#like no she very much does understand the reality of womanhood and misogyny shes just making a silly fun song like so many cis women made | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cosmiclion · 3 months

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An egg in the process of cracking 🥚

A design of younger Grell from my AU (she's about 20 here). I changed almost everything from her backstory since I first came up with this AU, notes (that I've been working on for months lol) under the cut.

(Also yes, I hid the hands behind the body because I didn't wanna draw them, don't mention it ☠️).

-Born in February 17th, 1863 in England, in this universe she's not a reaper but she's still not human.

-She's a werecat (I explored the concept for the first time in this post and I liked it so much that I ended up using it for my main AU). While werebeasts have a human form they are 100% nonhuman as the curse that turns someone into one fully alters their DNA. Adults are immune to the curse, which means if an adult gets bitten and survives they won't turn. However, cases of teenagers and younger surviving an attack aren't enough to properly determine up until which age a person can be affected. A child can also be born a werebeast as the curse can be passed to a fetus if a pregnant person gets bitten. The latter is Grell's case, as her mother got attacked during pregnancy.

-While she didn’t actually transform until her early teens, she did show feline traits from the beginning, such as a desire to hunt and chase small animals and moving objects, climbing trees or other structures, hiding in narrow spaces, etc.

-A homeschooled and pretty sheltered only child, with dead maternal grandparents, a dead father, an emotionally distant mother who eventually bailed on her and paternal grandparents who loved and spoiled her but didn’t really understand her on a deep level, Grell grew up angry and frustrated. She had always felt that something wasn't quite right with her, and when she slowly started to experiment to try to figure herself out she had no one to turn to. As a teenager she decided to just run away from home and leave everything behind. She knew she was leaving her grandparents to die alone but she didn’t care, she had never genuinely loved them anyway.

-She chose her own name AND surname, the first after a nickname her German grandparents often called her and the latter after a character from a book she liked.

-Struggles a lot with internalized misogyny thanks to a mix of her mother’s neglect and eventual abandonment and her grandparents only talking shit about said mother whenever they mentioned her, which greatly contributed to shape her views on motherhood and womanhood in general. Would love to have a child of her own but deep down that’s just because of her dysphoria, in reality she has very little patience for kids and is probably not the best parent material.

-Went through a phase of compulsive heterosexuality both when she thought she was a man and also after she realized she was a woman. Figuring out her orientation wasn’t any easier than figuring out her gender but she’s probably bi with a slight preference for men and masculinity in general.

-I still haven't come up with a story for what she does after leaving her home and before the main events, I only have some ideas. Like she's young when she goes out into the world, she's passionate and adventurous but also full of pent up anger. Also there's the small issue of her being a beast with a huge prey drive, being a trans girl in the middle of self discovery is harder when you're also learning about and trying to gain control of (or at least cope with) your literal wild side ☠️ I know that werebeasts' main driving force is hunger, and the longer they go without eating the more they revert back to a feral state. I'm tempted to make her go the serial killer route but in this case she doesn't have much control of her actions 🫢

-Her werecat form is based on a maine coon. When she first starts showing signs of therianthropy she doesn’t have much control of it, and transforming and becoming that big and rough looking makes her more dysphoric (even more so because “male” maine coons are bigger). Over time she starts accepting it and, as she discovers how powerful it makes her and all the things she can do with it and gains control of it, she fully embraces it as an important part of her.

-The only part of her feline form she cannot hide in human form are the teeth, no matter the form she takes she always has sharp fangs. This is a common trait of all werebeasts, some of them are self conscious about it and avoid smiling or opening their mouth at all while others are proud of it and will take any opportunity to flash their teeth at anyone (guess which one is Grell’s case lmao).

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gothprentiss · 9 months

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there's a post i've seen maybe twice that's got i think at this point 20k notes. it's about how, like, fictional depictions of medieval women Get It All Wrong (true); how our notions of medieval misogyny are relics of the victorian age, not historical reality (eh??); how class is a more realistic way of understanding premodern womanhood than gender (to some extent!); and here are some ways you might consider writing medieval women, e.g. "tip #2: remember that for medieval women, wife and mother wasn’t the ideal, virgin saint was the ideal. By proving yourself “not like other girls” you could gain significant autonomy & freedom".

the idea that victorian people had particular essentialist ideas about the genders (e.g. the angel-in-the-house-style separate spheres philosophy) and either a) medieval people didn't, not to that extent or in that mode OR b) that has overdetermined our notion of what all the past looks like strikes me as more of a starting point than a conclusion.

like, okay, the idea that there was a singular ideal for women (and that it's virgin saint, lol), even just women in a particular period in a particular area of the medieval christian world-- that does run so categorically against the idea that class is more explanatory than gender here. what you might say, though, is that you can extrapolate this as the sole ideal for women from the historical record (i don't think you can, but let's play) as a result of class and social position. christine de pizan was a court scholar for numerous members of the french royal family. most of the writings that survive of medieval christian women are the products of either noblewomen or nuns. but second of all-- you can't say that the virgin saint was the female archetype rather than the mother or the wife. the virgin saint is literally both of those things: she figures the virgin mary, whose virginity is important because of her maternity; she figures the church, which is allegorically the bride of christ. it's also worth noting, of course, that the virgin saint (i.e. the nun, presumably?) is not the same sort of ideal as the wife or the mother in any material way.

all of this is emblematic about how much of the historical record works and is made to work. in terms of real, factual women who were either able to write at great length or written about with any interest, you have the inevitable upper-class bias, as the post tacitly notes: "Often as nuns, saints, mystics; sometimes as warriors, queens, & ladies; always as businesswomen & merchants, women could & did forge their own paths in life" (odd groupings). in drawing in literary sources, as studies of medieval womanhood always do, you have the additional problem of fabulation, which you are trying to read a theory of womanhood or at least an account of gender roles out of. (medievalists, due to the size and conservatism of the field, are also notably not very good readers when it comes to gender.) e.g. the post cites a thesis which is, as i am looking at it now, significantly about the roman de silence (reading it out of the context of hagiography and alongside the roman d'eneas). the desire for fiction to work as historical record is common in medievalism (really in all premodernism), and understandable, and has some foundation. it is rare to see this foundation meaningfully established in this work.

the other problem you have for the concept of medieval women-- whether you just want to, like, depict one, or have some baseline understanding of what their lives were like, or do them justice-- is the privileging of the individual and the outlier. "women could do this in the middle ages" is often a sentence backed up with, like, five truly good examples, one of them legendary. the desire for a history of empowered women gives you a certain kind of returns; the expectation of a history of misogyny gives you a certain kind of returns. this sort of "THIS IS HOW MEDIEVAL* WOMEN REALLY WERE (*LIMITED TO A SPECIFIC SETTING, AREA OF INTEREST, ETC.)" trumpeting is naturally not about all women of that particular context, and to do so-- beyond the really quite blunt-headed approach to the dynamism of both gender and misogyny-- strikes me as a great disservice to this object of study, delimiting womanhood to solely that of the wealthy and, by that same token, empowered. if nothing else it's certainly telling about the state of gender scholarship in pop medieval history (if not also medieval studies) that feminist interventions get you to about the mainstream scholarly feminism of the 80s, where gilbert and gubar write a whole book named for bertha mason that is only really interested in jane eyre.

#i got like no sleep so i have no filter. sorry or whatever #this post drives me INSANE.... you can't use tolkien as your best example of the medieval status of women #'oh he was a medievalist' yea he was drawing from medieval literature. you know. where there is often artifice. famously he knew about that #imo if you assume that misogyny is not a dynamic ideology your feminist historiography will inevitably suffer

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thedreadvampy · 3 years

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ok the thing I'm struggling to find words for in my mind tonight is. a deep discomfort with the framing that complex relationships to sexuality and gender are something exclusive to queerness. that cishet people's relationship to sexuality and gender is by definition simple. and that's a tempting idea and like, yeah, there's much less impetus for a cishet person to examine their sexuality and gender. but that doesn't mean there's no complexity to it. and this isn't intended as a Don't Be Mean To The Poor Straights post it's just. observably not true that no cishet person has a complex relationship to sexuality and gender.

queerness is a complicating factor in people's relationship to sexuality and gender - we are made more conscious of the ways we don't fit what's expected, our sexuality and gender is often what is used to justify marginalisation and it comes with a whole host of pain and joy because of that, and the way that queerness is marginalised forces us into direct conversation with our sexuality/gender

but queerness isn't the only complicating factor in people's relationships to sexuality and gender. like as a woman who is pretty Definitely Cis I still have a huge ongoing wrestle with my gender - it's female, but what that means and how that's expressed and how that affects how i move through the world is still complicated and fraught and often messy and contradictory. that doesn't make me trans but it does feel pretty alienating that in a lot of queer spaces there's this implied assumption that the only type of gender complexity is a discovery of non-cisness.

