#but other than that very important point that we as trans people aren't alone in our experiences of our bodies

[gender0bender]

There is another group of men who live, and often suffer, with breasts. Unlike gynecomastia patients, these men are transgender. Assigned female at birth, they identify as, transition to, and live as their true male gender. It is common for transgender men to report dissociative feelings toward their chest. Many trans men develop personalized terminology to re-gender their body parts; it's common for trans guys to think of their chest exclusively as their chest, without using the word "breasts" to describe that part of their body.

Some non-transgender men who have gynecomastia also manipulate gendered language to describe their gender nonconforming bodies. Specifically, these guys use acutely masculine terms to talk about their breasts. One user on a popular gynecomastia forum underwent surgery to have his breasts removed. He wrote about the experience with sports terms, stating, "I had two liters of fat removed from each breast, and a hockey puck of estrogen, or whatever." Another described his breasts as if fast food: "The amount of tissue for each breast was about the size of a quarter pounder burger from McDonalds."

None of the men that I spoke with felt like their gynecomastia was a gender issue. "I feel the need to say [that] I've never had any complex with my gender. My case with gynecomastia was no different to the mindset of someone who wants to remove an ugly scar, birthmark, or lump," Sam told me.

Brian is also in his twenties, and he lived with gynecomastia for many years before having it surgically removed. "Gender was never really something I contemplated in any sense of the word I guess," he told Broadly in an email. "When I developed gynecomastia, I was embarrassed by it and sometimes made fun of for it, but I never felt like 'less of a man.'" He said that he never felt the need to be manly. But he and Sam both felt a need to correct a part of their body that they had come to see as abnormal, something that caused them some degree of mental anguish. Though they don't feel aware of the way that gender relates to their experiences, it is arguably intrinsic. "Gender didn't become more important after puberty," Brian said. "I never really paid attention to the idea. It just was."

"Feminists and critical race theorists have long argued that this is how privilege works," Blum said. "Just as most whites don't experience themselves as having a race, [cisgender] men seldom experience themselves as having a gender." The sense of anxiety, insecurity, or disconnect that men with gynecomastia experience toward their chests can resemble the way that transgender men experience gender dysphoria. Both groups deserve to live without that anguish, and to have healthcare that recognizes the difference between cosmetic and medically necessary plastic surgery—but they also deserve to live in a society where their bodies are not deemed abnormal.

- 'Chop the Things Off': The Plight of Boys Who Grow Breasts, from VICE by Diana Tourjée

[kodyfae-the-1st]

A response, i guess

Alright so I saw this pretty shit post recently, and I cant help but say I'm a little pissed. I will not be sharing the name of the blog that posted this, as i do not wish for them to be harassed.

So here's my response.

An open letter to you who wrote this.

"Hating endos is lame, hate on us instead ! We’re a DID system that believes people shouldn’t have to have their own entry in the DSM5 to be respected , apparently a controversial opinion these days !"

So though i agree in part that hate is lame as all hell, i do believe that listening to science is more punk than throwing it out the window. Yes system diversity is important as a working point in the community, it is still important to listen to the science.

Though some may not fit the diagnostics 100% doesn't mean they aren't valid that is true, but even so, there have been no scientifically supported exception to one. trauma is a necessary part, and the mind cannot and will not fracture like this without it, that should be without dispute.

"Being unapologetically plural is punk, ESPECIALLY if you don’t fit the “scientific” idea of what a real system should be."

You are right that science is not all inclusive, but i will say being anti science seems pretty conservative for a self proclaimed punk. but asides from cheap digs like that, id really recommend reading a couple scholarly articles if you are ever in doubt of the science, there is a lot to learn, and a lot left to be learnt.

"Systems should support other systems regardless of where we come from. The world doesn’t understand us and they don’t want to have to understand us, if we want to have a future where we are proudly and loudly ourselves we have to work together to make it."

Yes systems should absolutely support each other, and i do feel we fight too much sometimes. And no. the world does not understand us, but that does not mean it is ok to spread misinformation. Im sure you do this with good intention, and i too do my part with good intention. but we are fundamentally opposed, and i do not wish to support endos in a journey for recognition.

Some may genuinely have it, i do believe that, and others may be suffering from something else, so similar it may be difficult to know the difference, but i do not believe that they can be systems without trauma.

"I have to fight to be accepted as gay, i have to fight to be accepted as polyamorous, I have to fight to be accepted as trans, I have to fight to be accepted as non human, I have to fight to be accepted as autistic, I have to fight to be accepted as plural."

A lot of us have fought those same battles, i at least have, and a lot of systems still fight for this, and i do not believe that it should be a thing everyone goes through. And we still fight to accept ourselves in this, But i do not support endos fight for recognition. But i will fight with all i have to get them the help they need, because a lot of them do desperately need help. and i think that the fight to give them a support system and help is much more punk than this fight to support misinformation.

"I do not want anyone to have to fight me to be accepted as who they are, I want to fight alongside them because we’re fighting the exact same battle and it’s hard enough without us stabbing each other in the backs."

There is absolutely too much backstabbing in these communities. And i am willing to fight here alone to get them help, im not saying here that they aren't systems, some may very well be and have forgotten the trauma, but i do not wish to stand beside them in a fight against science. Im sure we'll all know more in the future with more studies made, and maybe itll turn the view on systems upside down, but until then i stand with the science, and with those that want and need help.

I do though want to mention lastly that as per the dsm-5 trauma is not noted as a criteria for diagnosis, and thus i am open to read articles of exception to this rule if they can be provided from credible sources.

I will also ask that if ever i said something incorrect i hope youll tell me and ill do my best to make amends. Please do also feel free to share your opinion, id like to hear more perspectives, and learn the faults of my own.

Well wishes.

-Kody, and a very tired system

[pillarsalt]

Anon worried about her trans-identified friend again, I wish I had the words to express how much I appreciate your kind words!!! (Maybe admitting it made me tear up would help? haha) Your response was just as thoughtful and considerate as I thought it would be, but I never expected you'd write so much for a stranger talking about another stranger, let alone throw compliments my way. You're a truly special person and everyone on here, including me, is so lucky we get to hear what you have to say and chat with you :) (And see your wonderful art to boot!! Finding another bug-lover is such a lovely surprise!)

I'll keep your kind thoughts in mind whenever the rare friction comes up again between my friend and me. It was such a quick process for me to desist and become gender critical that I think it's easy for me to forget how much harder it is for people to change their minds on the trans topic when they're so much more invested in it than I was. (Feel the same way about religion too, even as a little kid I was asking questions about why certain things bothered me in the Bible and getting frustrated when I got shame instead of answers. Maybe being annoying and asking too many questions is just in my DNA haha. But all the more reason why it's important to help those who aren't naturally critical: they're the ones falling for unreality the hardest because of that fact.)

Ultimately I will keep being me and see what happens, like I've done before. If nothing comes of it, then there was nothing else I could've done differently anyway. I've asked her if she'd like to do gift exchange for the holidays. We're planning on getting each other a few embarrassingly nerdy collectibles we've been eyeing for a while :)

Thank you again for your help, I'll cherish your words always!!! Hope you have a blast on your trip and get to see all the little guys you could dream of!!!

I'm very glad to hear from you, anon! :) and thank you so much for the kind words! it makes me very happy to be able to help in any way. ❤️

It's funny that you mention questioning the bible as a kid. I went to catholic school and I remember being taught in first grade that we were supposed to love god more than anything. More than we loved our parents or even our dogs, and I just couldn't get past the notion that I had to somehow love the kinda mean, angry, invisible flying grandpa*, who never says a damn thing when I pray, over the actual people who had raised me. I stayed in catholic school until graduation despite opposing catholicism, argued a LOT. I think my point is that I've also kind of been primed for voicing unpopular opinions, so I'm biased when it comes to people who are more hesitant to take any position on the matters at hand.

