#a lot of trans spaces just kinda act like the western US is the entire world

[sistersorrow]

4chan's /lgbt/ board is an actual hellpit and the closest thing to a cognitohazard that mankind has conceived of, but one thing it has over a bunch of other online trans spaces I'm in is that I can generally talk about my problems without people defaulting to treating me as delusional

[tooangrymustinternet]

For my cisgender friends, followers, and allies:

This is a long post. It's long because what I need you all to understand is complicated and nuanced, so it cannot be summarized in a short post if I want you to actually understand. Please bear with me, and please read the whole thing if you can, as I will consider that an act of love, allyship, and/or community. (Skip the glossary if you don't need it of course.) ____________________ Glossary of Terms in this Post

♡ Binarism (noun) - This is a specific form of sexism and transphobia that elevates binary genders (men and women) above all others. As of this posting, binarism is currently so pervasive that most people don't realize they are participating in it.

♡ Binary [genders] (adj) - This term refers to men and to women, regardless of cis or trans.

♡ Cis/Cisgender (adj) - Cis is a shortening of cisgender (sometimes written as cis gender). Cisgender people are people whose gender identity, sex assigned at birth, gender presentation, and chosen/performed gender role all line up in one neat little package. Mainstream western culture likes to pretend that all people are cisgender.

♡ Nonbinary (adj) - This term refers to the entire category of people who are not strictly 100% men or 100% women. Sometimes it refers to people who are somewhere between the two; sometimes it refers to people who are totally off of that spectrum and have genders entirely separate from it; there are a lot of possibilities, but the bottom line is that this is a category of genders which intersects with the word "transgender" like a Venn diagram.

♡ Segender (adj) - This term refers to someone whose gender is not recognized within their own culture. It is not a specific gender, but rather describes the state of a person's gender just like "cisgender" and "transgender" are not specific genders. In Western cultures, many people of nonbinary genders are segender. Other cultures are more likely to recognize one or more nonbinary gender.

♡ Sexism (noun) - prejudice, stereotyping, and/or discrimination in thought or action, on the basis of either sex or gender. Sexism is, as most people reading this know, highly pervasive. Our society is actively working to correct this.

♡ Trans/Transgender (adj) - Trans is a shortening of transgender (sometimes written as trans gender). Transgender people are people whose gender identities do not match the gender assigned to them at birth. This is a loose term; there are people who technically fit this definition but do not identify as cis or trans.

♡ Transphobia (noun) - a form of sexism which raises cis people and/or harms trans people. Transphobia is pervasive, but as of this posting, it is finally being talked about a lot more so things finally have a chance to start getting better. ____________________ PART ONE: Pervasiveness of Binarism

Binarism is pervasive in our culture. The idea that everyone is either a man or a woman is simultaneously false, and something our culture has steeped itself in. From binary check boxes on dating apps and doctor intake forms, to binary restrooms, to phrases like "Ladies and gentlemen," or "boys and girls," the concept that other people exist too has been purged from our cultural collection of colloquialisms, constructs, and more.

This means that the number of segender genders here is pretty darn high. It also means that binarism is one of the most common forms of transphobia. And that, my dear friends and community members who have decided to read this essay, is the first main point I need you to understand or the rest of what I have to say in this won't make sense. Binarism is a specific form of erasure and bias related so strongly to transphobia and sexism that a lot of people refer to it as a subset of those things. It is the erasure of the existence of nonbinary people like me to the point of not being able to safely use dating apps or public restrooms because they don't exist for us. And that's just the built environment; I haven't even begun to touch on being treated with respect by the people we interact with, in a culture where strangers will almost certainly never get our genders right.

Right now, as I write this, I can't handle talking about how afraid I am of gender-based violence and murder or the very real reasons I have for those fears, so I am going to skip that part.

I don't think I know how to describe the sheer depth and breadth of binarism people like me deal with on a daily basis, so I ask that you consider that it is similar to any other form of sexism in that it happens All The Time. Every time I want to use the bathroom at work, I have to walk to a different building because the restrooms are segregated and none of the ones for people like me are available in my building. Exactly once in my life, a stranger assumed the correct gender for me. The rest of the time, it's a day-long mix of Sirs and Ma'ams from well-meaning people who I know are trying to be polite despite their massive failures at it. There's a lot more, but I want to move on to my next point. Just know that binarism hurts me and others like me several times per day. That's just life for people like me in western cultures. Sucks to be segender in that sense. ____________________ PART TWO: On Being Silent

I work 2 jobs, both in academia. I commute with a mixture of car, bus, train, and walking on most days. This means I run into a lot of people. Almost every time I do, gender comes up in a bad way due to the pervasive nature of binarism. When this happens, I have a variety of choices.

