#i love all inclusive feminism

[finnsworldz]

the quote of all time

[thatonegaybrit]

; idk why but after reading some posts I js realized why it took me years and years of questioning, years of discomfort, years of self hate and years of forcing myself into labels to realize I'm transmasc & like guys. Like, like it took me years and it was because

; ( long under the cut + rant like but w a good ending lol /gen )

; because I had been taught men and liking men was bad, was evil, was mysoginistic, was siding w the enemy

pt: ; because I had been taught men and liking men was bad, was evil, was mysoginistic, was siding w the enemy

; and I fully believed this, it was said by my mother and my friends and by social media and influencers and everyone I used to look up too, so why wouldn't it be true ?? So realizing I was transmasc was 100% harder because ppl were clinging on too the whole " if you're born a man or transition into a man you're horrible and evil and disgusting etc etc and there's no getting out of it I hate you " feminism and I wanted so bad to be in a community and to have ppl like me ( and I didn't know of any other safe places ) that I js went with it. I claimed to be a trans ally but I depised trans men & trans mascs, I hated cis men especially ! I hated everyone who was masculine or liked masculine people. I was like legit a terrible person and a huge exclusionist and I didn't even notice. Because I genuinely thought I was in the right, because I'd been raised like that. Because I'd been continuously told that. So I wasn't a " bad person " I was a good person, I was correct and I was spreading good information

; and yk I was devastated when I realized I was transmasc, it was horrifying to think because " oh shit oh no I must be broken, be evil !! and what if I js get worse !?? What if I end up like other men oh no ! " and that is terrifying to think that's how I used to think, like, that was normal for me. That was right.

; but funnily enough after being like okay I'm transmasc now what !?? I went to some transmasc / accepting queer centered blogs & sites & discords and I swear they were so welcoming it flipped everything I knew on it's head. I'd been told they were all gross and mysoginistic and rapists and js terrible people but the nicest person there who helped me sm was a cis gay man. He was kind and supportive and helped me through what I was feeling .. !! He didn't even get offended by my original thought process because his brother had been the same, his friends had been the same, most trans men / mascs in those places had been the same. They'd all thought something was wrong w them, that they were horrid people and they were betraying women etc etc.

; and I'm forever grateful I got out of that way of thinking, I've never been happier being myself. Letting others be themselves. And I don't feel so broken anymore, I don't buy into the " siding w the enemy !! " bullshit because that's what it is, bullshit. Plus I know I don't have to look a certain way to be transmasc so it's helped my dysphoria to an extent yk .. But it still really pisses me off that people hate men for purely being men, that's stupid and literally genuinely not what feminism is, its not what inclusivity is, it's just shitty and stupid. You aren't just born a horrible person and it certainly isn't based off something like gender or sex. And you sure as fuck don't get to call yourself inclusive for it.

; anyways I love you trans men & transmascs and all masculine / man aligned lovelies in all your ways and yeah. You're not evil or disgusting or betraying anyone just because you are a man / masc person <3 ( this also goes for anyone expressing themselves masculinely / who look masculine <333 )

[mrgaretcarter]

Honestly I think it would do us all well to go back to kinda cringy feminism again for a little bit idk cause I think maybe for some people the discourse somehow circled back around to supporting sexism just rebranded or whatever so its more aesthetic

[fuck-i-like-too-much-stuff]

I HAVE SAID THIS BEFORE, IM SAYING IT AGAIN- DO NOT FOLLOW ME IF YOURE A TERF. I WILL BLOCK AND REPORT YOU (IF THERE WAS MORE I COULD DO, I WOULD). THERE IS NO SCENARIO UNDER WHICH I WANT TO BE SEEN ASSOCIATING WITH YOU. PLEASE EXCLUDE YOURSELF FROM MY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.

[cottoncommitscrime]

This goes out to the inherent camaraderie between women.

The women who treat every kid like their own child/grandchild. Who adopt their kids’ best friends because they’re ✨that mom.✨

The community older sisters who look out for the rest of us, help us as we become one of the big kids.

The aunties who aren’t even your blood but they are definitely your family, who share the gossip of the day with you and ask you how you’re doing.

The little old woman in the park or on that bus that becomes your own grandma for ten minutes because you looked down.

The girls who make sure their friends get home safe. The bodyguards of the friend group.

The girls that hype you up when you’re down.

The girls in the bathrooms that comfort you when you run in to cry.

The little girls that run up to you out of nowhere to compliment your shoes or your shirt or to show you something they were so eager to show off.

The teachers who let you come in and lay in their floor as you complain about drama and the hard life of a student.

The nurses and doctors who offer you the quiet comforts only they can give.

The connection between all women is just astounding. Mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, daughters, friends, and perfect strangers. A knotted community who walk among each other with a shared secret understanding of one another.

I just needed to get my feelings out there. God I love women.

[sunbearfriday]

happy pride

[livingfandomly]

I keep seeing people online hate on Agatha and, let’s be honest, hating on marvel has become the trend. For a universe that has existed on screen for almost 3 decades now, its output of good quality content is actually commendable. Are some projects completely shit because they’re trying to focus on faux feminism and inclusivity? 100% yes. But it’s like nobody wants to give anything under the “superhero” tag a chance anymore. I understand that audiences need breaks from certain content to want it again but, I will say, this targeted hatred to marvel is very much a consequence of the fact that if something gets too good then it has to turn sour. As a long-time comic book fan I agree that there have been nearly unwatchable projects like She-Hulk and the animated series was unnecessary. But Loki? Amazing show. Moon Knight? Baller. WandaVision? So innovative and unique. Falcon & Winter Soldier? Cute little bromance fuelled action dramedy. And you know what, I’ll come out and say it, Ms. Marvel and The Marvels were only hated on so aggressively because they’re all female led. Were they a little shit? Yes. Did they deserve that much hate???? Fuck no.

But let’s get back to Agatha. It’s a show that has a genuine plot line, the cast is amazing, it’s full of intrigue, the visuals are stunning, they’re not meandering about. They have a well thought out story unfolding. The best part? They’re not being faux about their feminism, or at least it doesn’t feel like that at all. They’ve managed to create a show full of women, all of whom are extremely intriguing characters, it’s so very sapphic and it’s proud about all of that. I fucking love this show. It’s dealing with generational trauma, with how much your upbringing and parents matter and it’s doing all of this while adding to the mcu. Am I confused about Billy? Fuck yes. But you know what, I don’t care about that right now because I’m getting to watch a show I enjoy. It’s really not that hard for people who don’t like it to simply state exactly that and then shut up.

I will never understand the human desire to shit on something that someone else genuinely enjoys…

[genderkoolaid]

I'm sorry but you people have demeaned the word lesbian so badly... the LITERAL definition of a lesbian is a NON-MAN who likes NON-MEN. How is that so fucking hard to understand? Not you specifically, but people like you have made it into something it's not; the whole "bi lesbian" and "straight lesbian" shit, saying trans men can date lesbians (which is literally just transphobic), straight up just saying lesbians can date men???? MEN???? DO YOU NOT HEAR YOURSELVES?

And now the whole butch discourse lmao. Sure, maybe in days long past it was a broader term, but today when someone hears the word butch, I can guarantee their minds will jump to a butch lesbian. If y'all want it to be the GBT community so bad then just say so

Also I can guarantee that you were one of the mfs laughing at lesbians who used he/him or he/they pronouns back in 2020 lmao performative ass bitch

Definitions of words do not descend from Heaven straight from the lips of God. We make them up! So I simply disagree with your definition of lesbian, as do many others. Personally, I enjoy the definition of "queer love/desire for women." For one, it centers lesbianism around women, instead of centering it around the exclusion of men. And two, "non-men loving non-men" is a definition which utterly erases nonbinary people. If an agender person is dating a neutrois person, they are not lesbians- or gay men- simply because y'all cannot get your head out of your binary asses for five seconds. "Non-men loving non-men" is a definition that attempts to be nonbinary-inclusive but only succeeds in making nonbinary & genderqueer identities palatable for radical feminism and political lesbianism. Honestly, I would prefer someone who defines lesbian as "woman loving woman" but understands that many people have complex relationships with womanhood while still feeling attached to the label of lesbian, than someone who uses this "NB-inclusive" definition and goes absolutely feral over genderqueers who are Doing It Wrong.

Anyways, speaking of radical feminism: acknowledging male lesbians and mspec lesbians is not "making lesbianism something its not." It is just recognizing the beautiful complexity that has always existed within lesbianism.

The lesbian community- which I'm using to refer to all kinds of communities organized around queer relationships to women & womanhood- has always been a haven for a lot more people than cis women exclusively into other cis women. The idea of sexuality-as-identity is very recent, and the idea of drawing a hard line between people who only like people of the same gender and people who like the same gender and more is also extremely recent. Beyond that, trans men and nonbinary people have always taken shelter under lesbianism. "Butch" in the context of lesbianism has always been a trans* identity, a way for people with a queer gender to find community and safety.

The reason why we have this idea of lesbianism as a strict category with hard borders is..... you guessed it..... radical feminism! And specifically "political lesbianism," which essentially placed woman-only relationships as the only true feminist relationship you could have. "Lesbian" became a political identity because of its focus on woman-woman relationships. But that meant that, for political lesbianism to be acceptable to radical feminism, it needed to conform to radical feminist beliefs about what makes a good feminist. Which meant:

No trans women or fems (because they are too male and probably predators)

No trans men or mascs (because they are too male and also traitors)

No bisexuals (because they are too male by association and are also traitors)

No penetrative sex, or at least no strap ons (because it imitates men)

No kinky sex (see above but with bonus "kink is evil" flavoring)

No butch/femme roles (because they imitate heterosexuality; everyone has to be neutrally androgynous).

