#did you know that some TERFs think that gender is not only a social construct but a capitalist concept

[blurrymango]

"Capitalism is the root of all evil" motherffuckers when I put them into this fun machine.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Terf: Define a woman.

Yeah, writer, NB here, and generally, I LOVE etymology and being both Korean and Jewish, both cultures have a thing for debating in different tactics. Jews, in particular, have a thing for arguing about words. (well, some of us–it mostly has to do with Torah reading, and meaning, but getting into that is a whole chore.).

How to answer this with queer joy:

Terf: I think words have meaning. Define a woman.

Sure. Woman is a wife man. See, the Etymology is from old English.

So, if you think about it, it's defining this person by their role, in what? Society. WIFE is not a natural construct. It's a social construction and does not refer to genitalia at all. Which means the root of the word is also a social construction.

Terf: I meant female.

Me: Oh... well then, the etymology of female is...

One who can suckle.

Male and female do not have the same etymological root, BTW. And despite what linguists argued on this one long twitter rant, yes, it is quite sexist to define someone by their breasts?

But even so, men do have the organs to *also* suckle babies.

There are historical cases of this in this article.

So technically, men can be female by the original meaning. Because the root of the word feminine and female are the same: dhe(i), to suck.

The attributes of a man in which it's described by his presentation, is attested only to the 1500's, which is long after the fall of the roman empire. The original usage was to gender nouns, which has fallen in English steadily since long before Chaucer.

Emasculate is attributed to the 1600's.

Thus, women can be men. And men can be women. It's very liquid by the original definition and actual biology. And as long as a person can suckle, they can be female.

BTW, Chinese, 女 is a person 人 who sits. Meaning she's in the house all day.

This also is a SOCIAL construct of the word. Do you find houses in NATURE?

(If they haven't fallen asleep by this time. Haha. As an Asian accused of not knowing English well, or whatever racists like to get up to, I LOVE doing this type of thing to them.)

And in fact the start of defining male v. female and woman and man as gender roles coincides with the rise of the patriarchy, and if you notice the dates, English colonialism, as they started to encounter cultures that did presentations of gender different from them. This might not have been the sole two motivating factors, but shouldn't you, "defending women's rights" think seriously on that fact? In order to suppress women, they needed to shift the meaning of those words.

Terf: But I mean people shouldn't use they.

Me:

Etymology:

See, because the original word was hie, which only referred to plural of he, not she. So they switched to a gender neutral word, thai. (Which BTW, is hilarious to me, since Thailand it's the only place to not have their plural gender system ravaged by colonialism. Yes, the sound of the words is different, but if the person is going that far into semantics, they can eat the shift of the masculine and feminine gender root to neuter too.) Anyway, the original is from Indo-European, likely meaning "this" "That" making it not gendered, but was gendered to only mean men along the way, but then was degendered

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/s%C3%B3

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/sa

Singular usage is attested back to William Shakespeare according to Webster's dictionary, singular they was in usage in early Modern English.

William Shakespeare, who, BTW, had men dress up as women which is still a strong part of pantomime today.

Also, for those who look at the Bible: James, the King that enforced this rule for the stage: No women on stage, is said to have been interested romantically and sexually in men and women. Yes, the one that translated the Bible to English, the King James Bible, was attracted to men and women and had sex with both.

This is LONG before Shakespeare.

This means early court cases could recognize gender nonconforming people, thus Shakespeare, who was in the company of queers, and crossdressers was likely to have.

There is even debate about Shakespeare's sexuality as an icon who was attracted to men and women. Plus he wrote about cross dressing in his plays. As You Like it.

So yes, Queer people always existed and it was actually legally recognize way back when in the English language.

If they haven't blocked you by this time... they are likely going to go into how people shouldn't enhance biological sex and change it, and then oh, you have science on your side.

You can go into the history of how testosterone was made and how men used it to enhance their feelings of gender.

You can go into how estrogen was used and applied. And ask them if they think that estrogen is evil when it is in biological males. And if they hate the idea of birth control, "the pill" for women.

You can go over brain science in humans and how a super male is actually gay. Haha. Make their heads explode.

And by this time while you're having queer joy, they are angry and blocking you, but you've won because you have redefine a bit of semantics and science with evidence.

tldr;

Female, one who can suckle, but males can suckle too. Woman, Wife man. Singular They: first attested to Shakespeare, and the birth of Modern English. Shakespeare and King James VI who were also bi. Male and masculine in terms of presentation, rise of the patriarchy and colonization. Gay person? A super masculine man, according to nature. GNC was legally recognized by English law in 1395.

And the terf is going to have to cry and take it.

[miss-gms-and-the-rotten-womb]

Ok I am done with transphobia disguised as feminism here!

First of all: if a woman decided to present as man and alter her body into a masculine form, it is their right for their body belongs only to them! Even if there was no gender dysphoria involved, if a person decides to customize their appearance or chance the way they present to the world, WHO AM I TO QUESTION OR DENY IT??? Like, I want legal abortions, I want freedom to choose if I wanna alter my body or not thru surgery, I want freedom to present myself regardless of biological sex, WHY IN THE FUCK DO I HAVE TO FOLLOW GENDER NORMS BASED ON MY TYPE OF GENITALS? WHAT IF I CHOSE TO CHANGE THEM THRU SURGERY???

I am NOT a genitalia ok? I am biologically female, I identify as the woman gender role, but gender is a fucking social construct built around the biological sex and I am FREE to decide if I will follow it or not and I am FREE to surgically turn the vagina I have into a penis and balls even if I cant produce sperm ok?! I cannot change the genotype but whatever, I can still customize my fenotype to a more pleasant appearance for myself! Stop talking as if I can only be mental for wanting a lil change when you bitches never raise your voices to defend genital mutilation victims across the globe!

Second of all you hoes: GENDER DYSPHORIA CANNOT BE HEALED THRU THERAPY ALONE YOU ABLEISTS! Some things need more invasive treatments like hormone therapy and surgery and THAT IS FINE! If a person with gender dysphoria NEEDS more than therapy, like present as their gender identity or do hormone pills and surgery, then SHUT UP YO ASS AND LET THEM HAVE ACCESS TO IT! ARE YOU GONNA DENY MENTAL HEALTH PATIENTS THEIR MEDICINES TOO?! WTF KAREN?!

For real! If you are not a medic who can offer an insightful second opinion to help, then shut it! Do not EVER get in the way of the medical care of a person when you do not even understand their condition! That is as bullshit as when men hide women's meds because they think their depression and anxiety is just "womanly hysterics"!

Third and final call out: any hoe on this universe that thinks blaming a community of minority groups who are denied medical care and support for the crimes that sexists and patriarchal people ESPECIALLY WHITE MEN commit, are NOT feminists ok?! The ones who rape me inside and outside the bathrooms are men, the ones who outshine me disrespectfully in sports and humiliate me when I seek a man-oriented career pathway are men, the ones who harm kids and impose gender norms and even plastic surgery on them and on their wives, like demanding the husband's stitch and boob jobs, is men, I ALWAYS got persecuted by men around me, while the trans community were the ones who empowered and protected me! Trans women taught me to love and embrace femininity instead of seeing it as inferior like sexism wanted me to, trans men taught me online about proper gyn healthcare, trans nonbinaries taught me I am more than a baby machine! What did you terf ass hoes do? Oh yeah! You ableists said that trans men are just autistic girls who are confused and lost huh? Nice to know my autism is not respected around you bitches! Lemme guess, do you also defend rapists against the evil rape victims who wanna send them to jail for a lil oopsie??? For real go take a hike! You won't defend me if a rapist tries attacking me and I know it! Meanwhile the transwomen are the ones chasing off creeps from around LGBT spaces and protecting lesbians and bisexual girls as well as the ladies in general and the others!

Ok, done with the rant, now if you are a terf please go take a seat because for real, you are repeating patriarchal and sexist bullshit but targeting trans people with it, under the guise of defending women, when yall gotta give this scolding to the creepy men in your houses instead! Only come here saying nonsense about trans people AFTER you put your husband in jail for all the times he tried groping teens on the street in front of you or shared child porn of trafficked pre-teens on his phone with his coworkers ok?! Thank you!

[generalchelseamayhem]

@cromulentenough @vacuouslyfalse

You don't have to read past this paragraph if you don't want, it's just more of me thinking out loud and unguardedly about gender, but I just wanted to thank you two for being very civil and understanding in our disagreement. Either way I feel like I'm learning a lot.

HOWEVER, it all still doesn't sit right with me and I think I need to combine your posts/points to figure out why.

I suppose one of the reasons I think of gender as Not A Social Construct - why I specifically deny the interpersonal definition of gender put forward by VF here - is that I simply don't believe I would not be a man if I did not have people around me to perceive me as such, and the thought of it makes me uncomfortable in ways I can't quite articulate. It also, and this is important, makes me uncomfortable that other people might think that I wasn't a man in such a situation, or indeed any situation. I'll come back to that point.

CE, I think the article you sent me is undoubtedly a great one. It is well argued, it is clear in its points despite mixing analogies, and I am compelled to accept that it has a good point, that the borders, both figurative and literal, between definitions of things ARE pretty weird! I don't know if it was necessarily supposed to counter my argument in some way, or whether you're cautioning me to live with the consequences and implications of my definitions. Off VF's point, I very emphatically prefer to keep my conceptions of "gender" and "gender roles" separate. I would think the cis butch lesbians are women and the GNC cis men are men, because I might define gender roles by how stereotypically feminine or masculine one acts in everyday life, but not gender itself. People in the latter two categories you mentioned, I would be more likely to consider agender, since by (my) definition, their self-perception doesn't line up with the way their sexual phenotype has shaken out, nor particularly with any other typical sexual phenotype you are likely to find without being born intersex. That seems pretty self-consistent to me, and I have yet to think of an example where it would break down.

And yet. And yet. It's not enough for me. "If your definition works for you, use it" is a great sentiment, but I find it terribly unsatisfying. I would drop my current definition in a heartbeat if tomorrow I was told a more correct, true, and self-consistent definition of gender that worked for even more people. I like being right, but I like being wrong and finding out the truth even more.

It bothers me that my largely incorrect, overly simplistic, woefully incomplete definition of gender could be considered a valuable enough framework to be used even if that use is limited to myself. A lot of people have definitions of gender that are largely incorrect, overly simplistic, and woefully incomplete! TERFs are a great example. Find me a single TERF whose conception of gender extends beyond women having a vagina, making the babies and having two X chromosomes, while men do the violence, have a Y chromosome and generally exist as all that's wrong with the world. And of course that doesn't work as a framework of gender for most of the world. It works for them though, and clearly they're more than willing to deal with the consequences and implications of it. In SlateStarCodex terms, they are the King Solomons saying "well my purview is protecting all people with XX chromosomes and appropriate sexual characteristics ("women") from every other being on the planet ("m*n"). But I don't think the definition suiting their purposes is a good enough excuse for them to use it! Obviously it is right for trans people to be bothered by this, just as I am bothered that some people might think under certain circumstances that I am not a man!

Maybe I could be okay with having a hierarchy of gender definition Good-ness of Fit. But leaving it up to individuals to determine what gender means to them is not only, obviously, nightmarishly difficult to legislate, but it also is as much to imply that my definition of gender is no better than that of a TERF. I obviously don't want that to be the case! I know TERFs aren't correct, and I want to be more correct than them, but it seems like you're both saying that it's technically impossible. If there is a hierarchical goodness of fit, I'd like at least to know how it's sorted and to try and improve upon it as best I can.

I'm saying all of this because I believe that a robust and widely-held definition of what gender actually is will help trans people in the long-term and possibly even the short-term. We all know radfems don't, won't, and possibly psychologically can't take these things on faith, and their reliance on hard categories over subjective experiences will ultimately win over more neutral observers than it will lose. So if I could do one thing in my entire life for trans discourse it would be to present them with a definition of gender they cannot deny or refute with their present arguments. The very LAST thing I would want to do would be to tell them that the definition of gender is up to them and their perspectives.

[thechekhov]

Hi! I saw on a post that you're agender and I'm kinda questioning my gender (again) but what interested me more about that post was that you said you believe that gender is a social construct and I'm not really familiar with that theory. I was wondering if you could explain to me what the whole idea is? (bc I kinda only feel like a have a gender in social situations? In my head, my dreams and how I picture myself in the future, I'm genderless idjskahwksjejensj) Sorry for bothering you if I did.

This is a BIG topic and it opens a LOT of wormholes. 

We’re gonna do this in pie slice statements that will hopefully help explain what I mean. Please keep in mind I’m going to simplify many things for the sake of readability.

1) What is a social construct? 

Social constructs are ideas that are negotiated by social groups. Something being a social construct does not make it ‘not real’. 

For example, money is a social construct. Yes, we have cash - coins, credit cards - but these are physical props that are REPRESENTATIVE of the idea of currency. You have some form of credit to your name - the money is a socially agreed-upon idea of value being represented by bills in your hand, by numbers in your bank account. 