Do I correct and educate the person? Do I stay silent? Do I just sort of laugh and make a joke about it in what is often a vain hope that they'll realize it's actually a softened callout? The answer varies dramatically in terms of the situation, my mood, and my energy level.

I often stay silent with these one on one encounters simply because I don't have the energy to deal with it. Yet, every time I do that, I find myself kicking myself for it mentally for hours after the encounter. Why? I have had some variation of this conversation countless times:

Me: **attempts to educate**

Person: "My friend is trans and I said this in front of them, and they didn't mind, so I don't get what your problem is."

Me: "Your trans friend said this was okay?"

Person: "No, but they didn't say anything, so they don't have a problem with it."

Trans people often say nothing. Some of us have these education conversations several times per day, some of us opt to never have them. Different people find different things stressful, so some trans or nonbinary people are more likely to ask strangers to change transphobic or binarist behavior than people they know well, while others are more likely to have that conversation with friends than with strangers. But in just about all cases, it takes energy. That energy is not always there, and it's not uncommon for someone to have already reached their quota for these kinds of conversations for the day before you do or say something transphobic or binarist in front of them without even realizing it.

Someone staying silent in front of you does not mean that what you did is acceptable. ____________________ PART THREE: On Speaking Up

Everyone is different, but I know that for me, I'm far more likely to speak up in a group setting than I am in a one on one setting. This is for a variety reasons that go well beyond the simple fact that it is also simply less frightening and stressful to me personally. These other reasons culminate in the end result of a lot less work for myself and others like me.

If someone does something transphobic or binarist and I stay silent, as I have shown above, I know they will think that I think their action is just fine and may even use my silence to justify their actions to others when called out later on the same thing. This is (obviously) damaging to the entire goal of reducing the ambient levels of transphobia and binarism, but it becomes far more so when this happens in a group setting. An entire group relearns the wrong cultural lesson when transphobia and binarism go unchecked. Instead, I say something, and that way the entire group can learn together. Because it is absolutely a learning process.

This goes well in spaces where accountability and intentional reduction of social harms is part of the norm. In these spaces, things like "hey that was kinda racist," or "could you change this so it is not transphobic" are met with thanks for the opportunity to self-correct, discussion for the sake of learning, and apologies. These discussions allow everyone in the group to learn the same lesson together and support each other in this learning process. I like this because it allows me to learn from others' mistakes as well as my own instead of continuing to make the same mistakes over and over again. I also like this because it's a LOT more efficient at reducing those ambient levels of transphobia and binarism I was talking about than talking to one person at a time.

I keep having the same exact education conversations over and over again on a nearly daily basis, so I am absolutely certain that these group conversations help a lot more people learn the same lesson than me putting the same amount of energy into a private conversation and only helping one person learn how to stop being an accidental asshole. Besides, then I can stop watching the faces of the other trans people in any given group fall in marginalized silence. It breaks my heart to watch that.

But anyway, this only works in these groups where people want to do better and care more about accountability in terms of how their actions impact others than they do about appearing to be perfect. In other spaces, it causes a shit show. ____________________ PART FOUR: My Request

So, if you have made it this far, you finally have the context for what I request:

If I or someone else lets you know that something you did or said was transphobic or binarist and asks you to make a change, please keep in mind that speaking up at all is often a fearful thing for us. We are afraid of physical and verbal violence, of losing social capital, of being told we are being dramatic or otherwise not being taken seriously, of losing your friendship, and more. If we thought you didn't want to learn or do better, we wouldn't bother. In that sense, it's a compliment, even though it feels uncomfortable if you aren't accustomed to accountability culture (and sometimes even then). Those of us who are accustomed to accountability-oriented spaces can forget that this isn't the assumption a lot of people have.

Take feedback to heart, and if the conversation starts publicly and you're able to keep it there, please do so as an act of allyship. Transparency and accountability are acts of allyship when it comes to these things because they become agents of cultural shift.

Thanks for reading my essay, I hope it makes sense. Again, questions are welcome in the comments.

