#fringe feminism

[blackmapmedia]

[luxiomahariel]

I admit that seeing the whole Talia Bhatt bullshit has been both kind of funny but also really making me realize how much TRFs have lost their common sense. I've seen so many of the big names who platformed Talia without an ounce of shame suddenly pretending they all knew this was going to happen. Which, a lot of people had mentioned already (her love for detrans women is explicitly brought up in her book- In a way that's really creepy at that). But these people were called hysterical transandrobros for daring to oppose her.

Now people are saying "wow I knew she was bad news, you couldn't ever try to reclaim radfeminism as a transfeminist thing" and things like that. And like, they had no issue with that a week ago. They're not even really talking about how horrifying is that she's happy to platform detrans people who vouch for gatekeeping transition, because they do literally think it's a positive thing IF it only affects transmascs. Their major gripes are about the fact they consider detrans women need to stay in their place as TMEs and that they can't ever try to compare their experiences to TMAs.

I'm sure there's going to be few people who are more on the fringes of this discourse who will realize that transradfeminism is really just unsalvageable, but there's also some TRFs that are kinda doubling down on how they just don't think there's an issue with platforming detrans grifters who think society makes it too easy to transition, specially with all the talks about how "all trans men are waiting to detransition and become hitlerites" or whatever crap they wanna say. And like, I don't think they'll realize this at this point, but vouching to make it hard for trans men to transition can't really be separated from making it also harder for trans women to transition. It's almost as if legislations that affect trans men also affect trans women. If one side is going down, so is the other.

But they're going to go through hoops and loops to find how much they can pretend there's no shared trans experience amidst trans people, I guess. And I think this latest discovery is really gonna just make it more evident which ones do truly believe this.

just to bring this point home, heres an excerpt from her book where she talks about Stone Butch Blues and how ~transfeminist~ it is that the main character Jess detranitioned:

this is the supposed future that trans(rad)feminists want? where the only gender is woman and they will justify detransitioning trans men/mascs and nonbinary people in order to do so?

trans radical feminism is as trans exclusionary as the radical feminism before it, but trfs dont care because its only targeting everyone thats not a woman 🙃

[brandyschillace]

The Forgotten History of the World’s First Transgender Clinic

I finished the first round of edits on my nonfiction history of trans rights today. It will publish with Norton in 2025, but I decided, because I feel so much of my community is here, to provide a bit of the introduction.

[begin sample]

The Institute for Sexual Sciences had offered safe haven to homosexuals and those we today consider transgender for nearly two decades. It had been built on scientific and humanitarian principles established at the end of the 19th century and which blossomed into the sexology of the early 20th. Founded by Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish homosexual, the Institute supported tolerance, feminism, diversity, and science. As a result, it became a chief target for Nazi destruction: “It is our pride,” they declared, to strike a blow against the Institute. As for Magnus Hirschfeld, Hitler would label him the “most dangerous Jew in Germany.”6 It was his face Hitler put on his antisemitic propaganda; his likeness that became a target; his bust committed to the flames on the Opernplatz. You have seen the images. You have watched the towering inferno that roared into the night. The burning of Hirschfeld’s library has been immortalized on film reels and in photographs, representative of the Nazi imperative, symbolic of all they would destroy. Yet few remember what they were burning—or why.

Magnus Hirschfeld had built his Institute on powerful ideas, yet in their infancy: that sex and gender characteristics existed upon a vast spectrum, that people could be born this way, and that, as with any other diversity of nature, these identities should be accepted. He would call them Intermediaries.

Intermediaries carried no stigma and no shame; these sexual and Gender nonconformists had a right to live, a right to thrive. They also had a right to joy. Science would lead the way, but this history unfolds as an interwar thriller—patients and physicians risking their lives to be seen and heard even as Hitler began his rise to power. Many weren’t famous; their lives haven’t been celebrated in fiction or film. Born into a late-nineteenth-century world steeped in the “deep anxieties of men about the shifting work, social roles, and power of men over women,” they came into her own just as sexual science entered the crosshairs of prejudice and hate. The Institute’s own community faced abuse, blackmail, and political machinations; they responded with secret publishing campaigns, leaflet drops, pro-homosexual propaganda, and alignments with rebel factions of Berlin’s literati. They also developed groundbreaking gender affirmation surgeries and the first hormone cocktail for supportive gender therapy.

Nothing like the Institute for Sexual Sciences had ever existed before it opened its doors—and despite a hundred years of progress, there has been nothing like it since. Retrieving this tale has been an exercise in pursuing history at its edges and fringes, in ephemera and letters, in medal texts, in translations. Understanding why it became such a target for hatred tells us everything about our present moment, about a world that has not made peace with difference, that still refuses the light of scientific evidence most especially as it concerns sexual and reproductive rights.

[end sample]

I wanted to add a note here: so many people have come together to make this possible. Like Ralf Dose of the Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft (Magnus Hirschfeld Archive), Berlin, and Erin Reed, American journalist and transgender rights activist—Katie Sutton, Heike Bauer. I am also deeply indebted to historian, filmmaker and formative theorist Susan Stryker for her feedback, scholarship, and encouragement all along the way. And Laura Helmuth, editor of Scientific American, whose enthusiasm for a short article helped bring the book into being. So many LGBTQ+ historians, archivists, librarians, and activists made the work possible, that its publication testifies to the power of the queer community and its dedication to preserving and celebrating history. But I ALSO want to mention you, folks here on tumblr who have watched and encouraged and supported over the 18 months it took to write it (among other books and projects). @neil-gaiman has been especially wonderful, and @always-coffee too: thank you.

The support of this community has been important as I’ve faced backlash in other quarters. Thank you, all.

NOTE: they are attempting to rebuild the lost library, and you can help: https://magnus-hirschfeld.de/archivzentrum/archive-center/

[unsolicited-opinions]

When Judith Butler Forgets How Identity Works

@squeeful replied on this post:

The issue is not in Butler’s work, like the work of the others mentioned, but that people, once supporting someone's work, think they must be right on other issues. Which is their intellectual immaturity, not a problem with the work

No, I actually have huge problems with parts of Butler's work - I'm just not willing to call all of it garbage because I think the concept of performative gender is important.

Butler's "work" on Jews, Jewish identity, Zionism, and Israel is pure @#&$ing excrement:

It's intellectually dishonest, academically anemic, and blatantly contradicts Butler's prior work on identity with a shameless reversal of their own theory for the purpose of condemning Jews who disagree with Butler's own fringe take on Jewish identity.