[Description: Two humanoid figures are standing side by side. The right-side figure is holding a rock in its hand. 

Right side figure: Let’s agree that this shiny rock is worth 2 sheep.

Left side figure: Sounds fake but ok.]

Technically, countries are also social constructs. We, as a society, negotiate what a country is, and this can be changed.

[Description: Two figures are standing on either side of a dotted line drawn on the ground. The left figure is pointing down at it while the right figure watches, its arms crossed.

Left figure: Let’s pretend that everything on this side of the imaginary line is mine.

Right figure: ...ok but my house is over there.

Left figure: ... for 3 shiny rocks you can come visit.]

Does that mean canada isn’t real? No. (I mean, obviously canada ISN’T real, but we all agree to pretend it is.) The thing that makes it real is that we are in agreement, and all follow the social rules of pretend to make it seem like the Canadian border, the idea of Canadian citizenship, etc... is an objective fact. (It’s not. These are in fact, negotiable limits and parameters. We have laws in place to define it in legal terms, but those laws can be changed, or may change in the minds of communities. That’s why it’s a construct.)

By that same token, I hold the view that gender, as we largely perceive it in modern society, is a construct. Why? Because it is not inherent; we, as a society, negotiate its meaning. 

2) What is gender? 

People will probably fight me on this and that’s fine, but here’s my (simplified) understanding of gender (from someone who personally has none)

Gender is a social category negotiated by cultures based on your assigned or desired role in your community that influences, among many other things, your physical appearance, your role in family units, your expected position in jobs, etc. 

How I think it happened:

[Description: Two figures are standing on either side of the panel, both holding children-looking figures. The one on the left is wearing purple. The one on the right is wearing green.

Green figure: Hey, I’ve got an idea. What if we separate the babies into two groups based on physical traits they have no control over?

Purple figure: Wh-- okay...?

Green figure: And then limit the jobs they can do and the community ritual involvement available to them based on that!

Purple figure: ... I feel like this is going to backfire on us someday.

Green figure: Nah, it’ll be fine.

The past panel is a dramatic closeup on the purple figure’s face - which is featureless - betraying a deeply doubtful emotion. It says nothing.]

Important points to remember: what gender looks like, what the limits are, what the expectations are... are not inherent to any human biology. We make up gender roles. This is evident in the fact that across the world, gender roles differ by culture. The positions people of a certain gender are allowed to take up are different. What is perceived to be ‘girly’ or ‘boyish’ is different across cultures. 

Simply speaking - currently the (western) model we have, dumbed down, is:

You are assigned male at birth because of physical characteristics

You are raised being told to ‘toughen up’ and ‘boys don’t cry’ and encouraged not to show emotions

You are taught to wear male-coded clothes and discouraged from female-coded fashion choices

You are given more opportunities to participate in sports, encouraged to engage in physical activity, etc

You are not expected to need time off for child-rearing 

Here’s where gender as it works in society breaks down into being not a real thing but instead something we thought up: 

Nothing about having a penis necessitates wearing pants. Nothing about having XY chromosomes means you need to keep your hair short. Nothing about your genome makes the experience of nail-polish different for any human being. 

All of these are arbitrary traits we decided were allowed or not allowed to a specific group of people based on entirely unrelated physiology. 

Even if we delve deeper, there is MORE variation among individuals of the same ‘sex’ than there are, on average, of members of the ‘opposite sex’ when compared to each other. 

Many people use the excuse ‘women are physically not as strong as men’ to say that this has an evolutionary aspect driving these cultural, historical, socially-constructed gender requirements. 

But if there was a physical reasoning behind the culturally-set gender-limited job expectations, then we actually WOULDN’T need a traditional binary gender system to sort ourselves into categories. It would simply be decided as a meritocracy - stronger individuals, regardless of gender, would be given physically-demanding jobs. (Also we know that many jobs thought to be ‘traditionally male’ are just the result of sexist bullshit, so this reasoning doesn’t fly any further than I can throw it which is, coincidentally, not very far. Politics is one such area. Doctors are another. We can go on but I think you get my drift.)

My own example of this is an anecdote when my grandparents came to visit my partner and I in Japan. While we were driving down to Tokyo, my grandmother - who has a PhD in entomology - began to say that driving is a masculine activity and women shouldn’t be driving as it was ‘un-woman-like’. My partner almost immediately fired back that in Japan, studying insects or having any interest in them whatsoever was considered a heavily masculine-coded activity. In Russia, there is no such assignment, and my grandmother was left silently blinking in confusion, unable to come up with any excuse except ‘well, all cultures are different, I suppose...’

Do either of these things inherently have a gendered aspect? Of course not! But we assign gendered ideals to them anyway.

3) If gender is made up and constructed by society, then does that mean trans people aren’t real?

No.

Even if you agree that gender is a social construct, trans people are still real. TERFs don’t get a pass. Why? 

Because gender - as a social construct - still affects our everyday lives, dictates our social position in our community. Transitioning is still a thing that has to happen. The fact that you are NOT easily able to decide your own gender and are ostracized for wanting to transition, abused for dressing the way you want to be perceived, and bullied for wanting people to refer to you with different pronouns - all those are the effects of a social construct that has very REAL impact on our lives.

This is also why I dislike defining trans-ness by dysphoria. Because transgender people are not only their suffering - the suffering is coming from the outside!! Many trans people remember not being concerned about their gender identity in their childhood, because they did not yet perceive the world as being hostile to their desire to fulfil a specific role in society. The issues and self-hatred and dysphoria begins when they express wanting to be themselves - a life which they are forbidden from pursuing based on physical characteristics they were born with.

Does this mean we should try to remove gender from society? If we constructed it, we can deconstruct it, right?

Realistically, I highly doubt this is possible. Gender is so ingrained in our daily lives that it would be difficult. Nor, I would say, would it be necessary to achieve world peace. 

Having social groups - having gender - isn’t inherently a bad thing. The bad thing is when we limit those social groups to specific basic human rights, like voting, or when we forbid them from transitioning from one to another based on things that are out of their control. 

Also, I’m not saying genitals and secondary sexual characteristics aren’t real. Please don’t bother sending me that angry message, I’ll ignore it, I promise. 

But the concept of gender IS something we thought up and maintain and negotiate with each other to this very day. It’s not granted to us by a higher power, nor is it a constant, unchanging thing. It’s a part of the human experience and like everything, it has the potential to evolve - as a concept in our communal memory, as well as on an individual level, for people who feel they want to be perceived differently. 

Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk!

[dumb-of-ass-pure-of-heart]

Both the Dave Chappelle and Margaret Atwood drama are taken wildly out of context. With their actual actions and words elsewhere they support the trans community (monetarily! where it matters). Chapelle particularly isnt steeped in the terf rabbit hole and outright says that trans women Are women but he's upset that people so hellbent on identity politics don't practice empathy when trying to correct people. Those very people drove his trans friend to suicide because she understood while he poked fun at trans people like he does @ every other demographic, he believes in her humanity. And of course people who talk about him 90% of the time haven't actually seen his shows and only quote articles about him.

Hi, first off, I'm not black, but still fuck you for this and I'm gonna tell you off based on of every single thing I'm hearing from the people who we all actually need to be listening to.

Literally every single black trans woman I know has said fuck this guy, every single black trans person/creator on TikTok, on social media in general, is saying that Dave Chappelle is perpetuating white supremacist views on gender and sexuality, perpetuating the idea that transness is a white construct that black people have fallen prey to. Perpetuating the idea that blackness and transness are conflicting identities. Perpetuating the very ingrained TERF ideology that intersectionality is wrong. Perpetuating First Wave white feminist movements. And you're saying that he's not in the wrong?

But It's Okay Because He Had A Trans Friend! Who can't defend herself. Who can't have an opinion on this because she's dead. She's fucking dead and honestly how dare you or anyone bring her up in this as some "gotcha".

I love stand-up. This Is Not Happening, comedy podcasts, Netflix and Comedy Central specials, anything and everything under the sun, including international stand-up. Seeing the recent smaller shows popping up on TikTok has really exciting to me. And before I say anything else, personally, I think Bert Kreisher's last special should have been a bigger deal in the media because half of it was him explaining all of the different ways he physically and emotionally scars his eldest daughter in like a 100% not funny way, this is relevant because if Bert Kreisher had said what Dave Chappelle did I don't think it would have even made news.

I've watched every single one of Dave Chappelle's comedy specials, I watched the Dave Chappelle show when I was a kid and once almost all the way through during the pandemic with a new critiquing eye thanks to life experience, I've even seen the clips that popped up in the very first years of YouTube as a platform. I've seen what he said on stage about trans people. At one point I was a part of a comedy scene enough that a cishet latino man who has real clout in some areas made some shit story about me as a trans person and my micro dick, as a transphobic attack against me after his dog tried to bite my cat and he theatened us both on a public platform. One of his biggest influences - Dave Chappelle. Transphobia in stand-up culture is well and alive and Dave Chappelle just gave TERF propoganda a seat at the table like it was no big deal. Like that doesn't actively put trans people in even more danger from people within their communities nonetheless. A household name stood on a stage and for 37 minutes railed on trans people. And when he did that, he railed on every single trans person. Not just the white ones.

So this take that you have is half-baked transphobic homophobic dimwitted propoganda nonsense. Congrats on falling for it. How the fuck do you have green on shinigamieyes when you're clearly steeped in rampant white supremacist transphobic rhetoric, get out of here I want nothing to do with you even if you are a mutual.

[searchingforproofsthatimwrong]

THE JAMMIEDODGER VIDEO ABOUT JK ROWLING (as recommended by a very polite anon)

so I go point by point after the cut but in short: they should read more feminist theory, they are lying, they are not as coherent as they think they are but they make some points, notably about the rapid onset gender disphoria that’ll need to check in more depth later on.Most of their sources were unfortunatly either on points I already knew or already agreed with.  Also that woman ( the “cis” one not Jammy), should really stop thinking being born a woman is somehow a privilege.

So the video starts by saying three things I agree with :

1)      Biological sex is definitely real

2)      Women’s right and girls’ right need to be protected

3)      JK Rowling is entitled to like support and write whatever she wants

 So far so good. Except it then goes on to say that TRA agree with that. Now maybe most do but at least some don’t. Don’t lie to me, Jammie Dodger.  

They then go on to misrepresent what our problem with “cis” is. Are they going to spend that entire video about trans people at destination of the non educated on that subject without ONCE defining what a trans person is? They are aren’t they ?

“TRANSPEOPLE AGREE THAT BIOLOGICAL SEX EXISTS!!” 

see earlier but given the number of people who are saying “sex is a social construct” and “sex is a spectrum” and “a neovagina is just like a vagina”, you may at least put a “most” in your statement here. Anyway this is not the problem we have, we wouldn’t even discuss this if it weren’t for the brain dead morons who argue with us about it.

“my biological sex -the one I was assigned at birth- was female” 

is Jammie here telling me he knows biology exists but his sex WAS female ? It still IS female. You’re a female. Moreover you cannot say I know biology exists and I was assigned a sex. The entire “assigned sex” is a refutal of biology by implying doctors choose a sex for you. This is stupid.

Strawman. They are saying radfems have no argument against “gender identity is a real thing”. The lies. Gender identity is not a real thing it’s just gender stereotypes and gender is a tool of oppression for women, it’s sexist garbage. I also notice they don’t define gender identity, this is starting to be a pattern, this video is aimed to normies but the only thing they defined so far is terf.

They did 5 fucking minutes on “transpeople know that biological sex exists” I am already exhausted.

Oh my bad they defined “gender identity” as “the gender you know you are”. THANKS A BUNCH THIS IS SO HELPFUL . Define gender please I beg of you.  

“They know they are a man but their bodies don’t match” 

okay so you agree that man and woman are words that depends on your body right? Since it can “match”, they are not gender then ? Nevermind he then says that man is their gender identity. This is not making sense.

Ooooooh the floating head analogy never heard that one before, this is a stupid one because gendies also argue that their gender is innate (unless Jammie here specifically says he doesn’t think that I’ll act as if he agrees with that statement) so the good question would be if you were born as a floating head and never even had a body would you still be a woman? And my answer here as well as plenty of people I suspect is “men and women don’t make sense if we’re born as floating heads what are you on about?”

“transwomen needs women’s right too” 

I know you think that is self evident but I’ll ask what exactly are the women’s right transwomen need. Abortion? Affordable periods product ? The right to have places free of male? oh wait. They are male so they can never have that can they ?

“so feminism also needs to believe in gender identity”

 because if we don’t our feminism is only for females and we exclude males. Notice how they didn’t continue their logic by saying how THIS feminism excludes transmen and nonbinary? Because it does, but guess who actually need the women’s right of abortion for exemple?

“transmen don’t need women’s rights” 

I FUCKING CANNOT YOU STILL NEED IT WTF ARE YOU ON ABOUT. OK I need them to define women’s right asap

“well JK Rowling said she supports trans rights”

 funny how you can understand how those words are not a proof that she in fact does but you still started your video by “we support women’s rights !!!”

