#I'm not convinced that makes me white supremacy misogynist

[aliasl]

ok, I've been tagged in this enough times that i've finally read everything and feel like responding

FIRST, I admire your passion, @osakanone. But I'd advise you redirect that passion to enjoyment and not competition.

I DON'T want to insult you, but I'll just say: you seem young. The demographic you are counting as "shippers," and thus the units you are measuring popularity of the aforementioned ships by, are fanfic writers. It gives you numbers to work with, but it's not fair to say that the number of fics directly relates to number of fans of a ship. Writing is a huge undertaking that not every ship enjoyer undertakes, and not only that, it's a strange metric to focus on - what about fan art? What about DOUJINSHI???

Gundam, as a Japanese property, has its own unique fandom ecosystem. I'm an American who's been an anime fan a loooooong time, and I don't know all the ins and outs, but fanfiction doesn't seem to be a popular medium there. Rather, doujin is king.

And let's talk about fan works... Why do they exist? Because, despite how much you enjoy a piece of media, you see something missing. You don't transcribe a show when you write fanfic. It's a creative process. Talking about doujin - a visible, money-making part of fandom - that's an easy way for a mangaka/creator to see the popularity of their work; rather than a census (like Shonen Jump will do a weekly popularity quiz), you have Comiket. And so, Yoshiyuki Tomino rightly points out the fujos as the true, passionate fanbase - the fellow creators, not just the consumers who buy toys. But why do "fujoshi" exist? These "rotten women"? Because they see gay love where a homophobic, majority straight audience (by which I mean society) refuse to. And we won't get into a conversation about "fetishizing homosexuality" and "authorial intent." Maybe Tomino would have included explicit gay representation in his shows if he could, but... we all know that Gundam is not that.

Thus all the gay fanworks, in which fans make up for what canon lacks. And you probably don't all ship the same ships. Or agree on characterization. And anyway, "The work of many artists, designers, writers, even videos of events are just lost media because we didn't have the archival mentality adults develop" ....... When I was a teenager, I was saving jpegs of my fav yaois to my PC en masse. Archival ain't just an adult mindset; shipping isn't majority teenagers. If even the creators of fan works aren't holding onto their work and reuploading on modern, supported sites... that speaks to a lack of care, not just a lack of foresight.

FFN went to adult fanfiction.net or live journal or ao3, and it was up to the authors to transfer their works themselves (you DO NOT reupload someone else's work FOR THEM). So if they didn't... it was they who moved on. REITERATING AGAIN: the number of fanfics does not equal the number of shippers (and not just because one author could be uploading a hundred fics of the same pair - it's just not a direct measurement), but it was an easy number to point to when *checks notes ... can't find it, has to Google* "Sulemio" was pitted against Destiel.

Gundam Witch Mercury premiered in 2022!! Destiel became a ship in 2008!!!!!! With all due respect, it was not a fair fight nor is a Tumblr poll an accurate census. "urgh this is just a trend tumblr will get over it and go back to supernatural" I certainly have. I never got around to watching this Gundam show, though I've heard a bit about it - only great things. Meanwhile, I am still obsessing over Supernatural (and particularly Destiel) four years after the show ended, and over a decade since I started watching the show. I don't expect everyone to share my obsession. Tumblr may be the destiel site, but no one is enforcing ship supremacy.

It was a bad idea to start a fight over ships to begin with! Again, "Sulemio" has existed 2 years; Destiel has existed 16!!! It's just basic respect for legacy. You think I ship Spirk?? No. I never got into Star Trek. I don't find Shatner and Nemoy attractive or compelling, personally. But do I go kick the hornet's nest? No. This has transformed two molehills into an ugly mountain. Now, you're casting aspersions like Destiel shippers are "waspy Americans." As though it isn't also a global phenomenon (which just isn't impressive these days, with the internet. What ISN'T a global phenomenon?). Spn also has a female majority audience. We are not so different. Only in size.

So can we not make this about race? Or ethnicity? Or country? Or men vs women? Let's just not insult entire fanbases! You don't make yourself big by trying to make others feel small.