(and tbh a lot of the time that's fair because a lot of people aren't cis and as I say like. it's much easier to Never Have These Conversations (with others or with yourself) if you're cis. so a lot of cis people never really name their gender troubles because they're not brought face to face with them.)

but there are a lot of things that affect your relationship to your gender. for me, I know I'm a woman, but how I'm a woman is a messy question wrapped up in trauma, in misogyny, in bisexuality, in autism, in body image, in the specifics of who I am and how I relate to the world and how I want to be seen and why. and there kind of is a thing in a lot of IRL queer spaces I hang out in where people jump straight to diagnosing me with Trans of Gender if I try to discuss a complex relationship with womanhood, or a desire to present as GNC, or a discomfort with being performed in certain gendered ways. and for a lot of people that is a step on the route but as far as I can tell it's not for me, I've spent many years trying out the shape of different genders because I had got into a headspace that any complexity in my relationship to genders must mean I was Not Cis, and for me it just didn't fit, womanhood remained the best fit. and I don't regret that, I think in an ideal world everyone should push themselves to question their gender and try out and see what good, and some people are just statistically gonna be cis like. it would be a weird numbers game for absolutely nobody's gender and sex to line up.

but I'm getting sidetracked. I was thinking about how cis and het people have the capacity for equally complex relationships to gender and sexuality as anyone else, and why that's important.

(I've never been straight or even thought I was straight, but I have occasionally talked to straight people and like. I have never met anyone, straight or queer, with a simple and uncomplicated relationship to their own sexuality - is it right, is it socially acceptable, there's shame, there's trauma, there's confusion, there's gendered and racialised and ableist baggage)

and like. it isn't that sexuality and gender aren't less of a fraught space for cishet people as a group than for queer people as a group. obviously in a group that faces a history and present of marginalisation and active violence on the basis of sexuality and gender, those are more intense complexities, and because of that there's also more intense joy as well as intense conflict. we are able to build community through marginalisation. we're brought face to face with our complex relationships to ourselves and because we can't ignore it we have built the language and community and frameworks to explore it and revert in it in a way many cis het people haven't.

but.

understanding intersectionality means understanding that as much as the marginalisation of queerness is bound up in the complexity of our relationships to gender and sexuality, so are power structures of race and gender and health and neurodivergence and wealth and class and geography and culture and language and religion and politics and education.

ultimately sexuality and gender are a huge element in how we relate to the world and our bodies and ourselves. and how the world relates to us. and there isn't a person on earth for whom that's 100% simple.

and idk I think a) to pretend that cishet people can't experience their bodies and themselves in a complex way is just a denial of reality, b) it simplifies out the many intersections of identity and power in all of us (even the straightest cisest manliest rich white dude) that make our social and personal identities messy and intricate and c) it gets in the way of us building meaningful intracommunity solidarity through a shared understanding of the beauty and pain and infinite variety of gender and sexuality

also idk. it's weird to me. to me it posits that to be cis, to be straight, to be allosexual and alloromantic, is a default whereas queerness is a deviation. and I just don't believe that, I don't think there's a 'normal' and uncomplicated Default State and then everyone outside it is a complication. I think there's value in embracing that othering in the world we live in, where we need to find strength in anger and in resistance, but I don't think it represents a truth about the world as much as a reclamation of the weapons used against us.

to me it feels similar to the way that white people thinking of ourselves as aracial and everyone else as racialised is an act of unconscious white supremacy. or the way that people are really keen to draw a sharp line between the Disabled Other and the Healthy Normal People. the idea that there's Normal People and Diverse People isn't...good...really? and this is in itself a messy issue because I do think there's a lot of power and value in taking pride in the complexity and thoughtfulness of queer relationships to sex and gender and I don't think there's some great evil in joking at the expense of the privileged. but when that starts to inform your actual serious thinking I think it can be counterproductive because erasing the complexity of cishet identities and acting as if any complexity in relationship to sexuality and gender means someone's Wrong About Being Straight/Cis is kind of reinforcing the otherising of queerness.

ughhhhh this is why I say it's hard to find words. because to me now it sounds like I'm saying 'don't suggest people might be queer' and like. do do that. we're in a world where that space isn't left open for the vast majority of people and straight or not, cis or not, allo or not, I think pretty much everyone benefits from having the space and community and language to have a conversation with their own identity. but that's kind of my thing like that conversation doesn't have a right answer. the conversation needs to have room for a model of straightness and a model of cisness that doesn't immediately slam the door on further exploration.

(also I've mostly been taking about cishet people here but let's be honest it's really a question of cis AND/OR het. one thing I'm finding really difficult at the moment is that there seems to be a lot of conversations about queerness and gender expression which conflate GNCness and a complex relationship to gender exclusively with being trans, and a lot of the time talk about how being a woman and being sapphic affect your relationship to gender are understood as less authentic explorations where they incorporate cis gendered identities. and a lot of discussions about complex cis wlw relationships to gender and womanhood get coopted by terfs who think that because their complex experience of gender is a cis one that means all complex experiences of gender are cis ones being wishfully misinterpreted (this is because TERFs have. no capacity or will to imagine experiences beyond their own, apparently) and that leaves. for me. often very little room to authentically discuss and explore with others my own identity as a cis wlw who uses she/her pronouns and still has a complex relationship to gender. and indeed as someone whose attraction to men (and no it's not straight but it's different-gender) is as textured and complex as her attraction to women. like it's a long way off the top of the list of Things To Worry About but I think about it a lot.)

#another long one tonight folks #sometimes you just gotta braindump when you should be getting ready for bed #and then oops 1am #queer #bisexual #cisgender

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searchingforproofsthatimwrong · 3 years

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THE JAMMIEDODGER VIDEO ABOUT JK ROWLING (as recommended by a very polite anon)

so I go point by point after the cut but in short: they should read more feminist theory, they are lying, they are not as coherent as they think they are but they make some points, notably about the rapid onset gender disphoria that’ll need to check in more depth later on.Most of their sources were unfortunatly either on points I already knew or already agreed with. Also that woman ( the “cis” one not Jammy), should really stop thinking being born a woman is somehow a privilege.

So the video starts by saying three things I agree with :

1) Biological sex is definitely real

2) Women’s right and girls’ right need to be protected

3) JK Rowling is entitled to like support and write whatever she wants

So far so good. Except it then goes on to say that TRA agree with that. Now maybe most do but at least some don’t. Don’t lie to me, Jammie Dodger.

They then go on to misrepresent what our problem with “cis” is. Are they going to spend that entire video about trans people at destination of the non educated on that subject without ONCE defining what a trans person is? They are aren’t they ?

“TRANSPEOPLE AGREE THAT BIOLOGICAL SEX EXISTS!!”

see earlier but given the number of people who are saying “sex is a social construct” and “sex is a spectrum” and “a neovagina is just like a vagina”, you may at least put a “most” in your statement here. Anyway this is not the problem we have, we wouldn’t even discuss this if it weren’t for the brain dead morons who argue with us about it.

“my biological sex -the one I was assigned at birth- was female”

is Jammie here telling me he knows biology exists but his sex WAS female ? It still IS female. You’re a female. Moreover you cannot say I know biology exists and I was assigned a sex. The entire “assigned sex” is a refutal of biology by implying doctors choose a sex for you. This is stupid.

Strawman. They are saying radfems have no argument against “gender identity is a real thing”. The lies. Gender identity is not a real thing it’s just gender stereotypes and gender is a tool of oppression for women, it’s sexist garbage. I also notice they don’t define gender identity, this is starting to be a pattern, this video is aimed to normies but the only thing they defined so far is terf.

They did 5 fucking minutes on “transpeople know that biological sex exists” I am already exhausted.

Oh my bad they defined “gender identity” as “the gender you know you are”. THANKS A BUNCH THIS IS SO HELPFUL . Define gender please I beg of you.

“They know they are a man but their bodies don’t match”

okay so you agree that man and woman are words that depends on your body right? Since it can “match”, they are not gender then ? Nevermind he then says that man is their gender identity. This is not making sense.

Ooooooh the floating head analogy never heard that one before, this is a stupid one because gendies also argue that their gender is innate (unless Jammie here specifically says he doesn’t think that I’ll act as if he agrees with that statement) so the good question would be if you were born as a floating head and never even had a body would you still be a woman? And my answer here as well as plenty of people I suspect is “men and women don’t make sense if we’re born as floating heads what are you on about?”

“transwomen needs women’s right too”

I know you think that is self evident but I’ll ask what exactly are the women’s right transwomen need. Abortion? Affordable periods product ? The right to have places free of male? oh wait. They are male so they can never have that can they ?

“so feminism also needs to believe in gender identity”

because if we don’t our feminism is only for females and we exclude males. Notice how they didn’t continue their logic by saying how THIS feminism excludes transmen and nonbinary? Because it does, but guess who actually need the women’s right of abortion for exemple?