*sidenote, around this time I obsessively read My Book of Bible Stories (1978) which was given to me by JW doorknockers. This is a bit uncanny, I haven't seen this since I was about 8. It was a treasured book to me, it's full of old testament stories and pretty brutal:

To demonstrate how young I was while reading this: the book refers to god as Jehovah, but I was still learning to read and thought he was called Joseph. So all the adults I told all these Joseph stories to were confused as to why I thought Jesus's stepdad was so OP. Anyway yes, Joseph was a scary guy in my mind, I mean look what he made abraham do before he said sike:

which really didn't give me much faith in him. Kind of a questionable thing to do to a guy tbh. Finally here's the illustration that basically inspired my URL:

Sorry to hijack your ask anon, for some reason your message sent me down memory lane. Finding that pdf was crazy.

ANYWAY: you made my night with yoir nice message, so thanks for that, hope you stay well. I'm happy that it's chill for the time being, and the gift exchange sounds like fun. Come around to chat anytime.✌️

[forgot-my-line]

By actively making posts that put people down and make a public space feel unsafe, unwelcoming or not open/accepting of someone, you are doing the exact same things they are. If it's bad when they do it, it's bad when you do it. It's not a one-way street. You are being just as bad as they are.

I completely agree that we don't owe them Respect. They didn't show us any. I do, though, wholeheartedly believe that there isn't a single person ever who doesn't deserve basic human decency. That includes feeling safe in spaces that are open to literally any and everyone. And yea sure, most aren't helping, but what about the ones who are at least trying? what about the trump voters who are donating to trans health donation centers? or the trump voters who didn't get a say (for personal safety or other reasons) or were spoonfed misinformation, who are trying to right things now? Do they not count for something?

I'm also not saying we have to coddle anyone. I'm saying if we could stop making public spaces unsafe for some people, regardless if you like, love, hate or despise them, that would be just peachy. These spaces are where some people go to escape other oppressive forces, don't add to the list of people they have to avoid. Actually, in fact, don't coddle them. That won't help. What won't help either though, is isolating them. If we isolate people, we do the same thing as the people you are so against. You are being just as bad as they are.

Not every person who voted againt Harris is a bad person. I apoligize if this fact is upsetting to you. Some trump voters, as touched on ealier, weren't in a position where they could vote how they wanted to. I am well aware that this is a very hard subject to come to terms with. Not everyone has to see things like abuse or manipulation first hand but that doesn't mean it isn't a real thing that actively affects choices and decisions. Sometimes the only thing they could do to avoid voting for Trump, was to withhold from voting or vote third party. They didn't get a choice so why make them feel worse about it.

It's been made more than clear that these are the consequences of what happened at the election. Not only has it been spelt out for everone, their dead grandma, and their pet fish, but it's been spoonfed to each and every one of them. Repeating the same things over and over and over again only make people sick of listening to you. They'll see and hear how upset you and everyone are regardless

As for standing up for what's important to me, Unity has to be pretty high on my list. Sorry if my standing behind that ideal upsets you. Change isn't gonna happen if you stand alone, acting as if the entire world is against you. Rome wasn't built by a single person, just as it wasn't built in a single day. You need to have people in your corner.

As you said, Change doesn't magically happen. People work for each and every change that has happened, big or small. Shaming and tearing people down doesn't have to be a part of that work. I'm not saying shaming people won't get the results you so desperately want, I'm saying that there are much better ways of getting people to realize they are wrong and/or need to change than making public spaces an unsafe space to be and to make people feel worse about themselves than they already do.

It wasn't just this particular post that was the issue, but the fact that no matter how many political opinions and posts I ignored completely and scrolled past, posts like these still showed up on my dash. My passion is my compassion and ability to care for everyone. I'd much rather live in a world where every single living thing feels safe, at least in my presence, than getting into silly arguments with random strangers on Tumblr dot com. Responses like these are not only condescending, they actively miss the entire point I was making.

[caspercryptid]

KILL YOURSELF

You know, attention is a natural human need.

It's pathologized a lot, but fundamentally, human beings need other people's attention. We talk about this in negative terms on social media all the time- attention whores, attention seekers, call people desperate or depraved or what have you, but the fastest way to break a human being is to shut them up in a box alone. Solitary confinement has proved this beyond a doubt- it's extremely unethical, extremely cruel, and serves no purpose other than that cruelty. People need other people.

Now, you and I. We're not so different. This sounds very much like a villain speech already so i'll happily lean into it, if you'll do me the honor of picturing me holding a cat in my lap and settling back in this chair, and not in my raccoon shirt and cupcake pajama pants. I don't know who you are, what you were wearing when you sent this, if you were curled in your bed or on your laptop, or even what specifically was on your mind, but I know you're a person, same as me, and that means in and of itself that we are more alike than we are different, both wasting far too much time on this website, both seeking, fundamentally, attention.

It's been a few weeks since i got this ask, so perhaps I denied you that demand, perhaps you've already fucked off into the ether and will never see that I responded to this. Perhaps you saw me reply to one of the other messages I get that pretty much says this verbatim and assumed that was yours and went away satisfied that i'd responded with something resembling distress, or were annoyed that I didn't, I don't know, it depends on the day. At any rate, I've forgotten exactly what it was I said that prompted this. I'm not entirely sure it matters. It might have been that trans people are more important than a children's book series, or that Chrisp Rat's brother is a facist, or that you should keep scrolling when you don't like things. In any case, the message was clearly not internalized, but it was recieved, and isn't that the point? Aren't I just shouting into a void, looking for someone to shout back? Sometimes the return is positive, validation, reblogs, sometimes the echo of my voice is this sort of thing, but fundamentally, the answer of anger confirms, still, that I am heard. So thank you for that.

You are unkind, true, and of the scores of people like you, some of them will get under my skin, some of them will manage to bother me on a bad day, some of the hits will land. But I'm a writer, professionally, fundamentally, so I am doing this for attention. I am speaking so you hear my voice. You are shouting back, you are coming directly to me because you want me to hear yours. I can sympathize with that, even as i hold up a mirror, because here we are, the message received, the meaning lost. I don't know what you're so angry about. You haven't done anything to make me care. Was that what you wanted? Do you know what you wanted? I'd love, genuinely, to know what you hope to achieve. I think you should think about it too. You can wish me dead, or wish me gone, but if this sort of thing always achieved that result it would be a lot more illegal. Would you like to be a murderer? would you like to hold a knife in your hands? Would you have the guts to stab me with it, when you don't even have enough to turn anon off? I don't think you do. I don't think that's really what you want. I think you just want attention. So here, have it, freely given.

[lesser-vissir]

Let's just,,, go over another example of the transmisandry crowd just,,,, completely misunderstanding the concept of intersectionality

Transmisandry and misogynoir are not the intersections between being trans and being a woman or being black and being a woman, it's the intersections between transphobia and misogyny, and the intersection of antiblackness and misogyny.

Intersectionality is about the intersection of axis of oppression, not of fucking identities

Somewhat related but I think this is an important part of why transmisogyny should be considered its own axis of oppression rather than the intersection of transphobia and misogyny.

Under the current gender ideology of our system (patriarchy really only describes about a part of this system, and for funsies imma call this expanded definition Big Gender) there are four distinct axis of oppression: transmisogyny, exorsexism, transphobia, and misogyny.

If we define our Big Gender as: Everyone is either a man or a woman, and it is better to be a man.

We can then define the following

Misogyny: the tool through which women are subjugated under men for their perceived inferiority

Transphobia: the tool through which Big Gender enforces the gender binary

So where does that leave exorsexism and transmisogyny? You could try to place both under transphobia but that leaves off a lot of the distinct ways transphobia alone fails to fully account for the experiences of those who suffer from them since there is no real intersection by which you can generate them (despite transmisogynys name)

So, let's define exorsexism as the tool through which Big Gender sorts people into the gender binary

Now let's talk transphobia. It's a manifestation of the ways in which people's behaviours are policed based on the AGAB they were assigned through exorsexism. Given this definition we allow cis people to experience transphobia which I think is actually an important part of our definition since transphobia is a metric of how well you fit into your assigned gender and you are punished in correlation to how far you differ from that. Obviously being trans and outright rejecting your assigned gender is the highest form of dissent and is punished the most severely but including gnc cis people under this definition is critical to understanding Big Gender (not to mention how ridiculous it is to try and call the way a butch lesbian is treated for being butch something other than transphobia or the even more absurd assertation that cis male crossdressers and femboys don't experience transphobia).

