#STOP CONFLATING GENDER WITH WHATS IN PEOPLES PANTS

[red-velvet-0w0]

shaking every lesbian alive by the shoulders and begging you to remember the fact that penises arent "gross and the enemy, I only like GIRLS".

like i hate to break this to you but there are a large amount of girls who have dicks. trans women are women and loving women means loving trans women too.

[jailedmoonshine]

Hi! Just writing to let you know that radical feminism isn’t “pure hatred”, and that the vast majority of women who support it don’t care half as much about people identifying as trans as they do care about protecting marginalized women worldwide (whose issues are fundamentally unable to transcend their biological sex in the way alternative feminism dictates). You said in the tags of a recent post that you’ve spent “so many years trying to understand” radical feminism, which is confusing, because it’s a relatively straightforward approach to feminism. No radfem is ever going to dictate how someone should or shouldn’t dress or behave. The single defining feature is just that radfems argue that how someone dresses and behaves should not be conflated with biological sex or be indicative of a societal gender norm. The entire concept is that boys can wear dresses and girls can wear pants and they are still male and female. Radical feminism strives for the elimination of gender and gender roles!

Genuinely hope you have a good day :) you don’t need to reply to this, I won’t see it anyway, but you really don’t have to prove anything to anyone either. Your beliefs should be yours, not something you feel the need to repeatedly reaffirm to an online public to stay socially acceptable.

Peace:)

Hey anon, thanks for the polite message, I do appreciate it. I'm gonna use this ask to share my perspective a bit more, and while you definitely don't have to continue this conversation if you don't want, if you have any further thoughts I'm happy to hear them!!

Essay below about my history with the phrase and community of "radfems/terfs"

I do acknowledge that in my original post I used the term "radfem" in that tag where I meant to use the term "terf", however in the past 10ish years I've found that the people who use these terms to describe their identity haven't given me any reason to differentiate the two terms.

When I joined Tumblr in 2013, I had already been involved with the queer community for a year, learning about the different corners of the community and our history. At that point, I had accidentally stumbled across the small "radfem" community that had started leaning into the "terf" category of identification on Tumblr specifically.

I remember this movement was relatively small but in any post I saw celebrating trans-ness or gender, there would be somebody with a "radfem" tag in their username trying DESPERATELY to shut down the joy. Comments filled with "you can't change your gender!" type beat, y'know? At the time, I figured it would die out and I moved on.

Suddenly a few years later, I'm on Twitter and I see a particularly famous children's author involving herself in the community I had forgotten about years before, liking posts about whatever the current drama was about and getting herself involved with the whole "you can't change your gender!" type beat, and whaddya know, it BLOWS up.

Now, let's take a few steps back. I'm somebody that struggled with fitting into same sex groups for my entire life. My childhood sport was same sex, my gym classes, the bathrooms, all the things that people don't really think too much about. For me, it came with a body rocking form of anxiety about things like my body being witnessed, the possibility of getting made fun of (which happened if I wasn't keeping an eye out), trying to fit into conversations that I wasn't really interested in because it's what people my sex and my age were talking about, I was getting denied opportunities from my parents because I was interested in activities that weren't typically for my assigned gender.

Funnily enough, I came across some old posts of mine from 2014, 3 years before I came out, that are absolutely mourning my assigned sex and begging to be anything other than my assigned sex. I didn't want my assigned sex to be perceived, I wanted my gender to stop controlling my life. Once I realized that being nonbinary (or agender, as I prefer) was an option and I could partially transition in order to become more androgynous, it has made my life MILES better. I have never thrived so happily in my body without my reproductive organs and a minor level of HRT, and I would encourage anyone looking for androgyny to discuss HRT options with their doctor because it seriously changed my life.

NOW, let's come back to how that's relevant to "radical feminism". In the last 10 years that I've acknowledged that phrase, I have never met a person who uses that phrase with the intention of including transgender people. I would genuinely like to know if anyone knows any people who identify as a "radical feminist" with the intention of including transgender people, cuz they're not doing a very good job of making themselves visible right now.

I live in a country that already has 3 different regions currently attempting to remove transgender people from the vocabulary of anyone under the age of 18, something that I would've THRIVED with the knowledge of as a teenager. If I knew that puberty blockers were an option, I would've avoided 8 years of incredible intestinal pain, dysphoria, depression and more. That's my choice.

