#intracommunity

[0w0tsuki]

God damn "dude/man/guy is gender neutral actually" discourse is really a sign y'all are fucking hopeless. Because the bar is quite literally on the FUCKING FLOOR.

You know the stereotypical "performative cis liberal ally"? The one who upon acknowledging they've been corrected about an accidental misgendering, turns it into an entire god damn show of apologizing and telling you how HARD they're working to gender you correctly. Yeah if you're someone who defends the use of dude and man as gender neutral terms guess what? Even with making every apology a grand display at least they're fucking apologizing and putting forth an effort to show you that they're putting your interests in mind.

Which is more than can be said of you.

Imagine if they were told they accidentally deadnamed you. And instead of the usual acting like they just accidentally hit their own fucking child they went "Actually I think [DEADNAME] is pretty androgynous and could be used for anyone of any gender! I'm not going to use it now that you have corrected me! But I just wanted you to know I didn't see myself as explicitly misgendering you when I used [DEADNAME]"

We are asking for the BARE MINIMUM amount of effort! Literally all you have to do is if your going to insist that "Using gender neutral terms when referring to somebody even when their actual gender is readily available information is actually the correct way to gender somebody online" that at the VERY LEAST use actual gender neutral terms instead of dude/guy/man. You don't even give up your use of it in your everyday life. You're only being asked to think about this in spaces where trans women are common such as online queer spaces.

That is how little trans women not being misgendered left and right in places that sell themself as safe for her matters to you. It matters so little that you can't even be asked to not do the barest minimum to not contribute to an environment where anyone who wants to misgender a trans woman with no repercussions can just Dude her knowing full well that she will view it as misgendering and fall back on "oh I was just being gender neutral. YoU sHoUdN't AuToMaTiClY aSsUmInG pEoPlE's GeNdErS!!" Which is a common enough occurrence that we have to have this fucking discourse.

The bar is on the floor and y'all are digging holes just to not have to face the smallest of inconveniences. Performative allies are fucking lapping you. You should be embarrassed.

Do better

[arotechno]

the way the aro community talks about attraction is inadequate

Disclaimer: The following is in no way intended to invalidate, shame, or "call out" anyone for using whatever language or terminology they see fit to describe their own experiences. This is about community-wide trends and pressures, rather than individual choices.

As an aroace, I've never felt a particular desire to label other types of attraction I may or may not feel. Identifying as aroace is a way for me to express my disconnect with what society at large views as healthy, normal, valuable, and aspirational; that is, a committed, monogamous, sexual and romantic relationship. I don't want those things. I'm not able to even understand them. But by and large, beyond that, I don't find the framework of different types of attraction very useful at all.

This is the fatal flaw of the split-attraction model in its most advanced form: it's predicated on the idea that there are distinct types of attraction that can be qualified and quantified in neat and tidy boxes. Just as there are people for whom romantic and sexual attraction cannot be separated, there are many (like myself) for whom the very concept of attraction breaks down more and more the more you try to categorize it.

Here's the thing: relationships (of any kind) aren't inherently predicated on attraction, just as they aren't necessarily predicated on love. We can understand, as a community, why an aro person might have a successful romantic relationship despite not feeling romantic attraction, or why an ace person might enjoy engaging in sex even if they are not sexually attracted to their partner. Attraction does not equal action. So why, then, must we make the assumption that everyone must categorize their feelings in terms of attraction at all? This is how we end up with terms like queerplatonic attraction, which warps the original definition of queerplatonic such that a QPR becomes something predicated on a separate kind of attraction that is more unique and special than "regular" platonic feelings, rather than being a broad type of non-romantic relationship that is deliberately built and developed by the people in it based on their own personal needs and desires, and not necessarily based on some ephemeral type of attraction.

This sort of trend towards hyper-categorization is extremely frustrating to someone like me, who doesn't view their relationships or their feelings for others in terms of attraction at all. I'm not platonically "attracted" to my friends, I don't think. I love them platonically (deeply, unconditionally, almost like family), but naming it as attraction makes me almost uncomfortable. Others may not feel that way and that's fine. It's no skin off my nose how people choose to talk about their own feelings. But the implicit expectation in a lot of aro spaces is that you will label your attraction, your feelings, your experiences, your desires, your orientations according to such-and-such paradigms, as if we can wordsmith our way out of simply understanding one another. As if the diversity of aromantic experiences were something we need to break down and quantify.