Trying to claim that cis people do not experience transphobia is also why nonbinary people are told they must transition to experience transphobia. Where the idea of the True Transexual, transmedicalism, trenders and every other way through which the trans community tries to define who experiences transphobia comes from. It is CRITICAL that we accept that cis people experience transphobia otherwise there is no way to stop the community from harming itself.

Given that cis people can experience transphobia we can separate out many of the things misogyny (and in the same vein "misandry") currently accounts for. Women getting paid less than men is misogyny, but women being punished for wearing pants or not using makeup is transphobia. (And in the same vein men who are emotional or twinky aren't experiencing "misandry" but rather transphobia)

Since for a very long time, misogyny was the only lens through which Big Gender was analyzed these phenomena were placed within misogyny and as a result applied the same brush as misogyny in that it is how men oppress women. This is why various theories like misandry or toxic masculinity were brought up as some way to explain how men were harmed by misogyny. (We can also find here the origin of the TERF talking point about how gender dysphoria in people Big Gender calls women being dissatisfaction with misogyny) That is why it is important to both label it as transphobia (which it is) and also to dispel the notion of "misdirected" transphobia or misogyny. Misogyny only affects those Big Gender has deemed to be women and transphobia affects EVERYONE, though the extent is wildly different from person to person.

This also helps to account for the ways in which transphobia manifests itself in different ways for different communities. Emotional men in feminist spaces may instead be rewarded for that behaviour since it has been moved into the realm of "acceptable" behaviours for men.

I want to add an aside here about the concepts of passing, clocking, and perceived gender. Obviously none of these are "systemic" in the sense that a state or other governing body is enforcing them. However, anyone saying that is stupid. I'll just be mean about it. Interpersonal harm is systemic if the system will either reward them for it or turn a blind eye to behaviour it would otherwise punish.

"If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power." Stokely Carmichael

Systemic doesn't mean "when the government takes away our right" (though that is a part of it) systemic is about the ability to enact bigotry without punishment both from governing bodies and your peers.

As a result, your perceived gender heavily influenced how transphobia will affect you. If you are read as a man, you will be punished for feminity and if you are read as a woman you will be punished for masculinity. Likewise, if you are read as a woman you will experience misogyny and if you are read as a man, you will be permitted to enact misogyny.

This is also useful for analyzing the dynamics of transphobia is communities that acknowledge chosen genders as a person's "true" gender. Trans men are given the power to enact misogyny even if they do not "pass" because they are recognized as men. Additionally, it is part of why nonbinary people are often heavily policed even in spaces that acknowledge binary trans people in that the gender binary wasn't erased, just the idea that you cannot *choose* your gender. Lots of what transmisandry people talk about can be properly understood under this framing.

Obviously if you get clocked you will immediately be shoved into the "correct" gender and experience transphobia or misogyny in line with that gender.

This brings us to an interesting question, does a person who is initially perceived to be a woman who is read as being actually a man get the right to enact misogyny?

I believe we can safely answer that question with a "no".

Why then, is that? Is it that sufficient gender deviance will result in someone considered by Big Gender to be a man losing their right to misogyny? No, otherwise gay men would not be allowed to enact misogyny. Nor would crossdressers or femboys or any number of men who experience heavy transphobia?

What then, is the tipping point? It is the rejection of the idea that being a man is better than being a woman. Heavy deviance from manhood is punished but since you still consider yourself a man (and society does as well), you still get the benefits that come with that role.

I would now like to pitch the idea that there is not a gender binary under Big Gender but rather a trinary: men, women, and tranny wherein trannies are men who rejected the idea that it is better to be a man.

We can then redefine misogyny as the tool through which non-men are subjugated under men.

And finally, we can define transmisogyny: the tool through which the idea of men's superiority is enforced

This is why trans women are denied both manhood and womanhood under Big Gender. To give them either would be to admit that it is not a universal truth that it is better to be a man. As such, it is decided that they were never men at all, and in fact we're trannies the entire time. Thus the sanctity of manhood is protected.

It is also through this gender trinary that the concepts of TME and TMA are born. Trannies are TMA and both men and women are TME.

As a result, despite both women and trannies suffering under misogyny together, women are also capable of enacting transmisogyny since trannies are afforded no social privilege and any attacks against them are either encouraged or ignored.

As such, TME trans people are still capable of enacting transmisogyny unless they have also been cast into the role of tranny. The vast majority of trans men will be TME but every trans woman is TMA.

The necessity of transmisogyny as a force separate from transphobia and misogyny is because fighting against either of those forms of oppression does not harm the bottom line of Big Gender. Fighting for women to have equal rights as men reinforces that being a man is better. Expanding acceptable behaviours for women to encompass those men have reinforces that men are better. Expanding those for men does nothing so long is it as seen as being for men (ie. crying is manly). Even transitioning ftm reinforces that idea.

Much in the same way that a movie criticizing capitalism only serves to reinforce it, all criticisms of Big Gender reinforce it. Except for one. Outright rejection of their core tenant. For capitalism it's that people must serve capital. Which is why a free breakfast program is shut down by the police but Noam Chomsky is safe to say whatever he wants. It's why trans women are deemed unacceptable to society, but wiggle room can be found for other forms of gender nonconformity.

As a sidenote, I think it would be more useful to view transphobia as being like racism than like misogyny in regards to how targets are chosen and affected. Misogyny is a simple binary of affected/not-affected but racism is very hierarchical and has varying degrees of harm caused to those lower on the hierarchy. This much in the same way that anti-blackness is the pinnacle of racism, transphobia against transitioning trans people can be considered the pinnacle of transphobia. And much like how the acknowledgement of anti-blackness doesn't erase the suffering and oppression of other non-white people, acknowledging that trans people who transition are more oppressed under transphobia than those who don't, does not erase the transphobia those people experience.

[nevermindirah]

🔥 anything quynh related

I'm so glad you asked!!

Unpopular opinion related to Quynh but less about fandom than the grand scheme of mental illness research and treatment: complex PTSD is 100% a thing. I shit you not, I googled "CPTSD definition" just now to double-check something and google told me "did you mean PTSD". 😑 Anyway Quynh absolutely no question would experience severe long-term mental illness as a result of allllllll this shit she's experienced:

(ID in alt text and below the cut)

We don't know what her childhood was like but jfc she saw and survived and did so much violence for such a very long time before drowning constantly for 500 years.

CPTSD or whatever you call it can present in a lot of different ways (I'm not a medical professional just have a lot of research and personal experience with this stuff) and basically all bets are off in terms of what kinds of symptoms she might be experiencing in that 6-months-later and 2O2G.

It's totally feasible she's one of those traumatized people who lashes out at other traumatized people and would call Booker weak for being suicidally depressed over what she might perceive as a lesser trauma. It's also totally feasible that she'd be relieved to have someone who understands. She might very well cling to Booker and avoid the others — maybe out of shame, or if she sees them again it'll all have been real, or or or. Andy herself checks a shit ton of those trauma boxes and my personal read on her is a nihilistic depression and not CPTSD but lots of readings are valid, the point is Quynh might cling to Andy or avoid her or do that "leave me alone come back" thing or be angry that Andy can't heal her or spend more time comforting Andy than herself or any number of different things.

I'm down for all of the above, as long as the storyteller takes this shit seriously, understands that mental illness is never the fault of the person experiencing it, and doesn't let the text agree with shitty harmful things that flawed human characters might say or do even when they do them as a result of their mental illness.

