#report a TERF today

[catcatb0y]

How DARE you say we piss on the poor?

I know we get collectively frustrated when staff roll out an unwanted layout change (I do too) but jfc the way some of you speak in your @/staff posts is absolutely vile. You know a human being has to read that right. You know a person with a job and rent to pay has to read you telling them to kill themselves because you don't like a website change their management ordered. You know that right

[ryegarden]

& btw I hope every terf goes to hell forever 🙏

[weedle-testaburger]

i wonder sometimes if non-brits get how fucking vile the british press is

[txttletale]

hey, a while ago you made a post to the effect of "tumblr's perpetual marking of transfems' posts as mature isn't due to malice but incompetence. that is worse" and I'm wondering if you still think that's true. I agreed at the time but idk it's been harder and harder to believe staff could be as incompetent wrt moderation as they have been idk

as a wise naruto once said, believe it. with the most recent case study, moira predstrogen's account getting nuked, it's really clear that there was a targeted mass reporting campaign at work. again, when i blame 'incompetence', i'm not saying that this somehow absolves tumblr staff, i think this site's moderation is incredibly transmisogynistic and the fact that these mass reporting campaigns work (and work on someone who has been targeted by this and succesfully appealed multiple times, no less!) is a catastrophic failure on tumblr's part on every level. but again, it's because of the mass reporting campaign and tumblr not having any functional systems in place to prevent that kind of thing rather than because someone at tumblr HQ was personally like 'hmm, today i, the Tumbling TERF, shall pick a trans woman to ban!'

[ladycharles]

Occasionally JK Rowling says or does something so offensive to my sensibilities that I must speak. Sadly, today is one of those days.

This post, and the "male" she is referring to is a cis woman boxer from Algeria. There is an unconfirmed report that she might have an intersex condition in which one's chromosomes are XY. She may not even have this condition, but even if she does, it does not mean anything but that she has an unusual DNA quirk. We do not call Tom Cruise a woman for having an extra X chromosome, for example (nor would I expect Rowling to accept it if he decided to compete as a woman in the Olympics).

Now Rowling, upon being pointed out that she essentially pulled the twitter equivalent of Austin Powers punching that old lady because she "looks rather mannish", moves the goalpost. She claims, against evidence, that she an unfair advantage, going so far as to imply that simply by competing with a rare condition this woman has cheated.

This might seem bizarre coming from a self professed FEMINIST. It is the contention of anti trans "feminists" like Rowling that womanhood is being erased and destroyed by "trans ideology"; Yet here a cis woman achieves a olympic victory and they accuse her of being a man, of cheating. They erase her achievement, they erase her womanhood.

The subtext is racist and misogynistic - a strong Algerian woman with features that do not reflect Western beauty standards is being denied the very womanhood that TERFs claim to protect. She has lost to women before, she has no clear advantage... Yet by virtue of her looks and a possible rare genetic condition, she is now a "man" and a fraud.

This doesn't surprise me, and I suspect that anyone who has had to deal with TERFs will agree. But in case anyone is shocked here's my take:

TERFism has always been a reactionary movement. While it draws from second and third wave feminists and has an ideology on paper, any space with TERFs will tend to feature mad crusades accusing cis women of being trans on looks, attacks against sex workers that are harsher than those on the men who make that industry dangerous, few towards actual men, and a sense of outrage that trumps any real ideology.

It is feminism much like how "National Socialism" was socialist. And like the Nazis did with socialism, it uses the idea of feminism to legitimize attacks on perceived enemies while preserving the status quo. For TERFs that's traditional gender roles, which they have twisted into something that protects women rather than subjugates them. (This is not to say TERFs are Nazis, but it is a decent comparison because fascism is the ultimate reactionary ideology; full of symbolism and mythology yet devoid of any substance but machismo and hate.)

