#BUT SOCIETY...........SOCIETY CALLS ME GAY

[bathypelagicbutch]

the first time i was treated even remotely respectfully in public when i first transitioned was at 3am in a 24 hour pizza place while high out of my mind on shrooms. i was in full drag with a full face and it was the first and only time i was ever gendered correctly and respectfully in a public place while presenting femme. i pass now, and I'm thankful that i do, but the amount of effort I've had to put into making my body as acceptable as possible for people just so i don't get harassed for more reasons than being Black in places i don't belong (super white grad school lmao) is wild. i shouldn't have to make myself look like you want me to fuck you for you to respect me, and it really shouldn't be that hard for queer people to realise that that is literally what most of society, including white queers, forces us to do. there's a weird intersection with Blackness and masculinity for both Black men and women that i feel gets pointed out a lot, but i feel like the hypermasculinisation of Black women unless they present sufficiently slutty is something that only gets talked about at length for cis Black women and queer Black women in general. mainly because whenever the dolls try to bring it up the only response is immediate horniness or complete denial. it's also interesting that when i started presenting more masc i started passing, but since then the amount of horny white people who've been unable to remove the rupaulified fucktoy version of me in their brain for long enough to listen to me when i try to talk about how much it sucks being butch and trans has increased. exponentially. you all have too many issues with Black men to even notice how your racism affects every part of how you view Blackness in general.

speaking of! follow up to that earlier thing i said about not being able to be masc and trans without ppl needing to remind you that they only support you for your ability to fuck them ‐ it's worse when you're Black, and you white queens do it too. and i really don't think you realise you do! because I've talked about this with almost every person I've been with (if I've even been allowed to before being dismissed without a hint of concern) and most of them just admitted to doing this at some point in our relationship. so instead of being philosophical I'll just use a few examples from the past 3 years (because they get worse if you go earlier and also i. do not have to)

you don't get to call me sir in bed because I'm masc and you said you want to treat me like a guy in bed (you're gay please stop confusing Black masculinity for being a man and work on your issues before fucking me) and you especially don't get to use this as leverage against me whenever i discuss how racist the relationship dynamic is despite your incredibly vocal support of my activism. you don't get to use my body or the right to demand that i use your body because you have a fetish for Black men, and you aren't allowed to get upset when i point out that this is the most supportive attitude you've had towards any part of me the entire time we've been together. you don't get to take out your frustration against Black people or Black men by making me fuck you, and again you don't get to get upset when i point out how fucked up that is that you call yourself an ally and then only use that allyship to get dicked down. you don't get to assume that because I'm Black and masc i'm the most aggressive top you've ever come across and you don't get to white woman tears your way out of it by using your own transness as a pass. you aren't allowed to enjoy Black bodies if we're only a commodity to you (which you openly admit) and you similarly don't get to white woman tears your eay out of it by using your confused sexuality as a pass.

i think I've made my point so I'm gonna stop! but yeah can you all be normal about Black people thanks a million blushes sweetly

kinda uncomfortable how ppl cant celebrate black trans women unless they are superduperhyperfeminine with 19 layers of makeup + expensive surgeries/weaves/dresses and looking like theyre going to walk the red carpet every day

[uboat53]

All right, I see enough of it going around that I need to address this doomerism among young Americans. Call this a LONG RANT (TM) or just an old man shouting from his porch if you will.

INTRODUCTION

Young people. The United States is not "falling apart". The world is not under threat of imminent collapse. Society is not coming apart at the seams, it is not going to disappear, and we do not need to prepare to replace it. The worst that will happen is that a lot of people will lose rights that they've gained over the last century and the government will become a whole lot less representative of the country it governs.

Don't get me wrong, this is bad, but it's not "start stockpiling dried food and weapons to prepare for societal collapse bad", and thinking that it is will stop you from doing a lot of the things that could be done to stop what's actually happening.

A BIT OF HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

The current state that we live in, particularly here in the US, is very new. Are the attacks on trans and gay people terrible? Absolutely. Is the return of white supremacy horrifying? Definitely. Are the efforts to deny rights to women deplorable? Yes. But you have to understand just how new many of the good things that are now under attack actually are.

I'm not even 40 yet and, when I graduated high school, 13 states still had "sodomy" on the books as a criminal offense. Gay people didn't even get the right to marry until I had already graduated college. The Violence Against Women Act didn't pass until I was almost out of elementary school. The Rodney King riots happened recently enough that I can actually remember watching them on the news.

