#im not a cis white male in any way that matters except as someone who's failed to be a minority in any meaningful way

[yeetskeetiwandelete]

We're politics posting again lads

By that I mean I almost went completely right-wing in, like, ninth grade. I can't find that "escaped from the right wing failpost" right now but I saw like 4/5s of the tags on a post about it were along the lines of "I want to kill OP" and. man. that sounds exactly what radicalized me. I don't know what to make of that.

I don't really know where to go from there. I got nothing, I just remembered reading the snippet everyone was looking at, and just going, "Huh, that sounds exactly like what happened to me." Still happens sometimes! and then I see the tags on everyone else's posts and it's like yeah no wonder I fucking hated you back then, you keep telling me you want me dead. My base instinct is to hit all aggressive comments with the "right back atcha' pal" which isn't a great tool, but I felt it rear up again when I was reading and it was just aaaaugh you guyyys I don't want harm on you but my goodness everybody here is the worst.

(yes including OP. Fuckin hell that was a rough take once I saw it in full. But still, seeing the fallout is just reminding me how I got radicalized and it's really sad.)

[the-scottish-costume-guy]

JK Rowling, transphobia and a hopefully helpful post.

A few days ago I posted on my Facebook (yes I have one sue me) debunking some of the things Rowling has been saying on twitter. Since she made a statement I felt the need to make another one... but this time Im sharing it here. Please note this is long, it is fairly opinionated in places but her statements have felt so insidious I want to share something in depth. If you are cis I implore you to read, but I understand this is long and a lot of people wont want to. No judgement. 