In a nuanced, good faith society, we might discuss trans women in sports using science to determine whether there are unfair advantages, and consult stakeholders and experts in sport and biology. We might study if chromosomes do impart an advantage, and weigh that against the other myriad genetic advantages like long reach or faster muscle gain to determine if there is any problem with current regulations. We might not do these things too, considering we have gone the entire history of sport without a single women's league collapsing from secret "male" invasion.

In Rowling's world, we first attack the winning woman as a "man in disguise" and rail against her without evidence. We have people replying "just look at HIM, he is clearly male". We have people writing violent revenge fantasies in which the Algerian woman gets beaten by a man or a gang of women to "teach her a lesson"... and JK does not once jump in to say any of it is inappropriate or hurtful to women who happen to have androgynous features, like some less fanatic people sharing the story have done.

When this is how their "ideology" reacts to an apparently "male looking" woman winning, we have to ask whether the liberation of women was ever the goal.

And the one thing that makes it all make sense, IMO, is that it's the lashing out that's the point. These people seem to enjoy calling a cis woman a man in much the same way they enjoy calling a trans woman a man. They enjoy the feeling of power as together they act cruel towards a woman who had the audacity to beat a white European. They seem to relish the ability to present themselves as feminists in one breath while brutally harrassing and demeaning women. Unlike ordinary bigots, they constantly bring up their crusade, as if they're growing dependent on the thrill. The cruelty, as they say, seems to be the point.

The danger of these ideologies is really becoming obvious ahead of the US election. Years of social media bubbles and astroturfing have made people like Rowling convinced that they are a silent majority, ironic for people who can't shut up.

Times like this I think are important reminders of where this can really lead. They may spin about being gender critical or concerned about women when the pressure is on; This is what these people do when they think they can get away with it.

This is the dark heart of their movement, beating loud enough to hear.

[buttercuparry]

My friend could have died today. Fuck. My friend could have died today in an attempt to reach y'all. I am so fucking angry that Siraj ( @siraj2024 ) and other Gazans, persistently post, persistently dm people and reach out to all of us, because they hope that this will help in raising funds. And what does tumblr do? What kind of user base does tumblr support and continues to support? The racist fuckers who threaten to tip off the FBI. There are still users on here, with their tumblr badges, who sneer at the gofundmes and call them scams and report them. There are terfs, there are Nazis, there are white supremacists, there are hindutvadis and of course Zionists- and tumblr doesn't go after any of them. Tumblr the racist shit site, goes after Palestinians, it goes after those who are campaigning for Palestinians.

You know I am surprised that a significant amount of userbase on here thinks that javert, badjokesbyjeff etc have been done with- that the smear campaign didn't create any ripples and some sort of "evil has been defeated" with writing-prompts mod kicking off other users- when I can guarantee you, that all of us who have been fundraising can feel a shift of before and after. We have lost engagement and the fundraisers have lost donors. So yeah all this to say is that ultimately what Siraj and other Gazans have now is an userbase that unfortunately loses interest very quickly, a bunch of racist Zionists and of course this site itself, that is hostile to Palestinians...and yet they risk their lives to log in and campaign, in hopes that some kind soul would listen. Fuck tumblr and its culture. I don't even know what to say anymore.

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Sssspace Ssstory 2

JK Rowling: i don't need you lot! Rowling: i don't need any of you! Rowling: i'm gonna go over to sspace coven to tell my new sstory! Barker: yeah have fun with that Rowling: I will!! Barker: they're all a bunch of nerds over there! Poe: now clive that's not very fair Barker: she's gonna find it out soon enough

[meanwhile, at space coven] JK Rowling: hello children Jules Verne: welcome, JK Rowling! I've been informed that you're the first woman ever to write science fiction Verne: so we're proud to make you a member of our very select group Verne: welcome to super friends!!!

Verne: i am called Ham because I enjoy ham radio Verne: [pointing to HG Wells] this is email Verne: [pointing to Isaac Asimov] cosine Verne: [pointing to Robert Heinlein] report card Verne: [pointing to Frank Herbert] mescaline Verne: [pointing to Mary Shelley] and Mary

HG Wells: [arriving in a steam-powered dirigible] excelsior, fellow space-ka-teers! HG Wells: it is I, HG Wells, chrononaut extradinaire! Wells: i am simply a-quiver to hear some new story and- Wells: oh crap, the gears fell off my top hat Jules Verne: don't worry, my good man, you can borrow some of mine!

