#Rape mention

[sickofthis666]

Neil Gaiman is trending again and, uh, yeah, the posts are as bad as could be expected..

Stop making someone's else rape about you, stop making someone's else rape about you, stop making someone's else rape about you—

Am I the weird one for thinking that discovering that my favorite childhood author is a rapist would not actually ruin my childhood?

[luckyladylily]

So a few months ago there was the discourse about would you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods. I didn't want to touch it while the discourse was hot and everyone dug in hard because those are not good conditions for nuance, but I waited until today, June 1st, for a specific reason.

I'm not going to take a position in the bear vs man debate because I don't think it matters. What is really being asked here is how afraid are you of men? Specifically, unexpected men who are, perhaps, strange.

People have a lot of very real fear of men that comes from a lot of very real places. Back when I was first transitioning in 2015 and 2016, I decided to start presenting as a woman in public even though I did not pass in the slightest.

I live in a red state. I knew other trans women who had been attacked by men, raped by men. I knew I was taking a risk by putting myself out there. I was the only visibly trans person in the area of campus I frequented, and people made sure I never forgot that. Most were harmless enough and the worst I got from them was curious stares. Others were more aggressive, even the occasional threat. I had to avoid public bathrooms, of course, and always be aware of my surroundings.

I know how frightening it is to be alone at night while a pair of men are following behind you and not knowing if they are just going in the same direction or if they want to start something - made all the worse for the constant low level threat I had been living under for over a year by just being visibly trans in a place where many are openly hostile to queer people. You have to remember, this was at the height of the first wave of bathroom law discussions, a lot of people were very angry about trans women in particular. My daily life was terrifying at times. I was never the subject of direct violence, but I knew trans women who had been.

I want you to keep all that in mind.

So man or bear is really the question "how afraid of men are you?", and the question that logically follows is "What if there was a strange man at night in a deserted parking lot?" or "What if you were alone in an elevator with a man?" or "What if you met a strange man in the woman's bathroom?"

My state recently passed an anti trans bathroom bill. The rhetoric they used was about protecting women and children from "strange men", aka trans women.

Conservatives hijack fear for their bigoted agenda.

When I first started presenting as a woman the campus apartment complex was designed for young families. The buildings were in a large square with playgrounds in the center, and there were often children playing. I quickly noticed that when I took my daughter out to play, often several children would immediately stop what they were doing and run back inside. It didn't take me long to confirm that the parents were so afraid of "the strange man who wears skirts" that their children were under strict instructions to literally run away as soon as they saw me.

"How afraid are you of a strange man being near your children?"

I mentioned above that I had to avoid public bathrooms. This was not because of men. It was because of women who were so afraid of random men that they might get violent or call someone like the police to be violent for them if I ever accidentally presented myself in a way that could be interpreted as threatening, when my mere presence could be seen as a threat. If I was in the library studying and I realized that it was just me and one other woman I would get up and leave because she might decide that stranger danger was happening.

Your fear is real. Your fear might even come from lived experiences. None of that prevents the fact that your fear can be violent. Women's fear of men is one of the driving forces of transmisogyny because it is so easy to hijack. And it isn't just trans women. Other trans people experience this, and other queer people too. Racial minorities, homeless people, neurodivergent people, disabled people.

When you uncritically engage with questions like man or bear, when you uncritically validate a culture of reactive fear, you are paving the way for conservatives and bigots to push their agenda. And that is why I waited until pride month. You cannot engage and contribute to the culture of reactive fear without contributing to queerphobia of all varieties. The sensationalist culture of reactive fear is a serious queer issue, and everyone just forgot that for a week as they argued over man or bear. I'm not saying that "man" is the right answer. I am saying that uncritically engaging with such obvious click bait trading on reactive fear is a problem. Everyone fucked up.

It is not a moral failing to experience fear, but it is a moral responsibility to keep a handle on that fear and know how it might harm others.

[cosmossystem]

this is how i feel trying to talk about mouthwashing with ppl

i'm so sorry i can only understand surface level concepts like "Take Responsibility For Your Actions" and "Don't Rape/Kill People"

i must be fucking stupid because I can’t find any reason to relate to Jimmy whatsoever

[wiisagi-maiingan]

People who are incarcerated deserve the right to vote. I cannot believe that the biggest argument against that is still "well they'd vote to legalize [murder/rape/etc]" as if ballots have a fill-in-the-blank option for new laws. So many aspects of our society are left up to people who have absolutely no idea how any of it works.

[autolenaphilia]

This post has been in the back of my mind ever since i saw it last year because it is a mask off moment for a usually more subtle transmisogynist. : I blacked out the account names being accused in the screenshot above, because i don't want to be spreading fake transmisogynistic callouts around even to be criticquing them.

Like "trans women are sexual predators who use their identity as queer women as cover to prey on children and other vulnerable people, and liberals are too afraid of being called transmisogynistic to stop them" is like the basic transmisogynist narrative. It's literally the terf narrative about trans women. This is the real terf rhetoric, not trans women criticizing (trans)misogyny.

