#and even if you *only* care about trans women

[nevermindmorpheus]

So I just want to notice a few things about this article and suggest we all take a moment to do a fact check.

First, it’s weird that only the advocate leading a rally on Jess and Dahlia’s behalf is quoted.

Second, there does not in fact seem to be a light rail stop at Hennepin and 5th street. (a bus stop, yes).

Third, the details are odd—Jess and Dahlia were beaten to unconsciousness on the street and yet the only news is this story in the Independent, and then a few stories using that article to regurgitate that information.

Fourth, while there is a quote from a legitimate group in Minneapolis (Sequeerity) it’s not actually about the attacks, but about whether their services and classes have been in demand. Which I am sure is true, but it’s a red flag there is no link to the actual event that supposedly kicked off the interview.

When I search “trans women attacked minneapolis” it pulls these up along with a story from the Star Tribune (Minneapolis’s award winning local paper) about a trans woman attacked by two men in a light rail station—in March of 2023

Now, this story treats the violence with the level of care I would expect for something this vicious, you can see the multiple sources, how the details are laid out etc. (Also in this incident, and the police are called and her attackers were charged.)

Now what I kind of suspected here in the case of the 2024 story that uses some of those details but none of the context that makes sense, was that this story is either AI written or in the worst case, written to stoke fear in trans folks hoping to find safety. Things feel very dangerous in the US right now and a story like this can make even places of refuge seem unsafe. The reality of course is that no place is perfect, but Minneapolis is still a much better option for safety for trans folks than many others.

Now, things that would make me trust this story is if we could find journalism where anyone has covered either:

a) the actual attack occurring Nov 2024, citing a full police report, speaking to either Jess or Dahlia, or a bystander who saw the incident. Or even you know, the time of day exactly, and gets the actual physical location correct.

EDIT! There is coverage here that does that and clarifies the location of the light rail station and resolves the factual issues that raised my questions in the first article: https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/rally-held-after-transgender-women-attacked-near-minneapolis-light-rail-station

https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/rally-held-after-transgender-women-attacked-near-minneapolis-light-rail-station

b) a story covering the rally that happened in support of Jess and Dahlia. Where was it? How many people were there? Are they asking for anything?

EDIT: the above linked story does that!

At this point I can find neither and so I urge everyone to be careful and critical when encountering news that is hitting all of your emotional buttons. No one’s fears are unfounded here (this did happen in 2023!) but we owe it to each other to only spread stories like this that are based on solid evidence ♥️

EDIT: Thanks to some other folks doing searching as well, the step of fact checking which is find other coverage has succeeded. I was wrong! I do want to emphasis that it is still important to go through the process of noticing these things and making sure what you’re looking at is real, because there were enough errors in the Independent story that made the reporting not feel right. The “bring me the news” piece, as well as the instagram posts it’s linked to clarify the rally, the large public support including government officials, and reports the correct details of location and when the cops showed up (late, at the hospital. nice look there guys).

I’ve gotten a lot of hate for wondering if this was correctly reported and being wrong on the internet, and I do want to say that I looked into this because it made me upset, and then concerned, that the violence against transwomen was being used to stoke our fear (which is what I felt about the Independent article). I included the sections about what would indicate this was real because I knew there was a real possibility I had missed something, and wanted to highlight how you know when to change your mind.

so the tldr: The first shared article has a lot of factorial errors that means you should look more. Even if you don’t see evidence at first doesn’t mean you won’t get it later! The truth is that this violence did happen, but also that there was a huge outpouring of local support. Please take care of each other, and be kind!

This is where we are. Anti-trans pogroms have begun and the community is living in fear. Things are so bad that some of us are unable to live anymore.

Where is the left? Where are our allies?

#TDoR2024

[euniexenoblade]

I debated if I wanted to mock this post/screenshot for a couple hours and i decided I was just gonna go in line by line and dissect it

"being poly is a choice you make. not an identity you cannot change."

