#(because why would you target cis white women

[genderkoolaid]

Over the years, I have observed that it’s easier for people to digest sex work when it’s done in a subversive way. Think of the way pro dommes are celebrated because their job is “to treat cis-men like shit”, or of the recent marketing trend around “ethical” porn. Yet, being a true ally means accepting sex work in all of its forms. If you find sex work praiseworthy when it’s queer and anticonformist, but you frown upon it when it’s done for the male gaze, I would like to invite you to examine your feeling as internalised whorephobia. What you praise is not what most sex work is like. The majority of sex work is not queer and it’s not anticonformist — the majority of sex work is focused on cis-men. It’s true that doing sex work for the male gaze mostly perpetuates social gender dynamics, but I would like to ask how damaging that really is if it’s done consciously and consensually. It’s a little bit like kink and domination: women who decide to be submissive in BDSM are replaying social gender dynamics, but they choose to do it for different reasons. I would apply the same line of thinking to sex work. If what we do in traditional sex work is consensual, it’s infantilising for people to call us out as pure objects of male desire without agency – that is objectifying us too. If you think that sex work is not feminist, that’s because the society we live in is not feminist. This discussion is too complex and nuanced to be tied to the black-and-white view “no male gaze equals empowerment” vs. “male gaze equals disempowerment.” Violence against sex workers is everywhere on this planet, and one of the factors (besides bad laws) that contribute to that is people seeing us as lesser humans, deserving of little or no respect. That makes us easy targets, the punching bags people can abuse without feeling guilty or ashamed. That’s why it’s important to produce a cultural discourse where sex workers are respected for what they do, even when it’s for the male gaze. Dancing for the male gaze in the strip club might not contribute to changing society, but the question is: is the strip club or any of our workplaces the right place to change society? Doesn’t change come from other places? From schools, from families, from social circles? Our workplaces are for the exact purpose they are called: for work. I never saw anyone asking a plumber to be responsible for societal change. We still have bills to pay, we happen to pay them by exploiting the male gaze, and it’s whorephobic to condemn us for that. Sex workers are tired of being scapegoats for society’s problems.

[ocean-breeze-pier]

Trans guy talks about the issues with male hatred

It’s EXTREMELY frustrating the way that specifically cis women treat me as a trans guy. We are often acceptable targets for hatred against men because we don’t have the ability to oppress like a typical white cishet man (especially if you’re like me and don’t pass) so they can get away with it.

The more I think about why it’s so frustrating that the second a cis woman finds out I’m a man (after already misgendering me because I don’t pass), I get vilified and hit with sentiments that shitty men are hit with regardless of if it’s true or not.

It bothers me because a huge reason I didn’t come to terms with being a trans guy for awhile was because of my own feelings towards men. I’m a survivor of abuse from (mostly but not limited to) cishet men and I was so traumatized from those experiences that one of my initial trauma responses was a really intense hatred of men.

I didn’t know how to process what was done with me. Not only that, but I was in a vulnerable place with no support system and super lonely. I discovered this community online that made me feel less alone (radfems). They would validate my feelings about men which felt good at the time but in the long run, wasn’t healthy. I started to be even more fearful because of the lens I saw the world through. I was even more scared to be around men and struggled to interact with them.

At the time, I identified as nonbinary. If you know anything about radfems, they’re more often than not transphobic. So as a byproduct I did end up seeing that stuff from time to time despite my focus on during my time as a radfem being stuff concerning cishet men specifically. During this same time period it is no coincidence that I suppressed my gender feelings even more, presenting feminine despite it feeling hollow. I wanted to fit in. I felt like this is what I had to do. I felt like since men are evil (radfem rhetoric, not what I believe now), I cannot associate with masculinity. That if I relate to men in any way I’m a traitor and it’s an insult to me as a woman (bc ofc they saw me as a woman).

These circles are insanely predatory. It’s one big echo chamber. Even though at the time I was involved in that community, I still identified as nonbinary. That never stopped. But I was so self hating that I would let them all misgender me and refer to me with an emphasis on my agab. I tried to be lowkey about my identity. I knew if they found out, I would be ostracized as I had seen them do to others. They were either super pitiful towards trans men or they were very hostile towards them, viewing them as gender traitors who were just trying to escape oppression. Plus I was so ashamed of who I was and desperate to fit into a community where my trauma towards men was validated. This is why when radfems interact with me now in the present day, I am so over it. Like I was already fell for this shit once. I’m not going to again. Fuck yall from the bottom of my heart.

This combined with how my abusive exes would treat me led to me hardcore repressing my gender. The abuse I experienced was not solely about my gender, but it played a huge factor. These men would invalidate me so much that to this day, my internalized transphobia is horrific. They really tried to push me to be more feminine and would refer to me in invalidating terms. Telling me I would always be a woman and just needed to accept it. The constant misgendering. It really mirrored that of how the radfems treated me. Like who I was came down my genitals. Like I didn’t have a say in who I was. That they could tell me who I was.

So when I see cis women hit me with the same types of shit that radfems would say about men it takes me back. The fact I get treated similarly to the way abusive men get treated except simply on the basis of being a trans guy… I think it’s fucking capital W Whack.

I haven’t ever opened up about this on here because I’m ashamed of that time in my life. But I want any trans radfems to know it’s possible to get out of that. You can find community elsewhere. To them, you’re just a pawn in an argument. They will never see you for who you are.

And to the man hating radfems. I really do understand. Men have done fucking horrible things to me. But when I used to be stuck in that mindset, I was fucking miserable. Yes, sexism is a HUGE problem. But treating every single man like a threat is not going to solve anything, and by extension you’re vilifying marginalized men.

You can talk about sexism without acting like every single man is evil. The association between evil and masculinity prevents trans men from realizing who they are (which I’m sure you’re glad about) but it also sucks in general because if you hate how shitty men are, don’t you want a version of masculinity that’s not toxic? If you think men and evil are inherently linked, then what? No one can get better. I don’t want to live in a world where the only option is femininity like I used to believe. Femininity ≠ good and Masculinity ≠ bad

When you’ve experienced such toxicity, it takes awhile to untangle yourself from those harmful ways of thinking. For some people, all this shit is just discourse. For me, it shaped my life in ways I’m still suffering the effects of.

TLDR: Hatred of men + trauma played into me not accepting that I’m a trans guy

[giritina]

Lately I've been dipping my toe into the mess that is transandrophobia discourse, and in the process I've been presented with one question in many forms:

"Do trans men experience misogyny?"

My initial answer was "these terms are all theoretical frameworks for a vast range of human experiences, why would you choose to frame your pre-transition experiences as that of a woman?" This makes sense to me, but clearly isn't satisfactory to many of the people sending me anons. As much as I might want to use my own life as a case study, I can't very well tell these people in my asks box "no, you've never experienced something that could be categorized as misogyny." Still, the question bothers me.

I think that's because the question obfuscates the actual debate. It's clear to me the question we are debating is not one of "experience" but "authority." That is:

"Do (binary) trans men understand what it's like to be a woman?"

My answer? No.

How can I justify that when we have, since birth, been raised as women? Well, because we also have, since birth, been trans men. If we cast aside the idea of transness as a modern social contagion or anything other than an innate, sociobiological reality, this has to be true. Even before you ever came out to yourself, you were transgender. Transphobia has dictated every moment of your life. Your idea of what "womanhood" is is not at all the same as a woman's, be it cis or trans. Why? Because a woman does not react to "being a woman" with the dysphoria, dissociation, and profound sense of wrongness that you do. [If you do not experience these things, a cis or trans woman, at the very least, does not identify as a binary trans man.] A woman sincerely identifies as a woman, and identity plays a pivotal role in how we absorb societal messaging.