Jk Rowling’s latest statement is a mess of valid concerns and fear mongering. At this point there can be no claim she doesn’t know what shes talking about - she herself has said shes been researching this for years. She throws in token acknowledgements to “real” trans people while framing the rest of her statements as concern for confused teens.So first things first - and something that might not be popular with some of my trans friends. I agree that teenagers should not be able to medically transition. It is a choice that should be made when the brain is fully mature. Hormone blockers are something I trust - and that are reversible. I have seen enough detransitioned people hurting to feel like we do need to be careful - especially with children who are trying to find themselves. I dont know about other people but during my teens I was coming to the crushing realisation that I wasn’t special. I was learning that no matter how well I painted someone else did it better, no matter how badly I hurt someone had it worse - I was learning about the wonderful mediocrity of life, and having anything that made me stand out gave a brief reprieve from learning to be okay with all these things. For me to be fair it was dying my hair outrageous colours and dressing in black leather during 30 degree summer heat - but its still something we cant forget. I KNOW a lot of kids claiming to be trans are - and I dont want to keep that from them, however I dont want to cause harm to the kids that are wrong. Continuing on, I’d like to address her comments about TERFS. Terfs are Self Described Trans-exclusionary-radical-feminists and the term does get thrown around a little too liberally at times. Terf is not and never will be a slur. No more than “White” is. It is about a group of people who have taken it open themselves to segregate another group - and calling that what it is, is not a crime. The reason Terf and transphobe have become synonomic is because the ‘radical feminists’ that subscribe to this have lost focus on nearly all other issues of feminism and sit squarely on “dropping the T” from the lgbt community and “keeping men out of womens bathrooms.” Terfs are overwhelmingly women - this is sadly simply a fact. Terfs are reviled because of how much it feels like a betrayal to the community. A group that fights for rights - except ours. A group that wants equality - except for us. Its different to the conservatives who hate us all equally - with Terfs we are singled out. Terfs are not, as Rowling claims, inclusionary to Trans-men. I’ve been met with a combination of pity, loathing, mockery and revulsion by people within this group. I’ve been told that I shouldn’t let homophobia push me into transitioning - only for all correspondence to abruptly drop when I mention Im marrying another man. I’ve been told my old body was beautiful - only for stunned silence when I agree. I was beautiful - I was curvy, I was a dancer and had a body to match - but I wasn’t Me. When their usual arguments against me fail - I’m met with hate. Im called anti-woman, traitor, homophobic. I even have some such comments saved on my blog. I have yet to meet a Terf who was pro-trans-man. Rowling claims that had she had the ability, as a confused teen, she may have sought to transition. I hate to tell her but she did have the ability and trans people didn’t pop into existence in the twenty-first century. I’m actually looking to do my dissertation topic in my final year on lgbt presentation throughout history - and in my overeager way I’ve already started researching. James Barry has been becoming a common name for years - a transgender surgeon who died in 1865. If Barry was able to at least socially transition from 1790 to 1860, I am fairly sure Rowling could have in 1980 - over a century later. Rowling also claims that groups of friends in schools all suddenly identify as trans at the same time. Speaking from my school experience - the queer kids group together. We seek out others like us, and we take strength from each others bravery to come out - often around the same time. We almost get a rush of resolve when one of our group musters the courage and strength, and some of us use that rush to bite the bullet ourselves. Its one of the beautiful ways the lgbt community is here for one another - and the influx of people identifying as trans is partially a factor of more people knowing the name of their feelings. Survivor bias will ignore the trans people through history without the knowledge or means to transition - and will claim they were never trans at all. Her initial statements about charities worry me in particular. As I said last time - we know sex is real, we just dont really like to be defined by it. She is worried that we’re going to “rebrand medicine” and ignores that medications for years have had warnings in their leaflets about “If you are or become pregnant” regardless of if the person receiving it has a dick or a vagina. We dont advocate for ignoring the differences in how people respond to heart attacks - and I for one would like research to be done on how hormones effect that. I dont actually know if I would respond more like a cis gender woman or a cis gender man if I were to have a heart attack or a stroke. But where possible we do want to change the language around some of these things. I have had a double mastectomy, but some Cis-men have these as well. This is not a gendered term. Why should a period be called anything else? Why call it a “womens problem.” I and Im sure many other trans people, support the research into how different medical and mental issues affect different sexes. I just think that should be extended further - and we know it should, as some medical issues affect people of different ethnicities in different ways and we don’t know how. I am truly sorry that Rowling has experienced abuse and assault of any nature. I am truly sorry that she has felt unsafe. But her feelings do not invalidate others experiences. Of the trans people I know, a saddening number have been assaulted, have been abused and in particular have experienced these things domestically. There is much work to be done on this in the UK. There are nearly no mens shelters for sufferers of violence to my knowledge. I, a trans man who have experienced some of these things in my teen years, would Not want to be around cisgender women even if I could be. A cis woman was responsible for much of the pain I personally suffered - and in fact one of the acts of violence she carried out against me was directly after I came out as trans to her. Trans women, even if they could go to male shelters, should not have to be surrounded by a group that put them in danger - in a place that is detrimental to them physically and mentally and is frankly degrading. The belief that allowing trans women into shelters for those escaping abuse is dangerous is sad. To be so afraid is deserving of pity. To let fear blind you to the suffering of others - to think its better that a trans woman face homelessness or a return to an abusive household because you personally would sleep better at night is the kind of passive evil we should be aware of in this day and age. It comes from choosing to see the word “trans” before “person.” Its from choosing to see a persons genitals before their humanity. Trans people are not dangerous - and cause no greater risk than any other demographic.  Her claims that she can empathise with this fear are empty. A gender recognition certificate is not a ticket into womens bathrooms. Funnily enough you dont actually require a piece of paper to go almost anywhere. I do not have a gender recognition certificate and use male bathrooms, can enter male spaces as I please. All a gender recognition certificate does is change the letter on your birth certificate. It doesn’t even affect other forms of identification - my passport, my student id, my drivers license all already say male. I am not sure why so many people have chosen this as their hill to die on because its the least relevant thing to them on the planet. How often have any of you seen another persons birth certificate? Rowling says she and other ‘gender critical’ (a terf dogwhistle) people are concerned for trans youth. Well… she can take her condescending concern and direct it to matters that are relevant to her. Trans people want to be left alone. Its a simple request, and yet people endlessly seem to trip over the dirt level bar.

[feliicityrampant]

Okay I got a few questions 1. are you an atheist and 2. do you agree with bairn-sidhe's or whatever their name is addition to your post that "white male atheists" are only so because they don't want to face consequences for their actions?

