#like you are part of the mogai community. one of the most mocked groups by both rightoids and assimilationist queers

[tigergendermoved2tigergender]

I am a chronic oversharer and I love describing myself but it still baffles me to see how much information people are willing to divulge in their carrds. Saw one dude I was lookin at randomly list every single label (like 20 in total) they used, every diagnosed mental and physical illness, every self diagnosed mental illness, every suspected mental illness, every single point of privilege they had, their religious views, their blood type, their triggers..... I understand wanting to show pride in your identity but this is just so unsafe. Do you know how easy it would be to absolutely fuck up your business with all of this info? Why do you trust internet strangers so much that you are willing to tell them every point of vulnerability you have while pointing them to where the knives are held. Why do you feel the need to disclaim every single aspect of yourself that may be relevant to your sociopolitical views in the case somebody even thinks about calling you out for some privilege they think you probably have. Why lay yourself so bare on the wild west of the internet for a blog where you don't even really speak? This person was OLDER than me which is remarkable because I assumed it would be the kids who so blatantly don't get internet safety but damn

[eulangelo]

callout for @genderfluidlucifer

google docs

tw for transmisogyny + TERFs + emotional manipulation

Transmisogyny

Lucifer is a huge transmisogynist who will complain 24/7 about how TERFs hurt the ace community, but the moment @randomclustermissile , a trans girl (who is not an exclusionist at all) tries to point out transmisogyny in inclusionist circles (in the most vague and general way possible, without pointing fingers nor calling anyone names) Lucifer will immediatly jump to block her and so they did with me (another inclusionist) and i have to suppose to everyone else who agreed with that post, even arriving to vagueing about us in private group chats to suggest that we were “sympathizing with exclusionists”. all because we dared point out transmisogyny in inclusionist circles. lucifer is TME but apparently they think they’re the authority on TERFs and their talking points but actual trans women are not, according to them, since this is the stuff that they would go and spew to other people. (screenshots from @enbyoctoling​)

here’s more examples of Lucifer (again, a transmasc person) going deep in detail about how according to them, TERFs/SWERFs hate aro/ace people and are an active threat to us

1. link

[Image ID: Three screenshots of a post by Genderfluidlucifer. The first screenshot is of a paragraph that reads, "Hey. So I can actually answer this. Anon your commentary about how you thought terfs would approve of sex repulsed aces is sort of it. Except...not. Basically terfs hate ace people for not wanting sex in the approved by terfs way. Terfs are actually extremely interested in [forcing] amatonormativity onto everyone. Because for as sex negative as terfs are...they don't want to actually acknowledge or change the fact that amatonormativity is at the root cause of rape culture and misogyny."

The second screenshot is a zoomed in section of the post that reads, "So yeah no I have NO idea where exclus allies are getting this idea from that terfs would even remotely care about the sexual rights of ace people. Terfs generally hate any sexualities in the LGBTQ+ acronym that aren't LGB because they can't force a gender binary onto those sexualities. At least, not as easily. That's why it's actually a massive sign of someone who doesn't call themselves a terf being a crypto terf if they use the term LGB in a positive manner. Along with the term SGA, as it is deliberately exclusive of nonbinary and not inherently SGA centric queer-aligned sexualities. /END ID]

link to the full post, these are just excerpts but the whole thing is just a very long rant about how TERFs hate ace people and so on (i think it’s worth noticing that although the actual post is kinda long, trans women are never once brought op in a conversation about TERFs issues and the only time transmisogyny is mentioned is not relevant to the conversation)

2. link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblog by genderfluidlucifer. The original poster is nothorses. It reads, "Because apparently I have to say it: Testosterone is not a 'violent' hormone. It doesn't make you 'more aggressive' or a worse person, it doesn't make you 'dangerous,' or 'toxic.' Transmascs do not need to be 'warned of the dangers of T.' We do not need to spend our transitions terrified that we're going to become a danger to those around us - that HRT is going to turn us into a monster.

Everyone experiences mood swings during hormonal shifts (pregnancy, menstruation, menopause, estrogen HRT, etc.) and while you might have grumpy moments or feel anger/frustration that you need to learn to handle differently, that doesn't make you a bad person.

Testosterone can change the way you access/process emotions somewhat, but if you're already thoughtful about how you handle your feelings and treat others, you're going to be fine. It's normal to lash out on occasion, by accident, then apologize and work to do better. It doesn't make you a bad person. Everyone on HRT is prone to this, and everyone experiencing hormonal changes is prone to this.

Getting HRT should be positive and affirming; you should not have to spend your entire transition terrified of becoming a monster."

The post then has a reblog by captainlordauditor that reads, "The big danger of T is that needle ouchy." /END ID]

here’s them reblogging from known transmisogynist user @nothorses (once again, the irony that a post about how testosterone is seen as the "aggressive hormone" does not mention transfem at all which are literally the main victims of this rethoric in the first place)

3. link (1), link (2)

[Image ID: Two screenshots of posts by genderfluidlucifer. The first screenshot reads, "Queer exclus: We're not repackaging terf rhetoric! Saying that is transmisogynistic! Also queer exclus: Remove the plus from LGBT!" and has tags that say, "I will pay these people to grow some god damn self awareness. Imagine being this dense. Queer discourse." The post has 15 notes.