Let's take homophobia as an example. While any queer person has probably experienced targeted episodes of bigotry, the majority of bigotry we experience must necessarily be broad and social. Boys learn to fear becoming a faggot as a group, but the boy who is a faggot will internalize those messages in a completely different way to the boys who only need learn to assert the heterosexual identity already inherent in them through violence. All of them are suffering to some extent, but their experiences are not at all equivalent. This is despite the fact that they've all absorbed the same message, maybe even at the same moment, through the same events. Still, we don't say that a straight boy knows what it is like to be a gay boy. Similarly, cis women do not know what it is like to be a trans man despite being fed the same transphobic messaging in a superficially identical context. It isn't a stretch to say the same can apply to misogyny.

Because I can't speak for you, I'll use myself as an example for a moment. I'll give my bonafides: I am a gender-nonconforming, T4T queer, white, binary trans man. I am on T, and I have recently come out to my family. I do not pass. My career as a comic writer is tied to my identity as a trans man. I can confidently say I have never been impacted by misogyny the same way as my friends who actually identify as women. This manifested early on as finding it easy to shrug off the messaging that I needed to be X or Y way to be a woman. In fact, most gender roles slid off my back expressly because breaking them gave me euphoria. I was punished in many ways for this, but being this sort of cis woman did help me somewhat. It's easy to be "one of the guys" in a social climbing sense if you really do feel more comfortable as a man. It also helped me disregard misogyny aimed at me or others because it seemed like an shallow form of bigotry. It was something you could shrug off, but it was important for building "unity" among women. I thought this must be the case for all women, that we all viewed misogyny as a sort of "surface level" bigotry. However, for whatever conditional status I gained in this role, there was a clear message that if I did "become" a man, every non-conformist trait about me would just become a grotesque and parodic masculinity.

That was the threat that was crushing me, destroying my identity and self esteem. That was what I knew intimately through systemic, verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. I could express my nonconformity as a cis woman, but if I took it so far as to transition to male? I would be a pathetic traitor, a social outcast. I truly believe that throughout my life people were able to see that I was not just a failed woman, but an emasculated man.

I do partly feel that the sticking point for many is the idea that the sexual abuse suffered by trans men is inherent to womanhood, and therefore inexplicable if trans men are men from birth. While this disregards the long history of sexual abuse of young boys, especially minority boys, I do see the emotional core. I'll offer that the sexual abuse I suffered was intrinsically linked to my emmasculation, my boyishness, despite the fact that I was not out to myself or anyone else. I believe many trans men have suffered being the proxy for cis women's desire for retribution against cis men, or for cis men and women's desire for an eternally nubile young boy. I also believe they have suffered corrective assault that attempts to push them back into womanhood, which in itself is an experience unique to transness rather than actual womanhood.

I'll note quickly that many, many trans men cannot relate to the idea of feeling confident and above it all when it comes to womanhood. Many of you probably tried desperately to conform, working every moment to convince yourself you were a woman and to perfectly inhabit that identity. I definitely experienced this as well (though for me it was specifically attempting to conform to butchness) but I can concede many of you experienced it more than I did. I still believe that this desperate play-acting is also not equivalent to true womanhood. It is a uniquely transgender experience, one that shares much more in common with trans women desperately attempting to conform to manhood than with true womanhood.

One key theme running through the above paragraphs is the idea that "womanhood" is synonymous with "suffering." A trans man must know what it is like to be a woman because he suffers like one. It should be noted that actual womanhood is not a long stretch of suffering. It often involves joy, euphoria, sisterhood, a general love and happiness at being a woman. It wasn't until I admitted to myself I had never been a woman that I was able to see how the women in my life were not women out of obligation, but because they simply were. The idea that you are a woman because you suffer is more alligned with radfem theory than any reality of womanhood.

When I admitted my identity to myself I was truly faced with the ways that my ability to stand up to misogyny did not equate to being anti-misogynist. I was giddy to finally be able to admit to being a man, and suddenly all that messaging that "slid off my back" was a useful tool in my arsenal. Much like cis gay men feel compelled to assert their disgust for vaginas and women after a life of being compelled towards heterosexuality, I felt disgust and aversion to discussions of womanhood as an identity. I didn't even want to engage with female fictional characters. I viewed other people's sincere expressions of their own womanhood as a coded dismissal of my identity. Like many people before and after, I made women into the rhetorical device that had oppressed me. Not patriarchy, not transphobia, but womanhood and women broadly. It wasn't explicit bigotry, but the effects were the same. I had to unlearn this with the help of my bigender partner, who felt unsettled and hurt by the way I could so easily turn "woman" into nothing but a theoretical category which represented my personal suffering.

This brings me to another point: I sometimes receive messages from nonbinary trans mascs telling me that it's absurd to think they don't understand womanhood and identify with misogyny in a deeper way. I would agree that, if you sincerely identify in some capacity as a woman, you are surely impacted by misogyny in a way I am not. However, why are you coming to the defense of binary trans men like me? Less charitably, why are you projecting a female identity on us? Perhaps my experience frustrates you so deeply because we simply do not have the same experience at all. Perhaps we are not all that united by our agab, by our supposed female socialization.

So, no. I do not believe that binary trans men know what it's like to be women. I don't believe we are authorities on womanhood. I do not believe that when a trans woman endeavors to talk about transmisogyny, your counterargument about your own experiences of misogyny is useful. I ESPECIALLY do not believe that it is in any way valid to say that you are less misogynist, less prone to being misogynist, or-- god forbid-- INCAPABLE of misogyny because you were raised as a girl. I also don't believe your misogyny is equivalent to that of a woman's internalized misogyny in form or impact.

For as much as members of the transandrophobia movement downplay privilege as merely "conditional," those conditions do exist. They do place you firmly in the context of the rest of the world. Zoom out and look at the history of oppressed men, and you'll find the same reactionary movement repeated over and over. Attacking the women in your community for not being soft enough, nice enough, patient enough, rather than fighting the powers that be. Why do I believe your identity is more alligned with cis manhood than any form of womanhood? Because this song and dance has been done a hundred times before by men of every stripe. Transphobia is real, and your life experience has been uniquely defined by it since birth. This is a thing to rally around, to fight against, but you all have fallen for a (trans)misogynistic phantasm in your efforts at self-actualization. You are not the first, and you will not be the last. Get out of this pipeline before it's too late.

[doberbutts]

you don't actually get to cry "ally yourself with trans women" while actively talking over trans women whose traumatic experiences with transmisogyny are wildly ignored in favor of how hard transmisogyny is on the cis women. like why don't trans women get to say privilege plays into how much transmisogyny affects people?

do we not characterize white privilege as being what protects white americans from the systematic racism that permeates the US?

again, what is the preferred way you would have us refer to that privilege? because I am right here telling you that privilege is a part of the construct of tme/tma but you don't really care that trans women are more affected.

like it's crazy that you seem to think my problem is with the transvestigation playing out against a cis woman and not the way everyone pays attention when it happens to cis women but ignores the rampant transmisogyny when it happens to a trans woman. like you don't even pause to look at why there were no trans women at the olympics to transvestigate in the first place so they turned to the next marginalized option, intersex and women of color, when discussing how trans women deserve better.

Hi I'm the trans woman I deserve better from you specifically

To be completely honest this is looking less and less like a good faith discussion and more and more like you simply accusing me of stuff I didn't say.

You say I am actively talking over trans women. How so? How is "we need to address transmisogyny at its root if we want things to be better" ignoring the plight of trans women?

How is it that I have *repeatedly* acknowledged that there is privilege there, and yet apparently I am ignoring it?

if you want to use the race example: white privilege exists. Racism also affects white people. If white people want to stop being affected by racism (welfare regulations, the war on drugs, low income housing, social programs for community aid, to name a few) then maybe they should ally themselves with people of color because the root of what's causing issues with these things is racism. That doesn't mean white privilege doesn't exist just because a system of oppression affects everyone under said system. It doesn't even mean that the primary target has changed. It's just what makes this a system rather than an individual occurrence.

