#former terf

[3dmenlover]

[ghostboyravenight]

”trans men are the weakest links of the trans community” my trans male friends and I have lived a lifetime of having our bodily autonomy stripped away to the point of sexual harassment. people talk about our bodies like everyone except us owns them because no one can handle the idea of precious female bodies being “mutilated” by gender affirming care. we are treated like traitors by women and as confused, silly girls by men. we have no spaces in which we belong because even the queer community tries to control our bodies. if we pass as men then we get ousted from queer-friendly spaces, and if we don’t pass as men we’re treated like cringe, theyfab trenders. everything we love is considered annoying. we’re called ugly and sad and “what a shame you guys are men haha”. We have to watch as society uses us as an excuse to ban gender affirming care for young people because our bodies belong to the government, because our bodies belong to our mothers, and because our anatomy is the only thing they see us as. And then we have to sit back as the trans community blames us for these bans. “All of these fake transtrenders are the reason they all hate us” when we’re busy having the women in our lives scrutinise our bodies to make sure we’re not being “infected” by the trans contagion. There’s no space we can belong in. No space that tries to make us feel welcome because either they treat us like women or they treat us like dangerous, cis men.

Every trans man I know has been sexually assaulted. Every trans man I know has been brought to suicide attempts, either due to their families or due to people online bullying them to death. Our struggles are constantly diminished and yet behind the scenes we’re fucking exhausted from fighting attacks from every single goddamn side. How fucking dare you call us weak. We’re going through fucking hell like every other goddamn trans person out there and our bodies are being abused and controlled and scrutinised every day of our fucking lives. Have you seen how TERFs talk about our bodies? How they lament us “mutilating” our breasts, our fertility, our anatomy, all in the name of feminism. That’s sexual fucking harassment, and it’s disgusting. But that’s all they fucking see us as. We’re not human, we’re just defected specimens. Cis women give themselves free passes to harass our bodies because they see us as “one of them”. One of them, but wrong. One of them, but need to be fixed. My mother regularly checks my chest to make sure I’m not trying to flatten it, and she can get away with it because “that’s what mothers do to their daughters.” Even when I’m not her daughter. Even when I’m screaming at the top of my lungs wanting to die because my body doesn’t belong to me. My body stopped belonging to me as soon as I came out as trans, because female empowerment doesn’t apply to me anymore. Female empowerment is now about “correcting” me, to restore my body back to its former glory, because only then was I worth something.

We are not weak. We are strong as fuck for dealing with the shit we have to deal with. And the worst part is, so much of the bullying comes from other trans men. We’ve been taught to hate ourselves so much that the only way to get ahead is to put down our own brothers and treat them in the way we’ve been treated.

There is no weak link of the community because we’re all dealing with absolute shit from all sides, but don’t you ever suggest that trans men are somehow the whiny babies who have nothing to complain about when we’re constantly holding back from screaming our guts out because there’s nothing else we can do.

[lemonsoured]

Ngl every time I see posts on here complaining about how much more accepted transmascs supposedly are in queer spaces, I'm reminded how the former leader of one of the local petplay groups in my area was super fucking weird about us specifically.

I think people just. Forget?? That many cis gay men have extreme hangups about the genitalia of trans men just. Existing near them. It's just like cis lesbian TERFs. It goes beyond a genital preference. Bro wore his disgust for "females" in his fucking bio

Down to even "supporting" trans people as long as they were AMAB in his mind. (I have doubts on if his NB friends would appreciate being called "male...")

This is not some extremely rare thing. People just don't talk about it! Gay trans men/mascs, especially those of us who don't pass, aren't welcome in a lot of places! Some people are just Not Normal about us. The idea of trans men raping cis men through deception or "turning them straight" is Not some fringe idea.

It took me like 2 minutes to find this screenshot on KF, reposted by someone who was very happy to see this attitude. There are tons of posts just like this. Christ, you don't even have to go to KF, just check any of the gay male subreddits.

