#and that's how i know a lot of trans people would be TERFs if they weren't trans

[spitblaze]

I will say this once because I'm tired of seeing stupid discourse: anti-transmasculinity is not about being treated bad because we clock as men, it's about being treated as stupid little girls because transphobes think we've been tricked into this.

It's kind of the opposite of transmisogyny- instead of fear and revulsion, it's constant condescension, the implications that we've been whisked away from femininity by scary bad guys, that we're going to cause 'irreparable damage' because we don't know what's best for ourselves, somehow. People fearmonger a lot about the "ugliness" of transfem people, but for transmasc people that 'ugliness' is used as a warning- you'll look like THIS! You'll go BALD! Your top surgery scars will leave you MUTILATED! A lot of aesthetic concerns. Worry about our 'beauty'. Because it comes from that same stupid reactionary 'we gotta SAVE the WOMEN' shit, but this time they have to save them from getting 'stolen away', as if we're being seduced or pressured into this. As if we can't make our own decisions.

For TERFS specifically, they're losing one of their own. We're 'gender traitors', willingly aligning ourselves with the half of the population they consider unilaterally dangerous and evil.

We aren't REALLY trans, we just want the benefits that men get. You don't actually want to transition, you're just trying to avoid misogyny.

You aren't actually a man, you're just a self-loathing lesbian.

Why can't you just be a butch girl? Why can't you just be a tomboy?

Why can't you just be something that I don't think is icky?

Anyway. Like all things, it boils down to misogyny. Women stupid and gentle, dont know what best for them, evil men trick into taking man juice, must save because lady stupid and dont know what best for them (having babies and being Feminine).

Theres like. Obviously more to this but I'm just a Transmasc Rando explaining this from my perspective, and I'm not the best with words. Anyone is free to hop in and add on to this

[boydykepdf]

btw i do not think the takeaway from the whole khelif olympics fiasco is that terfs are crazy obsessive extremists if anything i think the takeaway is that transmisogyny is simply part of the bedrock of institutions like the olympics. like everyone screaming abt khelif being trans was not violating any of the fundamental norms by which the event is governed ‘trans women shouldn’t be here’ is actually quite in line with olympic standards. like am i missing something here lol

[screamingay]

someone on here will literally say "encouraging plastic surgery for the sole purpose of conforming to eurocentric beauty standards isn't actually feminism" and 200 other people will come out of the woodworks and chant in harmony LET WOMEN BE HAPPY and WHAT ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE AND BURN VICTIMS as if the post wasn't clearly 1. about womens' self image & insecurities being strongly influenced by the richest and whitest of society and 2. not about trans people or burn victims at all

[swagging-back-to]

not sorry. i extend very little sympathy and patience towards tras who are underage, and the only ones who do get said sympathy are TIFs. but again. it's MICROSCOPIC levels of sympathy.

[jemandrr]

accidentally browsing a (very niche) female-dominated gaming space and seeing people TEAR into people who want an option to change the player character's pronouns to he/him or they/them without changing anything else because it'd invite men to invade a safe space. For a game purely about dating men. Like, I've been through plenty of female-dominated spaces where queer people and similar-interest straight men are welcome (in this case it'd be bi men but yknow), so it's just this one community, but jeez. The amount of fear that anyone who isn't explicitly a femme female would come in and A. hit on the faceless women there or B. taint the game by making the devs add designs of men who they don't want to date?

I got such a strong terf-y rhetoric from that community, like we can't have anything in common with people who aren't like us going on. All about taking 'our' things. And a lot of people contradicting one other but not trying to find out what the truth is because they have the same conclusion. Like two people saying A>B or B>A and no argument arises and no one shows interest in which is true because both people conclude C.

A lot of people even saying that, likewise, things that appeal to female or queer audiences should NOT be added to mainstream media just like queer content should not be added to female-oriented media. These hard walls around what belongs to who is like...they were raised by toy companies or something.

Like what is (paraphrasing so it isnt searchble) "I would never come into a male dominated community because I feel like I would be invading their safe space, so I don't get why men would want to come here and talk about liking men." At least the people who are scared of sexual abuse are warranted, I've seen tons of abusive language towards people they think are women in male dominated online spaces, but what is this fear of even...sharing interests with men? I know we've been in a new era of gender role enforcement with the tradfem movement, but jeez. And as for these last two points, they both are ones that were contradicted. People also said they do believe in diversity BUT just *this* shouldn't count.

