#except toronto

[naomiknight-17]

I wake up and my coutertop's gone

Can't have shit in Toronto

[humans-are-tasty]

[3416]

Mitch Marner gets dumped in front of the net, and Auston Matthews takes exception.

Leafs @ Blues | 11.02.24

[ghelgheli]

hey you might've been asked this before sorry if so, but have you read or do you have any thoughts on A short history of Trans Misogyny?

I have read it! I have a few thoughts.

I think it's a strong and important work that compiles historical archives into sharp analyses of how "trans misogyny" (using Jules Gill-Peterson's spacing) is not a recent phenomenon but a globalized structure with centuries of history. I also think it's flawed, for reasons I'll get into after a quick summary for those who haven't had the chance to read it yet.

JGP divides the book into three main chapters, the first on the notion of "trans panic". There, she traces how variants of this anxiety with the trans-feminized subject have presented—to deadly effect, for the subject—in such different settings as early colonial India, the colonization of the Americas, the racialized interactions between US soldiers stationed in the Philippines and the local trans women living there, and of course the contemporary United States itself. In every case she analyzes this "panic" as the reaction of the capitalist colonial enterprise to the conceptual threat that the trans-feminized subject poses; we are a destabilizing entity, a gender glitch that undermines the rigid guarantees of the patriarchal order maintaining capitalism. Punishment follows.

The second chapter is my favourite, and considers the relationship between transfeminine life and sex work. I posted a concluding excerpt but the thrust of the chapter is this: that the relegation of so many trans women and trans-feminized people to sex work, while accompanied by the derogation and degradation that is associated with sex work, is not itself the mere result of that degradation inflicted upon the subject. In other words, it is not out of pure helplessness and abjection that so many trans-feminized people are involved in sex work. Rather, sex work is a deliberate and calculated choice made by many trans-feminized people in increasingly service-based economies that present limited, often peripheralized, feminized, and/or reproductive, options for paid labour. Paired with a pretty bit of critical confabulation about the histories of Black trans-feminized people travelling the US in the 19th century, I think this made for great reading.

In her third chapter, JGP narrativizes the 20th century relationship between the "gay" and "trans" movements in north america—scare quoted precisely because the two went hand-in-hand for much of their history. She emphasizes this connection, not merely an embedding of one community within another but the tangled mutualism of experiences and subjectivities that co-constituted one another, though not without tension. Then came the liberal capture of the gay rights movement around the 70s, which brought about the famous clashes between the radicalisms of Silvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson (neither of whom, JGP notes, ever described themselves as trans women) and the institutions of gay liberalism that desired subsumption into the folds of capital. This is a "remember your history" type of chapter, and well-put.

I think JGP is correct to insist, in her introduction, on the globalizing-in-a-destructive-sense effects of the colonial export of trans womanhood. It is, after all, an identity conceived only mid-century to make sense of the medicalized trans subject; and "gender identity" itself (as JGP describes in Histories of the Transgender Child) is a psychomedical concept conceived to rein in the epistemic instability of trans existence. This is critical to keep in mind! But I also think JGP makes a few mistakes, and one of them has to do with this point.

In her first chapter, under the discussion of trans misogyny in colonial India, JGP of course uses the example of the hijra. Unfortunately, she commits two fundamental errors in her use: she mythologizes, however ambiguously, the "ascetic" lives of hijra prior to the arrival of British colonialism; and she says "it's important to say that hijras were not then—and are not today—transgender". In the first place, the reference to the "ascetism" of hijra life prior to the violence of colonialism is evocative of "third-gender" idealizations of primeval gender subjectivities. To put the problem simply: it's well and good to describe the "ritual" roles of gendered subjects people might try to construe contemporarily as "trans women", the priestesses and oracles and divinities of yore. But it is best not to do so too loftily. Being assigned to a particular form of ritualistic reproductive labour because of one's failure to be a man and inability to perform the primary reproductive labour of womanhood-proper is the very marker of the trans-feminized subject. "Ascetism" here obviates the reality that it wasn't all peachy before (I recommend reading Romancing the Transgender Native on this one). Meanwhile, in the after, it is just wrong that hijra are universally not transgender. Many organize specifically under the banners of transfeminism. It's a shame that JGP insists on keeping the trans-feminized life of hijra so firmly demarcated from what she herself acknowledges is globalized transness.

