#is what led to so many of them becoming terfs

[mingot-studios]

Am I the only one who feminism is kinda idk like exclusionary?

i feel like by focusing solely women's rights (cis white women in particular) it kinda leaves behind those who also suffer under patriarchy (i.e. gnc transwomen, enby people, men, poc people etc.)

I say this because at least in the West, cis white women have been at the forefront of the movement since it's start back in the the 1910s with the suffragettes fighting for the right for women to vote Specifically WHITE CIS women, women of color were not included.

And don't even get me started on terfs

I feel like we need a new more inclusive movement that includes everyone who's suffered under patriarchy not JUST Women.

[many-but-one]

I really admired you and looked up to you. Parts of our system were influenced by your journey to do the same. Our gatekeeper watched many of your videos and found them to be helpful. However, due to your association with a certain person, and after what I've been hearing about them influencing other systems to think they have a ramcoa history when they don't, I don't trust myself anymore. I don't know if I'm a real survivor anymore, maybe I was just led to believe I had that history due to the amount of information I was taking in from various sources. I wish I could still trust you, but I don't know if I can anymore. I also don't think it's a good idea to go into such graphic detail about your trauma. It caused me to do the same and feel that it was okay to do so. And I kept triggering other alters due to that. I kept pushing and pushing through it. And I did make progress with certain alters, but I think it really put me in an unhealthy state of mind too. I don't think I was ready to be dealing with that. Now we have a fight-reponse alter who will stop at nothing to ensure we deprogram and become free, even if at the expense of other alters and our overall wellbeing. He only cares that we keep fighting, that we tell our therapist information about our system and get her to believe us and help us, even though it's a lot for some alters. He's become a very dominant member of the system now, and has even tried to hurt persecutors before they can hurt us.

Hi anon,

I am assuming you are talking about the Legion system. Yes, I was friends with them for some time. About a year or so. However, I’m no longer friends with them and do not associate with them. I’m not sure why you think my association with them has anything to do with them trying to make people believe they have ramcoa when they don’t. I wasn’t involved in their interpersonal business with others. I apologize if this makes you feel like you can’t trust yourself or is making you go into denial, but I fail to see how this is somehow my fault.

Blaming me for sharing information about ramcoa and my trauma and saying you think it led you to believe you had something you may or may not have is not my fault. I educate about ramcoa in efforts to help others who have it. I make it very clear on both my tumblr and my tiktok that I don’t do armchair diagnoses. So you came to this conclusion yourself, and you coming to that conclusion by watching my content or reading my content has nothing to do with me. I’m not trying to influence anyone to do things that are unsafe in therapy (like deprogramming too fast), and just because you saw me talking about my trauma history made you do the same does not mean I forced you to do so. Placing all of this blame on me, an internet stranger who is well within their right to talk about these subjects, is incredibly unreasonable.

I understand you may feel betrayed by the situation that happened with Legion, but imagine how I feel? They were my best friend and I lost them to TERF ideology, even though I tried to warn them not to go down that path. And I have learned a lot of things from other people that I never knew about them, because I don’t really interact with much people online, so I was never aware of their actions outside of the ones they did with me. Learning that I was friends with someone who did some shitty stuff that I never knew about has been devastating.

However, blaming me or even Legion for how your system has chosen to heal is absurd. Because I tell people deprogramming is possible and share info on ramcoa and how to deprogram, suddenly it’s my fault that an internet stranger’s system is going about things in a way that is causing them distress? And trying to tell me not to share my trauma because it made you decide to share your trauma too? No, I didn’t make you do anything.

Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do on my healing journey. Educating the best I can and sharing The Horrors (which are always properly TW’d for the record, so you are allowed to scroll away if it’s not something you want to see) has helped our system heal, grow, and find community. I won’t apologize for doing so, but I am willing to apologize that you feel that it made you take actions that weren’t the best for your system’s healing process. However, placing all of the blame on me for this is immature and ridiculous. You are responsible for what information you take in and what you do with it. In the past, I have made it clear that my information is not a diagnostic tool and I’m not a therapist. What you do with the information I share is completely out of my control because I don’t know you and I am not your therapist.

That’s all I can really say here. I am a bit appalled that you’ve not only come to the conclusion that all of your problems in therapy/system healing are somehow my fault, but you’ve also decided to try and tell me directly that this is so. Your actions you take in healing aren’t something that I can control.

If I can offer some advice here—slow down. Help your protector alter who is trying to speed run this understand that speedrunning the healing process will only cause more problems. Help parts understand that trying to go gung ho into the healing journey before everyone is ready to go that direction will only cause more problems. And lastly, if you think consuming my content has been detrimental to your healing process, block me. Because I’m not going to be silent about ramcoa or what I went through. I will never be silent again.

[the-feminist-philosopher]

Damn. TERFs really do see themselves as white nights fighting on behalf of black & brown women against an aggressive hoard of black and brown men. I cannot go into the #feminism tag without seeing some of the wildest takes…

Because a TERF will really get on the Internet and say some shit like,

“Trans-exclusionary ideas are globally popular ideologies” and fail to see how public discrimination against a group is maybe a symptom of the current power structures, structures like the patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonialism.

and then follow that up with,

“Because the global majority isn’t white, my activism for those women isn’t white. Also because the women fighting against the patriarchy globally aren’t majority white, my brand of feminism can’t be white,” and fail to see how this is white-night activism and an attempt to co-opt other feminist movements globally, many of which actively resist their country’s neo-colonial resource exploitation and imperialist extraction of their country. But positioned in argument alongside the take that trans-hate is globally popular, it’s also an attempt to make non-white people look uniquely or predominantly hateful compared to those within their lofty country.

Which is exemplified by the fact that when a trans person—regardless of location—shows support for any cause in the global south, the popular response is to tell that trans person the people of that country would behead them or throw them from a roof. Because in addition to believing the brown other is uniquely “backwards” and “brutish,” they also believe that any oppressed group’s “salvation” is contingent upon good behavior. Whose salvation? Theirs, of course. These people will freely repeat talking points about things that don’t happen in whatever foreign country of their picking to support their argument because the intention is to show they have credible reason to believe “those people” are not the perfect model of “(western) civility,” and as such, are in need of the TERF’s ideas, resources, and “activists.” It’s a reframing of “The White Man’s Burden” to center women.

(I’ve always found the “defenestration threat” a particularly disingenuous take. There’s the apparent racism on one hand, but clear pink washing, too. I—a gay—cannot care about the suffering of others in another country if gay rights in that country is not on par with that of its imperial oppressor? Are these trans-exclusionary radicals disagreeing with the existence of transphobia in another country? Or are they disagreeing with the purported tactics? “My enlightened policies that mass incarcerate, push children to suicide, and strip strangers of bodily autonomy; their barbaric policies that do much the same, oh, and defenestration.” They do realize that they, the trans-exclusionary radical, are more of an existential threat to me in *my own country* than a stranger half a globe away, no?)

And this worldview becomes ever so apparent when, after pointing out their attempt to co-opt feminist movements led by black and brown women, the usual comeback is to ask the person who disagrees with their take if they think that black and brown men are “too stupid” to “know” to or how to oppress women. “Do you think it’s not worse in other countries?”

Not only is this an attempt at purple washing; an attempt to benefit from purported support for women’s rights as a way to distract from the issue at hand: Western paternalism and chauvinism, this is also an attempt to turn it back around on the other. The TERF could not avoid being critiqued for supporting imperialistic ideas that downplay the significance of white supremacy and the struggles of black and brown women by arguing that because the majority of women aren’t white, any advocacy for women couldn’t possibly be racist. And they couldn’t avoid being critiqued for supporting imperialistic ideas that downplay the significance of white supremacy by deflecting with a “what-about’ism” about the state of affairs in a foreign country. And now they’re faced with the fact others may think that they think black and brown people are uniquely brutish. So, their last hope is to argue that no, actually you 🫵 are downplaying the oppression that other women in other countries face at the hands of “their men” and engaging in the “noble savage” trope.