Some people even said it's not fair that they get pushed to be more inclusive when mainstream media never does. Which makes me wonder if they're so deep in their niche 'I only experience content made by and for exclusively straight women' content that they haven't noticed any of the movements in media going on over the last 1.5 decades. Like it's true that we haven't made that much progress, but how do they think that no media gets pressed to increase diversity? The more rigid/right-leaning male audiences of tons of media have been complaining about forced diversity for years in exactly the same way (and sometimes, when it really WAS forced diversity, everyone complains because it's not representing anyone really but yknow). But I guess they wouldn't know that if all of them avoid mainstream media?

Also...what is the fear that gay men like men in a 'wrong' way...(and again, the unargued contradiction being plenty of people saying that they also like media about gay characters, but just they shouldn't make these characters gay)

And like I do get it, in the sense that being marginalized makes you skeptical and fearful of things you don't understand in its own separate way from how being in a privileged class makes you skeptical and fearful of things you don't understand. There's a lot more fear of exploring things different and new because the possible retribution feels/has been higher.

Honestly, this post isn't actually about a couple hundred to low-thousand women in a small community for niche games. Not like, I think it's important, I want to actively make them change. It's not that big a deal, not that surprising in the grand scheme. It's similar rhetoric to things i've seen before (Tradfem/terf). I've seen screenshots of, like, facebook mom groups before. And I've seen way bigger communities be way more open and welcoming, it's just a little outlier.

I'm just writing this because I'm a bit shellshocked because I forget how much that those kinds of people are not just the older, tech-illiterate generations, and not just shallow influencers who will say anything for the clicks (or because someone behind the scenes is funding it), their views behind the camera up in the air. Like I think I cultivate the people I interact with a bit too well. Too many of the people I actually interact with or witness the thoughts of regularly are queer and have flitting relationships with gender and then I remember the other side of the coin has people who think they're being progressive by suggesting that everyone who is different be segregated and therefore safe from each other with no room for intersectionality.

[notebeans-galaxy]

the thing i don't get about trans inclusive radical feminism picking up so much traction among trans people is that if it were a cis person saying the things that make up TIRFism, basically every trans person would rightly recognize it as transphobia. why is it suddenly okay when a trans person says it.

[euniexenoblade]

since we're talking about call outs lately, i've been called out many times, most of which are made from lies and sometimes by altering screenshots, but the most effective call out i ever got was like, in early 2015 there was a tumblr user everyone knew was a terf, but she would say "actually i support trans women" this was before crypto terfs were as talked about so the language wasn't really there to say "hey this person is a crypto terf." but yeah some people put posts of this woman on my dash and i made a random post on my blog "why do yall reblog her shes a terf" and of course she searches her own name daily, found my post, and replied to it that me calling her a terf was racist. that was it. no other interaction. but she went on all night talking about me being racist and just making things up as she went "oh i bet she says the n word all the time irl" kind of shit that had, like no basis? But her follower base took it 100% and i literally had thousands of anons telling me to kill myself, trying to goad me into being racist (didnt work), and the most concerning thing was i got hundreds of anons being like "what was the point of doing hrt if you still look like that, you should kill yourself." It was like, violent and overwhelming. and on top of it I'd get random young teenager trans people who followed her and bought into her bioessentialism showing up in my messages being like "you give trans people a bad name" "you're why transphobia exists" etc etc it was fucking crazy.

but i lost like, no followers because everyone around me understood, this woman was a terf. this all set up the real one though.

later in the year a teenage "communist" trans girl made some snarky comment about me being racist on a post of mine blowing up. i ignored her cuz like, who cares it's just some random teenager. but i guess people were looking for a reason to hate me cuz that blew up, lots of people just took that at face value no need to investigate. when someone finally did send the girl an ask being like "hey how is she racist" she replied "I dont remember but I know she is" and even more people just took this as 100%. the thing is, i do remember her being one of those "you make trans people look bad" terf following young trans people, it's not that she didn't remember, it's that she didnt want to admit she followed a terf and she believed a terf just saying shit. I lost like 3/4s of my followers, i had a lot of people i thought were my friends just stop talking to me, and going forward every time i got a call out there would usually be a line of like "also she's racist, everyone already knows this" all cuz this girl needed to make a snarky comment cuz she just loves terfs.