I'm of the same opinion that anyone should be able to wear whatever they want and present however they want, along with identifying however they want. If a boy wants to wear a dress then that's so good for him, but if it's an 18 year old trans boy who wants to wear a dress, he is still valid as a man, whereas I've seen typical terfs argue that a trans man wearing a dress means he wants to stay a girl, therefore should just identify as a girl.

If we're genuinely talking about a group of people who identify as "radical feminists" and don't have a single opinion about transgender people I would like to know who they are, because from my perspective "rad fems" are the exact same group of people as TERFs.

To wrap this all up, my fiance is a transgender man. He was actually a huge influence to help me come out myself and better my life, and I'll forever be thankful for his kindness and education. My best friends are all trans or genderless, my sibling is nonbinary, the 3 different women I would run away with if they asked me to are transgender women... ahem

I love transgender people. I love people who play with their own genetics and put themselves through years of medical stress to be the best versions of themselves. Transgender people have been the kindest community I've ever interacted with, the most selfless group of individuals, the most in tune with their own minds and bodies and the world around them. I love their resilience and their strength in a world that wants them to desist, and I will always be on the side of transgender people.

This blog is not censored for appeal, nor will I ever post anything to satisfy any form of masses. This blog is my own beliefs, and my beliefs are that trans people are (pardon my pun) rad as fuck.

[screechingkingdomhottub]

my thoughts on the starkid controversies

{TCB included} yo so i got some opinions that i’m gonna spread...now. So does starkid have some inherently problematic things in their musicals that whether intentionally or not promotes a stereotype? Yeah. Let’s unpack these a little, okay? So let’s start at the beginning with Little White Lie. I think Little White Lie did great, there’s an episode where they defend trans people and the transphobic person is the villain and as a young closeted trans dude watching that...it was totally awesome. Now, AVPM, i dunno mans. I love it, I’ve seen the series many a times and used to watch it to cheer me up at night, I think it critiques JKR’s stereotypes very well and goes full out of “well if dumbledore is gay...let’s make him flaming gay” which is awesome. I saw Devin posted a youtube video talking about how she feels she stole the Cho Chang role away from an Asian actress who is known for playing Lavender Brown called Sango Tajima. I, personally, never got that vibe but I don’t think that’s up to me, I wasn’t there, I’m white, she ended up getting more roles and I encourage y’all to watch Devin’s video on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fubo7wfGcuo  I’m gonna skip a few cause there’s a lot of musicals and I’m tired. I think a lot of people feel uncomfortable about Umbridge’s portrayal and the way the relationship with Dumbledore is done because it can correlate to the trans women are often seen and portrayed and watching it thinking about it like that...makes it a bit cringey. On a similar note, in Spies Are Forever, Susan is a crossdressing character that has transphobic undertones.  Now, I’m not saying starkid are transphobic or racist or should be cancelled or whatever. And I believe a lot of this stuff they have redeemed and tried to progress forward a lot better and that’s awesome. I am a firm believer everyone should just be judged based on their intentions. If someone has good intentions but does a shite job and people point out they’re not fulfilling those good intentions then they can change and grow and it’s great.  So I love Black Friday but I have a gripe. Can we talk about Gary Goldstein for a bit? Now, I find the character kinda funny, Jon is an amazing actor and his portrayal is awesome. But Gary Goldstein is a lawyer...a very greedy lawyer...with the last name Goldstein. So for those of you that are unaware, Goldstein is a Jewish last name...Jewish stereotypes commonly consist of being very greedy lawyers...you see the issue here? I’m not Jewish, being completely honest I’m still confused about what being Jewish actually means however for Black Friday to take such strong political stances and add to it a so easily avoidable tidbit, literally without the name no one would conflate it with being Jewish but damn. And Hatchetfield names matter so much from what I’ve seen, so there’s thought behind this which makes it worse?  So onto Robert Manion, pitchforks ready? The first controversy I saw about him was to do with something called genderbent pictures. For those that don’t know, it’s when people take someone usually a character from something and switch them to the opposite sex. A lot of the trans community have an issue with this because it kinda eradicates nonbinary people a lot. Really focuses on the binary part, y’know? says “oh now they’re the gender they’re not actually” implying only 2...it’s kinda shitty. For me, personally, it’s dysphoria inducing. It highlights features everyone associates with only each gender and I start recognising all the features on the female version that i have on me and it’s not a fun time. I’m a big boi, i can deal. But many trans people replied to him when talking about this and expressed the dysphoria they were feeling, why promoting those was harming the trans community etc. He apologised but he only apologised for calling it gender bent and not digital drag which...is not what people were saying? I appreciate him making an effort on twitter to promote trans voices, idk much about american politics, so can’t say much on what he’s doing there but at least it’s something. What would be the most awesome thing for him to do is explain what the actual things the trans community told him and promote that to discourage those pictures or to encourage them to also include non binary people in some way cause artistic expression and stuff. More recent Robert Manion controversy is the body positivity pictures. I’m 100% for body positivity, always, anyone body shaming anybody (unless they’re a racist, rapist or general bigot) is a bAD BEAN. However, now this part is gonna get a little nsfw, so if you’re a minor please don’t keep reading, i aint trying to get arrested.  i can’t figure out how to do the keep reading thing so consider this it. Minors leave.  So, onlyfans is a website where you pay for porn basically like a total boomer simp but i digress. Some pages are softcore which is like just outlines of things...like people in their underwear. Robert posted pictures of him in his underwear and tagged it porn and onlyfans. Which if a grown man wants to do sex work I won’t stop him. That’s not the case here, the case here is he posted a picture in his underwear, where his ahem bulge is visible and sexualised it with the tags. There are minors that follow this man, that may have been scrolling through instagram in school and saw oh shit a dong. “But Joey Richter took off his pants in mamd!!!” yeah and that had a ton of warnings, you knew what you were gonna watch was for mature starkids only. “WHat about Lupin!!” couldn’t see the bulge. When I was 17, I went to see a play and a girl in it started stripping right down to her underwear, was just like seeing her in a bikini. The tags sexualised it but so did the bulge outline. He censored it on his story which kinda feels like he knew it was inappropriate. Something else that makes me very uncomfortable about this all is the Body Positivity argument. Now I have gender dysphoria, I have scars, I have stretch marks, acne, I’m so SO for body positivity. I rant so often about how fatphobia shouldn’t happen because weight doesn’t equal health. I’m not saying this is what he’s doing but that argument is used by actual groomers. Like y’know the fucks that groom children? i.e. onision (allegedly) where he’d say it’s just for body positivity and get children to send him pics of them in their underwear? You see why this is a dangerous argument here? I don’t think Robert’s intention was to do that but if you indirectly tell a bunch of teenagers posting pictures in their underwear is a good thing...I can’t be the only one making this link and the fact y’all defend this as “just shirtless pictures” is lowkey driving me wild. He apologised for the tags cause it was making fun of sex workers but please please please think of the risk. Please?  Starkid mess up, they’re human, please stop acting like they do nothing wrong and please stop acting like they’re cancelled forever with no redemption okay bye PS please let me know any trigger warnings to add <3