All of these things are socially constructed. Sex, romance, love, relationships, attraction. That doesn't make them not real, but they are not divinely granted concepts with their own inherent, easy-to-understand taxonomy. We make up the language necessary to describe complex and diverse human experiences as best we can, because it's the only way. But what is absolutely crucial to remember, as a crucial tenet of aro activism and beyond, is that none of these models work for every single person, and needn't be prescriptive.

[baeddelilluminati]

the transandro fraternity is a collection of loosely affiliated transmasculine supremacist clans that have a small intelligentsia whom are linked to online twef/terf propaganda organising;

its primary objective is to maintain the logic of biological essentialism within transmasculine discourse through the formation of a deceptive lexicon that retains membership ignorance (of its logical implications) through a mythologising of transfeminism, through a sort of double-think, as being terfism.

[arugula2048]

ik you prob wrote abt this ages ago but I wanted to say I appreciate your additions abt the 'almond mom' discussion. I saw it came from a child model almost fainting and the mother advising her to eat a couple of almonds chewed very slowly. So literally from eating disoreded mom harming and abusing child by purposefully malnourishing them. Ofc over time ppl posted more ambiguous things but what if the er mom was asked to comfort the child and 'did her steps' imstead? Or the mom eating salad (1/2

2/2 and the family eating heavier meals. Oftentimes the mom is visibly upset with the children so maybe they are 'breaking the cycle' by eating satisfying food after being told not to for many years? Like I agree we must not forget ppl acting 'strange' w food incl moms are victims of society which promotes disordered eating. But to actively push that on your child is cruel. And many ppl are not mentioning how strange their mom is but rather how it results in treating them, shamimg, policing them

I feel you, I could understand if the 'pacing bc she's worried and not ED' interpretation if it was one of many used in the analyses, but it irked me when so many bloggers just ran with that alone. Not very empathetic to the child, gyns, who in the post example was in the fucking ER, implying she wanted comfort but her mother prioritized her own body image instead... It's so funny (not funny) how they breezed past that part and was like "this bitter ungrateful child!! of course she's definitely lying about her mom to mock her"

It's an interesting analysis to focus fully and only on the 'almond mothers' in that post. But then to say that's the only way to see it and say that children are responsible for their mothers' healing is repulsive. I can't tell if that conclusion came from temporary tunnel vision, or if they never had a bad relationship with their mother, or if they no longer see themselves in the child now that they're adults, or if they're partly speaking from unresolved issues and believe that fixing their mothers will fix them too. They would've betrayed their younger selves just like their mothers did lol.

Not to mention, like you said, mothers are grown women and had decades to reflect on their experiences and illnesses to decide how they'd raise their daughters. As an adult and as a parent, they had that responsibility to step up for their children lol. The audacity of the ~approach your mother with a feminist mindset to break entire generational cycles of misogyny and EDs~ statement is unbelievable. To put that work on children? So the mothers shouldn't need to do anything? Why don't we start smaller with something kids can do?

I think that post got like that because of the whole "mother discourse" that had people acting as if someone said 'mothers should be officially recognized as a subhuman class' instead of 'I prioritize girls because they're the common denominator demographic of all women'. Cue the overcompensation and almost victim-blaming kids who were coached to get EDs. They seriously looked at a kid in the ER and blame her for her mom being fucked up, no one in that post contested that first reply. Yikes, but that's the internet, I guess.

Thank you for the message, I'm glad we felt seen by each other. Have a good day, anon!

[the-tipsy-tailor]

reasons i don't belong at synagogue:

too old for the young people and too young for the old people.

too autistic.

too crazy.

childless on purpose.

not going to marry a nice jewish person.

too quiet.

too anxious.

too shy.

messy jewish ancestry.

i love my synagogue, i really do. there's a reason i'm a member and am pursuing affirmation through them. they're queer and leftist and do social justice work. but man do i feel unwanted.