So let me explain exactly how full of shit Butler is on Jewish anything.

Why "Parting Ways" Parts Ways with Jewish Reality

Judith Butler made their name by challenging the idea that identity is fixed. In Gender Trouble, Butler asked us to think of gender not as a biological destiny, but as a performance - fluid, constructed, always in flux. That core idea reshaped entire fields, from queer theory to feminism to pop culture.

But when it comes to Jewish identity - especially Jewish identity in relation to Israel - Butler suddenly trades nuance for rigidity.

In Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, (get your copy here at no charge) they argue that "true" Jewishness is universalist, diasporic, and ethically obligated to oppose the State of Israel.

Butler says that Jews are not just required to critique Israel - but to reject its very legitimacy and existence. According to Butler, Zionism is a betrayal of true Jewish ethics and Zionists are doing Judaism wrong. In short, Butler is saying that if you believe in Israel's right to exist, you're a bad Jew.

That's not just a bold or controversial claim. It's historically, ethically, and logically nonsensical, yet people take Butler seriously on this topic.

Judith Butler isn't an outlier, they're one of the most influential voices shaping how the academic left (and by extension, much of progressive activism) understands Jews - and Butler doesn’t just misrepresent Judaism, Jewishness, and Israel. Butler erases the lived experience of millions of Jews.

Butler's Deliberate Misrepresentation of Judaism and Jewish Ethics

Judith Butler argues that Jewish ethics demand a rejection of nationalism - and therefore, of Zionism. They lean on figures like Levinas, Arendt, and Benjamin to claim that Judaism carries a moral duty to stand with the stateless, the exiled, the outsider.

There's a kernel of truth in that. Jewish tradition does emphasize care for the stranger and caution around power. But turning that into a blanket rejection of Jewish nationalism is a selective reading dressed up as principle. It's like claiming Buddhism forbids self-defense because it values compassion - technically clever, morally incoherent, and contextually blind.

That's how Butler presents their performance of Jewishness, by presenting selected works of selected Jewish thinkers, putting words in their mouths about Jewish national self-determination, then pretending that no other views exist (or are acceptable) within Jewish thought.

Bizarrely, this makes Butler's performance of Jewishness more restrictive, narrow, and intellectually dishonest than literally any I've ever encountered.

Butler preaches "Jewish tradition" like they can define it in a syllabus, telling their class what real Jewishness is.

Contrary to Butler's syllabus, Jewish ethics are much more than Levinas and Arendt. They're also Maimonides, Heschel, Soloveitchik, Spinoza, Buber, not to mention talmud. Jewish ethics is a diverse, often contradictory canon full of arguments about community, power, land, survival, and sovereignty.

Butler not only pretends this vast body of literature doesn't exist, but pretends that texts are the sole source of Jewish identity and ethics.

Jewish ethics and identity don't live in books, but in people. The overwhelming majority of Jews - across denominations, geographies, and politics- regard support for the Jewish state as an expression of their Jewish ethics. Safety after slaughter. Dignity after diaspora. Responsibility after ruin. Never again.

Butler doesn't just critique Israel, Butler claims Israel violates Judaism itself

...as if Judaism were a TED Talk on borderless cosmopolitanism instead of a 3,000-year conversation shaped by exile, return, law, myth, trauma, and survival.

Butler's erasure of Jewish history is antisemitic.

Caricaturing Zionism and Erasing History

Let's define Zionism clearly, since Butler doesn't. Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people - like all peoples - have a right to national self-determination in a portion of their indigenous homeland. That's it.

To hear Butler describe it, Zionism is a colonial project - an unjust seizure of land, an inherently violent ideology, and a corruption of Jewish values.

If you know Jewish history, that reading collapses immediately, and that's no accident. Butler relies on the reader being ignorant of that history.

Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel. Our liturgy, language, and law all trace back to it. The diaspora happened because we were violently expelled from our homeland, not because we left voluntarily. When the modern Zionist movement emerged in the 19th century, it did so in response to relentless persecution - not a craving for empire.

Butler erases that history. There’s no mention of the pogroms that shaped early modern Zionist thought. There's no engagement with the Holocaust survivors who built Israel's institutions. There's no space for Mizrahi Jews who fled state-sponsored antisemitism across the Middle East and found refuge in Israel. There's no acknowledgment that the Jewish return wasn't a settler-colonial endeavor, but a survival imperative. It was, as Haviv Retiig Gur puts it, a refugee and rescue operation.

Butler only permits Israel to be seen through the lens of power - ignoring that it was born in weakness, under siege, and remains the only country in the world whose existence is regularly debated on moral terms.

Erasing Arab Agency, Legitimizing Terrorism

When discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Butler never confronts the fact that Hamas - a genocidal, explicitly antisemitic organization - governs Gaza. There's no mention of how many peace offers Israel has made. There's no mention of how Israelis (of all religion and ethnicities) live with the trauma of intifadas, bombings, kidnappings, and rockets.

In fact, Butler has worked hard to legitimize Hamas.

For Butler, Israel is a villain by default - and Zionism becomes a heresy against Judaism.

That's not analysis. That's dogma. And it isn't even Jewish dogma.

The Identity Double Standard

Here's where Butler's nose is crammed most thoroughly up their own posterior.

Judith Butler has spent decades showing how identity categories are socially constructed, context-dependent, and always in motion. Gender, in Butler’s framework, is not what you are, but what you do - and how others interpret it. Right?

But when it comes to Jewish identity, Butler flips the script.

Suddenly, Jewishness is a fixed thing - and only Jews who perform it in a particular, Butler-approved, anti-Zionist way are doing it "right." Everyone else, 90% of Jews, are heretics and apostates.

Jewishness, in Butler's view, is historically and ethically defined by its diasporic condition, which entails living among non-Jews. This means that "the Jew can never be fully separated from the question of how to live among those who are not Jewish."

