#as if anyone who even knows what a Terf is thinks they’re the equivalent to just the ‘main feminists’ and haven’t been excluded from all

[cipheramnesia]

Genuine question?? Im a 19 y/o lesbian and ?? I dont find p*nis attractive does that make me a TERF?

I’m happy you sent this ask, because it’s a perfect place to talk about how someone can get hurt, feel wronged, and become susceptible to extremist recruiting.

First off, treat this as a simple yes or no question, asked with zero surrounding context, the platonic idea of penis preference if you will. “I don’t find penises attractive” is not a sentiment that makes you a TERF. You’re okay not liking them. My nonbinary wife doesn’t particularly like them, yet they are married to me (who has one) and we love each other more than anything in the world. 

In fact, in the abstract, I don’t like ‘em much either, and I own one! Ridiculous looking thing, wish I didn’t have to deal with it. A general dislike of genitals doesn’t make you a TERF… not by itself.

Now, here is where the critical thinking comes in, because if you posted something like that on Tumblr or something, it has a different context. You might not even know! It could be a totally innocent mistake, and it happens, and some women either get criticized in ways that makes them feel attacked, or actually attacked because you never know if what you post online is hitting someone on a bad day or a good day. 

The context first of all is, without any clarifying statements, saying you don’t like a genital could imply you’re reducing anyone with that particular set of genitals down to their genitals only. And it could result in either someone telling you it sounds TERFy (if they’re trying to be gentle) or calling you a TERF (if they’re out of spoons) because that’s what TERFs do. Here’s where it becomes a recruit pitch.

You say “I don’t like penises.” This doesn’t mean you’re saying you dislike trans women (not all of whom have penises anyway), but if you get the above lecture/yelling, a radfem can come along and empathetically agree how unfair it is that someone made you hurt for saying you don’t like a genital, and it’s not fair to tell a lesbian she has to sleep with a male or she’s a TERF and- OH WAIT A MINUTE!

Hold up, it looks like they were just being nice but wait wait, they just slid cozily from “it’s okay not to like a penis” to “anyone with a penis is male.” See that? Like a sleight of hand, once you’ve agreed with that premises, saying “I don’t like penises” suddenly becomes attached to “and anyone with a penis is male.”

Alright now in context, going back this kind of equivalency is so common with radfems that at this point saying you don’t like a genital is what we call a dogwhistle. It’s a phrase which is seemingly innocent, and can be innocent, which has been so widely appropriated by a hate group that it carries extra connotations in a certain context. Contexts like posting on Tumblr, which happens to have a particularly large trans population.

Now you can’t know every single dogwhistle because that’s the whole reason they exist - so normal people don’t spot someone’s bigotry and it looks like a disenfranchised group is getting angry over an innocent statement.

And lastly, which you probably already know, but generally not being interested in something doesn’t have to equate to disliking anyone with that trait, or even not being attracted to someone with that trait. I bring this up because the difference between a lesbian who just generally doesn’t like a genital and a TERF is that the TERF things anyone with a penis is automatically bad and a male and probably reading this right now thinks I’m saying you have to have sex with men or like penises, somehow, despite saying exactly the opposite.

You may have a general preference, but in practice I’m sure you’ve already found a difference between “I am physically attracted to how this person looks” and “Holy shit I think this person is amazing and everything about them is wonderful.” If you haven’t had that experience yet, I can promise you some day you will. Not necessarily over genitals, but some day someone, or many someones, will be part of your life and you’ll value every part of them, whether or not it’s something you normally find abstractly attractive.

Keep your heart open to kindness and caring for other people, keep your mind open to constructive criticism, and you’ll never be a radfem or TERF or SWERF or whatever. That’s all.

[watermelinoe]

1/2 Sorry for dumping this here, I’m currently crypto. As a gender crit fandom goer, I love fanfic but ao3’s genderland is depressing. I used to morbidly dip into reading ABO when I was younger, and it took a while for me to see that it’s just reinventing heterosexuality and sexism. What bothers me most is how it’s a sign that women DO want to talk about reproductive rights and issues surrounding pregnancy and raising children, but they’re so steeped in shame that they can’t even do that AS women. Instead, they have to invent an entire universe where men can be pregnant in order to justify it, even though genderbending the male protagonist to be female would be much simpler. They do not see female characters as fully human, or maybe it’s just too painful to confront the reality of female oppression without cloaking it in something else. The crazy thing is, if you asked any one of these women why male omegas are oppressed, they’d be able to tell you it’s because of the omega’s ability to give birth. And yet they can’t make the connection that real women are oppressed for the same reason. It’s so crazy that all their trans logic completely vanishes in ABO fic. Omegas aren’t told they’re bigots for being afraid of alphas and wanting to avoid them and have omega-only spaces, because omegas get raped and harassed by alphas all the time, and it’s recognized as a pattern. I’ve read fics where omegas take scent-blockers in order to pass as a beta or an alpha, and they NEVER do it because they internally identify as beta or alpha, they do it because they know that they’d be mistreated and stereotyped if anyone knew their true identity as an omega. Alphas hold all the wealth and power in society and are known to turn into violent, mindless beasts due to their sexual urges. You never see ABO fic in which alphas try to transition into omegas and claim oppression. I wonder why? Is it because their biology is immutable and such a thing would be fucked up and wrong? Change alpha to man and omega to woman and most ABO becomes basic TERF rhetoric. I wonder sometimes if mpreg fic is the only way to get through to these people. The ironic part is how most of the women who write mpreg and ABO are gendies. The same women who mock all the straight girls writing hetfic on ffnet, while touting ao3 as some kind of “queer haven”. But almost never do you see fic about alpha/alpha or omega/omega love stories. Overwhelmingly, it’s all alpha/omega with the omega as the self-insert. Hetfic with extra steps. It’s insane to witness. The unashamed straight girls who happily write pure hetfic or genderbend hetfic are braver than any gendie could hope to be, and the scorn they receive from TIFs is pure projection. Homosexuality isn’t some kind of curio. Gays can be both interesting and boring just like straights can be both interesting and boring. I think the main problem is that TIFs are ashamed of being straight women, and they use fic to fulfill their attraction to men while also escaping from how disappointing real men are. Don’t get me wrong, I think turning to writing as an escape from disappointment is a fairly healthy coping mechanism. But problems start when their writing becomes all porn and zero literature, and they become unable to maintain boundaries between fantasy and reality. But it also frustrates me when some radfems see this phenomenon and say that all fic is toxic and needs to go. Because I still believe that fic, even bad fic, is one of the purest distillations of female passion and creativity there is. There exists no male equivalent.

