#makes said trans people evil. also most of them not actually being misogynistic for pointing out cis dominance in this field.

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

i'm sorry but actually yes it is an issue that x reader fanfictions as a genre are primarily focused on straight (presenting) relationships with primarily cis female readers. the answer is not that the cis women writing these fics are bad or should stop, but just that they should consider branching out (and i'm not forcing them to! just a suggestion of diversifying their portfolios! which they don't have to do!)! and also that other non cis female writers should be being uplifted, too, in addition to all the straight cis female reader fics.

[genderkoolaid]

It's so frustrating to see people purposefully misunderstand transandrophobia/transmisandry and then very confidently talk disparagingly about the people who talk about their experiences of it and then blatantly ignore everyone going "hey yeah no that's not what that means"

Like. Devon price trying to frame it like people who talk about transandrophobia are doing so firstly because they're just ignorant misogynistic babies who want to be oppressed so bad and also to try and drive a wedge between transmascs and transfemmes is so fucking disingenuous I don't even know where to start.

We're literally just trying to talk about the experiences transmasculine people have and the institutional problems specific to us? Why is this such a fucking problem?

Its painfully obvious that the people who make these posts do not ever actually engage with the discussion of anti-transmasculinity & the wider transunitist-feminist theories. Its embarassingly obvious in this case because Devon tried to make this sick gotcha, by bringing up one of the most common topics of conversation in our spaces.

And then there's the whole "TMRAs don't realize most of what they deal with is misogyny!" take, which I've seen in other places as well. Which imo comes from the idea that people who discuss transmisandry are literally just the trans version of MRAs. & the MRA idea of "misandry" is just a reversal of their idea of feminist theory- so they use it to describe "actually society is based around women's needs and desires and it targets (cis) men and we actually live in a matriarchy!" While the transunitist concept of misandry/antimasculism is "patriarchal beliefs about men/masculinity & the roles they are expected to fulfill, used both generally to reinforce patriarcharal control and specifically to target marginalized men/perceived-masculine people." I coined antimasculism specifically to provide an alternate to misandry for those who are uncomfortable with it because of the MRA associations.

& like. whether or not you agree that these are useful words, its obvious that the transunitist idea of misandry/antimasculism is very different to the MRA one. But to know that you'd have to actually, like, read the things we write & take seriously to our theories on the patriarchy. And not just trust Tumblr Callout For Evil Trans People #3245853723 that said we don't think misogyny exists.

Also tbh I think a bigger part of this issue (transmascs who are anti-transunitist) is that its a symptom of anti-transmasculine erasure. If you don't personally experience, assault, demonization, or accusations of being a predator for being a trans man, and no one you know has either, then... you certainly aren't gonna hear about those issues from wider society. And even if you have, you might not recognize what happened as anti-transmasculine, or tell yourself it must be only a fraction of what trans women go through. & again, they don't fucking read anything we post. That's why I feel like its so important to point out & remember incidents of anti-transmasculinity (like what I do w the AoVaTP). Because its so easy to buy the "people don't violate trans men the same way" until you've read about (tw for somewhat graphic anti-transmasculine violence)

trans men getting their faces cut off, beaten with a chain, thrown out of men and women's bathrooms, hit over the head with a cooler, having their shelter at a refugee camp firebombed, having hot coffee poured in their eyes while being called a "he-she", institutionalized & tortured for not showing "proper gender behaviors" as a child, having their family burn their documents to keep them from getting a job, forced to jump from a 2nd-story window and left to die, being harassed by Fox News for being a "groomer" until their school got bomb threats, held captive and tortured for two years, found dead with their genitals stabbed, assaulted by a police officer for "lesbian activity", called "tranny" a lot, and so many rapes and so many suicides, and this is just some of the shit that I have collected for that archive.

But yeah. We're just whining about silly representation nonsense.

[scarrletmoon]

this is going to keep bothering me unless i finally put it down but let’s really quickly talk about ed, gender and trans femme headcanons

just right off the bat, i’m not saying that you can never HC ed as trans femme, and if you say that’s what i’m demanding, please point to the exact paragraph where i said that

moving on

my reticence to jump into the babygirlification of ed teach in the first few months of the fandom comes from the fact that i’ve felt this undercurrent of discomfort around masculinity in fandom and online queer community.

i mean, i say undercurrent but any trans masc can tell you how much (online) queer spaces hate trans men, especially bc they think of them as gender traitors. people will proclaim how progressive they are, how they’re fighting for queer liberation and bodily autonomy, and then turn around and say the most vile shit about men that you’ve ever heard. people will often excuse it in a myriad of ways — “obviously I don’t mean all men, but you asking me to qualify that means you’re a misogynist” or “i’m allowed to say this bc men have hurt me” or “if trans men are men then why are they trying to escape their compliance in patriarchy. i’m actually affirming their gender by assuming they’re dangerous as soon as they come out”

all of these reasons are fucked in different ways but this ain’t about them. this is about ed

i bring up the adversity towards masculinity bc i thought it might be a possible explanation for what i was seeing; some people seemed to be treating ed like a closeted trans woman, especially based on his actions in s1 ep10. he’s acting more soft and “feminine” so maybe he’s a trans woman and just doesn’t get it! and this bothered me for a bunch of reasons

first, ofmd goes out of its way to depict many different kinds of masculinity, across race, gender identity, sexuality and even hobbies and interests. all of the men on the revenge aren’t the idealized version of what masculinity is supposed to be. and yet they’re all still men.

second, there’s nothing inherently wrong with being a man. the real problem is patriarchy, which even women (and which especially white women) uphold too. this demonization of masculinity makes it so much harder to talk about how patriarchy actually functions. women are not inherently pure, non-violent angels. men are not inherently evil and irredeemable

third, ed is not white. we should know by now that gender and gender presentation are not exact matches across all cultures

so i think part of the reason why people HC a brown indigenous man as trans femme is bc they see some feminine traits — long hair, emotional vulnerability, a penchant for finery, etc — and bc they’re uncomfortable thinking of ed as still a man, they can incorporate him into womanhood in a way that matches their worldview (namely, that women are harmless and victims to protect, and worthy of that protection in a way that men are not)

(btw the first time i tried to explain this on twitter i had to delete the whole thread bc people started calling me transphobic and let me tell you, white trans people telling me, a black trans person this? not a good time)

anyway, i don’t think trans femme headcanons of ed are bad. i think they’re pretty cool actually. but being a woman is more than your hobbies and the way you dress and your actions. the single requirement for being a woman is choosing to exist as one, in any capacity, whether you come out or not

another thing is that ed doesn’t have the same gender shift that jim does, at least not from my perspective. i think ed is pretty comfortable with being a man. he’s just a queer man who also likes soft things, and gets to be softer and more traditionally “feminine” around stede. so it feels very uncomfortable when white people in particular assign ed as female when he’s shown no indication of being so

it also bothers me bc i love seeing a man of colour get to explore that part of himself. it means a lot to me to see depictions of masculinity that aren’t white, that are about being emotional and loving and feminine as well as protective and masculine and strong. and when people say “ed’s a closet trans woman” it feels like “there is one way to be a man, and that’s not ed”. and as a person who spent their whole life feeling like their gender was decided for them by others, it hits home (in a bad way)

it took me a long time to be comfortable with calling ed babygirl and all that stuff; i know it’s mostly tongue in cheek but it sometimes wasn’t. i eventually decided that i wasn’t going to let others ruin my fun, even if it means that when i talk about babygirl ed, it’s different to what everyone else is doing

so i guess TL;DR: ed is a man, but he’s also an indigenous man, and trying to contort him to fit a white supremacist version of gender isn’t going to work

[rametarin]

TERFs are wrong. But, so are social constructionist Gender Theorists

You know it is not a question of one extreme or the other. As much as both like to think they are morally right and have “the science” on their side, they don’t. Both are god damned annoying, totalitarian, and are interpreting reality and what that means in order to browbeat and push others, both socially and legally, towards doing things based on what those mean.

Both are trying to control the parameters of all things based on the fundamentals by their interpretation of reality, not by the objective facts. Both are wrong.

TERFs are not wrong in that someone that is born with XY chromosomes and a standard male sex conforming body is male, and you need dysphoria in order to be trans. They are not wrong that your gender is not just a wily nily purely social construct.

They are, however, wrong about absolutely everything else regarding what those genders MEAN, where they’re derived from and why they were derived that way.

And the social constructionists aren’t wrong in that we should make exceptions to the biological rule for people with transgenderist disorders of the mind and brain. But, they are wrong in that so many are totalitarian. They do not want these exceptions to be exceptions, they want the very basis and fundamental understanding, how we define gender and sex, to change to be based not on biological empiricism, facts or truth, but by legal and social oughts and things they argue “should be held true else it demoralizes and oppresses a minority.”

There are not, “millions of genders.” There’s your basic standard assed functioning, and then there’s a disorder we otherwise can’t do anything with or about right now where it’d simply more healthy for everybody around if we let them live with the identity that is in their minds and body.

Furthermore, the nonbinarist movement needs to stop being such a cowardly little bitch and argue for itself outside the umbrella of trans rights, because it sits there demanding changes and exceptions and validations be made for it on the basis of bowing to trans rights, when it itself hasn’t stepped out of its parasitic sphere to fight for any on its own. Strategically using trans rights as a platform for both offensive and defensive purposes.

TERFs, up to now, have been virtually unchallengable because, “you must be a horrible right wing fundamentalist religious monster to oppose EQUALITY for WOMEN!” And they’ve just skirted on that since the 60s. Which was absolute hell trying to convince anybody that radical feminism was nonsense and harbored deep, authoritarian bends on takes with social ramifications. Yall were in their corner when they were talking about how, “society” needed to give women, exclusively, help to go to college because of past oppressions. But when someone tried to tell you they had weird obsessions with vaginas and using them as rubber stamps for whom gets special treatment and privileges and exceptions to defaults that make men do dirty work and women get clean pay? Deafening silence.

But the minute TERFs don’t want transwomen in their magical witch girl’s clubs, fucking with the cosmology? Ohho they’re visible now. You can see their bullshit now. They’re weirdos drawing female symbols and self-portraits with menstrual blood and making hacky poems about their uterus, now. They’re bad people now. You can actually see they weren’t, “being hyperbolic” or “just venting about the evil MEN around them” now. Hahahahaa. Hilarious.

TERFs are wrong. Point blank. But so are the social constructionist extremists and postmodernists behind the appropriated bandwagon of what calls itself the trans rights and nonbinarist rights movement in the west. The basis for which they’ve defined their norms is not one of reality, but “oughts” and “should be’s” and “must bes” and “or else”s. To the point where they invented a slur specifically to denounce those that do not share their view. “Bioessentialist.”

That makes as much sense as calling someone a dirty, “bioessentialist” because they say you need to be an elephant, to be an elephant. Yes, you do need the physical, biological characteristics to really BE that which you aspire to be. No, you don’t get to redefine what an elephant is to force the elephant to “identify” as an elephant so something that is not an elephant can also be an elephant.

If misgendering someone is triggering for a minority, it’s just as triggering when you deny someone’s sexuality or gender when they’re hetero and cis. And many are repulsed by the idea that the reason they’re compatible with their sex and gender conformation is because they, “made a choice.” For that matter, if you’re actually transgendered and not some bandwagoneering asshole, being trans isn’t a choice either. It’s a psychological and neurological impossibility to be anything else, not a lifestyle, not a hobby, not a “preferred state of mind.” Arguing anything else is arguing not for trans rights, but for psycho-social dominance in law.

