be criticized, so I can do even better.

So PLEASE, for the love of Christ... y’all need to get your priorities together AND PLEASE STOP LEAVING ME OUT OF THE LOOP WITH THIS BULLSHIT. Grow a fucking pair and either call me, email me, or leave me alone. It’s really not that fucking hard. Looking at you, Lorne Michaels.

Oh and someone tell my husband what the fuck’s been going on because I’m tired of him gaslighting me about it.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I don't know how much this adds to the discussion regarding Animorphs being children's lit, but I think it's important to keep in mind that kids' books can get away with heavier themes than kids' shows tend to, so if someone's coming into the discussion with the framework of "for children" they may need to keep in mind that as a book it can cover more ground than a tv show that grownups just have to glance at to decide if it's "too much" for their kiddos (whether it is too much or not).

This definitely adds to the discussion of Animorphs as children’s lit!  I think you’re hitting the nail right on the head.  Many people don’t realize this (I didn’t realize this until I was in college and had a class on the subject) but television shows have to justify themselves to a metric shitton of people before they’re allowed to go on the air.  Books only have to justify themselves to a moderate-sized committee, if that.

People who have the power to veto content on TV shows include (but are not limited to): individual writers who have a particular idea, head writers who don’t like the idea, script editors who might take it out, directors who refuse to film what they don’t like, videographers or artists who add their own creative vision to ideas, visual effects teams who can cut things based on budget, voice actors who can protest decisions they don’t like, episode editors who might take an idea out, producers who won’t back anything that might cause controversy, studio executives who can pull content that’s not “on brand,” national network crews that can decide not to air certain content, local network crews that can also decide not to air certain content, and future “backers” who might decide not to invest in a show based on its content.

People who have the power to veto content in books include: the author with the idea, the agent who publicizes it, the editor who polishes it, and the publishing agent who sells the idea.  At most.

Nowadays, one can self-publish one’s own work with ZERO outside input, or else very little.  The Martian was read by exactly two (2!) people before Andy Weir put it on the internet, and it became an international bestseller.  It would be possible to make a self-published TV show with that little outside input… but most platforms wouldn’t promote it, and would probably take it down if it got hate-reported or had content violations.  Not only that, but (as Cates pointed out) books get edited as content that has already been written, in a story that already exists.  Shows get edited in the context of deciding whether it’s worth the trouble to write an idea that’s still hypothetical.

Television is ultra-conservative (in the sense of never rocking any boats in any direction) because it has to please hundreds of people with creative input and to justify its multi-million-dollar budgets.  Books can reach the minimum production value necessary to be good with the influence of one person (okay, lbr, two people) and fifty bucks for printing or web-hosting fees.  That’s the reason that only 42% of non-animated roles and 39% of animated roles go to women on TV, including only 12% of non-animated roles and 4% of animated roles going to women of color.  By contrast, 63% of children’s lit on The Atlantic’s bestsellers list is written by women, about female protagonists; that’s not counting books by men about female protagonists.  (They didn’t collect data on authors’ ethnicity; if anyone has this stat, HMU.)

It’s the reason that Arthur just made national news THIS FUCKING YEAR by depicting a same-sex (traditional) (Christian-coded) wedding ceremony, one that local networks in Alabama chose not to air.  Meanwhile, in 2015 Cates presented a conference paper about the history of kids’ picture books with queer protagonists, a history that goes back to 1981 (Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin) and covers such mainstream 1990s series as Bruce Coville’s Magic Shop and Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants.  We see the importance of the lack of gatekeepers: for instance, the author of Heather Has Two Mommies struggled to get a mainstream children’s press to pick up her book, so she went to a lesbian publisher, which ended up creating an entirely new branch for children’s books.  (Apparently there were entire publishing houses just for lesbian books in 1987?  The more you know.)  One other interesting case study for queer content is Gore Vidal: in 1948 he published what would today be classified as a YA gay romance novel (The City and the Pillar) but in 1959 he had to “code” and hide the queer content in the Hollywood film (Ben-Hur) that he also wrote.  Television to this day uses queer-coding in lieu of actual romance, especially when it’s kids’ TV (see: Legend of Korra or Adventure Time), while children’s literature has already made the push all the way into demanding that the queer romances in Grasshopper Jungle and Geography Club be more intersectional.

To be clear, it’s not like children’s books have carte blanche in this regard — Applegate and Grant have both apologized for having to code Mertil and Gafinilan rather than just marrying them off, and have expressed regret over not getting to write an openly bisexual Marco or openly trans Tobias.  But kids’ books can still fly under the radar of the wowsers in a way that kids’ shows often cannot.

Anyway.  Queer representation is obviously just one of a plethora of issues that get very different treatment in children’s books vs. children’s shows.  There are plenty of others.  Children’s shows can depict violence, but have to treat it as silly or inconsequential and avoid showing blood.  (Because that’s a great way to teach kids about not harming others!!!)  Children’s books can have as much blood — and, apparently, as many spilled entrails — as they would like, as long as those things don’t happen in the first couple of pages or make the cover summary.  Neal Shusterman is responsible for some of the most cringe-inducingly silly AniTV episodes, and also some of the most brutally unflinching works of children’s literature I’ve ever read.  American screen media are no longer subject to the Hays Code, but its marks still remain.  American literature has pretty much always been the Wild West, and with the advent of online self-publishing, the west is getting wilder.

Don’t judge a book by its movie.  And don’t judge a book by its show.  AniTV is tame and silly, treating its violence as inconsequential and its characters’ mental health struggles as harmlessly or innocent.  Animorphs has the courage to show that when you shoot a man he doesn’t just silently fall over and disappear but bleeds and screams and dies, that being a victim or a perpetrator of such violence can leave even “innocent kids” fighting for their lives against PTSD and depression.  It has the courage… but it also has the freedom to do so.  That’s an extremely important distinction that should not be overlooked.

#animorphs #anitv #children's literature #lit crit #television #censorship #animorphs meta #meta meta #long post #mental health #violence mention #homophobia mention #q word #queer representation #lgbtqia #old man yells at cloud #anonymous #asks