#i know its not true and i have friends irl and online who are women and over 30 and Thriving

[shinayashipper]

i need to find other jobs... But I can't let go of this one yet... maybe more freelance work... but idk... I dont think I have the time hhh they keep saying I should make more Money QwQ or make my own business. just... more Money. idontknoww QwQ im running out of time. if i reached 30 it's all over for me and Everyone in my extended families and the neighbors will Talk abt Me, The Failure Daughter who can't have enough money and marry a decent man

[pillarsalt]

hi Im the same ex transmasc anon who sent you that aask about rhe tumblr ban thing, I did a lot of reading without forcing myself away this time. (I used to look at radblr sometimes bc I got curious, but when it started making too much sense i would make myself stop reading and tell myself I was being manipulated and try to forget about it..looking back that probably wasnt normal haha,)

I have mixed feelings tho. I don’t regret looking closer, the amount of sexism in the trans community was horrible. I think even radfems don’t understand how bad it was because it was all subtle styff. But seeing it constantly irl and online was terrible for me as a female. It gave me so much internalized misogyny, it made me hate myself and I felt worthless and stupid! and whiny! and annoying! all the time!! unless I was able to be perceived as a man. I felt like I had to be a man to have any respect in the community. I remember being so amazed to see abortion be covered by trans people I followed in even a reblog because it was the first time I saw people in the community talk about female issues at all. Even then it was covered with disclaimers and terfs DNI banners. male,opinions were always prioritized.

I thought this was dysphoria and a sign I was really a man. then I started reading radfem things and its like that feeling instantly lifted. I felt respected, listened to, even though I wasn’t speaking. It was also like all this stuff I’d internalized from being female, all the trauma around sex based oppression, was actually being addressed. in trans circles you get called a terf for acknowledging females face any kind of oppression (they acknowledge sex when it’s to talk about how hard male loneliness is on young trans women, and how the incel to trans woman pipeline happens, though…)

but the reason I have mixed feelings is bc I now feel….dumb? And afraid. And angry. I spend well over a decade being part of this community, half my friends are in the community, I’ve been trans since I was 9. My typings not the best… dyslexia sucks lol. But I like to think I’m smart. Now I don’t know,

And it makes me think totally different of these people I saw as progressive cis male allies, who were so loud about trans rights and hating JKR and terfs. Now they just feel like the same flavor of anti-feminist man I hate.

And the community is so huge and it’s so widely accepted and I don’t know how to deal!

But I am happy to be a woman now. In a healthy way I haven’t been for a long time. thats all that matters.

I'm sorry for everything you were put through. Many girls and women have been sucked into this thinking it will provide a solution for their distress at the social ramifications of the body they're born in, only for more people, namely men, to take advantage of their distress and gain power over them. As you mentioned, even "cis" men get in on the action when they justify intimidating and threatening women with violence in response to perceived transphobia. It's a terrible situation to be in. Made worse when you can't openly talk about with people you're close to for fear of alienating them.

I think you should give yourself more credit. You ARE smart. You questioned what you were told was never allowed to be questioned and realized you were being misled. And what you said about trying to make yourself forget the realizations you've had, that is normal. It's a difficult and scary thing to hold opinions that conflict with those of the majority of your peers. I think it's like the climax of cognitive dissonance -- when what you know is true clashes so hard against what you want to believe, you find it impossible to justify anymore, so you just resort to pretending you never learned the information in the first place. Been there.

I'm just being a stereotype now, but there's a classic Dworkin quote for this:

"Many women, I think, resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships."

Anyway my point is, don't beat yourself up. I'm really happy to read that you're accepting your womanhood, it's a hard journey but it's worth it to have a good relationship with yourself. And in my experience (at the sage and wisened age of 25) that it gets easier as you get older. You work through mistakes, and that prepares you to handle the next mistake better. You're right, your health and happiness is all that matters, keep striving for that and it will steer you right.

I wanted to give you some reading recommendations, you mentioned you have dyslexia but I believe these two are available in audiobook form if that's up your alley:

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez

There are tons more great books on feminism but these two are my go-tos for hard facts on gender, socialization, and the systematic discrimination against women worldwide through biases that are built into society.

Well uh; TLDR thanks for gracing my inbox, anon :) Hope you keep well.

[tenpintsof-sundrop]

“fatphobia” for oversized shirts most chronically online shit ive ever heard LMAO?

fatphobia isnt real—no one wants to be unhealthy and it shouldn’t be promoted its ridiculous

I feel like I should actually make a bingo card for this lmao. that would be fun

I'll take 'automatically equating weight to health' and 'saying that fat people existing in any space and wanting love and acceptance is promoting being fat or promoting obesity'

saying that 'fatphobia isn't real' is the free space lmao

I also love it when people say 'chronically online' to diminish someone's argument or to say that someone's problems aren't real. like as if fat people - especially fat women, don't get called ugly, told they are unlovable, are heinously bullied, are diminished in every other area of life, only to come online trying to find some mental escapism and then find most fandoms and fanfiction spaces taken over by skinny people unconsciously saying they are unlovable as well

and you're right! nobody wants to be unhealthy. being unhealthy fucking sucks.

but as someone with a genetic disorder who was near death at my lightest weight and whose weight constantly fluctuates because of my chronic illness - people don't get to fucking choose if they are healthy or not. (and 90% of people don't get to choose their weight/body type either.) skinny able bodied just believe that they choose to be skinny and healthy when it is 100% luck of the draw, and every single able bodied person is one bad accident or one disease away from being disabled and unhealthy and unlucky.

think about that. you are under the fucking delusion that being fat automatically means being unhealthy (not true) and being skinny automatically means being healthy (boo) and skinny people have just made magically better, wiser choices in order to end up in the smart, happy, skinny group. no! skinny people can have genetic disorders, cancer, autoimmune diseases - and fat people can run marathons and exercise every single day and be in peak health. most people who participate in strong man competitions are someone you would consider 'fat', and they are major athletes.

also - can we just fucking annihilate the idea that existing as a fat person is 'promoting' being fat? like if writing fanfiction including fat people to make myself and all the amazing fat people in fandoms feel loved and feel included is 'promoting' fatness - then I will promote it all fucking day.