[readmetxt]

well, the way i understand it, a tr_p is like, kinda considered a bit of a slur for transgender people now. i think it'd be better to call it crossdressers (people, usually the anime character is a boy, that just like to dress up or act like a different gender, but aren't trans, they're just boys with a uh hobby) and transgenders (people who are, you know, actually trans). there are lots of crossdressers in anime, but having actual transgender characters is a bit new i think, simply because coming out as queer won't have as much backlash as it used to (well, hopefully anyway. there is still those backwards part of the world). anyways, so in the latest zombieland saga episode, it is revealed that lily hoshikawa is a transgirl. in the episode, she references her deadname as her "old name" and the other girls accept her for who she is. unfortunately, some more backward weebs insist that she is a boy or that she is a tr_p. apparently, they think that japan is a perfect utopia were "sjw" politics and pandering don't exist, despite it having its own lgbt+ subculture and some, but not a lot, of rights.

another thing that happened on twitter, someone posted that they were "born in japan and are fluent in japanese" and they know that crunchyroll, the official licenser and english translators of the show, mistranslated lily's lines to "pander" to sjws. pedantic romantic, a anime reivewer and blogger on youtube, and also an actual transwoman, said that 1) this person used a machine translation to translate lily's lines and 2) even though lily's lines in the official cr translation is something like "that's my old name," she more literally said "that's the name i abandoned" in japanese, which is apparently a very serious deal. and 3) the person of the original tweet is a liar since they posted a few months ago that they "wish they were fluent in japanese" or "started taking japanese language classes recently," (or something like that proved that they don't know japanese) so it is unlikely that they could correctly translate lily's lines. also, they said that they wanted to go to japan someday, implying that they have never been there and wasn't born there. despite this proof that this person had lied, people are believing them and incorrectly deadname lily or call her slurs for transgenders. this got so bad that the official english zombieland saga twitter had to explicitly post a tweet of "love her. respect her." and also another post reaffirming that lily is, in fact, a girl.

TL;DR . anime girl is explicitly stated to be a transgirl for an entire episode of her backstory. some bigoted anime fans deny it, blame cr for "mistranslating" or "pandering to western fans/sjws" and/or call her transphobic slurs like tr_p and other general anti-queer/transphobic hate speech, etc. typical twitter shitshow. it got so bad that the official twitter had to post about it twice. on the flip side though, we got a hilarious meme! the person who lied about being a native apparently couldn't even spell "hello, thank you very much" correctly in japanese. the american fans (esp anime fans who actually study/are fluent in japanese) are saying hilarious stuff like "im japanese, i was born on mt fuji" while the actual japanese side of twitter is making fun of him for not even being able to spell such a basic greeting right, since it's the first thing you learn in japanese class.

https://twitter.com/rnephistopheles/status/1066553254262190080 https://twitter.com/silessean/status/1066441647045566464 (he somehow confused kanji and katakana lol) https://twitter.com/aoirann/status/1066665423985405952 https://twitter.com/Esharp777/status/1066487930380636160 https://twitter.com/Charoncaori/status/1066935282191265792 pedantic romantic's twitter thread about this guy and his mistranslations, which is hilarious. at some point in the past week, he just deleted his twitter, but we will always remember him as a hilarious, lying trainwreck and source of a small meme.

also, people are ignoring that this anime was made by studio MAPPA, who make/have made anime w/ queer characters, such as Yuri on Ice (gay couple), Punchline (wow, it's another trans character!), and Banana Fish (gay couple again).

edit: formatting since i havent posted such a long reply in a while and the spacing/paragraphs were off. also, another better word to replace tr_ps is otokonoko i guess. also, another twitter thread of a person who is actually learning japanese and actually got the original japanese subs, literally translated them to a confusing mess of vague ideas since japanese is very context-based, and proved that cr did not mistranslate the lines that proved that lily is trans

[thedeadflag]

@dreamsheartstory​ said:  if you find any good sci fi, let me know… it’s so rare…

It really is. For a genre that has so much potential, it rarely makes the small screen without being corralled into a few very specific tropes (sci-fi cop procedural is so, so overdone, but I’m desperate haha)

Still, this is what I’ve watched over the past...3 years? 3 years, yeah. At least, the notable ones, not including the obvious big name Netflix marvel shows, Sense 8, orphan black, etc..

