#cw terf mention

[unhinged-transmasc-man]

(This is a very long post, but worth reading)

Being a trans man is bizarre. Because you grow up being treated as a girl and sexualized as one, mocked and diminished and dismissed as one. “Oh you’re just a whiny little hysterical girl, shut up.” You’re constantly gaslit about your interests and experiences and trauma. You know what it looks like when someone sees you as small and insignificant, unworthy of listening to. You have femininity forced onto you and get punished if you disobey. If you’re Asian, you’re even more sexualized and infantilized due to fetishization. And if you’re black or brown, society never considered you innocent to begin with. You’ve been an adult from the moment you were born. Being socialized as having a white girlhood is a very particular experience. But if you’re on the internet and in queer spaces you learn that femininity is always really good, actually, that it never punishes anyone, and that you can be anyone except a man. You can be a lesbian, you can be non-binary, you can be butch, you can be transmasc, as long as you don’t Step Over The Line to being a man. As long as you Stay Good. These ideas slowly creep into your head and stay there, sometimes being what keeps you from realizing you’re a man.

And then you realize you’re a man. And you still have all those experiences, you’ve still been hurt by misogyny in the same way, you’ve still had violence enacted upon you. But now it’s somehow worse, because the same people who supported you when you were butch, or a lesbian, or transmasc but not a man, suddenly they’re gone. You can see the distaste they have for you. Suddenly those “jokes” about men you and others made out of pressure and internalized self-hate affect you, and it hurts. So you speak up, say that actually, you’re a man and you’re not bad. And they laugh at you. They say that either “oh we didn’t mean YOU,” or “if you’re a man, then you’re included.” And what are you supposed to say to that? Either all men are evil but you’re not evil so you can’t be one, or you become a victim of a kind of violence resulting from 2010s Buzzfeed “progressive��� gender essentialist bullshit “feminism”, where you have to tolerate demonization of your identity as a man to be acknowledged as a man. Sometimes you’ll take it, because you want to be seen as a man so bad that even being complicit in your own dehumanization is better than being forced into womanhood. (I’m also talking about you, pick-me trans guys. If you grew out of it, good in you, but this may be a wake up call you need.)

So you go on the internet for a supportive trans community and you find that things have shifted since you thought you were still an identity of Not A Man. You still have the same experiences, but now you can’t complain about them. People call you “a whiny hysterical little girl,” but in different words. Now you’re “an aggressive toxic man.” Keep in mind, you’re still regularly misgendered and treated as a girl offline, but that doesn’t matter to these people. You’ve crossed that line, and now you’re Bad, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t talk about experiences, you can’t talk about prejudice, you can’t talk about issues that uniquely affect trans men. You can’t talk about how cis women throwing a tantrum at inclusive reproductive language is at words meant to include trans men, not trans women. You can’t talk about how afab socialization still effects you, that it keeps you from speaking out at this very moment. You can’t talk about the rate of violence, or of murder, or of sexual assault. Suddenly the people who know full well how inherently violent it is to misgender trans women in death are saying “but terfs like trans men, they just want to save you, you don’t die like we do,” and you don’t know what to say. Because it’s so untrue.

You know exactly how terfs attack trans men, all the fear-mongering about “poor autistic lost lesbians,” and “amputating healthy breasts and fertility,” and “internalized misogyny, they did this to escape the patriarchy.” You know the fear-mongering about it and where it comes from, because you’ve seen it from the day you were born. It’s the language of putting men who they see as deviant women back in their place. And yet no one besides you and other trans men seem to see it. When JK Rowling comes out with her transphobic manifesto, she talks just as much about trans men as she does trans women. And yet the only response you see to her is “trans women are women!!!!”. And generally, that’s the only response you ever see to any type of transphobia. That trans women are women. This gets so ingrained that anyone other than you is completely unprepared for how to defend trans men against transphobia, because they think transphobia only affects trans women and don’t understand the unique language. It also doesn’t help that most of them already believe the same things (mainly, that being a man is Bad and Not Progressive) and they can’t argue against what they believe.

And so here you are, still experiencing misogyny and violence, still being misgendered and threatened, uniquely in danger for being visibly trans, but you can’t talk about it now. Because you use he/him now, and that makes you evil. Other trans people, who are supposed to be your family, think you’re evil. They project their hatred of cis men and masculinity onto you, and you’re bewildered. You realize they can accept you for being trans, but they can’t accept you for being a man.