I believe that much of modern lesbian discourse comes from trying to marry lingering radfem beliefs with modern attempts at trans-inclusivity. So you adapt the blatant transphobia: now, trans women are allowed in (as long as they are palatable to cis women), because they're women! And nonbinary people can also be allowed in- at first they were woman-aligned, and then later as long as they weren't man-aligned. Being butch/femme is Back In Style, but we have to soothe the gender anxiety that butches cause by assuring everyone that only True Lesbians can be butch, and butches are always women, even if they kind of aren't, but regardless they're definitely not men, because butch has always been a lesbian term (except it hasn't.) The discourse is haunted by the ideas that lesbianism is constantly under attack, more than anyone else, and that lesbian culture is unique and special and must be guarded from (male/-aligned) invaders who are probably also sexual predators.

To say that this is all just "days long pasts" ignores both that, in physical queer spaces there very much still are male lesbians and bi lesbians who are accepted parts of their local communities, and that you only see those days as "long past" because of the impact of radical feminism on lesbianism. The only reason you see these changes as a good thing is because you've swallowed radical feminist ideas without realizing it.

Also, "if you say butch most people will think of butch lesbians" is an extremely silly argument. Literally who fucking cares. If you say "man" there are still a lot of people who will immediately think of exclusively cis men (see: every feminist who says shit like "if men could get pregnant). Does that mean that trans men should just give up their identities because other people don't understand them? You dork?

Anyways. The funniest part of this ask is how damn confident you are that I was apparently hating on he/him lesbians three years ago. Idk how to tell you this but I'm a boygirl gaylesbianbisexual and have identified this way for years. I have been personally terrorized by shitty lesbian identity politics, the same ones you are repeating now, which told me that if I was even 1% male then identifying as a lesbian made me a disgusting predator. Which caused me years of suffering because no matter how hard I tried, I could not ignore my multigenderedness and how that affected my sexuality. Sowwy but you look silly as hell and your argument is bad and you should feel bad </3

[tiathecreator]

⋆⭒˚｡⋆ so american ( hobie brown ) !

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎.𖥔 ݁ ˖✎ᝰ synopsis — " he laughs at all my jokes and he says i'm so american. " blk reader.

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟcontains — ooc (?) hobie, fluff, swearing, atsv!hobie brown, hobie is taller than you no matter what, very very slight.

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚ tia speaks — because nobody told olivia to write such a cute song like my goodness. i love this song so bad ( almost as bad as i love accented men ) so i had to write a piece inspired by it ! i am also using this to be a complete feminism nerd and i almost wrote something similar with another olivia song lol. i totally recommend reading this whilst listening to 'so american' by olivia rodrigo !! happy reading !

despite his punk exterior, hobie is the best boyfriend you've ever had.

you'd first met hobie when you were selected to speak at a diversity conference in london. you were studying abroad in the middle of your second year of university, using the excuse of 'furthering your education' to read authentic european literature and cross of some of your bucket list. he was doing his usual routine when he swung by a billboard advertising the conference. he decided to check it, never one to shy away from social politic discourse. he stopped by a few panels, taking a liking to the minority in leadership panel, before stopping by the gender and intersectionality panel.

hobie's eyebrows rose as he watched you prepare yourself for your own presentation. you were dressed in business professional with the best shaped afro hobie had ever seen. his pulse quickened as you sent the moderator a ready smile before you began speaking.

and you were so american.

your charisma was enchanting, gracefully demanding the attention of the room. you engaged with the audience as you presented, throwing in small jokes here and there to keep the crowded attentive. he even imagined your expression becoming the slightest bit bashful as he caught your eye. you ended your presentation with another dazzling smile and an adorable tilt of your head at the sound of the applause filling the room.

he was even more impressed with your ability to answers questions on the fly. it was as if you thought of every possible questions and came up with perfectly calculated answers for each of them.

"i have a question for y/n. you mentioned white feminism and black feminism as two separate movements due to the lack of inclusion of marginalized women and their concerns. does that mean that you believe that white women are inherently racist?" a commentator asked. a furrow found its way in between your brow before you answered.

"no, i called it uninclusive because i meant it did not include the needs of women who were not upper class, able, educated, white women. black feminism can include women who are not black as it's an umbrella term of sorts. it serves to uplift and represent the underrepresented and unite all feminists, not imply that all white women are racist because of one social group. there are some wonderful white women who can acknowledge their privilege and use it to uplift us all as a united front rather than living in their individual comfortability. thank you for your question."

after your panel concluded, hobie found himself searching for you in the crowd of spectators. he eventually found you holding a bouquet of flowers from the moderator as you put away your things. he casually made his way to you, slipping through the ocean of bodies before standing behind you.

"would've gotten flowers if i had known someone as smart as you would be presenting here. however, i doubt i'd be able to find anything as beautiful as you, ms. america," he charmed, immediately gaining your attention as you turned to him.

"i take it that you liked my presentation," you mused, smiling up at the man before you.

"liked it so much that i'd like to hear it again. maybe over a meal some time, yeah?"

your cheeks stung from how wide you smiled as you punched your number into his phone, telling him to text you the details.

you guys hit it off as your personalities, morals, and routines meshed almost perfectly. you finished your educational responsibilities around the same time he finished his internship, leaving the two of you with enough time to see each other at least three times a week, excluding your weekend.

he's so attentive as he remembers everything about you, including things that you mentioned offhandedly. you'll expect him to pay it no mind until he says or does something that showed you that he was in fact listening to your every word.

and he's so soft with you. underneath your boyfriend's unapproachable persona was a man who was putty in your hands. he melts into your embrace, hands gently cupping your face as he laid a breathless kiss on your lips. he was always touching you when he was in your presence. he usually opted for the casual arm hooked across your front as he rested his chin on your shoulder. it was the perfect height for you to whisper all of your jokes into his ear, ensuring that he didn't miss the chance to indulge in your humor.

you actually guessed that he was the esteemed spider-punk after having rescued you from a mid-evening robbery. you noticed the stature of the hero looked familiar as you watched him swing through the air.

"what happened here?" you asked him one lazy morning, pointing to the bruise forming on his shoulder.

"i slipped in the shower," he mumbled, pulling you closer to him as he tried to go back to sleep.

"are you sure it had nothing to do with that pole the news showed you being flung into?" you mused.

"how'd you figure?" he asked, eyes now open as he looked down at you with a tired grin.

"what kind of girlfriend would i be if i didn't know my boyfriend when i saw him?" you replied, planting a kiss on the corner of his mouth. "plus i’ve tripped over your beat up sneakers enough times to recognize them."

"sneakers," he said, copying your accent. he let out an amused gruff after you painlessly slapped his arm. "you're such an american."

he made the effort to join you for your public demonstrations, only stepping in when someone got mouthed off at you too much for his liking, knowing that you could hold your own but preferring if you didn't have to. he read all of your favorite books as well as any pieces that you mentioned to him. he participates in most of your hobbies, even picking up a few and calling them his own.

he even calls your mom, asking her how she had been since the last time he had the chance to ask. she was more excited to see him the first time you visited since meeting him. she tried to treat him as a guest, but he was set on helping her around the house, taking care of any odd problems she had.

you might just have to marry him if he keeps this shit up.

© tiathecreator 2024. all rights reserved.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Stellantis wants to make scabbing woke

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

I know, I know, it's weird when the worst people you know are right, even when they're right for the wrong reasons: like, the "Intelligence Community" is genuinely terrible, pharma companies are murderous crooks, and Big Tech really does have a dangerous grip on public debate. The swivel-eyed loons have a point, is what I'm saying:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

When conspiratorialists and reactionaries holler about how the FBI are dirty-tricking creeps who are framing Trump, it's tempting to say, "well, if Trumpists hate the FBI, then I will love the FBI. Who cares about COINTELPRO and what they did to Martin Luther King?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

It's a process called "schizmogenesis": forming new group identity beliefs based on saying the opposite of what your enemies say, and as tempting as that is, it's extraordinarily foolish and dangerous:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

It means that canny reactionaries like Steve Bannon can trick you into taking any position merely by taking the opposite one. Bannon's followers are even more easily led, so it's easy for him to convince them that we have always been at war with Oceania. The right has created an entire mirror world of "I know you are but what am I?" politics.

Anti-vax co-opts "bodily autonomy." Climate denial becomes environmentalism ("wind turbines kill birds"). Transphobia becomes feminism ("keep women-only spaces for real women"). Support for strongmen becomes anti-imperialism ("don't feed the war machine in Ukraine"). These are the doppelgangers Naomi Klein warns us against:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

The far right has even managed to co-opt anti-corporate rhetoric. Culture warriors rail against "woke capitalism," insisting that when big businesses take socially progressive positions, it's just empty "virtue signalling." And you know what? They've got a point. Partially.

As with all mirror-world politics, the anti-woke-capitalism shuck is designed to convince low-information right-wing pismires into buying "anti-woke pillows" and demanding the right to pay junk fees to "own the libs":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

But woke capitalism is bullshit. Corporations – profit-maximizing immortal transhuman colony organisms that view workers and customers as inconvenient gut-flora – do not care about social justice. They don't care about anything, except for minimizing compensation for workers while maximizing the risk those workers bear; and locking in and gouging customers for products that are as low-quality as can be profitably sold.

Take DEI, a favored target of the right. It's undoubtably true that diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives have made some inroads on correcting bias in hiring decisions, with the result that companies get better employees who would have been excluded without this explicit corrective.