Despite arguing that they're claiming to be using Jewish ethics to make a Jewish case against Jewish national self-determination...this argument hinges partly on Edward Said, partly on falsehoods, and partly on pure bullshit:

It came as a surprise to me, and also a gift, to read one of Edward Said’s last books, Freud and the Non-European, not only because of the lively reengagement with the figure of Moses it contains, but because Moses becomes for him an opportunity to articulate two theses that are, in my view, worth considering. The first is that Moses, an Egyptian, is the founder of the Jewish people, which means that Judaism is not possible without this defining implication in what is Arab. Such a formulation challenges hegemonic Ashkenazi definitions of Jewishness. But it also implies a more diasporic origin for Judaism, which suggests that a fundamental status is accorded the condition by which the Jew cannot be defined without a relation to the non-Jew. It is not only that, in diaspora, Jews must and do live with non-Jews,and must reflect on how precisely to conduct a life in the midst of religious and cultural heterogeneity, but also that the Jew can never be fully separated from the question of how to live among those who are not Jewish. The figure of Moses, however, makes an even more emphatic point, namely, that, for some, Jew and Arab are not finally separable categories, since they are lived and embodied together in the life of the Arab Jew.

Just to scratch the surface of Butler's bullshitting here (please add more in the replies!):

Moses, in Exodus, is not by any stretch of the imagination Egyptian.

The Egyptians of that era were not Arabs.

If Jewish identity is dependent on relation to Arabs, how did Jews define themselves for thousands of years before the Arab conquest reached the Levant in ~630 CE?

The only Ashkenazim I'm aware of who sought hegemonic definitions of Jewishness were the antizionist Bundists like Butler.

The assertion that seeing Moses as Egyptian says something about Ashkenazic conceptions of Jewishness is such a non-sequitur that it boggles the mind how an editor approved this being published.

Falsely asserting that the Moses of Exodus was Egyptian does not in any way imply a "more diasporic origin of Judaism", even if we took it to be true...which it isn't.

Butler actually asserts, despite scriptural, archeological, textual, historical, and anthropological evidence, that there were no non-Jews living among or near the Jews of ancient Israel. If this assertion was honest, we'd be appalled by the depth of her ignorance of Exodus and history.

And that's what's most infuriating about it: it's clearly, knowingly dishonest.

Butler is completely full of shit and making an argument they know damn well is intellectually dishonest and unsupportable. Butler started this book from a conclusion that Zionism is evil and worked backwards to find Jewish sources to distort into supporting that view, erasing and distorting 3,000 years of history, practice and belief. This book is one of the most shameful pieces of bullshittery I've ever seen.

We haven't even gotten to Butler's most and hypocritical, self-contradicting rhetoric.

If you're a Jew who believes in the dignity of diaspora, Butler says you're authentic.

If you're a Jew who believes in the dignity of sovereignty? Butler says you're morally suspect.

This is a total betrayal of the intellectual commitments on which Butler's career was built.

You can't defend gender self-determination, nuance, and fluidity while denying Jews the right to define their own individual and collective identity.

You can't champion multiplicity for everyone else and then enforce ideological purity tests on Jews.

You can't build a theory of liberation that demands Jews stay stateless.

Butler's issue isn't really one of Jewish identity. Butler's problem is with Jewish agency.

Why This Matters

This isn't just a philosophical dispute.

Butler's framework from this piece of shit book has spread far beyond the academy. It shows up in campus politics, activist circles, and social media discourse where Jews who support Israel - even critically - are cast as oppressors, collaborators, or frauds. Butler provides the justification.

It shapes a generation of progressives who have been taught that antizionism is the ethical Jewish position and that Jews who disagree are colonialist oppressors. It turns lived Jewish identity into a problem Butler solved by rehashing pieces of Bundism and Soviet antisemitism - but the Jews are a people to be understood and enfranchised as other peoples are: in all their complexity, fluidity, and nuance.

Butler creates moral cover for antisemitism. When an LGBTQ+ Jewish student is told they're "white" and "colonial" for supporting Israel's existence, that’s Butler's legacy at work. When a progressive space demands Jews check their Zionism at the door, that's Parting Ways in action.

We can - and should - critique Israeli policy.

Butler isn’t offering critique - Butler is offering disqualification, an eliminationist perspective which is nakedly antisemitic on it's face.

That's not justice. That's erasure.

Parting Thoughts on Parting Ways

I'm a Jew. I come from a community that has survived exile, pogroms, ethnic cleansings, the Holocaust, and 2,000 years of statelessness. Zionism is not a political ideology to me or the vast majority of the world's Jews who identify as Zionists. It's a lifeline.

It's the belief that Jews - like all peoples - deserve to exist, to belong, to build, to falter, to argue, and to thrive in a place of our own, the place which birthed our civilization.

I don't need Judith Butler to validate that - but I do need to call out the intellectual dishonesty of a conveniently inconsistent theory that makes room for every identity - except that of Jews.

The moment Jews demand dignity on our own terms, as Butler says other people should demand dignity on theirs, Butler parts ways.

I'm not discarding everything Butler has written or said (I haven't read everything they wrote), but every bit of their "work" on Jewish identity is excrement which deserves contempt and derision. It is bad faith, sloppy, pseudo-intellectual polemics of the very worst sort.

Butler is performing an inauthentic, fringe sort of Jewishness in order to insist that the 90% of the world's Jews who don't share Butler's view that Israel must he destroyed...aren't truly Jewish.

This is immediately discernable as bullshit to any Jew who knows anything about their own heritage.

Further Reading:

[fromchaostocosmos]

If there are two main things that you notice pretty quickly when studying antisemitism it is this:

1] Antisemitism is not original. Everything we see is something else just reworded. It is all the same patterns repeated over and over to ad nauseam. There is no creativity. Everyone is just using the same thing with slight updates for the current era and events. Every is just copying someone else's homework only changing a few words here and there.

2] After a certain amount of time passes from a very antisemitic period in history those who did the antisemitism, those who were party to it will do their best to erase it all. To pretend that it either never happened and/or they were apart of it. So for example: Christian love to pretend they have nothing to with christian antisemitism and the antisemitism of the Middle Ages has nothing to with them. Because well they are Modern Christians and also that was the Catholics. But if you point out that antisemitism is fundamental to Christianity and is the foundation on which it is built or the antisemitism of Luther and in Protestantism or the gospels or Modern Christian Antisemitism it is excuse after excuse.

The same goes for any discussion of antisemitism in atheism, antisemitism in the USA, antisemitism in academia, scientific antisemitism, antisemitism in the media, literature, and entertainment, antisemitism and misogyny, antisemitism in feminism, and on and on.

We also really see it when we talk about the history of MENA and Jews and that history has been totally whitewashed and twisted into this utopian world where everything was sunshine and roses.

That Jews were under dhimmi laws which for all that it means "protected person" in reality means second class citizens and paying a tax to have basic rights. That is was under Muslim rule that the color yellow, mustard yellow in fact, was introduced as the color to mark Jews as Jews because that was the first place that the color yellow was used for a marker that Jews had to wear to for the marker they wore to signal that they were Jews. This is something that we must never speak of or acknowledge.

