#even Judith fucking Butler

[sagevalleymusings]

Not to shit all over Canton Winer's extremely small and self-selecting sample of queer asexuals, but

the term agender was coined in 2006

the entire premise of The Second Sex was about how womanhood was defined as what manhood was not

The entire concept of "gender critical" is about how gender doesn't exist and has been integral to separatist feminism for over thirty years

Canton Winer is not the first person to use the term "gender detachment." I searched Google, Google Scholar, and JSTOR, and found a little over 30 results from as early as the mid aughts

Increased rates of non-gender conforming identities in asexual populations is already well established. In order to have non-conforming identities in either you have to have already examined your identity. Canton does admit this latter half with no mention of prior scholarship.

I can't find Canton's Gender Detachment thesis on JSTOR or Google Scholar but no examination of gender and sexuality can draw solid conclusions without discussing age and race, at minimum, since these two things have radical effects on how gender and sexuality are perceived

It's also a well studied phenomenon that cis people do not have a concrete sense of gender identity - much in the same way that white people do not have a concrete sense of racial identity. Their privilege as a cis person means that they do not need to think about their gender. "Gender Detachment" isn't a new concept - it is the default.

I tend to distrust people who say "research on [this topic] is pretty slim" because what it means is that they haven't done their research. Searching for asexuality in JSTOR yields at least 200 results, which is smaller than, for example, women, but the oldest cited source (and again this is just on JSTOR) is from 1973.

At some point Canton says "Almost all of my gender detached respondents were assigned female at birth" which is extremely telling in and of itself because this information is nearly useless without context (because knowing they are afab doesn't tell us if they are cis), and actually useless in context. Given what they've said about their sample here and other places, it looks like only 8 or so of the 77 were men to begin with, which means you actually can't draw any meaningful results about gender detachment among men literally at all. That's too small a sample size by an actual magnitude.

Like yes I do think it's helpful for someone this self-important social media savvy to bring awareness to this concept, but from what I've read so far this sounds... I don't know if there's a better word for it other than mansplaining, which I dislike using on non-binary persons, but this is where we're at. You want to be an allosexual amab *inventing terminology* for asexual afabs then as an asexual afab I get to call that mansplaining.

You run in lesbian circles and you discover immediately that this idea of frustration, apathy, and irresolution towards gender has been explored from a scholarly perspective for decades. Lines like "but that work has been mostly theoretical" and "My findings complicate the (often unstated) assumption that everyone “has” a gender identity" are so unhinged from real experiences of lesbian activists *who have written about this* as to be delusional. This PhD candidate has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

Since when have we been assuming "everyone" has a gender identity? Has that concretely been established? Or is that something this author is assuming is an assumption? Because it hasn't been my experience. I've had to push at every job I've ever worked at to change their forms from asking about a person's sex to asking about a person's gender in an attempt to be more inclusive to those whose gender doesn't match their sex. Does that imply everyone has a gender? No, of fucking course not. It implies that we still don't have good language for talking about this, and maybe never will. It implies that asking about people's sex is outdated and asking about people's gender only makes that obvious. It implies that patriarchy is so embedded into our systems of hierarchy that attempts to make that hierarchy more inclusive will still, inevitably, institute a hierarchy with their solutions.

And I would sincerely hope, though I am not convinced that this was done, that his research doesn't simply drop this term and peace out. Because "inventing" a gender theory term this close to describing gender critical biological essentialism without talking about how close it is to gender critical biological essentialism is irresponsible scholarship. There is an entire movement of women using their "gender detachment" to oppress trans women. If you're going to talk about this, you need to talk about that.

i feel so seen!!

(twitter thread)

[mymlody]

it sucks so bad that lolitas have to deal with fetishization of the fashion by several different communities but it also sucks that when i see a lolita with “sissies dni” i have to skim their blog to see if they mean like “people who are actively stealing images and crossing boundaries and sexualizing the fashion in a way that is unacceptable” or “people who don’t look like how i think cis women look wearing lolita in a completely respectful non-sexual way” bc sometimes it seems like there are people who uh. do not have that line!

[ugisfeelings]

my (white) undergrad director of my critical ethnic/cultural studies just belligerently accused me of self-plagiarism for my thesis draft and blocked me from enrolling as a thesis student…….

[gatheringbones]

[“It was only after I came out as a dyke that, for the first time in my life, I felt ready to celebrate being a girl, and I did. Actually, I overdid. Armed with Esther Newton’s Mother Camp, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, and Joan Nestle’s A Restricted Country, I embraced femme. I dressed up in short flowery dresses, pushup bras, satin panties, and lacy stockings. I paid great attention to my long, curly, perfectly-coiffed hair, my glamorous makeup, and especially my pouty lips. I spritzed Lola’s smell on my skin—Estee Lauder’s Private Collection—and painted my nails. I wore all of it with black combat boots and a brilliant sense of irony. I reveled in my girliness, went over the top, learned how to tweeze my eyebrows and line my lips with a lip pencil.

My gender presentation was unmistakable: blatant female sexuality. I was a proud, in-your-face, take-no-prisoners, uppity, don’t-assume-I’m-straight-because-I-wear-lipstick-and-dresses femme dyke. Because femmes are always assumed to be straight or sleeping with men, and I do sleep with men, I made sure to always have a butch on my arm so I’d be read as femme. Even though I was sure I’d be mistaken for straight, the boys took one look at me and steered clear. It was as if I was too much of a woman for them to handle, like I was a handful, and I was. But butch girls love a handful—a handful of tits, a handful of ass, a girl who needs to be handled, a girl who can handle herself.