💖 my blog is now the #1 promoter of being fat 💖

and that is not a negative thing. I just want fat people out there to feel loved and included. and that is the most healthy mindset in the world for people who have been bullied and told they are unworthy their whole lives

also, by your logic, any time that smoking or alcohol is mentioned in fics then those things are being 'promoted'. when these things are just a part of life and people write about them because they exist irl. just like fat people do. gasp! so please - suck a fart out of my ass and go apologize to every single fat person you know for being so damn ignorant (but I don't expect you to actually keep any fat friends with your attitude lmao)

[mithliya]

Hey I don’t mean to dump but I just need to know it gets better. Please tell me it gets better. I’m a 25 year old disabled lesbian who’s never so much as even kissed anyone, or held hands. I’m isolated and basically trapped for a while and I have zero friends. I feel like I’m failing at life, failing miserably and I wish I was born a man because at least I’d have a shot at finding someone. Right now it feels like my chances of ever being happy with a girlfriend or wife is zero.

hey anon, sorry for my delayed response. i hope ur still checking my blog for an answer!!

it gets better. i do not know your life but let me tell you how mine changed. when i was a teenager, i was ready to die. i lost all my friends, i was in an abusive relationship that i could not escape, my life was basically just self-harm and mental illness and constant suffering. things did get better for me, but not magically. the relationship didn't end magically, the mental illness didn't end magically (still dealing with it today and suffer bc of it from time to time), i didn't magically gain friends. but what did change is i stopped giving up on myself and my life. i went to therapy, i got prescribed meds, i studied to graduate from high school and then my bachelor's, i learned how to make friends & i did not waste my time with friends that would make me feel worse. instead i looked for friends who i could support, who could support me back, and who would make me feel good when im with them. i also dealt with fears of being alone forever and never finding a gf then myself. since then ive had multiple gfs, dated multiple women, and now i have a wonderful gf for once!! i thought i'd be trapped in my country in the middle east and that id have no hope as a lesbian.. also not true. im currently in germany and able to be as openly a lesbian as i want.

nothing is absolute. you won't be able to magically cure your disability, but it's all possible. ive met and talked to women who made it out of some horrendous situations, far worse than mine and potentially far worse than yours too (cannot judge as i do not know your exact situation). you can do it too anon. fight for yourself, create a plan for your future and find a path for yourself. put yourself out there. if you're trapped currently, find a support system & community for yourself. if you cant find one in real life, perhaps you can find one online. you can do it and you can make it on the other side, and end up looking back in awe of how you managed. but it won't happen overnight nor will it happen magically. take the first step, whatever that may look like for you. start by finding a way to be less isolated, if its not possible irl do it online and take it from there.

[ghostcrows]

i know ive made like seventy goddam posts about it...but i have still been ruminating like a mother fucker about like...trans gender issues

as you do

i want to listen to trans women right i dont want to be transmisogynistic and i keep on seeing that there are trans guys who are out of their minds high on terf fumes (whether they realize it or not), although ive known that already bc theres always been trans guys who want...whatever they think they get out of clinging to gender essentialism and the remnants of their claims to womanhood. radfem pussy from a female born womyn that hates you i guess

i also do want people to not brush aside transmasc issues as like, not real, or saying well you're a man arent you, so like, shut up and go get that privilege, that conditional privilege, that highly situational privilege, that goes away in dire straits situations such as um, medical environments....or to like treat us with disdain, or as a joke, which is what i see much more often than pure vitriol (its just like, funny to people to be a trans guy. a little too funny too often)

but we also have to recognize that many of the things we go through closely mirror transfem experiences - even if not all of them do, a lot of them do, and we aren't the sole understanders of trans oppression or misogynistic oppression, thats kind of like, the point right. it is not an inherently ~afab~ burden

i think its fair to want a word that doesnt step on anybodys toes that accurately describes our unique experiences with being treated poorly instead of vaguely gesturing to transphobia in a broad sense- we have consistently failed to find this ... theres a point i keep seeing that i agree with that we shouldnt scrutinize transfems who dont use absolutely perfect language to describe their experiences, i think that should probably also be true for transmascs, but we also do keep choosing like absolutely dogshit terms so...idk? the only one ive seen thats any good is "anti transmasculinity" ive also seen transandrosmia(sp?) but i dont know what that means and it seems to be just trying to replace the root words in transandrophobia/transmisandry. which to be fair was the main hangup because of the implications, to my understanding, but ...im not sure about it

i also see a lot of accusations towards either group that we "just see each other as our agab" which is like, in my opinion, true in the sense that everyone has ingrained transphobic beliefs from living in a deeply transphobic world, and you have to unlearn both the internalized forms and the externalized forms...you have to choose every day to continue to unlearn that stuff, catch yourself. even if you think youve done all the work i mean, no one ever truly has - but also like. so much of this stems from pure insecurity. not only "no one sees me as i am" but also "the 'other' gender has it better in some way" being very mch a thing trans people are inclined to feeling, even after they transition i dont think that always goes away, thats why you see like, someone saying "i hate my agab body" and someone else goes "ugh i WISH i had your body id be so lucky to have your body". absolute last thing that person probably wants to hear but you sometimes feel it anyway

and then like, at the end of the day, i dont feel like any of the ppl leading this current "crusade" are actually people who have a full picture...and i dont think i do either, like, so much of this is online for me, i have to wonder what other people are going through. i overall wish i knew more trans people in real life, i definitely wish i had more transfem friends irl, i know a handful of transmascs irl and that was a freak accident bc we all went to school together. if not for that i'd know basically no one trans near me. tho i have seen more people in public more often but i never say anything cuz im scared -_-

yeah....dk how to end this post. well bye

[castlebyersafterdark]

I’m curious to what your thoughts are on your experience as a male in the fandom?

(i am also a guy in the fandom and I feel like there’s no one here. insert that one [there are dozens of us] meme)

not that there’s anything wrong with that lol. I love the ladies! but when I first came on here I just assumed there would be more guys just cause of that direct connection/relatability to byler. obviously not straight guys, but queer guys. and yet… I was wrong lmao. and what I’ve learned since then is that fandom, especially tumblr, is heavily female-dominated. Which is so interesting cause ST is obviously a show for everyone and that’s not what I expected.

fun fact: I never specified my pronouns or gender in my account and now everyone assumes I’m also a girl, and it’s been so long that I think it’s prolly too late to clarify 😭

I’ve noticed that this lopsidedness affects both the sfw byler and the spicy byler side of things in subtle ways. not all of it is positive or negative. some of it is just… interesting.

what are your thoughts?

It hasn't really cropped up as anything too glaring, I've always been able to find a mixed bag of people online through different fandoms, but definitely it seems like demographics skew a certain way on this site. I've found over the years that even if that's the case, the big three (twitter, reddit, tumblr) are easy to just have a neutral identity if so desired, play with anonymity outside of a few people you decide to open up and chat one on one with. Even if true demographics do reflect certain numbers on sites, its not something I really feel bothered by?? I know just by true stats, more fanfic writers/readers tend to be women? I don't really know what that means, haven't thought about it too much. I've just always found comfort in escaping into media and am a big child of the internet.

I guess the one thing I find in the creative circles (not exclusive to stranger things) is maybe just different perspectives when people discuss or write a relationship or talk about sex or a type of experience that might not be theirs. Sometimes something jumps out that I just side eye and breeze past, but you really can't always tell. I just have a laugh (this is no shade!!! And there's a lot of talented writers but its like, oh boy, sometimes you encounter something and it's clear the sex scene was written by someone who knows very little practical applications about men but that's OK, its fanfic hahaha) BUT ALSO I've read published smut written by gay men too where I'm like... boy, what is this??? So I'll take odd choices in fandom writing with good characterizations of characters I already adore with maybe a few inaccuracies over the terribly written trash you sometimes suffer through off the shelf. I like to read!! That's the big thing that's always drawn me to fandom. An overactive imagination and fanfic really scratches that want for more. But truthfully, gender and identity of the blogger or writer isn't my first priority when I'm in fandom to be honest.