However, corporations don't value DEI because they abhor their history of hiring bias. Instead, DEI is how corporate management demonstrates to workers that their grievances are best addressed by trusting corporate leadership to correct their error of their ways – and not by forming a union.

Before the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, corporations would create fake "Company Unions" whose leadership were beholden to the company executives. These were decoy unions: they looked and sounded like unions, but when they negotiated with management, they were actually working for the bosses, not the workers.

This is more mirror-world tactics. They're the labor equivalent of the "crisis pregnancy centers" that masquerade as abortion clinics in order to fool pregnant people and trap them with endless delays until it's too late to terminate their pregnancies. Company unions get workers to trust in negotiators who are secretly working for the bosses, who emerge from the bargaining table with one-sided, abusive contracts and insist that this is the best deal workers can hope for.

Company unions were outlawed 90 years ago, and for decades, labor had a seat at the table, with wages tracking productivity gains and workers getting protection for discrimination, unsafe labor conditions, and wage-theft. Then came the neoliberal turn, and 40 years of wage stagnation, increased inequality, and corporate rule.

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. Finally, finally, we have reached a turning point in labor, with public approval for unions at levels not seen since the Carter administration and thousands of strikes and protests breaking out across the country:

https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu/

It's not just the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA, either. For the first time in history, the UAW is striking against all the major automakers, and they are winning:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/10/striking-uaw-workers-win-key-battery-plant-concession-from-general-motors/

The automakers are getting desperate. Stellantis – Chrysler's latest alias, reflecting the company's absorbtion into corporate-human-centipede of global carmakers – has mobilized its DEI programs, trying to get marginalized people to believe that scabbing is a liberatory activity:

https://theintercept.com/2023/10/10/uaw-auto-strike-stellantis/

Stellantis calls each of its DEI silos a "Business Resource Group" (BRG): there's a "Working Parents Network," an "African Ancestry Network," "Asians Connected Together," a "DiverseAbilities Network," a "Gay & Lesbian Alliance" and more:

https://blog.stellantisnorthamerica.com/2021/07/20/business-resource-groups-drive-inclusion-and-diversity/

The corporate managers who lead these BRGs have established a scab rotation for each subgroup, calling on members to cross a UAW picket-line at a Michigan Parts Distribution Center run by Stellantis subsidiary Mopar:

Each BRG will pick a specific day of the week/weekend to volunteer as a team. Help continue to be the RESOURCE the BUSINESS can count on! Stellantis needs your help in running the Parts Distribution Centers (PDC) to ensure a steady supply of parts to our customers while negotiations continue. Working Parents Network has identified Friday, October 13 as WPN’s BRG Day at the PDCs!"

Now, these BRGs weren't invented by marginalized workers facing discrimination in the workplace. They come from literal union-busting playbooks produced by giant "union avoidance" firms that charge bosses millions for advice on skirting – or breaking – the law to keep workplace democracy at bay. All the biggest anti-union consultancies love BRGs, from Littler Mendelson to Jackson Lewis. IRI Strategies touts BRGs as a way to "union-proof" a business by absorbing workers' grievances in a decoy committee that will let them feel listened to.

BRGs, in other words, are the Crisis Pregnancy Centers of workplace discrimination. They're a Big Store Con, a company union dressed up as corporate social responsibility.

Now, let's not pretend that unions have a sterling record on race and gender issues. Giant labor organizations like the AFL had to be dragged into racial integration, and trade unions have sometimes been on the wrong side of anti-immigration panics:

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/american-labor-movement.html

But unions have also been the most reliable way for people of color and women to win better workplace treatment. The struggle for racial and gender justice was fought through labor organizing. Remember that MLK's "I've Been To the Mountaintop" speech was given in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis:

https://www.afscme.org/about/history/mlk/mountaintop

Black organizers have always been militant labor organizers. Labor Day commemorates the victory of the long, hard-fought Pullman strike, where Black workers brought one of the most powerful companies in America to its knees:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike

And women have always fought for gender justice through the labor movement: the New York shirtwaist strike is the Ur-example, when women-led unions fought thugs and scabs on icy New York streets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_shirtwaist_strike_of_1909

It's no surprise that labor activism, anti-racism and feminism go together. Since the earliest days, the labor justice struggle was also a social justice struggle. To learn more check out Kim Kelly's Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171063

The most exploited, underpaid, and abused workers in America are also the most marginalized (duh).

From nurses:

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/kaiser-healthcare-union-says-week-long-strike-possible-early-next-month-2023-10-09/

To teachers:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-04-18/l-a-teachers-win-21-wage-increase-in-new-lausd-contract

To Amazon warehouse workers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Labor_Union

To publishing assistants:

https://apnews.com/article/harpercollins-union-strike-ends-0a94238718879066d9b21af6266be526

To baristas:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/29/business/starbucks-union-wages/index.html

To fast-food workers:

https://www.ufcw.org/about/

The vanguard of today's labor surge is Black, brown, female and queer. Without a union, workers who face discrimination are on their own, hoping that their bosses will voluntarily do something about it. Black workers in Tesla's rabidly anti-union shops face vicious racism, from slurs to threats to violence. Without a union, they have to rely on the shifting whims of an Apartheid emerald mine space-Karen for relief, or hope for help from the NLRB or a class-action lawyer:

https://apnews.com/article/tesla-racism-black-lawsuit-class-action-21c88bddf60eca702560be58429495de

The far right isn't wrong when they holler that woke capitalism is bullshit. As with so many of their mirror-world causes, they've got a point, but only a limited one. The problem with woke capitalism is that it's no substitute for a union. The problem with relying on Business Resource Groups to fight racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia is that these struggles are all class struggles, and a BRG is never going to fight against the company that created it.

To understand how bankrupt woke capitalism is, conside this: Stellantis is calling on its "Working Parents Network" to scab this Friday. Stellantis is also being sanctioned by the Department Of Labor for discriminating against nursing mothers – the same "working parents" that the BRG is meant to protect:

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2023/02/08/investigation-finds-stellantis-violated-rights-of-nursing-mothers-at-sterling-heights-plant/

Woke capitalism is just another kind of "predatory inclusion," like Intuit's campaign defending its "Free File" tax-prep scam, where they're claiming that ending this ripoff is racist because it denies Black families the right to be tricked into paying for something they are entitled to get for free:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers

When I learned about Intuit's wokewashing, I thought I'd found woke capitalism's rock bottom, but I was wrong. Stellantis's call for woke scabbing is a new low.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/11/equal-opportunity-class-war/#inclusive-scabbing

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[transfaguette]

I ask this in good faith, but how is it that so many transmascs hate the idea of (trans inclusive) radical feminism so much? All I know it does is liberate everyone from the evils caused by cis men and the patriarchy.

Well first I would say this isn't an opinion unique to transmascs, but thats the circle I orbit so I understand where that perception comes from.

The problem is that you really can't excise the problematic elements of TERFism simply by removing the overtly transphobic parts.

Radical feminism, both trans exclusive and "inclusive" hinge on the idea of Men (sometimes cis, sometimes not) are perpetrators and Women (and sometimes, vaguely, some* non-women)are victims. Putting aside the individual capability to cause harm which is easy enough to debunk, even on a societal level this is not telling the whole story. The Patriarchy is a system of societal control and allotment of power, and it aims to control everyone, men included. Most men, all but the most powerful in society, which is capitalist, christian cishetero white men, have the patriarchy weaponized against them!

"Cis men" as a class, as individuals, don't cause evil. They are just human beings. Human beings with equal capability to love and nurture and fight for what is right. Which is the other problem with radfeminism, is that it seeks to strip away this humanity from the people around you, and isolate you. and like...what is a cis man, anyway? Like I know the answer seems obvious, but at what point does "cis man" end and "nonbinary person" or "trans person" begin? What elements of cis-manhood cause evil? Where does that "evil" go when someone transitions or no longer identifies as a cis man?

This is, I think, the fundamental problem of "trans inclusive" radical feminism. In continuing to divide the world into Evil Men and Good Women, you STILL impose a system of gender essentialism in a way that does not coalesce with the ideas of queer liberation. A nonbinary person can be a cis man one day, come out as nonbinary and change nothing else about their life from that point. What then? Are they no longer evil? Were they ever evil? How do you even being to decide that without just using the same trans exclusive rhetoric you're supposedly fixing, anyway? And I'm not even getting into the impact this has on trans men, because we are put in this position of being a marginalized gender and victims of misogyny but also placed in this position of privilege due to being men that is not accurate to reality. And sure, maybe you can remedy that by always specifying cis men, but many TIRFs don't see that as a flaw of the ideology, anyway. They Do think trans men are gender traitors and Do think we inherit some sort of evil power the moment we become men.

And there is much, much more to be said on the topic of radical feminism and its pitfalls. These are just the broad points. The dehumanization of Cis Men as a class is not simpatico with queer liberation and it just never will be. It is a good question worth asking, because it can seem good on the surface unless you know what to look for.

[wordsandrobots]

IBO reference notes on . . . queerness

How has it taken me this long to write about this aspect of the show? (He asked rhetorically, staring at the enormous amount of fanfic that basically stands as a thesis statement on how very queer this part of the Gundam franchise is [as opposed to all the other terribly straight parts, he added, sarcastically].)

Anyway, let's do it. Full spoilers up to the end of the show will follow, together with discussion of child abuse and exploitation, since that is what IBO is all about.

Special thanks to @lilenui and @prezaki for their invaluable assistance in locating sources.