Rowling: ok sso here'ss my futurisstic sstory Verne: whoa you can't start a story like that! Rowling: oh? oh right, ssorry Rowling: i meant 'ssubmitted for the approval of sspace coven, i call-' Verne: no i mean you're not wearing any goggles Wells: every super friend must wear at least 3 pairs of goggles at all times Verne: it's the law!

Verne: won't you enjoy some of our "mind control cookies" ho ho ho Rowling: what Verne: oh i'm sorry are you not familiar with the music of dr steel??? Verne: he's ONLY our favorite musician Rowling: Verne: OMG you've GOT to listen to People of Earth Verne: it's SO funny Verne: we're all members of the army of toy soldiers Rowling:

Verne: [playing Dr Steel album] haha ok so this is my favorite part coming up HG Wells: are you playing dr steel? turn that hack off! Rowling: oh thank god Wells: you should be playing Aurelio Voltaire!

Verne: Dr steel! Wells: Voltaire! Verne: Dr steel! Wells: Voltaire! Rowling: I've been insspired Rowling: my next book is going to be a manifessto against the FuMP

Rowling: today i have an exciting new story for you! Rowling: those plebss over at midnight society couldn't appreciate this Rowling: FUTURISTIC story! Rowling: i think you sci fi people will really get this Wells: huzzah! Verne: huzzah!

Rowling: okay so Rowling: just imagine Rowling: a future world where a totalitarian government made up of blue-haired spoonies and their antifa goon squad Rowling: have made it illegal to be cis Rowling: one lone heroic terf is fighting for her right to be a gold star lesbian

Rowling: sssee, in the future, an evil coalition of trans autistic fat people Rowling: force innocent lesbians to put pronouns in their bios Rowling: or get sent to the woke gulag! Rowling: where they're forced to apologize for their privilege! HG Wells: i didn't understand any of that

Wells: i don't understand any of that Verne: me neither Robert Heinlein: me neither Heinlein: except that one bit about a lesbian being involved Heinlein: i did understand that word Heinlein: and frankly i think i would like to hear more about lesbians

[childrensrightsrehumanrights]

Tw for pedophilla and discussions of csa

A likely pedophile tried to follow my blog today. They’ve reblogged another post about children’s rights.

Child sexual abuse is one of the children’s rights issues that is most pressing. Child marriage and other forms of child abuse are still legal in many places and people are trying to normalise it again in places where people have fought for better rights for children.

It is a choice to want to sexually abuse a child and to promote the idea that is is okay. Don’t let rape culture tell you that these people can’t help themselves, they are making the choice to abuse an innocent person.

Children cannot consent.

If we in children’s rights spaces don’t protect children and we allow people like this to get into the community and groom vulnerable children we will have done worse then just fail as activists we will have been complicit in harming children.

Call this out. Block and report this person and anyone else who tries to get access to children.

Anything that’s says “paraphile, radqueer,” and definitely “pro contact” is a danger. The term “crophile” tipped me off to check their blog.

Like how intersectional feminist spaces need to be on the look out for terfs, children’s rights activists need to be aware of sexual predators trying to infiltrate our spaces.

[lachemisenoire]

Let's get the facts straight about Tortoise Media

It's NOT a TERF or right-wing platform.

Please be careful about this because Neil Gaiman's PR and legal counsel (should he eventually need to hire counsel) will be 100% using this bullshit description as part of his defence.