And if, unlike me, you live in an area where there's only one gay bar or one kink group, then you might have nowhere to go. Transmasc people are known to be isolated from community, and it's important to point out that this sort of attitude keeps them from finding safe places to exist and be themselves.

Frankly, it's even kept me personally from feeling like I can freely *exist* in queer male spaces, much less entertain the idea of engaging romantically/sexually. So... jesus christ guys, just try to get some perspective.

Trans people of all kinds have more in common with each other than you think. We need to be able to support each other. Support EVERYONE. Because we're all dealing with this shit.

[punishedgwyndolin]

does anyone else generally find it funny that when tme trans ppl talk about their experience being “former” terfs or getting “sucked into the pipeline” other tme ppl get down on all fours to suck them off for their bravery in the face of bigotry and their gracious and selfless will to change but when a trans woman jokes about having used 4chan she’s viewed with suspicion and marked as a pedophilic racist indefinitely

[blazing-butterfly]

Alright mechposters, what've you got for civilian mecha? I'm talking mecha in construction, agriculture, transportation, wilderness navigation, mining & salvage, emergency services, disaster response, etc. What exactly are they used for, what's it like to pilot one, how is it different from a combat mech?

If you want a more substantial prompt: a former combat pilot adjusting to a new job as a civilian pilot.

(This was written by a transfem, TERFs fix your hearts or die.)

[ocean-breeze-pier]

Oh and as a former radfem (I talked about how horrible that time in my life was if you want to learn more) but genuinely so many of the talking points yall use against those of us talking about transandrophobia are like… almost indistinguishable from what radfems and TERFs fucking say. Like that should give you pause but nope here we are

[neroushalvaus]

Okay I am going to use the Somerton situation to talk about something that is very important to me. Following the discussion I have seen former Somerton fans being disappointed in themselves and questioning how they can ever trust another video essayist again. I have also seen some people being smug because to them Somerton was obviously unreliable from the start. As a person who also saw the "red flags" in Somerton, I would like to skip the smugness and talk a bit about what the red flags were to me.

Someone else has probably posted something similar and Hbomberguy's & Todd in the Shadows's videos touched a few of these points, but they didn't focus on them or how to spot these things. I think it is a good thing: I think it would have reinforced the idea that Somerton's fans were to blame for being lied to, and these youtubers didn't want to pin any blame on the fans. Also, some of the things I'm going to talk about were not by any means proof of him being unreliable, they were common tropes I personally associate with people who are bullshitting on internet. Think of it as something like spotting terfs: If you consider following a tumblr user and find out they have at some point posted "males will always be a danger to females no matter what they say", it is very possible that they are not a terf. Maybe they were having a bad day and were just wording their post badly – But you should probably search "trans" from their blog before following them, just to be sure.

So, the tropes in James Somerton's content that I consider red flags:

Lack of sources. This one may seem obvious and Hbomb talked about this in his video, but the lack of sources in his videos was outrageous. Video essays are called essays for a reason, they are not supposed to be just a guy talking about whatever comes to his mind, they should be well researched essays. Obviously video essays should contain one's own thoughts and interpretations and those do not need citations. But James Somerton didn't come out of the womb knowing everything about LGBT history, Disney and film theory, if he actually knew something about all this stuff, he should have learnt it from somewhere. There should be sources he could point to. It is very common that even when a video essayist doesn't tell you where they got all their information, they open their video by saying stuff like "when I prepared for this video I read the book Also sprach Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche and this one thrilling blog post about lesbian cruising in 1960s Sweden". From what I've seen, James does not really do this. From watching his videos you could arrive to the conclusion that James Somerton does not read any books, he just knows everything. There are situations where people don't feel the need to add sources, like when the information is considered common knowledge or when the topic relates heavily to the essayist's actual academic field or profession. This is okay and very understandable, but can sometimes be dangerous, since if the video essayist markets himself as a marketing specialist, people are more likely to take his word for stuff that has to do with marketing, even without sources. It is understandable that in many situations an essayist may think "why should I cite a source? I know this thing!", but doing your research well is partly about checking if the information you are certain of is actually true. Also, as Hbomb pointed out, if you can cite a source, your audience can go learn more about the subject. It's not about anyone doubting you know your stuff, it's about learning. That's why well-respected video essayists usually cite their sources very clearly.