the thing about the "i dont remember" bit is it made some weird game of telephone. "I dont remember" became "oh she's racist, i think she says the n word" which became "she called black bloggers the n word" like people just made shit up about me and connected it to this call out. and when id be like this isnt true id be met with a "this is just known, youre a known racist" and it's like, to this day i will still find people be like "hey good on you for growing as a person and not doing that any more" and its like I NEVER DID IT TO BEGIN WITH

[max1461]

Everybody does the exact same stupid shit. That white nationalist anon I was getting a while ago would send me story after story of some random black guy or immigrant committing a violent crime against a white person. Well, yeah, people are violent, you're gonna find those if you go looking for them. And there's a lot of racial animosity in the world, so you'll even find racially charged ones if you go looking! No shit, Sherlock. We could play this game all day. You find me a news story of a black guy killing a white guy, I find you a news story of white guy killing a black guy. This does no one any good.

TERFs are identical. News story after news story of a trans woman raping somebody. Yeah, the world is an awful place and people rape each other. I can find you a news story of a cis woman raping a teenage boy and getting three months in jail. I can find you a news story of a cis mom killing her disabled kid cause they're too much work. But I don't want to. The world sucks shit, why gorge yourself on the tragedy?

Zionists come up with news story after news story of pro-Palestinian/BDS/whatever protestors being antisemitic. Yep. A lot of people out there hate Jews. And there has been a genuine rise in antisemitism since the Oct. 7th attack, and that's awful. There are no excuses for that. Do you know what else has happened since then? The Israeli military has slaughtered tens of thousands of Palestinians, including huge numbers of innocent civilians—men, women and children.

People are often terrible to each other. Welcome to Earth. If you go looking for bad actors in a big enough group, you are guaranteed to find them. How about this. What about all the black people who didn't kill a white little girl? What about the black little girls? What about their hopes and dreams? What about their chance at life? What about all the trans women who didn't rape anybody in a bathroom? What if they just want to go about their lives, without constant public scrutiny of what genitals they have (as a cis woman, can you empathize with that? Constant public scrutiny of what you're doing with your genitals?). What about the 30,000 Palestinians who have been killed, and the 70,000 who have been displaced from their homes?

Fear has made you a monster. Fear has driven you to demand slaughter and oppression of innocent people because they look like guilty people you read about on the news, and since they look the same to you, you feel fearful—how can you tell whether these are the innocent ones or the guilty ones? Best to oppress and slaughter them preemptively just to be safe. I am here to tell you that this twisted logic of self-defense does not hold. I do not care if you feel safe—I do not care if you are safe—if the cost of your safety is innocent life. The world is a risky place. I am not going to deny that. Horrible things could happen to any of us. If we go around preemptively attacking other over it, we do not make it a bit better. And, needless to say, danger comes from everywhere, from every group of human beings, and oppressing the people who make you nervous will not, in fact, deliver you from danger. It just makes you a monster.

[teaboot]

Do you think that cis men feel the same way as trans men do? Like with how men get treated by society as being inherently evil and as predators?

I think maybe both cis and trans men experience these issues but it's easier for a trans guy to point it out because he gets to see people so quickly turn on him for being a man while transitioning

oh yeah definitely

I find "meninists" fucking obnoxious, especially as any of their VALID concerns fall under the bracket of feminism, but there does exist a presence of radfems and terfs that are scarily eager to lash out at anything resembling masculine that. Definitely needs to be addressed somehow

Like. There's a mile of middle ground between "Um yeah women have problems, whatever, but what about ME and MY FEELINGS 😢" and "I am genuinely trying my best to be thoughtful and considerate of others, and everything I do is being met with bad-faith interpretations and dismissal"

And I think the best advice I have for anyone else getting bogged down by this is that. like.

If someone is determined to see the worst in you, nothing you can do to prove otherwise will be enough. You will never change that person's mind. They don't want you to change their mind. So like... just focus on you, and keep doing your best, and learn, and know that people determined to find something nasty don't really have an issue with YOU- they have their own experiences and traumas coloring their worldview.

