#hire more transfem people!!!

[crowdusk]

i really think there should be more physically disabled PCs and main characters in popular dnd campaigns like dimension 20 etc and fantasy settings in general. not just for representation but truly bc it’s so fun and interesting from a storytelling point of view?? like there’s so much potential for creativity and inspired choices - tell me someone fighting with their crutches or having magical mobility aids wouldn’t be incredible to explore. (thoughts actually inspired by how well these things are done in witch hat atelier and also me and my friend joking i’d have lower hp bc of disabilities).

i feel like so often you get characters and it’s like “oh they have a mechanical arm” or “they were in a traumatic accident as a child” and it’s like, ok and their relationship to their body, pain etc is supposedly not shaped by that at all?! come on.

and of course it opens up a whole other dimension of - what does ableism look like in that world, if it exists? what is a “healthy” body under racial capitalism and/or conditions of oppression? has the world “solved” certain issues but overlooked a whole bunch or made things worse for some people? disability and body politics offer so much richness and complexity, especially alongside race, gender, etc.

[dreamyintersexouppy]

"it's not that deep, trans women just aren't welcome in our media no matter how progressive it wants to appear because ultimately we must obey the tastes of the majority no matter how bigoted they may be" yeah idk what she was complaining about either, it's a mystery

if Dropout actually wanted to platform trans voices & performers, then they would implement a gender diversity quota into their shows. “but then it would be forced” so? ten years ago the BBC implemented a rule for all of their panel shows to have a woman on every episode. and obviously it didn’t End Sexism On TV Forever, but there was an immediate & noticeable difference even for female comedians looking for small time untelevised standup gigs. the reason Dropout don’t do this is for trans folks because they consider the public perception of trans women to harm their bottom line too much to consistently hire any of us, and it would be immediately obvious if they only gave these positions to TME trans people (and to be honest — they already do, and it already is).

[wolfman-ann]

A quick note on the current discourse. (bc as a trans, but afab genderfluid individual with dimension 20 blog, I feel it irresponsible not to.)

I like Dropout. I like a lot of their content, heck I like Mismag (especially S2, I like that it largely stepped away from the source material, and in general I think it is just a really great season of D20). Is Dropout perfect? No.

Liking something does not make it immune from critique. In fact, you should absolutely critique the things you like.

Dropout should absolutely hire more transfems.

Mismag should have absolutely had a transfem on the cast.

People are really showing their true colours here. 'But they have Erika on the mismag cast!' yes, and I love Erika on the Mismag cast. But as JK Rowling's transphobic rhetoric is largely centered around transmisogyny, there should have been a transfem on cast. 'But Persephone Valentine is on Dropout' Yes, but she's also only one person. There are so many funny transfems. There are so many transfems in TTRPG spaces. It would be great to see them.

It's like with any other form of representation, in any other media. We can be glad for the representation we have, while also realising it could be better. Dropout isn't going to vanish into the abyss because people question 'hey, can we get some more trans women?'

Some of you are being really vitriolic about this. Maybe look inside yourselves and wonder why that is.

[velvetvexations]

Tossing my own two cents into the discourse - phrases like "We need more TMA representation in this show" seems like... an odd way to phrase it to me? Like you could just say trans women and transfems? Phrasing it as a need specifically for people who are affected by a particular type of bigotry is so strange. It's like saying "This company needs to hire more people who are targets of sexism" instead of "This company needs to hire more women".

hey here's a really great explanation of why the controversy is ridiculous AND why TMA/TME is stupid bullshit

[jenny-in-a-jar]

🖤💙 4 days until my Surgery 💙🖤

(Picture taken Dec 9th, 2023)

I'm very very excited for my surgery (it's my second gender affirming surgery but this one is more significant to me since it'll be top and bottom surgery) and I'm obviously counting the days until it and I thought some people might be interested in my trans journey 🏳️‍⚧️ So see part 7 below the cut.