2/2 When most men like a show, they usually finish it and then move on to consume the next, or make one brief reddit post about it, or retweet some pornified fanart of a female character. The few REALLY passionate men might make one monetized youtube video praising the show, or create the pornified fanart themselves. But NEVER do you see men flocking together to post daily essays examining the psyche of a single character, or writing novel-length stories about someone else’s fictional characters and sharing them for free. Women OWN passion, because they consume stories in order to create more, and create stories without reward. Men just consume, and create only when reward is guaranteed. I get radfems being anti porn on camera because it exploits real women who are forced into sex for men’s profit, but I personally don’t think written porn about fictional characters is exploitive. No money is made with fic, no real person is raped; fic porn is made by women for women, and women depict men in fic far better than men deserve. I trust women to create weird gore/smut fic and art and still be decent people, or at least non-violent. Japanese women make some insanely kinky fanart, but I know they’re not out there raping anyone or being creepy in public. If fandom were truly grounds for exploitation, if you could reliably use fic to trick people into changing their morals, men would be getting in on the action too, but they’re not. Fandom is still a female-majority space and most men want nothing to do with it. I’ve certainly read fic that I thought was disturbing and disgusting, but I have the ability to click away, so I’d never argue that fic that bothers me personally shouldn’t have the right to exist. Because the moment I try to censor what someone else is allowed to write, they gain the right to censor me too. There is no single authority who can be trusted to decide what can and can’t be said without important voices getting silenced in the process, because everyone has personal biases. The whole “words are violence” narrative and censorship of gender critical voices is how trans ideology continues to reign. You can’t wake people up if you aren’t even allowed to speak. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I believe that any attempt to censor language will always escalate and come back to silence you someday, so I’d much rather everyone have the right to write whatever disgusting drivel they want as long as I get to say my piece too. No tyrannical regime has ever gotten off the ground without first silencing the opposition. Truth can only be found when everyone is allowed to speak freely, even the people you disagree with, so that everyone can make informed choices. Censoring people doesn’t change their internal beliefs, it only makes them lie about their beliefs in order to be liked. And I’d much rather people be open about their beliefs than me hazard a guess and feel betrayed later when their real beliefs come out. At the end of the day, I care most about material harm to real people and free speech. As long as fans mind their own business and don’t force their opinions or fantasies on anyone else, let them create what they want. Blacklist, block, disengage, put up the boundaries you need. Fandom was much more fun when most of us agreed upon these rules and being gender crit was the norm, but no one has self-possession anymore.

i know this took me forever to answer but there's really a lot here!! and i wanna divide your thoughts into three main big ideas to respond to, the first being, in your words: "they do not see female characters as fully human, or maybe it’s just too painful to confront the reality of female oppression without cloaking it in something else."

this is exactly it. i was in fandom spaces for a long time, i've been reading fanfic since i was in middle school, i've checked out a/b/o stuff and some of it, believe it or not, is actually well-written and surprisingly insightful about sex classes - the issue being that the authors substitute male characters. although not all a/b/o fic also has mpreg, i guess it would be called a/b/o-lite? i personally didn't read mpreg, i thought it was off-putting even during a time when i was trying despite my reservations to be open-minded and accepting of whatever someone wanted to write, but the appeal of a/b/o is basically as you said. whether they acknowledge it openly or not, women and girls are very aware of sex-based oppression.

m/m is already appealing to women, of all sexualities, for various reasons. it can be fetishistic of ssa men, absolutely. but, on the other hand, male characters are allowed to be fully human. m/m lets women explore relationships where both parties are allowed to be complete human beings. the cloak you mentioned can be worn in different ways by different women. for a time, without getting too into details, i couldn't read erotica with any women involved because it was too real to me; i didn't want to think of myself in a sexual context at all. so i liked m/m because i could disassociate from my own body. but tbh there's lots of reasons why women would want to see themselves in male characters. it's also a way to explore a same-sex relationship without misogyny. any woman who likes femslash can tell you... it is slim pickings out there. hope you like two feminine women and no real plotline. and bc anime men are basically women anyway, m/m is like, a poor woman's f/f.

a/b/o goes a step further, and what it shows us is that women do want to talk about sex-based oppression... in a vacuum. we don't want it to be happening to us, but wouldn't it be fucked up if there was a hierarchy of sex classes where men could be oppressed? and, with mpreg, what if men could be exploited for their reproduction? because men are fully human, and women want to be fully human, therefore we want to see ourselves in men. it's actually fascinating. i just wish women were self-aware about it, because it's this accidentally brilliant analogy of sex-based oppression and gender roles, and instead they're up to their noses in genderist bullshit :(

moving on to your second main idea: "because I still believe that fic, even bad fic, is one of the purest distillations of female passion and creativity there is. there is no male equivalent."

it's maybe not as popular of an opinion on radblr, but i completely agree. i am a staunch fanfic defender. i've seen women take these mainstream, impotent and unsatisfying male narratives (cough soul eater, rurouni kenshin) and write some of the most compelling character pieces i've ever read. women understand characters and storylines better than the original creators. it used to be believed that women lacked the capacity for artistic creation - at best, women could do portraiture and still life, but lacked the greater imagination required for high, inventive art. i would argue that the opposite is true. as you said, men only consume.

as for the last main takeaway, i don't think i can completely agree with you about censorship, but i don't think it's a black-and-white topic either. i really don't have a problem with women writing erotica for other women, i would not compare it to porn, there are no real people being exploited. i also think women fall into kink for different reasons than men, and don't have the same relationship to it that men do. i believe women can be trusted much more with disturbing content, whereas men lack the capacity to separate fiction from reality. they just don't process it as deeply.

but i think fiction can still cause harm, and that we have a responsibility to mitigate that harm. i just don't know what the exact answer is. jaws is one of my favorite movies, and it also caused a public panic that led to sharks being culled en masse, even though nothing in the movie indicated that sharks in real life are a real danger to people and need to be exterminated. are the movie creators responsible for how people responded to the film? i can't agree with that. just like i don't think nabokov is responsible for what pedophiles did to lolita. just because something is depicted in fiction doesn't mean it's endorsed by the author. but authors can still be irresponsible and create harmful content, some of it to the extent that it really shouldn't have been published, from a moral standpoint. but what do we do about it?

i agree that there's currently a problem with censorship based on moral grounds, because who decides morality? gender critical women are deplatformed for "hate speech" as decided by male supremacists and their handmaidens. it can be called hate speech to criticize your oppressors if your oppressors are the authority figures. you're right that there's no single authority that could ever be trusted to decide what we should be allowed to say and create. but on an individual scale, women are capable of making harmful and irresponsible content, and my problem with that isn't so much that she made it, but that it's so accessible and readily perpetuates itself, and maybe she made it "to cope" or whatever but then it should've stayed on her hard drive. but what kind of hard policy do you implement that doesn't stifle other creative women? i don't have a good answer. because i want women to keep creating, even if it's cringe, even if it's bad.

[frostfireft]

I would love to hear more about Southern Freed and British Laxus. Please, I beg of you, tell me more

Of course! this is combining the AU we made and bits of canon stuff so that it could be used in either context!

Freed:

-Freed has South Eastern southern accent because he grew up moving around the little area where Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina meet. (or in canon, whatever the closest equivalent may be. I honestly don’t know)

-He also talks really fucking fast, especially when he’s excited. This causes a lot of his words to turn themselves into weird contractions that can be hard to parse through if you don’t have experience with it. (Contrary to what you might think, if someone has a southern drawl, it doesn’t necessarily mean they speak slowly. It just means they elongate certain vowels and diphthongs sounds or even just the most prominent syllable of the word. (like how “going to” becomes “gonna” but is pronounces like “gun-na” with heavy stress on the first syllable) )

-example for the last one: y’ain’t gonna’lieve thi’shit (you are not going to believe this shit) 

-He has the ability, if he’s not sleep deprived, to completely neutralize his accent. He learned how to do this explicitly because people stereotype southerners as stupid, and he enjoys seeing people’s reactions when he gets done presenting his theses or linguistic findings. He’s using their reactions to them finding out he’s southern and has a deep accent to write another theses about why judging people by their first appearance or based on stereotypes is a terrible thing to do. 

