#to me as a trans person that question in itself is othering and objectifying

[ellielesvia]

I almost never ask anything anonymously but for this question I do not want to take the bullying by others who read it in case it’s taken wrongly.

I am a 30 yo gay woman though when I was younger (pre age 19) I considered myself bisexual.

My partners and I now use several different toys including strapless dildos and strapon dildos.

Every time I see a beautiful transgender woman I wonder if she wants to keep the parts she has… have surgery… etc.

You mentioned you like yours and it’s staying. Which takes me to my question… does it still work? How does the estrogen affect it? If it does work, do you like using it with women? Oral? Vaginal? Anal? Hands?

Please take this as someone who is as curious as I was the first time I saw, touched one way back in my single digits.

So this is a series of questions for which the answers will vary wildly from person to person, both physiologically and in terms of personal preference. I'm going to give my answers in probably more detail than you were expecting, lol, so strap in (and on?).

Let me start by addressing the comment at the top, because I think it's important to acknowledge before getting to the question itself. This might be a long post, but I promise I will get to your questions by the end.

You say you're worried about others taking your question the wrong way. Let's explore that. This type of questioning can definitely veer into invasive and/or objectifying territory, depending on how it's being asked, who's asking, why, and who's being asked. I assume based on your concern that you've seen trans women react negatively to being asked these kinds of questions. I can understand wanting to avoid any negative reactions, but I also think it's important to be open to some amount of criticism here, when the questions being asked are of a potentially very private, sensitive, vulnerable nature. I myself am very open to these types of questions, so long as they are asked in good faith, because I take it upon myself to be open to educating people on transness whenever I can. And I'm here to horny-post about my own body anyway. But not every trans person should have to do that- it's nobody's obligation to give out personal medical information about their genitals except to their doctors and their intimate partners.

That being said, and while I am open to answering such questions (even from random anonymous people), I still get irked by questions like these on occasion. It's particularly bad on dating apps, when someone you barely know wants details about your genitals so they can decide whether you're worthy of their attraction or not. While I understand that some people's attraction may hinge on these details, it's a pretty shitty feeling to be on the receiving end, getting graded on your genitals by a horny stranger who doesn't give a shit about you (and often one who could answer their own questions with a simple google search- I once literally referred someone to the wikipedia page for 'transgender' in a short-lived dating app conversation). To be clear, I am not accusing you of this, and I am completely comfortable answering these questions here, but I think it's important to address, to help you understand why there might be a stigma around asking trans people these questions, and why you might receive a negative reaction to asking them, depending on who, how, and why you're asking them.

Alright, on to my actual answers.

I like my cock just fine the way it is. This was not always true. I had dysphoria around it when I was younger, but transitioning both socially & medically have made me feel much more comfortable in it, along with a couple other factors: 1) I see a lot of people desiring women with both boobs & cocks these days (even the popularity of 'futanari' porn is kind of nice to see, since that's basically just me in hentai form), which helps with body image; 2) it's not a part of me that anyone gets to see unless I'm already comfortable with them being intimate with me, so it doesn't cause people to misgender me; 3) I actually had surgery some years ago to remove one of my testicles that had developed a cancerous tumor (and while I like my cock, I'm at best neutral about what's below it, so having only one testicle and a *much* smaller scrotum as a result is very positive for me).

My cock still works fine, but it has been changed somewhat by the estrogen. For many trans women, it will shrink and become a micropenis, which I know some people like because it feels more like a clit (and the penis and clit are essentially the same body structure anyway, just developed differently depending on what hormones were dominant in your early life and development). I'm in my third year of full hormone replacement therapy, and I think it's safe to say at this point that this is not happening to me. I am glad about this, personally. I like my cock the way it is, and I do not want it to shrink. That being said, the estrogen causes the aroused size of my penis to be much more of a range than a static number these days. Previously, my aroused length was around 5.5-6.5 inches, but these days it's more like anywhere from maybe 3.5 to 6.5. I find that my length varies a lot based on hormonal cycles and time since my last orgasm. Additionally, while the size still increases when aroused, I do not get as 'hard' as you might expect. Even at 6 inches, it's still kind of soft, which makes penetration difficult. I actually have pills that I take for this on occasion, same as someone with erectile dysfunction would, because I enjoy being able to use mine in that way.

As for what I enjoy doing with it, I absolutely use it in sexual activities with my partners (not just 'women,' mind you; I am a lesbian and have no interest in men, but I have currently & have had in the past my fair share of nonbinary partners). I have no particular interest in using it for anal sex (though if I ever have a partner who is interested in receiving anal, I'm sure we'll work something out), but I regularly use it in all the other ways you mentioned. However, the most successful way I have found to stimulate it is through vibration. My vibrator is my best friend. Ultimately, it's just a strapless, sensitive, dildo-sized & dildo-shaped clit with added organic functions, and that's how I treat it. I enjoy using it for penetration, but I generally do hand or vibration activities to actually reach orgasm with it.

#ellie's answers

[thedeadflag]

I’m so confused! I know it’s not your responsibility to educate me but in your post bringing awareness to the negative aspects of g!p fanfic you say

“Why do these g!p characters rarely if ever involve experiences reflective of trans/intersex women? Why are they so utterly cis and perisex-washed? Why do nearly all writers have zero idea that tucking is a thing? “

Doesn’t that answer your original question? The reason they don’t reflect those groups of ppl is bc g!p isn’t trying to represent those groups of people or else it WOULD be transphobic to limit them to one specific fetish right? it just refers to a canonically female character with the addition of a penis (I don’t argue the name “g!p” should be changed bc that’s a no brainer why that could be offensive). But the fanfic in general, how could it be harmful? I’ve noticed in my time reading it as a non binary person it’s given me great gender euphoria reading a reader insert where reader has a penis while being a femme representing person just bc that’s a reflection of my personal experience. I don’t see anywhere where g!p fanfic ever references or tries to emulate the experiences of trans or intersex people so how could it be offensive?

Sorry this is way too long I’m just very confused

I'm going to try and lay this out as politely as I can. It's after 3:30 in the morning here, so this could be a bit disjointed and rambling. More under the cut:

In real life, ~99.999999% of women with penises are trans women. Which puts us in a tricky situation of (A) being the only women with penises around for media involving women with penises to reflect back on, and (B) being in the lovely position of precious few people actually having had meaningful real life exposure to trans women, meaning (C.) all those stigmas and all that misinformation are going to purely affect us and it’s going to be uncritically gobbled up by the masses, since they don’t have any meaningful information to fill in the blanks with instead.

When we peer into the depths of femslash fandoms and see all these folks who aren't trans women writing about women with penises, and using cis women’s bodies as platforms for these penises, it’s the simplest thing.

I mean, some of those folks might actually be struggling and confused about why they’re into it, what the real appeal is, why they get off on it, why they might have some feelings about wanting a penis of their own…

…but from our vantage point, it’s really easy to gauge 99.99% of the time. We can generally see valid, legitimate yearning to have a penis pretty damn easily in a piece of art/writing, and we can also see when people who create this media are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization.