Part 1 here

As the summer was ending, I got really lucky! A lesbian hairstylist (who helped organize the drag show I went in the last update) gave my name to this sales lady who sold accounting work to like companies and she needed help with researching CEO and CFO types. And she paid me out of pocket and honestly it was pretty easy internet research using Google. I felt like a little rat scurrying across the Internet 🐀 So, thank you lesbians 🙏🙏

(Picture taken Nov 6th, 2022)

Apparently I really impressed her so she got me hired full time as a sales admin for her company (I wouldn't have gotten with my lack of a college degree without her) and I've had that job since! And a lot of my transition wouldn't be possible without the pay and benefits of this job. Also this is my first job where I get gendered correctly and I'm slowly getting less anxious about going to the bathroom at work 🥰

She honestly mom'd up on me and bought me a bunch of new business casual clothes for the job. And here's an example of one of my new work outfits 😁

(Picture taken Nov 14, 2022)

Bc of the new job I was able to afford a lot more things for transitioning! Like voice training. I remember when I first cracked I tried to just teach myself using videos but I wasn't good at it 😅 Also a friend during the summer of 2022 helped me and I did make some progress with her help. But, I started making a lot more progress once I started seeing a speech therapist. But, there was a barrier since I could tell she hadn't worked too much with trans people. I went to a speech therapist bc it was covered by my insurance but she moved and then I couldn't find anyone for insurance covered speech therapy. So, I eventually just paid for lessons Your Lessons Now. And, honestly it's going a lot better! It's really nice to be able to talk about my frustrations with voice training with another transfem. The biggest thing I'm learning from here is how to break the bad habit of pitching up my voice by squeezing my vocal chords.

(Picture taken Sept 8th, 2023)

I had also switched to injections and I highly recommend it! A friend even made my first two vials into earrings 🔥

I also got a lot lazier with makeup 😅 I do eyeliner wings, mascara, and blush for when I go into the office. Which for a bunch of accountants means I do about as much makeup that is normal for the women in the office 🤷‍♀️

(Pictures taken October 31st and December 2nd of 2022)

These were two notable exceptions. I really love the makeup I did for the Halloween of 2022 bc I decided to go as a ghost-type trainer. And the one on the right is when I learned how to use concealer to cover my 'raccoon eyes' as my dad liked to call them 🦝

Also this would be a good time to mention something I probably should've mentioned earlier 😅 I never learned how to use foundation. I know it's easy but I have a weird mental block around it 🤷‍♀️ But, in the summer of 2021 I started doing twice daily skincare routine for my face. Which took me from a very acne heavy face to people being surprised I'm not wearing foundation. Also the routine is really nice. Would recommend to those who want to get rid of their acne (send an ask if you want to know specifics).

(Picture taken Aug 20, 2023)

Romance update since I've been doing that lol: Well, things ended with all the girlfriends I had so I am down to 1 partner. And I got caught in a romance scam for a few months 😭 However, I can't really complain because I got engaged!!! It was so sweet in cute. My partner and I had this date the night before Valentine's Day under a statue outside of a local art museum. We read sapphic poetry by candle light and then they popped the question 🥰🥰

But, I say another big part of this era was I made a lot more local trans friends. Went to a good amount of house parties which would've surprised pre-transition me! And I really love my community of queer people I've been building 🥺🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️💕

(Picture taken July 21st, 2023)

Oh yeah!! I also started laser hair removal at the beginning of 2021 as well. Which was before this era but time is a lie. But the new job definitely made it easier to afford.

The biggest step for my transition was getting my surgeries set up!! And my FFS (facial feminization surgery) marks the end of this era. Below was the last picture I took before my FFS.

(Picture taken Feb 17th, 2024)

So, in my next update, I'll be showing my post-op pictures once most of the swelling went down. See you tomorrow!! 😁✌️

Next Part Here

[dropoutconfessions]

this is for the owner of this blog. why tf did you reblog plaidos. do you even know who she is and the kind of damage she's had on the trans community? she answered an anon about someone clearly pretending to be a trans woman working for dropout (because they use the language "members" (proven that dropout cast doesn't refer to themselves as that) and mentions a "dropout show" (... dropout is not a show. it's a host of multiple shows)) who had 0 proof. she's so reactionary and her logic is easily dismantled, she contradicts herself all the time (the post you reblogged she goes on about how "trans women aren't marketable" which is why they're not in dropout. there are so many other trans people in dropout, but in the comments of another plaidos post she said "persephone was so popular when she was in d20". literally took me 2 minutes to find the contradiction. not to mention the graph she reblogs with an elusive "tme vs tma rep in dropout" with no stats and no classification of what tme and tma means, no clear answer on where the many appearances and shows specifically made for and by drag queens, and then complained that lumping every genderqueer person who likely came out after being hired equaled to more than one subset of trans people.

i'm so disappointed. so much for this being a safe, apolitical space. plaidos has done irreperable harm to me and my transmasc brothers and to see a DROPOUT GIMMICK BLOG reblogging her baseless and clearly incorrect accusations proven by literally just KNOWING about dropout. but instead, you've made your blog an unsafe place for anyone who isn't a white transfem by showing you're in agreeance with plaidos.

you want links to posts? go to her blog and search the #dropout tag. there's your links.