“adding [to Harry Potter] content that was LGBT+ friendly” 

she added things that were gay friendly. I don’t remember her adding trans characters.

“transphobic” = saying men can’t become women. Whoah. The hatred.

“the lack of belief [in gender identity] is what she wants protected”

 yes and ? Atheism, the lack of belief in a god, is protected. Gender identity existence only proof is some people saying it does exists, it is not a scientific reality in any way shape or form.

“His biological sex was previously female” 

BUT WE KNOW WHAT BIOLOGICAL SEX IS WE SWEAR; Damn they spend 7 minutes on “transpeople know biological sex exists” and then keep acting like they fucking don’t.

After that they point blank say that gender identity is more important than sex, having someone who passes as an exemple. What about transpeople who don’t pass? How much you bet this will never be discussed in this video.

Anyway they follow that with that : 

Which is true but defining what a woman is does affect women actually (I know weird right)  so it’s completely irrelevant to the discussion here.

“When a large group of transpeople are telling you something is wrong please listen to them”

 please afford women the same courtesy. We are a large group of women saying males are not the fucking authority on what womanhood is but we are told to shut up. Listen.

“we cannot take the behavior of the minority [online abuse] and group it onto the majority” 

I agree with that statement but the majority still didn’t condemn the abuse. Honestly the people in this video did -just before saying HOWEVER but hey – but it is pretty rare to see TRA actually confronting the people who abused JK Rowling online, they cheered them on more than anything.

It is very telling how they spend more time in this video saying people collecting screenshots of the abuse JK Rowling suffered were “not cool” than the TRA giving them a bad name by actually abusing JK Rowling. They even say Jammy was also insulted online so TERF and TRA are as bad as each other right ?? Being called delusional or idiot is not the same as death threats sorry Jammy. (I doubt the “freak” one was from a terf tbh but even then, this is not even comparable) I mean didn’t you get at least one person saying they were going to kill you ? Because I did, and I have ,like, 200 followers. I find very weird that the woman here said “I received sexual assaults threats and this is as a cis woman!” as if women weren’t the primary target of sexual assaults threats. Yeah it’s the misogyny. What’s new.  You really should stop thinking you are somehow priviledged even when you are being sexually threatened ffs. What gender ideology does to a mf.

 “neither of these sides are innocent” 

oh come on, you cannot possibly means that the men who gave you sexual threats were terfs, this is ridiculous, you are just trying to excuse and diminish what people did to JK as per fucking usual.

 “persistent low level harassment” 

it hasn’t stayed low level tho. Stop trying to say you and JK are receiving the same abuse it’s embarrassing.

JK Rowling’s essay having real life effects on policies for exemple has an element of thruth ,even tho we disagree on wether or not this can be a good thing but your are deluding yourself if you think people assaulting transpeople are the sort of people whose views are in any way influenced by feminists. This is laughable. Also please stop with the guilt tripping, we are not responsible of the mental health of transpeople, we are not their therapists, sorry.

I love how they implied that the guy who forced GNC kids to behave as their assigned gender would somehow give a letter of thanks to a feminist. This is implying “terfs” want the same things as this maniac which is just a straight up lie, terfs absolutely adore GNC people and are mostly GNC themselves.

“What rights of women are actually being eroded by the inclusion of transwomen ?” I am glad you asked !! Well apart from the freedom of speech since “terfs” are losing their jobs and being deplatformed because of this, we have the inherent dangers of replacing sex by gender in what the law protects : https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/firing-mom-because-shes-breastfeeding-sex-discrimination this is a link to a story about a woman who was said being fired for breastfeeding was not sex discrimination because men can lactate. Do you see the problem ? Moreover there is quotas for women in politics etc….Women fought for their quotas and now males can have them, who do you think an employer would prefer someone who probably will be pregnant at one point or someone who never will ? and let’s not forget the right for women to have women only places :Women in prison are raped by the trans identified males in it .

“I cannot think of a single right that is removed from me”

 good for you maybe you should have actually researched radfems talking point before doing this video ? Your ignorance is not a good argument.  

“transwomen can use the women changing room because they are women” 

you keep saying that but apart from “they feel like women” you didn’t explain how they are women. This is the basis of this entire video and you never explained.  Also allowing any person who say they are women into the women’s changing room does not only allow transwomen does it ? It also allows lying freaks.

“You can protect cis women’s rights and transrights simulteanously” HOWWWWWWWWWWW, please tell me how to keep female only spaces (women’s right) while saying TWAW (transrights apparently according to them).

“transwomen can be the victims and cis women can do the voyeurism” 

true but did you forget we actually live in the real world and in that one males are much more likely to be sexually harassing people than women ? It is a brazen form of lying to tell women that since theoretically other women can also be creeps they don’t have to worry about males. Get a grip. Live in the real world for a change.

“It doesn’t reference transwomen but men pretending to be women” 

apart from “they feel it” you still haven’t told us what the difference is. You are aware nothing from an outside perspective distinguishes the two right ??

“there is no evidence of men pretending to be trans to enter female only spaces” and how would you know they are pretending ? This is the same problem again and again, if you define transwomen as men who feel like women then there is absolutely no way of verifying someone really is trans. And that’s a lie anyway since we do actually have proof of that happening?? There was that video making the room on radblr a while ago of a clear male pissing in the women’s bathroom saying (lying) that he was trans.

Yeah actually radical feminists would accept transmen in their bathrooms, but it’s not an easy question with an easy answer to know how to check they really are transmen. Although notice how they are again only talking about transpeople that passes ? I would feel safer with Jammy in my toilets than Hannah Mouncey for exemple :

  That is so obvioulsy a man in a dress.

“ If a transman with a beard and penis and balls can go into a women’s toilet and that is deemed okay because of his biological sex what is to stop a cis man from doing the same”

 I am sorry but are you saying a transwoman cannot have a beard and penis and balls ?????????? This is incredibly transphobic of you, you said that gender identity Is just feeling like a gender, how exactly does that mean transwomen cannot have beard ? If you want to know, radfem are arguing for a third toilet for transpeople, that’s our solution. What is yours ?

 Ok the next part is racist I’ll skip that thanks

On accusation of TERFery intimidating people and organizations “we haven’t seen these” again, your ignorance is not an argument, I am posting these on Tumblr where cryptoterfs arer numerous. Why do you think that is ?

Are they seriously saying Nike and addidas “accepted” transpeople because they “realized it was the right thing to do” ?????? Those companies employs slaves IN WHAT WORLD DO YOU LIVE IN??

“trying to make transpeople look crazy” 

the clownfish things were said online by real transpeople. We don’t need to invent thing to make transpeople look crazy, if there is  large enough group some people belonging in that group will say stupid shit .

“We support these rights”

 when speaking about women victims of abuse. This is a lie, the Vancouver rape shelter relief is often targeted by transactivists, recently a gofundme for it was cancelled because of transactivists, they are quite litteraly stealing money from raped women. This is not a small, inconsequential part of transactivism. 

“The trans-inclusionist views expand the meaning of women to include transwomen”

 It doesn’t expend shit actually since it excludes transmen and non-binary. If anything it reduces it.

They go on to say that transwomen deserves protection as women because of their murder rate. It doesn’t explain how being seen as women will help them here and anyway it’s a bold lie considering their murder rate is actually quite low. They also fail to consider how depriving transmen and nonbinaries of those same women’s right might be a problem.

Again they make the distinction between transwomen and men pretending to be transwomen without a way to identify which is which. This is starting to get repetitive and tedious. The problem is not that all transwomen are predators is that there is no way to see a difference until the predators acts, until a woman gets hurt, so accepting transwomen is accepting predators and saying transwomen feelings are more important that the women being hurt because of this. I disagree. The tiny tiny percentage of transpeople doing bad things is actually the same percentage as men doing bad things. If your argument could be used to say women only spaces shouldn’t exist at all because not all men are dangerous maybe you should reconsider your argument because I will not reconsider women’s right to have female only spaces.

“If you push transwomen out of female only spaces you push transmen in”

 Yes. I don’t even see where the problem is here.  Now why don’t we analyse the fact that if you push transwomen into female only spaces you push transmen out of them ? I don’t think transmen belongs in men’s prisons, do you ?

“Transpeople don’t dispute biology and don’t impact how female only diseases are treated” 

eat shit. They do impact this, every woman trying to say “female biology” get shit thrown at her faster than you can blink, stop lying to me Jammy. Do you think I would get called a bleeder, a fetus carrier, a motherfucking birthing body if transactivism wasn’t trying to erase sex ? Don’t you think the sentence “men can have periods” is not eroding biology ? Fuck off

Back to JK, Jammy is saying her disabling comment on her blog was not conductive to a conversation, I have to salute the straight face he says it with because do you really think a nice educated conversation would have taken place on JK Rowling’s essay ? They flooded her children’s book tag with porn for fuck sake.

“Thre is no explosion in young women who wishes to transition” sources ? Because it does seem to be true :https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jsm.12817

“the detransitionners rate is actually really low” hard to know but most people who transitioned did it not so long ago since transgender is a recent trend, we will have to wait and see to have a more robust number. But maybe they are right on that one, this is not going to be the one argument that changes my views unfortunately. 

“Does that mean we should stop people from getting plastic surgery then ?” 

lol you don’t know the radfem stance on plastic surgery do you ?

“There is more significant transphobia than homophobia” 

sources ? Because transition is used as converstion therapy in Iran so it is at least untrue in one country. 

“If transmen transition to escape womanhood why is there transwomen ?” 

You really didn’t research this did you ? the radfem answer is that transwomen are either gay men who have gender disphoria OR AGP (autogynephiles) read this if you want to learn more about it: https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-elephant-in-the-room

“why would people who have male privileges choose to give that up” 

you are assuming they lose their male privileges but I will need sources on that because most transwomen do not pass and are treated more as special men than as women.

“We have already shown you that transphobia is far more rife and damaging than homophobia” 

did I miss that part ? When ? You just said that ? Without backing it up ?

“anti trans narratives constantly contradict itself” 

No we do not, we are feminist so we OF COURSE we analyse men and women differently, this is an issue of gender which radical feminism posit as an hierarchy, trying to explain transwomen and transmen with the same arguments is doomed to fail because they were not equal in their relation to gender to begin with. Do you think black people trying to pass as white do it for the same reasons white people try to have more black features ? Of course not.

“What am I a lesbian or a homophobe ?”

 You are both, you are a lesbian in denial with a deep case of internalized misogyny and homophobia. You know yo can be both sexist and a woman right ? Well it’s the same here.

I heard “Simone de Beauvoir” and I knew they were going to be really fucking stupid with that “One is not born a woman but rather becomes a woman” quote and THERE IT IS! Please read the book. She is not saying male can become women if they try hard enough, she is saying basically the same thing JK Rowling’s quote said which is that “womanhood” as it is forced on women is alien and not natural and the point is that we should not accept it, it’s a feminist quote on femininity and I am so sick of men using it to say that they are women.

Transactivists acting as if sex recognition patterns don’t exists is exhausting so I won’t comment on “nobody checks if you have XX chromosomes before passing you over for a promotion” other than to say : passing over for promotions happens a lot when women are pregnant and after giving birth stop acting as if misogyny is unrelated to our reproduction capacities it is fucking insulting.

“transwomen will support [fights against tampon tax and FGM] too” 

FGM was a bad choice here considering transactivists tried to stop a bill against FGM .  I will need sources here actually since I never seen a transwoman fighting for women’s right in my life.

Ok I let a lot passes here because I’m tired but we are 48:40 in the video and fuck you “intersectional feminism” is not about males. It was for black women. It is not reductionist to say women are people with a vagina, this is just a definition, and one that applies to 50% of the population at that, there is litteraly no definition of woman that includes more people than that.

Imagine thinking “women are people with vagina” is reductionist but not calling women “vulva owners”. Please , I am begging for coherence.

“transwomen who experience greater abuse than cisgender women will ever experience” . 

This is revolting. I don’t have any other words. I am glad this is the end of the video because I would have stopped immediately if this was at the start. What abuse transwomen can experience than ciswomen cannot ? Because I would have thought forced pregnancy was horrific but maybe this doesn’t compare to being misgendered?

“most people are comfortable with transwomen going into women’s bathrooms” https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39147/bsa34_moral_issues_final.pdf

It says 13% of women are at least uncomfortable with sharing bathroom with transwomen, why are we ignoring their wishes? Because 0.1% of the population wants to ?  Whatever, the really interesting thing in this study is that for this question they defined “transwomen” as someone who has gone through all the steps to become a woman aka someone with surgery. I find extremely misleading that this is used for bathroom bills which defines transwomen as male identifying as women. Do you think the numbers would be the same if they specified the transwoman in question still has a penis ? Which is the case for most transwomen btw?

[thatheathen]

Isn't it weird how you just....identify as oppressed? You make up some fake gender and then cry oppression when other people don't validate it because gender is meaningless?

