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

[soup-mother]

I'm being characteristically bitter and petty here but god could i go without hearing about fucking stonewall ever again. there's queer history outside of fucking seppo land, queer history does not trace it's worldwide roots back to fucking stonewall.

there's things to learn, NAMELY how quickly and gleefully everyone turns their fucking backs on black and trans women, but even when people do acknowledge that it's still the only shit they give a fuck about and everyone else is expected to know and care about it.

and you get accused of "forgetting our history/roots" for not caring about it despite being on the other side of the planet! everything gets fucking subsumed into the mythology of the stonewall riots and Usian queer history.

USA is not the only country history happens in, USA is not the fucking birthplace of queerness or queer history, i have heard enough about fucking stonewall.

[velvetvexations]

I'm censoring this URL because the OP is eighteen. Do not seek the post out and do not harass anyone. Teens are often wrong about things. It's fine. It's radfem bullshit but it's fine.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let me be clear: The idea that t4t was invented by trans women for use betwixt themselves, and that "TME" people "gentrified it," is (a) holy fucking shit racist as fuck and (b)

takes a deep breath

WRONG INCORRECT UNTRUE EASILY VERIFIABLY FALSE

The OP is eighteen. That means that we did not do anything. They were not born when It came about on Craigslist and was being used by all trans people from the very start. I don't think they know what Craigslist is and probably more than half the people reblogging it don't either.

TME people fucking gentrified it? Are you fucking kidding me? Are these people tossing that post back and forth just fully playing pretend in fucking Tarabithia, what world do they live in where this combination of syllables makes sense and doesn't cause them to wither up in shame for even having the thought, much less vocalizing it?

Ohhhh but what really gets me is the assertion this was done because being with "TME" people meant there was a high chance you could be "socially (or even physically) murdered."

No.

No, OP. If you were any kind of trans person in pretty much any time and place before the 2010s, and a relationship with a non-trans person went poorly, there was a very high chance you would be dead. There's no "or even" about it. That is what fucking happened. Your ex didn't go crying to your mutual friends telling them about how you hogged the blankets. Your non-trans ex would proceed to ACTUALLY FOR REAL MURDER you, assuming they even waited for the relationship to go sour and didn't just kill you the second you walked through the door like they were always planning to do.

That's how it was when I was growing up, denied transitioning but longing so achingly to be a girl in spite of the horror and misery that seemed to plague us. So I have a problem with the obsession with sOcIaL mUrDeR that keeps getting tossed around these days, because of how degrading it is not only to how bad things still are with death after death after death, but how it disrespects what we came out of. But to directly act like soooocial murrrrrder was the big scary thing trans women feared back then? That's heinous. That's sickening. The social consequences all trans people were deathly afraid of back then was being outed as trans and then being fucking stabbed within twenty-four hours.

Even in spite of the election and what's coming next, how good we have it would be nigh-incomprehensible to the first trans men and women and non-binary people to be brave enough to advertise themselves as t4t to strangers. Like, I need everyone to understand that. They could not have wrapped their fucking heads around it. It'd be like explaining a circuit board to a Mesopotamian. One could show them a video of the Blue's Clues episode about queer people and it'd just register to them as migraine inducing static.

We're in such a better place than we were. And this is what people do with it.

Make up bullshit reasons to be angry at their siblings and imply they also didn't get murdered for being trans on a regular basis, or that even just trans women cared about an irritating buzzword, even as cishetpatriarchal fascism is empowered and determined to drag us back to the the horrific dark age that scholars refer to as Literally All of Human History Up Until Now.

Amazing.

Why do I even try. Like, with anything. Why do I get out of bed in the morning. I could have stayed in bed all day listening to rain sounds.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on that.

[liauditore]

what’s your thoughts on ouran? you mentioned you had a love / hate relationship with it and i think that would be interesting to hear

Oh god post that usually would be reserved for my sideblog incoming. Heads up this one might get uncomfortable, heed the tags. LONG POST.

TL;DR: it's a fun show that's neck deep in the misogyny sauce

I had the true ouran experience of watching it when I was 12 and thinking it was really funny but ultimately finished the show feeling mildly disappointed as well as being Very put off by one specific episode.

As a 12 year old I didn't really have the words to explain why but over the years I thought back to ouran again and again and the more I thought about it the more. Angry isn't really the right emotion I guess. Eyebrow raised emoji-y is more accurate.