Never once have I said that cis women are more affected and, in fact, in followup posts I have stated that it *is* quite annoying that people have only been talking about this because this year's Olympics included approximately 0 out trans women. I have been saying that this was the clear end result, once they were rid of the trans women they'd go for whatever cis women they could feasibly get away with, and this time it seems they overplayed their hand.

Castor Semenya is a cis woman who only found out that she is intersex due to being transvestigated. She is, by definition, TME. Except she's not, is she, considering the same rules that apply to trans women apply to her. That's why I brought her up! And- correct me if I'm wrong- but out trans women still competed after she was forced to leave the Olympic running. That is why I'm saying that things maybe are not quite so clear cut as "have" and "have not", because I can point to an example of someone that the definition labels as "has privilege" that according to Olympic ruling bodies no longer counts as a woman either despite being afab TME cis.

If you want to continue to put words in my mouth, then we're out of things to say to each other, and it becomes clear that this was never intended to be a good faith discussion in the first place.

[genderqueerdykes]

im gonna be so fr we need to stop excusing oppression with saying its "misdirected", like saying ___ group can't experience ____ because it's misdirected. they are experiencing it! when has saying "oh sorry youre mistaken you actually can't use that slur against me because im not that" ever worked on bigots? like even cishet men get called slurs and are abused for even clocking on the faggot meter, no amount of "im straight actually" has ever convinced bigots to stop. same for masculine cis women that are abused and called slurs, trans men that are assaulted and experience misogyny, white hispanics/latinx that experience racism and xenophobia, US citizens that experience xenophobia, Christian Middle Easterners that experience Islamophobia, ect.

I think people think oppression is only correctly applied to specific traits or identities you may have, so any instance where you are caught up in oppression is "misdirected" and doesn't count, when oppression is more a system to establish a "normal" and anyone who fails that test whether correctly identified or not is pushed out of the normal circle. this is also why the bar of what's considered normal changes over time, and while historically identities that would be oppressed are gradually moved into normalcy.

quick test, a cishet man is abused, raped, and discriminated against by his peers for not performing masculinity correctly, and so is targeted by homophobia and misogyny because people devalue the traits that are perceived as feminine and this is made to presume he is gay. is he experiencing nothing? its misdirected so it doesnt matter?

that same guy is a drag queen, though he is still cis he now experiences transmisogyny. again, can he say "im actually cis" and stop people from abusing him?

a cishet man is emotionally and physically abused by his parents who believe in traditional manhood and are trying to toughen him up, make him stronger, and enforce gendered stereotypes on him. he is being hurt by the patriarchy, a patriarchy that devalues traits associated with femininity and women in general. is he experiencing misogyny? if not that what? its not misdirected because he is being correctly identified as a cis man and being abused because of it, he is being hurt under the patriarchy as a man.

kind of scattered take, my point being that we cannot treat oppression and privilege as binary concepts that only support the people who reside within the privileged class and only hurt the people within the oppressed class because these concepts work on a societal level and individual identity is not enough to protect you from experiencing oppression and being pushed from normalcy, especially when multiple identities interact.

agreed this arguing is really tired it's so complex and people aren't even scratching the surface of how bad it hurts people. thanks for sending this ask

[demonslayerunhinged]

Unhinged rant >:(

Demon Slayer fandom discourse

I want to start this by saying, I know that Demon Slayer isn't an explicitly queer manga/anime because Shōnen Jump, but I believe that Demon Slayer is for the queers and has lots of themes that we can identify with like love, acceptance, loss, guilt and strength.

Despite what these stupid, smelly, ignorant, power-scaling, non-ass-washing, Cheetos-dust-snorting, once-a-month-showering, dude-bros would have you believe, Demon Slayer isn't just another battle Shōnen anime/manga, it's a love story and about the perseverance of the human spirit and if that doesn't speak to the queer experience then I don't know what does.

Plus, I don't know how Gotogue-sensei is as a person, but I think the fact that she managed to make one of the kindest mcs in shōnen speaks volumes about her disposition. I don't think she would be one to reject queer fans identifying with her story so well.

In these recent times, it seems like everything is going to shit, the world is slowly regressing into the dark ages destroying decades of progress and trying to distract ourselves from all this by engaging with the fandoms we love is hard because everything seems to cater to cis, straight, white men.

To be honest, I created this blog mostly out of spite, but I also wanted to carve out a tiny space for myself where I can talk out of my ass and not have some decrepit reddit dude bro go all 'well, ackshually ☝🤓' on me, and I'm happy to have met so many like-minded people.

So, I've compiled a list of answers to the common types of nonsense drivel these fuckers post in response to shipping and queer discussions and theories about Demon Slayer. You can copy and paste whenever and wherever you encounter these black holes of ignorance and stupidity if you want.

In the Taisho era, there were no gay/queer people: This is one of the dumbest statements I've ever heard, and the fact that it's a really common response really shows how we've failed as a society. Queer people have existed for ages all over the world, Japan has an extensive queer history. Demon Slayer is based on samurai culture and samurai culture was really, really, really, really, really, really, really gay. Sure, it had rigid roles, but that doesn't make it any less queer. A quick Google search would go a long way to nourish that dried-out, shrivelled husk you call a brain. Go read a book you walking condom ad, your parents and education system have obviously failed you.

It's forcing sexuality into the story: We literally had a whole season dedicated to the mcs going to the 'entertainment district', we have a sexy man with three wives who talks about 'loving' them all equally, we have the abundant male fanservice, one of the mcs talks about women on the daily, we have a boy who eats demons and is horny shy around girls all the time, we have his brother who exposes his tits because he's proud of them, we have a demon who was essentially a sexual predator that targeted 16-year-old girls and ate them, the main villain shape-shifts into a woman to 'get' information as a Geisha, we have a girl who literally lusts after almost everyone she meets but yea no lets not force sexuality into it 🙄.

I don't care: Okay cool, but I value your opinion as much as I value the shit I took this morning.

It's who they are as a character that matters: Sexuality is a part of a person's character. Your sexuality defines your experiences, decisions, options and outlook on life. That's why you as a straight man can be so ignorant.

It's forced*(I really hate this one): Honestly, fuck you. Why is it that you only think something is forced when it doesn't revolve around you and your experiences? You guys are fine with tons of anime/manga that sexualize women and girls to an insane degree even when it doesn't make sense, but that doesn't stop you from consuming and glazing the hell out of the authors, but when we talk about including queer characters suddenly it's forced? Your existence is forced, and you can just eat shit.

I don't like it: Who the fuck do you think you are dictating how other people consume and interpret the media they consume? How about you go hump your smelly, cum-encrusted anime body pillow.

Men can be touchy/emotional with each other without it being gay, it's just our western standards: No it isn't the majority of shipping activities and works come from Japan, which wouldn't happen if it was just part of their culture. We're not stupid, we know men and boys can be friends without it being sexual, and we know when a friendship is just that, and then we know when two guys are straight up pining for one another.

It's not canon/the mangaka didn't explicitly state it: They can't because of Shōnen Jump, so a lot of them pass off information about a character through subtext, metaphors and allegories. They also don't have to, things don't have to outright stated or 'canon' for them to make sense and if you need them to be so for you to understand or enjoy the story then a moment of silence for your head since it's without a brain.

It's not common: Despite Shōnen Jump, there are lots of mainstream anime/manga that have queer characters: One Punch Man, Hunter x Hunter, Dr. Stone, Windbreaker, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Naruto, Gintama, Dragon Ball Z, My Hero Academia, Fairy Tail, One Piece, Attack on Titan, Tokyo Ghoul, Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, Blue Period and that's not to talk of the ones with queer subtext like I dunno ALL Sports anime/manga to ever exist!