My second big complaint with the book is JGP's slip into a trap I have complained about many times: the equivocation of transfemininity with femininity (do you see why I'm not fond of being described as "transfem"?). She diagnoses the root of transmisogyny as a reaction to the femininity of trans women and other trans-feminized subjects. In this respect she explicitly subscribes to a form of mujerísima, and of the trans-feminized subject as "the most feminine" and (equivalent, as far as she's concerned) "the most woman". Moreover, she locates transfeminist liberation in a singular embrace of mujerísima as descriptive of trans-feminized subjectivity. As I've discussed previously, I think this is a misdiagnosis. Feminization is, of course, something that is done to people; it is certainly the case that the trans-feminized subject is in this way feminized for perceived gender-failure. This subject may simultaneously embrace feminized ways of being for all sorts of reasons. In both cases I think the feminization follows from, rather than precedes, the trans misogyny and trans-feminization, and there is a fair bit of masculinization as de-gendering at play too, to say nothing of the deliberate embrace of masculinity by "trans-feminized" subjects. Masculinity and femininity are already technologies of gender normalization—they are applied against gender deviation and adapted to by the gender deviant. The deviation happens first, in the failure to adhere to the expectations of gender assignment, and I don't think these expectations can be summarized by either masculinity or femininity alone. I think JGP is effectively describing the experience of many trans-feminized people, but I do not think what she presents can be the universalized locus of trans liberation she seems to want it to be.

Now for a pettier complaint that I've made before, but one that I think surfaces JGP's academic context. In her introduction she says:

In truth, everyone is implicated in and shaped by trans misogyny. There is no one who is purely affected by it to the point of living in a state of total victimization, just as there is no one who lives entirely exempt from its machinations. There is no perfect language to be discovered, or invented, to solve the problem of trans misogyny by labeling its proper perpetrator and victim.

Agreed that "there is no perfect language to be discovered"! But JGP is clearly critical of TMA/TME language here. Strange, then, that less than ten pages later she says this:

this book adds the phrase trans-feminized to describe what happens to groups subjected to trans misogyny though they did not, or still do not, wish to be known as transgender women.

So JGP believes it is coherent to talk about "groups subjected to trans misogyny", which she thinks consists of the union of trans women and what she called "trans-feminized" groups. If this is to be coherent, there must be groups not subjected to trans misogny. So we've come around to transmisogyny-subjected and not transmisogyny-subjected. Look: you cannot effectively theorize about transmisogyny without recognizing that its logic paints a particular target, and you will need to come up with a concise way of making this distinction. But JGP dismissing TMA/TME with skepticism about "perfect language" and immediately coining new language (basically TMS/not TMS) to solve the problem she un-solved by rejecting TMA/TME... it smells of a sloppy attempt to make a rhetorical point rather than theoretical rigour. It's frustrating.

I have other minor gripes, like her artificial separation of "trans women" from "nonbinary people" (cf. countless posts on here lamenting the narrow forms of existence granted TMA people if we want recognition as-such!) or her suggestion that "a politics of overcoming the gender binary" is mutually exclusive from rather than necessarily involved with struggles around "prison abolition, police violence, and sex work". Little things that give me the sense of theoretical tunnel-vision. But I don't think all this compromises the book's strengths as a work of broad historical analysis. I would simply not take every one of its claims as authoritative. Definitely give it a read if you have the chance, especially for the second and third chapters.

[karlkapri]

okay! @ kevinsousaphoto on ig

[misshoneyimhome]

But Daddy I Love Him

_

A William Nylander appreciation post 🤍

*I own nothing* @couldawouldashoulda50 🤍

[tiger-balm]

prettiest line in hockey? | leafs @ caps | march 20th 2024

[eyes-above--the-waves]

I hope whatever happened in Vegas stays the fuck in Vegas.