Now that I am a bit older and wiser and have read more shoujo, I think the majority of the annoyance and confusion I felt towards ouran, especially nearing the end of the show, came from the fact that it pretty much bait-and-switches its own stance on gender roles, classism and judging by appearance. Please note that I have not rewatched ouran in many years so take all this with a grain of salt and forgive me for anything I'm straight up misremembering.

Haruhi, to me, embodies a very quintessential shoujo protagonist archetype. She's not necessarily radicalized against gender roles, but doesn't place the same importance in gendered performance as her peers. She's also viciously ambitious and doesn't downplay her own intelligence, qualities that her female peers around her have been conditioned to avoid in their cartoonishly extreme upper class upbringings.

However, the other girls' education being a direct result of their education is never really examined. All the other girls at ouran are presented as vapid and "boy-crazy" over the host club. Renge, the only major female character aside from Haruhi herself, is delegated to being comedic relief (and of course, the humour surrounding her almost always has to do with her obsession with Kyoya) with some not so subtle implications that Haruhi is above her girlish antics because Haruhi is... Better, to put it bluntly, in every way including her ability to appeal to men, which can be seen through Kyoya's neutral to distasteful opinion of Renge vs his somewhat unsubtle care and attraction towards Haruhi.

This very unflattering depiction of women other than Haruhi extends to the very queer-coded* Lobelia academy girls, who the host club spends an episode "rescuing" Haruhi from and, once again despite their group leader's more masculine look, reacts in shock and horror at their feminine interests. Eugh, makeup! Disgusting!

*pressing the "nuance" button on this one because we can't expect to apply our understanding of queer signalling on a Japanese highschooler, but the Lobelia girls are. Fairly blatant enough I feel that I almost don't even want to call it coding.

The girls in the show who aren't Haruhi are either boy-crazy and therefore stupid, side characters whose episodes are often tied to getting with a male love interest (who is always depicted as "plain" compared to the desirable men of the host club), rivals in love against Haruhi (like Eclair) or silly evil lesbians.

Speaking of the silly evil lesbians, I do think it's interesting how many times the show feels the need to restate Haruhi's heterosexuality through her endless amounts of blatant disinterest in her fangirls. I briefly wrote once on how patriarchal standards have an amount of gender-nonconformity that can be accepted with women, but violently withdraws that acceptance when it can be even slightly confused with signalling queerness. Every second boomer dad wants a tomboy daughter, yet none of them seem to want trans sons. Idk, food for thought.

It's also fascinating to me that Utena is so much older than Ouran, yet almost feels like a direct response to Ouran's pitfalls at times e.g. the "not like other girls" logic of Ouran's world that pits women against eachother. The only women deserving of sympathy are those who don't act as a "threat" to Haruhi's desireability, everyone else is stupid and beneath her or an evil bitch.

The one woman who is always shown as intelligent and worthy of respect outside of Haruhi herself is Haruhi's deceased mother. Interesting that she had to be dead and more of a concept and motivator for Haruhi instead of.. a character.

If the show was just a marina and the diamonds girls simulator that would be one thing but what I find even more insidious is that not only does it not respect its female cast, Haruhi herself is almost. Instructed? In the show to uphold patriarchal rhetoric, when she entered as a neutral force. With the fact that she acts as the audience stand-in, I find this just the smallest bit troubling.

ESPECIALLY. when talking about the specific episode that really gave me the "I don't like this alot but I can't describe why" feelings when I was 12. Everything else in the show I can look past but this episode genuinely pissed me the fuck off when I was 12 and pisses me off even more now.

I'm talking of course about the "better remember your place in society or men will rape you!!"

In episode 8, the host club visits the beach but instead of the fun beach episode I thought was coming up, 12 year old me was hit was Haruhi being scolded by Tamaki for trying to defend a group of girls from ruffians, simply because she is a girl. Haruhi obviously gets mad.

This in of itself is fine, Tamaki's been shown to be an idiot and very deep in the misogyny/classism sauce, and the way this show mocks that is why I really like him.

But Tamaki is supposed to be IN THE RIGHT this episode, as later Kyoya pretends that he's going to rape Haruhi to teach her a lesson about why women shouldn't confront men I guess. Which, of course, implies quite a lot of very strange things in a show made for young girls, including that if you just abide by gender expectations that are Good and Keep You Safe you... won't be raped? Haruhi even thanks Kyoya for PRETENDING HE WAS GOING TO RAPE HER ?