And 99.9% of the time, the creators are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization, and see trans women’s bodies as a perfect vehicle to tap into that, generally due to deeply held cissexist views that link us and our bodies and genitals directly to cis men, to maleness. As if penises are rooted in maleness and masculinity (which is absolutely not true).

And I have sympathy for NB folks (certainly TME ones who have reached out to me in the past about this) who might be struggling with that, but just because they’re non-binary, it doesn’t mean they get to appropriate our bodies and reproduce transmisogyny and trans fetishization in their attempts at feeling better. Shit doesn't work like that.

Because again, the only women with penises in this world, essentially, are trans women. Meaning any woman with a penis in media is a trans woman, implicitly or explicitly. Meaning that when people who aren’t us want to write us, intent doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter if it’s just the writer’s fantasy, it’s still going to attach a variety of messages directly onto us.

And more often than not, due to cissexism, those messages are linking us to maleness, to toxic masculinity, etc..

While I do want to believe they're a fairly small minority, a lot of NB folks in fandom spaces like g!p characters in part because they see penises as male and the rest of the body as female and think that duality is interesting and would be comfortable, and is a nice balance of “both worlds” or a nice position “between male and female”, but that’s a wholly cissexist, transmisogynistic view to have, and it’s one that absolutely cannot be supported without directing sexual violence against trans women and invalidating our entire existence. Certainly not all NB folks into g!p like it for that reason, but holy shit a fair bit of them do and it’s weird and wrong and fetishistic.

g!p emerged from the idea that women can't have penises, and drew on the transmisogyny and cissexism of tr*nny porn to structure that frame of desire and the core patterns and trends within these works. It's always been trans women's bodies being used as a vehicle, whether or not the writers of these fics are explicitly aware of it, because the trope itself still holds true to its original patterns and cissexism. It's not the name that's the problem, it's the content; changing the name would be a surface level change that wouldn't affect anything.

g!p objectifies women with penises (trans women). A woman with a penis is more than just a woman with a penis, but the use of the term and trope is literally to (A) remind people that women don't have penises, otherwise the g!p term wouldn't be needed if people actually accepted women with penises as women, and that (B) this is a story centered on a scenario where there's a woman with a penis, with key focus on that genitalia specifically. it's the drawing point, it's the lure, it's what everything is centered on. It is a means for folks to write lesbian sex while also writing about penis in vagina and getting off to it. It's also no surprise that the penises so clearly emulate cis men's penises in these works, that is by design.

As I’ve said many times before, if you’re only writing trans women’s bodies to showcase cis men’s penises, you’re not respecting the womanhood of trans women, and this ultimately has nothing inherent to do with penis-owning women, it has to do with (cis) men and their penises, because trans women are just being used as a vehicle to emulate them. When NB folks do the same thing, and imagining themselves as those g!p characters, they are ultimately embodying cis men, their maleness, and often toxic masculinity, in a way that feels safe and distanced enough for them, a shell that they often code as cisnormative due to their own unprocessed cissexism.

And trans women don’t deserve that.

You seem caught in the idea that if something doesn't directly perfectly reflect trans women, that it can't be linked to us., which ignores the long long history of media being used to misrepresent marginalized peoples and cast us in insulting, dehumanizing lights. You show a lack of understanding of the g!p trope and the long history of its usage across a few other names, even if the content and patterns remained the same. It shows a lack of understanding of tr*nny porn and transmisogynistic stigmas, which the trope draws heavily from.

I think we can all recognize that most 'lesbian' prn that's made does not represent actual lesbians, it's overwhelmingly catered to the male gaze. We can also recognize that this category of porn has led to a lot of harassment towards lesbians from cis men who at the very least want to believe lesbians are just like they are in the porn he watches, that lesbians just need the right man. Lesbians are being used as a vehicle for a fantasy that was created externally to them, and doesn't represent their realities.

It's the same kind of situation here. The way g!p fics play out overwhelmingly doesn't reflect trans women's realities, but they are inherently linked to us regardless, as we're the vehicles for those fantasies, as unrealistic and harmful as they may be.

g!p characters are built in our fetishized image that’s based on a deeply cissexist misunderstanding of us, of the gender binary, and of bodies in general.

I mean, when 99% of cis folks don’t understand how trans women tend to be sexually intimate… when they don’t understand what dysphoria is and how it works and how it can affect us physically and emotionally…when they don’t understand almost any of our lived experiences…then they’re not going to be able to accurately portray us even if they wanted to.

And I’ve read enough g!p fics where authors wrote those as a means of trying to add trans rep, but because they didn’t understand us at all, it wasn’t remotely representative, and it was ultimately fetishistic, even if there was an undercurrent of sympathy and a lack of following certain common g!p patterns there that differentiated it from the norm.

If g!p fics were at all about reducing dysphoria or finding euphoria, then it wouldn’t be explicitly tied up in the performance of very specific sex acts, very specific forms of misogyny and toxic masculinity, very specific forms of sexual violence and exertion of sexual power, etc.

But it is.

So the notion that creating g!p fics helps NB folks? Nope. It CAN certainly prevent/delay those folks from facing a whole boatload of shit they’ve internalized, and coddle them at the expense of trans women.

Because if it was really about bodies and dysphoria/euphoria, there would be a considerable push (allying with out own) to end our fetishization and to represent us in and out of sexual contexts with accuracy, respect, and care. Because they wouldn’t care what sex acts were performed and what smut beats were hit, they’d just want to see someone with a body like their ideal being loved, being sexual, connecting, being authentic, etc. Which very much is not the case in the overwhelming majority of g!p fics. That's what we want, and it's not what g!p writers want, it's nothing they give a shit about.

Like, a ways back I started doing random pulls of g!p fics from various fandoms and assessing them for certain elements to provide some quantitative clarity. I started on The 100 here, and did OuaT here. Never finished the 100 one since the results leveled out and stayed pretty consistent as the sample size grew, so I didn't really see the point in continuing any further after about 140 fics when the data wasn't really changing much at all.

Lastly, media influences people. I've read countless posts and comments from people who use fanfiction as a sex ed guide, in essence. Which is ridiculous, but I also know sex ed curricula often isn't very accurate or extensive in a lot of areas, so people take what they can get. Representation in media can be powerful, and when it overwhelmingly misrepresents people, that's also powerful. Just because fandom is a bit smaller than televised media, it doesn't make that impact any lesser, certainly not for those whose primary media intake is within fandom.

Virtually all trans representation in f/f fanfiction is misrepresentative of us. That has a cost in how people understand us, how people react to us, and how people treat us. Not just online, but in physical spaces, and in intimate settings.

I invite you to read that post you referenced again, or perhaps this longer one which is a response to a trans guy who seemed to feel something similar to you with this trope.