P.S. I never heard of Yukio Mishima before, but reading the Wikipedia page on his Forbidden Color book, without much context... why are we upholding misogynist, infidelious gays as great gay storytelling? You know the root of homophobia is male misogyny. All my homies hate gay misogynists.

tldr; nature is NOT healing. same shit, different day. there'll be peace when we are done, which is how you know we ain't done yet 🙄 😒

UPDATE: The Destiel/Supernats aren't taking this well -- explaining my reasoning for the history I gave, and why Destiel is not the big bitch of shipping that it thinks it is

An update to THIS:

"This is just a marketing thing, Gundam is a giant robot show, only men watch it!"

Gundam's fandom is silent majoratively feminine:

"But its not gay, its about giant robots!"

Gundam is very gay. The entire climax of the first story is a riff of Yukio Mishima lmao

The climax of the Amuro/Char arc of Universal Century Gundam (expounding from first Gundam circa 1979), Char's Counterattack is somewhat on the history of Japanese disillusion with liberalism which notably climaxed with the life and history of Yukio Mishima.

You know. THAT Yukio Mishima.

The one who wrote FORBIDDEN COLOURS.

It was so gay that the fanfiction inspired by it became its own damn anime:

And that's just Charmuro, let alone Charma or a billion other ships just in OG Gundam alone.

We've got This is before we get to Guin Sard Lineford and Yamagi Glimerton (both verrrrry gay), Tieria Erde (a genderqueer trans-coded character who transcends gender entirely in their arc) and a bunch of others.

Gundam was always gay.

"I don't see the numbers"

"That doesn't seem like much, Supernat is at least 2x this"

Sooooo the amount of content you do see isn't representative of how much even got written, given FFN had a huge content purge.

First, let's start with the relative proportion of users: If we're analysing the concept of fandom, we first have to look at who had access to the internet in the first place to publish works.

Yeah that's a pretty sizable difference.

Wing's fandom actually exploded in 2000, but got capped VERY early, distributing itself to fansites when FFN fragmented and collapsed.

Why?

Content purges!

"Isn't there some sort of online archive of this stuff?"

Sure, if you wanna dig through tons and tons of Angelfire and Geocities pages which have mostly disappeared. Otherwise, no! There is no archive of this stuff?

"Why?"

They've since rolled back on this but it means there's a massive amount of lost media out there, including the discussions on it and thus there's an entire history you didn't get to experience.

Its actually very difficult to reach people who've been involved, since it was so long ago that very few people remember, and a sizable proportion of that population have actually died.

"But what about SF fandoms? We have ancient records of stuff like Spirk!"

See unlike physical media like zines, when a server goes offline or there's a data-loss, or something like that there is no surviving copy of the thing in question.

The net result is we have this weird hole where content just vanished, and its now considered lost media. The work of many artists, designers, writers, even videos of events are just lost media because we didn't have the archival mentality adults develop.

You're not gonna hear about all the X-Files stuff or Frasier fanfictions or GW stuff because of these purges and the lack of physical media. FFN users were teens, not adults with resources like US/EU/JP SF fans, who had archival tendencies due to their long history.

So there is this supermassive black-hole in the history of fanfiction running between 1998, and 2008 and some of the only evidence of it are worksafe works and fansites which the owners have long since forgotten about because folks moved on. Moving on is a normal part of fandom.

So to those of you just saying "supernatural is losing to a pair of dumb anime girls" or "urgh this is just a trend tumblr will get over it and go back to supernatural"...

Uhhhhh no they won't, actually?

Supernat's fans mostly seem to be waspy Americans. Gundam is kind of a global phenomenon, one which has traditionally had a silent majority female audience, a vocal minority male audience -- and every time that majority has spoken up, its coincided with a content purge, or a TOS change that mysteriously biases American derived fiction over Japanese derived fiction.