I guess maybe what you're getting at is something along the lines of looking for shared "community" in fandom spaces which is definitely nice but I've always just looked for connections about the media itself in nerd culture, since I get the social/community aspect in my personal life. I just like having a place to be a fan and be a little extra as hell 🤷 my friends/bf have similar interests, but not as excitable or analytical or creative about the media we all might watch so I don't really care who I encounter online as long as we click the same way. And we all have watched the show, but it's not like I spend tons of time talking about my extensive plot theories or ideas for smut fic with the irls. That's what the blogs are for haha. And I haven't noticed a big difference in stranger things compared to other fandoms I've been in (I'll say marvel for example). All the same for both problems and enjoyment, just with how huuuuge they are.

I'd love to hear what you mean by those lopsidedness observations you have about this fandom in general if you care to elaborate. No worries either way.

[charlotteswebbbbb]

What's the vibe? #59

News:

Roberto Cavalli died on Sunday. I think something I noticed about Cavalli or Mugler or Rabane dying was that they loved the female form. There was a reverence for the shape and how women move in their clothes. Now designers couldn't care much or they have no incentive to care? The commercial aspect wins again. Sexuality and sensuality will prevail in the underground and DIY.

Also Faith Ringgold, the American artist who worked within quilts and paint died.

Will smoking culture in the UK be changed forever after the passing of this smoking age bill? What are the new unhealthy vices for British society? This is something to watch considering smoking came back in quite a big way over the past two years. It's related to "idgaf" culture which is very....inauthentic.

Cannes announced it's big lineup - but will there be a breaking free from these kings (incl Berlinale which....this year went terribly)? Will there be a break from the hold of A24-isms...BFI festivals do amazingly for that.

Internet rn:

Dead internet theory > web 1.0 > IRL

Dead internet theory is defined as “its main argument is that the organic, human-created content that powered the early web in the 1990s and 2000s has been usurped by artificially created content, which now dominates what people see online. Hence, the internet is “dead” because the content most of us consume is no longer created by living beings (humans).” In the piece by Michael Grothaus for Fast Company, it is explained that there’s more bots but also the algorithm is working against influencers (which may lead to the death of them)… I mean also “Dead Internet Theory” is a conspiracy but I also think it’s partially true.

I don’t want to be the harbinger of bad news but AI is not getting the best PR at the moment. I think its ambassadors are realising that everything that has been made is better and faster. Having a level of control on how the machine works is much better than putting your hands and faith into a computer. See: Grimes going viral at Coachella for DJ difficulties or Marques Brownlee panning the Humane AI Pin.

AI is not smarter than us, it is a tool that can be used to bring up things that we have made and for it to be reformed again in a play-do-esque vision of smartness. Honestly in my opinion, craft will always be important, people are still amazed by vintage pieces.

See also: red carpet thematic dressing or people still trying to copy the Maison Margiela show.

Algorithms are eating themselves, becoming less useful to people. Creating frustration and creating distance from posting about their favourite things or work because they know their friends won’t see it. I wasn’t keen to use this Pitchfork example because it’s not really the same since they got rid of their staffers. (I say this because technically it was a prized position and running on freelancers that are recognisable to this audience is important now too). Anyway, last Friday Pitchfork's Best New Music was awarded to Cindy Lee. An artist with no social media that I can see, an album that is 2 hours long and someone who doesn’t do interviews currently but has a Geocities website where you can download wav files from. An artist on a FAREWELL tour, even. People on social media cry that tour dates are sold out and as far as I can see on Dice…they’re right.

Also the outage of instagram from last month has me thinking that people are investing so much into a platform that doesn’t even invest in them. Creatives making instagram their websites because it’s easier but what if everyone went back into making their own websites away from Meta, Elon Musk and other billionaires? The word by mouth way of sharing knowledge may prevail, trust increase? Maybe? There’s less space to discuss ideas but people can do that in real life. Like people want to experience things more than ever now but on budget. That one really good guaranteed club night, that one good film (could be Challengers/Monkey Man/pick any good film atm).

Basically right now, everything is Drake theory. Used to be fun, now middle of the road but still popular, claims to be the king but is in no way authentic, hopping from one thing to another because of money. You could say this is enshittification but I think Drake is a much better analogy because people still fill concerts arenas to see him, he’s so pervasive you can’t ignore his touch on rap culture. People aren’t turning away from him because unfortunately he makes things slightly interesting by being there.

Highlights in music:

Fabiana Palladino

John Glacier

Marie Davidson

Empress Of

DJs to watch:

Beauty x Sustainability:

Crystabel Efemena Riley is a "clean" beauty make up artist. Passionate about materials used being sustainable and reusable alongside organic make up.

Photography: Suzie + Leo

This idea of spirituality and eating/food has become quite pervasive in culture. You see people talking about fasting - which is apparently not that good for you but I'm assuming is great for weight loss? People like Rishi Sunak who is essentially a Cali tech bro using intimitent fasting to be seen as more serious and focused to a new middle class kind of person, whereas there will always be this bigger need for food culture. On the other side is people who belong to cultures where food is part of being a part of a community. Quite the opposite to this individualistic Anglosphere culture.

[thefanficmonster]

Hello Vy! I hope you're doing well! Since the Pride Month slowly comes to its end, i'd like to share some of my thoughts with you about the LGBTQ community, if you don't mind.

This is actually a good thing that the LGBTQ community exists because now people of different sexualities can finally find their safe place. They can finally feel that they are loved, cared for, understood and accepted. Now they know for sure that they are not alone, that there is a huge amount of people like them all over the world. These are all incredibly wonderful things.

But it's very unpleasant to realize that within the community itself some people still remain unaccepted. I am talking about the non-acceptance of asexual folks. Being misunderstood and rejected by straights they experience the same things from the side of queer people. It feels like asexuals cannot find their safe haven anywhere. Neither inside of the community nor outside of it. I am an asexual myself and know that many people like me have heard just a bunch of foolish phrases like: you don't want to have sex with anyone?! you probably haven't met the right person yet…What the hell? In this case, i can say the same nonsense to some, for example, lesbian: so you like women, don't you? you just haven't met the right man yet or you're simply dissapointed in men. But that's not true. You are a lesbian because you were born that way.

Sexuality is something innate. No one chooses their sexuality just like no one chooses the color of their eyes or hair. But still, we always have this choice: either we begin to hide our true self and live in fear and suffer from it, or we can accept ourselves completely and live freely and happily. For this, goddammit, the LGBTQ community really exists! For helping every person with some different sexuality to fully embrace the skin they are in and let them know that they are not alone, to let them feel that this community of people is their safe space and here they are safe, loved, accepted and understood.

I wish all people in the LGBT community become a little bit more kind, patient and understanding to each other! I hope it is possible.

Happy Pride Month!

Hi dear Margaret! I'm so honored to have received this heartfelt, raw and honest message from you.