They’ll try and get you to separate those parts, say nonsense like “all transphobia is only based on trans women,” when you know for a fact it affects people in different ways. If you say telling all men to die is problematic, they’ll call you transmisogynistic and sexist as though you don’t know misogyny like the back of your hand. You try telling people who have been dehumanized for being trans that you don’t want to be dehumanized for what makes you trans, and get demonized even further. You get the worst combination of all. You get diminished and mocked and condescended and dismissed, “Oh you’re just a whiny little hysterical girl, shut up,” turns into “Oh you’re just a whiny little hysterical man. Stop speaking over women.” You’re still constantly gaslit about your interests and experiences and trauma, because liking masculinity is seen as bad now that you’ve realized you’re a man. You know what it looks like when someone sees you as small and insignificant, unworthy of listening to (especially as growing up as a Jewish girl, and now a Jewish man). They see you as not only small and insignificant, unworthy of listening to, but they justify it with your identity. Before, it was that “women” weren’t worthy of being listened to because they were stupid and insignificant, and now it’s that you’re a man, and men shouldn’t talk about their experiences fear because they’re Evil. You had femininity forced onto you and got punished if you disobeyed, and now you get that again! But now you’re a “toxic man” if you hate being misgendered. You get the misogyny of being treated like a woman and the demonization of being a man, and you can’t talk about either. “You can’t complain now,” they say, “you asked for this. You chose this.”

They use the same language of those “he’s only pulling your hair because he likes you” teachers (“terfs want to forcibly detransition you bc they care about you”) or “you were asking for it” adults after being catcalled for the first time at age 12 (“you chose to be a man”) or the same fucking language as terfs, who they claim to hate. They use this same language, except now it’s a chance for them to project their trauma with masculinity onto you. You learn a lot of people only hate terfs because they don’t include trans women, not because they’re fascists who believe in innate gender essentialism and that your genitals determine everything about you. You learn a lot of trans people are terfs. In everything but name, they are. They believe in gender essentialism, in radical feminism, that all men are evil, just including trans women. In their view, they slot trans women into the status of white womanhood as eternal victims, and trans men into the status of white manhood as eternal oppressors. Except that doesn’t work.

(Not to mention that non-binary people can also be men or/and women, and are entirely left out in all of this except to fit into this oppression point calculator developed in a previous un-invented circle of discourse hell)

You find a small circle of trans men and mascs talking about the same stuff you’re talking about. You realize that realizing you’re a trans man means you have to become an activist for trans men. Every word you think of to describe your own experiences is, again, mocked and dismissed. You’re gaslit even more heavily than you were before, by the same people who claim you have power over them. People who have never talked to a trans man in good faith spread misinformation, that testosterone is easy to get (it’s actually harder to get than estrogen because it’s a level three substance that results in a felony if taken without a prescription), that it’s poison (and maybe it was for them, but they say it as a universal statement), that all trans men worry about is misgendering, ignoring the very real violence against us specifically for being TRANS MEN. And you die a little inside and grow very disillusioned and alienated from other trans people. You notice that traits of a testosterone-induced puberty are demonized even when that hurts trans women, and you notice any trans women who try to speak up are silenced, just as you are. And it hurts. Where is the community in this?

But still, you have your own community, slowly raising awareness for these things. You dust off your skills you got from validating yourself from harm from your abusive mother, and put on that same shield you used against abusive cis boys in high school who made period jokes and said cis lesbians just wanted to be men. You use the language to describe your own oppression that you know to be true. You use “transandrophobia” and “anti masculinity” without apology. You’re not going to apologize, flutter your lashes and give a nervous laugh the way you did for cis men when you were in danger, to other trans people about transphobia. Not anymore, not now, and not ever again. You work through your own self-hatred of masculinity that the queer “community” fully endorses and practices daily, and realize that being a man is good, actually. You start defining your own ideal of masculinity, and start being your own role model of what you want to be as a man.

You’re on testosterone and see it demonized daily by other trans people, and see that what gives you happiness is mocked as what makes you unlovable and disgusting. It hurts, but you learn to brush them aside. Solidarity is important, you’ve always known this. Sometimes you can get through to people, who will realize they’re hurting you and stop. But some people won’t, and will victimize themselves eternally. That’s not your fault, and the emotional labor you carried over from being raised as a girl means you especially need to hear this. That’s not your job. Not because women should have that job, but because no one should have to do more work than is equal. You are trans because you are a man, and so your manhood cannot be separated from your transness. Other people practicing transphobia against you is their fault, not yours.