Okay so I just would like to say a few things in response to this. first, I reblogged like, one post, and not even directly from her. I do not do an insane amount of research into people I reblog from to check if everything is kosher, which I assume no one else does.

If y'all expect me to check that much, stop sending me asks about how I haven't posted your asks yet. I know everyone assumes its because I dislike their post personally. It's not. It's cause i have a really really busy life rn. I mean this with all the kindness in my heart, I do not give enough of a fuck to block most of your opinions from making the stage short of you using slurs or straight up lying.

Regardless, she passes the tests. She's not anti-trans mascs and I feel like this is the result of bad faith readings and people assuming trans women are the enemy. Also taking any mention of oppression that doesn't apply to you as a personal attack.

I looked her up and the first thing i saw complaining about her called her a slur, so not a great start gotta say. If any of y'all use this word as an insult, stop, it's categorically not okay.

Also, there can be a lack of trans women, and also you can like persephone valentine. 3 trans women on a network with like a fuck ton of other queer people is also not very many, when you take into the fact that twice as many TME trans people have been on multiple episodes of dropout shows, that's not a contradiction. You can be popular and also unmarketable, that's like every remotely famous TMA, and honestly trans people in general have a harder time. That's not contradiction, that's us going "yippee a single fucking crumb of transfem rep" in 2021 and then being drip fed with game changer, um actually, and dirty laundry occasional appearances for the next 3 years.

If you want a definition for TMA and TME, like a formal one, not just what the acronyms mean, do your research on it. You wanna know how I learned about the fact that they refer to specifically institutional transmisogyny? FROM PLAIDOS'S BLOG. Do you actually, like, look at her posts? or just the ones cherrypicked to make her seem anti-transmasc because of bad faith interpretations? She's very clearly aware of the oppression trans mascs face, it's called transphobia. Transmisogyny is specifically the oppression trans women face given the fact we are seen as a subhuman third gender on an institutional level.

so much for this being a safe apolitical space

I never said it would be apolitical. In fact, safe and apolitical are contradictory. We're trans. Our very existence and identity and lives have been made political, and will be political for the entirety of our lifespans. I'm not going to lie down and pretend otherwise for the comfort of the world and I am honestly disappointed that you, as a fellow trans person, are encouraging that behavior in any way.

The entire "not an ask" tag, is for me to talk. It's mine. My space. You cannot divorce this blog from my influence because it's my goddamn blog. I am not a jukebox or a puppet for you to get your fandom stuff. I am a woman with her own damn opinions and a large enough follower count for my push for trans rights to largely get slightly less ignored than they do on main.

I have been following dropout / collegehumor since the All Nighters. The only subject I am more knowledgeable about is probably Alpharad or Paper Mario. I know dropout. I know statistics, I'm majoring in it. I've known about this issue for years now. But until this blog, until very recently, I didn't have a platform for it, so I just shut the fuck up. I'm not doing that this time. I'm going to be a very jaded women because some of the men who are supposed to be my brothers are acting like this. Like we need to shut up and not complain. No. Fuck that.

I do not think Dropout is the bad guy here. As of now, I'm holding out hope. I personally, am not boycotting them (yet). I am holding out hope that they respond, and then I'll wait a few months because I know things are recorded in advance and hiring and vetting processes take time. But I would like a change. Because outside of a spike in 2021 (when the seven was released), transfem appearances on dropout hasn't really changed for the better, at all.

but instead, you've made your blog an unsafe place for anyone who isn't a white transfem

Oh damn I guess I gotta leave, since my blog isn't safe for me. Since yk. I'm not white. I'm a stone cold desi bitch and I will live and die that way. Thanks for assuming I'm white tho, really showing that "white people are the default" world view you've got going there.

Do you want to know why, everyone assumes only white transfems have this take? Because so few of you, actually listen to transfems, ofc you don't notice, that transfems of color, have the same fucking opinion.

I want it to be clear. I love trans mascs. My partner is transmasc. Some of my best friends are transmascs. I don't hate trans mascs. I don't even hate you. I just kinda hate talking to you. And everyone, regardless of gender, like you. The type of people who heard, that transfems are oppressed in a way transmascs aren't, a way cis women aren't, and somehow turned that into a personal attack. You took a single fucking critic against Dropout, and decided to be guided by hatred.

This is my problem with the fandom. Transfems bring up one little thing: they'd like to be more represented. Nothing about Dropout being evil, nothing against Sam Reich or Brennan Lee Mulligan, just the fact that they are cis white men in positions of power being a valid part of the data. And you started attacking us. We're receiving death threats because people are whiteknighting a comedy company that is visibly entirely unaffected by our actions.

