#Gender ideology contradictions

[ex-foster]

This didn't age well.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Stephen A. Richards

Published: May 14, 2022

Shortly before I decided to detransition, I had a conversation with a trans friend about the Gender Unicorn. I was frustrated by it. I said, it doesn't make any sense! It doesn't actually represent what being trans is about at all! In some ways, the ideas it represents run completely counter to the actual goals of the trans movement!

My friend's response was that it didn't matter; it was better than the binary concept of gender believed by mainstream society. The Gender Unicorn didn't have to make sense, it just had to be simple and easy to spread. It's not an accurate representation of the ideology behind the transgender rights movement because it was never meant to be.

It's a recruiting tool.

The Lies of Gender Ideology

According to the Gender Unicorn, everyone has a gender identity: an internal gender separate from their sex. Like sex, it can be male or female. It can also be things other than male or female. In fact, there’s no limit to what a gender can be! Some people are “non-binary”, meaning their gender identity is neither male nor female. Gender identity doesn’t correspond to anything physical in the body or brain. It can’t be observed from the outside, but is known to the person experiencing it. A person can know their gender identity at any age, and can never be wrong about it—except when they are. Gender identity has no bearing on a person's personality, behavior, or mannerisms—except when it does.

When one’s gender identity doesn’t match one’s biological sex, this causes a condition known as gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria has no cure, but nevertheless should be treated via gender transition. Gender transition involves interfering with a trans person’s endocrine system to cause them to develop secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex and surgery to remove or alter unwanted sex characteristics. This is called medical transition. Medical transition changes a person’s sex, not their gender—except that it doesn’t change their sex, because one’s sex is determined by their gender identity. A male whose gender identity is female actually has a female body, and his—sorry, “her”—penis is a female sex organ. Despite this, “she” may want to get surgery to make “her” penis into a non-functional caricature of a vagina. Such an act should be celebrated.

Just as important as medical transition is social transition. When someone tells you they’re trans, you need to affirm them. You need to allow them to access facilities and opportunities intended for the opposite sex. You need to treat them, in every circumstance, as if they are the opposite sex—even when it comes to sex and medical treatment. You need to call them by whatever name they choose. You need to use their preferred pronouns. Most importantly, you need to believe. You need to look at someone who’s obviously male and believe, deep down in your heart, that he’s actually a woman.

If you don't understand this ideology—if you think it's absurd and incoherent—that's because it makes no sense. But the thing is, it doesn't have to. It’s a lie. Some trans rights activists—often new recruits—believe it whole-heartedly. Others sort of believe it, or have developed complicated justifications to make it make sense (maybe they weren’t born trans, but became trans due to being “socialized as the wrong gender”). Some recognize its absurdity, but see it as useful for bringing more people into the movement. A few don’t like it at all. But all of them benefit from it.

The seeming contradictions of gender ideology make perfect sense when you understand how they serve the interests of the movement.

For example, consider gender expression. Gender expression encompasses both your behavior and the clothes you wear. It's completely disconnected from your gender identity—except when it's not. Sometimes, being a guy who wears dresses or a girl with short hair says nothing about your gender identity. Other times it's indicative of repressed knowledge of your gender identity. The purpose of this seeming contradiction is to bring people into the movement and keep them in it. If you're a "cis person" who doesn't meet the stereotypes of your gender, well, you're probably trans. But if you're a trans person who doesn't meet the stereotypes of your chosen gender—say, a female "trans man" who likes dresses and flowers, or a male "trans woman" who loves video games—then that doesn't suggest anything at all about your gender identity. The rules are inconsistently applied to serve specific purposes.

Likewise, every trans person knows their gender identity, and this cannot be questioned. "Trans kids know who they are" is a popular rallying cry among proponents of childhood social transition. However, sometimes trans kids don't know who they are. Sometimes, they think they're "cis". If a male child thinks he’s a boy, he should question his gender, because he might actually be a girl. If a male child thinks he’s a girl, though, that belief can’t be challenged under any circumstances.

Social transition is the most insidious trick of all. It weaponizes your empathy to force you to act according to the beliefs of the trans movement and tries to guilt-trip you into adopting those beliefs. If you don’t go along with someone’s transition without question, you’re a transphobe. You’re doing harm to them. This expectation can easily establish a stranglehold over a community, and then force compliance by threatening expulsion for anyone who doesn’t act properly and adopt the right beliefs. And once you’ve taken on one belief which obviously doesn’t reflect reality—say, “trans women are women”—it becomes much easier to push you into believing even more extreme falsehoods.

So, if gender identity is fake, what are the real beliefs foundational to the trans movement? Where did they come from? What do members of the movement talk about behind closed doors?

Tumblr Leftism

When I was a teenage transsexual, I considered myself a radical feminist. Not a TERF; us radical feminist transsexuals didn't think TERFs were true radical feminists like we were. After all, a feminist fights for all women. TERFs only fought for cis women. They weren't real feminists; they were bigots hiding behind the cloak of radical feminism to spew their hate.

So, what did radical feminism mean to me? I hadn't actually read any works by radical feminist thinkers, only excerpts from writings by feminists like Andrea Dworkin, Judith Butler, and Julie Bindel, which were posted without context on Tumblr by other trans-inclusive radical feminists. Some of those feminists were trans themselves; some were not. They were the thought leaders. They constructed an ideology collaboratively, using social media as their medium. Not all of them agreed with each other, but a spiderweb of mutual follows connected them, and what one wrote on any one day would influence what a dozen others wrote the next day. When I was fifteen years old, I adopted a kaleidoscopic, schizophrenic ideology patched together from hundreds of individual posts talking about feminism, disability, gender identity, queerness, race, capitalism, and leftism. I didn't have the context for any of it, and neither did any of the other teenage kids on Tumblr at the time–of which there were many. I knew a few of them well. I called the police to one's house during a suicide attempt. We took this stuff in and internalized it. We believed it.

An interesting point of this belief system is social constructionism. Social constructionism suggests that gender is made up: a tool used by the patriarchy to oppress women and control men. If it weren’t for the patriarchy, all divisions between men and women would disappear. We would all be equal. Radical transsexuals will admit, to trusted cult members, that they believe gender is socially constructed. They'll admit that they weren't born trans, but chose to become trans.

So… why would anyone choose to transition? Why do individual trans people care so much about receiving treatment, and why do members of the movement spend so much time facilitating the transition of others? When a trans person questions the narrative, or wants to gain a deeper understanding, what do they discover?

Metaphysics of Marginalization

Medical transition is ritual purification.