Someone who is determined to see you as a monster will only ever see a monster. So it's better to ask yourself, "would a monster do what I'm doing?". If the answer is yes, take steps to change that. If the answer is no, then it's not about you, and you can give yourself permission to move on.

So... yeah, I imagine cis men probably do feel the way I feel about this sorta thing sometimes.

Except, like. After a lifetime being a girl, living as a girl, fighting for equality as the only girl in a lot of men's spaces, being a feminist girl and an Eldest Daughter girl and calling out the bullshit only to later realize I'm not a girl... and that Im actually mostly a dude, still a feminist... at least when people call me a mysoginist, I know they're talking out their ass

I can kinda see where young men encounter their very first radfems calling themselves feminists and immediately become radicalized right-wing conservatives cause like. If I as a teen thought feminism meant Radfems and Terfs, I'd probably start running too

It's all just so exhausting

Any one group being wholesale grouped as "100% helpless gentle victim" or "100% selfish malevolent monster" is doomed, imo

(Now watch the notes blow up with "this is just 'not all men' rhetoric, lol)

But anyways I hate nuance I hate interpretation I hate implication and symbolism and context and I wish everything in the world was simpler so we could all blow a collective joint together and invent some new soups

[soup-mother]

I feel like a lot of those "if you assume when people talk about women they're not including trans women then that's on you" type posts were made to fucking gaslight trans women while patting themselves on the back for allyship.

you know a lot of the time we can't actually tell when someone is including us right? like yea it's annoying when ppl tack us on after the fact but it's like...... you do understand you need to do more than just "obviously include trans women" right?

now when you say "don't assume someone talking negatively about men is actually talking about trans women" are you even slightly able to understand WHY we might be weary of people doing that? do you even slightly consider what things sound like transmisogynistic dogwhistles? or is this a 'i don't have to consider how anything i could ever say might be confused for crypto terf shit because it should be inherently obvious i support trans women' type thing?

like i feel that point is just straight up fucking lost on people talking on behalf of us, yall would fucking turn your backs on us in a fucking second too, don't pretend you wouldn't.

you KNOW why trans women hear "men" and think trans women, it's because a lot of people say "men" and MEAN trans women. you KNOW you know that, you're not that fucking dense. stop patting yourself on the back for being obtuse about it

[velvetvexations]

I'm a trans woman. You need to stop being weird about men.

The idea that trans women should be allowed in single sex spaces for cis women is completely contradicted by the man vs. bear discourse. Ignore that I keep going back to the meme - maybe it's still doing numbers, I don't know, but it's good shorthand either way. If you think men are inherently suspicious and dangerous, ask yourself: why does that not apply to trans women?

What, exactly, does a trans woman do to make herself different from cis men? How are you not advocating a belief in people being tainted by the way they were raised* which can only logically apply to trans women as much as it does cis men? It boggles the mind how, if that's a true concept, one could simply self-identify out it. Yet, the way transradfems talk, literally the only thing that distinguishes an AMAB better-than-bear from an AMAB worse-than-bear is that the former says they're totally better than a bear and you should take their word for it, which if men are really Like That should be of little comfort or security.

Some, even, will make impassioned defenses of butch trans women, which as a butch trans woman is great. But then they'll go on about how evil men are, and how innocent and victimized trans women are, and I wonder, what, exactly, differs an especially butch trans woman from a man to them? If, like me, a trans butch woman doesn't always wear clearly feminine clothes, has body hair, maybe even a shade of facial hair, and doesn't at all try to train her voice, are you going to be uncomfortable with her right up until she realizes she forgot to put their pin on and you see the she/her? Apparently that flips the switch from someone you desperately don't want to be alone with to someone you're totally fine undressing in front of?

All that sounds like TERFism, which is exactly the problem. The transradfem version of reality is one where TERF talking points are completely logical, because they're both based in the same radfem reality. That's not my reality, YOU have constructed a system perfect for them to operate in, that their ideology is fantastic for pointing out errors of reasoning in, as if it was deliberately crafted by them to be deconstructed. I would not at all be surprised if that's the origin of a lot of trans radical feminism, a psyop to make the trans community weaker with logic twists that TERFism can swing through like the Gordian Knot.