I have one question for all of you. Why aren't you in the comments and reblogs of all the confessions tagged negative dropout post? You want to defend this company, I better see an uptick in notes on those posts. Otherwise shut the fuck and let us beg for a bit more representation in peace.

If you have a problem with that. Leave. I don't want you following my blog if you so desperately need me to be silent on the matters that affect me and the people I love. And that includes you. The day the world comes for your throat, I'll be there. I have come to accept that I won't get that same treatment. But don't you fucking tell me not to stand up for myself. Cause I'm standing up for the both of us when any of us need it.

[tangibletechnomancy]

The (Personal) Is (Political)

~7 hours, Dall-E 3 via Bing Image Creator, generated under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

Or, Dear Microsoft and OpenAI: Your Filters Can't Stop Me From Saying Things: An interactive exercise in why all art is political and game of Spot The Symbols

A rare piece I consider Fully Finished simply as a jpeg, though I may do something physical with it regardless. "Director commentary" below, but I strongly encourage you to go over this and analyze it yourself before clicking through, then see how much your reading aligns with my intent.

Elements I told the model to add and a brief (...or at least inexhaustive) overview of why:

Anime style and character figures - Frequently associated with commercial "low" art and consumer culture, in East Asia and the English-speaking world alike, albeit in different ways - justly or otherwise. There is frequently an element of racism to the denigration of anime styles in the west; nearly any American artist who has taken formal illustration classes can tell you a story of being told that anime style will only hinder them, that no one will hire them if they see anime, or even being graded more harshly and scrutinized for potential anime-esque elements if they like anime or imply that they may like anime - including just by being Asian and young. On the other hand, it is true that there is a commercial strategy of "slap an anime girl on it and it will sell". The passion fans feel for these characters is genuine - and it is very, very exploitable. In fact, this commercialization puts anime styles in particular in a very contentious position when it comes to AI discussions!

Dark-skinned boy with platinum and pink [and blue] hair - Racism and colorism! They're a thing, no matter how much the worst people in the world want you to think they're long over and "critical race theory" is the work of evil anti-American terrorists! I chose his appearance because I knew that unless I was incredibly lucky, I would have to fight with this model for multiple hours to get satisfactory results on this point in particular - and indeed I did. It was an interesting experience - what didn't surprise me was how much work it took me to get a skin color darker than medium-dark tan; what did surprise me was that the hair color was very difficult to get right. In anime art, for dark skin to be matched with light hair and eyes is common enough to be...pretty problematic. Bing Image Creator/Dall-E, on the other hand, swings completely in the opposite direction and struggles with the concept of giving dark-skinned characters any hair color OTHER than black, demanding pretty specific phrasing to get it right even 70% of the time. (I might cynically call this yet another illustration against the pervasive copy-paste myth...) There is also much to say about the hair texture and facial features - while I was pleased to see that more results than I expected gave me textured hair and/or box braids without me asking for it, those were still very much in the minority, and I never saw any deviation from the typical anime facial structures meant to illustrate Asian and white characters. Not even once!

Pink and blue color palette - Our subject is transgender. Bias self-check time: did you make that association as quickly as you would with a light-skinned character, or even Sylveon?

Long hair, cute clothes, lots of accessories - Styling while transmasc is a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation, doubly so if you're not white. In many locations, the medical establishment and mainstream attitude demands total conformity to the dominant culture's standard conventional masculinity, or else "revoking your man card" isn't just a joke meant to uphold the idea that men are "better" than women, but a very real threat. In many queer communities, especially online, transmascs are expected to always be cute femboys who love pink (while transfems are frequently degraded and seen as threats for being butch), and being Just Some Guy is viewed as inherently a sign of assimilationism at best and abusiveness at worst. It is an eternal tug-of-war where "cuteness" and ornamentation are both demanded and banned at the same time. Black and brown people are often hypermasculinized and denied the opportunity to even be "cute" in the first place, regardless of gender. Long hair and how gender is read into it is extremely culture-dependent; no matter what it means to you, if anything, the dominant culture wherever you are will read it as it likes.