(Of course, this ignores how such a trope refers to positioning Indigenous people as people uniquely removed from societies—when in reality they had complex societies, social structures, and politics—who live in harmony with nature. Suggesting that someone’s ideas and characterization of other peoples is influenced by Western Imperialism and white supremacy is in no way the same as suggesting there is “innate goodness, pureness, and moral superiority” among an “uncorrupted” “primitive” other, but a TERF’s ideology often depends on equivocation, usually as a means of distraction.)

But, when someone points out that this is in no way what they said; the TERF is attempting to create a strawman to argue against, the final play in the book is to literally @/ the one brown TERF they know of on this site or conclude by saying “well, my brand of feminism has had Black and Jewish thinkers, so…,” fully blind to how this is quite literally tokenism.

All this because “I can’t be racist; I’m a feminist” really isn’t the argument they think it is.

[battyblog]

Feminism is not a genre of film!

Does anyone else feel like cinema is kind of popping off in 2024 so far? Watching films has become my coping mechanism for winter. Recently, I watched the film Poor Things which has taken the world by storm; with ‘Best picture’ and multiple other Oscar nominations to prove it. Aside from the gorgeous aesthetics of Poor Things, the film’s story has fuelled the fire for the current feminism in film debate. For anyone who hasn’t seen the film, this post will contain spoilers and I really do recommend you watch it! Poor Things is the story of Bella Baxter, a female lead who’s journey to mental maturation is a key aspect of the film. We follow Bella who is revealed to be an amalgamation of mother and child, the mother’s body with the brain of her infant child (An aspect of the film which receives NOT enough attention). What the film does focus on is how her brain develops and how the young brain being treated as the adult shell affects Bella’s view and experiences of the world. The film covers topics of the 20th Century society, and how women were treated within it, prostitution, marriage, manipulation and suicide.  

Is Poor Things a feminist film? Seems to be a key question in the discourse. But I think that we need to take a moment to question what this concept actually means, what is a feminist film? Whilst there are many great smaller films that cover feminist topics well, I want to focus on these big blockbusters as these moneymakers allow us to also think about the role capitalism plays in this debate. Film is an industry after all. A common theme in these female-led Oscar noms is that none of them are labelled as ‘feminist’ in their promotional materials. Feminism is still a divisive term, and in the pursuit of profit, it can be risky to give a film such a label. ‘Feminist’ is a label that is both given and taken away by the media and discourse surrounding a film.  it is an umbrella term for various socio-political movements, it is a lens in which to view the world and a standard to hold things to. How could this be encapsulated within a film? Within Feminism itself there are internal arguments, one person's feminism may look completely different to someone else's. 

Take a look at Barbie, celebrated by some as a feminist classic, but belittled by others as not being feminist enough. How could Barbie be a perfect feminist film? In 90 minutes could the film have covered aspects of a movement that’s history varies so hugely from country to country. There wouldn’t be time to then expand into intersectionality*, would Warner Bro’s dare discuss abortion issues, Barbie meets a TERF? By putting both Barbie and Poor things up to this impossible feminist standard it leads to them being torn down by an angry mob. It is important to view film critically, especially when these topics are covered, but when these films face so much backlash it can have knock on effects and scare filmmakers from attempting to cover women’s issues in their projects. Barbie is a film that set out to make money, it’s based on a bloody toy! While we can acknowledge that there were issues with the topics covered, it is important to also be grateful that a film like this exists, made so much money and definitely introduced or expanded upon feminist topics to the audience. 

This leads me to ask, where is this energy for films without a male lead? Feminism can be a critique applied to all films yet seems to only be extended to those with a female lead. Just because a film has a female lead doesn’t mean it is feminist. I think this echoes the emotional labour that society puts on women to represent feminism and fight for respect for themselves and other women. Do we all lack the object permanence to remember feminism unless we’re directly gazing upon a woman? In order to be successful, feminist practices need to be adopted in all aspects of a film, yes with female characters, but also behind the screen. A role can be written and directed by a man, just because it is played by a woman does not mean it is feminist or not exploitative.  

Capitalism wants to sell us feminism as this neat little package, it wants us to buy into it and forget that there is no way to price an ideology. Poor Things is a fantasy film, not a feminist film, feminism is not a genre. Yes, there are Feminist themes, but there are also prominent themes of class issues, yet no one is rushing to label it as a communist film. If we cannot decide a set framework or criteria for a feminist film, we need to stop trying to use that label. Feminism is a critique that can be applied to all media, and feminist debate surrounding film needs to also expand to cover those behind the scenes. Let’s just enjoy some cinema and accept that it cannot fit into the high standard, but by sparking a conversation it can do more and still be used to educate people. 

*Hey, don’t know about intersectionality? Thats cool, but you should acquaint yourself. Intersectionality in feminism is an acknowledgement that gender based oppression isn’t one size fits all and that other factors such as class and race can have a huge effect. Read up 

[psychoticallytrans]

Your argument that TERFs see men as all bad therefore it's a bad ideology doesn't make sense. You could apply this to any oppressor dynamic to say talking about oppression is therefore bad because it marks one group as doing harm.

There's a difference between "This group as a whole is doing harm to another group." and "Everyone in this group is irreparably evil due to their nature." Radical feminism very frequently lands on the latter side. That's a problem.

An example from another perspective. As a disabled person, I don't think abled people are inherently unable to make accommodations for and believe disabled people when they speak up. This means that it's reasonable to hold them accountable when they do not do so. I also don't think that every individual abled person is responsible for all the ableist crap a lot of them spew, or for structural ableism. I recognize that abled people are capable of not being ableist and that they are only responsible for their own behavior. I hold the abled people I care for to a high standard of treating me and my disabled loved ones with respect, and encourage them to advocate for our rights with what influence they have.

Taking the radical feminist attitude towards men and applying it to abled people would leave me with something like this: "Abled people are inherently unable to understand the disabled experience, and are inherently tainted by the hatred of disabled people. They will never be able to remove enough ableism from themselves to interact safely, let alone productively, with disabled people. Disabled people should never form close relationships with abled people, because they will inevitably hurt the disabled people around them. There is no such thing as an abled person honestly working for disability justice. All that say they are are just there to prey on naive disabled people."

That's an incredibly tempting perspective for someone who has been traumatized by ableism. Abled people are ableist, and the ones that are less ableist will almost always be the same ones that respect it if a disabled person tells them to fuck off. So a disabled person who cuts themselves off from as many abled people as they can would be more likely to interact more heavily with particularly ableist abled people, reinforcing the ideas that led them to cut off abled people in general.

Being a tempting reaction to bigotry, however, does not make it right, or fair, or reasonable. It's not fair or reasonable to judge all abled people by their worst actors, and it's not helpful for disability justice. Abled people have always been a part of disability justice, just as much as they have always been a part of structural ableism. Treating the former and the latter the same is unhelpful nonsense. Disabled people have always contributed to structural ableism, often by stepping on other disabled people to get ahead and show that they are different. Disabled people have also always fought for our own rights and dignity. Treating the former and the latter the same is unhelpful nonsense.

Replace all the instances of "abled people" with "men" and "disabled people" with women, and switch other words to fit the new subject as needed. None of the above becomes less true. The fourth paragraph remains just as untrue as it is now.

Radical feminism is an ideology of fear and isolationism. It lashes out at perceived threats while being unable to undermine the structures of power and influence that keep hurting women. It is so, so tempting to traumatized girls and women because it tells those girls and women that all of their fears are true about every single man, and all they have to do to stay safe is stick with other women. It's a terrible way to live. It inclines radical feminists to attack attempts to argue that men and women aren't so different, that people can "cross" from one to the other and that men and women can genuinely understand and love each other. Because if men are not so different than women, if women can be men and men can be women, if it is still true that men are the danger- then women can be dangerous too, and, suddenly, nowhere is safe.

[transirfanon]

Reflecting on The Trans Community as a Trans Person [EXTREMELY LONG POST/VENT]

INTRO

This is a post reflecting on the trans community as I have been relearning and learning things over the past month.

(There are probably spelling mistakes as this is at it's core, a vent)

I have been delving more and more into radical feminist spaces (not gender critical or "TERF" spaces) and radical feminists have allowed me to spot the cognitive dissonance trans space gave me, understand misogyny more and be able to reflect on the problems in trans spaces. I have become a better feminist and I want to continue to develop my own ideas. This is a messy post, I am writing this as catharsis as I have been mentally struggling with all these realizations. If you wanna talk more we can DM.

