#discussion of exorsexism

[technoxenoholic]

(gets diagnosed with a new-to-me and reasonably uncommon thing)

"whelp i guess i should look online and see if i can find community about the thing to maybe make friends and find extra coping strategies that my specialist didn't tell me about"

(the thing is a heavily gendered diagnosis, to the degree that there very well could be diagnostic bias skewing the numbers, but it's impossible to know for sure because it looks like nobody has bothered to examine why [binary gender] actually has it more often; it's just treated as a given by most that assigned gender is the reason. many people are talking like only [binary gender] have it, and that [other binary gender] with it are outliers; they rarely seem to even be considered. and also trans but especially nonbinary people apparently don't exist in most of these online spaces At All)

"...actually, i think i will not talk about having the thing except to my closest friends who i already trust"

[murderbotwritingprompts]

Yes, yes, you love Murderbot. You think Murderbot is so funny and relatable. You'd die for Murderbot. We know.

But do you actually use Murderbot's it/its pronouns? Do you actually respect the fact that it's an everything-repulsed aroace and is solitaremit touch-averse, and the fact that it represents real people who are these things?

Or do you just "love" the "relatable" version of Murderbot that exists in your head, where you've cut out and replaced everything that makes it who it is as a character with things you can personally relate to, even though the whole theme of the series is that you need to respect people even when you can't relate to them?

Do you think "representation matters" only when you're the one being represented?

Do you think it magically becomes okay to erase canon Queer identities and disabilities as long as you're not the one being represented?

Do you actually love the character of Murderbot, who is explicitly everything-repulsed aroace, nonbinary and uses it/its pronouns exclusively, and is soltaremit touch-averse?

Or do you just love the OC you've slapped its name onto that exists in your head?

[rjalker]

Reposting for 2024. Originally made in 2023. But bigots keep being bigots.

Allos in this year, 2024, still don’t see aspec orientations as genuine orientations. They see it as an empty space where the orientation is inexplicably missing, so they see a character who is cannonically aroace and viscerally repulsed by all forms of relationships and touch, and think that, because this is a “lack of orientation” rather than an orientation directed at, explicitly, no one, they think it’s perfectly fine and not bigoted at all for them to shove their orientations onto the explicitly Queer character, erasing the aroace representation in favor of turning it into another Cis Gay Man who uses he/him…even though the character is literally nonbinary, and uses it/its pronouns.

Because they also see being nonbinary as a “fill in the missing parts” puzzle. They think the character describing its gender as “not applicable” and “indeterminate” means that, really, it’s a guy! it’s a man! Because it’s funny and relatable and only Men™ are relatable! Only Male Characters™ can be  funny and well-written!

In 2024!

Fully grown adults are fucking pulling this shit in 2024 and think they’re the perfect Queer Allies™, and like this isn't the world's most basic misogyny to top off the exorsexism and transmisia. You people are so proud to admit that you think women can't be funny. And think nothing of it. Do you have any idea how bad you look doing this shit, even if you ignore the fact that you're shitting on nonbinary people?

You people don’t see aroace or nonbinary people as actually existing, and actually having meaningful identities. You think we’re walking fucking ad-libs and you can fill in the “blanks” with whatever’s most palatable to your tastes. 

And that means misgendering the canonnically nonbinary character who uses it/its pronouns, erasing literally every single aspect of its identity that gets in the way of shipping it (removing its aceness, its aroness, or just straight up pretending it’s not aroace to begin with, and erasing its solitaremit touch averseion and disgust towards sex and intimacy of any kind), and then pretending their actions are completely harmless when they’re called out for it.

Because according to them, it’s not bigotry if the canon Queer identities they’re erasing are the ones they think don’t exist in the first place. Being aroace isn’t an orientation for them, it just means you’re broken and need to be fixed. Being nonbinary and using it/its with them isn’t a real gender identity and presentation, it means they’re something wrong with you and you need to be fixed. Being touch averse isn’t a real disability, it just means there’s something wrong with you, and you need to be fixed.

They don’t fucking see Murderbot as representation for real Queer disabled trans people. They see it as something broken that needs to be fixed, by taking away everything that makes it who it is, so that they can fill in all the now gaping wounds with their own much less stigmatized identities instead.

Even though the literal entire theme of The Murderbot Diaries is that you should treat people with respect even if you don’t understand their experiences.

[technoxenoholic]

i want to stress a point that i feel got a teeny bit lost in this post: we don't have to be remotely male or masc in any way to ALSO not be remotely female or femme in any way. i'm 0% either and 100% neither. "women and femmes" simultaneously excludes and seeks to misgender me (a xenogender person) exactly as much as it does trans men & masc folks. trying to fit me into "she+" is equally as violent against me as it is to my trans brothers, butch siblings, et al.

spaces that label themselves like this help LITERALLY NO ONE except for cis women who want to perform the façade of inclusivity but don't want to confront the reality of gender diversity. it is an explicit demonstration of their ability and willingness to perpetuate violence and erasure against trans and genderqueer people when they define their intended audience this way.

