#Meaning they’re all on the Trans Parallel Agenda!

[completeoveranalysis]

[5]

Ohoho Egg Time!

Or at least Egg Explanation Time. 

I can’t remember exactly how much xxxHolic told us about where the Egg came from, but we see a little glimpse of it in the first frame here - in Acid Tokyo, when Sakura had her solo mission in the desert and brought back the monster egg that split into two when given to Yuuko. 

It’s a lovely parallel to what happened with Lava Lamp and Watanuki. 

And I’m sure Yuuko is just about to explain which two people the egg is for, but it’s Watanuki and Himawari! Or like, Himawari and Doumeki, but the Doumeki egg is specifically to save Watanuki, so that’s basically the same thing.

Yeah here we go!

With an addendum of ohhhhhh! So the different names and appearances was a deliberate choice in an effort to keep them both existing and not erased by the vague timeline rules!

That’s very fun. 

Also you could also draw a parallel between one egg that was born to be raised (Lava Lamp) and one egg that gave birth to nothing (since Watanuki was originally intended to vanish). That’s slightly less fun!

Also if Yuuko opening the locket is the going to reveal the actual faces of the parents I’m going to scream.

I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN. 

BUT!

BUT! MATCHING FAMILY MOMENT! WATANUKI WITH HIS PARENTS! WATANUKI IN LITTLE FORMAL WEAR! 

WATANUKI AND LAVA LAMP HAVING MATCHING PHOTOGRAPHS WITH THEIR PARENTS! 

And their parents giving Watanuki an auspicious name designed to protect him from his fate - which has worked so far! And even the word itself is about a process of conversion!

The meaning behind it all!

[harrypotterfuryroad]

can you talk about your thoughts on the Witch Trials podcast? I liked hearing JK’s interview but not much of the rest of it

short version is that it was way too both-sidesy about everything when the two sides did not warrant equal weight

like it kinda posed itself as a primer on “the debate” but it never really covered why the trans movement has a problem with jk rowling. you have contrapoints on saying things like “joanne’s words are very hurtful :c” without detailing what specifically he’s reacting to

and it felt like the producers didn’t really have a grasp of things going into the whole project. they started with a recap of how evangelicals lost their minds over harry potter in the 90s (which for the record i thought was really good reporting) and they had the correct takeaway message of “this group is not really reacting to the books but more leveraging their popularity to push their own agenda and interests”

and i figured they would obviously see the parallels between then and now but they don’t even make the connection, they just act like jk rowling was the center of two media kerfuffles by sheer coincidence

the parts where she actually got to talk were good, but megan phelps roper was kind of a softball interviewer. felt like someone with more journalistic experience would’ve gotten a better interview from her

when megan tried to tie in her own experiences was where the wheels really started to fall off. she doesn’t seem like she’s really grappled with or processed a lot of what happened to her, to the point where i don’t think she even realizes she was part of a cult. her framing of it was “i was raised in a religious family and they taught me hateful beliefs but i don’t agree with them anymore” which like, is ok if you’re a standard middle america christian kid, but you’ve got a bit more to go through if your grandpa is fred fucking phelps. i’m not blaming her for existing or anything, like i know everyone heals at their own rate, but maybe put the podcasting on hold until you get some perspective on cult dynamics

like her takeaway from the experience at this point seems to be “that group taught me to be mean to people, maybe i should be nice to everyone” which led her to give people like natalie wynn a bit more credit than they deserve here. the podcast briefly covers the forstater case and the june 2020 essay, but hardly gets into detail, especially against critics. megan takes everything they say at face value and never makes them explain or defend why they’re saying that jk rowling is a harmful bigot. like beyond whether or not you agree with the claim, it’s just basic journalism to get them to provide evidence

side note but the fact that she pretty much let contrapoints run the show and say whatever he wanted and portray himself as the victim and he still got eaten alive by pride flag pfp twitter users says way more than the podcast ever did

so yeah bottom line it felt like they didn’t really have a throughline for the whole podcast and they were just kinda figuring it out as they went. the recap of the 90s stuff was interesting bc i was like 8 when it all happened so i was kinda only peripherally aware of it and it was nice to have the hindsight perspective, but they just didn’t do anything to connect the dots

[the-ghost-king]

the term malewife isn’t a very nice term to use...

A man who acts as a wife and is inferior to his #girlboss girlfriend.

Person A: I just got myself a malewife. He's gonna clean my kitchen and watch me download custom content for the sims.

Person B: Sweet! You must be such a girlboss

^^urban dictionary. It’s just confirming to the sexist stereotypes that perceive and expectation of what a wife should act like. It’s quite harmful

It's a parallel to girlboss which is conformity to the sexism within corporate America:

"it becomes inescapably clear that when women center their worldview around their own office hustle, it just re-creates the power structures built by men, but with women conveniently on top. In the void left after the end of the corporate feminist vision of the future, this reckoning opens space to imagine success that doesn’t involve acing performance reviews or getting the most out of your interns." (here)

The word girlboss comes from a book quite literally called #girlboss, in parallel to the negative aspects of this book people eventually rebranded the term "malewife" to parallel it (malewife was originally an nsfw type thing)

In the malewife/girlboss "system" it's essentially the swapping of the problematic aspects, expectations, and socialization of men and women within a relationship

"Girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep" was a meme started to pick on the idea that women should become men and enforce the sexism within corporate society, and I'm sure it was a jab at the book the word came from as well.... "Manipulate, mansplain, malewife" was created to parallel the original meme

So yeah, the whole concept is mocking sexism within corporations and and modern relationships and showing how ridiculous it is. Girlboss mocks the idea of 2014 (largely) white feminism within America.