MATERIAL REALITY/SOCIALIZATION

I first original first delve in radical feminist began when I noticed how much Trans people deny certain realities about things. I first started seeing this problem 2-3 years ago when I began using social media more which led me to opening up to input by radfems that I use to wave off and dismiss. A lot of trans women online would accuse trans men of having male privilege, benefitting from the patriarchy and not experiencing misogyny. But the trans men they would accuse would often not be passing trans men. These ideas were wildly popular. At the time I thought that was ridiculous, especially when they would outright ignore things like medical misogyny, something that doesn't care if you're passing or not.

Essentially their argument was trans men experienced these things under of the simple fact that they were men, no more, no less, accept it. I realized the argument was ignoring materiality and recently, I've begin to notice this ignoring of material reality permeated everywhere in trans spaces and the the type of activism they push.

Trans women, usually the more extreme activist types would say stuff like "Actually trans women never experienced male privilege, even when they were closeted", and "Actually people could tell they were women" or "trans people experienced different socialization from cis people" or even worse "gendered socialization doesn't exist".

Trans women who lived their lives for years as regular degular men weren't ever experiencing male privilege? I would see the shared trans timelines they would do to show off the big transformation and they look like the manliest men to ever man in the "before" section. But no, they never experienced a touch of male privilege, at all (in fact they were possibly still female socialized!). They would often point to having more more girl friends, or being bullied for not being masculine enough as proof of the lack of male socialization or their true female socialization. But cis men have had the exact same experiences? These or not insane concepts, in fact being bullied for being feminine is a staple of male socialization. Male socialization is not everyone explicitly praising you for doing the daring act of being born male. Cis men can have and have had these exact same experiences and continue to be misogynistic and clearly male socialized, look at a lot of gay men despite their ridicule from the patriarchy. There is no "girl soul" or "girl brain" people are sensing from you that allows them sense a closeted trans woman and a cis man despite many wanting it to be true. That is wildly misogynistic.

Gendered socialization is so specific it permeates everything, how people talk to you, how you move around the world, what DOESN'T happen to you. It's all so gendered that it's unavoidable. And what about sex based oppression? Which is 100% real. Cultures where if you're born female, it's shadowed with disappointment and even death, is that not sex based oppression? Would you not be benefitting if you were born male in that situation, not even a little bit? In reality, these people have no idea whether or not they have been male socialized or female socialized and it is extremely simplified in their minds.

I believe in gendered socialization and that is something you must believe if you are a feminist, how could men possibly learn to treat women like shit for centuries unless you believe it to be a biological fact. I believe that's what 99% of trans people go through because its a fact of the reality and the patriarchy we live in. I can almost immediately tell when a twitter account is run by a trans woman based on the stuff they say, how the act, what they find funny, everything. Do they think it's just a coincidence trans women are on the primarily male dominated site that is reddit and trans men are on the predominately female dominated site that is tumblr? And don't get me started with the "gendered socialization isn't real". Now we're just denying how patriarchal oppression works.

When it comes to denial about gendered socialization, I've noticed trans men are more likely to outright say "they were female socialized" or "grew up as women", than trans women. I believe this is due to the denial of it being over compensation. Trans men are more likely to admit their socialization at it has negatively harmed them and is an example of them experiencing oppression that many will deny but trans women will deny their socialization as they don't want to admit they were ever in any way benefitting from patriarchy or that fact that their views could have been affected by the patriarchy.

GENDER ROLES

Recently another thing I realized is that the infamous "TERFS" may be right about trans people enforcing gender roles. I think it's still possible to be trans and not do those things (it has to do with sex dysphoria), but there's been a growing trend of trans people pointing to their masculine clothing or feminine clothing and saying "how can people misgender me when I'm wearing this!". This is outright supporting of gender roles. Wearing masculine clothing now equals "man"? What about butch women? A butch woman can look exactly like a trans man, are butch women now supposed to be he/him-ed because they're doing as described "male gender presentation?". This is so reductive on so many levels, gender-presentation should be thought of a patriarchal construction, not a tool to validate somebody, and way too many trans people are not fighting against this problem.

I'm starting to rethink if trans people are deconstructing gender or actually putting gender on a pedestal, something we don't want (I am a gender abolitionist). I've started to deconstruct the idea of "gender euphoria". I have some problems with the concept of "gender euphoria" I will talk about later but I'm starting to wonder, is gender euphoria once again pushing gender roles? I have no problem with people being happier as more masculine and more feminine if it's being true to themselves, it's the "gender" part I'm starting to have a problem with. Are we once again gendering things when that should be the very thing we are against? Being "feminine" makes you feel more like a woman, being "masculine" makes you feel more like a man? That feeling shouldn't exist at all if we are trying to deconstruct gender and social roles? We should be fighting for the opposite effect. I understand trans people want to go through their lives as a certain gender and pass and using gender roles to their benefit helps with that but... on the other hand, we're using gender roles and upholding gender roles in order to get the validation we want. Is that a good thing in the long run? I am reflecting this myself as a trans person and I'm starting to break away from it as a I become more sex-based when it comes to my trans identity and how I understand myself. It's a lot for me the process.

I'm more for gender euphoria being about changes to your sex I think I prefer that rather than stuff like "makeup" or "not doing the dishes". I understand it can make trans people feel more like a man/woman, it makes sense because we live in a society that genders those things but....once again....those feelings are a patriarchal construct. There should be nothing that makes you feel more womanly or manly at the end of it if we want to destroy gender roles right? I think it contradicts out "intended" goals.

WHY PEOPLE TRANSITION

Now onto analyzing why people transition and how misogyny can be rooted in that. This has been a very recent discovery of mine. I have been "researching" by going through so many trans people's accounts regularly, reading about trans people's experiences and their thoughts, trying to grasp a greater understanding. And because of this...I have become more and more disillusioned....

I have been more disillusioned with how I see especially trans women, as I originally really respected, were fascinated and looked up to them but now... I have become disgusted by a lot of them, especially white trans women which has shocked me and I am saddened.

This view that maybe trans women could have a serious problem with misogyny began with a tweet where a trans woman told a twink "he was basically a woman because he was a bottom and 5'2''.

Is this how they see women? Submissive things to eventually become? That's what you say passively say like it's an acceptable thing to admit? how worse could the misogyny be if that's something acceptable to say out loud?

Being in MTF spaces and seeing what they relate to, what they like, their experiences.... it's drenched in so misogyny it's sickening, and they see no problem in it. A lot of their desires to transition are rooted in misogyny. The anime, something that has a HUGE problem in how they portray women is treated as a goal. The childish imagery, the infantilization, I hate it, I hate it when cis women do it and I hate it when trans women do it, but it's so prevalent in trans spaces it's ridiculous. There is no criticism of it with them, just pure idolization.

And don't get me started on AGPs. Recently I've come accept AGP as a real things despite trans people dismissing it and me dismissing it myself. Because of this...I have become prejudice towards AGPs and they make up a large percent in the community, especially in the west. I have become fascinated with the concept of AGPs when I kept seeing how much trans women over sexualized themselves and were obsessed with porn and sex on their "normal" social media accounts (not NSFW specific). The constant talk about "euphoria boners" which I originally found kinda weird but accepted and their obsession with anime women made me weary. I never read anything about AGPs from people who are against trans people, never read shit from Blanchard himself, I wanted to see the experiences of MTFs from themselves and why they transition and oh god....

And it's harder for me to completely reject AGPs because it seems to really damage their health and lives, but their reasonings for transition are definitely problematic and go against when I stand for, especially when the community is dismissing it and ignoring the misogyny that lies within it. I would at least like for trans women to point out the misogyny in what fuels their desires to transition. I also think AGPs are the reason why "incel/nazi to trans" is so prevalent which I noticed a couple years ago and was confused by. It's probably the reason why so many trans women are on 4chan.

