ovisiphorus

[ovisiphorus]

ⓘ You can play creatures with a friend.

[ovisiphorus]

i like when one of those daily posts about how watching challenging adult media for grown ups and adults with good reading comprehension and mature critical thinking is good for your critical comprehension and thinking and reading, understanding even, but if you only watch baby shows like steven hotel and barney your brain will wither your reading comprehension critical thinking will suffer and your body will start to smell worse and if you cant handle the dark, challenging, difficult, complex adult media for grown ups that I like then you're probably a bad person who got bad grades in high school etc. basically a lot of self-aggrandizing about watching incrementally better tv and reading incrementally better books than some other people on the watching books and reading tv shows website, we've all seen this, and then you go to OP's blog and the mature difficult challenging thought provoking, dark, provocative media for adults theyre talking about is House MD

[ovisiphorus]

I need to talk about this because it's making me feel insane.

Last week, my white leftist goyisch friends sat me, a wholeass antizionist Jew, down for a "talk" because they "needed to check in about Palestine" and make sure "our values aligned before we hung out again". They apparently needed to "suss out" where I stood on Palestinian rights, despite having had several conversations about Palestine and them being some of my closest friends. They needed to check, to search for and uncover my true values, because I had said some "disturbing things" that had made them "suspicious".

Disturbing things included:

Supporting IfNotNow which is a "liberal zionist organization" because it normalizes Jewish heritage in the Levant

Not bringing Palestine up enough, despite them also not bringing it up (this was apparently a test)

Mentioning that the Houthi's flag talks about cursing all Jews

Saying Stalin was antisemitic because of the "all the paw-grihms"

...and apparently other things they wouldn't specify, but had been tracking for months.

To clarify, I am an antizionist Jew from three generations of antizionist Jews. I have been vocal in my support of Palestinian liberation and in my condemnation both of Israel's actions and its violent founding as a state, and of zionism in many of its forms. I am a regular donor to Palestinian and Jewish NGOs and advocate for Jewish antizionism in person, at temple, and online. I have been talking about Palestinian liberation before they could point to Gaza on a map. But they needed to make sure, they needed to "suss out", they needed to check. And it's notable that the majority of moments that made them suspicious of me were times where I talked about antisemitism: not about Palestinian liberation, not about Israeli decolonization, not about anything actually relevant to Palestine. It was talking about antisemitism that made them check to see if I was a cryptozionist.

One of the most pervasive and insidious forms of antisemitism is the idea that Jews are inherently untrustworthy and suspicious. You have to constantly be on guard, track what they say and do, "suss out" the real truth. You have to keep them in line and and watch them carefully because they're liars and sneaks, and if you're not looking closely they'll return to their real values (and drag you down with them). This is where the idea of "cryptozionist" comes from and what it's directly building off of: the inherent untrustworthiness of Jews and the need to check. Because no matter how close you become you can't actually trust them, and any upstanding gentile should make sure to avoid associating with Jews before "sussing out" their real allegiances and intentions. You have to make them turn out their pockets, just in case.

I'm the first and only Jew they actually were friends with; I know because they've told me (strangely proud of it in the way white Americans are proud of that kind of thing). They've asked me questions about Judaism and fawned over how beautiful and unique it was for me to be connected to my community and culture. Pre-October 7th, one of them had even mentioned being interested in coming to services at my temple. She still has my copy of our siddur. But now she needed to "check" before she could be seen with me in public. Which is what it was: it wasn't a "you're my friend and I need to give you some feedback because you're fucking up" kind of intervention (which is normal and important to have), it was a trial. It was a last chance for me to prove to them that I'm clean-enough that they could afford to risk being seen with me in public, just in case someone noticed them fraternizing with a hypothetical Enemy and their leftism was compromised. It was a test to make sure that I behave properly when required to, that I'd play along and do what I'm told and turn out my pockets if asked (because any refusal would validate the notion of having something to hide). And above all it was an opportunity for them to reaffirm their own cleanliness by putting my imagined immorality in its place.

I did what I needed to do: I smiled. I apologized. I "didn't know that". I "appreciated the feedback". I turned out my pockets because what else could I do? They'd decided who I was and what I believed, regardless of what I said or did, so there was no point in explaining that they were wrong about me. If I had told them they were being antisemitic, it would just have been proof that they were right. Caring about antisemitism is a dogwhistle in the spaces they've chosen: it's not a real form of oppression, it's a tactic for sneaky, lying Jews to weasel out of admitting their true alliances. There was nothing I could say.