If you accept man vs. bear, TERFism is the only logical conclusion. If you don't, as I don't, then it isn't.

The only alternative is that you think being a woman is the only thing anyone should be and "choosing" to be a man is morally inferior. Which I shouldn't have to tell you is horrifying. It's also again incongruous with at least your defense of butch trans women - what exactly defines a "man" and a "woman" when a butch trans woman doesn't have to try to pass at all? You are literally saying all of this, gender, transmisogyny, misogyny, hinges entirely on pronouns and a difference of two letters in the name of what they call themselves, someone is dangerous or not depending on if they go by he/him.

TERFs will see this and be like "yeah! exactly!" BUT MY POINT IS USING THAT TO SHOW YOU SHARE THE SAME FOUNDATIONAL LOGIC AS THEM. If you don't want TERFs to have a point then you can stop accepting their worldview any day now! Come join me and frolic freely where we think TERFs are wrong!

*socialization is real and the idea pre-dates TERFs who incorrectly use the idea that to say that because a trans woman may or may not** have been pressured by external forces to play sportsball she must be hardcoded to be a sex offender, which is completely ridiculous

**no one can be said to have the same experiences, it's a generalization

[genderkoolaid]

I feel like very few pro-trans people are talking about how the current moral panic about teens transitioning is explicitly centred on transmasc teens.

I’ve seen a lot of TERFs very explicitly cite the reason that they got involved in anti-trans campaigning was because more “girls” started transitioning in the 2010s (when before it had been more “boys.”) The initial survey on “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” by Lisa Littman surveyed parents of teens over 80% of whom were “female sex at birth.” The Cass Report is explicitly about “the reasons for the increase in referrals [to the NHS for youth transition] and why this increase has disproportionately been seen in birth registered females presenting in adolescence.” Probably the single most popular anti-trans book about youth transition is Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage, which is about transmasc teens.

Not to say that transfem teens aren’t targeted, especially when it comes to sports & bathroom bans, and being painted as predators from a very young age — although there’s definitely also been a lot of hysteria about transmasc teens “seducing” other teens into transitioning, as well as being aggressive, and it’s not like transmasc teens don’t also get beat up in bathrooms.

But just! I don’t see most pro-trans people acknowledging that this whole anti-trans-teen movement was fuelled in a huge way by transandrophobia (or whatever you want to call it), and that one of its primary goals is stopping transmascs from having any agency over our own bodies. At its core, it’s about transmascs not being properly submissive baby-makers who are attractive to straight men and the property of their parents.

It’s not just about transphobia, it’s about transandrophobia specifically and the fact that people can’t even name that makes me doubt what I’ve seen with my own eyes.

(Follow up to my last ask about the trans teen moral panic) I don't think it would bother me so much except that I've so often seen people try to silence transmasc voices on this topic, or say that transmascs are just collateral damage, as if we're not one of the primary reasons it exists and one of its primary targets. I feel like "nothing about us without us" should apply here, you know?

All of this, absolutely.

I've seen people claim that actually, ROGD and its associated panic attacks are actually secretly about transfems at their core, because transfems are the (only) one's blamed for young girls transitioning! Which is fucking wild!!! Like not only is it not true (parents tend to blame social media, specifically transmasc creators who talk about transitioning) but like why do you have this impulse where even things that are blatantly targeting transmascs can't actually be about transmascs. Why are we always the insignificant side characters in our own experiences.

This is how erasure functions: if you can't deny that anti-transmasc violence is happening, deny that its happening to transmascs. Obscure the victims and how the violence is motivated by their transmasculinity.

& then there's also the way that people act like infantilizing misogyny is 1) the only thing any transmasc ever experiences 2) is Oppression Lite and is more annoying than anything. Like sure let's just forget all of feminism and the well documented ways in which being infantilized kills and ruins lives. Because when it's a transmasc it doesn't really count.

Ik somewhere out there there's a video of ContraPoints where she actually corrects another person on their erasure of radfem anti-transmasc rhetoric. Let's see more of that please.