In example the original meme (created on Twitter) is intended to make mockery of Karen-types:

On January 12th, 2021, Tumblr user missnumber1111 posted, "today’s agenda: gaslight gatekeep and most importantly girlboss," garnering over 43,500 notes in a month (shown below). On that day, Twitter user @CUPlDL0VE posted, "my agenda is gaslight gatekeep and #girlboss," the first instance of the phrase on Twitter.

And a day later on January 13, 2021 Tumblr user a-m-e-t-h-y-s-t-r-o-s-e reblogged the post along with a photoshopped image of "Live, Laugh, Love" wall art instead reading, "Gaslight every moment, Gatekeep every day, Girlboss beyond words" (shown below). On January 18th, the image was reposted to Twitter for the first time.

Malewife doesn't hold those same implications however... The term malewife which is now being used to parallel girlboss achieves it's origins from p*rn, now I'm not an nsfw blog or someone who blatantly discusses nsfw concepts on my blog so I'm not getting super into it but there's a few places it comes from: femdom, bdsm, and feminization kinks... All of which have a connection to queerness in their own right but I don't feel comfortable going into the complexities of that with so many younger people following me.

On February 15th, Tumblr user @relelvance posted, "Manipulate, mansplain, malewife" as a male-themed opposite to "gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss," garnering over 27,000 notes in four days. The post was screenshotted and reuploaded by Twitter user @nortoncampbell on the same day, garnering over 14,200 likes and 2,800 retweets in the same span of time (shown below).

Urban dictionary's explaination of "malewife" is not only harsher than what malewife was intended to mean, but also removes the context of origin from the word- making it something new, different, and erasing the history of who originally used this word.

Because of Malewifes origins vs Girlboss origins, malewife is a less problematic term than girlboss and is more "affectionate" because the term malewife and it's use (up until recently) involved the man acknowledging that he wanted to be the "wife" in his relationship. There's a variety of reasons someone might do this, but it can generally be summed up as a mixture of personality and also personal wants.

I do think it's important to also note that although these words are being "glamorized slightly" they're still intended and being used in a memeing manner, but they're also used to quickly denote arbitrary traits in an individual and categorize those traits...

Although there's lots of conversations to be had for a variety of reasons about the origin and use of the word "girlboss" in relation to sexism, up until recently the world "malewife" was something claimed by men, something men wanted to be called, and something that men who used the term wanted to reference them.

Malewife is about "stepping-up" to "take on" "female" social roles, and it's something that at least some women would be happy to see in society:

"...We have been told that we can have it all, but so far we have noticed that it is extremely hard work having it all, because you still have to do everything that your mother did but now you have to do everything your father did as well. Except that your father had your mother waiting at home with a gin and tonic and his slippers when he came home from work, and you have the washing up and the shopping and a few screaming brats as well as a bloke with his feet up on the sofa watching the football... " (via. Victoria Mary Clarke)

And I don't think that she's wrong at all. Women are still expected to do so much more than men in society without equal reward.

Malewife exists as a a sort of fantasy removed from the truth of society. It's an idea that a husband can be waiting at home to care for his wife, and in this instance it benefits the woman- unlike Clarke's situation above, the woman comes home from a long day and is able to relax without the pressures of society and her life.

Where housewife is a word that holds its origins in forced subservience, malewife is a term that is showcasing men "picking up the torch" in regards to housework- where housewife is socially forced, and girlboss is reversed social compliance, malewife is the rejection of social expectations.

Malewife is about men finding a place in their life's and relationships to make themselves more than a paycheck. To say "I can be emotionally there for my spouse, I can clean a toilet, and drive kids to school, and I don't treat my spouses wants as something expendable". In a society in which men are often demeaned, mocked, and scorned for picking up socially female roles (say hello to misogyny and gendered contamination!)

The Urban dictionary definition, is not only too harsh- but not the way in which the word is intending to be used, because that's ignoring the origins of this word, and the fact that men had a choice in becoming malewifes where women didn't have that choice. It should read more like:

Person A: Ah yeah, I have a malewife waiting for me, he's going to clean my kitchen because I've had a hard day at work and need a break, and then he's going to watch me download custom content for the Sims because I enjoy the game so much and it helps me take a break from life!

Women's wants were often ignored in favor of men's wants, so by the malewife saying he's going to watch his spouse play the Sims, he's really saying "I care about her interests" and by him picking up the kitchen cleaning after she's had a stressful day he's saying "I have a lower stress job so I can handle that for her and make her life a little easier" (because malewife doesn't mean he doesn't have a job).

In a society in which a man's worth is tied to his ability to bring home money and be emotionally distant, malewife is the rejection of this norm. Malewifes are going to be there for their spouse, they're going to step up and take on traditionally women's roles and they're doing it because they want to, because they like it, and because dividing chores into pink vs blue is wrong.

I also want to say, you can't flip a word around and say it does "this" because that's not how it works... Men and women are forcibly socialized in very different ways, the two binaries have very different treatment, and expectations within societies social constructs. If you could flip the forms of oppression that men vs women face (because yes, the patriarchy oppresses men) then you could also flip the forms of violence faced by trans masculine people vs trans feminine people- but that doesn't work either, because women will always be oppressed in the most public way to "make an example of them" while the patriarchy expects anyone who is male to "keep his mouth shut and fall in line". (I know that's worded poorly, but I've just written at least a couple hundred words and my brain is a bit fried already from various other things today- basically anyone perceived female or male will be treated in a certain way as a result of others perception of them)

Anyhow, all this isn't to say that the term "malewife" is inherently free of any form of flaw ever... Malewife is a newly mainstream word, it wasn't popularized until February 15 of 2021... So?? 5 days ago?? The origins of malewife and the social implications of malewife combined with the history of the word, don't make the word bad or impressive and it's not "upholding the ideals of a housewife" but instead a word which provides men freedom from male social expectations.