The world painted by Tumblr's radical queer, feminist, transsexual theorists was one that has since become familiar to many people. You might know it as Wokeism, DEI, Successor Ideology, or Critical Theory. It has many tenets, but to massively oversimplify, it applies a pseudo-Marxist analysis to pretty much every social issue: men oppress women, whites oppress People of Color, the abled oppress the disabled, and so on. Through the magic of Intersectionality, these class antagonisms coalesce into one great struggle: the oppression of the Marginalized by White Supremacist Capitalist Cis-Hetero-Patriarchy (the Enemy). The world is wicked, and it is that way because it was made wicked by the Enemy.

One has to understand the nature of the world’s evil before one can repair it. The first step in obtaining that knowledge is realizing that our bodies are not us, but things which we're trapped inside of. We're not humans; we're ghosts haunting rotting corpses. To stop the Enemy, trans people need to make us all understand that our true selves don’t exist in our corrupted material forms. This is what gender identity actually means: We are not our bodies.

Virtuous souls have been unjustly trapped in profane flesh. The most virtuous are those who suffer most from their embodiment: women, “queer” people, the disabled, those lower in the hierarchy of the racial caste system described by critical race theorists like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi. These are the Marginalized. The Marginalized are the chosen people. They are chosen because they suffer. If you aren’t Marginalized, you can become Marginalized by deciding to transition. If you’re already Marginalized, you can become even more virtuous through transition, because Marginalized identities stack. A Woman of Color is more virtuous than a white woman, and a Trans Woman of Color is more virtuous yet. Trans actually carries more weight than some other forms of Marginalization; a woman transitioning to become a trans “man” or a gay person becoming a “straight” trans person are increasing their net Marginalization despite giving up Marginalized identities.

If those who are born Black or disabled are the chosen, trans people are the converts who have voluntarily accepted Marginalization. They choose to suffer more from their involuntary embodiment. Because of this, they become virtuous. They are saved.

To the trans movement, every transitioner increases the amount of virtue in the world and represents a blow struck against the Enemy. They’re another soul rescued from the clutches of evil. Not every member of the movement understands this on an intellectual level, but they know in their gut it’s all in service of the greater good and that convincing as many people as possible to transition is a moral imperative. If that means grooming teens online, then they'll groom teens online. If that means encouraging people to indulge in destructive fetishes, they'll encourage people to indulge in destructive fetishes. If that means indoctrinating kids in school while lying to their parents, they’ll do that. If that means convincing gay people they're heterosexuals trapped in the wrong body, they'll do that too. If that means prescribing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and performing surgery…

The world created by the Enemy is irredeemably wicked. For trans people to simply integrate into society would be to surrender to the Enemy. White Supremacist Capitalist Cis-Hetero-Patriarchy can’t be bargained with or reformed. It can only be destroyed: torn down utterly, uprooted and burned, and replaced with Feminist Anti-Racist Fully-Automated Luxury Communism.

The dream of the trans movement is of a world where no one has to do anything they don't want, where no one is forced to work, where everyone can indulge their every desire without fear or shame, where all distinctions between people have been abolished and we're all completely equal. In a word: Utopia.

If human biology gets in the way of that, then human biology must be fixed. If human nature gets in the way of that, then human nature must be fixed. Until Utopia is achieved, the movement hasn't done its work. If you stand in the way of Utopia, then you've got to be fixed as well, by any means necessary.

They need you to believe that the world is wicked and must be destroyed. They need you to believe that we're floating spirits trapped in dead flesh. They need you to believe that the fundamental facts of reality can be changed, if only we believe hard enough and are willing to do what must be done.

They need you to believe that trans women are women.

==

It’s innate and questioning it is “conversion therapy,” yet it’s fluid and on a spectrum. It’s a “social construct” yet needs medical intervention. It’s scientific but disconnected from biology. God is real but doesn’t manifest in this universe. God is good but can never be comprehended.

I don’t “identify” as a human. I just am. I don’t “identify” as bipedal. I just am. I don’t “identify” as my nationality or ethnicity. They just are.

Insisting that that everyone has a “gender identity” is as faith-based as insisting that everyone knows a god exists. A faith that even fewer people hold than believe in the Abrahamic god.

The idea, then, that we should reorganize society around a metaphysical faith that has been declared unquestionable, simply because people would be offended otherwise is not just unreasonable but illiberal. As the rules of liberal secularism hold, you can have your belief, your faith, but you can’t impose it upon to others, certainly without proving that it’s actually “true.”

[aaafeminist]

if ‘cis’ women aren’t allowed to discuss misogyny within the trans movement by nature of not being trans, how come trans women are allowed to define womanhood despite not being female?

[apas-95]

How do you not realize your Marxist ideology is false when it says shit like a trans black woman small business owner is oppressing her cis white man employees?

I don't think you're, like, genuinely asking, or are curious, here, but I'll answer anyways, for everyone else who might be confused on issues like this: it's intersectionality.

You could make this argument about essentialy any axis of oppression - 'how do you not realise your LGBT ideology is false when it says shit like a cishet black person is oppressing their white trans gay employees', or, conversely, 'how do you not realise your racial ideology is false when it says shit like a white trans gay person is oppressing their cishet black employees'.

The point here isn't to have a rock-paper-scissors, Pokémon type-effectiveness ranking of which axes of oppression 'outrank' which others, it's to understand that each axis of oppression is an entirely distinct social system that overlaps with the other. A black business owner suffers from the social system of antiblackness, and benefits from the social system of capitalism. The specific overlap of their blackness and their class character also gives them an entirely unique character with regards to their segment of society. If they are USAmerican, for example, in their specific case the state and progress of the national liberation movement in the US means that they make up the rear of the revolutionary movement, despite being themselves petit-bourgeois. These systems of oppression are qualitatively different, and cannot be simply, quantitatively, summed up against each other.

With this in mind, it should be understood that the Marxist understanding of class as the principal contradiction does not mean that class is the most important, overruling factor, and that other axes should be ignored. Class is considered the principal contradiction because it is the contradiction that all other axes of oppression, genuine in their own rights, grew out of. Antiblackness was created by the slave trade (not vice-versa), and the slave trade was created by the growing European bourgeoisie's need to extract surplus-value, in the collapse of the Feudal economy. In the example you gave, the petit-bourgeois business owner exploits the labour of her workers, and is supported in doing so by an entire legal, political, and philosophical system based on the expropriation of the proletariat. She is also herself repressed and exploited on the basis of race, gender, and transness. These do not cancel each other out. However, given the ultimate source of racial, patriarchal, and cissexist oppress is political-economic class, her ability to genuinely fight for her interests in those fields will be hamstrung by her class position - just as her ability to attain and maintain that class position in the first place is itself hamstrung by her oppression in other fields.

