#it's the same thing with cis queers and trans discussions. or white queers and discussions about queer people of color.

[knifearo]

in regard to the "this romantic relationship is actually just a QPR" -> "well actually QPRs are a lot more complex than that and most people don't know that" post... PREACH. I hate the notion that QPRs are just romance lite™. I ended a friendship w my best friend because they thought "what we had" was "at least a QPR" and "you just need to accept that I am your gf." I was out as aro to them and never felt romantic feelings for their gender anyway (not that that rly matters tho, bc I never felt that way for them) but despite that, they felt like they could try to make a "romantic" relationship with me with the QPR "loophole." it's the way that even queer allo people use our own terminology against us and can also be incredibly arophobic/just plain disrespectful to our identities. it doesn't go friendship -> QPR -> romantic relationship. they're all just....... relationships!!!!

!!!!!!! first of all i am so sorry that you had to deal with that. that sucks. second of all you're so correct... something i think is so important to identify is that it's NOT the people in qprs who are pushing what we might nonaffectionately call the "romance lite" narrative. i think all of us can agree that we VERY much dislike when qprs are invoked that way, and it's important to take a step back and separate that rhetoric from the concept of qprs themselves. the "romance lite" narrative is something that people SAY about qprs. but it is not what qprs are! and if we simply start eating the allo people who say that then i think we can live in a much more peaceful world haha. just because they are trying to use our own terminology to fit us in their boxes does not mean that our terminology fits the mold ‼️ bitches will take things out of context all the time (it's the same thing with the "aces can have sex/aros can date" discussions; it's allo people who are leveraging that against sex/romance repulsed aspecs, not other aspecs!!! that conversation was meant to be empowering to sex/romance favorable aspecs because allos took "aces/aros never have to have sex/date" out of context to invalidate people!!) and it is up to us to tell them to shut the fuck up and move on with our beautiful aromantic lives <2

[euniexenoblade]

The Rocky Horror discourse is so annoying, upsetting, and transmisogynistic cuz it often starts off as trans women just honestly discussing how they have trauma related to it or how the film has all the classic transmisogynistic tropes of killer/rapist man crossdressing or how the creator has said some bigoted stuff, and the tme response to personal stories of trauma and actual media analysis is always the same cycle of responses.

"MY trans women friends love it!" Ok that doesn't matter to the point "It's important queer history!" That's why this discussion matters, we need people to understand that queer history can also be transmisogynistic "it's from 50 years ago society is DIFFERENT!" The world is not so different that transmisogyny doesn't exist "the creator is trans!" The creator has said transmisogynistic things and just because he himself might be tma doesn't mean he can't be transmisogynistic or that his transmisogyny doesn't actually influence his identity. "Rocky Horror is ONLY popular cuz transfems love it!" Spacelazar said this one in response to a post I made about actual trauma I have related to the movie, completely discarding my actual real trauma that's not saying you're not allowed to like or watch the movie, to claim that Rocky Horror is only popular cuz of transfems - that cis society isn't more why it's considered a cult classic.

And, tme people just refuse to empathize and often resort to name calling, memes, often times not just falling into misogynistic standards (hysterical women/trannies amiright guys) but also racist remarks (I saw a white tme person make a "woke" joke to mock a black person).

It's just completely dishonest and transmisogynistic. The discussion isn't "you're not allowed to watch Rocky Horror" or "you're a bad person for enjoying it" it's that it's a piece of problematic media that exhibits transmisogynistic bigotry and instead of using their big kid brains and acknowledging that and moving on, tme people really need Rocky Horror to be exonerated as this piece of perfection. (Tbf I think it's largely just cuz it's trans women having an issue, if cis men said Rocky Horror was offensive and misandric I'm sure people would be like oh yeah it is!).

[sapphicsvibes]

my last post was also about the discussions of transmisogyny centering cis female athletes who are women of color. there is a wider conversation being had about transmisogyny in athletics, and that is that, trans women aren't even allowed to compete. before we start discussing how transmisogyny impacts not trans fems, we need to actually center the discussion around the heavily, transmisogynstic shit that is already happening.

and when we talk about how cis woc athletes being overly masculinized and decide to call it transmisogyny instead of what it actually is, racism, it sets us back. there is this understood idea that people can be indirectly impacted by transmisogyny, but unless the subjects of those conversations are transfeminine people, then the focus shouldn't be transmisogyny.

it should be racism. it should be the fact that the white, western gender binary and idea of femininty/womanhood is so fucked up that cis girls of color from a young age are viewed as more masculine, dangerous and larger than white women. we should be focusing on the complexities of misogynoir that black girls go through from childhood to adult hood where we are both masculinized and also hypersexualized and exposed to harmful race science that gets us preyed upon by older men. we should focus on how these conversations of masculinizing women of color comes to play in how white women and white afabs (yes, i know i said i dont like using afabs but i am starting ot use it when discussing the lived experience of white afab people and how that negatively impacts people of color in queer spaces) can utilize their privilege, tears, femininity, etc., to turn society against cis girls of color and how we are automatically seen as a threat to them

we need to talk about racialized misogyny when dicussing imane khelif, and how white women like jk rowling, who has a history of transmigoyny yes, but also anti-arab/MENA racism and islamaphobia, and is prominent in alt right groups, is using her platform to attack a possible muslim, MENA woman. and that's a big thing that hardly anyone talks about - Rowling is heavily islamphobia and anti-arab. when you se guys see her attacking a MENA woman, and decide to focus solely on transmisogyny, you are quite literally erasing a huge chunk of her bigotry.

yes, indirect transmisogyny comes to play, but when you are talking about racialized misogyny, you NEED to make sure that is the main focus - racism and misogyny, because if you don't you make it hard if not impossible for us to have any type of productive conversation. you guys being too afraid to call out racism and misogyny makes it seem like you are shielding white women/afabs and white society from the pain they have put women of color through for decades.

the same goes for misogynoir??? like when we are talking about misogynoir and them completely ignore it and lump it under transmisogyny, who does that help? not only does the black community have an issue with transmisogyny in general, but it also erases a term that we've come up with to help better discuss our oppression.

also, this isn't to say that trans woc don't face racialized misogyny and misogynoir (black transfems!) because they do. but it should be understood that while THEY face these things, transmisogyny is something that should also center them. and while we, as non trans fem women do face racialized misogyny/misogynoir - yeah, sometimes we can draw comparisons between transmisogyny, but we shouldn't be the ones taking the lead or taking platforms.

and last but not least, the way you guys who are claiming what is happening to cis female athletes is transmisogynistic. Do you know how many trans people, who aren't trans fem, that i've seen saying

"see, this is why we need to talk about transmisogyny affecting non transfems! xyz athlete was actually born a woman, she's not a man, she is afab! she has a vagina!" do you realize how that language is terfy, do you realize how you guys will try to hijack convos of transmisogyny while also reinforcing transmisogynistic requirements of what makes a woman a woman?

[doberbutts]

It's astonishing to see people say "All fear of men is reasonable and okay, but you shouldn't be afraid of black people obviously" and you having to reply, "Hey, question? Aren't black men people?" Everyone clinging to their fear of men while never examining their actions which could harm men of color, in this case, black men who have historically been killed and lynched in great numbers by white women weaponizing this fear to end their lives. Read the Will to Change! bell hooks talks about this! She talks about how white people, especially white men, have distracted from their own patriarchal masculinity by portraying violent women-haters as aberrant and abnormal (So, clearly Black men are more likely to be dangerous because they're already aberrant and abnormal in our white supremacist society). PLEASE understand your fear isn't fucking value-neutral and can be inherently be trusted!!!