“transmen don’t need women’s rights”

I FUCKING CANNOT YOU STILL NEED IT WTF ARE YOU ON ABOUT. OK I need them to define women’s right asap

“well JK Rowling said she supports trans rights”

funny how you can understand how those words are not a proof that she in fact does but you still started your video by “we support women’s rights !!!”

“adding [to Harry Potter] content that was LGBT+ friendly”

she added things that were gay friendly. I don’t remember her adding trans characters.

“transphobic” = saying men can’t become women. Whoah. The hatred.

“the lack of belief [in gender identity] is what she wants protected”

yes and ? Atheism, the lack of belief in a god, is protected. Gender identity existence only proof is some people saying it does exists, it is not a scientific reality in any way shape or form.

“His biological sex was previously female”

BUT WE KNOW WHAT BIOLOGICAL SEX IS WE SWEAR; Damn they spend 7 minutes on “transpeople know biological sex exists” and then keep acting like they fucking don’t.

After that they point blank say that gender identity is more important than sex, having someone who passes as an exemple. What about transpeople who don’t pass? How much you bet this will never be discussed in this video.

Anyway they follow that with that :

Which is true but defining what a woman is does affect women actually (I know weird right) so it’s completely irrelevant to the discussion here.

“When a large group of transpeople are telling you something is wrong please listen to them”

please afford women the same courtesy. We are a large group of women saying males are not the fucking authority on what womanhood is but we are told to shut up. Listen.

“we cannot take the behavior of the minority [online abuse] and group it onto the majority”

I agree with that statement but the majority still didn’t condemn the abuse. Honestly the people in this video did -just before saying HOWEVER but hey – but it is pretty rare to see TRA actually confronting the people who abused JK Rowling online, they cheered them on more than anything.

It is very telling how they spend more time in this video saying people collecting screenshots of the abuse JK Rowling suffered were “not cool” than the TRA giving them a bad name by actually abusing JK Rowling. They even say Jammy was also insulted online so TERF and TRA are as bad as each other right ?? Being called delusional or idiot is not the same as death threats sorry Jammy. (I doubt the “freak” one was from a terf tbh but even then, this is not even comparable) I mean didn’t you get at least one person saying they were going to kill you ? Because I did, and I have ,like, 200 followers. I find very weird that the woman here said “I received sexual assaults threats and this is as a cis woman!” as if women weren’t the primary target of sexual assaults threats. Yeah it’s the misogyny. What’s new. You really should stop thinking you are somehow priviledged even when you are being sexually threatened ffs. What gender ideology does to a mf.

“neither of these sides are innocent”

oh come on, you cannot possibly means that the men who gave you sexual threats were terfs, this is ridiculous, you are just trying to excuse and diminish what people did to JK as per fucking usual.

“persistent low level harassment”

it hasn’t stayed low level tho. Stop trying to say you and JK are receiving the same abuse it’s embarrassing.

JK Rowling’s essay having real life effects on policies for exemple has an element of thruth ,even tho we disagree on wether or not this can be a good thing but your are deluding yourself if you think people assaulting transpeople are the sort of people whose views are in any way influenced by feminists. This is laughable. Also please stop with the guilt tripping, we are not responsible of the mental health of transpeople, we are not their therapists, sorry.

I love how they implied that the guy who forced GNC kids to behave as their assigned gender would somehow give a letter of thanks to a feminist. This is implying “terfs” want the same things as this maniac which is just a straight up lie, terfs absolutely adore GNC people and are mostly GNC themselves.

“What rights of women are actually being eroded by the inclusion of transwomen ?” I am glad you asked !! Well apart from the freedom of speech since “terfs” are losing their jobs and being deplatformed because of this, we have the inherent dangers of replacing sex by gender in what the law protects : https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/firing-mom-because-shes-breastfeeding-sex-discrimination this is a link to a story about a woman who was said being fired for breastfeeding was not sex discrimination because men can lactate. Do you see the problem ? Moreover there is quotas for women in politics etc….Women fought for their quotas and now males can have them, who do you think an employer would prefer someone who probably will be pregnant at one point or someone who never will ? and let’s not forget the right for women to have women only places :Women in prison are raped by the trans identified males in it .

“I cannot think of a single right that is removed from me”

good for you maybe you should have actually researched radfems talking point before doing this video ? Your ignorance is not a good argument.

“transwomen can use the women changing room because they are women”

you keep saying that but apart from “they feel like women” you didn’t explain how they are women. This is the basis of this entire video and you never explained. Also allowing any person who say they are women into the women’s changing room does not only allow transwomen does it ? It also allows lying freaks.

“You can protect cis women’s rights and transrights simulteanously” HOWWWWWWWWWWW, please tell me how to keep female only spaces (women’s right) while saying TWAW (transrights apparently according to them).

“transwomen can be the victims and cis women can do the voyeurism”

true but did you forget we actually live in the real world and in that one males are much more likely to be sexually harassing people than women ? It is a brazen form of lying to tell women that since theoretically other women can also be creeps they don’t have to worry about males. Get a grip. Live in the real world for a change.

“It doesn’t reference transwomen but men pretending to be women”

apart from “they feel it” you still haven’t told us what the difference is. You are aware nothing from an outside perspective distinguishes the two right ??

“there is no evidence of men pretending to be trans to enter female only spaces” and how would you know they are pretending ? This is the same problem again and again, if you define transwomen as men who feel like women then there is absolutely no way of verifying someone really is trans. And that’s a lie anyway since we do actually have proof of that happening?? There was that video making the room on radblr a while ago of a clear male pissing in the women’s bathroom saying (lying) that he was trans.

Yeah actually radical feminists would accept transmen in their bathrooms, but it’s not an easy question with an easy answer to know how to check they really are transmen. Although notice how they are again only talking about transpeople that passes ? I would feel safer with Jammy in my toilets than Hannah Mouncey for exemple :

That is so obvioulsy a man in a dress.

“ If a transman with a beard and penis and balls can go into a women’s toilet and that is deemed okay because of his biological sex what is to stop a cis man from doing the same”

I am sorry but are you saying a transwoman cannot have a beard and penis and balls ?????????? This is incredibly transphobic of you, you said that gender identity Is just feeling like a gender, how exactly does that mean transwomen cannot have beard ? If you want to know, radfem are arguing for a third toilet for transpeople, that’s our solution. What is yours ?

Ok the next part is racist I’ll skip that thanks

On accusation of TERFery intimidating people and organizations “we haven’t seen these” again, your ignorance is not an argument, I am posting these on Tumblr where cryptoterfs arer numerous. Why do you think that is ?

Are they seriously saying Nike and addidas “accepted” transpeople because they “realized it was the right thing to do” ?????? Those companies employs slaves IN WHAT WORLD DO YOU LIVE IN??

“trying to make transpeople look crazy”

the clownfish things were said online by real transpeople. We don’t need to invent thing to make transpeople look crazy, if there is large enough group some people belonging in that group will say stupid shit .

“We support these rights”

when speaking about women victims of abuse. This is a lie, the Vancouver rape shelter relief is often targeted by transactivists, recently a gofundme for it was cancelled because of transactivists, they are quite litteraly stealing money from raped women. This is not a small, inconsequential part of transactivism.

“The trans-inclusionist views expand the meaning of women to include transwomen”

It doesn’t expend shit actually since it excludes transmen and non-binary. If anything it reduces it.

They go on to say that transwomen deserves protection as women because of their murder rate. It doesn’t explain how being seen as women will help them here and anyway it’s a bold lie considering their murder rate is actually quite low. They also fail to consider how depriving transmen and nonbinaries of those same women’s right might be a problem.

Again they make the distinction between transwomen and men pretending to be transwomen without a way to identify which is which. This is starting to get repetitive and tedious. The problem is not that all transwomen are predators is that there is no way to see a difference until the predators acts, until a woman gets hurt, so accepting transwomen is accepting predators and saying transwomen feelings are more important that the women being hurt because of this. I disagree. The tiny tiny percentage of transpeople doing bad things is actually the same percentage as men doing bad things. If your argument could be used to say women only spaces shouldn’t exist at all because not all men are dangerous maybe you should reconsider your argument because I will not reconsider women’s right to have female only spaces.

“If you push transwomen out of female only spaces you push transmen in”

Yes. I don’t even see where the problem is here. Now why don’t we analyse the fact that if you push transwomen into female only spaces you push transmen out of them ? I don’t think transmen belongs in men’s prisons, do you ?