The Farhud and the question of "where are all your Jews" is the prime example when it comes to the MENA region of things that are forbidden to discuss and things that ignored and erased.

So I know that somewhere down the line what is going on right now will be downplayed and erased. That it will turned into it wasn't that bad. And that there wasn't that many of these groups it was just really fringe. A couple of hundred. No one was really a part of them most of us ignored them. And all posts on social media that say otherwise will be deleted, all evidence that says contrary will be hidden, all social media handles that had the inverted red triangle will be changed and the lies will be told.

Just like the world lied so much after the Holocaust until they started to believe their own lies and that their own children and grandchildren never knew the truth. "We didn't know what was happening" even though it was being reported in newspapers all over.

"We would have let them in if we knew" you knew and you purposefully turned us away because you didn't care.

We, Jews, however will know, remember, and tell the truth. And each generation after us and each following generation will know, remember, and tell the truth.

Because that is what we do.

So that even if you no longer here we will still remember just as we remember the Ancient Egyptians and all they did to us even though they are no longer here. But we are. We have not forgotten. It is not what we do.

Am Yisrael Chai

We live and we remember.

[genderkoolaid]

While 4B has been a topic of conversation online for a few years, sporadically gaining popularity among U.S. TikTok users in moments like the “I chose the bear” trend, Trump’s reelection brought it front and center again. In the days following Trump’s win, online searches for the 4B Movement saw an unprecedented spiked. Across social media, women are posting that they need to divest from men, amassing hundreds of thousands of likes and millions of views. But the conversation about 4B in the U.S. is rife with misconceptions about the movement, including false assertions that 4B accounts for the majority of feminist thought in South Korea. It’s important to note that despite the global attention, 4B is a fringe movement in South Korea, and Han says the vast majority of South Korean feminists do not abide by it. “I just want to make sure that people understand that 4B does not speak for Korean feminism,” Han tells Them. “4B is not representative of Korean feminist politics. A lot of us see something a lot more diverse and a lot more intersectional than what 4B calls for.” Though the 4B movement is quickly gaining wind in the U.S., this is far from the first time American feminists have called for a divestment from men to combat misogyny. In the 1960s, political lesbianism emerged from the second-wave feminist movement as a means of decentering men from the lives of women. Like 4B, political lesbians aimed to divest from dating and having sex with men. They asserted that any feminist can be a lesbian, defining lesbian as any woman who did not have sex with men. “We call it 4B now, but it's political lesbianism,” Han says. “Essentially it's the same thing too, but the one aspect of being a political lesbian was you may or may not [actually be a lesbian], and sometimes you really didn't have sex with other women, but [instead lived by] the idea that you prioritize your relationships with other women, that you prioritize your solidarity with other women.” But with the 4B movement both in South Korea and the U.S., Han says this isn’t the case, as men still find themselves front and center in the discourse. She adds, “I've never heard so much discussion of straight men. Can we just decenter them?” [...] Han says that they hope this blip in interest about 4B fades into the next news cycle, as there are so many other forms of intersectional South Korean feminism that do include queer and trans people. Ultimately, many of the current discussions about 4B are coming from a place of privilege that queer people don’t have the luxury of accessing. “Queer and trans folks know that isolation or imagining a life ‘just on our own’ — that's not our reality,” Han says. “That's not our vision. In many ways, I think our experiences tell us that we have to live with people who hate us. We have to work with and against and fight folks who mean to harm us and simply disavowing them or refusing to interact with them or somehow running away and keeping to ourselves, that's never been possible.”

[animefeminist]

In Sailor Moon S and Revolutionary Girl Utena, butchness is vital fluidity

Spoilers for Revolutionary Girl Utena

Women are a pivotal element in my work. In my pictures they act as representatives of all genders….I process the human themes with a female cast.

Utena crossdresses to capture a boy’s [sense of adventure] while remaining a girl. To make a stand against the world.

A commodified form of femininity is sweeping pop culture online: from tradwife influencers getting millions on views on platforms like TikTok, to the chorus of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” being used as a meme sound for young women to joke about how hopeless they are. Whether all of these posts are ironic or not, they reinforce a broader social trope about being “just” girls: pretty, pure-hearted, in need of rescue. Won’t somebody please care for girls who are just girls? Sentiments of this manner are not new, but they popped up in stronger frequency sometime during the pandemic and show no signs of stopping. Unthreatening femininity is en vogue, feminism old-fashioned and unnecessary. Images of womanhood beyond it are fringe and unattractive, if not outright non-existent. 

It’s a deeply frustrating ecosystem to have to scroll through, particularly as a queer woman of color. It’s all the sweeter, then, to encounter modes of womanhood that are perpendicular to such notions. Sailor Moon S (1994-1995) and Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997) both feature butch characters very prominently: Tenoh Haruka, aka Sailor Uranus from the former, and Tenjou Utena, the titular protagonist of the latter. In adapting both these characters for TV, Ikuhara Kunihiko makes compelling arguments: that girlhood can look like many different things, that the girl who embraces masculinity finds herself with more freedom, and that it’s worth our while to deconstruct and question the archetypes and assumptions of girlhood that try to pin these characters down.

Read it at Anime Feminist!

[sunny-day-jack-official]

URGENT! Stop KOSA!

Hey all, this is BáiYù and Sauce here with something that isn't necessarily SnaccPop related, but it's important nonetheless. For those of you who follow US politics, The Kids Online Safety Act passed the Senate yesterday and is moving forward.

This is bad news for everyone on the internet, even outside of the USA.

What is KOSA?

While it's officially known as "The Kids Online Safety Act," KOSA is an internet censorship masquerading as another "protect the children" bill, much in the same way SESTA/FOSTA claimed that it would stop illegal sex trafficking but instead hurt sex workers and their safety. KOSA was originally introduced by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass. and Bill Cassidy, R-La. as a way to update the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Act, raising the age of consent for data collection to 16 among other things. You can read the original press release of KOSA here, while you can read the full updated text of the bill on the official USA Congress website.

