#I don’t think our existence as trans people is political

[star-anise]

I recently saw your post about lgbt+ language with the history of queer and stuff, and is the phrase “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” also a result of a response towards those radical lesbians you were talking about, as well as society as a whole? I have no idea how or where I even saw that phrase and I don’t even think I’ve seen or heard it in over a decade, but it has that prolific sort of protest-y feeling and I’m curious

Ah, no. That one's not from conflict within the LGBTQ+ world, it's from our struggle with the world around us. It's the battle cry of a community trying to convince the world around them that LGBTQ+ people were:

A real and non-trivial part of the population, and could not be made to disappear

Human beings who deserved to live, even if they kept participating in "the homosexual lifestyle"

Dying at horrific rates of a disease nobody understood or had treatments for, and

Going to fight like HELL for their survival.

On a previous post of mine people got talking about the AIDS crisis, and the contributions made it better than anything I could do alone. I think it's very worth reading. But one thing I want to highlight is:

The Die-In. It was a tactic ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) used in the late 1980s and early 1990s to push AIDS into the public consciousness. Activists would rush into a public place like a traffic intersection, a busy train station, or the entrance to a government building, and "die", laying down and bringing things to a grinding halt. They held up signs and tombstones airing their grievances; they chanted slogans aimed to bring about the very particular political point they wanted to drive forward.

[Image description: ACT UP protesters outside the FDA headquarters in Rockville, Maryland on October 11, 1988. They demanded the release of experimental medication for those living with HIV/AIDS with slogans reading: 'Never Had A Chance.' 'I Got the Placebo' and 'I Died for the Sins of the FDA.' Source. End image description.]

AIDS deaths involved so much stigma and isolation. Fear of contamination meant that hospitals were reluctant to treat patients with HIV/AIDS, medical staff hesitant to touch them, and ordinary people afraid of so much as using the same toilet seat or water fountain as them.

And then, like the post I reblogged a couple days ago, severe illness and death meant that many people's estranged families suddenly re-entered their lives, because they were often the only ones with the legal rights to visit them in hospital or dispose of their effects, and wanted to hush up their queerness. Bury trans people under their deadnames, write obituaries of gays and lesbians that failed to mention their significant others or cause of death.

So that's... the context in which Queer Nation arose, and the environment in which "queer" was reclaimed. "Queer" was useful because it was inclusive and easy to put in a chant, and also because straight people did use it as a pejorative.

Mainstream liberals would literaly argue that sure, they guessed gay people had the right to exist, but did they have to be so blatant about it? Did they have to be such fucking queers? And sure, AIDS was terrible, but those activists were so unpleasant, and anyway, it's a totally preventable disease: Just don't have gay sex ever! Problem solved! (Spoiler: Gay people will not stop being gay; nobody deserves to die for having sex; and straight people can get HIV too.)

So ACT UP also staged "kiss-ins", which also involved occupying a public space, but this time to prove that people can be gay in public and the world will not end and society will just have to DEAL with its inherent disgust or moral outrage or whatever.

That's where the chant came from. It's stepping out defiantly into public space in a marginalized position, and warning the world that we are not going away. We refuse to go away. If, as many claimed, God himself designed AIDS as a punishment for the sin of homosexuality, and meant it to wipe gays from the face of the Earth? He must feel pretty sheepish right now, because it didn't work.

We're here. We're queer. Get used to it.

[nothorses]

hi! i’ve seen your longer posts on lgbtq+ community, and as someone younger, i’d love to here your opinion on this. i think there’s a trend of the internet where we’ve all “reclaimed” and “normalized” stuff like fruity and limp wrist etc. and often times incorporate queer slang into our online posting, and it’s co-opted by straight people because the queerness has been stripped away from it. what’re your thoughts about that? my main conflict is this: there are terms like “babygirl” or other feminine terms that people use for their favourite male fictional characters or male celebrities they like. and there’s a constant debate about how this mislabeling of cis people is harmful. first of all, i don’t agree that you can mislabel cis people. furthermore, i feel like just like how some queer slang has been normalized, terms like babygirl etc have been stripped of their original meaning which meant feminine. also, a lot of queer people, myself included, who’re not chronically online don’t really care about such discourse. plus, older queer people often subscribe to terms or identities that the internet would say is politically incorrect. so, personally i feel like it’s inconsequential to actual queer issues. but i wonder if i’m wrong in not being bothered by this. i’d love to know your opinion. (even though this ask seems a little all over the place.)

tbh I think you're getting at a couple of different issues:

Straight people "co-opting" reclaimed slurs against queer people because either a) reclamation has made them no longer queer-specific, or b) "co-opting" from outsiders has made them no longer queer-specific.

People taking issue with referring to folks with gendered terms that do not apply, i.e., "babygirl"- your belief being that a) these terms are no longer gendered (through gender-agnostic use), and b) cis people cannot be misgendered.

In general, I don't really think meaning can be "stripped" from a word the way you seem to imply. I do think that words will shift in meaning and collective understanding over time, but this is definitely a longer and less tidy process than what you're talking about here.

People who have been personally targeted by "fruity" and "limp-wristed" are not forgetting those experiences when 16 year olds on TikTok use the words without understanding what they mean. "Babygirl" does not become less painfully gendered to trans men just because you have seen a lot of internet posts using the word to refer to cis men.

I don't really think straight people should be joining in on the "fruity" and "limp-wristed" jokes; I also don't think policing those folks does anyone any good. We don't necessarily know every random internet person's personal history or intentions, and it's not our place to make assumptions or demand explanations. But we can, imo, still spread information and encourage introspection.

People who think they can make those kinds of jokes despite not being a part of the target demographic are usually doing it because they don't agree with those views, and they're arrogant and presumptuous about how they think those views exist or don't exist today- usually because they're young and lack that lived experience. They can learn, and probably want to.

I think we should also apply that to folks using "babygirl" the way you're describing. And I think folks shouldn't be using "babygirl" that way, either. First because you don't know anyone's personal history, you don't know for sure whether random internet strangers are cis or trans, and it absolutely does feel like misgendering to a lot of trans people (myself included!).

Second because cis people absolutely can be misgendered. They can also experience gender dysphoria. They typically don't, because the way society perceives them aligns with the way they perceive themselves, but when we use that as justification for targeting them with shit we already understand to be cruel to trans people, we're really just engaging in garden-variety transphobia in new and exciting ways.

And third because gendering men as women/girls is an extremely common and extremely damaging joke meant to uphold and reinforce gender expectations. Men are compared to women/girls because emasculation is a punishment under misogyny. Applying that punishment as frequently and randomly as possible doesn't mean you are no longer reinforcing that system by engaging in the punishments it uses.

Reclamation is also… not "stripping meaning" from words. I'm not 100% sure that was the implication, but just in case: reclamation is about changing the negative connotation of a slur to a more neutral or positive connotation. "Queer" still means what it always has- but the connotation of the word is now, in at least some mouths, less "you're a freak who I hate", and more "I am proud to be this", or even just "this is a group of people that exists".

