#MoM gill

[monstersofmancomic]

Happy Halloween from the MoM crew!!

[ghelgheli]

hey you might've been asked this before sorry if so, but have you read or do you have any thoughts on A short history of Trans Misogyny?

I have read it! I have a few thoughts.

I think it's a strong and important work that compiles historical archives into sharp analyses of how "trans misogyny" (using Jules Gill-Peterson's spacing) is not a recent phenomenon but a globalized structure with centuries of history. I also think it's flawed, for reasons I'll get into after a quick summary for those who haven't had the chance to read it yet.

JGP divides the book into three main chapters, the first on the notion of "trans panic". There, she traces how variants of this anxiety with the trans-feminized subject have presented—to deadly effect, for the subject—in such different settings as early colonial India, the colonization of the Americas, the racialized interactions between US soldiers stationed in the Philippines and the local trans women living there, and of course the contemporary United States itself. In every case she analyzes this "panic" as the reaction of the capitalist colonial enterprise to the conceptual threat that the trans-feminized subject poses; we are a destabilizing entity, a gender glitch that undermines the rigid guarantees of the patriarchal order maintaining capitalism. Punishment follows.

The second chapter is my favourite, and considers the relationship between transfeminine life and sex work. I posted a concluding excerpt but the thrust of the chapter is this: that the relegation of so many trans women and trans-feminized people to sex work, while accompanied by the derogation and degradation that is associated with sex work, is not itself the mere result of that degradation inflicted upon the subject. In other words, it is not out of pure helplessness and abjection that so many trans-feminized people are involved in sex work. Rather, sex work is a deliberate and calculated choice made by many trans-feminized people in increasingly service-based economies that present limited, often peripheralized, feminized, and/or reproductive, options for paid labour. Paired with a pretty bit of critical confabulation about the histories of Black trans-feminized people travelling the US in the 19th century, I think this made for great reading.

In her third chapter, JGP narrativizes the 20th century relationship between the "gay" and "trans" movements in north america—scare quoted precisely because the two went hand-in-hand for much of their history. She emphasizes this connection, not merely an embedding of one community within another but the tangled mutualism of experiences and subjectivities that co-constituted one another, though not without tension. Then came the liberal capture of the gay rights movement around the 70s, which brought about the famous clashes between the radicalisms of Silvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson (neither of whom, JGP notes, ever described themselves as trans women) and the institutions of gay liberalism that desired subsumption into the folds of capital. This is a "remember your history" type of chapter, and well-put.

I think JGP is correct to insist, in her introduction, on the globalizing-in-a-destructive-sense effects of the colonial export of trans womanhood. It is, after all, an identity conceived only mid-century to make sense of the medicalized trans subject; and "gender identity" itself (as JGP describes in Histories of the Transgender Child) is a psychomedical concept conceived to rein in the epistemic instability of trans existence. This is critical to keep in mind! But I also think JGP makes a few mistakes, and one of them has to do with this point.

In her first chapter, under the discussion of trans misogyny in colonial India, JGP of course uses the example of the hijra. Unfortunately, she commits two fundamental errors in her use: she mythologizes, however ambiguously, the "ascetic" lives of hijra prior to the arrival of British colonialism; and she says "it's important to say that hijras were not then—and are not today—transgender". In the first place, the reference to the "ascetism" of hijra life prior to the violence of colonialism is evocative of "third-gender" idealizations of primeval gender subjectivities. To put the problem simply: it's well and good to describe the "ritual" roles of gendered subjects people might try to construe contemporarily as "trans women", the priestesses and oracles and divinities of yore. But it is best not to do so too loftily. Being assigned to a particular form of ritualistic reproductive labour because of one's failure to be a man and inability to perform the primary reproductive labour of womanhood-proper is the very marker of the trans-feminized subject. "Ascetism" here obviates the reality that it wasn't all peachy before (I recommend reading Romancing the Transgender Native on this one). Meanwhile, in the after, it is just wrong that hijra are universally not transgender. Many organize specifically under the banners of transfeminism. It's a shame that JGP insists on keeping the trans-feminized life of hijra so firmly demarcated from what she herself acknowledges is globalized transness.

My second big complaint with the book is JGP's slip into a trap I have complained about many times: the equivocation of transfemininity with femininity (do you see why I'm not fond of being described as "transfem"?). She diagnoses the root of transmisogyny as a reaction to the femininity of trans women and other trans-feminized subjects. In this respect she explicitly subscribes to a form of mujerísima, and of the trans-feminized subject as "the most feminine" and (equivalent, as far as she's concerned) "the most woman". Moreover, she locates transfeminist liberation in a singular embrace of mujerísima as descriptive of trans-feminized subjectivity. As I've discussed previously, I think this is a misdiagnosis. Feminization is, of course, something that is done to people; it is certainly the case that the trans-feminized subject is in this way feminized for perceived gender-failure. This subject may simultaneously embrace feminized ways of being for all sorts of reasons. In both cases I think the feminization follows from, rather than precedes, the trans misogyny and trans-feminization, and there is a fair bit of masculinization as de-gendering at play too, to say nothing of the deliberate embrace of masculinity by "trans-feminized" subjects. Masculinity and femininity are already technologies of gender normalization—they are applied against gender deviation and adapted to by the gender deviant. The deviation happens first, in the failure to adhere to the expectations of gender assignment, and I don't think these expectations can be summarized by either masculinity or femininity alone. I think JGP is effectively describing the experience of many trans-feminized people, but I do not think what she presents can be the universalized locus of trans liberation she seems to want it to be.

Now for a pettier complaint that I've made before, but one that I think surfaces JGP's academic context. In her introduction she says:

In truth, everyone is implicated in and shaped by trans misogyny. There is no one who is purely affected by it to the point of living in a state of total victimization, just as there is no one who lives entirely exempt from its machinations. There is no perfect language to be discovered, or invented, to solve the problem of trans misogyny by labeling its proper perpetrator and victim.