You can read the following articles about KOSA here:

EFF: The Kids Online Safety Act is Still A Huge Danger to Our Rights Online

CyberScoop: Children’s online safety bills clear Senate hurdle despite strong civil liberties pushback

TeenVogue: The Kids Online Safety Act Would Harm LGBTQ+ Youth, Restrict Access to Information and Community

The quick TL;DR:

KOSA authorizes an individual state attorneys general to decide what might harm minors

Websites will likely preemptively remove and ban content to avoid upsetting state attorneys generals (this will likely be topics such as abortion, queerness, feminism, sexual content, and others)

In order for a platform to know which users are minors, they'll require a more invasive age and personal data verification method

Parents will be granted more surveillance tools to see what their children are doing on the web

KOSA is supported by Christofascists and those seeking to harm the LGBTQ+ community

If a website holding personally identifying information and government documents is hacked, that's a major cybersecurity breach waiting to happen

What Does This Mean?

You don't have to look far to see or hear about the violence being done to the neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ communities worldwide, who are oftentimes one and the same. Social media sites censoring discussion of these topics would stand to do even further harm to folks who lack access to local resources to understand themselves and the hardships they face; in addition, the fact that websites would likely store personally identifying information and government documents means the death of any notion of privacy.

Sex workers and those living in certain countries already are at risk of losing their ways of life, living in a reality where their online activities are closely surveilled; if KOSA officially becomes law, this will become a reality for many more people and endanger those at the fringes of society even worse than it already is.

Why This Matters Outside of The USA

I previously mentioned SESTA/FOSTA, which passed and became US law in 2018. This bill enabled many of the anti-adult content attitudes that many popular websites are taking these days as well as the tightening of restrictions laid down by payment processors. Companies and sites hosted in the USA have to follow US laws even if they're accessible worldwide, meaning that folks overseas suffer as well.

What Can You Do?

If you're a US citizen, contact your Senators and tell them that you oppose KOSA. This can be as an email, letter, or phone call that you make to your state Senator.

For resources on how to do so, view the following links:

https://www.badinternetbills.com/#kosa

https://www.stopkosa.com/

https://linktr.ee/stopkosa

If you live outside of the US or cannot vote, the best thing you can do is sign the petition at the Stop KOSA website, alert your US friends about what's happening, and raise some noise.

Above all else, don’t panic. By staying informed by what’s going on, you can prepare for the legal battles ahead.

[the3musketeers]

request!! >> (fandom : degrees of lewdity, Alex)

🧸- im sooooo sorry if this is ooc help??? sorry dol fandom

w: feminization & feminine dressing (alex), sub/bot alex & dom/top reader, reader referred to as [name], a little ooc???, somnophilia maybe..?, HORRIBLE transition into sex, oral/bj, reader calls alex a girl likeee once, gay sex (real)

minors dni <3

a pink, frilled skirt, socks that hugged his plump thighs perfectly.. this was perfect, alex thought. he adjusted his red fringe, admiring himself in the view of the camera he held.

a few hours prior, his boyfriend came home from work. after greeting him, name went on his way to rest on a chair in the living room. alex had been in his room since, to surprise him with a little video.

he puts the camera lower to avoid showing his face, and starts recording. he paces towards his resting boyfriend, showing his body on camera.

his shirt was all messy, barely tucked in. the buttons near his neck are undone, and his legs were in a man spread. alex smiled behind the camera, but upon further inspection of his partner's clothes, he seemed to notice something else.

something bulging for attention under his pants. alex, who was visibly surprised, stopped filming. he puts his phone in his other hand, before slowly coming closer to him.

a little peek won't hurt.. will it?

the room was unbearably silent for alex as he unbuckled name's pants as slow as possible to avoid waking him.

successfully getting rid of the belt, alex puts it on the floor. he puts his hands to work on name's pants, pulling it off his legs to reveal the very thing he's been searching for.

it practically jumps out of [name]'s underwear, eager, and awaiting for any form of stimulation. alex found himself staring at it, his mind blanked.

alex wraps his hand around his length, as he licked his lips in anticipation. [name] would love it if he helped him out, he wouldn't mind, he thought.

he slowly strokes his boyfriend's throbbing member, all the while keeping a tight and firm grasp around it. his fingers glide over the slit on it's head, from the veins, to the base.

alex was snapped out of his trance, suddenly stopping when name groaned, and stirred in his sleep. he repositions to get comfortable, and only continues when he goes quiet again.

"..hope you're dreamin' bout me right now.." he mutters, just as he decided that he was ready for it, he took [name]'s dick into his mouth. bobbing his head at the pace of his hands.

he loved the way it tasted, the way he'd take it into his mouth n the strange, but welcomed flavor would invade his tongue. the way the veins of [name]'s member would brush against his tongue while he'd suck.

alex was distracted by his own focus on [name]'s dick, he didn't even notice his boyfriend woke up already..!

[name] put a hand on alex's red hair, rubbing it affectionately. "this's a surprise.." his voice and touch made alex's heart almost jump. alex raised his head, his mouth parting from name's cock.

" 'm sorry, I--" he tried to make up some excuse, though [name] promptly shuts his lip with a finger to his mouth. "hey.. I didn't tell you to stop, did I? you can keep goin'.. if you want."

alex was surprised, but.. it's not like [name] would deny him,, " 'kay.." he muttered in response, as his mouth hovers right above [name]'s member, about to take it back in his mouth..!

[name] let out a pleasured sigh, feeling alex's warm cavern wrapping around him. his hand raised to cover his mouth,, just as the other kept itself knotted in the redhead's hair.

only two sounds could be heard throughout the room. [name]'s pleasure-filled groans, as well as the sounds his boyfriend made as he kept sucking on his cock,

"mmh.. a-agh, good girl, suckin' me so well.." he whispers, in a husky tone. his view of alex bobbing his head, sometimes taking it so far to make his entire length disappear within his mouth. It aroused him further,

"c-cummin', honey.. I'm cumming!" [name] was itching towards his own release, tangling his hands onto alex's hair as he thrusts his hips into his face whilst he moans out loud.

alex didn't seem objected to it either, if anything, his hands were gripping around [name]'s inner thighs. the thrill of his boyfriend's seed filling his mouth-- claiming his throat as his, it was something he was waiting for this entire time.

[name]'s hands gripped onto alex's hair, locking him in place. he shot his load inside his mouth, "ah.. ah," [name] pants, as alex's cheeks filled with ropes of his warm cum, then swallowed it all up.

[name] gulps, feeling alex's still expectant gaze land on him again.

"..fuck, maybe we should go for another round."

