#on gender politics lol

[inkskinned]

it isn't really complicated, but i still can't tell my grandma about it. my girlfriend is also my boyfriend and i'm her girlboyfriend and there are a lot of days this feels like smoothing sheets over a good mattress. it feels like getting a cup of good hot chocolate. we paint our nails lesbian flag pink, and i watch her eyelashes make shadows on her cheeks. she wants to kiss me because i am really good at baking, and i want to kiss her because when i am freaked out about how i spilled coffee, she just hands me extra napkins and helps me clean. he is so handsome i want to eat my fist. they once just winked at me and i couldn't talk for like the next fifteen minutes.

i haven't seen the L word and i was raised catholic. my earliest experiences with queer relationships were through harrowing conversations and hushed questions and blood on the ground. i didn't like boys soon enough. what, are you gay? asked to a 6th grader, almost like a demand.

when she is asleep next to me and i can feel the dreams run up and down her body, i pretend we are both somewhere in the stars. i like to picture a future full of fruit trees, and writing him poetry. sometimes she wakes up, has a whole conversation with me, goes back to sleep, and utterly forgets that we ever even spoke. she is always kind to me, even in that liminal half-there ghost. i like the croaked, raw way her voice sounds in the very-early morning, the way she always seems surprised i'm still here, and home.

on the internet, there are a lot of people who would be annoyed by both of us, and how labels must be pruned into orchids. a box has to hold and define the insides. people must be organized.

we went on a date last night, and the host said, oh, table for 2 nice ladies? neither of us are ladies, but also we are very much 2 nice ladies. i have been wearing her sweater nonstop. he has frequently been forced into wearing my taylor swift official merch quarter-zip because i was worried about him catching a chill, and you simply cannot be cool in an official taylor swift quarter-zip. do not worry: they listen to better music than i do, and their voice sounds like leaves falling.

i wear the skirts and makeup and i am better with spackle and know how to drive stick. recently someone commented on my work - you're just a man trying to reappropriate lesbian spaces. sometimes i feel like she is a clementine to me, and sometimes i feel like he is a german shepherd and sometimes i feel they are a bird. i like watching his hands over a guitar. can i write this poem, even? how can you be a lesbian if you're sometimes with a man? or you are the man?

how can i, huh. you know, our first date lasted 3 days. we'd been flirting for over a year before i finally asked her out. i'd already written her into poetry. she'd already written me into songs.

last night, in the late night, when they woke up again, confused about where they were, they said - oh, thank god. this is your arm. there's just something so precious to me about the specifics, the denotation that the arm was (thank god!) mine. i really liked that definition. i liked the obvious relief because i understand it.

i say yeah, i have a partner. i mean - oh. thank god. it's your arm.

#writeblr #warm up #on gender politics lol #inkskinned try not to have feelings for someone challenge #time of death: they put my earring in their ear. they were wearing an unbuttoned black buttondown and a necklace with my name on it #you can just send me the coffin i was ready to crawl in

[mccoalminer]

Alison Bechdel

#alison Bechdel #dykes to watch out for #ive been thinking about this image a lot partly because that right there is what we like to call a shared experience #but also because of the god damn gender of this dyke in particular #dtwof holds a special place in my heart because as a comic strip about queer/butch experiences it feels like a rare insight into how wlw #felt in the 80s-00s and especially over that progression. its not about traumaposting or sending a message #it was just dykes going and not to play into a cliche here but i think thats beautiful #just lesbians living their lives #i always think of it like if the f.r.i.e.n.d.s. cast was replaced by a group of gay ppl living politically charged lives #only without making the gay ppl the butt of the joke lol #ive forgotten what i was trying to sau with these tags but basically these two lil panels feel like a lot like home to me #gender #oh no i used the dreaded quotation marks in my tags and it has ruined the order of the tags #the 8th tag was supposed to say something like 'its just dykes going 'this reminds me of a dyke i know' ...' #7th tag not 8th i cant count #the point is #i tried

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

#gender #politics #twitter #tweets #meme #memes #tweet #funny #lol

[ofcowardiceandkings]

ah excellent

we didnt need ANOTHER reason to dump him directly in the fucking bin but yet here we are