“Transpeople don’t dispute biology and don’t impact how female only diseases are treated”

eat shit. They do impact this, every woman trying to say “female biology” get shit thrown at her faster than you can blink, stop lying to me Jammy. Do you think I would get called a bleeder, a fetus carrier, a motherfucking birthing body if transactivism wasn’t trying to erase sex ? Don’t you think the sentence “men can have periods” is not eroding biology ? Fuck off

Back to JK, Jammy is saying her disabling comment on her blog was not conductive to a conversation, I have to salute the straight face he says it with because do you really think a nice educated conversation would have taken place on JK Rowling’s essay ? They flooded her children’s book tag with porn for fuck sake.

“Thre is no explosion in young women who wishes to transition” sources ? Because it does seem to be true :https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jsm.12817

“the detransitionners rate is actually really low” hard to know but most people who transitioned did it not so long ago since transgender is a recent trend, we will have to wait and see to have a more robust number. But maybe they are right on that one, this is not going to be the one argument that changes my views unfortunately.

“Does that mean we should stop people from getting plastic surgery then ?”

lol you don’t know the radfem stance on plastic surgery do you ?

“There is more significant transphobia than homophobia”

sources ? Because transition is used as converstion therapy in Iran so it is at least untrue in one country.

“If transmen transition to escape womanhood why is there transwomen ?”

You really didn’t research this did you ? the radfem answer is that transwomen are either gay men who have gender disphoria OR AGP (autogynephiles) read this if you want to learn more about it: https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-elephant-in-the-room

“why would people who have male privileges choose to give that up”

you are assuming they lose their male privileges but I will need sources on that because most transwomen do not pass and are treated more as special men than as women.

“We have already shown you that transphobia is far more rife and damaging than homophobia”

did I miss that part ? When ? You just said that ? Without backing it up ?

“anti trans narratives constantly contradict itself”

No we do not, we are feminist so we OF COURSE we analyse men and women differently, this is an issue of gender which radical feminism posit as an hierarchy, trying to explain transwomen and transmen with the same arguments is doomed to fail because they were not equal in their relation to gender to begin with. Do you think black people trying to pass as white do it for the same reasons white people try to have more black features ? Of course not.

“What am I a lesbian or a homophobe ?”

You are both, you are a lesbian in denial with a deep case of internalized misogyny and homophobia. You know yo can be both sexist and a woman right ? Well it’s the same here.

I heard “Simone de Beauvoir” and I knew they were going to be really fucking stupid with that “One is not born a woman but rather becomes a woman” quote and THERE IT IS! Please read the book. She is not saying male can become women if they try hard enough, she is saying basically the same thing JK Rowling’s quote said which is that “womanhood” as it is forced on women is alien and not natural and the point is that we should not accept it, it’s a feminist quote on femininity and I am so sick of men using it to say that they are women.

Transactivists acting as if sex recognition patterns don’t exists is exhausting so I won’t comment on “nobody checks if you have XX chromosomes before passing you over for a promotion” other than to say : passing over for promotions happens a lot when women are pregnant and after giving birth stop acting as if misogyny is unrelated to our reproduction capacities it is fucking insulting.

“transwomen will support [fights against tampon tax and FGM] too”

FGM was a bad choice here considering transactivists tried to stop a bill against FGM . I will need sources here actually since I never seen a transwoman fighting for women’s right in my life.

Ok I let a lot passes here because I’m tired but we are 48:40 in the video and fuck you “intersectional feminism” is not about males. It was for black women. It is not reductionist to say women are people with a vagina, this is just a definition, and one that applies to 50% of the population at that, there is litteraly no definition of woman that includes more people than that.

Imagine thinking “women are people with vagina” is reductionist but not calling women “vulva owners”. Please , I am begging for coherence.

“transwomen who experience greater abuse than cisgender women will ever experience” .

This is revolting. I don’t have any other words. I am glad this is the end of the video because I would have stopped immediately if this was at the start. What abuse transwomen can experience than ciswomen cannot ? Because I would have thought forced pregnancy was horrific but maybe this doesn’t compare to being misgendered?

“most people are comfortable with transwomen going into women’s bathrooms” https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39147/bsa34_moral_issues_final.pdf

It says 13% of women are at least uncomfortable with sharing bathroom with transwomen, why are we ignoring their wishes? Because 0.1% of the population wants to ? Whatever, the really interesting thing in this study is that for this question they defined “transwomen” as someone who has gone through all the steps to become a woman aka someone with surgery. I find extremely misleading that this is used for bathroom bills which defines transwomen as male identifying as women. Do you think the numbers would be the same if they specified the transwoman in question still has a penis ? Which is the case for most transwomen btw?

#anon #jammiedodgers #transgender #op is a terf #this took wayyy to long don't read this

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a-room-of-my-own · 4 years

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Hi! Did you see the NewStasteman interview with Judith Butler? The way she framed the whole debate about gender is so depressing, I cannot believe it... And that's without going into the Rowling debate, the more I read about it on Twitter and tumblr and the most depressed I get. How can womanhood be reduced to a feeling anyone can claim?

https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times

I had not seen it so thank you for giving me the opportunity to read it. She’s really manipulative and that’s pretty scary honestly. I picked up a few examples to show you

“I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. (…) I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. (…)I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen.

It’s “our” responsibility to act on something she cannot prove? It’s quite easy to observe that trans-activists are an active minority within the feminist movement. On the other hand, it’s much harder to prove than most people support modern trans-activism in all its implications. She doesn’t give any source, proof or figures to support her claim but ask people to fight for it, nevertheless. That’s faith, not fact.

If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” [the problem of men claiming to be trans to access women’s space] we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life.

Then again, no proof, when many gender critical bloggers have lists of dozens of examples of men using self-ID to access bathrooms, women’s shelters, women’s prisons, some of them sex offenders.

The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality.

That’s a lot of words to call women who are afraid of men “hysterical”. #sorority

Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. The fact that such fantasies pass as public argument is itself cause for worry.

Word salad that could be translated like this: our priority shouldn’t be protecting women from men, it should be accommodating men, because #notallmen are predators, so it would be very unfair to them, uwu. Men’s concerns should always be considered while women who are afraid are irrational.

I am not aware that terf is used as a slur.

I’m 99% sure that’s a lie, but okay.

I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women's spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary?

Women who want to have spaces without men should be called exclusionary, because we define women based on their relationship with men and how they include them. Suuuuure.

If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists? My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples.

We’re not the ones telling you can cure a psychological problem with cross-sex hormones and amputations, but we are the one pathologizing trans and GNC people. That’s hi-la-rious.

My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived.

Meaningless word salad > "women should let men redefine the word woman as they please"

Let us be clear that the debate here [between people who support JKR and others] is not between feminists and trans activists. There are trans-affirmative feminists, and many trans people are also committed feminists. So one clear problem is the framing that acts as if the debate is between feminists and trans people. It is not. One reason to militate against this framing is because trans activism is linked to queer activism and to feminist legacies that remain very alive today.

TLDR: Real feminist can only be trans-supporters.

Feminism has always been committed to the proposition that the social meanings of what it is to be a man or a woman are not yet settled. We tell histories about what it meant to be a woman at a certain time and place, and we track the transformation of those categories over time.

That’s gender for you Judith, not biological sex. Social identities vary, biological sex is a constant. Saying that isn't essentialism.

We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings. It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women...

“Women who are afraid of men are irrational” third instalment.

Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity. The trans-exclusionary radical feminist position attacks the dignity of trans people.

Men are whoever they say they are, women are whoever men say they are.

One does not have to be a woman to be a feminist, and we should not confuse the categories. Men who are feminists, non-binary and trans people who are feminists, are part of the movement if they hold to the basic propositions of freedom and equality that are part of any feminist political struggle.

Many feminists consider that men can only be feminist allies, so the debate is clearly not settled.

When laws and social policies represent women, they make tacit decisions about who counts as a woman, and very often make presuppositions about what a woman is. We have seen this in the domain of reproductive rights. So the question I was asking then is: do we need to have a settled idea of women, or of any gender, in order to advance feminist goals?

Does “woman” need to have a *gasp* definition? Judith is saying it doesn’t. You’ll notice that she doesn’t say that anything about “man” not having a stable definition. She believes it’s possible to fight against misogyny while having no stable definition for what a woman is. Laughable.

I put the question that way… to remind us that feminists are committed to thinking about the diverse and historically shifting meanings of gender, and to the ideals of gender freedom. By gender freedom, I do not mean we all get to choose our gender. Rather, we get to make a political claim to live freely and without fear of discrimination and violence against the genders that we are.

Word salad > “we don’t get to choose our gender but we get to choose it I am very smart"

Many people who were assigned “female” at birth never felt at home with that assignment, and those people (including me) tell all of us something important about the constraints of traditional gender norms for many who fall outside its terms.

Many women have internalized misogyny and homophobia, which in turn had a huge impact on their sense of self and self-esteem, but that doesn’t mean they’re not women Judith. And I don’t think any woman who was forcefully married, who had her vulva mutilated for religious reasons, had to wear a veil since she was a toddler, or was sold as a child into prostitution ever “felt at home” with having been born a girl, you absolute unit.