Lack of pictures and screenshots. This is about different kinds of sources again, many things on this list are kind of about sources. An example: When James Somerton made a video about JKR, he mentioned something about Rowling at one time saying that trans students in 30-50Feralhogs (or whatever the wizard school is called) could use magic to present as their gender. If this was any other video essayist, you'd expect a tweet to pop up, or something else confirming Rowling ever said this. Nothing pops up, obviously because Rowling didn't say this, but you can't see anything fishy in that because things rarely pop up in Somerton's videos. He doesn't show you court documents when speaking about a court case, he doesn't show you the comments apparently mad at him for implying the gay anime is gay when he is complaining about people being mad at him. There is a reason people show screenshots and tweets in video essays. When a good video essayist says JK Rowling has tweeted that all people who menstruate should be referred to as women, the video essayist shows the tweet so people know they are not making it up. If there were hoards of annoying bitc-- I mean, angry white women whining about gay sex in HuffPost articles or Somerton's youtube comments, he should have no trouble showing you those. Remember that you should not trust someone just because they show you pictures or screenshots. Pictures can be photoshopped, screenshots can be doctored. Many youtubers are aware that you listen to their videos while cleaning or while walking your dog and don't actually see the screen all the time, and some may take advantage of that by saying something like "and here she threatened to kill me" while showing a text message where someone said "die mad about it". A screenshot alone isn't much but you should demand to see the screenshot.

Passive voice. I am once again bitching about this. Somerton repeatedly says things like "it's been said that" or "it was common knowledge that" or "a legend says that" or "according to most interpretations". He doesn't say who says it, making it very hard to fact check and that seems to be his goal in some cases.

Relying heavily on anecdotes. Writing a dense, analytical video about film theory or history can be exhausting and you may want to pepper in little fun facts. However Somerton seemed to rely on these heavily; he can't just talk about how he has totally bought every lie told by The Pink Swastika, he also needs to tell a cute little anecdote about SS men forcing sexual favours out of men. He can't just tell a story about a court case, he needs to add in ridiculous stuff about the jury booing. This is what I mean by not all the things on this list being necessarily proof of someone being unreliable. Many people use anecdotes and little stories in their storytelling, it makes the videos flow better and it's hard to decide which anecdotes are valid and which are not. A source obviously makes an anecdote a bit more believable, but here are some things that instantly make me fact check an anecdote:

It's a bit too convenient, poetic or ironic. Sometimes real life is weirder than fiction but if an anecdote is "perfect" and has an amazing punchline and you could write twelve poems about it, there is a possibility it was invented by pop science books.

It assumes your political enemies are stupid. Dunking on conservatives, MRAs and transphobes is always fun and after you've seen a lot of this kind of content it's easy to believe anything about these people. You must resist the impulse to believe everything that may make your opponents look stupid.

The person telling the anecdote implies it is an example of a larger, systemic problem. You know what's worse than taking a random happenstance from human history or internet and basing an entire political theory on it? The said random happenstance being made up. You should in general be wary of people telling one story and explaining why it's an example of everything that's wrong in the world. We live in a huge world. You can always find a white woman who loves cute gays but hates the idea of Nick Heartstopper and Charlie Heartstopper getting nasty but that doesn't mean it's an indicator of a larger issue.

