smallfightercat

[smallfightercat]

hey y'all I hate to ask for help like this, but food's been running a bit tight lately and it's hard for me to keep drawing consistently since I don't eat that much for financial purposes

any help towards my Kofi is appropriated, thank u for supporting me throughout all of 2024 and I hope to continue bringing art to you all!!!

[smallfightercat]

Elon Musk attacked democracy defender and superstar court lawyer Marc Elias as “undermining civilization,” taunting him by asking if he suffered “generational trauma.”

Elias’s response was brilliant and worth amplifying:

Mr. Musk,

You recently criticized me and another prominent lawyer fighting for the rule of law and democracy in the United States. I am used to being attacked for my work, particularly on the platform you own and dominate.

I used to be a regular on Twitter, where I amassed over 900,000 followers — all organic except for the right-wing bots who seemed to grow in number. Like many others, I stopped regularly posting on the site because, under your stewardship, it became a hellscape of hate and misinformation.

I also used to buy your cars — first a Model X and then a Model S — back when you spoke optimistically about solving the climate crisis. My family no longer owns any of your cars and never will.

But this is not the reason I am writing. You don’t know me. You have no idea whether I have suffered trauma and if I have, how it has manifested. And it’s none of your business.

However, I will address your last point about generational trauma. I am Jewish, though many on your site simply call me “a jew.” Honestly, it’s often worse than that, but I’m sure you get the point. There was a time when Twitter would remove antisemitic posts, but under your leadership, tolerating the world’s oldest hatred now seems to be a permissible part of your “free speech” agenda.

Like many Jewish families, mine came to America because of trauma. They were fleeing persecution in the Pale of Settlement — the only area in the Russian Empire where Jews were legally allowed to reside. Even there, life was difficult — often traumatic. My family, like others, lived in a shtetl and was poor. Worse, pogroms were common — violent riots in which Jews were beaten, killed and expelled from their villages.

By the time my family fled, life in the Pale had become all but impossible for Jews. Tsar Nicholas II’s government spread anti-Jewish propaganda that encouraged Russians to attack and steal from Jews in their communities. My great-grandfather was fortunate to leave when he did. Those who stayed faced even worse circumstances when Hitler’s army later invaded.

That is the generational trauma I carry. The trauma of being treated as “other” by countrymen you once thought were your friends. The trauma of being scapegoated by authoritarian leaders. The trauma of fleeing while millions of others were systematically murdered. The trauma of watching powerful men treat it all as a joke — or worse.

As an immigrant yourself, you can no doubt sympathize with what it means to leave behind your country, extended family, friends and neighbors to come to the United States. Of course, you probably had more than 86 rubles in your pocket. You probably didn’t ride for nine days in the bottom of a ship or have your surname changed by immigration officials. Here is the ship manifest showing that my family did. Aron, age three, was my grandfather.

[see image in comments]

As new immigrants, life wasn’t easy. My family lived in cramped housing without hot water. They worked menial jobs — the kind immigrants still perform today.

Some may look down on those immigrants — the ones without fancy degrees — but my family was proud to work and grateful that the United States took them in. They found support within their Jewish community and a political home in the Democratic Party.

I became a lawyer to give back to the country that gave my family a chance. I specialize in representing Democratic campaigns because I believe in the party. I litigate voting rights cases because the right to vote is the bedrock of our democracy. I speak out about free and fair elections because they are under threat.

Now let me address the real crux of your post.

You are very rich and very powerful. You have thrown in with Donald Trump. Whether it is because you think you can control him or because you share his authoritarian vision, I do not know. I do not care.

Together, you and he are dismantling our government, undermining the rule of law and harming the most vulnerable in our society. I am just a lawyer. I do not have your wealth or your platform. I do not control the vast power of the federal government, nor do I have millions of adherents at my disposal to harass and intimidate my opponents. I may even carry generational trauma.