It's this. Very strange and hypocritical moment for this show and really, really soured Kyoya's character for me -- which is a shame cus I do think he's one of the most interesting club members. I'll never not fume about this episode man I literally got into fights with friends over this episode being garbage as a kid and it was one of the smartest opinions I had at that age.

It's also gross to me that this whole thing revolved around, in the first place, Haruhi trying to defend other girls. In a show that keeps isolating Haruhi from them. So to recap 1. DO NOT seek out relationships with other women, they are vapid and won't understand you, certainly not more than the men in your life and 2. If you defend other women (from men), you're being stupid. Get a man to handle it instead, because it's men's duty to defend women, not yours. and if you violate this natural order you deserve to get raped. Hashtag some gender roles are good, actually.

I also have more thoughts on the way it's presented as if being raped as a woman is the worst thing imagineable but Renge's stalker tendencies towards Kyoya are played up for laughs. Shrugs.

The episode even ends with Haruhi saying she wasn't afraid because she knew Kyoya wasn't going to do it, but then ending up in a curled up helpless ball anyway because of. some thunder. really awesome. While I don't have any problem with exploring Haruhi's vulnerability, we never see any of the boys in such a state, reinforcing that this isn't about dropping the facade of unemotional masculinity but Haruhi being... a girl. Barf.

Even completely disregarding that episode, the messaging is. Strange to say the least. I do think this one might be the thing that gets me shot because Tamaki Does come around to appreciating Haruhi as a person and not simply a "woman", but the fact remains that she still acts as a "love interest" from beginning to end. And the whole dynamic of. Haruhi going from completely disinterested to fond of Tamaki over time, and Tamaki learning to abandon his playboy ways and see Haruhi as a person is totally fine and okay. BUT it is a little bit. Oh so NOW you want to talk about seeing women as people.

I feel that I've been. very focused on the hate part of the love hate and I'll be real nowadays that is very much the dominant half. I still like the show just for nostalgia value, the humour, as well as the host club members themselves. Morii and Honey specifically have a really awesome dynamic and I wish we got to see Honey go berserker more but it is what it is. Kyoya, rapey moment aside, is also really fun and maybe one of those characters that made me realise what kind of tropes I like. I will not stand a word of Hikaru and Kaoru slander, those boys are awesome and their incestuous club personas are a great parody of how performative the club really is, and through that how performative society as a whole is when dealing with attraction as a concept. And I actually really like the side characters too, the emo catboy and Renge in particular.

But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't perhaps one of the most anti-feminist bait and switches I'd ever seen in my life.

Haruhi's not even gender-nonconforming!! She's just a normie with a normal amount of care put into gendered presentation but because she's in the psychopath rich people school she SEEMS gender-nonconforming!! Which is fine as I've said before I think a lot of shoujo protagonists are like Haruhi in that their gender is more "I just work here" at best and something used to oppress them at worst, but Haruhi goes out of her way to present more feminine the moment she leaves the school gates.

Big words for this show to come out swinging saying gender roles and expectations attached to them are dumb when its so terrified of actually tackling them. I don't require everything I watch to be queer queer gay gay homosexual transgender beam attack but like?? Why have Haruhi say she dgaf and then have her present feminine anyway? Especially when it's been highlighted to us that her family is dirt poor, yet she still has the money for hair extensions? You're telling me she decided to cut ALL OF HER HAIR OFF FOR A TINY PIECE OF GUM. for no reason at all when she could've easily just cut it into a bob??

FTR I do still like Haruhi which is what makes this all the more frustrating, especially since she's one of the few female anime characters who we're told is supposed to be masc-presenting and actually could pass as that. Mf questioned the system of gender and then proceeded to do fuckall with it. Gets forced into crossdressing but underlines it with "but im not a lesbian" the whole way through. What cowardice. What theory and no practice. What bark but no bite. What a non-theme. Haruhi is the opposite of punk. Centrist ass take of an anime.

Ahem. Biases aside. I just feel like it fails as a romance, fails saying anything substantial about gender or class and ultimately ends up being meaningless fluff at best and pro-rapist and anti-woman at worst.