And if you think misgendering someone that’s transgendered is bad, people that make up at MOST, 0.7% of the human species, and some say as few as 0.3% of the human species (people with cleft lips, born missing limbs and more are born more often) then what the FUCK do you think it is, redefining the identities and realities of 99.3% to 99.7% of the human animal, not to mention how every other animal works? (not counting some exceptions like clownfish.)

Gender is not, wholly, a social construct. It’s a derivative and pluto’s shadow from SEX. SEX is not psychological. Sex is not negotiable. Sex is biological and disease can make it express incorrectly or correctly to function as intended by natural selection. Gender is only a social construct in that some cultures have assigned thoughts and characteristics and responsibilities for people on the basis of said sexual role. That’s it.

But people that try to live purely in the psychological sphere or argue that sphere belongs in the dominant position for mankind try to argue it’s the only one that really matters, and while we’re at it, lets let the minority dictate what is normal and rational and good. So their believe gender as feelings supersedes sex as reality.

And why would they argue this? Because they’re, “just such big fans of trans rights?” No. Because they hate disparity and immutable, biological difference. And so want to use the arbitration of human law and culture to marginalize it and pretend it doesn’t exist- to where using technology to circumvent it and the penal system to enforce that view seems like a reasonable, moral thing to strive for. Trans rights for these people have always just been a nice coat of paint to put their real activism under.

And the biggest bitch of it all is, Radical Feminists and Trans Inclusive Radical Feminists and Social Constructionists all receive their marching orders from the same ideology. The same stupid take that says bugger reality, live in a communal fantasy and enforce everybody else to live in it, too. Else they’re a bad person. Else they’re a fascist. They merely differ in the rules and the fundamental parameters.

Know the difference between, “this person is bad and they should be shamed for their beliefs because they are bad,” and, “This person is bad because they’re sitting on a throne that I want to sit on as is rightfully mine.” TIRFs don’t hate TERFs because they’re wrong, they hate them because they’re in the middle of a power grab.

But we have the opportunity to end this “Critical Lens” shitshow forever. Both sides are exposed and showing their true colors as terrible ideologies and people. Both sides are showing their totalitarianism in the form of competitive propaganda and using the legal system to get their way based on past manipulations and exploitations they got from lying to a public that didn’t want to be misogynistic or prejudiced against the transgender.

All it takes is connecting the dots and understanding just how and why it’s not a matter of “bitter evil borderline-conservative Karens Vs. noble oppressed transgenders.”

TERFs are fucking NOT conservatives. They’re typically the same far-left assholes as the TIRFs. They differ ONLY in that they believe critical theory fucking STOPS at the immutable reality of biological sex, because they stand to lose dominance if it’s not immutable- so they demand it be CONSIDERED immutable. Their status as oppressed inherently, hinges on it.

So that’s it then. You’re left with no real heroes in this fight. But if you take anything away from what I’m telling you today, it’s that you can argue legally for trans rights. Just, on the basis as exception to the biological basis, as has been proven. Asterisks. Hyphens. Acknowledging the reality that the existence of the transgendered does not negate the reality of biological sex, nor those whose genders are a direct result of their biological sex as the norm.

It’s not bigotry to sexually discriminate to some degrees. When dealing with subjectives, it’s a matter of argument. When dealing with biological realities and imperatives, opinion is irrelevant to the self-evident realities, and interpretation matters less than the reality.

But to those that believe any discrimination based on physical differences or state is inherently wrong, just the idea of male and female being two different, named things, (”classes”, if you will) with different, “unequal” functions and capacity, fills them with rage.

Your moralism stops where nature begins. Period.

[problematic-faves-appreciation]

"benevolent" misogyny in Fire Emblem and how coddling female antagonists can be very misogynistic.

I think the inability to have repulsive female villains because of "benevolent" sexism, benevolent used loosely. Like in some writers minds, women are pure and delicate, unable to have their own agency outside of a man, there’s no way a woman could be a bad mother without a man forcing her to be one as heaven forbid a woman have a life outside of men and children.

Like Shouzou Kaga joked in an interview that he guesses most men don’t like the idea of a "completely irredeemable women" or find the "killing of women" unpleasant, and I’d wager thats definitely true based off most of the people who write for Fire Emblem. 

Two remakes of Kaga’s NES and SNES era FE game by different writers even changed the nameless faceless female grunts to be forced to fight for the enemy in some way instead of simply willingly choosing to fight alongside with their male relatives and family.

Oh that reminds me the orphan trafficker and killer was Eremiya added in the remake of one of Kaga’s games, who you can read about here. She spends most of the game openly using the orphans she kidnapped as soldiers and abusing them physically and emotionally, killing them in their training and such.

The "twist" about her being magically controlled by a hideous and truly evil man adds nothing as not only does it cause plot holes, its impossible to sympathize with someone who laughed whilst personally torturing orphans onscreen. Its also bad because one of her orphan slave soldiers was a male teenager was killed without any sympathy from the narrative simply because he was an ugly muscleman, read about him here, BTW.

That reminds me of another thing, its easier for some artists to make ugly/evil looking characters if they’re male, like Eremiya is still a moe-eyed, even though she’s 40+ and all the other characters that age don’t have eyes that big. Non attractive women aren’t allowed to appear onscreen period according to some artists.

Fire Emblem in general, often does goodness equals beauty as this comic shows, and don’t come at me with a bunch of sympathetic villains who are attractive to try to disprove my point.

Also simply adding "someone else magically forced me to do evil, I’m 100% innocent" to a female villain, doesn’t make any of these characters more interesting, it makes them less engaging by removing all  their agency. A popular LPer even said the Eremiya twist ruined the whole remake plot for him. The male tragic villains are allowed to be interesting as its still their own choices they’re making. 

They do this a lot too, like in Awakening, the only female villain seemingly not manipulated by a man, who initially claims she fights for the enemy because they are her family, is later revealed to have only actually been a random innocent bystander magiked into unwillingly fighting for them and then spends the uses of her screentime swooning over a male character.

Note, Awakening, which was unusually aggressively heterosexual, had no problem, painting a character who in the Japanese version, was a trans woman, as the scum of the earth. Before you ask, the character, read about her here, was the only transgender character in that game and her transwoman status was explicitly painted as repelling.

Anyhow babying your female villains and removing their agency can be incredibly misogynistic. Female villains is only problematic if their villainy is tied to to some aspect of their gender. Just as male characters can be handsome, plain, or ugly as well as good, troubled or repulsively evil, the same should apply to female villains. Make tragic female villains, but don’t make them tragic because they’re female.

PS: If you want you can add Gharnef (Evil Wizard who magik'd Eremiya), Legion/Roro (orphan soldier) and Excellus/Exceli (Evil transwoman stereotype) to your list.

[autumnblogs]

Day 43: Openbound

We’ll principally be doing Act 6 Intermission 3 today, so expect lots of pictures in this one!

Believe it or not, I initially didn’t like Openbound very much; I felt like it kind of dragged on my first readthrough, and generally had a pretty hard time getting myself to care about the Dancestors. They’re a pretty unsympathetic bunch.

Then again, lots of Homestuck characters are pretty unsympathetic! I’ve been really feeling that in the second half, as retrospect allows me to view a lot of secondary characters through the lens that we’re not intended to get attached to them.

That said, Openbound is actually pretty key to helping us understand the second half of the comic, I think, and makes explicit a lot of the themes that it explores, and how it builds upon the first half.

I think that the theme of Openbound as a self-contained work within Homestuck that we can use as a tool to decode Homestuck can be concisely stated like this; “Nostalgia and a desire for unity with the past causes toxic stagnation.”

So, aside from the introduction that we’ve already gotten to Meenah through the short conversation she had with the other kids, this is our first real opportunity to get to know her! Boy is she obsessed with money.

Money, like Cake, is a symbol that is associated with the Aspect of Life. As an aspect principally associated with Raw Power - the power to do what you want, unfettered by the stringent restrictions that are associated with Doom - it’s natural that Life would be associated with money.

The origin of money in history is pretty nebulous; it precedes the invention of writing, so any theory concerning its invention is ultimately conjecture. What I think is interesting about money is that the move toward a monetary economy in history mostly (but not always) happens as a result of the fact that it is way more efficient to collect taxes; the state mints standard coins, only accepts taxes in the form of standard coins, and propagates them into the economy by buying goods and services from the market.

It’s a tool of government, and even though Meenah may abrogate her inheritance, the Princess can’t escape her birthright. Money offers control, security... and power. What makes all of this extra interesting is that money is effectively worthless in the afterlife. Here, there’s actually nothing for her to really buy or spend it on; anyone can dream up whatever they want with ease.

It’s a nice bit of callback humor that Meenah has the same reaction to discovering the Thorns of Oglogoth that Rose does, but unlike Rose, Meenah actually does destroy them on the spot.

For being so headstrong and dangerous, there are ways in which Meenah is really pretty surprisingly sensible.

Lord English can destroy ghosts - this has always been a pretty disturbing thought for me. I may have said something to this effect before, but if I haven’t I’m a free-thinking Theist - raised in the Church, and largely independent in terms of beliefs, but I’m still pretty convinced that there is some kind of life after death. It doesn’t bother me nearly as much in works that have final death as a general presupposition, but it always bothers me when some kind of eternal life after death exists in a setting, and can be arbitrarily denied by evil beings with some power or another, like how some Demons and Liches can destroy or devour a soul in Dungeons and Dragons.

In Homestuck though, it fits with the themes established by the ways in which everyone God Tiers - spiritual power can be pretty arbitrary, and generally signifies very little about the moral worth of the one who has it; it does not intrinsically elevate the one who has it. It fits with its general criticism of power and the powerful, whether that’s the Mayor’s hatred of Kings, or the associating of corporatism with the worst parts of Jane’s characterization and Crockercorp in general.

Lord English has the power to destroy ghosts and end the lives of immortals not because he has attained to any kind of heightened spiritual awareness. He’s just some douchebag who through cosmic serendipity was in the right place at the right time to become basically all-powerful.

I adore Meenah’s spark. Who gives a fuck if Lord English is invincible? She knows exactly what she’s going to do when she gets her hands on him, and she’s got a plan from the outset. I think it’s also interesting the way that even though Meenah is absolutely taken by the spectacle of power, it isn’t sufficient to make her want to join up with English. Only soft power works on Meenah Peixes; emotional intimacy, friendship... keeping her entertained. All of these are the actual way to moderate her violent and dangerous personality.

While neither Rose nor Meenah is a parallel character to either Gendo or Rei from Neon Genesis Evangelion (I think, actually, that Dirk is the character who most strongly parallels both of them), this bit reminds me of the way that Ritsuko describes both of them;

Rose says of herself and Meenah, “You’re not very good at this, are you? ... talking to people.”

Ritsuko says of Gendo and Rei, “They’re not very adept (at)... living, I suppose.”

The same can really be said of a lot of characters in Homestuck, particularly the ones who primarily find their identity in some form of power-seeking. Whether it’s Rose, or Dirk, or Meenah, or even someone as innocuous as Jake, none of them is particularly adept at living.

Rose is pretty conciliatory with Meenah; given her attraction to danger and darkness, it’s probably not surprising that she makes such an obvious pass at Meenah in spite of the fact that she probably knows what their relationship was in another life.

Further evidence that Rose is the horniest Homestuck character.

“you know how it is with ancestors

they just kind of hold this inexplicable power over you”

Dave continues to progress down the path of not giving a shit, as did Sollux before him.

He’s not quite to the level of reluctance that he eventually adopts, of choosing to just not engage with English at all.

Gods are, to some extent, aware of the various narrative forces that govern their existence.