But you need to know this about me. I am the great-grandson of a man who led his family out of the shtetl to a strange land in search of a better life. I am the grandson of the three-year-old boy on that journey. As you know, my English name is Marc, but my Hebrew name is Elhanan (אֶלְחָנָן) — after the great warrior in David’s army who slew a powerful giant.

I will use every tool at my disposal to protect this country from Trump. I will litigate to defend voting rights until there are no cases left to bring. I will speak out against authoritarianism until my last breath.

I will not back down. I will not bow or scrape. I will never obey.

Defiantly,

Marc Elias

[smallfightercat]

It took me forever to figure out how anyone could reasonably claim that trans men weren’t directly targeted by the EO about “protecting women and girls from gender ideology” until I thought about how that phrasing would be interpreted if you’re thinking of trans women and only trans women. Now I’m slightly less irritated with people saying only trans women are gonna get hit by the EOs and switching from “are you fucking for real right now, like are you just pretending this isn’t even here” to “hey I thought about how this would apply to trans women, can you do the same for trans men?”

If your focus is solely on trans women, “protecting women and girls from gender ideology” means not letting trans women into women’s bathrooms or locker rooms, which is enforced by forcibly detransitioning them legally and socially. The idea being to “protect” cis women from trans women existing near them.

If you focus on trans men tho, “protecting women and girls from gender ideology” means denying them any sort of medical transition and then forcibly detransitioning them legally and socially because the “women” you’re trying to “protect” are both the trans men themselves and the egg transmascs near them who might consider transitioning because they now see it as an option. (See: the common rhetoric of trans men perpetuating a “social contagion” and giving your “daughters” “ROGD.”). This is also why it mentions FGM; they’re not talking about actual female genital mutilation, they’re talking about transmasculine bottom surgery. Phalloplasty is like +$100k and no insurance covers it, so basically anyone who was saving up for it just got told to go fuck themselves.

Not to mention no matter what their ASAB was, nonbinary people are going to be hit but in a way that lumps them in with trans women and trans men based on ASAB. They are just as screwed as the rest of us.

I’m just saying, it would help so much if y’all would just read something and think about how it affects multiple different types of people.

[smallfightercat]

like a lot of time transmasculine "victimhood" is not about the transmasculine person themself. it's about the abstract ideal daughter that is grafted onto their body. when people talk about protecting their daughters from themselves, they mean they must kill the evil dyke to save the fantasy of a good daughter/future wife and mother. it's the same thing that happens with ageism towards children, where your "real" identity is the value you represent to society, and you- the consciousness driving the body- can and will be punished if you are seen as threatening that hypothetical person they need you to be. transmasculine people are not seen as innocent. their body represents the sexual labor society demands of them, and the social failure inside the body has to be beaten and forced into submission to protect the body.

[smallfightercat]

The amount of times I see people say "you fell for bait", "that's a troll account", "obvious psyop" whenever I point out intersexism in the trans community is kind of a pattern.

I do not post things I believe are bait.

I have seen posts from all sorts of different kinds of trans people claiming incredibly intersexist things such as;

Intersex people are "cis invaders" who believe their medical conditions make them queer

Doubling down on the idea that HRT makes perisex people become intersex

Insisting "doctors know best" (in refrence to intersex medical abuse) and intersex activists are "two steps away from becoming antivaxxers" for criticizing the medical establishment

Arguing that intersex trans people have privilege over perisex trans people because they are "biologically closer to their gender" or have a "head start on their transition" + calling intersex trans women "passoids"

Repeatedly denying intersex medical abuse exists and dismissing any intersex people who provide proof or sources

The word perisex is "eugenicist language" and all trans people are intersex (this one had a lot of notes for how extreme it was)

Intersexism is not a legitimate form of bigotry and all examples of it can be accredited to transphobia only (or to racism in some posts)

Perisex trans people can "reclaim" the H slur and any intersex person who says otherwise "should be shot"

Intersex people being referred to as the H slur is actually comparing them to trans women and therefore only a form of transmisogyny and not intersexism

Circumcision is the same as intersex genital mutilation and intersex people are "being overdramatic about routine medical procedures"