-When he really sleep deprived his words slur so bad that his own momma wouldn’t be able to understand him. 

-He’s written a few books, but no English major would be surprised to learn he’s southern. This is because no matter how well you nuetralize an accent, the tendedency to use certain colloquialisms is usually very present in any author’s style. (examples: Bless your heart, I reckon, pot-kettle, fisticuffs, doohicky, hissy fit, fixin’, Sir/Ma’am, calling a shopping cart a “buggy”)

-has used southern colloquialisms in his runes. This is part of what makes them so hard to fight and decypher. No one fucking understand them on top of them being hard to change regardless.

-He has some of the best insults, be it the super southern ones(“Well that’s about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.” and “She’s a few green beans short of a casserole, but that’s all right”) or just straight up sassy ones (”you’re why the gene pool needs a life guard” and “the bar was low but you brought a shovel”)

-Definitely called Laxus “highfalutin” before they became friends. (pronounced high-fo-loo-tin, means that someone is uppity and thinks their hot shit when they’re not)

-Drinks sweet tea with so much sugar that it’s damn near molasses, but hot tea with very little. 

-Would punch a cop without hesitation, ducktape and wd40 can fix 90% of problems. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” “if it’s stupid and it works, then it ain’t stupid,” definitely knows how to make and/or owns illegal fireworks, definitely went to a horse camp as a kid and can ride. 

Laxus:

-Grew up in Westminster and has an RP/Queen’s English accent(b-are-th pronounciation. this is the accent that’s  most often mimicked by people and used in movies. once again, in canon he’d have grown up in whatever the most canon equivilent is. probably Crocus, and then he moves in with Makarov after Ivan(fucking cunt) gets arrested)

- He speaks so properly and it’s a drastic contrast to the way he looks.

-and by that I mean. This man has no fashion sense. None. This is because he doesn’t want to be seen as posh, and he decided that dressing like a blind man who ran through a thift store is the way to do it. 

-Tried so hard to get rid of his accent. So. fucking. hard. He hates it because it reminds him of his dad. 

-Insults people while trying to be “nice.” He doesn’t really realize he’s doing it until after he meets Freed and sees the way he intentionally insults assholes while being “kind.” He did not understand why everyone hated him until then. 

-Would punch any other person who sounds and acts posh without hesitation. Makarov is proud of him. 

-Used to drink a shocking about of black and milk tea, but Freed got him to try a bunch of other kinds. He still won’t touch the sweet tea though. 

-His words tend to drip with sarcasm. Most people just think he’s being an asshole, but the few who understand his humor get the biggest kick out of it (Makarov, Freed, Evergreen, Bickslow, and then a few other’s later in life) 

-Would also punch a cop without hesitation. 

-he can’t handle spicy food. Like at all. He feels like he’s dying one bite into anything with crushed red pepper in it. Not that he’ll let anyone know that. 

- Absolutely loves the rain, and not just because of his magic. It makes him remember what little of his childhood was actually nice and plesant. 

-he sunburns really easy because it wasn’t sunny very often where he grew up for the first 12 years of his life. He peels really bad as it heals too. 

Fraxus:

-the first time Laxus spoke to Freed while he was sleep deprived, he had no fucking idea what he was saying. Not a fucking clue. Freed tried four seperate times to seperate his words before just giving up. 

-They argue about what the proper word for something is all the time. All. The. Time. (fries vs chips, cart vs buggy, cookie vs bisciut. 

-Laxus once watched Freed mentally die inside when a waiter offered him sugar packets because there wasn’t actual sweet tea. 

-There aren’t many dishes that they’ll agree on. Especially if they’re arguing about who will do the cooking. 

-Freed has absolutely made the food “too spicy” just to get Laxus back for dumb things. watching his partner die inside from something that barely tingles will never cease to amuse him. 

-They eventually get to a point where parts of their vocabulary make it into the other’s, and soon they have theis weird mix-matched dialect that confuses the shit out of other people. 

-They use their hellish combination of sarcasm and insults disguised as compliments to subtly insult and cuss out homophobes, concervatives, TERFS, and basically any piece of shit they come across. 

-They also argue over whether or not to fix something or buy a new one when it breaks

Laxus: Are you sure it’s safe to fix that with duct tape? 

Freed: Duck tape is insulated enough for this-

Laxus: no it isn’t. It will catch fire if it gets hot enough.

Freed: Toaster’s worked fine with duck tape holdin’ the wire for the past decade. 

Laxus: You fixed the toaster with duct tape?

Freed: It worked, dinit?

-He doesn’t mention that he also added runes to it too explicitly because it’s funny. 

-There’s a lot of stuff like this: “You dumb mother fucker, how did I fall for you?” “Because you tripped.” 

-If you insult one of them, you better believe the other will roast you so thuroughly that a bonfire wouldn’t compare all while the one of them you insulted kicks your ass into the stratsophere. 

-They both have so much respect for each other. So. Much. Respect. They’re completely honest when alone, no sarcasm, no half insults, just them. 

- Even when not alone, they fully trust each other. There’s no one else they trust to have their back the same way, even if Ever and Bicks are close seconds. No one can pick apart their mind and thought process the same way, and it comes from the fact that they argued so much before they were in sync with each other. 

-Once they get to the point of being in sync with one another (let’s be real, it propbably only takes like a year) nothing can get in their way. 

-Freed’s captain of the Raijinshuu for a reason goddamn it, and it’s not just because he and Laxus are together. It’s because he’s strong as fuck, should have been fucking S class, and he’s one of the only people who can talk sense into Laxus. 

-is the last bit partially because they’re together? Yeah probably, but Freed and Laxus are equals damn it. He could at the very least, tie a fight with Laxus. 

[dabistits]

thank you for your answer! i think my most pressing question is at what point am i trying to salvage a bigoted mess that isn't worth "promoting" by creating AUs for it. if a piece of media has potential but the author is too much of a centrist to ever fully realize it and ends up promoting a lot of things i really disagree with, is it fair for me to create different scenarios and tell other people "yeah, this piece of media is a bad take but it could have been like this instead"

I know tumblr makes a big deal out of no-platforming certain creations and creators, and this is a legitimate strategy and one that I agree should be applied at the very least, no exception, to TERFs and fascists and people who are legitimately bigoted. I think there’s a strong argument to be made for no-platforming certain exploitative creations, such as KS, and exploitative fanworks.

But.

1) for all the mess that BNHA is, I don’t think it’s equivalent to KS, and

2) what is “promotion,” even, really?