Why do you look for LGBTQ in everything?: It might be hard for straights to understand but growing up queer and looking for a connection causes us to develop what we call a gaydar that helps us identify characteristics, mannerisms, features and vibes from a person that screams 'ONE OF US! ONE OF US!'. It's only natural, and our gaydar doesn't suddenly turn off when we're consuming media, especially when it's media that we love and hold dear to our hearts. It doesn't matter if the mangaka inserted these characteristics intentionally or not, that doesn't stop us from picking up on them, and why should it?

Shipping is stupid: So is power-scaling, but that doesn't stop you assholes from making thousands of posts, creating YouTube channels and sharing content about it and cramming it down our throats. It's even worse because it's from grown-ass men.

The characters have no chemistry/they hate each other: A lot of queer ships have more chemistry, history, interactions, personality and development than a lot of 'canon' straight couples. It's literally a trope in media that all a man and a woman need to be in a relationship is to be in close proximity to each other, then their relationship goes on to be drier than salted crackers in silicone packets scattered in the Sahara desert. Well, I guess you can't blame the creators, you write what you know after all.

I know this is a lot and I know how angry I sound right now, but I'm so sick and so tired of all these guys who are as useful to the human race as pieces of freshly shat out dog turds that have been thrown in the grass by the sidewalk in a hot summer afternoon, who can't see past their lice-infested neck beards trying to make something as colorful, interesting, joyful and queer as anime and the fandoms fit their own boring, stupid and misogynistic worldview.

In Conclusion, Demon Slayer is amazing, horny* and unbelievably queer.

*I'm talking about the male fanservice btw :)

[lastoneout]

Seeing people say with their whole chests that forcefem has no parallel to irl violence or bigotry is fucking bonkers for like seven hundred different reasons but like the one that confuses me the most is we have documented proof of what goes on during conversion therapy and the kinds of shit transphobic parents will do to their kids afab who are too masc in any way, so like do you think that just doesn't happen? Everyone's lying? No transmasc or butch person has ever been murdered or abused to "fix" them?? 99.9% of butch folks afab have stories of being forcibly feminized by their friends and families, often violently, and I have heard from butch trans women that they face significant bigotry from other queer and trans people for the crime of being masc trans women. And intersex men have killed themselves over forced medical and social feminization!!

I just think maybe denying all the violence masc queer people of all types face at the hands of cishetperisex society to defend why your kink is woke is uh. Maybe extremely transphobic and butchphobic and exorsexist and intersexist?? Like I will defend both kinks because I think kinks are almost always morally neutral and I could not give less of a shit what people get off to but come the entire fuck on. If trans and gnc people who have their masculinity targeted exist, which they do, then forcefem has a real world parallel to systemic violence just like forcemasc does(as well as dozens of other kinks, this is a very normal thing and does not make either kink evil, I would wager a significant portion of incredibly common kinks parallel irl violence that's just...what kinks tend to be about, taboo shit), like please go watch Caelen Conrad's videos about infiltrating online gender critical parenting groups and tell me forcible feminization has never been weaponized in a way that could be extremely traumatizing and violent.

(My whole life I have had to deal with people constantly trying to make my name more feminine. I've had people outright refuse to believe I'm a girl named Alex including a customer who harassed me at work for like 10 minutes over it. I had a P.E. teacher growing up who refused to use my real goddamn name for a YEAR because apparently Alexis is a better name for a girl. People can't even be fucking normal about a girl named Alexandria preferring to go by Alex, there's a reason I refuse to tolerate it now, you pull this shit you're either apologizing and not ever doing it again or you're dead to me bcs it's genuinely insane that I should have my NAME denied to me because it's gender neutral and apparently to most folks gender neutral = masculine. They always wanna call me Ally or Lexie or Alexa or Alexis like Alex is one of the most common names in history can we not fucking act like a girl using it is a Defcon 5 Level Gender Deviance Crisis??? Not saying this doesn't happen to other trans and marginalized people of all types, it very much does, which is why it's crazy to me to deny that forced feminization has very much been a major form of violent oppression.)

Forcing masc folks to grow their hair out, wear women's clothes, use feminine deadnames or just names in general, to shave and wear makeup, refusing to give them birthday and christmas gifts they want in favor of girly stuff, sending them to conversion therapy or other institutions, forcibly impregnating them to deny them transition, just straight up beating them and treating them like garbage whenever they express masculinity, intersex medicalization and forced surgery and hormones that do not match the person's desires or gender, and yes gnc/butch trans women facing cis and trans folks who keep trying to "correct" their masculinity or suggest it's proof they aren't trans, these are all things that happen CONSTATLY to masc people, hell even cis men face this shit do you SEE the way white people treat asian and/or disabled men???

I s2g some of y'all think because the patriarchy exists society does not punish people who are not "supposed" to be masculine for being masculine anyway and it's actually deeply upsetting in a way that I cannot accurately put into words to hear my queer siblings deny the documented history of masculinity being punished when it deviates from societal expectations to defend a fucking KINK.

[everything-transmasculine]

sorry this is so long it might be cut off sometimes i feel like the people who have been adamantly referring to trans men and transmascs who talk about masculinity and the different aspects of it as "tMRAs" and "men's rights activists" have

1. never experienced dealing with an actual MRA and are using a snappy acronym that coincidentally terfs/radfems use to refer to trans people as well, which comes off as "i feel targeted, so i'm going to push that onto others" and

2. don't view trans men and transmascs as having the ability to have a complex and intimate understanding of masculinity, from toxic to healthy, and that trans men/mascs have never experienced or heard "how men are when they don't think any women are around." because 'locker room talk' 100% happens to and in front of people they think are girls/women, they just don't see those perceived as "female"/who have "lesser/weaker anatomy" as able to like. understand what they're saying or relish in making them uncomfortable.

this is shit i've literally heard guys admit to and say to me regardless of how i passed, if they did or didn't know i was trans, it literally doesn't matter to them. bigoted people (especially weaponized victim status cis women and creepy cis men) don't care about transfeminist theory or how sexism is transphobic because genitalia has nothing to do with gender or discrimination, they're transphobic and misogynistic. and they express that by being transphobic and misogynistic. they do not care about the tme/tma dichotomy or how thinking female (vagina) = weak is transphobic to trans women. their transmisogyny is synonymous with homophobia and their transphobia is synonymous to misogyny.

trans men and trans women aren't opposites or enemies whatsoever and the pitting of them against each other has effortlessly undone so much solidarity and understanding of what intersectionality actually is. that being trans is now a morally-based social contract in which you agree to be disrespected on almost every front, including by other trans people, and those other trans people are The Enemy. i'm so tired and this is coming from an academic who deals 24/7 with literally ONLY cis people who think i am cis as well, but being an effeminate short man gets me pigeonholed as a bunch of shitty stereotypes and expectations even from my own FAMILY who can't compute how i look now as opposed to how i used to. sorry this turned into a ramble but trans men aren't both white cis men and white cis women simultaneously benefitting from the privileges of both with the most bigotry they see being occasional "harmless bullying" of misgendering or deadnaming and how it's nothing compared to how real suffering.

if i talked about how i was treated and perceived and the horrors i went through because of specifically being a trans man people would say i was lying. why is it always non trans men who are so sure of what happens to trans men to the point where if trans men try to talk about anything besides what's been "allowed" they're branded as i said in the beginning, tMRAs/theyfabs/the blue hair and pronouns annoying kazoo voice stereotype and a million other "shut up" terms. this is all over wanting to be seen and viewed as a whole person regardless of ASAB/appearance/nonharmful beliefs we all have the same goal why are we letting interpersonal annoyances about personalities clashing dictate how much someone can suffer

anon, i fully agree with you - especially “why is it always non trans men who are so sure of what happens to trans men.” there is a serious problem inside and outside of the queer community of non-transmasculine people trying to dictate transmasculine lives as they see fit (ie, classic DARVO - “that didnt really happen to you, and if it did happen to you it wasnt that bad, and if it was that bad then you deserved it.”)