You start to learn that damn, the patriarchy really does effect men from how other queer people treat you. Because people, especially women (both cis and trans) start treating you like a non-human robot, an emotional punching bag. That’s if they don’t demonize you entirely. But still, you have your community, you’re transitioning, and you’re happy. You start growing into your manhood and masculinity, really growing into it. And there are times when you’re really, really happy. You decide to make your own representation. Don’t let anyone take that away from you, fellow trans men. You are handsome, you are strong, you are resilient. Your are courageous and lovely and kind. You are worthy of love not despite being a man, but because you are a man. It’s been hard, it’ll be hard. But it’s worth it to be a man.

(This ended up being a long post, a combination of what started out as a rant and turned into more of a personal journey narrative. I want to make people feel heard. You are valid. It’s not just in your head, they are gaslighting you. You aren’t sensitive, you aren’t dramatic, you aren’t toxic, and you aren’t whiny. You’re a trans man who wants to be known as a man without being demonized for it. Never be afraid to speak up against transphobia, especially when it’s from other trans people. They should know better, it is not your fault. I love you. I’ve also learned more about multigender people and intersex people, but I can’t speak to their experience at all and so didn’t want to misrepresent. But I can only imagine it’s even more complicated and hard for you, so you get even more love and support <333)

(If you’re not a trans man or transmasc reading this, and you support it, thank you. This was specifically about trans men because it’s the man part people really demonize, and transmasc as an identity is still seen as “safe” because it’s “not a man”. For supportive trans women and transfems, I love you. Keep speaking up for us. But for anyone who comes at this in bad faith, re-evaluate why you feel attacked. Are you perpetuating harm against trans men? Are you continuing gender essentialism but justify it because you have a marginalized identity? Are you projecting your trauma against cis men, men in general, and masculinity against people who can’t fight back? Reflect and grow the fuck up. Are you a trans man who’s bought into dehumanizing yourself so you can be seen as “one of the good ones”? Are you a white trans woman weaponizing your newfound sense of white womanhood onto trans men, especially non-white trans men? Reflect on how demonizing men and masculinity as inherently predatory and dangerous effects jewish men, black men, brown men, disabled men, and Asian men. And maybe just white cishet men as well!!! They’re also people!!!! Being a man isn’t inherently a bad thing. You should be mad at systems, not people, and individuals when they perpetuate harm. Being marginalized in one area doesn’t mean you can claim to be the voice of the community while hurting members of the community you supposedly consider yourself apart of.)

[imrisah]

Saw some of my old ha*ry p**ter art making the rounds again and I just feel it's important to clear the air:

I do not support that TERF, I do not make or consume any type of hp content anymore and haven't for years and in fact I will go delete those old posts now.

Have a brilliant and TERF free day ✨

[soundwavefucker69]

being in different discords has made me realize how VIOLENTLY i have curated my own online space. what do you mean there's terfs on tumblr. where are they. what are they saying. oh, okay, they're saying it's racist to use they/them pronouns. that's new. how are you guys finding this?

anyways, i'm not changing my dash.

[flock-of-cassowaries]

Just stumbled on a post by a sex worker who is casting a wide and confounding net with this unholy collection of tags.

Girl, what?

[almost-correct-quotes]

when im feeling vitriolic i go through terf blogs and mark everyone with "gender critical"/"radical feminist"/"man-hating" in their bio or tags as anti-trans on shinigami eyes

youre welcome <3

[icannotgetoverbirds]

ugh i just went through a terf's blog to block all their buddies and fellow radfems and it felt like i was wading through toxic sludge.

[cjcroen1393]

Today is a wonderful day to remember that Celty Sturluson is NOT and NEVER WILL BE a TERF.

Celty would be a friend and ally to the trans community, and the LGBTQ+ community on the whole. She knows how it feels to be mistreated and hated just for being different. She understands.

[levil0vesyou]

Literally what are you still doing here!!! What do you want!!! Just unfollow me!!! What, you didn't notice you're the one mutual I deliberately didn't refollow with the new main??

What do I have to do to get your terf ass to finally fuck off

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

Allen Exclusionary Radical Kenninism

[enbycrip]

The genocide in Palestine has really been bringing home to me how deeply certain groups have learned to use the language of social justice as a weapon to muddy the waters while they are enacting horrendous violence.