Statement of caveats: this work is an amateur analysis of the English-language localisations (subtitled and dubbed) of a piece of Japanese media. I do not speak or read Japanese. I am myself bi, which qualifies me to be attracted to more of the cast than the average viewer, and have a working knowledge of LGBTQ+ history in the UK and USA, which tells me nothing about the cultural and historical context in which this anime was made. As such, I will not be addressing the behind-the-scenes production or the corporate mandates surrounding it but will focus narrowly on what I perceive to be present in the text (hereafter meaning both the script and animation, and any additional fictional details provided elsewhere).

Queerness in Gundam

Some background before we dive in. To my knowledge, the first character in the Gundam franchise to be intentionally depicted as LGBTQ+ is Guin Sard Lineford from Turn A Gundam (1999). An ambitious young aristocrat who spends the series on the line between hero and villain, he is infatuated with protagonist Loran Cehack and the show makes little attempt to play this as anything other than one man falling in love with another.

This is entirely one-sided and not appreciated on Loran's part, although that seems to have less to do with it being homosexual attraction than with Guin's high-handed and entitled attitude to life, filtered through heavily gendered social norms. For plot reasons, Loran spends several episodes cross-dressing as 'Laura Rolla', corsets and all, and Guin continues referring to him as 'Laura' long after the deception is no longer required, saying it 'suits him better'. Guin is eventually called out on this by a third character, who accuses him of forcing an idea of feminity on the other man rather than stoop to place himself in the position of a 'wife'. Objectifying Loran is presented as of a piece with Guin's overall flaws as a person, to whit, putting his own views about how things should be above the material reality and desires of those around him.

Guin is also the only explicitly gay character in the show (I'm honestly not sure how to classify whatever Dianna Soreil and Kihel Heim have going on, but it's certainly not labelled in the text). Therefore no counterpoint is provided to demonstrate healthy queer relationships. I don't state this to dismiss his inclusion: he forms part of a smart, nuanced plot thread, and Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino had to fight to get Guin's homosexuality clearly included. But even so, Guin is a palpable step forward rather than a watershed moment, and the end result veers close to some nasty stereotypes about queer people imposing their desires on others.

There are other examples of characters transgressing gender norms in Turn A, most especially Loran's aforementioned cross-dressing. He is comfortable playing the part of 'Laura', in ways that mitigate viewing this situation as the extended joke it might be in another production. Funny moments do come up – particularly in the lead-in to his 'debut' as he acclimatises to the female attire of the show's pseudo-Edwardian setting and takes posture lesson – but he and the concept of a man in ladies' clothes are never made a subject of mockery. The same cannot be said for the character of Sochie Heim, whose attempts as a young woman to fulfil a gung-ho masculine role often turn comedic. This is part and parcel of her assaying militaristic modes of action, which are soundly mocked across the board. It nevertheless stands out next to Loran/Laura.

Further, Loran's status as a literal moon-child carries implications for his attitudes. His dismissal of existing social standards on Earth is very much presented as correct, and in keeping with what I know of Tomino's other writing and stated beliefs, but it dovetails unfortunately with a treatment of queerness as otherworldly, not something that may be found among an average population. We get another example of cross-dressing in the next-but-one series, Gundam 00 (2007, not a work Tomino helmed), where the usually male-presenting artificial lifeform Tieria Erde switches to a female presentation (in a ball-gown, no less) during a covert mission. This sufficiently parallels Loran's case, I assume it was a deliberate call-back, being as it is a disguise enacted by someone even less typical than a boy from the moon.

What I am driving at is that while Guin, Loran and Tieria may be characters who are queer or perform queerness in some manner, they do not necessarily represent an outright embracing of queerness as a mundane facet of everyday life.

Fast-forward to 2024 and the latest mainline Gundam show is a lesbian romance.

If you have been following my blog for a while, you will know I do not hold The Witch From Mercury in especially high regard. I think it is annoyingly messy, frequently half-baked, and, broadly-speaking, exactly as frustrating as I'd expect from the guy who wrote Code:Geass. It's still an explicit love story that opens with a clangingly blunt statement about the acceptance same-sex relationships and ends with the two female leads happily married to one other. For all its flaws, I genuinely think the central relationship between Suletta Mercury and Miorine Rembran is a nice piece of story-telling, not to mention admirably open about what it is doing. Like it or lump it, Gundam is gay now, properly, with a protagonist and co-protagonist who can be definitively labelled queer and whose romance appears entirely unremarkable for the setting (in terms of being same-sex; clearly there is a lot to remark upon otherwise).

I would be remiss if I did not mention that the conclusion of the series was accompanied by a certain amount of corporate arse-showing, with hollow attempts to walk back the ending seemingly for the sake of appeasing homophobic elements within and without the companies that produce Gundam. The frankly laughable nature of these actions stands testament to how unequivocal G-Witch is. It is flatly impossible in my opinion to interpret as anything other than flagrantly homosexual, and that's great.

Between this interesting but limited start and the full-throated present lies Iron-Blooded Orphans (2015), my absolute favourite and the show that got me writing slash fic after years of… not doing that. So: what is the deal with queerness in IBO?

Natural for a human

By my count, including all present spin-offs, there are three characters stated in-text as being attracted to people of the same gender (Yamagi Gilmerton, Iznario Fareed, Deira Nadira), two who are at the least open to the idea (Norba Shino, Mina Zalmfort), two whose mutual attraction is stated within the context of polyamory with a third person of the opposite gender (Atra Mixta, Kudelia Aina Bernstein), one whose sexuality is briefly hinted at (Chad Chaden), and one male character who is possibly not attracted to women (Orga Itsuka).

Let's get Iznario out of the way first, because the less time we spend on the actual paedophile, the better.

Lord Iznario Fareed is a rich, powerful aristocrat who sexually abuses young blonde boys and inadvertently sets large parts of the plot in motion as part of quasi-villain McGillis' backstory. In a lesser show, Iznario would be the embodiment of the 'predatory queer' stereotype Guin skirts the edge of. Here, however, he is very much not the only 'gay' character present and his proclivities demonstrate one of the many ways the world exploits vulnerable children, a core theme of the series. Early on, we see fleeting glimpses of young girls being pimped out on the streets of Mars. Iznario shows this social failing extends to the much richer Earth and although he is portrayed as the worst among the Gjallarhorn elite, they all abuse their power for personal gain. Thus, as much as the reveal of what he has done carries a certain shock value, it is not present purely for cheap impact. (This isn't the essay to discuss it, but the flashbacks to McGillis being abused as a child are a masterclass in how to frame such things around the victim, clearly communicating what's happening while avoiding gross voyeurism.)

I don't know how deliberate it is the canonical gay character who is shown in an entirely positive light fits the profile of Iznario's victims to a T, but it does underscore we're looking at a case of power allowing people to get away with hideous things, not a stand-in for queerness in general. To an extent I resent having to spell this out, since it seems so obvious Iznario is not fulfilling the role of a homophobic cliché. Sadly, the cliché exists and the point is worth discussion.

Moving swiftly on: Yamagi and Shino.

Yamagi Gilmerton is a small, quiet teenage boy with a somewhat withdrawn and acerbic personality, who spends much of Iron-Blooded Orphans nursing a hopeless crush on mobile suit pilot Norba Shino. Like the majority of the cast, Yamagi is a child soldier, but a mechanic rather than a combatant. Additional backstory commentary reveals that he struggled on joining CGS mercenary group due to his physique. Indeed, while this detail is not directly referenced in the anime itself, he is indeed drawn noticeably thinner than the other boys.

Again, we veer towards stereotypes, where a queer character is portrayed as weaker and more effeminate. Yet in spite of leaning this way in looks, Yamagi is an eminently capable person, never treated as lesser for fulfilling a support role rather than being a fighter. If anything, IBO goes out of its way to highlight how vital good mechanics are to mechanised warfare, and we see multiple examples of Yamagi being both assertive and kind of badass. At one point, he scales, unaided, an 18 metre tall mobile suit that's collapsed to its knees. When he and Shino are revisited in spin-off game Urdr Hunt (soon to be some form of animated production), he pilots a spaceship within an active battle-zone, flying escort for a damaged freighter as it retreats. In Season 2, he's comfortable ordering Tekkadan's new recruits around and is the first person to properly chew Orga out for his failings as a leader. Far from being an outlier among the protagonists, Yamagi is equally brave and dedicated to the cause, irrespective of his sexuality.

To be fair, he does tend to clam up and grow more awkward around the object of his affections. To be equally fair, he has the misfortune of having fallen for the most oblivious himbo on God's red Mars.

Shino is a big, boisterous warrior, the polar opposite of Yamagi in personality and physicality. He embodies Tekkadan's machismo, eagerly anticipating the chance to prove their strength and generally being a standard bearer for becoming the biggest, baddest group around. Things are not as straightforward as they seem on the surface, however. He shows a good awareness of when the group is in over their heads – going so far as to suggest retreat in the face of bad odds several times – and he is not nearly as sure of himself as he might first appear. He displays a wide streak of insecurity about his abilities as a soldier, reacting badly to people questioning his dedication or competency. And he crumbles completely when some of his comrades are killed as the result of a split-second mistake on his part, stating a wish to have died in their place. Thereafter, he acts in ways that read as choosing to take all the risks on himself rather than go through more loss. It makes him an interesting mix, someone who acts as a cheerleader, boosting everyone else's morale, while swallowing his own doubts and personal fatalism.

He is also presented as one of the most sexually active members of Tekkadan, using his wages to visit brothels to sleep with women. Indeed, he is frequently found extolling the virtues of the opposite sex, referencing collections of pornography (at least in the English dub), and generally being a very typical teenage boy about such matters.