Can the word malewife come to be a word which enforces expected female social behavior? Yeah it absolutely can become a word to mean that, erase the history from the word, and give it to someone who doesn't know the history of the word, and someone who doesn't have an intimate understanding of gender theory, and you've got a recipe for hundreds more asks like the one you've sent me...

I can't find a single positive reason to use the word girlboss in an empowering way, but I can find more reasons to use the word malewife in an empowering way than not to do so.

So at the very least if all you come away from this with is that I don't personally use the word malewife to uphold female social expectations in a relationship but instead I use this word to provide space for guys to be allowed to be feminine, soft, caring, emotionally present, and worth more than their monetary value, then I guess that's okay.

[transsexualhamlet]

pushing my shameless trans agenda onto liam

Hi i just think he’s transgender have you seen the man

Ok so obviously I’m not intending to say this is canon or ever will be canon i just think it would be Neat and i can fit it within canon since well we really can’t tell and there’s honestly a lot of things that fit with it :) also it’s just my favorite characters get hit with the transgenderification beam bc i say so

The whole argument is basically:

-the Name Situation

-his appearance and mannerisms

-his Past TM 

-the Bond Situation

-and because I said so

But yeah so the main reason this came to mind is because of the whole deal with his name. I made a previous post on this but yeah, the thing about liam’s name is a big deal, and you know, as a trans person I see it and relate it to that.

The main thing is that there was no necessity to change his name. Louis never changed his first name, and there was no need to. And it’s never really gone over why william’s past life is so important to cover up, other than the fact that he did a court case where he threatened to cut a guy’s arm off when he was like eight, but that’s like... you know, that’s reasonable. He’s very very protective of his past identity, where louis kind of isn’t. 

And the fact is, William isn’t an alias, he didn’t have to take that name, he isn’t just doing it out of necessity- he truly does identify with that name, proven in many ways. He enjoys nicknames derived from it. And the thing most indicative of this is Sherlock. In chapter 53, he goes wayyyy out of his comfort zone to actually reveal his past identity and his name. Sherlock knows it, the entire point is to reveal that to him, as a way of giving up the last and most important of his secrets. And yet, even then, William signs his letter ‘William James Moriarty’, though it’s supposed to be his innermost, most vulnerable self.

This pretty much says for sure it’s the name he wants to be called, the name he identifies with, and not whatever his name used to be. It’s important to him, and that’s not a front- have you read that fucking letter? If he was going to admit himself as anything else, it would be there.

Sherlock respects that as well- if there was ever a time when Sherlock would not call him liam, it would be in chapter 55. And yet the most important thing is that he still did call him Liam. He was accepting this dude even though he used to be something else, he didn’t care and he was still willing to save him and love him. Hmmm Sherlock allegory for Trans Ally lmao. 

How the identity and name itself is treated also makes it seem even more a positive represetation of a deadname situation. They never tell us his name. And that’s like... honestly important. They’re going out of their way to say that his old name isn’t important. They’re not keeping it secret for any reason than to show that it doesn’t matter, that no matter what he used to be, William James Moriarty is what he is now.

Anyway, other than the name situation, there are still a lot of other factors that go into my thoughts about it.

A lot of his behaviors are indicative to it, especially when he is a kid there are moments where im just like “haha this is an allegory for transgenderism”. 

Like first and foremost have you seen how this man looks as a kid? That is the most androgynous motherfucker you’ve ever laid eyes on. No one would honestly be able to tell, the way he looks as a kid is in no way disproving this- kind of the opposite, in fact.

are you honestly looking at this face and telling me rn you know that’s a cisgender boy?

And honestly, the fact that Albert lends him some of his old clothes just to go around outside in, and then when he comes back the butler is like Take Those Off Right Now Those Aren’t For You is like. Hm. That’s a gender thing. It’s obviously not the case but yknow, another allegory TM.

In his own orphanage as well, he basically took the ‘eldest daughter’ role to a T. He was doing all the chores, taking care of the children, teaching them things, actually managing all the finances as a Child, and kind of thanklessly getting handed this workload he took on bc, you know, eldest daughter. This role just isn’t really given to guys, no matter if they’re Smart TM? I feel like an amab person here would be given the oooh special gifted kid treatment but he’s not, they mostly just use him there as “free extra mom and 100% adult at 12″.

Another big thing is the entire situation around bond, who is literally a canon trans character. For this time period, the way the Moriartys handled the situation seems almost comically out of place. These dudes from the 1800s really just were like “oh yeah ofc you’re a man and we’ll fight anyone who says otherwise and facilitate you in any way possible”- they accepted it without even having to come to terms with the idea that it could be a thing. Bond clarifies constantly that it isn’t about him filling a role, that this is genuinely him, there’s no doubt about it. They clearly have run across it before, and it’s a significant and important issue to them that at least one of them has to have experienced firsthand. It literally just doesn’t make any sense otherwise.

Also in this situation I think it’s kind of funny that the one name they have on hand for the transgenders is James like come on you can do better than that

The parallels between him and Bond also make the whole situation really funny, especially with Sherlock bc it’s like wow sherlock i see you have a type and it’s blond trans men. 