I disagree. I struggled with this through most of my teens and early twenties. The desire to be with multiple people was strong and the concept that I couldn't be with all of them was very confusing and hurtful not just to me, but the people I was with. Had I been taught what polyamory is younger and had known that monogamy is not actually the only way you're allowed to be, i'd have probably been able to stop struggling with this much sooner. Do I think this was as big of a mental struggle as being gay or trans? Nah. But it was certainly an issue that ate away at me.

As much as polyamory was a choice, so was me being trans was a choice. I would say both are inherent to who I am. Just because something isn't inherent to your identity, doesn't mean it isn't inherent to mine.

The second paragraph is a gross misinterpretation of what was said. I said abused poly people in relationships they cannot escape will likely cheat when they do find love. The same is true for monogamous people who cannot escape relationships. This happens all the fucking time. To women. To gay people. To trans people. To poly people. This is so utterly common it's an overused trope in story telling.

"OBVIOUSLY abusive situations aside"

The post was about abusive situations. You're already throwing away the core concept to the post.

"why are you staying with someone you are completely incompatible with"

This shows how this person has no value for relationships. Just because you realize you're poly doesn't mean your feelings for an individual disappears. You want to see if this relationship can still work, whether monogamous or polyamorous. Not to mention so many people would find themselves homeless or penniless by just leaving. There's no actual understanding of love and relationships and the heart here.

"you don't need to pursue any kind of relationship ever"

And gay people don't have to be in gay relationships. Trans people don't have to transition. Doesn't change the longing to experience what you want to experience.

"where exclusivity is agreed upon"

I know poly people who entered relationships under the premise the other person was poly, just for that person to decide "actually I'm monogamous, and I'll kill myself if you leave me." You have no understanding or empathy.

"wanting to be poly does not excuse cheating what is wrong with you people"

Look I agree cheating sucks and violates trust, but acting like it's the worst thing in the history of ever is just childish. I get it hurts but at the end of the day, you do not own another person's body and sometimes shit happens. I just do not care what other people do with their own bodies and you cannot make me believe I'm supposed to care. If my husband goes and fucks someone without my permission (which he commonly does) then that's rad. I hope he has fun. If my wife goes and fucks someone I don't know (which she regularly does) then fuck yeah I hope they both had fun. Y'all are too fucking uptight.

Also the tags

The "monogamous people are losers and shouldn't get a say in anything" was something I said in reply to a heckler on my 'monogamous people often abuse poly partners' post. To take it solely as 100% serious opinion is foolish and childish.

"I cheated cuz waaa"

I've never cheated on any partner. The post isn't even saying it's ok cheat, it's saying that poly people get branded as cheaters whether they do or don't. But I'll say it here just because it's so controversial that it pisses losers off: it's ok for polyamorous people to cheat on monogamous partners. Get out before they abuse you.

[starstruckbyacomet]

A Friendly Reminder...

...to not watch the show through the official channels. Since there's a possibility that they won't continue Tevan's love story, our biggest chance for Tommy's return is by:

Keeping the rating/viewership* low to push the show to bring Tommy back.

*Rating = live/same day views via cable, viewership = streaming views up to +7 days since live.

Some people might think that our views don't matter. There are 4 millions people watching the show. Tevan shippers might be only one or two thousands people on Tumblr. We're like drops in the lake.

This situation is similar like the latest US presidential election. There were 140 millions of voters. Our votes like drops in the ocean. Did it stop you from casting your vote?

You want protections of women's rights and marriage equality. You want an affordable health care. You want a free, or at least affordable, higher level education. You want accountability of police brutality. Did you vote to make them happen, or were you sitting around, letting other people vote, waiting to reap the benefit from other people's works?

You want a happy ending of the rare bisexual relationship representation on TV that you've invested on. You've done some of the works: submitting complaints to ABC, and posting comments on ABC's official IG & FB accounts. But we all know, all of them won't matter if the rating/viewership doesn't budge.