Simplifying complex issues. We all know that "only the boring gays survived the AIDS crisis, and that's why gays started to only care about marriage equality and military" is a horrible, insensitive thing to say, but you also have to think about it for like two seconds to realize that it can't be correct. It kind of reminds me of the "roe v wade caused the crime drop of 1990s" claim in Freakonomics. It sounds logical and simple, like a basic math calculation. Societal issues rarely are like that, though. You should never believe anyone who tells you about a huge societal shift and says it happened because of one thing and one thing only.

These were some of the things I noticed in Somerton's content that caused me to distrust him. I hope these were helpful to you and feel free to add your own "red flags" if you feel like it!

[genderkoolaid]

it feels like people forgot that "trans men are whiney misogynists who are begging to be more oppressed than they are" is a terf talking point

tbh the way some people talk it sounds like they fundamentally agree with the TERF premise that transmascs are sex/gender traitors who seek acceptance into the patriarchy & seek to oppress their former sisters by pulling the ladder up behind them. they just think of them as having male oppressor brains instead of being females who reject class solidarity. but because anti-transmasculinity is so under theorized + discussed it's just fucking ignored

[boundwithpurple]

i think what people don’t understand about rhaenicent fandom and my critiques of it is very evocatively demonstrated by an incident on twitter where a self-professed radfem lesbian feminist had a podcast called “alipilled” where she read alicent hightower through dworkin’s right wing women but then it was unceremoniously cancelled when her fellow radfem cohost was revealed to be a former incest shipper who had said racial slurs (guess which offense was greeted with more horror). and then also incidentally tweets from her private twitter were leaked where after the details of alicole consummation were leaked she posted a picture of real life actress olivia cooke with the accompanying text “all i can see when i look a her is a WHORE.” never has their been a neater encapsulation of the psychosexual constitution of the radfem/crypto-terf yuri fandom hydra and its profoundly misogynistic politics.

[goanonanontg]

Former TERF messaging a goddess, begging for forgiveness. She so so so sorry for her past, and just wants to repent. So she meets up with the transfem superior irl. And is in order forced to, rim the goddess, clean her armpits with her tongue, clean the dried cum off her cock and balls, then give her head.

She dose so well she rewarded with a yellow shower, soaking her good cloths in piss, then a sticky white face painting~

She did so well her new goddess took her home~

[femalecel]

Maybe it just seems this way to me because I'm on the TERF side but I find it impossible to believe there's going to be huge waves of "rehabilitated" terfs. I've only ever found one or two TRAs that are former TERFS, meanwhile at least half of radblr is former TRAs. New women peak every single month especially as TRAs continue to act more openly misogynistic. But I guess we'll have to see what's up in 2031.

[soup-mother]

i really do think if you're taking a guys word as a "former" terf as to why trans women are all hysterical misogynistic monsters you might want to just jump off a bridge.

[televisionenjoyer]

you were a former terf? (not meant in a judging way, clearly you're a better person now, it's just surprising)

I was! I talk about it quite often because I think it's important for people to understand what drives ppl to this ideology and what it entails. I recently made a post talking about how I dropped radical feminism after getting misgendered as a cis person which led me to reconsider the whole world of gender and my personal relationship w it

[anxietycheesecake]

I think before we question why the victims decided to go to terf press to speak up at first, we should ask ourselves why these victims, some of them former fans, didn't feel comfortable speaking up in our so-called safe spaces. Would y'all have listened? You're barely listening now.

[damelancelot-darling]

Gotham Inception Fic

Aka: a Gothamite writes fanfiction about the Batfam and the Wayne family like step-families.

All inspired by @jasontoddiefor's post here:

Obviously fans are going to wildly mischaracterize everyone, especially the BatFam so I'm seperating each person's character traits into their civilain ID and their persona. Some of these are grossly incorrect in any kind of canon or fanon but this is from the perspective of a Gothamite.