I don't "identify" as oppressed. Never did. That's ridiculous. I'm white and not homeless, so I'm pretty privileged, but I still receive daily or weekly death threats from people online like you and worse, just for being trans. We trans folk receive systemic discrimination and hatred no matter how successful or well off we become. We exist deal with it.

I'm not crying that I'm oppressed, where is that located that I did this? I shed tears and express fears for OTHER trans people and trans youth who are living in dangerous situations or experience extreme discrimination for being trans not harming anyone. Black Queer folk are hated even more than any white LGBTQ person. And then there's the trans people in prison not being able to get the medical care they need.

Transwomen are being murdered monthly SOLEY for being trans and that of course doesn't alarm you, women being hunted down or killed by insecure lovers. I'm not selfish, I'm selfless. I have chronic depression and slowly learning to love myself more and more, but that's not a cry for help or wanting people to pity me yada-yada. I will go to literal war for transwomen and transmen. Fuck all the way off.

You have no right to deny our existence, like how I don't have a right to deny your existence. This doesn't mean you have to like us or support us. Really don't give a shit how you feel about trans people, it's your actions are what I care about and watch transphobes closely doing. You're free to be a transphobe and a bigot, just don't expect freedom from consequence. If you attack trans people in any way or help push anti-trans policies created by the GOP, then we're gonna have problems. There's no point in arguing with you people because you're always gonna find something to scream and outrage about.

Gender is a social construct to an extent, but more of a spectrum. Gender within our western civilization is strictly binary and it's forced upon people to fit in a specific (gender) role when in reality it's ALL is made up BY THAT CULTURE. So if people are imprisoned and shackled to the binary gender roles rejecting it and don't realize it's an indoctrination, they'll no doubt hate that gender construct and render it meaningless. So yeah, the basic western idea of gender is meaningless. Weird huh?

Gender (regardless of the era) is 100% constructed or fabricated by human beings like anything humans created. These are just basic understandings of life and reality we are still learning about; gender, biology, astrophysics, gravity, neurology etc. are not truisms or laws that can't be broken or improved upon. Science hasn't finished understanding our cosmos that's absurd and very arrogant to assume. We are not slaves to our biology we go against it all the time; hence our manipulation of nature to build cities and bombs - is that natural? Science isn't set in stone it's always evolving. All life evolves even the concepts of gender that get you so upset. You're obsessed with policing peoples gender expressions and that's kinda oppressive no? Or do you think oppression is only through state sanctioned violence and that if you see it you'll know it? Doubtful.

There's nothing you can do to stop LGBTQIAP+ people from expressing themselves and creating new gender concepts that don't go along with your outdated dominator culture constructs and behaviors lol! You're a slave to the old ideas you defend. Isn't that Weird?

Every civilization throughout history has had a myriad of different genders and were socially expectable. Weird huh?

Gender Critical Cults are a tiny hate group along with TERF's and other fascist hate groups who tend to ally with conservatives to hate trans people together. The size of these anti-trans hate groups is puny compared to those who are trans and those who accept all LGBTQ folks, cisgender people showing their solidarity by putting pronouns in their bio's on social media or showing up to marches, pride, or protests. There's more of us than there is of people like you.

You're just a miserable bigot who hates queer people expressing themselves freely without much fucks given. Isn't that weird?

[edwardforkhands]

Asking for help to become not transphobic

This is a long rant, very unorganized. Sometimes I don’t know where I’m going with it. But basically, I’ve been on terfblr in secret for the last 3 years or so, and I’ve become transphobic during that time. I want help to try and change. If anyone could point me to any articles, documentaries, studies, etc to help me get out, I would appreciate it. If you can add in your own two cents, that would be appreciated as well. I’m not sure how much I’ll respond to replies or reblogs on this post, or DMs, as I’m pretty shy and non confrontational (hence why I was on terfblr in secret). But I will read everything!

Basically I agree with a lot of things terf believe, but one thing I want is to find a way to escape the transphobic side of everything. I want to be a radical feminist minus the trans exclusionary part. I’m pretty leftist and progressive, but I hate being bigoted in this way. I almost feel like someone that’s fallen down a neo nazi rabbit hole, in the ways that I have to hide my true beliefs from friends and family. The problem is, I just can’t find a way to for my brain to make peace with a lot of principles of present-day trans activism.

I feel like the only way to make progress is to first just flat out say I’m transphobic. In many ways I’m not, but in a lot of ways I am. That way when I ask my questions, people aren’t just like “that’s really transphobic of you to ask” and shut me down. I want to be kinder, but I need to be able to say what I think. Like how you need to be able to write out your math in order to find any mistakes. But the way things are now, my math looks perfectly fine to me.

So that everyone understands where I’m coming from, here’s a summary of my beliefs:

I agree with terfs/swerfs on a lot of things. I believe there are 2 sexes, gender is a social construct that is not at all innate, women face female-specific oppression, sex work is dehumanizing, there is no such thing as a genital fetish, I think in recent years that some people are transitioning when they not “actually trans,” etc. And there are some more petty things I get annoyed at like saying “uterus owners” or “pregnant people.” I also disagree with the term swerf (though I don’t think terf/swerfs are slurs). I want to protect women and sex workers. To me, this is like calling people who are against child labor “child exclusionary human rights activists.” In my mind I’m trying to do a good thing for them. Sex work is the commodification of consent— which imo can’t be commodified.

But then on the other hand there are a lot of topics on which terfs would disagree with me. I think we should respect peoples’ pronouns, trans people should be able to use what bathroom they want, using someone’s deadname is rude, for many people medical transition is necessary, there are cases where it is appropriate for children to transition, and even if gender roles were totally nonexistent, there would still be trans people.

Here’s where I think I started to get sucked up into “terf” ideology: I think dysphoria is necessary to be trans. I think this was the “gateway drug” that made me into a terf. This stems from my belief that there are two sexes, gender is fake, and your biology is tied to being trans. My understanding of dysphoria is this: It is a state of being dissatisfied with the sex of your body, feeling like it shouldn’t be the way it is. Like how some people feel like a limb shouldn’t exist, and they want to cut it off (I can see how this analogy is a bit transphobic, I just don’t see how else to explain my understanding). Dysphoria is innate, and would exist no matter how men and women are viewed in society. If you don’t have dysphoria, then what is the point of being trans? Is it to change the gender roles you have to/don’t have to adhere to? Could that not be solved by being gnc? And wouldn’t it be more progressive to push to abolish gender? How is transitioning without dysphoria anything other than reinforcing gender roles?

I’m not trying to be bigoted, these are genuine questions and concerns I have that keep me in terf circles.

There are also just so many things my eyes have been opened to on terfblr. Why porn and sex work is harmful to women, why makeup and sexualized clothing is bad, how to read between the lines in advertising targeting women, seeing just how much woman-hate there is everywhere and how acceptable it is in society. These are beliefs I could never see myself abandoning.

Just a heads up: I use the phrase “trans positive” as an antonym to the word “transphobic” (can’t think of a better one atm).

But with the whole trans issue, that’s where I feel like I might have crawled into a hole that I want to get myself out of. I don’t like that in being a terf, many would consider me to be a hateful and bigoted person. I want to be progressive, and on the right side of history. But there are so many things that I see in modern day trans activism that just don’t make sense to me logically, and some that I view as actively harmful. Like reinforcing gender roles, or eliminating the ability to talk about sex-specific and female-specific issues. It seems every few months things that were once considered trans positive to believe are now transphobic. Most of the time, progress like this is wonderful! It’s good when realize they have racist, sexist, homophobic, etc microagressions and work towards becoming better people. That’s great! But a lot of the times the new transphobic things just don’t make sense. For example, I realized saying things like “bitch” or “cunt” casually was sexist, and it made sense. But if I were to say your sexuality is based on someone’s sex, not their gender, that’s transphobic because it implies trans women aren’t real women, or trans men aren’t real men. If they pass, society can see them as being men or women. But biologically, they aren’t. That’s why the word “trans” goes in front of their name. It just doesn’t make sense to me how it’s transphobic to have a sexuality, so having what’s basically a “gender-ality” is the only acceptable thing now. Obviously it would be rude to go around telling every trans person “actually, you’re not a REAL man/woman!” randomly. But when the context permits, like with dating or for female-specific issues, I just don’t see how it’s transphobic to acknowledge a very relevant biological reality.

Trying to say anything relating to feminist issues in a non-transphobic way feels to me like walking on eggshells to escape a maze. It would be easy to give up and just say everything’s related to gender, sex is a social construct yet somehow gender’s innate, and go with the flow but I just can’t if it doesn’t make sense to me. I know I don’t have to understand everything about everyone else’s experiences, especially if it’s not hurting other people, but I feel like in some ways trans activism nowadays is.

I just wish all this made sense to me and I could happily say I support everything trans positive. I don’t want to be transphobic. In some ways I’m not, but in so many ways I am, and I want to change. But I want things to make sense at the same time. Currently it feels like terf beliefs align with common sense, while believing a lot of principles of trans activism takes so much mental gymnastics.

Obviously if you don’t want to respond you don’t have to. It’s not your responsibility to change me— it’s my responsibility to change myself, and fix my beliefs. But if anyone is willing to listen or help, that would be appreciated. I feel like a lot of terfs start out where I did— initially trans positive, but had just one or two issues that brought them to terfblr, and they come out the other side transphobic. Hopefully helping me will help at least one other person down the line.

I feel terrible interacting with trans people, knowing I follow and listen to so many terfs. I have so many conflicting feelings and beliefs and I wish things could balance out the right way.

[the-velveteen-victorian]

Hi Elle! I used to follow you on your old mega-popular tumblr. I really love your new one. :) I know that you've lived in a "super spiritual" community for several years now (not sure if you want me to publicly say the place). What is the community like? Is it more bad than good? What are some strengths and weaknesses of the place/people? Thank you! I've heard mixed things and really respect your insights.

Haha I knew I would get this question one day! If I could title my response, it would be, "Why I've Chosen to Keep My Distance from the New Age Community in the American Southwest." I info-dump and write novels, so get ready! =)

I think there is something to be said for defining things neutrally for yourself overall. Fortunately, I've been able to easily do that in this instance due to: 1. Being introverted and not "needing" a big community experience and 2. Having wonderful friends all over the globe that I am able to interact with all throughout my year. With that being said, if I am being 100% honest and real with you, I truly believe that the new age community where I am is more toxic than good. Here is why. I will have a positive note at the end.

A quick preface: I am not calling out any particular individual(s) and will not be naming names.... quite frankly, there are just too many and I'm not here to humiliate people. Secondly, these traits can take place in ANY community, spiritual or otherwise. But these are things that I feel a spiritual community should be more self-aware of... and sadly right now, they are not.

********ATTENTION: There is a big content and trigger warning here: There will be mentions of sui****, sexual *******, and gaslighting/narcissism, terfs, eating disorders, and other things that could be very upsetting. Proceed with caution and stop reading if you find yourself getting stressed, triggered, or deeply upset.*********

1. Malignant narcissism and community insulation from constructive criticism. I have never seen such a ubiquitous display of malignant narcissism in all my life in a collective, save for some conservative Christian environments in my growing up years. Go onto almost any youtube channel for the Sedona community and you will see very few negative comments… why? (And I have watched this for a long time) Almost ANY criticism of anyone’s channel or blog is instantly removed. There was a time when people who simply noted that some of these small “influencers” were saying toxic things were sent cease and desist letters. The community is very tight knit and displays many marks of a cult. One of these indicators is that they all protect each other and hype each other up on their channels and blogs, while labeling ANY criticism (healthy or not) as someone who is being “triggered.” The younger part of the community cares about looking perfect and having everyone worship them, but has very little spiritual substance. It’s always about who did the alien thing “before it was cool” or “who can do a backflip off of a steep cliff without breaking their neck because their synchronicity is on point.” One youtuber said once that she only wanted to hang out with “pretty” people because they were purer expressions of the divine. The older generation expresses narcissism by assuming they know more than everyone else. Good luck having a conversation on controversial topics with any of them. They are right, you are wrong. If you argue, you are “triggered” and “seeking for truth.” If you don't believe that there are reptilians on the moon with a secret base, you've drunk the kool-aid. Not a good environment to foster open sharing and knowledge. The men have a particular problem with this when it comes to topics of sex and intimacy. If you are a woman and don’t want to “surrender” to your partner (in a lot of vague and unclear ways), you are out of alignment with the divine feminine. Most of the men believe that they should be allowed to "hunt" (look for sexual partners/spiritual twin flames) and that women should do everything in their power to be softly feminine so that they can sync up and recognize each other's souls.

2. A full denial of science and medicine. Look, I get it. We all want to solve our own medical dilemmas and use herbs to cure all ills. I try to solve any (non life threatening) health issues I have the “natural” way first too… often, I have great success! The problem comes when the community rejects all western medicine, most science (that doesn’t affirm their beliefs) and any medical opinion that has… actually been to a real medical school. There is a strong anti-vaccination movement coupled with the belief in using yoni eggs religiously and doing colonics every week (though science tells us this isn’t a great idea overall). I used a different type of yoni egg for awhile to see what would happen, but trust me, your pelvic health is going to be better without them. You will be judged harshly for going to a “mainstream” doctor to get antibiotics for a serious infection and will most likely be gaslit into oblivion regarding “what you did to attract” your infection etc.