About the only thing this piece of nasty trash has in common with Karkat is the extent to which they both blabber, and he helps create contrast with the other, somewhat more likable dancestors. Kankri is pretty much openly contemptible, and really in the worst way. I’m almost inclined to call him a concern troll because of the extent to which his verbal essays exist purely to make him feel better about himself. Any time it comes time for him to listen to people who historically actually suffered from the systems they were involved in, Kankri shows his true colors, slut-shaming and misogynistic.

Unsurprisingly, The Other Thief is also the vector for English’s ideology in her session, “turning us against each other to make us stronger.” While Kurloz may be a worshipper of English, and Damara may have thrown in her lot with the demon because of her nihilistic despair, Meenah (rather like Dirk!) is clearly driven toward a life of violence, and restless action for its own sake.

Now we’re starting to get some insight into Feferi’s style of rulership, which in turn, probably gives us some insight into Jane. For Feferi, leadership means taking power away from the people you’re leading if it seems like they have the potential to hurt themselves (or to be a drain on society if left to their own devices). It represents a violation of agency, perhaps not so severe as the kind that Vriska perpetrates usually.

Feferi and Jane are the sort of people, I think, who want to create a perfect world - but it’s important to them that they’re the one who’s creating that world, and less important that the world is perfect for anyone in particular. Just perfect.

https://homestuck.com/story/5288

John’s whole self-conception, and especially his conception of himself as a man, and someone who might be growing up to take on the same roles as his Father, is tied up in the icons of dadliness and masculinity in the movies that he likes.

So we should expect that his disillusionment with his past will change the way that he thinks about his future, and what he’s going to do with it. It’s a shame that this line of questioning never goes anywhere in Homestuck proper, but I’ll use it as evidence in the “John/June Egbert is trans” folder. Reminds me of how my decisive lack of affinity for the Boy Scouts serves as a nice little retrospective bit of evidence in my own trans narrative.

Based on the number of trans Eagle Scouts I know, I feel like there’s a certain extent to which it be like, a fast-track to figuring that out about yourself, like, you tried all the boy stuff and just decided, nope! Not for me.

https://homestuck.com/story/5290

Man, especially if we continue to read this section of Homestuck as conflating the characters and the audience, this whole section reads as John not just having a meltdown about Con Air, but also generally having a meltdown about his own story so far - everything he’s done in Sburb, etc. It just all feels lame and shitty in retrospect, when it was something that was kind of exciting at the time, at least up until the point where his loved ones all dropped dead there at the end.

It turns out that there was nothing particularly edifying about John’s suffering.

https://homestuck.com/story/5300

Teens can be such monsters. It’s the anniversary of Bro’s Death too. Davesprite is probably as broken up about that as John is about Dad, but it’s hard for boys/men to talk about that kind of thing with each other.

Cronus is even more of an incel than Eridan. He may be the most singularly contemptible character in Paradox Space. Do I hate anyone more than Cronus? No, I think I do not.

I won’t have a lot to say about the middle leg of Openbound; it’s relatively empty of substance, and not much that happens in it is ever relevant again compared to the first and second legs.

I like to think that this leg of the journey is, more than anything, a chance to ruminate on some joke characters who were already parodies; parodies of parodies, a joke made at the expense of an existing joke. The kind of thing Dirk Strider would write, basically.

Hey check it out, the Year of Our Lord 2012, and Andrew was starting to show some mild sensitivity in his choice of words. Just mild enough to have the lowest character in the story show a tiny bit of sensitivity himself.

This leg of the adventure does give us some more insight into Meenah’s character. Just like Vriska, she’s all about being a hardass super-murder, until she starts causing problems for the people she actually cares about.

Being Evil Sucks.

This is a really weird sentiment for Karkat to have in light of like, everything else about the latter half of the comic. I mean, he hasn’t exactly had the epiphany yet that the ideas that he has about being a leader are kind of awful and shitty, so it’s possible that he’s talking the Condesce up to avoid thinking about that. IDK.

He also immediately claims he’ll leave behind the meteor to go and join Meenah’s army, so maybe Karkat is just in a pretty low place in general? That tracks.

Karkat’s little conversation with Terezi explains at the two thirds mark of Openbound exactly what this whole thing is about.

Almost the entire second half of the comic is about examining the character’s guardians, and their relationships with them. The Guardians - Grandpa and Bro especially - are hyped up to be these outrageous badasses, both in-and-out of universe, and their ambivalent relationship with their kids creates this ambiguity throughout the comic about whether the kids are worthy, whether they’re living up to their parents’ legacy - and it’s the kind of thing that plagues them throughout.

But the thing is, Ancestors can be lame, or even terrible. They’re not really anything to aspire to, and the image of success that they project onto the world is one of learned confidence, and usually that only if they’ve really managed to make it.

Even the best parents are flawed, and instead of trying to measure up to them, growing up healthy usually means learning what those flaws are, and committing not to reproduce them.

Parents don’t suck; they can be awesome, and generally speaking, for a long part of our life, they’re all we’ve got. It’s hard not to love them. But we shouldn’t turn them into idols.

(On another note, it’s one hundred percent fitting for Terezi’s Ancestor to be an outrageous coolgirl. Terezi is perpetually anxious about being cool enough, the sort of person who is breathlessly fun to be around, who commands the attention of everyone around her, and she’s surrounded by them wherever she goes.)

https://homestuck.com/story/5340

John’s distress leads him to dream about his dead Dad, and boy is he angry. He spends a lot of the second half of the comic seething in rage directed at whomever is responsible for all the suffering he and his friends endure, dishing out beatdowns toward those responsible, but I’ve never gotten the impression that these little outbursts of his are particularly rewarding for him.

https://homestuck.com/story/5358

That was quite a blow. He knocked out like a tenth of Jack’s health bar.

https://homestuck.com/story/5387

Depending on where you’re standing some really totally different things can matter to different people. From Vriska’s point of view, the things that happened back when she was alive totally don’t matter at all anymore - only the matter of Cosmic importance that is fighting Lord English.

But the stuff that matters to the people she left behind, and the suffering she’s responsible for - especially for putting Terezi in a position where she had to slay her - all of that still matters very much to the people who are alive, which is what makes her self-conception as someone who is on the side of the angels now really... not sit well.

She clearly hasn’t changed all that much. She just thinks, as usual, that now that things are even, now that the score is settled, things can go back to the way they were before.

https://homestuck.com/story/5388

Tavros and Vriska are really bad for each other in general. Like, it’s not good for her to be around someone as pliable as Tavros is, and it’s plain to everybody that it’s not good for him to be around her either; whenever he’s around her, he apes her bogus inflated self-esteem in all the worst ways.

https://homestuck.com/story/5397

Tavros’ explanation of what Vriska does suggests that storytelling has become kind of a ritual for her - a means by which she is attempting to connect with her Ancestor, by performing the same actions she is, miming her - still the same old Vriska.

That’ll be all for now. Cam signing off for now - join me for the thrilling conclusion to Openbound tomorrow, Same Cam Time, Same Cam Channel.

[contextualstudieslorena]

IS BEING A PART OF THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY A TREND?

+Throughout the years’ many people are seen coming out as queer. And nowadays it is even more common to see queer characters in media as something that is becoming normalised. For example, in this early graph made by Gallup, (an American analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C.) we can see that the amount of people ‘coming out ‘ and identifying as a part of the LGBT community grows every year. Yet, it is seen to be more common in people who are born from 2002 to 1997, that being generation Z. After that, being Millenials, who are followed by generation X. Besides that, it can be seen that few traditionalists identify as LGBT, for a reason that I will be talking about in this essay.

We can also see in the graft that those numbers rise throughout the years. And why does this happen? Is it because Millennials and Gen Z started a new trend of being queer? Or is it because they feel more comfortable talking about issues that used to be hidden before.

Queer representation has indeed been growing a lot, if not in movies or magazines, Kids nowadays can spot a drag queen only looking through social media, or even Netflix, a Movie platform that has been seen adding a lot of queer characters to their movies and shows. If Netflix is doing a good job at bringing awareness and representation that is another conversation but compared to 10 years ago, it is noticeable that every day queer representation grows more and more.

Yet, the only place we can see this is in media, as there is not much of it in the regular history classes we have at school.

It is also important to note that kids can be very moldable. They spend more than 11 years of their life copying exactly everything they see, that being something positive or not. And that happens so often, that a boy died in Indonesia after trying to copy the fictional superhero Spider-Man. ‘Police are investigating if a five-year-old boy in Jakarta was trying to mimic Spider-Man after he jumped out a window to his death after being told he couldn’t watch the latest movie in the franchise.’. And as surprising as this can be, it shows kids and teenagers can be influenced by something so much, they will try to mimic it, which might be happening to all the Gen Z adults who grew up with media shoving down LGBT content down their throats. As well as that, they can also be following their friend’s choices to come out and can be even lying to their own selves for attention.

I could spend an enormous amount of time writing about how social media can affect peoples sexuality and gender but I’d rather do something more educating and look at the past. Where humans started coming together as tribes and living in a society, having to deal with the presence of each other and create romantic and social relationships.

When talking about same-gender relationships the queer community mentions how normal gay relationships are in nature. Petter Boeckman, Norweigan Zoologist would say that more than 1500 species of animals have been seen having some type of homosexual interaction, those not only being mammals but as Boeckman stated "We're talking about everything from mammals to crabs and worms. The actual number is of course much higher. Among some animals homosexual behaviour is rare, some having sex with the same gender only a part of their life, while other animals, such as the dwarf chimpanzee, homosexuality is practised throughout their lives." as well as that, he then compares chimpanzees to humans who identify as homosexual "If a female has sex with a male one time, but thousands of times with another female, is she bisexual or homosexual? This is the same way to have children is not unknown among homosexual people.". However, Petter wasn’t the only one who found homosexual interactions between animals, Kurt Kotrschal, a known biologist for researching these types of behaviours has confirmed that these ty pes of relationships are beneficial for the species.

I am mentioning animals not only to show that homosexuality is natural to other species but because they can be even more related to indigenous people.

Indigenous people are the ones who can be seen the most in contact with nature. They have decades of history of not having any contact with other human beings than the ones that were located in the same tribe as them, and as much as they would fight with other tribes and move around they still had their tribes, where they would create relationships in and settle their tents. They didn’t have any contact with books and science before the colonizers came in 1500 and even after that many tribes weren’t discovered by them in the middle of the Amazon forest, so many of them didn’t even get to be influenced by the Europeans and their racism and misogynistic views and homophobic religion.

The point I want to make is that indigenous people are the ones who are the closest to animals, and if they saw an animal do a homosexual interaction, they would probably see it as something that is intended to happen and not weird, as animals don’t have a perception of that is morally wrong or not. They are a part of nature, different from the Europeans who colonized them who were already influenced by the church and their extremist ideas. And as much as it would be wonderful to have indigenous people be so open-minded as they were, Colonization happened, and with that, so did a period where Europeans found the need to force their catholic beliefs on them, as well as bringing many diseases and suffering. Cieza de Leon, a chronicler of the conquest in Peru once said, and I quote ‘ Within a somewhat different framework. During the colonial years, indigenous morality changed, partly as a result of contact with the Europeans.’She also believes and argues that indigenous people had a spiritual justification for doing anal sex with their partners ( which is now seen as something Queer people are more familiar with), that being in a same-sex or straight relationship. This spiritual justification had to do with their religious beliefs. While Colonial Latin American societies would see anal sex within their own beliefs, Iberian societies would see sodomy as a way of showing male dominance.

