#also interesting that when TRAs used to come and ate on my blog that my pinned post was often a target

[radkindoffeminist]

Things I really want TRAs to get through their fucking skulls.

B*tch, c*nt, and wh*re are misogynistic slurs. This isn’t something I am ever going to debate. These are derogatory terms used specifically against women and using them against women doesn’t make them less of a slur. Using them because ‘in some places c*nt isn’t a slur’ doesn’t make them less of a slur. Also, I’m literally fucking British and have lived in Scotland for some years now so before you start with the whole ‘but in some places it’s completely normalised and used commonly’: it’s not. I have heard some men use it to insult their friends, but it’s not thrown around constantly and is still typically used to degrade women.

R*tard is an ableist slur which should also never be used. (And, to be honest, lots of radfems need to learn this one too.)

We don’t want trans people dead. We don’t want them to struggle and be without help. We just disagree on the help that they should get. You think the only way to help them is to validate their gender and help them to change their entire body in the hope that might make them feel better. We think that mental health support designed to help them cope with their body issues is a much more effective form of support. No situation involves killing them or letting them all commit suicide. We want those who are genuinely struggling to get help.

Slight caveat to the point above: the males who fetishise womanhood and being a lesbian and who aren’t struggling with their body and their identity but just get off to being in a dress and want lesbians to fuck them? They don’t deserve help. They’re pornsick men. But the ones who really are struggling and just trying to get by do need help.

Your community is homophobic as shit. Saying that it’s just a ‘small minority’ who support genital preferences and say rejecting trans people is transphobic and call lesbians TERFs for not liking dick does not fix the problem and only serves to diminish what those who have been at the receiving end of this hateful and homophobic rhetoric have been through. You need to start speaking up against this rhetoric and telling people that it’s not fucking okay. You need to start taking a stand anytime someone says lesbians need to learn to like (girl)dick or to have a sexless relationship with a trans woman to be inclusive or uses the term genital preference (certainly if they’re saying it’s wrong/that people can learn to get over a ‘preference’; but even saying that it’s okay is homophobic because an inherent sexuality is not a preference).

Your community is misogynistic. Even ignoring the fact that the idea that trans women are women and that they know exactly what womanhood is like is misogynistic in and of itself, trans ideology is deeply misogynistic. It’s not okay to use misogynistic slurs, even against women you don’t like. It’s not okay to send rape threats to women, even ones you don’t like. It’s deeply misogynistic to blame all transphobia on TERFs when it’s men who are typically in charge of laws being changed and men who are the ones going around assaulting and mustering trans women. And it’s deeply misogynistic to tell women to get the fuck over themselves and learn to deal with having trans women in their spaces. Women built female spaces for a reason and you are completely ignoring our sex-based oppression which is deeply misogynistic.

Oh, and trans inclusive language? That’s misogynistic to. Forcing women to refer to themselves by their organs and functions especially when women have been seen as little more than their organs/reproductive abilities; making this language completely inaccessible to many women, especially those who speak English as a second language; forcing this language almost exclusively on women while men are still called men (or sometimes just cis men to be a little more specific); and telling any woman who has a problem with it, regardless of their reasoning, to get over themselves? That’s all deeply misogynistic.

Self-ID will be dangerous. I don’t care what stupid reasoning you come up with it not being dangerous because it will be. Men have and will continue to pretend to be women to access those spaces and creep on women because self-ID means that all they have to do is claim that they’re a woman and suddenly it’s transphobic for them to not be allowed to enter. There is no ‘you can tell the difference’ because it doesn’t matter what your personal opinion of that person is: if they say that they are a woman, they have to be allowed into women’s spaces and creepy men will abuse that. (And, no, you can’t argue that trans women ‘have always used women’s spaces and it’s been fine’ because we both know that we live in a different time now. It’s no long a very, very small number of trans people who genuinely tried their hardest to pass as the opposite sex. So unless you’re happy to exclude non-transitioning and non-passing trans people from the spaces which match their ‘gender’, these are the only options.)