Funny that.

tl;dr:

NATURE IS HEALING

[molsno]

just because transmascs don't face the exact same type of oppression that transfems do, doesn't mean that we don't face oppression at all. you don't have to use the term transandrophobia, but don't act like we're the pinnacle of society and we garner respect wherever we go, whoever we interact with. we tried to make our own space in the trans community wider by creating a term to describe our unique experience with oppression, and the community immediately shot us down.

it's a good thing I never said that! c'mon now, do you really think you're gonna convince me to change my mind by putting words in my mouth?

if I started smashing together different aspects of my identity and pretended they formed a new and unique kind of oppression, where would it end? should I start talking about "alesbophobia" because I'm an asexual lesbian? sure it presents some challenges that manifest in specific ways but those challenges aren't unique, other asexuals and lesbians experience them separately.

what if added my transness into the mix to call it "transalesbophobia"? yeah these are all inseparable parts of me and again, I do feel like I experience them in ways specific to my being an ace lesbian trans woman, but none of these things meaningfully intersect in a way that makes the resulting product unique.

except, oh wait, whoops, I've only been giving you examples of mashups between actual marginalized identities I hold. I almost gave you too much credit there! let's go with something more analogous to transandrophobia.

suppose I were to start talking about the specific experiences I have as a white trans woman, and I decided to give those experiences a name like "blanchetransmisogyny", and I started insisting that this is something important that white trans women need to be able to talk about. even though yes, my whiteness is inseparable from the rest of my identity and that results in the transmisogyny against me taking shape in specific ways, those manifestations aren't unique. if they were unique, then that would imply that there's a widespread hatred of white people within society, a la "reverse racism". but there's no such thing! I may be marginalized for being a trans woman, but I still hold privilege over trans women of color because I'm white. insisting otherwise would absolutely reek of white supremacy, and poc would have every reason to "shoot me down" as you put it.

that's what you're doing with transandrophobia. it's not about "describing your unique experiences with oppression", it's about denying your male privilege. yes, you are oppressed for being trans, and within the context of larger society, you will very much feel that oppression. but the fact of the matter is that you still hold privilege over trans women just by way of being a man. and guess what! denying that fact is extremely misogynistic. if a cis man did the same thing you're doing but to a cis woman, there would be no denying his misogyny. so why is it ok for you to do it to a trans woman?

and if I'm being honest, having misogynistic trans guys coming into my inbox to mansplain oppression to me every week is testing my patience! I don't have to explain any of this to you, especially not when I've already written numerous posts about it that you can browse at your convenience. next time I might just decide to be the mean bitch tranny you all seem to think I am!

[the-feminist-philosopher]

They tell me that- as a woman- one day I'll eat my words. One day I'll regret standing by those who they seek to exclude. They even suggest that some day someone will take advantage of my advocacy; that it may bring my death.

While I know that isn't so, I'm still willing to take that chance.

Mostly because I know that defending the purity of white womanhood has always been a "significant axis of common bigotries" and that Fascist propaganda often obsesses over white fertility. I also know that if I am to be assaulted, statistically, it will be by someone closest to me.

I don't fear the world, even though I've long been told that I should.

I also recognize that when your movement is lauded by the likes of Piers Morgen and highlighted by the likes of Tucker Carlson and defended by the likes of Ben Shapiro, there's a better than good chance you're on the wrong side of history.

I know you're funded by Christian rightwing groups from the United States. And I know you've allied with groups from the Heritage Foundation to the American Center for Law and Justice to the Alliance Defending Freedom. I know they design the legislative templates you use for your anti-trans legislation and I know they help campaign your legislation.

I know your monies and the organizations and leaders who head your movement are supporting the very organizations and politicians working to strip people of the right to abortion.

I hope your bigotry tastes sour knowing you traded away our rights to the "devil" for the chance to hate without consequence. I hope it tastes sour knowing that you helped create the very tool with which the rightwing aims to destroy feminism altogether.

I hope it continues to sour on your tongue as you give your money and support and alliances to those who are banning books from our schools and public libraries; to those who are suing libraries for displaying pro LGB books, accusing them of peddling "porn" and "obscenities;" to those who are pushing to end privacy protections in marriage and medicine- that very thing that allows people to love in peace; and to those groups dedicated to connecting "radical feminists" with hate groups who target the LGBT+ community and who think LGBT+ people are a sin and child predators.