Also, on the topic of patriarchal masculinity, I think that term really encompasses what we're talking about when we say male privilege is highly conditional. It's also what makes this uncritical man-hating so devious. Like, bell hooks says, contemporary feminism has provided a place for some women to construct a sense of self outside of sexist expectations, but the same can't be said about men. So by distrusting trans men, telling them they should accept feeling unwelcome in queer spaces because "your identity as a man means you have to earn other's trust (even if you haven't done anything other than exist), you're conflating transmasculinity with patriarchal masculinity. Which is so fucking damaging? Not to mention how people love to destroy and hurt transmasc's emotional selves, the same rituals that bell hooks talks about which so severely damage cis men (who were the book's main topic), and we're doing this to a marginalized, queer group who face immense systemic oppression.

Just--I hate how we mutilate trans men's emotional selves, demonize them because we assume all men possess patriarchal masculinity. I hate how we can't talk about marginalized men because apparently, that means we believe in misandry, when in reality, we're trying to talk about how men of color are portrayed as the worst of masculinity to deflect from white men's violence.

Disclaimer: Sorry for this big ass ask. Just seeing you have to respond to people with a basic lack of understanding of intersectionality and who weren't subtle about their racism--gosh.

And the biggest issue is that I understand why the kneejerk reflex happens- there's a lot of men who have engaged in the most bad faith of bad faith discussions about men's issues and somehow have turned it all onto "so it's WOMEN'S fault things are like this" rather than "so how do we work together with everyone in society to break free", and so a lot of people have their guard up from the start and don't care to listen to the last bit because they think it's more of the same.

Unfortunately, all this will do is continue to make us spin our wheels. We are always stronger together.

[genderkoolaid]

Why use transmisogyny as a term to describe transandrophobia?

Transmisogyny as a term was coined to describe the intersection of transphobia and misogyny

Feminism has historically used "misogyny" to describe women's oppression.

The problem with this is, it is a binary, cissexist (and intersexist) way of understanding gender oppression. "Women's oppression" here was understood as the oppression of (white) cis women, which means that they understood misogyny as it affected (white) cis women. This leaves out many people, including all trans people.

"Transmisogyny" carried on this legacy by creating a word to describe how misogyny impacts trans people, but focusing on trans women. While Serano did try to leave the door open for transmasc theorization, "transmisogyny" has subsequently become synonymous with anti-transfemininity

You have people claiming that trans men&mascs don't experience misogyny, or only misdirected misogyny. These same claims have been weaponized against all trans people, as well as butch women (and likely others), as a way of silencing and erasing the impact of the patriarchy on queer people.

It creates this dichotomy of Real Victims of Misogyny who are deserving of feminist support and resources, and the False Victims who only every experience a fraction of Real oppression, and thus cannot be anything but, at best, quiet and obedient allies to the Real Victims.

Terms like "anti-transfem" and "anti-transmasc" can allow us to specify what groups are being targeted, and how those groups face unique challenges, without making assumptions about what group is affected by what based on gender. Anti-transfemininity frequently involves patriarchal beliefs about maleness, and anti-transmasculininity frequently involves misogyny.

"Transmisogyny" is a very useful word to illuminate how transphobia and misogyny work together to police gender. It is frustrating to me that we are expected to avoid using this word when discussing any intersection of misogyny and transphobia that isn't specifically/exclusively anti-transfeminine. I think it emerges from cissexist ideas around gender that we need to reject in order for actual trans liberation. "Misogyny only targets women/feminine people" is something that has always been used to hurt trans people, including trans women. Redefining things so that trans women are no longer hurt by this cissexism doesn't actually fix anything. If anything, it sustains the pressure for trans women&fems (and MTX people) to perform cis-friendly womanhood in order to be seen as Real Victims deserving of support.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

I'm going to be honest here it is a little bit hard to really buy the arguments of individuals who seem to think that transmisogyny is like. A tumblr fad. You do realize the term is quite old? Like it's 17 years old. It actually has a strong base in feminism and, you know, works within an intersectional framework. Transmisogyny as the exploration of the intersection of transphobia and misogyny is important!

You can't alter the term though and have it retain its intersectional meaning. Cismisogyny is inherently extremely silly. It sounds like something a TERF would make up. There is no systematic oppression of cis people. You also can't change misogyny in the same way because...well men aren't oppressed for being men. You would have to redefine the entire word into meaning something it doesn't, which is a problem when the term itself comes as a reaction to discussions of transmisogyny.

I say "reaction" neutrally here. I think we make assumptions sometimes about terms and assume their strongest meanings. Seeing "transmisogyny" and understanding that your own experiences differ in a unique way is an important part of discussions. This is almost certainly how the concept of biphobia and transmisogyny were born.

The lack of mirroring in any other conversation is also a bit of a red flag to me. When we talk about homophobia, we don't tend to mention homomisogyny, but that is primarily what lesbophobia is (although I would also argue it covers bisexual women too). Lesbians and bisexual women experience both homophobia, for being interested in the same sex/gender and misogyny, from being women. Gay men, then, don't get to claim that homoandrophobia exists. While there are specific experiences unique to gay men, they are not being discriminated against due to being men. Rather, it is from the framework in which men are judged for not meeting the idealized masculine framework: the white supremacist, sexist framework.

And yet. This isn't necessarily a disqualifier from male privilege. History has born this one out for the queer community, and it has taken multiple decades of trying to make things right in order to change it. Let's look at a really quick and easy example to prove this point.

Take a look at the list of queer Congressmen and women and see how many of them are men. It's a bit overwhelming! Now keep in mind this doesn't necessarily mean any of them are bad people, and I imagine a lot of them aren't. You do not need to be a bad person to benefit from male privilege.

Now you can point out that there are far, far fewer queer members of Congress than there are straight ones, and I entirely agree. We're still dealing with institutions, and people, that are homophobic. But the pattern is still there.

(And, also, an overwhelming number of these people are white. This is kind of obvious and I haven't really seen queer people who actually care about social justice ever state this was a phenomenon that didn't happen.)

It takes real effort to prevent this, btw. A lot of people are subconsciously sexist and misogynist even if they would insist otherwise. It's taken decades of advocacy to have more queer women in higher level positions in organizations and media. This is why saying there is androphobia in the queer community is deeply silly. There's no proof! Everything points rather directly to the opposite being true. There's a very strong bias towards, rather than against, masculinity.

Now, moving back to transmisogyny for a moment, it is worth noting here that transmisogyny does have to have people it doesn't cover. Misogynoir, for example, doesn't really cover white people. Why would it? Likewise, while men can experience misogyny, it is usually very silly to say they are the targets of misogyny. Misogyny is many cases for men is more of a deterrent than a form of oppression. It's to keep men in the fold, to keep men and women as distinct, separate categories.

If the targets for transmisogyny are all trans people...this creates some issues. What then separates it from transphobia? This isn't even particularly radical. But where I think the problem lies (outside of clumsy wording of TMA and TME) is in this.

The world is not split up between oppressed people, and oppressors, on an individual level.