This is long enough already, but basically: words do have meaning, we can acknowledge when people are using them maliciously or just ignorantly, and we can talk about that. But don't assume you know everything about anyone- their identities, their experiences, their emotions, their intentions, or anything else. Don't assume you know why someone is using a word a certain way, and give folks the benefit of the doubt unless they prove themselves to be taking advantage of it.

[posi-pan]

let’s talk about panphobic dogwhistles

A panphobic dogwhistle is coded/subtle to avoid opposition. These statements aren’t inherently panphobic and not everyone who shares them is panphobic.

“You can identify as pan, if... I support you being pan, but...”

This create hoops for pan people to jump through in order to be supported. But support and respect contingent on us internalizing and regurgitating panphobia isn’t genuine. We don’t trade autonomy for a sliver of pseudo acceptance.

“New labels damage the community. It doesn’t matter if a label is valid, it matters if it’s useful, materially different, and serves a political purpose.” And other anti self-identification/individualism statements.

This targets any label that isn’t The Four. Labels are, and always have been, useful if they help someone understand and communicate their feelings, identity, and experiences. We don’t owe our queerness to anyone, and we don’t have to use our queerness as a calculated strategy for anything.

What damages the community is creating an environment where any kind of difference in identity/language/expression or rebellion against norms/status quo/rules is met with hostility, fostering fear and distrust of the people who are supposed to support and nurture that self-discovery and expression.

“All genders/regardless of gender has always been the definition of bi.”

This often perpetuates the counterfactual ideas that pan “stole” The bi definition and isn’t necessary because “bi already means that”. This is also ahistorical biphobia; there’s never been one “true” definition of bi (this isn’t even the common community one) and it erases bi history/people who don’t relate to it.

Using scare quotes around pan.

Putting pan in quotes when it isn’t necessary is often a way of disrespecting its legitimacy, casting doubt/judgement, especially if pan is the only one in quotes.

“Bi has always included trans/nonbinary people.”

This is often used to falsely claim pan was created because “biphobes thought bi didn’t include trans/nonbinary people, so pan doesn’t need to exist”. (Binary bi texts aren’t universal, but there are plenty that speak to a reality that affected people and contributed to the current more inclusive language.)

“Mspec labels overlap but the distinction matters to some and that’s okay.”

I’ve seen this said so many times in response to people asking what bi and pan mean and how they relate to and differ from each other. What good is it to tell people the distinction matters while avoiding explaining what that distinction is? Ultimately this statement discourages any dialogue about mspec labels.

“Bi is an umbrella term that includes pan.”

The bi umbrella was once genuine inclusion of all mspec people, and activists/orgs use it, so most people don’t see it as anything else. But when bi only content has “bi+” slapped onto it, it becomes meaningless and performative. Panphobes also use it to argue pan doesn’t need its own, specific visibility.

“When a character ‘just likes people’ or is ‘attracted to all genders or regardless of gender’ they aren’t automatically pan instead of bi.”

I’ve experienced this from panphobes who simply assume pan interpretations of pan definitions/common pan explanations must be because of biphobia. But it’s a big, false, and purposely bad faith leap of logic to fuel the panphobic narrative that pan people are always misrepresenting bi.

“Pan people need to let bi people have something and stop making everything about themselves.”

This might seem like advocating for bi only content/events for the sake of bi visibility/community, but it’s often malicious exclusion of pan people who’ve always been included. We aren’t “invading” or “derailing” anything by being in spaces we’ve always been in, or by sharing a bi post because we relate to it.

“Read the Bi Manifesto.”

A lot of the time, people say this because they think the manifesto states the true definition of bi and proves pan is unnecessary/biphobic. However, the full text explicitly states there isn’t one true definition of bi and the group who published it explicitly supports all mspec people and identities.

“People identify as pan due to internalized biphobia.”

This masks panphobia with concern for internalized biphobia. Pan is being written off as a product of biphobia under the guise of wanting bi people to embrace being bi. Pan people are being equated to bi folks who just haven’t unlearned biphobia enough to embrace being bi, when that isn’t the case.

“All pan people are bi, but not all bi people are pan.”

This appears to be an easy explanation of bi/pan, borrowing from ���all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares”. But queerness isn’t geometry and doesn’t work like that. The only pan people who are bi are the ones who also identify as bi. We can’t box queerness into simple, universal categories.

“Analyze why you’re uncomfortable with being associated with bi people or being called bi.”

Of course, pan and bi are associated, but it’s never mere association these people are referring to. Pan people are vilified and wrongly painted as biphobic for criticizing the erasure and mislabeling of our identity.

“Bi and pan people need to stop fighting each other, both are valid and neither is -phobic.”

This implies the “fighting” is equal. But there are popular bi accounts dedicated to panphobia, “battleaxe bi” was coopted for panphobia, a major bi org spreads panphobia, panphobic bi authors/activists are praised, and researchers subsume pan data into bi data. Biphobia from pan people just is not on the same scale as panphobia from bi people.

This is not to disregard/downplay biphobia from pan people. It’s just important to acknowledge the reality, severity, and disparity of the situation. Erasing that by saying or implying it’s just a silly mutual argument about which word is better is disingenuous at best, and malicious misrepresentation at worst.

“I’ve never seen a definition of pan that isn’t biphobic/transphobic.”

Panphobes involved in bi/pan “discourse” saying this aren’t hoping to learn the actual (read: non bigoted) definitions of pan, they’re saying there aren’t any definitions of pan that aren’t biphobic or transphobic, because they believe pan is inherently biphobic and transphobic.

“Behaviorally/scientifically bi.”

“Behaviorally” and “scientifically” bi are used to categorize people based on so-called innate, universal indicators of being bi. Both say pan people are actually bi, hiding identity policing/erasure behind science. Funnily enough, researchers have said it’s hard to determine who is “actually bi” because “individuals determine this for themselves”. In other words, there aren’t innate or universal indicators, we simply are who we say we are.

So. I’m sure there are plenty more examples I’ve missed, and if you have any please send them my way! (I tried to make this as short as possible, so if you’d like me to elaborate on any of these, let me know and I’ll happily do so!)

But I hope this will encourage you to think a bit deeper about the things people say and the possible intent behind it before sharing, as well as be more invested in supporting pan people and trusting us when we tell you something is being said to spread panphobia.

[sheathandshear]

I get irritated when trans people talk about how “outdated” transgender terminology and schema are intrinsically bad and do “harm” to trans people, because the gender concepts that best fit my experience are incredibly out of vogue in the (online, younger, cultural-majority) Anglosphere, so I guess I... what, do harm by existing?