#get fucked lol if youre agreeing with current JKR in any way ???? do some aoul searching #especially on top of the new gender guidelines for uk schools #fucking YEET #didnt elect you anyway be gone #rory's ramblings #uk politics

[shimenchus]

it's so telling when someone says radical feminism is "white woman shit" and you bring up the fact that in many places such as africa or asia, the only feminism that prominently exists is radical feminism, and for those places it's just considered regular feminism that you get told those women live in places that aren't progressive enough for them to understand their actions properly. to say these women are too dumb to realize that their beliefs are "bad" simply because they don't align with western mainstream liberal feminism is rooted in xenophobia and racism, not to mention a lack of understanding of the struggles and violence women from these countries regularly go through, which can range anywhere from fgm to men rubbing and wiping their cum on the back of women's clothes in trains. but of course, as usual, there's no intelligent response to this so you just end up getting blocked or get rape wished on you.

#my grandma was born and raised in south sudan she considers herself a feminist and her beliefs #along with all of the women she knows believe in what radfems believe in #being against things like surrogacy forced marriage harmful sex culture misogyny male violence and femicide #i live in a primarily hispanic/black area and literally the only people who try to push gender shit on us is white people #and if you say you don't believe in all that you get called an ignorant white supremacist #white people put the mirror down when you're calling non white people white supremacists #anyway today's rant is brought to you by a white guy who told me (a non white darkskin child of 2 immigrants) #that of course i didn't understand gender politics because i'm too privileged #and then went on to say women in south korea aren't 'booksmart' enough to realize their corset movement is a 'terf' movement..... #my mom always tells me do not engage with white people who want to play devil's advocate with race based matters #and yet here i am doing it again lol #/rambling

[splickedylit]

excerpting

Domestic Diplomacy II is turning out to be even more "splickedy gratuitously gets caught in the weeds of xenosociology and alien language barriers, the fic sequel" and tbh I'm not mad about it

--

“Oh, your moirail!” says Jade, and bounces upright, ignoring John’s wary little soft human cautionary hiss.  To your vague surprise, she’s apparently learned enough not to do the human holding-out-a-hand gesture they usually do when they’re introduced; she clasps her hands in front of her, nonexistent claws politely folded in, and ducks her head briefly forward and to one side, careful not to jab at him with her nonexistent horns. 

It's a pretty passable greeting—for a social equal, which is its own bizarre issue, considering he’s a highblood.  But relatively non-offensive, for a human, and fortunately for her she’s picked a highblood who isn’t likely to give a shit.  Gamzee laughs out loud and gives his own lazy-ass version of a greeting back, a vague twist of his wrists and dip of his head, condescending to use an equal’s greeting back at her.   When he says “Gamzee Makara,” there’s a hint of a threatening buzz to it, a testing you should know to respect me warning—you could have told him she’d show absolutely no sign of hearing it, which is exactly what happens.

“I’m Jade Harley!  I meet you,” Jade says, a carefully neutral statement-of-fact greeting—not fawning or hostile.  You don’t know if humans are out here just learning neutral address no matter what, or if this human particularly just doesn’t give a shit that your moirail’s a fuck-off mutant-huge highblood with horns that scrape the ceiling of the block—by the expectant way she looks up at Gamzee afterward, she wouldn’t give much of a shit either way.  Out of all of the humans, Jade Harley might actually win the prize for giving the least shits, no matter what Rose and Dave like to pretend.

“Yeah, I meet you too, motherfucker,” says Gamzee, looking incredibly amused, and glances down at you.  “She’s a rude-ass little motherfuckin’ toothful, huh?  I like her.”

“Of course you do,” you say, pained.  “Don’t take it personally, alright?  You’re not a highblood here, they don’t get highbloods.”

“Oh, best friend,” says Gamzee, and kisses your nugbone again, embarrassingly.  “I’m a highblood wherever the fuck I go.  It’s cool though.  Squishy-ass little motherfuckers won’t get any grief from me.”

“<Motherfucker>,” Jade repeats behind you, and switches back to English, in the bright, wide verbal tone you’re starting to learn means ‘smiling and happy’, weird interstitial ‘vowel’ breath-sounds further back in the throat through pulled-back mouth-corners.  “Hmm, <motherfucker>…  Oh, neat!  Is that dialect?  It sounds like, ahh, what’s that other word.  Kk—kkkht—  Uh, dammit.  You guys need to learn how to use vowels—  It sounds like <;brother>.”