I, for one, have had very little real life exposure to the LGBTQ+ community IRL because of the area I live in but from what I've gotten the chance to experience online, I can say that this is one of the most wonderful things I've ever been a part of - a community with no other intentions than to make everyone feel confident in themselves and valid. To remind everyone that they are loved no matter how cruel the world can be and how disheartening things can get.

But unfortunately, this time last year, my inbox got a fair amount of anti-asexuality propaganda messages that enraged me. I never thought (had never heard of this phenomenon before that. I apologize for my at the time ignorance) that the community that is meant to be inclusive of everyone would be so avid to excluding people and gaslight them as well as undermine their emotions and identity.

I myself am not asexual but I stand by all my friends, fans and mutuals who are and who have experienced slander like this. I'm so sorry you have to face this sort of judgement and misconception from the very community that is supposed to be accepting and welcoming for everyone.

I hope things will change in the future but until then just remember that you're not alone. That for every acephobe out there, there are 10 people who support, love and care about you and believe that you are nothing if not loved, important and VALID.

Asexuals, aromantics and all the all the people who fall under the ace aro umbrella have always belonged and will always belong in the LGBTQ+ community.

~ Vy 💌

[antiresperidoneclub]

i havent posted anything in awhile but happy pride month yall! and, very much in me fashion imma take this time ta make another informational post! this installment is called

why assimilation is overall harmful to the queer community + the damage of pseudo-right wing ideas spread thruout the trans community!

CW: queerphobia, transmedicalism, bl*ir wh*te, k*lvin g*rrah, violence against queer ppl.

so, where do we start?

assimilation, what is it?

assimilation is a deliberate effort made by a minority/ marginalized group to (instead of become free) join the majority/privledged, which is wildly more accesible ta abled nuerotypical cis white lgb folks.

now, how does that apply ta th queer community? before that, we hafta look at th stark distinction between th LGBT community and th QUEER community.

because sadly its now different

imma make this as short as possible but basically,

despite its intentions when it was formed decades ago, th LGBT communiy an th way it functions is percieved is different. case in point, th term LGBT has been heavily gentrified and commodified especially by corporations tryina sell it to non-lgbt audiences. youll notice a majority of LGBT voices an advocates are usually white cis lgb ppls or are assimilationists. th term LGBT aswell has been heavily diluted and decontexualized from its roots, such as fightin for rights wit riots an demonstrations, bein heavily tied wit black an indigenous liberation, socialist ideals and memorializing th struggle for our freedom. its also (as apart of its gentrification) is bein forced ta be more 'family friendly' in an effort of control an ta make cash off of us an further assimilate us.

the QUEER community is a somewhat niche nowadays as it sticks fairly close ta th original goals as th LGBT community once had. such as wantin an willin ta fight for liberation rather than succumb ta assimilation. its also seen as a threat as it directly challenges th authority (capitlism, cops/military, goverment, white supremacy, fascism) for its mistreatment an oppresion against queer ppl and other marginalized groups. if th LGBT community is th privledged assimilations that can be proffited off of, then th queer community is more alike 'outcasts' or 'rejects' that arent as palatable ta a cishet majority ie; trans women/ trans/queer ppls of colour, more radicalized queer folks, or those impoverished.

so, with that said, how has/does assimilation harm queer ppl?

as i said, assimilation is disspraportionatly accesible ta able-bodied, neurotypical, cis, non-poor white LGB ppls (shocker) meaning th majority of queer poc, trans people, impoverished, and diasbaled/neurodivergent folks get left behind and continuosly stomped on in an attempt ta eradicate us. and it should be noted theres 2 types of assimilation

1. forced assimilation; forced assimilation is where marginalized ppls thru cultural eradication/genocide r forced ta strip themselves of their identity an join th majority which results in oppresion, discrimination, an further erasure of th ppls themselves. this is heavily seen within th queer community wit th AIDS crisis where those who survived were later branded as 'brave' by th very system that sought their demise in th first place, leavin our community in shambles.

2. chosen assimilation; chosen assimilation is where usually a small group/ or a singular person will disregard their people in an a attempt ta be spared from oppresion or discrimination. in terms of queer ppl (especially trans folks) th main contendors r blair white, kalvin garrah, an buck angel. blair is a stellar example of attempted assimilation. she not only rejetcs, but constantly puts her own people on blast publicly ta her audince of white cishet conservatives an (more often than not) fascists. not only that but she deliberatly associates wit th very ppl who seek her erasure an oppresion in an assbackwards attempt at salvation. more concrete examples include 1. showin herself as 'one of th good ones' or 'normal' 2. acting as if shes cishet 3. constantly self-hating ta appease those mentioned above 4. spewing dangerous an misinormed rhetoric aimed at trans ppls which directly affects trans poc an non-passing trans women. next, kalvin garrah. i was gonna write a whole thing on him but instead ill (below) link copshatemoe's videos about him.

so, now that we know how assimilation both forced an personal harms queer ppls in general, what about trans ppls an th trans community?

transmedicalism and its disasterous effects towards the trans community.

transmedicalism is a belif system of sorts that follows ideals such as

beliving trans ppls must be suffering from dysphoria to be trans

a trans person must want to transition to be trans

being trans is a mental illness/ neurological condition/ birth defect cause by unbalanced horomone levels or th existence of "male and female brains"

belivies HRT or surgerys are a 'cure' for dysphoria/ 'transness'

that neopronouns or non-lesbian, gay, bisexual, or binary trans folks are invalid or 'wannabes' who see th "lgbt community as a club of sorts to join jus because"

borderline or blatant rascist, transmysoginistic, ableist rhetoric.

intentional or not, that assimilation is key an becomin 'as close ta bein cis as possible' is th goal of transition.

now, i could spend ages rantin about how these belifs are blatently wrong but however rather than disecting them lets jus go over th direct harm these belifs have caused th trans community.

lets start wit nonbinary folks. nowadays as ive seen transmedicalism has become more open ta acceptin nonbinary folks but regardless they were one of th first punchin bags. since bein nonbinary in any facet isnt exactly 'medically sustained' its already seen as bullshit, but past that it opens th gates for neoprounouns an non-convetional identitys. enby ppls would be attacked constantly or called "trenders" in an attempt ta discourage them from even existing. this 'highschool bully' type of mentality along wit th superiority complex behind transmedicalism created a stark divide between "normal" trans ppls an th "weirdo, faker" trans ppls. not only did these attacks further stigmatize an already oppresed minority but also forced ppl ta hide themselves from they own community ta avoid ridicule an bullying. this type of harrasment has left these ppls wit trauma an fear of they identity bein challenged not only online but also in IRL queer spaces while they already hafta stay hypervigilant around cis ppl, now it seems th same around binary trans folks. not only have nonbinary ppls have been impacted however, binary trans ppls were left wit insecurities, wonderin if they dysphoria is 'rlly that bad compared ta others' and worrying about things they usually didnt care about. probably th biggest of those is 'passing'. passing is th action of looking as cis as possible ta blend in an avoid general treatments sustained by cishet ppls. i as a transwomen was directly affected by this rhetoric which caused me years of my transition spent not becomin myself, but becomin as close ta a cis girl as possible. this lead me ta become embarresed by my own community also factored in by havin virtually no trans friends IRL. this was th shared experince of many binary trans folks an nonbinary trans folks i know an am friends with. in conclusion, transmedicalsim has not only ostrasized an traumatized queer folks, but has also left insecurities an damage ta binaty trans folks aswell.