Trans men do the same thing too, AAP is real. Their desires to transition are rooted in sexuality as well but, I am less annoyed with them due to living in a patriarchal society. The way men and women are viewed are very different. What fuels AGP trans women is much more problematic due to misogyny than what fuels AAP trans men. Trans men hype up the regular ass looking men they see in movies and pinterest tho still idealized of course while trans women are hyping up depictions of women that are rooted in misogyny (stuff they see in anime and in porn). AGP Trans women still do get envious of normal ass women as do AAP trans men, but porn is still a major part of their trans experiences due to their paraphilias.

The problem is, I have rarely seen a trans woman interested and obsess over the beautiful women you see in tv and film like trans men do. I find that to be a lot healthier depictions of women rather than porn for god's sake.

Woman as a concept is so packaged, commodified, idealized, catered and aestheticized due to the society we live in, do you you truly believe your perception of woman is entirely pure? Without misogyny?

Do you think your view of women and what you want to be doesn't have any underlying misogyny when porn and anime has been a big part of your understanding of your trans identity? Do any of you people want to do any introspection at all whilst claiming to be feminists? I think this problem is what leads a trans woman to say a man is basically a woman for being small and submissive.

TRANS ACTIVISM (Chronically online edition!)

When it comes to these sorts of trans women I've noticed they tend to be white, the most outspoken about transfeminism and transmisogyny. Is this because they went from "Straight White Men", the ultimate benefiter of everything, to being looked down upon in society? So now their oppression is their biggest identity and they have it so much harder than everyone else (Cue the "trans men are oppressing me" posts). Often when I look at these accounts, and I see what they look like, it's very clocky trans women. They very rarely pass.

Now HSTS trans women, I feel no prejudice for as there is no porn they repost for me gag at. They usually aren't very loud about their oppression though they obviously are very oppressed. It's harder for me to distinguish between a HSTS trans girl running a social media account and a cis girl running a social media account unless their very vocal about their transness. I don't think they are immune to being misogynistic but generally they tend to have less hostility towards cis women (which I think is important in being allied with cis women when it comes to destroying the patriarchy). They usually pass more and seem to be less porn brained but still sexualize themselves similarly to the way cis women do (when other trans women do it, it's fucking ridiculous, it's like their whole lives revolve around a fetish [puppy girl, diapers, etc.]) I don't think HSTSs are breaking any glass ceilings or gender roles, they tend to be very gender conforming women and do things I think are very patriarchal, but of course their transition goals are "average (pretty) cis woman" and the average cis woman is still very influenced by the patriarchy.

OUTRO

Radical feminist may read post and say "DUH!" but it's harder for trans people to recognize these sorts of things. I'm not sure how to go about these feelings as I know radical feminists are not the biggest fans of me and is difficult for me to say something like "AGP and AAPs aren't real trans people" as I know it's not simply a easy fetish they can put on and take off, but what I want to is self-reflection in trans spaces when they perpetuate misogyny. I want gender abolition to embraced, I want radical feminism to be embraced. I want cis women to be our allies though they may disagree with trans identities. I don't want gender roles to be put on a pedestal because you wear it like a pronoun pin. I'm sick of so much. I miss my more trans positive self, the less I knew, the better.

[self-loving-vampire]

It's also helpful in that once you notice the way it works you realize it is completely identical to how conservatives talk about immigrants. In fact, Julia Serano points this out in the same essay where she says this:

Cultural feminism literalizes the Predator/Prey mindset and its imagined categories of “dangerous” and “contaminating” men, and “safe,” “pure,” and “vulnerable��� women.

While this worldview is well-documented, few people actually call themselves “cultural feminists.” As Echols explains, many continued to call themselves “radical feminists” (which is why we now have the term “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists” or “TERFs”). More recently, “gender critical” has become a popular self-descriptor for people who hold this perspective. Some of these individuals strive to create communities completely free of “male/masculine contamination” in a lesbian-separatist sort of way. Others are straight women who appreciate cultural feminism’s valorization of womanhood and want it to remain “uncontaminated” by those who seemingly undermine that category (e.g., trans people, and possibly other sexual minorities). Echols’ article explains why the former group tolerates the latter despite their relationships with men, and why the latter tolerates the former despite their lesbianism. Cultural feminists sometimes collaborate with social conservatives and the far-right on certain issues — most notably, their anti-trans, anti-pornography, and anti-sex-work positions. This strikes many outsiders as hypocritical. After all, how could any feminist side with groups that explicitly oppose women’s rights? I would argue that this paradox is readily resolved once you realize that what these groups share in common is their literalization of Predator/Prey — that’s simply how the world is in their minds. Their only disagreement is over whether women should defer to men’s “innate” aggression and supremacy, or whether women should create male-free spaces in order to fend off that “innate” aggression and supremacism. So where does that leave trans people then? In the case of trans female/feminine people, pretty much fucked. Cultural feminists’ sex-essentialism doesn’t merely lead them to misgender us. Rather, because they view us as “men,” they imagine that male sexual “contamination” and “corruption” practically oozes out of us. This is why “gender critical” activists are so obsessed about our (real or imagined) “penises” and their unsubstantiated fears that we will go around “flaunting” them (it’s always the word “flaunt” for some reason). It’s why they constantly portray us as “sexual predators” who “prey” on women and children in sex-segregated spaces, or who “pressure” lesbians into having sex. It’s why they go on and on about “autogynephilia (AGP),” and extrapolate from that thirty-year-old disproven theory that trans women who simply exist in public spaces must be nonconsensually involving other people in their “sexual fetishes.” Cultural feminism’s literalization of the Predator/Prey mindset is what led Janice Raymond to write: “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves.”

I mean, personally, I think examining the way TERFs specifically think of men - not just trans women (who they view, largely, as particularly perverse men) - is useful to understanding how the entire radfem ideological lens pollutes the perception of those caught in its echo chambers towards both cis men and cis women alike, and how those ideas are thereby reflected upon trans women. That's not "shifting the focus" away from trans women, it is a part of the whole ideological black hole radfems exist within.

I don't think it's at all pointless or misguided to look at how they view men as inherently dangerous and predatory and (cis) women as inherently victimized in order to understand how those same ideological distortions are thereby applied to transwomen; as well as the transmisogyny perpetuated and acted upon specifically by TERF circles and how it pollutes public discourse.

Illustrating the ways in which TERF/radfem ideology is rooted in a hatred of men as much as it is rooted in transmisogyny does not invalidate the core part that the latter plays in their ideology; rather it helps fully understand how both of those concepts feed into each other and how their view of the world as a whole is warped by this ideology. I don't understand why it's so controversial to acknowledge it as an important part of the conversation.

[kyliafanfiction]

One thing that I’ve noticed is that, even before JK.Rowling outed herself as a tone-deaf TERF caricature of who she’d been before, is that people attacked the Harry Potter series for things that other YA series don’t get the same attacks for.

Like, JKR sucks, but let’s let our attacks on her and her books exist in the realm of fair reason, hm?

The one that really stands out for me is the complaint that the Harry Potter series is bad because Harry didn’t.... fix all of the problems with the Wizarding World? 

This one has always baffled me. Like, leaving aside the fact that there was hardly room for fixing everything in a seven book series (what, did we want ten, twenty, thirty more books covering the rest of Harry’s life? I’m sorry, I don’t want to read Harry Potter and the Landlord’s Inspection followed by Harry Potter and the Series of Boring and Straight Forward Criminal Cases With No Plot Twists), How is it Harry’s responsibility to always, 100 percent of the time, be on the fore of solving all the world’s problems. Give him a freaking break, he spent seven years fighting for his life, let him have something nice!

Like, yes, the Wizarding World is packed full of problems. Many of them ones that J.K. Rowling deliberately included, and many that she doesn’t really see as problems (which is it’s own set of issues with her writing), but since when is it the responsibility of a book series to resolve literally every bad thing that exists in the world?