“It is like,” you say, surprised despite yourself.  “&lt;Brother> is a troll, and <motherfucker> you put it all spots you want.  It’s a thing, it’s a troll, it’s a, tss, a doing-things word, it’s a name.  It’s bad, it’s good.  Any spot you want.  And he does want, for all those, all the time.”

#splickedydrabbles #Homestuck #Domestic Diplomacy #me staring into the distance: what if 'motherfucker' and 'brother' are translated different but they're related words in alternian.... #what if 'brother' and 'sister' aren't different words theyre just translated in english based on gender but there's no distinction actually #it's all the word I tend to translate as 'kin'/'family'/'fam' lol but gendered by english-speakers for comprehension #what if alternian greetings have implicit settings for 'i'm hostile to you' and 'i'm trying to be non-offensive and polite' #and the lack of either is an implicit message of 'we're equals' which comes with its own social baggage RE: castes #what if I approached Homestuck as though it was implicitly a translated text ala JRR Tolkein's meta-narrative of Lord of the Rings #''Alternian wouldn't spell his name 'karkat vantas' of course but it's been anglicized for the audience with additional vowel sounds'' #'when his tone of voice is referenced in this line it of course actually refers to his engagement of his third subvocal chatterbox--'' #WHAT IF-- #I am frothing at the damn mouth I love fucking around in this sandbox so much I will make up ALL the societal/cultural indicators #this is the casual/semi-formal/court-formal code-switching in Save a Horse Ride a Dragon all over again lmao NO REGERTS

[lesbiancolumbo]

it's been interesting reading your reaction to poor things, and i wanted to ask-- do you feel that way about this film specifically, or do you feel that way about lanthimos in general? because i have a hit and miss relationship with most of his work; liked the killing of a sacred deer and the favorite, but not much else. would like to hear your thoughts

the thing about poor things for me is that aside from the trailer being one of the worst things i have ever seen in my life, i don’t feel any kind of way about it. i’m not offended by it or anything. it’s clearly not for me, and that’s fine lol. but i keep feeling a certain kind of way about it because it’s very telling to me that this film specifically is getting a lot of accolades and being praised to hell for being so like. transgressive and brave! and out there! by people who would be going to discourse fucking city if a woman had written and directed this. and considering how people are already pick-meing about this when thats pointed out is kinda proving my point. uwu “im the BIGGEST fan of women filmmakers but men can make great films about women too” literally shut the fuck up lol

anyways i liked yorgos’s early stuff but i kinda hate when filmmakers who make cool weird shit in their home country get an international blank check and go oh cool, time to Cast Da Movie Stars and be weird for the sake of just being weird without any of the substance! like what the fuck even was killing of a sacred deer, yorgos. like the fuck. i enjoyed the lobster and the favourite but nothing hes done has held a torch to the frantic energy of what dogtooth was doing and i miss THAT weird guy. where the fuck did he go. take his money away

#asks #also after realizing the plot of PT i’m now afraid to revisit any of his films bc i suspect the gender politics have always been bad lol #it’s BECAUSE i like so much of yorgos’s early work that i find whatever the hell is going on with PT to be :/

[tiredyke]

i honestly feel like the cis vs. trans debate depends on how we’re defining the terms. “trans” as in “no association with your agab whatsoever”? probably excludes a good sum of trans people. “cis” as in “only expresses their gender through stereotypical presentation and/or never experiments with the concept of gender”? probably excludes a good chunk of cis people. but this doesn’t necessarily conflict with or negate the cultural significance of being cisgender or transgender and labeling those experiences as such. cis and trans people obviously receive very different treatments and privileges, so it’s less about strictly defining what it means to be cis or trans and more about how these terms (as broad groupings) help us understand and identify where we stand. they’re communication devices first and foremost, not diagnoses. i hope that makes sense