Agreed that "there is no perfect language to be discovered"! But JGP is clearly critical of TMA/TME language here. Strange, then, that less than ten pages later she says this:

this book adds the phrase trans-feminized to describe what happens to groups subjected to trans misogyny though they did not, or still do not, wish to be known as transgender women.

So JGP believes it is coherent to talk about "groups subjected to trans misogyny", which she thinks consists of the union of trans women and what she called "trans-feminized" groups. If this is to be coherent, there must be groups not subjected to trans misogny. So we've come around to transmisogyny-subjected and not transmisogyny-subjected. Look: you cannot effectively theorize about transmisogyny without recognizing that its logic paints a particular target, and you will need to come up with a concise way of making this distinction. But JGP dismissing TMA/TME with skepticism about "perfect language" and immediately coining new language (basically TMS/not TMS) to solve the problem she un-solved by rejecting TMA/TME... it smells of a sloppy attempt to make a rhetorical point rather than theoretical rigour. It's frustrating.

I have other minor gripes, like her artificial separation of "trans women" from "nonbinary people" (cf. countless posts on here lamenting the narrow forms of existence granted TMA people if we want recognition as-such!) or her suggestion that "a politics of overcoming the gender binary" is mutually exclusive from rather than necessarily involved with struggles around "prison abolition, police violence, and sex work". Little things that give me the sense of theoretical tunnel-vision. But I don't think all this compromises the book's strengths as a work of broad historical analysis. I would simply not take every one of its claims as authoritative. Definitely give it a read if you have the chance, especially for the second and third chapters.

[russell-crowe]

rhod gilbert and greg davies in world's most dangerous roads S01E02

[razberrypuck]

fucked up that dropping gillion off for his training was done as unceremoniously as it was btw. it wasn't some grand goodbye, they didn't do anything special that day for their little boy -- it was just gillion and his father. his sister, his mother, his grandfather, they weren't there. it was just gillion, his father, and a quiet, possibly several day long trip to the capital. it was just gillion and his father at the steps of the palace, just his father that saw the big smile on his face, heard the little boy's promises of telling them everything when he got home. no one had even bothered explaining what was going on to him. he had to figure it out on his own, when papa never came back.

[luna-spacedoodles]

guess where i got to in my rewatch. there are so many pieces of dialogue that mean something so different now oughh

[jackdaniel69nice]

Continuation of last years mermay MHA mermaid au. Dark shadow and tokoyami are half deepsea-mer and half reef-mer. While dark shadow is covered in dark scales, has sharp talons and glows in the dark; Tokoyami ended up looking more reef like I suppose. Shadow focuses on hunting small crustaceans while tokoyami forages for algae, and other sea plants. They lived in a cave at the edge of a trench before joining 1-a’s school.

[paradoxolotl]

You guys I’m giggling so hard at these fish clustering around a leaf like drunk girls in a bar bathroom

[wrinklemcdinkle]

is this a weird crossover of fandoms. probably. but-

riptide pirates as trolls!!!? ouuughwa? gillion and the tidestriders whaaat, they started their tours after the 2nd movie.. trolls were kinda suspicious of them for a while with good reason but now they’re well renowned!

i just think they’re neat :D

[gilliontidestriderchampionoftheu]

theory: caspian is the navy's chosen one?

ok hear me out ok ok. we know the navys chosen one has to be an undersea person bcus of aster's prophecy (71) and gills.. "conversation" with the navy people (62). if the chosen one is someone we've already been introduced to, it's only down to gill, edyn, finn, aslana, aslana's mom, felipe, and caspian.

we also know that someone on lizzie's crew is a traitor. either john, rudith, or caspian. (115)

its implied that caspian's sister became one of the elders of the undersea, while he went the opposite direction and went to the surface. (79)

and finally, my only decent piece of evidence: caspian was previously in possession of The Golden Lotus, aka DESTINY'S BLADE. he says he "found" it, but doesn't elaborate where or when. he also says "It'll be like having another friend watching your back" implying he KNOWS it's sentient? and best of all, it gives the user the ability to cast DAYLIGHT. which power of mana is associated with the sun? the NAVY.

[oldfangirl81]

If you are west coast Whovian then you might be interested in Rose City Comic Con's announced guests. The con is in Portland Oregon from September 22-24.

[itstimetodrew]

‘willem dafish’ made me realize for the first time that is in fact his voice coming out of that fish. im having an indescribable feeling about it.

His voice is very very very nice and he definitely needs to do more voice work because of it... 😳

He's also a southern villain rat in Fantastic Mr. Fox and an ASMR villain in Tales from Earthsea if you would like more hehe

[monstersofmancomic]

Renfield and Gill first date ‼️

Super happy with the shading on this one ^^

[b4um3pfl4um3]

Limited Life is officially one big family drama and I'm here for it!

[razberrypuck]

I'm still emotional over may and gillion's conversation in ep 98 btw. how, while jay and chip were getting what she needed to heal gill, may started talking to gill as if nothing was wrong. and I know it was probably to keep him from drifting off, but it was exactly what he needed in that moment. how they went back and forth, asking and answering questions for hours. may asking something vague about her daughter and the other pirate she was with (chip, she thinks his name is,) asking about their adventures, and gillion using the rest of the time spent waiting talking about them. I wonder what he told her. I wonder if jay and chip know just how much he loves them.

[cuteniaarts]

Best sisters, in any universe

(A.k.a: ever wonder what happens when a mermaid and a human have kids together?)

((as always, click for better quality))

[chipjrwibignaturals]

hey guys! thinking about how these two might interlink <3