Plus, the man is overly secretive, he refuses to let anyone but Louis in his room and just generally doesn’t let people he doesn’t trust get close to him, obviously there are plenty of valid secrets he is keeping, it’s just another thing that points to it.

And I mean, honestly. Just look at the dude. Transgender trait: awful haircut. It’s the awful trans haircut you get from having a Gender Moment and going to a cis barber like “cut my hair short” and they give you karen hair. Somehow he owns it? But it’s an objectively terrible haircut.

My last point: because I said so. All my favorite characters get the transgenderification beam.

So you know, I refuse to believe he is cis until they decide we get to see him shirtless, come on anime team, don’t be cowards lmao

[powerbottomblake]

Do you think CRWBY would have the guts to have Penny admit she has a big old crush on Ruby, the same way Ilia did for Blake? Because I feel like the girl does have a big old crush. LIke a big fat one.

I think it’s less a matter of guts than a matter of intent.

As I said before, nuts and dolts as an intense, formative platonic bond for both Ruby and Penny is still a very valid reading of their relationship till now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very much into n&d and the romantic coloring of it is there if they want to take it there, but I don’t think that was the original plan.

If we take bumbleby as an example, you can see how RT had them planned from the get go, down to their very character designs being complementary. Ilia, as well, was intended to be the first officially introduced lgbt character. I don’t see that kind of intent in n&d. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen! Sometimes some subplots and relationships grow organically from the writing without first being planned that way. Becky Albertalli, for example, saw the response to the Leah/Abby storyline (or the potential there that the readers picked up on) and realized she had unwittingly planted the seeds for what would be the sequel to Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda and would be a great f/f storyline (check it out if you haven’t already btw).

So RT could totally go over what they’ve put out so far and be like oh. This is something that developed organically and could definitely lead to another great lgbt storyline, which, paired with Penny’s trans coding would be incredible. But I honestly wouldn’t fault them if they didn’t take the story there.

But also yes Penny has a big fat crush on Ruby and she fills the Classic RWBY Love Interest Prerequisites that is:

- she Sees and is Seen by Ruby from the very get go; Ruby just immediately sees to the heart of Penny, regardless of her having a metallic body she’s always affirmed how Penny is real and human to her. And Penny is inspired by Ruby’s kindness and courage and nobility. Tbh a great moment is Penny immediately pegging Ruby’s semblance before she herself was aware of all it entailed; surface level it’s a great joke, but it also speaks volume abt Penny’s ability to grasp what makes Ruby’s soul.

- Parallel/complimentary struggles and arcs! Ruby has to contend with being one of the last specimens of an otherwise extinct line of warriors that could be key to saving the world, Penny has to learn how to basically be Remnant’s equivalent of a superhero. They’re in unique positions to understand each other best (which is actively being reflected rn)

I don’t know how this turned into an N&D manifesto but yeah basically I don’t know if they were planned to come off this way nor would I be miffed if RT ultimately doesn’t go there with them but. The seed is there, and it’s been growing, and it’d be kinda neat if it did end up flowering.

[plounce]

i’m watching how to survive a plague for my history of public health class and i’m aware of the issues regarding the focus of the documentary (white upper class cis men) but like. god. the footage of people screaming in protest because they are literally being left to die is really rough to watch. just… fellow gay people having to organize in the streets to scream “stop killing us” and knowing that a lot of them would die is so emotionally taxing, i’ve been on and off crying. taking breaks and all that

i’m leading the class discussion on friday about it. current ideas for questions: divide into low medium hard: w m h divide class into groups, display multiple questions/topics to discuss, have people share what they talked about

lowball just to get people to start talking: what struck you about the material? what affected you the most? maybe this is just from my own perspective as a gay person, but i think that the hiv/aids crisis is fueled by anger and terror that was able to be captured on film in a way we haven’t experienced yet in this class. what did it make you feel? what feelings were most acute when you watched the documentary, both from the screen and from yourself?

why were people angry? what did they want their anger to do? what did they want politicians/those in power to do? drug companies in modern medicine. who were activists angry at? why?

the chant of “healthcare is a right” - what did act up activists mean by that? how does that fit into the context of us public health, especially in the era of the 80s and 90s? participation of aids activists: partners, scientific + moral? “self-help with a vengeance”

i think that we can find many parallels to other readings we’ve done for this class. how do you think the hiv/aids crisis and the protest surrounding it fit into the history of US public health? (cholera: the attachment of morality to illness) (body & soul: public organizing for treatment and for attention to an epidemic) (our bodies: proliferation of knowledge among laypeople, distrust of institutional medicine)

what do you think of HTSAP as a depiction of the AIDS epidemic? what do you think its goal was?

what do you think of the protests depicted in the documentary? what do you think of the methods that activists used? what do you think of the response to those protests? which protests stuck with you the most? do you think that they were successful, in the end? why or why not? what impact did they have?

something about public access to medicine, to science, to medical research. engagement of the public with how health is managed. act up creating a research agenda that they thought would be effective in abating the epidemic. “public health.” SF AIDS conference 1990 aids travel restrictions. there IS a system that is failing to help, and DELIBERATELY so in certain regards. in what ways did aids treatment activists interact with/influence/impact how clinical trials are performed? immediate needs vs long term goals

aids and civil rights - the depictions of violent arrests, putting the condom on jesse helms’ house. probably don’t have time to show the vanity fair video but GOD if i could… if i could. ill discuss it w her tomorrow. jesse helms’ bit about wanting to be able to ignore gay people/aids. 1st amendment doesn’t apply if you’re gay