#which is why i bagged on that post. the point of cis/trans/gay/straight/allo/ace is that they’re labels created to express a part of us and #describe experiences that impact our social power and how we are treated #straight and gay are incompatible as tangent labels not because they’re like polar opposites or because they’re different species or smthn #but because they are two different social classes at an institutional level #and because the words were created to identify this inequality. ‘straight’ literally means ‘exclusive opposite gender attraction’ which obvs #conflicts with the definition of gay. like to say you can be both is to say that these words are essentially meaningless and were invented #as borders that don’t actually exist. and there’s a sliver of a chance that in a different world this could be true #but right now in this political climate the distinction matters. abolishing and disregarding the meaning of these words literally helps #no one #having words and labels and language to express ourselves is very crucial so i’m really not interested in arguments that are essentially #‘i use words regardless of what they mean or the weight they carry because it doesn’t matter to me’’ #besides if you told a gay person irl that they could be straight also or that there’s no difference between them and their oppressor they’d #fucking punch you lol #neon talks

[c-rowlesdraws]

⭐️New Patreon Post!⭐️ Several of them, with all the sketches I found time to do on my trip with family to Singapore and Thailand over these past couple of weeks! My cousin got married in Singapore to his very nice Malaysian fiancee, and last year when the date was announced, a small group of us planned to extend our stay in SEAsia so that we wouldn't have traveled halfway around the world for basically a long weekend. I would never have been able to do such an amazing trip on my own and I'm very fortunate and grateful that I was invited to tag along.

I took lots of pictures-- and in between sightseeing and family time and travel and devouring fresh ripe mango like some kind of frugivorous mammal, I had time to do some drawing, from life and from my photos. I hope to do more drawings from my trip now that I'm back home!

#singapore #thailand #travel #my art #also MAN I really want to learn thai properly #all the people I used my handful of phrases with were very nice and it was embarrassing every time I heard another foreigner #just start barking at someone in english #I love the tones and also I've only known thai grammar for one week but if anything happened to it I'd kill everyone in this room etc #the polite gender particles are so cool #also the written language is so beautiful???? I spent the whole trip like lol man sure wish I wasn't illiterate in this country

[longlivedead]

theres something so yuri about large percentage of nuns proclaiming to be marked with the stigmata that ended up becoming important saints and/or reviled as heretics, and i dont just mean that because lesbian nuns doing exactly that were historically a real thing, but because these women used the language of the church they were bound to in order to evolve and grasp power. how they claimed an injury directly from god meant they were chosen; more special in the eyes of heaven than the men who controlled their convents. how the women they spent time with and who believed them were there for them and cared for them. how the men called them deceivers, possessed, and (more recently), mentally ill. how these women faced death... and became icons for other women anyway.

#yuri #the gender politics of the stigmata was a fascination of mine for a while #immodest acts is so good btw #the movie based off it #benedetta #is pretty ok lol

[biracy]

I am obviously not one to disregard all "inter-community" criticism as like, "online infighting" or whatever (particularly with regards to misogyny, feminism, etc.), but there is a point where I think people need to realize that people who are The Other Kind Of Trans are not actually Accepted By The Mainstream or Monopolizing All The Attention or whatever. There is a point at which claiming that either transfemininity or transmasculinity is Accepted or Normalized by mainstream society (not people on Tumblr, not people hosting Queer Sex Parties, yknow, actual mainstream cisgender society that dictates big stuff like whether or not trans people can legally exist) becomes, to me, obviously a little overblown if not completely constructed. Often it's just getting lost in the weeds. I don't think vividly imagining trans people you consider "other" from yourself being secretly actually More Accepted is a particularly useful thing to do

#doesn't help how often it involves the reduction of trans people to Amabs And Afabs either lol #just very often there is a veer into a kind of separatism i do not find useful if trans liberation is being presented as a political goal #i do not like framing the inclusion of trans men among 'women and femmes' for instance as a kind of acceptance. if i'm being real #open mick night #gender #i'm beinggg very careful with how i word this but like i think this is important #i think ideas of who is Accepted and who is Privileged and etc are misused a lot in Queer Spaces(tm) generally #sometimes just idk i think a framing of this kind of Thing against The Real World is important. yknow politically

[crabcrabcrabmeat]

Anon has got me thinking abt Gundam again -_- apologies. Specifically Gwitch, which iirc had a preproduction w a ton of market research vs First which has more auteurism imo. They have opposite pitfalls in a way.