Given this, you might assume Yamagi is longing hopelessly for a straight man. That is indeed the idea the show teases us with for much of its run (can something be straight-baiting? I feel if anything ever earned that title, it's this). OK, Shino's fond of Yamagi as a friend and frequently relies on his assistance in improving his fighting ability, and per ancillary material, is the one who got Yamagi transferred to the mechanics corps in the first place, rescuing him from struggling in the infantry. And sure, Shino spends an awful lot of time in very close proximity to Yamagi, including literally pulling him into the cockpit to assist with a mission. And yes, Shino is absolutely a flamboyant creature, sporting gold ear studs and an attraction to the colour pink, ensuring his mobile suits are painted all over magenta in order to stand out on the battlefield. And certainly, Shino is extremely empathetic, adjusting his attitude depending on his impressions of other people, such that he dials his boisterousness down in Yamagi's presence, displaying a far more gentle affection than he does with his other friends.

But clearly he hasn't noticed Yamagi is head over heels for him.

Right?

Well, towards the end of Season 2, during another moment where Yamagi is literally sitting on Shino's knee, Shino proposes the two of them drink together all night long once the fighting is over. Not only is this an unambiguously romantic overture (he's asking while pushing aside the fringe that normally covers half of Yamagi's face, in order to look into his eyes properly), it comes after a joke several episodes earlier in which Shino has to explain to a less worldly comrade that a girl inviting you for a drink is not a request to go out with the whole gang but a far more intimate gesture (I say explain, it's more expressing incredulity Akihiro didn't realise Lafter was asking him on a date). Later, it is revealed Shino did indeed work out that Yamagi 'likes' him (to his friend Eugene's exasperation that it took him so long to notice), and he reacted with amazed delight to discover there was someone in Tekkadan who'd fall in love with 'a guy like me'.

He'd assumed because Tekkadan is a family (a description provided by their ally Naze, which everyone just kind of runs with), romantic love wasn't possible between them. Having worked through this mental block and finally realised the blindingly obvious, he renews his desire to protect Tekkadan as long as he lives, refuting his previous view of himself as an expendable human shield and heading out with every intention of surviving all the way to the end.

And because IBO is an exquisitely-written tragedy, he is promptly killed while attempting a futile one-man attack against their enemies, his advances on Yamagi forming part of a long build-up whereby the boy who loves him provides the tools he needs to charge into a suicide run.

Right then. *drags out the reading comprehension soap-box* I have seen some people refer to this as an example of the 'bury your gays' trope, and there is nothing more likely to get me manifesting behind you in the form of an irate shoebill than to do likewise. 'Bury your gays' refers to a tendency for queer characters in fiction to disproportionately suffer tragic fates. This is a writing choice usually rooted in the idea queer relationships are inherently tragic, either because they are viewed as a perversion of 'correct' forms of love, or because of some misguided idea the prevalence of homophobia means queer joy is impossible. I am going to be charitable and concede this is indeed a case where one half of a budding homosexual relationship dies horribly. But, as always, the context matters.

All but one of the romantic relationships established prior to the epilogue of Iron-Blooded Orphans end in death. Of the two that survive in some capacity, one is a heterosexual background romance between two older characters and the other is a pair of women I shall be covering later. IBO is a story about child soldiers that does not shy away from the fact these are teenagers being fed into a meat-grinder. That the director's original intention of killing every named character was toned down (to the series immeasurable benefit, in my opinion) dos not change a narrative arc towards doom.

Within this, Yamagi and Shino aren't singled out for being queer. The coyness around Shino's eventually-evident bisexuality serves to generate an instant of hope and relief right before the rug is pulled from under everyone's feet. Where Shino's death does differ from those of other characters is in presentation: he dies alone and does not get any form of farewell or the passing-on moment afforded to others. But that is only to be expected, since we're talking about the point where it becomes clear there is no saving the situation. It's a cruel, abrupt moment of bad luck, puncturing the heroic idea of scraping victory at the last second. Shino flew out intending to live and he died anyway. A queer relationship forming part of what he was fighting for is an almost incidental detail.

(As an aside, I am aware of two other examples in Gundam fiction where a pilot and a mechanic have a doomed love affair. One is in Char's Counterattack, where a male engineer's romance with a female pilot ends with them both being abruptly killed, and the other is from Gundam AGE, where a female mechanic sacrifices herself for the greater good, leaving a male pilot to mourn her loss for the rest of the series. Shino and Yamagi reiterate this same concept.)

Stepping back from the tragedy, Yamagi's love for Shino is as delightfully underplayed as the other relationships in the show, with little emotional melodrama being wrung from the romance itself. Yamagi can't bring himself to declare his feelings, frequently turning cold instead and perpetuating Shino's misunderstanding of where they stand. Yet Shino ultimately proves enthusiastic for the idea, rendering moot any concerns Yamagi had over getting turned down (going beyond the text, a Q&A with the series' director confirmed Shino was written as bi). Equally, in the aftermath of Shino's death, Eugene comforts Yamagi by relating the truth of Shino's earlier realisation and even going so far as to rebuff Yamagi for implying there's something wrong with him for grieving. This and other interactions in the same episode imply those nearest to the pair were well aware of Yamagi's desires and had absolutely no problem with them. The prevailing attitude within Tekkadan is one of complete acceptance for its members and this is no different.

Indeed, for me, the most important part of how queerness is represented in IBO is that it is treated as just another aspect of the diversity of the cast. I've seen it stated that viewing homosexuality as a natural part of human existence was Tomino's motivation in making Guin gay. IBO presents us with the same idea, far more seamlessly and far more positively.

Now, let's leave the anime proper and look at the same-sex pairing from spin-off manga Iron-Blooded Orphans: Moon Steel.

Deira Nadira and Mina Zalmfort are part of the Gjallarhorn nobility and their marriage was arranged to strengthen relations between their two families. We see an example of a similar political match in the main show, where the heir to the Fareed family, McGillis, is betrothed to the second child of the Bauduins, the much, much younger Almiria. That this can take place regardless of the gender of the participants has big implications for the functioning of a bloodline-focused aristocracy. Presumably it indicates they are happy to use medical technology to ensure the Nadira family continues into the next generation, and if same-sex marriages are thus permitted, that means fewer factors to worry about when it comes to perpetuation. Whether male-male weddings are allowed too remains an open question; given the existence of real-world double-standards, it is possible Deira and Mina represent the only acceptable form of homosexuality. Nevertheless, that it is accepted speaks volumes. Gjallarhorn is not an especially progressive organisation, built as it is on rigid class structures and notions of human purity. Yet here we are.

Perhaps we should have expected that the norms around gender in this system don't correspond to strictly patriarchal patterns from the real world. Carta Issue, a key player in Season 1 of the anime, is the only child of the Issue Family's current leader and positioned as his sole heir, irrespective of the fact she's a woman. The logical inference is that any children of hers would count as Issues, rather than belonging to a potential husband's family. Deira is similarly the heir to her father's position, although intriguingly, it's not outright confirmed if she is his only child or simply the oldest. The possibility exists that gender is a non-factor in determining inheritance.

With respect to sexuality, Deira seems pretty obviously intended to be a lesbian. Her relationship with Mina is presented as one they are both happy with, despite it being an arranged by their parents, and Deira is depicted in the manual for Gundam Gremory's model kit as favouring the clothes of 'a handsome man'. She doesn't present that way within the manga' story, first showing up wearing the standard unisex Gjallarhorn pilot-suit, then wearing a formal gown for a meeting while in an official capacity. But she is depicted wearing masculine clothes in silhouette when initially mentioned and in a post-story panel at the back of the final volume.

(Another aside: the fan translations I use for this part of the manga refer to Deira using male pronouns when she's introduced. However, that could simply be down to the poor quality of said translation; she's consistently referred to using female pronouns in official materials and the game adaptation of this scene has her named as simply 'Lord Nadira', the standard appellation for Gjallarhorn family heads.)

Whether Deira's code-switching is the result of institutional expectations around her role or personal preference, it adds extra texture to her depiction. While civilian garb was designed for the adult version of Carta and closely matches conservative gender expectations for a woman, she's never shown wearing it, so we don't have a point of comparison to judge what's required of a character in Deira's position.

Regarding Mina, you'll notice I grouped her with Shino rather than the characters whose sexuality I consider to be stated outright. With Shino, the nature of his sexuality is not put absolutely beyond question in the text. This is splitting hairs due to the overt nature of what's on screen but the fact remains, the anime doesn't clarify if his being open to Yamagi's love means he already thinks of himself as bisexual, or if this is something he hadn't considered before. With Mina, it's more a case that I'm unwilling to label her one way or the other based on the available information. Deira carries sufficient signifiers, I find little room for doubt over the intention. We also have an outright statement that she holds great affection for Mina regardless of being obliged to consider her an eventual romantic partner. Indeed, she becomes so upset by believing her fiance dead, she runs off to Antarctica in a Gundam. But the exact depth of Mina's feelings in return is not discussed.

In addition, Mina is considerably younger than Deira. McGillis and Almiria's match takes place when he is (probably) somewhere in his late twenties and she is nine, with plans for the union made four years prior. This is not great, to put it mildly, albeit fairly typical of how such things have historically worked for nobility. Based on appearances and how they are treated by the rest of the cast, I would assume Mina to be in her mid-teens, and Deira to be in her early twenties (annoyingly, exact ages are provided for several characters in Moon Steel, just not these two). A less dramatic gap (and I don't believe Mina is meant to be quite as young as her appearance perhaps suggests), yet still significant when one of the people involved is below what we'd consider adulthood.

There is no indication of anything untoward going on, within the confines of the situation, similar to how we're given no indication McGillis is abusive towards Almiria. Any comparisons with Lord Iznario's activities lie purely along the axis of how children are exploited by adults even without suffering directly. All indications are that Deira and Mina have made the most of something they have little choice in. Regardless, I still feel more comfortable describing Mina as open to being in a relationship with another woman, rather than pinning her to a specific preference.