Ultimately, there are no simple rules that society can be flattened down by. Each and every instance and scenario must be investigated in its own right. The idea that people are driven to Marxism because it provides an easy or simplified way of looking at the world is (perhaps unfortunately!) wrong, it actually means a lot more work!

[taliabhattwrites]

Could you talk a little more about how and why the most basic feminist discourse is being presented as TERFism? Does it go any deeper than plain old misogyny and transmisogyny, or is that all there is to it?

This is a really great question! The answer is, however, short and disappointing: It's just (trans)misogyny. Let's discuss it a bit, though!

On a fundamental level, while it's relatively easy to acknowledge that women, as a whole, have been cut a raw deal, taking that to its logical conclusion--a critique of male-supremacy--is a tough sell even amongst the more progressively-minded. Feminism is uniquely burdened with formulating a theory of liberation that does not hold men accountable for benefiting from patriarchy, does not at any point imply that men are actively invested in upholding patriarchy, and advocates a way forward that does not require men to give up anything or meaningfully change their relationship to gendered and reproductive labor.

It is a fundamentally impossible ask. Some of this stems from naturalizing sexual difference and viewing the subordination of women as an inevitable outcome of biology, but a decent amount of the pushback comes from a reluctance to truly unpack relations of intimacy and kinship with a critical eye. Feminism is easiest to do when telling an obviously misogynistic stranger to check his assumptions, or discussing the cold facts of being under-compensated and over-burdened at your job. It's harder to contemplate the destabilizing truth that most men genuinely think you have less internality than they do, will expect you to do the lion's share of domestic labor in a relationship, and will feel emasculated if you at any point demonstrate more competence, wit, intelligence, or verve than them.

It's hard to admit that most men won't put in the work to see you as human.

So instead, we get a lot of rationalizations. Feminism is too white, too bourgeois, too ciscentric, too anglocentric, and unlike every other school of thought or ideology, it is forever tainted and cannot be redeemed. It is not allowed to have factions, contradictions, missteps, or to evolve. Much easier to rattle off a canned line about how feminism doesn't account for something that it has definitely accounted for if only one bothered to treat it seriously and actually engage with the literature, and consequently chuck the entire history of women's liberation into the bin.

There is, at the end of the day, a real psychological cost to being aware of just how pervasive societal misogyny is, and not everyone is willing to pay it.

[youraverageaemondsimp]

“Seven Above.” // Highly Religious Dark!Aemond Targaryen x Wife!Reader

DD:DNE ;; Reader discretion is heavily advised.

WARNINGS: noncon & dubcon, forced breeding, forced beliefs, breeding kink, religious themes and psychopathic aemond, dark!aemond, misogynistic views, pressure to fit into the gender norms, forced pregnancy, multiple orgasms, brainwashing(?), mindfucking, + not proofread. PLEASE BE EXTREMELY MINDFUL OF THE CONTENT WARNINGS

Block the tag #MAE:DARK!CONTENT to refrain from seeing my dark works.

WC: 2.1k

A/N: fic contains dark content, do not proceed to read if you are easily triggered or find the topics mentioned above triggering. // dividers by @cafekitsune

Aemond was a man of the faith of the seven

He was extremely religious, his mother’s belief in the faith has also made him follow it, though he studied about dragons and old gods of Valyria, he didn't particularly follow them. His need for impressing his own mother, followed by his grandfather made him follow this faith more.

The only problem? He was way too religious and strict, but also hypocritical, he had shamed Aegon for being married to Helaena, but also desired her for himself, he would taunt his nephews for being bastards, yet also had one for himself with a common whore he could not remember the name of. He doesn't acknowledge them as sins however, saying that they are forgiven by the gods as he visits the sept daily.

Alicent did not know what to say, for when she would speak to him about what he's doing and points out his wrongdoings, he simply ignores her and tells her that her job as a woman isn't to judge, but rather understand and nurture, to which she couldn't argue against. So she remained silent.

Everything was going the same as usual, until Aemond was summoned by his grandfather, who had selected a proposal for him.

“The woman is Y/N of the L/N house, a woman loved by many, it will benefit us if we formed an alliance with her family, what do you think of it Aemond?” His grandfather questioned, to which Aemond nodded, saying it isn't too much of a bad match considering they had more to gain than lose, and so the proposal was quickly made.

Aemond only saw you on the day of the wedding, when your house arrived in the throne room, where Aegon sat in the middle, handling the matters. You had not shied away from looking in his eye, to which he was caught off guard by, his mind quickly realising how you are the feisty type.

The ceremony went well, Aemond refused the bedding ceremony and took you to your martial chambers before bedding you. He was gentle of course, he didn't do anything that was too painful.

One thing about Aemond is that, you should never get on his bad side, he is cruel just as he is lenient, you heard of what he had done to his own nephew, to riverrun, to the strong house, leaving absolutely no one alive from that bloodline, no woman or bastard was spared.

The first month flew by quickly, Aemond had gotten to know you better, and he quickly realised that you both don't share the same ideologies on most of the stuff, you even dared to speak back to him, to which he excused you of. Arguments with him on small things have started to happen, his opinion contradicting yours, and his refusal to understand your point of view made you extremely unaccepted, yet you still tried to convey your feelings to him, hoping somewhere deep down in your heart that he'd understand. After all, you had grown to love him a little. He was far better than any husband, most of them didn't even let their wife speak to them.

That was until the topic of children had come when you were dining together.

“Wife, Have you gotten your moon's blood yet?” He asked and you nodded, “Yes, husband, it passed a few days ago and it is regular.” you tell him confused as to why he is asking this, “Are you perhaps barren?” He asks, which makes you feel shocked, and quite offended, “No! Why would you ask such a thing like that?” You ask, eyes slightly wide with shock. “Then why aren't you with child yet?” He questions as if you had any control over anything that happens after intercouse.

“It is only the second month, and besides….” You bite your lip and he raises an eyebrow, “What is it?” You sigh heavily, “I do not know how to ask of you this.” You tell him honestly, “What is it that you need wife? Dresses? Jewellery, do not be shy to ask, I am your husband after all. It is my duty to provide.” He rests his hand on yours, squeezing it in a reassuring way.

“I–” you take a deep breath, “I do not want children, at least, not yet.” you spit out.

It's almost as if everything had frozen in place, the air becomes silent with only the crackling sounds of the fireplace being heard. The tension becomes more imminent in the air as the Aemond continues to remain silent and not do anything, except directly stare at you.

His grip on your hand suddenly tightens, making you wince and you look at him pleadingly, “Have you gone mad?” He stands up, forcing you to stand up as well and you grip his arm tightly, not wanting to fall before balancing yourself, “Please- I am not yet ready, let me prepare myself mentally first.” You beg him and his other hand grabs you by your throat and pulls you closer to him, his grip on your throat begins to tighten, causing you to lose bloodflow to your head.