On February 4, 1985, Washington leaders rejected the plan to limit further spread of HIV, adding that the CDC’s main obligation should be to “look pretty and do as little as possible.”[3] Dr. James Mason, the director of the CDC at the time, chose not to confront the Administration’s decision, instead disregarding the health of the public. According to Mason, “there are certain areas which, when the goals of science collide with moral and ethical judgment, science has to take a time out.”[4] 1992 - police wearing latex gloves

bush saying “you can’t talk about it rationally” people are DYING, george. was government/politicians actually important in fighting against aids beyond funding? well yeah but that's the question

larry kramer quote from “the normal heart” about the early years of the aids epidemic: “We’re living through war, but where they’re living it’s peace time, and we’re all in the same country.” discussion of class wrt the crisis: medical professionals vs activists (the scene in the daichi office where the activist points at his sarkosi mark, “you’re my murderer in your shirt and tie!”); division within act up about technical stuff (“lay expert” vs “lay lay”), moratorium on meeting with drug companies “six months is the rest of my life”, splitting into factions and the creation of TAG (”think tank type of project”), division between the harvard graduate method and the plea to have crowds of people to “get attention” as the speaker yelled to - the latter can funnel the anger of the common people, can be accessible to the majority of people, but is that the best course? also leader talking about PERICLES????; and WHO is shown in HTSAP? ray navarro is the only person of color speaking. no trans people. does the gay community have certain dis/advantages when it comes to organizing and affecting change? (gays aren’t bound in origin; brokers can be gay)

anyway i got distracted watching that one vanity fair compilation about the reagan administration’s “response” to the epidemic that was basically mostly gay jokes so. fun times here

[phaylenfairchild]

I Just Learned What RadFem Is, and It’s Terrifying

I must be a lot more unplugged than I thought.

As a Trans person, it’s important to strike a balance between having your finger on the pulse of adversity and progress, but also keep a safe distance from the toxicity the can wear you down and ultimately pull you under the current.

Especially in the current climate, where emotions are running at an all time high and common sense has exited the building, which is on fire and crumbling around us like a scene from a Hollywood disaster movie. Minorities, specifically those who have found themselves on the receiving end of an onslaught of political abuse and social terrorism, have to self preserve. Sometimes that means turning off social media, which can inundate a casual user with hateful rhetoric, wordy news articles spreading misinformation, and people they care about, friends, family, casting away their fear of retribution or accountability and putting their prejudices proudly on parade. It can be shocking, deeply disturbing and overall very, very sad.

Knowing when to shut the world off can be a blessing. There is nothing wrong with putting down your sword and retreating to the safe harbor of netflix and pizza, at least that’s what I tell myself. Things are spiraling into some dystopian parallel universe, where upside down is right-side up. Trying to make sense of the chaos and understand the insanity can make you insane.

A lot of people have gone crazy. We don’t call it crazy anymore, though. We call it religious freedom, or alt-right viewpoints or alternative facts. It’s all radicalism.

While on the phone with a friend in the UK, she told me about a woman on the news who created the “Radfem” movement. I had not heard the term Radfem before, but it’s not exactly science to determine that it implies a Radical Feminist. They’re basically TERFS- Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, but reject being referred to as TERFS, claiming it is a slur.

“They’re a hundred times worse than TERFS…” My friend told me. After a few days of research, I discovered she was right.

Radfems are indeed much worse than the traditional TERF. As where TERFS are typically casual with their prejudices, I’ve found they lack self-awareness. They try to logicize their bigotry and sell it to their audience packaged as a “Sophisticated Arguments” and “Clever Rebuttals.” They resist being called a bigot, it offends them. Instead they ask others to sympathize with them for being portrayed as villainous. They are villainous, make no mistake, but they lack the capacity to comprehend why we make that deduction. Therefore, they presume the role of a victim under assault by an army of “Men in Dresses.”

Radfems are a different beast in that they embrace their radicalized sensibilities with pride. They covet their bigotry and wear it like a badge of honor. They aren’t interested in posing as innocent victims of a make-believe Trans agenda, but desire to be viewed as vigilant guardians of femininity, sexuality and womanhood. They aggressively attack, unprovoked, nonsensically hellbent on creating a narrative that paints them as a hero trying to slay a mythical beast. Radfems are completely consumed by their hatred and any awareness of a shared reality is entirely absent- They exist in an imaginarium where only others like themselves exist. They feed off each others rage. They have handed over their freedom of thought and developed a hive mind, informing each others opinions- and their very souls have gone septic, sending them into a state of madness not altogether unlike a rabid dog. They can no longer differentiate between right and wrong, helpful or harmful, kindness or cruelty. They have gone primitive, they only know outrage. They fling their arms about, bellowing inflammatory slurs and when shut out by the public, they complain they have been oppressed for being women.

Despite their vocal intensity, they’re actually a cowardly collective. Their movement lies mostly on social media where they create ridiculous smear campaigns against Transgender women, whom they believe are trying to coerce into their space with the intent of penetrating them by force. Radfems, I’ve noticed, mostly identify as lesbians, and have presumed entitlement over the whole of lesbianism, for example, how lesbians behave, who can be one, and what makes you a good lesbian. If you’ve ever had relationships with men, you’re going to be viewed as traitorous to the RadFem collective. There is one way to be a Radfem, and any departure from that makes you their enemy.