Yes, I’m all for a story about Aragorn’s tax policy, but I wouldn’t want that to be part of the Lord of the Rings proper, because that’s not what LOTR was. And I wouldn’t expect (or enjoy) a story where Aragorn literally fixes every single wrong in Gondor and then the rest of Middle Earth because that’s not how things work. Shit doesn’t get fixed like that, doesn’t get rendered perfect. (It’s telling that the loudest voices on this line of attack tend to be the kind of lazy socialist who thinks that everything can be solved by just screaming ‘eat the rich’ and ‘medicare for all’) Problems are solved, and the solutions raise new problems. They expend scarce resources. They require limited decision bandwidth. A solution for one group makes things worse for another. Or actually implementing the solution in a way that doesn’t accidentally kill innocent people becomes a challenge all it’s own.

And all this assumes that all the relevant figures in a society can be convinced to back a solution. Or you could use violence, but that doesn’t tend to work out all that well for anyone, by every single historical example we have. But sure, this time when we feed people to the Guillotine, it’ll work.

So yes, it’s not that it wouldn’t be interesting to read a series about a world like the Wizarding World being reformed, or even having a violent revolution (though if that violence led to a perfect utopia, I’d question the sanity of the writer). But that’s not what the Harry Potter series was, and I doubt JKRowling, with her abundance of character and writing flaws, would have been able to write it to the satisfaction of the people who bitch about it. And Harry Potter would hardly have been the right protagonist for that story anyway. But that’s not what the series was. It was a Juvenile fiction/YA series about an orphaned boy finding a place in the world, graduating school and defeating a Dark Lord. It’s not a particularly innovative model of a story, but it’s one that works well, and that is well established. It was very clear from the start what sort of story it was, and it was never gonna be ‘Harry Potter Fixes the World’.

I mean, it’s fine to want to read a story where someone discovers they belong to some secret, hidden world and then they set out to correct all the injustices of that world. And depending on how heavy-handed it was, and how unrealistic all that fixing was, I’d probably even enjoy it. But that isn’t what Harry Potter was. And getting angry at J.K. Rowling for not doing that in her seven book YA coming of age story is a bit like walking into a McDonalds and then screaming at them for not carrying vegan nonfat soy gluten free kale smoothies! It’s like going into a pizza place and wondering where the Chicken Tikka Masala is. You’re in the wrong place for what you’re looking for, and that’s not the proprietor’s fault.

And again - and this is what gets me - I have never seen any other YA author taken to task for this. I have seen tons of them attacked for bad representation, or lack of representation, or daring to have sex happen in the story, or for ‘sending bad messages about relationships to impressionable kids’, et cetera. 

But I’ve never seen - and maybe I’m just not looking in the right places - any sort of widespread idea that the author’s story was a failure because *looks at smudged writing on hand* “... they failed to have the protagonists resolve all the problems of the society...” That can’t be right?

Oh, but it is somehow what people expect here. I have not once, in my many years of reading fantasy fiction, Sci-fi, and YA stories encountered any novel or series that ended with everything being solved. Or even most things. It’s never been an expectation I’ve seen anyone throw at any other story. The fact of the matter is, even the most complex of stories is only going to resolve a small number of problems just from a logistics of writing approach. I can’t even begin to imagine how complex a story focusing on just a tenth of the major systemic problems of our society and their ‘fixing’ would be.

JKRowling is, now, trash. She’s an out of touch, elitist, tone-deaf, perpetual victim TERF who has more in common with the alt-right than anyone to the left of Richard Freaking Nixon. Her refusal to take even reasonable and mild criticism, and her constant and persistent doubling down on her nonsense while continuing to screech about how dare ‘cancel culture’ attack her shows how thin her skin is, how badly she takes even the slightest disagreement, the barest hint of a ‘no’. There are many problems with the HP series, and many in the Wizarding World, including the ones that she didn’t seem to see as problems. A lot of unexamined Very British Baggage, for instance. And had JK Rowling been able to do any self-reflection once she started getting criticism, maybe she could have addressed those problems, at least a little. But a lot of the attacks the books got, and still get, were and are unreasonable. Expecting things that no one had any legitimate reason to expect or by judging it by standards no one ever judges books by. If you graded books by ‘solve all the problems in the world’ every book gets an F. But I’ve never seen any series get hit with that same, persistent line of attack.

It’s unreasonable, and stupid, and more than anything else, it’s baffling. Why did anyone ever expect this of Harry Potter in the first place?

[flagellant]

Why are people on the Internet so comfortable asking strangers personal questions about their relationship with their doctors

The answer is because Tumblr has instituted a "social justice" platform entirely based on perfect personal transparency, where the lack of saying you're not a terf is equivalent to being a terf, and that if you do not have on your bio a carrd describing every mental illness and oppressed minority that you have, you are automatically considered suspicious.

I am fairly open about the bare basics of my backgrounds but I have reached a level of internet publicity that I have not felt comfortable sharing any amount of details about my personal life on here for quite some time. It took me about two or three months before I felt willing to even offhandedly mention that I'd moved.

Many Tumblr users feel entitled to a stranger's personal life and details because they have been taught that unless a person is X then anything they say about X no matter what it is or what context it is in is considered problematic, speaking over voices, or actively harming the X community. This has led people to be forced to out themselves or their traumas before they were willing, ready, or able, because obviously if you depict sexual assault in a Netflix show you are glorifying sexual violence against women, and because you have not publicly spoken that you are a sexual violence victim yourself, you have become One Strike Problematic.

The reason people feel comfortable and entitled asking me about my deeply personal life is because they don't see me as a person, they see me as a username who they think is sus because I won't give them my full name, date of birth, and social security number because they ask me to.

[radkindoffeminist]

Hi! I know you’re not a stand-in for all gc people and don’t expect you to speak on behalf of all of us but I’ve been wondering for months now what the stance is on tifs— in my experience, I’ve tried to engage with other terfs on this allied basis against all males, but I’ve personally never really taken issue with women/females who want to transition or change pronouns, which is typically where I find a division. Obviously I think they/thems are annoying and egregious most of the time, but I’ve found it really perturbing how much vitriol I’ve seen towards tifs from some terfs, I’ve seen some calling them stupid or deranged or brainwashed, things of that nature. Have you seen this pattern? How do you feel about it? My best personal/irl (and most effective) activism has always been talking to tifs actually, and getting them to see how the trans women in their lives treat them, how they perpetuate violence (particularly as tifs are often subjected to more tw attention and fetishism, and often effectively groomed into submission under the guise of “T4T”). But I love women and I feel like tifs in whatever form shouldn’t be hated or criticized this much (yes I recognize I’m calling them women even if they would not, irl I do my best to respect how they want to be referred to as and treated). Anyway, food for thought. Hope you’re having a good Sunday!

So my view is heavily shaped by the TIFs I have been good friends with for a long while and many encounters I’ve had online. As you said, I’m not a stand-in for all GC and my views are on the more sympathetic end as things go. I’m mostly in the same boat as you and have found that TIFs can generally be split into three categories.

Internalised misogyny/Internalised homophobia/Trauma: These three categories overlap heavily so it’s impossible to split them apart. Internalised misogyny/homophobia and/or trauma has led these women to identify as NB or trans in order to become ‘trans and straight’ or to escape the restrictions that they feel as women. The sad thing is that this probably makes up most TIFs and they will never analyse where some of these feelings are coming from because the hate for their bodies and womanhood is validated by the trans community as proof of them being trans. These women are struggling and often dress more androgynously because they think that gets them further away from ‘being a woman’. I have so much sympathy for these women, even if many of them still tow the trans party line and are assholes sometimes. They’re still struggling nonetheless.

Trendy Q*eer Girl(TM): Can cross other with either of the other categories, but also distinct enough to give it its own category. The trans q*eer girl is basically just the ‘I’m not like other girls’ but instead of doing it to impress the boys, does it to impress other q*eer people because they see being q*eer as a cool trend that they want in on. Often straight and if not straight then identifies as bisexual or pansexual but has (almost) exclusively been with men. Uses things like ‘loves iced coffee and energy drinks’ as proof of their q*eer status because obviously you can only like things like that if you’re q*eer, right? Annoying as fuck but sometimes does have trauma and internalised misogyny behind it so I have some sympathy, but not a lot for the people who treat our identities as little more than a trend.