[rawstrap]

I've seen people say terf rhetoric is any hatred of men and I've seen people say terf rhetoric is anything transphobic said by anyone. the refusal to actually engage with the reality that terfism is primarily focused on oppressing trans women is in itself a form of transmisogyny. yes they hate all trans people, but it is quite easy to see who they primarily target with their words, actions and policies, you just don't want to care about trans women. claiming someone is a man hater doesn't mean you get to call them a terf or a radfem, thats an obvious, willfull dilution and denial of what terfs are.

[ryuuseirune]

i can't say i experience misogyny because that's "misgendering myself" and i can't say i experience anti-transmasculinity or transandrophobia because those terms are apparently offensive in some way. but i really think people just want trans men to stop complaining about their oppression so that they don't have to live with the fear that they're capable of hurting someone

[terminated-baeddel9]

gave up on the blog now that she's back or frustrated with the discourse or both?

hi feb 11th anon

yeah i did get kinda disillusioned with this blog but also jez came back to tumblr so i was like, what ever x2. but she's been terminated again. she wasnt stiring shit so i dont know why. i worry that people hold grudges against people for when they behave poorly while under immense levels of mental distress and then go out of their way to try fuck that person over, even if they've expressed remorse or apologised etc for their shitty behavior and haven't been repeating it

out community is so overzelous with punishment for any perceived transgressions or rudeness. we cannibalise eachother and its a fucking miserable state of affairs.

[throesofincreasingwonder]

You know what? I want a whole post for this:

Sex Repulsion is not the same thing as, or an excuse for, Sex Negativity

non-negotiable!

I am a sex-repulsed asexual. This means that I am uncomfortable and repulsed by the idea of engaging in sexual acts. This does not mean that I have an excuse to be repulsed by other people's sexual attraction or the right to police how other people engage in or express sexual acts or attraction.

Young queer people need to learn the difference between sex repulsion and sex negativity, and actively work to unlearn sex-negative attitudes. Asexuality, even sex-repulsed asexuality, is and should be fully compatible with sex positivity.

If you are uncomfortable with the idea of other people feeling sexual attraction or engaging in sexual acts that do not involve you in any way, that is not sex repulsion it is the cultural Christianity and you need to seriously work on that.

[crippled-peeper]

A harmless ‘opinion’ cannot be “depression is a chemical imbalance and nothing else.” Or “cerebral palsy is a neurodivergence” or “there’s no difference between mental or physical disabilities.”

These folks can totally have opinions — like Disco is great or Pink is a great color or that psychiatric institutionalization in its current form is inhumane— that’s not the issue. The issue is misleading others about terminology and science and calling it “disability activism.” … all they’re doing is worshipping their own hurt feelings while spreading misinfo at the expense of others

It’s tiring. I’m tired. we’re all tired

"Im disabled too why don't people listen to meeeee?"

Well, maybe it's because your opinion sucks and it's not something that's opinion based? Maybe the argument is fact based and you're just flat out wrong? Being disabled doesn't automatically make you right?

[starryjoy]

The amount of times I've been told from a transmasc they try not to engage in a specific kink in online spaces out of fear of getting called out and harassed endlessly genuinely breaks my heart.

The amount of transmascs who like transfems I have talked to who have confided in me that they have actually so many harder kinks than they let on because they don't want to be wrongly accused of being transmisogynistic is staggering.

This is going on my main and idc I'm going to fully say it, the amount of trans guys I, a trans woman with a massive misogyny kink, had to convince that it was okay and allowed for them to reciprocate with enjoyment towards some of my kinks, is insanely high.

And it seems like no one cares. It seems like no one gives a shit when transmascs get harassed for kinks. Like don't get me wrong, many people don't give a shit for trans women that this happens to either. But it seems like people don't even think that it's a possibility that it could happen to other people.

No one should have their kinks examined and pulled apart and outed for the whole world to see. Everyone should be allowed to write whatever kind of smut and porn they want. And yet so many transmascs are scared, are terrified, of doing so.

And here I'll be honest, it hurts a little bit for selfish reasons as well- so many of these people could have been writing beautiful smut that I would have loved for years, but before meeting me they were too scared to even admit things to themselves. It's fucked y'all. Make trans people feel safe in exploring kink. Make any people in general safe.

[tpwrtrmnky]

threat

[ID: Four panel comic with crudely drawn stick people.