I approach sexuality and relationships with people of any gender through the perspective of having been a queer woman. I loathe the term “deadname”, because I didn’t fucking die, I changed. I say “When I was a girl” and “when I was [name]” and use “she” pronouns to talk about my past self when I thought I was cis, because in a very real social and personal way, that’s who and what I was. I do think I was female-socialized in a way that continues to affect my behavior, whether through adoption or rejection. And even though girlhood and womanhood never felt like home, even though there was always that persistent discomfort, there were parts of it that I really enjoyed! Yes, I chose to present as high femme in part as a reaction to feeling undesirable because I was a big, fat kid who never felt like one of the girls, but it was also really fucking fun, and I have real grief in not being able to feel comfortable embodying that anymore. More than anything: I don’t actually feel that I’ve always been male. I don’t think my transmasculinity is anywhere close to cis masculinity. I think that the experience of having been female (and in some ways, still being) is so intrinsically intertwined with my experience of being male that they can’t be separated into “true” and “fake”. I’m uncomfortable with being 100% a “trans man” because I feel like it severs that part of me in a way that “female man” or “FTM” honors. If I do end up medically transitioning, for me it won’t be “gender confirmation” any more than getting a tattoo is “pigment confirmation” -- it’ll be transsexual, because I am deliberately choosing to take what I naturally started out with and modifying it through unnatural intervention across the binary that society imposes on it, and that’s fine. Modification and choice are value-neutral. Transition is an active choice rather than a passive inevitability. And if I do end up happily detransitioning or de-then-retransitioning later (gasp!), that also doesn’t make my masculinity have been less real any more than moving back to Omaha after living in Chicago for 20 years would make someone a “fake” Chicagoan. But I also don’t think that this means that I’m automatically “nonbinary” instead of binary, or that I’m “not really” trans, or that I’m hate-criming other trans people by feeling that way and talking about feeling that way using language that is comfortable for me and uncomfortable for others. In the rush to justify our existence to cisgender people and to shore up our own self-images -- which yeah, for some of us are really aggressively, unhealthily fragile and I think discussions about intra-community conflict and harassment do need to address that elephant in the room -- there’s been tremendous pressure to purge “trans voices” of all the weirdos and cis simps and unfashionable old fogeys who might give transphobes the wrong idea but like...

They’re going to get the wrong idea anyway. It’s not trans language they object to, it’s the existence of trans people itself. TERFs already think that trans men are alienated women. An Evangelical transphobe hears “trans man” and thinks it means “man who considers himself transgender”, i.e. a trans woman. (And trust me, most cis people, even those who’re genuinely trying to be accepting of trans people, actually struggle a lot less with the idea of “MTF/FTM” than “trans woman / trans man”.) Yes, the intra-identity policing of “acceptable” and “accurate” terminology is a tool, and yes, it can be used to certain political ends... but it’s incredibly disheartening to watch trans complexity get squashed by other trans people (or “cis allies” a la the ones gleefully participating in the Attack Helicopter harassment mob) because of the fear that a TERF might screenshot it and use it to justify the beliefs they already have no matter how carefully you word something. And while I don’t particularly care if insular groups of terminally online trans people feel the need to get into internet slap-fight threads with each other over the precise language of a tweet in order to distract from their own niggling insecurity, I do care when people start thinking that someone talking about their own trans experiences and/or identity with unfashionable terms or language that could be “misinterpreted” is cause to send them death threats or accuse them of “doing harm” or harass them in real life.

[baeddel]

Please. Please can you tell me what a baeddel is and why people (terfs?) used it in a derogatory manner on this website for a hot minute but now no one ever uses it at all

you asked for it, fucker

[2k words; philology and drama]

baeddel is an Old English word. i have no idea where it actually occurs in the Old English written corpus, but it occurs in a few placenames. its diminuitive form, baedling, is much better documented. it appears in the (untranslated) Canons of Theodore, a penitential handbook, a sort of guidebook for priests offering advice on what penances should be recommended for which sins. in a passage devoted to sexual transgressions it gives the penances suggested for a man who sleeps with a woman, a man who sleeps with another man, and then a man who sleeps with a baedling. so you have this construction of a baedling as something other than a man or a woman. and then it gives the penance for a baedling who sleeps with another baedling (a ludicrous one-year fast). then, by way of an explaination, Theodore delivers us one of the most enigmatic phrases in the Old English corpus: "for she is soft, like an adulturess."

the -ling suffix in baedling is masculine. but Theodore uses feminine pronouns and suffixes to describe baedlings. as we said, it's also used separately from male and female. but it's also used separately from their words for intersex and it never appears in this context. all of this means that you have this word that denotes a subject who is, as Christopher Monk put it, "of problematic gender." interested historians have typically interpreted it as referring to some category of homosexual male, such as Wayne R. Dines in his two-volume Encyclopedia of Homosexuality who discusses it in the context of an Old English glossary which works a bit like an Old English-Latin dictionary, giving Old English words and their Latin counterparts. the Latin words the Anglo-Saxon lexicographer chose to correspond with baedling were effeminatus and mollis, and Lang concludes that it refers to an "effeminate homosexual" (pg 60, Anglo Saxon). this same glossary gives as an Old English synonym the word waepenwifstere which literally means "woman with a penis," and which Dines gives the approximate translation (hold on tight) male wife.

R. D. Fulk, a philologist and medievalist, made a separate analysis of the term in his study on the Canons of Theodore 'Male Homoeroticism in the Old English Canons of Theodore', collected in Sex and Sexuality in Medieval England, 2004. he analysed it as a 'sexual category' (sexual as in sexuality), owing to the context of sexual transgressions in the Canons. he decides that it refers to a man who bottoms in sexual relationships with another man. i don't have the article on hand so i'm not sure what his reasoning was, but this seems obviously inadequate given what we know from the glossary described by Dines. Latin has a word for bottom, pathica, and the lexicographer did not use this in their translation, preferring words that emphasized the baedling's femininity like effeminatus, and doesn't address the sexual context at all. Dines, however, only reading this glossary, seems to decide that it refers to a type of male homosexual too hastily, considering the Canons explicitly treat them separately. both Dines and Fulk immediately reduce the baedling to a subcategory of homosexual when neither of the sources to hand actually do so themselves.

by now it should be obvious why, seven or so years ago, we interpreted it as an equivalent to trans woman. I mean come on - a woman with a penis! these days I tend to add a bit of a caution to this understanding, which is that trans woman is the translation of baedling which seems most adequate to us, just as baedling was the translation of effeminatus that seemed most adequate to our lexicographer. but the term cannot translate perfectly; its sense was derived from some minimal context; a legal context, a doctrinal context, and so forth... the way Anglo-Saxons understood sex/gender is complicated but it has been argued that they had a 'one sex model' and didn't regard men and women as biologically separate types, which is obviously quite different from the sexual model accepted today; in any case they didn't have access to the karyotype and so on. the basic categories they used to understand gender and sexuality were different from ours. in particular, Hirschfield et al. should be understood as a particularly revolutionary moment in the genealogy of transsexuality; the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft essentially invented the concept of the 'sex change', the 'transition', conceived as a biological passage from one sex to the other. even in other contexts where (forgive me) #girlslikeus changed their bodies in some way, like the castration of the priestesses of Cybele, or those belonging to the various historical societies which we believe used premarin for feminization [disputed; see this post], there is no record that they were ever considered men at any stage or had some kind of male biology that preceded their 'gender identity.' the concept of the trans woman requires the minimal context of the coercive assignment at birth and its subsequent (civil and bio-technological) rejection. i have never encountered evidence that this has ever been true in any previous society. nonetheless, these societies still had gendered relations, and essentially wherever we find these gendered relations we also find some subject which is omitted or for whom it has been necessary to note exceptions. what is of chief interest to us is not so much that there was such a subject here or there in history (and whatever propagandistic uses this fact might have), but understanding why these regularities exist.