“I have done nothing except do my duty, be the ideal husband, provide for you, all while allowing you to express yourself yet it seems I was too lenient on you.” He growls, “Because here you are, asking me, to allow you to not have children. It is your sole duty as a wife and a woman, and you could not even provide such a thing?” He let goes of your throat, making you engulf a huge amount of air as you tried to calm down.

“Every woman is the image of the mother, she should have a natural nurturing personality towards anyone, especially to their own children, yet here you are refusing to be a mother to your own child or rather having one of yours, it is disgusting.” He says meanly and you glare at him, “I never said that I never wanted to be a mother, I asked you to give me time to which you are– hmmgh!” You are dragged by Aemond to the bed and thrown on it, you quickly lean on your elbows, fear gnawing in your stomach as you look at Aemond who seemed so furious at you, your heartbeat accelerated as he just stared down at you, like a predator staring at its prey.

“Your sin is forgiven, wife, I remembered how some women think they do not want children until they do, and then they become the best mothers and perfect wives known to man, maybe you are of that same category.” He keeps on talking, and you stare at him, confused and in fear, what in the seven hell was he talking about?

“It is no surprise if that is the case, luckily, there is a cure for that, and that is to get you pregnant, and I shall do just that, simultaneously fulfilling the duties as your husband.” He leans down and caresses your cheek. Your eyes widen when you catch his expression in the illuminating moonlight. He was smiling, yet the smile did not reach his eyes, Your stomach began to churn as goosebumps arose on your skin, he doesn't seem like the man you married anymore.

Before you could make an escape, Aemond pounces you and pushes you down onto the bed, you thrash in his hold trying to push him off but he holds your hands together and pins them up before grabbing your cheeks harshly and spitting on your face, “Behave, I'm treating you.” You began to tremble knowing he had gone completely mad.

“Let go of me! Aemond!” You scream and he pushes his hand over your mouth, “Shut the fuck up.” He tells you before grabbing your dress and tearing it off your body, the bodice coming along with it, causing your tits to spill out. He gropes and squeezes them, “I wonder how nice they'd look when they swell with milk hm?” He coos, before descending his lips onto your nipple, you use your now free hands to push him away but he doesn't budge, you try to pull him by his hair but he bites harshly onto your nipple causing you to let go of his hair in pain, he pulls away and looks at you angrily.

“Behave.” He says sternly and you flinch, never having heard Aemond use that specific tone before, it was extremely scary. “Aemond, please.” You plead him but he doesn't care, simply ripping off the remains and pushing you up the bed and prying your legs open. “You'd look so beautiful, all round with my child in your belly, I pray to the mother to bless us with a child.” He undos his breeches and your eyes widen in horror, knowing what is about to come.

You watched in silence as he lined himself against your entrance, prodding the tip at the very beginning of your hole and began to push inside, you shut your eyes tightly and clenched the sheets below you, a pained cry leaving your mouth at the stretch of your cunt by his cock, unprepared.

He soon fully sheathed himself inside you, and wastes no time before beginning to thrust, whines and gasps leave your mouth at his actions, you grip onto his shoulders as he jerks you up and down, you felt ashamed when it started to begin to feel good, your body in dilemma where you push him or pull him closer.

However that sense of choice is taken away from you when he grabs your hands and pins them above you, all while pistoning his hips into yours, “Seven above, I pray that the mother blesses my dear wife with a child in her womb so she may be cured of her sinfulness, I pray that the maiden guides her into realising how she should truly perform her duty as a woman, and may the crone remove useless thoughts and guide her to the correct path.” He prays closing his eyes and your eyes widen in pure shock, shocked by the fact on how he can pray in a situation like this?

His thrusts feel so sinful, and you're convinced you've lost your mind because of the fact that you are getting pleasure from this, his lips find yours in a passionate kiss as he ends the prayer, kissing your forehead afterwards and pulls back, “You'll make a good mother, I'm sure of it.” He coos in your ear before pressing a kiss to it as well.

You soon began to recognize the familiar feeling of a rope tightening in your abdomen, the telltale sign that your peak was nearing, Aemond's hand groped your tits, pinching your nipples and rubbing his thumb over them, providing you with additional pleasure, and before you know it, you are toppling over the edge as your peak hits you, arching your back and moaning out his name loudly.

He too finishes inside you, filling your hole with his seed, before pulling out, his face hovers over your stomach and you watch as he presses a kiss on the location of where your womb would be located, “May the mother bless us.” He mutters.

You thought that would be the end, yet you were wrong, you gasp when you feel his finger scooping up his seed which leaked out and push it back into you, essentially beginning to finger you, he takes you by surprise again when you feel his warm tongue on your clit, causing your hands to fly out and grip his hair as you breathed heavily.

His tongue and finger worked simultaneously, introducing you to a sensation of a new type of overstimulation, making you peak once again.

Time blurred together and yet Aemond did not stop, you've lost count of how many times he made you peak and how many times he finished inside you, but at the end of it, you surely felt full and fucked out, your mind filled with nothing but the thought of having his children, which he kept muttering over and over again, causing you to pick up on it.

“You'll be a great mother.” He pulls you into his arms as scoot closer, burying your face in his chest, “Yes, Husband, I'll give you as many children you want.” You mutter before finally drifting off to sleep.

Aemond smirks, knowing that he has now achieved his goal, now he can slowly start shifting you into the type of wife he wanted in the first place.

It was no surprise when you found out that you were pregnant with a child, only for you to give birth to triplets.

“A blessing from the mother.” Alicent beamed, yet that sentence only made you flinch.

— !  ݈݇- thank you so much for reading! i hope you enjoyed it <3 comments and reblogs are appreciated greatly ♡

[velvetvexations]

I'm a trans woman. You need to stop being weird about men.

The idea that trans women should be allowed in single sex spaces for cis women is completely contradicted by the man vs. bear discourse. Ignore that I keep going back to the meme - maybe it's still doing numbers, I don't know, but it's good shorthand either way. If you think men are inherently suspicious and dangerous, ask yourself: why does that not apply to trans women?

What, exactly, does a trans woman do to make herself different from cis men? How are you not advocating a belief in people being tainted by the way they were raised* which can only logically apply to trans women as much as it does cis men? It boggles the mind how, if that's a true concept, one could simply self-identify out it. Yet, the way transradfems talk, literally the only thing that distinguishes an AMAB better-than-bear from an AMAB worse-than-bear is that the former says they're totally better than a bear and you should take their word for it, which if men are really Like That should be of little comfort or security.