How I figured out I was a femme had a lot to do with the women I was attracted to and the dynamic between us. When I was in junior high, I used to mess around with a friend of mine named Angela. Angela was one of those girls who developed early; I remember she had big breasts in like sixth grade. We mostly kissed and touched over clothes, and we played out various boy-girl scenarios. I was always the girl—my early femme roots. My favorite of all our little scenes was the one where she was my male boss and I was the secretary. The boss made me have sex with him and told me if I didn’t I would get fired. Now this was all before Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill and the media awareness/obsession with sexual harassment. I remember she’d tell me to suck her dick and push my face unmercifully into her crotch, which smelled amazing,. The drama of it all—the force, the degradation, the power games—really got me off. After that, there was no going back to simplicity. I was hooked on the power.

Jen really epitomized all the girls I was attracted to then and still am. Being with a butch girl, I was valued for my combination of strength and vulnerability, for dressing up, for wanting an arm to hold onto, hips to wrap my legs around, being able to give my body over to her and say, I trust you, I’m yours. My butch loved me in low-cut dresses, appreciated my sexual voraciousness, worshipped my inner slut. I reveled in the fact that I could be strong and submissive all at once. Surrender and still be a feminist. Being a dyke is not just about who I fuck and love, it’s about being a girl who doesn’t play by the rules.

Butch girls don’t play by the rules either, and I love butch girls. Girls with hair so short you can barely slide it between two fingers to hold on. Girls with slick, shiny, barbershop haircuts and shirts that button the other way. Girls that swagger. Girls who have dicks made of flesh and silicone and latex and magic. Girls who get stared at in the ladies room, girls who shop in the boy’s department, girls who live every moment looking like they weren’t supposed to. Girls with hands that touch me like they have been touching my body their entire lives. Girls who have big cocks, love blow-jobs, and like to fuck girls hard. Every day, it is the girls that get called Sir that make me catch my breath, the girls with strong jaws that buckle my knees, the girls who are a different gender that make me want to lie down for them.

Someone else said it about me recently and it’s right on target: “She gets off on all different sorts of people sexually, but she falls for butches.” Like the poet who bought her first strap-on with me and then wanted to sleep with it on. The shrink-in-training who got harassed every time she drove down South. She did look so much like a fifteen-year-old boy: blue button-down shirts, neatly-combed blond hair. The ad exec who had names for her dildos and used to love for me to spit-shine her wingtips. The photographer whose face was so mannish she could pass almost anywhere. The writer who wanted a body like Loren Cameron’s. The telephone repairwoman who drove a truck. The cook who had a boy’s name. The academic who got cruised by gay men on Castro Street. The cornfed farmboy from the Heartland with arms so hard and strong you swear they’ve been working the land, not the iron at the gym.

And there’s the one who’s got the James Dean stare down, and dresses like a clean-cut fag, and looks at me like she could look at me forever and never blink or grow tired or move from the spot she’s in. She’s a girl who loves girls like me—girls in velvet bras, girls who want to surrender to her mouth. She’s a girl who isn’t afraid to throw a femme down on the bed and fuck her. Possess her. My kind of girl. This girl is different.”]

tristan taormino, from this girl is different, from a woman like that: lesbian and bisexual writers tell their coming out stories, 2000

[skyethel]

What does Judith Butler know about loading her son’s corpse in a cab? What does she know about the horror of turning a taxi into a hearse?

im so mad. i've been in mourning and a state of constant rage for palestine for the past few years, and these past weeks have been especially devastating. while im not palestinian myself, i have friends and family that are, and i cant help but be on edge about the things they cant afford to think about right now.

i read their 'thought piece'. its nothing new on that front, and thats why it makes me so mad. im really struggling to connect with the blind, white-american privilege of calling for non-violence in the face of a genocidal apartheid regime. the fucking gall of these so-called western intellectuals to preach how rampant anti-intellectualism has become just to turn around and buy into some colonial playbook of peace shit is hilarious. people i thought were with me on this, not only on palestinian liberation but on liberation full stop, have been a constant disappointment. i cut off so many ppl i called friends over the absolute lack of grace and empathy they handled this with. when are white western 'activists' going to stop treating us like timed bombs of irrationality?

this part in particular kept coming up and made me feel like i was going insane:

"When, however, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee issues a statement claiming that ‘the apartheid regime is the only one to blame’ for the deadly attacks by Hamas on Israeli targets, it makes an error. It is wrong to apportion responsibility in that way, and nothing should exonerate Hamas from responsibility for the hideous killings they have perpetrated...The necessity of separating an understanding of the pervasive and relentless violence of the Israeli state from any justification of violence is crucial if we are to consider what other ways there are to throw off colonial rule"

literally nobody is asking anyone to 'exonerate' hamas. hamas is a military organization fighting the US-backed israeli occupation with smuggled weapons that is active in 365 km² at best. hamas is not even in the orbit when it comes to comparisons to israel.

israel said it with its own mouth that hamas is a product of israeli occupation. this isnt a matter of opinion, right? or am i too far left to think that a brutal occupation will radicalize its victims? and they gave them the means to become a 'terrorist organization'? how are you claiming to care about palestinians if you don't bother unsubscribing from the very schools of thought that constructed the occupation in the first place?

some of you 'leftists' have been lying about what you've been reading because where are the frantz fanon quotes you like to throw around, huh? where's the malcolm x, the angela davis? where are your insta posts with chomsky's books?

holy shit WHAT OTHER WAYS?

keep our communities out of your mouth. we are not some thought experiment you can exercise your conscience on. we're watching an ethnic cleansing unfold, and instead of supporting palestinians so many of you are playing out your own little fantasies of the 'progressive' solidarity you fail to show. sometimes, you need to fucking stop and listen instead of consulting the higher morality police on whether you need to 'contextualize' your incompetence.