Because of my own stuff I need to avoid certain depictions of romantic relationships between trauma survivors, so I basically can't read any significant Andy/Quynh angst. I'm sure I'm missing out on all kinds of beautiful shit as well as some things I'd have some arson-y opinions about. But speaking from what I have read (and real talk, what I've written, bc as much as I love Quynh, I don't think about her near as often as Nile or Booker), some of my, uh, lighter? unpopular Quynh opinions:

evil dragon lady trope is racist and it's absolutely necessary to avoid it — and it's possible and worthwhile to respectfully explore Quynh as a three-dimensional character who's committed a lot of violence, in her context alongside others who aren't targeted by the dragon lady stereotype but have also committed a lot of violence

her personality might be unrecognizable to Andy Joe and Nicky, and/or recognizable but upsetting or, even worse, repulsive to them. that would SUCK but that happens sometimes and it's worth exploring in ways that are considerate of all those characters

similar to what I talked about here with Nile, the way some people write characters named Quynh and Andy who have their faces but none of their depth in Before the Drowning fics 🤮

it's possible she was monogamous with Lykon for a while and/or not romantically involved with Andy and as much as I desperately need canon Andromaquynh in 2O2G there's an important place for these other depictions in fic (provided that they're motivated by exploring other Quynh ideas and not queerphobia)

ok actually on the lighter side! what if she's trans!! that could be fun and beautiful and not a source of trauma for her!!!

Quynh and Booker's hot girl summer is a fun joke or whatever but I WANT FIVE SEASONS AND A MOVIE OF THEIR FRIENDSHIP! throw Nile in there too, the potential for Quynh's friendship with Nile is so interesting! chaotic honorary-youngin' Quynh a three-dimensional character doing hedonism to cope my beloved!!!!!!

To wrap up this heavy post I'm gonna call myself out on a fun thing! Hot take @ Dirah: write that Quynh/Nile fisting pwp before 2O2G comes out will you!!!!?!??!??!??!

[ID: screenshot of the UK mental health charity Mind page about Complex PTSD. Text: "The types of traumatic events that can cause complex PTSD include:

childhood abuse, neglect or abandonment

ongoing domestic violence or abuse

repeatedly witnessing violence or abuse

being forced or manipulated into prostitution (trading sex)

torture, kidnapping or slavery

being a prisoner of war.

You are more likely to develop complex PTSD if:

you experienced trauma at an early age

the trauma lasted for a long time

escape or rescue were unlikely or impossible

you have experienced multiple traumas

you were harmed by someone close to you."]

[mcrmadness]

I understand the need to relate and find relatable characters/people from e.g. medias - I do that all the time too! But I just realized something that I'm not sure if it's related to my aroaceness, or if it's just me being a tad older (but still not one of the oldest either) than the majority on this website.

So I realized that I'm often getting annoyed by posts where everyone headcanons either characters, people or idk, groups of something as a certain orientation or gender or trans or whatever. And I realized that it annoys me so much because: what does it matter what they are or aren't?

This is where I don't know if I it's just my age or aroaceness or both, but I simply don't CARE what they are or hypothetically are. I like canon if it's well written. Het couples in medias annoy me if it's clear they exist only because of heteronormativity. I like it when characters are and are let to be cis, I like it when people "respect" canon genders and orientations. Here it's probably a bit of that identity thing for me too because I'm not trans, but also not cis (I like the word "cisn't" actually), so I always feel a bit left out when everything has to be trans this or that. So when everyone talks about hormones or surgeries on people or characters who show no signs of that, I just feel left out (also because you can still bw comfortable in your birth body and not be cis, e.g. I'm agender.)

So in my case it's more that I just don't care about those things on characters much because they don't affect it how I will see them, "lgbt+" or not. I don't seek for aro/ace/agender characters because I don't find that as the most important thing ever. It's only a nice bonus if a characters turns out to not be a stereotypical cis/het but something else. I don't start reading a book, watching a movie or series only because I've heard it has lgbt+ characters. It's super cool when lgbt+ are included as it tells something about the people whined the media, but there are so many things that have nothing to do with how someone identifies with and that are more important to me than their identity. E.g. I don't need to make a straight character aro and/or ace, I just prefer that they leave the romance at home and the main story would just focus on other things. Like, the adventure for example, or friendships pr whatever. It doesn't wipe out their identity, it's just not pushed into anyone's face.

It's very likely that my age affects this also because when I was a teenager/adolescent and then a young adult, I simply HAD no characters to relate to. We barely got even gay characters during the mid and late 2000s, let alone other orientations. Can you imagine the only characters I could relate to with my asexuality and aromanticism, long before even hearing those terms, were mainly fictional serial killers? And can you imagine how worried it made me. I related to Dexter Morgan because he wasn't interested in sex, had a romantic relationship only to appear normal (since he was a serial killer) but did care about his girlfriend, just differently than "normal people". Like, I'm not mad about this because at least somewhere someone understood something about me, but I was often worried if I'd be a psychopath too. I started watching Dexter when I was 15, I think I learnt about asexuality when I was 17 and about romantic orientations and aromanticism when I was already over 20.

I've always been completely fine with whatever I identify with. After finding those terms, I've never felt like I was broken or faulty. I have never really needed reassurance nor support regarding my identity. I don't understand when people pretend e.g. not liking something or not being interested in something only because of peer pressure. So, idk, I don't know what I'm saying here anymore. I guess the point was just that such posts annoy the heck out of me sometimes because I don't understand why those things are important in a character, and what makes an lgbt+ character more likeable and interesting than a character who is cis and/or het.

[sapropel]

The main things that turned me off of conversion for now were

1. I have alot of shit on my plate and am low income as a result so finding a place that will help might be hard because locally there really aren't any synagogues around

2. The synagogue I did find locally was uhhh...... Hhhhh. Their web page had a huge section about Israel in a positive light..

I love the religion, I love certain values it holds however I refuse to align with anyone who justifies colonialism and bloodshed against another group of people while ignoring past bloodshed done onto themselves. It makes 0 sense to me and is highly hypocritical.

Hypocrisy was one of the reasons I hated Christianity so much. Constantly causing bloodshed, huge present and past history of colonialism, huge present day history of wanting people like me who are gay or trans dead and in the ground.

the difference with Christianity is that there isn't even a present day persecution or justified worry of safety despite the fact that I've seen jack chick esque evangelical fuckers unironically act like they're holocaust survivors whenever a pride parade happens within 1 mile of them.

It makes me sad, I don't see the point in colonizing or maiming a group of people who should be your equals.

It's racist at best, dangerous and actively contributing to more death and violence at worst.

The thing is there isn't really a "point." It creates its own point. Real actionable Zionist sentiment was basically non-existent until the rise of European nationalism. It's literally the exact same brand of nationalism that gave birth to fascist Italy and other great failures of modernity. And when "Israel" was a proto-state basically its entire existence was contingent upon its continued usefulness to Britain as a tool of control over India through the Suez. Zionist claims to the land are super shaky at best and straight up revisionist at worst. Post-facto Israel has tried to give itself legitimacy through fearmongering, genocide, and forging alliances with other imperialist powers. It's doing what America did (and is doing) but it's happening in the age of mass media and we are all watching colonial revisionism happen in real time.

If you are letting the prevalence of Zionism keep you from Judaism, I would say you should keep thinking about it. If you treat Judaism as too thoroughly engulfed in Zionism, you do the work of Zionists for them--you legitimize their claim that Judaism is Zionism is Israel. You legitimize the idea that anti-Zionism is antisemitism which is incidentally exactly how my local rabbis have been fucking me over since June. You are of course totally within your rights not to convert to a religion that doesn't work for you, but I hope you rethink the implication that converting to Judaism is akin to aligning with Zionism.

And yeah, Zionist hypocrisy is a systematic issue within American Jewish institutions in a feedback loop with Jewish populations. Any institutional apparatus is going to have systematic issues that reflect the dominant discourse of the greater cultural framework--mainstream Jewish institutions are going to, both by the nature of maintaining relevancy in America and by the natures of fearmongering and cultural amnesia, have a vested interest in participating in capitalism, imperialism, racism... You are not going to find mainstream insitutions that don't perpetuate them. That's why they're dominant. You are no more aligning yourself with Zionism by going to a synagogue than you are aligning yourself with capitalism by shopping at Wal-Mart. Anything you meaningfully do in public is in some way going to be "problematic" on some level because public space is designed to keep itself alive by those values.