Nothing's really changed for me. I'm going to continue my activism for Palestinian liberation rooted in my culture and my faith. Antizionism is still not antisemitism. But I got a reminder that many white goyisch leftists fundamentally just don't trust Jews, and that the activist spaces they're in not only exacerbate their antisemitism in an increasingly insular echo chamber, but also allow them to finally vent their internalized bigotry in a socially-acceptable way. In my former friends' eyes, what they did was activism—disavowing a Jew (and making me feel humiliated, scared, and unclean in the process) as a cathartic stand-in for doing fucking anything for actual Palestinian liberation—but for me it was a grief that I'll be feeling for a long time: not only over losing friends I loved and trusted, but also over my sense of belonging and security in leftist spaces.

[ovisiphorus]

there's this well-meaning but I think quite misguided Thing where someone transmasuline whose transition has left them looking, for lack a better term, very conventionally masc - bearded, muscular, liable to be assumed cisgender - will be held up in an argument that essentially goes "lmao you dumbass terfs really want THIS GUY to use the women's bathroom???" as if it's inherently absurd that someone who looks that way would use the women's bathroom. and these tend to get passed around quite a lot to cackle at the stupid terfs who want huge hairy men in women's bathrooms.

and like, let's get one thing straight: no, of course they don't want that guy to use the women's bathroom. they want him to die or detransition; that's their actual goal. they want him to not exist as a trans person. let's just be clear on that.

but the thing that actually bothers me is that this rather steamrolls over the fact that for every transmasuline person who looks like that, there are also transfeminine, nonbinary, and intersex people who look like that and want access to women's bathrooms, and setting up their presence as some kind of absurdity really isn't doing them any favors. nor is it helping the less "passing" trans people who want to use men's bathrooms! this is in fact reinforcing the idea that public bathrooms are a space to be policed based on appearance, that you only gain access to if you can look a certain way.

which is absurd for many reasons, including that it's a fucking bathroom. people are there to piss. ideally anybody should be able to piss next to anybody and we could stop bothering with gender separated bathrooms at all, but in the meantime let's at least not take part in actively encouraging people to decide at a glance who's allowed to piss where.

[ovisiphorus]

If a trans man interacts with other trans men he's in an echo chamber.

If a trans man interacts with cis women he's falling for TERF ideolgy by bonding with them over assigned sex.

If a trans man interacts with cis men he's falling for patriarchal oppressive roles

If a trans man interacts with trans women he's love bombing and manipulating her.

If a trans man interacts with a non-binary person then just pick whichever of the other four people think fit them the closest.

These are all things that I've heard said about me for having friends and acquaintances of any gender and it's like the only right way for a trans man to exist in some people's eyes is alone. Or, you know. Not that either because then trans men are just mass shooters waiting to happen.

Don't let anyone tell you who you can be friends with. Falling for the constant demand to self flagellate will put you in a loop of never being good enough.

[ovisiphorus]

“sure i mean these bills affect all trans people but they specifically target and name trans women” an executive order was signed to halt transition under 19 with the expectation that we need our breasts for our future as mothers and cites anti fgm laws against trans men and mascs specifically. what do you MEAN we arent being targeted

[ovisiphorus]

"The laws Trump wants to pass won't affect trans men because-"

...

Who do you think they're talking about when they talk about 'protecting women from extremism' etc?

They're talking about trans men and AFAB non-binary people as well as cis women.

That's what they see trans men/mascs as. Women. Because they don't 'believe' in gender 'only biology' and therefore, don't accept trans men as men and trans mascs are whatever gender they are.

They're talking about forced detransition of trans men currently out, and preventing those who haven't come out or haven't realised they're trans from doing so when they talk about 'protecting women' as much as they mean anything about preventing those born without a vagina from living as women.

If laws define 'woman' as 'someone with a vagina' and nothing is allowed to go against that, it doesn't just stop trans women from being themselves, but trans men too.

The laws that transphobes pass purposefully spread a wide net because they hate all of us, and they see all of us are our AGAB and talk about all of us as if we were our AGAB.

When they say men they mean trans women too. When they say women they mean trans men too. That's how they see us. Binary and without gender, only biology which they get to decide means what they want in terms of 'man' and 'woman' which again are not genders to them.

I shouldn't be seeing even one video or post talking about how 'this proves that trans men are not oppressed, because I personally have poor reading comprehension and don't understand what's going on, so take that transandrobros'.

[ovisiphorus]

With this latest round of discourse being "trans men shouldn't complain about being kicked out of women's spaces", I felt the urge to write up a relatively long post regarding the topic, as I feel it is a long tangled mess and involves a significant amount of people simply talking past each other.