[queerautism]

Next time you defend transfems I’d like you to explain how any of this is okay

https://www.tumblr.com/unsentimentaltranslator/757666009828212736/

Why are you sending me to a terf blog creeping on transfem kink posts like 😭😂

Listen I know it can be scary to read people go on about rape kink or whatever when you really dislike it, but it's not real. It's pretend play, like a horror movie, okay?

It's not okay to share hard kink posts out of context and with no warning like this either, btw. A lot of people would be upset by it, and it's not okay to try to weaponise those upset feelings against a marginalised demographic - You are the one who provocked those feelings, not women writing about their kinks in their own blogs, in a way I can easily filter out if I want to.

It's also not healthy to continuously upset yourself by looking at kink content you dislike. I highly recommend you don't do that anymore.

All kinky transfems and trans women have my full support.

[certifiedsexed]

I'm really sorry if this is off topic, you post a lot about trans stuff and I don't know where else to ask for advice. Ignore this ask if it doesn't fit the blog and have a nice day.

Has anyone here dealt with partners who have switched views from radfem to TERF? For context, I'm a pre-everything trans male and I don't pass at all. I've been dating my girlfriend for a few years now, she's always been supportive, until this year.

Two years ago she adopted radfem views and this summer she began to deadname and misgender me for the first time and hasn't stopped after polite corrections. She keeps saying I'm just confused and other things, you know what I'm talking about if you've ever interacted with a TERF. It happens every day now.

Is this normal and just a bit rude, or something serious? It's exhausting and I don't feel safe with her anymore, but everyone says I'm just overreacting and I don't know how to handle it carefully, since I don't really have any support now.

Is it really selfish to want to be at least called by another (gender neutral in my country) name if you look like a girl?

No apologies needed! I'm happy to help and I appreciate you trusting me to answer. <3

I need you to genuinely listen to me for a second, Anon. I do not say this lightly. The behavior you're experiencing with your girlfriend is abusive. It's not "just a bit rude", it's not safe and its not appropriate.

Everyone who is telling you that you're overreacting are frankly not trustworthy either if they're telling you that your girlfriend refusing to use your name, misgendering you and trying casual attempts at what sounds a lot like conversion therapy bullshit is not an immediate "get away from that person now".

It makes sense you feel unsafe. She's being consistently abusive towards you and you have no support behind you, that's awful. Whether you "look like" a girl or not, you're not a girl and you've said so.

It is not selfish to ask people to respect your gender and pronouns.

I'm not sure how to handle this carefully either, if i'm honest, because I don't know your situation and I don't know what you have access to.

But my primary advice is to find a way out of this relationship and away from your girlfriend, since it sounds like she is the biggest issue here. I'd frankly also advise finding more spaces with openly trans people, even if that's just online, so that you can find more people like you, in situations like you.

I think it'd really help, especially since people in your life don't sound very supportive. I also think looking up information specifically on trans people, dealing with transphobic abuse would be helpful. This is an article, for example, that might be helpful for you to read.

I don't know how helpful this all is but I'm so sorry you're dealing with all that, Anon. I've dealt with [and still deal with] some of what you're talking about and I know that's such a burden. Sending love. ❤

Let me know if you have any other questions. If anyone else has suggestions, feel free to add on. <3

[genderqueerdykes]

the post you just shared about being both a trans man and a dyke reminded me of something that ive been wanting to talk about for a while now but haven't been able to so far.

im brazilian. the country with one of the biggest pride parades in the world while also being in the highest rates of violence towards lgbt people. queer culture here is weird, and maybe i missed out on it because i was able to find refuge online among the english speaking community relatively early.

ive been observing something that i wrongly assumed was our own version of the butch/femme community, and for a second i got really excited bc we all know butch loneliness, but the more i started looking into it, the more of its completely rotten entrails they showed me.

it's a disfigurement of the ideas that i have held to my heart so dearly ever since i read stone butch blues for the first time, and even more as i discovered leslie feinberg, and found out that there really were others like me. they use the term "desfem" (as in "defeminized"), and the definition explicitly states that the individual must be a cis woman, quoting some terf-tier bullshit that would make joanne proud.

hating men is their entire personality, and it's so shallow and based on cishet gender roles that there is no "femme" counterpart, because they see no way to perform femininity outside of patriarchal roles. they want the aesthetics of butchness without the hardships of living as one. the trans community carries these people on their backs and still they're more worried about how some dykes are trans too.

i don't know where im going with this, i just need to get it off my chest to someone who would at least have an idea of what im talking about. it's so disheartening to see the community head towards this direction, and i grow less and less interested in forming bridges with cis people as time goes on lol

i wanted to thank you for taking the time to send it, i really appreciate these thoughts! i get contacted by a lot of brazilian people. i think that's super cool! i've heard that despite how large your queer scene is that it's still very queerphobic and that's unfortunate, but it does happen.