I have midwifed for many years now and have extensive “mainstream” training to be able to do this legally. Once, I was working with another midwife on a mother who was having her first baby. The laboring woman had an ideal birth in mind like most people do. Long story short, I discerned while she was laboring that the baby was in intense distress and that the mother was displaying very concerning signs of a life-threatening condition. When I insisted on calling an ambulance and getting the woman to the hospital, the other midwife said that I was interfering with nature. I explained simply that if we didn’t get said woman to a hospital, the baby would most certainly die and the mother’s life would hang in the balance. Her response was that: “Some babies don’t deserve to live and I shouldn’t invite karma by interfering with nature’s course.” I called an ambulance anyway and the mother was taken for an emergency c-section. The mother was very disappointed about not being able to follow her birth plan. However, after the birth (she and baby ended up being okay thank goodness) she sat down with me personally and thanked me for making the decision I did. She said that one of the doctors explained that if I had waited another hour, both she and the baby would be dead. Apparently, this other “midwife” had also had her license revoked a year before for endangering a different laboring person and child. This sounds like a stand-alone freak incident, but I can cite 15-20 other situations just like this one where life-threatening emergencies were viewed as opportunities for good karma and growth… and that western medical intervention would invite bad karma.

Regarding science, if you point to the fact that jade yoni eggs are likely to cause an infection, most of the new age community will scoff and say that they don’t trust science (the logic being that science once explained volcanos as angry gods or something and now cannot be trusted overall). If you don't wear blue-blocking glasses anytime you look at a screen, apparently you've already succumbed to mind control. You get my point… It’s so bad that the new age community is willing to endanger people’s lives and place the blame on the victims for being out of alignment with synchronicity. This one bullet point could be talked about for hours.

3. A lack of discernment and victim blaming. Many have heard about Bentinho Massaro and his crew from that time when they swept through Sedona a couple years ago. The core of the Sedona community started blindly following him… some of them wanted to boost their online platforms by being associated with a well-known figure. Others wanted a guru… and others were just curious and got sucked in by his charisma. All one had to do was google him. He has allegations of physically beating his followers, gaslighting people, torturing animals in his childhood, and ignoring the fact that an alarming number of his followers commit suicide. With all of this knowledge at our fingertips, the popular new age “influencers” went so far as to get in polyamorous relationships with him, validate his platform, and gaslight people who, sadly, committed sui**** because of certain things he said in his teachings. It was insane. Now, many of the people who followed him try to pretend it never happened or that they had no part in it. Many of them claim to have “gifts of the spirit” and to have stellar discernment.

One of the people who got into a polyamorous relationship with this person did an Instagram post where she basically said that if someone is being r*ped they should show their attacker love and surrender to what is happening so that they could experience unconditional love and come back to the "light." I honestly couldn’t believe what I was reading at first when I saw it. The part that was heartbreaking was when I read the comments and watched people (not just women and men) berate themselves for “fighting” while something terrible happened to them in the past. A few of them were teenagers. I made it a point to personally message the ones I was able to, and thankfully, a good number did respond positively. This exact issue has occurred on youtube channels, blogs, and in-person encounters. I’m just citing ONE online instance of this horrible, misaligned belief. Keep in mind that the person who did this post abandoned her disabled child with a family she barely knew to pursue a sexual relationship with Bentinho.

4. TERFS/anti-LGBTQ/anti-feminism. This falls under the categories of relationships, sex, autonomy, and social issues, but expands into much more overall.

A chain of videos came out a couple years ago where about 5 women in the new age community each did a presentation on what was wrong with the “divine feminine” these days. They were saying that women had been erased because they were not conforming to gender roles or seeking out conscious relationships. They all referenced that “women are angry” and basically said it was wrong for women to feel this way and that angry female energy was throwing our whole environment out of balance and even contributing to global warming somehow. They empathized with toxic people/men/known violent incels and said that women needed to get over their traumas and be more available for the divine masculine to show up. They dehumanized women by saying they shouldn’t be expressing anger, glossed over sexual a******, and blocked everyone in the comments who took a stand against what they were saying. The general consensus is that feminists are just angry women who need to get over their trauma.

Many people in the new age community also believe that if you incarnate in a particular body with certain biological parts, you incarnated that way for a reason. Changing it extensively is to erase “the spiritual lessons you were supposed to learn.” Basically, they stand against trans people, nonbinary people, gender nonconforming people… etc. I can go deeper with this if you want, but that is the gist of it without writing a novel within a novel.

Most of them take an active stance against intersectional feminism and use exclusive language to shut out anyone who doesn’t conform to the binary. A few of them are more passive-aggressive about how they do this: refusing to show any support for the LGBTQUIA+ community or mention social issues at all, even when someone is pointing out that they did something hurtful or offensive.

5. Appropriating Indigenous cultures and using past lives as an excuse. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard a white new age person say that something is their “spirit animal” or seen one wear Native American/indigenous headdresses to tight-knit community events, citing that they were “Native American” in their past life and that they are entitled to use these symbols, items, and cultural lexicons because of it. (Not that this is the main point… but they tell trans people that they shouldn’t be trans or insinuate that people should conform to the gender binary because they incarnated in a body type for a reason… but make an exception for themselves culturally? Super hypocritical.)

A couple of “woke” guys from the new age community walked around for awhile saying that the Hopi had adopted them into their “tribe” and that the were given Hopi names. I spoke to a few Hopi people about what was happening and they were shell-shocked. That is not something that they do for one thing, and for another, they had never even heard of these people! Thankfully, the behavior stopped after the two men were confronted about it, but this kind of thing happens all the time in various ways. There is a new age store here with a racial slur in the title… bring it up to the owner and she’ll kick you out and launch a smear campaign. Tell one of the white new age women that just because she studies “different traditions” doesn’t mean it’s okay to do rain dances or perform indigenous rituals (Native American, Australian, and others) without permission and they’ll blacklist you. I think many of the new agers operate within this Trojan horse of “I want to accept and validate all cultures”, but do not actually care at all about indigenous voices, feelings, or opinions. Many of them talked a lot about collective trauma in our nation during Black Lives Matter, but wouldn’t actively support it in any way themselves.

6. Let’s talk about mental health. This could go under the science and medicine label, but I think it deserves its own paragraph. Boy is mental health stigmatized in the new age Sedona community…. Real mental health professionals are painted as people who just want to “drug” you and keep you controlled. People with mental health struggles are instantly blamed. “Hell is just a state of mind, you need to change your mind,” is a phrase I have heard more often than not. Ancestral healing, umbilical healing, and random reiki sessions are somehow supposed to take the place of a licensed counselor.

A huge chunk of the “spiritual” community supported a pseudo-therapist who (without any scientific basis) was preaching that any woman who wasn’t sure if she wanted to have children or not by the age of 25 was toxic and needed to be ostracized because “something is wrong there.” A bunch of people believed it and re-posted/shared the teaching.

Another instance occurred where an unlicensed “hypnotherapist” without so much as a bachelor’s degree in anything was using questionable methods to hypnotize clients. During one session a person experienced a severe PTSD flashback and panic attack. She was not brought out of the hypnotherapy session properly or cared for. She ended up having a mental breakdown and having to spend time in the hospital. The charlatan who was treating her said that the client was willfully unresponsive to treatment and refused to confront her demons…

Anyone who is on anxiety medication, anti-depressants or anything else to support their well-being and mental health will be judged aggressively and most likely verbally confronted at some point if they are open about being on medication. The charlatans will throw essential oils into your space saying that they can cure anything. Others will try to get someone to talk to a new age leader in the “inner circle” and attempt to persuade the client that western therapists/psychologists just want to drug people and ignore the spiritual cause of unrest. They’ll cite earthing, crystals, vaginal wands, special teas, dietary habits, and color therapy as causes and answers to everything…. All while regarding victims of sui**** as unfortunate souls and lost causes etc.

7. A summary. I need to sum up other issues here quite quickly or I’ll be typing all day. XD Many of the women here are terrified of gaining weight or looking older. They hide behind the thinning veil of “health and veganism” to justify their worrisome habits to feel sexually appealing to supposedly “woke” men. Disordered eating and terror of eating one granule of processed sugar permeates the consciousness. You can be judged for anything from buying pokemon cards to eating legumes…. of all things. Most of the men are sexual predators who prey on younger women, rely on narcissism as a personality type, and don’t let anyone get a word in edgewise when their opinions are challenged. Many of the women validate these behaviors and blame themselves when they get hurt citing “spiritual growth” as a silver lining to cure all traumas. I would say that 95%+ of the people in the community present a perfect picture of themselves online while having crumbling relationships and failing inner lives. You might see a post or video about “conscious uncoupling” of a spiritual "power couple" and then find out later that someone was in a relationship with a narcissistic predator or was experiencing physical abuse. Sadly, many of the victims gaslight themselves in the uncoupling announcement. Many people here are predators in other ways… they might launch a health business that uses essential oils to replace therapy. There are con artists all over the place who can range from simply overpricing their wares in alarming ways to trying to entrap people in “business contracts” that devastate their lives. I have had personal UFO experiences here and do personally think that extraterrestrial life exists, but I would NEVER try to manufacture a fake experience… One of the UFO tour guides was having people hide out in the desert and flash lights into the sky while people on the tour wore special glasses. Then she was charging an arm and a leg to channel “spiritual messages” from the e.t.s for her clients and saying that if they didn’t receive the message, something bad would happen to them. This is the fluffiest and lightest post I could possibly do to communicate how bad it is in the “spiritual community” here. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

The good news? Sedona is so much more than a toxic new age community. It is GORGEOUS and it does have many good, healthy/normal people here. =) I have had such a beautiful experience in this place and can’t say enough good things about it. I have easy access to healthy foods, endless nature to explore and bask in, and a growing community of people who call the new age community out on its toxicity. I read what I want, play Animal Crossing without blue-blocker glasses, regularly enjoy going to listen to goth music at my preferred venue (I’ve been demonized for this lol), and eat what makes me feel good. My partner and I have had a beautiful and successful relationship for nearly a decade now and create amazing memories every day. We have good friends all around the world… and I have a solid, BIG group of academic colleagues/friends locally who DO ethically cite their sources and contribute positively to science and higher learning. If you’re into paleontology like me, you are in fossil heaven! =D If you love astronomy or astrophysics, we’re in a dark sky city! There are so many cool things to do from playing in LOTR-worthy waterfalls, to sampling delicious vegan creations, to playing DnD on red rocks with your friends while a *real* UFO passes by overhead. Get yourself a smoothie and organic wrap from one of our incredible food trucks and drive out into the desert while listening to Nightvale with your love or your friends. =)

If you ever want a list of must-do’s while visiting, let me know. I’ve got your back! The point is that I just harped on the negative above, but the good news is that you can completely avoid all of the junk. Keep it or scrap it when it comes to the Sedona new age community? I say scrap it. But you can still pursue your spiritual interests in healthy ways here while enjoying all the yummy creature comforts that the Verde Valley has to offer. I hope this helps and if just one person comes here and has a safe experience because of my thoughts, then every moment I’ve spent writing this was worth it. =) <3

[mithliya]

what was the thing you told your girl about TRAs, if you’re comfortable saying? i’m talking to a girl right now who’s cool in every way except in that she’s a normie who thinks kinks are exempt from criticism and buys into gender bullshit. i have no idea how to broach the topic without coming on too strong

hmmm the thing is... she already holds quite radfemmy beliefs (she didn’t think it was radical feminism at all & actually assumed radical feminism = extreme feminism, she thought her beliefs were just regular feminism) and also majored in sociology so like, she knows gender is bullshit. so maybe my situation was generally quite easy compared to yours, bc she already was politically aligned to me and thinks critically about such topics.

first mention i made to that stuff was me telling her about the “genital preferences are transphobic” debate, i told her my opinion and summarized the debate on both sides for her (mostly telling her about the TRA side tho). i then showed her Riley J Dennis and told her to watch Riley’s videos bc i may be misconstruing bc of my personal bias. she watched the videos and took issue w the arguments and said they were ridiculous. she was quite surprised bc she had never seen or heard of that stuff before. so i told her about that and about random arguments ive had with people and my stances, she didn’t disagree with any of it.

i asked her thoughts on child transition & told her about the research on it and my issues with the diagnostic criteria of childhood gender dysphoria and my opposition to puberty blockers etc and she agreed with me there.

i can’t remember all the other stuff i told showed her but the convo we had that had her going full terf on me was me showing her this:

which led to us discussing how people are calling every other thing transphobic. obviously, as a lesbian, she found this ridiculous. the same way she found genital preferences discourse ridiculous. it led to us talking about how people are now even arguing that distinguishing between the sexes is transphobic, and people arguing sex is a social construct, and the like. she found all of those things ridiculous and i was able to show her examples of this and we mostly discussed that. i briefly mentioned in a voice msg how women are now being called “menstruators” or “womb carriers” or w/e else while men still get called men & that women are being called that for the sake of “inclusivity”. i went to sleep & woke up to this from her:

so basically she read that article and completely agreed with the terf side. she started wondering why this stuff is going on in the trans rights movement and she theorised that maybe it’s bc trans women are socialised male & probably have remnants of the male entitlement they were raised with (i did not make this argument at all around her, so she 100% came up with that bit on her own). we talked about the possibility of porn addiction playing into some people’s transition and how the fetishists of which most are privileged straight white males may have taken over the movement to their own benefit. she started wondering who this would all benefit & her conclusion (right now) is that the only people who’ll benefit from it are creepy men. she still wants to read more on it and seems intrigued bc she brought it up herself while we were on a call yesterday and we discussed the weirdos that claim that saying males can’t menstruate is transphobic. i think she’ll continue looking into it and i offered to send her arguments from the TRA side of things if she struggles to find any herself.

so tbh, i didn’t really say or do much. i just informed her on this modern phenomena and she looked into it and formed her own opinion. im not sure if my situation is of any help to u since i feel like, it was pretty easy for me here. i brought up the topic by asking her beliefs and telling her mine without going too deep into it and we just kinda went from there.