a very parsimonious explanation is that gender is a biological reality, and there is some particular biological subject which a whole host of words have been conjured to denote. if this were the case then we would expect that, no matter what gender/sexual system we encounter in a given society, it will inevitably find some linguistic expression. if, like me, you find this idea revolting, then you should busy yourself trying to come up with an alternative explanation which is not just plausible, but more plausible. my best guesses are outside the scope of this answer...

anyway, all of this must be very interesting to the five or six people invested in the confluence of philology and gender studies. but why on earth did it become so widely used, in so many strange and unusual contexts, in the 2010s? we're very sorry, but yes, it's our fault. you see apart from all of this, there is also a little piece of information which goes along with the word baeddel, which is that it's the root of the Modern English word bad. by way of, no less, the word baedan, 'to defile'. how this defiled historical subject came to bear responsibility for everything bad to English-speakers doesn't seem to be known from linguistic evidence. however, it makes for a very pithy little remark on transmisogyny. my dear friend [REDACTED] made a playful little post making this point and, good Lord, had we only known...

it went like this. its such a funny little idea that we all start changing our urls to include the word baeddel. in those days it was common to make puns with your url (we always did halloween and christmas ones); i was baeddelaire, a play on the French poet Baudelaire. while we all still had these urls a series of events which everyone would like to forget happened, and we became Enemies of Everyone in the Whole World. because of the url thing people started to call us "the baeddels." then there was "a cult" called "the baeddels" and so forth. this cult had various infamies attatched to it and a constellation of indefensible political positions. ultimately we faced a metric fucking shit ton of harassment, including, for some of my friends, really serious and bad irl harassment that had long-term bad awful consequences relating to stable housing and physical safety and i basically never want to talk about that part of my life ever again. and i never have to, because i've come to realize that for most people, when they use the word baeddel, they don't know about that stuff. it doesn't mean that anymore.

so what does it mean? you'll see it in a few contexts. TERFs do use it, as you guessed. i am not quite sure what they really mean by it and how it differs from other TERF barbs. i think being a baeddel invovles being politically active or at least having a political consciousness, but in a way thats distinct from just any 'TRA' or trans activist. so perhaps 'militant' trans women, but perhaps also just any trans woman with any opinions at all. how this was transmitted from tumblr/west coast tranny drama to TERF vocabulary i have no idea. but you will also find - or, could have found a few years ago - i would say 'copycat' groups who didn't know us or what we believed but heard the rumours, and established their own (generously) organizations (usually facebook groups) dedicated to putting those principles into practice. they considered themselves trans lesbian separatists and did things like doxx and harass trans women who dated cafabs. if you don't know about this, yes, there really were such groups. they mostly collapsed and disappeared because they were evildoers who based their ideology on a caricature. i knew a black trans woman who was treated very badly by one of these groups, for predictable reasons. so long-time readers: if you see people talking about their bad experiences with 'baeddels', you can't necessarily relate it to the 2014 context and assume they're carrying around old baggage. there are other dreams in the nightmare.

the most common way you'll see it today, in my experience, is in this form: people will say that it was a "slur" for trans women. they might bring up that it's the root of the word bad, and they might even think that you shouldn't use the word bad because of it, or that you shouldn't use the word baeddel because it's a slur. all of this is a silly game of internet telephone and not worth addressing. except to say that it's by no means clear that baeddel, or baedling, were slurs, or even insulting at all. while Theodore doesn't provide us with a description of how we can have sex with a baedling without sinning, and it may be the case that any sexual relations with a baedling was considered sinful, sexuality-based transgressions were not taken all that seriously in those days. there was a period where homosexuality within the Church was almost sanctioned, and it wasn't until much later that homosexuality became so harshly proscribed, to the extent that it was thought to represent a threat to society, etc. and as i mentioned, there are places in England named after baedlings. there is a little parish near Kent which is called Badlesmere, Baeddel's Lake, which was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Domesday Book (as having a lord, a handful of villagers and a few slaves; perhaps only one or two households). it's not unheard of, but i just don't know very many places called Faggot Town or some such. it's possible that baedlings had some role in Anglo-Saxon society which we are not aware of; it could even have been a prestigious one, as it was in other societies. there is just no evidence other than a couple of passing references in the literature and we'll probably never have a complete picture.

[sapphos-catpanions]

so on one hand, you have homosexuality and bisexuality, which appear in every human culture and have appeared in every period of human history, and also appear in many pair bonding animals. they are biological phenomena that predate language, culture, and the species homo sapiens.

homosexuality and bisexuality are also instantly recognizable. they look the same everywhere, and will until the end of time. and they are immutable: we all know that “ex-gay” means the person is still gay.

on the other hand, trans is a self-identification. it is extremely culturally specific: ask any trans rights activist if a white person can identify as two-spirit. it takes strikingly different forms in different times and places, and even in the same time and place: on the same block there may be trans people who desperately want to transition, who don’t want to transition, who feel crippling dysphoria, who feel no dysphoria, who go to great lengths to pass for the opposite sex, who make no effort to alter their appearence, who acknowledge that they are not literally changing their sex, who insist that they have always been the opposite sex, and everything in between. there is no cohesion, and there’s in fact a lot of squabbling over the finer points of the dogma right now. (are trans people under the nonbinary umbrella, or are nonbinary people under the trans unbrella? do you need dysphoria to be trans? and furthermore, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?)

it is also religious: it posits a “gender identity” that has not been shown to have material existence and does not occur anywhere else in the animal kingdom (the few isolated attempts to find transgenderism in animals have been laughable). “gender identity” has a lot of similarities to the “thetan” of scientology and the “soul” of christianity.

it has been given a veneer of scientific legitimacy as some papers have come out attempting to prove that trans people are “valid”, usually by claiming to show some neural similarity between trans men and men, and between trans women and women. but there’s a problem… in attempting to prove that the biological category “trans people” exists, they have assumed that the category “trans people” exists. they have “begged the question.” they have looked at the brains of trans women and women and found similarities. that looks like science to people who don’t know better, but it’s actually pseudoscience. let me know when they can look at trans peoples’ brains and predict who will DEtransition… who’s really “cis”. THAT would be real science.

trans identification is also very subject to change, much like moods are (dysphoria literally means “bad mood”). detransitioners will testify how sincere their trans-identification was, and many of them will have to live with permanent medical disabilities as they try to rebuild their lives. this does not stop those still in the community from slandering them as “never trans”, treating them how all religious zealots treat apostates.

so why is it the lgb”t” community? what do we have in common? what political goals do we share? what do we, as homosexuals and bisexuals, gain by hitching our wagons to the trans rights crowd? the trans rights movement has too many internal inconsistencies and contradictions to last much longer. their ship will sink… i don’t think we need to go down with it.

[spuffybot]

I put this together for my friends but thought some of you might enjoy!


Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin
This book will make you want to vomit but I promise you won’t be able to put it down. Following a pandemic that turns anyone with too much testosterone into a raging, murderous cannibal, two trans women try to get by amid depleting sources of hormones, a rising terf army, and the usual post apocalyptic problems. This book is witty, gruesome, and thought provoking. I loved every repulsive second. Felker-Martin is a clever writer with a knack for horror and her observations about humanity and the current state of gender politics are cutting.

Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White
I seem to have read a lot of queer pandemic horror this year but luckily for me it’s all been stellar. This expertly written YA post apocalyptic nightmare explores a world where religious extremists have decided the only way to save the planet and fulfill gods will is to wipe out the human race. The virus they unleash turns everyone it infects into a grotesque monster, one I won’t describe because you should read the book and also I don’t want to be blamed for making anyone sick. Benji is on the run from the cult responsible for the virus because they’ve selected him for a special mission he isn’t sure he wants to complete. When he stumbles upon a rag tag band of survivors hiding out at the local LGBTQIA+ Center he is forced to decide who he wants to be. I loved this book so much. YA is a tricky genre but this book managed to lean into the hallmarks while also being challenging and thought provoking. It’s also EXTREMELY gory. 

Maurice by E.M Forster
Despite thinking A Room with A View is an absolute classic, I had no idea this novel existed. Written in 1914, Maurice is about a young well off man who grapples with his sexuality and place in society. The book wasn’t actually published until 1971 because Forster feared it would damage his career. For much of the time it existed, novels that ended well for gay characters were prohibited. The Price of Salt gets a lot of recognition for similar reasons and if you’ve read that, I highly recommend reading this! This book is beautiful and flawed and a must read for anyone interested in queer lit and queer history. 

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen
Honestly if you read anything in 2023 please read this book. Wow. This is one of those books that has the potential to unlock something in your brain and change your worldview for the better. I’d never given much thought to asexuality. Plenty of people question their sexual identity, with more young people than ever before openly rejecting heterosexuality in favor of things that feel more authentic to who they are. Less people question sexuality in general. If you’ve never felt confused about whether or not you are interested in sex, why would you? This book invites all of us to question the things we’ve been taught about sexuality: about what consent really means, what being sexual means for you as an individual, and how society has shaped our expectations around sex in relationships. Author Angela Chen does an excellent job of exposing our preconceived notions about sex and breaking down what’s truly innate versus what we’ve been taught to be true. This is absolutely a book I would recommend to everyone.


Girlhood by Melissa Febos

I lied, if you read any book in 2023, let it be this one. Idk maybe just read all of these books. How about that? elissa Febos' powerful memoir / dissection of female adolescence under the patriarchy is genuinely essential reading. It’s beautifully written, seamlessly blending complex theory with personal narrative in a way that makes convoluted subjects effortlessly readable. I suggest taking your time with this one and really sitting with some of the things she talks about. I found this book relatable, triggering, and eye opening. Febos analyzes how being sexualized transformed the way she moved through the world. The freedom and fearlessness she experienced growing up was forever changed when the world went from viewing her as a child to viewing her as a girl. Her chapters on consent are revolutionary and will change the way you think about a lifetime of sexual and non sexual encounters. This is the kind of book that opens your mind to new ideas and new ways of coping with your experiences.

[nerdygaymormon]

In conjunction with the open house of the Washington, D.C. temple, Elder Bednar spoke to the National Press Club. After his prepared remarks, questions were asked. Some of the questions are about topics that would be considered controversial in the church.

One question pointed out that in the USA, for every 5 members of the church who leave, there are 4 converts who join. Elder Bednar says that church is growing in the United States, he didn’t specify but I think the birth rate is still high enough when added to number of converts.

Elder Bednar was asked about negative depictions of the LDS Church in the Under the Banner of Heaven Hulu series and the Book of Mormon musical. His response is, “We don’t like it, but we don’t spend all of our time trying to respond to it.”

Regarding LGBTQ issues, the Church supports legislation like was done in Utah, for LGBTQ rights & protections as long as they don’t require the church to change. He also said the Church’s position is marriage is between a man and a woman.

The question was asked, “You mentioned that women lead within the church in many ways. Will there ever be a female president of the church of Latter-day Saints? Can a woman be a prophet in the lineage of Joseph Smith?” Elder Bednar’s response is that “We follow the pattern of the ancient church...the pattern anciently was that the apostles were men.”

A question was asked whether the church would intervene in politics “by publicly advocating its position that abortion is a woman’s choice in consultation with God and local male leaders in cases of rape or when the mother’s health is at risk?” Elder Bednar reiterated the church’s position but didn’t offer the church getting involved politically.

Elder Bednar was asked how a trans person would be treated if they had already transitioned but wanted to join the church. His response is that “We welcome all and strive to love them.” He went on to say that due to existing stereotypes, misconceptions and biases people in the church may not love perfectly.

————————————————————

I am going to add my thoughts to these responses of Elder Bednar.

It’s clear the Church is barely growing in the USA and soon is likely to enter a stage where it’s shrinking. I thought it was interesting he said there’s been a huge outflow of members in the western US, which is the heart and strength of the church

—————————

On the LGBTQ issues, he failed to mention that a trans member would not be allowed the same rights & privileges as other converts, that there would be restrictions on them that other members don’t have. So yes, the church would welcome them, but only partly.

—————————

I thought the answer about women being apostles or president of the church was interesting. It’s based on tradition, not revelation or doctrine. Here’s the thing, there have been female prophets or apostles in every dispensation except ours. That seems incredible to say considering the misogynistic, patriarchal cultures of those times.

Here are some prophetesses: Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah (mother of the prophet Samuel), Abigail (a wife of King David), Huldah (from the time of Jeremiah), Esther, wife of Isaiah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.

Women were the first witnesses to the empty tomb and speak with the resurrected Christ. We can say they were special witnesses of the resurrected Christ, just as we say apostles are. Junia is an apostle from the New Testament (Romans 16:7). 

Furthermore, Acts 2:17 says in the last days, God will pour out His Spirit upon all people and “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” Any gender can be a prophet.

In other words, there’s no reason why we couldn’t have women in the top leadership of this church.

[nothorses]

Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

[ms-demeanor]

My friend says not to vote in the upcoming election because our liberal establishment is no different from fascism and because Trump's policies are merely an extension of existing policies (like the ICE concentration camps that were established under Obama). How would you, being a leftist like me and my friend, respond to this attitude?

When I was in high school there was one cataclysmic, catastrophic, Very Important school board meeting.

It was a perfect storm of religious freedom, LGBT Rights, and Holy Shit You’re Talking About Taking Daycare Away from Students Who Are Parents.

The first thing, religious freedom, was exceptionally stupid but I think it’s a great example of how shitty the suburb I lived in was and what we were dealing with. Basically the D&D club that I started was accused of being Satanists and the Campus Christian Club was trying to get us shut down for worshipping satan. (I live in the fucking WORST part of LA County, I swear). The defense for the D&D club was pretty simple: If we’re worshipping satan as an on-campus activity at lunchtime we have every right to do so just like the Campus Christian Club an in fact if the Campus Christian Club got us shut down for practicing a different religion they’d made a very effective argument for shutting down their Praising Christ on-campus lunchtime activity.