All I can do is lay it out there and try to explain this. It's up to you how you handle this. All I know is whenever there's a big surge in g!p in a fandom, trans women generally leave it en masse, because it's a very clear and consistent message that we're not valued, respected, and that people value getting off on us over finding community with us.

#g!p #creative responsibility #trans fetishization #trans representation #intersex fetishization #intersex representation #genitals tw #genital mention tw #intersexism #transmisogyny #fandom meta #long post #cissexism #t slur tw #media representation #media literacy

[freyfall]

Hey sorry to bother, but i don't thing I've really seen any sexism in the fandom? I might have just missed it, but would you be willing to elaborate on it a bit? You don't have to if you don't wanna

CHOKES

I’ll elaborate under a cut because a lot of the sexism I see is rooted in the ns/fw side of the fandom. I’ll be talking explicitly so don’t click if you’re not prepared for a conversation about sex and ectoplasmic genital shit. Also... it’s long.

God, where do I even start? This post covers a lot of the base issues with the fandom, though most of what OP said had to do with queerphobia. The issue with writers and magic genitalia in the fandom boils down to the fact that so often - so often - I click on a fic to read and heteronormativity slaps me in the face. One dominant (male-identifying) partner with male genitalia, one submissive (male-identifying) partner with female genitalia. And okay, I get it, some couples are like that. It’s not bad to write something like that as long as it doesn’t rely on sexism or queerphobia to explain away the choices. But then it’s... every fic. Every. Fic. I click on. 

Actually, I’ll give you some numbers! I’m going to look at the UTMV kinktober fics I’m keeping up with and see what kind of ratios there are. I won’t name them out of politeness, but here we go. Out of 4 Kinktober 2020 series on A03 with, so far, 23 or 24 chapters each, here’s how the gender and sex of the characters play out:

In terms of biological sex, the majority were male/female* with two partners, making up almost half of the fics read (42 out of 94). Out of said fics, 35 had a dominant** male and submissive female dynamic, 4 had a dominant female and submissive male dynamic, and 3 were unclear or there was no such dynamic. Only one out of the 42 fics had the female character identify as a woman. (Furthermore, she was genderbent.) 

The runner-up was the ‘other’ category, which encompassed the following: no genitals present, only one set of genitals present, odd genitalia (such as tentacles), or unspecified. This category made up 26 out of the 94 fics. Of the 26, 20 of them fell into the ‘one set of genitals’ category, with 14 male and 6 female. The male fics were split evenly between dominant and submissive males, and the females were all written as submissive. 

None of the other categories were nearly as popular, with the next one down the line only having 9 fics out of the 94. This category was male/male with two partners. The next one, male/male/female with three partners, had 8. Of the 8 fics, all of them had dominant male and submissive female dynamics.

The female/female with two partners category only had 3. Only one of the three fics portrayed a lesbian relationship where both characters identified as women. 

The other categories were as follows: m/m/m with three partners, m/m/m/f with four partners, m/m/m/m with four partners, m/m/f/f with four partners, m/m/m/m/f with five partners, and m/m/m/f/f with five partners. These categories only had 1 fic each. Each and every fic with a female partner had the female partners playing submissive roles.

It’s important to note that out of the entire roster of fics, there were 3 women. One of them was a genderbent character in a m/f fic, and the other two were in a lesbian f/f fic. Why the lack of women? Why constantly portray those with female genitals as men?

Going back to the post I linked at the very beginning, I do want to cover my bases - I understand that male characters with biologically female genitals and sex characteristics can be a hugely needed source of rep for transgender people, especially those who are transmasculine. As a transmasculine person myself, it’s important to me that male characters with female bodies exist. Having a casual environment where men can have whatever genitals they want is, in theory, rather progressive. However, three things:

Never in all my time in this fandom have I ever seen one of these characters stated explicitly as transgender. None of the fics in the study above did, either. 

In the UTMV, when writing skeletons with magical genitals, having male or female genitalia is seen as a choice. It erases the need for transgender characters. It erases transgender narratives that deal with transition, discomfort, coming out, and dysphoria. If you can pick whatever kind of body you want, why would there be a need for being trans? There’s no easy way to determine a ‘male’ or ‘female’ skeleton, erasing the concept of gender assigned at birth and erasing the struggles that trans people may face.

None of the characters have bodies that might align more closely with transgender folks who medically transition. No top surgery scars, no bottom growth. No breast tissue growth on male bodies, nothing. Of course, why would that exist in the first place? Magic erases the need to portray bodies with quote-on-quote ‘imperfections.’ None of the bodies portrayed even step a toe out of the cisgender box - such as perhaps portraying female genitals with a flat chest or male genitals with breasts. None of that was found in the study, and I don’t recall fics like that outside of the study, either.

So clearly, most if not all authors are not attempting to portray any sort of transgender character when writing them this way - which begs the question, why write men with female bodies? 

While I was taking these statistics, I had a conversation with my partner in which they said something that applies here:

“[Every AU character] being Sans is a problem on its own, but when you have the power to make whatever character a woman, how you approach that says a lot. What people do is that they give a male character female parts and it’s only for sexual purposes. So like, the entire existence of [the female body] in the UTMV serves only for sex and that’s just kind of not good.”

Keeping this quote in mind, the short answer to the question I posed above is this: sexism. In this fandom, the female body, femininity, and being a woman in and of itself is objectified, hyper-sexualized, and exoticized... in that order, respectively. I’m not just using these as buzzwords, I promise you.

The female body is objectified. The same as the quote above, female bodies aren’t seen as something that someone will just have in a non-sexual context. After reading 94 smutfics, their treatment of the female body tends to start looking the same. The female body is for sex. That’s it. Giving or showing a character with breasts, even clothed, is seen as the display of a sexual object, even though breasts are visible on (cis) women in everyday scenarios. In sexual scenarios, the female body is never portrayed realistically, either. Female arousal and preparing the female body for sex - compared to its counterpart, the male body - is wildly unrealistic. Yes, this is porn, and there’s bound to be realism issues, but in comparison, female sexuality is much more unrealistic.

Femininity is sexualized. Characters act feminine for sexual appeal... and only for sexual appeal. Because a character acts feminine, they’re more sexually appealing to their partner. Feminine clothing, such as dresses or skirts, are seen as sexual. 

Being a woman, in and of itself, is exoticized. This isn’t even a staunchly NSFW issue. I’ve been asked if my male characters, explicitly stated to be bisexual, would have sex with a woman. My partner has received asks about ‘what would happen if (insert male character here) met a woman.’ Genderbends of male characters into female characters are seen as cringy, childish, or fanservicey by default. Women aren’t treated as a normal occurrence. When genderbends do happen and people like them, it’s often in a sexual way. “She’s so hot/sexy.” “Step on me, queen.” 