[cats-moss-gays]

@terflies

You’ve been all over my posts so I’m just going to consolidate into this one. I’m tired of scrolling past your long and quite frankly boring responses. This post will be divided into sections. If you’re going to respond please say something interesting. However I doubt either of us will ever change the other’s mind. These are kind of like closing statements and I doubt I’ll make anymore major responses because I’m trying to stay focused on offline things.

1. Unanswered Questions

There are some questions and statements in my reblogs that you conveniently ignored.

Definition of a woman? You responded with some generic bs that very clearly isn’t an answer. I’ll be more specific, what should the dictionary definition be? Any ideas?

If I don’t feel like a woman am I allowed to identify as one? You said you weren’t going to humour this question but it is applicable to me and many other gc women. I definitely don’t have any internal feeling of womanhood, or any gender. Does this mean I have to be agender? Is the female gender label restricted to a certain feeling? Or is there absolutely nothing that women have in common?

What is the feeling of womanhood? You kind of answered this but I have a follow up question. You say the feeling of womanhood is enjoying being perceived as a woman. If I feel indifferent to this does it mean I’m not a woman? Additionally, many women feel uncomfortable with being perceived as a woman because of the misogyny associated with the label, does this make them men?

2. Inaccurate Statements and Lies

I don’t believe any “TRAs” define women by gender roles

You may not but there are many who do. It’s also important to point out how deeply ingrained gender roles are in society; you can’t stop them by just saying your choices exist in a vacuum. I’m sure you think I’m just making this up for fun, so here are some examples ;)  x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x

So this whole…thing is dishonest from the start. Gender does not replace sex.

In another post you said that laws should be based on gender instead of sex. So which is it, either gender isn’t replacing sex or it is. When feminists talk about sex based oppression they’re called terfs. When gay people say their attraction is based on sex they’re called transphobic. When people were saying that only females get cervical cancer, they were called violent transphobes. Gender is absolutely attempting to replace sex as the basis of legal protections, safe spaces, political movements, etc. Two of the top post on my blog are more extreme example of this. x - x

BONUS: You’re saying TERF rhetoric

3. The “Questions” Post

You seem very confused about how to define biological sex and to some extent I understand that but you have to stop playing dumb. There must be some way that doctors are able to identify the sex of a fetus before it’s even born in the vast majority of cases, right? And before you try to say I’m just ignoring the existence of intersex people or trying to deny science, I’ll point out that I have watched and read a lot of “sex is a spectrum” stuff. I understand that DSDs exist and that biology is complicated. Our disagreement is mostly not over the facts but over how to define them. I know that however I explain it you’ll pretend you don’t understand it, so instead I’ll just link you to some other sources that explain it more in depth. x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x

A third sex—and many creatures have more than two—does not necessarily mean a third gamete. Mostly this question is a childish distraction, but if you were to use a strict, gamete-based definition of sex the answer would be “none”.

So all infertile people are a third sex? To be female you have to be able to bear children? And you call me regressive, yikes. This can be debunked with the same sources from above but I wanted to feature it in my post because I want people to know that you think there’s a third sex.

I made a quick little chart to compare all the things gender has been compared to! The difference is that while many are socially defined, gender is socially constructed. If someone never interacted with other humans, they would still have a skin color, have or not have specific abilities, have a sexual orientation, and be male or female. They would not have an observable gender identity.

1 - You refuse to humor my questions about being a woman who doesn’t feel like one, however this is not in bad faith; I do want to know what you think. Many gc/radfems, including myself, and many women in general do not have a specific feeling of gender. This is especially true for gnc women, who often feel a disconnect from the feminine gender role and subsequently, the feminine gender. The solution is to realize that there are no standards to conform to to be a woman, no clothes or interests or feelings, just the biological reality one is born with.

2 - You say “the feeling of womanhood is enjoying being called a woman” but what does that mean? It’s circular reasoning, a fallacy called begging the question. How do you know you are a woman? If I gave up being a terf on tumblr, how would you advise that I identify if I don’t think I feel like a woman? My current plan was to just pick the mogai flag with the prettiest colors, but I’m thinking maybe there’s more to it than that...

3 - See my explanation above. Sex is comparable to race or disability or sexuality; gender is not.

4 - You say genders are social classes. If they are indeed social classes, they are unnecessary ones that reinforce oppression. They are undefinable when not based on biological sex or gender roles. The other example of classes I can think of is wealth. Wealth classes have obvious divisions, you can’t just identify into more money. Gender has nothing that is shared by every woman, man, or nonbinary, so you can just identify in and out of classes. Additionally, if there are like 100 genders, are there 100 classes? 

4. The “Biological” Sex Post

Gender does not replace sex

Then why are TRAs trying to say sexuality, legal protections, bathrooms, spaces, political movements, etc should be based on gender instead of sex? You keep contradicting yourself; you should talk to your fellow trans activists because many would disagree. Also see my response in part two.

A number of points here aren’t factually wrong but simple (*simply) irrelevant

So you would agree that biological sex is important and that it is relevant to many conversations? Then why were people getting mad about this?

Or this?

On to the specific examples. This post is long enough already and I’m not going to spoon feed basic biology to you because you’ll probably just ignore it. I referenced a variety of sources earlier. I’ll just reference Invisible Women since it’s an amazing book.

1. This first point is, appropriately enough, true in isolation; it just doesn’t support Paradox Institute’s argument. Listing it leads the audience to believe that truth is on their side, but PI do nothing at all to justify that.

So nothing here is true? They’re just lying? Here are their sources btw.

2. Generally irrelevant, but not entirely biologically accurate, either. It isn’t that ‘male’ and ‘female’ are categories intrinsic to nature that produce small, motile and large, immotile gametes respectively; ‘male’ and ‘female’ are labels we assign (generally, but not always) according to gamete size.

So it’s not relevant that one sex has the ability to carry children or menstruation or get an abortion? It’s not like there’s any issues women face specifically for that, right? So we assign the labels male and female to gametes. If you want to play semantics, sure, we created the words, but the gametes themselves already existed. Not really sure what you’re trying to say here other than disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing and moving some words around. Are you implying that the categorizations of gametes are subjective? Are you saying there’s a spectrum of gametes?? Are eggs just big sperm and sperm just small eggs??? Genuinely have no idea what the fuck you’re trying to prove here.

3. Whatever your opinion of evolutionary psychology, this does not preclude gender. (On the contrary, we ought to include gender in our understanding of cultural development with respect to sex.)

The only gender in history was gender roles, and both were tied to sex in most cases. Sex absolutely came before gender and is more integral to our existence. In any time before the last few decades, gender and sex were basically synonyms.

4. Entirely a straw argument. And, to the contrary, precision greater than two sex categories would be beneficial (i.e. specific sex characteristics, history, endocrinology etc.).

Obviously doctors don’t just diagnose based on sex, they factor in medical history and other traits. Precision is irrelevant because it still focuses on sex not gender. If it’s “entirely a straw argument” why did someone else reblog your response with this?

Speaking as a member of a medical family, the medical one fucking OFFENDS me.

Blood type HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GENDER. Or biological sex! Both are totally irrelevant! And medication dosage is determined by AGE and SIZE. A 25-year-old 160-pound person with a penis needs the exact same dose as a 25-year-old 160-pound person with a vagina. In fact, possibly LESS of a dose, if the person with a penis is 5’10” and the person with a vagina is 5’5”. (The taller person may be underweight.)

This is just. UGH. I could scream.

@prismatic-bell​ this is one of the funniest and dumbest replies I’ve ever gotten. First of all “member of a medical family” tf is that lmao. This reminds me of that post where the “medical worker” tra turned out to be a garbage collector guy. I have no idea why you brought up blood type when it is literally never mentioned in the original post. Strawman much? Fucking obviously blood type isn’t affected by sex, and you’re completely missing the point if you think gender has anything to do with this. Medication dosage is decided by age and size, yes, but also biological sex. This is like basic medical science, dumbass. Mandatory reading from Invisible Women as punishment for your stupidity crimes:

People called her a terf for this :)

5. How sports are best divided is a far broader question than this point implies. We could, for example, segregate sports by relevant physical attributes (as is already the case in some sports) rather than by sex or gender. This point also presupposes (but does not justify) that a woman having an advantage in women’s sports by dint of being trans is significantly greater than an advantage any woman might have by dint of her natural attributes (which, empirically, she does not) and hence would be unfair. That said, enforcement of “female” sports is already marred by racism and perisexism.

You agree sex and gender are different, yes? So then why should males be in female sports? You’re trying to distract me with that stuff about physical performance and whatever. Focus on the question at hand, should males be allowed into female sports? We cannot eradicate sex-segregated sports because female athletes will be even more systematically disadvantaged. If you were truly a feminist you’d understand that female sports are the result of the movement you claim to support. More Invisible Women facts plus some interesting info about the plough hypothesis:

6. Simply untrue. Excluding trans women from statistics about women on the basis that doing so would affect those statistics is arbitrary at best. Those statistics may change, but that does not mean they are unsuitable or inappropriate. The exclusion of any subset of women can be justified in exactly the same way.

Nope! Stop trying to use women of color and intersex women as justifications for why we should let men pretend to be women. You’ve seen the hundreds of receipts of trans women committing all sorts of male violence. Has anyone found anywhere near a comparable number of trans men doing similar things? They have not, even though if trans men were truly men they would be much more violent.

7. The majority of single-sex spaces are, functionally, just as much single-gender (owing to the traditional equivalence of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ and to the majority of the population being cis. Trans people have been using spaces appropriate to their gender for decades, whereas concerns about them doing so are based on speculation and hypotheticals rather than fact. (Aided, as with a lot of bigotry, by bad and manipulated statistics.)

I’ve spoken about my opinions on the bathroom debate before. If a passing trans person uses the bathroom of their choice I don’t really care, but there have already been many examples of men making women uncomfortable in their bathrooms, or worse. Making all bathrooms gender neutral is by far the worst idea, but unfortunately that seems to be where we’re headed. More Invisible Women, just for fun:

8. This is the worst red herring, exploiting violent misogyny for the sake of argument. It is another straw argument, too, since—even ignoring trans-positive feminism in practice and assuming trans people act only in self-interest—trans people are concerned with addressing such injustice.

Sure, many trans people are supportive of feminism. But we can’t effectively dismantle the patriarchy if we can’t accurately describe the (sex-based) oppression involved. Women are routinely silenced when talking about our biology, even when there is no “transphobic” language involved. “Trans-positive feminism” also often reinforces misogyny by supporting sex work and porn, and by shutting down analysis of things like femininity and makeup because “some women like it.” See also from trans activists: misogyny racism homophobia + lesbophobia

9. Similar to (7) there is no consistent distinction between sex and gender across law. Even so, this is another red herring as it is possible to recognise both sex and gender in laws and policies. Some laws already do (at least functionally, if not explicitly).

You can deny it but the TRA train is leaving without you and they’ve been clear about their goals. As you’ve seen in this post, gender is intended to replace sex. Those who bring up sex-based issues are silenced as “terfs” who deserve the hatred thrown at them.

Sorry for making such a long post but I was on a roll so I just kept writing. I don’t expect @terflies​ to respond to all of this but I wanted an excuse to make some sort of masterpost that links to a lot of my other posts and can be used in the future. Online school is going pretty well and I’m trying to start some doing some hobbies that are better than tumblr blogging.