so, with that in mind, how do we combat, well, all of this an much more?

liberation

liberation is th action of freeing a marginalized group from its oppresive chains. an how would this look/work for th queer community?

majority of cishet ppls think that queer liberation ended wit marriage equality but thats very much not true. multiple basic human freedoms have been stripped from not only cis lgb queers but also trans people aswell. rights such as affordable housing witout discrimination, medical options for trans people being completly accesible or downright free, safe spaces or areas where were able ta exist free of fear of persecution or discrimination, better healthcare treatment towards queer ppl, things sometimes neccisary ta ones transition bein more accesible such as name/document changes, and many more things. but remember, none of this is possible witout ingigenous liberation/land back, black liberation, or under capitlism

anyways, i have 0 way ta end this so happy pride month an a very happy juneteenth!! if ur black ur more than welcome ta leave any gofundmes, cashapps, venmos etc in th notes or reblogs!

also, if you have any additions or points/topics i shouldve made or covered pls reblog wit them!

-alexis

[radicchia]

I just stumbled on your blog and reading through the posts it made me confront some uncomfortable truths. Im very gender dysphoric and was confused about my gender identity, but the real issue isnt that im trans/nb, its that I would WANT to be, bc deep down I want to be a PERSON and not a “just a female”. Its gonna take some time for me to knock the internalized misogyny outta me but its a start. I might not agree with some of the hatefulness toward trans women but still.. thank you. Today I learned “terfs” arent the hitlers theyre painted to be.

Hey, thank you for your message! And sorry for taking so long to reply.

I know you didn't ask for advice, so I hope this is ok. Please take the time to learn about awesome women, connect with other women online and offline, and go out into the physical world and do something with other women! Whether that's in a political group or in a gardening club doesn't matter (although women can't really afford to withdraw from the political, public sphere, but that's another issue). I know all that can be exhausting, but that's in the short term. I was never dysphoric, but I had/have my fair share of problems and getting organised with people helped me so much! It also automatically means finding women you can look up to (if you join the right groups at least, lol). That is an amazing feeling!

As for the hatefulness towards trans women/trans-identified males:

- I agree that sometimes it, let's say, focusses on the wrong aspects and can become quite unhelpful and unfair

- Generally, in radical feminism, you look at men without censoring your analysis for their benefit. That can result in pretty drastic positions (because generally speaking, men aren't great). Now with TiMs, we're already critical of them because they are men and have been socialised that way. But then add to that that their policy focusses a lot on taking away women-only spaces, for which women have fought long and hard. So they are a threat to women's rights in that way. Also, women's health care is worse than men's health care, so dissolving the meaning of the word woman into nothing also does additional harm in that area.

- Another problem with TIMs is that, to be honest, they are men with specific problems. It used to be that most transsexuals were gay men who had experienced a lot of homophobia and as a result took on that female identity - but without claiming they were actually women. Nowadays, you've got a completely different group of men who call themselves trans. A lot of them are heterosexual men with fetishes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is true for all TiMs. I know several TiMs relatively well irl and I know that a lot of factors play into their identification as trans. But you can see a large online scene of TiMs who clearly get off on the objectification of what they perceive as womanhood. They get boners when they wear women's clothing, they want to be sexually molested and degraded. That is a) a problem and b) not an empowering view of what a woman is and what makes her a woman. Add to that other fetishes that you can often find in online TiM communities, such as furry and diaper fetishes, and you can probably tell that it isn't particularly healthy for anyone involved.

- Then there is also the problem of grooming that happens online a lot, where it's often older TiMs who talk girls (and also other men) into thinking they are trans, and ultimately into harming their psychological well-being as well as their social and familial lives and their bodies. I don't find it funny at all, I don't find it merely mean, I think it is dangerous and despicable. My friends and relatives are doing themselves extreme bodily harm because of online spaces like this.

[rogueswitch]

1, 3, 5, 9, and 11 for the ask meme

o geez thats a lot :p i'll do Wrench because of course i will

1) what’s a Hot Take you have about your f/o?

The only reason why Wrench is popular is because he is quirky and white. You know the whole thing with fandoms only giving a shit about the white characters? I truly think it holds true with watch dogs as well. people will wax poetic about how Aiden (another 'vigilante' white man) from watch dogs 1 is the best character, and Wrench is unabashedly the most popular character from WD2 even though he's not the protagonist and arguably is a pretty undeveloped character (the actual protagonist of WD2 is Marcus, a black man, and a reasonably well-developed character compared to the others).

To bring this point home further, both Aiden and Wrench have their own DLC missions+story in WDLegion, while other characters like Marcus (and any of the other WD2 characters) are forgotten about all but to provide some cosmetic outfits.

3) did you used to ship your f/o with anyone before realizing you wanted to ship them with yourself?

No, not really. Once I really got into the meat of WD2, I just kinda went oh, and realized I had a crush on Wrench and started to ship with him. A lot of people ship Marcus/Wrench because they have a bromance in the game, but I always read it more as Wrench is unabashedly flirty with everyone, and they are both just being silly because they are best friends and comfortable with each other.

5) what’s the dumbest thing you’ve heard about your f/o, either on the internet or irl?

I'm not gonna lie, i don't really interact with fandom much so i dont have a great spicy answer for this one. but maybe something like Wrench is straight or some shit. The dude does nothing but flirt with everyone in WD2, men and women alike. No way is that man straight.

9) do you distance yourself from other fans of your f/o or their source?

Fans, yes. Source, no. I like Watch Dogs as a setting, it's sort of pre-cyberpunk dystopia where things are modern but with just a bit more complex technology (at least in WD2), and it begins to dip into why things like advanced technology can be incredibly harmful when everything is connected to the internet or links back to the government (survalience state). And, because it's Ubisoft, I do also like exploring things like my watch dogs/assassins creed crossover au, because both settings lore fit really well together. I vibe with the source.

I generally don't interact with fans of WD that much because 1) people that tend to play the games and interact online are classic Gamer Bros and i don't really wanna fuck with that, and 2) other then the occasional artist, people who like Wrench just tend to be that Brand of fandom bullshittery that I don't want anything to do with.

11) do you think it’s better to have a copious amount of content for your f/o, even with the risk of finding a lot of ship art, or better to have a lot less?

Ummm. Most content for Wrench is generally Wrench/Marcus ship stuff, which doesn't really bother me even though I don't romantically ship them. So I personally don't mind seeing ship art, and I even like some of the marcus/wrench art just because the artists are really good. When it comes to other's selfships with Wrench though, I tend to be a bit iffier and uncomfy.