“Promotion,” when it comes to these discussions, I think usually refers to introducing a creator or creation to someone who didn’t know about them in the first place. This is actively dangerous when it comes to bigotry, and it’s part of TERF and fascist strategy to post ‘reasonable’ ideas (ex: about feminism) or innocent-sounding memes in hopes of drawing the ‘uninitiated’ back to their blogs or forums to ‘convert’ them (as an aside: I think pro-fetishizing fandom types do this as well, to be honest, and they do it by portraying their concerns as ones of free speech or misogyny so that people who aren’t aware of the root of the issue are easily led into agreeing with them). On this basis, people who have bigoted opinions should be no-platformed so their ideas can’t be spread.

I don’t think fandom participation is this insidious though. People make fanwork because they transparently enjoy a canon, not because they’re necessarily trying to insidiously “promote” it. Of course, there’s still a snowball effect where the more people are talking about a canon, the more buzz it gets, and the more people check it out, which makes buzz an important thing for small or new canons (but rarely is this contingent on one person only, and especially not if that person only has a small following). With BNHA specifically? It’s already huge. One person doing anything for it is a snowflake in a blizzard, and if anyone is checking out your fanart or fanfic, it’s incredibly likely that they’ve already heard about or are already into BNHA. Is it really fair to yourself to, uh, think about writing AU fanfic as you proselytizing to non-BNHA fans somehow, rather than you seeing better ways to do BNHA and sharing it with other fans? Rather than you writing something for the sake of your own catharsis?

As I said in my previous answer, there are still a lot of ways for you to decide how you participate. When I mentioned “AUs and dumb headcanons,” it was really just a group of my friends on a fairly insular forum and group chat, fairly self-contained. Even though we were fans of a ‘problematic’ canon, I wasn’t all that worried about “promoting” it, because it was a small group of people who I trusted could be respectful and critical, and other than that, we were just doing our own thing, having pretty much zero impact on anyone outside of us. You could say that liking this canon means we have questionable tastes (and that’s fair lol), but it’d be pretty hard to argue that we were promoting it, rather than just... adapting the canon into something we could semi-privately enjoy together.

Now, I’m running a BNHA blog with a few hundred followers. I guess that could count as "promoting” BNHA (though most of the people who found me were already BNHA fans in the first place), but I’m personally quite comfortable with that. I like to think, and I hope lol, that even though I’m giving BNHA a platform, I’m also giving platform to myself and my critiques. I’m unlikely to prevent people from reading BNHA by deleting this blog, but by continuing to run it I’m much more likely to engage people to think critically about the way the narrative treats issues like sexual assault, and abuse, and criminality. I hope I don’t reach the point where I’m hate-blogging about BNHA, but at this specific point in time, I’m happy with talking about the things I like and hope for, in addition to the places where I think it fucks up.

That’s all to say that you really do have options. If you can’t stand to think that you’re “promoting” it? Maybe just talk about it with a group of friends or a server, rather than posting about it. If you want to post about it, but don’t want to feel like you’re ‘justifying’ it? Maybe reblog more critical posts, or write your own.

While I agree with many of the posts on tumblr that say we should probably distance ourselves from some creators and creations—and the worse their issues are, the more all-consuming their issues are, the more relevant this position is—I also think there’s some leeway for people to say “this canon is bad, and I acknowledge its flaws, but there are parts of it I still really like.” Yes, while liking certain creators and creations will make you highly questionable and untrustworthy, we also have to resist the temptation to inextricably link our morals to our consumption (I mean this both about media consumption and the consumption of material goods), because “there’s no ethical consumption, etc.” and also because there’s no work without flaws. Being hypercritical toward ourselves for having imperfect tastes in an imperfect society will just make us obsessive with hypervigilance, tirelessly questioning ourselves and our motives like we’re waiting for ourselves to fuck up, and that’s not a healthy way to treat our own being.

(If you read the above and were like, “no, I’m capable of enjoying things without overinvesting in the perfection of its morals, there’s just something about BNHA that ticks me off,” then, good, it doesn’t apply to you. I thought I’d mention it in case this is a recurring issue.)

The final thing I have to reiterate is: if you’re grasping for reasons to stay, and ways to interact with BNHA that don’t impinge on your values, then this is my insight. If you’re grasping for reasons to go, then go! You don’t need my permission nor my insight to say “this canon makes me so uncomfortable that I don’t think I can interact with it happily anymore.” If you think leaving BNHA behind is for the better for yourself, if it will give you more peace of mind to do so, then you probably already know your decision.

[orenonahaichigoda]

I had a rough day, and came to a realisation. I will say a bit about my own experience, and then, after having to lay the groundwork of explaining 400 things about Japan because American schools and media think the whole world is the US, Western Europe, and places to blow up, making explaining necessary, will tie it to Ichigo, or at least how I portray him.

I'm Post Dankai Juniors, growing up in Japan. So's Kubo, actually. The boundaries of this Japanese generation are roughly '75 to '85, Yutori, the following generation that's always translated and localised as Millennial, pretty solidly set as beginning at '86. These things are always fuzzy because you can't vivisect living brains and find the part that likes char siu buns and the part that likes jazz fusion. I *majored* in Social Science. You'll have teachers who say "it is absolute that we date people who are similar to us because we're all actually narcists." (It *might* be because they're like our beloved family or community. Narcistic Personality is not universal) But it really just is fuzzy, and that teacher/book author is an idiot. Anyway, Yutori is always translated as Millennial. I don't know the end boundary. Post Dankai Juniors covers almost totally a debated throe for Germanic nations (I know Britain, Germany, and Nederland use the same generations as America, and their languages are Germanic) because of how fuzzy it all is, though.

Anyway, so since coming to the US, my interactions with other Asians, again, how is this defined when China, Mongolia, Japan all border Russia and West Asia includes Jordan and Saudi Arabia, South Asia is India's area, Southeast Asia is Laos, Thailand's area, I mean, find the Arabic kanji. I don't think Thailand even uses soy sauce. What the heck IS Asia, really? (Or "Middle East" when half of that's Africa and the other half shares plate with Europe? )

Anyway, my experience with Asians that are Boomer ages tends to be people who immigrated as adults, who more identity with a generation like "Dankai" or "Sirake." My experiences with Latinos older than me... I've never actually asked if the generational labels are even the same.

The thing about that is that when the name is the same, it means enough cultural traits are shared.

My biggest experience with people who grew up under the term "Boomer" are Black and white.

I've noticed a unifying trait.

If they're something oppressed (Black, gay), their attitude tends to be"it is mandatory to stand up for *my* demograph...but kicking the person behind me on the ladder in the teeth is wholesome, pure, and fun."

Outing me to large groups and saying I "speak Asian" seem to be the most common two. Calling me "Chinese" long after I've cleared this up for them is a close third.

I mean, don't get me wrong--my experience with Italian Americans past GI generation has been that now acquiring the "white" label, just like biphobic/aphobic/transphobic cisgays, they're more often staunch priveledge defenders than cishet people of Anglo descent! And it's just as true for X and Y as it is for Boomer (for the latter, one need only look at NYC destroyer and trump defender Giuliani) I actually don't really identify with my Italian side at all because I was kinda locked out of making any meaningful connection.

But back to my point that even in so-leftist-it's-almost-not-America Bay Area, Boomers are still like this!

The kind of stuff that flows out a X/Y TERF's mouth, or the mouth of an X/Y person with a Confederate flag on his wall, American-raised Boomers say with ease regardless of their alignment! It's banananas.