Dick (Richy):

Everyone gave up on using Dick as his name because it kept getting flagged everytime so they decided on Richy. He confirmed in an interview that he prefers Dick because English wasn't his parent's first language and when they gave him a white name, they didn't know what dick meant until they had already been using it too long.

Way stereotyped. Both as Romani and as a former circus performer.

Goofy, smiley, more of a puppy than anything.

Doting on his family.

Nightwing ():

Human thristtrap.

Oversexualized and flirty af.

Gets very angry easily (stemming from his early Robin days)

Overprotective (of family, of his partner, of Y/N, etc.)

Cool in a way that teenagers think is cool.

Richi taught him acrobatics.

Jason:

Dead lol

Still legally dead and out of the view of the public.

Everyone writes angst about his death.

Made out to be this sweet little uwu baby.

They do guess correctly that if he was brought back, he'd be pissed he was "replaced".

Red Hood (Liam):

Woobified

His "real" name came from him quoting Shakespeare in public and so got called William which turned into Liam because Will was not a cool enough name for him.

Daddy issues af

A lot less violent that in reality.

Brucie has guilty resentment about him coming back but not Jason.

Only shows up to work with Batman on cases that involve his terf.

Hates Brucie with a burning passion and doesn't explain why.

Tim:

More uptight. Kinda like Damian's fanon calling everyone "peasants" thing but less outspoken.

Secretly thinks he should be the only son of Wayne but when Wayne Enterprises was given to him, it quelled most of the jealously.

Kind of the "bad guy" and/or the pessimist in most fanfics.

Basically a semi-spoiled rich kid who inherited his daddy's company.

It's debated whether he's actually a compitant boss or if he's more like Brucie was and everyone else does his work for him.

A small group of fans insist that he's stereotped into being the bad guy and he isn't actually that bad in real life. (Most of these are the Batfam trying to raise Tim's spirits.)

Red Robin (Rhett Robbie):

Yes his name is a reference to his vigilantie name.

Nerd

I can't really think of more for him rn

Damian:

More shy than snobby.

Overwhelmed with suddenly having a large family.

Covers up his negative feelings with either anger or coldness.

Doesn't speak much.

More affectionate than irl.

Snow White (ie: someone found out about the zoo he keeps at the manor and everyone thinks it's cute.

Robin (Taj):

I will murder you with a smile.

Has to be kept on a BatLeash (patent pending) at all times so he doesn't kill all of the criminals.

Complete Middle Eastern/ninja stereotype

They do get his desire to be the only BatKid because he's "actually" Batman's son.

According to the internet (which is exactly where a fan writer would go for name inspiration) Malik means crown in Arabic.

Bruce (Brucie):

Still very much a himbo.

Mischaracterized as "the wife" when shipped with Batman

Some people insist that Damian got his animal adoption problem from Brucie's child adoption problem.

All of his one night stands after parties are fake b/c he'd never cheat on Batman.

A little too dependant on hard liqour when left alone because Jason is dead/he's worried about Batman dying on patrol/etc.

Secretly depressed.

Would 100% kill a villain if they were after his kids (batkids included) and he had an opportunity.

Was taught in-depth selfdefense before Batman even considered a first date.

Batman (???):

I can't think of a good name for Batman. If you can think of something better, please add it.

His Batman persona sticks around even when the cowl is off.

Usually a redhead with green eyes because they suspect he's BatGirl's bio dad.

"Do the butts match?"

Loves his kids and Brucie's kids but is emotionally consipated and doesn't show it well.

Has a tragic backstory.

Childhood friends with Brucie.

He doesn't use guns because they're a huge trigger for Brucie.

I am absolutely not the authority of this kind of AU. If anyone has Corrections or additions they want to add please do. If there's enough additions and Corrections on this post, I will eventually I will make another post with everything added and corrected. 

Yes I know I need to add Duke, Cass, Stephanie, Barbara, Alfred, maybe Clark Kent, etc. I will make a sequel post with them in it or I will just include them when I make the masterpost.