Some, even, will make impassioned defenses of butch trans women, which as a butch trans woman is great. But then they'll go on about how evil men are, and how innocent and victimized trans women are, and I wonder, what, exactly, differs an especially butch trans woman from a man to them? If, like me, a trans butch woman doesn't always wear clearly feminine clothes, has body hair, maybe even a shade of facial hair, and doesn't at all try to train her voice, are you going to be uncomfortable with her right up until she realizes she forgot to put their pin on and you see the she/her? Apparently that flips the switch from someone you desperately don't want to be alone with to someone you're totally fine undressing in front of?

All that sounds like TERFism, which is exactly the problem. The transradfem version of reality is one where TERF talking points are completely logical, because they're both based in the same radfem reality. That's not my reality, YOU have constructed a system perfect for them to operate in, that their ideology is fantastic for pointing out errors of reasoning in, as if it was deliberately crafted by them to be deconstructed. I would not at all be surprised if that's the origin of a lot of trans radical feminism, a psyop to make the trans community weaker with logic twists that TERFism can swing through like the Gordian Knot.

If you accept man vs. bear, TERFism is the only logical conclusion. If you don't, as I don't, then it isn't.

The only alternative is that you think being a woman is the only thing anyone should be and "choosing" to be a man is morally inferior. Which I shouldn't have to tell you is horrifying. It's also again incongruous with at least your defense of butch trans women - what exactly defines a "man" and a "woman" when a butch trans woman doesn't have to try to pass at all? You are literally saying all of this, gender, transmisogyny, misogyny, hinges entirely on pronouns and a difference of two letters in the name of what they call themselves, someone is dangerous or not depending on if they go by he/him.

TERFs will see this and be like "yeah! exactly!" BUT MY POINT IS USING THAT TO SHOW YOU SHARE THE SAME FOUNDATIONAL LOGIC AS THEM. If you don't want TERFs to have a point then you can stop accepting their worldview any day now! Come join me and frolic freely where we think TERFs are wrong!

*socialization is real and the idea pre-dates TERFs who incorrectly use the idea that to say that because a trans woman may or may not** have been pressured by external forces to play sportsball she must be hardcoded to be a sex offender, which is completely ridiculous

**no one can be said to have the same experiences, it's a generalization

[autolenaphilia]

The understanding of feminism on this site is absolutely terrible. To the point where people have no idea of what feminism even is. It’s especially annoying when people on here claim to be feminists, but contradict basic tenets of feminist thought.

And to be fair, feminism is a complicated and not united ideology at all. But let’s try to explain anyway. A basic tenet of any feminism is that society is a patriarchy. Women are oppressed and exploited, and men are the oppressor class. Men gain advantages for being men, which is what male privilege is. And feminism is about destroying this system of gendered oppression, the patriarchy.

This is as basic as it gets. And that we live in a patriarchy is easily proven. Patriarchy theory is a theory, but it’s a very well-supported one. Basic statistics and other evidence prove women are disadvantaged and discriminated against, and that men prosper in comparison. Misogyny is real, it’s an oppression that definitely exists.

Yet this basic understanding consistently eludes people on tumblr, even as they claim to be feminists and say “fuck the patriarchy.” People are at best reluctant to acknowledge misogyny as being real and lack understanding of it.

Talking about misogyny will get you accusations of being “terfy” when it’s just basic feminism. Even transfems get these accusations. I’ve already lamented that many people who are anti-terf (which you should be) don’t know what a terf is. What is actually “terfy” is having biological determinist and cisnormative explanations of who women are and what causes misogyny. In reality, trans women are very much women, and have to navigate the world as such. We constitute an especially oppressed subset of women, due to suffering from an intersection of both misogyny and transphobia: transmisogyny. The recognition of misogyny as an oppression we experience is needed to explain our experiences and suffering. We are not men, and are exiled from manhood and it’s privileges due to rejecting it and not performing masculinity.

Particularly disturbing are people who claim to be feminists and yet argue that “misandry” is a real thing. It’s often not said to be “misandry”, I’ve read words like “antimasculism” (more or less explicitly) used as substitutes for the term “misandry”. It is often phrased in terms of “the patriarchy hurts men too.” That the patriarchy is just harmful gender norms that oppress all genders more or less equally.

And those who adopted this have abandoned feminism, often without acknowledging it. They have abandoned the most basic feminist tenets, such as we live in a patriarchy, a society that benefits men. The idea that men do not gain privilege from being men and are in fact hurt by it is an anti-feminist idea.

It’s an incoherent way of analyzing gender. The question of who is the oppressor class in this analysis is eluded entirely. Who benefits from oppressing men via gender norms? Feminist theory is clear about men being the oppressor class who benefit as a class from the oppression of women. It’s a basic question, yet studiously avoided, sometimes in terms of blaming it on the system, understood as some impersonal monster, not as a system that exists to benefit certain people.

It also misunderstands how masculinity works. Sure, being forced to adhere to masculine gender norms hurts, I’ve been badly bullied myself for breaking them. But even if the patriarchy hurts men, it more importantly benefits them. It privileges men, because that’s the literal definition of patriarchy.

Masculinity benefits men, that’s why they perform it. The proper performance of masculinity is needed for being recognized as a man and thus given male privilege. It gives them power over women (cis or trans), even other men (like gay men) and degendered others, the ability to commit violence against them with impunity. Men who perform it are not the primary victims of masculinity, the victims of the violence done to prove masculinity are. And privilege is what men are afraid of losing if they appear non-masculine. It’s the fear of losing their status, of experiencing just a smidgen of the horrors trans women are given everyday. Men will do violence to avoid that. I don’t wish to downplay the horrors of being an openly gnc man (especially if they are also gay or queer in some other way). but they still have a privileged position compared to women in general, and especially transfems.

Of course, men are oppressed too, but it’s not for being men. Working class men are oppressed under capitalism. A long list of oppressive systems like racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and so on do oppress the men who are affected by them. Men thus often find their male privilege curtailed by these oppressions, especially if they are affected by several at once. And because of this there are indeed situations where women can hold power over men (white women do often hold power over black men in white supremacist societies for example). This does however just curtail their male privilege, not negate it entirely. You just need a more complicated analysis, that takes those factors into account. Still, all else being equal, men hold power over women. It’s when comparing gay men and lesbians, comparing disabled men and women, and so on, that you can truly see the privilege these disadvantaged men still hold despite the real oppression they experience. Women are also affected by these oppressive forces, and their effect is made worse by intersecting with misogyny. Men in oppressed communities still have power and privilege over the women in that community. Their experience of oppression looks different, but that’s due to the absence of misogyny, rather than the addition of any misandry (as another tumblr post put it, and which I can’t find now, so I can’t give credit. Would love to be given a link if you can find it).