Keeping spaces sex-segregated is the only viable alternative to self-ID for most public spaces. I’m happy to hear any ideas of how you’re going to make sure that only trans women can access women’s spaces and that cis men will never be able abuse self-ID to get in, but I don’t think such a solution exists. Therefore, I will continue to defend these spaces being sex-segregated because that’s the best way to ensure that the women in these spaces are safe from the abuses of males.

Continuing to scream that we’re so worried about sharing spaces with trans women ignores what you’re actually asking for in regards to self-ID. As above, literally any person will be able to say ‘I’m a woman’ and access these spaces so while you may focus on the ‘genuine’ trans women who just want to use the bathroom and be more comfortable than they would be in the male spaces, we worried about every single male abusing the existence of self-ID in order to abuse women. Remember what self-ID is: anyone can identify as any gender at any time just by claiming that they are that gender.

‘You shouldn’t be scared of public bathrooms because the bathroom in your home is gender neutral’ is the stupidest fucking argument. Like, I’m sorry, but how fucking idiotic do you have to be to think that comparing a private and public space is not only a good idea but will also support your point? You share a bathroom in your house with people you choose to live with and invite over; you share a public bathroom with strangers. Do you not understand that people can be comfortable sharing a space with family and friends, but uncomfortable sharing with literal fucking strangers who don’t always have the best intentions???

Saying women are adult human females or that they have vaginas does not reduce women down to their organs and you are ignorant as shit is you continue to repeat this lie. Reducing someone to their organs (or any other feature) means that you think the only important/significant thing about them, that you view them as being only of value because of this feature. You know like conservatives saying that women are only valuable/useful for sex and giving birth to children? That’s what reducing women to their organs really means. Stating the common characteristic shared by a certain group does not mean you view the whole group as being valued for that one thing. It’s why no one says that lesbians are female homosexuals reduces lesbians to their sexuality: because, in this case, we recognise that we are stating the shared characteristic that lesbians have.

Radfems don’t believe in gender as a concept. If you’re talking about how radfems believe sex = gender then your argument is already flawed. If you’re talking about radfems believing in gender in any way then your argument is already flawed. We believe in the existence of biological sex and recognise its impact on people in current society, fighting for rights of women who are discriminated against on the basis of their sex. We use the words women and girls which describe people of the female sex based upon their age: adults are women and minors are girls. Men and boys work similarly. These terms are therefore sex-based, not gendered/gender-based. We believe that, functionally, gender is a set of misogynistic stereotypes which tells people (though especially women) how they are supposed to act and serves no purpose in society other than to make people continually question themselves and force people into little boxes. We believe that TRAs and conservatives have gone two different ways with gender and both are harmful: conservatives telling people that they must follow gender roles based on their biological sex and TRAs telling people to identify with a gender based upon what gender roles they like/take up.

Define woman. Please. All we want is a coherent definition of woman which doesn’t rely on stereotypes, debunked brain sex, circular reasoning, or calling it ‘a feeling’. No one has ever been able to give us a coherent definition.

Yeah, brain sex has been debunked after some fucking massive studies into it. Turns out, it was always rooted in misogyny and most of the previous studies were basically just confirmation bias to ‘prove’ that men and women are ‘wired differently’ to give a scientific foundation to all the misogynistic stereotypes surrounding women. Once you account for brain size, we’re really not all that different after all. So no, a trans woman cannot just be born with a female brain; a trans man cannot just be born with a male brain. No such thing exists.

Which argument do you want: there is absolutely no difference between cis and trans people and therefore many people have probably had crushes on trans people without knowing it OR trans people are in danger of being abused/raped/murdered specifically because they’re trans? Because the first argument would suggest that trans people could never be targeted for being trans because people will always see them as their chosen gender and the only people who would know that they’re trans is people that they’ve told but the latter point means trans people are targeted because people can see that they’re trans and therefore many/most trans people don’t pass and so it’s unlikely that people have had all these crushes on trans people because it’s fairly obvious that they’re trans? Because I’m willing to admit that some trans people really do pass and I would not know that they’re trans unless directly told, but the percentage who pass that well is minuscule and hardly representative of all trans people.