And forget about me, Ruby Bridges desegregated the first previously all-white school in New Orleans in 1960. She's only turning 70 last year (as did the Brown v. Board of Education decision that banned segregation in the first place) and is very much alive. So are a lot of those people in the famous pictures screaming racist abuse at her. The US Supreme Court decision that established a right to interracial marriage (Loving v. Virginia, 1967) isn't even old enough to retire yet and Martin Luther King Jr., who often feels like a fairly distant historical figure to us, would only be 96 this year if he had lived.

All of this is to point out that, not only are the rights we're defending actually fairly new in US history, much less world history, but that many of the people who opposed these rights when they were put in place are still very much around and they're still unhappy that those rights exist.

WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING

Here's the thing, what's really happening is not the destruction of the American political and social system, it's just a sustained effort to hijack and twist them. If the MAGA crowd have their way, the institutions of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Presidency, and the entire administrative state won't actually collapse or cease to exist, they'll just be changed such that they only represent the values and desires of white, Christian men. It'll be a disaster, to be sure, but it won't destroy the fundamental structure of how you live.

Frankly, what's the most creepy about it is how little you'll actually notice the change.

What you have to understand about government is that it's not some impartial reading of rules. There's a huge amount of discretion built into the system. And, to be clear, this is a good thing. No set of rules written in stone could ever hope to cover every situation that real people find themselves in. We allow officials at all levels to make judgement calls. They're guided by the rules, but they have a lot of room to make different decisions within those rules because we want them to consider the real-world circumstances.

Of course, given all of that, you can see how important the person in a given position can be. We've already seen a movement around the country focused on district attorney elections because, if you can replace a fire and brimstone conservative with a progressive or vice-versa, you can completely change how justice is administered in a particular jurisdiction.

MAGA conservatives have figured this out as well and they focus on it to a greater extent than just about anyone else. The death threats they send to, for example, election administrators aren't intended to destroy the apparatus of election management. They're intended to force the person out of the office for fear of their safety in the hopes that they can be replaced by a MAGA loyalist. As I said, the person is important.

This is happening now at just about every level, but many of those opposed to the MAGA movement misunderstand what's going on. They're not trying to destroy our governing institutions, they're trying to capture them.

THE HAZARDS OF DOOMERISM

The answer, of course, to what the MAGA crowd is doing is to outfight them. Polling fairly consistently shows that no more than about 30% of Americans actually believe MAGA nonsense and even less than that actively seek to put it into practice. If enough other people come out and reject their candidates, reject their ideas, and insist that authorities deal appropriately with their threats of violence, they will lose. And, let's face it, MAGA supporters are overwhelmingly older than the American population at large; if we hold them off long enough they'll die off, this isn't a group that's set to continue into the future.

By succumbing to doomerism, the idea that everything is already lost and that, rather than take over society, the MAGA crowd will destroy it, people are turning away from the one thing that could actually stop this takeover; political action. If you think that society is actively collapsing, you're not going to invest your time and energy in it, you're going to spend your time preparing for said collapse and attempting to shield yourself from the worst effects of a Mad Max world.

And, let's be clear, no amount of hoarding of dried food, guns, and seeds will do anything to protect you from a government that is committed to denying you basic rights. Doomerism, whether passively lying down and awaiting the end or actively preparing for the collapse of society, only distracts you from doing anything about what is actively happening.

CONCLUSION

Society is not about to collapse. I know it makes great disaster porn and gives people a sense of black and white certainty in a complex and often confusing world, but what's actually happening is that society and government are being captured one institution at a time by people who want to return to a time when only straight, white, Christian, cisgender men had any rights or representation in society. By embracing a narrative of societal collapse, you are disengaging from both society and government, making it easier for these people to capture them and, when society doesn't collapse, you're going to find that none of the things you've done to prepare for "the end" won't help you a bit.

This is the whole point, though, who benefits from you dooming it up? It's the people who want to do all the things that you don't like! They benefit from you giving up on society, they benefit from you failing to defend important institutions, and they benefit from you letting them get their people into important positions, so don't do that!