im going to put my full response beneath a readmore, as this got pretty long!

i think you are correct in your assessment of the current situation of seeing a transmasculine person talking about their experiences, and immediately referring to them as a MRA/tMRA, or not valuing their experiences because they dont see transmascs as being able to have complex relationships with gender, and by extension, masculinity. whenever i see someone calling a transmasc a “tMRA” as if its a bad thing, i always wonder to myself - what is so bad about being an activist for the rights of transmasculine people? in what world do transmasculine people not deserve to speak up for their rights - and in fact, the rights in question usually end up being along the lines of “id like to be treated with basic human decency, please.” just because one group is campaigning for basic human rights doesnt mean theyre taking away from the other groups struggle? of course this notion is exempt when the group in question is campaigning for the other group to be silenced and erased from marginalized spaces, taking away their status as a marginalized people in the first place to label them as “oppressive” based on a binary, sex-based dichotomy that has no basis in actual practicality when all groups involved are denied access to human rights on basis of “chosen” gender, regardless of ASAB… but im getting off topic lol.

tldr; what is so bad about trans people - because lets not forget, transmascs are TRANS before they are anything else (save for other marginalized identities that follow the current societal norm) - vocalizing their struggles to a (supposedly) supportive community?

what is so bad about trans people? because it seems like every person who labels a transmasc as a tMRA on basis of “you wont shut up about the problems you face” needs to do some unlearning of ingrained ignorance and discrimination - and if im not being clear enough… if youre calling any transmasc a tMRA for talking about their unique struggles, you not only sound like a bigot… YOU ARE A BIGOT.

i also think the view you present of bigots, and how they interact with bigotry, is very interesting - because youre right! to those who are bigoted, they arent thinking “this aggression against this person is specifically due to the unique intersection of bigotries that turn into transmisogyny/antitransmasculinity/transphobia/etc” … theyre thinking “this stupid (slur) is a freak and deserves to die.” and whether that violence is in the form of other-gendering, physical violence, sexual violence, or some other form of bigotry, the bigots dont care about who is “affected” and who is “exempt” - ultimately, they just care that youre trans, and that being trans makes you a target. to us, the victims and survivors of the bigotry - we give it unique identifiers, ways for us to call out certain forms that the bigotry takes so that we can better recognize and stand against it (transmisogyny, transphobia, antitransmasculinity, etc.) to bigots, were just receptacles for violence, and thus whatever violence enacted on us is their “god given right.”

additionally, its important to note that medically transitioning and nonmedically, nontransitioning, cis-perceived nonbinary, transmasculine, transfeminine people will not see the same amount of bigotry as visibly (or knowingly) transitioning people will. however, in the case of someone mistaking a trans person for the “wrong” gender, and instead viewing them as the perceived ASAB (or, to put it shortly, people who are quantified as “basically cis”) - they are often, regardless of transmasculinity or transfemininity, treated similarly when it comes to the immediate knee jerk reaction. the main difference is, as i have stated in other posts, hypervisibility vs hyperinvisibility. whereas the transfems experience will take precedence due to their hypervisibility in society, conversely the transmascs experience will be largely ignored or written off on basis of them not being taken seriously (and this is due to a multitude of factors, including derision based in ASAB, “manning up,” etc.)

theres also a harmful rhetoric being pushed that when transmasculine people DO speak about their experiences, their oppression, etc… harmful terms (such as youve outlined) are immediately used to condemn and slander the transmasculine individual who is speaking in the first place. this also often reinforces ASAB-based discrimination, as these terms often boil down to “youre being whiny/hysterical/stupid/a bitch” - all terms that have a basis in misogyny and sex-based oppression. those terms dont stop being misogynistic just because theyre not being applied to a woman - if the root place from which the language is derived is “your ASAB makes you inherently inferior, and youre acting like your ASAB” its inherently bioessentialist and sex-based discrimination. it becomes misogynistic if your ASAB is female, as there is the added stereotype that anyone who is AFAB will inherently be a “whiny, hysterical, stupid bitch.” you can see this reflected in words like “theyfab” - which literally posits the word “they” (referring to a nonbinary identity) with “AFAB” (referring to the ASAB of female) - as a way at discrediting the transmasculine individual its applied to by implying they are both embodying the stereotype of the annoying nonbinary person, while still using and abusing the perceived “privilege” that comes with being assigned female at birth… and the privilege in question is being told to sit down, shut up, and look pretty so the so called “superior” sex can do whatever they desire.

trans people should not be defined by their ASAB - actually, ill go a step further. NOBODY should be “defined” by their ASAB. your assigned sex at birth is a designation of biological diversity, one that doesnt always fit in neat little boxes. its a biological marker of what reproductive niche you may or may not fall into, not a determiner of superiority (and consequently, inferiority.) anyone trying to sell you on the idea of any one sex or gender being better than another is a bioessentialist bigot, and hasnt even begun the process of unlearning sexism, misogyny, and gender discrimination.

and this whole, long response STILL doesnt even touch on harmful beliefs like “all transmascs are detransitioners and TERFs in disguise” because transmascs are AFAB or how the term TME (despite people claiming it applies to everyone who isnt transfem) is exclusively used to ridicule and devalue transmascs or how the rates of violence for transmasculine people are so high (even surpassing the average rates for trans people) and yet still transmascs are seen as “attention seeking theyfabs.” and thats just the tip of the iceberg! i could go on for much longer about all the horrific, vitriolic, deeply transphobic sentiments that have pervaded the queer (and trans!) community, that have become acceptable statements to make because - once again - that didnt happen, and if it did happen it wasnt that bad, and if it was that bad… you deserved it (you stupid, hysterical, whiny, bitch!)

[chronicsyd]

Yk… I feel like people have become So used to like TikTok doom-scrolling feeding their limited attention span and having most sapphic rep be TV-Y7 shows (She-ra, TOH, TLOK, etc.) that when they’re faced with a TV-14 show where they actually have to Pay Attention to little things like facial expressions over words instead of having constant exposition shoved in their face they don’t like it.

And this is not me saying you can’t be an adult and watch a TV-Y7 show, but you Do have to keep in mind that the shows target demographic Is younger viewers so they have to utilize stuff like exposition so younger viewers can easily understand it. And those shows have pretty black and white morals “Horde = Bad” “Princess Alliance = Good” all that fun stuff.

But Arcane isn’t like that, it makes you think deeper about what’s actually being told to you and I’ve had to do a couple rewatches myself to pick up on stuff I hadn’t noticed the first time. And putting those same black and white morals to the characters like these really does the show a disservice.

(I also think the "oh I don't like oppressor x oppressed" complaint to be Incredibly stupid because you could slap that onto practically Anything. Heterosexual relationships/Hetero-passing relationships? that's oppressor x oppressed because of men over women. Mixed relationships involving any white person? that's Definity oppressor x oppressed. Relationships involving a cis and trans person? yup oppressor x oppressed again. Reducing characters down purely to their socioeconomic status and occupation and ignoring all the nuance, complexity and logic of them and their actions frustrate the hell out of me because they refuse to think deeper than that.)