[queerasaurus-rexx]

actually, i'm gonna clarify this;

terfs like to closely align themselves with second wave feminism. you know. the one that forced black women and other woc out of the movement and pushed them to spearhead intersectional feminism.

which terfs hate.

terf 'feminism' is the only school of feminism i know that actively pulls itself up by attacking other feminists (just look at their takes on 'liberal feminism') despite claiming that all afab are united in their experience of oppression.

they have this weirdass paternal attitude toward non-terf feminists, acting as if they and they alone know what's best for women, even if it speaks over the women they claim to want to uplift, even backending into victim blaming when discussing choice feminism.

and that's not even getting into the racism.

they actively choose to align themselves with a wave of feminism that actively ignored the struggles of woc.

that said, they violate the tenets of even that wave of feminism.

i've said it once, and i'll say it again.

terfs hate trans people and men more than they care about women.

Transphobia is so antithetical to genuine feminism it blows my mind there's such a wide overlap like you either believe in autonomy and self determination or you don't

[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.

[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)

[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

[nerdylilpeebee]

I've already asked myself this. The answer: very few others that align more to the left do. And I'm tired of not having left-leaning challenging the toxic bullshit that comes from the left.

I'm not unconcerned. As I've stated several times now, the restriction are not oppression. This does not mean they are not an issue. Oppression and an issue, while overlapping, are not the same fucking things.

Because radfem beliefs are rampant throughout the left. :) you think just cuz radfems are overt with it there aren't countless leftists that agree with everything they say except when they add "trans" to the front? The misandrist bullshit needs to be challenged. And I don't care who thinks it isn't an issue or not. Equality means equal fucking treatment. Not "put women on pedestal and treat men like walking erections foaming at the mouth as they eagerly wait to rape everyone in sight at the first opportunity." There are already plenty of pro-trans voices in the left, and I am trans myself. But there are not nearly enough pro-male voices.

Well, first off, because I'd forgotten about that. And second, it holds no real bearing on the current election. Unless he pulled the same shit here, it's really irrelevant to the process of democracy. I hate Trump, I don't want him to be president again, but the fact is, he won. Acting like deranged psychopaths and encouraging people to kill themselves is not an okay reaction to this outcome.

I'm staunchly pro-israel. The fact the left called a man who repeatedly pushed for ceasefires is a massive fucking issue for me, but not nearly as much as how much the left turned on jews. One more thing to add to the list of bullshit that needs to be called out.

I'm not a Republican and never will be one. I'm a centrist who leans left. The only things I agree with Republicans on are our amendment rights. Freedom of speech, our right to guns, etc. there is nothing that can make me fully go on their side, no matter how toxic the left becomes. But the left IS fucking toxic and if we can't call out it's bullshit without people like you insisting our priorities should be elsewhere, we'll never change things for the better. We'll always be doing "damage control" and being told "oh, if you just vote blue no matter who this time you'll be able to vote how you want next time." We'll always have men being pushed right, and Jews being harassed cuz they're not deemed brown enough to be allowed to defend themselves from arab terrorists who killed their people and kidnapped hundreds of innocents, including children.

I am a voice that challenges the left more than I challenge the right because I want the left to be better. The right doesn't give a fuck about what I say, but if some on the left see me, see what I am saying and even just take a second to stop to think about how the left is becoming the exact discriminatory group it prides itself in not being, then I am satisfied in what I am doing.

Oh, I just wanted to say that ectopic pregnancies are not the only version of a pregnancy that is life threatening to the mother. You sort of seemed to imply that, possibly unintentionally, in a previous response.

What about abortion in women with severe preclampsia? Even women who previously had preclampsia have a 20% chance to have it again. Abortion could be an important preventative measure for the women in question.

I didn't mean to imply that was the only issue, but the thing is, in that case... It wouldn't be abortion, it would be a preventative medical procedure to save the woman's life. Even if the procedure was the same as an actual abortion, in that case, it would be legal even in places where abortion is banned. As legally, even in those places, they are not allowed to just let the woman in question die cuz they'd have to terminate the pregnancy to save her. That is not something that is permitted by the law.

[thedevotionaltour]

if i had a nickel for every time i had online friends and acquaintances that started off in the realm of not having many strong opinions then became anti porn then became radfems and reposting terf rhetoric well it wouldn't be a lot but it's a disappointing amount because it's not zero

[snekdood]

its so telling how terfs supposed fucks about women just kind devolves into bullying trans people, it’s almost like you use that as a guise for your desire to just be fuckin bullies, prolly bc you were bullied by girls who were better than you growing up :/// unfortunate