1. im “”agnostic”” by which i mean a) i didn’t grow up in a religious environment tho i did go to lutheran church for a few years as a child and b) i honestly don’t care or believe it’s any of my business how the universe is ordered.2. i have various feelings about it. to begin with, my post wasn’t about anyone’s specific beliefs. it was about who has the power to create and enforce laws and social standards within communities (local, city, state, nation [yes, this was a us-centric post. no that isn’t a crime as a lot of people seem to believe.]) based on their beliefs. minorities (and whether or not this includes cishet white women honestly is a debate) lack that power so their beliefs are “inherently different” based on that fact alone. minorities in organized religion lack power within that religion at its largest form. minorities within atheist/scientific communities lack power within those communities. i made the post as a response to posts floating around which broadly accused atheists of having some form of anti-religious power. i felt this was tone deaf to the reality of the power structures in place.so i get really mad that i constantly (day in and day out) have to read various accusations about what my one sentence post means from people who totally lack context and additionally have taken the context they DO have and decided to read something into it that quite literally is not therethat being said, i think it’s worth talking about the relationships people have with religion (of all forms, not just christianity, although it seems to be the only thing people want to talk about, which i guess makes sense because of the extreme impact it has on many people’s lives in the us) because of who they are on a social level. as someone who was not raised religious at all (my mom recently confessed to me that we only went to church when i was little so that i could have options) and whose brushes with local christian communities were not negative (i am also white and cis and though i am a lesbian i didn’t know that until a decade after i had stopped attending church) i still have thoughts and feelings about who i am in relationship to organized religions. i feel it’s disingenuous of people to respond that they are “atheist because they don’t believe and not for any other reason.” i think people are more thoughtful than that. they are inquisitive and seek to understand the universe and themselves in the process. at some point everyone wonders if there is a higher power. at some point everyone makes a decision about it (or doesn’t, and that’s a decision of its own). and decisions are formed the way the rest of our thoughts are formed: by what we are exposed to in the world and how we are treated. i think it’s absolutely true to say that cishet white men surrounded by other cishet white men are going to approach the question of “is there a god and if so what does that mean for me?” in a way that’s different from, say, a lesbian surrounded by straight people, living in a patriarchy. that’s not a value-laden statement. it is what it is. people are different. difference isn’t bad or good. it’s just the various ways in which we’re human. so i don’t necessarily think ‘cishet white men are atheists because they’re smug assholes’ or ‘minorities are atheists because they make emotion-based decisions’ are true statements. i think ‘cishet white men who are atheists are more likely to be atheists because they were raised in non-religious environments’ and ‘minorities and women are more likely to break from religion are are more likely to have done so because of bigotry they have experienced and/or trauma they endured’ are probably true, but that doesn’t really say anything about “atheists” in general or even “minorities and women who are atheists” in general.also i really really fucking resent all the people saying it’s racist or homophobic to say “some people are atheist because of trauma” because it implies they’re too stupid to make decisions based on logic. how thoughtless and insensitive can you be. how can you possibly look at people who have endured hatred from their families and communities and been so shaken and harmed by that experience that they broke from their beliefs and FAMILIES and COMMUNITIES as a result and say “wow what a moron.” nobody NOBODY in that post is making that judgment except the people saying they are and they should be ASHAMED. that’s their value system that they’re projecting onto other people and it shows.(as a side note, at some point in all of this it’s necessary to point out that white people and gentiles regardless of whether or not they are minorities in other respects are absolutely capable of exerting power over muslims, sikhs, and jewish people)

((i also realize you probably weren’t interested in this long of a response. i’m honestly not sure why you reached out to me for comment. the post has 100k notes, most of them people arguing about it or sharing their extremely witty comments about ‘op’, and i think like one other person has ever bothered to ask me about it. even assholes very rarely try to antagonize me directly. at this point i think it’s fair to say my opinion or what i actually meant doesn’t actually matter. the opinions expressed belong to the people who reblog it, in whatever state they decide that should be. and i reserve the right to be fucking annoyed by all of it.))

(((as a final aside, because i thought it was kind of interesting, someone recently reached out to me and asked my permission to use the post in their phd research, which i found equal parts annoying and funny. probably my greatest impact on the world and it has basically nothing to do with me. this is why i try not to think about the universe as either ordered events or total coincidence. it’s too depressing either way.)))

[anthonymller]

is it prince charming in real life (except this is not real life and it’s actually rping)?? is that someone who really needs sleep?? is another white guy with a sad backstory by yours truly?? yes yes and also yes. hi!! i’m ella and this is my baby anthony he is not that great but he is trying his best so i think that amounts to something honestly. you can find more info about him under the read more and if you would like a plot with him then give it a like or im me and we’ll talk.