[plaidos]

Sorry if I'm speaking out of turn but I've also noticed a real slight of hand whenever transmisogynists say "trans women and trans men should stop arguing about who has it worse and instead [graphic sex description]" because the implication is that trans people must agree that all of them are harmed equally even though that's demonstrably untrue. But as far as I can tell it's a real fringe opinion even among those TMRAs that transmascs actually have it worse than transfems (I'm sure some of them do say that though), when most of the harassment actually comes from people who insist that trans men and women are equal. Especially when that sentiment is overwhelmingly paired with sexual harassment. It's straight out of the centrists playbook. It's giving "I'm not a feminist or an MRA, I'm an egalitarian"

it’s literally the same exact thing. most of them don’t wanna say men are more oppressed because it’s obviously not true, so they reflexively lean back on what most of the Non-MRA antifeminist men have been saying the whole time: “feminism is pointless because men and women are already equal”. except trans women don’t feel like we’re equal to trans men even within the trans community, and the overwhelming response has been “you’re delusional and tearing the community apart” rather than “wow, i can’t believe so many trans women feel this way, maybe something needs to change?”. it’s heartbreaking to be honest.

[rebelfell]

Welcome to your appointment, @sidereustales Robin is all set up for you in the back. Enjoy!

18+, MDNI┃1k

cw: summer romance, a little sad but pretty much just fluff

The surface of Lover’s Lake shimmered with the rays of dying sunlight reflecting off it.

Your bare feet dangled in the water, swishing back and forth so the ripples radiated out from around your legs and the pale, freckled pair next to them. Her toes tipped in electric blue wiggled above the murky depths and she exhaled, blowing her fringe out of her eyes.

“We can write,” Robin reminded you for the umpteenth time, although the meekness in her voice betrayed her own doubts. “And talk on the phone. Once we figure out the time difference.”

You nodded back, a single tear leaking from the corner of your eye that you hurriedly swipe away. Both of you had promised, no crying. No wasting time with tears on your last night together.

There’d be plenty of time for that later.

When your mother broke the news you would be spending the last precious weeks of your summer vacation in Hawkins, Indiana of all places you just about threw a fit. You’d never heard of this “Uncle Rick” guy before, and you had zero interest in staying in his lake house even if it was free.

But now there was nowhere else you’d rather be.

Just a couple of days into your vacation, you had ambled into the local Family Video with both your younger siblings in tow. While they had raced off to scour the animated films, you drifted aimlessly through the racks until you stopped on a double VHS you picked up to examine.

“Oh!”

A squeak came from the end of the aisle as someone rounded the corner, and you looked up to see a girl about your age standing not five feet away from you seemingly frozen in place.

She had almond-shaped, watery blue eyes and choppy, caramel-tinged tresses that framed her lovely face. She was dressed in what looked like men’s clothes—a button-down shirt and a blazer underneath a dark green vest that bore the name of the business—but she feminized them slightly by cuffing the sleeves to show off a silver bangle on her wrist and the rings on her fingers.

“That’s a great one,” she said, eyes falling to the copy of Dr. Zhivago in your hands. “If you were wondering, that is. Also I’m Robin, I work here, I’m not just offering my unsolicited opinion for no reason. Not that you solicited it, just that if you were wondering how it is—it’s a good choice.”

You couldn’t help but smile at the words that tumbled so freely from her mouth, how she was seemingly trying to stay ahead of her own brain.

It was oddly fascinating.

“That’s good,” you smirked, “I only watch movies that are old enough to order their own drink.”

“Not a bad rule of thumb,” she answered with a fluttery laugh. “You know, uhhhh…they’re playing La Dolce Vita at The Hawk tonight. That one’s old enough to rent its own car.”

You took a careful step closer to her, placing the video back on the shelf and crossing your arms behind your back. Her eyes bugged, chest heaving as her breathing picked up.

“I’m hoping The Hawk is a theater,” you chuckled. “Because I do love Fellini.”

And so began what you could only describe as the most romantic four weeks of your life.

She met you that night downtown, explaining that once the mall and the fancy cinema opened, The Hawk had taken to showing older films in an attempt to draw in business. It hadn’t worked out very well, considering you two were the only ones in the theater. Not that you were complaining.

You had never felt so instantly at ease, so totally comfortable being completely 100% yourself with someone. Robin was unlike anyone you had ever met before. She had that frenetic way of talking and an even more chaotic way of thinking you found endlessly charming. She was clever and smart, but also deeply caring and intuitive. And no one had ever made you laugh like her.

Any and every moment you could, you’d spent together. Seeing movies, playing arcade games, sharing milkshakes and baskets of fries at her favorite diner. You even convinced your mom to let you borrow the car for the night so you could drive to a concert in the next town over.

And it was there, in the front seat of your family’s minivan, hours past when the show ended as you and Robin got caught up talking all night, that you leaned across the center console and kissed her.

But your favorite place to go remained the lake.

You could spend hours together down at Ricks’s dock, laying out in the sun on the bleached wood and reading while Robin sang along to some of your favorite songs played over a portable radio. Trading lazy and sleepy kisses, slipping your fingers together to hold her hand.

Those moments had felt so immovable, unencumbered by the laws of time and space. Like they could have gone on forever, stretching on into eternity. Not like now, with the sun setting and the night rushing in far too quickly for your liking; the threat of your return trip looming.

Robin leaned in first, dropping a delicate kiss to your bare shoulder and laying her head against it. You leaned back, letting your cheek press into the warm crown of her head. Taking a deep and slow breath of her strawberry-scented shampoo.

“I feel,” her throat clicked, voice wavering with hesitation, “I feel like I wanna say something…but I don’t wanna say it just because you’re leaving, or because I feel like I’m supposed to say it, or—”

You smiled sadly and took her hand, pulling it into your lap and quieting her runaway thought.

“But I would say it,” she emphasized, “I want you to know, I’d say it in a heartbeat.”

Another tear leaks out of the corner of your eye and you don’t wipe this one away. It rolls off your cheek and lands on the top of her head, seeping into her scalp. You take in a slow, shaky breath.

“I know,” you finally whisper. “I’d say it, too.”