It most likely doesn’t help that all of the popular AU characters in the fandom are men. It creates an environment where women are scarce and hardly represented, leading to unnatural assumptions about them.

I’m not sure how to close this off, so... TLDR; women are normal people. Stop exoticizing them. Stop objectifying the female body. Don’t use trans/queer characters as a scapegoat for your sexism. 

Sincerely, a bigender lesbian who’s sick and tired of all this.

-

*‘Male’ and ‘female’ are used to refer to biological sex. When I talk about gender, I will say men and women.

**When I say dominant, I mean ‘in control’ of the sexual situation. This was determined by considering factors such as written personality, physical position, and how they behaved. Vice versa for submissive. I don’t intend to use these terms as an equivalent to what they mean in BDSM language, though several of the fics attempted to or did portray BDSM relationships. I also do not mean these terms to be equivalent to ‘top’ or ‘bottom’. 

#utmv #sexism cw #important #fandom talk

[tikkisaram]

Power — The Compleat Analysis

Though it is generally flattering for one to be the object of a poem — provided its sentiment is positive, of course — there are some rare poems which are so frightfully poor that their dedicatee can only be offended to be associated with them. The poem Power by Adrienne Rich is sadly of this kind; its lame lines manage only to dishonour the memory of the greatest scientist of all time — the late Madame Curie.

In the interest of impartial and complete consideration, we can begin with the praiseworthy aspects of the poem (this will not be a long paragraph). The idea of writing a poem about the underappreciated discoverer of radioactivity is in itself laudable. The link between power and vulnerability alluded to is important, even if it is not handled well. The poem is also rather short, which makes it more bearable — this, however, strikes me more as emptiness than as conciseness. We could finally add the alliteration of "body bombarded", were it not so clearly accidental.

Unfortunately, no amount of alliteration could save the poem from its unimpressive content. Leaving aside the more minor issues — such as the reference to a singular "element", when Marie Curie famously discovered two of them — Power fundamentally fails to be the feminist masterpiece it could have been under the pen of a better poet. Not only does Rich questionably portray Marie Curie as being in unscientific denial, the titular concept is perverted by claiming that Curie's power came from radiation:

She died    a famous woman    denying her wounds denying her wounds    came    from the same source as her power

But this is clearly not true — her strength came from within, from her personality and willpower, from the mind that led to her outstanding scientific achievement. Claiming otherwise objectifies and dehumanises her in a disgustingly misogynist fashion. Adrienne Rich is the worst kind of pseudofeminist, one who pretends to fight for women's rights while obstructing equality and tolerance in a similar fashion to trans-exclusive "feminists".1

A stylistic and technical analysis of the poem sinks us even deeper into the pits of despair. Nevermind rhyme — we do not even get assonance, consonance or euphony to compensate for the rhythmic anarchy. Other than the meaningless line breaks and the even more pointless spacing, there is little to make this "poem" anything more than prose. The spaces are the most perplexing of all — in the first four-line stanza, they seem to indicate (logically) slight pauses, in a way similar to Emily Dickinson's dashes. In the rest of the poem, however, they make absolutely no sense — which casts doubt on whether they were even intended to have significance in that stanza. They do not even shape the pacing or slow lines down in any reasonable way. They seem to be nothing more than a failed attempt to make this literary scarecrow look more like 'a poem':

Living    in the earth-deposits    of our history

The fact that Marie Curie is no longer alive may make such tripe less harmful, but Power still infringes unacceptably on her memory. If anything, the lack of her worldly presence makes it all seem like we are gossiping behind her back. Adrienne Rich pretends to honour her and to support the struggle of feminism — perhaps she even believes to have done so in this poem — but what we ultimately receive serves only to offend and frustrate.

Marie Curie's remarkable achievements make her easily my favourite scientist. She discovered polonium and radium; she coined the term ‘radioactivity’; her inventions saved millions of lives. In a deeply sexist age, she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, and the first person — not the first woman, the first person — to win two Nobel Prizes. Yes, we should all write odes to her — but surely she deserves a better poem than this?

For a further discussion of such ideas, see my blessay on interpreting Elizabeth Bishop's Filling Station. ↩︎

#blessay #poetry #poetry analysis #adrienne rich #marie curie

[queermediastudies]

Identity, Infidelity, and iPhones: A Critique of “Tangerine”

Tangerine, set in Los Angeles in 2015, follows the journey of two black transgender women through the streets of West Hollywood the day that one of them is released from jail. The main character, Sin-Dee Rella, learns from her friend Alexandra that her fiance, Chester, has been cheating on her while she was in jail for a month. Sin-Dee sets off to seek revenge on Chester and the “other woman”. The film, which takes place over the course of Christmas Eve, depicts sex work, infidelity, drug use, singing performances, transphobic violence, and more. The plot comes to a peak with all the main characters in one donut shop, where the biggest secret of the film is revealed. Part drama and part comedy, Tangerine is a story of revenge, friendship, identity, sexuality, and love. 

The reception of Tangerine was rather mixed. The film was highly acclaimed for its methods of production, as it was shot entirely from three iPhone 5s smartphones. It was also praised for its casting: the two main characters, Sin-Dee and Alexandra, are played by Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, two openly transgender actresses. Taylor won several independent film awards for her role (Shawan, 2015). Today, the film has a score of 96 on Rotten Tomatoes. However, the film has also received criticism about its portrayals of trans characters. 

While Tangerine exhibits themes that align with aspects of queer theory, it also has some problematic elements within its production and content. As a viewer, my personal subject positionality impacts my interpretations and criticisms of the film, and my identity informs how my reading of the film differs from others’. Overall, Tangerine is a complex text that requires many different perspectives to dissect.  

One of the major themes evident in Tangerine is intersectionality. This film follows the lives of two transgender black women who are also sex workers. This represents an intersection of marginalized gender identity, race, and class, all of which overlap and inform each other to create experiences unique to these particular positions in society. The intersection of these many marginalized identities is not often represented on screen, and this film was made in the 2015, pre Pose era. 

Other apparent themes in the film include trans identity and gender performativity. In one scene, Sin-Dee drags Dinah, the “other woman” to Alexandra’s performance where she sings Doris Day’s Toyland in a club. Dinah later refers to the performance as a “drag show”, to which Alexandra sternly replies “I am not a drag queen”. This exchange challenges Dinah, who, rather than deconstructing her ideas of gender, still thinks of Alexandra as a man performing as a woman. Although Tangerine includes trans characters, the film does not give Sin-Dee or Alexandra much more background or storyline other than their trans identity, a critique that will be explored more in later sections. 

One of the most common praises for Tangerine is for its method of filming: the entire film was shot using iPhones and a four dollar editing app. This cheap, user-friendly technology exhibits a queer approach to production. As Scott & Fawaz point out in Queer About Comics, “low-tech quality makes comics either fundamentally democratic or especially available to democratic practices” (Scott & Fawaz, 2018, p 201). This idea is reflected in Tangerine, as the groundbreaking use of iPhones showed audiences the endless opportunities available with more readily accessible technology. The editing of the film also exemplified some nontraditional techniques. The footage was edited to be quite oversaturated, giving it a slight orange hue, thus the name Tangerine. These film choices deliberately broke cinematic norms.  