Your community is racist. Stop leaning on the whole ‘black women had their womanhood denied from them like trans women are’. Black women weren’t seen as women because they were seen as less than human; they were still viewed as female which is why they were raped and forced through pregnancies. Stop saying that attributes we say are more likely to be found in men are more commonly found in black women therefore we see black women as men. That’s an argument used in bad faith and you know it. Like please learn the difference between ‘more commonly found’ and ‘exclusively found’.

Your community is intersexist. Intersex people are not pawns to be used in your argument. Like 0.1% of the population having a condition which genuinely makes their biological sex more complicated than male or female does not disprove the sex binary and, if anything, the fact that these people struggle with many health problems and are typically infertile goes to show that the sex binary does exist. Moreover, if gender is completely different from sex then conditions which make your biological sex complicated/mixed should say nothing about gender. (And yes, I said 0.1% of the population even though intersex conditions occur at a higher rate than that because most intersex conditions don’t make your sex more complicated than male or female so only a small percentage of intersex conditions overall make people’s biological sex complicated.)

Shut the fuck about PCOS. My condition is not to be used in your arguments. Radfems have never used my condition against me or called me less of a woman for it, so you don’t get to say I’m less female for it either or tell me that you somehow know that radfems see PCOS sufferers that way. You’re the one who abused the existence of my condition and implies that I’m not fully female to make some backwards arguments. You’re the ones abusing the existence of my condition.

Going one step further than PCOS, shut up about women without a uterus or ovaries or post-menopausal women. We know they’re fucking women, dipshits. They’re still adult human females, just ones who are older, went through some trauma which resulted in surgical removal of their sex organs, or had a developmental issue in utero which resulted in them not developing certain organs. (See that I said developmental issue? Because you know what we call people who didn’t grow a uterus but that’s not a problem/issue at all? Men.)

A lot of your views of gender are based on stereotypes. A lot more than you’re willing to admit. You can try to pretend that you’re above all the stereotypes and I’m certain that you genuinely believe that you are, but no one has been able to define woman without referring to brain sex (which is normally just down to stereotypes and debunked anyway) or just straight up stereotypes. And so many people list various stereotypes as one of the reasons they knew that they were trans or non-binary. Even when people say that they don’t ‘feel connected to womanhood’ or whatever as a reason why they’re NB, it’s often because they’re androgynous or not completely feminine 100% of the time. They won’t ever admit that as being the reason, but you can see from how they speak about womanhood and their disconnect to it that it’s true.

Not everything is a fucking dog whistle! A dogwhistle is an inconspicuous term/phrase/symbol which a group uses and only those who are within the group recognise. Like how 88 is a white supremacist number because H is the 8th letter of the alphabet so it’s HH which is Heil Hitler or how ‘I just want the trains to run on time’ is a fascist phrase because it refers to people saying that Mussolini was bad but at least he got the trains to run on time. The only thing that might be considered a radfem dog whistle is TIM/TIF, not because it has a secret double meaning that only we recognise, but because it’s a term which radfems typically use and often isn’t understood outside of radfem circles. It stands for Trans Identified Male/Female and we mean exactly that. We don’t have things that secretly mean that trans people should die. We say exactly what we mean but you just choose to believe the secret meaning you made up over what we are directly telling you, probably because ‘I hate all trans people and I want them to all die’ isn’t something we say.

Saying that we only care about what genitals we have is a simplification of our views which is basically incorrect and used to ignore all our actual issues while making us out to look like creeps. Do you also not understand the homophobic history behind it? Being used against gay people to ask why they were so obsessed with what genitals someone had and why they couldn’t be with the opposite sex? (I’ll answer that: of course you don’t give a shit because you don’t care about homophobia or using homophobic rhetoric which supports your ideology.) We don’t actually care about if someone has a dick or vagina. We care about the fact that the dick havers were raised with male socialisation and that means that they experience life differently from us. We care about the fact that the penis owners are much more likely to abuse women and that far too many will do whatever it takes to be around vulnerable women so that they can abuse them. We care about the fact that we have faced specific issues because we have vaginas both directly (eg: menstruation and childbirth) and indirectly (eg: period stigma, medical misogyny, catcalling, and other forms of discrimination) and we want spaces away from the very people who uphold this misogynistic system to be able to discuss our issues openly. But you constantly ignore all of these issues and make it out to be just about genitals because you ignore our arguments and want to make it out like we’re fucking idiots.