Continuing the theme of things where doubt or ambiguity exist, let's discuss some characters were there shouldn't be any: Atra and Kudelia.

I don't know about you, but I find it extraordinarily hard to read this as anything other than a three-way love-confession. Still, in the interests of fair play, let's review the wriggle room for declaring this something else.

Kudelia Aina Bernstein and Atra Mixta are love interests of nominal protagonist Mikazuki Augus, in an iteration of another tried-and-true trope, that of a male lead inexplicably being attractive to the female characters in his orbit. Or rather, it would be if the show didn't take such pains to demonstrate why these girls fall for him, setting up a long-established crush on Atra's part (rooted in him being the first person in the world to be nice to her) and a mutual respect on Kudelia's that gets spurred to more when Mikazuki randomly decides to kiss her because she 'looked cute' (Mikazuki has the manners of a feral stray raised on the streets, because that's precisely what he is).

Justification aside, this has the makings of a traditional triangle, that is, one without a connecting base, which we might expect to be resolved by either Kudelia or Atra 'losing out'. For a few episodes, this does indeed seem where we are headed. Then Atra discovers the concept of polyamory via the polygamous Turbines group and all bets are off.

Having realised it is perfectly possible for a family to consist of multiple romantic partners, Atra proceeds to work towards ensuring everyone gets everything they want. Strictly speaking, this doesn't mean she is attracted to Kudelia as well – even if she clearly recognises Kudelia as an attractive person from the start and…

You know what? Acknowledging that the information about their eventual marital status was only stated in interviews at live events with no official record and seems to have been framed around raising the son Atra has with Mika, I'm going to abandon the pretence of both-sided objectivity and go straight for the throat. Turns out my patience for soft-footing this lasts about as long as it takes to say 'bi-erasure'.

Over the course of Season 1, Atra not only decides the end-game is some form of three-person wedding, she also:

Shows no jealousy over Mikazuki and instead chides him for not providing the correct emotional support to the girl he kissed.

Spends a great deal of time with Kudelia and enthusiastically throws herself into furthering Kudelia's goals, without necessarily understanding the technicalities.

Covers for Kudelia by pretending to be her during a confrontation with Gjallarhorn soldiers, getting herself soundly beaten up in order to prevent them from chasing after the real deal.

Drives an armoured car through a battlefield for Kudelia's sake, safely delivering her to a vital rendezvous.

Leaps in front of a massive mobile suit to push Kudelia out of its path, physically shielding the other girl with her body.

As much as it pains me to resort to the 'if this were a man and a woman, would it read as romantic' crudity – yes! Yes it would! Especially since in Season 2, Atra presents Kudelia with a good-luck charm bracelet she has woven, something she previously did for Mikazuki explicitly out of having a crush on him. I'm all for embracing platonic love (which is why Takaki and Aston are not featuring in this rundown) and there's nothing in the above list necessarily entailing attraction beyond deep friendship. But when Atra consciously repeats her actions towards Mikazuki (someone she goes on to definitely have sex with) with Kudelia and it leads to the scene between them where they declare how they feel about each other and Mikauki, looking for non-romantic angles takes more effort.

After all, if we are to read Shino's openness to Yamagi's affection from the things he says and how he looks saying them, we can certainly do the same for Atra and Kudelia's use of the word 'like' in reference to one another and their reactions to hearing it said of them. (Obligatory note that if there is some nuance in the original Japanese the translation doesn't capture, I'd love to hear about it. The English scripts, however, leave little to the imagination.)

It is indisputable that Atra feels a strong affection towards Kudelia and while I have been focusing on her a lot (she is by far the most proactive member of the triad), Kudelia reciprocates at every opportunity she is presented with. Even if there truly wasn't an intention to portray this as exactly equivalent to Atra and Mikazuki, the end result manages to be on par with Yamagi and Shino. Consider Kudelia and Mikazuki, for example. In terms of portrayal and the two-girls-one-guy trope being explored here, they have the same level of chemistry and the same absence of overt consummation as Kudelia and Atra, and it would hardly be a serious position to claim the show does not place the two of them in romantic conjunction, now would it?

You may at this point be wondering why I am getting so defensive of reading Kudelia and Atra as romantic partners. Honestly, I am too. On reflection, I think it's because IBO is playing around with such a worn-out and insipid means of wringing drama from characters who should know better, I keep searching for the catch. And yet there isn't one. This show really did respond to a nascent love chevron by having the mousy, homely girl tell the governor's beautiful daughter to shut up and get in the polycule, and turned it into a true triangle.

That's wonderful. I cannot properly express the wave of joy and relief that came over me when I realised this was the direction they were taking. It ends in tragedy, of course, Mikazuki giving up any chance of a peaceful life to die in battle, far away from the women who love him. But their lives continue because of his sacrifice and by all appearances they remain together. In some ways, for the overarching message of hope persisting on the back of heartbreak, the precise details of that arrangement don't particularly matter. So why not take the gayest reading possible?

What an excellent segue into a blink-and-you'll-miss-it, probably-stretching-too-far, nonetheless-compelling potential bit of queerness: Chad in the series epilogue.

One of the many tertiary characters in Tekkadan, Chad Chaden has minor speaking parts throughout Season 1 and a larger role in Season 2. He initially appears during a particularly dire early moment when it looks like everyone is about to be killed by attacking mobile suits. His obvious resignation to this fate sets the tone for a rather dour personality, at least while on the clock. Chad starts out as human debris, a person enslaved after a space battle and sold to the CGS military group as free labour. This gives him a very matter-of-fact attitude towards fighting and the kill-or-be-killed nature of being forced into it – he voices the sentiment that even when facing other human debris, they can't afford to show mercy.

Off the clock, Chad displays a more sensitive personality. He seems studious, learning about interplanetary communications from Kudelia's maid Fumitan and later being promoted to leader of Tekkadan's Earth branch. He has some difficulty acclimatising to being treated as a free person, proving unsure about the concept of wearing a smart suit instead of his normal fatigues. And he grows anxious when he returns to Mars to discover nobody told him two of the few adults in the group (Yukinojo and Merribit) had started dating, worrying that he's no longer 'one of the guys'.

The most we learn about his relationship preferences prior to the series epilogue comes in a comedic sequence about a third of the way into Season 2, when Shino suggests a trip to a local brothel. Eugene responds by proclaiming that he's realised money will not buy him true love. This prompts Chad to ask Merribit if this is true and, on her saying she supposes so, opts out of the trip as well. Judging by his body-language in the next frame where he appears, this is possibly a decision he regrets – perhaps owing to his anxieties, since he just passed up the chance for some team-bonding.

None of this is directly relevant to the topic of this essay. If anything, the scene I just described suggests that, like Eugene, Chad has previously gone along with Shino in paying for sex with women, only to discover he wanted more than just physical intimacy. But then we get the exchange in Kudelia's office during the last episode, following a time-skip after Tekkadan's defeat and dissolution. Now working for Kudelia as an assistant of some kind, Chad notes that Merribit is shortly to give birth to her and Yukinojo's second child, saying he and Yamagi intend to meet up later to plan a celebration. Eugene reacts with amused disbelief, accusing them of just wanting an excuse to go out drinking, to which Chad retorts, 'what's wrong with that?'

And the thing is he's blushing when he does. Which may simply be because Eugene is accusing him of slacking off – IBO characters blush all the time and their embarrassment is frequently to do with being caught acting immature or otherwise against how they want people to see them. But given the weight that 'drinking the night away' carries in regards to Yamagi following Shino's actions shortly prior to his death, it is easy to speculate this represents something more specific.

As far as I can recall, Chad and Yamagi do not interact at all over the course of the show's two seasons, meaning these lines present a rather unexpected combination of characters. Eugene would have seemed a more likely candidate to associate with Yamagi. He's positioned as Shino's closest friend, he comforts Yamagi over his grief, and they are together for much of the climax to the series' plot. So what has happened in the years since, that Eugene's teasing should elicit a blush from Chad instead?

If we put on our shipping goggles, it's far from a nonsensical pairing. Chad goes through an arc not too dissimilar to Shino's. He is knocked into a coma while protecting an ally from a bomb blast and subsequently the Earth branch gets swept into a war orchestrated by one of the factions within Gjallarhorn. On recovering, he blames himself for the many deaths that result, echoing Shino's line about thinking it better if he'd died in place of his comrades. On returning to Mars, he jumps head-first into mobile suit training, determined to make up for his perceived failure as a leader and cheering himself up through rigorous activity. Different though their personalities appear on the surface, there are clear commonalities here. Further, Chad's responses to his traumatic experiences have a more measured quality to them than Shino's. He is not nearly as reckless and provides clear directions to his comrades even while acting as a decoy against a dangerous enemy, rather than abandon any attempt to be an effective leader. Taken together, and coupled to a more long-term view of romance, these qualities might make him a 'safer' version of things Yamagi loved about Shino, creating space for them to be drawn together.

Or perhaps they're simply the most logical points of contact between the ex-Tekkadan survivors at the Admoss Company and Kassapa Factory and intend to make that an excuse to get companionably plastered for no greater reason than it being a nice time. I am speculating over a couple of lines and an animation choice. Nevertheless, it does not feel like unreasonable speculation. When we already have a veritable gaggle of characters who are queer or may trivially be read as such, it's hardly a stretch to assume one more.