Tangerine mirrors Pose when it comes to some of its criticism. Because of the casting of two trans women of color, the film was able to deflect a lot of criticism. Dr. Martin makes this argument with Pose, saying that “These gay and trans actors of color function as a shield for Pose’s problematic representational politics” (Martin, 2018). While the casting of these two actresses seems groundbreaking, the film itself was created and written by two straight, white, cisgender men, Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch. These two men received the praise and profits from Tangerine even though there were many problematic layers within the casting, production, content, and intended audience of the film. 

For one, although Baker and Bergoch may have had good intentions by trying to cast black trans actors, their methods for finding actors were questionable. Their desire to create this film came from Baker’s “fascination” with a particular Los Angeles intersection that was known for sex work. “As straight, white, cisgender men, he and frequent writing partner Chris Bergoch knew they needed a collaborator familiar with the area’s culture. Approaching people on the street proved futile, so they wandered over to a nearby LGBT center. There, Baker instantly “gravitated” toward a transgender woman named Mya Taylor, an aspiring entertainer who had never acted before, but was game for whatever Baker and Bergoch wanted” (Jacobs, 2015). The intense interest in a community that Baker is not a part of seems voyeuristic if not intrusive. Also, the way that Baker found Mya Taylor shows a situation where Taylor has very little power in the creation of this film. While Baker did intend to get an “inside perspective” of the area’s culture rather than relying on his own perspective, his casting of Taylor seems to be solely based on the fact that she is a black trans woman and was willing to participate. This has some connotations of tokenism and performativity that must be looked at more closely. 

Secondly, the film itself has many issues of representation of trans lives. Overall, Sin-Dee and Alexandra have been propped up as “window dressings” of the film. As Rich Juzwiak states in a critique of the film, “We get virtually no sense of Sin-Dee’s interior life, and the sense we get of Alexandra’s is eye-rollingly trite (she wants to be a singer)” (Juzwiak, 2015). We do not get much of a sense of these characters’ lives outside of sex work, such as their backgrounds or even where they live when they are not on the streets. Instead, Baker and Bergoch rely heavily on tropes and stereotypes of black trans women as well as sex workers. On the other hand, they show the family and home life of Razmik, a cab driver who is a regular customer of Sin-Dee and Alexandras. This makes sense with the later plot, but the stark distinctions between these characters are clear.

The obsession with anatomy in Tangerine presents another layer of concern. For one, the fetishization of trans women was a major component of the film. Razmik consistently objectifies and fetishizes trans women. We see this when he unknowingly picks up a cis woman, then proceeds to kick her out of his car when he realizes she is not trans. This fetishization is dehumanizing, as it portrays trans women as objects of a straight male’s gaze rather than people with complex identities. Cavalcante (2017) criticizes films such as Boys Don’t Cry and TransAmerica for “scenes in both films that fetishized genitalia” (Cavalcante, 2017). This obsession with the anatomy of trans bodies is also shown when Dinah calls Chester “homo” for wanting to marry Sin-Dee. Selena, the woman that Razmik picked up, also called him “homo” when she realized he was looking for a trans woman. This implies that Sin-Dee and other trans women are men, invalidating their female identity. There are also consistent references to Dinah as a “real” woman or a “fish”. This reference implies that, as a cisgender woman, Dinah’s biology is what makes her a woman, and that trans women are not real women. While the trans characters use this reference themselves, it is still problematic to use biology as the determining factor for womanhood. Rather than challenging this implication, Tangerine consistently perpetuates transphobic language and ideas.

As viewers, it is important to recognize our own subject positionality when critiquing films. Personally, as a young queer woman of color in college, I often tend to have a critical, almost cynical lens with many texts. For one, as a mixed-race person, I rarely see images of myself in the media, so I understand the importance of representation. When I do come across characters that I identify with, I often will fall prey to the trap of representation without considering larger structures within media. 

Because of my subjective experiences as a queer woman, I would say I am also sex-positive and sex work positive. I had trouble with some criticisms of Tangerine that I found online because many people took issue with the portrayal of Sin-Dee and Alexandra as sex workers. The particular editorials I came across used a lot of anti-sex worker language. While I agree that “trans women as sex workers” is a trope that must be challenged, my own positionality tells me that there is nothing inherently wrong with sex work. Sex workers deserve to have their stories told and they deserve respect and dignity. While there is a lot of questionable material in Tangerine, I don’t think the presence of sex work alone is inherently problematic. However, the portrayal of sex work as indecent, as it was sometimes portrayed in Tangerine, contributes to the stigma against it. My personal experiences and views further complicated my reading of this film. 

At first glance, Tangerine seems indisputably groundbreaking based on its cast and the characters it is representing. However, a closer look behind the scenes reveals that the features praised in the film are a veil for some questionable processes. A close examination of the text recalls Tourmaline’s Teen Vogue piece: “Too often, people with resources who already have a platform become the ones to tell the stories of those at the margins rather than people who themselves belong to these communities. The process ends up extracting from people who are taking the most risks just to live our lives and connect with our histories…” (Tourmaline, 2017). If we truly want a raw, real look at the lives of trans people of color and sex workers, we must leave the storytelling up to them, rather than approaching these communities with nosy voyeurism as Baker did. However, Tangerine revealed the possibility of a full-length film created with very limited technology. Perhaps the next breakout film will be a story created by trans women of color using nothing but iPhones.  

  Works Cited

Critique by Lucy Briggs

Jacobs, M. (2015, July 9). Tangerine may have had a tiny budget, but the film's heart is bigger because of it. Huffington Post. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tangerine-movie-transgender_n_559bc990e4b05d7587e22881.

Juzwiak, R. (2015, October 17). Trans sex work comedy Tangerine is the most overrated movie of the year. Gawker. Retrieved from http://defamer.gawker.com/trans-sex-work-comedy-tangerine-is-the-most-overrated-m-1717662910.

Martin, A. L. (2018, August 2). Pose(r): Ryan Murphy, trans and queer of color labor, and the politics of representation. Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved from https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/poser-ryan-murphy-trans-queer-color-labor-politics-representation/.

Scott, D. & Fawaz, R. (2018) Queer about comics. American Literature, Volume 90, Number 2, June 2018, pp 197-219. Doi: 10.1215/00029831-4564274

Shawhan, J. (2015, August 6). Beyond using progressive filming techniques and casting, Tangerine is expressive and warm. Nashville Scene. Retrieved from https://www.nashvillescene.com/arts-culture/film/article/13060247/beyond-using-progressive-filming-techniques-and-casting-tangerine-is-expressive-and-warm. 