‘Here’s six women. One of them is a trans woman. Guess who’ Isn’t the argument that you think it is. Firstly, literally no one is saying that trans people cannot pass at all. No one. Of course we understand that SOME trans people do pass really well and we would never be able to differentiate them from actual women. Secondly, just because they appear like women doesn’t make them women. They are still biologically male and hence a man. It really doesn’t matter how feminine or well passing they are; they’re men. Thirdly, it is not representative of all trans people. Yes, some people pass well but the photos you show are almost exclusively of rich models who are wearing heavy makeup and who’ve had extensive work done which isn’t accessible to most trans people and you’re basically telling them that if they can’t pass so well then they must not be women. Isn’t that wrong by your own ideology? Fourthly, you really going to do that and then accuse us of saying that women must be feminine? Really? And finally, this is almost always used as a trap against us, hence why we often refuse to respond, but you’re not proving anything. You’re not fighting against any of our arguments; you just think you’re fighting against the whole sexual dimorphism and generally being able to tell women and men apart but being able to generally do something doesn’t mean that there aren’t exceptions? Exceptions don’t make the rule.

I’m not here to argue about what I would believe in some theoretical utopia. I’m here to argue about what is happening in reality. I’ve heard the line ‘but would sex be important if we lived in a society which didn’t discriminate against people by their sex/gender aside from when medically necessary?’ way too much. And the answer is no, but we don’t live in that world and that world is not going to exist within my lifetime at the very least, probably not for centuries. We live in a world where women are treated differently because of their sex. We live in a world where period stigma and medical misogyny and catcalling and rape and domestic violence and devaluation of women’s labour all exist, among other deeply misogynistic issues. So me fighting to get people to recognise that sex is an important characteristic and defending it’s legal protections is not because I deeply believe that it should be an important thing, but because the way in which women are treated by society, particularly at the hands of men, shows that we have built a world in which someone’s sex is an important characteristic and which will affect many aspect of our lives and hence we need to recognise the reality of the world in which we live in. If the end goal is to build a world in which sex is irrelevant outside of medicine then we first need to recognise why it’s not a reality now and work to fix that rather than pretending that everyone’s going to go along with us and misogyny will completely disappear overnight or arguing the what-ifs of this purely theoretical world that we will not live to see.

Radical feminism is about freeing women from their sex-based oppression and fighting for sex-based rights. As a result, males of all genders all inherently excluded from our feminism. To say that we exclude trans people completely is ignoring the fact that trans men and AFAB non-binary people are included in our fight for women’s rights because, regardless of how they identify, they have and will continue to be oppressed on the basis of their sex and they deserve rights to protect them from that discrimination. Your unhappiness that we’re only including people on the basis of their sex is not my fucking problem. Your unhappiness over trans women specifically not being included is not my fucking problem. Movements which seek to free people from their oppression don’t owe it to you to include everyone, they only have to include the oppressed people that they are fighting for. Your inability to understand that is not my fucking problem and only goes to show your entitlement.

If you don’t argue with me in good faith, don’t except me to argue in good faith either. If you’re going to twist my words, ignore what I say, tell me my sources are wrong with no evidence (or tell me that it’s not a source you like/trust enough), and refuse to respond to many of my points then don’t expect me to do the same. I have tried way too many times to argue in good faith only to end up having my points ignored, my sources dismissed, my words twisted if not just straight up having words put into my mouth. If you are not going to be open minded when you talk to me, don’t expect me to put the time in to explain things to you. If you are rude or dismissive or ignoring me or not asking questions, I’m not going to put in all the mental and emotional labour to explain concepts to you and you have not ‘won’ the argument if I have enough and stop responding. You are not owed our time and effort and you should never expect it just because you claim that you ‘really want to learn’.