I've been seeing a disturbing number of "queer safe spaces" describe themselves as things like "femme & them" and even worse "she+," conflating femininity & nonbinaryhood. cease this immediately. say it with me: nonbinary people are NOT women-lite and it is extremely violent and straight up incorrect to imply that all they/thems are fem adjacent. this is erasure and this verbiage does nothing but make gnc and nonbinary spaces unsafe for masc and male nonbinary people. nonbinary, genderqueer and other third gender people can be and are masculine and men, we can be hes as well as shes and theys, stop allowing yourself and your peers to view nonbinary as woman/femme-lite, signed a butch nonbinary person.

[spitblaze]

In the spirit of lrb but on a different post so I'm not derailing bc it is in fact a different topic:

Stop trying to arbitrarily sort nonbinary and multigender people into binary categories! Like yes there are nonbinary women and nonbinary men and multigender people who might only have one binary gender or present/mostly identify one way and all sorts of asterisks and caveats but you CANNOT keep trying to figure out people's agabs or presentations or whatever so you can fit them into the arbitrary binary of 'woman' ('victim'/'tma') or 'man' ('opressor'/'tme'). Nonbinary people aren't just 'valid'- we're nonbinary. Many of us do not fit within the binary and we do not want to and don't want to be assigned a role to play in binarist discourse. Multigender people are not just women or just men, and to force them to reduce themselves to one or the other is, in fact, transphobic. Cut it out.

[trans-androgyne]

To get a proper picture of modern trans oppression, you need to recognize the ways trans issues have varied across history and still vary heavily across places. I made a post the other day about how things have changed in my country for trans people over the past 50-100 years, but it was incredibly US-centric, a huge issue when trans discussions on here tend to be western-centric in general.

I feel most folks recognize that where things are bad for queer people generally, they're terrible for trans women and similar groups. It's illegal to be queer in one-third of all UN member countries, and in 13 cross-dressing is explicitly criminalized. Such laws have often targeted transfeminine expression specifically. And of course, Trans Rights as we know them (such as access to medical transition, ability to change gender markers, anti-discrimination laws) are a struggle in even relatively accepting countries; there are plenty of trans and other gender non-normative folks that don't have access to the most basic rights I do as a trans person in the United States. Problems trans folks face here, like trans women being forced into sex work, are even more prevalent and severe elsewhere in the world.

But fewer people seem to recognize that where things are bad for cis women, they're terrible for trans men and similar groups. There are so many places where those considered women are put under much heavier appearance and behavior restrictions than here and I can guess that trying to undergo any amount of masculine transition would not turn out well for them. Where I live, we may have gotten better than 50 years ago about not treating women as babymaking property, but there are 46 countries where marital rape is not a crime, while 40% of folks globally live under restrictive abortion laws. I know forced pregnancy as a form of controlling and detransitioning trans men and mascs happens enough where I live, and I cannot imagine what it would be like to live a transmasculine life under these conditions. I'm privileged by where I was born, and hope to find more stories of trans and gnc lives in other places. If anyone has any stories to share or somewhere to point folks towards to educate ourselves, it would be incredibly welcomed and appreciated.

[technoxenoholic]

wasps and spiders 🤝 "weird" nonbinary people

people freaking out about their existence and threatening them with violence just for being visible when they are literally not trying to hurt you they are literally not dangerous to you and they're only scary or upsetting to you because you take their literal existence in bad faith and refuse to understand them or do even the bare minimum to not make them scared of you

[nightmarish-fallen-angel]

I just watched a news video about new guidelines regarding pain with IUD insertions.

The entire video framed this as a "women's rights" or "women's healthcare" video.

I am a trans nonbinary guy who had an IUD insertion. Using gendered language regarding reproductive rights and healthcare is so frustrating because I need these health guidelines and laws to apply to me too. And the more people stay in the habit of framing it as a "women's issue" the more likely I am to get denied the care I need.

Trans, nonbinary, and intersex people deserve to have a voice in these things as well. We deserve to have gender neutral language surrounding the procedures we might undergo at the very least.

I want the health codes and guidelines that may be written to protect me and my trans siblings if they pursue this kind of birth control or any other reproductive healthcare.

[rjalker]

Has been in my drafts for like over a year now.

You can enjoy something and criticize its failing at the same time. The Murderbot Diaries has a lot of issues that need to be addressed.