[blonkk]

to women being inspired by bursts of emotion rather than genuine curiosity and hunger for knowledge: read. put down your phone. get off tiktok, twitter, ig, youtube. go to the library, get on an archive and read. read feminist theory that isn’t from an influencer or a self-proclaimed “video essayist” or even your university’s “gender studies” prof. read feminist history. read articles that challenge your confirmation bias. read kate millet, catherine mckinnon, dworkin, valerie solanas, betty friedan, angela davis, nawal el sadaawi, judith butler….read shit that makes you uncomfortable. work through why you’re opposed to reading certain feminist thinkers and then read their stuff.

just read the material and then make your own decisions about what you believe. enough of this dime-store feminism. feminism isn’t an identity, it’s not a passive way to state that you care about women’s rights. it’s something that requires real action to be a true part of. most women who think they are aren’t actually feminists. they barely even understand it’s core tenets. if you want to be one that does, and maybe even take some legitimate feminist action, then commit to learning the hard way.

you can’t be an effective activist without action. you can’t understand a movement or theory without undertaking the necessary research and analysis and challenging your preconceptions.

it’s gonna make you question things. it’s gonna turn your stomach, and put you on the defensive, and force you to admit that some of your actions and beliefs are actually not at all feminist, and many may even be anti-feminist/woman. no one’s saying you have to observe and change everything about yourself, but for fuck’s sakes stop calling yourself something you’re not. it’s an obstruction of truth and insulting to women in the movement doing the real work.

[intothedysphoria]

Depending on your point of view, coming across Billie Hargrove’s Instagram account was either the best or the worst thing to ever happen in Stevie’s life.

Stevie didn’t even know that butches could have long hair but this one did. Granted in a douchey eighties mullet type of way. She also had a very pronounced six pack which she was not attempting to hide in any of her photos. Crystal blue eyes. A winning smile. Shit.

Billy, they/she, basketball stan and cringe Judith Butler supporter- 60% girl, 40% something else-meanest lesbian ever

Over the course of about three weeks, Stevie had looked over that profile at least six times a day. They were mesmeric and Stevie found herself wanting to be consumed. She’d never felt this way about a boy before. Not even Tommy Hagan who she’d dated for over a year before they split. And Billy was in fucking L.A. Nothing was ever going to happen between them.

Still, she found herself sliding into their DMs just before going to get her hair done. Nothing too I’ll-stab-you-and-keep-your-body-in-the-basement but like casual. Maybe a little flirty. They didn’t seem like they had a girlfriend.

What she ended up messaging was “hi Billie! You don’t know me but I love your jeans where did you get them from ☺️”

Smooth Stevie. Very smooth.

She couldn’t even talk to her hairdresser during her hair appointment because she was so embarrassed by what she’d done. A small part of her genuinely considered setting her phone on fire until she checked it again after her highlights were in.

Incredibly surprisingly to Stevie, Billie responded and not even that, responded very positively indeed.

It was all Hey pretty girl and smirking emojis and I got my jeans from this underground thrift store or whatever and Stevie didn’t exactly take any of the information in because she was so incredibly flustered.

If she flattered herself, Stevie knew she was pretty. She knew she had big eyes and glossy hair and full lips which usually led to a line of guys queuing up for a shot. Billie wasn’t like any of those frat guys she was used to or the pretentious hipsters she’d dated later on in college. If there was chasing that was going to be done, Stevie was going to have to do it herself.

A gratifying squirm started in her gut the next day, when she realised that Billy had followed her back. Stevie may have been far too chickenshit to actually message her back but still. Progress was progress.

They danced around talking for a bit. Billie always liked her stories but there was never actually any flirting. Just a palpable tension. Something waiting to begin.

Stevie was not a patient woman. So she decided to push it forward a little.

Posting a thirst trap wasn’t something Stevie had done since she was bored during lockdown but how hard could it be? It had to be like riding a bike or some shit. So she just uploaded a couple of pictures, no overthinking it.

After deleting about thirty different messages from guys, all of whom were being creeps in different ways, Stevie finally got to the message she hoped she’d get from Billie. For all the anxiety leading up to it, the actual content was remarkably short.

Cute 💖😙

Robin picked up after the third ring. Judging by the time of her voice, Stevie had definitely woken her up from a nap. Whoops.

“What the fuck is it dingus?” Ouch.

Stevie tried to answer without sounding like an absolute moron.

“Robin how do you know if a lesbian is flirting with you?”

The long silence indicated to Stevie that she’d absolutely sounded like a moron.

“What did she say dingus?”

Stevie told her then she hung up. Which seemed harsh.

Billie messaged again the following day. Again it was brief.

Sorry if I misread. I’ll leave you alone now.

Stevie had never scrambled to reply to a message as fast in her life. Begging Billie not to leave, she wasn’t very good at this type of flirting but she wanted to try.

Billie seemed a lot less bummed after that. And much flirtier. They’d explained about their ocd, the constant fear of being creepy or a bad person stopping her from messaging Stevie more. But now that they were talking they could try. If Stevie wanted.

Stevie did want. She wanted very much.

And when finally visited Billy one person about five months later and they were doing dumb first date stuff, being in love, she thought that was a pretty good story to tell their grandkids about how they’d met.

Embarrassing. But good.