Trophies and medals - For one, the trans sports Disk Horse has set feminism back by nearly 50 years; I'm barely a Real History-Remembering Adult and yet I clearly remember a time when the feminist claim about gender in sports was predominantly "hey, it's pretty fucked up that sports are segregated by sex rather than weight class or similar measures, especially when women's sports are usually paid much less and given weirdly oversexualized uniforms," but then a few loud living embodiments of turds in the punch bowl realized that might mean treating trans people fairly and now it's super common for self-proclaimed feminists - mostly white ones - to claim that the strongest woman will still never measure up to the weakest man and this is totally a feminist statement because they totally want to PROTECT women (with invasive medical screenings on girls as young as 12 to prove they're Really Women if they perform too well, of course). For two, Black and brown people are stereotyped as being innately more sporty, physically strong, and, again, Masculine(TM) than others, which frequently intersects with item 1...and if you think it only affects trans women, I am sorry my friend but it is so much worse and more extensive than you think.

Hearts - They mean many things. Love. Happiness. Cuteness. Social media engagement?

TikTok - A platform widely known and hated around these parts for its arcane and deeply regressive algorithm; I felt it deserved to be name/layout/logodropped for reasons that, if they're not clear already, should become so in the final paragraph.

Computers, cameras and cell phones - My initial specification was that one of the phones should be on Instagram and another on TikTok, which the model instead chose to interpret as putting a TikTok sticker on the laptop, but sure, okay. They're ubiquitous in the modern day, for better and for worse. For all the debate over whether phones and social media are Good For Us or Bad For Us, the fact of the matter is, they seem to be a net positive-to-neutral, whose impacts depend on the person - but they do still have major drawbacks. The internet is a platform for conspiracy theories and pseudoscience and dangerous hoaxes to spread farther than ever before. Social media culture leaves many people feeling like we're always being watched and every waking moment of our lives must be Perfect - and in some senses, we are always being watched these days. Digital privacy is eroding by the day, already being used to enforce all the most unjust laws on the books, which leads to-

Pigs - I wrote the prompt with the intention that it would just be a sticker on the laptop, but instead it chose to put them everywhere, and given that I wanted to make a somewhat stealthy statement about surveillance, especially of the marginalized...thanks for that, Dall-E! ;)

Alligators - A counter to the pigs; a short-lived antifascist symbol after...this.

Details I did not intend but love anyway:

The blue in the hair - I only prompted for platinum and pink in the hair, but the overall color palette description "bled" over here anyway, completing the trans flag, making it even more blatant, and thus even more effective as a bias self-check.

The Macbook - I only specified a laptop. Hilariously ironic, to me, that a service provided through Bing interpreted "laptop" as "Macbook" nearly every time. In my recent history, 22 out of 24 attempts show, specifically, a Macbook. Microsoft v. OpenAI divorce arc when? ;) But also, let us not forget Apple's role in the ever-worsening sanitization of the internet. A Macbook with a TikTok sticker (or, well, a Tiikok sticker - recognizable enough) - I can think of little more emblematic of one of the main things I was complaining about, and it was a happy accident. Or perhaps an unhappy one, considering what it may imply about Apple's grip on culture and communications.

Which brings me to my process:

Generated over ~7 hours with Dall-E 3 through Bing Image Creator - The most powerful free tool out there for txt2img these days, as well as a nightmare of filters and what may be the most disgustingly, cloyingly impersonal toxic positivity I've ever witnessed from a tool. It wants to be Art(TM), yet it wants to ban Politics(TM); two things which are very much incompatible - and so, I wanted to make A Controversial Statement using only the most unflaggable, innocuous elements imaginable, no matter how long it took.

All art is political. All life is political. All our "defaults" are cultural, and therefore political. Anything whatsoever can be a symbol.

If you want all art to be a substance-free "look at the pretty picture :)" - it doesn't matter how much you filter, buddy, you've got a big storm coming.

[agendercryptidlev]

just to be crystal clear your use of Persephone as "the trans woman dropout already has love her she's enough" imagines a world were me, a transfem who thinks dropout should do better about transfem representation, does not love her and does not already support her and follow and consume her other projects. Which is just a blatant tokenization. Thank you.

to be more specific, so Persephone being the only non-drag queen transfem in all the shows meets the quota right?

My point is that you should hype up the trans women already there and there is no quota. In fact, as a trans person, nothing would be more humiliating and dehumanizing to me than getting hired just to fulfill some representation quota. I wouldn't wish that on another trans person.

I don't know you, random anon. I don't know what you post. I'm just sad because I haven't seen a single post asking for more transfems at dropout that doesn't hype up the one who's already there which makes me sad. I'm sad people are turning trans rep into a numbers game instead of supporting and uplifting trans folks in the industry.