I think I prefer having less content/art/fics, because I imagine that if every piece of content was ship content, I would probably get fed up pretty quickly. It can already be a bit eh now, because every other self shipper who is into WD ships with Wrench. I think its a bit nicer to have a smaller amount of good content that I can enjoy, rather then a lot of content I really can't interact with because it makes me uncomfy.

[grumpigremlin]

I'm just so so angry right now

All i did was go through my messenger to leave old work groups. Ended up coming across a load of creepy abusive DMs from men and absolutely atrocious nasty messages from women, all from the time i spent at Uni. How the fuck was I supposed to enjoy my graduation day when THAT summed up my time there in a nutshell. I know its not true but in these states I find it hard to not see all straight men as predators and women as snakes/bullies. 

My entire life up until this point has had me with very little to no friends with the exception of the small group I made at Uni that weren’t even on my course. Why does asking for a place to belong and to be a part of something seem like so much of an ask? I don’t want to spend my life alone in my head anymore. I don’t want the only company I have to be from creepy guys who could actually care less about how I feel???

All throughout highschool I suffered from major bullying IRL and even more major sexual abuse online from a group of people who I kept talking to for over 7 years because they were the only people who gave me attention??? I look at people with friends, even just two best friends and I feel like killing myself because I know that if I havent achieved that now, I never will.

Sometime I wonder how my life would have been if i was neutrotypical or at the very least diagnosed early on.

Call this attention seeking because it is. I need help. This is a cry for help right now.

[gendercynicalgrantaire]

A little bit ago I saw you make a comment about how radfems fail to realize there are trans normies. I've been thinking about it and I wanted to ask, other than yourself, do you know very many trans people irl who are normies who don't have any explicitly homophobic or misogynist ideas about gender and sexuality? I know they exist. But I've been disappointed by more than 1 transman who I thought cared about me and respected me as a lesbian when we really got into discussions about sexual orientation. Like I try not to become jaded but its really hard when I have trans friends I trusted for a long time and then they tell me same sex attraction is harmful or that gender roles are innate (ie: "I know I'm not a woman bc I don't vibe with xyz stereotype that I believe is true for every other woman I meet unless she identifies otherwise". I don't think every trans person is a actively toxic or anything but I feel like homophobia and misogyny is so rampant and explicit from the trans community in current year it's really hard not to be jaded as a defense mechanism.

Hi! So I found the post you were talking about. The intention I was trying to communicate wasn’t so much that normie trans people are unproblematic in their views of gender, but more so that there are trans people out in the world just trying to live their lives who aren’t narcissistic manipulators like a lot of internet TRAs might come off as.

When I call trans people “trans normies,” I’m defining that as trans people who are mostly not online and mostly not involved in trans discourse. And trans normies, like other kinds of normie, sadly tend to have some unexamined assumptions about how things work based on the dominant culture they were raised in.

Most of the trans people I know irl fall into one of two categories: the ones I meet at PFLAG meetings or trans-centric spaces, and the very rare ones encountered out in the wild. I’m going to hazard a guess that most trans normies are the latter-- they tend not to run in circles with many other trans people, and they also tend to be more interested in passing to blend in, both of which make them more difficult to find. They, like me, tend not to really run in the “trans community.” And admittedly, it’s even rarer that I meet a visibly trans person in the wild that I grow close enough to that I learn all about their gender philosophy, because I too have internalized assumptions about other trans people’s feelings that make me jaded against them (I’m trying not to fall into the idea that I’m “not like other troons” lol), and I’m trying to work through it to find and see if there are ones who have gender philosophies I can vibe with.

Most trans people whose gender philosophies I have heard, then, are the ones I meet in PFLAG and trans-centric groups. So probably a little less normie, but there are still normies mixed in there. And I’m not gonna lie, some of the ideas I hear make me cringe a little or feel like they would quickly fall apart if poked at. I don’t know if there’s a single trans philosophy out there that’s going to satisfy the gender critical community. But what I can say for trans people is that the vast majority of them that I have met irl believe in the following (paraphrased):

- If someone’s sexuality/dating pool excludes me, that’s their business. It can be a little disheartening knowing how small my dating pool is, but trying to convince people who don’t want to date trans people to date trans people is not a solution. I want a partner who loves me for me, not one who pretends to love me for woke points.

- XYZ stereotype does not mean that someone is a man/woman/nonbinary. (Insert just about anything in the XYZ. The trans and nonbinary people I meet in real life are also some of the most pro-gnc-cis-people people I know.)

- I am consciously aware of how I make cis people uncomfortable, and I make a conscious effort to mitigate that discomfort to the best of my ability while still living authentically and keeping myself safe.

- Cis women can have their own spaces. It doesn’t concern me.

- Obviously there are issues that only impact natal females and ones that only impact natal males.

- I understand that I have the biology of a certain sex. I might be uncomfortable with having a body of that kind, maybe even to the point where I don’t like to use the anatomical terms to describe my body in contexts where I can avoid it, but I’m obviously different from a [cis man/cis woman]. If I didn’t understand that, I wouldn’t be calling myself transgender.

I make these points because of their relationship with gc discourse. It’s inconvenient for gendercrits and radfems to acknowledge that there are trans people who feel this way. It’s even more inconvenient to know that the number of trans people who feel this way is not insignificant and thereby easy to dismiss.

In particular, I want to focus on the second point: stereotypes do not a gender make. Because honestly, most of the trans women at the PFLAG meetings aren’t talking about how they played with dolls as kids or how they just love being expected to wear make-up (often in an effort to pass, because unfortunately our gendered society does turn make-up into a tool for reading as female), and the trans men there run the gamut from hyper-masc to fairly feminine. There are a variety of trans philosophies I’ve listened to that stray away from the idea that simple gender stereotypes make a gender.

More often the story is one of alienation -- alienation from one’s body, from one’s appearance, and/or especially from society. And this alienation usually disappears (or at least fades into background noise) once transition has been undertaken. The trans person in question might not always have a satisfactory explanation for why that is -- and again, I don’t think any explanation fits the radfem/gc ideal -- but it is distinct from the rhetoric “wigs and dresses don’t make you a woman,” “lack of those things doesn’t make you a man,” which trans people are generally well aware of. This is what I hear most often from other trans people regardless of sexuality, mental health history, class, or any other dividing lines that gendercrits like to use to explain trans people away as simple, easily dismissible categories (think Blanchardianism).

Hmm...I hope that answers your question? I know I probably went off the rails there. Again, I can’t claim that trans normies can’t be problematic, or even that most of them aren’t problematic. Most normies in general are problematic because they tend to live less examined lives. But I also know there are trans people out there willing to listen to and calmly discuss the other side of things, especially if their viewpoint is just parroting what they’ve generally heard from the mainstream side of trans discourse.