The second screenshot reads, "Honestly it is so stupid and frustrating to see ace exclus continue to deny that the ace discourse was started by terfs. Proof was given countless times. And a big name terf like galesofnovember even admitted to starting it. Those of you who demand proof but ignore all of this never wanted proof to begin with." and is tagged with, "ace discourse. The post has 38 notes. /END ID]

heres another two post of theirs conflating TERFs with ace exclusionism

4. link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblogged post by furbearingbrick. The original poster is boxlizard, Lucifer's old account. The original post reads, "By the way for people still in denial about it, here's galesofnovember, a terf, admitting that she intended to start the ace exclus movement. She's taking credit for it. Normally if the victims of this behavior weren't ace/aro or other queer identities y'all be ready to rightfully lynch her. But since it's us, y'all just still wanna stamp your feet and go, 'Nuh uh!' instead of acknowledging facts." The part that says, "admitting that she intended to start the ace exclus movement" is a link to a galesofnovember post.

There is then a reblogged addition from furbearing brick that reads, "archived versions of the receipts" and has two links to the webarchive. The tags read, "Bringing this back since it's apparently still relevant. Terfism mention. Aphobia mention. Queerphobia mention. Blocklist." and has 1,455 notes. /END ID]

this is their post that ive already talked about but basically they found a 52 notes post made by a TERF in 2012 and this one person said "i dont know why i dont get to be the princess of the anti-ace-brigade" and apparently they are convinced that this means TERFs started the ace exclusionism movement and that this is one of their goals. which is insane when TERFs in real life only care about making life miserable for transfem people first and foremost.

5.link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblog by genderfluidlucifer. The original poster is yu-gay-fudo. It reads, “Just in case you happen to be unaware, some of the “radfem lite” they post to warm you up to their rhetoric, just off the top of my head:

- Ace/aro exclusionism

- Bi exclusionism or claims that bi people are “less queer” bc of “straight passive privilege”

- Saying you have to be dysphoric to identify as transInvalidating nonbinary people

- Calling queer a slur regardless of context, saying people can’t identify as queer, and saying that it can’t be reclaimed

- “Mogai hell”, “kweer”, or otherwise mocking less common labels and claiming they are “just cishets who want to feel special”

- Excluding sex workers from feminist discussions or claiming that sex work is inherently evil

- Basically anyone who thinks they can determine what other people identify as”. The tags read, "queerphobia tw. twerfs tw. no id." and has 70,727 notes. It was reblogged on March 22nd, 2021 /END ID]

another example of conflating radfems to things that, while wrong, have little to nothing to do with them because being a radfem, again, is something very specific that has all to do with transfem oppression.

Emotional manipulation

Lucifer has done nothing but block, break boundaries, spread lies and vague about people, some of which were even mutuals with them knowing they would see the posts. when confronted about it Lucifer's only answer was "just say you hate me and block me" but they actually ended up blocking everyone first, making it impossible for anyone to set some boundaries with them or even just to calmly confront them about anything.

[proof: Io(popncourse) and Lucifer had a disagreement in a shared discord server, which prompted Lucifer to vague Io in a vent post. Io confronted them, as being vagued is one of buns triggers, to which Lucifer initially agreed to delete the vent post, but then proceeded to victimize themself and immediatly blocked Io. later on, Jude(malewifedeckard) was confronted by Lucifer, then after Jude told them “I’m worried that you’ll vague me just like you did with Io” they proceeded to block Jude and vagued about him too. when Io made a post (which was not a callout, it was just bun setting buns boundaries) explaining what Lucifer did, Lucifer immediatly jumped to victimize themself, acting like they were being called out and straight-up lying, even going so far as to say that no one tried to hear them out, which is a blatant lie if you consider the aforementioned Io and Jude’s attempts at doing so, with Lucifer immediatly blocking and cutting ties with the both of them. ] 

(screenshots taken by @popncourse and @malewifedeckard)

as seen in the proof above Lucifer’s behaviour is not ok because they don’t accept any kind of confrontation and immediatly jump to blocking, and after blocking, they'd immediatly go and vague about the people who confronted them pacificly, spreading more lies and painting themself as the victim and even arriving to say “no one hears me out at all” which is simply not something you can say when you block people who are trying to hear you out in the first place.

this is by no means an invitation to go and harass them, send them hate or anything like that. i absolutely don’t want anything even remotely hateful or negative to be sent their way after this post. 

this post was only made because:

1. as an ace person who fully supports the inclusion of aspec identities in the lgbt+ community i don’t want to support an enviroment that costantly downplays transmisogynistic oppression in order to be taken seriously. there are hundreds of ways to make aspec activism without acting like we(as in TME aspecs)are the victims of a system that seeks for the annihilation of transfemenine people in real life everyday. i especially don’t want to support TME individuals who act transfem-friendly but then block any transfem who tries to speak on transmisogyny without a second thought.

2. Lucifer’s behaviour has hurt two friends of mine and i don’t want to associate with someone who actively breaks people’s boundaries without taking accountability when messing up.

3. i cannot associate with someone who spreads lies about me accusing me of sympathizing with exclusionists all while having me blocked so that i can’t see it nor defend me. they complain about people not hearing them out but they’re the very first person who does not try to hear people out, and instead jumps to spread baseless rumors. this is not someone i can nor want to associate with. 

(image descriptions provided by @malewifedeckard)

[ablednt]

Quick guide to spotting bullshit discourse

What is the heart of the issue?

Actual discussions that need to be had is "this [thing/person/ideology] is causing harm." If the issue is "I don't like that these people exist" that is not an actual issue and y'all need to focus on something more important.

If its harmful how and why

You cannot just face value accept "this thing is bad guys trust me I can't explain why / I don't have any evidence."

"They make the rest of [marginalized group they're in or adjacent to] look bad" is respectability politics and life does not work like that. Marginalized people will still face bigotry even if they excluded anyone who didn't take themselves %1000 seriously and no community no matter how hard you try will be a monolith. See point one and not hating people for existing in ways you don't like.