As far as I can tell, the RadFem movement sprouted up like stinkweed, first in the UK, from one woman’s dissatisfaction with the Labour Party deciding to include Transgender rights as part of their manifsto in defending The Gender Recognition Act of 2004. Recently, the GRA has had broad changes proposed, allowing Transwomen to self-identify, rather than navigate years of obstacles and red tape.

Venice Allen — RadFem Organizer

Spearheading the RadFem movement is Venice Allan, a 43-year-old from South London, who was suspended from the Labour Party after an investigation revealed she had been heavily engaged in creating and posting anti-trans photos. Doubling down on her hate-parade, Allan publicly condemned Lily Madigan, the first transgender woman to be elected as a women’s officer in the Labour Party. Then, just last week, Allan also found herself banned from twitter for promoting hatred and inciting violence toward Transgender women. She still has her facebook page.

Transgender women have become more visible in the UK, even assuming positions of power. This alone can likely be credited with Allan’s gory birth of RadFem as an opposition.

Quick to join Allan in the formation of the RadFem movement was Lily Maynard (A pseudonym, she informs us via her website.) Lily is Mother to a 15 year old girl, Jessie, who came out to her as Transgender in 2015. Maynard, who describers herself as a one-time “bisexual, polyamorous, gender-fluid, rainbow-sparkle unicorn (who) lived that way for many years,” was so distraught by her daughter’s confession that she was Transgender, she intervened and claims that, together, they worked their way through it and are now committed to revealing the truth regarding the “Transgender War on Women.”

Maynard wrote and article called “A Mum’s Voyage Through Transtopia: Love and Resistance.”

It’s essentially a confession on how she mentally tortured her Trans daughter, Jessie, brainwashing her into conforming to her birth gender and rejecting Transgender ideation. Jessie, herself, contributes to the article in the postscript, and it is heartbreaking.

“Although at the time I didn’t appreciate it, the constant repetition of “you can’t be a boy” did me good. A lot of good. I had been spending too much time on the internet and I had got it into my head that somehow, biological girls could really be boys, if they “identified” as such (& vice versa).

As someone who’s always had a mostly realistic grip on the world, for some reason I had been pulled into a world where boys could become girls and girls could become boys. I felt that because I said I was a boy, I was a boy” — Jessie Maynard

Drawing a parallel; If TERFS are the Focus On The Family of hyperfeminists, the RadFems are the Westboro Baptist Church. They make great spectacles with the intention of generating attention from the public and recruiting other women into their ranks. It is a warped, cult-like organization that is equally dangerous to the public as it is to the mental state of those who enthusiastically self-declare as RadFems. They have no time for science, facts, and reject the idea of sexual or gender fluidity across the spectrum. They hate Trans women and this wholly defines their identity. It is their only purpose; To serve RadFem justice by spreading propaganda and promoting the erasure of Trans people. To be clear, they state in their manifesto that they do accept Transmen into their legion. Because they Bleed.

No one told the RadFems that not all women menstruate. Many women deal with infertility as well, and have never been pregnant. That doesn’t disqualify them as women. But, I digress.

Allan began organizing efforts to recruit other women into her collective, including Linda Bellos and Shiela Jefferys and eventually decided to take her band of angry Fem-Lesbians on tour, which she called “We Need To Talk: UK and Ireland Tour.”

https://medium.com/media/142b852ca00c440d6bfe34391741c80a/href

Most do not welcome the RadFems with open arms. As soon as they publicized their intent to tour Ireland, dozens of National organizations and hundreds of individuals alike composed an open letter to Allan and her folly, saying, “We neither want nor need your lecture tour. You’re not welcome here.” Many others have followed suit in cancelling RadFem’s “Transgender War On Women” rallies and appearances, including Millwall in Southeast London.

During an event for International Women’s Day, Allan appeared before MPs Heidi Alexander and Ellie Reeves, as well as Steve Bullock, mayor of Lewisham to ask “Why can’t I speak?” But… that’s all she did, uninterrupted.

https://medium.com/media/894544d1e92c8ce4a78e2fdef5bc4902/href

The ire of RadFems is as extreme as it gets, save reounding up Transwomen like dogs and shooting them. This is the kind of rhetoric they post:

It is untrue that 91% of Trans women are autogynephiliacs. So you don’t have to google, Autogynephiliac is defined as a sex-fueled mental illness. This is the kind of material that RadFems distribute in order to shape opinions regarding Transgender women, implying they are “Extremely jealous” and want to “Wear our skin.”

In my foray into their cesspool of hatred and repugnant lies, I found some of their posts humorous, ironically.

https://medium.com/media/7a2b745fd22cfbb85eef670c86d7b62d/href

Sheila Jeffrys, Anne Ruzlyo and Julia Long — from the public page We Need To Talk UK and Ireland tour

Sadly, there is nothing feminist about blind hatred. It clear these RadFem lesbians fear Transgender women. They believe that Trans women threaten their sexuality, or represent some form of competition for them within the lesbian community. They have sexualized the state of being Transgender to the point of obsessively associating the acts of rape and physical assault with being Trans. They become defensive over their lesbianism when broaching the subject of Transgender women, which is ironic, because as far as I had researched, many of these RadFems routinely present outside gender norms- even as the opposite gender- often with such masculinity and dominance, I had to wonder how many steps away these women were from being Transgender themselves.

Historically, we know that the most anti-gay individuals exhibit, albeit discreetly, gay interests. Most staunch anti-gay Republicans have been caught in compromising circumstances with other men, including male sex workers and underage boys.