In that regard, you’ll have the most luck with passing trans people and trans people who’ve been settled into their identity for a while. Non-passing and newly-out trans people tend to be defensive and self-conscious in a way that more seasoned and socially integrated trans people just aren’t. That’s another post in and of itself though. If a trans friend of yours says something along the lines of “I know I'm not a woman bc I don't vibe with xyz stereotype that I believe is true for every other woman I meet unless she identifies otherwise” (if they use that wording -- not sure if that second part is what they actually say or just the implication you’re picking up on, but chances are they don’t think every woman vibes with it and just need that pointed out) but they also seem like a chill person and you feel safe doing so, don’t be afraid to calmly and casually bring up a point of disagreement. It might not be something they fiercely cling to or have even really thought through all that much.

[dykespreads]

think imma butch bi dyke. if ur fine with sharing, what were your experiences with dykehood as a bi woman? i honestly feel really nervous but contented w dyke as a whole, i dont wanna be considered lesphobic or whatever :(

well im going to be 100% transparent with you that regardless of your intentions you will be called a lesbophobe by some people, the nature of tumblr is to paint whoever you disagree with as your oppressor and a monster and you just have to deal with that. in irl spaces it matters significantly less and nobody (at least in my experience) will question your choices. it helped me a lot because i have a lot of irl friends that are bi or lesbian or trans so everyone is pretty understanding and not quite so “if you say something i disagree with you are cancelled forever and i will make sure i convince everyone that you’re a terf” which has happened to me over dyke discourse with online tumblr “friends” despite me obviously not being a terf, given that im trans and my gf is a trans woman. but on to the point, i have reblogged a ton of cited essays and resources on bi women’s history in lesbian spaces, our impact on those spaces, our historical right on butch/femme/dyke and our current right and usage of butch/femme/dyke so if that kind of proof reassures you i definitely recommend looking through my blog. tumblr search feature is super awful so i’m sorry it’s not more accessible but you should be able to search for key terms and find it. my personal experience with dykehood comes largely from comphet, living in racist christian south, and some homophobic experiences with past girlfriends. ive always known i’ve liked girls and ive spent a long LONG time flip flopping between lesbian and bi, and lo and behold my lived reality and the way people treat me when im with a girl literally does not change at all. that leaves me to believe that it doesn’t matter. whether i personally ID as bi or lesbian does not matter because my experiences won’t change. im still in a loving committed relationship with a girl and am visibly gay. ergo im a dyke. i won’t be ashamed about it.  *and yes i am aware the dictionary definition of dyke as written by cishets says that it means lesbian. but gay marriage was also banned in the united states. does that mean that two bi women, who aren’t techincally gay men or lesbians, could marry? no stop being fucking stupid anti-wlw language has always revolved around lesbians that doesn’t mean bi women were just unfortunately caught in the cross fire. the sacred lesbian only experience doesn’t exist, unless its specifically “i identify as a lesbian”. all wlw are subject to comphet, corrective r*pe (though i may agree that it has different connotations among lesbians, i can personally say lesbians are not the only ones targeted for being “cured” of their attraction to women, and r*pe CERTAINLY does not feel better just because you hypothetically could like a man lmao get your fucking heads out of your asses), prejudice, feeling predatory, loving women, being gnc, having an estranged parent relationship, not feeling really like a true woman, confliction with gender roles, not loving men or wanting to be with men, having trauma, facing misogyny and homophobia, etc etc. literally name something and i will make a counter argument for it, because me or a bi woman i know has lived it. wlw have been going through this shit together since the dawn of time. and radical feminism and political lesbianism warped us. a lot of these arguments about bi women being available to men are misogynistic and extremely biphobic and literally ACTUAL terf rhetoric. terfs, especially terfs that are wlw, have something to gain from painting lesbians as this group that is being set in on all sides by men (and trans women), and that bi women are using their privilege by being close to men to push lesbians down, and are class traitors. tldr; people will hate you no matter what you do. bi women helped build the lesbian community before radical feminism, terfs, and political lesbianism drove bi women out of the lesbian community. we have much of a right to our terms as any other wlw and its ahistorical to say we don’t. also life is short if calling yourself a dyke connects you to your love of women nobody can tell you otherwise.

[doctorodyssey]

my secret is that ive always known since i was a kid that i was a lesbian but idk now as an adult i have this shame that not so much homophobia but shame that i dont fit in with other gay people and its wrong for me to group myself in with people who are actually good and brave and deserve love and they struggle enough so they dont need me. idk. in their spaces or whatever. i feel like im not good enough for women or to be gay and as a result i always shy away from gay things and having pride but on the outside i guess it looks like im homophobic

hi my friend! firstly i want to say that i really doubt anyone thinks you’re homophobic. idk about you but i have a tendency to like, assume that strangers think certain things about me based on my own projection of myself, and it’s rarely ever true. they probably assume you’re just shy, or don’t think anything of it at all. 

i think you’re doing yourself a disservice to say that it doesn’t stem from societal homophobia - heteronormativity & homophobia are the reasons you feel like that. it’s absolutely nothing you did and it’s not on you. i know there’s probably not much i can say on tumblr dot com to make you believe this but you really and truly do deserve infinite love and you deserve a community that will support you. and they (we) ARE your community and you belong as much as anyone. you are good and you are brave (admitting you’re a lesbian, even just to yourself, is brave!). other people having perceived struggles that seem “worse” than yours doesn’t negate the fact that you, too, are struggling. nobody would tell you that it does! 

i know that finding actual irl community is hard right now, but maybe you could see if there’s an online lgbt group chat or a book club or something that you could join? i think finding a group of friends would help a lot. 

tell me a secret!

[coffeebased]

Hey! Wikathon na! I’ve started reading Relocations by Karen Tongson, about a third through now, but I had to take a little detour through Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir like I said I would. I’ve finished reading HtN but I’m not quite done experiencing it, so I’ll probably pick Relocations back up tomorrow.

But here’s what I read in July! What’s a segue?

1. Haikyu!! Volume 44 and 45 by Haruichi Furudate

A chance event triggered Shouyou Hinata’s love for volleyball. His club had no members, but somehow persevered and finally made it into its very first and final regular match of middle school, where it was steamrolled by Tobio Kageyama, a superstar player known as “King of the Court.”

Vowing revenge, Hinata applied to the Karasuno High School volleyball club… only to come face-to-face with his hated rival, Kageyama!

And with those two volumes, Haikyū has ended. I’m really glad that my cousin got me to catch up to the series because being a part of the sheer joy and love that’s poured out the fandom these past few months has been refreshing to my spirit. I enjoyed the way Furudate brought the series to its conclusion, by giving all the characters a future and room to grow. I hope to hear more from him in the upcoming years.

  2. Looking for Group by Alexis Hall

I read Looking for Group because I was reading up on Alexis Hall in anticipation of Boyfriend Material, which I will talk about later, and saw the synopsis:

So, yeah, I play Heroes of Legend, y’know, the MMO. I’m not like obsessed or addicted or anything. It’s just a game. Anyway, there was this girl in my guild who I really liked because she was funny and nerdy and a great healer. Of course, my mates thought it was hilarious I was into someone I’d met online. And they thought it was even more hilarious when she turned out to be a boy IRL. But the joke’s on them because I still really like him.