Feminists know that women with ambition are called “monstrous” or that women who are not heterosexual are pathologised. We fight those misrepresentations because they are false and because they reflect more about the misogyny of those who make demeaning caricatures than they do about the complex social diversity of women. Women should not engage in the forms of phobic caricature by which they have been traditionally demeaned. And by “women” I mean all those who identify in that way.

That was going so well until the last sentence

I think we are living in anti-intellectual times, and that this is evident across the political spectrum.

JB, darling, just read your own word salad and get some self-awareness.

The quickness of social media allows for forms of vitriol that do not exactly support thoughtful debate. We need to cherish the longer forms.

Tell that to your supporters Miss I Wasn't Aware TERF Were A Slur.

I am against online abuse of all kinds. I confess to being perplexed by the fact that you point out the abuse levelled against JK Rowling, but you do not cite the abuse against trans people and their allies that happens online and in person.

Kindergarten argument, but sure. Also, yet again, no proof.

I disagree with JK Rowling's view on trans people, but I do not think she should suffer harassment and threats. Let us also remember, though, the threats against trans people in places like Brazil, the harassment of trans people in the streets and on the job in places like Poland and Romania – or indeed right here in the US.

“Threats against JKR are bad BUT have you seen what’s happening in Brazil?”. I’m sorry what? Also, could trans-activist please stop instrumentalizing Brazilian stats, since they reflect the situation of prostituted homosexual transsexuals ?

So if we are going to object to harassment and threats, as we surely should, we should also make sure we have a large picture of where that is happening, who is most profoundly affected, and whether it is tolerated by those who should be opposing it. It won’t do to say that threats against some people are tolerable but against others are intolerable.

NO ONE, literally NO ONE said that threats against trans people were acceptable. In fact, most, if not pretty much all threats, especially physical threats, don’t come from radical feminists, but from men. Basically, what she’s saying is “who cares about threats against JKR, trans people (men) matter more”.

If trans-exclusionary radical feminists understood themselves as sharing a world with trans people, in a common struggle for equality, freedom from violence, and for social recognition, there would be no more trans-exclusionary radical feminists.

♫ Kumbaya my Lord, Kumbaya ♪

It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society.

All radical feminists are right wingers, sure.

Anyway, it's terrible that this kind of article is taken seriously when it could be summed up as "women are irrational and hysterical, men can be women and redefine the word woman if they so wish"...

#Gender critical #Judith Butler #And that's sooo pompous #Way to hide the emptiness of your reasoning ma'am

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ms-hells-bells · 3 years

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what's your opinion on "my id is gangnam beauty"?

what true beauty wishes it was. it confronts the male gaze, which the female lead has absorbed, it confronts toxic female relationships caused by socialisation to see all women as competition, and i think at the end when she realises that she’s just as miserable post plastic surgery as before and that as long as you’re a woman, you can’t win, is very powerful. se can’t reverse the surgery (without severe damage), but she can move on in life not caring how other people view her looks, and understanding that other women go through the same difficulties.

it also had a scene that was anti wrist grabbing, which in a manhwa (and kdrama) is super great considering how much that trope permeates throughout east asian media. of course, it has its flaws (like some hot dude teaching her all this), but for a ROMANCE manhwa, its messaging in regards to womanhood is really great. it also does something rare, which is show men how they are. not just one bad man or a group of men, but men in general kept making misogynistic comments and it showed it as female reality. it also subverted the typical trope of the female lead’s biggest “villain” being another woman. she’s posed as the big bad, but as you go through it, you realise that although she does some bad things, she’s just another victim and they reconcile and understand each other. the villain is the female lead’s own internalised misogyny and society.

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transgenderteensurvivalguide · 6 years

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(1) Hi, I’m not asking this question to offend anyone, this is a genuine question I have. If I offend anyone for being insensitive I am very sorry. So I've been thinking a lot of the differences between transracial vs. transgender and the more research and opinions I find on it the more I get confused. The main argument against being transracial is that a transracial person hasn't gotten the full experience of the specific gender they are identifying due to them living as birth gender. continued

(2) Like Rachel Dolezal being told she is not allowed to identify as black because she hasn’t gotten the true experience of being a black woman in America due to her living the her life as a white woman. However, can’t the same thing be said, for example, a MTF transgender person? It is undeniable that there is a specific woman experience. And for people (especially who realize they are trans late) live their lives passing as a man and don’t get this experience. (continued)(3) Being a woman is being catcalled, is being objectified, and is being paid less than their male counterparts. A MTF trans person doesn’t experience those for most of their life until they begin to live their lives true to their real selves. Why does this ‘experience’ argument work to discount transracial but doesn’t discount transgender? Again I’m very sorry for this question, I will admit myself it is very ignorant. But I just really want an answer to this and I hope I can get that.Harper says:Hi there, I’m going to assume you are asking this in good faith but to be quite honest the phrasing of some of your questions seriously makes me doubt that. Before I start, I want to clarify as Kii does in this ask that transracial is a term that actually describes someone who has been adopted by someone to a family of a different race, rather than the racist stuff Dolezal is doing.First off I’m going to address some assumptions about being a woman that you make in your question: “there is a specific woman experience” and that that experience “is being catcalled, is being objectified, and is being paid less than their male counterparts.” It’s curious to me that you claim there is an “undeniable… specific woman experience” and then only cite moments that we can see other people who are not women experience. For example, homophobic catcalling, i.e. verbal sexual harassment can and does happen to effeminate gay men on the streets; black men are a site of sexual objectification in much of media, consider pornography for example; gay men, men of colour are also paid less than their male counterparts and have been for some time historically. If you base your understanding of what makes a woman entirely on something like misogyny, you have to be open to the fact that other oppressive forces will coalesce in the same way to recreate similar experiences in similar liberation groups. You should also acknowledge that gendered discrimination doesn’t operate on a basis purely targeting women. I think you should broaden your understanding on how such forces work. I recommend reading Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl:

While often different in practice, cissexism, transphobia, and homophobia are all rooted in oppositional sexism, which is the belief that female and male are rigid, mutually exclusive categories, each possessing a unique and non overlapping set of attributes, aptitudes, abilities, and desires. Oppositional sexists attempt to punish or dismiss those of us who fall outside of gender or sexual norms because our existence threatens the idea that women and men are “opposite” sexes. This explains why bisexuals, lesbians, gays, transsexuals, and other transgender people — who may experience their genders and sexualities in very different ways — are so often confused or lumped into the same category (i.e., queer) by society at large. Our natural inclinations to be attracted to the same sex, to identify as the other sex, and/or to express ourselves in ways typically associated with the other sex blur the boundaries required to maintain the male-centered gender hierarchy that exists in our culture today.In addition to the rigid, mutually exclusive gender categories established by oppositional sexism, the other requirement for maintaining a male-centered gender hierarchy is to enforce traditional sexism — the belief that maleness and masculinity are superior to femaleness and femininity. Traditional and oppositional sexism work hand in hand to ensure that those who are masculine have power over those who are feminine, and that only those born male will be seen as authentically masculine. For the purposes of this manifesto, the word misogyny will be used to describe this tendency to dismiss and deride femaleness and femininity.

I’d also like to turn your attention to Jacob Hale’s essay Are Lesbians Women? in which he lays out a list of factors of what makes a woman. He does so in such a way where each individual item on the list is not necessary nor sufficient in order to be a woman. For example, although he lists ‘presence of breasts’ as one such condition that is often correlated with being a woman, there are plenty of women without breasts in the world: trans women without breasts, cis women who have had double mastectomies, and so on. Hale also notes that his list is not entirely exhaustive: there’s always the possibility that this list will be added to in future. I’d highly recommend you look at it if you’re after your “undeniable” “woman’s experience”.Next I’m going to look at your claim that “an MTF trans person doesn’t experience those for most of their life.” This entirely constructs a similar narrative for trans women and entirely disregards the possibility that such a person was raised by understanding and supportive parents from a young age and grew up as a girl from an early age. Whatever your argument about ‘transracial’, it’s clear that you already have a reductive understanding of womanhood and a transgender experience. Such forces and experiences that play into gender interact in ways far more complex than what you’ve detailed above. I also want to point out here that you’ve failed to describe how the arguments above apply to trans men: that is to say a trans man who transitions in his late twenties in the western world will probably experience all of what you label as the “woman experience”, and yet they are men. The argument you present is typical of the considerations ‘transracial’ arguments operate with. They are often circulated by people with a vested transmisogynistic interest as a “gotcha!” designed to portray trans women as either dangerous or ridiculous. As a result they are designed to eliminate any shred of transgender voices. What is implicit in the argument you’ve laid out is that 1. trans women aren’t women and 2. trans men are. The argument fails completely to consider how a trans person articulates their own understandings which often run contrary to the line of argument. I urge you to consider how this argument is made and what purposes it serves. Is it an honest exploration of the workings of gender and race or is there a bias or a motive driving the ‘logic’ of the argument.On to the ‘transracial’ aspect of your argument. I hope so far I have managed to draw your attention to the implicit biases given in the argument, as well as the levels of complexities you have yet to acknowledge. Much of the same can be said about how you present race in the argument.First of all, I’d like to draw your attention that considerations of being perceived as a different race is a reality faced by many white-passing people of colour and many mixed-race people who live through this daily. It is a consideration that has been often articulated and is still often articulated. If the argument was an earnest exploration of the shifting and transitory nature of the perception of people of colour in a racist society, would it not rather look at this aspect? If the argument was an honest exploration of the similarities and differences a construction of both racialised and gendered experiences, would it not center trans women of colour’s voices as they are best situated at this intersection of race and gender to experience this? Is it not suspicious that such an argument doesn’t do this? In fact, go read Franchesca Ramsey’s article on this for a black trans woman talking about it, and Riley’s arcticle, a black non-binary person who highlights:

Rachel Dolezal flat out lied about her life and her experiences, and not to protect herself, but to protect the benefits she received and the space she acquired through those lies. She lied to protect her privilege, a trait of white people and all privileged groups. Her life could have been the same had she merely remained the white woman she was. White people already devour space in Black communities as a bonus of their whiteness, but she chose to take her farce further, becoming a “Black” woman who happened to be indistinguishable from the party in power.There is no benefit to being transgender, and there is no harm, but there is every benefit and harm to a white person picking a less privileged race to join because white features are privileged in every race and identification has no effect on that.

(my emphasis added.)In addition to the points raised by Riley and Ramsey, I’d point out that the move to make a blind comparison between race and gender on the basis of “they are both experienced by people” or “they are both social constructs” “so why can’t x” is just so materially and historically off. There is no consideration in your given argument over the differences between race and gender. There is no consideration that racism was founded by a white ruling colonial class to dominate a colonised and enslaved population. Such a population had within it differently gendered and transgendered people. There is no consideration that this domination was a product of hundreds of years of a capitalism that needed a large white working class to carry out a sustained colonial project: a colonial project that is still in action across the world today. There is no consideration of the formation of gender and the nuclear family as a product of the division of labour enforced by capitalism and the ruling classes on the working classes.In effect, gender and race are two different things. They of course intersect, but the ways in which they operate are distinct and different. Reducing both down to a level that strips them of their actual effects and lived realities in order to further either a justification for a racist white woman exploiting black people or to further a ridicule and strawmanning of the transgender community is a shameful act of bigotry posing under a guise of logic and inquiry.

Check out our /tagged/transracial for more commentary.

#Anonymous #harper says #transracial #racism #transmisogyny #transphobia #hale #serano #caps #im not going to tag this mtf because it'll just be noise in that tag #misogyny #mtf /

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neonstatic · 6 years

Text

(transcripted convo)

i’m reposting a discussion i had w a terf. i previously posted screenshots but she messaged me and said she didn’t want her url or avatar displayed. editing the pics to post them again was hell so i’m posting a script instead (i learned my lesson tumblr: you suck). if anyone ends up finding the convo and thus the redacted speaker... idc. this is a public website and we technically had this convo in public - the notes of a post aren’t private spaces afaik. i’m posting this as proof that sometimes calmly reasoning with ppl lead to nothing. (i know anyone could say the same but lmao leave me alone.)

tw for transphobia/transmisogyny

[redacted] (speaking to a transmasc discourser about the "woman path"): Ok let me explain what I mean :) if your experience was totally different then thats fine :) im 24 and when I was little i was encouraged to play with dolls and learn 'motherly things' like playing with baby dolls while my brother played with toy trucks. There was a lot of pressure at school to wear dresses, and be sweet and polite. @[transmasc discourser] then of course, learning to deal with periods and the shame and taboo around them. Removing body hair because its considered unladylike. Etc

@[transmasc discourser] have you had none of those experiences?

neonbaebae: these are all common experiences for women bc of gender roles/stereotypes but none of that defines womanhood as an identity.

[redacted]: completely agree they are gender roles. But menstruation isnt a gender role. Its a frustrating part of being female. But that said, what IS womanhood then?

(rest under cut)

neonbaebae: menstruation is a biological function that is in no way exclusive to female bodies. remember intersex ppl, who come in all forms and shapes. women aren't all the same and it's likewise for men. there are intersex women who don't fit all the criteria for being "female" yet still identify as women. there is a distinction to make between womanhood as an experience and womanhood as an identity.

the woman experience is what you've described. the woman identity is feeling like one, e.g.: liking female-coded clothes, makeup, hairstyles, feeling comfortable in the societal role of being a woman. identity is essentially abt self perception most of the time

[redacted]: intersex is unique and I respect that not all womens bodies are the same. Intersexuality is complex but it doesnt represent the majority of biological women. I dont have a strong baclground in intersex knowledge so I'm certainly not gonna speak on behalf of intersex women. so if identity is self perception (which I completely agree with) how can a biological man self perceive his femaleness.if he's never experienced it?

neonbaebae: trans women never identify with being male and all in entails. and they can see, thru watching women counterparts and how they interact with the world around them, that they id more w the idea of womanhood and much less w the idea of manhood. it's esp why dysphoria often settles around puberty bc the dissonance manifests physically and that's harder to handle

[redacted]: but what youre talking about is what trans women see women do. If thats what someone aspires to, its a very basic and narrow understanding of what womanhood is. Its only what they see. And people are far more complex than this. Does a biological male aspire to periods stigma, beauty conformity and lesser social stance in the world? Or do they aspire to femininity? Something many biological women dont feel comfortable with

neonbaebae: womanhood as an identity is a feeling that is strengthened by a disconnection to manhood, its polar opposite. someone who completely rejects the idea of being man is likely to prefer being a woman (not always but likely!). many trans women do aspire to femininity and it has nothing to do with the cis women who are uncomfortable w it, just like there are many cis women who embrace it too.

many trans women cannot quite explain their transition in another way than "being a man felt wrong but being a woman feels right and authentic to my true self". i'd suggest to ask an actual trans woman for her pov tho since i'm not one, i'm just basing myself on what i've heard them say

[redacted]: but feeling disconnected with manhood (which is understandable and gender roles are frustrating) doesnt make someone the opposite of a man. As society we need to open our understanding of gender expression. But this isnt the same as thinking 'if I dont feel like a conventional man or connect with male social expectations, then I must be the opposite'. Theres no logic in that

we live in a world where gender stereotype binaries are considered natural, and people who dont fit this understandably feel marginalised. In fact Id argue to a greater or lesser degree, none of us truly fit the prescribed gender binary.

but i find it problematic when a man thinks they're a woman based on what they think 'woman' is.

neonbaebae: you're right in saying that a disconnection from manhood doesn't make someone a woman - a connection to womanhood does. it has v little to do with the upbringing of women which you seem to define thru misogyny and menstruation alone which is frankly a pessimistic view of womanhood. it's less not feeling like a conventional man and more not feeling like a man At All. tru it doesn't sound logical but gender is not logical it's abstract and complex

it seems problematic bc one might think men would gain smth from iding as women but stats show that trans women are at higher risk of assault for being out and open, both of bc of misogyny (not directly related to having a vagina or menstruating after all) & transphobia. it's esp telling that trans men aren't targeted as much. do you disagree w trans men as well?

[redacted]: but as a women i dont connect with womanhood. Lol i am a women. It would be nice to think we live in a world where women are equal, but that's not the world we live in. Womanhood is hard. And we do live under a patriarchal society that's cultivated female inferiority over many centuries. We're still negotiating freedoms today.

Its not about gaining or loss. Its about the male right to self define womanhood on their terms, without the biological or social conditioning. In fact, many have recieved MALE conditioning as children. This comes with its own privileges.

I think transmale is a very different experience so no I categorise them very differently to transwomen

neonbaebae: "as a woman" you say. even if the experiences and stereotypes don't fit you perfectly, even if you reject it, you still id as a woman. you feel like one and you suffer the consequences of being one. believe it or not trans women suffer from iding as a woman as well and thrice as harshly. i can provide sources if you want.

trans women don't think like men bc they feel like women. the thought patterns are different. they don't digest the social messages abt men bc their mind doesn't relate to it. male entitlement and all doesn't apply to them. and in sociology alone womanhood is often defined as more than a biological or upbringing thing. it's a social identity and trans women have a right to it if they don't id and reject manhood altogether

my question tho was do you think trans men aren't men either cus otherwise that'd be hypocritical

[redacted]: my point is its not an identity. Its a reality. Im a woman. I have xx chromosomes and the world treats me as such. Similar to my race. I dont identify as my race, i am treated as the world sees me.

male entitlement does apply. Statistically baby boys are fed for longer than baby girls. And little girls are left to cry for longer than baby boys. Little girls learn many motherly caretaker roles while many of their male counterparts are encouraged to conquer the world. Children are raised by gender. Even subconsciously. I can also provide sources :)

there are many more male leaders and men in authoritive positions in the world. Women fight very hard for the same respect, but womens voices are less valued. It takes no genius to see men have greater standing in the world

about transmen. No I dont consider them men but I'll respectfully use the pronouns anyone prefers, male or female. Its common decency.