You still can get the update of the latest episode by watching video clips on YouTube. There are several YouTube channels which upload clips from the latest episode within hours after it is live. My go to channel is:

Other similar channels are:

Nobody can't guarantee that witholding our views would bring Tommy back, like no one could guarantee that Democrats would win even if you'd voted Blue. Even if the show continues Tevan's love story, it might be because it has been planned in advance, and this break-up is a planned temporary hurdle. Whatever the result is, let's try our best to make their love story continues.

[unavailableapple]

Excuse me for coming to your askbox, I am not a radfem and don't agree with a lot of it's principles, yet I find radfem spaces are the only place where discussion of nonbinary identity has any nuance. Personally I have no problem with people doing whatever they want with their own bodies/minds/labels but I did struggle to wrap my head around just how many people started IDing as nonbinary during the last few years. Now recently it's been a bit of the opposite, with a noticeable amount of previously out and proud nonbinary people dropping the label. I've heard some people discuss it like it was just "in fashion" for a while, while others insist it's a result of gender experimentation or having to go back in the closet due to the political climate. But it's not just the young, I noticed that includes some of the first nb people I knew, who were nonbinary before 2020, hell, before 2015. I know you had a similar experience, so I just wanted to hear your opinion on this whole phenomenon, why it's happening and why now, and if you expect the trend to continue?

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot and honestly the short answer is: I’m not sure.

The long answer:

I think that these things come in waves. Think about BBL surgery (Brazilian butt-lift surgery). When that surgery was really popular, I’m sure it felt like a very real need to the women who got it. Similarly, my nonbinary identity felt very real to me. But once you apply any amount of pressure to either of these, they start to break. Because really what does it mean to be nonbinary? Why do I NEED to express myself as nonbinary? Why does she NEED to have a large posterior? Eventually you realize, it is misogyny. That’s all it is. And then the whole thing falls apart…Aside from that, even if you don’t acknowledge the misogyny, these things are ultimately superficial and, as such, fall away once one reaches a certain point of adulthood.

I don’t mean adulthood as in becoming an adult human I mean adulthood as in a certain level of struggle that makes fanciful discussions of pronouns seem taxing. Eventually real life catches up and you don’t feel like wasting your precious free time thinking about whether you use they, she, he, or meow pronouns. I think the lasting effects of COVID have meant terrible things for the general public and a lot of people are struggling to pay rent or afford food. I know that what first made me stop caring about pronouns was when I was homeless and thought a lot more about finding a safe place to sleep than making sure everyone calls me he/meow/it pronouns.

Then I think there’s the climate of the trans community right now. When I was younger, there was an idea of, “Being trans is equally hard for males AND females”. But now the dominant narrative seems to be that trans identified males have it a thousand times harder being trans and trans identified females face no oppression at all. I do think this drives more trans identified females out of trans spaces and leads them to find more community with other women. This was the case for several of my friends. Once the trans community told them, “You don’t face any oppression” even though they did (by right of being female), they stopped feeling aligned with a nonbinary identity and suddenly realized they felt more aligned with being female, on the basis of shared experiences.

Finally, it could genuinely just be that it’s falling out of fashion. I’m of an era where I, like a lot of young women my age, was the froggy jumper round glasses meow/it pronoun using boyflux aligned aroace nonbinary person and that was in style. Nowadays kids on TikTok make fun of that and it’s much less “in”. Recently Mitski cut her hair short and people started calling her “theyfab”. For the uninitiated, theyfab is a rude term the trans community uses for a female person who identifies as nonbinary, especially if she doesn’t do anything to express this nonbinary identity beyond cutting her hair. They were not trying to “affirm” Mitski, they were making fun of her for being a gender nonconforming woman, and they were making fun of the women who identify as nonbinary. No matter what, it’s always “in” to make fun of women so if a lot of women are identifying as nonbinary, it’s going to be “in” to make fun of them and it is. On pinterest, Nonbinary identities are already being relegated to “2010s nostalgia” the way moustache tattoos on pointer fingers are “2000s nostalgia”, these things come and go.