Unless you can point to an inherent ideology or privilege no group is fully bad or fully good. If the discussion includes pointing out a bunch of shitty people from one group and makes the conclusion that everyone in the group is like that without strong reasoning that's a fallacy.

If a person, group, or ideology is actually harmful there will be logical and objective reasons as to why. These reasons need to be put in context and presented clearly.

Is there a clear aggressor?

Centrism is a bad take almost all of the time. When most of the community discourses that happen are over people's existence this becomes especially true.

Take a look at each side of a discussion or debate. Is one more on the offense than the other? What kind of tactics are they using to debate? Are they forcing people into the discourse?

Learn to spot sockpuppets

People have pretended to be marginalized to mock and stigmatize people for as long as the internet has existed. If someone conveniently is so caricaturistically horrible that they prove all of someones points on how ridiculous or terrible a group of people is investigate that! It's suspect! Sockpuppets will intentionally add dogwhistles and signs that they're sockpuppets so others in their group can be aware of it. One example you see often is a "mogai" blog that coins a series of offensive genders, has a long incomprehensible list of identities meant to look ridiculous, and often intentionally gets caught up in discourse to make mogai people look harmful when having custom genders or emoji pronouns is actually harmless. Sockpuppets exist for any marginalized group that people are trying to discredit.

What is the goal

If a particular discussion doesn't have a predetermined goal it's not going to end anywhere. You can also see the goals of each side of a discourse and use that to determine if they're arguing in good faith or just to argue.

Good goals may be: "I want people to stop oppressing me/my group" "I want more people to understand what my experiences are so they can be accommodating or supportive." "I want to stop a person or group from harming specific people or groups." Or "I want to get other peoples opinions so we can have a nuanced discussion and come to a greater understanding."

Bad goals may be: "I don't want to be inconvenienced/change my views or behavior" "I want to be seen as more valid than others" "I want to silence or to continue harassing another group." "I want this group of marginalized or otherwise harmless people to stop existing" "I just want attention/clout" "I just think starting discourse is funny." Or not having a reason at all.

Conclusion

A lot of discourse is bullshit and we live in a time where most people don't have the time and energy to care about every goddamn argument people have on the internet when we all need and want to focus equal parts on combating real issues and just existing in peace. Stop engaging in pointless discourses to amuse abusive and malicious people and distract from real issues, genuinely if we don't reward people who start discourse for fun they'll get bored and go away.

[ex-terfs]

I’m curious about how you were introduced to trans exclusionary ideology, and when you realized how toxic it truly is. I’m genuinely curious.

Hello! Sorry for the hiatus.So this is my story & long rant post.I've been among TERFs/Radfems (AKA the Conservative side of "feminism") since 2015. In mid-2016 — with the dangers of having Trump as President — I started getting critical of everything going on in the community, deleted older posts, & stopped reblogging "trans-critical" stuff. In 2017 — after seeing TERFs celebrating that the 'Everyday Feminism' site was facing a financial crisis & after paying more attention at what our "enemies" were trying to say — I unfollowed all the bullies, & eventually started to despise seeing "trans-critical" stuff. Their hatred towards the "big scary Libfems" is what made me rethink my priorities.

Many parts of their ideology had peculiarly attracted my attention back in 2015. As a GNC person who celebrates gender nonconformity, their gender abolition theories seemed very interesting (& I later found out how bigoted they are towards GNC men & GNC people with different identities/pronouns). When I was a sex-repulsed person, their porn-critical & sex-negative theories also seemed very interesting to me (I later found out how bigoted they are towards sex-repulsed people — upholding heteronormativity & saying things like "Haha, nobody loves you", "If you're a man/bisexual/lesbian, you must perform oral sex on your gf"; but still, I'm NO longer in the sex-negative/SWERF community). People sending them death threats was also one of the reasons why I had joined their movement.

It always begins like this. Step 1: you begin exploring anti-kink/anti-porn stuff; Step 2: you begin exploring anti-"MOGAI" stuff; Final step: you turn into a transphobe. That's how I got into this mess.

Second-wave theories originally had a critical focus on the social construction of gender & sexuality, monogamy, submission/masochism, natalism, the family structure, the fear of nonconformity, emotional/economic dependency, religion, & violence.As a feminist, yeah, I still agree with most of these analyses. I love reading academic books. But there was something different about terf/radfem tumblr. & this is all I've noticed over the years.

TERFs treat their word like holy truth.

TERFs use Right-wing "sources" to back up their transphobic & sex-negative arguments (& often associate themselves with conservative groups).

TERFs claim that all men are "biologically/physically the same".

TERFs contradict themselves all the time: claim that sex-repulsed AroAces are "usual straights", mock people who just want to remain single, & at the same time still say that if you don't want to have sex with men, then "you're a lesbian"; they say that people don't owe you sex, & at the same time say it's "not okay" for men to sexually reject a woman for "bad reasons".

TERFs claim that lesbians who are anti-TERF or who don't believe in the "born-this-way" theory are "fake lesbians".

TERFs are against the idea of removing your secondary sexual characteristics; & if an AMAB person doesn't like their "secondary sexual characteristics", then they must be a "delusional fetishist" (srsly I identify as a woman, but I still wish I could remove my uterus & have a breast reduction surgery; & it's not for sexist reasons! Shocking, I know!).

TERFs claim that men can't be raped/abused by women (not all TERFs believe this, but I still see them quietly following the ones who do).