To begin, what is a woman's space? I ask this, because "women's spaces" often fall under one of three categories: medical services, social services, and social gatherings. Of the three, trans men need access to nearly everything if not everything included within "medical services" and "social services". These things often need to be considered co-ed anyway, but are still considered "for women" and often are labeled things like "women's health" or "women's defense". Social gatherings- things such as book clubs, concerts, festivals, and other similar outings- can have a nuanced and complicated history when it comes to the inclusion, or exclusion, of trans men.

As an example- I am a binary, gay trans man who has not yet been sterilized. If I become pregnant and need to seek out social services, I must do so via my provider's "Women and Babies" department. I am neither of those things, and yet regardless of whether I am completing or terminating the pregnancy, I must label myself a woman in order to receive care. If I wish to have a pap smear, receive birth control, or investigate my chances of ovarian and cervical cancer, I must do so via the "Women's Health Clinic". I am not a woman, but I must label myself as one in order to discuss sterilization options. Many trans men who have had their gender markers changed prior to sterilization have reported difficulty even booking an appointment, as well as difficulty convincing their insurance to pay for this appointment due to a discrepancy with gender markers vs gendered care. Many have discussed the realities of being a pregnant man, whether they remained pregnant until their child was born, or whether they terminated said pregnancy with an abortion.

It should come as no surprise that the statistics for trans men receiving quality gynecological care are abysmal. It should be equally unsurprising to hear how many trans men have died from botched abortions, untreated miscarriages, infections and cancers of the uterus and cervix and ovaries, and complications during pregnancy or birth. We belong in this space, despite it being labeled "for women", and the only thing pushing us out has done is quite literally what's been killing us.

This is, of course, not even taking into account the numbers of trans men who have been forced to become pregnant via their husbands or families as a means to detransition them, and those who have become pregnant as a result of corrective rape. There is a saying among trans men of my age- it isn't "we all know a guy this has happened to", it's "which of us haven't experienced this? who among us doesn't fear this? who will it happen to next?"

Which brings me to my next point: women's social services. As with women's medical care, nearly everything labeled "for women" as a social service must be inclusive to trans men. Shelters for domestic violence survivors, rape crisis centers, self defense classes, family planning, these are all things that honestly should already be co-ed. But, many times, they are exclusively targeted towards women. I understand why, I do. But with trans men being statistically more likely than cis women to experience the need for these services, it seems a cruelty to close their doors to a vulnerable demographic reaching out for help.

Where should trans men in crisis go? Shutting the door to us without addressing the reason we need to access these resources gives us a single ultimatum: detransition, or die. Go back to being a woman, or die knowing the likelihood that a woman's name will adorn your headstone, and "daughter, wife, mother" will be said in your obituary. Much like the medical services, this incomplete answer has lead many trans men to their deaths. Whether by their own hands, or by their attackers'.

But there are other social services out there that perhaps are not as dire. Women's scholarships, colleges, all girls schools. Girl Scouts, women's sport leagues, gym memberships. Trans men don't need access to these, right?

Well... is the trans man in question out? Has he been living as a man, or is he still closeted? Is it safe for him to come out? Does he pass, or has he just bought his first binder and given himself his first buzz cut? Is he living under the control of his parents, or is he able to freely decide for himself the type of person he'd like to be and the type of life he'd like to live?

You see, I was a Girl Scout once. And, if we are to believe to our core that trans men are men even before they know the words "transgender", this means I was a boy in a girl's space. I didn't know that being transgender was an option for me at the point where my troop disbanded, and another leader to replace the first within my local area was not found until after I had aged out.

But also... I was in 7th grade when my troop disbanded. Two years later, I would learn the word "transgender", and suddenly everything would make sense. Two years later, I would come out to my parents and my sisters. To put this into perspective, I graduated high school in 2010. The Boy Scouts officially allowed cisgender girls and transgender people of all genders to join all programs in 2019.

I was not expelled from my Girl Scout troop. My leader simply stopped showing up to meetings, and my troop disbanded to go our separate ways when leadership could not find someone quickly enough to replace her. But... if this had not happened, I would have been a recently out transgender boy in a girl's social service, still wearing push up bras and frilly shirts because that's all my parents would buy me until I became an adult and moved out and had a job with my own money to re-purchase myself a wardrobe. Indistinguishable from any of the others, outside of what went on inside my own mind.

I would not have been accepted into the Boy Scouts, if Girl Scouts had been taken from me as abruptly as it was from a different transgender boy in the same state I was born and raised. Which would have left me with... nothing. Neither. And the only reason I even joined the Girl Scouts was because I had wanted to join the Boy Scouts and the local troop had refused to allow me, because they had labeled me a girl.

I don't believe I'm the one that coined Schrodinger's Gender, but I do reference it often. In this situation, one is both a boy when it hurts, and a girl when it hurts. Even if that gender label changes by the second, the point is to use your gender and your assigned sex to hurt you.