[wannabelilybriscoe]

i have booked a little cottage long weekend next week and i do fear that this is what will tip me over into writing that pawp@th summer cottage special i’ve had planned for months…

[sergeifyodorov]

In my relatively short career as A Guy Who Watches Hockey Games (In Person) I have realized that there is in fact a "bucket list" of things a person wishes to see. Some things -- a goalie goal, for example -- are so infinitesimally unlikely you can't really bank on ever getting to see one; if you went to a game where a goalie scored a goal, You won hockey, doesn't matter what the score was. It is not my mission to see one of these, but here's what I actually do want to see:

Every currently operating Great One (Ovechkin, Crosby, McDavid, Matthews, Bedard). I have seen 2/5 -- Bedard and Matthews (in the same game, even -- went to Leafs/Hawks in Chicago). It brings me great pleasure to note that I have seen rookie Connor Bedard. It was from very far away (press box seats. thanks dave!!! <- not sarcasm i had a lot of fun) but I can confirm he is that tiny IRL. The hope is to see at least one more this season; the Caps come to Ottawa (my current home arena, and there is no way I'm paying for Leafs home tickets) twice in January, and I might see the Pens in Detroit also.

Speaking of AM34 I would like to see him score a GOAL. Auston that's basically your whole thing. Auston please. Your goals

I have seen two hat tricks (Mika Zibanejad JIMMY VESEY!??? pre-COVID when i did Not care about hockey, Jason Dickinson in the aforementioned Leafs/Hawks game). I would like to see a hat trick from someone i CARE about oh my god.

This is not a bucket list item but I have been going around telling people I saw a Mika Zibanejad hat-trick this whole fucking time and it was JIMMY VESEY????? Mika got 3 assists and I think I remembered him more than Jimmy FUCKING Vesey because Jimmy Vesey is (as established in iconic piece of 21st century tragedy filmmaking All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs) vanilla as fuck and Mika has a name and identity that really clicks with you when you are 15 and only at this hockey game because you're on spring break vacation with your absent father and he really likes hockey. Jimmy fucking Vesey

This is an internal betrayal of the highest degree.

I would like to see a fun comeback; either the home team at a game where I am a neutral party, or the Leafs.

I want to see a game at everyone's home stadium. Currently at 4/32 (MSG, Scotiabank, CTC, United Center (NYR/TOR/OTT/CHI))

I don't care about normal fights (half a lie; they're fun but not a bucket list item) but I would kill to see a goalie fight

A playoff game. Ideally one where the Leafs win, but I will take what I can get

A playoff game that goes into at least double OT. This is technically separate from the previous statement but combined would be fun.

This is a rare one: I want to be at one of those games that you can refer to in shorthand and everyone who's a serious fan will go oh, That game. Like not "They lost in OT in Chicago and some dude scored a hat-trick and Willy's point streak broke" shorthand. "10-7 in Detroit" shorthand. "Steve Dangle's most viewed video" shorthand. Post-a-screenshot-and-people-know type of shorthand. Good or bad. I just want it to be weird

[based--ball]

parfois je me rappelle qu'apparament y'a certains matchs des jays télévisés en français. et pour environ 20 minutes je veux tellement tellement tellement regarder comment ils font ça en français, et je veux apprendre tout les termes en français et voir si j'aime ça. et ensuite j'essaye de trouver comment et puis c'est genre 25$ par mois pour tva sports pis ils ont seulement la moitié des matchs et c'est pas trop clair si c'est même possible en streaming ou s'il faut vraiment genre du vrai cable. et puis je décide que FUCK FRENCH NO MORE FRENCH I HATE FRENCH. also like french baseball is not piratable at all trust me i have tried.

[scoringeffects]

obsessed with the oilers constantly crashing headfirst into nonsense that only the toronto maple leafs of the 1940s have done and noone else ever (went down 0-3 in the stanely cup finals and forced a game 7, played the joint-most measurably boring game in history). wonder what else they will do

[naomiknight-17]

Annual tradition of watching Black Christmas (1974) with Mom happened tonight

That movie remains extraordinarily disturbing

If you haven't heard of it - you probably actually have, but you don't realize it. It's the origin of

The call is coming from inside the house

[3416]

the comments... real.......

[kirstielol]

.

[baguvix]

raptors vs. cavaliers, february 26, 2016 / the lovers i, rené magritte (1928) / the chaos of stars, kiersten white (2013) / raptors vs. 76ers, april 7, 2022 / photographic re-enactment of the lovers ii, rené magritte (1928) / wuthering heights, emily brontë (1847) inspo [x]