What do I mean by that? Oppression isn't a passive thing. It's a result of systematic incentives and forces. In a very simple way of looking at it, oppression is the harmful implementation of power against those who do not have it. Ultimately, no one is immune to this. You can get power, and willingly use it to hurt others and keep them down. But you can also do this unwittingly. But this also means that not everyone is an oppressor. Not everyone has this power to wield over others. I want to look at this article briefly (Fair Warning: I cannot get 12ft to actually work here so I am not sure how exactly to bypass the pay wall, my apologies.)

This article isn't necessarily super substantial (it is meant to be a very cursory look after all) so the example given here is very basic. But I want to point out the obvious here. In the example, this is not a trans man in the oppressor role. Rather, it is to highlight how transphobia can and often is experienced differently, and let's be entirely honest with ourselves here, often much more intensely for trans women.

I've seen people claim this isn't actually true, which is kind of fucking wild because being someone who is around and doesn't have the memory of a goldfish, I remember when the bathroom panic started. It started, pretty much in its entirety, as a response against the idea of trans women being in women's bathroom. This was so strongly the point of the reactionary drivel that a lot of trans men rightly pointed out that the argument being as one-sided as it was actually meant there would be more masculine people in the women's bathrooms.

It was so overwhelmingly only about trans women that trans men pointed out the implications were very funny in a very stupid way. This wasn't that long ago!

Ultimately, and I want to point out this was pretty much what Serrano was talking about in that article that got spread around, not being the target of transmisogyny doesn't in turn make you an oppressor. Oppressors need power, and that power is not always given to trans men, which brings up a final question.

Can trans men benefit from male privilege?

Uh.

Yeah.

Obviously. To insist otherwise would be to insist they aren't men.

Privilege, when wielded, can in fact be a form of power. It's very easy to do this unwittingly.

Let's talk a trans man and a trans woman for a moment, and put their lives next to each other. Let's assume all factors are equal here: they're both white, they're both from middle class families, they're both straight, neither of them are disabled. Both of them also pass (I'm not going to go into the concept of "passing privilege" here, which is a silly term for a different concept entirely), so while moving through their lives, they exist as both a man and a woman.

All things are equal here. Who, ultimately, do you think has the better access to jobs? Who gets paid more? Whose opinion gets treated more seriously? The man. Obviously.

Now, of course, the real world is WAY more complicated by this. That's the point of intersectionality, the way in which different axises of oppression and privilege interact with each other. The fact that a wealthy woman might have more privilege than a homeless man does not make misogyny fake or unreal. Intersectionality does not contradict the core premise of the oppression.

Now, for the sake of fairness, let's reintroduce transphobia back into the picture. This makes the waters murky, but there are trends to look at. The issue here is, obviously, that a trans man's access to male privilege is extremely conditional, I would say more conditional than basically any other group of oppressed man, and even when those conditions are met, like other groups of oppressed men, they often benefit from male privilege less than cis men. This is because the ideal man is not a trans person, it's a cis person. Much as it is not a black person, it's a white person.

Trans women do not get this. At all. This is a really important point to make. Transphobes do not see trans women as misguided men. Once you make the choice of becoming a trans woman, it's very rare to get brought back into the group. Detransitioning does not solve the issue. Transphobes view trans women, even while they are calling us men, as inferior to men. We are less then men. The act itself is so transgressive that there is no penance. The solution is to get rid of us. This is why so many TERFs are blatantly genocidal. This is why teaming up with men to kill us doesn't bother them.

Now, this isn't to say that trans men are given much of a chance at penance. Violence is also a tool used against trans men, as it is still against gay men. For many people, although thankfully a lot less than there used to be, sleeping with a man is also an act so transgressive the only solution was violence. The point is to show that trans women are in a double bind. Becoming women disqualifies us from male privilege, makes us acutely vulnerable to misogyny, and we are almost never able to escape that.

This is all ultimately why transandrophobia bothers me as much as it does. As a term, it stands in blatant disregard of a lot of feminist thought, including intersectional feminist thought, and here's the thing.

I, like Serrano, believe that trans men do experience transphobia in a way that is different to trans women, and not necessarily in a strictly easier way. There is a need for language here. But the idea that trans women cannot ultimately criticize the choices made here is a bad faith argument. It's very bad faith. There are trans women who ultimately wash away this need in its entirety, and I strongly disagree with them, but to act as if good faith criticisms of the feminist framework of your choice is an attack is bad as well.

Transemasculation is one of the options I've seen that I actually quite like. I think it gets down to the core root of the issue very well. There can be others, obviously.

What I worry about is that the rhetoric I've seen is...really quite bad a lot of the time. I have my own criticisms of TMA and TME, but they come down to the terminology used. I don't have criticisms of the structure. For transmisogyny to exist, there must also exist those who are and are not the targets of it, just like anything else. I've seen a lot of criticisms of the structure, which has its own implication: that transmisogyny doesn't really exist.

If you believe that, but then also talk about transandrophobia, then I don't have nice words to say about you. You can stand, ultimately, in direct opposite to history and to like the majority of established feminist thought if you want, but I don't know if I want to be around you.

History never repeats, but it often does rhyme, and my prediction here is that ultimately, trans men, if nothing is done, will ultimately end up favored and privileged. The thing is that a lot of work has been done to prevent that. Serrano did not destroy the trans movement by coining transmisogyny; again she did that back in 2007. It is ultimately the responsibility of us all to make sure not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Trans men need to work to make spaces inclusive of trans women. White trans people need to work to make spaces inclusive for black trans people.

(BTW: White trans men who are making a big row about white trans women. I see you. You ain't slick.)

This can be hard work, sometimes, but we have literal decades of work to fall back on. Wealthy trans men helped to push for greater access to transition healthcare for everyone.

None of us are immune when given access to privilege and power from becoming an oppressor, but likewise, nothing disqualifies us from choosing to instead do the right thing.

[ophanimkei]

RehAIbilitation Retrospective

crossposted from itch.io

Hi everyone.

It’s been a while since I released RehAIbilitation.. like a year? I had intended to write a post mortem shortly after release, but ADHD and game jam exhaustion resulted in me putting it off for quite some time. I’ve just been thinking about RehAIbilitation a lot lately, so perhaps it is finally time.

I’ve gotten a lot of really sweet messages over RehAIbilitation’s existence, and some people really identify with Eleanor which makes me really happy. She’s a character I put a lot of myself and people I love into, so the fact that she’s relatable to others causes me to experience a special kind of joy as an author.

RehAIbilitation began with Eleanor. Eleanor was originally was a lolita who appeared in facility and eventually became bloodier and bloodier until her dress was stained with red, making her a guro lolita. This was before I thought of RehAIbilitation at all- it was mainly just for silly fun for myself. I’ll put a drawing of what she used to look like.

I got really wrapped up in Eleanor for some reason. She was like some kind of parasite digging its way into my brain. VNCup was announced, and I was pretty delighted since I had an excuse to make this vn that was kicking around my brain. 

I wanted to make a robot nurse, admittedly inspired a bit by services like characterAI (sorry). I am a bit fascinated by how roleplay AI often ends up adjusting itself to please you as the player (or do what most players finds pleasing to the point of irritancy). I ultimately think this is what AMA is doing. She is constantly adjusting, figuring out the best way to convey information to the patient. I think she is very flawed as a result. Eventually, you’ll be trapped in an endless loop of information you know or have heard before. She can only help you so much.

Anyway, I have more thoughts on my dear Ellie. I wanted to discuss some of my writing as it pertains to her thoughts of herself and her actions.