So yeah, I ultimately don’t know, and these are only a couple among my many many MANY different theories. But based on my own experience and the experiences of people I know, this is what I’ve been thinking.

[byjove-cannibalcove]

my uncle (who 15 years later is a super anti-trans pro-trump guy) when i told him i was trans as a teenager: starts explaining to me that i should date older divorced women "because if they are used goods theyll just be glad anyone is willing to take them, which is how (2007 version of the phrase 'low value men') like us get 9s and 10s, ive NEVER dated below a 7, hot girls get desperate when they're older" --(coincidentally we stopped to eat and even though i was not attempting to pass i walked into the womens bathroom and a man saw me doing it and GRABBED ME and scolded me and tried to push me towards the men room and i froze up, squeaked, hurried into the womens room, he went and got a manager, i had to go 'no im a girl' like it was.. not fun! a very BAD first accidental passing situation! i only felt miserable embarrassed and in danger. )

a year or so later, coming out to my dad id only recently met as being a 16ish year old Lesbian (because i didnt trust him enough to come out as trans): 'oh okay, cool, lets go to hooters and oggle the waitresses, they are hot but stupid haha, i like stupid girls the most (note, his gf was 20 years younger than him) but id FUCK Sarah Palin, im only going to vote for Mccain just because Palin is HOT, hey did you hear they made a porn of her lookalike? yeah i know she hates gay people (and you are gay) but who cares, shes fUCKABLE i dont care what shes SAYING i just care about her BOOBS'

when i was about 18 during the training week for my first ever job at krogers i managed to pass without realizing it until the dudes invited just me (not the 1 girl) to eat lunch with them and just IMMEDIATELY started talking about fucking girls, girls being worthless if they were ugly and 'if theyre ugly just fuck em in the mouth hahaha' and HEY you know what i did NOT feel liek one of the boys, i felt like i was IN DANGER if they clocked me!! i did not feel like id gotten a special pass to the Fun Misogyny World where id get paid more, i was a 5'2" spotty teen boy working his first ever job as a grocery bagger who was now kind of scared his new coworkers might kill him, because ALL id done to pass was have short hair, be naturally kinda ugly, and have a gender-neutral nickname. none of my bosses thought i was a guy, they could find out at any second (as soon as we got back from lunch, evern) , that i was a worthless ugly girl that had invaded their space for their private conversatoin and maybe theyd decide to to show me what they meant!!!???

i have pretty much never managed to pass Ever Again after that point as far as i know, just a handful of times where a service worker went 'sir' to me, so these are pretty much the only times ive ever passed and it wasnt super fun!! so like!! maybe if youre a big huge strong tough trans guy with a spine of steel, complete confidence in your ability to pass and defend yourself, are in a highpowered/skilled enough environment to not worry about your job opportunities, maybe in that case invitations to the Fun Special Misogyny Club are being handed out even if you disclose that youre trans and hey, maybe its even fun to be there! ... but acting like thats the DEFAULT is just insane.

I'm this close to just sending that trans inclusive radical misogynist post, the one about how there's loads of guys who'll go "oh, you're a man now, great, come shit talk women with us" to every blog insisting that trans men can't have male privilege and it's transandrophobia to say they do. Not every trans man has this experience but it's actually pretty common even for out trans men to be seen as, if not "real" men depending on who you ask, certainly non-women, and encouraged to perform misogyny as part of their social transition.

[benveydraws]

i can't love you in this skin

[ot3]

this flavor of trans guy misogyny where they do rhetorical backflips to explain why them not caring about women is good, actually, and since cis men are also misogynists a lot of the time we should all just stop complaining about it.

[raptorific]

Okay, let me make this really easy for you: there is no option available to her that would stop this rule being enforced against her or against these hypothetical staffers everyone seems so concerned about. She cannot let them get away with doing it to her, and to every other transgender government employee, because they have gotten away with it. The time when it could've been stopped was a few weeks ago, in the elections. Sorry. We failed. The good guys lost. There is nothing she, or anybody other than the Republican House Majority, can do to change this rule or prevent its enforcement until there is no longer a Republican Majority in the house.