And now that we’re together, it’s going pretty well. Except sometimes I think Kit—that’s his name, sorry I didn’t mention that—spends way too much time in HoL. I know he has friends in the guild, but he has me now, and my friends, and everyone knows people you meet online aren’t real. I mean. Not Kit. Kit’s real. Obviously.

Oh, I’m Drew, by the way. This is sort of my story. About how I messed up some stuff and figured out some stuff. And fell in love and stuff.

And I knew that I had to read it. Immediately.

I enjoyed it way too much. The characters were adorable, the conflict was done well, the geeky gamer wrapper was AMAZING and the author never dropped the ball on integrating the online game into the narrative. It was very readable and I enjoyed the atmosphere of the book immensely. I also may have spent a heady week or so thinking of playing WoW, but I avoided that temptation. Made me miss uni too, and the way my friends and I would spend countless hours with each other.

  3. Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

Wanted: One (fake) boyfriend Practically perfect in every way

Luc O’Donnell is tangentially–and reluctantly–famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he’s never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad’s making a comeback, Luc’s back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything.

To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship…and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. He’s a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and he’s never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. In other words: perfect boyfriend material. Unfortunately apart from being gay, single, and really, really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened.

But the thing about fake-dating is that it can feel a lot like real-dating. And that’s when you get used to someone. Start falling for them. Don’t ever want to let them go.

I came into this book with high expectations after Looking for Group, and my expectations were mostly met. The few issues I had were ultimately negligible, probably cultural differences or conventions of a genre that I’m not familiar with. The characters were strong, and I found the book funny. I know it sounds as though I’m damning it with faint praise, so I’ll say it plainly: it was an enjoyable read and I was totally invested in the romance. I think it’ll make a really good film as well.

4. The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya

Everyone talks about falling in love, but falling in friendship can be just as captivating. When Neela Devaki’s song is covered by internet-famous artist Rukmini, the two musicians meet and a transformative friendship begins. But as Rukmini’s star rises and Neela’s stagnates, jealousy and self-doubt creep in. With a single tweet, their friendship implodes, one career is destroyed, and the two women find themselves at the center of an internet firestorm.

Celebrated multidisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya’s second novel is a stirring examination of making art in the modern era, a love letter to brown women, an authentic glimpse into the music industry, and a nuanced exploration of the promise and peril of being seen.

If you’re a millennial and if you’ve ever had complicated friendships, this book will ring really true for most of it, I think. I kept wincing at the characters’ actions and “mistakes”, recognising them as things I or my friends have done, but there are portions of the story that I found inaccessible because Neela, the main character, just seems really opaque even when they’re the ones speaking. The music Shraya made as a companion to the book slaps and can be found here.

  5. Empowered 11 by Adam Warren

Costumed crimefighter Empowered finds herself the desperate prey of a maniacal supervillain whose godlike powers have turned an entire city of suprahumans against her.

Not good! Outnumbered and under siege, aided only by a hero’s ghost, can Emp survive the relentless onslaught long enough to free her enslaved teammates and loved ones, or is this–*gulp*–The End?

From comics overlord Adam Warren comes Empowered, the acclaimed sexy superhero comedy–except when it isn’t, as in this volume’s no-nonsense, wall-to-wall brawl guaranteed to bring tears to the eye and fists to the face!

Warren’s tying up a lot of loose ends and answering a lot of questions and I’m wondering if that means Empowered‘s ending soon. I haven’t seen any info regarding this, even though the words “The End” are right there in the summary, because comic books always lean on the whole the hero could die! thing, and more often than not they never do. But Emp has come so far in the past 11 volumes, and I think that she’s ready to confront a lot of the stuff that Warren’s only hinted at in the past. Most of Empowered is about how Emp deals with failure and how she rises above it, and recently it’s become about how other people have failed her, rather than how she has failed, and how she deserves better. I’m worried about her, but at least we are another volume’s worth of evidence for the Emp/Thugboy/Ninjette OT3.

  6. Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan

The iconic author of the bestselling phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians returns with a glittering tale of love and longing as a young woman finds herself torn between two worlds–the WASP establishment of her father’s family and George Zao, a man she is desperately trying to avoid falling in love with.

On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can’t stand him. She can’t stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have the view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can’t stand that he knows more about Curzio Malaparte than she does, and she really can’t stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa and they are caught by her snobbish, disapproving cousin, Charlotte. “Your mother is Chinese so it’s no surprise you’d be attracted to someone like him,” Charlotte teases. Daughter of an American-born-Chinese mother and blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favor of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucy is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment, and ultimately herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world–and her heart. Moving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures.

This was the third romance novel I read in July, and that’s honestly the highest concentration of romance novel I’ve ever had in my life. I know that I’m supposed to find romance novels like super kilig and stuff, but so far I am just very anxious for romance novel protagonists all the time. I think that the whole thing about the romance novels I have read is that they’re mostly about how deeply anxious people learn how to allow themselves to be loved and that is tough! I wanted to protect Lucie all the time! I was Invested in her Welfare, and I don’t think I cared about Rachel Chu from Crazy Rich Asians half as much, even if you condensed all my attachment from the entire trilogy. Also, small spoiler, there is a hint that Sex and Vanity is in the same universe as Crazy Rich Asians, which I think is awesome.

  6. Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

Pulitzer Finalist Susan Choi’s narrative-upending novel about what happens when a first love between high school students is interrupted by the attentions of a charismatic teacher

In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.

The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.

This is a book I could not stop reading and I felt gross after I finished it. I think that I enjoyed it and that the narrative flips were well-done and it was engaging, but Choi writes teenage trauma in 3D, and you can smell her scumbag characters. Very good will never read again unless looking to feel bad.

  Re-read:

Temeraire: His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, andEmpire of Ivory by Naomi Novik

Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors ride mighty fighting dragons, bred for size or speed. When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes the precious cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, fate sweeps Captain Will Laurence from his seafaring life into an uncertain future – and an unexpected kinship with a most extraordinary creature. Thrust into the rarified world of the Aerial Corps as master of the dragon Temeraire, he will face a crash course in the daring tactics of airborne battle. For as France’s own dragon-borne forces rally to breach British soil in Bonaparte’s boldest gambit, Laurence and Temeraire must soar into their own baptism of fire.

I started re-reading it because I wanted to introduce it to my girlfriend, and I outpaced her very quickly, and selfishly. She’s still at the beginning fourth of Throne of Jade, and I feel like I blinked and gulped down four of the books in quick succession. I had to stop myself after Empire, in a very belated effort to sync up to my gf’s progress. The series is amazing, and I don’t know if I’ll ever read one like Temeraire again. Being able to revisit it should be enough, really, because every time I do it’s as though I’m caught up in a strong and wonderful wind that fills me up with delight and awe. Novik’s starting a new series this September, and I hope it’s just as good.

    That’s it for July! I’m probably going to do two books at a time for my Wikathon posts, just to keep things fresh and current, so keep a weather eye out for those posts!

  July, next verse, same as the first Hey! Wikathon na! I've started reading Relocations by Karen Tongson, about a third through now, but I had to take a little detour through…