Chad/Yamagi doesn't appear to be a thread the fandom at large has pulled on much, likely because the pairing of Shino and Yamagi is so prominent, it eclipses a mere throwaway possibility. But I'm glad it exists within easy reach. And even if we take off our goggles, these lines demonstrate life for the characters has not stopped. The ex-slave and the gay kid are not stuck, trapped by the tragedies of their past. They have instead grown in both confidence and happiness and now have peaceful, stable lives where they're on going-out-drinking terms. That above all is why I wanted to explore this exchange: it reinforces Iron-Blooded Orphans' rejection of the idea the suffering people like Chad and Yamagi go through is perpetual or inevitable.

OK, one more character to look at. Let's talk about Orga and asexuality.

Orga Itsuka, leader of Tekkadan and instigator of the series' events, is notable for his charisma, his drive to provide a safe home for his comrades, and his complete unsuitability for the grown-up activities he attempts. Trying to party all night leaves him puking up his dinner. He forces himself into a suit and tie to handle the administration of a break-out paramilitary company, despite finding it stultifying and bewildering. His goals spin like a weather-cock, as he's surrounded by older characters possessing strong convictions while unable to stick to his own. And he is ultimately undone by an unwillingness to ask for help, having assumed that, as leader, he must decide everything alone.

I suspect his expressed lack of interest in women is intended to help convey overall immaturity. Orga is a good soldier and tactician, but he plainly isn't prepared for adulthood, lacking the grasp on the complexities of life that implies. Making him uncomfortable about sex serves to heighten the impression of a teenager trying to navigate circumstances for which he's not yet ready.

Relatedly, it should be stressed Orga stating he 'doesn't care' about woman is a response to Eugene asking if he agrees love and kindness are what's important, as opposed to Shino's endorsement of boobs. On hearing this response, Eugene proceeds to mock his commander for inexperience. That he himself has only just had his first sexual experience with another person and previously said much the same about not caring about sex simply proves hypocrisy is a fundamental aspect of Eugene's characterisation. The whole scene is very teenage.

Matters have not improved much when Orga and Eugene's dynamic is revisited in one of the side-stories released via the Iron-Blooded Orphans G mobile game. A year and change later, Eugene continues to act superior about having 'experience' where Orga doesn't.

Orga takes this rather poorly.

(Subtitles by @trafalgarlog)

Eventually Merribit has to shout at them to stop being brats, shaming them for behaving like argumentative children. It's funny – and then you remember they basically still are children and this is headed towards more carnage that will not spare them for being young. Such it is to engage with Iron-Blooded Orphans.

What does any of this tell us about Orga's sexuality? In principle, taking it as a device to convey immaturity, nothing. Orga's persisting virginity could simply mean he's not worked out this aspect of himself yet. He is a busy young man who likely hasn't had the time to try.

Alternatively it could mean he is gay. Mikazuki/Orga is an extremely popular ship in the fandom and we might take Orga's professed lack of interest in women as 'evidence' of him swinging the other way.

Or we could take my view, that Orga is asexual and his embarrassment is rooted in just not getting what the big deal is.

To immediately clarify, I don't think he is ace because he 'hasn't worked out what he wants', I think he's ace because he blushes on admitting he doesn't care about women and does not try to prove otherwise once he's in a position where he could easily do so. In circling back to the same joke for the side-story, the writers portray Orga as continuing to be uninterested in sex and sensitive over being needled about it. Again, a feasible interpretation is that he's into guys. Yet this is an argument with Eugene, whose response to the idea of Yamagi being in love with Shino is basically 'you mean you didn't notice?' Eugene is a dork and jerk; he isn't bigoted. None of the Tekkadan guys are. It's unclear if homophobia is even a factor in the setting. Sexism is, but when someone as superficially macho as Shino is comfortable with male/male attraction, and there are same-sex weddings inside Gjallarhorn, we cannot assume stigma exists around being gay. So why should Orga be worried, unless it goes beyond a question of who you're attracted to and into the answer being 'nobody at all'?

When you're surrounded by people who happily wax lyrical about how the joys of sex make you a real man, the absence of a libido might easily become a sore point.

Again, I'm supposing. Again, there is room to do so. As I touched on with Chad, it is easy to read queerness into the text when the assumption of straightness has been taken away, which is something this show does wholeheartedly and deliberately.

Orga Itsuka is one of the first characters I looked at and realised, not only shouldn't I assume heterosexuality, I shouldn't assume sexual attraction at all. I cannot credit Iron-Blooded Orphans alone with this. I do credit it with being a piece of media that applies itself to inclusiveness in ways quite remarkable for a show about giant robot fights, produced to market toys.

The word we want here is 'normalisation'. IBO has a lot to say about what constitutes 'normal' and a lot of it accords well with my own views, particularly those that have me twitching whenever anybody demands we 'be normal' about something. Normality is horrible. It is cruel and it is callous. 'Normal' is a world run on exploitation, on slave labour and on police savagery. Normal is children forced to risk their lives to earn the money required to feed themselves, because it is normal for their parents be gone, or incapable of supporting them. War is normal. Corruption of political systems is normal. Death coming more rapidly for those deemed expendable by society is very, very normal.

But so is protest. The drive to do something, to change things. The capacity for caring about each other. Love. 'Normal' is just a statement about what surrounds us every day, for worse and for better. In too many pieces of fiction, normality is narrowed, rendered a neater, cleaner picture, often excluding the kinds of people we might run into on the street, or walk past, or see on the news, distant and dehumanised.

Queerness is normal, yet for a long time it has been one of the first things to be cut out of fictional worlds. And when it is present, it's a big deal. An object lesson or a cry of triumph over breaking free of unfair strictures. I love stories about queer joy and victory. Heck, I'm a sucker for a good, soppy gay romance. But these aren't the only kinds of stories we tell. Sometimes we need to reflect the worst aspects of the world and what it does to normal people.

In attempting this, Iron-Blooded Orphans commits to an idea of 'normal people' that includes those who are gay or bisexual, those of colour and those we'd call white, the polyamorous, the illiterate, the desperate, the powerful, those who throw themselves into the fight with everything they have, and those who are simply kind. Those who are accepting, understanding and compassionate. Those who need to be accepted, who struggle to be understood, who suffer for a lack of compassion.

There are all sorts of people in IBO and – as a certain cheery, violent dumbass once said – man do I love it. I don't believe it is reading against the spirit of the thing to imagine more diversity than gets outright stated, to interpret one of the leads as ace or suppose another side character is bi or pansexual. It would seem entirely natural if they were.

Everyone's welcome here, down among the debris and the bloodshed, where hope is precious and fleeting and still somehow endures. So why shouldn't we raise a few extra pride flags?

Queer as in 'fuck you'

This all said, taken as a whole, Iron-Blooded Orphans is not a story about queerness or queer romance. Nowhere is this clearer than in its ending.

I skipped over the framing of the final scenes of the anime when I discussed Kudelia and Atra. They form a striking contrast with the ending of The Witch from Mercury, where the conclusion is directly focused around Suletta and Miorine's love for one another, their bonds of wedlock, and the happiness they have found together. This follows from the show being primarily about their relationship. In Iron-Blooded Orphans, the ending focuses not on Kudelia's feelings toward Atra, but those she has for Akatsuki, Mikazuki's son, with Eugene even saying she's eager to go see 'the man she loves', setting up a brief moment of uncertainty over who the character with Mikazuki's outline actually is.

The nature of Kudelia and Atra's relationship post-time-skip is implied rather than stated: in the English versions of the script, they do not refer to each other using terms suggesting they are married, although Atra has dropped her habitual 'Miss' from the front of Kudelia's name. They do not have wedding rings (redundant as those would be alongside the charm bracelets) and Akatsuki does not call Kudelia 'mom'. That they are raising him together is suggested very strongly, in line with Mikazuki asking Kudelia to be guardian of his child if he died. There are non-romantic ways of taking this idea, though, and none of these are closed off as viable interpretations.

But why should we expect some definite statement about romantic status when the point being conveyed is how Tekkadan's legacy continues to shape the world? This is a story concerned with the exploitation underpinning the world and the effort required to make even the smallest wide-scale change. It is about how people trapped at the bottom of the pecking order are still people, still human, messy and complex. It is about their pointless deaths, they ways they struggle on until those deaths come for them, and why they matter, even if the world forgets them.

Mikazuki, the living weapon, the human sacrifice for Orga Itsuka's reckless ambitions, leaves behind a child who will grow up in a more peaceful time, in a society slightly better off than when he and Orga were starving on Chyrse's streets. He doesn't live to see it; Akatsuki does. For all the failures, the attempt wasn't a waste. Don't you dare disrespect the people who died by saying it was.

This is where the epilogue centres, on Akatsuki and on Kudelia's cherishing of the world Mikazuki and everyone else built. Atra and Kudelia's relationship is there, a part of the gentler life they now have (Atra's desires were always towards the version of her existence where Mikazuki retires to a farm; here she fulfils the dream with Kudelia alone). It just doesn't need to take up space for the ending to land.

Yet, as I pour over how queerness is incorporated into Iron-Blooded Orphans, I find myself considering the struggles queer people face in reality. The victims of the AIDS crisis, dehumanised by indifferent institutions. Section 28 and the attempted destruction of knowledge around non-heterosexual forms of love. Riots and campaigns, voices raised loud and proud. How we are equated with dirt and corruption, reduced down to facts others find disgusting. The name-calling. The petty, pathetic posturing that makes everyday existence pointlessly harder.

So it goes for space-rats and degenerates alike.

I am lucky. My life is about as far from that of a child soldier as it is possible to get. My sexuality has been largely invisible. My gender matches the one most favoured by my society. I still have more common cause with those born in poverty on the other side of the world than I will ever have with the aristocrats and billionaires who shape the direction of my country. Because we hold many causes of misery in common. Because we share the same capacities for joy and suffering. Because our humanity is so easily cast aside by those we will never be able to touch.