[mikhalsarah]

The Emperor’s New Gender

How can you help a 3-year-old to stop misgendering family friends who are transwomen? She isn't trying to insult them deliberately, but just doesn't perceive them as women and won't remember being corrected the next time she sees them. -Quora

First of all, as per further information in the comments, this is not your child and it is NOT your place to be interfering in how this family handles the issue unless they have specifically ASKED for your advice. This is something for the offended friends and the parents to work out, and if you value your friendships you will back out of what isn’t your problem. The entire fact that you feel entitled to force your personal beliefs on other people’s children and intervene in their parenting and other social relationships is extremely disturbing. I suggest you get a good book on Co-dependence recovery.

Secondly, this is an “Emperor’s New Clothes” problem. There is NOTHING ��wrong” with this toddler (who at 3 is actually a preschooler), so there is nothing the parents can do about it. You can’t fix what isn’t broken. This reminds me of medieval parents getting the idea in their heads that crawling was too animalistic and ungodly, and strapping their children to little roundabouts to force them to skip crawling and go right to “proper human” walking. Crawling is developmentally necessary for most children and they rarely skip over it, and their lower leg bones and muscles are not yet ready to bear their full weight, leading to possible bow-leggedness. You cannot force children to skip developmental stages because it offends people based on some ideology they have. It has consequences. It is grown-ups here who must accept the natural development of children however inconvenient it is. This is called ACTING LIKE AN ADULT.