⌜ ELLA. 19. GTM -3.⌟  did i really just see [ JOSH DALLAS ]? nah, that’s just [ ANTHONY MILLER ], also known as the [ MEDIATOR ] of new york city. apparently, they’re a/an [ THIRTY FIVE ] year old [ POLICE DETECTIVE ], identifying as a [ CIS MALE BISEXUAL ], which is probably why they’ve lived in [ BROOKLYN ] for [ EIGHT YEARS ]. i heard that [ HE ] is known to be very [ RESPONSIBLE & PATIENT ], but watch out — they can also become very [ REPRESSED & SELF-RIGHTEOUS ] on their bad days.

-` Anthony John Miller ´-

TW: MENTIONS OF CHILD NEGLECT, EMOTIONAL ABUSE, MISCARRIAGE, CANCER AND DEATH

let me tell you about the biggest workaholic in new york city.

person life?? pfts. hobbies?? nah. throwing yourself into work so you won’t have to deal feelings??? yes

anthony was born in texas, in 1983. his parents owned a whiskey distillery and were both very wealthy.

his father wasn’t really the greatest. he was barely around, always having to be somewhere else because of work. though, his mother was really the worse one. she was always pushing her children to do what she wanted, emotionally manipulating them into doing what she thought would make them into the perfect children. 

anthony and his siblings would constantly be asked to do things they didn’t want to because their mother thought would be best for them. she would also hold them to impossible standards and then scream at them when they didn’t meet it.

through, high school anthony was your local football playing popular jerk. he started playing football mostly because his mother and father thought that was what he should do, using his acomplishments to boast about their parents skills. but tony didn’t really care much for the games. he spent most of his time partying, drinking and having fun. despite the fact that his mother would constantly scream at him for his actions, he would more often than not be found drunk hitting on some random girl at a high school party.

that is until she meet some goth girl that switched school. that girl was alice. they meet when tony was in his senior year of high school. they quickly fell in love and started dating, tony dropping most of the things he used to do at that point to spend time with her.

he started getting as drunk as he used to, didn’t go out as much with the football crowd. he was pretty much head over hills with her.

everything was perfect for a while, well that is, until she got pregnant. 

after she got pregnant anthony told his parents about it and his mother just went on about how terrible alice was. alice and their child didn’t meet with the plans that they had for anthony and so their parents hated both. his mother told him about how he’d have to choose between his family and alice.

they finished the high school year, alice being three months pregnant at that moment, and then both ran away from home to a complete different city.

he and alice had to start from scratch. she was a musician and would sing in bars and different places every night around town while he started working as a parking attendant after becoming friends with the local sheriff.

life was starting to go their way. though they did have to work a lot, and they weren’t really living in the greatest condition. ( the small motel they were both sleeping in not even comparing to the mansion tony used to live in, ) but it was good. he was with someone he loved and there was no one to tell anthony what to do all the time. 

alice had a miscarriage through her second semester. that really affected her, alice not being able to go out to sing for a long while, but anthony did his best to try and help her through it. 

that was when he became most of the man he is today. he got two jobs to be able to support both of them and he started being way more responsible since he had to take care not only of himself but also of her.

time passed though and they were able to recover from it.

they got married a few years later spending years together.

she started teaching kids arts and anthony was able to become a policeman and slowly starting to evolve in his career. he loved helping people and he loved being able to do daily.

they moved to new york city.

the real lowest point though came a few years later. alice was constantly feeling sick and tired, unable to do the things she usually and she decided to go the doctor. she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. a few months later she died.

the death really affected tony, him unable to do anything for a while.

instead of dealing with the loss though he buried himself into work. spending every awake moment focused on it so he didn’t have to think of anything else.

-` Random facts + Personality ´-

he mostly lost his texan accent, and most people can’t even tell he is not from new york, though, when he is angry you can sometimes hear his original accent slipping through.

he is really super responsible and likes to take care of people and if anyone tells him about their problems he’ll drop mostly all of his priorities to make sure they are fine and won’t rest until he solves the problem

catch him outside the club avoiding all his feelings

he’ll mostly never talk about the shit he is going through no matter how bad he is feeling. 9/10 times he either doesn’t want to deal with it or bother people with his feelings.

he is most of the time super nice to people and really respect and polite. that is unless he sees you doing something he finds morally wrong in each case he’ll get on that moral high ground and lecture you.

even though his wife died five years ago, he hasn’t really dated anyone ever since his wife died. still wearing the wedding ring to this day.

he’ll on occasion try to take off the wedding ring and go on a date if any of his friends convince him of it but it’ll hardly ever go past the second or third date as he’ll most of the time feel guilty for trying to connect with someone else.