And we have to be careful when talking about oppressed men, because their experiences are often exploited to justify anti-feminism. The fact that the oppression is real is exactly why it’s useful, because it can be decontextualized to argue that men are oppressed for being men. Propaganda often lies by omission, than by outright making things up. Warren Farrell, “the father of the men’s rights movement”, used the experiences of working class men dying in dangerous jobs and as soldiers in war to argue that male power was a myth, and in fact “men are the disposable sex” or “the expendable gender.” Those deaths are real, but the context that it’s due to capitalism exploiting the working class is removed, and instead attributed to their gender. The facts that working class women also suffer and die from exploitation and that capitalist men benefit from the exploitation of the entire working class are ignored. It also eludes why women don’t die as these men do. Women are kept out of many “dangerous” jobs and the military in order to justify their subjugation as “the weaker sex.”

It’s a terrible argument, and Farrell and the men’s rights movement he helped create are openly anti-feminist and deeply misogynistic, denying women’s oppression. Yet I’ve seen variations on Farrell’s argument posted by supposedly “pro-feminist” blogs. Queer bloggers here will hold up the sufferings of gay and trans men as proof misandry is real, that men are oppressed for being men, ignoring that their oppression is due to homophobia and transphobia. And still against all reason still use the word “patriarchy” and being feminists, despite denying the analysis of society as a patriarchy where men are privileged for being men.

At least Farrell and his fellow proud MRAs are honest about rejecting feminism and believing patriarchy is a myth. I’m glad at this point that I was and am a fan of David Futrelle’s blog criticizing and mocking the men’s movement, because that has enabled me to recognize and criticize the arguments they use, a thing some people here clearly need some help with.

Often these bloggers bring up the ancient anti-feminist accusation of feminists not being a movement for equality at all, but about hating men and their masculinity. Anything critical of men as a class who holds power over women is understood as “misandry” or “terfy”, and so is any criticism of masculinity as a gender role. Criticism of masculinity are only made in the context of “toxic” masculine norms hurting men, never in terms of how it confers men power and privilege and how the misogyny of hegemonic masculinity hurts women and other people. I suppose in this kind of thinking my earlier criticism of masculinity as a tool for gendered violence is enough for them to call me a misandrist. And like I’m not. All men benefit from patriarchy, but if you are a man and don’t abuse women or are a misogynist, you are okay as a human being in my book. What else can I say?

These criticisms are not just taken as misandry, but as some kind of widespread norm, despite really only being made in feminist and queer spaces. So making a tumblr post saying “it’s okay to be a man, it’s okay to be masculine.” is seen as reasonable, despite that being literally what the vast majority of society already believes (including the feminist spaces that can reasonably be targeted by this statement). It’s a bizarre statement to make in a patriarchal society that favours men and expects them to be masculine. It again echoes MRA complaints about how society has been captured by a feminist conspiracy (with anti-semitic undertones, as any conspiracy theory has, that’s how MRAs answer the question of “who is oppressor class for misandry?” btw).

It illustrates how a bad understanding of feminist theory leads people into some rather right-wing positions, all while clinging to the banner of being a feminist or progressive. Our society is a deeply misogynist one, yet in response to feminist gains it likes to cloak its misogyny in a kind of superficial feminism. And acknowledging misogyny is a real oppression is hard when you grow up and live in a society that justifies it. It’s especially uncomfortable to do so if you benefit from it. It’s more comfortable to deny misogyny. But it’s work that needs to be done. Or else you can turn into basically an MRA while still believing yourself to be a feminist, which seems to be the trajectory of some people on this site.

[acknowledgebiology]

Something I've noticed about TRAs is that they are literally the epitome of hypocrisy.

They claim to advocate for inclusivity and to disapprove of discrimination based solely on someone's beliefs, yet see no wrong in treating people who don't agree with them on the issue of transgenderism with the highest level of disrespect and contempt, nor do many of them seem to have a problem with using threats of violence to silence dissent, as they are aware that at this point they will ultimately face little to no consequences for doing so. In fact, they believe that in doing so they are performing some heroic deed, justifying their actions by claiming that they only do it to protect people while refusing to acknowledge that they're actually doing the opposite.

They claim to oppose gender stereotypes (particularly those regarding appearance), yet when arguing with a non-TRA on the issue of, say, a biological man claiming to be a woman, they will immediately say something along the lines of "You're ridiculous for calling 'her' a man; 'she' looks more womanly than you!" or, for the opposite scenario, "It makes no sense for you to call 'him' a woman; 'he' has a flat chest, a deep voice, and facial hair!" So we aren't allowed, for example, to say that it's completely absurd for someone to claim to be the opposite sex while not at least putting any effort into looking the part—since, according to them, a woman or a man is anyone who identifies as a woman or a man and to say otherwise is bigotry—but they're allowed to say that simply possessing the physical features associated with the sex a "trans" person claims to be is enough and that people should use a "trans" person's appearance as an indicator? These ideologies completely contradict each other. Do they really believe that "gender is a social construct"? Clearly not, since they rely so heavily on the gender stereotypes they supposedly believe shouldn't exist even to support their own arguments. They just use that phrase to make themselves look intelligent and philosophical.

You can't just say that one way of thinking is correct at one point and then—to prevent yourself from getting confused about the unnecessary and nonsensical complicatedness of your own ideology—say that a different way of thinking is correct at another point.

[ghelgheli]

Recognizing this central ambivalence in regard to so-called Western values—whereby they are cast out as “postmodern authoritarianism” only to be embraced as the “true spirit” of societies to come—is essential to understanding the strategic significance of the anti-gender misappropriation of postcolonial language. This ambivalence sheds light on the fact that the superficial takeover frames the “gender ideology” colonizer not simply as the “West as such but [rather as] the West whose healthy (Christian) core had already been destroyed by neo-Marxism and feminism in the 1960s” (Korolczuk and Graff 2018: 812). Very often, the anti-gender misappropriation takes on a decidedly Islamophobic hue; for all their catering to anticolonial sentiments, anti-gender thinkers often claim that “gender ideology,” with its historical roots in anti-European “neo-Marxism and feminism,” goes hand in hand with the threat of (Muslim) immigration. A blatant example of this can be found in former Cardinal Sarah’s proclamation against the two unexpected threats of our times:

On the one hand, the idolatry of Western freedom; on the other, Islamic fundamentalism: atheistic secularism versus religious fanaticism. To use a slogan, we find ourselves between “gender ideology and ISIS.” . . . From these two radicalizations arise the two major threats to the family: its subjectivist disintegration in the secularized West [and] the pseudo-family of ideologized Islam which legitimizes polygamy [and] female subservience. (Sarah 2015)