TERFs have definitely never read a book with a different perspective/purpose, yet they will act like total experts on any subject (TERFs act like they're experts on Postmodernism & Queer Theory, but they have no idea what these theories are actually about. These theories are both very complex & don't have only one definition! Shocking, I know!).

TERFs will assume you're a trans woman if you don't disclose you're actually AFAB (& they could still have doubts).

TERFs are very manipulative & use brainwashing tactics. If you're AFAB & anti-TERF, they will say it's because of your "internalized misogyny" & will try to guilt-trip you. Because how dare someone has a different opinion! If you're AFAB & proudly calls yourself 'genderfluid' or 'non-binary', TERFs will get offended.

TERFs claim that asexuality only exists "because of the prevalence of porn" (Aces & sex-repulsed people would still be here even if porn didn't exist! Shocking, I know!).

TERFs claim that men who call themselves 'feminist' are "all predators".

TERFs would rather include transphobic men in their spaces than "those evil libfems" (those women are enemies).

TERFs claim that radical feminism is the "only true feminism", & that all second-wave feminists were "radfems".

TERFs claim that GNC men are "fetishizing" femininity (but according to TERF logic, masculine men are not fetishizing masculinity).

TERFs are extremely bigoted towards sex workers, polyamorous people, people who don't want commitment, people who are sexually experimenting or who are promiscuous (which is also one of the reasons why I left the sex-negative community; their views on sex/lust/love are similar to the Christian conservative perspective).

I can definitely assure you I still very well remember most of their URLs & blog content. There are many TERFs who hide behind aesthetic blogs, & use subtle TERF language & comforting rhetoric — which you might not even notice if you don't know much about their specific type of language & tactics (e.g. complaining about the "neoliberal postmodern identities" & about people "erasing females"). This type of TERF also may follow a bunch of (trans-inclusive) anti-'MOGAI' & anti-kink blogs. If you're trans-inclusive & TERFs follow you, it's likely because your blog content doesn't make them uncomfortable.

Their blatant transphobia is absurd & paranoiac, & they don't hide it. Anyone who disagrees with them gets called a "handmaiden", "lesbophobe", "male", "genderist", "liberal", "libfem", "special snowflake" (I no longer consider myself a radical leftist, but I don't consider myself a centrist either). TERFs call trans women as a group "fetishists", "delusional", "mentally ill", "sociopaths", "narcissists", "pedophiles", "necrophiles", "incels", "genderfucks" + slurs like "tr*nny", "troon", "tr0n", "transes". They say that the trans movement is "coercing children to transition" & "forcing lesbians to have sex with penis". It's pure fear-mongering. Their views on trans men are also contradictory — there are times they claim that trans men are "straight girls who are trans just bc they read fanfiction & watch gay porn", & there are times they claim that trans men are "brainwashed butch lesbians" (Pick a side!).

I live in a very religious Latin American country. The majority of the population here is not educated on gender/sexuality issues. I got the chance of educating myself better only after I've learned English. And then some terfs had the gall to say "academic fields such as Gender & LGBT Studies & philosophy are oppressive & pretentious". In a country like mine with a dark history of military dictatorships, censorship & anti-intellectualism, being leftist means protecting the social sciences in education & freedom of the press.

So yes, I left the terf community bc unlike them, I think for myself & I hate bullying (i was in fact heavily bullied for years in school, & only bullying victims know how it truly feels like). My terf blog is now inactive; I had 1000+ followers. I'm a very quiet person irl & online; I was never vocal about my real opinions bc I don't like getting into heated discussions & I didn't want to be featured on that gross radfem-gossip blog.I was very transphobic back then. & now it's quite possible terfs will say to me "You were never one of us". I followed & liked their blogs, just like they followed mine. I was loyal & obedient. Now not anymore.

[atalana]

I'd also just like to add onto this-

When this started coming up as an issue? People did look for a word that everyone would be happy with. That wasn't even debatably a slur, and that could describe everyone. There were a couple of ones going around, but the most popular was MOGAI, standing for Marginalised Orientations, Genders, And Intersex.

And people were happy with this, for a while. It never got as popular as queer or LGBT+ because those were way more recognised, but most people didn't have a problem with it. Until the exclusionists realised that there was no way to exclude people from it (at least, not without arguing that certain groups have never been marginalised, which they tried to do as well).

So since it was only inclusionary, they decided to mock it for that. These days you only really hear it in the context of "oh this person made a rabies pride flag", and specifically like, making fun of labels they dont like by creating stuff that blatantly isnt part of the community, by any definition, and then sort of just discreetly lumping any label outside of the main five or six into that so they can't be taken seriously.

For people who argue against anyone using queer, it's never been about the word itself, but about taking away any ability for the less recognised identities to have a part in the community

Queer is not a slur.

Not when used as a self-identification, and not when used as an umbrella term within the community, at least.

See, here’s the thing: The most common identifier used by bi, pan, and trans people to describe their sexuality? Queer.

Given that multiple studies have shown that bi people alone comprise about half the community, that makes it by far the most common term we use to describe ourselves.

What’s more, it’s not just an identifier: it’s a rallying cry. It’s a banner the whole community has assembled under forever. “We’re here, we’re queer” is a cliché for a reason. It’s a statement of power, and of pride - yes, we’re weird. We don’t fit into the “acceptable” categories cisheteronormative society gives us. And that’s a good thing. It’s a call to demolish those “acceptable” boxes, to build a world we’re all part of.

Its rejection is a relatively recent move by the same homonationalism that brought us “Bi people don’t belong,” the thrilling sequel “Trans people don’t belong,” and the stunning conclusion “Ace people don’t belong.” It’s a deliberate strategy employed by respectability politicians seeking a seat at the table - taking the work we’ve put in and distancing themselves from us so they can tell the straights “We deserve your respect because we’re just like you! We even hate queers!”