Information about the investigators from from Splice Today:

"The investigators. The Slow Newscast belongs to an outfit called Tortoise Media. The lead presenter for the series is Rachel Johnson, a journalist who is undeniably the sister of Boris Johnson and who vocally opposes the idea that trans women are women. Gaiman believes they are and has said so emphatically, but no evidence has surfaced that Johnson’s attempting a hit job. Most of the reporting on the series, and some of the on-air presenting, was done by Paul Caruana Galizia. He’s won an Orwell Prize special award and a British Journalism Award; this information comes from Penguin Books, the publisher of Galizia’s A Death in Malta, which is about his mother’s life as an investigative reporter and her death in a car bombing."

I'm pro trans and anti Tory. You'll never find me going to bat for Rachel Johnson, of all people.

But I'm also Maltese and lived through Paul's mother's death, went to protests about it in my country, and I can vouch for his credentials and ethics.

If you look up his brother's Twitter (Matthew Caruana Galizia) you'll also see that Matthew is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and software engineer. He's also vocally pro-Palestine.

If you want more information about Paul and his family, and his work as a journalist, please feel free to reach out. I'll be more than happy to provide it.

[qqueenofhades]

Can I request a further rant on Alice Albinia's The Britannias please?

Anonymous asked: 'Further rant available upon request' here is my official request.

Aha. You are both prompt and accommodating. And it is my lunch break, so let's do this!

For context, this is the book in question:

This book was recently published, comes highly reviewed and (as I said) has apparently already been longlisted for some prestigious nonfiction writing/women's prizes. I got it from the library the other day and started reading it; I'm about 150 pages in. It has given me an increasing Itch to the point where lo, yes, here I am on Tumblr about to compose a Statement. This may be because of what the book blurb states upfront as its focus and goals:

Trespassing into the past to understand the present, The Britannias uncovers an enduring and subversive mythology of islands ruled by women. Albinia finds female independence woven through Roman colonial reports and Welsh medieval poetry, Restoration utopias and island folk songs. These neglected epics offer fierce feminist countercurrents to mainstream narratives of British identity and shed new light on women's status in the body politic today.

Okay... well. Basically, she wants to write a history of Britain as focused on its islands, which in itself is a perfectly valid thing to do. As she states in the introduction, focusing on the history of a place through its physically and geographically marginalized locations, its relation to the "mainland," the constructions of power and identity, how one resists and influences the other, is all a very interesting thing to do. It's just how she does it that gives me a twitch. Her clearly stated goal is to find a "hidden women's history" wherein these "fierce feminist countercurrents" are allowed to inform and eventually subvert a totally androcentric and oblivious mainstream British history that has apparently prevailed largely unchallenged ever since antiquity, and where the Male Process of History deliberately destroyed and excluded all female contributions. She is somehow, apparently, the first one to notice this and/or put it together.

Now I'll be honest, the Secret Magical Women trope also gives me a twitch wherever it appears, whether in saccharinely self-important historical or fantasy-historical fiction or in this case, attempted historical nonfiction. Albinia's thesis also seems, essentially, directly lifted from Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon fantasy series in the 1980s: the pagan Celtic/British tribes were egalitarian, proto-democratic, female-led and/or female-centric, and the conquering Romans/Christians/Saxons were all virulently misogynist, masculine, authoritarian, and determined to stamp out this wherever it appeared. I have only gotten up to about the year 1000 (it goes chronologically), so I can't speak to what rationales Albinia comes up with for the later centuries, but let me just say: Hmm. It says a lot about the overall style of this book that I read the first 10 pages and then immediately picked up my phone to check Wikipedia and see if she was a TERF. As far as I can tell, fortunately, she isn't, but it does give me the same binary gender-essentialist vibe (men are from Mars, women are from Venus), and yikes. Basically, there are a lot of things going on here, and all of them are Not Good when it comes to the actual practice and investigation of premodern women's history:

First, while Albinia cites a few research articles (via endnotes) and translations of primary sources (thus far, mostly Roman and early medieval) we know nothing about her qualifications for using these sources, how she is comparing and analyzing them, whether they should in fact be taken at face value, whether anyone else has written on these topics (spoiler alert: yes), or why we are supposed to buy her narrative of this Hidden Female History of Britain. For example: she includes several passages from Roman writers discussing (reported) actions or (reported) mythologies of British women or British female-associated places. These are presented as uncritical and general fact, or something which we should apparently assume was really happening as described, even when she (occasionally, and shallowly) points to the issue of using exterior and non-contemporary male writers from far away. Her analysis also does not touch at all on the potential metatextual or political impulses these Roman male writers might have for presenting a freshly conquered imperial territory as corruptly or unacceptably feminine, and whether this correlated at all to an overall real-world practice or belief. Yes, as far as we can tell, the ancient Celts were in some ways more "feminist" than the Romans, in that Roman public culture was deliberately and exclusively masculine and patriarchal and any civic participation by women in other societies would thus appear as more than usual. But that is a whole can of worms for many reasons, none of which are highlighted or dealt with here. (Like... are we even going to talk about how the "Roman standard" for society was itself re-created by the Renaissance and how that shapes Western historical views, or...?)

As I said above, the book completely brushes aside any of the previous existing scholarship on these topics (done, you know, by actual historians) and presents it as Albinia discovering these issues or formulating these arguments for the first time. She does mention a few other people whose work she relies on or who are informing her hypothesis, but several times thus far, this is from the 1920s or some other clearly outdated argument. Nobody in the field is still treating arguments made in the 1920s as au courant, and while I can't say for certain, it reads as her being more able to access older or public-domain work (since more up-to-date publications require institutional access or paying for copies) and doing the equivalent of the people on Wikipedia who cite the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia for everything: they can get that text for free, so that's what they refer to. Now obviously, we all support uncovering feminist strands of history, doing feminist history, challenging heteronormative or patriarchal narratives, etc. But also, we support doing it well and making some reference to the complexity of it!!!!

Likewise, Albinia is a white British woman whose previous books are based on her time living and traveling in India and Pakistan (both of which are, uh, previously British colonies). I have not read them, so I can't speak to how she treats it, but there's certainly an element of exoticizing them here, and while she does make passing reference to the British Empire's effect on those places, she does a sort of weird inverse here. She obviously knows about the basic facts of empire and colonization, but there's a notable amount of time dedicated to portraying ancient/Celtic Britain as the helpless victim of constantly brutal Roman colonization (she makes a few very brief and offhand references to cultural miscegenation and how this process unfolded in ways apart from violence, but they are clearly secondary to her main thesis of this as a masculine rape analogy). She is very clear about mourning for this "sacred divine [female] Britain" which was then destroyed by the unrelentingly violent and misogynist forces of Roman (cultural/military) and Christian (religious) colonization, and as I said, that is straight up Marion Zimmer Bradley. I haven't gotten past said first 150 pages, but I'm not terribly confident that her historical analysis improves much in the centuries to follow.

The book does have some bright spots: it's well written, it's engaging, she includes some colorful and interesting sociological vignettes about life on the margins of modern Britain, and there are certainly some things she's mentioned that I would like to look into in more depth. But yet again, this is being presented as an Authoritative or Revelatory History deserving of recognition and prizes, when there are real historians who have done so much of this work and in so much better ways. There is very little nuance to her thesis, no context or analysis or critique provided for her sources (yet again: why are we supposed to take Roman men as an authority on British women and why is she presenting them as obvious empirical fact while critiquing all other elements of their system/society?) and some squicky assumptions around gender and empire that really would need to be drawn out and examined in more detail. The Secret Magical [Pagan] Women Erased In History By Brutal Men gimmick is one that got a lot of traction with Philippa Gregory (sidenote: bookstore websites really need to stop recommending me Philippa Gregory for Women's History Month before I do crimes), and has been exasperatingly hard to eradicate ever since. Just to name one, we need to talk a lot more about the gender politics of medieval Christianity, any of the work done on this topic already, or anything else that would complicate her argument beyond the simplistic black-and-white state in which it currently exists. There are plenty of historians who would like to do that! Why don't you give some of THEM a call?!?!