One this is clear, there is no valid motivation for these extremists. Transgender women cost them nothing and their existence does them no harm. They lose nothing by coexisting peacefully alongside people whose plights they do not know, understand or have any interest in. As with so many instances of social terrorism, there is no winner, there is no genuine purpose except to demonize innocent people who do not meet their standard of acceptability. Odd coming from lesbians who, when it comes to many others, don’t meet that standard either.

Interested in learning more? Here’s their facebook page.

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[speakpirate]

Why Addison’s Accusation Plot is the Worst

Within the show itself, the word predator / predatory has now been used to describe Ezra Fitz and Emily Fields an equal number of times. 

The show is continuing its really fucked up messaging around this stuff. Remember the scene where Noel gets busted with the answer keys in his locker, and the audience is supposed to feel this big sigh of relief? That sigh is predicated on the idea that no one will believe him now.  (Even though he'd be telling the truth about Ezria!) The idea that even if you tell, no one will believe you is exactly how abusers cow their victims into silence.  

(And false accusation plots, and the promotion thereof, train people to doubt the accuser and give the benefit of any doubt to the possible perpetrator.) 

That sigh of relief is the same one we're supposed to breathe when Paige doesn't believe Addison. Yes, Addison is a cretin (and I hate her name being Addison! Oh, are you trying to signal that she’s a mini-Alison? I had no idea, you were just so subtle!)  But Paige's reaction is based on her personal perception that Emily is a nice / good person. 

When someone says, "This person hurt me," it is never the right thing to counter, "That can not be true, because they never hurt me." That’s not evidence. That's actually the exact attitude that lets men like Ezra and Ian and Wren and Holbrook and Lorenzo and Garrett and every single adult Rosewood man on this show get away with their endless bullshit!

So it's an irresponsible story in general and then it leans hard on homophobia and homosexual panic to do its heavy lifting. It implies that LGBT teachers and coaches are more vulnerable to these accusations because as queermos in a locker room full of same gender people undressing, the possibility always exists that we could be looking at you in an unsavory way! Cue ominous music!

(If this line of reasoning seems familiar, that’s because it’s the older cousin of the trans bathroom panic sweeping Republican legislatures in a state near you!)

It equates Emily's potential guilt with her lesbianism, since  Addison's story relies on the mechanical equivalence where one part is true of the lie is based on the truth (Emily is gay), so the other part is more likely to seem true (she hits on teenage girls). It feeds into the long standing idea that gay people are more likely to be pedophiles. And it doesn't do any work to refute any of that! 

The story goes away because Addison is a liar, and Emily is a good guy. It's tagged as messed up that Addison did that, but it's messed up because she was trying to fuck with Emily, who is a Good Gay Person -- not because of all the ways her story is perpetuating negative ideas about gay people. 

Like, if Addison was the secret kid sister of one of the Liars and the gay coach was a Nefarious Gay Character like Sara Harvey or Shana - I think the show would/could use this exact same plot point, because they're giving no indication that it's inherently bad. All the badness of it revolves around the moral positioning of Emily and Addison.  

Compare that to when Spencer told Coach Fulton about Paige's homophobic comment about the breast stroke. Coach Fulton's response and Spencer's immediate reaction were entirely on the side of homophobia is bad. This plot, it's like lying is bad and doing bad things to Emily is bad, but homophobia is a morally neutral plot device.   

This plot line is like the Trump administration. I hate it so thoroughly, and it's being awful in so many directions it becomes hard to know what to rally against. I choose all of it!!!!

This plot is also the ultimate nail in the coffin of OG Alison DiLaurentis. They defanged her. They had an entire episode full of sex take backsies for her. They took away her plane. They had her make soup for Lorenzo during his terrifying tennis ball elbow injury. They married her off to Rollins and had her sign herself into a mental institution and then topped it off with an unplanned pregnancy. And now, now - she doesn't even have enough of her old mojo to help Emily Fields best a tenth grade wannabe mean girl? SERIOUSLY?!?! 

Also, the show was bending over backwards to push this Addison is the new Alison parallel, but does it really work? Alison was consistently shown using her sexuality and her brains and her instincts to bring down adult men. Yes, she manipulates the other liars, and I'm sure Addison manipulates whatever pseudo liar group she is the leader of, but Alison (back then) had complexity. She did bad things for good reasons. This little twerp appears to have no agenda except being terrible and skipping swim practice to make out with her boyfriend? So making her the stand in for teenage Ali is yet another retcon oversimplification of who Alison was back then.

Finally this whole thing MAKES. NO. SENSE. 

What is Addison's motivation? That she doesn't want to be benched?  Okay. I mean, if swimming is so important to her, why did she skip practice? If she's a top shelf liar, why didn't she come up with a better cover story when Emily asked her about it the first time? If she overheard Paige and Emily talking, which she certainly did, she heard Emily talk about her "intense history" with both Paige and Alison. So why would she even spin that story for Paige? Doesn't it seem like she should have known that Paige wouldn't buy it? Or was she randomly trying to cause trouble for the Paige/Emily/Alison love triangle by activating Paige's jealousy towards Alison? But why? Because Chaos Theory? 

Or is she - this new character who we have never seen prior to the ninth-to-the-last episode - somehow mixed up in the 'A' game, as the possible Jenna text and board game video suggest?  (She was ten years old when the Liars were being messed with before. As Austin Carr would say, "Get that weak stuff outta here!") 

In addition, what on Earth is AD getting out of this? What do they care if this girl is benched from a swim meet?  Why are they trying to help Emily out of trouble? Why didn't Emily take the AD video to Paige instead of confronting Addison? Was AD's big plan to make Emily yell at this girl?  