(And don’t think it’s a coincidence that the community suddenly forgot the massive, massive overlap between “queer” and “poly” when building the very self-conscious image of two clean-cut upper-middle-class smiling young professional men or women either. Anything that wasn’t “respectable” enough had to go. My deepest thanks to the person who pointed this out.)

In the rush for our place in an oppressive hell, we’ve lost our revolutionary edge, lost our fire, and lost a lot of what drove us in the first place. Fuck. That.

I’m queer, and you will never take that away from me.

[book-of-torments-blog]

However more interesting and perhaps more pressing subjects present themselves as deserving of a more detailed discussion (the likes of which this blog purports to host), this fanatical obsession some have in regards to ‘pronouns’ and their supposed ideal usage in so-called progressive and politically correct circles bothers me to such an extent that I am forced to dwell on it a while.

Those of us begrudgingly associated with the ‘LGBTQIA+’ disaster of a monolith are well acquainted with the trend of seeing people who are not, in fact, gay or lesbian intrude upon our spaces, our debates, our lives, and co-opt our cause in their favour – that is how, indeed, a simple, already much too ambitious acronym transfigured itself into the aforementioned mess of ‘LGBTQIA+’ and its varieties, like the equally preposterous ‘MOGAI’ or ‘QUILTBAG’ denominations one sometimes stumbles upon while browsing Tumblr. It is a mystery that some will still refer themselves to ‘the gay community’ when it has been completely overrun by self-proclaimed ‘queers’, whose interests have no common points with those of actual homosexual people. Already when the ‘community’ was only about gay men and lesbian women there were issues of principles and priorities – and the deference was always to homosexual men’s needs, as one would expect in a misogynist society, for the link of oppression on the basis of sexuality (or any other, in that case) is evidently not enough to unite men and women under the same flag. Our sex is a barrier that, it seems, cannot be overcome. So if there was already a divide between homosexual men and women in the same movement, it is no wonder that the addition of ‘other sexualities’ and ‘genders’ as well as completely unrelated groups such as polyamorous straight people would only serve to fragment and confuse the movement and its objectives even further.

Compared to the larger implications of this entire process of decay, the pronoun mania seems relatively harmless, but the insistence upon modifying and bending language to the sole benefit of all these non-homosexuals over that of actual homosexuals has quite the impact on our lives. It is detrimental to homosexuals, women, and, most markedly, the intersection of these two groups: homosexual women.

It is also a problem that walks hand-in-hand with a whole bunch of other matters. The very denomination ‘queer’ serves as hindrance to female and gay needs and interests, as it erases the differences between sets of people who have very little in common to create the idea of homogeneity where there is none. A collectivity defined by non-definition is perhaps functional and cute in purely abstract debate to those who take pleasure in speaking of what does not exist for the purpose of pseudo-intellectual mental masturbation, but it serves for nothing in the real world. Rather, it serves to weaken the cohesion and limit the scope of political action the group in question could propose itself to pursue. The discussion of the emergence of ‘queer’ as an ‘umbrella term’ encompassing homosexuals, bisexuals, transgenders and all other groups deeming themselves ‘gay enough’ (or, worse, ‘gayer than’!) to belong as well as the effects it has merits an essay of its own. For now, suffice it to say that the manipulation of language done within a self-identified ‘LGBT’ community by those who are neither gay or lesbian – and with the naive support of gays and lesbians – is destructive and antagonistic to the very ideals that inspired the creation of a ‘community’ in the first place. It is destructive and it is divisive. How many hours have been spent in argument about the ‘validity’ of asexuals or demisexuals or straights who are ‘queering sex’, how much anonymous hatred spewed, how many women threatened for their views when we could have been focusing on securing better lives for gays and lesbians?

For something that sells itself off as extremely homogeneous to the point of believing a single word can translate the experiences of a fuckload of different people, the ‘queer community’ is also extremely invested in promulgating an infinity of micro-identities to those who fashion themselves its members. It presents the paradox of one word meant to represent gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders and the never-ending list of made-up sexualities as well as a plethora of imagined words allotted to each, both as an identifier of sexuality as well as of ‘gender’. Basically, a collection of (as has already been pointed out in some posts circulating the Tumblr-verse) socially-stunted narcissists with self-esteem issues wanting to belong to something that will make them look ‘cool’ and important when they themselves have no characteristics of their own to stick out from the bunch. Even negative attention counts as attention, of course, so the sheer absurdity of their project isn’t a problem – rather, even if people mock them, they’ll get the attention they so crave.

It takes a very sad and bland or very disillusioned and confused person to actually believe that being called ‘xe/xir’ is an inalienable human right or related to radical revolutionary praxis in any way.

Let us suppose, for a second, that a microcosm of, say, forty students in a higher education classroom decides to state their ‘preferred pronouns’ so that their teacher and colleagues can refer to them as they would like – in third person, meaning, when these students aren’t even a part of a given conversation since it’s uncommon to refer to someone in the third person if they are standing right in front of you. Suppose a nice portion of them goes by fantasy pronouns, these ugly products of fancy that have no foundation on any kind of grammar. Suppose the same teacher has another seven classes to teach, containing around forty other students each and the same percentage of individuals who go by completely unique, fabricated pronouns. Do people deem themselves really this important to want to hang a teacher who might slip up and call the tall and bearded, deep-voiced and nut-scratching queer aplatonic pansexual wolf-kin student a ‘he’ instead of ‘furself’, or – and I recoil just to imagine it –, ‘she’?