Gwitch is undoubtedly made with the international market in mind. For example, the UI at the school, on characters phones etc is exclusively in English, and not even basic phrases or wasei-ego a Japanese audience could easily infer or read. (Granted, the font makes it tricky for anyone to, lol) Someone's job was to write it grammatically accurately and meaningful, as opposed to just plunking in filler text about operating photoshop or whatever like someone at the studio did for Wing. It's a notable choice, but also a poor one for narrative flow, because it necessitates fumbling at the edge of the 4th wall a bit (and for anglophones, redundancy) when characters talk abt the text they just sent/read. (It happens multiple times too lol) It's a very good choice however, if part of your metric for success is getting foreign eyes on your show AND having nerds pour over the phrasing as easter eggs to analyze. It's free marketing!

Using English can absolutely be an artistic choice, esp when only a Japanese audience is going to be watching the show (there has been tape-sharing from pretty much the start, but that's not what finances a production) Early UC used English/Anglophonisms all the time for an international and narrative intent, such as calling female federation cadets "Waves" a la WW2 USA, having western name orders ("Amuro Ray" even though "Ray" is his family name) and saying that the canon name spellings are in katakana, even with Japanese names like 'kobayashi' and 'deikun'. Part of that is futuristic world building, but it's a very political choice, even before getting into 0079s obvious themes. I'm no expert on race/ethnicity in anime, but to put in context how new the 'racelessness' design approach was in 1979 as opposed to today, Yasuhiko Yoshikazu semi jokingly told coworkers a possible kanji spelling for "Ray" if any higher ups audit their choices. A non (Yamato) Japanese lead was something artists had to defend! (Another example off the top of my head is Jotaro from JJBA having a Japanese father....who is never even pictured lol. It's a compromise with editors for "daring" to show a minority lead)

In that sense, having characters of color, having women characters who aren't pigeonholed into "women's roles" etc are choices that today are taken for granted. It's fun to point out the silliest Tomino names for example, but it's far better than ethnic homogeneity. And make no mistake, representation is a good thing! I just hold a higher bar for productions that have the benefit of less scrutiny. If my understanding is correct, absolutely no toy sponsors or TV execs back in the day would've pushed for more POC in Gundam but the studio did anyways! Whereas I assume such a thing was a given at sunrise today, not out of anti-racism goodness nessessarily (Shaddiq was done SO dirty) but because it's generally profitable to avoid ruffling too many feathers, as well as to target as wide a demographic as possible. And in this day and age with high-speed internet, quick translation, vast supply chains for producing and and disseminating merch, etc, "wide audience" means an international one. "Representation" is incentivized, not nessessary a choice made against a status quo.

This is all obvious and fun to parse if you're aware of the socioeconomic context in which media is made, questions like "who is the audience? Who is the producer? How is this being made and why?" show a more objective picture of it all. I'm not here to beef w other fans who feel less alone when there's someone like them on the screen, I want people to think About media more is all. If you find Sulemio meaningful, I'm not going to take that from you, as WLW are in fact good. I'm just painfully aware that someone somewhere was calculating, financially, if an onscreen lesbian marriage would be profitable or not (Gundam and other big anime IP are federally subsidized by the 'Cool Japan Initiative' iirc) and the choice to be less gay than possible (and promised, imo) was made, maliciously or not, to bow to the wishes of a conservative, misogynistic nation-state.

#sorry for the lack of sources this got massive quick #i was intending to talk abt gender politics in gwitch vs zeta but thats an even bigger topic lol #abs blabs

[butchmartyr]

www.tumblr.com/spacelazarwolf/731117200345300992/

Homeboy is straight up. Completely unironically. Calling or at the very least indirectly painting poc and even jewish transfems as rapist fascists 🙃

its not the first time hes implied horrendous shit about transfems or painted us as a unique and terrible issue and it wont be the last, he just very strongly has a bone to pick with transfems and will go to whatever path of least resistance he can express that rage through. its disturbing. that ask is mainly ragebait but its funny just how completely different it is than what hes framing it as, like nothing in that ask is supporting either of those bigotries, and yet that certainly doesn’t stop him as acting like we laugh at abuse! maybe one day ill stop seeing his posts spread

#no surprise the guy w fucked up mental gymnastic antifem gender politics also has shitty other conservative views; reactionary thru&thru #i still dont get the rage over the fat and pregnant thing tho like are transmascs not allowed to joke about being fat and pregnant. lmao #why is that transandrophobic. and why is it somehow the fault of trans women lol #asks #kvetching

[burnsopale]

I love that in The Elusive Pimpernel, Marguerite and Chauvelin spend the final day in an absolute agony of anxiety, wound tight like clockwork toys, hands shaking, cold sweating, only keeping it together because they both want to seem cool in front of the other.