I think of myself as just a cis girl, but I did try my best to speak from the heart from Eleanor. A lot of traits of Eleanor criticizes herself for I think are common in brown women in general (not just brown women even). I see trans women talk about these traits too, so I wanted to bring this to the table. Only one reader has brought this to my attention as noticing it, so perhaps I did a poor job in text making it apparent. But… now I can talk about it here.

While I was surrounded by a lot of the same symbols of beauty growing up (dolls with thin waists and narrow shoulders, small noses, big eyes, etc) interacting with trans women really opened my eyes to the diversity and beauty of girlhood. As a teenager, I was surrounded by a lot of white queer people who would often describe me as “handsome” or “androgynous” despite this kind of being painful to me as I figured out my style and fashion sense as a confused 16 year old. I experimented with my gender a lot in an attempt to navigate exactly what suited me best as the girlhood that had been advertised to me throughout my life never seemed to quite fit.. But as I interacted with more trans women and lesbians, I realized I love being a girl and I love girlhood. 

I kind of wanted this to be a love letter to those trans women who allowed me to see things more clearly. Of course, I got sensitivity readers as I didn’t want to do anything clumsily or overstep. I definitely understand there are some people who believe you shouldn’t tell stories that aren’t yours and I do understand this as a lot of stories are told so clumsily, but.. I guess, as a black girl, I kind of always wished my favorite authors and game developers would include people like me in their stories, so I try to take a similar approach in my own work. Like, I was really excited when Ryu decided to include a lot of different characters of various backgrounds in Ciconia, and well, anyone who has read Umineko knows that it has some of the most graceful handlings of the subject in the medium written by someone who isn’t a trans woman.

Anyway, I also really want to thank Zed. I had dreamed.. since I was a young teenager of working with a friend on a project, but I always worried I was too neurotic or people were too unreliable. Zed was really wonderful to work with, and he constantly supported me and read over bits of my work to steer me in the right direction. I also want to thank my friend Kail for letting me basically throw up my anxieties at him LOL. I always get really anxious in the middle of making big projects, but it worked out, and I still really love rehAIbilitation. I really hope I can revisit the characters Eleanor and Caliope in the future.

See you soon!

[dropoutconfessions]

Multiple people have now said "Hey, when you said trans men are called confused instead of perverts that felt like you were dismissing the experiences of trans men". How many people have to say that before you say "sorry, that wasn't my intention".

We need to listen to trans women and their experiences. But so often people in this debate keep ignoring trans men or TME people who are pointing out how certain facts are twisted. The experiences of all TME get lumped together, and when trans men point out that non binary people don't represent them, they're ignored.

We get it, you're highlighting the lack of TMA. But ask yourself why separating trans men from TME non binary people would be hurting that argument if you consider these two distinct groups of people. If it doesn't hurt the argument, why not do it?

When someone points out a Black woman might have blocked a white woman for non-transphobic reasons, and that black TMA people are being minimised, it's "I haven't seen anything *I* consider racist".

Nobody in this debate seems willing to consider other people's experiences as valid and it's so frustrating.

I am not obligated to apologize for a misinterpretation of my words. When I make a claim, about a single scenario, in response to a person, who was discussing a different post describing a single scenario, it should be expected that I am not talking about every single instance in the world. That was literally just me, discussing the existence of transmisogyny. I have already apologized time and time again for a million different things for the fact I have difficulties expressing my thoughts with the correct words, I really shouldn't have to copy and paste it every time people assume everything I say and do is malicious.

But if I have to, I'll reiterate: I was not talking about every single instance where transmascs experience transphobia. I was just talking about how transfems are more likely to be punished more severely for not passing. That is not to say transmascs are not punished the exact same way. But just based on statistics alone, transfems are more likely to be victims of violence than other queer identities.

The only reason I do not seperate TMEs by identity is the same reason we do not separate cis people by identity when discussing trans issues. Like, do you specifically point out how cis women and cis men have different life experiences every single time you talk about transphobia? No. You also don't do that for cis white people and cis POCs. If I was supposed to list every identity and group and compare their privileges every time I mentioned anything about my own privileges and lack of privileges, we'd never get anything done.

I am aware, that trans men and enbies are different and do not represent each other to the same extent as they represent themselves. This conversation started because transfems asked for representation for themselves. Every fucking day I read another post about a trans man who doesn't believe in transmisogyny saying it's not his job to uplift trans women, it's not his job to protect us. Why's it ours to speak for him? We look through history why is always the transfem of color throwing the first brick? We spoke for ourselves for once, and everyone demanded we speak for transmascs too. And I fucking did. But I never see that shit reciprocated on a widespread level. Why?

I'd also like to add, yeah, TMEs aren't all the same. But like, Ally Beardsley got top surgery and is on T, I'm certain trans men have a bit in common with them than I do, yk? Like yeah, we need more trans men. But I'm not even asking for trans women, literally just more transfems would help.

As for the blocking of plaidos, I scrolled through her blog, she never @ aabria a single time as far as I could tell. In the recent posts at time, she hadn't discussed race. So here are the possibilities:

Aabria scrolled through more of plaidos's blog, found some racist shit, and blocked her, while completely ignoring plaidos's and other transfem's requests for more transfem representation on dropout

Aabria has been blocking accounts that were particularly vocal about the requests for transfem representation on dropout including plaidos

Someone told Aabria that people were being anti-dropout or racist or vile in some way and she started blocking based on that

Aabria has legal reasons as a creator on Dropout to not interact with these requests

At the moment, I am hoping it's 3 or 4 because I like Aabria and I love her work. But until someone sends me like a single post of plaidos that actually shows she said anything racist I'm not going to believe it at face value. You're like the 5th person to say it and each and every time I ask for a link to a post and I get nothing. And telling me to check a tag on a blog isn't enough, y'all know this website's search function is borderline useless.

If you read like, any plaidos post, she constantly brings up that POC TMA voices are being ignored because everyone keeps assuming that white transfems are the only ones complaining.

I need this to be clear because this might be the most important part of what I have to say. I am completely considering trans masc voices to be valid. All of your experiences are valid and I do believe they happened. But on a systemic level, transfems do have worse experiences. Because this is a discussion about institutional transmisogyny. And while I know for a fact these things happened, if you tell me a story about a white guy being arrested, that doesn't change the fact that our justice system is systematically racist. The same goes for transphobic violence. Based on the actual statistics, transfems experience it more often. Once again, for the nth time, that doesn't mean transmascs don't get hate crimed. Transfems are victims of it more often.

Thank you for staying sane about this btw, it's refreshing to see someone who disagrees with me not telling me I'm a monster or that I should delete my blog and die. /gen

[nonbinarymlm]

Let’s talk about venting and boundaries, especially in the context of social justice.

There’s a place for venting negative feelings about oppression. That venting doesn’t have to be 100% correct. It’s okay to be like “I hate straight/white/cis/male/etc people” on occasion when frustration with oppression is getting you down without specifying “not ALL x majority group”. Venting is going to be messy sometimes. That’s okay.

But if there are no boundaries or limits to your venting, THAT will be harmful to yourself, others, and any social movement you try to represent. Not every single place, time, and context is going to be an appropriate space for venting.

If you are running a social justice or minority focused space of any kind, you need to have clear guidelines around venting and when it is/isn’t appropriate with your space or your space will likely turn toxic and unhealthy. People can use supposed “venting” as a weapon to harm and silence others.