SOME MINOR SPOILERS BELOW

The Expanse:

Harder sci-fi. Essentially, it’s the future, where humanity expanded across the system, and Mars split off to do their own thing after a civil war. The people working on “the belt”... as in the asteroid belt and other such unsavory places and stations...are the clear have-nots and are generally abused at will by both Earth and Mars, and the show starts where tensions are at an all-time high, with the belt a hair’s trigger away from revolt, and the Earth/Mars tensions coming to a head

Great casting, the crew of the Roci is fantastic. Though Thomas Jane is...a Thomas Jane character. He’s such a perfect fit for Miller, because Miller checks all the boxes for his strengths, and hides his weaknesses well enough in the flaws of the character. So i can’t blame the show for that, but I hate looking at his face. Still, the casting is just top notch. And they have Shohreh Aghdashloo, who is always fantastic, and Frankie Adams pops onto the scene in S2 and does quite well. Essentially, casting = A+

Only real complaint is that i read the book, and there’s a pansexual lady character that is exceptional and amazing and I love her and her mouth of a sailor. The show cut that and made her more passive and scared in S2, which is bullshit, and led me to stop watching because I was furious at that decision, but in the end, it’s still absolutely 100% worth watching. If just for the Roci crew alone and the endless shenanigans they get into (and sometimes out of)

Binge-worthy. Pacing of the first two episodes is a bit inconsistent, but they’re covering an absurd amount of ground, so that’s expected.

Killjoys:

Lighthearted space-faring sci-fi, set in a totally built from the ground up universe. It slowly leaks out the lore as to not jeopardize the general tone of the show. However, it does turn serious for stretches.

Easily binge-worthy. Takes 3 episodes to get momentum, but after that, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

My only real quibble is with the origins of Dutch. We get a hint of her growing up essentially as property, abused into being a living weapon/assassin, before we get a good read of the world, and that...really comes off as a bit exploitative, given she’s a woc. 

The ship is an A+ lovable sassy ladybug

Dark Matter:

A bit “harder” sci-fi than Killjoys, but it has its lighthearted moments

Super super slow burn. I finished the first season and only then did I really start to dig my claws into the show. It’s slow. 

That said, interesting lore, and the overarching series of narratives are solid and worthwhile, they just take an egregiously long time to lift-off.

There’s apparently wlw content in season 3. I haven’t finished S2 yet, but I’m hoping it’s solid.

Westworld:

Western meets Wizard of Oz featuring Anthony Hopkins with an old west fetish. Set far off in the future. There are, like, androids and stuff

I didn’t get through it since western shows give me the creeps, but most of my friends who watched it says it was pretty great. I only watched the first episode, but the acting and cinematography and music were all very well done.

Ascension:

A sci fi mystery, set in a space-ship, if that space-ship was sort of like one of the Bunkers in the fallout games, full of people from the 50s.

The show is not without its warts, but it’s a miniseries (so it’s not long), and it’s surprisingly well done.  Doesn’t cover all the themes it brings up with the greatest nuance or skill, but I’d wager it’s probably worth a watch? 

The OA:

Another mystery! Sci-fi in the vein of alien abduction and strange abilities.

It’s kind of surrealistic? It makes you pay attention, and if you slip up, you’ll probably miss out on something. There’s a decent chunk of content mashed into those surprisingly few episodes.

Didn’t like that it robbed a character of a disability. I think it would have worked just as well with the character still being blind. They could have made it work. 

Trans guy rep in this show, which was a plus

American Gods:

I’m not sure if this counts? It kinda counts. I’m saying it counts. It mixes sci-fi and fantasy. 

I haven’t finished this yet, mostly just because it’s hard to find torrents that aren’t tracked by the network. My ISP is okay with me getting one or two notices a month, but past that, it’s tricky, and I can’t afford a good VPN, so I’m playing the waiting game for a bit.

Ricky Whittle and Ian McShane were fantastic in the episodes I did see. The show is, if nothing else, visceral and beautifully shot.

3%:

Sci-fi in the vein of Hunger Games, but a better premise, and better executed

I only managed to get it with the dubbed audio, so that was flat out atrocious and made me weep over the injustice

Still, despite the absolutely grating audio, I pushed through that and enjoyed much of the rest of the show. it’s solid. Not, like, the best show out there, but it does what it does well, it covers its themes well, and the visual elements of the acting seemed strong.

Find the sub-titled version with the original language (portugese iirc?) audio. I think that’s available on Netflix now, or at least Netflix USA, from what I understand.