Here are the options, the only options, available to her

She can comply with the unjust rule, giving the Republicans nothing to enforce against her, and allowing her to do the job she was elected to do without being a piece in their weird culture war games. If she holds to this line, then the people targeting her come off as weird, obsessive bullies, and their constituents are left wondering why the people of Delaware have a Representative who's working for them while THEIR representative is off tilting at a transgender windmill who won't give them the time of day

She can resign her post in protest of the unjust rule, taking the number of trans people in congress from 1 to 0, or

She can violate the unjust rule, and the Speaker of the House can order her penalized and dragged out of the bathroom by the Sergeant At Arms. She's photographed being dragged out of the bathroom, and the Republicans gleefully prop her up as proof that trans women simply can't resist barging into women's rooms even when they've been directly ordered to stay out. The Republican Majority, in response, now bolstered by a substantial Rhetorical Victory with the public in this asinine debate, introduces legislation for federal laws restricting restroom access not only in government buildings, but in all buildings. This legislation passes in the republican-controlled legislature, it is signed into law by President Donald Trump, and any challenges to it are defeated but he conservative supreme court. Trans rights are set back a full century in this country.

The Republicans-- you know, the ones who are actually doing this-- really want #2 or #3 to happen. They are not happy that she said "I will comply with the rule." They desperately, desperately want to see a transgender woman break this rule, because if that happens, they get everything they want.

Like, put even an ounce of thought into it. In none of those situations do the Republicans say "aw gawrsh, I guess we CAN'T control her after all, on account of her Gumption. Guess we gotta let trans staffers pee where they want." That's the big secret. They don't actually care where trans people go to the bathroom. They are telling them "you're not welcome in the Capitol." Sarah McBride has answered with a resounding "make us as unwelcome as you like, we're staying."

Don't be stupid on this post because I will turn off reblogs, but it is truly illuminating to see Republicans explicitly lay a transphobic trap to frame their transgender coworker in a negative light (because they currently possess the authority to do so without consequences), see the transgender coworker say "I see the trap they've set for me and I will be stepping around it rather than directly into it," and have people online overwhelmingly respond like "wow, she's such a traitor to the community, letting them decide where she walks."

[yuridovewing]

i understand the frustration with “i made this gay pairing cis x trans so they can still have biological babies” with no thought to other methods and how ppl assume thats the case when it comes to mothpool aus where mothwing is also the mother of the three, but also…. idk i kinda dont give a shit if someone wants to do that and i dont really think its inherently transphobic as long as its handled with care and respect.

what really concerns me about this debate is how some people are adamant that you cannot portray trans people having biological children in media or youre being disrespectful. and im gonna say as a nonbinary person who doesnt want children for themself- thats kinda fucking weird? like i understand that for some people, theyre trans themselves and theyre speaking from a place of dysphoria, and i absolutely get that, which is why i think the topic should be handled with nuance and diversity in trans characters, but like…. guys. pregnant trans men exist irl. trans women get people pregnant irl. trans ppl’s ability and right to parent and have biological children are being debated irl. we get denied the opportunity to adopt as well.

in a climate like this, are we SURE we want the stance on rewrites and headcanons in the silly cat books to be “if you portray trans characters having children, especially with a gay couple, youre a transphobic freak no matter what!” does it really matter? especially if its being done by a trans person handling the topic with nuance who has a lot of trans characters with varying perspectives?

obviously yes, remember that thats not the only way certain gay couples can have kids, remember that not every trans person is fully comfortable with it and keep that in mind, remember that surrogacy and adoption are also perfectly valid ways to give fan babies- but remember that there are OPTIONS. not that you need to condemn the idea of transgender parents in the first place unless they fit the very specific criteria of “proper transgender representation” and anything that dares deviate from that is proof the op is a transphobic monster (bonus points if theyre a trans creator bc i mostly see trans people getting shit for this and it kinda pisses me off. although idm if cis people do it either as long as theyre handling it with respect)

[musical-chick-13]

Regarding the whole "Fandom Is An Escape, so why should I have to care this much about misogyny/racism/ableism/transphobia/etc." thing. Idk about the rest of you, but it gets kind of hard for me to "escape" when I keep seeing people say the same vile things about characters who share aspects of my identity that I hear all the time in real life.