The second thing was ANOTHER conflict with the Campus Christian Club - this was more serious. This was “High schoolers shouldn’t be exposed to deviant lifestyles and therefore we need to shut down the Gay/Straight Alliance.” At that point the GSA was also very new and I was also the VP of it. Spoilers: we were allowed to continue existing and we had speakers come in from time to time - we had grownups who talked to us about dealing with homophobia and resources for what happened if your parents kicked you out; we had a trans woman in her 50s come and talk to us (in 2003!) about transphobia and dysphoria and how to cope. The adviser handed out a packet to all of us that had the suicide hotline number right at the top, I know at least three people used that number the first year. The defense for the GSA was actually another handy-dandy page out of the ACLU handbook: The Campus Christian Club’s definition of deviance is something they have a right to hold but not to impose on other people - if you ban the GSA based on being ‘deviants’ you are imposing someone else’s belief system on us so knock it off unless you want to be a fun LA Times story.

The third thing didn’t have ANYTHING to do with the Campus Christian Club and was much worse because it had to do with funding and teen moms. The third thing was “The district believes it’s a waste of money to continue to pay for childcare at the district continuation school; if you can’t afford childcare you should have thought of that before becoming a teen mom, good luck getting a babysitter while you’re trying to finish high school.” Four of the students from the continuation school had showed up with their children and their defense of the daycare program was basically (and understandably) “What the fuck you fucking ghouls we just want to finish school and it’s one fucking daycare provider on campus you already have to pay the insurance for childcare providers for other schools in the district what the fucking fuck.”

The D&D Club, GSA, and Childcare for Teen Parents Program were all allowed to continue existing.

By one vote.

By someone who had recently been elected to the school board.

By four votes.

Four people went out and voted that November. Four people filled in a bubble on a ballot.

The GSA did fundraisers to pay for STI testing and suicide prevention. My friend Michelle graduated on time with her daughter waiting in the crowd. Knowing that adult trans people could survive and exist and thrive and love themselves was lifesaving information for a few kids in the GSA.

Four votes. If four people stayed home that’s a hundred fewer STI tests, that’s wondering if Michelle would ever be able to get a job when she didn’t have a diploma and couldn’t hire a babysitter. That’s three dead queer kids and another two homeless.

And it didn’t happen. Because four people filled in a couple of bubbles one night in November.

Voting is not activism but it is by no means useless. If your friend is incapable of distinguishing fascism and liberalism that sounds like a them problem and it sucks to be them; that amount of nihilism is hard to carry around.

People who criticize leftists for “electoral apologism” or whatever for voting are the “yet you participate in society, curious. I am very intelligent” comic

Yeah, the system’s shitty. Yeah, it sucks and should be overthrown. But it’s not overthrown YET so we may as well take advantage of the few areas of harm reduction the system allows. Voting doesn’t mean you STOP doing direct action or that you stop pushing for change, it just means you’re doing the single easiest real-world thing to alleviate suffering. And if it doesn’t work who gives a fuck - you did the bare minimum and it cost you a small amount of time.

Vote and then go hand out food in the park or cut the valve stems off a cop car if you’re feeling angsty about conceding to the system.

(also FUCK, you have no idea how much I hate having to defend the Obama administration but please go talk to a trans person about whether it is easier or harder to get healthcare in their state under Trump or under Obama. I fucking hate liberals but I don’t think that they’re actively interested in overturning Roe V. Wade. Fuck this political purity culture and go learn about harm reduction.)

[communistkenobi]

Conservatism is taken to mean traditional economic laissez-faire individualism, according to which our economic life is conceived in terms of the free (unregulated) competition of individual entrepreneurs. […] Conservative ideology has traditionally urged that the economic functions of government be minimised. Fear of government power (like union power) is emphasised, and great concern is expressed for the freedom of the individual, particularly the individual businessman.

This is the authors’ assessment of American conservativism in the 1940s, and those base assumptions are what inform all of their political questions to participants. They want to ask people questions that will allow the authors to place them on a general left-right political scale and then map their susceptibility to fascism (“ethnocentrism” / “authoritarianism” are the words they use, I’m using the word fascism) onto that scale. The goal being that they want to define the political character of fascism as expressed in everyday sentiments of regular people.

And I don’t think this is an incorrect assessment for the time period, but if you were to administer this survey today, I don’t think you would capture the political character of American fascism very well. That ^ historical definition falls much more in line with right wing libertarianism, which is currently a political minority in America. And like I’m not a historian but my assumption is that the American conservatives of today abandoned free market individualism when they realised that “the free market” is much more socially progressive (or has the appearance of it, anyway) than they like. This is why they lose their minds about gay people in kids shows, trans flags mounted on businesses, black people in their tv shows, etc. The current western market is very eager to cater to socially liberal sensibilities, and has clearly found great success doing so. Like conservatives have essentially lost that slice of the culture war - the free market has figured out a way to make minorities profitable, and while that has dubious material benefits for said minorities (if any exist at all), it’s still a bridge too far for conservatives.

So like they aren’t economic individualists anymore, if they ever were in the first place. They aren’t small government free market types. They want to control the market they feel has abandoned their values, and the way to do that is through the state. I feel like that whole debate around whether or not christian bakeries should have to make cakes for gay couples is the Ur-example of this. I think it also speaks to the inevitability of economic liberalism leading to fascism - you cannot champion the free market and also hold a set of static and regressive political views, because capitalism is going to adapt to whatever environment is most profitable, which necessarily means it’s eventually going to move away from your insane right wing cultural and social beliefs. It’s not “stable” the way conservative social values are. So if you want to maintain capitalism and your social beliefs simultaneously, you’re gonna need an extremely strong state to control the economy

[transmisogyny-explained]

Okay, today we’re discussing some common ways which transmisogyny is understood and talked about within trans TME circles — ways that it’s misunderstood, misconceptions about TME privilege, and the phenomenon of “oppression olympics.”

“extremely unpopular opinion but people treating transmisogyny like the worst kind of oppression you can face is... bad actually”

This isn’t an unpopular opinion; I’ve seen this same idea spread around by TMEs, both cis and trans, but it’s especially prevalent with trans men. Transmisogynists often downplay the severity of transmisogyny in order to excuse their own transmisogyny. This is nothing new.

Being affected by transmisogyny necessarily means being additionally affected by both misogyny and transphobia separately. Meaning that, on a gender-based axis of oppression, those who are affected by misogyny and/or transphobia but not transmisogyny may share something in common with transfems, but they are still privileged over us by virtue of being transmisogyny-exempt. Transmisogyny is not “worse” than any other form of oppression, but because oppression is intersectional and accumulative, transfems being affected by all three axes of oppression means that anyone who is not a transfem necessarily holds some kind of privilege over us. The same way that cis people necessarily hold privilege over trans people, even if they’re oppressed in other ways.

Transfems do not believe that transmisogyny is the worst kind of oppression you can face. I don’t think it’s fair to say that any form of oppression is “the worst,” as it is all bad. However, again, transmisogyny is the culmination of several different axes of oppression interacting, meaning transfeminine people (transfems of color especially) are the most affected by — and cannot be privileged over TMEs in terms of — gender-based oppression. Transfems being vocal about this is not a bad thing.