Our brains do not, unfortunately, possess unlimited storing space. Memorising the ‘preferred pronouns’ of a handful of people who want to be seen as freakish (as if gay people haven’t been insulted with ‘queer’ precisely because considered ‘freakish’ by society at large…) simply isn’t as important as, well, anything else one might think of, really.

But this very appellation proves absurd from the start: preferred pronouns? Will we start ‘preferring’ verbs and definite articles next?

Grammar isn’t fashion, it is not a style one chooses or ‘un-chooses’ according to one’s mood on a given day. As much as we can and must debate normative grammar, there are certain structures that must be there and used in certain ways to render someone’s speech intelligible to others. Pronouns, as other classes of words, serve a specific function within sentences. Personal (I, she, he...), possessive (mine, hers, his…), and reflexive pronouns (myself, herself, himself…) have a purpose in avoiding repetition and clarifying one’s speech. They work and we understand one another because language is a code, a system we share, whose elements and knowledge we have in common as a community of speakers – of English, in this particular case; I will touch upon some other languages soon. Even if separated by social class or levels of formal education, we can still understand one another because the language we share is the same. We are free to choose the vocabulary we like and express ourselves as we like, for language is an extremely productive tool as can be seen by the variety of ways one can say roughly the same thing using different words and constructions, ranging from the most banal, day-to-day kind of discourse to the most extraordinary, surprising poetic one. That much we choose.

But pronouns? Will a trend of relative pronouns arise as well? The running ‘whom’st’ve’-type jokes are amusing, but just because some kids on the internet are fooling around with them doesn’t mean they can change the structure of the language at will, nor do they intend to. No one takes this seriously, apart, perhaps, from curious linguists investigating the creativity and possibility of this kind of construction, but no one will advocate for this to be included in a grammar book, for instance. Maybe in some good many years, if the meme catches on and becomes a part of popular vernacular, sure, though perhaps unlikely seeing as language tends to simplify itself for the sake of practicality rather than the other way around. We could talk about language change (I will avoid the term ‘evolution’ so as to not provide further fuel to the fire of linguistic debate…) throughout the years, but let us do so returning to the topic at hand.

The word ‘preferred’ already indicates that this is a very conscious imposition on the part of those who claim ‘their’ pronouns (as if someone could own a particular set of words...). It marks a desire for forced linguistic change and, while languages do change constantly, they also do remain, charmingly, constant. These aren’t concepts I’ll be able to explain to the uninitiated in the associated theories in one paragraph, but one is invited to consult the work of Ferdinand de Saussure for an introduction to linguistic problems and study, specifically his Cours de Linguistique Générale.

Nevertheless, let us resume some aspects thus: language is a system exterior to the individual but one which encompasses them; it is social and it exists in a specific linguistic community as a human creation. Its conception is ‘random’ inasmuch as there is nothing in a given object’s ‘essence’ that determines it must be called this or that. If that were not the case, we wouldn’t even have multiple languages to begin with, for all of them would call a house ‘house’ instead of ‘casa’, ‘maison’, ‘ дом ’ and so on. So, to those who say that language is all made-up and that fantasy pronouns should be acceptable on these grounds, I raise you this:  yes, language is made-up, but not by you or I. Try speaking to someone using only words you have invented, paying no mind to the syntactic and semantic structures of your native language. You won’t get far.

An individual or a group of individuals do not have what it takes to transform with willpower alone what has been crystallised in centuries of a language’s existence – linguistic changes cannot be imposed by someone, they happen as the speakers of a language develop their communication. There is a dislocation in the relationship between the signifier and its signified, but that dislocation cannot be forced; language adapts as needed by its users, not as desired by a cluster of them.

(Side-notes: 1. language mutability is a much more complex phenomenon than this essay can hope to convey in a few lines and linguistic science is still taking its turns with it. I would suggest the interested reader seek out Saussure to get an initial grip on linguistics and to follow up her research by trying to access articles on the matter being published today, if the academic language does not prove too daunting; 2. the inclusion of feminine forms in grammars that do not supposedly accept them is another debate entirely that warrants another discussion altogether. The case with French, lately, is an interesting case for study, if one can keep from trying to comprehend the French situation with Anglo-Saxon eyes and sensibilities.)

Besides, to fashion oneself a creator of words to be adopted by a large number of people, one must truly regard oneself as brilliant as, say, the likes of William Shakespeare, as he gave his particular contributions to what we understand as the English language today. I am sorry to say so, but a fifteen year-old furry on Tumblr is probably as far from Shakespearian genius as religion from spirituality – or Pluto from the Sun, if I must make myself clear and unambiguous to those with religious tendencies.

Not to mention the fact that, for something as powerful as the proponents of ‘identity’ as something sacred claim it to be, it stands on very shaky ground if the mere use of a pronoun unequal to their expectations poses any sort of challenge to this certain ‘identity’. Maybe these ‘inherent’ and ‘essential’ gender identities aren’t as sturdy as they are being called after all, if they are incapable of withstanding such harmless and easy contest. If your ‘identity’ starts with words rather than apprehensible reality, then it is clearly not as stable or natural as you would like it to be.