There are not that many pieces of evidence of Queer indigenous people in history, as the colonizers would murder them and force them to stop being who they truly were. However, there’s an engraving that shows a little bit more about their experience as trans indigenous people in colonial times. In this engraving made by Theodor de Bry in 1594 as part of his Les Grands Voyages, we can see how this homophobia is well represented. In the art piece, 8 men are shown wearing noble clothes, and between them was Vasco Nunez de Balboa, a man known for being a Spanish nobleman who conquered Panama. But what is atrocious about this art piece is what is in front of them, 3 men being eaten alive by dogs after being demanded to do so by the nobleman, after being seen dressed as women. However, what is most ironic about this engraving is the way it’s presented, which plays when seeing the men standing above them. Who present themselves in a feminine way earring clothes that could nowadays be considered quite puffy and girly. This engraving is only the beginning of what queer indigenous people had to go through, of course not mentioning the amount of evidence of homophobia that was probably erased through the time. To summarize Brazil’s colonization process, the European view on lust, nudity, polygamy, cannibalism, sodomy and homosexuality which was normal to indigenous people, was considered to be against nature and gods will, and their job was to basically baptise as many natives as they wanted and shove catholic ideas down their throat.

Yves d’Evreux, a french capuchin priest delivered a highly dramatic letter, that presented his reaction on how he encountered an indigenous that could be considered a trans man. His trip to Northern Brasil (1613-1614) surprised him , as he reacted in a negative way towards them. As he wrote ‘There is, in Juniparan, in the Island, a hermaphrodite, in the exterior more man than a woman, since he has the face and the voice of woman, with fine, flexible and long hair, however [he] was married and had children (...). (d’Evreux, 1874, p. 90) he then mentions this man again, as he ran after him with the French to ‘purify his soul’ and kill him, he was then captured and chained under the fort of Sao Luis and was obliged to say the following ‘You will die for your crimes, we approve your death and I myself want to light the fuse for the Frenchmen to know and to see that we hate your evil deeds [...]: when Tupan sends someone to take your body, if you want to have in the Heaven the long hair and the body of a woman instead of that of a man, ask Tupan to give you the woman’s body and to be resurrected woman, and you will be in Heaven on the side of women and not of men. (d’Evreux, 1874, p. 232). This however is just a glimpse of what transgender people had to go through during colonial times and still to this day. The queer community is a community that is supposed to help everyone, but that doesn’t focus much on the history of indigenous people and how much they suffered.

In conclusion, as much as nowadays, people can be highly influenced by others, the LGBTQ community has been around for a rather long time and it is not something that the newest generation has made up. From the colonization times till nowadays, queer people have felt oppressed and the necessity to ‘stay in the closet’ and not be their true selves while being afraid of getting judged or even murdered by random people or even close ones. However, nowadays people have been talking more about important issues such as homophobia, sexism and racism, which is making queer people feel more comfortable Even though, they are still fighting for their rights, and they’re still in the long run, protesting for all the people who have died since Europeans somehow decided that god found their sexual choices to be unnatural and demoniac. Now, what is left for us to do is to create a healthy environment and show more representation in media every single day, so more queer people feel comfortable without having to spend their entire lives fighting and running away from who they are. Being queer is not a trend, but queer people have been being hidden from us our entire lives. They were always there, and they are always going to be there.

Bibliography:

Partal, Y., 2021. Are there gay animals in nature? Homosexuality in the animal world. [online] Zoo Portraits. Available at: <https://www.zooportraits.com/animal-homosexuality/> [Accessed 5 April 2021].

Sigal, P., 2003. Infamous desire. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p.2.

Fernandes, E. and Arisi, B., 2017. Gay Indians in Brazil. 1st ed. Springer.

News-Medical.net. 2021. 1,500 animal species practice homosexuality. [online] Available at: <https://www.news-medical.net/news/2006/10/23/1500-animal-species-practice-homosexuality.aspx> [Accessed 9 April 2021].

New York Post. 2021. 5-year-old boy dies ‘trying to be Spider-Man’. [online] Available at: <https://nypost.com/2014/05/04/5-year-old-boy-dies-trying-to-be-spider-man/> [Accessed 9 April 2021].

Jackson, A., Thomas, M. and Steffen, A., 2021. Homosexuality Is Natural. [online] Exposing The Truth. Available at: <https://www.exposingtruth.com/homosexuality-is-natural/> [Accessed 9 April 2021].

Buchholz, K., 2021. Infographic: 5.6 Percent of U.S. Adults Identify as LGBT. [online] Statista Infographics. Available at: <https://www.statista.com/chart/18228/share-of-americans-identifying-as-lgbt/> [Accessed 9 April 2021].

Pictures:

1475. Spanish Explorer Ordering Native Indians To Be Torn Pieces By Dogs Copper Engraving 16Th Century. [image] Available at: <http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/debry-atrocities.htm> [Accessed 9 April 2021].

n.d. Two indigenous women kissing at an LGBTQ+ pride parade. [image] Available at: <http://@indigenasLGBTQ> [Accessed 9 April 2021].

n.d. Trans (We’wha (Zuni) circa 1849-1896 Mexican Indigenous woman. [image].

[somnilogical]

case study: elle benjamin

the rationality community's least skilled exploiter of transmisogynistic coordination points known to me

when thinking about strategy, i often use the least sophisticated version of a given strategy that i know of to reason about the minimal elements of the strategy in general. i have an index of unsophisticated versions of things that i ping and ask "is this strategy basically this vector but with more optimization power behind it?" it helps compress a lot of information. to check, i can make a prediction given a set of examples of the pattern and test it.

(like i did with the transmisogynistic rationalist orgs "i bet this org has 0 transfems in positions of power" and yep they did, they all did.)

and thats how i factor strategies generated by agents with large amounts of optimization power. who might have more ability to optimize in a domain than i do.

both of these claims are false. elle benjamin never let emma into the group. shes culpable for her continued choice to "believe" bigoted propaganda. just as davis tower kingsley is culpable for "believing" that anna salamon, the president of cfar, isnt involved in cfar's hiring.

elle benjamin is deeply concerned about the treatment of trans people in the rationalist community. elle isnt that good at social optimization so this is an obvious false face. like a cop during segregation who runs an algorithm of "smile at people" if no black people are using the WHITE water fountain and "beat up a human" if a black human uses the WHITE water fountain. as long as trans women know their place as violent abusers like ▘▕▜▋, elle is happy.

if we start claiming we are women just the same as them and how people are treating us is wrong, if we protest against omnicide, if other people are coordinating against trans women along lines of transmisogyny; then elle decides its time to show us our place in the social order as male. violent, child abuse loving, misogynistic, strong-arming, men.

this decision-circuit is not peaceful. people who start trying to exploit transmisogyny in an attempt to coordinate with others against you only when you look vulnerable or they think they can get away with it and otherwise smile at transfems are with their whole soul given over to transmisogyny.

erica's post is so passive-aggressive!

<<One issue is that i think this group is just too large to remain a high trust environment.>>

<<Thanks everyone for keeping this a civil place that deals with sensitive issues all these years!>>

in reference to my blog posts about how they didnt have any transfem mods and immediately took down hot allostatic load because it was a [[bad culture fit]] and [[incoherent]]. as if i were expected to keep some confidentiality about transmisogyny. i have no loyalty to keeping secret that kind of oppression, i signed no contract to that effect.

as if telling other trans people exactly what they did was "uncivil"! as if it were ruinous to society instead of ruinous to a cis women coordinating on transmisogyny.

as if posting hot allostatic load and talking about transmisogyny on my blog were less "sensitive" than the other things the group was doing which included posts like "How many romantic novels/movies/etc do we have left, once we take away all the ones focused on a man relentlessly trying to convince a woman through trickery and persistence and stalking that she should really have sex with him" and "the White Knight/Damsel in Distress dynamic" at the time HAL was taken down.

https://somnilogical.tumblr.com/post/175420481784/i-tried-to-post-to-rationalist-feminists-closed

its an equilibrium where anyone opposing the "peace" of transmisogyny is labeled "antisocial" and "disrupting things".

would you say this woman is being misogynistic and "strong-arming" a female DA?

<<Last year, I was arrested twice in Sonoma County at Sunrise Farms and then Petaluma Poultry, two massive industrial farms that torture and kill hundreds of thousands of birds- while lying to the public about how these animals are treated. My crime? Asking the county to help the starving animals inside. Not just asking by email or phone call or office visit (though all these efforts were made and ignored), but asking by going right to the frontlines myself, exercising my statutory right to help neglected animals, and calling the attention of the authorities to this pervasive cruelty. The fact that the sheriffs chose to arrest us and ignore the animal cruelty broke my heart. It's hard to believe we live in a world where helping someone who is dying is the "crime" and not putting that life in danger in the first place. But have hope that this will change, and my hope growing.>>

<<Now, in response to the action at Reichardt, Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch has decided to file additional charges against me, Priya Sawhney, and Wayne Hsiung. We are already facing 7 felonies and 5 misdemeanors and we're still fighting for animals every day. Do you think new charges will stop us? No. And it wont stop the movement, either. They think they can stop DxE by targeting leadership, but they don't understand that we are a network of leaders. That every single one of us is leading the world to one of the biggest changes it will ever see. #RightToRescue>>

probably not because shes cis and looks like:

laying down and making it clear that you offer no impediment to mass murder is not a female thing, its not a feminist thing. its a *you* thing, elle benjamin.

someone commented on the screenshots:

<<(It feels relevant that when I met this person a few months ago they went on a rant about the evils of TERF’s before telling me I couldn’t experience misogyny bc I was “male-socialised.” They apologised quickly after having it explained but the idea of their being the Font of Wisdom about transness to rats is insane.)>>

https://loving-not-heyting.tumblr.com/post/614660027724283904/ht-somni-for-screengrabs-this-sums-up-absolutely

ozy brennan, i know what the fuck im talking about when i say "transmisogyny". ive been lied to then kicked out of a homeless shelter for being a trans woman. several men forced me to the ground and held me down and cut off my clothes while i shouted "I DONT CONSENT" locked me in a bare room then crowded around a window embedded in a door and said "i told you it was a guy" and a bunch of people came to gawk at my naked body. and so much more.

some of my interactions on the street in the bay:

<<at bart ppl would call me an ugly bitch and ask me to sleep with them in exchange for meth

someone tried to sell me something and i was like "im not interested in being scammed today" and they were like "bitch!!!"

i walked around in sf talking with a homeless women for ~8 hours and someone asked if we had boyfriends and offered to sell us meth if we went with him and i was like "no thanks" and she was like "how much?" but it was too expensive or something. she showed me lots of places to get food and shelter.

and like if i sit down in places for long enough people will come up to me and ask me if i have a boyfriend or if i want to go get coffee with them on a date.

sometimes ppl ask where im *really* from and if i was born a girl. sometimes ppl touch me on my back or thigh.>>

ive compared notes with cisfems, i get more solicitations to have sex with men in exchange for meth.

this isnt oppression olympics, this is "maybe 7-8 years ago when i started transitioning i didnt have a detailed model of transmisogyny, but now i cant not have one". alyssa vance could have one too (and know things like elle is the kind of person who exploits transmisogyny whenever she gets a chance) if she werent busy using her adult intelligence to defeat itself for miri/cfar.

what elle benjamin did was transmisogynistic and i can arbitrage actually being aligned with justice by taking a stack of screenshots of all the things she said and showing them to transfems uninvolved with the ambient miri/cfar gaslighting. and theyll be like "yup, thats transmisogyny". and other transfems can be like "yup, elle was also transmisogynist to me."