Claiming sex binary abolition is a "sex essentialist stance" and intersex activists are TERFs

Intersex people are not discriminated against and have an easier time getting gender affirming care + we are lying about medical abuse and difficulty transitioning

Intersex people are lucky and privileged over trans people for getting "bottom surgery" at birth

Referring to testosterone HRT bottom growth as "ambiguous genitalia"

It is not intersexist to use the H slur or F-nari slur to refer to fictional characters and is only bad when you use it for real people

Intersex people are ""genetically inferior"" because they are "all natural genetic dead ends" wheras trans people are revolutionary for becoming infertile on purpose in spite of having "good genes" (this one was on reddit)

Perisex trans men claiming their breasts are gynocemastia

Intersex people who have disabling variations should not be considered intersex

Intersex people cannot be trans

Calling a trans person perisex when they don't like it is tantamount to misgendering

I know that a lot of these ideas are fringe and uncommon in the trans community, but that does not mean they do not exist and do not harm intersex people. If you account for every intersexist idea perpetuated in the trans community, there's a lot of intersexism, even if many of the individual stances themselves are rare to stumble on.

You're not going to see a trans guy claiming forced TRT is "free HRT and you should be thankful" every day, but you'll probably stumble on some other intersexist shit every day. There's a lot of new and unique flavors of ways perisex people hate us. Just because any one of these takes isn't super common doesn't mean intersexist sentiment as a whole isn't.

Regardless of whether or not this seems outlandish to you personally, I and other intersex people have seen shit like this in the trans community. And I'm frustrated with being told I am lying or that bigotry we face isn't real. There is an incredibly prevalent form of intersexism in which intersex people are over-scrutinized to an impossible degree to "prove" our own oppression, specifically because the asker has not noticed it themselves. And once we do provide examples they are brushed off as fake or outlier cases that don't count. I'm incredibly sick of pretending this in and of itself isn't a form of intersexism.

[smallfightercat]

goal: this week i will

[smallfightercat]

I go to school board & city council meetings regarding trans rights, and something I noticed is that almost every single transfem student who has gone up to defend their right to use the women's lockers & bathrooms has reported being sexually assaulted in school, often multiple times, by cis men & boys.

And yet, what is taken more seriously is the single cisgender girl who went up to speak about her discomfort with trans girls in the lockers & bathrooms. Not danger. Not harm. Not trauma. Discomfort.

The cisgender girl spoke about how she was not comfortable, wheras the transgender girls spoke of how they were not safe. I am somehow supposed to believe these are of equal severity? Eat a fucking brick.

[smallfightercat]

OUR GOALS

- to provide support for our community

- to give new detransitioners hope for a future after transition that includes joy and satisfaction

- to promote solidarity between the trans and detrans communities in order to share resources and so that detransitioning is no longer treated as “betraying” our trans siblings

RESOURCES NEEDED / HOW TO HELP

we currently need information on the following

- which insurances cover detrans healthcare (ex. top surgery for detrans men) and where they are

- which name (and legal gender) change resources also serve detrans people

- discounts for laser hair removal

- detrans friendly support groups around transitioning to another gender

- hotlines/helplines

- posts/articles that give tips for passing as your gender

[smallfightercat]

more people need to be aware of the term alterous attraction (a desire for a close emotional connection with someone, but it's not completely romantic or platonic) and use it instead of calling everything a qpr. because by calling everything a qpr you are turning that term into a label instead of what it actually is - an umbrella term for many non conventional types of relationships.

[smallfightercat]

You don't have to like weed but I find people who are vehemently anti-weed but claim to be left leaning infuriating. If you go into a rage because you smelled someone smoking pot, how the fuck do you expect to form community with people addicted to meth? It's easier to say you hate smokers than to say you hate all drug users in leftist spaces because one makes you sound a bit like a square while the other is the writing on the wall. You aren't anti-weed, you're anti-drug user and anyone who uses substances is not safe around you.