Sarah aggressively draws up a dual picture of the true enemy—the biopolitical survival of the family is threatened on the one hand by excessive secularization and sexual freedom, and on the other by “ideologized Islam’s pseudo-family,” which marks the degraded and uncivilized counterpart to Christianity’s proper tradition. This discursive construction of “terrorist look-alikes” as possessing an excessive, uncultivated, and dangerous sexuality yet again plays into the same fundamental racialized mapping of progress that colonial gender undergirded (Puar 2007). This rhetoric is mirrored by Norwegian right-wing politician Per-Willy Amundsen (2021) when he writes that:

I will never celebrate pride. First of all, there are only two sexes: man and woman, not three—that is in contradiction with all biological science. Even worse, they are allowed access to our kids to influence them with their radical ideology. This has to be stopped. If FRI [the national LGBT organization] really cared about gay rights, they would get involved in what is happening in Muslim countries, rather than construct fake problems here in Norway. But it is probably easier to speak about “diversity” as long as it doesn’t cost anything. (Amundsen 2021; translation by author) Here Amundsen draws on the well-known trope of trans* and queer people “preying on our kids” while at the same time reinforcing the homonationalist notion that Europe, and in particular Norway, is a safe h(e)aven for queer people—perhaps a bit too much so. In his response to Amundsen, Thee-Yezen Al-Obaide, the leader of SALAM, the organization for queer Muslims in Norway, aptly diagnoses Amundsen’s rhetoric as “transphobia wrapped in Islamophobia” (as quoted in Berg 2021). Amundsen mirrors a central tenet of TERF rhetoric by claiming to be the voice of science, biology, and reason in order to distinguish his own resistance to “gender ideology” from the repressive, regressive one of Muslims. In this way, his argumentation, which basically claims that trans* people don’t exist and certainly shouldn’t be recognized legally, attempts to come off as benign, while Muslim opposition to “gender ideology” is painted as destructive and anti-modern. This double gesture, which allows Amundsen to have his cake and eat it too, is a central trope in different European iterations of anti-gender rhetoric. In France, for example, such discourse claims that, “while ‘gender ideology’ goes too far on the one hand, the patriarchal control of Islam threatens to pull us back into an excessive past. Here of course, ‘Frenchness’ is always already neither Muslim, nor queer (and certainly not both)” (Hemmings 2020: 30). Therefore the French anti-gender movement sees itself as the defender of true Western civilization, both from Western “gender ideology” and from uncivilized “primitives” who are nevertheless themselves victims of “gender ideology.” A similar dynamic plays out in Britain: “Reading Muslims as dangerous heteroactivists and Christians as benign points to how racialization and religion create specific forms of heteroactivism. . . . Even where ‘Muslim parents’ are supported by Christian heteroactivists, they remain other to the nation, and not central to its defence” (Nash and Browne 2020: 145). In the British example, it is clear that white anti-gender actors represent themselves as moderate, reasonable, and caring—often claiming that their resistance to the “politicization” of the classroom has nothing to do with transphobia and homophobia.

Is “Gender Ideology” Western Colonialism? Jenny Andrine Madsen Evang

[museumofferedophelia]

The scariest part of gender ideology is how similar it is to religious dogma. At its root, it calls its followers to place their conviction in abstract concepts rather than an observable, unfalsifiable reality. Observations of the material world that contradict their beliefs are met with threats, aggression and violence.

[being-kindrad]

Gender Critical Articles

This post is intended to be a collection of gender critical articles and resources. I intend to continually update it. I've now broken it down into categories to hopefully make it easier to sort through.

General gender critical articles

An Open Letter To the Guy on Twitter Who Wonders if Biological Sex is Real

Pronouns Are Rohypnol

Sex Is Not Gender: The Validity of Sex-Based Rights

Break the binary, break the body

Every Gender Identity Is ‘Authentic’—Until It Isn’t

The Endless Contradictions of Gender Ideology

Collette Colfer: A New Religion

Trust your discomfort

The Hidden Cost of Pronoun Politeness

Trans People Aren't Babies

Why can't we talk about this?

Not everything is about gender

The medicalization of gender (sexist stereotypes)

Inauthentic Selves: The modern LGBTQ+ Movement Is Run By Philanthropic Astroturf And Based On Junk Science

[Academic paper] The Myth of “Reliable Research” in Pediatric Gender Medicine: A critical evaluation of the Dutch Studies—and research that has followed

In the dark: A major documentary in the Netherlands shakes the foundations of gender medicine

‘Gender-Affirming Care Is Dangerous. I Know Because I Helped Pioneer It.’

The secret life of gender clinicians

New York Times publishes bizarre case for youth gender transition

A Raging Transgender Debate in the Netherlands

Why disturbing leaks from US gender group WPATH ring alarm bells in the NHS

The Worst Argument For Youth Transition

Sex reassignment in minors may be medical history’s ‘greatest ethical scandal’, French report says

The reckoning over puberty blockers has arrived

How a cult captured the NHS

Simply criticizing 'gender medicine' isn't enough

People are in denial following the Cass report – it’s like deprogramming cult members

Politics

My conversation with Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender

JK Rowling’s victory over Humza Yousaf’s hate crime laws is a victory for all women

Detrans

Introducing the Desisted & Detransitioned Women’s Bill of Rights

Exploitation of people with DSDs ("intersex")

Klinefelter syndrome (XXY) is a Medical and Genetic Condition: Stop Exploiting Us

[taliabhattwrites]

Transition care is being outlawed and institutionally gatekept the world over.

Trans existence is the reactionary scapegoat du jour, a convenient symbol for regressive ideologues to rally against because we constitute a convenient effigy to burn, an existential threat to the patriarchal ideology of 'immutable', 'biological' sex upon which their 'natural order' (of male-supremacy and misogynistic exploitation) is founded.

During a cultural moment where the right's intentions to directly attack bodily autonomy and non-heterosexual, non-reproductive modes of existence are being plainly stated, where the nativist and natalist violence upon which states and their colonial orders are founded is being made most explicit, the response to this overt declaration of war on our ability to do what we will with our bodies is ... non-existent.

Feminism is being thoroughly repudiated by the left, by advocates of collectivization and queer activists alike. The "male loneliness crisis" is spoken of as our most pressing cultural issue, eliding the reactionary turn among men who are responding to deepening capitalist contradictions by demanding their patriarchal entitlement over women's labor and bodies. Trans people's existence is considered a luxury belief, established and proven healthcare is called 'experimental', and we are perceived as affluent eccentrics seeking novel forms of costuming rather than a thoroughly brutalized, impoverished, and stigmatized demographic sinking further and further into the margins.

Conservatives who rail against abortion and no-fault divorce now claim the label of "women's rights" because they also call for the eradication of transsexuality. The connections between the opposition to trans existence and the threats to women's political and economic independence are obvious, but no one is making them.