-` Possible connections ´-

the good inflence ; someone that might have been doing something wrong at some point but tony was a good influence to and help them get back on their feet.

the bad influence ; someone that gives him bad ideas and drags anthony along to stuff that he wouldn’t really normally be involved with bc anthony is worried about them and wants to make sure they are fine.

the best friend ; someone with whom anthony can be honest and talk about stuff that actually happened. maybe something bad happened to that friend as well and they connect through the trauma of it, or maybe that person is just really warm-hearted and kind. in either case, tony feels like he can talk to that person even if most of the time he won’t.

the ex ; maybe someone from high school that met him before he changed to the man he is today and only knows him as his former asshole self or 

the blind date ; maybe a friend set them up. maybe a co-worker did, in either case they ended up together some time and really connected while talking. things, however, have been really awkward ever since bc tony won’t call them back or really attempt at anything else

the one sided crush ; pretty self explanatory. someone that started crushing on anthony for whatever reason and he doesn’t feel the same way. i feel like it could be interesting since he doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings ever, especially if it was a friend or someone he already had some sort of connection with, but he’d be unable to feel the same way towards them.

siblings ; anthony has five siblings of varying ages and genders and he hasn’t really talked to his family ever since he ran away from home so it could be an interesting dynamics maybe to see how they have grown apart, maybe what him leaving did to your character and all that.

[lesbian-ayano]

this set of responses are so fuckin messy. lets talk about how both of these people fucked up, starting with furry because there’s only two real problems.

im confused why theology got brought up by furrytech, since its completely irrelevant to this specific discussion about terfs. also, furrytech did word her initial comment in a somewhat confusing way. i assume what she meant was “maybe if terfs spent a day in the shoes of a trans woman, they wouldn’t be shitheads to trans people”, not “cis women have never experienced oppresion ever”.

that said, ghoulgirl’s responses aren’t a shining example of proper discourse either. her first paragraph, which is a shining example of theological illiteracy, sets the tone for the rest of the response; riddled with fallacies and poor manners.

nobody on this post, and i doubt anybody at all, has said that rich, able-bodied, neurotypical white cishet women dont experience oppresion on the axis of being a woman, because that’d be fucking stupid. thats like saying a working class white cishet man doesnt experience any oppression on the axis of being working class, or that an autistic white cishet boy has a perfect priviledged life because he’s white and male. your opression isn’t somehow less valid if you only experience one or two axis. furthermore, nobody targets people who know that misogyny towards cis women is real except like, incels and other manosphere types. those are rather silly things to say, and very easy points to dispute and stand against. so if nobody said these things, why is ghoul responding to them.

well, you’ll notice that ghoul put lots of words in furrytech’s mouth, and somehow dragged a mysterious “y’all” into the equation. unless furry’s account is run by two people, that kinda makes this look like ghoulgirl is strawmanning. that’s a terrible way to go about the discourse, and makes you look like you aren’t confident your beliefs will hold up to opposing views in earnest.

there’s another very bad discourse tactic in this post that i see a lot on here, and have been guilty of myself in the past. calling someone you’re arguing with “honey” or “child” is infantilizing them, and makes you look like a stuck up prick. it certainly wont endear your position to the other person. it doesn’t do anything to help you, so it’d be wise to cut that habit out.

now, putting asside ghoul’s bad discourse manners, this whole response is absolutely ridiculous. ghoul made a snarky comment that implied furrytech was less intelligent and furry got emotional. maybe the thought that furry had been dealing with more obnoxious transphobic pricks on tumblr prior to this interaction just didn’t occur to ghoul. maybe furry had been dealing with some big name bullies in the terf tumblr circle, or had just dealt with some white terfs being absurdly racist, or a number of other things that could have made furry more prone to hostility. hell, maybe she just had a bad day! but that didnt matter.

instead of considering what furry had said, that maybe she SHOULD leave people who arent hurting her alone, what does ghoul do?

she tries to one up furry tech’s trauma, and then brings up that she thought she was trans because of it, seemingly for no reason.

now, i cant say i know what ghoul was thinking when she said this, but it seems like she’s implying that her using a label that didnt actually fit is somehow the fault of others who use that label. its the same argument as “i thought i was ace because internalized homophobia, so that means asexuality is inherently homophobic!” and its still just as absurd.

i hope we can all take some lessons away from this trainwreck; oppresion isnt a contest, strawmanning is bad, and that using pet names in an argument is petty and childish.