[smallfightercat]

reminder that PCOS is an intersex variation and bullying, harassing and misgendering people who have PCOS isn't helping the intersex community, or anyone else, for that matter. there's no reason to be rude or say it doesn't "count". thats not for you to dictate. you're not helping other intersex people by saying people with PCOS aren't intersex, all you're doing is hurting intersex people when you do so.

[smallfightercat]

y'all r way too comfortable calling transfems who don't meet ur standards for femininity "butch"

[smallfightercat]

I saw some snippet of a callout post for an autistic trans woman where they list social faux pas she committed, and I think we allistic people should all feel 100x more ashamed of not telling people in the moment how we feel about what they're doing. I think its extremely evil and cruel to not only lie to an autistic person and blame them for it but also to feel justified shaming them for your behavior. And it's currently the social norm to do that

[smallfightercat]

we are seeing outbreaks of the measels in the United States right now because of parents who are refusing to vaccinate their children. this is one of the most infectious diseases known to humans, this can potentially become a very deadly issue very quickly. it's not fucking them up- refusing to vaccinate them is what's fucking them up. why would you rather chance your child getting sick and dying because you "don't want an autistic child"? its so irresponsible to not vaccinate your children. that affects every child around them.

please for the love of god vaccinate your children. a vaccinated child is much better than a dead child. this is literally life or death, don't treat it like it's optional- it's not. it's a public health crisis.

[smallfightercat]

Disabled people are not immune to saying ableist stuff

[smallfightercat]

maybe it's true that some people can work as hard as possible day in and day out and use all their smarts and skills and go from poor to well-off, go from an impoverished immigrant to a successful citizen. but they shouldn't have to. the people who cannot afford to do that shouldn't be considered failures because they didn't have the time or energy or education or ability or resources or support or plain old luck to do all that. those people still matter. marginalized people shouldn't have to be uber-dedicated constantly-grinding prodigies who play the game of an unjust system perfectly to have their innate human worth recognized. the success of a few does not justify the suffering of the many or validate the system itself.

[smallfightercat]

I don't really get kinning, neo pronouns, therians and all that stuff but Everytime I see some random person go on a rant about how they're "destroying the community" I get so annoyed.

Cuz it feels like you're always in some way "destroying the community" - If you're colorful, if you don't pass well, if you act 'cringe', if you have weird hobbies or identify with a sexuality that doesn't make sense to them... And it is and always has been so so stupid and pointless.

So what if I don't get neogenders? The cis don't get me either.

But I'm not gonna mirror them and treat someone like shit just cuz it's easier to punch down than accept the fact that there's always gonna be people who live their lives in ways that you won't understand.

That's being human.

So if someone's telling me they identify as stargender or whatever I'm gonna do the queer thing, suck it up, and deal with it.

thanks for taking the time to send this in, i appreciate it. you have a lot of great points that i'd like to add on to

the whole destroying the community, making cishets hate us, being the reason why people are misgendered and abused, being too weird to fit into normal society and thus deserving of being misgendered and abuse.... all of this stems from a concept known as assimilationism. alot of queer people want to blend into cishet society- and that's fine, that's their right. it's okay to blend in as much (or as little, or both, or neither), but forcing all queer people to blend in and not stray from the cisheternorm when it comes to appearance and presentation is antithetical to queerness itself.

a lot of us are going to blend in. a lot of us are going to stand out. it's going to happen. but a lot of queer people do want to stand out. a lot of queer people do want to embrace having "weird" identities. some people are just not concerned with gaining the approval of others and thus, it does not cross their mind that they should try to look, act and sound stereotypically cishet. it's every person's right to choose how much and/or how little they stand out from the cisheteronorm.

i agree, and neopronouns are such a tiny thing to get stuck on, too, i think a lot of people don't realize how small of a thing it is in the sense that if you just respect that person's pronouns, you reduce and eliminate conflict and as such, have a much easier time. i don't know why people complicate things for themselves. you really can simply go. i don't understand but power to you

i appreciate you anon, take care. i want more people to understand this mentality really is the way to go when it comes to approaching queer identities you don't quite understand but are literally harmless