rationalists like alyssa vance and ozy brennan currently have an incentive to imply people who accurately identify transmisogyny are crazy. to go along with the status quo. (if i had to guess: ozy to protect an environment where they can provide for their baby, alyssa because she routed her hopes for personal immortality through miri/cfar.) though its not like i expect /alyssa vance/ to start calling transfems “gross uncle style abusers" like patrick lavictiore did or start listing off their "manly" physical characteristics contra anna salamon being a small feeble cisfem like peter did. not because alyssa vance is a particularly good person, shes not. but because thats paying in to a coordination technique that could be used against /her/. she doesnt expect social reality to label her "psychotic" anytime soon so she pays into that instead. ozy does and didnt call me "psychotic". this optimization is dumb, myopic, and doesnt serve their own values. but all evil is like that.

i dont hold by "use words for their expected value over a community" like scott alexander does. this is nice because i can align what i say with my internal cluster structure of anticipations of reality and escalate arbitrarily far without things breaking. elle benjamin cant escalate very far until her claim of ziz being a "misogynist" shatters, because its not exploiting the cluster structure of thing-space.

anyway GG on this front. the territory of "elle benjamin isnt transmisogynistic, somni is hallucinating transmisogyny" isnt worth enough for the miri/cfar campaign to expend energy on; elle benjamin isnt an important piece to miri/cfar like anna salamon is; and alyssa vance isnt in an environment with a bunch of warm bodies she can coordinate on a falsehood with. so afaict this region is ceded.

one technique of fem v fem cyberontological combat when you are right is arbitrage. when people gather a bunch of warm bodies together to gaslight you that elle benjamin isnt doing transmisogyny or whatever. instead of submitting to a series of increasingly arcane requirements until your writing looks like the inside of /principia mathematica/ and then have people complain about you writing long technical paragraphs saying they dont understand them dont care to understand them and you must be crazy;

just take a comprehensive recording of them all choosing to be dumb in a given direction and show it to people who dont have a political commitment to be dumb in that direction (which, when you are right, is often most people outside of the gaslighting bubble) and explain why its wrong. there are a lot of overlapping social spheres and you can iteratively arbitrage between them exploiting the fact that the methods of rationality and justice are more universal than specific false coordination points. in go terms, the spirit of this strategy is tenuki.

--

alyssa vance also says anna salamon isnt transmisogynistic, tried claiming ziz whistleblowing on miri/cfar paying out to blackmail was blackmail, and defends paying out to oneshot blackmail with subjunctive dependence for cdt reasons.

[discyours]

(please keep anon) hi! i was wondering - based on your blog you seem like you don't agree with either transmeds or tucutes, so I was wondering if you just agreed with parts of each ideology? or if there's a different "middle ground" group? also! I saw an old post of yours that said non-binary people are cool if they experience "atypical dysphoria" (instead of relying on gender roles) and I was wondering what atypical dysphoria would be? -k

I wouldn’t really call it a “middle ground” but I guess being gender critical would be the third option (which obviously isn’t very popular amongst trans people). I might sort of agree with some parts of each, but trying to analyse things that way would make me transmed-leaning, which I really don’t agree with because I honestly think that transmeds are more harmful than tucutes. 

I don’t believe that people without dysphoria should transition, which is enough to make me a transmed in most people’s eyes. But I don’t buy into the transmed view of why they shouldn’t transition (because their Gendered Brains won’t work right if they do) nor do I agree with their perspective on nondysphoric people who do transition. I don’t view nondysphoric people as dumb cis girls who are just desperate for attention, and I’m ashamed that I ever supported that view. It’s incredibly misogynistic and lacks empathy. I now understand that a lot of people identify as trans as their own way of escaping gender roles, or at the very least feeling that they can reclaim control of them. I don’t believe that’s a healthy or productive approach, but I do understand why some people feel the need and I’m 100% done projecting my own frustration with my dysphoria and with the insanely long waiting lists to get help with it onto them. 

I think a lot of tucutes are relatively on the same page as gendercrits in the sense that they recognise that gender is a social construct and that it’s restrictive. They just happened to take the more liberal approach of attempting to “reclaim” or expand it rather than eradicating it altogether. I won’t claim that that’s been even remotely harmless, but at least it’s an approach that’s relatively easy to argue against considering how fluid it inherently is. 

Transmeds on the other hand attempt to legitimise gender by claiming that it’s a scientific reality. Not only do they categorically reject all criticisms of gender as anti-scientific transphobia, they also do immense harm to dysphoric people with their approach to transition. I’ve heard time and time again from transmeds that I might as well kill myself since I can’t transition. Transmeds don’t just minimise the risks attached to medical transition, they wholeheartedly justify them as a necessary evil. Transmeds are the ones posting about binding 24/7 and how it’s justified because This Is The Reality Of Dysphoria. Transmeds are the ones holding constant pissing contests on mental suffering, and present that suffering as not only permanent (assuming you can’t transition) but a necessary part of being trans. Again I don’t believe that nondysphoric people should transition, but just imagine the harm it does to constantly have to validate your own suffering or discomfort just to be justified in accessing the only solution you’ve found to it so far. I honestly believe that transmeds are causing people who don’t have dysphoria to convince themselves that their discomfort with gender roles counts, which is the complete opposite of what they’re hoping to accomplish. 

Both groups are generally extremely homophobic and both groups are contributing to the erasure of women’s rights. But transmeds are so much more diplomatic (and seemingly scientific) in their approach to it that they’re a far greater threat. 

As for nonbinary people, I don’t know how old that post was but at this point I realise that most dysphoria is “atypical” in some ways and that no form of transition is an ideal way to deal with it (which doesn’t mean that some people don’t end up finding it necessary). That being said “atypical dysphoria” generally refers to not feeling comfortable with looking like either sex. I’d refer to it as just wanting to look androgynous but I feel like that downplays how severe the distress can actually be. I don’t know a lot of people with atypical dysphoria (they tend to be even less cool with gendercrits than binary trans people) but you could try asking some about their experience with dysphoria. @seasonallydefective is the only person I can think of right now. 

[a-room-of-my-own]

This is grim stuff, so apologies in advance. Although I don’t know why I’m apologizing.

Aimee Challenor, former spokesperson for the UK Green Party and current Diversity Officer for the Coventry Liberal Democrats is about to marry a gentleman from Michigan who writes pornographic fiction about children and “mind control.”

How do we know this? Because someone posted the accusation on Mumsnet and the budding author, Nathaniel Knight, cheerfully owned up to it on Twitter.

“Yes, I have written smut,” Knight said. “I have written smut featuring minors. I have written smut featuring incest. I have written smut featuring things that are not ethically sound or morally right in the real world. I also write smut featuring adults.”

Stirring stuff! Even by the Internet’s cavalier application of the laws of space and time, the thread stayed online for too long. Knight deleted the thread, but it was too late. The tweets had been screen-shotted and reposted.

Note his choice of word, by the way: “Smut.” Not “pornography” or “porn” or even “erotica.” Those words wouldn’t have quite as casual an air. “Smut” has the just-minding-my-own-business-guv quality you need when you’re choosing something to loiter next to the word “minors.” Essentially, he’s trying to diminish it and normalize what it is he actually writes and fantasizes about. “I have no reason to hide the fact,” he continues, “that I am sexually awakened adult who has fantasies that might be unethical to explore in real life.”

Well, you do, mate, as a matter of fact. Because your “unethical” fantasies are the kind that get you housed away from the general prison population, should you be so “unethical” as to indulge them in real life. (Again, note another artfully chosen word.)

It was an astonishing thread. The guy’s brain is obviously so pickled in porn that he genuinely doesn’t realize that the thing he is oversharing is something that no human being should ever feel safe saying out loud to anyone, except maybe a therapist.

But Knight isn’t really the point. You see, at the time of writing, Aimee Challenor is still — still — on the trans advisory board at Stonewall, an influential charity which advises many organizations with responsibilities for children, including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). Yes, that NSPCC. (And now, this NSPCC.)

Despite the fact that Challenor’s father was charged for an unspeakably dreadful and depraved crime, Aimee continued to use him as an election agent. David Challenor is currently serving a 20+ year sentence for raping and torturing a 10-year-old girl in the attic of the family home.

The Greens produced a report that meant Aimee scarpered rather than hang about to be disciplined, pausing only to shout “transphobia” on the way out the door. Then it was straight into the arms of the Liberal Democrats and a new man, who apparently shares the same taste for children — at least in his imagination — as David Challenor.

A Labour peer recently got fired from her position as the shadow Brexit secretary because she complained about a bunker mentality at the top of the party, but this is a problem that extends all the way across the UK Left. Anyone pointing out legitimate concerns with, for instance, the obvious ramifications of legally allowing individuals to self-identify as the opposite sex, is portrayed as a bigot and a bully, with a kind of message consistency that would be the envy of Fox News.

Feminists who question modern gender ideology are insulted by trans activists in suspiciously coordinated language. The same phrases come up again and again: “no debate,” “transwomen are women,” “trans rights are human rights” (whatever that means… Trans people have the same rights as the rest of us…) There are some — the majority — who repeat this messaging because they think it makes them appear more inclusive, more evolved, and because they haven’t thought beyond its superficially “kind” appearance.

But there are others — and I think David Challenor was one of them — who have a vested interest in lowering the standards of safeguarding in the UK and silencing those who raise the alarm about it. As social workers often point out, it only takes a few people to groom an organization — or, in this case, a whole movement — and people like David Challenor see the destruction of safeguarding norms as a way to normalize sexual practices and exploitation of children that would ordinarily attract a criminal sanction. Almost in the same way another person with paedophilic tendencies would replace the words “pornography” and “evil” with “smut” and “unethical.”

These women who must be silenced include Helen Watts, who was expelled from the Girl Guides for questioning Stonewall’s safeguarding policies. Stonewall (along with Gendered Intelligence) advised Girlguiding on its trans inclusion guidelines — guidelines that require males who identify as girls to use the same sleeping, washing, and changing facilities as females, without the prior knowledge or consent of parents. If girls object, the only remedy is to ask for a private space away from the others, or not take part.

“Girls are being groomed to ignore their own boundaries, to put the needs of males above their own, to never express a preference for single sex spaces for fear of being labelled a bigot.” Watts told me. “It’s revealing that while the Guides trans policy emphasizes that trans children must be protected from harassment and victimization, no such protection is offered specifically for girls who must have single sex spaces.”

As Helen also pointed out, “In all seriousness now, if Yaniv was in the UK and so inclined, [Yaniv] could be a girl guide leader. Girlguiding policy is that being a woman is a matter of self ID. Anyone who says they’re a woman can be a leader. Assuming [Yaniv] passed a DBS check (no convictions) then [Yaniv] is in.”

Women like Watts are now tagged for violence as “TERFs” by both gleeful misogynists and unthinking children who insist they are protecting the most vulnerable. Aimee Challenor is very likely a damaged young person for whom we should have sympathy, but sympathy should not extend to enabling such people to take influential lobbying roles with young people’s organizations.

And must it again be pointed out that both organizations have a duty of care — not only to the vulnerable LGB people who are affected by their guidelines and policies, but to Aimee Challenor?

One thing is certain, there is no way this person should be giving Stonewall any kind of advice. And while they are, no-one should be taking advice from Stonewall.

Graham Linehan is the comedy writer and director behind Father Ted, The IT Crowd, and Black Books.