@shieldofiron @dragonflylady77 @oopsiedaisiesbaby @thatgirlwithasquid @robthegoodfellow

[mooncurses]

I hope all Zionists choke 🫶 get fucked and never get near me or I'll literally piss on you 👍 try and call me an antisemite and I'll start reciting Judith Butler and Hannah Arendt and Primo Levi to you until you feel so ashamed you don't even know your own fucking history that you wish you never approached me in the first place 😚 🍉🍉

[heygirltimeformorning]

Title: Ricochet

Summary: Buck is a good housewife. 

Alternatively: Eddie calls Buck his housewife, and Buck makes it weird.

Notes: :) I mean, this is what it says it is - content note for discussions of gender stuff. Nobody is trans or coming out as trans, but Buck gets called a housewife and likes it and has a little spiral about what does this mean, which Judith Butler would have a field day with.

*

It starts as a joke.

They’re curled together, and Buck’s listening to an early morning rainstorm that woke him up, but mostly he’s listening to Eddie breathe, listening to the slow, deep, even cadence of sleep interspersed with the rain, and he thinks that he is maybe, possibly, the luckiest son of a bitch in the world. He thinks getting away with murder would have been easier than getting away with this, with getting to have Eddie and Chris in his life, and he closes his eyes, listens to the rain and his boyfriend breathe, and he thinks this is what it means to be content because his brain is finally quiet, and Eddie is warm and solid and real against him. Their alarm goes, and Eddie stirs, slowly, rubbing his bristly cheek against Buck’s chest and Buck shivers, tracing his fingers down Eddie’s back, which passes the shivers to Eddie, who huffs out a laugh, and stretches, not unlike a cat. 

“I’ll make breakfast,” Buck says, watching as Eddie stretches and rubs his face and tries to wake up, and god, he’s so in love it’s physically painful, and Eddie offers him a sleepy, unarmed smile (that’s Buck’s favorite, followed closely by the smile Eddie uses when someone (usually Buck) manages to claw their way through all the thick weeds of Catholic guilt that choke off Eddie’s happiness) and drawls “well, aren’t you a good little housewife,” and something between Buck’s heart and his head catches. Misses a step going down stairs, or something, and Buck (because he’s Buck) shoves it back and grins at Eddie, because Eddie had been making a joke, not trying to accidentally stumble on a kink Buck didn’t even know he had. He’s read about people who spring their kinks on their partners. It’s very messy, and Buck is determined not to fuck this up. So he presses a kiss to Eddie’s smile, and gets out of bed, tugging a tshirt on, smoothing it out, and he says “only the best for my hard working —“ his voice sticks on husband, so he says— “boyfriend,” even though housewife implies the existence of a husband, and Buck would marry Eddie in the space of a heartbeat, but that’s not really on the table. Yet. Then, because he’s Buck, he shakes his ass and taps the top of the doorframe on his way out of the room because what the fuck, who hears their boyfriend call them a housewife and immediately has a situation? Buck. Buck does. 

Buck makes Christopher’s favorite for breakfast, and, when Chris and Eddie come into the kitchen, he’s wearing the apron Eddie bought him (as a joke, as a continuation of the joke) and Eddie slaps his ass and says “have dinner ready by 5:30, baby,” and, okay, they have a problem. Or maybe not a problem (maybe problem is overstating it) but they have something because between the slap and the command, Buck is ready to get on his knees and let Eddie do whatever he wants with him, which isn’t, actually, all that different from how he is usually, but usually, Buck has a little bit more self-control about it. Eddie slaps his ass and says “have dinner ready by 5:30” and calls him baby and Buck knows it’s scientifically impossible for him to get pregnant, but if it were possible, he’s pretty sure that would have done it, and he just kind of stands there for a second, Chris’ dirty dishes in his hands, and then Christopher rolls his eyes and gets up from the table with a clatter of his crutches and says “dad, not in front of my innocent eyes,” and Buck laughs, turning to the sink to drop the dishes off. He comes back to tell Christopher goodbye and to have a good day, giving him a hug and a kiss on the top of his head (which earns him another Christopher eyeroll, which Buck will cherish forever). Eddie slides up behind him at the sink, lips against Buck’s neck, and this isn’t, really, different from any other day when Eddie’s taking Chris to school and Buck’s handling the breakfast dishes, but the difference is that Buck can’t stop thinking about being in one of those maid uniforms and meeting Eddie in a suit (god, he loves Eddie in a suit) at the door with a martini, and Eddie bending him over the couch and — 

“See you in a bit, babe,” Eddie says, kissing Buck’s cheek, and Buck nods, trying to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, voice a little hoarse. “Be safe. Ha-have a good day, Chris!” he adds, and then he turns to watch his boys walk out the door, before he goes to finish the dishes, like a good housewife. 

*

It starts as a joke, but then Buck can’t stop thinking about it, like some kind of housewife savant (which is not, Hen had told him, the appropriate use of that word when he’d called himself a math savant after being struck by lightning, and Buck had looked up the word and shoved his phone in Hen’s face, and Hen had said okay, but that’s not what that is), and he really needs some alone time (not like that) to figure out what this means, why he keeps thinking about Eddie in a suit (which makes the little Buck that lives in his brain do literal actual cartwheels), Eddie with a drink in his hand, Eddie with his tie off and his collar just a little bit unbuttoned, Eddie in a chair and Buck --

Well, that’s where the fantasy gets a little complicated, because Buck does not wish he were a girl. He does want to be a housewife, but he feels like, after thinking about it, housewife is a gender-neutral term, really, at least in this particular instance. Buck doesn’t want to be a woman, but he does want to be Eddie’s -- however Eddie will take him. Husband, yes (Buck wants to be Mr. Evan Diaz, only they’re going to have to figure out how to keep his name Buck), but househusband doesn’t have the same vibe as housewife, and Buck wants the vibes. Buck lives for the vibes.