Thank you so much for visiting the spa, we hope your services were satisfactory 🌿

[ghouljams]

hi ghoul :) i remember seeing that you have a degree in gender studies and i’m taking a class in that right now so i just wanted to ask if you had some book recommendations about gender! fictional or nonfictional! if not then that’s totally fine and thank u anyway <3

"The Essential Feminist Reader" collected by Estelle B Freedman is a great collection of feminist and proto-feminist essays that I truly believe everyone should read in their first gender studies class. It's going to show you where the movement started and how long people have been fighting for gender equality. Also it's always fun to read Mary Wollstonecraft, an icon. It's also a good showing of the men who participated in proto-feminism, because I think we forget that not every man opposed gender equality (even waaaaay back) and it's fun to see them talk about how great women are and how they should be treated like goddesses lmao

"Assata" by Assata Shakur is a really fantastic memoir about being a black woman during the height of the Black Panther movement. It's also a really gripping look inside the revolutionary groups that were gaining traction during the 60s/70s and the way the US government attempted to sabotage, infiltrate, and eventually dismantle both Black and White led groups. I found Assata's voice to be refreshing and also incredibly unapologetic in the way she addresses both her alleged crime as well as the crimes that were committed against her. This one focuses more less on gender and more on race, but there's definitely a lot of intersection going on.

"Stone Butch Blues" by Leslie Feinberg is an essential read if you want to look at the intersection of sexuality and gender. It's a fantastic look at the way we present ourselves as well as the way we are perceived, especially by people who are supposed to be our allies. There's a really great discussion in this one about how sex is used to define gender for certain marginalized groups and how queer spaces both embrace and reject the "other" within them. I think every queer woman should read this book (not assigning you any labels, just a general recommendation) because it picks apart so much of what it means to be a woman who is also queer.

Literally anything by bell hooks, but that's a given. I like "Feminist Theory from Margin to Center" a lot because she's incredibly frank with her look at the feminist movement and some of the exclusionary politics that go on within it. She has two books exploring masculinity that are from the early 2000s which have been on my list for ages as well. Love bell hooks.

I'll try to think up more but I always enjoy looking back at second wave feminist books. They're less afraid to address the elephants in the room and call out full stop the racism and trans/homophobia that is latent in the movement of the time. I am also of a belief that learning the history of a movement is the only way to truly progress forwards within it. So much of what we see in fringe/conservative "feminism" is failing to address (and often direction contradicting) many of the issues that people were fighting to push past in the 80s. I think about my mom and how she asked me "I was fighting against 'defining' womanhood, why are people so keen to define it again?" and idk I carry that with me often.

Anyway I'm a gender abolitionist because of my degree so like... take my opinion with a grain of salt.

[wellofdean]

OK, I was going to reblog this excellent post by @luckshiptoshore so go read it, because yes. Yes!! YES!!! But then when I got started my post got super long and I felt bad tacking it onto her post and decided to make my own in response to these tags:

#i am actually a bit obsessed by the whole hunting as queerness metaphor#it’s so clearly something everyone involved in the show is thinking about#supernatural

Gurl, me too! Like go back to the start! By the time Supernatural began, the backlash against the Joseph Campbell Monomyth-style mode of storytelling had already begun in the hallowed halls of USC film school, and yo: I was there at the time of Kripke's graduation, and my best friends from college are full scale big giant time filmmakers now, whose names I will not share on main because it's uncool, and I don't want that attention, but... yeah. I am referencing FIRST HAND SOURCES on this.

But, for a real source? The Oxford English Dictionary places the first use of the term "Queer Theory" in 1990, with Queer Studies as an option in the academy by 1992. I know the kids think it's a new-fangled thing, but Kripke graduated USC in 1996 (I graduated in 1995) and it was ALL THE RAGE by then. My friends read queer theory in their Critical Studies courses in the Film School, I read it in the College of Humanities getting my degree in Literature. By that time, you could not get through that school with any degree in any non-STEM subject without knowing about ye olde postmodern lenses, queer and feminist theory, and without knowing how to employ those lenses.

Queer refers to sexuality, yes, but the word's earliest use (again, according to the OED) is in the 1500's, meaning: strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character; suspicious, dubious.

So, ok, in 2005, Enter Supernatural, episode 1:

Presented? Two brothers. One actively seeking credit in the straight world that is not available to him in the bosom of his family: Stanford, law school, hot co-ed girlfriend, the other bound to his fractured, wounded family by duty, yes, but also by love, living on the fringe, alone, fighting monsters, and chasing after his father's approval, and who has long since given up any dream of being 'normal'. Episode 1 presents Sam's call to adventure, which he refuses when it's just familial duty, honor and love calling him, but accepts when the show takes a very straightforward and very telling path by classically fridging his woman. Ok, now he's on board. Like John, whose motivation is another dead woman, his motivation is revenge. So far so straight!

Dean though: he's different. He is already on the adventure and he was not 'called' or given the option of accepting or refusing because he had no agency when his feet were set upon this road. He does not fit the straight world at all, because he is cobbled together out of love, duty, deep guilt, striving, desperation and fear. This is who he is now, in some elemental, incontrovertible way. It was not a choice for him, he was born to it. His mother is dead, and we later learn, she made the choices that brought them all to this fate. Dean remembers her idyllically, but he is not motivated by revenge, more than any other thing, he wants to be worthy. He wants his father's approval, his brother's love.

Enter Supernatural's main theme: fucked up relationships between men enmeshed in patriarchy, which will eventually expand to include fucking GOD HIMSELF.

And like, there are SO MANY CLEAR STEPS ALONG THE ROAD in season one, and I am not even talking about sexuality and gender here, but there is SO MUCH TO SAY about it in season 1. But I am not talking about that -- I am talking at a structural, narrative level, the whole thing is just fucking all the way queered, yo.

The big climax?

At the end of the season, Dean says: "I just want my family back together. You, me, Dad... it's all I have." He is Sam's mother, John's partner! His vulnerability and emotion is feminized and contrasted with Sam and John's more overtly driven by their more masculine/straight heroic revenge quest. John: "Sam and I can get pretty obsessed, but you always take care of this family." Only that's not John talking, it's Azazel, and Dean knows it is because his father would never forgive how soft he is, how he will always choose love and family over revenge. Then, in the end, the show makes a huge point of telegraphing that Sam is finally aligning with Dean by refusing to shoot Azazel because he's possessing John, and Sam just can't do that to Dean.

Sam and Dean are thus bound together and cemented into a marginalised path, living on the road, haunting liminal spaces and cheap motels, confronting the monstrous everyday. Sam is presented as the brains of the operation, he does research, logics his way through things (masculine) while Dean is the heart who acts impulsively and on instinct and intuition (feminine).

It later transpires that Sam has a piece of the monster inside himself, and Dean has to learn to love the monstrous, he has no choice, because Sam is his brother and then Cas... and, and, and!