This is a normal stage of neurological development. At a certain point in the developing brain it starts to categorize things as a means to understand them. The ability to understand who is biologically male and producing sperm and who is biologically female and producing ova is self-evidently crucial to the survival of every species on the planet that has sexual reproduction. Even for species that can literally morph from one sex to the other, it is still crucial to recognize which members of their species are in which sexual form, and to have that skill locked well down before puberty hits. Therefore that ability is hard-wired into us, just like our ability to acquire language is. This child has reached a stage where they can now identify key markers of biological sex in people’s body shapes (hip to waist ratio, shoulder to hip ratio) and faces (relative size and placement of eyes, nose and philtrum lengths, chin length and width etc) but they have no idea yet what “gender” is as a concept because their brain is not mature enough to entertain a concept that still confuses many adults, apparently.

Children are notorious for mis-gendering everyone, not just trans people. I was mis-gendered by two preschoolers yesterday when I appeared at work in a skirt instead of my typical jeans. There was even a story decades back in Reader’s Digest illustrating how they mix up and conflate sex and gender roles. It was submitted by a parent who allowed their 4 year old to go to JK wearing his sister’s barrettes, only to have the teacher overhear him arguing with another boy about whether he was a boy or a girl. The boy eventually became exasperated and pulled down his pants to show the other boy his penis to prove he was a boy, to which the other boy dismissively said, “Everyone has a penis, only girls wear barrettes.”

Here I will suggest that you also need some good books on child development and evolutionary biology.

This situation would not have been a problem even a few years ago, before “transsexual” was turned into a dirty word and transgender was foisted on us, instead. Once upon a time you could just tell a child that:

A) not everyone who is male or female fits neatly into the typical or average appearance for their sex (or behaviour, for that matter)

B) some people who are born into one sex are unhappy about it for reasons we don’t yet understand. They feel strongly that they are the other sex internally (in their mind/brain) and are much happier if everyone just lets them live as the sex they feel inside as much as possible, and they can have hormones and surgery to help them do so. Since most of those people don’t fully understand themselves until past puberty, they develop outwardly like their biological sex and it can take a lot of time and money to change that.

and

C) It’s impolite and unkind to make personal remarks, or to draw attention to physical features or other differences which people have no control over.

We don’t yet fully understand the biological working of things like gender development, gender identity, or sexual orientations, but there is more than enough evidence that they are “real” events with correlates in the material world. We know that people with conditions that are known to affect the structure and function of their temporal lobes are much more likely to be GLB (including sudden shifts in their sexual orientation after events like head injuries, strokes and seizures) and much more likely to identify as trans or otherwise not conforming to the gender binary (including again, sudden changes to their sense of self-identity in the wake of neurological events). Obviously the majority of people who are LGBT haven’t had a head injury, stroke or seizure, so being LGBT is not “caused by” those things, they’re just some of many things that can “flip the switch”; genetics, pre-natal hormone exposure, birth order, and developmental life experiences have all been tentatively cited as having a role to play.

*People on both the Right and Woke Left will be determined to misunderstand me here as saying that being GLB or T is evidence of a “sickness” of some sort…either agreeing and using this information as “proof” that it’s so or becoming angry at me for equating the two. So let’s just head off that nonsense at Go. ALL MANNER of changes can happen in the wake of neurological events in the temporal lobe or elsewhere. One man who had a head injury suddenly became a mathematical genius…do you think that’s evidence that being good at math is a “sickness”? One person finds they become more emotional, another less so (neither is a pathology unless taken to extremes that prevent the person functioning). Some people who develop Temporal Lobe Epilepsy suddenly take up writing or (less often) the visual arts. Is being a writer or artist a biological flaw? Obviously not. The linkage of any trait with an area of the brain is not evidence that the trait is pathological (it might be, it might not), it is merely evidence that one or more neurological substrates that control that trait resides in that particular part of the brain. As regards gender identity, it tells us that there is some part of our brains where sexual self-identity arises and therefore the person’s experience may be subjective (only they experience it, others cannot perceive it unless told of it) but is not imaginary.

In the past children gradually acquired the ability for more complex categorization and learned to differentiate between someone’s biological sex, their gender presentation (how closely they match others of their sex), and societal gender roles. Children are remarkably accepting of diversity and exceptions to rules when they are presented matter-of-factly. More so than adults who apparently can’t accept facts which don’t fit with their ideologies on the Left, any more than Evangelical Young-Earth Creationists on the Right can, and feel the need to tie themselves into mindless, slogan-droning intellectual pretzels as a result.