(Please note that I also just have not met a whole lot of Native Americans, period, nor enough people significantly older than me from any one place in Africa, that was an omission of lacking data, not intended as erasure)

How I tie it to Ichigo--

So Kubo avoids specifying birth years for anyone.

When I see something like this, I generally assume date of publication, as do most people in most fandoms (which of course gets screwy when you have something endlessly rebooted like Superman or Batman or something eternally unchanging like Detective Conan)

Anyway, the first Bleach something published was the comic in '01.

I generally assume it was supposed to be the start of a new school year, as Ichigo doesn't know many of his classmates until at least the first test scores come out. So it's probably April or something.

If Ichigo was 15 then, he'd also be Post Dankai Juniors, just barely. If Ichigo TURNED 15 shortly after, during his adventure, he'd be undebatably Millennial.

Now, there is still something up with Dankai and Sirake. PM Abe is the latter, b. 1954. A lot of his age-peers are behind him. This is the guy who supports remilitarisation and was caught funding a private militarist/fascist high(?) school that teaches that people from countries Japan conquered during its brief phase of trying to beat colonial Europe are less than dogs.

Now, I left there as a teen. Clinton was US president. Scandals still got people kicked out of public office in Japan. I hadn't figured or come out yet. Sure, I got bullied for being mixed, but kids will pick if you like different singers than the "cool" ones. They'll pick based on what's in your lunch. That data is sausage.

I'm not 100% sure what Ichigo would face day-to-day sociopolitically as he grew up/aged. I haven't had living family since'95 there, and friendships don't get deep enough to ever last distance until at least high school. For me, adulthood.

But I've kept/caught up enough (you try keeping up in the South before the internet was more than ten University sites!) that I know he'd face fascists (c'mon, the guy takes on a martial law government to save a new friend--that's anarchist, he just doesn't seem anarchist in his own world. He only fights humans in defence) I'm not sure how he'd feel about the JSDF, but he only fought the sinigami's war out of feeling like it was his responsibility because the adults around him kinda made it so. I super don't see him being for *starting* wars. In a human war, I see him actually being like Sugihara Chiune, a historical figure who died when I was a kid who I majorly admire. He worked at a Japanese embassy in Nazi territory, and when the embassy was evacuated,he continued throwing passports to Jewish people to go to Japan from the train he was departing on,and is hidden from Americans in the same spirit that Martin Luther King is...pulled the teeth out of. (PS, speaking of,go Google Steven Kiyosi Kuromiya)

Also, Ichigo's whole schtick is defending those worse off than him. He's not someone I see defending Yamato Japanese priveledge. Heck, I could see him joining Uchinanchu efforts to get Parliament and the US base to leave them alone. I can easily see him sticking up for a Filipino domestic worker he met thirty seconds ago.

To this end, I think regardless of what he is, he'd have a large rub with Japan's equivalents of Boomers.

Not to mention that Abe supporters tend to be very sexist and queerphobic, which isn't even homegrown but imported from Américanisation. I mean, there were female warriors--assasins, which is what Yoruichi and Soi-Fon are styled after, and go look at some Ukiyoe, like Utagawa Kitamaro. Quite a few artists in the 200-ish years of the Edo period depicted life in the queer districts. I've also had people posit that Noh might've been a welcoming draw for trans people the same way drag was all over the US in the twentieth century and still is in rural areas, where there's less cisgay gatekeeping. But this isn't something I can reasonably research without access to plenty of older and not well known dusty documents, and lots of time, and I live in the US many years now. And do you know how much round trip airfare alone is!? Also, the language changed so much and I can't read anything before Meiji without dropping words. Rukia, Byakuya, Yoruichi all have made for TV old-sounding Japanese like period dramas. Actual 18th Century Japanese would be unintelligible to the unspecialised.

So this stuff isn't really native, but Abe and a lot of people his age support all these -isms.

I super don't see Ichigo being happy about this.

(I also feel like Issin's old enough to remember before these -isms, but that's my own thing. In my project, he was in those districts, but that's me)

At the same time, I'm still writing this through my own lens. Also, not still being there, I just don't have enough data on Yutori in adulthood, or the grown Yutori lens. Honestly, even most other immigrants I meet are older than that. Or older than that and their adorable three year old children. So I have no clue.

In the early 2000s, I got myself from the South to CA and began to reconnect, but began to is the key phrase. I can tell you right now that Abe is as much of a second phase of Nakasone as trump is of Nakasone's buddy Regean. But what shifted when, I can't say. I'm not entirely sure how Koizumi ran the ship, as it were. I know some things, but not enough to say.

But whenever things shifted however, and whichever year Ichigo was born, I just cannot imagine him being any more on board with current events than really anyone in my area not born between 1946-1964 and raised in America.

I feel like he'd probably be too tired or self-effacing to fight for himself, but he'd take on, loud and proud, any bigotry against *others.*

I...also can't really say I'm much different, except my joints are held together by the power of wishes, so I'm more like "get the victim to safety" than "give the attacker plenty of regret." So, I can only do anything in limited ways.

Ichigo is also entirely fuelled by the power of love. Lost his ability to protect and feels like his sinigami friends ditched him? Mondo depressed, however much he wants no one to notice--which most do a great job of ignoring! Everyone in his world turned against him for a guy who has attacked people close to him? Terrified, and murder can now be an answer. (Fullbring Arc)

I was going somewhere with that. I've forgotten, but I'll leave it.

But anyway, I feel like he really only comes close to fighting for himself when others are taken away from him in a way that's also wronging them.

So yeah, I super don't see him happy with current events or Sirake gen.

I'm not sure how much I see him fighting for himself as mixed panromantic grey-ace. I mean, we know he fights people who are about to punch his face in for his looks, but what else can you reasonably do at that point? Get your head bashed in? I'm not sure how much I see him fighting hateful words pointed at him versus resigning himself to "people are the worst." I mean, when he talks about being picked on, he kinda seems resigned, or at least like it's a fact, like shoes being for outside or something.

I guess I tied it to Ichigo a lot better than I thought!

But also, the struggle against people born just after the war is not just you, and not just America. It's a major problem.

And it's likely that Ichigo would agree.

[azurowle]

Apologies for the quote-blocking, I tried to write it out in paragraph form but am feeling sick today. This is the only way I can hit on all the points I want to.

Fascists absolutely believe in gender. Both fascists and Q-theorists enforce the same definition of womanhood: submissive and breedable.

Conservatives have been co-opting the language of TERFs and gender critics and using it to continue the marginalization and attempted stripping of our rights.

At the end of the day I care very little about the difference in what fascists and gender critics believe and why they believe it, because in practice, they’re close enough that fascists can infiltrate, co-opt, and parrot TERF rhetoric about trans people to their own ends.

And TERFs and gender critics are, at best, ignorant to it happening and don’t call it out. At worst? They are willingly turning a blind eye and letting it happen, because it suits their own ends and agendas.

Q-theorists propose that "cis women" are exactly what fascists view women as, and anyone who feels differently is simply not actually a woman.

You tried to be very sneaky about the bolded, if that was intentional. You’re subtly implying here that conservatives are somehow at the very least enablers of trans people, or somehow allies of us.