OOOOOHHH! They've engineered Spencer visiting Toby in the hospital and Emily shouting at a kid! What will this dastardly genius do next?!?!  

Although the "get in touch with your darkness" quote was mildly interesting, but darkness is Spencer fake kidnapping Malcolm. Darkness is Mona draining her own blood every night for months and storing it in a mini-fridge in order to fake her own death. I get that Emily is not generally a dark character, but raising your voice in a heated way at a tenth grader is just not on anywhere near the same level. 

Maybe I wouldn't be as worked up about it if the track record of the show post jump didn't include the deaths of Charlotte and Sara Harvey and Jenna’s involvement putting another queer woman as one of the final villains. 

And now, in the final episodes, we get this story that's a throwback to The Children's Hour. Boo x 1,000,000.

[nofomoartworld]

These LGBTQ+ Films Put Diverse Queer Voices on the Big Screen

Stories of love, resistance, and good old rock and roll shone bright on the screens at this year's Sheffield Doc|Fest, highlighting diversity in cinematic storytelling with a number of films focused on LGBTQ+ content. In part a celebration of Britain's 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalization of homosexuality—the Sexual Offenses Act 1967—the festival opened with Queerama, a film by Daisy Asquith.

Diving into the archive of the British Film Institute, the documentary illustrates the fight for LGBTQ+ equality in the UK with a mashup of clips, both fact and fiction, that demonstrate how taboo queer culture was in mainstream society just 50 years ago.

Before 1967, homosexuality was a crime in Britain, most notably emphasized by the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895 and the thousands upon thousands of men who followed, according to the recent posthumous pardons of those convicted. But while Queerama offers a snapshot of what would eventually lead to the 2014 legalization of gay marriage in Britain, it's not the only way to tell the story of the gay rights movement.

Daisy Asquith's Queerama

"Representing LGBTQ+ filmmakers and stories on the screen shouldn't be a singular film within your program," Luke Moody, director of film programming at this year's festival, tells Creators. "I think you need to reflect on the fact that the narratives, issues and adversity that LGBTQ+ individuals can face is not a singular story. It's something that's different in every part of the world."

"Mr Gay Syria is going to wear a tiara, not a crown," says Mahmoud Hassino in Mr Gay Syria.

Mr Gay Syria is just one example. The documentary by Ayşe Toprak follows Hussein, a Syrian refugee in Istanbul who was forced to flee his country due to the civil war and persecution of LGBTQ+ persons there. Attempting to make his community's plight visible, and provide an alternative narrative to media reports of persecution by ISIS, Hussein tries to enter the Mr Gay World competition amidst a continued struggle of invisibility.

"If it's not documented, it is lost," says Moody. "So beyond creating a story, the filmmaker is creating this legacy where the film itself becomes almost like an institution, an archive, that's shared with the world."

Mr Gay Syria features scenes from the 2016 Gay Pride in Istanbul, which was banned by the government and where the police outnumbered the paraders.

Running parallel to these notions of visibility is David France's The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. Disturbed by the number of unsolved murders of trans women in NYC, activist Victoria Cruz investigates one of the most high-profile cases—the 1992 death of trans pioneer Marsha P. Johnson, a legendary figure from the 1969 Stonewall Riots. The film gives much-needed voice to the startling number of transgender people who have been the victims of hate crimes, and delves into the unacceptable prejudice that continues to impede justice.

Hate crimes towards the LGBTQ+ community begs the question of diversity in mainstream media, after a 2017 report by GLAAD found that major film studios continue to underrepresent LGBTQ+ characters in the films they release.

Yony Leyser's Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution presents archival footage from the punk era, including Wheeler Tess at the one year anniversary of the World Trade Organization protests, Pine St, November 30, 2000.

While there have been improvements since 1967, the LGBTQ+ characters who do make their way on to mainstream screens tend to be tokenistic, which fails to normalize diverse sexual identities. "Gay is not enough," says director Yony Leyser. "Maybe elsewhere it's enough but now, in the West, we need to start pushing a further agenda."

Zines found in Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution.

Leyser is the director of Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution, a fresh insight into the punk subculture that provided an alternative to the more mainstream Gay Rights Movement. "On one side you want visibility, but as soon as it gets commoditized and suddenly queer means being a white gay male, you lose control of your narrative," Leyser says. "How do we prevent that?"

Tristan Ferland Milewski's Dream Boat. Image: gebrueder beetz filmproduktion.

Getting more LGBTQ+ people into the commissioning editor seat is the overriding answer, and the documentary Dream Boat demonstrates how that can work for everyone. "At first, you see all these crazy gay men on a boat, but then you see that they have problems that concern every one of us," says director Tristan Ferland Milewski. "These differences become less important. It's about having choices, and if you don't have the same choices, then it's about discrimination. We all carry the value systems of our society."

Tristan Ferland Milewski's Dream Boat. Image: gebrueder beetz filmproduktion.

But narrow value systems can be broken, or changed, by giving a platform to diverse voices. "While I'd wish to champion those stories, I think they're films. They're great films," says Moody. "They're not selected just to tick a box of diversity in the program. I look at them as great pieces of cinema and great piece of documentary storytelling that deserve to be commissioned alongside any sort of film."

Tristan Ferland Milewski's Dream Boat. Image: gebrueder beetz filmproduktion

Check out the other films that ran at the 2017 Sheffield Doc|Fest here.

Related:

There's a New Pride Flag in Town

[NSFW] London's Porn Filmmakers Are Getting Screwed—By the Government

Tender Portraits of a Photographer's Muse Challenge Ideas of Gender Identity

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