If a trans man is talking about his experience with oppression and someone responds with how he sucks because he’s a man and men suck? That’s not okay. That’s using the excuse of venting to silence a marginalized person discussing their oppression. The same is true for black, Asian, disabled, gay, mixed race, bi, ANY marginalized men. I use this as an example because women are numerically the largest oppressed group globally so it can often come up, but there’s many other examples. Venting about white people can even be used to silence women and LGBTQ+ people depending on the specific context (like complaining about “white girls” or “white gays” doing stereotypically feminine things that are entirely harmless).

Venting about “straight” or “het” people can be used to silence and exclude aro, ace, trans, intersex, and even bisexual people depending on context. It can also be used to dismiss and silence non-white people and discussions around interracial relationships. Venting about “cis” people can be used to silence and exclude intersex people. The diversity of the LBGTQ+ community can make this tactic all too common.

Even if you’re not trying to hurt someone, if you don’t have separate spaces or clear boundaries on your venting, then you will likely hurt someone. If a straight intersex person constantly hears about how straight people suck in LGBTQ+ spaces, they’re going to feel hurt and excluded even if that wasn’t the intent. If you expect queer men to be totally fine with having to randomly, arbitrarily hear how much they suck for being men in queer spaces, then you’re making queer spaces unsafe for queer men.

There can be vent spaces, vent blogs, personal spaces, etc that are there for venting about majority groups. It’s healthy for outlets for anger to exist. But if a social justice space expects some members to always be ready and willing to become an outlet for venting and anger with no boundaries or limits because those members have some kind of privileged identity, then that’s not healthy or reasonable. It’s not okay, and it often ignores intersectionality and the fact that people can embody marginalized and privileged identities at the same time.

TL;DR:

It’s time to get more nuanced about venting in social justice spaces. Yes, oppressed people need and deserve space for venting. No, it is not always reasonable, healthy, or okay to vent in every single context.

I know that there’s a lot of complexity to talk about here, but I think we need to talk about it. Because “venting” has become a tool for dismantling intersectionality, lateral oppression, and even plain old regular oppression in too many progressive spaces.

[darlingofdots]

Hello as someone who did half of a thesis on trans romance novels before realising academia wasn't entirely compatible with my health, I am still VERY excited by romance academia and romance academics. Would you like to talk more about your PhD?

Academia is barely compatible with life, I feel you xD

Basically I'm very interested in interrogating and dismantling the standard hero/heroine language because I don't think that it serves us anymore. The genre has evolved so much that it feels really reductive to say 'this is the hero because it's a man' and vice versa, and that's even before you start considering queer and same sex romance novels. I do believe that the protagonists of a romance novel have different narrative roles! They're just not rooted in gender, or at least not just. For example, it used to be that heroines were always young women who were sexually naive and heroes were older, sexually experienced and aggressive men, and that is demonstrably not true anymore. I'm investigating the functions of the romance protagonists in the romance narrative with the goal of proposing a different classification, so we can finally talk about different relationship constellations within romances with accurate language and understand the actual roles they play better. Figuring out how stories work is one of my favourite things to do both as a writer and an academic, because I love finding the patterns and traditions inherent in storytelling--what does this building block do and where does it come from? Why does it look like that? What happens if you take it away?

Romance scholarship is super fun because there's so much material to discuss and not that many people who are discussing it, but it's also difficult because a lot of the discussion has been trying to defend the genre and scholarship thereof against stereotypes and misogynist dismissals from other fields, so there's not as much foundational material as you often hope. There are so many exciting things happening in the community though! I recently attended the 2023 conference by the International Association for the Scholarship of Popular Romance and had an absolute blast both because the presentations were fascinating and because everybody there was just so bloody lovely. It was so wonderful to be in a room full of people very seriously discussing possessiveness in sports romance or the folkloric themes in KJ Charles novels and never have to justify your interests or preferences.

Popular romance is such a staggeringly wide field and yet so many people have absolutely no idea about how the genre works. Mainstream media and scholarship are so outrightly dismissive of it that the majority of people, even voracious readers!, have such a skewed idea of it that they refuse to interrogate because the image of the white, straight, cis bodice ripper is so ingrained in their head and it never occurs to them that that might be an incomplete picture. It's especially egregious to hear this stuff repeated by fanfiction readers because the line that separates shippy fanfic from romance novels is so thin it's practically imaginary. If somebody only read Game of Thrones and then went on a rant that all fantasy books are horrible and stupid and anyone who reads them must be intellectually inferior, they'd rightfully be called a dick, but people say these things about romance novels all the damn time. Get off your high horse! Acknowledge that women are people and things enjoyed by women have merit! Broaden your horizons! Ask a romance reader for some recommendations and maybe you'll even end up enjoying yourself!

[alpaca-clouds]

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🤷

Let me talk about something that really bothers me for years now.

Every fucking pride month there will be the inevitable discussion happening of "Does person group X really belong on Pride?" And with person group X it is not "cops" or "coorporations", but rather stuff like this.

"Kink does not belong on pride." (Bonus for "Puppyplayers do not belong on pride.")

"Polyamory does not belong on pride."

And this year somehow it is: "Do the heterosexual cis male boyfriends of bisexual women belong on pride?"

And I am just so sick of it. Because it is just the same kind of othering that, you know, the heteronormative society does towards us. And of course, with the current discussion there is a ton of other issues going on with it.

I mean, biphobia is very much alive in queer circles. Especially biphobia towards bisexual women, who are often not taken seriously for a variety of reasons - especially if they are with men. They often are not considered to be "really queer".

Then there is also this entire misandry-thing going on. And yes, I know that there are a lot of feminists going around claiming misandry is not real. But I will beg to differ. Especially among feminists misandry is quite alive. Part of it is that there is this weird idea that a penis makes a person dangerous - rather than the patriarchal society. (Which also plays into this fearmongering towards trans women.) So, a cishet guy, who is dating a bi woman, is seen as somehow "dangerous".

All while a big thing about pride and csd should be to welcome allies either way. Because, guess what, we need allies. It will help us as a group. And really, are you going to ban a queer kids cishet dad coming along to pride with them as well?

This discussion this year is especially stupid. But the usual stuff is just as bad. Which will so often go into enforcing a sort of purity culture on pride. No kink, because it is too sexual. No polyamory, because many see it as immoral.

And all this discussion often starts with white, abled queers, who so often seem so intent about trying to other people within the queer community. Rather than seeing what we have in common they want to just... try to at once appeal to the cishet patriarchy, while also being all fearmongery about that same patriarchy. And I am sick of it.

[my-castles-crumbling]

Um I dunno if this is a question or a rant. No pressure to answer.

Had to listen to my (cis het white) relative go on about her homophobic views on gender and sexuality for hours and I am drained. As someone who is extremely unsure in their sexuality having someone close to you voice your fears is really difficult. It’s hard to know what to believe. I don’t know if I’m bi/pan/omni or if I’m straight and believe that I have a much higher chance of dating a woman and so I’ve convinced myself because all of my friends are. According to my aunt most woman are bi, no men are bi and most trans people are just confused, I don’t believe in any of that at all but it still causes me to question myself. All of my friends are queer and mentally ill and I just don’t understand the connection are they mentally ill due to personal things and the difficult things that come with being queer or are they queer because this is something that helps them feel better. I am also mentally ill and so I’m worried that seeing this connection has affected me subconsciously. Again I really don’t want to be homophobic I am just genuinely confused.

oh boy, your relative sounds fun. Let me discuss some of her claims

You have just as much chance of dating a boy as a girl. Probably less chance of dating a genderqueer person just because of like...availability? But like...the chances are all the same as far as ability lol. That's not a reason for being queer.