"Murderbot isn't actually a robot so it's not a stereotype for it to be nonbinary!"

okay people just because Martha Wells has decided to call SecUnits and ComfortUnits "constructs" instead of "anthroids" does not mean you get to defend the real exorsexist stereotype that Murderbot and yes, literally all the other robot characters in these books fall into!

The "nonbinary robot" is in fact a transmisic stereotype that yes, in fact, 10000% applies to Murderbot, and ART, and Miki, and literally everyone else.

Why is Murderbot nonbinary? Because it's an androgynoid that doesn't have any gender or sex-related parts. Because its sex is non existant and therefore its gender is nonexistant because Martha Wells equates sex with gender.

Murderbot is the epitome of the "nonbinary robot" stereotype. Because on top of being nonbinary because it has no sex and thus no gender, it's also aroace.

The stereotype would not apply if Martha Wells' view of gender extended beyond "sex = gender" in any meaningful way, but it very clearly does not right now, because if it did, we would not be six books into a series filled with nonbinary robots, and then have only one nonbinary human so far, who only appeared for a few scenes and doesn't really do anything before being shoved off-screen until te gets another sentence right at the end of the book.

(no, seriously, I will literally go in and fucking highlight every scene where Rami is actually there doing stuff when I'm done posting this and I will post the grand total of ter contribution to the fucking book to drive it home.)

And to make it clear, the problem here is not that Murderbot is aroace and nonbinary.

The problem is that we've had six books now, and yet somehow the only nonbinary human character was back in book 2, and te only appeared for a few scenes and didn't really do much at all.

And no! No! The random single-appearance background humans that Murderbot apparently arbitrarily uses they/them pronouns for do not fucking count as nonbinary human representation! Not when literally no one in these books has ever fucking asked "hey what are your pronouns?" or even just fucking listed their pronouns in their bio!!

I keep seeing people saying this book has "great trans rep" and no, it literally objectively does not. In order to have trans rep it would have to have trans characters who exist for more than five seconds.

Murderbot is not trans. Not unless Martha Wells decides to do the smart thing and reveal that "no Murderbot, your experiences are not universal to al SecUnits"

And no, this does not fucking mean any of you exorsexist assholes get to misgender Murderbot or any other of these nonbinary characters!

[viciouslyrobotic]

Radical feminism buys into white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy and requires gender essentialism and exorsexist ideals to work. That's why it operates under the "man vs woman" framework we already live under. That's why Rowling and other radfems are called trans exclusionary, why they're so often racist, and why their communities are so often white, and why the attempt to rebrand it as trans inclusive will never work.

It functionally can't be trans or even gnc inclusive without ignoring several intersections of oppression.

[technoxenoholic]

there's nowhere to put my gender on this theoretically-inclusive "pick somewhere along the slider, or pick the 'none' option" system.

i have a gender. it's not between male and female. it's nowhere near either of them. it's completely unrelated. it's literally in another star system.

you cannot create a limited system of gender and include all genders within it. stop trying to do this. it will never work.

Really hate that the queer community's response to the creation of a gender trinary (girl, boy, and nonbinary) was to... reinvent the binary. We just started grouping all genders into "masc/male-aligned" and "fem/female-aligned" and it's so fucking stupid. Even with the occasional allowance of "neutral/unaligned" it still maintains the binary as the standard. And then they don't let you use certain labels if you don't have the "right" gender alignment. The fuck.

[nonbinarymlm]

I wish there were more posts on malgendering sharing many different trans experiences. I think every trans person (and likely other LGBTQIA+ and GNC folk) have experiences with it and it’s so insidious.

So. This is going to be an open post for LGBTQIA+ folk, particularly trans and intersex folk, to talk about your experiences with malgendering.

Malgendering is when you’re gendered correctly, but that gendering is treated negatively or used to justify bad treatment. It could include a wide range of behaviors, from trying to silence trans people who discuss their experiences from before coming out to being passive aggressive about gendering someone correctly to using a trans person’s gender so justify violence.

Do you have any experiences with Malgendering that you’d like to share? Aspects of it that you want others to understand? Would you prefer being misgendered or malgendered? This is a post to share your experiences and thoughts! (While respecting others.)

[agendercryptidlev]

Omg wait.. you're right. Those hysterical bitches don't suffer enough for their voices to matter. Male socialized baeddels, uhh I mean trans women should just quit complaining about misogyny forever. Fuck those man hating feminists, am I right or am I right man!

You are no better than the average MRA I could find on reddit lol. Maybe try cracking a book or talking to more than one trans woman a week idk

I wonder what I could have said to cause this ask!

hm

hmmm

hmmmmmm

Yeah this really is the piss on the poor website

[transmandrake]

I wrote out a longer version of this that made no sense but. Trans people arguing on whether theyre seen as their chosen gender by others is such a tiresome thing.