I think society needs to get more comfortable with non confirmative gender expression

neonboobear: but it is an identity. that's why there's a distinction between sex (bio) and gender (identity & expression). if it would feel wrong for you to be called a man or nonbinary then that'd be bc you don't id as such. (also there are women with chromosomes other than xx maybe you should avoid phrasing it that way.) i id as my race but race has v different roots & impact than gender historically and it cannot be compared. let's stick with gender.

and i'm not denying gendered socialization but it doesn't shape a child more than their personal feelings on their identity, which can differ v early in life bc (some) would rather engage in activities associated with the opposite gender for example. if it were that simple trans ppl wouldn't go at lengths to "play the part"

you're right society does need to accept gender non conformance but that's v different from the trans experience. i rly think you should have a deep conversation with a trans person to try and see their pov

[redacted]: if womanhood is an identity, it totally invalidates what it means to be female. And yes its arguable that there're are women who arent xx but how about the majority of the population that are. Must we pander to the few at the expense of the majority? also what makes you assume I dont talk to trans people? Critique doesnt mean lack of empathy.

Children and gendered socialization is complex. Maybe if 'feminine' activities werent coded as female and just 'childhood play' we wouldnt have the same degree of dysphoria. It goes back to the irrational logic, 'if I like the pink toy section then I must be a girl.'

neonboobear: i'm afraid that is your pov for the ideology that womanhood is an experience but also an identity is considered a v valid theory in the science field. the fact that there are women with chromosomes other than xx is proof alone that xx chromosomes aren't what makes a woman. and i've suggested a deep conversation and an intention to Understand the Other. not just a talk. i said nothing abt empathy.

there would be less dysphoria but i'm sure it's still be there. many think the abolition of gender would solve everything but i doubt so

[redacted]: i have a close mtf friend and we have the debate constantly. We don't always agree with her but there's a lot more common ground then you might expect :) Gender roles damn us all. Hmmmm... abolition of gender is impossible but theres is a lot that can be done to challenge gender expectations. But not an easy battle! neonbaebae: i mean this with the least offense okay but i sincerely think neither of you should be friends. i’m black and i’d never befriend a racist. that’s a lack of self respect on her part and a plain lack of respect on yours.

i’d like to end this conversation here. i’ve said my point and i’d only repeat myself by continuing. and since i’m not a trans woman i don’t want to misinterpret them (so sorry if i’ve already did. trans girls feel free to bring up clarifications). might sound tedious but i strongly suggest you watch this 50-min long video essay by youtuber contrapoints. her vids are informative and entertaining and so v easy to digest despite the length. i’ve heard she’s not v liked in terf circles but it’s worth it to listen to what she has to say as a trans women.

#transphobia #transmisogyny #convo transcript #long post #anti terf

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njawaidofficial · 6 years

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Queens Are Questioning RuPaul’s Grip On Drag Culture After His Controversial Trans Comments

https://styleveryday.com/2018/03/09/queens-are-questioning-rupauls-grip-on-drag-culture-after-his-controversial-trans-comments/

Queens Are Questioning RuPaul’s Grip On Drag Culture After His Controversial Trans Comments

RuPaul in drag promoting the third season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars.

VH1

“I’m not just [a] drag queen,” RuPaul once said. “I am the drag queen — number one.”

For more than 20 years, RuPaul has been the face of drag in America. In the early ‘90s, the nation’s curiosity was piqued by the 6-foot-4-inch man who strutted around unapologetically in outrageous dresses, dazzling blonde wigs, and thigh-high boots — the same man who coined the famous phrase, “You’re born naked and the rest is drag.” RuPaul wiggled his way into the public consciousness with hits like “Supermodel” and “Snapshot,” became the face of a high-profile MAC cosmetics campaign, and even briefly helmed a talk show, The RuPaul Show, in the mid ‘90s.

But it was RuPaul’s Drag Race, the Emmy award–winning show, that truly brought drag culture — and, with it, RuPaul — out from gay bars and ballrooms and into people’s living rooms.

The show, soon to begin its 10th season but currently airing its third season of the All Stars iteration, may have begun as a wry parody of America’s Next Top Model, but it’s since evolved into a pop culture smash embraced not only by the LGBT community but the internet at large. (If you’ve been online at all in the last few years, chances are you’ve encountered a reaction GIF from the meme-generating show.)

But in light of what have been called transphobic comments by the television star, some in the LGBT community, including drag queens and former Drag Race contestants, are questioning the influence RuPaul wields over drag culture and wondering whether drag is evolving beyond the queen who helped pioneer it.

Chelsea Guglielmino / Getty Images

The controversy began this past weekend when RuPaul was asked by the Guardian if he would allow a transgender contestant to compete on the show if they had physically transitioned. The answer? “Probably not.”

“You can identify as a woman and say you’re transitioning, but it changes once you start changing your body,” RuPaul told the newspaper.

“It takes on a different thing; it changes the whole concept of what we’re doing,” he said. “We’ve had some girls who’ve had some injections in the face and maybe a little bit in the butt here and there, but they haven’t transitioned.”

(RuPaul’s representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment from BuzzFeed News. In the Guardian piece, RuPaul was out of drag, and has said in multiple interviews that he doesn’t really care what gender or pronouns people use when referring to him.)

In the interview, RuPaul noted that Peppermint, a queen who appeared on Drag Race Season 9 and who finished as first runner-up, did identify as a woman while competing in the show, but argued she hadn’t “really transitioned” because she didn’t have breast implants.

Peppermint in 2017.

Angela Weiss / AFP / Getty Images

Several former contestants on the show were quick to express their shock, hurt, and strong disagreement with RuPaul’s comments.

“My drag was born in a community full of trans women, trans men, and gender non-conforming folks doing drag,” tweeted the the show’s most recent winner, Sasha Velour. “That’s the real world of drag, like it or not.”

“A queen is a queen and I’m sad that we keep having to say this,” Velour said.

Tatianna, a veteran queen from Season 2 of Drag Race who later competed on All Stars, said, “Drag is art. Drag is for everyone. Drag can be created by anyone.”

Gia Gunn, another former contestant from the show’s sixth season, said on Twitter, “Trans women were the first entertainers I ever saw in drag and have always been a big part of the industry.”

Gunn, who came out as trans after her stint on the show, later asked in a YouTube video, “Does this mean as a trans woman I will no longer be considered for future seasons of All Stars?”

Yet some contestants also defended RuPaul. Season 8’s Derrick Barry said RuPaul should be able to set his own rules: “You may not agree with all the rules, but please be respectful to his vision for the show.”

VH1

But for many trans and gender-nonconforming people, the comments RuPaul made weren’t surprising given his past history, according to Meredith Talusan, the executive editor at Condé Nast’s LGBT vertical, Them, and a former BuzzFeed employee.

Talusan, who is trans, told BuzzFeed News that she used to watch Drag Race but stopped after RuPaul came under fire in 2014 for using the words like “tranny” and “she-male” in segments on the show.

That controversy prompted GLAAD, the LGBT media watchdog, to release a statement condemning the use of the derogatory terms. “These words only serve to dehumanize transgender people and should not be used,” GLAAD said.

After that storm, Logo, the network on which Drag Race previously aired before switching to VH1, issued an apologetic statement: “We have heard the concerns around this segment. We are committed to sharing a diverse range of trans stories across all our screens and look forward to featuring positive and groundbreaking stories of trans people in the future.”

“I just didn’t necessarily feel like he was responding to the criticism,” Talusan said of the 2014 controversy. “I didn’t really see a demonstration of real affinity with the trans community and so I guess not having felt that myself, I felt like it was a show I didn’t absolutely need in my life.”

Venus Selenite, a black trans woman writer, also said on Twitter that RuPaul’s past comments had “shown us who he is.”

“His recent comments about not allowing trans people on Drag Race are not surprising,” Selenite said. “They are harmful and wrong, but not surprising.”

Selenite, who declined an interview with BuzzFeed News, recently wrote a Twitter thread titled “#RuPaul, His Transphobic History, and Why He Is Not the Know-It-All on Drag.”

Season 9 winner Sasha Velour defended trans drag queens after RuPaul’s comments.