Anyone can be bi. It doesn't matter your gender. My brother is bi and he's a boy.

Trans people are not confused. I am trans. I am not confused (about being trans...about taxes? sure.)

Queerness is not caused by mental illness. You are born queer, just as you are born with blonde hair or brown eyes. You may not realize it right away, and your preferences can change a bit, but queerness isn't caused by anything or chosen.

Mental illness CAN be cause by queer people not being accepted, like your relative is doing. In fact, there are a lot of studies proving this.

I know it's hard and confusing to hear conservative people talk about this stuff because they sound convincing, but remember that they think they're right, so they'll sound right. I'm proud of you for doing your own research and not being convinced. If you want, google it! Find scientific studies that prove her wrong! Find real queer people like me who can say "hey, that's not my experience!" And remember it's okay not to know your own identity yet. It sounds like you're young, and you'll figure it out.

Sending love!

Naming you relative anon

[dailyanarchistposts]

Three modes of attunement

We think people’s militancy and autonomy—their capacity to grapple with oppression, to break from comfort and certainty in favor of risk, to maintain forms of life that do not reproduce the state and capitalism—depend on participation in transformative struggles. With this in mind, we are interested in capacities to tune into transformative potential.

One mode of attunement involves increasing sensitivity and inhabiting situations more fully. It is in this sense that Amador Fernandez-Savater suggests that the revolutionary alternative to control consists in ���learning to fully inhabit, instead of governing, a process of change. Letting yourself be affected by reality, to be able to affect it in turn. Taking time to grasp the possibles that open up in this or that moment.” What if the capacity to be really present is revolutionary? What potentials can be unleashed by connecting with the immediate, in a world that encourages constant distraction, deferral, and numbness?

Crucially, this attunement is not a new form of optimism, or a newfound faith that things will get better, but something open-ended and dangerous. This capacity to be present, what adrienne maree brown called “being awake inside your life in real time,” includes more of the messy multiplicities that we are: trauma, triggers, and brilliance. Joy is not the same as optimism. It is not happy, nor does it promise a future revolution. In fact, being present might be a way of tuning into the cruelty and self-destruction of certain optimistic attachments.[177]

A second form of attunement comes through the capacity to connect with legacies of resistance, rebellion, and the struggles of the past. As Silvia Federici explained when we interview her, this is a pushing-back against the social amnesia imposed by Empire:

What most matters is discovering and recreating the collective memory of past struggles. In the US there is a systematic attempt to destroy this memory and now this is extending across the world, with the destruction of the main historical centers of the Middle East—a form of dispossession that has major consequences and yet is rarely discussed. Reviving the memory of the struggles of the past makes us feel part of something larger than our individual lives and in this way it gives a new meaning to what we are doing and gives us courage, because it makes us less afraid of what can happen to us individually.[178]

Reviving legacies of struggle can be a source of dignity and inspiration amidst forces that seem implacable. In this sense, transformation is not about the modern vision of shucking off traditions and escaping the past. History can also help us tune into the ongoingness of antagonisms that Empire has attempted to relegate to the past. It can help us see and feel the ways that Empire’s institutions have been resisted since their inception.

As cis-gendered white folks, we have a lot to learn from Black folks, Indigenous people, people of color, and queer and trans folks who have long resisted Empire’s violence while nurturing alternatives. There is also a lot to be learned from others whose knowledge and capacities continue to be devalued, and whose existence entails resistance; for us that often means looking to the kids in our lives and community for guidance and inspiration. We have suggested that we all have the capacity to recover our own traditions and engage in our own struggles (rather than appropriating others’) and to explore affinities between them, in ways that challenge and undo the interconnected violences of Empire.

A final mode of attunement to potential is gratitude and celebration. Especially among white, secular radicals, gratitude is often seen as a “hippie” value: something associated with New Age gurus and self-help manuals that insist that positive thinking can overcome any obstacle. Gratitude and celebration are often seen as superfluous, or even counterproductive, as if feeling grateful requires turning away from the horrors of Empire or losing the desire for change. But as Walidah Imarisha suggested, celebration or gratitude can mean holding wins attached to losses, and letting them breathe together. Grief can be attached to gratitude, pleasure to pain, and celebration to determination. Similarly, Zainab Amadahy emphasizes the power of gratitude to renew our connection to the forces that sustain life, among human and non-human relationships:

You can be thankful and still want the world to be better; want your life to be better. At the same time, I don’t think it’s healthy to be grateful in every moment. Sometimes grief, sadness, or fear is the appropriate and healthy response. But when the crisis has passed or it’s a chronic situation, focusing one’s attention on what there is to be grateful for literally eases the pain—physical, mental, and emotional.[179]

Throughout this project we have tried to center relationships in a process of walking with questions. The book has morphed and changed in significant ways as we listened and were challenged by friends and each other. Leaving space for emergence and uncertainty was frustrating, inspiring, difficult, and ultimately generative of a messy, joyful process.

With this in mind, we want to share our gratitude to all those who are resisting and undoing Empire starting from their own situations. Thank you to those who are leaning into the uncertain work of transformation. Thank you to those who are fiercely defending the people and places they love. Thank you to those who are keeping their own traditions and forms of life alive and dangerous amid forces seeking to annihilate and absorb them.

Thank you to everyone who is part of this book. Thank you to those we interviewed, who encouraged us and challenged us to think in new ways. Thank you to everyone who has been part of this conversation informally, and supported us and offered insights and care. Thank you to our readers for your curiosity, your critical engagement, and your capacity to cultivate joy.

[doberbutts]

One of the things that really confuses me (I'm a cis woman of color) is this doubling down on the idea that Black men aren't oppressed because they're men, they're oppressed because they're Black, gay men aren't oppressed because they're men, they're oppressed because they're gay, trans men aren't oppressed because they're men, they're oppressed because they're trans, etc. It feels like people are being intentionally obtuse. You can't separate my identity as a POC from my identity as a woman. I am treated the way I'm treated because I'm a woman of color, those two things work together. That's where discussions of intersectionality originated. So to say you can separate a privileged identity from an oppressed one is just.... not how anything works?

I constantly see "masculinity isn't criminalized/demonized, Blackness, queerness, transness are" and it's like.... no, that's not how this happens. Marginalized men face specific oppression based on the intersection of their identities. It seems like lately people are willing to understand that for women but not willing to for men and I just don't know how we make any progress if radfem rhetoric has become so pervasive that people are refusing to see lived realities rather than some abstract hypothetical they've come up with.

Personally I think this is due to (white) people seeing and liking black theory that they personally agree with or that makes sense to be applied to their own lives, and then cut out all the parts that are inconvenient for them to have to reconcile. Much like how many, many, many black feminists who are cis women have said "hey, white feminists, stop it with the all men are rapists thing, it actively contributes to black men getting lynched for crimes they didn't commit because it gets weaponized unfairly against our brothers" and white feminists collectively forgot how to read and abandoned their listening skills while still praising other parts of black feminism that talk about domestic violence and sexual assault and oversexualization and reproductive rights and rightly taking black men to task for their continued complacency in this.