Fact of the matter is that conservatives want us to not exist too. You know that as well as I do.

(Incidentally I’ve never seen a conservative - or a “Q-theorist” - suggest trans men are not woman because they don’t fit the stereotype. They’ve called us mentally ill, or led astray by the evil Gender Cult, or any of the regular slurs and words slung at us because they perceive us as failed women - but it was my therapist and TERFs themselves who suggested it.)

Feminists correctly assert that gender is an oppressive hierarchy that needs to be destroyed. Gender abolition is beneficial for all gender non-conforming people, it allows you to be yourself.

Empty words. If this was about gender roles I’d agree, but it’s not. I have yet to see evidence that the two are the same.

At the end of the day, the only difference between the post-trans people world of conservatives and the “gender-abolished” world of TERFs is that in the TERF’s world, I’d be allowed to wear, act, and be whoever I wanted - and, perhaps, sexually available to the types of women who are attracted to masculinity in women - right up until I wanted to be referred to with he/him pronouns. Or wanted HRT. Or wanted top surgery. Or a hysterectomy. Or asserted myself as a trans man. Because in the utopia that TERFs opine about it wouldn’t even be a thought to us.

I wore, acted, and said whatever I wanted to before I transitioned. I was miserable and almost lost my life to it.

In either world, I would not be thriving like I am right now.

Dysphoria happens because of internalized sexism.

I have said it again and again - my dysphoria is because my body is capable of being impregnated and potentially birthing the human equivalent of a chestburster and it should not be capable of doing that.

This keeps getting ignored, because of course it does. Because trans men do not actually matter to gender critics in any meaningful way.

Gender is the sexist caste system fascists use to oppress women. Q-theory is just an obfuscation of that.

Again, if we were talking about gender roles, I’d agree.

But my gender - and accepting who I am, and allowing myself to define who I am - is exactly what fascists would use to inflict violence on me.

And when they’re done with us? They’ll go after the next minority group that threatens them.

Do you honestly think women aren’t somewhere down the line, once they’re done using your own rhetoric to subjugate us?

Judith Butler: ‘We need to rethink the category of woman’ | Life and style | The Guardian

Gender is an assignment that does not just happen once: it is ongoing. We are assigned a sex at birth and then a slew of expectations follow which continue to “assign” gender to us. The powers that do that are part of an apparatus of gender that assigns and reassigns norms to bodies, organises them socially, but also animates them in directions contrary to those norms.

[mymoviefaves]

I’m gonna go on a quick rant on feminism/femininity and Disney here.

It just riles me up when people seem to get the idea that femininity means a lack of feminism. When people take a look at the girl in the pants and the girl in the ballgown and says the one in pants is more feminist and empowering than the one in the dress. The whole point of one of the many aspects of feminism is that as women we have the right to choose to be and wear whatever we want. A woman in a dress is just as feminist as a woman in a burqa, and they’re both just as feminist as a woman in a suit or a woman in a bikini. And beyond clothing, a woman who’s married and in love is just as feminist as a woman who’s single. Here’s where Disney comes in, no one princess is a better more feminist role model than another. It’s important to have more than one type of role model yes, but just because one girl likes to fight and another girl likes to sew, it doesn’t mean that one is a better role model. All the princesses and other Disney ladies have good values to teach us and our kids in different ways and I’m gonna go through them with you. Oh, and just for good measure, I always include trans women in my feminism, so terfs, this post isn’t for you. 

Snow White:

For one thing this girl is 14. She is a child and her outlook on the world and her dreams in life shouldn’t be measured up to an adult’s. She’s kind, caring, and yes, she does dream of true love’s kiss. But she’s 14. When I was 14 I was dreaming of the same damn thing. But what we can learn from her is that when you care for everyone, even strangers, you’ll see that kindness returned. When she’s lost in the woods and scared for her life, she still finds the strength to be kind to the animals. In return they show her to the Dwarves’ cottage. She’s sweet and decides to clean up the place and take care of the dwarves out of the kindness of her heart and they return the kindness by giving her a home when she had none. At the end she’s rewarded with the true love’s kiss she wanted. We can even learn from the Evil Queen that vanity is a terrible thing. 

Aurora:

The main thing to remember about Aurora is that for one thing, she met Phillip when she was a baby. The other thing is that while the good fairies did love her and take care of her, she grew up isolated and alone. She’s always had these dreams of meeting someone (anyone) else to break that isolation. But in that isolation she’s still strong, kind, and trusting. She loves her adoptive aunts, and for a side character(might make a post about that later) I would still count her as a good role model because of that kindness. 

Cinderella:

Her, I’m definitely going to expand on in another post. But, she’s one of my favorite princess. Ironically, not one of my favorite movies, but she’s an amazing character and I love her. She’s a survivor of child abuse. That’s the very first thing that you need to understand about her. She doesn’t stay happy and content with a grin and bare it attitude, she got mad. She was snarky, and she only found happiness in the little free time she had and in her pets/friends. All she wanted that night was to go to the ball. All she wanted was one night to have fun and get out of the house. She wanted one night where she wouldn’t be berated and yelled at and ordered around. And when she met the prince, she didn’t even know who he was. She didn’t even mind that she would probably never see him again. And at the end she more or less saved herself. She didn’t wait around and sing a song from her tower to get rescued, she asked her friends to get the key and help her out. She was smart enough to pull out the other slipper. There’s nothing wrong with getting help from those around you and there’s no shame in asking for it. There’s nothing un-feminist about getting help, especially when you’re an abuse survivor. And that’s what Cinderella is about. Her fairy godmother coming to help her. Women helping women. 

Ariel:

The one big thing that made the Disney renaissance so great is they decided to follow the rules of Broadway musicals. One of the trademarks of this is the “I want” song. That’s the motivation for the main character and it’s the driving force for the plot. 

Ariel wants to live in the human world. That’s her dream. She desperately wants to be a human. Eric was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Ariel is strong willed and curious. She’s the undersea equivalent of an anthropologist. She’s 16, so of course she’s going to make stupid mistakes, but she gets to live out her dream in the end and become a human. The main point and what makes her a wonderful feminist role model is that she uses that drive and curiosity to pursue her passion. 

Belle:

I’m not sure I have to go into too much detail about her although I will mention, she is not a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. And to be honest how would being an abuse victim make her any less feminist? Anyway, of course she’s smart and loves reading. She loves adventure books and that’s what her “I want” song is about. She wants adventure and she wants someone who understands her and doesn’t think she’s weird for her interest. She’s a good role model not only for her love of reading but also of course for her kindness and seeing the good in people despite their appearance. 

Jasmine:

She. Is. Not. A. Prize. To. Be. Won. Moving on,

Kidding. But anyway she’s great because what she values is freedom and love. I feel like a lot of people forget is the line, “when I marry, I want it to be for love”. She wants to make her own choices in all aspects of her life and she decides to leave her life of privilege to pursue that freedom. You can hear and see it sprinkled in all around the movie (and the stage show). She sees herself as a bird in a cage and she’s happiest when she’s free and litteraly flying. And at the end she chooses Aladin. It’s all about her choice. 