In a way that “gender criticals” appropriating feminism hadn’t, actually, because a lot of transphobic violence, like misogynist violence, is more hidden and more complex. I could see how a pretty privileged cis person might not see it, or think it was “complicated”. (None of which means it’s excusable, btw. It’s just less fucking obvious than an entire country being carpet bombed).

But the fact that the UK and the US are openly funding Israel to mass murder children, civilians, journalists in Palestine and using protections against *hate speech* to shut down criticisms of it is fucking killing bits of my soul.

*While* doing fuckall to protect ordinary Jewish people from rising antisemitic violence from white supremacists. Who are bombing and shooting up synagogues as well as mosques and indigenous American water protectors in the US and beating up Jewish and Muslim folk in the UK.

[companionplanting]

We've been debating on how to properly tackle this kind of subject without coming off as ignorant, contradictory, or belittling to others. So if our words come off in that way, please reach out to us and let us know.

With the rampant scene of various mental illnesses being painted as malicious (ASPD, NPD, Schizophrenia, etc.), TERF/SWERF ideology being mainstream as well as on the other side of that same coin of "Alpha" males, it has clearly been shown to us what we had speculated for a while.

People don't want to confront their pain, and blame their trauma on anything but the truth.

I'm gonna go more in depth with this so hear me out.

We had (and still have) gone through a multitude of confronting our trauma, processing it, then eventually having to accept it and move on. It's challenging to say the least. But it's necessary. We have a lot of trauma, so we have had to do this song and dance multiple of times. None of us can say it gets any easier each time, but it has always lead us to getting better.

Each time we are confronted with the same question,

"Why did this happen to me?"

Of course sometimes it goes deeper with other questions, but we always circle back to that same one. A lot of people have asked that, honestly it's not new. We also acknowledge the outside factors that lead to moments of abuse or trauma like systematic oppression of various groups, indoctrination of ideologies, generational trauma, as well as lack of different kinds of support and community. Of course those are explanations, not excuses.

So we then go back to that question after learning what we know about the world and it's harmful systems. "Why me?". What we ultimately came up with was

"It just happened because."

It's anticlimactic and frustrating, we acknowledge that, but true. You can point to all the outside influences, you can dissect people's personhood down to their very core, you can label them with whatever would fit best but none of that is going to answer why it happened to you.

And it won't. But that's okay. There wasn't a grand scheme, it's no one culprit, it's not a big master plan, it's simply just happenstance. You were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and it's awful, but it had nothing to do with you specifically.

It's easy for us to create a big boogyman to blame our problems. It makes it simpler, easier to digest.

For one example this comes in the form of vilifying people with mental disorders. Maybe it's to excuse their parent's or partner's selfish actions, sudden and aggressive bouts of unexplained violence, or simply neglect in every field.

For TERFs and SWERFs, it's anyone one that doesn't prescribe to their definition of 'womanhood'. Maybe it's to excuse the way past partners would twist and violate their romantic and sensual attractions. Maybe they feel hurt and scared in a patriarchal society, constantly watching and judging. Perhaps even just feeling scared and lost in a world they have very, very little control over.

For 'Alpha' males and their ilk it's to men not prescribing to their definition of 'traditional values'. Maybe it's an excuse to direct sadness and anger that has built up for so long towards society's lessers. Maybe it's an excuse to feel powerful and important in a sea of random unimportance.

I cannot say for sure what these people have been through or desire. Even still it's simply, again, explanations and not actual reasons. But it all goes back to pointing the blame at something, anything to make the world less scary.

The truth, the much more scary truth, is that there is no reason. The world is random, and that includes pain. Those people didn't hurt you because of their mental disorders, their gender, their occupation, none of what that person was.

It happened because.

Of course more awful things happen to various minority groups (LGBTQIA+, disabled people, POC, etc.). Even still, that is again an explanation not a reason.

But there is no one singular monolith you can tear down to make the world freer and happier.

It's just the many complicated and absolutely random layers of the universe.

That's okay, and you will be okay. It makes the world more unpredictable, but you'll find your footing. We're sure of it.

-🖋️, 🌲 & 🍂

[underestimated-heroine]

The people straight-up not getting this in the notes like "they're asking her about music??? When she works in music?? I'm missing something here" jfc I try not to get frustrated here but sometimes, you guys...

anyways this happens to virtually every woman in every industry. If you're a woman working in tech, you have to prove yourself in ways your male counterparts don't during the interview process and throughout your career. You're "tested" through questions which require a thorough and elaborate understanding of how different things work in your field ostensibly so tech bros can "make sure you actually know your stuff"...except they don't do the same thing with men. Trans women are constantly reporting how shocked they are by the differences in how they were treated in tech before and after they transitioned.