I hope it tastes foul knowing that the founders and co-founders of your movement are eco-fascists who believe that the Earth needs a "mass die off" in order to preserve the environment.

But you don't care about the genocidal foundations and tone of your movement, do you? Wasn't it Janice Raymond herself who advocated for “morally mandating [transsexualism] out of existence,” mainly by restricting access to transition care? And wasn't it Sheila Jeffreys who called trans women "parasites"?

Please understand that the likes of Richard Spencer recognize how useful your language and beliefs are to recruiting more women as white supremacists. It doesn't take much to convince someone who believes that our hierarchies are due to biology to believe in overt white supremacy. It doesn't take much to convince someone who believes in gender essentialism to fully embrace bio essentialism.

You may have "liberation" and "radical" and "feminist" in your self-proclaimed title, but I know your movement has ultraconservative ties. You cannot ally with these groups and still call yourself an advocate for women's rights or claim to support lesbians. You cannot ally yourself with anti-abortion, violent misogynist, or hate groups and still claim you're a "feminist."

You have co-opted leftist language and now capitalize on women's social frustrations and genuine grievances with the patriarchy and the existing social order to create a feeling of political loss. And you tell them this loss is the result of a lower social group.

But, no, go ahead and make yourself palatable to the very system that exploits us and mistreats us (/sar). Go ahead and repeat the same talking points as the alt right.

Like the idea the is an immutable physical sexual dimorphism

or the idea that pornography is corrupting

or the idea that activist criticism destroys people's social capitol

or the idea that one's gender is tied to one's sex

or the idea that certain groups are intrinsically violent and aggressive, so we should have "separatism:" the practice of separating a certain group of people from a larger body on the basis of ethnicity, religion, or gender

or the idea that science and "fact" can never be bigoted, as if that's not exactly what people said about eugenics and as if there aren't countless examples of "biological fact" being used to justify atrocious things

or the idea that policies around sex or gender are an act of paternalism; a way to "protect" women

or the idea that there are innate qualities to the different sexes

or the idea there are certain universal and intrinsic biological or psychological features at the root of the difference between the sexes

or the idea that sex is a necessary condition for gender

or the idea that biological sex determines who a person is

or the fixation on classifying people into separate groups

or the idea that some "women" are simply foolish and brainwashed; that they can't really think for themselves to make a big decision about anything from medical procedures like transitioning to careers like sex work

or the idea that women are defined by and subject to their biology and biological functions, thus reducing women only to the break-down of their definition: a bipedal anthropoid of the sex that can bear offspring and produce eggs, and stripping them of the the quality or condition of being an individual person

You don't even realize how your sense of comfort in the public sphere is tied to your views on ‘proper’ 'female' presentation. You cannot discriminate on the basis of transgender status without imposing a stereotypical notions of how sexual organs and gender identity ought to align. You are making assumptions about someone's reproductive anatomy and making decisions about someone's status or inclusion based on how you think people with that reproductive anatomy ought to behave or do behave.

"Transphobic policies may be instituted on the grounds of 'protecting women,' but in practice, all they do is institute a hellish panopticon where everyone is constantly inspected for signs of gender nonconformity, and where the only way to stay safe... is to present as the absolute most stereotypical version of your assigned sex at all times."

-Jude Ellison S. Doyle

When we try to set firm limits on who’s allowed to identify as a woman, or what women are allowed to look like, cisgender women invariably suffer too. Limiting the definition of "woman" is only going to lead to more violence against women as this practice will always exclude people who are women, but who don't neatly fit into your definition of woman.

"Any attempt to catalog the commonalities among women … has the inescapable result that there is some correct way to be a woman. This will inevitably encourage and legitimize certain experiences of gender and discourage and delegitimize others, subtly reinforcing and entrenching precisely those forces of socialization of which feminists claim to be critical."

-Carol Hay 

In reality, your pro-police, anti-sex worker, anti-porn, anti-trans politics only robs people of their autonomy and personhood under the guise of keeping them safe.

Can you even structure a feminist argument or discuss a feminist issue without an attack on trans, nonbinary, gender non conforming, and intersex people?

Your misogyny is old. It's tired. It's unoriginal. And it's time to put it down.