Pocahontas:

So unintentional racism, stereotypes, white savior trope, erasing history, and pairing her with the horrible monster aside for a moment...

Let’s talk about 18 year old Disney Pocahontas as her own character. The main thing that comes to mind when I think of her is strength and bravery. She knows herself and she knows what she loves, and she’ll do anything to protect it. She also cares about the earth and environment. All of those are wonderful traits to have as a role model. 

Mulan:

Again, I don’t think I have to go into much detail about why she’s a great feminist role model. She’s usually who everyone thinks of when it comes to great feminist characters.

But what I will say is one thing not a lot of people mention in her great feminist role model-ness is that she doesn’t mind being feminine. She knows the ”perfect porcelain doll” isn’t her, but she doesn’t mind dressing up when she can make it her own. Another thing that I’m surprised get’s as ignored as it does especially since it’s scattered through the whole movie including her very first scene, she’s smart. She’s not a fighter, she’s a strategist. She makes her chores easier for herself. She wins the game of Go on her way to meet the match maker. She figures out how she can protect her dad. She uses the weights to her advantage. She does trigonometry in her head on the fly. She comes up with the distraction and using the fireworks. And the epitome of it all, she uses the symbol of femininity in the movie, her fan, to outsmart Shan Yu and take his sword. 

Tiana:

Can you believe I’ve heard people say Tiana isn’t feminist enough? Most people know how hardworking and practical she is, but she also learns a very important lesson that you’ll never be truly happy if you don’t let loose and have fun in reasonable amounts. She’s an amazing role model just as wonderful as everyone else in the line up and her morale is one of my favorites to try and live by. “Fairytales can come true, but you’ve gotta make them happen. It all depends on you.”

Rapunzel, Merida, Anna, Elsa, and Moana:

Honestly I feel like I don’t have to do much defending for these four. Everyone on this site has already pointed out what great feminist role models they are and many people regard them plus Tiana and Mulan as the “best” most feminist princesses. I love them all too, and of course they’re all great feminist role models, I just don’t think there’s much I could add. 

Anyway, I think a /lot/ of other Disney ladies are also wonderful feminist role models but this was supposed to be just the princess lineup. and I might make separate posts for them. But if you’ll notice I didn’t take relationship status, style choices, hobby choices, sexuality headcannons, or appearance into account when talking about what great role models they are because you shouldn’t. Of course women and girls deserve more than just one type of girl to look up to, but one type of girl isn’t any better or worse than another. You can be hyper feminine like Cinderella, Not feminine at all like Merida, or a little bit of both like Mulan. You can be smart like Belle, or naive yet kind like Snow White. All of them are wonderful. 

I’ll go ahead and leave you my favorite Disney feminist hero.

(she’s amazing. google her real quick)

[motherboxing]

One of the frustrating things about a Mutual Bullshit Society is they will tell you that anyone who says they’re a Mutual Bullshit Society is THEMSELVES part of a Mutual Bullshit Society. Cults do this, abusers do this - “Oh, your mother thinks I don’t treat you right? Well look at how SHE treats you!” “If our church is a cult, then so is your college, you never had these ideas before you went there!” - and it’s so insidious and destabilizing! It builds a sense of isolation on top of isolation and confuses victims, which if course is deliberate. It is manipulation. It often is part of a pattern of gaslighting.

I was remarking to someone today that I feel like certain circles within discourse function a lot like cults - they demand a very rigid and specific ideology that hinges on condemning people who don’t conform to that ideology (which is itself based on very easily movable goalposts), they use ostracism and social punishment to maintain control, inviting people to participate in punishing “bad” people not only so they feel included in the circle of “good” people but also so they know exactly what the people around them will feel about them and do to them if they become “bad”. The social dynamics of the group take up a large amount of time and energy, leaving little room for outside hobbies or etc. There’s a clear social hierarchy - way too easily facilitated by social-media-as-capital - and often you can track how someone moves up or down within that hierarchy based on their loyalty or perceived loyalty to those higher up within it than them. 

The fact that someone spent hours and hours of their life creating a list of evildoers thousands of names long and then disseminated it with a call for people to uncritically ostracize the people on the list, conflating “said they weren’t sure about the utility of the term ‘demisexual’” with “raped someone” and “thinks you can be bisexual and in a straight relationship at the same time” with “actual Nazi” in such a way that also ended up drawing an equivalence between Jewish and Romani people and Nazis, between victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse, between trans women and TERFs, etc and was visible to those Nazis, abusers, TERFs, etc is indicative to me of a kind of social dysfunction and control that is... not harmless or silly, as ridiculous as it seems on its face (especially to those of us outside of it). 

But of course, all of this is exactly what the people in those circles say about the people who are critical of said circles! And honestly, the waters get even muddier just because of the ways we all admittedly interact, especially on tumblr, a site which gives you the number of people regularly reading your blog in terms of “followers” (as opposed to “readers”, “subscribers”, etc)! I want to be clear: I think this happens, or at least CAN happen, on all “””sides””” of discourse. There’s no ideology that’s inherently pure or whatever enough to be immune to manipulation and abuse.

I don’t know what to do about any of this and it weirds me the fuck out! This is why I am much more comfortable not being tumblr famous.

[azurowle]

Apologies to my followers in advance for the wall of text.

There’s a big problem with your idea of gender identity and it’s right there in your definition: the individual sense of self. Individual.

This just in being an individual is bad, humans should just be like the Borg

Is everyone sense of being a woman or being a man of equal worth?

I know English is not your first language, so all going to say is I don’t think I understand the question.

Don’t you a problem with equating your identity as distress/happiness?

This is actually a really shallow, trivializing way of describing what myself and other dysphoric trans people have gone through.

I didn’t transition because I was “equating my identity with distress/happiness.” I did it because it was getting to the point where my therapist was seriously considering inpatient therapy to keep me from trying to take my own life.

(This is not traumadumping; this is a statement of fact.)

Here’s the thing: my sense of being a woman is acknowledging that I’m of the female sex like 50% of the rest of the human population and it doesn’t mean much else.

Cool! Mine mostly stemmed from the fact that my brain rejected the fact that I could be impregnated either willingly or unwillingly. My body should not be able to host the human equivalent of a chestburster.

Many people of that 50% are deeply unhappy about being women, because why wouldn’t they be in a world that is so male dominated and sexist?

I guarantee you that trans people are not your enemies here, or the ones making it that way just for existing.

If being a woman or man is simply ‘individual sense of self’,

I honestly wouldn’t describe it that way, it’s a lot more complicated than that. I don’t quite have the words for it, and given the way that TERFs dismissed me like dogshit on their shoe soles when I tried to explain it while I was still clinging to some hope that I could make myself cisgender, I’m not inclined to put in the effort right now. Not for you, or any other GC in this thread. Not unless I can guarantee you’re asking in good faith and willing to listen.

how can we even begin to adress larger issues surrounding sexism?

…the same way we have been? It takes a bit more nuance and thought, yes, but it’s not impossible.

The grouping of women in society is the female sex and the feminine is what is associated with it.

This is metaphysics and not the super-duper scientific smoking gun you think it is.

Males who wish to be part of this group do not belong in it, because females never part of this group because they wished to.