By giving up on society and becoming a doomer, you're letting all the things you dislike happen, but instead of society collapsing so that you don't have to deal with it, what's actually going to happen is that society will continue to exist under the control of people who want to take away all of your rights and opportunities. But here's the thing, that can only happen if you let it. Fascists (and that's exactly what the Moral Majority/Tea Party/MAGA/Whatever-they-call-themselves-next-week crowd are) make a lot of noise and threaten a lot of violence because they're trying to intimidate you into not fighting them, they're actually very weak and can't win if you stand up to them.

So fight back. Stop pretending that you're helpless and that nothing you do matters. Maybe you can't change the entire world by yourself, but every single thing you do adds up. Even just helping one person is enough, you could be the one to bring just one more person into the fight who tips the balance. More importantly, it's not a black and white, fascists win vs. fascists lose, situation; everything is in shades of gray. Every action, every good deed, every win makes the long term better than it would have been otherwise. If we lose trans rights but keep gay rights, that sucks, but it's still better than losing both and it means that we can focus our efforts on getting trans rights back instead of having to fight for both of them again.

Ultimately, though, doomerism isn't some brave position, it's the coward's way out. Giving up is exactly what the MAGA people want you to do, do you want to give them the win without even fighting for it?

[baconcolacan]

Somebody asked me why my Future Tom’s gloves don’t “fit” him, and I was way too embarrassed to admit that he’s wearing half-palm gloves, and no, they dont serve any purpose other than aesthetic reasons, I just thought they looked cunty and now here we are

[3584-tropical-fish]

Thank you for the tag morgan! (And also @shrimpler and @new-hyperfixation-every-month who tagged me too)

No pressure tags: @horseyluvpink @tecceran @the-zenith-calls @the-gay-gatsby (and if anyone else wants to feel free to join in!)

Not me having some kinda type... Who shall I tag? I think I wanna tagggggg... @mybugsmybugsmybugs @mexicangela @lunar-years @biscuitboxpink but no pressure!! I just thought it would be fun!

[mcchi-ken]

fiddauthor galore featuring: another pmmm crossover, me getting the hang of drawing that wonky man (fiddleford), and a wip

the last one is a very obscure entirely italian reference but if you get it. i will give you a little kiss 😋 little hint: its a music video. you know this song. your dad loves it. there's the word gravity in it thats why i chose it

[aweirdbugcreature]

Blue flag basically

[glorious-destruction]

I think about this a normal amount

[desire-mona]

any time i talk about how i like dead poets society to someone over 35 they go "good for you!' and quite frankly what the fuck is that supposed to mean

[terymlxyrstdus]

i read a lot of angst. I read crimson rivers, I read atyd fuck I read choices for normal people I read they both die at the end, the perks of being a wallflower, dead poets society, call me by your name so i thought in my experience there really isn’t book that would totally emotionaly kill me…well i started the Book thief yesterday. I literally read 30 pages and oh man that book is something else

[queeraliensposts]

If y'all don't believe that transmascs experience misogyny let me tell you something that happened recently.

There was a post that was essentially making fun of "pick me gays", where they were saying that "I don't watch rupal's drag race, I don't like being called "gurl" and I don't do *insert stereotypical gay activity"". And in that post I commented that some people don't like being called "gurl" or "girl" because it makes them dysphoric and you shouldn't label them a "pick me" because of it. The responses I got for that comment were SO hostile for the sake of my mental health I had to delete the comment. Some people even tried to PURPOSELY trigger my dysphoria.

In that same post a cis man said that he prefers men who are masculine and he shouldn't be shamed for his preferences, and EVERYONE agreed with that.

If you don't see the hypocrisy IDK what to tell you.

[purplebehittindifferent]

You is..... You is gay? ✪ ω ✪

Contrary to popular belief I’m cishet!

But I would definitely consider myself a casual women enjoyer

Imma go out in a limb here and say that-

You anon. You is gay.

[the-gayest-tree-you-ever-did-see]

finally caved and started reading all for the game. two chapters into the foxhole court and what kind of gay fucking shit is this! also did not know there were sports in here

[bucephaly]

Fuck whatever terfs and transphobes are treating the term 'socialization' as if it's evidence for bioessentialism or whatever as if it isn't literally the exact opposite, fuck them for taking a useful term we should be aware of and poisoning it so now people think whoever uses it is a piece of shit.

[seethroughcan]

Why do some jobs only require females to wear makeup, what about men?

What happened to pretty men?????

[vashiekyun]

If you feel bad when drawing try doing it outside

It still feels bad but now when you look up there's the sky