Afp Contributor / AFP / Getty Images

Peppermint, the trans queen RuPaul mentioned in the Guardian piece, told BuzzFeed News she felt “perplexed, sad, fearful, and speechless” upon hearing the host’s words for the first time.

“My womanhood is not really up for debate and negotiation by anybody else, and my womanhood is not at stake,” Peppermint said.

Mathew Rodriguez, a staff writer at the LGBT-focused website Into, said RuPaul should not be afforded any leniency based on his status or star power.

“I don’t think that in other instances we would be like, ‘okay,’ if a show discriminated against a group of people based on their bodily reality,” he told BuzzFeed News.

For Rodriguez, RuPaul’s rules about anatomy were a “masking for transmisogyny and misogyny in general,” and they also overlooked the historical contributions of trans women to drag.

“A lot of culture starts on the margins, and with drag culture, that starts with trans women of color,” Rodriguez said. “The most marginalized in our community kind of helped build this art, this craft and now as it gets more mainstream they’re being kept out of the conversation.”

For instance, Marsha P. Johnson, who played an integral role in the Stonewall riots of 1969, was a black drag performer who many believe would have identified today as a trans woman (the term transgender was not in wide use in her lifetime).

The country’s leading trans rights group, the National Center for Transgender Equality, has noted the difference between people who perform drag and people who are transgender, but adds, “While some drag queens live their lives as men outside of their drag personae, people of any gender can be drag queens.”

After the outraged reaction to his comments, RuPaul eventually released a statement, saying, “I understand and regret the hurt I have caused.”

“The trans community are heroes of our shared LGBTQ movement,” he said. “You are my teachers.”

Talusan, the Them editor, said RuPaul needs to be reminded of the influence he wields as a gatekeeper in the drag community. “RuPaul isn’t necessarily mindful of just the power he has within this industry, the power that he has in terms of controlling people’s livelihoods, being able to sort of like turn people into celebrities,” she said.

“I personally know very successful trans drag queens who are just like, ‘I will just never have the opportunity to make — my career advancement, ya know, is limited, simply because of the fact that I can never be on Drag Race,’” she said.

“I think it’s a good time for us to examine our dependence upon one source for what’s supposed to be a diverse kind of flow for information and culture and art, which is drag”

For Peppermint, RuPaul’s comments should prompt some soul-searching in the LGBT community over the influence Drag Race holds over drag culture.

“I think it’s a good time for us to examine our dependence upon one source for what’s supposed to be a diverse kind of flow for information and culture and art, which is drag,” said Peppermint.

However, she stressed she didn’t think it’s time to “invalidate or demote RuPaul” after this recent mishap.

“I think we just need to look for someone else who can provide just as much influence,” she said.

More local drag queens are now making themselves heard online in the aftermath of RuPaul’s comments, according to Rodriguez.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of local performers speak up and say, ‘Hey, this is only one facet of drag and the community’s so much larger,’” he said.“So if this is something that you love, but maybe you’re not totally invested in RuPaul anymore, go to your local bars, support your local queens.’”

“Drag Race is not the only way in America to consume drag,” Rodriguez said.

“Drag Race is not the only way in America to consume drag.”

With growing pains being a part of any successful franchise, Peppermint said she doesn’t believe this will be the nail in the coffin for the show. “I don’t think it’s going to tarnish the show or turn people off from watching it,” she said. “I think, if anything, I’m hoping it causes people from the community to rally around it and take care of this precious, this gift that we have.”

But, she cautioned, the show needs to adapt to keep up with the times.

“I think anything that’s going to survive in the future needs to be adaptable … people who don’t adapt, things that don’t adapt, they die off,” she said.

Peppermint said she hopes she won’t be the last trans queen to compete on the highly rated reality show — and RuPaul has since indicated he’s open to including trans queens. After his initial apology, the host tweeted, “In the 10 years we’ve been casting Drag Race, the only thing we’ve ever screened for is charisma uniqueness nerve and talent. And that will never change.” (However, the tweet was mocked by some, as rather than including a picture of the striped trans flag, RuPaul shared an image of green and yellow stripes that some were quick to note appeared to be a 1950s artwork titled “Train Landscape”).

Despite her hurt, Peppermint hopes RuPaul is able to recover from this latest blunder.

“She’s human and has the right to her opinions and she said she’s learned from this experience and it appears as though there was a little bit of an evolution or a change, at least some openness.”

“I have to take that for what it is. If she’s apologizing, I accept it. If she’s saying she’s open, I accept that,” Peppermint said.

“Everyone has room to change.”

LINK: RuPaul’s Version Of LGBT History Erases Decades Of Trans Drag Queens

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femaleresistance · 7 years

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So much of it predicts the path that mainstream feminism would be about to take, drifting away from the shit-and-string-beans mundanity of everyday exploitation to be dazzled by the glamour of individual inner lives. We’d given up fighting the wolves that lurked in the dark and taken to gazing into magic mirrors. The future lay in false hope.

“Papa, do you think I’m odd?” she humblebrags. “It’s just that I’m not sure I fit in here.”

This is the beginning of a new style of feminism, which is not about one’s social position, but one’s inner identity. It’s not for rubbish women, who marry local heartthrobs and have babies and get old and shit. It’s only for special women, like Belle. This makes it more inclusive (no, I don’t know why, either). More importantly, it makes it more marketable. Sod the sisterhood; as long as you have the right accessories, liberation is yours.

In order to have this new feminism, you still need sexists. Fortunately, Beauty and the Beast provides us with the character of Gaston, who is your classic, out-and-out, unreconstructed chauvinist. Indeed, he’s so stereotypically chauvinist you might forget for an entire hour that he’s not actually the one keeping a woman prisoner until she falls in love with him. Gaston might attempt to use Belle’s father as a means of coercing Belle to be with him; the Beast is the one who bloody well does it.

Structurally, it turns out there’s very little Gaston wants to do to Belle that the Beast doesn’t actually do. However, the latter is excused because he does it while being a beast and hence has identity issues. Not only that, but the Beast’s sexism isn’t as clichéd and common as Gaston’s. If the latter reads FHM, the former reads Julia Kristeva. If Gaston stands for the easy-win, obvious, pussy-grabbing misogyny of the right, the Beast stands for the left’s more refined, complex, long-wordy woman-hating. It’s not for Belle to challenge it, but to listen and learn from it.

This is, I think, one of the most insidious aspects of Beauty and the Beast, and the one which marks it out as a fundamentally third-wave project: it remarkets femininity – by which I mean female accommodation, empathy, self-sacrifice on behalf of males – as not just a female, but a feminist, virtue. Belle is sneeringly dismissive of the Bimbettes’ adoration of Gaston, yet quite prepared to embrace self-effacement for a more unusual male in a more unusual setting. Why, then it starts to look like empowerment! Watching this now, I can’t help recalling my own feelings about leaving behind the “coarse and unrefined” men of my own town to go to university, where I met men whose sexism I chose not to see. I associated misogyny with a lack of education and an uncritical embrace of stereotypes. Surely men who looked different and read books couldn’t hate women, too? Perhaps all they needed was a woman who understood them.

Feminism makes no sense without a meaningful analysis of work and class. I didn’t realise this back in 1991. As far as I was concerned, sexism was simply a massive, global misunderstanding, the unfortunate outcome of the mistaken belief that women were inferior to men. It never crossed my mind that it might all be the other way round: that the dehumanisation of women could have arisen as a means to justify their exploitation, an exploitation upon which countless social, political and economic structures depended. That would just have been too depressing, not to mention terribly second-wave.

One solution Friedan didn’t count on was an enchanted castle, with the staff who claim to “only live to serve”. In modern feminist terms we would call such people “cis women” (singular version: your mum). Such women’s relationship with their class status is not conflicted; on the contrary, they apparently identify with it. This means feminists don’t have to challenge an exploitative hierarchy after all. Rather they only need ensure that they – as individuals wanting “more than this provincial life” – don’t find themselves wrongly positioned within it.

This was my kind of feminism, one based not on the world I wanted for everyone, but on the women I didn’t want to become. It was and remains incredibly appealing. It’s only now it strikes me that feminism as flight from stereotypical womanhood into one’s own perceived exceptionality isn’t reaping the rewards one might have expected, at least not for female people.

It’s comforting to be reminded of a time when sex-based inequality seemed like an easy problem to fix, when I believed I could identify my way out of my mother’s fate. But that is a fantasy. What’s worrying is the degree to which fantasy feminism is now winning out over reality, while real, live women continue to suffer.

“To be a feminist,” wrote Rebecca Walker, “is to integrate an ideology of equality and female empowerment into the very fibre of my life. it is to search for personal clarity in the midst of systemic destruction, to join in sisterhood with women when often we are divided, to understand power structures with the intention of challenging them.” In other words, it’s more than simply stepping beyond the barriers that still hold other women back.

#beauty and the beast #third-wave feminism #second-wave feminism #radical feminism #disney

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