There is always a place for stories uncomplicatedly about queer love conquering all. Equally, it is important to recognise the places queerness overlaps with stories about the many other ways the world casts people out. It is vital to be able to explore loss, futility and heartbreak. It is essential to capture why we strive onwards despite how heavily tragedy might weight us down.

We may be doomed. Our lives still matter. To ourselves, to each other and, whether they remember or not, to those who come after us.

So, no: for all the queer characters it contains and the many more we might trivially imagine queerness into, Iron-Blooded Orphans is not gay in the vein of The Witch From Mercury. It is not a happy story.

But it is a tenaciously hopeful one and, from certain angles, that alone looks queer as hell.

---------

Happy UK/US Pride Month – in honour and memory of Marsha P Johnson and everyone else who refused to go quietly.

I shall leave you with one of the least straight things ever to be included in any Gundam show.

[Index for further writing]

[caffeineandsociety]

"We need weirder queers!"

You couldn't handle ace people in 2016 and half of you still can't until you can use them as an excuse to call other queer people gross sex addicts.

You can't handle aro people.

You can't handle bears.

You can't handle leather daddies.

You've turned "twink" into a synonym for "faggot (derogatory)".

You can't handle transfems who aren't perfect supermodels who are only ever horny in a way you find palatable, if at all.

You can't handle transmascs who aren't constantly apologizing for being the misogynistic gender traitors terfs say we are and removing ourselves from "women's spaces" even more thoroughly than you demand of cis men and offering ourselves up as sacrificial lambs and denying any oppression aimed at us exists Because #Feminism - hell, half of you can't handle transmascs you can't conceptualize as "alt girls who use he/him" at all.

You can't handle nonbinary people without pigeonholing them into "masc-aligned" and "fem-aligned" regardless of whether or not they identify with such concepts, and/or you turn "nonbinary" into just another box in a discrete and exclusive trinary.

You love multigender people...until they want to go into a space you want to keep gender-segregated.

You love butches...until they're on the transmasc cusp, let alone definitively transmasc, and want that to be ACTUALLY respected, not just paid lip service to. Or until they're fat and don't have huge knockers to AWOOGA at, and heaven forbid that's due to top surgery. Or until they're transfem and not concerned about getting "fem enough" to be butch first. Or, or, or...

You still haven't stopped the "women and nonbinary people" crap.

You can't handle queer POC whose experiences of queerness don't line up perfectly with your white cis-but-"inclusive" feminist theory.

You can't handle disabled queers - if we have common invisible disabilities, we're inherently talking over people who Have It Worse if we open our mouths at all; if we have uncommon or more visible disabilities, well, we can't just expect the world to bend over backward for something sooooo hard to anticipate, and if we have highly stigmatized disabilities, we're evil abusers just like the stereotypes say.

Like I agree with your stated sentiment but who exactly are the weird queers you want?

[drdemonprince]

I forget if it was a post or an article but one thing that had bothered me a LOT about transmisandry stuff was this person claiming that his male relatives were way more progressive and understanding to him than his female relatives because they invited him to sit with them and socialise with other men while the women did all the chores and then the women got pissy about it and made (admittedly) transphobic comments about abandoning the women and getting out of chores. Everyone seemed to be agreeing with this guy too, and it bothered me so much that this was being framed as the cis men being progressive and better people to be around. It was textbook misogyny at play in the home and that misogyny becoming trans inclusive doesn't make it okay and doesn't make those cis men progressive allies. It is definitely weird to me that this person saw his manhood being respected by cis men of the family and didn't reject the idea that being a man involved putting all the chores onto the women, instead joining in with that practice. I do not at all fault him for being rightly annoyed and hurt at the comments from the women, but I do find it suspect how this guy and many others like him abandon all solidarity with the women in their lives that easily and then uphold misogynistic cis men as progressive because they were nice to the guy personally.

yeah dude it's fucking INSANE to feel like the men roping you into a misogynistic ritual is somehow some transgender inclusion victory.

I've also heard some trans guys talk about how once they began being accepted as a man, the cis dudes in their life would include them in really misogynistic locker room talk and degrading of women's bodies. some trans guys rightly speak to how traumatic that can be -- it's the same thing as the dynamic above. Powerful cishet men LOVE to flaunt the power of being a man by performatively including younger men (or people "new to manhood" as they see trans guys) within the ritual of degrading women. it's weird as fuck to consider any of that to be compliment, or to understand it as anything but the rampant misogyny that it is.

Personally, I went from very stubbornly REFUSING to ever contribute to the gathering of plates and doing of dishes after a family meal because of #feminism when I was a "girl" to being really over the top in involving myself in chores and making myself as helpful as possible as a "man." The former was a little bit self-serving in retrospect I admit but the throughline is that I was always put off by these sexist scripts and was deliberately gender non-conforming. whats the fucking point of being trangsendger if you're just gonna reinforce the most reprehensible sexist shit.

[velvetvexations]

God it makes me so angry when I see people claiming trans men & transmascs are privileged because they have some ~ special access to lesbian spaces ~ when trans women are often unwelcome in them, or that they constantly try to "claim some connection to their AGAB" and "play it up" etc...

I understand where the complaints come from because yes, it truly feels like shit to see another group of trans people being seen as "technically belonging more than you" in these gendered spaces just because they had an AGAB in common with the cis queers in there while you're treated differently or straight up excluded because of yours. I understand feeling resentful, feeling that it's unfair, fearing the other trans people's perceived ability to "put you in your place" (as they're seen as a "truer" member of the group than you), wondering if they'll ever randomly use that to throw you under the bus if they stop wanting to play nice, all these fears and worries and unpleasant feelings. GUESS WHY. Because it's the same with gay men's spaces. It's not some sort of unique transmasc privilege or AFAB privilege or whatever. Yet I also understand that when transfems are "accepted" in a space for gay men, it doesn't mean that they're magically treated well by the cis gay men or actually, truly hold any meaningful power in that space. So why can't the reverse be true ?

There's straight up stuff like, gay bathhouses letting trans women in while not accepting trans men, or doing "trans nights" but for trans women only (aka the only type of trans they accept). This isn't the proof of some transfem privilege or whatever. But god, the double standard drives me crazy.

Constantly having to see shit ranging from some transfems talking about how there's some sort of super special lifelong inner experience and suffering unique to having been AMAB and feminine, shared with gay/GNC cis men but somehow impossible for gay/GNC trans men to experience or comprehend. To seeing some transfems reclaim stuff like "faggot" or something (which is fine) and then act faggotier-than-thou because they have the True Experience and Insight, they're edgier, more "real", more of an authority, unlike the clueless little transmascs who are basically posers unable to understand the Real Gay Life (less fine). To hearing how ballroom culture is the pillar of gay culture and is for transfems and cis gay men (the ballroom slang label for "gay men" excludes gay trans men btw). To seeing gay and drag pageants stating in their rules that they're open to "biological males only", and seeing them get called "trans inclusive" because they let trans women compete with cis men while banning trans men. I could go on and on but that ask is already long.

It's just so tiring. Somehow it's considered okay and doesn't matter when it happens in gay male spaces but it suddenly becomes the ultimate proof that transmascs are evil, untrustworthy, selfish and privileged when it happens in lesbian spaces... Ok.

it's my also my understanding that on average lesbian spaces are also much friendlier to trans women on average than cis gay male spaces lol I've seen and heard about a lot of cis lesbians who love trans women to pieces and nothing but horror stories about trans-cis gay man relations

this fixation with trans men as being not men but just more girls refusing them access to The Girl Club is just another way in which trans radical feminism is mostly born out of resentment of perceived access to womanhood

[apolline-lucy]

Any tips for writing sapphic romance

I don’t think writing sapphic romance is much different from writing any kind of romance. Feelings are feelings, and human beings are human beings. We all experience love in very different ways, and yet it renders us crazy and desperate all the exact same.

I don’t write romance, but romantic fantasy; the nuance is that rather than having the plot gravitate around a relationship, the relationship supports my plot (usually a magical adventure of sorts). And whether i write wlw, mlm, or else, I don’t change my formula. I make every character unique and imperfect, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation.

What I like is putting them in uncomfortable situations (aka hell) and then watching them suffer, really. I put together people that originally don’t belong together + forced proximity + having them face their fears + having them help & rely on one another + slow burn + making them actually get to know one another + making them doubt and cry and get real with their emotions and feelings + having their beliefs being ripped apart, twice, because betrayals + pain pain pain

Too often, I read romances that start with a physical attraction and never elaborate much deeper. Attraction is great for just dating, it’s great for erotica, but if you want a much stronger story and a relationship to seem believable, they have to go through rough patches, they have to test their limits and see the worst of each other. No one’s perfect. That’s cliche, but that’s true. Your characters can’t (and shouldn’t) be perfect either—that’s boring and no reader will identify with them. Us readers are like our characters, we want someone who will keep on loving us when we’re bleeding and screaming and hurting and making mistakes (deadly or else).

That being said, writing sapphic literature, and not necessarily romance, allows me to get more chances to explore some topics that are important to me: feminism, feminine rage, women’s sexuality, inclusiveness, friendships between women, trans women, women of colour, women being women, women supporting women, etc.

These can all be written into non-sapphic stories, of course, but the more you make space for women into your pages, the more characters are women, the more voices you give them. And us women have so many things to say.

When people ask me why I choose to write sapphic stories, here’s my answer: I simply love writing about women because women can be anyone and everything, and that’s enough for me.

Hope this helps🖤✨