Meanwhile Percy is in his room napping peacefully in between writing poetry, the cad!

Do you even care about your wife and your pet ferret? Jerk!

#the scarlet pimpernel #The elusive pimpernel #This is the book were Percy has not yet learned how to communicate #Ask me how much I love how completely exhausted Chauvelin is by the end of the ordeal #He can't even fight back when Percy ties him up he passes out he's so overwrought #Ask me if I love the continuing parallel between him and Marguerite in how intense their feelings are in general and for Percy especially #Ask me if I love how this calls back to Percy calling Chauvelin a woman earlier in the book (I do despite the iffy gender politics) #Just don't ask me what I thought of the plot in general lol

[vote2]

i do acknowledge i need to watch what i say wrt gender women men cis ppl etc just augh.

#its like. im a trans man 100% i want nothing to do w being seen as a women i acknowledge that. i also acknowledge that I am putting #literally zero effort in my irl life to present as a guy at all. partially lack of resources and embarrassment etc stuff like that partiall #the autism i literally look in a mirror and see a guy #and i go to class go to work and until soemone explicitally refers to me as a woman i think of myself as a guy. so like its this weird #disconnect of what i actually do vs what i percieve as expieriencing in my daily life where i am objectively living #as a cis woman who just dresses and acts a bit masc. lol. #and like that doesnt bother me atm until i get to a setting where i am gendered frequently. then i feel nauseas etc but whatever ill deal #so i always hesitate whenever i talk abt women feminism men makeup beauty expectations etc (also i am mixed thai and white which #def plays into everyhting ofc ofc) as i dont know rly what is like. not fine idc if i say smthn uncouth just i dont want to at all #seem like im doing what these other trans guys do and latch onto my femininity and 'girlhood growing up' etc or like #its all dumb to me ofc im a feminist i consider anything i speak abt feminism free the nipple being against gender essiantialism etc etc #as in feminism (not that women arent/cant be femnists just in terms of im not trying to sound like a woman) and #ofc growing up as and my current life experiences have obvi had a large impact on myself how i veiw the world my political beliefs and all. #but like. im always scared it sounds like im idr the phrase someone else used but a i dont want to seem like im latching onto girlhood as #a failsafe or whatever. its just mm ykwim its a weird feeling. cause like im a 21 year old man and read my posts as such el oh el. #idk its all weird and idk if its a specific to me thing or whattttt it just like. i feel silly sometimes and i dont want my points to be #misconstrued :) anyways me posting this after rewatching and posting abt pearl has nothign to do genuinly lmfao just timing its been #on my mind after that dumbass trans guy posting abt the lonelyness he feels abt abandoning womanhood #after watching barbie. lol and then i saw someone in the comments of some ig quote it w like 30 replies all positive like get a lifeee #i understand it can feel isolating being trans and everyones relationship back to womanhood is diff and complecated but by god. shut up #anywayyyyyssss mmm okay im done whateverr #maybe all a fear in my head and literally none of this has every crossed anyones mind however it bothers me :(

[crunchycrystals]

ok now realizing that post i made that one time ab imagining being w a woman more often than a man despite being demiro and not having a preference probably coming from a part of my brain that wants to be openly queer but now im also just realizing. im friends with more women generally so

#crunchyposts #lgbt #i love men !!!!! i have guy friends i can be attracted to any of my friends #but. when it comes to friends im generally more gravitated towards people similar to me #and the easiest way for me to know if im like someone is obvious external gender #the other things for me are being queer and neurodivergent and thats something you only really get to know once youre #acquaintances/ friends #but obviously not just that id prioritize politics and interests over this generally but its just nice to be around people who get it #also race isnt a factor bc maybe 5% of the school population isnt asian lol #but if i ever like move somewhere where i become a minority race/ ethnicity wise it Will become a factor im sure