*

Coming to AO3 soon :)

[ghelgheli]

So I absolutely agree that gender is socially constructed, but I have always had a hard time with the idea of gender as being a set of "behaviors/expressions/desires" like you say, for the same reason why I'm uncomfortable with the Judith Butler "performance" idea. Doesn't that inherently leave the door open to say that, if someone says they are a trans woman, but they're behaviors/expressions/performance/etc don't line up with what a woman's are supposed to be, then we can just say "No, you're not a woman. You don't fulfill the criteria for womanhood." Like it feels like this inherently sets gender nonconforming people up to be blocked from the gender they identify with and forced back into one they don't. Am I missing something? This isn't a gotcha, I genuinely think I must be misunderstanding something, but no matter how I look at it, it seems like that would be the result of defining gender that way.

oh I don't think this at all! did I say I thought this? if I did I fucked up.

to start, my (second-hand, tbf) understanding of performativity in butler's sense is that it is widely misunderstood. the notion of gender as performativity is descended in part from speech-act theory a la JL Austin and so on; these are discussions of how certain utterances (like a priest declaring a marriage) can have uptake in the world and change it—ive just summoned the phrase "illocutionary force" into the minds of those readers that know. to perform such a speech act is to change the world just by speaking. this is the notion of performance at work in butler's theory (again, as far as my second-hand understanding goes. I'll read gender trouble soon)

in that theory, gender is built by people performing gender, and people performing gender constantly rebuild it. I think this can accommodate gnc expression because, like a speech act, someone can assert that they are performing a particular gender by fiat even if that performance is aberrant relative to whatever the dominant performance is. that is the kind of thing a masc woman does when she asserts that she's a woman despite "doing gender wrong". but that's enough of me defending butler by proxy. I don't actually think performance is a successful theory of gender, because it fails at identifying its material etiology

as far as I'm concerned gender is something that is done to people and that people take up themselves because they are wise to the ways it can and will be done to them. it is an organizing principle of cisheteropatriarchy which, along (and inseparably) with racialization, constitutes part of the superstructural foundation of our political economy. this precedes capitalism, but today has been fully adapted by it. it is the stabilizing grip of the family as an economic unit and is essential to the maintenance of division of labour as it exists today, designating certain groups (again, bearing in mind intersections with race) not just for reproductive labour but for any of the more invisibilized, precarious, subservient forms of labour c.f. the relationship between trans womanhood and sex work

the aesthetics of gender (behaviour expressions whatever) are just its visible surfacing and one of—along with its medicalization and racialization, e.g.—the methods of demarcating and enforcing it. deviation is punished only proximally because of this or that kind of outrage. the ultimate reason for punishment is the maintenance of capitalist homeostasis, insofar as such a thing is supposed to be possible (it is not, of course). and as the post I cannot stop talking about points out, transmisogyny is one of the most violently feverish of capitalism's autoimmune responses. but despite its violence, it is never a successful response, and on the contrary it manages just to condition defenses against it.

trans womanhood, for example, is not a historically stable object. it has as much ontological essence as any gender-inflected concept: none. it is one construction in response to the experiences of betraying maleness and its demands (linguistic, economic, behavioural, psychological... these are fuzzy concepts. there is no one narrative) and being subject to transmisogyny as a result. there are other constructions (crossdresser, transvestite, travesti, hijra...) that have been formed in response to transmisogyny, and all of them are stubborn tumours that capitalism will never be rid of; thus it tries to starve them.

but to get to your point: gender concepts, particularly "deviant" ones like trans womanhood, but even womanhood itself (which I conceive of as an umbrella) can accommodate nonconformity because no amount of, say, masculinity is going to redeem a trans lesbian as far as cisheteropatriarchy is concerned—ask me how I know. trans lesbianism, as a declared divestment from simply being a man, is unacceptable however it is instantiated. you may accuse me of being pessimistic here. I am!

[commonpigeon]

and like i went out of my way to study gender in history and sociology at university and there would be like one lesson on radical feminism framing it as something from the past that was extremely limited and exclusionary but necessary to be aware of as it informed future writers and students would still get mad as fuck that we even dared utter the name dworkin. nevermind that we studied judith butler for 3 weeks 😭 people literally quit the class

[ianhoolihandeluxe]

@judiths-sequence Really horrible THC AU idea: all the movies take place in the same universe instead of being different universes where the previous movies exist as movies. The way this works is probably something really fucked up.

My fucked-up idea is that First Sequence is a home movie made by Dr. Heiter to keep a log of his centipede experiment that he then edited into a theatrical horror movie for the funsies. He decides to release it as an actual movie to see if he could get away with it, so he shoots a fake death scene to sell it as a fictional movie. He then hires some guy named Tom Six from the criminal underworld to pose as the fake director, and it kicks off and gains notoriety.

Over in London, Martin Lomax watches this movie and decides he really wants to recreate it, having no idea it's essentially a snuff movie (but I imagine he wouldn't care much even if he knew). He does so, and films every aspect of it, both to record his experiment and for his viewing pleasure. However, the experiment goes a bit awry, and he's forced to flee to evade the authorities. News of this gets out, and Tom Six (under the pressure of Dr. Heiter) finds the footage and decides to release it, framing it as a dramatized documentary - a move met with widespread backlash (but they don't really care).