“it’s definitely really bad! and i don’t think people *intend* to do this. but at the same time it feels like a lot of ‘TMA’ (transmisogyny affected) people take that fact and hold it above others’ heads like it’s worse than any other kind of oppression. and that’s not cool”

Bringing up the fact that TMEs like OP are privileged over us is not “holding it above others’ heads”; this implies that transfems are trying to guilt or force or possibly blackmail TMEs into doing something. What exactly? The only thing I can think of is acknowledging their privilege. TMEs don’t often think about the ways their actions might affect transfeminine people without us trying to insert ourselves into conversations about the oppression of women and trans people. Of course, we’re discouraged from and often punished for doing so because of the abuse we endure from transmisogynists in retaliation, which is why some transfems end up either going full assimilationist or full separationist, but that’s a topic for another day.

I also want to point out that the second sentence strongly implies that transfems are incompetent in understanding and discussing our own oppression. “We don’t intend to treat transmisogyny like it’s the worst kind of oppression, we’re just too stupid and only think about ourselves because we’re entitled males,” is that right?

Lastly, notice how “TMA” is in quotes. Those don’t need to be there unless OP is expressing skepticism towards the idea that TMA individuals (and therefore transmisogyny itself) even exist.

“playing oppression olympics of any kind isn’t okay to do, and honestly i’m kinda tired of seeing it. and this isn’t even getting into how people will weaponize the idea of privilege, whether it’s actually there or not, which is another thing that plays into oppression politics”

I haven’t talked about this directly on this blog yet (though I may have alluded to it before) but the concept of “oppression olympics,” like cancel culture, is yet another attempt by those in a position of privilege to excuse their own bigotry, avoid accountability, and dismiss the concerns of those whom they’re privileged over. Once again, transmisogynists often downplay the severity of transmisogyny in order to excuse their own transmisogyny. “Oppression olympics” is the idea that a person of one marginalized identity will claim to be “more oppressed” than a person of another marginalized identity in order to...do something. It’s never really clear what the intent of “playing oppression olympics” actually is, and that’s because the actual intent is always getting someone to acknowledge that they can be simultaneously oppressed for one identity and privileged by another, and to reconcile with the fact that their privilege informs their experiences, beliefs, and actions. The only people who are benefitted by the perpetuation of the idea that “oppression olympics” exists (and is bad) are people who are absolutely averse to being held accountable for the ways they’ve contributed to the oppression of another group. When a trans woman tells a trans man to “check his privilege,” she’s not saying that transphobia isn’t real, that he doesn’t experience oppression, or that transmisogynistic discrimination is worse than transphobic discrimination. She’s telling him to stop being transmisogynistic.

The phrase “weaponize the idea of privilege” is an...interesting one. The whole concept of privilege, or really the lack thereof, is that some people are denied certain basic rights while others given institutionalized power over them. Yes, some people do weaponize their own privilege — we call that oppression. But an oppressed person cannot levy a privileged person’s privilege against them. That’s...the opposite of what oppression means.

“to clarify, again: i’m not saying that transmisogyny ISN’T bad, or isn’t ‘that bad,’ or anything like that. i’m saying that treating it like it’s the absolute highest tier of oppression isn’t good. it’s like treating others’ trauma as if it’s not ‘as bad’ as yours. don’t do that!”

A more apt comparison would be like if there were two traumatized people and one of those traumatized people was continually triggering the other while insisting that the other is being ableist for asking them to stop because “we’re both equally traumatized.” Transfems and trans TMEs are both oppressed. Trans TMEs are still fully capable of being transmisogynistic.

“i really... hate how often we see takes like ‘trans men don’t know anything about trans women and can’t talk about their issues’ and ‘trans men have a [trans]misogyny’ problem as if there aren’t trans women who just [expletive] Hate Transmasc Guts for no damn reason”

I genuinely don’t know why a trans man would want to talk about our issues instead of just listening to us and boosting our voices. But, yes, if you’re TME then you cannot know what it’s like to be oppressed under transmisogyny, and you therefore are not an authority on the topic. Your opinions matter, but they should not be prioritized over the lived experiences of transfeminine people (which they often are because of transmisogyny).

“Trans men have a [trans]misogyny problem” and “Some transfems use transmisogyny as an excuse to be needlessly hateful and callous towards transmascs as a specific group” are two statements which can coexist. This is plainly whataboutism in order to dismiss the important discussion of misogyny within transmasc circles.

Conclusion:

Talking about transmisogyny is not “treating it like it’s the worst kind of oppression you can face.” Talking about transmisogyny is not erasing or downplaying the oppression of other trans people. Transfeminine people talking about transmisogyny is not speaking over TME trans people. The reason why TMEs are uncomfortable with talking about transmisogyny, the reason they work so hard to shut down and problematize discussions about transmisogyny, is because it forces them to acknowledge their privilege and the ways which they have (even unintentionally) harmed transfeminine people. Acknowledging your privilege should make you uncomfortable because you’re coming to terms with the fact that you have, in some ways, contributed to others’ suffering. What you should do with that discomfort is seek to change it by helping to dismantle the systems which have afforded you that privilege and uplifting those without; not closing your eyes and plugging your ears.

[Image ID: A banner of the pink trans woman flag with white text that reads, “I don’t want to see or be seen by transmisogynists” next to a green check mark /end ID]

[firespirited]

Vagueing here but the notes of the harry potter posts are using the same weird arguments for say, not giving up the n-word because it doesn’t affect structural change. Well you’re right: not saying any of the n-words* (even the academic ones I now censor because I was asked to) doesn’t change a thing to society.

The concept of the n-word exists from the moment someone calls about a black man minding his own business to the police grabbing him off the street for doing normal people stuff while black, to the courts who are stacked to view the black man as less important to his family and community, as less civilized and more disposable and with law written and unchanged since black people were considered property, to his time in jail forced into slavery to get basic necessities where the concept of the n-word is fully enacted on him again.

And yet, every time you mute yourself from singing the n-word and cut people out of your life for using it: you’re having to think. Maybe you don’t think about black people’s feelings at first because you just don’t want to lose non-black friends who do care, but the thought-seed is planted that maybe this actually hurts somebody... real friends wouldn’t drop you if it wasn’t serious right? And bit by bit, this tiny moment of mental “stop and think” translates to understanding that words carry history and ongoing suffering. You grapple with a non-black friend who believes free speech entitles him to use the words and realize you care quite a bit. You start noticing dog whistles and stereotypes: it’s not the n-word but it might as well be and isn’t that shifty and cruel?

So no it won’t change the world to not buy any more JKRowling related anything but it will slowly change you and your friends every time you stop and think about using a potter metaphor and switch to something else. Maybe you’ll start to question the groomer rhetoric and the tasteless predator jokes, the idea of gender performance and “failing” at gender, maybe you’ll even take the time to examine how you perform and enforce your gender in ways that might hurt you or your friends.

These ‘insignificant’ details matter because when we break thought patterns and bad habits we have to question and examine them. Most people don’t just stop smoking: it’s figuring out why you smoke, why you don’t want to smoke any more, how to replace it with something equally rewarding but healthy, slipping and learning from that. You take a small detail that’s been in our cultural background so long we use it as shorthand for personality types and villains... Well to remove the habit will require thinking about the habit and maybe instead of just worrying about losing “politically correct” friends, you’ll start to wonder why it’s serious enough to lose people’s respect and you’ll start thinking about trans people as people who deserve better than to be treated as monsters for existing.