We are not organizing a robust, materialist, ideological opposition to this reactionary backlash on the basis of bodily autonomy, the emancipation of marginalized genders, or the right to exist independently from patriarchal structures such as the nuclear family.

We are arguing with each other about validity, about whether it's "biologically essentialist" to observe that society enables men to exploit women, and about whether anyone who speaks plainly about misogyny is a "TERF".

I stand here seeing things get worse for my sisters and my siblings, cis and trans and non-binary and intersex and queer and even heterosexual and more, watching us devour each other while working class men settle for dominion over their wives and families in exchange for being compliant for their bosses, and I wonder if we'll realize what must be done before it's too late.

I don't know. I don't have an answer for you.

At least, not a good one.

[malloryrowinski]

u talk about trans women being violent as if they're not one of the most discriminated against groups. trans folks are over 4 times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, including rape and SA

So? Does experiencing violence make a group somehow “pure” or incapable of violence themselves? Women, as an oppressed group, also experience higher rates of violence, yet no one claims this makes women incapable of committing crimes, and no one silences those talking about female criminals. Actually, the media and public often focus on and sensationalize female-perpetrated crime. Marginalized or oppressed groups can and do contain individuals who commit violent acts—being a victim doesn’t erase that fact.

This trend of denying that men can exploit gender identity policies to harm women is exhausting. There are real cases of men hiding behind gender ideology to gain access to female-only spaces and commit abuses. This isn't hypothetical—it’s documented in cases around the world. Ignoring these risks doesn’t erase them; it just lets them go unchecked. Read the news, and you’ll see that this concern is grounded in real events.

My point has always been that gender ideology and the uncritical acceptance of it create loopholes that violent, misogynistic men exploit to victimize women. Are we supposed to ignore this out of "political correctness," because you can't say anything trans-related that isn’t overwhelmingly positive? How is silencing women’s real safety concerns politically correct? Women are being assaulted and even killed in spaces that are supposed to protect them—this should matter!!

To be clear, I don’t condone violence or discrimination against the trans community—no one deserves that, obviously. But acknowledging the reality of violence against women and advocating for safety in female-only spaces doesn’t contradict this. Anyone capable of basic critical thinking should recognize that I’m not attacking the trans community, nor am I labeling all trans women as “bad” simply by raising these issues.

[determinate-negation]

“The division of labor is a broad concept and both in the workplace and across societies, and there are numerous social and cultural distinctions that shape its formation, including the organization of productive and social reproductive labor through gendered and racial hierarchies. However, at this point, Marx is focused on divisions between firms and economic sectors and more broadly with territorial divisions of labor. As with cooperation, he suggests (cursorily) that a social division of labor of some form exists in all types of societies, and in relation to territory, this includes exchange relations that arise between different communities with different assets, resources, and products. He asserts that “the foundation of every division of labor which has obtained a certain degree of development and has been brought about by the exchange of commodities, is the separation of town from country.” While territorial divisions of labor exist in precapitalist societies, the division of labor in the manufacturing system provides a “fresh stimulus” to the “territorial division of labour, which confines special branches of production to specific districts of a country” and “exploits all natural peculiarities.” This extends yet more broadly to the “colonial system and world market.”

While they reinforce each other, Marx makes an important distinction between the division of labor in the enterprise and in society, which he suggests, differ not only in degree but kind. One key difference is that with the social division of labor, the means of production are not strictly concentrated, but rather distributed among independent producers, and the connections between them are formed through the purchase and sale of commodities. The way the social division of labor is organized is also quite different. Marx points out that its organization is not based on conscious control but rather “the play of chance and caprice,” which “results in a motley pattern of distribution of the producers and their means of production among the various branches of social labour.” While the division of labor in production is extensively planned, regulated, and supervised—and is thus enforced a priori by capital—the division of labor in society, Marx writes, is enforced a posteriori, via market-price fluctuation and competition.

As a result, capitalism is characterized by “anarchy in the social division of labour and despotism in the manufacturing division of labour.” While capitalists eagerly plan the organization of production in the factory, they continually resist attempts to control and plan the social division of labor. This resistance, as Marx presciently observes, is enforced by bourgeois ideology which “celebrates the division of labour in the workshop” but “denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to control and regulate the process of production socially.”

There is a deep contradiction, in Marx’s view, between socialized production and private appropriation, leading him to suggest that under socialism, society-wide planning would eliminate capitalist “anarchy of production,” ensuring a more rational allocation of economic resources and productive capacities, while eliminating economic crises. This is expressed succinctly in Marx’s reflections in the Civil War in France, where he writes: “If co-operative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the Capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of Capitalist production—what else, gentlemen, would it be but Communism, ‘possible’ Communism?”

In the chapter on divisions of labor, Marx points not only to the irrationality of market coordination, but also to the despotism and coercion this market system produces in the workplace. “Manufacture proper not only subjects the previously independent worker to the discipline and command of capital, but creates an additional hierarchical structure among the workers themselves.”The result is an “impoverishment of the worker in individual productive power,” such that “the possibility of an intelligent direction in production expands in one direction, because it vanishes in many others.” Workers’ own capacities to administer production are thwarted.”

Planning and the Ecosocialist Mode of Cooperation, Nicholas Graham

[blackholebaybee]

Stoner communist thoughts:

🔴 there's a difference between what queerness materially is and what it does

🟠 queerness is the contradiction of patriarchal gender power; it is what is deliberately excluded from the division of labour designed to devalue reproductive labour and subjugate one party to it; it is the question of the human in the ideology of productivity-for-its-own-sake; it is the constant reminder of all the blood that must spill for this monstrous system to exist

🟡 what queerness, real queerness, does, however, is it smashes the fences of those borders and carves its own way of life in the midst of its jailers; it asserts the human, burns money, and kills any pig that dares to jail it ever again; it shouts from the rooftops that work should serve life, not the other way around

🟢 the queer practice of humanity comes in the form of the protracted struggle against cishet ideology and patriarchal power; we let people fuck who they want to fuck, we let them love who they want to love, we let them be what they are; we seek to kill the cop in each of us and not limit the horizons of our culture; queerness is the practice of embodied creativity

🔵 chicks have dicks, dudes have cunts, some folx ain't got shit or got all kinds of it, men can have babies, women can cum (particularly well with each other), non-binary people can fuck it all up and do whatever they want, mfs can cross-dress because clothing gender is just as fake as biological gender; you can put a dick in a butt or an armpit or hair, who cares; you don't need to fuck or even be into people, just play Nintendo, it doesn't fucking matter; you can be literally whatever you goddamn want and do some wild, unexpected shit

🟣 the cultural revolution, the total social revolution, WILL BE QUEER