[peachyteabuck]

hii!!! in one of your earlier posts you said that you did not like the phrases "womxn" or "womyn" and while I did find out that womyn or wombyn have TERF origins and are transphobic, may I ask what the problem w womxn is just trying to learn for the better 😅 -🌲

sure thang

i don’t know if anyone has been like “here’s the history of all the variations of womxn and why they’re all bullshit” so here’s my unofficial retelling of why all variations of “women” are nonsense and why you need to stop using them. 

the biggest problem is like, why everyone feels the need to spell women with the last vowel taken out. like yay points for wanting to deconstruct language, but...the last vowel? wtf does that do? congrats, you’re winning yourself liberal points, but like pussy hats and changing ur facebook profile pic to “SUPPORT WOMEN” it’s purely performative. it’s sort of like the phrase “bipoc.” cool, you’re using something a lot of people use, but do you know what it means? do you understand it’s aim? have you given .5 seconds of thought to why you’re using it? 

like, most if not all women-aligned people (e.g. nblw, lesbians who consider lesbianism their gender, etcetc) know that “women” is something closer to a political class than an exclusive club. “women’s section” is less of a strict rule and more of a social construction of what women should wear and what sizes they are and all that junk. to try and like, change a vowel so they feel more included is both useless and counterintuitive which leads into my next point 

terfs will always use some variation of “womxn” because all variations of “womxn” have the same goal: to exclude men. and, by drawing a rigid line between genders (that doesn’t exist! gender is fake and a spectrum!) you not only exclude men-aligned nb people, but terfs will ALWAYS claim that trans women are the men they’re trying to exclude. drawing rigid lines around gender always end up forcing people into boxes they don’t belong, either because of transmisogyny or nonbinary people who don’t think of gender as two rigid categories and other cultures who have non-male/female identities of which...real people are involved in. 

tl;dr:

i’m VERY pro language deconstruction, but actual deconstruction, not changing a literal single vowel and thinking that solve all the problems in the universe. 

per usual, i hope this helps! and if you have any more questions feel free to ask. adhd me sometimes has trouble with broad questions, so if i missed the mark here just send me a more narrow question to realign me lmao. 

[nudityandnerdery]

Please explain non-binary genders to me in a manner that isn't over simplified... Everything I find is either from a terf bigoted bullshit perspective, or just kind of a vague love is love be a decent human being that does nothing for those of us who try to be decent even when we don't understand.

Okay. So. We need to start with two facts.

Fact the first:

Gender and sex aren’t the same thing. Your biological sex is pretty much controlled by your chromosomes and the development of your body. Now, looking at these in a binary fashion, i.e., people either are one or the other, is an inaccurate oversimplification of things. But that's a bit really why we're here. We're here about gender, which brings us to9

Fact the second:

Gender is a social construct. There’s no specific universal definition for what counts as masculine or feminine or any other gender in the world. That shit varies from culture to culture and from time to time. So anyone who tells you something along the lines of “This is what a Real Man does” or “This is what makes you a Woman” or anything in a similar vein? Look, they’re full of shit, they’re either pushing conservative rhetoric or radfem bullshit, which are really not nearly as far apart as either of the aforementioned groups wants to believe they are.

So! With those two facts in mind, here’s what we get with our current gender situation. White western christian-influenced culture, in which most of us are soaked, pushes the idea that there’s two genders- masculine and feminine, whatever synonyms of the roles you want to take up. They want to take those two roles, cast them as opposing roles, and split up various traits in life by what side they think they should belong to.

This is bullshit on multiple levels.

First of all, those traits are arbitrary. According to society, where do some things fall out? Physical strength is masculine, empathy is feminine. We see confidence as masculine while tact is feminine. And they get ridiculous, too. Wearing pants? Masculine, apparently. Crying? It’s feminine to acknowledge pain of any sore, I guess. There’s whole lists of this sort of thing if you look into it, but the fact is that western society spends a lot of energy reinforcing this idea.

Did I mention this is bullshit?

They’re arbitrary. They shift as time goes on- a hundred years ago, pink was a “stronger color” that fit boys better while blue was “delicate and dainty” and thus obviously a color for girls. Pants were previously only for men.

These fucking ridiculous norms are, then, entirely entirely subjective- and they are weaponized far, far too often by people who want to attack someone who’s not appropriately manly or lady-like for their taste. It was some standard bullshit that got thrown at the Obamas- making fun of Barack for not being Clint Eastwood macho, insulting Michelle as being too manly. (There’s also a fuck ton of racial weight to this specific instance here, too, and I’ll have to admit, I’m not a person qualified to do that justice. Do some research, there’s people who have addressed that aspect of it better than I have.)

So this means that forcing people into these standardized roles isn’t about helping them find self-confidence and who they are, they’re about ensuring obedience. They’re about punishing people for stepping out of line. They’re about reinforcing the strictures that our society wants us to have to spend energy adhering to, making sure that we’re more scared of being out of compliance with society’s expectations than we want to find the truth of the life we should be living.

(Every dude out there who’s blamed feminism because he was angry that his girlfriend didn’t need him to help carry a heavy box for him? Yeah, buddy. That’s you being suckered into thinking the cultural gender “norms” are more important than acknowledging that maybe your girlfriend doesn’t need you to lift boxes and fix leaky pipes, because it’s easier to get angry at feminism for that than to consider what else you can bring to a relationship other than simple mechanical abilities.)

Another reason they’re dumb? Because very, very, very few people are strictly one side of the register or another. Especially when those registers are politicized in their own way- negative gender stereotypes would tell us that traits of femininity make them gossipy, illogical drama queens, but then traits of masculinity make them territorial, egotists who act without thinking, and is there really much of a difference, or is there just something recursive about trying to describe similar traits in different ways to fit what you’re trying to argue?

And I’m not even qualified to get into the idea that a gender binary is a pretty specific idea. There’s other cultures out there that believe in more than just the two. But White western christian-influenced culture had pushed the idea that there’s men and there’s women and that’s all.

And it’s a pretty bullshit idea, at least to me.

Which. Well. I guess finally gets us to the point of your question here. And the answer is that while there’s all that standard, strict arguments of what counts as masculine and feminine up there? There’s also… everything else. Look, I’m not going to say that I have all the answers to everything. I’m not entirely joking when I say things like my gender identity is a vague handwaving motion. It’s something I’m trying to figure out. It’s not something that’s really got a straight answer to it. All I can give you right now is this.

Yeah, my body is pretty masculine looking. Got the beard, got a dick, got all that. But when it comes to all of those traits that are supposed to be masculine and that are supposed to be feminine?

I look at the masculine side of the register. A lot of that doesn’t fit me. A lot of that isn’t things I want to aspire to. There are things that do fit, but looking at them, do I feel there’s something inherently male about them? I don’t think so.

I look at the feminine side of the register. A lot of that doesn’t fit me. A lot of that isn’t things I want to aspire to. There are things that do fit, but looking at them, do I feel there’s something inherently female about them? I don’t think so. 

And I think that means the only option I have left is to figure out what a third option is that fits me.

I don’t feel comfortable describing myself as masculine. I don’t feel comfortable describing myself as feminine. So. I have to figure out what I do feel comfortable describing myself as. For the time being, that’s genderqueer. It’s a work in progress, and it may never be something I figure out entirely, and I’m okay with that.

Acknowledging that I don’t know was, in and of itself, kind of a relief.

[star-anise]

do you have any sources on the claims you made? im always willing to change my stance if you have legitimate backing for it haha

So first, I’m sorry for blowing up at you the way that I did. I’m not proud that I reacted in such a kneejerk, aggressive fashion. Thank you for being open to hearing what I have to say. I’m sorry for mistaking you for a TERF, and I’m sorry my response has caused other people to direct their own hostility towards you.

So, here’s the thing. “You can’t call bi women femmes” is pretty intrinsically a radfem thing to say, and I am deeply opposed to letting radfems tell me what to do. I’m trying to write this during a weekend packed with childcare and work. I’ll try to hit all the high notes.

The one thing I am having trouble finding is the longass post I talked about in my reply, that was a history of butch/femme relationships in lesbian bars, which had frequent biphobic asides and talked about “the lesbophobic myth of the bi-rejecting lesbian”; the friend who reblogged it without reading it thoroughly has deleted it, and I can’t find it on any of the tags she remembers looking at around that time. If anyone can find it, I’ll put up a link.

As far as possible, I’m linking to really widely accessible sources, because you shouldn’t intrinsically trust a random post on Tumblr as secret privileged knowledge. People have talked about this at length in reputable publications that your local library either has, or can get through interlibrary loan; you can look up any of the people here, read their work, and decide for yourself. This is a narrative of perspectives, and while I obviously have a perspective, many people disagree with me. At the end of the day, the only reason I need for calling bi women femmes is that You Are Not The Boss Of Me. There is no centralized authority on LGBT+ word usage, nor do I think there should be. Hopefully this post will give you a better sense of what the arguments are, and how to evaluate peoples’ claims in the future.

I looked up “butch” and “femme” with my library’s subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary because that’s where you find the most evidence of etymology and early use, and found:

“Femme” is the French word for “woman”.  It’s been a loanword in English for about 200 years, and in the late 19th century in America it was just a slangy word for “women”, as in, “There were lots of femmes there for the boys to dance with”

“Butch” has been used in American English to mean a tough, masculine man since the late 19th century; in the 1930s and 1940s it came to apply to a short masculine haircut, and shortly thereafter, a woman who wore such a haircut. It’s still used as a nickname for masculine cis guys–my godfather’s name is Martin, but his family calls him Butch. By the 1960s in Britain, “butch” was slang for the penetrating partner of a pair of gay men.

Butch/femme as a dichotomy for women arose specifically in the American lesbian bar scene around, enh, about the 1940s, to enh, about the 1960s. Closet-keys has a pretty extensive butch/femme history reader. This scene was predominantly working-class women, and many spaces in it were predominantly for women of colour. This was a time when “lesbian” literally meant anyone who identified as a woman, and who was sexually or romantically interested in other women. A lot of the women in these spaces were closeted in the rest of their lives, and outside of their safe spaces, they had to dress normatively, were financially dependent on husbands, etc. Both modern lesbians, and modern bisexual women, can see themselves represented in this historical period.

These spaces cross-pollinated heavily with ball culture and drag culture, and were largely about working-class POC creating spaces where they could explore different gender expressions, gender as a construct and a performance, and engage in a variety of relationships. Butch/femme was a binary, but it worked as well as most binaries to do with sex and gender do, which is to say, it broke down a lot, despite the best efforts of people to enforce it. It became used by people of many different genders and orientations whose common denominator was the need for safety and discretion. “Butch” and “femme” were words with meanings, not owners.

Lesbianism as distinct from bisexuality comes from the second wave of feminism, which began in, enh, the 1960s, until about, enh, maybe the 1980s, maybe never by the way Tumblr is going. “Radical” feminism means not just that this is a new and more exciting form of feminism compared to the early 20th century suffrage movement; as one self-identified radfem professor of mine liked to tell us every single lecture, it shares an etymology with the word “root”, meaning that sex discrimination is at the root of all oppression.

Radical feminism blossomed among college-educated women, which also meant, predominantly white, middle- or upper-class women whose first sexual encounters with women happened at elite all-girls schools or universities. Most of these women broke open the field of “women’s studies” and the leading lights of radical feminism often achieved careers as prominent scholars and tenured professors.

Radical feminism established itself as counter to “The Patriarchy”, and one of the things many early radfems believed was, all men were the enemy. All men perpetuated patriarchy and were damaging to women. So the logical decision was for women to withdraw from men in all manner and circumstances–financially, legally, politically, socially, and sexually. “Political lesbianism” wasn’t united by its sexual desire for women; many of its members were asexual, or heterosexual women who decided to live celibate lives. This was because associating with men in any form was essentially aiding and abetting the enemy.

Look, I’ll just literally quote Wikipedia quoting an influential early lesbian separatist/radical feminist commune: “The Furies recommended that Lesbian Separatists relate “only (with) women who cut their ties to male privilege” and suggest that “as long as women still benefit from heterosexuality, receive its privileges and security, they will at some point have to betray their sisters, especially Lesbian sisters who do not receive those benefits”“

This cross-pollinated with the average experience of WLW undergraduates, who were attending school at a time when women weren’t expected to have academic careers; college for women was primarily seen as a place to meet eligible men to eventually marry. So there were definitely women who had relationships with other women, but then, partly due to the pressure of economic reality and heteronormativity, married men. This led to the phrase LUG, or “lesbian until graduation”, which is the kind of thing that still got flung at me in the 00s as an openly bisexual undergrad. Calling someone a LUG was basically an invitation to fight.

The assumption was that women who marry men when they’re 22, or women who don’t stay in the feminist academic sphere, end up betraying their ideals and failing to have solidarity with their sisters. Which seriously erases the many contributions of bi, het, and ace women to feminism and queer liberation. For one, I want to point to Brenda Howard, the bisexual woman who worked to turn Pride from the spontaneous riots in 1969 to the nationwide organized protests and parades that began in 1970 and continue to this day. She spent the majority of her life to a male partner, but that didn’t diminish her contribution to the LGBT+ community.

Lesbian separatists, and radical feminists, hated Butch/Femme terminology. They felt it was a replication of unnecessarily heteronormative ideals. Butch/femme existed in an LGBT+ context, where gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people understood themselves to have more in common with each other than with, say, cis feminists who just hated men more than they loved women. 