But then, why do these services even have to be gendered to begin with? After all, Boy Scouts just updated to be The Scouts, and has removed (on paper) the insistence on gendering.

Well... I certainly agree that the majority of gendering these services is at this point a concept that needs to be reformed, but I'm unconvinced that we will be able to completely integrate without addressing the reason they were segregated by gender in the first place.

Women's gym memberships are gender segregated for two reasons. Women and girls- and anyone labeled as women and girls, regardless of true identity- are frequently not afforded the same access to resources as cisgender men and boys. Women and girls- and anyone labeled such- are frequently at high risk of predatory sexual behavior and physical violence. Both of these problems are symptoms of a larger system of misogyny at play, and both of these problems directly affect trans men especially those who have not transitioned in a way that makes them pass for cis men.

Regardless of the truth of my identity, the reality is that I was seen as and treated as a girl when it came to physical fitness, and thus barred from the same activities freely offered to the boys. Regardless of the truth of my identity, I have experienced predatory sexual behavior from cis men as young as 8 or 9 years old, continuing past when I came out and began to transition socially.

If the problem is not addressed, cis women cannot re-integrate with cis men. But, additionally, if the problem is not addressed, the choice still remains clear for trans men. Detransition, stay closeted, or go without.

A common complaint of trans men is the invisibility and erasure our demographic faces. It should be easy to see why this happens. The problem of a misogynistic society is one that continues to this day, and without addressing the problem we cannot hope for success in creating a more inclusive space. At the same time, trans men are being pushed out and isolated as they realize they must make a choice.

As for social gatherings, such as a woman's retreat or a woman's music festival? Of course, it may sound odd to say that a trans man should feel welcome there. But the truth of the matter is the majority of the trans men asking for the ability to stay are trans men who have been within that space for years already, prior to coming out, prior to realizing some things about their genders, prior to taking their first steps as men.

I'm pretty good friends with an older butch who told me that I am the first person they ever told that they were a nonbinary man. This person is in their 50s. They're married. But the wife doesn't like it, and they love their wife too much to cause friction in the relationship, so they keep it to themselves, and they keep quiet, and they don't say anything about being transgender, but in their head they aren't a woman. This person is not a woman, by their own insistence. Should this person be forcibly ejected from their local lesbian community, which they and the wife helped form decades ago? Should they divorce their wife, since that would make her not a lesbian anymore?

What harm is it, truly, to allow this person to stay? Social isolation kills people. The trans man suicide statistics are just as abysmal as any of the others I've mentioned here. Forcing someone to burn 20, 30, 40 years of their lives and their friends and their achievements because they are finally living as themselves is a deeply hurtful and isolating experience.

The majority of trans men asking to be included in these spaces are not trans men like me- who never really jived with the idea of womanhood and distanced ourselves as much as possible the moment we saw the opportunity. They are men like my friend, often existing outside of the binary, often with a deep love and appreciation for womanhood despite realizing that perhaps the label does not fit them as well as they once thought. They often have many years of connection, entire lives spent intwined in these spaces.

What good does it do to chase them out? What harm does it to do let them stay?

[ovisiphorus]

When a celebrity with more twitter followers than there are Jews on the entire planet can go on an unhinged, extended, and incredibly dangerous antisemitic rant and have people make excuses for him and dismiss it as not that important, or even worse, find it funny, it really shows just how unseriously people take antisemitism and how little people actually care about it.

[ovisiphorus]

People on Tumblr will really be like, "You believe in contacting your Representative and Senators? That pales in effectiveness to my strategy, doing absolutely nothing."

[ovisiphorus]

have the accelerationists learned yet that letting fascists take over does nothing to provoke revolution, it just sets back human rights and forces us to reinvent abortion protections

[ovisiphorus]

Apparently this is a controversial take now but just FYI spreading misinformation is still bad even if you think it's funny or have decided it's for the One True Cause.

[ovisiphorus]

Literally hundreds of thousands of people are directly saying "I am a Nazi" and "Hitler was right" and "the idea of antisemitism is just a Jewish plot" and still no one thinks it is the right time to talk about antisemitism. Lol. Lmafo even.

[ovisiphorus]

Radiant!

[ovisiphorus]

This is a mushroom playing keyboard for her friends in the mushroom farm. The attached sensors measure electrical fluctuations in the mushroom. The fluctuations are converted into signals that control the mushroom's bionic arms. The keyboard plays a synth in Ableton.

If you want to hear it:

[ovisiphorus]

Nobody hates you bro just do your dishes

[ovisiphorus]

died and came back exactly the same but something was so so so wrong with me before and now I have an excuse to really lean into it