[eroticcannibal]

Regarding that whole terf being like "I can totes tell which is a real vulva just by looking at it" thing, people are covering the transmisoginy but I've noticed no one is talking about how anti-porn views are playing into how this terf views bodies

Like, their is clearly a reactionary "only bigger inner labia are real, everything is surgical" thing going on here which obviously stems from the (legitimate!) Complaints about lack of genital diversity in porn (and inner labia size was a huge point of discussion a few years back). And like, radfems being radfems, decided at the time that the appropriate response was to decide anyone with this more favoured-by-mainstream-porn kind of vulva are evil and should be mocked and probably got surgery (even if they didnt) which makes them a traitor to women etc etc

And this is not to say that this specific instance is actually an attack on anyone but trans women (though the "real vs fake women" narrative *is* something also applied to sex workers of any gender, including cis women, by radfems) but rather I feel it is something to be aware of especially considering how anti-sex work sentiment affects overly sexualised groups (trans women) and groups who engage in sex work more frequently (also trans women)

[velvetvexations]

The last one about their friend makes me apocalyptically angry, how gross and resentful can you possibly be to someone that considers you a friend, and cares about you and trans women enough to self-identify as TME? Even beyond the exorsexism this is such a gallingly horrible and selfish way to view the people in your life.

And since someone is once again getting upset at the idea a transmasc might have a dykebreaking kink, I must once again point to the fact that transfems being into it is a regular feature of TERFs trying to show that transfems are evil sexual predators, to the point of comparing main blog selfies with obscured selfies on transfem dykebreaking blogs to level accusations at prominent transfem Tumblr users. Transmasc doms into kinks like that are vanishingly rare and this only makes transmascs better than transfems, or victimized by them, if you think having a kink like that is inherently wrong. If you actually apply TRF logic it always comes back to TERFism being the rational conclusion.

God. There is just so much to be pissed off with here. Can you imagine people who have a screaming fit if they and a group that otherwise consists of cis women are referred to as "you guys" but call trans men bitches?

this post is already annoying and just repackaged “transtrender” garbage but

y’all are literally just transphobes who think you and your friends are exempt from the transphobic worldview you accept.

[cold--carnage]

I genuinely, wholeheartedly do not believe that women are statistically more likely to be rape victims. I think the numbers are probably pretty balanced but men just don't come forward about it because the reaction is always some variation of "well it was probably another man who did it to you so men are still the problem" or fucking whatever

[maybeicanbesaved]

got into yet another fight with my mom, again about voting/the election, she said that she’s only voted once in her life and never cares to again because she ‘doesn’t care about politics’, saying that shit almost proudly?? and it set me off for obvious reasons, then she got mad at me for saying it’s because she’s privileged and ‘most’ shit doesn’t affect her directly so she can afford ‘not to care’

[existingtm]

Wow

J. K. Rowling's response to the Trump campaign and his successful re-election is...wow. She really does not give a fuck as long as she can point to trans people as the number one problem in the world.

Y'all Rowling devotee, self-martyred "TERFS" really don't give a shit about women, do you? That's the worst part—using women as a fucking shield for your abuse toward trans people. You think you'll be safe because you're one of the good ones? As long as YOU feel safe, fuck everyone else, right?

Hope you U.S.—based cowards enjoy losing your reproductive rights because you couldn't stand sharing a world with trans people. Better hope you can get to a state with enough legislation to protect you. Oh, wait! Those are trans refuge states, so you probably won't feel safe there. Never mind! Best of luck on your own!

[toytulini]

name some canonically nonbinary characters why dont you