[queenboudicaa]

The annuls of the terf part 2

TERF-blocker descends*

 Episode 1: The End of the First War. Scene 3: Cyberspace and public sphere, 2014-5

Feminists: *Educate themselves* *Become increasingly horrified* *Start writing articles nobody fucking reads*

HEY PEOPLE! This shit is mental. There are these people saying being female has nothing to do with being a woman, and that they’re women because they have magic gender essence, and this sounds pretty sexist, and they also say that sex doesn’t exist and given we’ve always thought that that’s the reason we’re oppressed we’re pretty worried this is a bad idea for women and feminism, and now these other people who say they’re feminists are telling us we have to centre people who are not female in our feminism or we’re the oppressors and are going on and on about how we shouldn’t say anything because we’re whorephobic bigots and it’s kind of nuts and people are bullying lesbians to have sex with people with penises and they’re encouraging young people to take hormones that we don’t seem to understand the effects of and we think this is all sketchy as fuck to be honest. What the hell is going on?

Trans activists and intersectional feminists:That woman talking over there is making people unsafe because she is an evil bigot and trans people are the most vulnerable people in the world and she is the oppressor and she is oppressing us by speaking and if she speaks then it is literal violence and it will make people hurt us and we will also hurt ourselves and so you have to stop her speaking and if you don’t stop her speaking then you are also an evil bigot and we are going to tell everyone what evil fucking bigots you are and you wouldn’t want that now so you better stop her speaking right fucking now.

Civic institution: Um, what now?

Trans activists: *Pickets* *Inundates with letters and emails and phone calls* *Goes on twitter and gets a massive pile of people to bombard institution*

Civic institution’s PR people: This makes us look bad.

Civic institution: Okay, we won’t let the bigot speak. I mean, she’s just a feminist, right?

Trans activists: Hurray we are safe! Ding dong the witch is dead!

Feminists: What the fuck? HEY PEOPLE! I was just trying to say something because I think there are some questions here and I think we should really talk about it. I’m not sure people are women just because they have magic woman essence and I think there might be some not good consequences of thinking this.

Trans activists and civic institutions: SHUT UP BIGOTS.

Misogynist child with column in major left-wing newspaper: SHUT UP BIGOTS. YOU’RE THE KIND OF PEOPLE WHO THOUGHT GAY PEOPLE WERE ALL KIDDY FIDDLERS.

Feminists: Um, lots of us are lesbians actually and the rest of us were totally behind gay rights, like, we’ve always been allies, what the hell are you going on about?

Misogynist child with column in major left-wing newspaper: *Blocks all the women objecting* WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY BITCHES.

Woke bros and assorted leftie-misogynists:*Jumping up and down with excitement* WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY UPPITY BITCHES.

Trans activists and civic institutions and leftie newspapers:  REPEAT AFTER US – Trans women are women. Because trans women are women then trans women should be given all the social resources given to other women and if you don’t accept this then you are exclusionary bigots and we’re going to make damn sure everyone knows what terrible terrible people you are and how you shouldn’t be allowed to live or work or speak or write in public. Have you fucking got that???

Feminists: You’re intimidating and silencing us.

Trans activists and leftie newspapers:  No, we’re not. You trigger people by existing and asking questions and having the wrong opinions. You need to shut the fuck up so that everyone is safe. RIGHT NOW.

 Episode 2: Between the Wars. Public sphere, 2015-2017

Feminists: We’re feeling pretty demoralized here…

Trans activists: EXCELLENT. You just sit over there and keep your little lady-mouths shut. *Organise some more* *Take over Stonewall and all the LGBT+ organizations* *Start sending people into school and institutions to explain that people have magic gender essence which sometimes gets trapped in the wrong body* *Bully, harass and no platform any woman who speaks up*

Hey, government. We’ve got this great idea. You know how people think you’re a bunch of assholes who has been driving the economy into the ground and lining rich people’s pockets while you let vulnerable people starve, we’ve got just the ticket for you.

Government: *Ears prick up* Tell us more.

Trans activists: Yeah, all you have to do is change this piece of legislation so we can get our sex changed more easily. The current legislation is really burdensome, and we’re really vulnerable, and it would really help us out, and would totally make you look like you care about marginalized people while costing you fuck all.

Government: Well, that does sound like a boon. Is there a catch?

Trans activists: No, not one. It’s just streamlining an administrative process really.

Government: Okay, come and tell us all about it. Is there anyone else we need to talk to?

Trans activists: No. It doesn’t have any effect on anyone, it’s just paperwork really. JUST MAKE SURE YOU DON’T TALK TO THOSE UPPITY WOMEN OVER THER THEY’RE ALL EVIL BIGOTS WHO WANT TO KILL US.

Government: Oh yes, they do sound like terrible people, how awful for you.

Trans activists: Yes, they’re really horrific. And while we’re at it, you might want to think about removing their rights to single-sex spaces from the Equalities Act because it discriminates against us.

Government: Interesting. Okay, when can you come in?

 Episode 3: The Second War Begins. Scene 1 – Somewhere in Whitehall, 2018

Government: We think we’re going to change the law. Just a little administrative clear up to make life less burdensome for the trans population who, as we know, are terribly vulnerable.

Feminists: You’re going to do what??? Why didn’t you ask us about this?

Government: Yes well, the trans people said it didn’t affect you.

Feminists: THEY SAID WHAT??? Hang on a motherfucking minute.

 Episode 3:  The Witches Strike Back. Scene 2: Cyberspace and public sphere, 2018

Trans activists: REPEAT AFTER US: Trans women are women. Trans women should not be excluded from any spaces women have access to. Anyone who questions that is an exclusionary genocidal racist who is in league with the far right. And by the way, you’re not women anymore, you’re cis women, and we want you to stop talking about your bodies, and we’re going to change all the words in all the literature that has anything to do with you so that everyone understands that being female is not necessary to being a woman, and from now on you are ‘mentruators’ and ‘cervix havers’ and ‘pregnant people.’ Got that?

Women: WOAH. You fucking what? We’re cis-what? And we’re not women anymore, we’re menstruators. We don’t think we like this.

Trans activists: It’s inclusive.

Women: Well, it sounds dehumanising as all hell to us.

Trans activists: Shut up cis people, you are the oppressors. These are the new words for you.

Women: Don’t we get to decide which words we use for ourselves?

Trans activists: No, you are the oppressors, if you do not accept these new words you are oppressing us.

Women: We’re oppressing you by wanting to be called women??? What the hell is….

Trans activists: BIGOTS! These are your new words. You are cis women, and we are trans women. We are both just different types of women, except we’re more oppressed than you so you have to do what we say. Look, there’s nothing you can do about it, the government already agrees with us, see?

Women: The government already agrees with you? What?

Trans activists: Yes. REPEAT AFTER US: Trans women are women. The government believes this and is going to change the law so that we can be legally recognised as female if we sign a piece of paper that says we have magic woman essence…

Women: What??? This can’t be right. Surely someone would have said something about this? Where are the feminists? Feminists, is this right?

Feminists: U-huh. We were trying to….

Women: What are the implications of this???

Feminists: *montage of charts and essays* *three weeks later*

Women: Fuck this shit. We need to do something.

Feminists: YES. WE. DO.

Feminists and radicalized women and intersex people and transsexuals and concerned parents and gay men who are realizing something’s up and some straight male allies:EVERYONE HOLD HANDS AND PUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLL.

The press: The women seem to be making a shit-ton of noise about something? Why are there stickers of cocks everywhere??? What on earth is going on?

Trans activists and the left-wing press:NOTHING, THEY’RE BIGOTS.

Most of the press: Oh, okay.

A few journalists: *Digging around* What the actual fuck??????

Feminists and allies: EVERYONE KEEP PUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLING. IT’S MOVING.

Trans activists: BURN THE WITCHES BURN THE WITCHES BURN THE WITCHES.

Feminists: Ha, yeah, we’re not so scared of you and your words now are we? There’s a ton of us here. And people are starting to listen. EVERYONE. C’MON. PUUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.

Trans activists: BURN THE WITCHES BURN THE WITCHES BURN THE WITCHES.

Women and allies: PUUUUULLLLLLLLL.

Feminists watching from around the world:Hell yes! PUUUUULLLLLLLLL.

Women and allies: KEEP FUCKING PUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLING.

Trans activists: BURN THE WITCHES BURN THE WITCHES BURN THE WITCHES.

Government: Lah-lah-lah.

A few journalists: Um actually, we had a little look at this thing, and we think the women might have a point.

Trans activists: NO THEY DON’T THEY’RE WITCHES BURN THEM BURN THEM.

A few journalists: Now, come on, there is a proposed change to law, and this is a democracy, and they have some arguments that seem quite compelling, and there have been some things that have happened recently that seem to suggest that maybe there’s some substance to their concerns, and it seems like we should think this through.

Trans activists: NO DEBATE. BURN THEM BURN THEM.

A few journalists: We’re not sure that’s really helping your case. We think we’re going to start covering this in more depth.

Trans activists: YOU CAN’T LISTEN TO THEM THEY’RE WITCHES. IF YOU DON’T GIVE US WHAT WE WANT WE’LL KILL OURSELVES.

Women and allies:PUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLL. IT’S MOVING IT’S MOVING!!!!!!!

Feminists watching from around the world:PUUUUULLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!

Major left-wing newspaper that has been steadfastly quiet: *ostentatiously clears throat* Um, actually we think the women might have a point.

Women and allies: *BACKFILPS*

Trans activists and allies at home and abroad:OMFG why is the British media so full of evil bigots??????

Women and allies: *Lying in a bundle panting* Whatfuckingever asshats.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

Christian anon here, & I was dismayed when a recent reblog post stated in regard to Christian sexual morality & I quote "“all sex outside of marriage is evil” . This is at best a very poor interpretation & I apologize to the poster if they have been exposed to this mindset. For us, sex is something very sacred, so sacred that we reserve it to a man & a woman who have, via Matrimony, promised before God & each other to love, honor and mutually obey each other. 1 of 2

Outsideof marriage, it doesn't make sex "evil", but it does make a sin,something we strive to avoid, not always easy because humans are inherentlyflawed and fallible. Sadly, there are far too many Christians caught up in thepurity culture mentality who make a bigger deal out of sexual sin than theyshould about other sins (sins against social justice as a big for instance). Idon't like this mindset either, and thankfully, there are more Christianspushing back against it. 2 of 2

Hi,Christian anon. I understand where you’re coming from because I am alsoChristian (a queer Christian, which makes for an interesting life sometimes).And I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said here regarding a truly Christian perspective on sexoutside of marriage vs the purity culture bullshit (my point of disagreement isthat I think ‘sin’ and ‘evil’ are usually treated as synonymous).  It is, in fact, the least Christian thing inthe world to go around trying to control people’s behavior.  

But. (there’s always a ‘but’ with me.)

I spent a huge chunk of today writing this and cutting it back because it kept turning into a theological dumping ground, which I don’t want it to be. but I’m throwing the majority of this post behind a cut because it’s inevitably sensitive stuff, considering how much pain (and death, tbh) Christianity-as-law-bludgeon has caused.

tl;dr: Christianity and secular law don’t mix well. Whenever it’s tried, things get real hellish real quick for a lot of people. Especially for people who are judged as ‘sexually immoral’. 

(warnings for binary/cisgender language b/c the Bible doesn’t really address being nb or trans in particular.)

In thepost you are responding to, I called the Catholic Church the source ofanti-prostitution law in the United States. I said that it was because the US legislationwas founded on Western Europe legislation, and Western Europe legislation wasfounded on the legislation of the Catholic Church. And to be fair this is aglib and simplistic illustration of cause & effect – for starters, it skipsover Protestantism and the Age of Reason – but I’ll stand by the heart of it.  Laws about sex work – sexual interactions ofany kind between consenting people of age, actually – in Western Europe &the US find likely origin in the inevitably disastrous mixture of Christianityand lawmaking, which originated in the institution of the Catholic Church.

