#- misunderstand what it means to be butch by acting like butches who are women don't exist

[hotsugarbyglassanimals]

A lot of you need to sit the fuck down and remember that cis women and trans women can be butches. because at this rate y'all are acting like it's a solely transmasc identity by conflating the experience of going on T and having top surgery as a universal butch experience. or god forbid, y'all equate butch to being a trans man

[gaymessriku]

Old issue at this point, but the American reception to Dragona Joestar really is emblematic of the remaking of the gender binary into a 'woke' version. As presented in the manga, Dragona is called Jodio's brother and uses he/him pronouns. He also has a stereotypically feminine appearance and has canonically had surgeries to achieve this.

It is of course important to understand this in the context of Araki's treatment of women in past chapters. And he has in fact repeated these tropes with Dragona. However, especially with any knowledge of how gender is seen in Japan, there is no reason to view his pronouns and presentation as unintended or inherently transphobic.

I have seen person after person use she/her or they/them when referring to him, not due to any textual support but their own confusion and discomfort. Dragona may be a binary trans woman, or a gnc man, or whatever the fuck his heart desires. That is irrelevant to his pronouns. The idea that he cannot possibly use or like he/him due to his presentation is incredibly restrictive and disrespectful.

Viewing pronouns as inherently tied to gender or presentation only rebrands transphobic ideas of gender being inherently tied to sex. It implies an inherent scale between 2 points of male and female which are tied to certain appearances and behaviors, and everyone falling somewhere on it. E.G. the idea of having to be a masc or fem aligned nonbinary, or stereotypically feminine traits in men causing jokes about how they're secretly trans women and don't realize it yet.

This is harmful to not only the people who fall outside these categories but also those who are comfortable within them. It perpetuates stereotypes in queer spaces that cause fear and ostracization. And it is completely ahistorical to the movement as a whole. Accepting gender as a construct means both acknowledging the utility and weight of its signifiers in a personal and societal context, while also releasing yourself and others from the obligations thereof.

A trans man and a butch lesbian can look or act exactly the same and that makes them no less different or authentic in their existence. Promoting men wearing skirts or makeup while simultaneously viewing them as less their gender is hypocritical and still presents maleness as a default that femininity and womanhood is an aberration or change to. Saying you support trans people and gender nonconformity is incongruous with assigning certain traits to certain genders.

It is of course entirely possible that Araki has some level of misunderstanding or ill intent in his representation of Dragona. It is also possible that his identity or pronouns will change over the course of the manga. However, as currently presented, that is what he wants and is comfortable with. As a reader, in the same way you wouldn't misgender someone who doesn't fit your standards for presentation in real life it should also be applied to characters. This is not a matter of personal headcanon but the material as it is presented.

I'm not attributing intent or malice to those who do this. It is very much not about accusations of queerphobia or inciting self flagellation. This is about explaining how these actions are harmful and what they perpetuate. It is an invitation to think about how you view these categories and apply them to the world, even subconsciously.

It is not a sin to be wrong. It is not a sin to not have the perfect enlightened ideas inside and out. We all have biases, and they take time to identify and account for. Part of having moral and ethical principles is recognizing your own flaws in these areas. That is always the first step to understanding and improvement.

And of course I'm not a perfect being either, so contributions, criticism, or questions are very much welcome. Community is based on shared values and identity but also the ability to keep an open mind. We all have pieces of the world and the only way to get a better picture is sharing them.

[thedreadvampy]

honestly what really annoys me is how much transphobia strips us of very useful language by making it be commonly understood in Very Weird Ways

take 'female socialisation' as an example. it's a common TERF dogwhistle which makes it really hard to talk about but also. the way that it's used to undermine trans people betrays that some people are working really hard to twist concepts to suit a trans exclusive worldview.

like. nothing about the concept of gendered socialisation implies it's exclusive of trans people or directly connected to passing, or that it's reliant on childhood experience, or that it's static.

female socialisation just means people interact with you as if you're a woman. male socialisation just means people interact with you as if you're a man. it doesn't say anything about who you are as a person but it does affect how you behave and react.

the way it's often framed by TERFs is like. you were understood as a boy at 4 so you're Male Socialised Forever. but that's a weird fucking way to understand social development. like it kind of implies that you just Stop Socially Developing after a certain point. you are who you were when you were 10 and after that you never learnt or changed at all? that's weird. what's that about, guys, are you unchanged by any social interactions you've had in adulthood? that's not. good.

like I think anyone who's watched anyone they know transition can probably recognise that gendered socialisation Is A Thing. it takes a wee while to adjust to the expectations and norms and experience of being reacted to as a man when you're used to being treated as a woman, or vice versa. and knowing what it looks like from outside isn't the same as experiencing it from inside.

but like. that's a process all of us go through throughout our lives, adjusting to different ways of being received socially. there's a difference between being perceived as a child and as an adult and as an older person. you socialise differently in different spaces, with or without your intent. if people treat you differently you react differently and if people hold you to different expectations it changes how you understand yourself.

(also. changing from 'being treated as a man' to 'being treated as a woman' doesn't start when/if you start being read as a cis woman. it happens in any circumstance where someone knows that you're a woman or thinks of you as a woman.)