Trust me, I’m a trans man and I’m very aware I don’t belong in female spaces. For all your clamoring about how much we’re loved and supported you prove that every time you open your fucking mouths.

‘what is so unbearable about being female in society that someone who is would not want to be and how can we change that?’

It is the fact that my body is capable of doing something that my brain tells me it should not be able to do.

I can’t speak for anyone else on why they’re dysphoric, but I cannot make this any fucking clearer. My dysphoria is based on my biology, not my social role.

Here the truth: your individual sense of what gender you are doesn’t matter.

Maybe not to you, but accepting myself and transitioning is the reason I am as confident, mentally healthy, and able to improve myself as I am right now.

No one cares.

Correction: YOU don’t care.

We shouldn’t treat people based on their indiviudal sense of gender but based on if they are female, male, or intersex.

That’s a loaded statement. Tell me: If right now, we treated people based on their sex, right now, at your suggestion, how exactly do you think that’s going to go?

Given how I’ve seen radfems discuss men, women, and intersex people, I can’t imagine it would go well.

We should treat all people as human beings

…you know what, I’m not going to even say anything. If you see it, you see it.

while recognising that their bodies impacts how they live and that will have different needs.

Great can you take maybe five fucking minutes to ask AFAB trans people how you can help them meet their reproductive right needs, instead of assuming you know what’s best for us like our fucking mothers? Because for all you’re harping on “recognizing different BODIES and NEEDS and and and,” y’all are awfully fond of blaming us for our lack of access to care.

Thanks! 💕

To recognise that society is male dominated and that females are more vulnerable.

So about that whole “treating people based on what sex they are” thing…doesn’t sound like it would go too well?

Gender identity doesn’t matter, only sex.

Good to know the only thing that matters to you about me is my vagina then. That is a very radical and very feminist thing, I guess.

For Real now what is a gender identity, what are gender roles, what is a gender, what is the difference ?

A definition for each please

I am getting tired of Always Reading how terfs are stupid for conflating those and never getting a straight answer as to what exactly those are.

Gender identity: the individual sense of what gender you are. The reason why can be for various different things. Mine being the drop in gender dysphoria and experience of gender euphoria.

Gender roles: Femininity and masculinity, stereotypes, etc.

Masculinity and femininity are usually seen as types of gender expression within our transgender cult. We don't think that whether being masculine or feminine has an impact on what someone's actual gender is and instead as a way of expressing oneself.

The difference is that gender identity isn't determined by gender roles and that being masc or fem doesn't have to equate to someone's gender identity.

Gender identity can simply be how one percieves themselves and/or their body. Gender roles are what's expected of that gender identity. Gender expression is how the person presents themselves (clothing, pronouns, etc.).

This is how masculine trans women and feminine trans men exist. It's how they don't get shunned by every other trans person, even if they are by some.

[lucydiamondwillstealyourgirl]

Thank you for writing all of this. I have been in the trans-women-started-everything/TERFs need to go away camp for a long time, but I can no longer ignore just how disingenuous it is and how this side absolutely refuses to answer really basic questions about how people who have presented as men for a long time can never–ever ever ever–experience an ounce of privilege, as if it were something they could decide not to have because it made them uncomfortable. As if saying “a woman is whatever someone wants it to be” and “all trans women have been socialized as women” made any sense. 

If you’re going to define woman as basically anything anyone wants it to mean, how can there be one single experience of oppression, that of being socialized male against one’s will, that all trans women unilaterally face? If anyone who says they’re a woman is a woman, that group must include a variety of experiences, including some who were NOT socialized in that way, those who decided much later to be a woman. Socialization isn’t part of the definition of woman. Except it secretly is. And certainly socialization is a complex topic for all women, cis or trans, but in these discussions, it’s somehow always a straightforward process of, basically, removing the privilege a trans woman may have ever experienced while enabling a cis woman to enact oppression. Which is classic bullshit privileged nonsense.

Everyone is expected to believe in a plurality of definitions of “woman” but one single definition of oppression that trans women all face, that is supposed to explain away the privileges experienced by a life lived as a man, and that they all face as VICTIMS of cis women. Somehow the question of how a person can present as a man and never receive unearned benefits–because the feelings of the male-presenting person nullifies those benefits, I guess; benefits that they may not have even noticed, which is one of the tenets of privilege–never gets answered, and anyone who wants clarification is expected to take it on faith or is told to choke and die.

And I’ve always been of the mindset that, yes, anyone who wants to be a woman can be a woman. But I can’t accept these logical inconsistencies, nor the way that people say they want TERFs to suffer consequences, to die, to be expelled. This hivemind of people trying to sniff out the TERF, which is equivalent to cis lesbian or radfem (which is itself incredibly suspicious; radical feminism is about female oppression!), as if she were an actual murderer, so that they can push her out of the movement that is supposed to protect women, is absolutely insane to me. All to prioritize people who want to be recognized as women, which is certainly fair, over people who cannot experience life otherwise. To prioritize male feelings over female experiences.

And it takes nothing at all for someone to be labeled a TERF. All you have to do is ask questions about the oppression of trans women, or “not prioritize” them, as if cis women and girls weren’t being murdered all over the world all the time for being unavoidably female. The “privilege” of having your gender match your sex is a fantasy if you’re a cis woman.

And I wouldn’t be questioning if I hadn’t met trans women who would otherwise have absolutely struck me as bros, or trans women whose contempt towards cis women did not strike me as “internalized misogyny,” but just plain old misogyny. (We’re not allowed to say that it’s just misogyny, of course, because cis women don’t know fucking anything about how women are treated. Calling a spade a spade is grounds for harassment and death threats.) Or if I hadn’t met misogynistic cis men who would “uplift” trans women while talking down trans men. Or if I hadn’t known trans men who have absolutely faced sexualized violence while identifying as trans men. Or if I hadn’t seen the way some trans women on here call cis women and trans women “uterus bearers” and claim that AFAB people only identify as nonbinary to steal resources that rightly belong to trans women. (!!!!!!) Or if I hadn’t seen the creepy way that trans woman insult cis women on here by referring to cunts or pussies. Or if I hadn’t seen the ludicrous fantasies that TERFs kill and rape trans women left, right, and center, only for it to come out during debate that it’s TERF “ideas” that are the real killers of trans women. Please. The idea that male entitlement might be playing a role in these statements is supposed to be ludicrous while it is perfectly obvious to me that that’s exactly the case.

(Oh, and the reports that made the rounds at some point of trans women having the same brains as cis women was absolutely nuts. How have we gone back to Biology Is Destiny?)

And your news accounts on trans women killing cis women (lesbians, specifically, it often seems) and, in fact, hurting women in bathrooms was surprising to me, but only because we are constantly being told never to think about even the possibility that it could happen, or of the possible reasons behind these acts of violence. Instead, when we hear of these instances, of their violence and pedophilia and rape, something else must be behind it. Never male entitlement.

I’m not really sure what the proper conclusion is. I’m not threatened by most of the trans women I meet. I certainly can see the argument of misdirected socialization in some of them, and I welcome trans women because it sucks not to be recognized for what you are. But they keep trying to explain away my observations with ideology, and I can’t go along with that anymore.