Like... I could go on and on, citing ENDLESS EXAMPLES. This could be a literal book. Maybe one you need to read with a magnifying glass like my condensed edition of the OED. LIke, the queerness of Supernatural is DIZZYING and MYRIAD.

But basically? FROM THE START, hunting is a queered version of family, and within that, Dean is a queered version of a Campbellian hero. Hunting is a metaphor for otherness and liminality, and that's even before you say a WORD about sex. It starts in deviation from the norms of family, masculinity and expands from there on so many levels both in story and on a meta level. The story is flesh on queer fucking bones.

I'm so sorry, but anyone who thinks queerness was not BAKED INTO Supernatural and more specifically into Dean from DAY 1 has clearly never seen Dean's insane lip gloss in season 1, and vastly underestimates the cultural awareness of people who write shit in Hollywood, and also the other people who put pink lip gloss on pretty boys in Hollywood. Nothing that gets on your screen wasn't a fucking choice made and approved by a LONG LIST of people who know what they are about.

[souryogurt64]

really appreciate you for talking about everything, this fandom always goes through it lmao. also i just lurk so im not rlly deep into what is happening most of the time so your blog is like my newspaper js

also im curious if bc of everything, do you feel detached to fob? do you resonate with their music at all nowadays? is pw really a genius? just want to know your perspective.

thanks again for being THE blog always excited to see the cats and fits queen

Ok Fall Out Boy were like part of my life for a long time and probably always will be which is why I'm able to dedicate so much energy to Hating full time but --

A lot of my interest in them was because of Pete's book but recently the ghostwriter claimed Pete has never read it and doesn't know what's in it. Additionally, after the SWMRS fiasco I was attracted to the idea of him realizing the error of his ways in 2012 or whatever vs BJA who was like publicly a feminist in the 90s and then called a teenage girl a cunt in 2020 or whatever but ever since he started acting like a cartoon supervillain in SNL sketch about if Hugh Hefner discovered feminism that has also gone away.

Also like I knew hardcore was like homophobic but I thought it was just like "Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" not "Gay people should be rounded up and killed," and it was actually very surprising to read that book and learn it was fringe even for the 1990s, and realize how far people go out of their way to obfuscate this to preserve FOB's legacy lol. And it's also frustrating that FOB would rather let those people continue to dictate their history rather than like ...... be involved in projects that include people like Hayley

And like FOB are not remotely homophobic and were like 15 at the time so I get it but it's annoyinggggggggggg that their fans send "I hope you get raped" to a bunch of people when someone makes a 24 note text post being like 'Wow look at this book I'm reading, I didn't know that and that's kind of fucked up."

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

  The New York Times' 1619 Project rewrote history, claiming America was founded to protect slavery.         Today's woke right say: Hitler "was trying to encourage community ... family values," (social media influencer Dan Bilzerian).         "I want total Aryan victory ... the only way we are going to make America great again is if we make this country Christian again," says white supremacist Nick Fuentes.          Fuentes' videos have received more than 30 million views. On his show, he says, "Jews better start being nice to people like us because what comes out of this is going to be a lot uglier and a lot worse for them."          Influencer Andrew Tate won 10 million followers largely by attacking feminism: "I am absolutely sexist."         "'Men should be in charge, knock the women down,'" sighs Lindsay, "The woke right literally becomes all the caricatures that the woke left said conservatives are: 'racist, sexist, homophobes.'"         "They're fringe," I say to Lindsay. "No real threat."         "That's what everybody said about woke kids on campuses," he replies.         That shut me up. I admit I thought brainwashed college progressives would drop "safe spaces," trigger warnings, speech codes and other silly ideas once they had to earn a living.         But I was wrong. Most didn't. Those kids brought about lots of change. Their preferences got many companies to mandate DEI training and led many employees to fear speaking honestly at work.         But today, says Lindsay, the energy is on the right.          "It's great that we're having a conservative revival ... but there's also called 'falling off the cliff.'"         Elected officials now say things like, "We should be Christian nationalists!" (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene) and, "I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk," (Rep. Lauren Boebert).         "Your ability to believe as you will," says Lindsay "worship as you will without state interference, is a bedrock idea of the American experiment. Woke right, like the woke left, is this litany of bad ideas."         He fears that next election, the woke right will elect the woke left.         "The left is going to say, Hillary Clinton was right to call (people on the right) 'deplorable.' Then the left will sweep back in and dominate."

Whenever I've used the term "woke right" I used it to describe the No Fun Allowed moral puritans like Matt Walsh or Melonie Mac who want to ban porn or anime or video games or other, generally popular, forms of entertainment. But the term applies equally well to the Nick Fuentes' and the Andrew Tate's and the other grievance grifters that prey on the disaffected edges of the right wing tent. And I get it, it's very easy to look at wokeness discriminating openly against white people and men, mostly in favor of black people, and see the BLM rioters being hailed as racial heroes, and fall into the trap of resenting black people as a whole. It's very easy to see how a society infested with third and fourth wave feminism is actively hostile to boys and think that the appropriate response is to lash out at women in return. But neither of those things are the proper response. Women and black people aren't a monolithic, faceless group with the same ideas where anyone in that group are equally responsible for any actions taken by anyone else in that group. The black supremacists and the feminists are the enemy. Not all black people and not all women.

If the right is going to thrive we can't let the fringes take over the way the left did. Because it won't take 20 years for the rest of the country to notice. Every single person like Tate and Fuentes and Walsh will end up amplified a million times by a media that hates us and wants to see us slaves to the left. They'll be amplified by every movie and TV show that gets made. And eventually the normie who has just woken up to what the left actually is will go flying back to them if those people and their views become the face of the right. And that will be a disaster for everyone, regardless of color or gender.

It's easy to lash out when momentum is on your side. But it's wrong and ultimately self-defeating. Just look at what happened to the left from Obama to now. Do you really want Trump to be our Obama? Do you want to see AOC ushered into the White House on a populist backlash to the woke right?

It's cliché to say, but don't give in to hate. You'll get the momentary satisfaction of lashing out, but that's a toddlers satisfaction. We're supposed to be better than that here. We're supposed to be the adults who understand how the world really works and respects everyone's individual rights. Be that. Don't be a rotten reflection of everything we've spent the last few decades fighting against.

[streakoflavender]

I feel like part of the problem is the very label of TERF, the implication that transmisogynist feminism is limited to one small relatively fringe group, and the assumption that feminists in general, and especially feminists who are marginalized in other ways, will be friendly towards trans women by default.