I'm glad you're (reportedly) hyping her up but I haven't seen posts doing so get traction and that makes me really, really sad. Because I think Persephone is great and wish she was in more stuff! I don't post about specific members of the cast that much cause I try not to be parasocial and pedestalize them but she's one of my all time favorites. All I can think of is being in her position seeing people reduce her and her coworkers into numbers to fulfill a representation quota and acting like she doesn't matter. If I were in that position I'd feel really shitty!

And I'll I'm trying to point out is that if you want more trans women in the cast show some love to the trans woman who's already there instead of implying there are other trans people eating all the rep when most of them were hired as cis women anyway. I want more trans people in the cast always but if they went out of their way to diversity hire more trans people to have a "complete set" that'd feel super icky and unnatural.

There's this performative allyship I see in trans spaces that really grinds my gears where people will claim to love and support trans women and then do nothing to actually support and uplift them, not hype them up not donate to their gofundmes not protest for their writes, just post to get ally points and do nothing else. Why are people going to bat for hypothetical other transfem cast members who must be getting cheated out of being hired while it's fucking crickets on hyping up the actual trans WOC who works there? Why are the theoretical trans woman more deserving of your allyship than the trans woman in front of you?

Also who the fuck cares that a transfem not be a drag-queen? What do you have against transfems doing drag?

[cazort]

As a transfem person with strong feminist leanings and a commitment to sound money management, the phrase "girl math" fills me with layer upon layer of rage, disgust, and sadness.

Let's unpack this:

we live in a society where millions are spent telling women and other female-adjacent people that they "need" to make extra expenditures that men don't need to make (makeup, hair and nail styling, body hair removal, skin treatments, diet products, etc.) just to be "presentable" or "professional" or "to be happy" or whatever.

this same society is packed with opportunities for costly impulse buys heavily marketed to women as "self-care", like "treat yourself" to an overpriced Starbucks drink, a costly spa session, an expensive handbag, flashy but poorly-made and impractical clothing, the list goes on

women already struggle with not earning as much as men for similar jobs with similar work, on top of being virtually shut-out of many of the top-paying and most powerful jobs (CEO's and other top executives, corporate boards, politicians all have fewer women within their ranks)

on top of the optional stuff that women are pressured into buying, women face additional necessary costs that men don't, everything from menstrual products to more resource-intensive medical care, especially associated with childbearing. there can be a gray area between what is necessary and what isn't too, like bras aren't necessary for all women but some women may need them for support in certain activities, and in certain social settings they are seen as near-mandatory by the social order and women can face stigmas for not wearing them.

the shakier financial status of women is exploited by predatory men who utilize their greater financial status as a way to manipulate and prey on poorer women, often culminating in sexual violence and other types of domestic or relationship violence

So women are already playing the financial management game with a severe handicap.

And now enters this phrase which basically associates female identity with poor financial management choices. It sends the message that poor choices are inherent to being female, pushing people's minds away from the reality that they are learned and taught and reinforced by marketing and social systems. It erases and redirects focus away from the systemic factors including sexism and misogyny in hiring, salary reviews, and politics, that keep women poorer than men. It is presented in a fun and lighthearted way that makes some girls and women feel "justified" in making bad money management skills and ignore or deflect criticisms or suggestions that they exhibit greater restraint or make more prudent choices. It might even make some women feel like they are "less of a woman" because they don't engage in this sort of behavior.

It's such a toxic phrase and it's presented as being light-hearted fun.

I hate it. Just stop. Don't use it. When someone uses it? SPEAK UP, and strongly. This is not a "mildly problematic" phrase. We as a society have been under-reacting to it. It's reinforcing a highly regressive social order that is directly related to sexual and domestic violence against women.

[thefantastickatinator]

Hi I'm a transfem that has watched almost all of dropout's content it does have a problem and you can't see that because you are a transmisogynist!

Yeah i never said dropout didn’t have issues with hiring/casting i’m just pointing out that people declaring dropout to be equally bad as major media companies or categorically trash are taking things too far.

Also that manipulating data to make a point actually weakens your argument and makes it easier for people to attack you.

Apparently nuance is lost on many people.

Again: Dropout should hire more trans women.