If you're a female doctor, your research and perspectives will be belittled no matter what you do. There are constant reports of their male peers condescendingly telling them to read papers/research without even realizing they're talking to the author of the research they're recommending.

And, as we see here, if you're a woman working in music, dudes ask what you're listening to so they can belittle that, too. Sorry, but misogyny--both internalized and overt (re: the many women who can attest that people refuse to refer to them properly if they choose not to take their husband's names) is alive and well, and that's why a lot of you people's whole thing where you assume anyone talking about misogyny is a sign someones a T*RF is bad, actually. Because now we're apparently becoming ignorant to its existence or treating it like a T*RF myth. Also handing T*RFs ownership of the conversation.

[moongothic]

You know it's funny when radfems bring up shit like "99% of violent crimes are committed by men!!" to prove their bs beliefs that men are biologically engineered to be violent sex pests or some shit, and like. Even if we put aside things like how often do women's violent crimes go unreported etc, "99% violent crimes being committed by men" ≠ "99% of men are violent criminals", right. Like the gender of the people committing a certain type of crime does not make all people of said gender criminals, right

Like otherwise we'd be calling all mothers violent criminals too because mothers are more likely to abuse and murder their children than fathers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But if I said that people would be calling me out for fearmongering and misusing statistics to make generalizations etc etc

[eucalyptus-gl0bulus]

how do you fail transphobia so bad that the transphobes are calling you out on it

[lastoneout]

That's true, but just so we're clear, there is a massive difference between effectively removing a person from a space bcs they have broken the contract of tolerance and spending a significant portion of your time sending useless harassment to nazis and terfs.

I'm not saying we have to tolerate people who hate us, I'm saying that sending them hateful messages and rebloging their posts telling them to kill themselves is not deplatforming. It's the opposite of deplatforming, actually, and all it does it waste time and trigger vulnerable people who need our support and protection.

Also, recognizing the fact that evil people are human beings does not mean you are tolerating them. We need to talk about why people go down these paths and do bad things and critique how shitty our current criminal justice system is and how all people, even horrible ones, deserve basic human rights and we can absolutely do so without allowing bigots to run rampant in our spaces.

I'm saying this as a leftist to my own community bcs I want us to be better. And idk if you're the type of person who has been so hurt by bigots that you just want to lash out and hurt them back and you don't care who gets caught in the crossfire then uh, you're an asshole but I can't stop you. But if you are a leftist or progressive or whatever and you want to actually be a good activist who helps make meaningful change then you are going to have to wrap your head around the idea that there are some actions that are unhelpful or harmful to your cause, and it doesn't matter how good or righteous they makes you feel, you have to stop and do something else.

Actual deplatforming is good. Sending every terf you can find on tumblr messages telling them to kill themselves is not. (And also, it's going to get YOU blocked, reported, and banned.) I guess this is a harsh reality for some people, but I believe it's a good idea for us to try to minimize the harm we are doing to vulnerable people and put our time and energy into actions that actually help. And if you can't suck it up and stop being an unhelpful asshole for the greater good then I have no choice but to assume social justice is just a shield you're using to get away with being a bully rather than something you actually give a shit about doing right.

We don't have to tolerate people who would not tolerate us in turn. But we need to make sure our actions aren't doing more harm than good. We need to be better. And also care about people struggling with suicide. That's all I'm saying.

Seein' too many Twitter refugees asking if they'll get in trouble for saying "kill yourself" to people and while no, you're not gonna get nuked from orbit, that is maybe something you just shouldn't be doing in general perhaps?? Maybe telling people to kill themselves is bad actually?? Some of y'all are wild, why is the first thing you can think to ask on a new platform if you can send one of the worst kinds of harassment to people?? Grow tf up and learn how to use the block button. It'll do wonders for your mood, trust me.

[levil0vesyou]

Terfs being indignant about being harassed when they're mistaken for trans women is fucking ridiculous. Let me spell it out for y'all. If you base the foundation of your movement on hating women, even if you specify trans women, surprise! You're gonna be in a movement that harms women. And if you're a woman, that means you're gonna be at risk of being harmed! The solution is to stop supporting a movement designed to harm women.