Please learn some critical thinking skills. I know radfems say this all the time, but I really mean it. If not to understand radfems more, but to be critical of literally all the information that you absorb. I am tired of explaining to people that just because you don’t like or trust the source (like the Daily Mail) doesn’t mean that the actual story itself is untrue. Newspapers like this are incredibly bias and will publish stories which feed into their specific narrative, but it doesn’t mean that what they publish is actually false? Unless you can actually find a source which can tell me that whatever story I’m showing you never happened/was objectively false, I’m going to keep using it. A story which goes against your beliefs doesn’t make it a fake. Biases in newspapers come from the stories which they choose to publish (or not publish), the details they focus on, and the wording they use. My favourite example of this is a few years back when every newspaper was publishing articles about how the Labour and Tory proposed budgets were never going to work/actually balance because the assumptions they used weren’t right. The Daily Mail, however, published only that Labour’s proposed budget wasn’t going to work. Was the story correct? Yes. Did they purposefully leave out information which therefore gave a bias perspective of the two budgets? Absolutely. If you throw everything out which has any biases (which was a thing a TRA I argued with claimed you should do and said that was what they were taught to do), you would have to throw out literally everything ever written. Instead, it’s significantly better to be critical of what you read and understand what biases are in place and why.

[hollywayblog]

People | Top Film Photos 2017

See: Places | Things

Film photography kept me going this year. It kept me curious and humble, and my hunger for a gorgeous shot led me to a lot of places I would never have seen otherwise.

I’m a writer first, but my words are something I have complete control over. As a perfectionist, this can drive me pretty mental at times; I could spend an eternity combing through a story or blog post changing this or that word and never feel done. While my perfectionist tendencies come out at the editing stage of film making (I don’t really edit my photos unless I have to alter exposure), there is an urgency about capturing a moment that will never come again, having limited film or space on your memory card. When you’re behind the lens, you are capturing something rather than manufacturing it. Even in a controlled shoot, you are still limited by time and tools. Writing can only be limited by your imagination, and while that’s freeing in some ways, it can be terrifying in others.

These visual mediums are creative outlets that allow me to follow my instincts without so much pressure to be perfect. I know I can’t control the weather or the set of someone’s teeth or whether they blink just as I’m pressing the shutter. It doesn’t mean I don’t strive to be better, and I would love to do some planned shoots next year, but I guess because I don’t define myself as a photographer or cinematographer it takes a lot of the pressure off to be revolutionary. I just do what feels right.

But enough about that.

I was going to choose ten photos overall, but that proved to be literally impossible. Instead I’ve chosen thirty overall, divided into three categories. The first is People.

One of my favourite things about taking up this hobby is the beautiful pictures I’ve snapped of my loved ones. I’ve always dreamed of taking photographs that captured the specific energy of a person or a moment, and when I look at these ones I feel like I’ve done that. These are photos I love of people I love.

1. Avalon. Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood, Victoria, Australia. Minolta Dynax 500si. Kodak ULTRAMAX 400.

This girl is a whirlwind in the best kind of way. Interested and interesting. Kind. Spontaneous. Ridiculously beautiful. She’s unlike anyone you’ve ever met; a girl who turns heads wherever she goes and knows it, who isn’t afraid to tell strange men that she’s the CEO of a radical feminist magazine and laughs at their feigned support (she doesn’t care what they think). That very magazine is how we met online; I became a regular contributor and she flattered me when we met in person by telling me that she’d told her workmates “If I fall off this ladder, the magazine goes to Holly Way!”

That night we went to a feminist zine launch that was definitely more of a gay 90s rave and I danced in a club for the first time in years. The photos I took were risky - the girls were dancing and the smoke was thick - but even the blurry ones have an energy to them that I love. Moving subjects will give you some duds, but so much more life in the good ones.

2. Connor. Inverloch, Victoria, Australia. Minolta Dynax 500si. Kodak ULTRAMAX 400.

Connor was so bloody stoked with this view, and I feel so warm when I look at this photo and his huge, genuine smile.