#tangerine #queer media studies #pose #qtpoc #iphone #queer reading #intersectionality

[gynoidwren]

do you identify as an autogynephile? genuine question. what that is to being trans is confusing for me. Angry denials some places, claims it doesn't exist, and anyone who says so should die... but then widespread agreement that it is a big part of transgirl's/women's life and celebration in other trans spaces. as for myself, I don't know.

If this is b/c of my blog title, that’s a joke, obvs. Chloe was talking about how I have a kind of fetishy thing for weird goth girls even though I also am one myself, and I joked that I’m an “autogothephile.”

But no, I mean, it’s not a real thing at all. Or rather, it is a specifically cruel and calculated way to separate trans people from their identity. This is changing recently but for so long p. much the only place trans women were culturally visible or acknowledged at all was in porn, and even now I think that’s probably the most prominent position we have and one of the most acceptable ways to view us (in part b/c it’s private, I’m sure, and there’s a sense that what you think about when you get off doesn’t have to connect to the rest of your life). Literally the first time I ever saw someone like me was them getting fucked in the ass. So of course for a lot of people our first sense of connection to that is via our sexuality. And particularly because of the extreme way that all women are sexually objectified in our culture it’s like v. easy to fixate on that when you feel connected to womanhood in a way you don’t yet understand. It’s hard to say you want to be a girl and at least marginally easier to say you want to get fucked like a girl. Most ways of being like a girl, being feminine in any way, are inherently sexualized, too. Autogynephilia is the medical gatekeeping arm of this idea, trying to say that if your sexuality is rooted in thinking about yourself as a girl that’s just a weird fetish that makes you a freak and not a real woman.

And so, yeah, it absolutely is a huge part of most trans women’s experiences, at least of my generation. It was a wall that a lot of us had to bump up against in the process of coming out, trying to ask ourselves if we really wanted to be or felt ourselves to be women or if it was just a sex thing. And you had to interrogate this about yourself because the only way to get hormones, and certainly the only way to get support and understanding from cis people was to articulate a v. specific kind of personal identity and narrative, usually specifically differentiating it from this. Even if you thought you might be trans, there was this blurred line that being trans in itself was kind of thought to be a sex thing by most people. And so a lot of this leads to the exact conclusion I read on a trans website when I was coming out, which is that you should only ever transition if you think you’ll kill yourself if you don’t. Which is, like…completely horrifying and terrible advice, but it was advice I followed. So most trans women my age have this specific experience of thinking about being a girl and masturbating, trying to hide it, dismissing it even as you start to realize it has this greater emotional impact on you.

And yeah, I think a lot of trans women are trying to reclaim or destigmatize this in our culture. They spend time talking about the trauma-rooted weirdness of their sexuality and the psychological contortions they went through being an egg, exactly because these are things that would be used to delegitimize their identity if they ever admitted to them, even though they’re things almost all of us did because that was the only expression of transness we had access to at the time.

So, like, I guess I kind of would identify that way in a joking sense? I mean, I had a girl’s sexuality even as a boy, centred around seeing myself as a girl. But like…that’s because I was one. So really we’re all autogynephiles (insert Dawkins t-shirt).

I don’t know. I’m sure that’s rambling and stupid and I know other ppl have explained it a lot better than me. But it’s just a weird outdated technical term used by transmisogynists to keep trans women in the closet, basically, so we all like to joke about it. I don’t know why you’re asking me this, of all people.

I guess if you’re asking because you’re asking yourself if you are one, I’d just say like, look: you’re trans. If you’re asking yourself that question you’re trans. But like, I can’t tell you what to do about that, that’s a more complicated question and I don’t know even know who you are, so…

#transgender #trans #transmisogyny #autogynephilia #misc.

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

It's time to reclaim singledom as a symbol of power

"Are you swiping?" my best friend asks me over breakfast one morning. I gulp down a spoonful of woefully bland porridge and think for a moment about how to reply. 

The answer was no, I wasn't swiping. But in saying so, I was met with a bewildered expression. I'm reluctant to swipe these days, or just to date in general, due to a long, troubling pattern of power imbalances that have occurred in every single relationship I've had since I started dating when I was 15. 

Now, at age 30, my status as the perennial singleton is firmly established after taking countless protracted hiatuses from dating. Not because I don't like the idea of being in a couple, but rather because I find dating really hard. Let's be real, it's a truth universally acknowledged that dating is plain sailing for literally no one. But, as a woman who dates men, I've found that every breed of relationship I've ever had — from casual sex to long-term relationships — has felt completely antithetical to the vision of equality I've envisaged for my own life. The lack of agency I feel in my love life made me want to remain single just so I could cling on to any semblance of control. So, in order to avoid feeling disempowered, I have periodically opted out of dating.

It strikes me as odd that even in 2019 — in this new wave of the women's movement — my lack of a partner renders me something of an anomaly, an outlier among my friends and family. For decades, we've been trying to rebrand the trope of the single woman from sad lonely spinster to something more reflective of reality: an independent, discerning woman who is resistant to the pressures of the patriarchal social values we've inherited. But, is this rebrand even working? Because, from where I'm standing, the very same pressures Bridget Jones and Carrie Bradshaw were up against in the '90s and '00s feel just as prevalent today.

At every single step of dating and in every genre of relationship, I come face to face with power disparities and micro-aggressions that are tinged with misogyny. During my last serious relationship, my boyfriend hurled gendered insults — "bitch," "crazy," "insane" — at me when I tried to assert myself or express that I wasn't happy about something. He would openly objectify my female friends, appraising their physical attractiveness with nominal values. I dumped him and vowed to be more discerning about the next man I called my boyfriend. The next person I dated rolled his eyes when I spoke and replied "come on, Rachel" when I asked questions about subjects I didn't know much about. The realm of online dating brings other headaches, like being pressured by matches to send nudes, receiving unsolicited dick pics, and harassment, and verbal abuse if I take too long to reply to messages or don't want a second date. 

In my sexual experiences with men, a marked power imbalance has left me feeling vulnerable and, at times, traumatised. When I look back on past encounters through a post-#MeToo lens, I can see that a troubling proportion of my sexual experiences fell into what I'd characterise as "grey areas"— sex that's non-criminal, but can feel violating. I experienced coercion, pain, and violence during sex that caused me trauma. During one experience, I asked the guy I was having sex with to stop because I had changed my mind. He proceeded to shout at me and yell insults until my housemate  intervened and helped remove him from our house.

Perhaps it's me, perhaps I'm picking the wrong men, I've told myself countless times. In an attempt to address those concerns, I have re-calibrated the choices I've made in selecting a partner. A few years ago, I vowed to only date men who identified as feminists, but in venturing down this path, I encountered a slew of other hurdles, principally so-called performative wokeness. This term, which has recently entered the popular lexicon, refers to people who publicly claim to care about social justice, they identify as allies to women, people of colour, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. In some of my liaisons with men who identified as feminists, their behaviour during our relationship ultimately did not match the values they purported to hold. Behind closed doors, there'd be micro-aggressions like gaslighting and subtle ways of patronising me that made me question my own intellect. 