The fact that we now view even toddlers with suspicion of “transphobia” and seek to indoctrinate their natural neurological development out of them should be a GIANT F*ING RED FLAG that we are NOT becoming more aware of diversity and more accepting, we are becoming LESS able to see the full extent of how diverse humans really are and are being forced to pigeonhole them into categories that the average five year old is supposed to be outgrowing. What we are seeing is an extremely judgmental, rigid and abusive cult that denies an obvious reality that even a child can see, that biological sex is real and important, and cannot be replaced by or conflated with gender identity or roles, even if we also agree that gender presentation and gender identity are also important biological realities. It used to be only children who foolishly did so, but now we have adults telling children that everyone can have a penis and only girls wear barrettes.

In the original story of The Emperor’s New Clothes, the child’s lack of indoctrination into social hierarchies left them nonconformist, and free to state what they saw with their own eyes with impunity. The child was not punished because children are not expected to be politically correct. In fact, it led the adults to realize that they had let fear and desire to conform and be thought clever blind them to obvious reality. It is the adults in the end who feel foolish and ashamed, and change their ways. We’re not yet at the end of the story of The Emperor’s New Gender, but based on the current trajectory the “adults” are going to double-down and I will soon be looking for a new career, as I will be expected to throw away everything I know about child development so that daycares can be run like Orwellian indoctrination camps. I will not participate in the ideological and developmental abuse of children so that a tiny minority of adults can live in a fantasy world in which they deny an aspect of reality when it has the temerity not to give a shit about their ideology.

[upthetracks]

I had a coworker years back named Isaac and thought about stealing the name ever since. I knew an Eli last summer who I took to go look at crayfish by the lake and never saw after that and that name is stuck in my head now too. When did this gender shit start? Idk if I can even say. I didn’t feel like I wasn’t a girl growing up, but then what is being a girl supposed to feel like? A girl isn’t a real thing maybe. Nah they’re real but how many people live their lives or childhoods as people and children and accept the name girl or boy because it’s frictionless enough, sure fine, and anyways that’s what they say you are so that’s what you are. I cast my memory back and remember a history of small things and mold it into the shape of discomfort but maybe that’s a fiction. But then we’re all of us stories we tell ourselves huh? So humor me, because this is how I’ve been saying it to myself, lined up in a row chronological like: 1) Kindergarten I always wanted to seem ‘cool’ which I distinguished in my head from the way other girls wanted to seem cute or pretty. I wanted to be a fast runner and an artist and an enigma. 2) Second grade a new girl moved into the neighborhood and she wore a purple jacket and I was real viscerally off-put by her. I had something against what I called girly girls and femininity. In Highschool I’d come to understand this as internalized misogyny, but now I think it points to some desire to avoid being understood a certain way. 3) Up into fifth grade I had a sorta peculiar way of dressing. I wanted to avoid dressing girly, but I wasn’t trying to dress like a boy. Didn’t know I could. I never wore skirts or dresses and I didn’t like graphic tees or cute stuff. I guess I liked colors and how they paired - I wore plain long sleeve colored shirts with a plain colored short sleeve over top a lot, mix and match. I liked to look cool the way I understood it, before I realized how strange I looked most of the time. 4) in sixth grade I because self conscious and found my style of dress immature, conflated femininity of a certain caliber with maturity and fitting in. Obsessed with fitting in from then on - started trying to be pretty and presentable and wore shirts with lower necklines and learned not to use low pony tails. 5) Seventh grade started shaving, extremely self conscious about body hair. Legs and pits and by the grace of god I never tried for my arms. Dressed more feminine but was still not drawn to very feminine things, still no dresses, no skirts, no pink. Still wanted to look ‘cool’ before pretty. 6) Highschool started a Make-up routine and Never left Home without light foundation, and for a good while, some eyeliner. 7) when boys would like me, it would bring up feelings of disgust, fear, or anger. I remember thinking to myself ‘they only like me because they see me as a girl and make assumptions, I wish they could see me as me’. I like boys, but I’d later think this was a sign I was a lesbian. 8) after senior year I stopped wearing makeup and started shaving less. I came to like a moderate amount of hair on my legs and pits, eventually I stopped all together. 9) my college was full of gay people. Not many from Highschool, or not out, especially in my grade. Made and appreciated gay and lesbian and trans friends, felt comfortable with them, more at ease. Throughout college I dropped more and more female signifiers - tight tops and pants, low necklines, my long hair, eventually started binding and wearing almost exclusively men’s clothes. Started wearing a longer dress and skirt now and then, once I admitted I wanted to wear them in the way a boy might…

[frogsandfries]

Our society is so myopic

Which is ironic because I wear glasses.