[nephilimbrute]

whatre your splatoon AU squad's genders/pronouns/sexualities i must know :3

my agents? Hmmm......welllll

val (agent 3) is a Cis lesbian. she uses she/her. someone asked if she got kicked out of the NSS for being cis. she holds the title of agent 3 to prevent confusion even though she was FIRED. she's also blonde and white but thankfully not blue-eyed

spingly (agent 4) is a bi transman and uses he/him. he's the only normal one out of everyone else (he later on decides to get his joints replaced with metal). he HATES salmonids and doing salmon run shifts. marie is like his mom

riley (cap'n 3 and Only called cap'n 3) is a sapphic demigirl that uses she/they. i can't tell if her or 8 are more troubled but she's Really anxious. was hired in place of val because val was "too reckless" (that's just how she works), which resulted in riley getting her ass beat BAD by agent 8 not once but TWICE

agent 8 (agent 8) is NONBINARY and uses THEY/THEM (really sticking this into your brain so you'll remember it). they don't have a name but if they did it would probably be "nana ida" which sounds cute, but they don't even respond to the name nana since it's not their birth name. they're also really mean, but they don't show it and keep it to themself. like they don't say mean things (because they rarely ever speak) but they'll probably upset you with no remorse

maggie (neo 3) is a uhhhh.huhhhhhhh.. bigender unlabeled inktoling. i think. i forgot. she uses she/him (no pref) and is super annoying. really stupid and likes to annoy people with his dumb arguments. knows a lot about technology but that's the only field he's smart in

and then vega is a transfem lesbian that uses she/her. she's dating marie and she has a Cool Metal arm. i don't know. she's awesome and she mains splatana and splatling

val is dating one of my friends' ocs (iris) and we hit them with hammers over and over again and burn them alive. this is their daily treatment

8, riley, and spingly are all dating each other. riley is Very dependent on spingly but she tries to manage on her own. both riley and 8 are very awkward with touch, but they know each other's boundaries. spingly is very nice and riley and 8 love him. though, 8 'likes' to make riley uncomfortable by asking her really personal questions or by staring at her too much (because all they do is stare), and sometimes they make her break down into tears (they don't really have much empathy).

maggie is 21 years old but dating nobody because he's just. uninterested. if you flirt with her she'll make fun of you for it

this is canon to me. whenever i see cap3 or 8 i go "OMG that's riley" or "stupid bug looking 8". same with agent 4 but preferrably if it's a green 4

ummmmm that's all. if you wanna know more about any of them you're free to ask any questions

[plaidos]

The craziest part of all that Dropout discourse about how they almost never feature transfems outside of drag is that dozens of people were saying shit like “Well, if you don’t have any recommendations of trans feminine comics, then you can’t complain and you’re just looking for something to whinge about and you’re just as bad as them”

like first of all, i don’t live in LA and neither to most Dropout fans — it’s their job to find interesting & exciting talent local to them, not ours. secondarily this complaint & belief basically implies that the reason Dropout barely ever features transfeminine talent is because they just haven’t “come across” any. I saw literally dozens of TME people asking “well how do we know any transfems are applying?” — first of all, transfems who applied for positions at Dropout personally reached out to me to tell me that real world staff members of Dropout agree with me & that all of the transfems who are involved behind the scenes in the company do feel like they are being undervalued and underrepresented.

but secondarily, this just implies that Dropout would’ve definitely had more transfems if only they knew about talented transfeminine performers or if ant had applied — and this betrays such an obviously transphobic understanding of this situation. There are not so few trans women comics in LA that it would not be incredibly easy for Dropout to find one, and the belief that we are is indicative that you see us as some niche incredibly rare minority. there are straight up thousands of trans people in LA. LA famously has an incredibly rich & diverse scene for transfeminine talent.

…but even beyond that, the fact that many Dropout fans can’t name any transfem comics to suggest Dropout hire (which, by the way, that’s not how this works, and the reason most of us weren’t doing this is because it doesn’t make any sense to, it would be ridiculous to demand Dimension 20 hire one specific person?) is not an indicator that they “just want to whinge and don’t actually care” — it’s an indicator that transfems are so underrepresented that many people outside of the industry haven’t seen any big popular transfeminine comedians/etc. like… isn’t that fucking sad? isn’t that tragic??? isn’t that absolute proof that we need more people like us highlighted?

it just seems like a good way to punish transfems for complaining. Like I really don’t understand why so many Dropout fans are so upset at the fact that trans women are saying “hey, it’s really disappointing how little we’re represented, could we have more?” other than because they fundamentally don’t want to see us outside of as a drag queen. Like sorry but us wanting more transfem comedians doesn’t make it our responsibility to name each one. It’s giving “if you’re a fan of this band, name five of their albums” Why? Why should transfems have to name ten counterexamples every time they felt underrepresented? It’s an objectively shitty double standard.