It's exhausting to make yourself never come close to anyone or anything bad at all--refusing to associate with anyone with a problematic ideology is a doomed enterprise. I've been there. A lot of Zionist sentiment is implanted in people's minds with lifelong propaganda and destructive mind control techniques, and it's important to recognize that. That doesn't mean Zionist adults don't have a responsibility to unlearn it, but I think it's possible to have compassion for people who do try to do their best with improving themselves. Most people you meet want to be good and don't want to be willfully ignorant. I try to think about how difficult it is to convince the average well-meaning white American of the merits of decolonization/land back. Most well-meaning Zionist Jews are going to feel the same way about Israel--actual systematic justice and decolonization are not in their lexicons. Decolonization is hidden behind thought-stopping techniques that they have been inundated with from day 1. But most people do have a basic sense of goodness and are willing to sacrifice something for it. Most people are willing to give ground for the sake of human decency. The only way I can survive talking to people I know are Zionists is by understanding that we both want the world to be a better place and if I dwell on the specifics of how I perceive them to be evil, the possibility of us having a working relationship and any hope at productive dialogue drops to zero.

You don't have to be patient with Zionists or Zionist institutions. You don't have to forgive them. You don't even have to be compassionate. But you do need to understand, intellectually, that imposed cognitive dissonance is a very powerful tool of mind control (and I'm not talking about woo-woo shit I'm extrapolating from cult research and personal experience) and that the pathos of Zionism isn't supposed to be logical. Fear trumps hypocrisy. Fatigue trumps informed consent. Charisma trumps logic. Any bigoted ideology is going to fall apart under logical scrutiny, and that's why the only battleground for maintaining bigotry is necessarily charismatic and emotional.

We haven't yet, of course, acknowledged that there are also tons of anti-Zionist Jews and that the concept isn't absurd or fringe, no matter what the dominant Zionist discourse says. It's important for us not to let Zionists be the stewards of Judaism--Zionists do not OWN Judaism. Just like the most Orthodox of Jews also don't OWN Judaism. Judaism is only what you make it to be, and if you leave it alone because you are too worried about Zionism, that is all Judaism is ever going to be for you. Of course, you still have to contend with Zionism, and if you actually are interested in being a Jew, you would have to find a way not to let it kill your Judaism. I've come close (ish) to giving up on Judaism a couple of times because of Israel and Zionism, but I'm glad I haven't. I've stuck it out long enough to give myself to tools I need to separate the two and see the situation with more clarity.

[orange-orchard-system]

Pop off all you'd like

I will say that I do see accounts of people who are affected by syscourse (and those who care about it) offline – everything from attempted institutionalization to physical assault to general unkindness – and I don't want these people's experiences to be erased, which I fear the common narrative of "none of this matters offline" perpetuates. But I'm very glad that you've been able to have more positive experiences; it brings me hope whenever I hear things like that.

Something I think that people may be missing in my original post is that it was inspired by seeing syscourse around the very concept of pluralphobia. Out of all the things we're going to argue over, it's how we talk about the shit we face for being plural?! It's about whether the shit we face is "bad enough" to spend time talking about?! It's about whether the shit we face specifically for being plural is distinct enough to identify it as its own form of oppression?! We've graduated from the "you aren't real" argument to the "even if we suppose you are real, none of the oppression or discrimination you face matters, it's just people being mean on the internet, you don't need your own word for that" argument (and wow, I wonder where I've heard that before! *stares aggressively at ace and trans discourse*). The usual exclus have gone a step further in adopting common bigot logic to shoot all of us in the foot, and even the people I see pointing this out are ending up dragged into intracommunity slapfights over the precise ways we talk about our pain. This whole thing makes me feel like the "can I please get a waffle" vine, except it's "can I please get some legal protections".

Like you mention in your post, we should be helping and looking out for each other. I don't think syscourse focused blogs are necessarily worsening things, or putting their energy towards the wrong things – the work to fight against exclusionism, misinformation, and cruelty within our online spaces is important, especially as we see it begin to spill into offline spaces as well. But we as a community shouldn't lose sight of there being more to the problems we all face than syscourse alone. We shouldn't be infighting about the parallels we draw between different forms of oppression; we shouldn't be telling each other off for drawing comparisons and handshaking with communities that have gone through similar to us. There are systems who could be kicked out by their families at any given time for being plural and yet people are arguing over the meta of our exploratory theories and thoughts on our own oppression; on whether or not we're "allowed" to call it oppression at all. It makes me so angry to think about. Call it whatever the fuck you like, but call it out.

When I'm in a safe place in life, I want to turn my attention to helping more systems offline. Probably in the form of a regular, local meetup at a library or something. We desperately need more in-person places to foster community and meet other plurals at. I want us all to be able to know for a fact that we are not alone. I want us all to know there's at least one other person/system they can go to who will understand and can help them. I want us all to be able to come together, whether that's to push for change, or just to be there for one another. It's hard to do those things in a way that feels tangible and real in online spaces, no matter how much the online world affects offline events and lives.

Peace and love to all plurals and survivors, indeed. May we all find the peace and community we need.

I wrote a whole f-cking poem about this that I may or may not publish but. I need to stop looking at syscourse. People are arguing over whether or not pluralphobia is bad enough to care about and what kinds of discrimination it's okay to draw parallels between and I'm just here like. Okay. Great. So anyway, regardless of these slapfights, I'm still stuck depending on openly and specifically pluralphobic family – as in, my own family I directly depend upon who have outright stated their hostility towards systems specifically– to be housed and fed. I have met multiple other systems offline in my local area who are stuck in the same position I am, with unsupportive if not outright hostile and hateful family. We are forced to remain closeted for our own safety and to ensure our basic needs are met. Can we focus on problems like that, please? We can hold the Oppression Olympics after we get a start on making sure vulnerable systems are safe.

[teenagebeautyqueen]

[Image description: a young person holds a mobile phone with a blue case and a paper on the other. the paper has a drawing of an umbrella colored with the trans pride flag. we can only see their upper body. they are looking down and to the left of the image. they're smiling without showing their teeth, and look relaxed. they're wearing a black, loose hoodie and some shorts can be seen at the bottom of the picture. they're also using black nail polish. on the background there is a door and a star wars poster. the other image is a close up of the paper. end ID]

🌈ʜᴇ/ᴛʜᴇʏ🌈

happy trans day of visability to all my fellow trans*!! here is me and my project for peace's day... i personally love it. it's on spanish, but i'll translate it for y'all.

the text on the left says "cada persona que conoces está luchando una batalla de la que no sabes nada. sé amable. siempre", which is the translation of that quote that goes like "every person you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. be kind. always".

the one on the right says "¿qué sentido hay en pelear? ¿por qué insistimos en sabotearnos mutuamente? Todos caminamos por el mismo sendero embarrado, todos nos dirigimos al mismo final." its translation is something like "what's the point on fighting? why do we insist on sabotage each other? we all walk the same muddy path, we are all headed for the same end."

and above the umbrella there's words like "odio", "acoso", "ignorancia" & "discriminación", which mean "hatred", "harassment", "ignorance", and "discrimination".

yeah i'm very subtle.

i've decided to share my story with the world. but i got kinda carried away. it's not s fairy tale, so don't read it if you're sensitive to themes like bullying, mental health issues, and toxic people.

——————————————————————

it's been... one ride of a journey, to say the least. i've said a few times that i started to question my gender around summer. but that's not quite true.

growing up, i never was fond of... anything that i associated with femenine, really. this included, but wasn't limited to, any color that wasn't blue (pink and purple get a special mention, i despised them), flowers, clothes too loose or too tight, shorts if they weren't from some sport, etc. i think you get the idea.

this collided with me being afab (aka a girl for everyone including myself) & neurodivergent. i wanted nothing to do with those things. but society wanted me to love them.