Christianityas an organized religion does not playwell with the power to make law. 

The inevitable product of trying toenforce Christian values via lawmaking is purity culture, authoritarianism, andviolence. This is because human law cannot enforce having moral character: wecan only judge actions and behavior, not thoughts or feelings. We can’t makekindness or uprightness into law: what is kind and upright behavior towards oneperson may be cruelty to another. (Not to say that Christianity is the only religion that mixes poorly with law,but Christians often deny that a religion founded on benevolence andforgiveness can be totalitarian. But the joke is: totalitarian law is no lesstotalitarian because its author wrote it to encourage ‘morality’ and ‘righteousness’.The joke is: God never forces His morals down anyone’s throat, so who are you to do it on His behalf?

I mean: theologicallyspeaking, one of the central tenants of Christianity is that law is insufficientand ill-fitted to guide our complicated, morally gray human existence. To methis seems like a huge giveaway that Christian principles and the law arefundamentally incompatible concepts.)

In its mostmature iterations, Christianity-as-law is

sexist

misogynistic

patronizing

anti-intellectual

controlling to the point of micromanagement via fear and shame

emotionallyabusive and denigrating individual worth

unforgiving of moral failings

hypocritical

judges others by assumptions about their thoughts and motivations

holds peopleto unachievable standards of ‘morality’ without kindness, and

punishes disobedience/noncomplianceviolently and without mercy. 

It takes on God’s role as implacable judge, jury,and executioner, and holds the benevolent forgiveness promised by Jesus hostagein exchange for good behavior. How is the law God supposed to have mercyon you when it’s clear you’ll just abuse that mercy? Prove your worth first. (spoilers: you’ll never be approved.) 

TheCatholic Church, born of Christianity shaking hands with the power to make lawvia Constantine's outreach, is my Exhibit A. at the peak of its legislativeinfluence and power, it severely set back human health, education, and wealthin Europe and West Asia and presided over multiple military excursions into theMiddle East in the name of conquering Jerusalem on God’s behalf (the literalCrusades, yes). 

And I’d argue that this conquering spirit has been Christianity’sAchilles Heel ever since: a thread of shitty, shitty colonialist bullshit,through Anglicanism and Protestantism and Puritanism, that even now is buildingits latest thunderhead in the shape of ‘dominionist’ Christianity here inAmerica (if you are not familiar with it, suffice to say it is a secretive butwell-spread cultish thinking that straightforwardly holds that Christianitymust be legislated into place all over the world or Jesus can’t come back. Youcan’t make this stuff up.)

Bringingit back into to the sex thing, though: the Old Testament has multiple mentionsof laws forbidding sex work, and the New Testament, at least 50% written by theunmarried apostle Paul, has a lot of recommendations about being married toprevent being tempted by sex outside of marriage and the like. Extramarital lustand sexual immorality are also credited with multiple instances ofjump-starting unfortunate Biblical events and described by Paul as the only ‘sinagainst the body’ (1 Corinthians 6). In fact, Paul was kinda ‘eh’ on the wholehaving sex thing in general. In the same verse, he mentions in passing that itwould be better for men to not have sex at all if it’s possible for them.

Christianity-as-law is thus morally obligatedto make sex outside of marriage and anything that tempts people into sexoutside of marriage illegal. It’s the moral thing to do. Sex work has to go. Andbecause Biblical marriage can only be between a (cis) man and a (cis) woman*, same-gendersex has to go too. And extrapolate Paul’s offhand ‘male celibacy is ideal, tbh’into the harshest and narrowest form of lawful judgement that you can and youget ‘anything that makes men want to have sex is clearly dragging (cis) men down fromthe best possible person they could be. (people cis men see as ) women being beautiful makes men wantsex! (perceived) women are bad! Punish women formaking men want sex!’

Is thiswhat God calls for? I don’t think so.But historically speaking, this is what we get when Christians try to take thelegislative reins on God’s behalf.

And it’sfrankly hilarious that supposed Christians are acting as if it’s possible tosave people from their own sin by making sinillegal. When you check in with Jesus on the interaction between God’s lawand secular law, his response is simply ‘follow both’**. He also hung out withsex workers pretty much constantly during his ministry, never condemning them fortheir line of work even though it was explicitly against Jewish law to be a sexworker, because he recognized that human-enforced law – even law laid down byGod – can’t account for all the circumstances of human life or account for thereasons people do things that are, on their face, unlawful. That grace –literally the opposite of law – was kind of the point of his being born in thefirst place.

 *Regardlessof what one’s opinion is about how the Bible defines marriage, that doesn’tmean that secular law has to share that definition. Especially when it createsa religious discrimination against LGBTQ+ people for completely secularmarriage benefits like tax breaks and visitation rights. (that’s the entire pointof this essay, oh my god.)

**ReferencingMark 12:13-17. Jesus also calls out the people asking him for trying to get himin trouble with the Roman authorities.

[thenightling]

Hey, so I can appreciate that fandom discourse can get frustrating, but it does hurt me to see a friend I treasure being called certain things. May I ask that you try and keep it civil? If there's a problem, it's easy to clear it up over messenger. We all have different opinions but hopefully we can still respect each other. I'm sorry to hear about the anons - nobody deserves that. There's Tumblr hit-tracking tools out there which can help you see where they're coming from in future =).

I appreciate your civility and you have the right to know that I strongly suspect your friend was sending me very hateful anonymous messages for days all because I dislike The Dreaming spin-off comics and outside of those anonymous messages her most recent open reply to me was accusing me of being Transphobic, misogynistic, superficial and other hateful terms, among other things.

The evidence is there in her “points.”   The wording used is virtually identical to the hateful anonymous messages attacking me and telling me that I was calling the author “as bad as her oppressors.”   

What your friend and certain others on Tumblr need to grasp is that being Trans doesn’t automatically make someone non-Transphobic.  There are plenty of ways Trans people deal with Transphobia within the Trans specific community.  

There are gate keepers who insist you need to get the surgery to be a true Trans.  You even see Passive-Aggressive behaviors about this when they’re being critical of the character Wanda from Sandman simply because she was afraid of the surgery and therefor (according to these specific hateful elements) “not really Trans.”

You even see it on the DC Wikia page for Echo (the character your friend was defending) by the repeated statements in the wikia page saying “She was really a man before she became a nightmare!” (No, if she was always a woman deep down inside she was always a woman.  That’s the truth of it). 

And the one bit of potential Transphobia in The Dreaming that your friend can’t seem to get her mind around and accept the probability of, while ironically calling me Transphobic, is the fact that The Dreaming, despite being pro-Trans Woman -more or less- (See what I said there about Echo) you will find content that at least one Trans male has been uncomfortable with, and that is Nuala happily going back under a glamour.

The simple fact is someone can be pro Trans Woman while being anti Trans Man.  As weird as that may sound, that mindset does exist.  And I am afraid that may exist in The Dreaming comics.  I could be misreading it but that is how it appears to me.  

There’s actually a lot of apparent misandry in The Dreaming, including how the Corinthian is written, coming off anti-Woman when there was no indication he was like that in the original comics, he just preferred men, as lovers and victims.   And Cain (in the Book of Dreams) using words like “Bitch” in jarring places, where he sounds more like Freddy Krueger than his usual Vincent Price-esque self.  Can you really imagine someone whose vocal patterns and mannerisms were modeled after Vincent Price shouting “Get on, Bitch!” to Nuala?    

I have explained the symbolic significance of Nuala and her glamour, and how I and some others have seen it, as best I can, but your friend not only refused to accept my opinion but harassed me over it.   I compared it to someone willingly going back into the closet and even used non-sexual comparisons- anyone defying their cultural expectations but then conforming to them later “But this time it’s their choice so it’s empowering!”    

I’ll use a religious comparison.  A dissatisfied Catholic finds her true beliefs in Wicca but later the browbeating and the fact that everyone else around her is Catholic gets the better of her, so she goes back to “the fold” and treats the religion that she actually felt at peace with is now “evil.”

But your friend keeps claiming “Nuala is more than her appearance!” making it clear that she refuses to even consider the metaphorical implications.   And it’s rather rude.   Not only that but in her latest bullet points she decided that to dislike Nuala hiding herself under a glamour is “misogynistic”  

And honestly, this was the last straw.   

I had to shut off the Anonymous feature because of messages received,  that use her exact same wording, her exact same attempted defenses of the author, Echo, and Nuala.   And I’ll be perfectly blunt, even if that was a coincidence and somehow those anonymous messages were not her, there aren’t that many people who liked or even heard of The Dreaming comics.  That’s why DC doesn’t sell them in trade paperback form and ignores most of the events of those comics and also why characters like Echo have never appeared outside The Dreaming.  So the probability of it not being your friend greatly diminishes in my mind.  I acknowledge that there is a chance it was not her, but the chance that it was her is too great for me to to be willing to take the chance.  

Rest assured I will not unleash my anger on your friend again for her bullying replies to my opinion but she also needs to learn to be respectful of the opinion of others without turning it into self-righteous social accusations (and this has nothing to do with my suspecting the anonymous person is her.  This has to do with her final open reply to me).   For this reason I have blocked her.  

[snarktheater]

Comic Book review — Wonder Woman Rebirth

Happy Wonder Woman Day! I wish I could be talking about the new Wonder Woman movie, but since I'm not getting it in theaters for a couple more weeks, I have to resort to a back-up solution.

Luckily, I mentioned at the end of last year that I'd been reading a lot of comics, especially Wonder Woman comics. And with the completion of the fourth story arc in the Wonder Woman run since the DC Rebirth started, I feel like it's a pretty good time to look back at what the comic has been about, what it's done, and why I love it so much.

First of all: I'm still far from a massive comic book aficionado. I know about comics because I basically live on the Internet (and also, let's face it, because of Linkara), but I'm not really following either the evolution of the DC Universe or the Marvel comic universe. So I'm always happier to catch a series as it starts, especially if it starts anew.

The Wonder Woman Rebirth fits that bill. Part of the DC Rebirth initiative that started a year ago, which didn't fully reboot the universe but did force a clean slate (and some retcons) on most of the properties, it's a series that clearly has roots somewhere, but is written to be accessible to new readers. Like me. Well, kind of. I did read part of the Gaile Simone run before this one, but there's been a universe reboot between the two, so I think it doesn't count anyway.

Another thing: I said it's the fourth story arc, but the comic was actually published with two parallel story arcs at once until now, and all four have built up towards a single storyline.

So we have four story arcs. On the present-day side of things, we have the aptly-named "The Lies" and "The Truth". And in the past, we have "Year One" and "Godwatch". The present-day storylines are more intricately tied together, while the past storyline are independent from each other and mostly connect to the concurrently-running story…to an extent.

The Lies and The Truth are, as the naming scheme implies, two facets of the same story. Diana realizes that something's wrong as her past and memories become confused as a result of the DC Rebirth events, and her investigation leads her to uncover…well, a lie. A pretty big one. Then comes The Truth, where she tries to uncover…well, what the truth really is. Wow, am I being vague with this recap. But really, there's little way of explaining it beyond that.

Year One, meanwhile, follows Diana's first year as Wonder Woman, complete with Steve Trevor crashing on Themyscira and Diana leaving to the "world of men" with him, knowing that she can never return. Of course she does this with a reason: signs have appeared that Ares, the god of war, had escaped from his prison, and Diana must stop him.

Godwatch, finally, follows the backstory of, well, Godwatch, an antagonistic organization that appears near the end of The Lies and is our primary villain throughout The Truth. The comics still feature Diana, of course, but she's not aware of who's pulling the strings of the fights she's involved in. This may make this story arc seem trivial, but it it not.