All of them decide to flee - Dr. Heiter and Tom Six from the negative publicity, and Martin from the authorities. Dr. Heiter decides he'd better also lay low in case the authorities examine First Sequence too closely. He decides he will need a new name and personality, and so he takes up a job at George H. W. Bush State Prison under the alias of William Boss, inventing a new persona as an obsessively bigoted patriot. Martin Lomax catches wind of this, and arrives at the same prison under the assumed alias Dwight Butler, sporting a new appearance and personality as well. Martin/Dwight wants to create another centipede, but Dr. Heiter/Bill Boss refuses at first, believing the risk to be too high, until Martin/Dwight invites their old friend Tom Six over again, after which everyone is on board with the centipede idea.

Sorry to anyone who had to read this.

[methed-up-marxist]

judith butler (rancid liberal pacificist bitch) says that one of psycho-analysises main contributions is to take seriously the implications of the state of radical dependence that we are born into. its hard not to break the feeling that many people are just sad about not being able to tell themselves robinson crusoe stories anymore. And more than that it feels like people seem to think there isn't something deeply important captured by "independence" that retains its importance even it as it comes to us so often with all of this narrow-indivualist baggage. I firmly believe if everyone did what was best for them we would have communism tommorow and it is by making people unable to see themselves in the rest of the world that this potential is foreclosed, people are unable to articulate how only a broad-scale transformation can allow them to step forward as indivuals. Henry Miller says - and this has always stuck with me from when i read it in, i think, foucaults foreword to anti-oedipus - "we must die as egos and be born again in the swarm, not seperate and self-hypnotised but indivual and related". Big prompter behind my bug obsession. I can't help but break the feeling that our society has become so techo-scientific or "rational" or whatever the fuck that like the schema for even theorising what this would mean as an actual way for conducting a life just is inaccesible. I do really take seriously and believe that the intercourse of one's life determines not the specific nature of one's thought but definitly the range of formations it is able to take. idk, i feel so fucking trapped. Suicidaity, self-destruction, narrow-minded obstinance they all start to have the appeal of a sort of moral strength to them in this situation, refusing to enter into the kind of level of thought where a mathematical calculus of ur best interests or "what i should really be doing" can even become articulable. When my husband smashed that window and completely fucked the next few weeks of our life up all I could see was the strength involved in allowing those emotions to be so close to ur being. The most proud of myself I've ever been is when I've been getting the stuff together to end my own life and the deepest shame is when you wake up in the morning or make the call asking to be taken to the hospital. I don't want to feel that shame again.

[atranswomansdiary]

Day 47

July 22, 2020

I am not a man… And I don’t think I ever was.

This is ridiculous and preposterous, I know, but it is not as stupid as it reads, I promise.

I was born a man because I was born with a penis. I don’t think there’s anything deeper than that. I don’t believe doctors actually examine your DNA and make sure your chromosomes match your sex—unless there are problems, of course. But, I think we can all agree, even if they did, a human being is not only whatever sexual genetic material their cells contain, aren’t they?

From then on, no one ever asked me if I wanted to be man. Of course they wouldn’t! I was too young to understand the concept, wasn’t I? So, because I was too young to process what was going on, the logical thing was just to assume I was a man. You’re born with a penis? You’re a man.

The problem, however, is that not everyone born with a penis is a man.

As far as I know, people whose gender doesn’t align with their sex—or, in the simplest words, people who have penises but aren’t men or have vaginas but aren’t women—are a minority, yes. And yet any reasonable person, I think, would agree that having that possibility alone should mean that parents, families, and society in general should be open about this and inform their children about it, right? Just to let them know that the possibility exists and that, if it is so in their case, that there are alternatives—reasonable, scientifically-proven ways—of remedying any feelings of inadequacy or general discomfort with their own bodies. After all, they’re only children. They supposedly don’t know better, but adults do. The same way we explain them every other fucking thing in the universe, from atoms to praying to an invisible bearded white man in the sky.

FUCK!

So, you grow up and, at least in my case, I never had any information about this little thing that I’ve come to know as gender dysphoria. My parents were progressive enough to talk to me about sex and relationships, but not about this. I studied in one of the most prestigious schools in the country I grew up in—and I specialized in sciences in high school, so I had the best possible education(?) on the matter—and no one ever fucking even mentioned the existence of trans people. I went to university and studied a bunch of shit, met and saw lots of people, and never in my godsdamned life had even the opportunity to learn about this. I didn’t get to have internet at home reliably until I was 24, but I was still able to teach myself a language, learn about a shit ton of things, buy books on the most diverse of topics—and in various languages—but this specific, vital knowledge was never accessible for me. And I’ve never been a slouch when it comes to research for fuck’s sake! I read (a not very good translation of) Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft when I was 17 years old because I was able to borrow a copy from my school’s library. And yet, somehow, someway, I was never taught about trans people.

The closest I ever got in whole life before I was 30 were a) cross-dressers (what the people around me called "transvestites") and b) the notion of intersexual people.

How can it be possible that a decently informed human being, one who read newspapers since they were able (and could afford) to do so never learned about gender dysphoria and/or trans people?

At the top I said that human beings are not only whatever their DNA says they are. So, it follows, I think, that there must another dimension, non-biological—at least in that sense of the word—that determines them.

That is what people in the biz call “psychology”, I’m told.

So: if being born with a penis is not sufficient reason to be a man, then there must other aspects that complete this definition. Psychological, social, political, philosophical, and even ontological, perhaps? This is not something new or revolutionary and, if you don’t want this messy version of the idea that I’m putting forward, I can’t recommend you Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) enough. Butler is orders of magnitude more intelligent than I am and writes way better than I ever could on the subject.

So, my poor (wo)man’s version of the issue of gender—as it pertains to me, at least—is as follows. Biologically I am man—AKA I have a penis—but, in almost all other areas of manhood (so to speak), I’m a total and absolute failure, both by my own and other people’s admission. But this isn’t really about “manhood performance”, no. My focus is, instead, on level of comfort/identification with it.

