#This sort of lateral aggression happens across the community regardless of gender

[amalg-em]

The thing about the lateral aggression I see in trans communities is that it's everywhere. All the time I see people parroting this idea that trans woman = most oppressed, trans man = spoiled manchild that never has any problems ever. And it's pretty disturbing how many people I've seen regurgitating it. People I cared for. People I trusted.

Did you know that transmasculine people have the highest chance of being a sexual assault victim? Higher than cis women, trans women, or cis men? But certainly that's nothing, right? Certainly that sort of trauma isn't the thing that irreversibly damages you, makes it harder to make life worth living?

Do you really think invisibility is a privilege? That being forgotten and ignored is beneficial? The last 12 months have been the worst of my life, and I've had the least support that I've ever had. Even my biological family has fucked off. The only thing keeping me from offing myself is the knowledge that it would leave my partner abandoned and unsupported. But surely I'm just being dramatic, right? Somewhere out there is a trans woman who has it harder than me, so how dare I complain.

The thing about suffering is that it's not readily quantifiable. It all sucks. It literally all sucks, all the time, and people can have the exact same amount and kind of suffering and be affected by it completely differently. It's utterly pointless to try to create some sort of hierarchy of most oppressed and we know this. We've known this forever. We literally have a term for it (oppression Olympics). We know that it's counterproductive and pointless to lash out at people on the same sinking ship as us because, well, MY end is lower in the water than YOURS so YOU don't get to talk about your problems. In fact HOW DARE YOU coin a term for the problems facing you, that makes you exactly the same as a TERF.

It's so fucking bleak out here. We could ALL be talking about our problems without demanding silence from others while we do it. We could be building solidarity with people who have different experiences, acknowledging those differences without trying to rank them, and give everyone space to be heard. There shouldn't be imposed scarcity of compassion - but there is, from people who claim to be compassionate, who claim to care about the struggles of people not like them. Not really though. Not unless you're the Right Kind of oppressed.

Today my social circle gets a little smaller. The world gets that much more hostile. And the noose of isolation tightens around my neck that much more. And somewhere, someone will find a vent post that I made while trying not to be another trans su|c|de statistic, and use that as proof that transmasculine people are a Lesser Breed of trans and don't deserve support, acknowledgement, or the ability to name & talk about our problems.

[redwoodrroad]

where did you get the idea that it’s part of norn culture to demoralize women

Here’s the thing: This is the sort of thing you pick up around NPCs in the game, and it’s something that I’ve decided is worth an essay. Norn men tend to fall into a category of hypermasculinity--they’re loud, they’re stubborn, they’re aggressive, and all Norn have massive complexes related to power and prestige, especially as applicable to the Hunt, etc. These traits may sometimes extend to Norn women, but they are emphasized in Norn men. I have actually included a read more at the end so I could offer some anecdotal examples, leaning on Braham, Eir, and Jora to discuss their actions throughout the game. For the moment, there are a couple of things I’d like to point out here: 1) these stores do not exist in a vacuum, they come from real life inspiration and experiences; 2) the Sons of Svanir didn’t invent the idea of hating women, it’s an idea that’s intersected with a yearn for power; and 3) Jormag also is not advocating for the demoralization of women, they also just want power.

First off, here’s something pretty key about this that my friend @jorasdottir brought up: Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 do not exist in a vacuum. The culture that came up with Norn culture is a hypermasculine and hugely westernized culture. We see hypermasculinity all around us, and it exists in this game. I get into more of this later.

Second, the very fact that the Sons of Svanir are so anti-women doesn’t come from nowhere--you don’t just start systemically hating women because one woman killed someone; the Sons of Svanir were bourne from someone who already hated women but who found the justification for it by pinning all their anger on Jora partly out of their respect for Svanir. Not only that, but no one starts a whole movement of hating women by being alone either--one guy yelling in the street about how he hates Jora doesn’t start a movement, it’s something that several people would have to calculate. It’s also not all Jormag’s funny little whispers because if that was the case, we’d primarily see mindless Norn attacking you for not agreeing with them--in reality, the Sons of Svanir essentially have a motel built into Hoelbrak’s caves, and they got jackasses handing out fliers. They believe that women are not to be trusted, that they are weak-minded, and that they are not worthy of Jormag’s blessings in the same way that the Sons of Svanir are worthy of them.

