the idea that testosterone is a dangerous hormone that inherently makes someone domineering and difficult to be around is transphobic all round, leaning on bioessentialism.
for trans men and transmascs, we are warned against medical transition for fear that we may lose our agreeableness and perceived passivity. we are seen as potential aggressors after going on it.
trans woman and transfems have any testosterone in their system, whether on hrt or not, held over them like an original sin that can not be escaped that positions them as more aggressive and dangerous. it is seen as something that threatens their womanhood and can be brought up against them at any time to revoke it.
testosterone is not an evil hormone. it does not change your moral character. it does good for some and bad for others, like any other hormone.
What I need for White Americans (ppl in general really, but I'm talking to the U.S.) to understand about Americans of Color is that You don't know Us, but We know YOU.
We've spent generations upon generations of our entire lives learning YOUR social norms, forced to assimilate to YOUR idea of society. We live and learn entirely separate cultures, but we also learn from birth what it means to have to cater to Whiteness in America. It's why I can name so many famous movies with white casts, but most white people didn't even know where "Bye Felicia" came from. It's why I was raised to professionally Code Switch from childhood, but grown white people struggle to even grasp the basics of the grammar of AAVE. It's why people who speak different languages think they have to give up their own mother tongue just to function in this country.
It's why you all are so uncomfortable with the idea of people of color questioning and rejecting what seems "normal" to you- and to be honest, I actually think older white generations are better at admitting this than younger ones. It's because what you know as normal is usually not "normal"- it's White. Whiteness is just as loud as any other presentation of race in this country, you just don't see it that way because everyone else has been forced to maintain your comfort. The entire system is built around it, and you don't even know it.
It's why it frustrates white Americans of some marginalization- queer, disabled, neurodivergent- because you do not have access to the "norm" as it is shown to you. But that frustration- literally everyone of color (who shares those identities btw) lives under that understanding.
Idk, I didn't really have a direction. I just think it's wild how so many conversations require this... Constant Verbal Leveling of the Playing Field simply because Whiteness blinds white people to what things ACTUALLY look like out here.
was lamenting the fact that my eczema is flaring up when the thought "the itcher" popped into my head fully formed and unprompted and now i can't stop laughing
the reason it is necessary to educate yourself on colonialism and specifically on settler colonialism is that it is very easy to be stupid and think about asymmetric power as bad strategic decisions in a war, like the average blue-check replying "FAFO" under every palestinian death toll. there is some kind of comfort in believing that a colonial power can be out-strategized or appealed to and that palestinians somehow have been making the same strategic mistakes for 75 years which is why they're being genocided (this is what stupid people believe and evil people are trying very desperately to get stupid people to believe)
but once you understand it is a colonial struggle and not a war, patterns begin to emerge. no colonized people "lost" a war because no colonized people have ever asked for a war nor have they engaged in one. colonialism imposes war upon indigenous people. colonizers come to you in your home, where you are a civilian, and force a fighter out of you. every civilian is now engaged in an existential struggle simply due to the bad luck of existing in a home coveted by colonizers.
many complexities have been manufactured to disguise this simple truth. but across the worldโin canada, in algeria, in south africa, in the united states, in australia, in lebanon, in the philippines, in hawaii, in puerto rico, in argentina, in sudan, in india, in every region that has experienced colonialism (and that is almost every region in the world) this remains the base truth of it. and it is also instinctively why everyone recoils at the images of idf soldiers gleefully dancing on the ruins of gaza. it doesn't look like victory in war, does it? there's no honor nor achievement in it. the more they kill, the ease with which they do it, more obvious it is. it looks like what it is.
mabel podcast episode 23 // i am in eskew episode 22 // shirley jackson's the haunting of hill house // italo calvino's invisible cities // text post bc i ran out of ideas