Fetishiser: Rarer but certainly becoming more common and incredibly toxic. The fetishisers are typically trans men who date (or want to date) gay men and love yaoi (or whatever it’s called) and from that have developed an obsession over gay men to the point of convincing themselves that they themselves are actually gay men. It is creepy and weird and this group, even though they can struggle and have issues which led to this, deserve to be called out to no end. These are the people who are helping to normalise ‘genital preference’ and not being allowed to reject someone just because they’re trans, but focus more of their energy on gay men than lesbians. They are deeply homophobic.

As I said, I have an incredible amount of sympathy for many TIFs who are obviously struggling and it’s sad to see other radfems attack them so harshly and so often. They should definitely be called out on their toxic, homophobic, and misogynistic views, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t recognise that so many of these women are just struggling and doing their best to cope with their issues. Baselessly attacking them because people want to group together all trans people as being the problem when that’s not the issue does absolutely nothing for our cause and, if anything, continues to drive women away from radical feminism.

Why does so much of our sympathy go out of the window when people disagree with us? When did we stop fighting for the rights and protections of all women and decide that actually only the women in the fight with us need help and protection?

[sevsssnape]

Mauruaders stans are the oddest fuckers put there. They straight up want to have code names like the mauruaders. And for what reason? Half of your gang doesn't live up to 22, those who do survive literally have 0 charecter development and quite literally only sound like gym teachers talking how they were the shit back in highschool (then again you can only talk about your past because your life deadass stops) .

Also they had like the unhealthiest dynamic of all time and that lack of communication led to their downfall. 90 % of mauruader content is fanon.

The reality is that they grew up with little to no pretense of a possible war and were sheltered by magic youth l guess. When they graduated, they had to choose sides because for some unknown reason there were little no no adults and they literally died (lmao).

But yeah tell me how being called ' insert colour and your fav plant', and kinning a dead charecter with 0 development, can literally help you cope with apparent continuous indie highschool musical lifestyle. (choices were made, certainly questionable ones)

Literally snape fans should be only trusted in granting development to jkr plot devices (the mauruaders) in a 'everybody lives/nobody dies au'. And I stand by that.

SORRY I TOTALLY FORGOT TO ACTUALLY RESPOND AND NOT IN MY HEAD

Half of your gang doesn't live up to 22, those who do survive literally have 0 charecter development and quite literally only sound like gym teachers talking how they were the shit back in highschool

this 💀💀

also in case of pettigrew the dude become a fucking death eater, brought back V O L D E M O R T to life. dude.

Also they had like the unhealthiest dynamic of all time

EXACTLY. like sirius accused lupin of joining voldy, lupin didn't bat a fucking eye when sirius was accused of MASS MURDER like it was totally believable for him that he'd do such thing. i mean? what tf does that say about these characters?

also pettigrew had SUCH low trust in them that literally went begging to voldy.

and that lack of communication led to their downfall

honestly i don't believe even communicating would've saved them at that point. they'd known each other for seven fucking years and how they'd gotten to know each other directly chose their decisions for them.

sirius thought lupin was a werewolf and since he'd been this loyal to dumbledore bc he gave him a chance and supported him through hogwarts, why wouldn't he go to voldy now, that was extra powerful and that would ACTUALLY support lupin bc of his dark heritage and stuff?

lupin had witnessed sirius giving zero shit about shit and attempting M U R D E R for FUN!! back when he was like sixteen, so why wouldn't it make sense that he'd actually go on and kill people when he's drunk on fury and grief?

and pettigrew, pettigrew knew them. knew they weren't men of war, just oversized spoiled pricks that would endanger anyone and anything for... literally nothing. for fucking fun. and this one wasn't just from when they were back in hogwarts,

porker and sirius went harassing people even when they were in the middle of war!!! and in HIDING!!

i mean now that i'm thinking pettigrew was the most sensible of them all. wow.

90 % of mauruader content is fanon

lol literally😭😭

When they graduated, they had to choose sides because for some unknown reason there were little no no adults and they literally died (lmao)

exactly :))

actually, this is either another plot hole on the terf bitch's side, or dumbledore had lost so much of his popularity throughout the years since the war with grindelwald, bc eg we know orion black, abraxas malfoy and so many others indirectly supported voldemort, and all their children from any age; lucius being in his late twenties, bellatrix in her fucking thirties, same for rodolphus, and so many more that were actual adults, then there were regulus, barty crouch and many other ones that had just graduated hogwarts. yet dumbledore only had a bunch of little gryffindorks. and contrary to the elders of the black family, malfoy family, lestranges and so many others, those like fleamont potter weren't even indirectly supporting the order.

literally the ONLY reason dumbledick won the war was bc of severus, and HOW i wish he hadn't changed sides. i can't believe him.

But yeah tell me how being called ' insert colour and your fav plant', and kinning a dead charecter with 0 development, can literally help you cope with apparent continuous indie highschool musical lifestyle. (choices were made, certainly questionable ones)

omg this💀💀💀💀

i really don't get why. like. why. wtf. how i hate stupid people.

granting development to jkr plot devices (the mauruaders) in a 'everybody lives/nobody dies au'

wjgkeflkwjhurgefkadwefad

[diamondcitydarlin]

do you think you'll watch any of Loki s2, write any meta about your thoughts?

I'd like to say probably not, but knowing me and my brain it's also possible I might despite my better judgement. The thing is -and it's 10 years too late- but I'm just getting kinda tired of writing and reading long, thoughtful essays on subject material the creators of which don't care even 1/4th about as much. Most of the education we've gotten in the US anyway in regards to critically evaluating art and media leans heavily towards this; we're taught to always assume every piece of art and media has a bottomless depth of insight bestowed upon it by the creator(s) that we must parse through to discover their genius treasures hidden cleverly within the text (ex. "the curtains are blue because the author wants to allude to depression"). We're told that every piece of art/media/literature etc is more of a detective's puzzle than anything else and anyone creating mainstream art is in on the game.

While I think it's absolutely true that every piece of art has a bottomless depth of potential in it, I think we were sold a lie in being led to believe that any and every creator cares at all about that, let alone is helping to construct some genius meta web for us to unravel (particularly capitalist, mainstream creators that are beholden to execs). I think because of this we also, historically, have fallen easily into believing that IF the creator IS doing this, they're constructing something for our appeal (a subtextual queer pairing for instance). We never consider the much more likely outcome (as has been proven time and time again) that the creator is constructing something solely for himself and others like him and doesn't give a single shit about what marginalized people might want to see in subtext or context or otherwise (but lord knows a suit is going to push them to do the safe amount of queerbait for views and investors)

As it stands at this point, I'm indisputably in love with Owen and Tom's dynamic and the very few things they're able to think up that make it into the text. I love the idea of what Mobius and Loki could be together if the MCU hadn't become a completely hollowed out capitalist husk spitting out garbage for profit as fast as it possibly can. I love what the fandom has come up with in the interim because everyone within is SO talented and cares so much more about these characters than the people being paid to write them. I can absolutely go read a fanfic or a comic and get far more satisfaction and food-for-thought than I would trying to sit through yet another churned out pile of MCU garbage that ultimately means nothing, because no one involved has or was allowed to have any heart in the work. I feel like I've been shown SO MANY times that I'm not only wasting my own time doing this, I'm wasting the time of others by helping to convince them a text without depth actually might have it intentionally.

So. I'd like to say absolutely not. I'd like to say I will not have anything to do with this 2nd season as much as I might want to, because they already made it clear in the first season (and the resulting messy, completely unprofessional interviews etc) that this show is not for me, so if I go wandering into this next season with some dumbass expectations or hope for things that absolutely are not going to happen that's on me. I also am not keen to support a show that has been OVERTLY stubborn about depicting genderfluidity in an accurate or responsible way, has repeatedly employed TERF ideologies into their plots, with multiple people on cast and crew being open TERFS, despite making sure the show was advertised as a queer-appealing piece that would explore Loki's gender identity. They are absolutely trying everything they can to take queer peoples' money and time without giving them anything substantial in return, and it's not the first or I daresay the last show to do it. I'm tired of being a fool to these narratives tbh.