5 yo me said she didn't like Monster High. 5 yo female classmate said i was a weirdo. 7 yo me loved football. 7 yo male classmate said i couldn't play because i was a girl. 9 yo me hyperfixated on minecraft. 9 yo pretty much every classmate called me a geek.

so i stoped trying. for a while, i loved pink, wanted to have rapunzel's hair, watched disney channel, etc. but i already was the weirdo. i remember being three and friends with all of them. i remember playful fights for the toy rocket and reading books with the only other boy who could read, to ourselves, each other, and the whole class. but people grow up, and they change. so yeah, i was bullied. always the last one to be chosen, left alone on the bus rides, on my own at the playground.

and you'll be thinking "that sucks, but pao, how is it related to you being trans?"

you'll see, i didn't have many friends. i was kinda alone until i turned 7. then two new kids came to my class. let's call them eva and john. i made friends with them asap. i loved them so much!! they were my first friends since kindergarden. so i allowed myself to let go. i was already hated by most of my peers. why wouldn't i be myself with those who didn't despise me? (i was 7 when i thought this. 7 years old, and i thought that out of 20 people, 18 hated me. and then people wonder why i've got self-steem issues lmao. i'm tryna make the point that bullying in primary school isn't just some mean kids calling you names. i'm currently in high school and it still has its mark on me. but that's for another moment.)

so yeah. i went "wild". eva has adhd too (noice, right? i mean she has her diagnosis becaise she's primarly hyperactive, while i'm primarly inattentive, but we understood each other way quickier than with neurotypicals– even if i didn't know why yet), and john was kinda shy & corpulent (he wasn't fat, but he didn't look slim either), just like me. so we became friends. and i slowly opened up a little, while still playing my role of "the freak kid". i knew i was seen as that AND as the smart kid. double pressure, double bullying. but i had my small circle. it evolved until my current friend group, in which, god bless, there's a trans girl!! (eva's still on it– she's my best friend and i would die for her, no doubts. john can go fuck himself, the goddamned fascist).

but it ain't that easy. it never is. i'm 14 and afab. shit happens. y'all get it.

my first period happened while i was on a school trip (bad), on a hotel with no pads avaliable (very bad), on another country so i couldn't call my mum unless i had wifi because politics & stuff– and i did not have wifi (really bad). cue a lot of dysphoria (even if i didn't know it was that) + not being able to contact anyone. add the fact that i was the second one to have it, and it was some kind of taboo– it meant the other girls wouldn't leave me alone, and the result is clear: one of my worst panic attacks ever, on a tiny bathroom of some shitty hotel room.

from there it went downhill. my body started to become femenine, and the football short didn't make my hips smaller. my face, my oh so alarged face, suddenly became rounder. puberty hit me not only physically, but emotionally. and if that wasn't enough, we, as a class, were entering what's called here "the turkey age", a.k.a. teenagerhood, where looks become even more important. it didn't take long until i hated my body.

[WARNING: from here, this gets hard. mentions of eating disorders, depressive episodes/thoughts, toxic enviroments, homophobia/transphobia (both internalized and external), anxiety attacks, and thoughts of self-harm]

i thought "it's big, it shouldn't be big, it's fat. besides i don't want it to grow so fast. i want to make it stop growing. how? well, i grow up by eating. no eating=no growing".

yeah. eating disorder. when i think about it, i want to laugh. because it only took a few comments and "jokes" for me to be so angry at myself when i should be mad with them. i'm big. always have been, very likely always will. i've been told that i could make a very good rugby player. i probably would. i shared my cantine table with people (😔). and they wouldn't shut up. "[deadname], the rest wants to eat too!", "look at [deadname], she's gonna eat it all!". things like that. i stoped eating. i would pick up the smallest amount of food i could, even if my stomach was begging me to please eat something. eventually, my mum found out. and she helped me to grow out of it. i sometimes releapse, but never for that long. because i went on a whole year like that. and it sucked.

so, last year. socially anxious neurodivergent girl with several doubts on her sexuality gets to eight grade.

i play basketball. since i was little. i used to enjoy it a lot. we weren't a team– we were a family. loved 'em so much, 1000/10 one of the best things of my life. BOOM. now you're old enough & good enough to be on the "good" team. in the good time there's the cool kids. i am not a cool kid. oops. i was left behind, they all laughed at my back, no one cared about me (except one girl, but she was in the group and was scared to act until almost the end of the year. love her for that tho). i felt like shit. i was too scared to go to train. the sight of a ball scared me, because i couldn't help but think everyone was talking shit about me. we went to a national championship and when they went out to the city, they didn't tell me, then sent a pic of them having fun to the groupchat & delated it saying "oops it was for the other group". i had several breakdowns on my room that night. it was such a bad experience i can't even hear the name of the city without tearing up.

not to count that a new girl decided to make my life a living hell. now i know how to deal with her, but then i didn't, and i ended up curled up on the bathroom floor crying.

all while i discovered my own identity. i was so scared of being non-straight i hated myself for it.

it was a tough year and there were times where i would wish i'd never existed. it was too much for me to deal with, and i was just miserable. but i got out of it. remember the trans girl i mentioned? she's closeted, and she told me just this october. but even before that, she was my friend. she bought a new life to it all, a fresh one. i owe her a lot, including accepting myself as i am.

she is here, despite everything.

i am here, despite everything.

you are all here, despite everything.

some of us aren't here. they are the ones we remember. each one of us has our history. i shared mine with you all. it is not an easy road. you know that. it's hard, and it's tough, and it's difficult, and it's unfair.

but we are here, despite everything. the ones who made it, the ones who didn't, the ones who are halfway through it, and the ones who are to come.

we are here. we are trans. and we won't be erased.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

"The erasure of women"

I think this is a topic that a lot of people are really terrified to touch on especially if they both support women and trans people. Fact of the matter is actual trans people who have been diagnosed make up less than 2% of the entire world population. And while I don't think that that makes them less important than anyone else, I do believe that we are in the process of erasing many different languages and fundamental norms that adhere to most of society. The problem with language, is that it can't always be absolutely inclusive. Not only will it not be typically, but not often.

I've been watching people try to push this narrative that trans women are women. But I don't agree on principle. And the reason being is because the dictionary definition of what a woman is, is an adult human female. Female as described is a few things one is a living entity with XX chromosomes and the ability to give birth in almost all cases. Not counting rare cases and not counting abnormalities.

The bigger issue here is the NEED people seem to have to make biological sex "a social construct", which is as anti science as it gets. More over then that, I've seen people say there are no differences between biological men and women. Which if that's to be believed, then why does "trans" even exist? Look. I support trans people. And I'm no feminist. The issue is based on the video. At what point do we stop for a second and realize we are erasing 50% of the population, for maybe 2%. And more over why have we pushed to "normalize" it to the point that the therapy and hormones are no longer covered under insurance. The reason people say "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" is because smart people try to do things either for themselves or others, pass it off as a great idea, use sentiment to push for it, and no matter the outcome they end up happy because they can signal their "proper" virtue to everyone else. Even when their action (often) poorly affect those they were aiming to "help".

Fact is, gender dysphoria it's a mental illness. It's one that requires therapy often to get over. When neo progressives got the WHO to remove it as a mental illness because "as an illness it's sigmatized" it screwed over a lot of actual trans people. Not these trans tender lunatics. And now we are trying to erase women in sports and physical accomplishments. Honestly believing that doesn't make you a "terf". It makes you someone who is able to see issues with what's going on. Biological women have their own sports and unique physical competitions for a reason. And the biggest LIE told by most activists is, "all descent against ANYTHING I believe is transphobia". Which is false. Transphobia IS a hate of trans people. Criticism of a movement is not. And frankly? I've had it with people expanding definitions just to shut others up. It's disgusting.

Either way. You don't have to agree with me, but it doesn't make you right. This is a complicated issue and not one that's easy to solve. But if this is also it's own trolly problem. Do you sacrifice 5 people to save 1? Or do you sacrifice 1 to save 5? A sane person in 99/100 instances of that would sacrifice the one to save the 5. Radical activists? They'd sacrifice the 5. In no world should that be your default.

And before I get someone going, "oh well if the 5 people were Nazis-" That's clearly NOT what I'm saying. I mean, worse than that, I see a lot of people online dating crap like "I hate strait people" or "I hate cis people". So you hate over 98% of the WORLD POPULATION, in one instance and 88% (possibly more) in the other. And why? Because you or someone you know it's different? And what does that hate do? Oh I can tell you easy; it spreads hate. And more over you justify any hate you or others get by participating in it.