12 Monkeys:

It’s a police procedural time jumping sci-fi with a dystopian, post-apoc future.

It’s okay. Nothing special. The two leads really do try to put the show on their back, btu the writing’s not real strong. Watchable, but lots of plot holes, plot armor, and writers shoehorning in sudden/coincidental events out of nowhere to increase tension. if you want something to watch for background noise, or maybe if you want a procedural show and have checked out the others already, maybe this will be for you.

Agents of Shield:

Superhero-based sci-fi

First season is slow and full of filler because they were waiting for that Captain America Winter Soldier movie to come out before tying their show in with the events. There are guides to watching the first season. I thought it was all decently fine, and good writing alla round, there’s just too many episodes that season to justify the few meaningful narrative events.

Season 2 has Dichen Lachman. The final half of that season character-assassinates her (and the other inhumans) to provide the show a late-hour villain to root against. I hated that. It’s the weakest season, thankfully, and I’m sure there are watch-guides to skipping through that because...

Shit gets real in season 3, and it’s worth watching even outside of S1-2, I’d even rec skipping those if there wans’t so much character-building in those 2 seasons. The writing is better, the acting is better from S3 onward. There’s still some fumbling of themes, but not to the degree of the previous seasons. Same with Season 4, where it arguably has it’s greatest few episodes. Ends with a brief Hydra-AU arc that IMO is skippable, but some adored it. I didn’t, but eh.

Colony:

Harder sci-fi. Aliens invaded and swiftly won. Now they’re ruling us from a distance, using human figureheads to do so. Really neat lore, and worldbuilding.

Unfortunately, it’s the most frustrating sci-fi show i’ve seen in years, because the male cop lead always has a gut feeling that always aligns with what the revolutionaries are planning, so he always intercepts them. And they get unbelievable plot armor to escape the writers’ ham-handed tension-building, ensuring the writers don’t pay any consequences for the shitty bullshit they keep pulling over and over.

If you can take that sort of crap, and care enough about worldbuilding/lore/etc., then go for it. There’s definite value, and things improve greatly in season 2. But my lord, season 1 is so frustrating.

Person of Interest:

You’ve probably watched this one

Hard sci-fi in the vein of "Hey, maybe writing a secret intelligent AI is just a really bad idea” *five minutes later* “Oh no what have we done”

It’s a really bad idea.

But we get fun police procedural moments out of it, because John is solid, and Carter & Root & Shaw & Bear are excellent. 

Bear is best.

The show has watch guides for getting through the first season, and parts of S2. 

Avoid the final 3 episodes of the series. Maybe the final season altogether. Otherwise fantastic and heartwrenching stuff.

The Last Ship:

Naval Adventure to Rebuild the World After a Rampant MegaVirus sci-fi

Surprisingly decent for a show that’s basically funded entirely by the American Navy.

Just keep in mind that there will be shitty patriotism bits of bullshit tossed in here and there, and there won’t be so much shock when those bits show up.

First two seasons play out like a mix of The Hunt for Red October and Jesus Camp. It’s bizarre, but sometimes it works? Rhona Mitra and Christina Elmore are probably the reasons for that. And Dichen Lachman is in S3 and she doesn’t die, so that’s a plus.

It definitely has its dips into shit-tier quality, and self-righteous bullshittery, especially in S3.

But it also handles a national political arc halfway decently for a sci-fi show in S3. 

Anywho, this is good for, like, background watching? Or low-intensity, low-effort watching. In that context, it’s a good enough show.

The Leftovers:

Three seasons of super depressing and heart-wrenching drama with sci-fi at its core (huge amounts of people vanish one day...the show is about the world finding out how to move on, what ti all means)

Excellent acting. Top notch. Like, some of the best on TV. Some stunning stuff.

The show only gets better. I didn’t like the first half of S1, it’s very slow and arduous, but it’s worth it. 

Not very sci-fi, at least not until S3, but still. It works with sci-fi elements and it’s a very thoughtful, smart show.

Wayward Pines:

It’s sci-fi in the vein of Under the Dome, but it manages to be even worse somehow don’t ask me how

Oh my god don’t watch this, the cast does not make up for it, they flounder in atrocious writing. i’m only mentioning this here because it’s just so bad, don’t waste your time like I did.

That’s...well, the stuff that’s not far below mediocre.