And I'd RATHER Caitlyn Show she's remorseful and changing through her Actions rather than a sob session of "I'm sorrys'" (Also, LAST time Caitlyn merely said words to Vi ("I won't"), her actions didn't reflect those words, so why would Vi trust a simple "I'm sorry" now? Not to mention we already got that "I'm sorry" plot beat when it came to Jayce and Viktor back in S1 with Jayce doing stuff like setting the Bridge Blockade (and No one wants to bring up the "oppressor x oppressed" thing when talking about Jayvik despite it being the same dynamic...))

(Let's also address that Vi never said "I'm sorry" to Jinx for joining the Enforcers. No, the "I'm sorry" in Ep 3 wasn't for That it was an "I'm sorry for what's about to happen" because they Both know that there's a high possibility that Jinx might be dead at the end of this fight, and I know this because Vi becomes defensive in Ep 5 when Jinx brings it up. Vi doesn't say "I'm sorry" for hitting Isha either (btw if you say Vi saw Jinx care for Isha as a "I'm a bad sister" then you just lack basic media literacy all together). Jinx never says "I'm sorry" for all the fucked up shit she does like kidnapping Caitlyn and forcing Vi to kill her. Also, Vi AND Caitlyn come up with the plan to take out Silco loyalists, Shimmer and Jinx so why the hell does Caitlyn have to apologize for that? Caitlyn admits that forcing Vi to take the badge was the wrong thing to do and gives an explanation as to why she wanted Vi to join her as an Enforcer, because Caitlyn's worry of "one of us comes back in a box" IS justified)

(I also think the time jumps have fooled the audience, because they feel that Caitlyn's scene with Ambessa in ep 4 is "a complete 180" when you have to keep in mind that Caitlyn's been watching how her actions have affected those in these 6 months that we haven't really been seeing her on screen; we see bits of her during the "Paint the Town Blue" montage and Even Then you see her damn near crying in one of those still shots and looking so exhausted and over it in another. Once again part of that "Arcane wanting you to use your brain to connect those dots instead of the show doing For you but the audience refuses to do so" kinda stuff.)

Also, do people need to go through their Own trauma, grief and anger in order to understand Caitlyn's actions/motivations? because it's kinda starting to look that way. Caitlyn wasn't maliciously manipulating Vi with the kiss and the "I won't" statement because when going through emotions like this, Caitlyn doesn't have the time to reflect on those actions and see how she is changing, it's more of a hope that she isn't changing in the way that Vi doesn't want her to (you have to remember that S1 Ep4-S2 Ep3 happens within the span of like a week, maybe two at the most; Caitlyn's not being given time to stop or think about what's she's doing or what's going on, she's merely going through the motions in a sense. So by the time we pick up Ep 4 and there's been months of shit happening under her watch, she's had Time to be like "I don't want to be this, I hate this and the person I've become in all this".)

(I mean we can have Another discussion of how a lot of hate is just performative activism. One of the reasons I Like Caitlyn so much is because she shows that even with good morals, someone from privilege can easily fall down that rabbit hole. Because that's happened to myself before. Despite being lesbian and mentally disabled I still come from certain privilege, while I don't come from aristocratic wealth, I still lived a life better than most and just being a white woman that also gives me privilege and I've had to do my own reflecting on how my thoughts and actions can affect others simply from that privilege; which is what Caitlyn's able to do herself over the course of the season, which it seems that none of these haters are able to grasp)

[machine-saint]

i don't think I've ever really faced much discrimination for being a trans woman in my job; I've got promotions at a decent clip, always had good salary raises, and so on. I've gotten fucked by The System for changing my name, but that's not really a thing targeted at trans people per se I would say. the most it's fucked with me medically is when a psych refused to write me a bridge prescription for Vyvanse because he was worried about interactions with estrogen (it doesn't have any).

of course it would be absurd of me to extrapolate from this to the wider population of trans women! some of this is due to my privilege in other areas, some of it is luck, some of it is living in a fairly trans-friendly area. but this is still my "lived experience". and this is part of why I've always placed (somewhat!) less emphasis on the idea of listening to individual lived experience than I see elsewhere; people are experts on their own lives, but if you want to talk about populations, you need to do surveys or whatever.

of course, conversely, the problem is that if you ask "have you been discriminated against for being X characteristic", there's a subset of (say) white people, cis people, men, etc., that will answer yes even if they haven't because of culture war nonsense. and you can't know whether that's legitimate or not without knowing a priori how social relations around race/gender/etc work. so you take a step back and go, okay, let's look at salaries and median wealth and employment numbers, but those can have noise for their own set of reasons, etc, etc

there's no punchline here, no one weird old trick. I think this is just hard.

[velvetvexations]

honestly those posts about needing to steal trans women from tme partners for their own good just feel condescending. very "if your views don't align with mine, it's a sign that you can't make decisions for yourself." if you're genuinely concerned someone is being taken advantage of by a partner, there's better ways to offer support and help them out of that relationship than "convince them to be with you instead"

it's the radical feminism!

i was genuinely asking myself if I was high while reading that meat-headed, "come to the Denny's parking lot if you want an ass-whupping"-plagiarising post, like great work defending trans women by — oh, dear, threatening to beat up people (including, by that purposefully vague definition, other trans women)? And doxxing yourself while doing so? Instead of — oh, I don't know — dismantling the idea of waifish women & fems in need of protection by strong men & mascs, and doing the legwork to break down other such binary ideals? I thought the whole argument was that trans mascs are inherently emulating the worst of cis masculinity by BEING trans masc, and are thus dangerous to be around/include in the community; does it help or hurt that rhetoric to specifically act like that? And also; why are you going to doxx yourself about it?? With the political climate as it is??? It is infuriating that I still care about this jabroni's safety but there it is!

wild right

Terminally online transradfems will say they're the most oppressed demographic but I don't think many of them are poor sex workers of color

there is no good hierarchy ordering but the new TRF thing is that they (affluent White women) HAVE to do this for the less privileged trans women who can't do it themselves and lol

I love black trans women and believe they need all the support they can get. I also believe it's crazy to portray tWoC as the #1 most targeted group of people when intersex people's right to life is under question since birth in more than a few countries. Around the world and throughout history, intersex people have been euthanized like animals before even getting the opportunity to live our lives. This practice is still not outlawed worldwide. Did you know that even in the US and European countries, the medical establishment attempts to coerce expecting parents into terminating an intersex fetus because it would be "better for the child not to live such a horrible life", and if the visibly into child is born, 95% of the time they are mutilated at birth or otherwise before puberty. Is that not a hate crime? Oh wait. It's not illegal, so it can't be a crime. Is maiming an intersex person's body because you believe how they look is disgusting and disordered not hate? The violence of intersexism is baked so throughly into laws and medical protocol that hate crimes against us aren't even documented because they're fully fucking legal. Millions of us. Our blood soaks the earth and nobody cares to hear our pleas.

ultimately no oppression caste system will ever help anyone but the way intersexism is ignored is disgusting and desperately needs to stop

Often I wish I could like your response to a post without liking the rancid original post

lol my friend says that a lot

At this point I've started to take someone being transandrophobic as a FULL THROATED confession that they were aphobic during the ace discourse days and only stopped because it started being "cringe" (read, they only stopped because it was unpopular, not because their views actually changed) to be aphobic. And like, this is what, the fourth identity or so that's being completly fucking harassed like this? By the same fucking people? I'm done giving these people the benefit of a doubt.

the first thing I heard about fite-club was what a huge aphobe he was so that was my introduction to TRFs

the enemy is at once all-powerful and in control of everything, and incredibly weak and few and far between, right? lol. everyone agrees with you and loves you but actually nobody believes in the things you claim. somehow.

it's wild like yo dawg I just passed a thousand followers!!!!!