[corvidaedream]

100% from a tourist end of things. we have an incredibly gender-affirming creative dept including trans costumers and the father of two trans kids as one of my supervisors who is a little bit "hes a little confused but hes got the spirit". i think everyone would be very supportive if i decided to switch roles.

most of the trans actors here are nb and portraying someone of their agab, but there are two transmasc people portraying teenage boys and both of them have said they get misgendered regularly.

the one i interact with in front of guests more often "passes better" (subjectively obvs) but i still witness him getting misgendered fairly often by tourists. usually it's with some smugness, and he handles it well but it seems pretty exhausting.

the one i talked to this morning whose schedule overlaps less w mine was just like. "yeah, i dont remember the last time a guest used he/him to refer to me, no matter how many times the other interpreters do."

it does make me hesitant to try, bc i dont know if i would last long w that level of scrutiny. on the other hand, i'm the only one of the three of us who's on t so maybe that would make a difference? idk

asking one of the few nb people on site how their experience has been portraying a character who isnt their agab bc im thinking about changing characters and their response was "oh, its bad." :///

[genderkoolaid]

The fact of the matter is it serves transfems more to just claim “your agab doesn’t matter at all!! you as a woman suffer under patriarchy and transmascs as men are your oppressors under patriarchy!” than it does to acknowledge the messy reality of life. aren’t we supposed to be beyond this black and white thinking of cis people? a trans woman and cis woman would both deal with hiring discrimination, but a trans man and a cis woman would both suffer from an abortion ban. we all need to reckon with our role in the patriarchy. but for some reason transfems insist on pretending it’s completely black and white and they never perpetuated misogyny ever pre-transition. The world doesn’t work that way! The world is messy! Gender is messy! Oppressive systems are messy!

I agree that this is unhelpful black-and-white thinking, but I disagree that it serves transfems more or making a blanket statement that "transfems" at large are insisting on this. I think this kind of thinking is generally a survival strategy to get cisfeminists to care at all about trans women's suffering by presenting trans issues solely through cissexist frameworks, at the expense of other trans people who cannot fit into those frameworks. but that includes transfems with more complicated experiences/identities than "i am exclusively a girl and have always been (treated as) a girl." Those kinds of transfems, as well as other MTX people who may be grouped into transfem, are often the ones who speak out against this kind of thinking. It's not helpful to anyone to present the harm of black-and-white thinking as, ironically, a black-and-white issues where transfems as a homogeneous group are supportive of it and served by it.

[velvetvexations]

one of the most ridiculous takes on the dropout thing I saw was someone saying they wanted dropout to have a transfem come out and transition as publicly as Beardsley did. Like that's a thing dropout can control? Like Ally didn't describe transitioning in public like that as a "horrifying pleasure"?

Like I'd sorta get it as a wistful "oh I wish there was someone like Ally but for transfems" (still kinda icky to wish that on anyone bc I don't think transitioning basically on camera is always very fun) but it wasn't phrased that way, they were basically saying even if dropout hired a bunch of transwomen, that still wouldn't be enough, they should have someone come out and transition like Ally did like????

You think college humour could smell that Ally was trans and hired them bc of that before they even knew? You want them to go looking for potential eggs and crack them on camera? Or do you want them to hire a bunch of cis guys just in case one might turn out trans?

None of that sounds very uh. Helpful. Or ethical.

It feels similar to how Bob and Monet don't count bc they're drag queens and ppl are like "well dropout should have them on out of drag then, clearly they only care about them as drag queens" like no. They care about them as performers. Their performance identity is their drag identity, I don't think either of them are interested in being on any dropout show out of drag (any more than, idk, Siobhan would be interested in showing up to d20 in a ratty t-shirt and jeans (unless it matched her character)). But of course it doesn't matter what they want. It doesn't matter if any hypothetical trans woman wants to transition on camera for dropout. It only matters what we want and if we don't get it, it doesn't count as representation and dropout is evil actually

People have to learn to be happy for others because yeah, Ally got to transition on camera - which they've described negatively in the past, so, you know, not fun for anyone who isn't a detached viewer using them as a paper doll to project on to - but that kinna consistent and detailed rep Ally provides is not really something that transmascs often get either.

[thehollowwriter]

*ahem*I have an idea for another one of Silas' staff.

What I have so far is that her name is Raine, and she's a blue ringed octopus! She grew up poor and it was difficult for her to find work or make connections because people were afraid of her being "poisonous" which is not true! She's venemous! And she's not going to bite you nor will you DIE if you touch her!

Working for Silas was a last resort, and she wasn't even sure he'd want her since she'd been told she shouldn't work near food of any kind.

However, Silas did hire since she's got street smarts and was an efficient hunter even without venom.

Also... what if... transfem?

More ideas pending

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