SEE ALSO: Stop telling women how they should talk

In reality, it's far more complex than simply the choices I make about the type of guys I go for. Humorist and author Blythe Roberson, author of How To Date Men When You Hate Men, says dating is hard for everyone, but "dating as a straight woman is complicated by the fact that the gender you're attracted to has vast systemic power over you." 

"This can manifest in large ways, but also in more insidious ways I used to brush off: men saying they could never be in a relationship with someone more successful than they are, or men treating me as frivolous for thinking and writing about dating at all," says Roberson. 

My experiences are, of course, not representative of all men. Nor do they represent the experiences of all women. Trans women who date men face a different set of challenges when dating, chief of which is being sexualised but not respected. 

Paris Lees, British Vogue columnist and trans awareness campaigner, says there are some men who are happy to have sex with trans women, but feel shame about dating trans women in a serious capacity. "It's really interesting when you tell guys that you're trans because immediately it's like, 'Oh we don't have to treat you with as much respect now.' Not all of them, but a lot of guys, they think 'Oh, this is the one I'm gonna fuck, but I'm not gonna take home to meet mum and dad.'" 

She believes the conversations surrounding whether or not trans women are "real women" have heightened misogyny for trans women. "At the height of the 'are trans women real women' debate in the British media about a year ago, I was actually dealing with bullshit from a man and I just remember thinking, 'This is bullshit,'" says Lees. "Seriously, these people are telling me I'm not a real woman, and I'm out here getting all the misogyny." 

Indiana Seresin, an academic specialising in feminist and queer theory, says she believes that "heterosexual dating is often just tiring for women." 

"Dealing with issues like men's entitlement, the unequal division of physical and emotional labour, and men's ignorance about women's sexuality is exhausting," Seresin tells me. "As a queer woman I can confidently say that we don't face a lot of these issues, thank God. On the other hand, there are still cultural norms that we've regrettably inherited from heterosexuality, one of which is the couple form itself."

Rebranding the trope of the single woman 

The hegemony of the couple form is something we, as a society, are struggling to shed. And it's standing in the way of our perceptions of what it means to opt out of traditional dating structures, like not participating in dating. When we look back on the pop culture poster girls for singledom — Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennett, Carrie Bradshaw, Bridget Jones, Kat Stratford — all their stories end happily with them finding Mr. Right. The story ends with these shrewish bluestockings finding a cure for their ailment — and that cure is a man. Not only do I not want to take this medicine, I know for a fact I'm not ill. 

This notion of single women needing to be fixed is one that frustrates sex and wellness writer Maria Del Russo. "I feel like there's still this idea among women that 'single' is a negative state of being instead of just another label for society to slap on you," Del Russo tells me. "When a woman is single, there's something wrong with her, and she needs to fix it. There's this idea that single folks need fixing, and it's pretty messed up."

Not only do we think of single women as broken and waiting to be fixed, there's also the stereotype of the 'sad single gal' (think Bridget Jones in her PJs singing Céline Dion's "All By Myself" on her sofa). 

Roberson says there's "definitely a trope of sad single girls or frustrated single girls" — a label she feels has been applied to her. "I think a lot of people conflate my book title and my relationship status with me being, like, an incel," says Roberson with a laugh. 

Don't villainise women who don't date

Dating shouldn't be considered a compulsory module in the curriculum of life. Roberson says women's "increased access to education, jobs, birth control, abortion, and divorce means women don't have to structure their lives around men." 

"So, if women have more financial choice, trying to shame women for making the choice to be single is another way that patriarchy tries to control them," she says.

This shaming can manifest itself in what Seresin calls "faux-concern" — something that many single people might be familiar with. Think about the moments people have cocked their heads to one side and said, "oh you'll find someone" or "he's out there" when you tell them you're single. 

"Women who opt out of dating will be villainised by the broader culture (even if that comes in the form of faux-concern)," says Seresin. "I think the important thing is to see that villainisation itself as proof that you are doing something radical."

"Our society is still terrified by women who realise they don't need heterosexual partnership," she says. "But this is actually a major trope in early science fiction. Lots of this literature features worlds that have developed technology to reproduce without men and realise men suddenly have literally nothing to add to that society." 

When a woman says she's happily single, believe her 

In the same way that childless women are stigmatised, we're also socially conditioned to think that single women are tragic figures deserving sympathy, not admiration. In some cases, that social conditioning makes us disbelieve our own happiness when we're single. Lees says she feels very conflicted about how her views on other single women tally up with her own experience of singledom.

"Deep down at the back of my mind if I'm completely honest with you, I never really believed people that they're happily single," says Lees. "I have been single for the past year and honestly I am so happy. It's like I couldn't believe the evidence of my own life?" 

Lees even found herself thinking that she was only telling herself she was happy to make herself feel better. But, over Christmas she did some stocktaking of her life and thought to herself: "No, maybe you are happy, Paris." 

Question who society prizes as icons of singledom 

In our pop culture celebrations of singleness, we need to think about how race also intersects with those we herald as the forerunners of the single-by-choice movement. "There's everyone going crazy over Rihanna saying she isn't looking for a man, or that video of Eartha Kitt laughing at the idea of compromising for a man," says Seresin. "They are both amazing statements that I totally agree with, but I think we need to be aware of how our culture frames black women as patron saints of singleness, because black women have always been excluded from mainstream narratives of romantic coupledom." 

"In romantic comedies, for example, there is the role of the single, 'sassy' black best friend of the white woman who gets the man. By having Rihanna and Eartha Kitt be the major voices of refusing heterosexual coupledom, we are forcing them to play that role in the culture at large," says Seresin. 

Throughout history the single black woman has been vilified. In the 1960s, the Moynihan Report — a report on black families authored during U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration — essentially blamed black women for the demise of the traditional family structure. In 1976 and 1980, Ronald Reagan stirred up racist rhetoric by using the term "welfare queens" — a label historically applied to single black women — as a cautionary tale against people defrauding the welfare system. As our culture slowly re-calibrates its position on the palatability of single women, it's important to recognise the cultural legacy of scapegoating the single black woman.  

See relationships as a side order, not a main course

It's hard not to think about dating and relationships when they're such a ubiquitous theme in mainstream culture. Love is on our TV screens, on the pages of the books we read, in our Instagram feeds, and in the conversations we have with friends. We might not be able to do much about the wider cultural fixation on love, but one thing we can try to change is how we, as individuals, prioritise relationships. 

Del Russo, the sex and wellness writer, says that "until the culture as a whole changes, and stops selling us this package of relationships as a goal to clear, people need to start changing their own perceptions." 

"I've started to think of a relationship the same way I think about a scented candle. (Stay with me.) Is it a nice thing that makes the space a little nicer? Sure. But is the space still a complete space without this scented candle? Absolutely," she says. 