But what I mean is, I can't stop thinking about the conversation I had on my lunch. My coworker asked if I got the job at the one place, and I said, no, I think my uncertainty got in my way. She said she interviewed there to cashier and they said she wasn't qualified for the job, when that's all she's done since she's been working. She said (at least a little bitterly) that she wouldn't work there anyway because one of the people who interviewed her was trans, and extra, y'know? I mentioned I think gender transitioning is the lobotomy of this century, and that people only feel like they need to entirely, visually change their gender so they can be the right gender, but if there was less emphasis on genitals, and more on you as an individual, and more acceptance of things like men being carers and nurturers.

She said, it's not right, that she'd rather a woman looked after her son. I mentioned that women can be just as creepy as men--think those female teachers who "seduce" their high school or middle school male students. She mentioned priests, that you don't hear of a lot of girls being messed with by priests.

An opportunity opened up for me to bring up my favourite bible fact, the oft abused "thou shalt not lie with man". I'm strongly camp "the bible in its most original form doesn't give a shit about homosexuality".

And this is what I'm here for tonight:

The greater context

The ancient Greeks were so gay, their society failed. Yes, I know I'm greatly, massively exaggerating. But the Greeks were equally, massively gay. Unless I'm conflating them with the Romans, who were also So Gay ™. But seriously, the Greeks were so gay, they had standards for a beautiful penis, see the Adonis or any other nude, male, ancient Greek sculpture. They slathered athletes in oil and collected and treasured that sweaty oil. Only men could be athletes.

Beyond that, there are more cultures than just Christianity, and they have different opinions than Christians. I literally cannot cite my sources because when I Google "bum boy" all I get are rants about baggy pants and when I Google "silk road" all I get are articles about that scam that happened and I do not know how to use Google better. Edit: Nor, apparently, DDG. My point is, I remember reading somewhere that they would take "boys", whether that meant slaves or actually pre/pubescent boys, on ships or voyages so that men could still have, y'know, a warm hole. I swear I remember reading this.

Anyway, we all know the bible is just a book. Christianity, we forget, is a very young religion, relatively speaking. It branched off from Judaism and only took off with the Roman empire. It's easy to imagine that outside of the confines of "society", such as on the Silk Road, or other such mercenary expeditions, it would've been easy to be who you really were--perhaps a pagan, or somebody who could care less about the Sabbath or what the bible said about mixing textiles.

Also, we should all remember that traditionally, for centuries, women were property and marriage was a business transaction. No one married for love, and the more I learn about history, the more realistic it seems to believe that a) pre-industrial revolution humans had more freetime, which means b) if they found love as we think of it, they would just pursue it because that's just what you do. Additionally, for centuries, women have been going to war, men have been dressing up as women; men have been fucking men and women have been sexually satisfying each other because men just cannot be bothered.

Instead, we just lazily want to throw our hands in the air and blame Those Damn Liberals ™, because things used to be so much easier In the Olden Days™. We can't understand why the first generations to get married "for love" couldn't stay married. We can't understand why men want to fuck men and we can't accept that men have emotions and we can't accept that some men think they want to be women and some women think they want to be men. What's next, conservatives despair, humans wanting to be accepted for fucking children and animals?! Um, no. Those things are not acceptable in a world where we know children are not small adults, but rather developing brains inside of tiny bodies. And it's never really anywhere in the world been acceptable to fuck animals.

I'm losing all track of my thoughts.

Another point I want to bring up is that manufactured beds as we think of them are also a modern convenience, and historically, the bed might have been entirely "manufactured" by the woman--from harvesting and spinning the fibers, to weaving the cloth, harvesting the filling, and maintaining the tension. That was her bed, insofar as it was the place for conceiving children. Not fucking your neighbor Bob.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The institutional inferiority of black people was invented and exacerbated by the slave culture of the United States, but we're slowly fighting to change that. The United States was the birth place of marriage for love, for the sake of selling diamonds, but that's some bullshit that only took the internet to crumble. Speaking of the internet, the internet is how we know there are centuries of records of men dressing like women, women dressing like women, men loving men and women loving women.