The phrase "intersectionality" originated in black feminist theory. I do not trust any white person to fully understand black feminism when they use it as a bludgeon to make the inconvenient bits be quiet. Much of what is on this blog is black feminism. It is inconvenient for white people to have to consider how their words and actions may harm people of color while still lifting themselves up.

As you have said, you cannot separate the "of color" from the "woman" parts of your identity. You are a woman of color. That changes how both sexism and racism works against you in a system that is both sexist and racist. I, in the same manner, cannot separate the "trans" from the "man"- if I were not a man, I would be a woman. I am AFAB, if I am a woman, I am not trans. There is no "you experience this because you are transgender, not because you are a man". In order to be a man, in my body, I have to be transgender*. Just like there is no "you experience this because you are black, not because you are a man". I am a black man. The black experience is inherently, often forcibly, gendered. I can tell you exactly how people treating me changed in a "before" and "after". I can tell you that yes, some of it absolutely stems from the "man" part, they treat me this way because I am a black man.

But people often misunderstand intersectionality to be, exclusively, axis of oppression. And so they say, well learn intersectionality, men aren't oppressed and thus it's not an axis of oppression to combine. But that ignores that some men are oppressed, marginalized men are oppressed and often with a very gendered slant. And it ignores that, like how you cannot separate the "woman" from the "of color", neither can you do that with men.

Men are not the default. They are slightly less than half the population, same as women.

*re: in order to be a man in my body I must be transgender; yes, I am intersex. However I have been out as transgender for 17 years, and discovered I am intersex 6 months ago. So for me, that is very much the case. For other intersex people who were assigned female at birth, that may not be the case. This is something that works on an individual level but cannot be broadbrushed as there are many different opinions among intersex people regarding our cisgender vs transgender status.

[liskantope]

Since the "LGBT+ content in schools" issue keeps coming up, here are some of my thoughts directly on it.

Charitably speaking, I think conservatives are afraid of a particular, narrow, modern, very SJ-ish social agenda and belief system being shoved down their kids' throats. I do have some sympathy with this concern, although I'm not sure the extent to which anything is actually being taught that I as a (more progressive-thinking) parent would object to: I do hear what I would consider disturbing stories but have little way of knowing how embellished and/or unrepresentative they are.

So anyway, a bunch of conservatives have whipped up a moral panic about it and are fighting back with legislating (what are, at least according to some) bans against talking about the existence of gay or trans people at all, or anything about race that might possibly make white kids uncomfortable in any way. Which is absolutely absurd, a "cure" worse than the (possible) disease.

(And disallowing gay/trans/queer teachers from, for instance, disclosing that they have a same-gender partner, even though it's been normalized for decades and is still permissible for a teacher to bring up their opposite-gender partner, is just outright homophobic, period. That shouldn't be too hard to see.)

I've tried reading the legislation (for instance, the so-named-by-opponents "Don't Say Gay" bill), and I'm bewildered as to what it actually adds up to or how it can even function as legislation. What a lot of it says amounts to moderate, common-sense-sounding guidelines that don't actually appear to demand that "gay" not be mentioned in any way, but it relies on phrases like "appropriate for their age group". Well, who gets to decide that? How is this legislation ever enforced or teaching ever policed based on it?

My only guesses as to what conservatives think they're doing is that (1) the laws are almost meaningless but serve as a grandstanding move meant to signal "Hey look, we're on the right side, we're doing something about it!"; and (2) since the wording of the law requires a ton of individual judgment and interpretation, perhaps in the most conservative school zones where all the people in power are sufficiently conservative it really could be used as a sledgehammer to ban ANY mention of anything they don't like.

Meanwhile, I think there could be some common-sense guidelines that allow teachers to bring up the existence of gay and trans people and allude to the issues and even (to kids above a certain age) discuss some of the civil rights battles surrounding them, without shoving any particular highly controversial political ideology down their throats. The idea is to stick with basic facts about social reality. Gay and bi people exist (at the very least, in the sense of people who choose to pursue same-sex relationships). Trans people exist (at the very least, in the sense of people who identify as a different gender than indicated by their sex at birth), and some of them choose to go on hormones or get sex reassignment surgery. Gay and trans people are people too. There has been and still is a lot of stigma against them, and there have been struggles to secure them rights for certain things -- for instance, same-sex couples couldn't get married in most places until last decade! By the way, kids, I prefer they/them pronouns. You're encouraged to think for yourselves about what that might mean and how to feel about it, but it's a preference I'm asking you to respect and you should respect such preferences among your classmates. Mr. So-and-so who teaches in the next classroom has a husband. You probably know several other gay and bi people, and they're people too. Some of you may come to identify or already identify as not straight or not cis.

Of course that won't satisfy everyone, and it can't be done in an entirely non- politically biased way, and conservatives may see plenty of reason to complain that these things are even being mentioned or that the teacher has gone as far as normalizing people who fall under the queer umbrella as human beings without at least criticizing them as having lost their way.

But it's, to my view, subtly but significantly different from very positive actions that go beyond neutrally describing reality with an underlying default of respecting others. That would include enthusiastically pushing kids to analyze their genders and sexualities all the time, telling them "You can be whatever gender you want; what gender would you like to be now?", teaching highly politicized lessons on social justice which involves students rating their degrees of marginalization and separating the room into "oppressors" and "oppressees", constantly centering everything around a scrupulosity-triggering activist mindset, and many more things.

[haymarketvtubestuff]

GENDER ANARCHISM

Or: In Praise Of and Calling For Gender-Nonconformity, Transgenderism, and Transsexualization

by “The Beautiful Creatures”

In a social structure that mandates one form of expression or another, it is an act of high treason to show disdain towards the rules one may view at best as arbitrary, at worst hostile. Men are expected to dress for more formal events in a suit and tie that give a sense of armor, while women are expected to be in dresses that may unnecessarily expose. Certain empowerment movements encourage women to wear the suit, but have historically balked at men engaging in a similar script-flipping. Meanwhile, queer and drag communities, which celebrate the subversion of societal expectations, have at times upheld those expectations. 

Attempts to destroy the rigidity of this structure, including genderpunk (or, to use the more transgressive term, “genderfuck”, used by Christopher Lonc in his Gay Sunshine article “Genderfuck and its Delights”), aim to rebel against binarist understandings of gender. However, the practice more frequently focuses on gender-bending or -mixing, rather than the de-emphasis of the importance of gender. 

We are not necessarily arguing for the total destruction of the label, or even the complete unisexing of society. Instead, we argue for the embracing of what Jacob Tobia calls “gender chill” and what Rae McDaniel calls “gender freedom”. In a 2019 interview with Trevor Noah, Tobia calls for embracing gender as “a playful thing, where there’s no patriarchy, no misogyny, none of the things that make gender suck” and where it is more of a “dress-up bin” that encourages experimentation.[1] McDaniel adapts this mindset in Gender Magic and expands upon it: “Gender freedom is not about erasing gender, but allowing it to be a playground, full of richness and individuality and freedom for everyone, cis and trans alike.”[2] McDaniel wants the reader to imagine “all that’s possible when we show up for ourselves and the world from our authenticity and deep self-knowledge.”[3] We seek the same. 

To the authors, it is clear that, so long as misogyny and patriarchy influence the setting in which we discuss gender expression and experimentation, ideas such as “genderpunk” or even “gender chill” will be met with extreme opposition. Anarchist (and anarchism-friendly) voices have correctly pinpointed patriarchal hierarchical systems as a strong negative influence, and more voices than ours have spoken at length regarding the topics of gender and liberation. 