In order to start trying to change our perceptions about the importance of relationships, Del Russo advocates posing yourself two questions: "Why do I want to be in a relationship? What do I think a relationship could give me that I couldn't give myself?" 

The weight of society's trepidation should never have to fall on just one woman's shoulders. And, as Seresin says, "no woman can change these things on her own — you can't be a one-woman revolution." 

What we, as individuals can do, is interrogate our preconceived notions about dating. Like the idea that single women can't possibly be happy on their own. Or that even our most iconic single leading ladies eventually will succumb to love in the end. 

Love or no love, I know I'm already complete and that's all that matters to me. 

WATCH: Here are the top five moments where women stole the show at this year’s GRAMMYs

#_uuid:e79874b5-3744-32f1-ba17-48dbeaaf7a2b #_author:Rachel Thompson #_category:yct:001000002 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

[catalogueofaliens]

WHY IT’S NOT SO SIMPLE FOR ME TO CALL MYSELF A FEMINIST

TW: trans antagonism, mainstream/white/cis feminism, assault mention, mention of police, white supremacist mention, trans exclusion, erasure, cissexism, misogyny, internalised bullshit, patriarchy

[DISCLAIMER: This is my very personal take on this and something I’m still working through. I am a 28yo, white, middle-class, able-bodied, queer, trans non-binary pretty boy with mental illness and everything I say here is coming from that perspective, drag me if I overstep. TERFS not welcome tx]

When I allowed feminism into my life I was already past 21 years old. I had resisted in that way that a lot of people do – because it was uncool, because it was misconstrued as bra-burning/man-hating (things I’ve come to enjoy a lot more about it later on – certainly things I vastly prefer to the trans exclusionary, white supremacist nature of mainstream feminism). Then I started reading Tavi Gevinson’s blog and followed her over to Rookie mag and it changed me in a way that has been fundamentally important to the shape that my life has taken, largely in that it helped me to see power in things that had been robbed of their power by a patriarchal society, and in that it helped me find queer theorists and queer people online who helped me to make sense of the shit I’d been struggling to name since I was a kid. So yeah, a lot of this has been good, but I want to talk about what was bad about it, I want to highlight the ways feminism hurt me and continues to hurt me, because feminism is not every assigned female person’s saviour, and sometimes it does very real harm that cis white women don’t see, because it is only ever empowering to them, because it is designed by them and for them.

Feminism made me believe in my femme self, which is great and continues to be empowering and important for me as a non-binary person. But, it also made me suppress my masc self. Not only that, but it made me believe my masculinity, which I now see as an important and nuanced part of who I am, was merely a product of the patriarchy, and that my enactment of particular forms of masculinity (I am not here for toxic masculinity, thanks) was in fact a reflection of my oppression and a perpetuation of that very oppression. I came to believe that the boy who lives in my head was an oppressive, patriarchal implant. I came to believe that the fact that I relate so easily to male characters in books and shows (especially gentle and/or queer male characters) was a result of them being given much more airtime and being treated as the default, not because there was something about them that felt like looking in the mirror. Now, it definitely is the case that cis (white) men are given much more airtime and are treated as the default, and maybe there’s something in that that makes them easier to relate to, and yes, they tend to be given more complex characters and stuff so there is more of a range for relating, but feminism hurt me by making me believe that was all that was going on. When I literally felt like I could see my own face in a boy on TV or when my whole body ached for the cute queer kid who was figuring himself out one painful step at a time, I wasn’t just relating to a well-drawn character, I was the character. They were me. I probably will never know myself better than when I read a character I relate to.

Mainstream feminism continues to fail me. When it takes things I deal with daily and calls them women’s issues, when it erases my identity, erases my body, when it implies that my masculinity somehow exempts me from misogyny. I do not pass as a man, I get looked up and down, scrutinised daily, I have had security laugh at me before groping my chest and crotch, I’ve had a cop brandish me by the arm and ask a fellow police officer “What is this”, I exist at an intersection of gendered oppression – I am at once a woman and a trans person in how I am received, I am rejected and objectified in one glance, and yet I have literally been told that I am trying to exempt myself from the sexism that women suffer – like being a whole non-binary trans person is me checking out of being a woman, because it was just too hard. I fucking wish I was a woman, I really do. I mean, I love myself, I love who I have been able to be, and I know that my considerable privilege has helped me to be able to be myself and to love that person, but yeah, I’d take the added privilege of being a cis woman, on top of my whiteness, middle-classness, able-bodiedness, that’d be great. Mainstream feminism hurts me by continuing to make me feel like maybe my identity, my sense of self, is just an extension of an imposed patriarchal mindset, that maybe I’m not strong enough to just be a powerful woman who relishes in her femininity. I know this is wrong, and I know that patriarchy plays a major role in making me believe this, but mainstream feminism has certainly helped it along. In a lot of ways mainstream/white/cis feminism and patriarchy have been good companions over the years. The essentialism that still persists in today’s mainstream/white/cis feminism aids partriarchy and binarism beautifully. And it really fucking hurts me and it has literally killed other trans people. The question I’m struggling with is do we continue to strive for a better feminism, or do we need to look at the possibility that the ideology is too old, too harmful to do good, and find something better? The word itself is exclusionary in its erasure of non-binary and trans masc people who also deserve to be fought for. I guess I’m just tired of having to remind even feminists who openly claim to be intersectional to remember that trans people exist, that a movement that only fights for cis women is failing really marginalised people. There are so many really important critiques of feminism and how it has historically and continually erased womxn of colour and their struggles, how it overlooks the realities of people with disabilities, of fat womxn, and so many other marginalised groups. Many many trans folx have raised the issue that cis feminism is killing us. A feminism that doesn’t recognise trans womxn as womxn can rot in hell, and a feminism that ignores that non-binary people exist can follow right behind it. But I guess I’m just at a place where I’m wondering why we cling so fast to feminism at all? Is it just because it’s there? What about intersectionalism? Or something?!

Because mainstream/white/cis feminism fails other people way worse than it fails me. It is partly to blame for attacks on trans people (particularly trans people of colour, and especially trans women/femmes of colour) and it is partly to blame for so many different forms of systemic dehumanisation that persist on a daily basis. Trans and GNC people have been showing up for cis women from day one, have put our bodies on the line to advance feminist causes, and yet we’re erased and sidelined again and again, given new ways to hate ourselves by an ideology that was designed to empower, but only if you fit the right mould – cis, white, thin, able-bodied, neurotypical, straight – viva the fucking revolution, let power pass from the hands of the white man into the hands of the white woman, because there’s no blood on there, right?

#feminism #white feminism #trans exclusion #trans antagonism #assault tw #erasure tw #mainstream feminism #transphobic violence tw #racism #white supremacy #misogyny #identity #non-binary #trans #gender non-conforming #cis feminism