Panel 1: A turquoise person is walking along a street while an olive green person comes running around the corner.

Olive: "Shit!"

Turquoise: "Huh?"

Panel 2: The olive green person dashes towards the turquoise person, who stands there cluelessly.

Olive: "Run. Now!"

Turquoise: "Huh?"

Olive: "Seriously, run!"

Turquoise: "What's going on?"

Panel 3: A low angle view of the corner from Olive's back reveals a masked grayscale individual with a bloody knife, and corresponding slash wounds on Olive's back as they point to the corner. The turquoise person is still standing around.

Olive: "There's someone around that corner, and they're attacking chromatic people. We need to get away now and get help. Listen to me!"

Turquoise: "Wow..."

Panel 4: Zoom in on Turquoise, who says:

"I can't believe you're threatening me with being subjected to a hate crime if I don't do what you say. This is a real new low for you, I'm so disappointed. You really need to work on being less aggressive and demanding. Look up 'lateral violence'."

End ID.]

Start - Previous - Next

[arotechno]

I don't think QPRs are limiting in some way or an ineffective or inappropriate term to use. I think that's an extrapolation of things that I didn't say here.

QPRs are a wonderful thing, and I think they should be celebrated. I would never claim otherwise. My issue is when we continue to redefine them to be something inherently more special and unique and deeper than "regular" platonic relationships. this isn't me saying "don't you mean friendship? 🤪🙄" this is me saying "stop treating QPRs as inherently deeper than friendships"

i honestly think the aro community crossed some kind of event horizon when we started referring to queerplatonic as its own type of attraction, instead of letting queerplatonic relationship mean what it always did... which was a type of platonic relationship different from "traditional" friendship.

on the individual level i don't really care what terms people utilize to describe themselves and their own experiences, but on the community level it frustrates me that we've just created yet another box to sort people into. it's such a devaluation of platonic relationships to be like "this isn't actually just platonic, this is something Unique and Special." wasn't the whole point to validate platonic feelings as equally valid, meaningful, and worth building a partnership around? do y'all realize that this is just a recreation of the exact way people talk about romantic attraction?

again, people can use whatever words they want for themselves and that's fine, i'm not passing judgment and people know their own feelings better than i do. but just... consider that platonic feelings can be just as strong and unique to each person, and you don't necessarily have to assign a new type of attraction to it just to validate how special it feels

[caffeineandsociety]

All the bullshit queer infighting about queer subgroup a refusing to be normal about queer subgroup b, or no it's b that can't be normal about a, or no it's both of them refusing to be normal about subgroup c-

And I feel it's time to recognize that the problem has less to do with specific identities and more to do with people refusing to be normal about queer people other than themselves

Yes someone who's like this will usually be slightly more normal about someone whose queer identity is more similar to their own than not, but I have never seen, for example, an explicitly transmisogynistic trans man who wouldn't jump to throw another trans man under the bus for "making us all look bad" at the first viable excuse, and we all know how big overt exclusionist movements like terfism end up just aggressively policing the ingroup to make sure they never, ever, ever deviate from a perfect True Scotsman

It's self-centered bullshit is what it all is and I think it deserves to be seen for that

[jewish-vents]

i’m sick of people acting like judaism is so social justicey and progressive all the time. so many maga kippahs. so many casual racist comments at shul. so many frum queer suicides. i feel like the rest of jumblr is on another planet

.

[faggotry-enjoyer]

[ID: text:

most of the transmisandry posters are white trans men with a self-victimization complex who can't imagine they have both some very genuine experiences of oppression (transphobia or transmisia, whatever you want to call it) and also significant privileges. it's just so fucking

/end ID]

I’m so tired of this claim I’m so emphatically tired of this claim. Even here where it’s recognized that some people talking about transmisandry are trans mascs of color, (what else can “most” mean?) anything they might have had to say is immediately discarded and dismissed.

And in addition to that, this post is another potshot at the language of people trying to talk about anti-transmasculinity. Despite the fact that time and time again folks like @genderkoolaid and @spacelazarwolf (among others I’m sure, they’re just who I recall off the top of my head) have demonstrated that it doesn’t fucking matter what language we use to discuss it, the problem people have is that we’re discussing it at all.