However, again, my problem is that I love Tom and Owen together and immediately melted when I saw them in the s2 BTS pics. I don't know how I'll realistically talk myself out of watching any of their scenes together at least in the next season, even though I know the MCU is never going to write them to be what they could be. Let's just be honest about that now. It's never going to happen in canon, I'm sorry- and even if it did it would probably suck and all the Lokius fanfics you've ever read are leagues better than what the MCU would do to them even if they deigned to make them official. We need to stop kidding ourselves because the end result is just feeding a corporation accolades and money they don't deserve, while creators trying to make actual, heartfelt representation get ignored. (....now if I'm wrong someday feel free to bully me on anon or whatever lmao)

AND THIS ISN'T TO SAY WE SHOULDN'T HAVE A FANDOM. This isn't to say we shouldn't create our OWN versions!! This isn't to say we shouldn't love the POTENTIAL of the pairing and keep exploring what that could be, I don't want to be misunderstood here! I think it's just a matter of being comfortable enough to move away from that need for canon affirmation, which is something that while not impossible or unprecedented, is difficult sometimes for fandoms to do as we've historically seen canon as the ultimate authority, rather than a sandbox of things we can just grab what we like from to play with and ignore/nuke the rest lmao. It's about embracing the derivative for what it is.

I might end up writing some meta about s2, probably something that expands on a look Mobius gives Loki or something equally insignificant that I blow up and turn into my own thing, but that's if I can get access to Lokius scenes etc. Either way I will not be watching this show in completion on my own or paying the Disney+ sub to watch

[spotaus]

Owl you are so silly for this but also so right... (Elaborating some rough ideas under the cut so that I (<- guy with bad object permanence) will look back and remember wtf my plan was here.)

So the Temmies could go a couple ways here. Like, my first thought was following that biker gang idea, because a group of Temmies led by that Underswap Tem would be SO funny. Though, Abyss would see them roll onto his terf and tell his boys to obliterate them, which wouldn't end super well haha!

Another, following that God concept, brings me back to Dopple!Temmies and their silly cult, which I adore!! But in all honesty I already have a god-complex guy in place elsewhere. Of course, that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be a little temple in the slums of a city where a singular Temmie has become a God lmao---

I think what I wanna go with is a bit more friendly! (Blue does *not* meet enough folks who are allies from the start) There's a location called The Silver Isle (and their rival the Bronze isle) which both float in the air and operate completely based on aesthetics. The Silver Isle is completely covered in what we would consider 'Futuristic' so all white and smooth and Tron-Like. Having said that, it's also still pretty run down in the aftermath of the war. It's a haven of techies abd inventors abd programmers and engineers who were shunned in the aftermath and found haven in a place like this.

Why is that relevant? Why, obviously, Tem went to colleg! UT Tem would be a monster who was great at engineering! Not great with codes or repairs, but she was speedy with designs and execution of them! (Now I'm thinking she was probably recruited the same way Sci and Geno were). But Tem Armor? Yeag. What- what if all the bodily modifications on the ectos were mostly her design? That's why they were so strong???

Anyways, she would escape the government eventually. My thought here is that she lived in the Silver Isle for years and years before the war, and was really well known for her Tem-Bots! Little assistants for your desk, to be your maide or helper, etc! They're based completely on her and she made hundreds. A lot were destroyed in the war, but those that survived recalled to their place of origin.

When the EMP went out, they all lost power, but as it slowly started returning the Temmies were all coming back online. Now I'm picturing that they're all over the Silver Isle and they help out inventors, interrogate travelers, etc, which leaves Temmie at a position of authority!

And of course this would lead her to be inclined to help and be friendly with Blue when he arrives, and call upon him for help with repairs/restoring programs for her Tems when needed. It gains him a powerful ally in the Silver Isle, and that place offers him sanctuary whenever he needs it.

Along with that, if Temmie was taken in by tye government, there's zero doubt that she'd recognize Geno's work when she heard reports that were sent to Blue's workshop late-story, and she's yet another concerned voice telling Blue that Geno's no good. Not to trust him. To be careful.

And idk the idea of the Temmies being lil Ectos that all listen to their og creator? It explains why there are so many and why they all look the same. 'Temmie' was almost a brand name so ppl would've kept the default names of their own Tem-Bots, and the few who got their settings altered (ex. Bob) make sense too! Main Temmie is the Tem who went to school and got really good at engineering! What she lacks in speech she makes up for in skill!

And bonus: Ozzy!

Oc feature moment! Owl, we could definitely workshop this frfr but my initial thoughts are a -> Knows/Relationship with Pretender (carries over from previous headcanons we'd have) or -> Techie/Semi/General Survivor/etc. (Basically limitless! Two pals ocs are a Techie abd a Semi respectively, and there's 0retty much no limit to who Ozzy could be. Badass rogue in the desert? Sure! Best Techie this side of the river? Yeah! Maybe sone dancetale origin story flavor about audio enhancement tech? Is he an heir to the family fortune? A killer? Anything!)

The version where he knows Pretender is as simple as, hos parents would've moved underground during the war, finding the subway the safest location. They probably would've had Ozzy and hos Siblings down there (timeline-wise), but it's not like they'd *never* go up and out. Ozzy in this scenario could very well be one of Tender's most trusted merchants, going out to forming civilizations to offer trade and rations and things they need for only a little cost. Or he'd stay and help Tender in other ways, maybe he was a mechanic and helps Tender modify hinsrlf with new Ecto parts every once in a while. Idk, there's potential here lmao- Maybe instead of being born there, Ozzy shows up later, post war, after a disagreement or the loss of his family (or his 0arents and he's protecting his siblings Yada yada) and he's pretty well-traveled and ready to find someplace new and safe or snth.

And ik the lore is kinda hazy because I'm insane but if there are other options that interest you besides the ones I elaborated on Please Do bring them up! Ec-4o is my favorite universe to bring ocs into because there are some general basics, but beyond that it's pretty much up to you to decide what roll an oc plays! Hero of their own story kinda thing!

Guys I think I wanna toss a,*bit* more variety into my multiverse project (ec-4o.verse). Does anyone have good suggestions for non-sans (or paps) au characters I should include?

Like, send an ask. Or comment. Or rb. Pretty please 🥺. I might not do things right away but I'll tuck them into my pocket for later use!

[coughloop]

vent/rant post about fash/cryptofash/reactionaries on tumblr under the cut dont reblog

im really frustrated with how things have gone down in the last week and im gonna ramble a lot, also im gonna use fash/cryptofash/reactionary and maybe some other terms pretty interchangeably cause they all feel like umbrella terms for the type of people im talking about.

I know we're all getting tired of blocking the same cryptofash accounts that keep remaking over and over again, as well as new ones that find their ways into the periphery of popular posters and have suddenly shoot into popularity until they post something super racist. And a lot of the time it feels so useless and futile, like half the time they have a backup ready to go and the other half just remake in under 24 hours. and like, what does it even do? its not fighting any real world issues, i have no idea what the social effect of having super racist people 3 degrees of separation from everyone on the site actually means, but I know I really fucking dont like it, I know it makes me super uncomfortable to see a mutuals reblog from someone who constantly reblogs and interacts with people that fantasize about beating up trans people on the street.

and now that people like me and some others are getting more and more savvy about noticing cryptofash blogs, it becomes harder and harder to not see how many people i follow that keep me 3 degrees of separation from them.

take ukrainianbimbo for example. they constantly reblog from terfs, transphobes, racists, misogynists and anti-Semites AS WELL as trans people, Jewish people, and people of colour. i blocked them from following me months ago after spending 30 seconds on their blog and recognizing multiple well known tumblr reactionaries. when they noticed i had blocked them and made a couple posts about how easy it is to not follow and reblog from fascists they went on a posting spree whining about how they dont check who they reblog from and why should it be their responsibility. wah wah wah, shut up. anyway, last week they got properly called out for this behaviour and badgrapple came to their defense, going on the dumbest tirade ive ever seen about how theyre sick of fake callouts for people who havent done anything wrong (tell that to your friend ukrainianbimbo who's reaction to being labelled an anti-Semite and a fascist was to triple down on telling a trans jewish woman that she was ugly and should kill herself (both of these things are very untrue shout out Agent, you dont deserve that at all)) and now both of them are going out of their way to interact with more bigots seemingly as a protest for being repressed over hanging with those types in the first place. Fuck off.