Since we’ve touched on the question of signifier and signified and how linguistic change implies a change in the relation between the two, what this pronoun craze (and the inextricably attached to it gender-mania) does is not that; the idea of creating pronouns as well as genders to go along with them does not shift the relation, but implode it. It ruptures significance as it completely disfigures whatever lines are set – lines which have a purpose, for delimitation begets identification, which, in turn, allows for action. If that sounds cryptic, allow me to break it down: delimitation and proper description of a given phenomenon (say, of the oppression of women, for instance) permits the identification of its root causes and, most importantly, its agents (therefore, the oppression of women is classified as a by-product of a heterosexist, misogynistic patriarchy which is enacted and supported by men, for it is males who benefit from the suffering and subjugation of females), so that those who take the brunt of it can organise and fight back with appropriate targets in mind instead of hazy, abstract enemies. A movement must have a target for its actions if it desires to succeed. Remove the necessary lingo that allows for analysis, criticism and discussion in search of a viable course of action/solution and you may well neutralize the group’s impetus for justice and their probabilities of success. Pretend men are women and all of a sudden the patriarchy is created by women and they are their own enemies -- the rhetoric possibilities of perversion are endless.

If the explanation still isn’t clear enough, one can imagine a chessboard in which the pieces retain their original values but are all disguised as pawns. One may go around wasting time and take all of them down one by one, in hopes of taking the king, if one is so inclined to the effort, of course. But a serious chess player knows that the end goal of chess isn’t to take all pieces, but to checkmate the king. The former might even come about as a consequence in trying to secure the latter, but, usually, one attempts to minimise effort and save time.

Speaking of effort, apart from demanding superhuman amounts of it on the part of those willing to indulge and use heaven knows how many different sets of nonsensical ‘pronouns’ for each person of their acquaintance, this little game of creating genders and pronouns and throwing fits if they are misused does make pawns out of all pieces, but in appearance only. It enshrouds information; it hides people responsible for certain things they should be held accountable for but are not – ‘queer’ serves to disappear the lines between actual homosexuals (gays and lesbians) as well as ‘quirky’ bisexuals or straight people, establishing a false equivalence of individuals within the group. This serves as an instrument to guilt those in disagreement as if they were ‘working against their own interests’, as if they were ‘traitors’ to the group. This is how lesbians have been denounced as the bogeyman of the ‘queer community’ – firstly, lumped in together with these ‘queers’ against our will, then shunned for daring not to agree with them, considered traitors of a cause that wasn’t ours to begin with and which actively antagonises us.

The mechanism behind pronouns and gender identity, however, has overarching consequences: it gives criminal men the perfect excuse to enter female restrooms where they can assault women; it gives them the perfect excuse to beg to be sent to women’s prisons, where they will be closest to the very portion of the population they terrorise. It skewers statistical data, which ceases to be a reliable source for analysis because, all of a sudden, female-committed crime starts to spike in areas that have always been the dominion of male perpetrators. Anyone paying attention will know that women aren’t magically acting as violent as men, they aren’t raping and murdering people in male rates or with the same amount of male cruelty; these numbers are a reflection of men masquerading as women, since this sham of personal, ethereal, holy identities – the motor for pronoun-fixation – has been warmly embraced by the mainstream without a single instance of questioning and in record amounts of time.

Television shows are still afraid to say the word LESBIAN out loud, but will showcase their ‘queer’ and/or ‘trans’ characters without fear of censoring, if not in earnest hopes of being labelled progressive and awarded for it.

Yes, of course words are very much tied to how we perceive reality, but messing them up in the cause of something as stupidly and unsatisfactorily defined as ‘gender’ is in the mouths of its own champions serves no purpose other than to soothe megalomaniacal cretins and antisocial, manipulative teenagers; to further confuse young gay girls and boys already devoid of proper guidance; and to terminate all useful terminology and, consequently, praxis relating to female and homosexual struggles. Meddling with one’s discourse does not induce some sort of alchemical miracle that transforms material reality into whatever someone wishes it could be – my repeating over and over that I am rich (or that I ‘identify as rich’, to use the preferred construction) does not, in fact, have the slightest effect of increasing the value of my withering bank account in so much as a dime.

It’s hot air.

The problem lies with the consequences, as mentioned, on us all, since these linguistic atrocities and resulting social practices are being officially accepted and implemented by mass media and governments alike.

Moreover, cohesive groups exist prior to the language used to describe them. Women are biologically female and form a cohesive unit because of it despite the push for reducing women to lipstick and stilettos; gays are gays and form a cohesive unit by means of their exclusive attraction to individuals of the same sex, despite the push to redefine sexuality in terms of nebulous and volatile ‘gender’. Even if the words we use and need do end up swallowed and wholly co-opted by the trans/queer crowd and their allies, the concreteness of these groups will not cease to be, nor will their oppression, but it will be a lot harder to talk about it and for us to find one another to build actual community so we can fight back. Our best interests, as lesbians especially, are obviously not at the heart of those peddling trans/queer politics.

Politics which, ironically, claim themselves progressive – anti-sexist, anti-racist, anti-homophobic (or ‘LGBTphobic’ as I’ve been elsewhere forced to read), the list goes on (to include, many times, a comical idea of being anti-capitalism when queer/trans ideology is intimately linked with consumerism – performativity demands products to showcase it; it demands reification of the self and that comes with buying these or those items to heighten the image of one’s self as a consumable good – but that is another essay entirely). Those who ‘identify with’ this world-view go so far as to say that women and lesbians (their being actual feminists or radical ones at that completely disregarded for the ‘TERF’ acronym to be freely tossed around) who so much as question them, let alone fight back, are colonialist, racist, Eurocentric, yada yada yada bigots. Because, apparently, the categories of female/male are western creations imposed on native peoples to control them… For some reason, whereas categories of masculine/feminine are essential, spiritual and totally-not-artificially-constructed or socially imposed so as to create a hierarchy of the sexes… Or, another ‘argument’ found between the defenders of ‘gender identity’, everything is deemed as socially constructed, but delusions are somehow considered more real than flesh and bones just because they say so.