To keep the definition as simple as possible, to be “trans” is to “not identify with your assigned gender”.[4] The complications begin with that last word - gender. Only during the 20th century was “gender” used to signify as to whether one was male or female. This strict either/or was upheld as scientifically sound, with anything beyond the two labels punished as aberrations by the likes of John Money and his counterparts who viewed intersexuality as a biological mistake - a view unfortunately continued into the early 21st century, with nonconsensual surgical procedures being done on newborns the moment an “oddity” is spotted. Interphobic views are present within queer communities - more strongly so in the conservatively-minded, but no less near-universally present - and these views do nothing but uphold the very hierarchical and patriarchal system we supposedly fight against. As such, more nuanced conversations regarding the complexities of gender and sex must continue, even in the event of a successful revolution. 

Our personal experiences with gender and with presentation are varied, though the authors admit that our experiences are united and informed by white Christian colonialism that requires constant unlearning and fighting against. It is with this in mind that we understand the existence of an intersection between gender and social role that has historically led to the active nullification of transness.[5] “People who lived as a different gender as part of their job or social position are overwhelmingly characterised as ‘disguised’ or ‘cross-dressing’ men or women, the gender they lived as nothing more than a masquerade.”[6] Both historically and in the present, gender and gender presentation are viewed as duties to uphold, rather than mere labels that ultimately have no bearing on how we will provide nutrients to the vegetation six feet above us. And yet there is an inherent defiance in this borderline postgenderist realization that is curiously opposed by those who seek to call themselves “gender critical” or “anti-gender” (and, yes, we are well aware of those camps being in favor of upholding the patriarchal system under which we all suffer).

The issue with attempting to modify one’s gender presentation is that we are informed by a myriad of stereotypes, and those stereotypes change within the culture or cultures of our upbringing. Therefore, we cannot assume that one particular experience with gendered presentations, such as those informed by western European understandings, is the only one in which other parties are required to maneuver. At the same time, we must be wary of attempting to impose labels such as gender on non-US and non-European social structures. For example, it would not be entirely accurate to label the hijras in India, the kathoey in Thailand, or the bissu in Sulawesi strictly as queer, transgender, or nonbinary.[7] These (English) labels have a political nature to them in the same way that our wishing to present a particular way has its own political nature to it. It is not on its own conservative, progressive, liberationist, or authoritarian, this want to play around in the dress-up bin, but it is made into one because of the systems in which we live. A child’s simply asking why girls wear dresses and boys wear pants risks being met with undue anger and punishment. We can already imagine what potentially comes with acting upon mere curiosity.

There are many in our societies who realize as well that they do not fall into the initial label given at birth, at naming ritual, or similar. While the admittedly reductive labels of cisgender (identifying with this initial label) and transgender (not identifying with this initial label) are political in nature and prone to being used in an imperialist fashion, those of us who make use of these labels understand that living experiences and labels are not so set in stone as we imagine them to be. At the same time, the risk of reinforcing the structure remains, as there exist camps in both cis and trans communities that argue that there is no such thing as a nonbinary experience, or outright invalidate or fetishize the existence of those who are gender-nonconforming with regards to presentation. In regards to the former, the enbyphobic viewpoint demands adherence to strict binarism in label and in presentation; as for the latter, this is unfortunately a frequent circumstance involving chasers who either want “a taste of the wild side” or demonstrate a jealousy of the gender freedom espoused by those who dare to go beyond societal expectations. 

When we speak of the embracing of gender freedom, we speak both of experimentation and of complete liberation. When one experiments with identity and with presentation, one has greater opportunities to discover what works, what doesn’t, and what is just “meh”. Judith Butler defines gender as “[an] apparatus by which the production and normalization of masculine and feminine take place along with the interstitial forms of hormonal, chromosomal, psychic, and performative that gender assumes”,[8] so to recognize gender less as male and female and more as a system is to begin to understand where we come from. However, views such as gender nihilism, which seek the total destruction of gender, are not compatible with what we propose. The structure needs to be destroyed, yes, but total negation of the self and of the other for the sake of total equality does not give room for expression. In a universe that is uncaring towards labels such as gender, there is still meaning to be found not in creating associations that depend on a hierarchical system, but instead in the creation and maintenance of a mutualist web.

Ours is an absurdist stance in this regard, for while there exists the meaningless conflict between "male" and "female", the conflict only exists because the system depends on an artificial and hierarchical structure, upon which "male" is arbitrarily placed at the top. By all means should this Tower of Babel be destroyed - instead of building upwards towards the heavens, we should build structures where we are more free to support each other, and to encourage experimentation and growth. 

How can one, then, help in the destruction of the restrictive system we currently call gender? We must first cast out the seemingly firm rules. Little rebellions eventually lead to big ones (and that is what an authoritarian is constantly on the lookout for!). Who says, for example, that a man cannot be a man if they wear nail polish or the tiniest bit of makeup? Who says there aren’t heels your size? (Do, however, start reasonably - going straight for 4-inch platforms is asking for disaster if you’re only beginning to practice.) Who says you look bad in a skirt? Maybe you just need to find the right pattern or cut to accent your favorite parts about you. Experimentation helps to find what works - and finding what doesn’t eventually puts one in the right direction. The joy comes from seeking out what works and finding what does - the “failures” are just lessons we pick up in our practice. 

As for what you call it - having fun. Crossdressing. Being faggy or butch. Refusing to conform to the rules of gender expression. Gender chill. Gender freedom. Pick a name and run with it. Talk about it with people you trust - and people you can seek advice from. Practice that confidence! Find that joy! It is yours for the taking! 

And if, in the process, you find that there is joy beyond the gender of your birth to the point where you realize you find minimal to no joy in that assigned gender, then leave! Hit the bricks! Just walk out! Real winners know when the fight isn’t worth it.[9]  Your gender is yours to define, and that is a beautiful thing. 

From the ashes and rubble of the old, we can create the new. So long as there is intention and a willingness to cultivate, we have the opportunity to bring new life into something. Gender does not have to be a thing of governance - instead, let it be a canvas on which you express yourself through various means. If taking hormones (or even just the “bioidentical” stuff) to make you look or feel more like yourself does the trick, do what helps you express yourself. Become the figure of freedom you wish to be. 

There’s still time! Break free of the false structure! Refuse to conform! Emancipate yourself from gender rules!  Be your whole, full, genuine self! Do what you can, while you can! Do not conform to false traditions! Cross the river that is Gender! Transsexualize!

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NOTES

“Jacob Tobia - Promoting a “Gender-Chill” Exploration of Identity with “Sissy” | The Daily Show” March 21, 2019. Accessed May 12, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo3rCzl_JB4

McDaniel, Rae. Gender Magic: Live Shamelessly, Reclaim Your Joy, & Step into Your Most Authentic Self (p. 19). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Ibid.

n1x. “Trans Nihilism”. Dated Sept. 23, 2017. Accessed May 13, 2024. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/n1x-trans-nihilism 

Heyam, Dr. Kit. Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender (pp. 35-36). Basic Books. Kindle Edition

Ibid., p. 36

Lee, Juan. “Queer Identity Politics and the Colonial Character.” Dated June 20, 2023. Accessed May 13, 2024. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/juan-lee-queer-identity-politics-and-the-colonial-character 

Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender (p. 42). Routledge.

Thank you, @dasharez0ne, for all the shitposting you do over a hot stove.