"hating men is their entire personality, and it's so shallow and based on cishet gender roles that there is no "femme" counterpart, because they see no way to perform femininity outside of patriarchal roles."

i really appreciate the way you said this! i've been trying to point this out for a while now and i'm glad you've come to this realization, yourself.

for whatever reason, cis lesbian, dyke and sapphic spaces are obsessed with the butch-femme binary. it's romanced to hell and back but it's very restrictive and patriarchal. implying that romantic relationships must fall into a masculine partner + feminine partner structure is cisheteromative. there's not much representation for butch4butch, butch4all, femme4femme and femme4all people. the idea that the masculine partner must be strong and protect the weak feminine partner that can't defend themselves is a patriarchal dynamic.

all of the lesbian yearning posts are about how butches are tops and doms and how all femmes are bottoms and subs. butch becomes synonymous with penis and femme becomes synonymous with vagina. calling butches 'chivalrous knights' dehumanizes them and reduces them to being protector figures. the way cis femmes online go on and on and on about how they "need" a butch is very alarming. femmes are being framed as dependent and as though they can't function unless they have a butch in their life, which is very misogynistic.

it's just a repeat of cishet- the patriarchal relationship formatting applies here, even if the genders are slightly tweaked. it's in the coding. it's literally a copy and paste job. it's lazy and toxic as hell and it leaves out all of the diversity that comes with lesbianism and how butches and femmes can experience life and love and sexuality in a variety of ways.

the thing is, as a genderqueer person, i've never understood why people are so attached to this binary. it's so restrictive. i'm butch, but not in the way that white cis lesbians define it. the way they tlel you how to be butch is so restrictive it's not even funny. it's like you gotta pass a test. you gotta be stereotypically masculine 100% of the time or else you're not a real butch. you're expected to emulate a cishet guy, but if you identify as a guy, all hell breaks loose. if you think about it people basically force butches to identify as men and then hold it at arm's reach away. like you have to act exactly like a man but be a Woman. and it makes no fucking sense.

lesbians are some of the most gender diverse people out there. it's crazy to me that people are trying to force lesbians, people who are known for being gender weird, into a male-female cishet binary but with a lesbian Womyn coat of paint. i wish you better luck in finding community that wants to stick together instead of fight over petty bullshit that doesn't matter. take care of yourself. feel free to stop by again any time

[theabigailthorn]

Hi, I don't know if this has been asked a lot but I'd like to know how you deal with the transfobia without getting really sad constantly? I have come to the conclusion that I'm trans but struggle with the fear of transfobia to the point I'm thinking I shouldn't actually transition or even dress the way that would make me comfortable because the fear of being seen as trans is making me unconfortable anyways.

It does still upset me greatly sometimes, like when it happens in person or when it comes from people who wield actual power, or if the transphobia comes in the form of denying me something I need, like healthcare.

But when it's just anonymous people on the internet sending me hate, I guess I've learned from experience that their ability to affect my life is actually quite minimal. Like, "Oh no, @CarolBunchOfNumbers thinks my face looks manly? Well, I have a job I love and friends who support me so, who cares what she thinks!" (To be clear, I'm both lucky and privileged in that regard!)

Also, I've been on the Internet for 11 years - I've dealt with WAY worse than the average TERF. During the B**k A***l saga I had people trawling through my old videos looking for things my abuser said to me to repeat back, I had people signing my email address up to weight loss subscriptions to trigger my eating disorder, I've been libelled - like actually criminally libelled and accused of the worst sorts of crimes people can commit - so many times. And @CarolBunchOfNumbers thinks she can upset me with some thought-terminating-cliché about chromosomes or some shit? Please. My haters are of a higher class than Carol can even conceive of.