Anyway. There is probably more I could say (and might), but I will leave it here for now. Thank you for the indulgence, etc.

[toadundercoldstone]

Despite living in England, I have been incredibly invested in the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill for the past few months because to me, it represented UK politics moving forward from the time of medical diagnosis of dysphoria, 10 year waiting lists and the like.

I thought that considering that the bill passed in Scotland with a solid majority, and they had taken steps to make it as difficult as possible for the uk to intervene without causing issues, that we were smooth sailing and we were finally seeing some progress on terf island.

I even foolishly allowed myself to believe that the rest if the UK would follow along eventually, and that it marked the beginning of self-reporting your gender without medical intervention - as it is in many other countries.

Section 35 (follow the link below for a better explanation) is part of the Scotland Act 1998 that allows the scottish secretary by power of the UK government to veto any bill within four weeks of its passing if there are reasonable grounds to believe either:

The bill is incompatible with the UK’s international obligations or jeopardises national defence.

The bill has adverse effects on policy areas that are the responsibility of the UK government.

IT HAS NEVER BEEN USED UNTIL TODAY

Parliament is claiming that the scottish bill has “passed the adverse effects test” and has used section 35 to stop it from coming into effect, continuing to place the lives of trans people in danger and furthering tensions surrounding Scottish independence, making claims about “same sex schools” and “sex equality”.

FM Nicola Sturgeon has called it a blatant attack on scottish independence and has promised to fight against this situation. She has also accused the UK government of using trans people as a weapon in the debate of scottish independence, and I am inclined to agree with her.

As angry and disappointed as I am, I wish I could say I was surprised. terf island continues to terf and trans people continue to die as sufferers of violent crime, economic disparity and suicide. Spread love, check in with your friends, fight your battles until we don’t have to anymore.

I love all you trans people in scotland and the uk and the world and I wish you the best <3

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ryan Grenoble at HuffPost:

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) says she was assaulted at a foster youth advocacy event earlier this week; witnesses say it was just a handshake. Whatever the truth, the South Carolina Republican sure would be a lot happier if the media stopped reporting on it. [...]

“I have a warning for any media outlet that says I wrongly, falsely accused this guy of physically accosting me, of assaulting me,” she told Johnson. “That is defamation. And so I would be walking on eggshells if I were you,” she said with a giggle. The congresswoman also accused anyone who disputes her characterization of the interaction of “victim-shaming.” “This guy came in for what I thought was going to be a friendly handshake, and I know the difference between a passionate handshake and a violent one, and here I sit here today with an injury from it,” she said. Mace also shared a photo of herself wearing an arm sling and a brace on social media Thursday. The photo was immediately ridiculed by Natalie Johnson, a former Mace staffer, who called it “a pathetic ploy for attention.” “This is the same woman who told staff, myself included, during Jan. 6 that she wanted to get ‘punched in the face’ by a rioter so she could get on TV,” Johnson said on X, formerly Twitter.

While Mace says she was “physically accosted,” witnesses speculate it’s what James McIntyre, the man who shook her hand, said ― not how he acted ― that set Mace off. McIntyre, the co-founder of a foster care advocacy group, reportedly told Mace, “trans youth are also foster youth, and they need your support.”

America’s lead TERF Nancy Mace is such a snowflake crybully.

See Also:

The Advocate: Nancy Mace gets prominent foster care activist arrested on assault charges that eyewitnesses dispute

From the 12.12.2024 edition of The Benny Show:

[nothorses]

sorry to bring this to your inbox but i got nowhere else to bring it and i need a yell. I was going through the transgender tag for more information on the CEO's transmisogyny debacle and came across a post that started out by stating that transmisogyny has been on the rise on tumblr as a whole; reasonable and true. but they started their list of examples with "1. The entire concept of transandrophobia" and I just.