3. Stuart. Squeaky Beach, Wilsons Prom, Victoria, Australia. Minolta Dynax 500si. Kodak Portra 120.

If you want a glimpse of how much I - and the rest of my family - love Stuart you can watch this video I made for him for Christmas. Basically we had only met his British ass once before he moved into our house for twelve weeks. Luckily he turned out not to be a murderer but rather the most lovely, genuine, polite and cheerful dude you’ve ever met. It was devastating when he left - almost a month ago now - but the group chat is still going strong. More importantly, we’ll always have the memories of him reading us A Street Cat Named Bob on Squeaky Beach as the sun went down.

4. Rhiannon. Inverloch, Victoria, Australia. Minolta Dynax 500si. Kodak ULTRAMAX 400.

With the year we’ve had, it’s an indescribable pleasure to see my sister smiling and happy. On this particular day five of us drove to the coast, ate watermelon and baguettes on the beach and just escaped the rising tide at the end of a dusty pink dusk. On the way home we put on my ultimate sing alongs playlist and screeched Tribute and Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of our lungs. What could possibly be better?

5. Rhiannon and Brendan. Blue Rock Dam, Victoria, Australia. Pentax Espio 955, Fuji Superia X-TRA 400.

Another example of moving subjects. An imperfect shot with tangible mood.

6. Stuart. Blue Rock Dam, Victoria, Australia. Pentax Espio 955, Fuji Superia X-TRA 400.

The hour or two we had to ourselves at this outlandishly gorgeous dam are some of my favourite hours of all time. Stuart had a swim and gave us all heart attacks when he brushed up against a branch (thanks bitch) but other than that we were just so... relaxed. Climbing trees, eating, baking in the Aussie heat, telling dumb jokes and having Stuart read to us again. Then a bunch of bogans showed up with their dogs off the lead and disrupted the serenity, but whatever.

7. Beren. Cataract Gorge, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia. Minolta Dynax 500si. Kodak Portra 400.

This photo is from the first colour roll of film I ever shot. We surprised our family by showing up unexpectedly to celebrate Dad’s 50th and stayed for a few days. It was bittersweet as we had just lost our cat, Evie. It was a hard time, but spending those few days with our dad and siblings we rarely get to see made a difference, as did spending time in Tasmania, which has become a beautiful second home to me. I like the composition and natural feel of this photo, and just the fact that it’s one of my favourite people in one of my favourite places.

8. James. Red Wood Forest, Victoria, Australia. Minolta Dynax 500si. Kodak Portra 120.

I have a feeling this was either on or just after Easter, but I really can’t remember. Either way this place was absolutely magical. Even though this photo is blurry (the ISO of this film was not a good fit for a forest on a cloudy day) I just think it’s cool. I love getting action shots of people focusing on something, just natural and in their element. Watching James experiment with the camera has always been one of my favourite things to do. Also, he looks so fucking grown up in this picture.

9. Nienna. Tamar Wetlands, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia. Minolta Dynax 500si. Kodak Portra 120.

Definitely one of my favourite memories from this year; getting up before dawn to catch the sunrise at the wetlands with Dad and Nienna. It’s the kind of thing I’d do way more often if I had a car, as there’s something so beautiful about being at mercy to the cycles of the sun to get your photo. And we weren’t that lucky. It was overcast as hell and we got maybe a few minutes of a few slices of pink sunlight through the clouds. But that didn’t matter. We got photos that felt different than we expected and had a wonderful adventure in the meantime. To be separated from my sister so greatly in both years and distance but still manage to have such a strong bond and so much in common is something I am so, so grateful for.

10. Georgia. Home, Victoria, Australia. Minolta Dynax 500si. Kodak Portra 120.

This photograph makes me feel so many things. I grabbed it while Georgia was reading out a bit of her novel to Rhiannon and I, and it was just a moment that was so close and pure and poignant that I couldn’t help but try and capture it. That connection is what I treasure most about my relationship with Georgia. Ever since we were kids I feel like our bond has been free of judgement and pretense. She’s one of the few people I feel I can be all of my selves with instead of just choosing one suitable side to present. We don’t see each other nearly as much as we should, which makes moments like these all the more special.

What next? Check out the other posts in this series:

Places

Things

And moments | twentyseventeen - a video of moments from this year