Lastly, and to wrap up, if Jormag was only utilizing promises of power, the Sons of Svanir would not be willingly chilling (no pun intended) 100 feet away from Knut Whitebear, and Knut Whitebear wouldn’t be letting them stay there if they were visibly hostile. Jormag isn’t telling the Sons of Svanir to hate women, and Svanir himself didn’t represent all Norn men before he was killed--Jormag promised power to the few Norn who were already prescribed with larger yearns for power, and those Norn didn’t just happen to be men. These were men who themselves felt demoralized enough to want power. They must be competitive, reckless, untrusting of others, unempathetic, and selfish. It is not a coincidence that these qualities can become more intense in men--and this is something that extends past the walls of this game. This is what I meant when I said “we see hypermasculinity all around us.” These are the qualities of hypermasculinity--and sure, you can see all of these qualities in women too, in the real world and in the game, but it is not without purpose that these qualities apply to the most extreme members of Norn culture, in Norn men. There are also many essays that examine the intersection between sexism and power, it comes from a history of demoralizing women--yes, in the real world, but as I’ve established, these games were created by people who also live in the real world--and it’s honestly worth reading up about.

All of this is to say that Norn men didn’t just come up with hating women simply because of anything like Jormag’s influence or hating Jora, it must come from the culture. Norn culture involves seeking power. Power requires demoralizing others. Hypermasculinity in a culture that emphasizes power, legacy, prestige, etc. breeds otherism. Otherism causes a rift between those who deem themselves the most worthy of receiving power--those who have heightened traits of hypermasculinity, predominantly men, to include those who are extremely competitive--and those who they deem most unworthy of receiving power. If you’re a man and you’re experiencing otherism mixed with competition and other qualities of hypermasculinity, the subject of that otherism is most commonly women. When there are a lot of you who feel this way, you make a group because you may also in turn be rejected from the larger society for having these views. This is what leads to the creation of groups like the Sons of Svanir. This is why it is part of Norn culture to demoralize women. It’s not by any means a priority, it’s not a central quality of Norn culture, but it is part of the culture.

Obviously this is a lot to swallow, I’m sure you didn’t expect six paragraphs of Sociological perspective here, but hey! this is what I went to school for. I’m very passionate about this topic, so I’m glad you were inspired to ask! This also wasn’t meant to be preachy or condescending in any way, so I’m sorry if any of this might come across that way. If you’d like ask me anything else about my perspective on this type of thing, please feel free! Of course, thank you so much for reading all of this, and I hope you found it useful. Feel free to read some anecdotal evidence under the read more below; otherwise, take care! Let me know what you think!

For even just one example, remember how Braham acted towards us when we admitted we weren’t going to uphold Destiny’s Edge, that we thought it was more respectful to start Dragon’s Watch in her honor instead. Braham reacted by claiming it was not only unhonorable to her legacy but then turned on us while accusing us of letting her die, going against all the good terms we left him on during the Heart of Thorns campaign. In the caves during Season 3, he became more reckless than ever, newly obsessed with upholding his idea of her legacy by unearthing this scroll, right, and risking Rox’s life in the process. He didn’t even hold any remorse for her when she was in that ice--even after she was freed and brought back to proper health--and look, I’m not saying Braham is a bad person for acting this way. He was going through a really terrible mourning process after losing someone he only recently realized he still loved. Even so, this attitude was not something necessarily present in Eir, even though she was raised in the same community.

Eir wasn’t necessarily a nurturing person herself, but she didn’t have as extreme a version of those qualities as Braham--and if the implication during the Personal Story was that all the members of Destiny’s Edge were close close friends, having spent years fighting and traveling together, you’d think she’d be just as stubborn and reckless about Snaff’s death as Braham was about her own, later down the line. Instead, Eir drew into herself and stopped fighting dragons all together. When fighting with Zojja all those times we were there to witness it, she didn’t get aggressive, she got depressed; she didn’t blame Zojja or anyone else in defensiveness, even though Rytlock would be the first and loudest to blame Logan at the time, she maintained that she felt horrible for what had happened. She was full of remorse. It’s likely she had never experienced a level of remorse like that, and neither had Braham for losing Eir.

Now, this isn’t a perfect 1-to-1 comparison, but it’s pretty clear that it’s at least somewhat a pattern based on the fact that other major characters fall into these categories too: Svanir turned into a bear and went mad due to Jormag’s influence, that’s not necessarily his fault, but Jora chose to find another way to heal him or break him out of the curse. Only when she realized there was no other way did she decide she had to kill him--you can honestly ask jorasdottir more about this because she’s very knowledgeable about the whole affair--but if the theory is that all Norn, regardless of gender, should be the type to run in, guns (or, axes) blazing, in order to kill everything on sight, that would extend to Jora as well, right?

My point is that we have witnessed Norn men take extreme approaches to situations, especially in moments of high emotion, and we have witnessed Norn women take careful or even passive approaches to situations, likewise in moments of high emotion. I believe these anecdotes further emphasize my point here that some men in Norn culture may sometimes be raised to act differently and more aggressively than some women in Norn culture, even those within the same family. Again, thank you for reading!