So ok let’s say virtue signalling is a thing, I guess it’s signalling to your friends that you won’t drop them if they come out or date someone marginalized - It’s signalling that this particular discrimination isn’t ok so maybe people might think twice before talking about other bigotries, it’s signalling that you’re more likely to vote for candidates who are trawling trends and polls about issues people care about and that moves the needle a bit. Maybe the real virtue signalling is when you think it’s beneath you to make a tiny gesture of good will, when you say nothing because people will call you a spoil sport.

On the other hand, I am going to use cripple/crip for myself because it jolts people back into seeing the world as it treats me and not the magical happy post disability rights world people seem to think we live in. It’s a tiny act of rebellion and unity with others and it’s only very few words compared to the very many that we’re not reclaiming. You probably have your own slurs used against you and complex feelings about them: it’s how you know stuff is not your words to decide on: the people hurt by them get to choose what is and isn’t off limits or what they choose to reclaim.

*I’m using the most cross-culturally relevant example here, my unlearning journey has been hardest with concepts that would provoke serious wankery if this post ever escaped containment.

[the-scottish-costume-guy]

Some trans things (that might be interesting)

Not entirely sure why I want to share this but I do. To preface this I came out to a doctor for the first time when I was about 16 - which was a long time ago. I can’t stress to you all how much things have changed and how quickly they’ve changed. When I came out I hadn’t heard of other trans men. I didn’t know any trans people or have any celebrities I could point to and say “we exist.” When I went to the doctor I was tearfully asking them to fix me, I didn’t know what transitioning was.  Anyway, this means that the assessment at the Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) was as much a discovery for me as my doctor. I didn’t lie, but luckily my story generally lined up with expected narritives. At some point during the appointment/assessment the doctor asks me “Do you ever want kids?” And I reacted very negatively. No. No the thought of having kids is terrifying, the thought of being a mother was horrible. I pictured carrying a child on my hip and doing the things that I needed to - mixing up bottles, changing nappies. I went on a rambling explination of why all those things made me very uncomfortable. The doctor politely cut me off. “Let me rephrase... would you like to be a father?” And here’s the thing, you’d think it wouldn’t make much of a difference. I imagined all the exact same scenarios. The only thing different in the images was me - me flat chested, maybe with a beard. The kids calling me ‘Dad’ instead of ‘Mum.’ At the time just that tiny recontextualisation was so dizzying and I found that yeah I DID want that. I wanted it so much at the time, I cried during the appointment. The doctor told me that things like this happened a lot - where he’d ask a question and we’d answer with the context we’d been forced to consider our whole lives, rather than the context of what things could be.  It was the moment that I accepted my identity. Again nothing in my imagined scenarios changed. I didn’t think that baby shit was going to suddenly smell like roses. I didn’t think it was going to be easy or that I was going to be absentee.  In the years since I’ve realised I don’t want to be a dad. I spent years caring for a parent, I’ve only just gotten my life sort of together and I want to have time just looking after myself and my partner. Maybe one day we’ll foster but not anytime soon. But yes I just wanted to share this anecdote. 

[mommy-issues-haver]

sex and gender vs sexuality: why sexuality is a distinct category

i’ve been thinking about the idea that the way terfs view trans people is the same as how homosexuals were viewed 60 years ago in wider society. but i think there are some pretty important distinctions to make:

1. sex is the single truest impulse of any sexually reproducing species. and while this impulse is derived from the fact that reproduction is necessary for survival, homosexuality still exists and has similar sexual drives. the sex drive may have become part of our physiology in order to reproduce, but that doesn’t mean that sexual desire = a conscious desire to reproduce. this demonstrates the homosexual sex drive is innate to biology and not socialization.

2. nothing in nature requires gender roles. gender is not mandated by nature. yes, there are sex-based tasks (ie breastfeeding) but the concept of gender is not an inherently natural concept. there is nothing in nature that requires gender roles. again, i am speaking of gender here and not sex. there are certain divisions of labor that were ability-based and tended to therefore be sex-based, like hunting vs gathering or child rearing (ie one woman may breastfeed multiple children, not all of whom were hers) but this in itself does not constitute gender or gender divisions. on a small scale, pre-agriculture, we cannot say there is gender-based systemic oppression because there simply is no system. there may be cultural and generational sex-based oppression, but not gender-based. the gender hierarchy, of which women will always be on the bottom, is what must be abolished.

i don’t have strong feelings about the lgb alliance or the idea that the T should be dropped from lgbt, but i do think that there is a reasonable argument against all so-called “queer” identities being grouped together that isn’t rooted in malice towards trans people. our wants, needs, and challenges are very different. in the end, it is difficult to separate anything we do from the society we live in (need i remind you that the personal is political) but i do think it’s easier to separate sexuality from society than gender.

[tevanbuckley]

The thing that I can’t get over with Loki is that I just hate that Sylvie exists as a character, she’s just a terrible, awful copout. You can love her, you can think she’s the baddest bitch the mcu has ever offered up, you can think her and loki are the best romance that has ever dared grace our screens. And honestly if they’d written more effectively around the incest issue I think what they were going for could’ve worked. But you can’t avoid the fact that she exists as a character because marvel was either too ignorant or too chicken shit to actually make Loki genderfluid. After explicitly saying that he would be. That’s a fact. I don’t care how much you love the character, the show or the relationship. At some point in your enjoyment of it you have to reconcile that.

Loki could’ve been brilliant, like genuinely all of the building blocks were there. A queer character who has to break free from this oppressively normative organisation and decide their own destiny after literal centuries of trying to compete with their hyper-masculine warrior-archetype brother? Fucking sign me up. But for that to work as an effective allegory you have to be willing to centre Loki’s queerness. Why not have a good omens style relationship between Loki and Mobius where Loki is the “corrupting” influence ala crowley that allows both of them to break free, or by making Sylvie explicitly trans (and ya know, casting a trans actor). Like a Loki who’s literal nexus event was them identifying as the perceived ‘wrong’ gender and our Loki realising through that mirror that they can be literally whatever they want? Again ideally through some kind of expression of his own queer identity. Chef’s kiss. But the show isn’t willing to centre Loki’s queer identity (any identity) in any meaningful way. We get one line. One. And some set dressing that is contradicted by the script on multiple occasions.

Let me compare it to TFATWS, if you swapped Sam out for a white man the entire premise of the show falls apart. Sam’s anger at what’s happening post-blip and his sympathy with Karli is directly presented through the lens of his identity as a Black American. Now cut that one line from Loki, literally nothing about the show would change, because nothing about this show was constructed with that identity even remotely in mind. There’s no stakes to his queerness. And the idea that that’s a good thing, that “oh queer people are just like straight people, sexuality doesn’t matter” is based in some very sketchy early 2000s respectability politics. Queer people aren’t just Straight and/or Cis people with a spicy dating life. It’s not much to ask that my experience as a queer person matters more than just “he said he dated a man once”.