i am so baffled by the insinuation that youre a Very Popular Transfem and all other transfems on here are fighting for scraps???? because not two months ago, the posts being passed around were about how all the best most popular posts on tumblr are made by the same circle of transfems

maybe they were talking about apricot-aligator being a sycophant for transmisogynistic TMEs

re that fox girls post, i dont think thw critique itself is unfair but ime transandrophobia blogs sharing black feminism is not necessarily bc it has relevance to white transmasculine experience directly (ofc entirely ignoring the black transmascs active in this theory) but bc transandrophobia itself is built off of black feminism and most of these people are interested in black feminist theory outside of transandrophobia theory or rather, that they came To transandrophobia theory From black feminist theory < or at least thats been my experience with my favorite transandrophobia theorists (the more i think abt it the angrier i get that it just sidesteps talking abt its relevance to black transmasculinity by . just tacking on "white" and leaving it at that. like yeah thats abt what id expect from someone that finds hooks' own intersectional work "mid" lol) (but maybe im being uncharitable idk.)

it was really weird because it's like

marginalized misandry for my category but not for thine ig

[mariacallous]

I think the real crypto-terf behavior is telling people that they can't talk about things they've personally experienced themselves (like most women have with gendered socialization, whether because they got it, or they didn't/resisted it and were socially punished for it) in order to be a "good ally." If you don't let people talk about that, they're going to find someone who will. If you tell people who are on the fence on something that your side is the one that refuses to believe something they experienced is real, that's telling them that you're not a person you should listen to, and by extension, discrediting your whole side. This whole stupid shit on tumblr where feminism 101 concepts like gendered socialization, male privilege, and so on are now considered "crypto terf" is itself the most crypto terf ass behavior. Terfs have for years tried to act like they are the only true feminists, that feminism is inextricable with transphobia, and here are all these supposedly progressive pro trans people on tumblr handing it to them on a silver platter! I'm also just amazed at like who ARE these trans women on tumblr who have never noticed the way in which certain behaviors they took for granted before are treated worse now that they're perceivved as women. Do these people not leave the house? Are they just completely oblivious to how others perceive them? Because it's one of those things that is almost universal in trans women and is talked about regularly in trans women spaces. But I also think what a lot of people don't understand with this attitude of "I shouldn't have to make the right arguments, because you should recognize the hate group is bad anyway" is - first, this is stupid and self-defeating with anything, you should want to win period and not lose but keep the moral high ground. Second, they underestimate how much hate groups appropriate the language of social justice and oppression to make their arguments. They just frame themselves as the True Oppressed. For TERFs, this is even easier than it is with other groups because they're speaking to a group that is genuinely oppressed and giving voice to those real experiences of oppression, and then redirecting it at the wrong target. The only comparable hate group would be like, Islamist groups when they recruit in Muslim-minority countries, in terms of drawing on people's real experiences of oppression to radicalize them. Obviously other groups like MRAs and alt-right THINK they're oppressed for being men or white or gentiles but they aren't actually so they have to work on that a bit to convince normies. But you can kinda see why for a feminist woman who doesn't know trans people and is "new" to this question in general, some of them might be genuinely confused as to which one is actually the "real" anti-oppression group. Since terfs frame themselves as fighting an insidious misogynistic movement cloaked in the language of social justice - which is also what describes terfs. So both "sides" are saying 'I'm the real oppressed one and they're lying." Like, we know from experience which one is telling the truth, but you can see how that might be confusing to an older cis het woman feminist or like, a baby 18-year-old from a conservative background who's never met any out LGBTQ people in her life, let alone trans people

Yeah

[gatheringbones]

[“Rather than conceptualizing of everyone as having their own innate preferences, participants who engaged in a Critical Cis-ness viewed desire as socialized and connected to power. At the end of each interview, I asked participants “How, if at all, should our understandings of who is beautiful, attractive, and desirable?” Janelle responded:

I think—they should change. They should change. You know that store Aries, you know American Eagle and like they have this, they have like a little mini story for like lingerie. Yeah, and if you go onto their advertisement or you go onto Aries, their models are Black, White, skinny, fat, disabled, like it’s honestly amazing. It needs to be like that, like I feel like all places should cater to all types of individuals and like also the range of sizes and things like that. If I go to Victoria’s Secret and I can only be a small, medium, or large or XL but I’m a 2x or a 3x, Ima be like I’m less desirable, but if I go to Aries and they got a range up to like 4XL, I’m going to feel really good about myself. I’m going to feel like whoa, I can buy things from here, it’s beautiful, it makes me feel sexy. I’m gonna feel desirable. So we just have to, us as a society has, we have to stop like neglecting other [pause] types of people . . . Things like that and like the media like I said . . . The media, capitalism, needs to change, like if you really wanna make money, even though I hate capitalism, but if you’re really tryna make money, you need to stop looking for, to make one demographic happy and try to make all demographics happy. Period.

Janelle connected who is seen as desirable to what is sold as being desirable within a hyper-capitalist society. This contrasts with those in previous categories who saw desire as an individual preference, potentially something innate, but inherently disconnected from social forces. Further, Janelle highlights that being desirable is not merely about being desirable to others but also a inner feeling of self-attraction. When one cannot find clothing in their size at any store or see themselves reflected in the advertisements, branding, and ownership of a business, it becomes that much more difficult to feel as though there is something beautiful and of value about oneself.

Continuing to discuss this within our interview, Janelle discussed Eurocentric standards of beauty and issues of colorism. Janelle elaborated on the connection between white supremacy, colorism, capitalism, and desire:

It’s like the more White you seem, that equals the better opportunities you can have. So, like that’s why people are usually more attracted to like European features, because not only are people in general attracted to it, but jobs are attracted to it and things like that, work opportunities.

Such a connection to beauty and job opportunities is even more exaggerated for women and feminine individuals who are held to White standards of hair styling, scrutinized for how they do their nails according to White and classist standards, and policed for wearing “women’s” items if they are not women or are not perceived to be women. This is even more evident among trans women, for whom expectations to “pass” according to cisnormative, Eurocentric, middle-class standards of what a woman should look like drastically affects not only one’s workplace opportunities but whether one will be more likely to be targeted for violence and harassment.

Alyx, too, felt that social conceptualizations of desire, beauty, and attraction should change. In explaining her answer, she noted:

Um I mean there’s always like, with, with any social issue, I feel like there’s um some group in a position of power that would like to stay in a position of power, and [pause] beauty standards might sort of play into that a lot. Um and that people who are deemed pretty would like to continue to be deemed pretty.

Alyx, Janelle, and other participants in this category conceptualized beauty and power as interconnected rather than separate phenomena. Race, class, and gender shape how others perceive individuals and what they have to offer at home and the workplace. For TERFs and Conditionally Accepting Cis-ters, trans women were conceptualized as offering dishonesty, deception, and difficulty. For those engaging in Critical Cis-ness, trans women were conceptualized as potential partners with cis people conceptualized as the ones offering difficulty, harm, and violence.

Participants who engaged in Critical Cis-ness worked to actively challenge the necropolitics of cis-ness. They constructed trans women as vulnerable to the harms of trans people and cis-ness as an assault. Black trans women, thus, need protection (including self-defense) from the harms of cis-ness. Cis-ness is marked as pathological, problematic, and violent. Finally, participants’ discussion of desire and power as interconnected challenges those in prior categories who argued preferences were apolitical and biologically innate. Instead, participants in this category argued that power shapes who is seen as desirable and that those marked as desirable have greater access to power.”]

alithia zamantakis, from thinking cis: cisgender heterosexual men, and queer women’s roles in anti-trans violence, 2023

[gauntletqueen]

the italian boxer isn't a cop, isn't 100% white, and was crying because of her dead dad. she's come out in support of the other boxer people are using her as a weapon against to be racist. the way the olympics and the media is treating both boxers is really fucked up, i do not think the italian woman did anything wrong, she's just a useful tool of oppression people are utilizing against her will

Okay you're part right, part wrong. I've done some more looking into it and I'm glad I did cause it's Nuanced~ Not here to prove you wrong, just gonna list it all out clearly so we can all understand the situation better.