Yet it is still so common among ostensibly transfem-accepting liberals/leftists. Like trans women using their identity as a shield against legitimate criticism of their predatory behavior is such a common trope in queer spaces that claim to be against terfs. This is because TME people use hating on terfs as a substitute for dealing with their own transmisogyny.

This is extremely common among people in the callout culture transmisogyny fandom like the screenshotted blogger.They go for this line about "transfems using their identity as a shield against genuine criticism" all the time when their obvious if lightly veiled transmisogyny is pointed out. This is their main argument, their own shield against criticism. And it rings very hollow when these people call out transfem after transfem as sexual predators based on them liking harmless kinks like fauxcest and CNC, literally using old radfem arguments against kink.

What this sort of thing is, is the denial that transmisogyny even exists. A claim that instead of being an especially oppressed class of women, we are actually a privileged group. And terfs here are open about saying it's because we are men and have male privilege. The more subtle kind of transmisogynist, the "trans women are women, terfs dni" crowd, leaves the trans women have male privilege bit unsaid but implied.

And of course it's false. As people are surely aware, being transfem makes you more likely to publicly accused of being a sexual menace. And they are most likely false accusations. Accusations against the privileged and powerful, like cis men, are seldom false. The social power that these men wield make it dangerous for any victim to come forward.

Accusations towards members of marginalized groups like transfems, however, are easy and safe to make, because they don't have that kind of social power or privilege. Their position in any social setting is tenuous, and it's easy to turn the group against them to exile them. Transfems don't have the power to defend themselves even against the flimsiest of accusations, while privileged men can defend themselves even against the most well-documented ones. Transfems are instead more likely to be victims of abuse, and then DARVOed by their abusers, being accused of abuse when they were actually abused.

The fact is that transfems can "scream transmisogyny" but few TME people, including other lgbt people, are not likely to listen.

And this is not a "white girl" problem despite what the screenshotted post implies. This problem is far worse for black transfems suffering from transmisogynynoir, and other non-white transfems. Read writings written by black transfems like Position of Guilt: Black Hot Allostatic Load by Anonsee Storyweaver.

[dungeonmastersconsortium]

things are getting WILD on far-right twitter

[anti-terf-posts]

actual feminists: women deserve the right to feel safe, choose to not have children or get married, vote, abortions, pursue their dreams, and feel comfortable in their own skin. rape is a huge problem in our society, and rapists must be prosecuted/condemned for their crimes. Women face an unfair amount of domestic violence compared to men.

terfs: agreed

actual feminists: also, trans rights

terfs: you’re just an evil misogynist, you’re just pretending to be a feminist, you actually hate women >:(

[awakefor48hours]

Please stop telling people, for any reason, to kill themself. Stop advocating for suicide in any form or capacity.

[cutecipher]

Why is the idea that transmisogyny is "just" an online problem so pervasive? Trans women face issues from rape to starvation to imprisonment for being trans women to name a few, these are extremely "irl" issues that are pretty common from my experience.

[manstrans]

honestly the reason I'm so confident in myself when I talk about transandrophobia being real is because I remember what it was like to be ace in 2016

any random blog could come out against aspecs at any time. didn't matter what their content or gimmick was. and if they did come out supporting us, they'd be harassed and sent death threats. it even happened to thomas fucking sanders, who was generally seen as beloved before that (at least from what I saw)

the last major aspec discourse I remember seeing in that era was when someone said "it's bad to rape asexuals". that was all they were saying. and so many people arrived from nowhere to say "actually, aces are the ones withholding sex in the first place, which is abuse, so it's fine"

and when people replied to this saying "you're condoning rape. this is rape apologia," these people doubled down, trying to find reasons why it was okay

so now when I hear "transandrophobia isn't real you don't need a word for that" I remember "aphobia isn't real you don't need a word for that" and how the latter spiraled into justifying corrective rape so easily

[vamprisms]

the emotional whiplash of viewing nosferatu 2024 and it lodging itself in my brain forever as a metaphor for sexual abuse and the way patriarchy enables rape just to come home to see people refer to it as the monsterfucking movie and moving on with their day. like yea she fucked that monster alright but she was not having. a good time.

[fairuzfan]

Here's a summary of what's been happening in Sudan the past couple of days. It's gotten to the point where women are asking for contraceptives for fear of getting raped by RSF forces.

[reachartwork]

can you guys be normal for like five seconds please

[allpiesforourown]

Shen Yuan randomly throwing feminism into his thoughts is always so funny

Tianlang-Jun: I'm gonna be straight up after 20 years of being imprisoned, I don't give a fuck about whether humans die during the merging. They'll figure it out

Shen Yuan: damn... reminds me of the injustices women face everyday. #feminism

[macgyvermedical]

Lithium is so interesting. It was the first medication that actually treated a severe mental illness (bipolar disorder in 1947). It helps prevent dementia. It drastically lowers rates of suicide, homicide, and rape in places where it is naturally present in tap water. It improves bone mineral density. It decreases risk of cancer and stroke. It kills COVID-19. It used to be an ingredient in 7-Up.

[vague-humanoid]