It's time we start being able to talk about this. It's time people stop getting shut down for just wanting a dialogue. Time to also stop just using "terf" and "transphobic" to halt people whom are concerned about stuff like women's sports. Or the people concerned about telling a 2y/o they are trans. THEY CAN'T POSSIBLY KNOW THAT! Honest to goodness? A lot of the modern trans activist community are honest to goodness misogynists. Some even self hating. This new Critical Theory shit needs to stop. Because I'm really done with this idea we have to fuck over and shame the vast majority of people for the sake of the very few. These assholes would sacrifice scientists who cure diseases, even one who cures cancer, mother's, father's, children, babies, just to save one trans person. I'm sorry but if that's how you think I'm not even sorry telling you to move to an island alone and get off my rock.

Biological women deserve to hold records for sports and physical activities. They also deserve to not get literally beaten in MMA, boxing, etc by a biological man 3 times their size who realized they were "trans" when they couldn't make the men's team, and now they will be popular and famous because they will have zero competition except for other trans women, and they will be applauded and awarded just for saying they are trans. "So brave, so bold, so amazing, and now a world record holder. Omg I'm so happy because biocidal women don't deserve medals or awards. They aren't special".

That's how you all fucking sound. And if you are trans and not like that, or an activist and not like that fine. This is directed at those who ARE like this. Of which there are PLENTY.

[doublemegative]

ok, so as expected, i'm getting some pushback on this. i want to foster an environment where we, as feminists on the internet, can all talk about these complex issues civilly and openly. i don't think i can effectively state every single reason i believe trans rights are human rights and trans women are women in this post, so here are only my responses to the arguments i've received--but keep in mind that it's a lot more complicated than this one thing. i will likely cease updating this post after this reblog and go back to my usual content after that. as i mentioned in my notes on the original post, i'm a cis girl and intersectional feminist. i will attempt to keep this post as brief as possible, but it may run a tad long. below, i use the phrases "pre-transition" and "post-transition" to refer mostly to social transition. please be as open to my ideas as i am to yours.

anon message:

"how are you a feminist if-" gonna stop you right there. i cried when roe was overturned. i believe in and gender equality and human rights for everyone. that is feminism.

"you think gender is real and innate" gender is a social construct and gender dysphoria has complex causes. we don't fully understand why it occurs, so i guess i'm not sure if it's "innate"--i.e., people are born with it (though many trans people seem to report always having felt they were their true gender, so maybe it has an early onset)--but we know it occurs. gender as a social construct and an important factor in one's identity is real.

"you think white people can identify as black" i don't believe this is true and transracialism was never addressed in my initial post. i suppose my argument could be twisted to support this point, but i don't think i'd approve of that.

"you think the stereotypes attached to sex are more important than women's rights" unsure what this meant and where in my initial post you got it from. maybe from the bit about how a constant in women's history is overcoming oppression? and how it would be nice to not get oppressed, which i see as one of the main goals of feminism? i guess that's a stereotype? i think i may be misinterpreting your words. i am genuinely sorry, but i can't argue with something worded in a way i don't understand.

reblogs:

"trans women aren't women because they're male" gender is more complicated than biological sex alone.

"do you think when black people talk about racism, they are defining their blackness by the oppression they experience?" i understand that talking about oppression and marginalization is part of how we deal with it, and that like it or not, these things are a part of our identities. my original post attempts to refute the terf idea that because trans women "don't experience misogyny" (again, they do) they can't be women--because that suggests that misogyny is what makes us women, that it's some sort of defining characteristic of the experience. right now, maybe it is. but we can't speak about it as if it'll be that way forever. (i think that's defeatist of us as activists.)

"do you think it’s 'weird' for a black person to tell a white person that the white person isn’t black and they don’t experience racism?" transfems do experience misogyny and sexist violence in addition to transphobic hate crimes.

"they don't experience misogyny the same way women do" that's true, to a degree. transfems do present male for at least a period, and during this time, they aren't likely to experience misogyny. but that doesn't mean they never experience it or that they don't experience misogyny once they begin to present as female.

"being male is antithetical to being a woman, the experiences are fundamentally different" being treated as male is different from identifying as male. and yes, being treated as male and being treated as female are very different experiences, but pre-transition trans women don't identify based on how other people view them. they identify based on how they view themselves. also, there are many ways to be a woman and many ways to be a man, and i'm not just talking about being cis or trans. i think you may be generalizing too much when you suggest that being male and being female are "antithetical".

bottom line, cis women and trans women have systemic oppressive forces working against us. we need to defeat them together or we might not defeat them at all. and we need to stop pretending that they alone are what make us who we are.

does anyone else think it’s weird how sometimes terfs are like “noooo trans women aren’t women they don’t experience misogyny” because a) they do and b) how can you call yourself a feminist if you define your womanhood based on the oppression you experience. don’t get me wrong: a constant in women’s history is how we face and overcome oppression, but like, i don’t really like being oppressed? and i don’t want to define womanhood as being a victim of misogyny because it’d be pretty nice if we could get rid of misogyny without taking away what makes us women. this may be an unnuanced take, but tl; dr: trans women are women for lots of reasons and here’s another one.

[cosmic-potato-art]

Why wouldn't we ?

Yes I'd date an android, or be friends with one. If we can have close bonds with pets, it mean we can have close bonds with other species, right ? So why not androids, who'd be able to communicate with us way better than our dogs barking at us... X3

The trick is that androids look human, but aren't human. If you can date a droid while remembering that they aren't the same species, yes sure ! If not it could easily become a very toxic relationship.

A lot of serious questions are to be asked (and sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one thinking that much in this fandom (probably not)(but I never see that kinda stuff), but :)

For example, if an android can't harm a human : if one gets into a toxic relationship with a human that hurts them, they couldn't defend themselves ?

(I mean I'm pretty sure you all know how victims in toxic relationships already often *can't* defend themselves, either because they depend on their abuser (financially for example) or because they're guilt trapped in staying with them etc...)(so thinking about being 100% unable to fight back - because of the programming - is SO scary)

Wouldn't a lot of humans be tempted to take advantage of androids ?

Wouldn't androids be statistically in positions of inferiority compared to their human partners ? (Because they would be marginalized in work or public places maybe ?)

What would people say of androids dating androids ? (The "easy choice", 'stay with your own kind'...)

What if someone date an android and have an "android maid" at the same time ? (Seems pretty fucked up to me)

What about android children ? (How can that even EXIST)(Yes I have a huge problem with Alice in DBH like how do you stay all childlike after deviating WTF) What about human children too ? (decreasing child birth ? In every rich country ?)

Would human/androids couples be marginalized ? It's important to remember that in a lot of places it's dangerous/forbidden to be in (and I don't want to exclude enbys and binary trans presenting as the opposite gender as their own, I'm just putting myself in the shoes of *assholes*) a gay relationship, I'm not super optimistic about how *some* people would react if you were to have PDAs with your android partner or s/o...

On the same point : sometimes people are too scared to be in "gay" relationships, or at least they do not have PDAs outside to not get insulted (or attacked)(or killed, you know)... A lot of people actually wouldn't date androids, even if they wanted to because of this, or :

Social pressure. If your family was to be against androids/humans couples (btw I'm sorry I really need to search the polyamory terms because I'm excluding all of you polyamorous and it's not on purpose), would you still date one ?

Some people need the emotional bond they have with their family. Some are bound financially to them.

There also the "f r i e n d s" social pressure. Surrounded by anti-androids friends ? Would you risk being alone at your workplace ? Having no one to go out with ? No one to text at night about your favourite TV show (or if you're sad and insomniac, you know) ?

Idk.

It feels like there should be a serious discussion about this.

And I don't want to think more about this rn 🤔

I'd probably date an android. But I invite you to consider all the aspects of the matter before shouting YES

Or shout YES because you'd date Connor.

YES I WOULD DATE CONNOR WHO WOULDN'T 😭💕

I just still have trouble with :

Doing as if Connor was human.

He's not.

errr yes next question

[batty4starker]

Let's talk about casual feminism and why it's important in a family film like this.

Kids see the things that happen in media and they make assumptions. Boys don't cry, girls wear dresses, women can't fight. This gets reinforced again and again as they're exposed to 'child appropriate' media which often is afraid to 'push the envelope' when it comes to gender norms.