I haven't personally seen any racism coming into the controversy so I don't understand why you're bringing that up, or that Angela Carini isn't fully white. The most I can see is a few mentions of Italian politicians using the situation to try and earn some brownie points by standing behind Angela Carini, but even then they're also latching onto the narrative that Imane Khelif had an unfair advantage, due to her being transgender. She isn't, btw. She's a cis woman,another case of transphobes jumping at any opportunity to try to push their bullshit, even when the target isn't trans, and nobody had even accused them of being trans before that point.

While I can't find definitive proof that Angela herself is a cop, she was raised by cops and is a member of the boxing division of one of Italy's police forces. I can't figure out if that means that she is also an actual cop but that's probably where the assumption comes from.

"she was crying because of her dead dad" is true, but oversimplifying it. Specifically, she's said that her brother and late father were boxers before her, and taught her the sport. She wanted to honor them in the olympics, but the tension, stress and expectations got too much for her in the match against Imane, who it seems fought much harder than Angela was used to. This caused her to have an emotional breakdown. That's all extremely reasonable honestly I can't imagine having to handle to pressure of representing your country At The Olympics, especially not when there are also such big personal stakes. Supposedly she was cited as shouting "it's not fair!" as she left the ring. This is what got transphobes like JK Rowling and Musk to co-opt the story into their bigotted narrative that Imane must be transgender, as transphobic women in the past have blamed their losses on the fact that a transgender woman Was Involved.

It's likely that they might also have used Imane's disqualification from participating in the 2023 IBA Women's World Boxing championship. The organization had declared her testosterone levels to be too high, which supposedly "proved they had XY chromosomes". Since then, the International Olympic Committee has removed the IBA as the organizers of boxing at the olympics due to "continuing irregularity issues in the areas of finance, governance, ethics, refereeing, and judging" So. Perhaps they are a bad judge of chromosomes. Because again, Imane is a cis woman.

Anyway. Angela has stated (translation taken from Wikipedia, the original italian article is behind a paywall) "I want to apologize to her and everyone else. I was angry because my Olympics had gone up in smoke. I don't have anything against Khelif. If I were to meet her again, I would embrace her"

So yeah, she's done nothing wrong, she just cracked under immense pressure, and might be a cop or cop-sympathetic, but that doesn't seem to really have anything to do with the situation. The important thing is that rightwing bigots jumped at the chance to make her a martyr against her will, as you said.

[masteroffearshusband49020]

Anya deep dive time!!!

She's very quiet and meek, what Jimmy did to her doesn't help one bit. I think she was always quiet and meek. That's why Jimmy raped her. He knew she'd be too scared to tell anyone. And she kinda was at first until Jimmy got her fucking pregnant and she couldn't stay quiet about it anymore. I have a feeling Anya has been put down her whole life. I had a period where I was quiet and meek like her because people had broken my spirit, and I have a feeling that that's very much what happened to her. Also another reason she's so quiet and meek is because she's the only woman in a crew full of cis men. She has nobody to talk to or relate to in terms of being a woman. Yeah, Curly and Daisuke are nice, but Daisuke is a kid and Curly is sweet, but a clueless white, cis, probably straight man who hasn't the slightest idea of women's struggles. And no offense to Swansea, but he's not who most people would go to first with their struggles. This isolates Anya and makes her an easier target for Jimmy. I'd love to dig deeper into her psych, but I have a feeling that the writers kept her character development to a minimum because you play as Jimmy and Jimmy doesn't see her as a person.

[mermaidsirennikita]

As always, I'm hesitant to discuss Bton, but I find this Variety article on toxic fandoms influencing creative decision-making so concerning on a creative level... And the fact that Michaela/Bton is name-dropped and included in the image collage attached is so...

Because it's easy to blame racist, homophobic white fanboys for most of the backlash to the inclusion of people of color and the LGBTQ+ community in conventionally cishet white-centric fiction. I think that probably, the biggest and loudest voices often are cishet white guys, right? The Acolyte comes to mind.

And I do think there's something to be said about media that targets women being treated as something you MUST alter significantly during adaptation to "appeal to a wider audience" (men), whereas there's more of a demand to be faithful to media directed towards men, or to at least incorporate highly anticipated arcs, scenes, into the final product. I grew up with the constant litany of "your girly thing that's being adapted must be changed to appeal to a wider audience". However, again... that audience... was primarily male. And we are accommodating men when we say "Maybe Galadriel shouldn't pick up a sword after all".

BUT. We aren't only accommodating men, and the Michaela storyline is a prime example.

Bton is a show that has a male audience, sure. But we've seen so many thinkpieces, which aren't incorrect, about the power of the female audience for that show. And on a related note, the power of a romance audience that is primarily driven by women.

Except... it seems that the women most often listened in both spaces are white cis women who want to watch a man and a woman OR PERHAPS TWO MEN fall in love. Because I don't think this article just pulled Michaela as an example out of thin air and angry redditors (many of whom, I must say, have been truly disgusting). The article has anonymous insiders giving information. I would not be surprised at all if at least one of those insiders was from the Bton team.

I've said before that while I don't like the show at this point, I think there's a lot of positive things this show could do with Michaela and Fran, both on a social level and a creative level. And I TRULY don't get why people are up in arms about this either way—I don't think the intro was done in a way that forecasts like... great sensitivity, but I'm also at this point so done with the show's choices that I could just be counting my critiques before they hatch. (And truly, how critical can I get if I'm too checked out, etc., I'm aware of some hypocrisy there.)

But at the end of the day, the show has never been a very faithful adaptation, and I'm not talking about the diverse casting. If Michaela had been Michael, you would have had a lot of changes to the plot anyway.

The thing is... if the show listens to a bunch of fans who hate that "Michael" is a Black woman, they're going to downplay the Fran and Michaela story. The series has one CONFIRMED season left. I would be kind of surprised if they didn't get a renewal for more? But maybe not. That season will not be out until 2026. It won't be about Michaela and Fran, at least not at the forefront. And like... what would it say if the show made this big shift to provide LGBT+ rep, in the form of a sapphic interracial relationship at that, and then... gave them a subplot romance.

And again, maybe I'm counting my critiques before they hatch. I can say that some things I saw online circulating about Michaela's casting made me think that she would have a more significant role than "supporting B-plot love interest". And when I see articles like this, I would hope that the response to fan backlash would be "fuck them" and not "oh, let's give the people some rep, but not TOO much rep".

Look—for all my misgivings about how that plot was introduced, I hope Fran and Michaela get a center stage season, and I hope it blows all the rest of them out of the water, and I hope they get to be on posters as a romantic couple and merch, and I hope they get someone to rewrite WHWW so that people who see themselves in that story onscreen can read something that ACTUALLY reflects it.

(And if the show doesn't, I hope they refer people to some of the actual sapphic historical romance novels on the market right now. I know that's pie in the sky, but I'm just putting it out there.)

Most of all, I hope the show's team protects Masali in a way they didn't protect Ruby Barker, or even Rege-Jean Page.

(Ya haven't seen much of an effort to combat the issue yet, a la the way Amazon addressed the ROP issue, and it's been LOUD already.)

I guess it's just articles like these COMBINED with what I'm seeing not only in Bton but in shows across the board that concern me. It would be horrible to think that something was or is in the works, and gets downplayed because of backlash from people who just neeeeeeded to see a fictional character.

Especially when we're in the age of Another White Heathcliff in 2024 and "Dorian and Basil are brothers, actually". It feels like we're going backwards, and it feels like that storyline is going to be a statement from Netflix whether they like it or not. What are they going to do on their Big Romance Show?