And this is the one area where my dysphoria has been most evident and I can actually trace it back the longest. I never identified as a man, in a manner. I knew that’s who I was supposed to be, on a very subconscious and obligatory level—similar to my reluctant acceptance that my family was my family, whether I liked it or not—but feeling like, happy about it? Nope. Never. Maybe a couple of times during my Conan-esque months, but at that point even I was able to discern that it was more of a pose or an attitude than really something deep and meaningful. It was something that came from the outside in, instead of the other way around.

So that’s why I say that I’m not a man and I probably never was. I was born a human male, that is the truth, but a man? Nope. I don’t think I ever felt comfortable nor identified with that gender label. What’s worse, I didn’t have the language to express my discomfort, anxiety, and sometimes erratic behavior. I was always a “dissident man”, internally, emotionally, psychologically, and affectively long before I discovered that I was also a dissident on a social and even political level.

The tragedy, of course, are the 34 years of my life that took me to realize this. To put these feelings and ideas into words. It’s my whole fucking life we’re talking about! And what’s worse, of course, is that I fear it may be too late. What chances do I have at 34? My body has already been deformed by years of mistreatment, male hormones, and general decay. What hopes and dreams can I foster? I’ve been researching and most people transition when they’re in their late adolescence, early adulthood. I’m ancient, in comparison.

Biologically, I can’t believe that my body will be malleable enough. Psychologically, I don’t think I have the strength of mind necessary to withstand the abuse most trans people undergo every day. Imagining losing my mother’s love, my father’s hard-earned approval, and my siblings’ affection terrifies me. And what about the rest of society? How would I deal with all the nazis that want trans people dead or worse? I don’t think I could. And what about my new job? I like it so much—it’s pretty much perfect, especially since I feel most of the people I get to work with like me well enough—but I don’t think a single one of those persons would accept me if I changed.

I’m not even sure if my lifelong friends or newlymet ones would, to be honest.

So, this is nice and all, but it doesn’t change a single damn thing. I’m still where I started. I’m trapped. No way out. I may now know “the truth about myself”—if there is such a thing—but it doesn’t change a fucking thing. Nice thoughts and feelings, but they’ll have to remain that. They must remain that.

Maybe one day I’ll find someone I feel confident enough to share this secret with. And maybe in sharing that secret I’ll be free, at least for that brief moment. An island of relief amidst a sea of sorrow.

Until then, with love,

ZZ

[hadesoftheladies]

i just saw jessie gender's "trans women are not biological males" video and . . .

it's so catastrophically awful. like one hour of strawmen and flat out inaccurate and false constructions of what is meant by the term "male" and "female" and "biology"

and isn't it funny how the goal with the trans movement as headed by these guys is about erasing distinction rather than providing clarity? we say, fine, transwomen are transwomen, and they can go by she/her, but no, they need to be called "women." okay. then we call transwomen "women", but male, and they say, "no, we must be called female."

woman and female are not inclusive terms. they are descriptive. i don't care who doesn't like to be "defined" if you exist, behave and are percievable in this dimension, you will get a fucking label because no one has the time to pretend to see you as an "essence." no matter how many times we move the goal posts, we are still going to need language for those distinctions between trans women and women, but oh wait . . . hold on, there are distinctions that are acceptable. we can use "trans" and "cis" for women.

and that's the thing isn't it? women can no longer define themselves as they want, centering their biology and struggles as the female sex, because they must define themselves as trans women want.

acknowledging sex differences, which is vital to women's rights and liberation, the core of their oppression, is now secondary to the comfort of transwomen.

it's an affront on feminist consciousness-raising. screw up the language so much and so successfully that you can't meaningfully discuss women's oppression.

feminist-materialist ideas are incompatible with genderqueer-metaphysical fantasies. jesse literally starts railing on "naturalism" being some kind of "belief" that how we are born is "is the only way we should exist" or some shit, which is like . . . not what naturalism is.

As indicated by the above characterization of the mid-twentieth-century American movement, naturalism can be separated into an ontological and a methodological component. The ontological component is concerned with the contents of reality, asserting that reality has no place for “supernatural” or other “spooky” kinds of entity. By contrast, the methodological component is concerned with ways of investigating reality, and claims some kind of general authority for the scientific method.

naturalism is literally about investigating reality: it's constraints and capacities. no "naturalist" is arguing that people are born perfect, but that they are born male or female, which is a biological system, not a fucking dress code or magical aura. it means, jesse, that even if you took more estrogen or got implanted with ovaries or feminized your face or got a vaginoplasty, your MALE BIOLOGICAL SYSTEM will react accordingly. this is why transmen can't just take testosterone without it causing serious physical risks. this is why trans women still can't fucking gestate a baby. STOP LYING TO PEOPLE ABOUT WHAT MALENESS AND FEMALENESS MEANS.

and top comment was some shit like "They just replaced ‘In the eyes of god’ with ‘biologically’ and thought we wouldn’t notice that it makes no sense because it invokes science".

It is a literal religious trick to refer to scientific endeavor or non-religious philosophy as its own religion. you are the ones thinking religiously. christians and young-earthers literally call "atheism" and "science" religions. like . . . what are you on right now?

biology is not a language game. it's a fucking reality. if you called water "spoof" it wouldn't change what water is or how it behaves, for fuck's sake. even if you believed really hard that the ocean was calling to you, it wouldn't change the fact that oceans cannot physically form a mouth and consciousness. i don't care what judith butler or forest valkai or whatever a pedo-queer theorist man said. women's oppression is not due to pronouns, fashion, or the english language.

trans women are biological males or they wouldn't be trans, jesse. you're fucking up your own lore.