What the goddamn hell is wrong with you*? (not YOU you THEM you) Why the fuck are you throwing your trans brothers under the bus for the actions of a pissbaby CEO? There's a wave of false reports and deletions - TARGETING TRANS WOMEN - and your response is to try and shift the target to transmascs for... talking about their experiences? Your response to outside harassment is to try and spark more infighting? What's your fucking problem????? We need to be coming TOGETHER not picking a fucking target to spit on!!! Christ alive. And people wonder how it's so easy for terfs to turn us against each other. God.

Ok rant over thanks for listening

I just want to challenge your wording here a little bit; did you check this person's blog and how they identify? Do you know if they're a trans woman, a trans man, nonbinary, etc.? Even what they might have said on their blog about how they identify should be scrutinized- we don't actually know who this person is, and they could for sure be lying. It's really, really useful for people outside of our communities who want to stir shit up to pretend they're not outsiders at all.

The post you're describing is horrible either way, and you're 100% right that it's stirring up harmful infighting. I think it's really easy to see that kind of thing and think, "oh my god, people are falling for it! they're actually fighting each other now!!"

It's a scary thing to see, and it's incredibly hard to ask critical questions when we're afraid, or otherwise emotionally activated like that. And there's nothing wrong with being emotionally activated, either; of course you are! That's some really hateful, really wrong, and really dangerous shit! Sentiments just like that one have caused so much harm to our community, and so much harm directly to individual, vulnerable people- probably people you know. Certainly people I know.

But it's reactions from that state of emotional activation that lead to the success of these kinds of infighting campaigns. We get activated, we make assumptions and act from that activated place, other people get activated and do the same, and the cycle continues.

What's worse, you're the only person who saw the post in question; I can only react to what you're telling me. I can't go look at the post, check OP's blog, and answer any critical questions about the nature of the situation. I have no way of knowing whether this person might be transfem, or just a TERF trying to stir shit up. I don't even know if the OP was an anon ask sent to someone else. I don't know how many notes the post got, or how big OP's audience is; I can't really conceptualize the amount of harm the post has done. I don't know if anyone has debunked it in the notes, or if OP has since posted an update denouncing that original sentiment.

Again, that's not to invalidate your emotional response, or even really question how honest you're being here. For all I know, you did check all of those things, and this is worse than I think it is. It certainly seems pretty realistic to me, just based on my own experiences with these kinds of conversations.

I just want to push back on that wording a little bit because like... as much as it is a real problem that a lot of transfems really firmly believe that Transmascs Talking About Cis People Being Transphobic To Us is the most serious & urgent form of transmisogyny facing the transfem community today, it's also a real problem that transmacs will jump on that same line of thinking in an effort to paint themselves as "one of the good ones".

Cis women will often throw transmascs under the bus in the same way in order to avoid Cis Guilt, oftentimes avoiding talking about their cis positionalities- which leads people to assume that, because they're talking about trans issues so much, they must be trans themselves! Which, again, perpetuates this illusion that "the trans community is full of infighting" and that much more dangerous to various trans people.

(Granted, this is a complicated issue; I don't think it's wrong for cis people to talk about these things, and I don't think trans people should have to out themselves in order to do so, either- but I have absolutely seen this pattern taken advantage of by hateful anons, TERFs, radfems, and cis women who revel in being called "honorary trans women" for bashing transmascs frequently enough.)

Is this post demonstrating the success of cis people's efforts to stir up infighting in the trans community, or is it just an example of cis people trying to stir up infighting? And if you know it's the former, how do I know? How do all of my followers know? Is it better to understand it as one vs. the other?

I'm sorry this got so long and off-topic; I'm sure this isn't what you were looking for when you sent me this ask, and I'm sorry for criticizing your wording over providing the emotional reassurance you probably needed a lot more than this. And also, I do feel a responsibility to think about the people reading asks before I think about the people sending them (particularly if they're on anon), and I felt this was the message that most needed to be received from anything I could say in response. I hope you're able to find the emotional reassurance you need regardless, and I appreciate you bringing this to me in the first place. 💙

[tollytolin]

I got misgendered for the first time in months and months today. And the woman called me a slur, too.