Spies in Disguise may not be a female lead film targeted at little girls, but that's exactly why it's important. This is what teaching your sons about feminism is all about. Why?

Spoilers:

At the very start of the film we see Walter with his mom and we're already told so many things about their family without them being said. His mom is a police officer, she's single, and she is a fantastic mother without the help of a spouse. No child watching this scene is going to come to the assumption that a woman needs a man to raise a child or have a family.

So many movies see the handsome tough guy spy confidently assuming that all interactions with women are flirtatious. He'll wink, call them pet names, shoot them a smile and they'll swoon. In Spies in Disguise, Lance's confidence is not flirtatious and it's directed at everyone in the room who all respond with swooning, delight, and excitement. Gender doesn't play a role in his interactions with people in this context which breaks the trope of confident tough guys being appealing to women.

Then there's Marcy. Her character is written with all of your classic male spy tropes. She's enters the room with authority and makes her demands without backing down. At no point is she belittled or mocked for chasing after Lance because she is a woman. All too often in the situation of male outlaw runs from female law enforcement, we see the male character treat the female with contempt, laugh that she could possibly catch him, and ultimately find her attractive when she succeeds ending on the pair kissing because the film makers seem to believe their male character deserves her love and that he has in some way tamed her fire. It doesn't happen here.

The relationship between Lance and Walter is what shows the most progress to me personally. The way that Lance begins to respect Walter the very first time he's shown that his inventions work rather than falling back on his 'Im better than you because my job is physical' stance is a pleasant surprise. They quickly develop a trusting relationship and learn to understand each other. Lance struggles the most with being understanding but he consistantly humbles himself to show Walter his respect.

When Walter hugs Lance, there's never a joke along the lines of 'I don't do hugs', or suggesting that hugs aren't manly, or that hugging is childish. The joke is Walter's hugs last too long. Not that they're bad or gross or stupid, just too long.

When Lance does pull the expected 'I work alone' move we can see the emotion in his eyes and hear it in his voice. He doesn't want to push Walter away, but he's obviously scared. When he thinks Walter is killed we see him cry. The cocky, tough guy, spy cries. And that's after he fights and pleads for Walters life and we see him being scared. When the boys are reunited there are no jokes about Lance being scared or crying. There's only 'I thought I lost you' followed by relief and friendship.

How about the whole Lance has a 'girl pigeon' body? No mocking, no anti-female jokes. The revelation happens that Lance can lay eggs and no one laughs. Its more like 'wow, didn't see that coming' and other than that, it changes nothing. It's not a joke and it doesn't change their relationship dynamic. It doesn't even factor into Lance's decision later to become a pigeon again to save Walter's life. They might have used more trans friendly speech in terms of saying that Lance 'is a girl', but hopefully this is something we can see in future family features.

Then there's Walter's character all together. Walter is a pacifist who believes that the world can be saved with hugs and glitter. While everyone mocks him for this, no one so much as implies that his gender is a factor. It's more so that they're a spy organization and they kill people and bad people deserve to die. I fully expected the film to end with Lance and Walter both having changed each other, but that's not what happens either. Lance does become convinced that he can do his job and protect people without killing, but Walter's stance never changes. When the moment comes that he can make the choice to kill a man who attempted to kill a hundred others, Walter sticks to his morals and sacrifices himself to save the villain. No one questions this, he's seen as a hero. In the end, we see everyone adopting the idea that hugs and glitter can save lives and no one seems to think that this is 'soft' or lacks masculinity.

Honestly, I probably missed some things because I've only seen the film once, but for a movie targeted at kids and families it does a great job of telling a compelling and fun story without bullying male or female characters for breaking gender norms.

Why is no one talking about what a feminist gem Spies in Disguise is

[rrrawrf]

hey, anon! i'm also an ace member, and to second David, these feelings are normal to me, too.

I want kids, but I don't want to be married, and neither do I want to, ah, go through all the steps required for me to have my own biological children. but I do want to adopt, even if that means I do so as a single parent, and I think it would be really cool, albeit, at present, highly unlikely, that I could be sealed to my adopted children as a single parent in the temple.

there's a wide range to asexual people - some do want to be married, regardless, some are sex-repulsed, some are not. I sometimes think that being married wouldn't be too bad as long as it was a sexless marriage, but the likelihood of that is very slim.

I haven't dated, or even wanted to date, for several years now. I'm far from being stable enough to adopt children, but I know there's always time. and I think that that's important to know - there is always time. things change. circumstances change. I hate being told "you just have to find the right person," but that is always a possibility, for some people. however, don't let that hold you back from enjoying your life as an ace and NORMAL member of the church. and please know that you are good enough, you have always been good enough, and you will continue to be good enough.

not a lot of people, queer members included, talk about asexual members. we tend to be thought of as straight-passing, and it can be easier for heterosexual members to slot us neatly into an acceptable box. after all, we're just really good at following the law of chastity, you know? (that's lightly sarcastic) and so the thought that we have our own concerns and wonder about where we fit in often gets, well, overlooked, usually by people who simply don't know asexuality exists, or don't think it warrants the same kind of attention that other kinds of orientations do. I'm not here trying to cast aspersions on other people, or play oppression olympics, I'm just stating what I've come to realize and learn as an ace member.

all of this can contribute to the feelings you describe - that you feel inadequate because everyone else is moving along the plan, and maybe, if you're like me, you feel stuck. some of these feelings subside with time. I'm almost 28, and I've identified as ace since 2012, or thereabouts, and by now, I've come to terms with it. but there are still often times when I also feel like I'm not good enough, or don't belong, for all kinds of reasons. everyone has those feelings at some point, and sometimes often, regardless of whether they're ace or straight or trans or gay or literally anything else.

I've kind of rambled and I'm not sure if any of this is at all helpful, but the point I want to make most is that you aren't alone, and you are beyond adequate and beyond good enough - you're blessed and beloved and you bring so much to the people around you. be patient and learn to love yourself, all aspects of yourself. it's hard and difficult and it will take a long time and sometimes it seems like these feelings will never go away, but there will come a time when they will. I haven't reached that point myself, yet, but I know that one day we'll get there.

I know I don't have anon enabled on this blog of mine, but if you would like, feel free to reach out, through asks or DMs, or if you want to remain anon, you can go to my other blog @rrrawrf-writes. I can't promise I'll be either helpful or timely, but I'm more than willing to talk with you or even just let you vent or talk at me until you feel better. 💜💜💜

So I’m an ace member of the Church and I want to be sealed in the temple and have a family but I don’t actually want to get married. I know that’s weird, but that’s just how I’ve felt lately as I’m getting to the age where a lot of my friends are getting married. I also have this feeling lately of inadequacy, like even if I did want to date and get married I’m not good enough—not just due to being ace, for other reasons too. I guess I’m wondering, are those normal feelings?

The feelings you just described are perfectly natural. 

You’re ace so a marriage, which of course includes sex, isn’t appealing to you. 

You’re also a member of the Church and have been taught to look towards being sealed in the temple so your family can be eternal, it’s the pinnacle goal of our religion. It’s natural to want the prize that’s been held in front of you since you were a child. 

There’s an inherent conflict between these two. Emotions is one way our bodies reacts to things we’re thinking about or to things going on in our lives. Feeling inadequate makes sense because there’s not really a way to resolve this conflict. And you’re at an age where lots of people are dating, wanting to marry and so on, so to not be pursuing the same activities as them can make a person feel a bit abnormal. 

I don’t know that my words will assure you, but you are normal & these feelings are normal. Even the people who seem to be popular and successful have times they feel like they’re not good enough. 

It’s okay to have these feelings and understand why you’re having them. They can be the impetus to thinking about what a “successful” life looks like to you. Not what the church or society says is successful, but deep down, what are things you want to accomplish in life? What do you feel drawn to? It’s something my therapist encouraged me to do and I still work on that, what do I want my life to become?

From your ask, I sense that you’re intelligent, sensitive, and a decent, good person. Those sound like winning qualities to me that people would want in their friends, spouse, and parent. Even if you aren’t dating, it doesn’t mean you don’t measure up. 

I’m wishing you all the best!