(they may treat you as a trans woman rather than the way they treat cis women, and that may be in a really shitty way, but although people might think that they think trans women and men are the same thing, they don't act like it - they hold trans women to different standards and react to them in different ways than they react to people they think of as men. being met and understood to be a trans woman is no longer male socialisation. being met and understood as a trans man is no longer female socialisation. even if everyone around you is a transphobic shitheel, that's not Continued Socialisation As Your AGAB bc the subtle and obvious ways people treat you and think about you change when you come out)

like. gendered socialisation is not really about you. it's about the people around you and the conscious and unconscious ways our reactions are shaped by what we know or assume about people. it doesn't say anything about your internal reality, your future or who you are, but it does affect your experience and behaviour in minor and major ways.

but like. it takes some real commitment to misunderstanding social existence to think that a trans woman who's been out for 30 years and is exclusively known as a woman has more male socialisation than a butch woman who's read as a man and rarely bothers to correct people, let alone a trans guy who's been out as long.

gendered socialisation is, very objectively, A Thing That Happens. people who are mostly being treated as women tend to have different social behaviour, expectations, neuroses and blind spots than people who are mostly being treated as men.

but to take that concept and understand it as a reason why Trans Women Will Always Be Men requires:

thinking that social and psychological development stops dead at an arbitrary point, which is fucking depressing

thinking that cis men and trans women are treated identically, which is very provably untrue

ignoring the observable ways that non face-to-face interactions (eg email or online chat) are very visibly altered by informed or assumed gender

thinking that gendered socialisation is a binary m/f switch rather than a cumulative pattern with a lot of variance

ignoring the VERY OBVIOUS FACT that people's behaviour, reactions and self-image changes a lot in the early years of social transition in response to differences in social pressures and expectation

and then like. the fact that people are so determined to misunderstand ALL THESE VERY OBVIOUS ASPECTS OF GENDERED SOCIALISATION in order to prop up their own transphobia

kind of cuts us off from readily being able to talk about the ways that masculine and feminine socialisation materially affect all of us and particularly affect the safety of women and people being treated as women. like how the fuck are we meant to do a feminism when every time we bring up one of the foundational bases of gendered operation we end up having to spend our energies trying to correct these Extremely Basic Misreadings of the ideas involved like no Joanne we're not talking about how Anyone With A Dick Is Dangerous we're talking about how misogyny is invested in every part of how people are socialised. we're not litigating whether being given a toy truck means you'll never understand the Struggle Of Womanhood we're talking about how people percieved as men are incentives to perform violence and people percieved as women are incentivised to manage emotions. get your fucking brain in gear we are literally talking about incredibly basic foundational feminist ideas and you can't even grasp those because you're trying to fit every peg into the square hole of Trans Women Are Oppressing Me Personally By Existing? Trans Women Are The Sole Face Of Misogyny?

like shut up or catch up ladies. gendered socialisation isn't an argument against transness. the existence of attacks on bodily autonomy isn't an argument that misogyny is purely biologically based. the existence of female sex offenders, trans or cis, isn't an argument against heavily gendered patterns of abuse. Bigotry wearing the house of feminist theory genuinely prevents us from discussing or tackling the issues that Actually Exist by poisoning or diluting words and concepts that reflect actual realities into hollow weapons against trans and nonbinary people and I am sick to fucking death of it.

[lgunity]

I really want to be considerate of other people's identities. I'm a moderately butch lesbian who got a lot of flack for not being 'feminine' growing up. but I've seen a lot of straight girls who don't have any "gnc traits" decide they're some nongender and then start appropriating gay terminology, acting like they could date gay men etc. while staying 'girly'? I know the gendery version of 'female' is restrictive, but it bugs me that not fitting gender stereotype = understanding gay experience?

this is a personal take on the issue but from talking to other gay and lesbian people who have been troubled by current gender ideologies, i know i’m not alone.

i think one of the biggest indicators that the current gender movement privileges non-gay people and insidious forms of heteronormativity, is that a lot of them don’t even understand that the experience of growing up homosexual is deeply gender non-conforming in itself. so many of us are not taught that it’s the “done thing” to only, exclusively be attracted to the same sex, and the abundance of heterocentric media and cultural messaging reinforces that. this is why there are many many gay and lesbian youths who think they “should have been” the opposite sex, because there’s not a lot of positive models or feedback for their actual feelings but so much for the het worldview. this is especially true outside of the so-called gay utopias that tumblr types love to hold up as the norm for gay and lesbian people, but even the “gay utopias” are often actually bubbles, gay rights have to be continually fought for just like women’s rights.

and at the same time, many of us have been gnc from early ages. so now you have all the conversion therapy propaganda where a growing number of adults are eager to “fix” children who might turn out to be gay or lesbian, and the larger culture, lgbtqxyz/queer culture thinks this is just good, wonderful, progress! it’s not just hurtful and disrespectful to see this experience being so roundly dismissed, it’s horrifying. homophobia is so deeply entrenched in society.

about the people appropriating our words and descriptors… it’s now bigoted to suggest that we collectively work more at expanding what it “means” to be male or female. there are several reasons. one reason is that even though this would actually help a lot of male people, especially gnc male people of any sexual orientation, such a project would not erase the historically rooted understanding of male privilege as a general concept. and we can’t have that. another reason is that a lot of people creating new gender and sexual categories by the dozens seem to have this very late capitalist approach to things, they think the generation of more and more consumer choice in identities is what truly provides freedom. that’s why so many of them always accuse us of “reducing.” working with what we have, using those resources and expanding the limits of what already exists, that’s a��nightmare for them, it suggests poverty, not a possibility of richness and variety in personalities.

you can be a closeted gay person and you will still always be gay. you can have your exclusive same sex attraction denied by everyone you know and you will still be exclusively same sex attracted. you can dress however you like and you won’t be any more gay than when you’re naked, singing in the shower, or whatever. you don’t need more and more categories to express that single immutable reality.

a lot of this is just what happens when outsiders look in and make copies based on a fundamental misunderstanding of our experiences, and have the majority strength and political influence to force an institutionalization of that misunderstanding.

-Mod Jia