The flaws in logic and in their overall rhetoric would be hilarious, if they didn’t bring about such negative consequences along with giving any sensible and thinking human being a headache.

For here’s the clincher: all this talk of ‘inclusivity’ and progress spewing from trans/queer activists is done in English. Yes, the very language that has infiltrated most corners of the known world given the colonising efforts of the British throughout history and, more recently and perhaps successfully, due to the grip on mainstream media and consciousness exercised by the United States of America. We are made to witness English speakers (native and not so!) throw tantrums when someone does not recognize the ‘validity’ of or fails to utilise something like ‘ey/eirs’ pronouns. So the discourse is constructed in a way that uses certain cultures as props (‘In X culture, there is a third gender!!!’) but at the same time derides all these non-English speaking peoples for their incapability of using a broken, and, let’s face it, horrendous English. It isn’t even a Eurocentric view (something these ‘activists’ say themselves vehemently against, to the point of blindly embracing and defending, say, the tenets of certain non-Western religious ideologies only to spite so-called Western sensibilities…), it’s a decidedly Anglo-Saxon view they espouse. ‘Queer theory’ is born in English-speaking academia and these vulgar branches of it spread amongst English-speakers who think it viable and useful to change the entire structure of the English language to amuse them when they can’t even differentiate ‘your’ from ‘you’re’ in written media a lot of the time.

See, there are, to mention but one kind, Romance languages in Europe and outside of it and these languages (the likes of French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian…) are gendered. They use grammatical genders because this is how they developed throughout the ages from their Latin roots. It’s an essential part of their mechanisms; not because Romance languages are somehow bigoted and want all trans people to die terribly in a fire, but because these languages have existed for much longer than the ideology and social practices that the trans/queer crowd defend.

In these languages, one cannot do what some of these individuals do in English, using a third person plural to signify a single, individual person (the idea that ‘they’ is a neutral pronoun). It is utterly impossible to make any sense of it in a Romance language, added to the fact that these tongues separate third person plurals into feminine and masculine forms (elles/ils in French; elas/eles in Portuguese, etc.). To attempt something of the sort would be to incur in an egregious error in using these languages and native speakers of them do not and shall not recognize these strategies as proper or practical in any way.

English is not a parameter to which other languages compare or should strive to emulate at all. ‘They’ is impossible to carry on as a ‘neutral’ pronoun in translation, so one can only imagine how obtuse it would be to try and find equivalents to ‘ze’, ‘xe’, ‘ey’ in Spanish or Italian, to speak of only two… Those writers today who include ‘nonbinary’ characters who are referred to in the story by these unorthodox pronouns, in the name of ‘inclusion’, are automatically excluding the rest of the non-English speaking world from reading it, unless they consent to having these anomalies translated into proper pronouns that reflect the target language of a possible translation of their story.

There has been pressure from self-proclaimed leftist circles to write certain words in the vein of ‘Latinx’, ‘elx’, ‘el@’ in some countries as a way to approach this concept of ‘gender neutrality’ in human language, but none of these hideous little chimeras are pronounceable. Of course, as is to be expected, those of us who recognize this difficulty in the popularisation of these forms and who refuse to partake in the collective illusion that new genders and pronouns can effectively better the world are shouted down, ostracised, and likened to right-wing sympathisers. In refusing to let our speech be contaminated by ludicrous ideas originated in other countries and languages, in other social configurations (for, needless to say, the social and material reality of an American academic making a living out of ‘queering’ literature at Berkeley is far different than that of a low class Brazilian selling fruits on the street – in fact, that American academic is already very much removed from the reality of an average American of lower income as well), we are accused of being intolerant.

So, by refusing to let ourselves be colonised by American theories, we’re being intolerant… Of whom? Sexual minorities? How can a lesbian, of all people, be charged with the crime of effacing the existence of a trans/queer person? What power does a single lesbian hold in the midst of society, what influence does she have when she is forced to express her discontent with the path both feminist and gay movements have followed by means of an anonymous blog on the internet for fear of violent reprisal? What power does she wield when all of mainstream media supports and sells trans/queer ideology hourly? How does she, in not bending to the whim of some narcissist who calls himself her equal or even more oppressed than she is, cause any violence to this person just by calling him ‘he’? How can she be accused of racism by not acknowledging a concept born and bred within the halls of North American institutions of higher education she, most of the time, can’t even dream of entering?

Identity politics are invariably tied to the language and culture that birthed them. Transplanting this train-wreck to other countries isn’t educating prejudiced whites or liberating the poor, uneducated little third-world citizens of their ignorance, it’s imposing a foreign and quite nonsensical world-view on us all. That seems much more akin to imperialism than the fact of not accepting this same ideology being forced upon us.

This world-view they want us all to adopt (in whose benefit, again?) is rooted on a very simplistic and mistaken understanding of the systems that govern society as we know it, a world-view founded upon the columns of misogyny, homophobia, neo-liberal lies and jargon meant to obfuscate its true meaning and intentions.

How naive must one be to believe that changing some pronouns around and creating a whole slew of ‘genders’ based on aesthetics and stereotypical behaviour can change the world in any way?

Or rather, how can one allow oneself to be seduced by the idea and think that whatever changes it does cause can ever be for the better? Activism is reduced to a joke, a game of scrabble, feeble discussions on the internet which are soon forgotten. Worse still, activism is done in the name of those who need it the least: men. What benefit does this zealous concern with pronouns create for actual marginalised people? What can women, homosexuals, people of colour, the poor all gain from this?

It certainly is not liberation. That does not come in the form of new shackles, as colourful and covered in glitter as they may be.