[queering-ecology]

Chapter 11. ‘fucking close to water’: queering the production of the nation by Bruce Erickson (part 1)

“A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe” (attributed to Pierre Berton, Raffan 1999b, 225) and “Making love in a canoe is the most Canadian act that two people can do” (45)

Except…actually-- “a Canadian is someone who THINKS he knows how to make love in a canoe” (Ferguson 1997, 158) And it turns out that the person attributed with the quote (Berton) confessed that he did not come up with it.

The canoe is a popular symbol of the Canadian Nation—it’s [been] on currency, sits in the Canadian Embassy in Washington, has been an official gift from the state to foreign dignitaries, and is a part of  the multi-million dollar nature tourism industry…(311)

The construction of nationalism requires a narration of national identity that attempts to override the experiences of the national citizens. There will always be a gap between the ideal image of the nation and the actual performance of the nation in the lives of the subjects within the nation, and the dissemination of nationalism occurs in the processes by which that gap is overcome (Bhabha 1994) (311)

The failure of canoe sex within Canadian nationalism suggests a failure that connects sexuality, nature, and race to the future existence of the state. (311)

Biopower (Foucault)-- shows how the construction of identity in modern capitalism is intimately a part of the production of capitalism. National identity is made into an active part of the biopolitical frame of the nation, such that identity becomes another form of labor that is focused upon normalizing and controlling bodies and pleasures. As Foucault reminds us, sexuality stands at the heart of modern power, and its discourse arose along with imperialism and the power of the modern nation-state. (312)

In the modern world, our quest for identity is inherently productive, as late capitalism relies upon the desires of identity to fuel patterns of consumption.

Nation

“Put another way, nations require particular sentiments of attachment, ones that often rest at least in part on the erotic”—Steven Maynard (2001)

Relationship of landscape to the canoe—about hiding the actual form of the relationship with landscape, whether racist colonialism or the production of heterosexuality, to accomplish a fetishizing of the leisured, supposed innocent connection to the land of the new world. (313)

Columbus’s image of the new world was eroticized from the start:

“In 1492, Christopher Columbus blundering about the Caribbean in search of India, wrote home to say that the ancient mariners had erred thinking the earth was round. Rather, he said, it was shaped like a woman’s breast, with a protuberance upon its summit in the unmistakable shape of a nipple—toward which he was slowly sailing (1995, 21) (313)

Europeans have long eroticized the land of America from the moment of its naming and ‘discovery’, yet the common interpretation of this myth as a form of amor patriae hides the heterosexuality implicit within such genealogies.

Performativity: “it is not that heterosexuality is natural and queer denaturalizing; rather heterosexuality is naturalizing, concealing the masquerade of the natural that queer makes manifest” (Prosser 1998, 44) 314

“Performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate ‘act’ but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names” (Judith Butler 1993, 2) 314

The claim of nationhood=sex in a canoe naturalizes the relationship between the heterosexual image of the nation and the landscape the ‘performance’ takes place

But the failure of the performance (basically no one ACTUALLY has sex in canoes despite the popularity of the quote)…so it can work like a metaphor… it is not the mere ability to canoe or even to have sex in a canoe that embodies the Canadian-ness but rather the reiteration of desire to canoe in Canada—a desire for Canadian canoeing—that embodies the Canadian-ness through the canoe. This desire privileges heterosexual white desire over any different, non-national, or perverse forms of canoeing pleasure. (314)

Sexuality is not about the truth of the matter but about the power of truth (315)

Foucault: power over sexuality relies on cooperation of two regimes; disciplinary power (focused on the control of individual bodies, increasing capabilities to fuel efficiency, aligning mechanic repetitions toward efficiency) and politics focused on controlling populations—Species body (Foucault 1978, 139) (315) (regulatory controls focused on the reproduction of life, the control of birth and death). These regimes produce a mode of biopower (315)

Capitalism would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production to economic process (Foucault 1978, 141) 315

Sexual identity, as Foucault shows, is made to be part of that production, an argument only proven more and more correct by the increasing power of the “pink” dollar under capitalism (316). (rainbow capitalism)

Then by extending our examination into the realm of colonialism—our understanding of sexual identity and capitalism is tacitly coded by race, and nation. According to Stoler, racism is not “an aberrant, pathological development of state authority n crisis but a fundamental ‘indispensable’ technology of rule—as biopower’s operating mechanism (Stoler 2002, 159) (316)

These same logistics of sexual control (regulation of bodies and species body) occur at the level of race, specifically as part of a national dream. (316) (the american dream=nuclear family)

“Race anchors a distinction in the use of land that justifies the colonial existence of the nation state. It was the productive use the land in North America that allowed European subjects to justify their acquisition of all the fertile and useful land occupied by First Nations peoples. (i.e. John Locke, Gilbert Sproat) 312-317

The 'failure' of the race allowed for the deployment of sexuality to work in tandem with the techniques of state racism such that populations and bodies, of both the colonized and the colonizer, were subject to the regulations of race and sexuality (317)—>The Reservation System; a space established in which to monitor the reproduction (and in many cases the hoped-for death (see Francis 1992 and Bracken 1997) of First Nations communities…census data, marriage regulations, identity papers utilized to fence in populations that stood in the way of the state to the landscape (317)

“A crucial part of the subjugation of …Native peoples was the destruction of their erotic, gender and social life and the imposition of European social and sexual organization…this story of extreme cultural, social, and physical violence lies at the root of the Canadian state” (Kinsman 1996, 92) (317)