But our culture is so myopic, we don't want to fully imagine history. We don't want to imagine real people; we want to imagine a vignette that looks how we imagine it should. History is so intangible to people who are incurious and want to be spoonfed only what they want to hear and nothing more.

So instead of working on my patterns, I've spent half an hour of my life attempting to research this post and an hour of my life writing it to complain that no one wants to imagine for a second that the social issues that are out in the open today aren't new.

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

On my femininity

I find it odd when people seem to conflate the idea of being a strong woman with 'wearing pants'. Sure, many strong women do, and they are beautiful. But I want to take a moment to talk about why wearing a dress or dressing in a traditionally feminine manner makes us be perceived as weak, as soft, even as childlike and in need of protection, or as mere sex objects. When I was a kid, I had a friend who hated skirts and dresses- she thought they were stupid and awful, and because of her, I stopped wearing them too. All through the end of elementary school and middle school and into high school I wouldn't wear dresses, I said I hated them too. Just before middle school I stopped wearing shorts too, actually- I hated my legs in particular when I was younger, and desperately wanted to cover them. The funny thing was, when I was really little, I loved dressing up- princess dresses, witch costumes, holiday dresses, anything with a skirt, I loved to wear. I loved how they swooshed around my knees. My grandma actually made me dresses for a history camp I went to, so I could dress like a girl my age would have dressed in the past- femininely, in a skirt. I know why a lot of people associate dresses and femininity with weakness- they want to move away from that past where all too often women had so much power taken away from them. Never mind that women have always been badasses in their days, in whatever they wore, whether the clothes were enforced by societal expectations or not. Somewhere along the line we made it all about the symbolism of the clothes and not about the people who wear them. We gave into the patriarchal idea that skirts/feminity equals powerlessness. That is not only reductive, but it limits women's choices yet again. I wore a dress again for the first time in five or six years because I had to for a costume in a play. it wasn't exactly my favorite- the skirt was short and seemed to lay so flat- but I took a chance on another dress after that, and a maxi skirt which I adored (full coverage and feeling feminine as anything). I felt (and feel) stronger and more confident when I'm in a dress. For me, wearing a dress makes me feel like I've put more effort into my outfit (even if I haven't) which gives me a reason to hold my head up to live up to the impression my clothes will make. And speaking of impressions, I get a total rush when I stand up to prove a point or win an argument or provide analysis and no one is expecting the girl in the skirt and ballet flats to get business done. And to be perfectly honest, there's probably still a bit of a princess in me, of the belle or Leia type (Moana wasn't around when I was a kid) who shows up in a dress and looks damn fine as she commands the situation in all her femininity, a juxtaposition of wisely spent kindness and fierceness. I'd like to add here, by the way, that the notion that the only reason for an adult woman to wear a dress is to be sexy, is also bullshit. I dress for my own confidence, thank you, and if it is to be sexy (because hell yes being sexy can be fun too) then it sure as hell still ain't for you, unless you're my girlfriend. If you're not her, the former still applies- it's for me to feel confident and good. I couldn't finish this without talking about how I've thought of my femininity since coming out. Because while I'd made peace with it (and come to own it) in the straight world, I again feel self conscious about it sometimes around my fellow queer people. I feel it in the way an older queer woman ran her eyes over me suspiciously but gazed approvingly at my trans masc and obviously queerly dressed friend. I feel it when anyone asks who wears the pants in my relationship, and I want to scream "she does, more often than me, but that means nothing in terms of the heterosexual gender roles you're trying to place upon us!" Being straight passing (in this case being feminine-presenting) feels like far less of a "privilege" when you realize that it serves to embolden random men to hit on and follow you, seems to mark you as weak in either straight society or queer society, invalidates your identity, makes both straight and queer people question if you're lying about being queer, turns you into a stereotypical porn category that straight men can stomach because you have long hair and a skirt but "representation" outside the porn industry rarely acknowledges that a queer woman can own her feminine clothing (although this is getting better, and by the way, all wlw need more and better representation, that hella includes more butch people/all wlw no matter what they wear). So I'll stand by my dresses making me feel good and strong, and I'll stand by anyone else who feels like that in a skirt as well. I'd just really appreciate the rest of the world dropping the bullshit that traditionally feminine clothing has no place on the figure of a strong, modern woman. My skirt is for me, it does not revolve around a need for patriarchal protection or being a sex object.