All of this then led into people i respect making random vagueposts like "feel like fash is a word being thrown around way too liberally on tumblr these days" and like, yeah, in a way i guess it is, but also people are acting like fascists! crypto fascists specifically because theyre never completely open about their beliefs. fash is shorter and less confusing however (thanks cryptocurrency for that) so thats what people genuinely call them. Why is that a bad thing? If you're posting things that people look at and say "woah dude, you sound like a fascist", maybe thats on you for doing things that other fascists on this site do, not on them for using the "wrong word" for it.

on top of all this though, people HAVE started making up unchecked callouts about people, like Declan smokeweedinbong, who was unfairly called a fascist by someone because declan responded to a comment on his post he didnt background check, thats totally unfair to declan but fuck the reaction from a lot of my mutuals was REALLY WEIRD. people didnt start posting in defense of declan, who again, did nothing wrong but not pay as much attention to a random person as he could have (ive done that too i get it!), but instead people started beating the "cancel culture has gone to far" drum, fucking again. why is that your response?? defend your friends, please! but why is it people who dont want to be exposed to racists and transphobes and anti-Semites ultimately receiving the pushback? its so dumb!

so now half the time i see someone getting an anon about reblogging from a fash, they respond positively but why do they always get follow up anons like "thats dumb who cares, i never look at who i reblog from" like maybe you fucking should?? shut up! people are so fucking stupid on anon it blows me away soemtimes.

i really have no idea where im going with all this, i just really needed to get this frustration of my chest. thanks for reading my run on sentences if you did, and sorry for being somewhat incoherent, i just am so fucking tired of all this, and it doesnt even mean anything. whatever

[residual-fortitude]

I am astonished. By how far the terfs will go. Astonished and terrified and just... tired. I knew they're manipulative asshole supremacists but I didn't realize how *deceptive* they can be. They call us the liars, the fools, the posers. They say *we're* the ones trying to trick *them.*

And yet. They're the ones putting out media that could be trans positive, that could highlight the injustices committed by them. And they're the ones putting them in all the right tags. All the trans safe tags that we thought were safe, because "there's no way they'll try to put themselves into a space they're not safe."

I just found an account on IG. "quotesbytranswomen". Puts out news about trans women facing injustice. Seems safe, right? They even tag it with "trans rights are human rights," "trans lives matter," "trans is beautiful," all the tags we use to promote positivity and LOVE. But then they put an ambiguous caption-- something that could be taken either way-- and then finally, hidden among the tags, tucked so carefully between the positivity "radfem safe." Some even go so far as adding "Trump" or "conservative." And the cherry on top. Their profile pic is the trans flag, and their caption is about "autogynephilia." The bullshit idea from a far right neofascist that was refuted nearly 20 YEARS AGO that they still use as their call to arms.

It's hard enough getting by with anxiety and dysphoria. It's hard enough dealing with the negativity in person. But now I'm supposed to make a thorough search of all accounts I look at to see if there's any HINT of terf bullshit?? Within my only safe space they have placed a poison so enticing, so secretive that they can even get trans kids spitting their murderous ideologies.

THEY ARE EVIL

It doesn't matter what religion/lack of you may believe. No good has come from deception. Only evil. I do not use these terms lightly but they fit all of them. They are EVIL. They are COWARDS. They are a BLIGHT on humanity and the definition of HATRED.

We're tricking them? Who is it that is trying to legally define another SENTIENT BEING as SUBHUMAN. Who is it that tries to use fascist platforms and the idea of a Boogeyman to convince the ignorant masses to allow them to MURDER US? Who has entire essays and handbooks on how to hide within a community and feed enough lies to gain trust before spitting their own indoctrination? In the same manner that led to the Red Scare and the suspicion of sleeper cells within our communities?

And then who is it that offers help to those that have nowhere to go? That offer HOPE to those with none? That give LIFE to those that no longer wish for one?

It is sickening that we have to fear them. That we have to conform to their "normality." That we have to master *learning and teaching how to not be detected/outed* so that no more lives need to be lost?

It is even more sickening that the only way to combat this is with compassion. Because if we spread hate we will just prove their point to the masses.

"He who fights monsters should make sure he does not himself become a monster"

--Friedrich Nietzsche

They do not fear us. So we cannot fear them. No matter how many death threats we receive, no matter how much hate they send, we cannot back down. Or they win. We cannot back down or we lose everything. We cannot back down or the lives we have lost will be for nothing. We cannot back down or they will never know us. Let them see the love we have for our communities. Let them see the love we can give and receive. But most of all, let them see our grief and our pain so that they realize that our blood is on their hands. Show them beyond any doubt that we are HUMAN. Show them that they can no longer hide their crimes. Show them that we will not forget and that we will not back down.

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

hey, so. im just here to ask a couple questions. the last tiktok you posted (the one about white women) has really stuck with me and made me think. though i dont identify as a woman, i was raised afab in a white family and i can see a lot of things happening that were talked about in the video. the sexual exploitation part really hit me, because i was taught (intentionally or not) that my body is my greatest and only valuable asset. this in turn has led to the majority of my sexual trauma, and it made me outraged that something like that could have been prevented if i wasnt taught to dress myself up and make myself appealing to white men. thank you for posting this. it changed my perspective on a lot of things. i specifically want to know how i can prevent the mindsets described in the video and become a better ally, and how i can avoid overshadowing poc issues with my own. i want to be a more considerate person in that sense. thanks for spreading valuable information. bye 👋

Hey!

White AFAB nonbinary here. @yinx1 might have more input as a Black woman.

Obviously I'm not the last say here as a white "woman" (calling myself a woman because that's how society perceives me). If any women of color want to add to this, I'll reblog you.

But, here's what I do to try to be a better ally.

First of all, if I have a platform, I share it. Yinx is the other admin here. I don't do that to get kudos or anything. I just do it because as a white "woman" I know I'm incapable of talking about intersectional issues to the depth that they deserve. (Also Yinx is super sweet, and deserves a platform.)

Second of all, if I see women of color speaking about sexism, I shut up. In a conversational setting, I may ask questions or say something to show I'm listening. If it's on social media like this blog, I may add to what they say with sources. Not to "whitesplain" their issues, but to just be like "She had a good point, and I did some research. Here's some more information I learned."

Third. Any like personal pieces or articles about BIPOC issues, I only share if person that wrote it fits into the community they're talking about. So, for instance if it's an article about the appropriation of braids, that's a Black issues, and I'll only share if the person that wrote it is Black. I'll also do the same with religious practices.

Fourth. Any Black women that have good feminism content? I'll try to boost they're blogs. Tell people to follow them. Dig through their blog for content I like. You'll see a few people I frequently reblog are Black women. Sometimes, things don't need me to say them. If someone more knowledgeable than me says something, I just let them say it. I also, obviously, follow them.

Fifth. If I'm talking about feminist issues, I try to stay away from the "white woman" perspective. My knee-jerk reaction to abortion bans is what a lot of white women are saying (I know that women aren't the only ones effected by the abortion issue, but women are the topic of this post). "My body, my choice." Which is great and all, but that's putting white women at the center of the conversation and not looking at how it effects anyone else.

Did you know that women of color are the ones most effected by abortion bans? Not many people know that. Because white women always have the center stage in feminism, and they only ever make it about themselves. As white "women" we've got to acknowledge that and look at feminism from an intersectional lense. Not just "how does this effect me?" But take a few minutes to do research on how this effects Black women or Latino women or Indigenous women, or literally any other group of women.

Most importantly. FOLLOW WOMEN OF COLOR. YOU SEE CONTENT A WOMAN OF COLOR MADE THAT TEACHES YOU SOMETHING? SHARE IT.

I swear. If I see a woman of color (that's not a TERF) posting stuff about how sexism effects her, specifically? Immediate follow. Scroll through her blog reblog or queue anything I can. Because I want to learn, and she's teaching. Great.

Also important, put your money where your mouth is. Buy from women if color wherever possible. Donate to organizations that benefit them. If there's a woman of color that's it there teaching and you love her content and you find it she has a store? Check it out. Maybe buy something to show your support.

Hope this helps!

-fae