The other main stream of feminist thought at the time was Liberal Feminism, which was like, “What if we can change society without totally rejecting men?” and had prominent figures like Gloria Steinem, who ran Ms magazine. Even today, you’ll hear radfems railing against “libfems” and I’m like, my good women, liberal feminism got replaced thirty years ago. Please update your internal schema of “the enemy”

Lesbian separatism was… plagued by infighting. To maintain a “woman-only” space, they had to kick out trans women (thus, TERFs), women who slept with men (thus, biphobia), women who enjoyed kinky sex or pornography or engaged in sex work (thus, SWERFS) and they really struggled to raise their male children in a way that was… um… anti-oppressive. (I’m biased; I know people who were raised in lesbian separatist communes and did not have great childhoods.) At the same time, they had other members they very much wanted to keep, even though their behaviour deviated from the expected program, so you ended up with spectacles like Andrea Dworkin self-identifying as a lesbian despite being deeply in love with and married to a self-identified gay man for twenty years, despite beng famous for the theory that no woman could ever have consensual sex with a man, because all she could ever do was acquiesce to her own rape.

There’s a reason radical feminism stopped being a major part of the public discourse, and also a reason why it survives today: While its proponents became increasingly obsolete, they were respected scholars and tenured university professors. This meant people like Camille Paglia and Mary Daly, despite their transphobia and racism, were considered important people to read and guaranteed jobs educating young people who had probably just moved into a space where they could meet other LGBT people for the very first time. So a lot of modern LGBT people (including me) were educated by radical feminist professors or assigned radical feminist books to read in class.

The person I want to point to as a great exemplar is Alison Bechdel, a white woman who discovered she was a lesbian in college, was educated in the second-wave feminist tradition, but also identified as a butch and made art about the butch/femme dichotomy’s persistence and fluidity. You can see part of that tension in her comic; she knows the official lesbian establishment frowns on butch/femme divisions, but it’s relevant to her lived experience.

What actually replaced radical feminism was not liberal feminism, but intersectional feminism and the “Third Wave”. Black radical feminists, like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, pointed out that many white radical feminists were ignoring race as a possible cause of oppression, and failing to notice how their experiences differed from Black womens’. Which led to a proliferation of feminists talking about other oppressions they faced: Disabled feminists, Latina feminists, queer feminists, working-class feminists. It became clear that even if you eliminated the gender binary from society, there was still a lot of bad shit that you had to unlearn–and also, a lot of oppression that still happened in lesbian separatist spaces.

I’ve talked before about how working in women-only second-wave spaces really destroyed my faith in them and reinforced my belief in intersectional feminism

Meanwhile, back in the broader queer community, “queer” stuck as a label because how people identified was really fluid. Part of it is that you learn by experience, and sometimes the only way to know if something works for you is to try it out, and part of it is that, as society changed, a lot more people became able to take on new identities without as much fear. So for example, you have people like Pat Califia, who identified as a lesbian in the 70s and 80s, found far more in common with gay leather daddies than sex-negative lesbians, and these days identifies as a bisexual trans man.

Another reason radical feminists hate the word “queer”, by the way, is queer theory, which wants to go beyond the concept of men oppressing women, or straights oppressing gays, but to question this entire system we’ve built, of sex, and gender, and orientation. It talks about “queering” things to mean “to deviate from heteronormativity” more than “to be homosexual”. A man who is married to a woman, who stays at home and raises their children while she works, is viewed as “queer” inasmuch as he deviates from heteronormativity, and is discriminated against for it.

So, I love queer theory, but I will agree that it can be infuriating to hear somebody say that as a single (cis het) man he is “queer” in the same way being a trans lesbian of colour is “queer”, and get very upset and precious about being told they’re not actually the same thing. I think that actually, “queer as a slur” originated as the kind of thing you want to scream when listening to too much academic bloviating, like, “This is a slur! Don’t reclaim it if it didn’t originally apply to you! It’s like poor white people trying to call themselves the n-word!” so you should make sure you are speaking about a group actually discriminated against before calling them “queer”. On the other hand, queer theory is where the theory of “toxic masculinity” came from and we realized that we don’t have to eliminate all men from the universe to reduce gender violence; if we actually pay attention to the pressures that make men so shitty, we can reduce or reverse-engineer them and encourage them to be better, less sexist, men.

But since radfems and queer theorists are basically mortal enemies in academia, radical feminists quite welcomed the “queer as a slur” phenomenon as a way to silence and exclude people they wanted silenced and excluded, because frankly until that came along they’ve been losing the culture wars.

This is kind of bad news for lesbians who just want to float off to a happy land of only loving women and not getting sexually harrassed by men. As it turns out, you can’t just turn on your lesbianism and opt out of living in society. Society will follow you wherever you go. If you want to end men saying gross things to lesbians, you can’t just defend lesbianism as meaning “don’t hit on me”; you have to end men saying gross things to all women, including bi and other queer women.  And if you do want a lesbian-only space, you either have to accept that you will have to exclude and discriminate against some people, including members of your community whose identities or partners change in the future, or accept that the cost of not being a TERF and a biphobe is putting up with people in your space whose desires don’t always resemble yours.

Good god, this got extensive and I’ve been writing for two hours.

So here’s the other thing.

My girlfriend is a femme bi woman. She’s married to a man.

She’s also married to two women.

And dating a man.

And dating me (a woman).

When you throw monogamy out the window, it becomes EVEN MORE obvious that “being married to a man” does not exclude a woman from participation in the queer community as a queer woman, a woman whose presentation is relevant in WLW contexts. Like, this woman is in more relationships with women at the moment than some lesbians on this site have been in for their entire lives.

You can start out with really clear-cut ideas about “THIS is what my life is gonna be like” but then your best friend’s sexual orientation changes, or your lover starts to transition, and things in real life are so much messier than they look when you’re planning your future. It’s easy to be cruel, exclusionary, or dismissive to people you don’t know; it’s a lot harder when it’s people you have real relationships with.

And my married-to-a-man girlfriend? Uses “butch” and “femme” for reasons very relevant to her queerness and often fairly unique to femme bi women, like, “I was out with my husband and looking pretty femme, so I guess they didn’t clock me as a queer” or “I was the least butch person there, so they didn’t expect me to be the only one who uses power tools.” Being a femme bi woman is a lot about invisibility, which is worth talking about as a queer experience instead of being assumed to exclude us from the queer community.

[oscar-mildes]

elvira you know I always see what you're hiding in the tags,, I will always read it if you answer all of them abhsjdbs

nev you asked for this and im going to go thru with it bc im an oversharing idiot like oh you asked me how’s the weather i will tell you about all my trauma instead :D 

What do you identify as and what are your pronouns? i’m cis yo i’m she/her. i’m biromantic ace. thats the label i would put on it i guess. i really just refer to myself as gay bc i like pretty boys who look like girls and pretty girls and pretty nb and queer people and basically i just like pretty people ajsfbjf

How did you discover your sexuality, tell your story? theres no story to it. no epiphany or realization. i just always was ok with thinking that girls were pretty and that gay people are cool and it wasnt until recent years that i was like oH SHIT AM I GAY

Have you experienced being misgendered? What happened and how did you overcome it? no i guess bc i’m a girl and id as a girl and have a very obvious girl body

Who was the first person you told, how did they react? i guess my best friend. we’re both very ok with gay shit and we just always made comments about pretty girls and now we’re both pretty gay. i like my big tiddie anime girls and she likes her pretty kpop girl bands

Describe what it was like coming out, what did you feel? i’ve only “come out” to some of my friends. i would NEVER in my LIFE even imagine telling my mom i like girls. shes homophobic Like That

If you’re out, how did your parents/guardians/friends react? uhh see above. my mom, stepdad, family members are all homophobic. hispanics in general are Like That rip. i think my dad would be the most ok with it but he lives in mexico and i dont talk to him often anyway. doesnt matter

What is one question you hate people asking about your sexuality? i hate when people ask me about the ace part. like they have a bigger problem about my not wanting to have sex over the liking girls part tbh. sometimes it’s difficult for me to even describe where i am on the ace spectrum. it’s honestly the more difficult part 

Describe the style of clothing that you most often wear. basic nerd. you know those fics like “she dressed in a black t-shirt, skinny jeans, and all star converse” yea that she is me

Who are your favourite lgbt+ ships? ajkfj this is a good question and canon wise i love Ash and Eiji from Banana Fish, Uenoyama and Mafuyu from Given, Nezumi and Shion from No. 6, and Simon and Baz from Carry On. Not canon i love Kurama and Hiei from Yu Yu Hakusho, Izuku and Todoroki from My Hero Academia, and Inosuke and Tanjiro from Demon Slayer. Note how most of them are anime i

What does makeup mean to you? Do you wear any? i dont really wear any bc im lazy. if you like it you do you but idrc for it? except for lipstick i LOVE lipstick i have all the colors. i wear it so it distracts people from the rest of my face

Do you experience dysphoria? If so, how does that affect you? ...no

What is the stupidest thing you’ve heard said about the lgbt+ community? i live in the south so ive heard tons of shit talk about gay people. i dont really have any that stand out. my mom just likes to say that we’re going to hell :D so let’s give em a show ay

What’s your favourite thing about the lgbt+ community? i guess i like how we find solidarity in each other just bc we’re not straight. most of the lgbt+ folks i know are pretty chill about everything

What’s your least favourite thing about the lgbt+ community? terfs but they dont count

Have you ever been to your cities pride event? Why or why not? i live in a small town and i could never sneak out of my house for that bc i still live with my mom so no

Who is your favourite lgbt+ Icon/Advocate/Celebrity? theres so many big celebrities now that id as lgbt+ but im going old school and loving my man, my tumblr url namesake mr Oscar Wilde. my man got put in jail for sodomy 

Have you been in a relationship and how did you meet? lmao never bc im mean, ugly, and terrible at talking to people irl. i had a bf in middle school? but bc i was 12 i dont count it 

What is your favourite lgbt+ book? Carry On and the sequel Wayward Son. (very anxiously waiting for book 3 Anyway the Wind Blows come on Rainbow Rowell)

Have you ever faced discrimination? What happened? for being gay? no. bc im not really out. ive faced discrimination for being a brown woman tho :)))

Your Favorite lgbt+ movie or show? yall i love gay anime: Given, Banana Fish, No. 6, Yuri on Ice yeee. i dont really watch tv with real people but i think that Brooklyn 99 does a very good job with Holt and Rosa yall im love Rosa

Who are some of your favourite lgbt+ bloggers? theres bloggers??? um idk i love u nev so you count right @why-do-you-pick-flowers

Which lgbt+ slur do you want to reclaim? for a while everyone was mad as hell about “im gay for ___” and idk im gay for everything so thats a “slur” i use for myself

Have you ever gone to a gay bar, or a drag show, how was it? ive never gone omg i’d probably be intimidated as hell like i have a lot of problems just existing so to be existing around very flamboyant and extravagant people like that makes me break into a nervous sweat

How do you self-identify your gender, and what does that mean to you? ive always felt like a girl even tho my mom always said “oh you like boy things??? you should have been born a boy” but like, your likes and dislike dont determine your gender. i like “boy” things and “dress like a boy” but i dont FEEL like a boy. ive never had any desire to become a boy or id as a boy. gender is a social construct fuck society

Are you interested in having children? Why or why not? i have a very complicated relationship with children. babies are ugly and toddlers are annoying but i feel like if i had children i would love them obviously because theyre mine. this is gonna be a weird analogy but like i dislike cats. BUT  i have cats. and i love the fuck outta them. so i feel like thatd be me with kids. but im ace so like.... who would even have kids with me. i could not. pregnancy seems like a hassle and adoption is... i have thoughts on that but thats for a different post. also i can see myself being married and not having children OR having kids without a spouse. theres just something complicated about having both??? maybe im just fucked in the head idk bro

What identity advice would you give your younger self? you dont hate girls you like them, dumbass

What do you think of gender roles in relationships? fuck gender roles. get pegged, bros. i also have a very specific dynamic if i ever got into a relationship (which you know. wont happen) but like if i dated a guy i feel like i’d be very top. a MAN telling ME what to do??? fuck that. but if i dated a pretty girl??? top me pls

Anything else you want to share about your experience with gender? i think ive already said too much oh god someone is gonna look at this and be like what the FUCK but like lmao dont be afraid to ask me i apparently have no shame

What is something you wish people know about being lgbt+? it’s scary at first because you think “im not normal” but like pray tell me what is normal. do what makes you happy. fuck society

Why are proud to be lgbt+? i’m comfortable with the people i like. i might not be very confident and i have depression, anxiety, self esteem issues, probs adhd or ocd idfk but at least i know if i see a pretty girl or smth im gonna be like wow that girl is pretty and have no bad thoughts about it. it’s just how it be. after a lot of dissecting my past behavior, ive always been this way. you cant change who you are. just accept it