Why do I love this four-part, twenty-four issues story? Well, on the surface, it's just really well-crafted. The plots intertwine, setups are made that pay off long afterwards and feel natural and no element feels out of place in hindsight. The world surrounding the Amazons is built with precision and with a fresh take that divorces them from Greek culture specifically and gives them a more universal edge. The main characters are fleshed-out and well-rounded, featuring Diana and Steve, naturally, but also Etta Candy, reimagined from Steve's assistant with an unrequited crush to his superior officer (on top of being a black woman, which I understand is the case since the New 52 reboot), Barbara Ann Minerva, the villainous "Cheetah" being now a scientist with a fascination for the myth of the Amazons and a feminist streak…

…and Veronica Cale, the head of Godwatch, who has a troubled past of her own and is really just trying her best. Plus, a few more characters to round out the cast (and of course, a bunch of Amazons in the early issues who stay very relevant afterwards, in spite of everything).

But it's not just that it's a well-crafted story. This run has themes, and they're good, and I want to talk about them. And I'll split it in two broad categories for the sake of structure

Queer and feminist themes

I'll start with this one because…well, it's more incidental. Although it's really important too, don't get me wrong. But it's more…there, rather than something the story is trying to make a point about.

And really, it's long overdue. Diana comes from a society of only women. She's the most famous superheroine in existence. If anyone's story should primarily focus on women (and it does, if you look at my list of protagonists) and feature some pretty major queer women, it's this one.

And this series delivers on that front, too. Queen Hippolyta of the Amazons calls her general Philippus "my love", Etta Candy and Barbara Ann "Cheetah" Minerva are implied to be a couple when the latter isn't busy being a monstrous demigod, villain Veronica Cale and her associate Adrianna are definitely intimate and Veronica's daughter Isadore "has no father"…it's all there. And of course, there is Diana herself:

Diana of Themyscira is canon bi in this series. And I do mean bi, since she also has a thing with Steve Trevor and apparently a romantic past with Superman, although that one I think is due to earlier comics that we get the sense the writers here would have happily done away with.

And the greatest thing (especially considering the writer is male) is that all this representation of queer women is done without a single objectifying scene of any of these women. The one more thing I could ask for at this point are trans Amazons, really. But still, that's some giant steps forward.

It's not just queer representation. The story, as I mentioned, is focused primarily on women. Diana's gang includes herself, Steve, Etta and Barbara Ann, and the latter is the first she can even talk to outside of Themyscira, while Etta is definitely her closest friend. The first antagonist of The Lies is Urzkartaga, the god who cursed Barbara Ann to be Cheetah, and he's a literal misogynistic god with a cult of literal misogynists. So that's one obvious message there.

Also—and I'd be remiss to mention it—that head of that cult, Cadulo, gives us my favorite Steve Trevor moment.

So, you know, no big deal. Let's just have every single protagonist in the series denounce aspects of the patriarchy and fight literal misogynists.

The bigger antagonist of the entire story arc, Veronica Cale, is on the opposite end, in that she's humanized thanks to the Godwatch prequel stories and given motive for standing against Wonder Woman (spoiler: she's more or less coerced). Bonus point since, when the coercion is lifted, she immediately stands down instead of going on being evil for no reason, which I almost expected to happen but never did.

And you also have some racial inclusiveness. On top of Etta, as I mentioned, the Amazons are moved out of Greece and are now multicultural, and a few prominent figures (like Philippus, whom I already mentioned, and a woman who appears to be the Amazons' chief scientist). I'm not going to say it's the most balanced ratio I've seen (because…it's not), but considering how many "iconic" characters we're dealing with here, I think the books are faring remarkably.

Truth and compassion

Linkara defines Wonder Woman as the "spirit of Truth", and I think that's the best way to describe her. I realize that sounds like a meaningless, pompous title, but it actually captures what she's about fairly well.

Outside of the obvious (her lasso makes people tell the truth), the idea of Wonder Woman as the spirit of truth is also well explained in her post-Crisis on Infinite Earth backstory (which is also shown in that video I just linked), where one of the powers she received is to "open men's hearts". Which, no, isn't about romance—I think.

It's truth, but it's also all that derives from it. Above all, something I think is best explained in the recent annual issue of this very series:

Understanding. And with it, empathy and compassion. Which defines Wonder Woman's heroism. To me, the Big Three of DC's universe, at their best-written, convey very identifiable and humanist messages (in the classic sense of the word, not in the "shouldn't feminism be called humanism if it's about equality?" nonsense).

Batman is the heroism humanity can achieve (and note that I'm not talking about edgelord Batman here like in Batman v Superman, I'm talking about the guy who adopts a whole gaggle of children because he can't see anyone else grow up alone like he did), through wits and resourcefulness (and, admittedly, money). Superman is the value of humanity; what makes a god-like being like him heroic is that he is human and understands humans (again, not something we see in the Snyderverse much), and cares about them. And Wonder Woman is the in-between, the demigod (not necessarily in-universe) who embodies the best values of what humanity can be.

There's obviously some intersection, and probably also better ways to phrase it (let's be real, there's probably an essay's worth of discussion in what I just said in a paragraph), but that's the gist of it.

A few very popular frames from Wonder Woman are the one that shows Batman could never identify a weakness for her, and another where she says she doesn't have a rogue's gallery like Batman and Superman because "when I deal with them, I deal with them". Both of these are cool and badass, but they omit the reason why both of these things are true (in theory if not always in execution, because, again, inconsistent writers): her primary weapon is compassion and understanding. At her best, she solves the problem that drove her villains to villainy in the first place (which is exactly what she does in this series with Barbara Ann as Cheetah), and only resorts to force as the final resort, like with Urzkartaga. And that brings us to the resolution of this story.

Minor spoilers in the next few paragraphs.

It turns out that the big villain behind everything Diana had faced throughout this story wasn't Ares as she thought—he never even left his prison on Themyscira. Instead, it's his sons, Deimos and Phobos (terror and panic), who want to usurp Ares as the god of war. See, when Ares was bound to his prison, he was allowed to see the madness that war brings, so he doesn't really want to be released.

So Diana has to stop Phobos and Deimos, literal gods, from killing their dads. How does she do that?

Yup.

End of the spoilers.

It's the same thing with Veronica Cale, though I won't go into details over why. Diana deals with her enemies by understanding them. Even Urzkartaga is defeated through Diana's empathy, not for him, but for his victims.

On a greater level, the final battle of the story sends a powerful message: that truth, understanding and compassion are greater than fear, anger and violence. They are far more powerful tools to solve a problem. And that's a pretty powerful message to send, especially in a superhero comic.

And that's what Wonder Woman being the spirit of Truth means to me, why I love this comic series, and incidentally, why she's my favorite superhero across the board. Oh, yeah, did I mention that she's my favorite superhero? I might have wanted to start with that.

Happy Wonder Woman day, everyone. And now I'll go back to anxiously waiting until I can see the movie, while hoping very, very hard that I won't be disappointed by it. But if I am, I'll know I can go back to these comics to find the heroine I love.

Also, if you're interested in checking these out for yourselves (and you absolutely should), Comixology is currently having a Wonder Woman Day sale until June 5, which includes the first seven issues of this series, so go take advantage of that!

[nightcoremoon]

looking for input on something

so currently in one of the fantasy series I'm writing the first installment of, I kind of noticed something... queer

so 7 of the characters are pyromancers and I accidentally made all of them gay. except one. we have:

-bisexual disaster dad, O

-steamship pilot lesbian, K

-florist panro ace, P

-armor knight lesbian, A

-royal guard twink, T

-a moth man, S

-the token straight, L

...

O is the kind of guy who encounters orphan kids and immediately adopts them-kinda like Bruce Wayne- because of a tragic backstory that killed his family- again, like Bruce Wayne- and he's bi but doesn't really think too much about romance- oh oops he's just Batman. and he is a pyromancer, but only in one arm since the other arm is prosthetic looking like sekiro.

K and P are sisters, major red oni blue oni but their palettes are more orange and green, and live a frugal life alone after losing their parents. K is soft femme awkward lesbean while P is a pan ace social butterfly. they're pyromancers.

A is the "oh shit we're being invaded" button, deployed via zeppelin airdrop with a fuckhuge flame claymore and emerald green armor; like if flame swordsman and gearfried the iron knight had a baby. she has an Eowyn reveal but it's when she kisses her wife. also she's trans. the sword's fire is powered by pyromancy.

T runs fast and leaves walls of fire behind him. he exists because he's part of a group whose names are based on the 8 horses of Helios so since he was Phlegon he... has fire magic. I coincidentally made him gay because why not.

S is not mothman, he is a moth man. he's an anthropomorphic man sized moth man from a race of anthropomorphic man sized moth men. but with that being said since mothman is an LGBT icon I decided to make him LGBT, which stands for Let's Get Bright Things. but also he has a husband. and he can throw fireballs. this is because that would be very fucking cool.

L is a merchant's daughter who has a strong affinity for dragons and it eventually gives her fire magic and the ability to

all of these were completely coincidental means of settling on their sexuality. them also all using fire magic and also being the only ones who use fire magic I am considering...

what if I used fire magic as an allegory for gay?

like, I'm not gonna make some huge political "being gay is okay" big deal about it because homophobia never existed in this universe so that's normal n shit like it is now without all of the fuckin post-british-colonialism degens. it's just a fact of life that some people are gay oh well who cares. which is i guess itself a political statement in this modern hellscape, you can't take five steps or say racism is bad without some boomer getting mad and crying because they can't be evil misogynists without getting criticized anymore. but I'm not gonna have an extensive preachy segment because we don't want that, we want dame archer and the pride knights fighting eldritch horrors. but but BUT!

what if I... sneak in some social commentary? like the only good part of x men 3, which used bobby telling his parents about his ice powers as a euphemism for coming out of the closet, except instead of being good in screenplay but clunky in execution and also brian singer being yucky, it's actually good because I wrote it? it's conceited to say that, yes, but I'm confident in my abilities. I already have there being distaste for magic users sorta like with korra's equalists and a segment where O takes a ride on K's air ship (the city is built in the side of a crack in a cliff and they use hot air zeppelins as public transport and pyromancers use their fire to work the hot air stuff) and she's all nervous because he's comin from the antimagic part of town but he sees that she's kinda uncomfy so he starts a fire and uses it to light his pipe and she kinda relaxes because oh thank god he's just like me, which as I was looking over that I was like. well shit that might as well be allegory for gay especially since I thought of mckellen's interview where he was nervous about telling this cab driver he was gay bht the dude was like "oh cool me too". and that prompted me to look at the rest of the pyromancers before i wrote this.

now obviously I know that the answer is most likely going to be a resounding, oh that may be cool if you somehow manage to not fuck it up. that's me using logic and common sense. but. at the same time, things like flaming and flamer being used as insults towards pyromancers is a natural consequence, and it will not end well. and there may even be a group of people who find it offensive to use the allegory, and even saying that it trivializes the struggles that gay people have gone through to just reskin it with something fantastical like magic. or whatever. because at this point I'm not sure what is or is not offensive anymore since 12 year olds will just say random shit on twitter and everyone goes along with whatever dumb shit they have to say for 5 minutes before moving onto the next thing to send death threats to people over. so I'm only asking this on the off chance that this actually is offensive in some way that I've not thought about because I genuinely want to seek out other people's perspectives on this.

TL;DR

would it be cool if I used the social struggles of those who use fire magic in a fantasy novel as an allegory for gay people in the real world,

or would that be dumb and stupid and harmful and bad?