Like yeah I do agree that trans women arent seen as men and often are seen as women

But I do not think this is a good thing or that thats a core component of transphobia and transmisogyny specifically

Because

1. the corollary 'so trans men are seen as men' is simply not true. Trans men largely are not seen as men, or even women imo but often as women.

2. Transphobes, largely, when they see trans women as women... Do not. See women as people, or worthy of true personhood. Yes even if said transphobe is a woman.

Transmisogyny I do not like as a word because I think all transphobia is misogynistic. If it wasnt, trans men would be seen as men largely. But they are not.

All trans people are seen as women in typical transphobia, because 'woman' is lower on the ranks than 'man', and therefore are placed as low as possible, where possible.

More specifically, trans people are seen as inhuman, where possible. This often means being seen as women. Because misogyny.

This is also why, even though I, generally, really like the *productive* discussions the concept of transmisogyny and transandrophobia have fostered, I dont think they are useful terms, because all transphobia is an intersection of sexism of all flavours. That is what it is. If men were seen as lesser, trans people would be seen as men. And, while fringe, yes, and not systemic, people who see men as lesser see trans people as men. That's all.

Digging deeper into it, pretty much nobody has discussed enbyphobia as the real intersection of transphobia. Trans people are seen as outside the binary, and this does not contradict people who say there are only two genders at all... because gender is a piece of humanity. To these people trans people are not human enough.

That might sound like im contradicting myself but it isnt. Whichever gender is closest to inhumanity is what people will see trans people as. There are two genders, lesser, and human.

This is also why it causes so many arguments, and why they arent productive. If a trans man is insisting theyre seen as a woman, and a trans woman is insisting theyre seen as a woman, they are not at odds. They are in agreement that they are percieved as our current societies lesser category.

I don't think insisting a trans woman is seen as a man is transphobic, and insisting a trans man is seen as a man is decidedly not gender-affirming, because, while fringe, lots of trans people are, whether theyre aware or not, are in sexist circles, who do, in fact, see men as lesser in personhood. Sure, misandry isnt systemically a thing, but sexism is not purely targeted at women.

This is also why I think the 'Trans X are X' phrase is not useful or truthful. Insisting a trans woman is a woman to many peoples ears is affirming a trans woman's lesserness. Insisting a trans man is a man is often a weapon against them expressing their multigendered experience.

Trans men and women are not always men or women. They are always people. Worthy of personhood. Insist upon this above all.

I think more productive action can be done if all this is kept in mind, and we stop eating ourselves in finger-pointing.

[rjalker]

(It's also important to note that this does not just happen to transmasculine people. Anyone who was/is seen as a girl/woman who wants to transition to be something else, or even just wants to have a different body even if it's not a transition into another gender, has to deal with this infantilization.

For many, the reason for this is that our bodies are viewed as property of society, rather than belonging to us. We're supposed to make babies and look sexy, so if we remove our breasts and baby-making parts, that means we're removing the only thing that made us valuable as far as society is concerned.)

((Wanting to remove breasts or go on testosterone or anything liket hat doesn't inherently make you transmasculine. Not having breasts or having high testosterone doesn't inherently make you masculine. Not everyone who wants these things is doing it to become masculine. Transmasculine does not equal "everyone who wants these things"))

whoever was the first person to make the observation that transphobia against transmascs is rooted in this kind of paternalistic misogyny whever everyone asks like they're just poor confused widdle girls who don't know how to make decisions for themselves was so SO right about that. like I'm not even transmasc but it's infuriating to see these posts every other day being like "do you realize that these medical procedures are IRREVERSIBLE?? If you get top surgery it will PERMANENTLY take away your breasts. If you go in testosterone it will PERMANENTLY change your body??" When the obvious fucking response to that from anyone who's even considered going through with any kind of masculinizing gender affirming care is

Like transmascs (teenagers and kids included) aren't fucking stupid. they're not too ignorant or impressionable to make decisions for themselves.

[transmaverique]

'binary' isnt a slur, it isnt a mean word, it isnt a bad word. there are differences between how binary trans people are treated by others both within and outside of the trans community, between how you move through Cisiety and are harmed within it, and how nonbinary trans people are. there are things binary trans people are benefited by that actively hurt nonbinary trans people, and ime, whenever i bring those things up as being harmful to me, binary trans people wave them away because they are beneficial to them as binary people.

i dont need to coddle or comfort you and say things like "ohhh yes of course your gender is just as multifaceted and complex as minee!!". i don't need to justify myself when i point out that being or passing as a binary gender brings can give you certain situational advantages that being nonbinary bars from me. i dont need to continuously capitulate, i dont need to be constantly scared over whether or not im hurting your feelings by asking you to acknowledge my experiences as a nonbinary trans person.