The woman in question is the main manager of the dollar store I was in. How utterly poisoned must a person's brain be to openly call a customer a slur at WORK?

I'd noticed her giving me shitty looks every time we interacted and that she didn't do it for anyone else, so I had assumed she was a transphobe for a while now. Everybody else that works there has been super sweet and cool to me.

Moments prior she overheard an older fellow say "Excuse me, miss" to me, and I figure this TERF took issue with someone like me getting treated like an actual woman.

I was indignant in the store but when I got home I cried for a while. First time getting hate-speeched like that. Crying and wondering, "Am I going to look like a man forever?" "Are random strangers people just being polite when they use feminine pronouns for me?" "Do I just look like some crossdresser? Are people thinking I'm just walking around showing off a fetish?"

I reported her to corporate and to her colleagues but who knows if anything will happen. I also wanna tell all of the queer people in town that I know. I'm pretty sure I'm the only transwoman in town so I hope she doesn't incite anger in her CHUD friends and invite violence on me for daring to stand up for myself instead of politely not existing :1

[mithliya]

have you seen what happened to posie parker in new zealnd? i don't really like her (bc she minimizes homophobia and excuses racism) but the energy of the people mobbing her at the rally was truly terrifying. if there weren't others there to stop them, they'd have torn her limb from limb. it's really scary how radical feminism is so targeted by a dangerous mix of mob mentality + lack of empathy + misinformation + normalised violence as a response to disagreement. i worry that the murder of one of our sisters is looming on the horizon, and the whole world will cheer because she was "a terf"

this is actually beyond insane. a woman on the trans side was also hurt and several women were attacked for attending the let women speak event in auckland. im glad there were no deaths, it looks like an absolute shitshow

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: BBC

[mysterious circle of robed figures] JK Rowling: hello children JK Rowling: today we begin our biggessssst challenge Jesse Singal: bigger than convincing our terf legion that men have a special bone that makes them good at chess? JK Rowling: no that was remarkably easssy actually

JK Rowling: today we rehabilitate graham lineham Singal: b-but mommy! Singal: graham lineham is the one terf too toxic for the BBC Rowling: isss he? Rowling: the whole point of the BBC is to launder terfsss Rowling: itsss time they ssstarted doing their job!

Rowling: maybe if we cleaned him up a little Graham Lineham: FECK ARSE [vomits] Rowling: we could try teaching him a few sssimple phrasses Rowling: enough that he could move out of my basssement

Rowling: will you not just give it a go graham [pointing at  blackboard on which is written "yes" and "I am being silenced for my views"] Lineham: y-y-y Rowling: yesss! yessss! keep going!! Lineham: [inarticulate slurs] Rowling: Rowling: better

Rowling: come on graham i know you can do it Lineham: [inarticulate slurs] Rowling: graham if you sssay the line, there will be a little treat in it for you Lineham: [inarticulate slurs]? Rowling: yesss Rowling: sssay the line Rowling: and you can sssleep in your racecar bed

Rowling: finally! now graham is ready for hissss big debut on the BBC Lineham: [inarticulate slurs] Singal: golly mommy he sounds the same! Rowling: Rowling: yeah well Rowling: they can fix it in possst

BBC Announcer: welcome to the BBC, coming up is Part 8 of Sir Nigel Hemmingwedge St. Plonkington's 12 part documentary on the St. Slurryshire cheesemonger guild, followed by Are You Being Served? and the Brexit is Going Great report BBC Announcer: but first some light revisionism

BBC Announcer: joining us is graham lineham who has some views worth considering Lineham: [vomits] FECK ARSE Lineham: [inarticulate slurs] JK Rowling: what graham meansss issss we jussst have sssome concernsss Rowling: and you BETTER consssider them

Rowling: real nice sstudio you got here, BBC Rowling: be a real shame if ssomething were to happen to it Rowling: like, sssay, you had to film another cormoran ssstrike ssseries here BBC Announcer: no no! anything but that! we'll consider your concerns! Rowling: sssee that you do