#she literally told me she isn't trans actually just for attention

[expressionless-fr]

hate hate hate how she gets away with everything she does.

don't read tags if you're sensitive they contain a lot of bullshit and I ain't sugarcoating it ty

[aretheyqueer]

Anyway I sent you that ask but I’m not like boiling over mad about it, it’s just like. The experiences of men and women are different but it is because a woman’s experiences breaks off from the default, which is the male experience. I do not think things can be that clean cut when it comes to gender identity but for cis men? The intersectionality of being black and disabled makes sense, the intersectionality of being black and a man doesn’t. That is called anti black racism. And it is foolish to act like the ways black men are seen, as violent, aggressive, poor, untrustworthy, older than they are as children, aren’t applied to black women too

what are you talking about

well its about this post and normally I try not to give attention to angry anons but I'll talk a bit about it

misandry. a difficult topic for some. it seems that a lot of people believe that in order for misandry to exist, misogyny has to not exist. but that's not true. both exist at the same time and both affect everyone.

men are seen as more violent than women, and if you combine that with the "black people are more violent" mindset, you get a violent black man stereotype, which is different from what a black woman experiences. doesn't mean one is more oppressed than the other. but one of them has been affected by misandry as well. one of the people I know is a black man and because we get "violent black person + violent man" together, people cross the street in order to not pass him on the sidewalk. he has been told to his face by women things like "you're actually cool, I thought you were going to hit me when I first saw you...", which they somehow think is a compliment. this is not only because of racism or misandry, but because of both at the same time.

generally speaking in the US, women get away easier with crime than men. there have been cases where all the evidence shows that the woman killed someone, only for it to be randomly decided that she didn't. this is a combination of pretty privilege, and difference in how men and women are treated. white people also get away with crime easier than black people. it's not ridiculous to think that these combine, that black+man (violent+violent) has different expectations of how much evidence is necessary and how harsh the punishment should be.

when a trans man transitions, it's likely that he will feel a change as he starts to experience male privilege. but things aren't as great as a man as they tell you on the internet.

men and women have different beauty standards. generally, it's seen as unattractive if a man is chubby, has acne, lack of muscles, beard growing in the wrong places etc. (even women who "like dad bods" often go for the conventionally attractive men). now, as a trans man basically going through your second puberty, acne, fat redistribution, hair growth - it can all impact your appearance in ways that you don't actually like.

and this happens. some trans men experience these "ugly" changes, and suddenly they go (literal quote) "people are so mean to me now!" becaaauseee... society has different expectations of men and women, and when men don't meet those expectations, they are treated differently. not only because they're "ugly", but because they are "ugly" men.

a lot of women don't like to admit it, but they can be really horrible to men. there's this assumption that men have it easy, which leads to a couple things:

"Ugly" men are treated horribly by women

Every ugly man is assumed to have worse morals than handsome white men

Women's abuse against men isn't taken seriously

Remember the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard case? There was a lot of evidence that a man was being abused by a woman. Him literally taking her to court and showing the world that men CAN be abused by women and there are things you can do about it, was an inspiration to other men that had been abused. But then you open twitter, and... people are demonising him because he has "started a culture where men take women to court over every little thing". You hear that? That's misandry, baby. (btw, rape and abuse accusations have been used against men to take advantage of the "trust all victims" mindset. it's horrible to do something that causes distrust against women who speak up, but it is an unfortunate truth. this happens both off the internet and on the internet.)

Now...

It's important to step out of radfem and "hate all men" bubbles sometimes, because while their purpose is to support women, they are frequently spaces where misandrists thrive. there, it's normal to think every man you pass wants to rape and/or kill you, and it's normal to laugh at and make fun of ugly or weird men.

men and women have different experiences. disabled men and disabled women have different experiences. trans men and trans women have different experiences.

and that's ok. we don't need to have a competition about which one is worse. misandry being a problem doesn't mean that misogyny isn't. we can fight both at the same time.

I would encourage people to think about what they mean when they say they hate all men. if you tense up when you walk past men. how quick you are to believe that a man is a rapist before you've seen the proof. how you define an ugly man, and how you think about ugly and handsome men differently. if you've ever made fun of a man for having traits that you praise women for. if you've ever forgiven a woman for something that you would have never forgiven a man for. etc.

there aren't any titles or stuff in this post so I don't know how readable it is. but if you got this far, cool.

tldr: misandry is real and it is amplified to the max when a man is a minority or doesn't meet the expectations of what a handsome man is, go talk to a man in your life about it

[tritoch]

Something that bugs me a lot in Dawntrail discourse is watching people who think they are defending the expansion argue away its best aspect. Because here's the thing: Wuk Lamat isn't like prior FFXIV characters. She takes up way more space than them. That's good!

A common thread you see in defenses is that people are complaining about things they were fine with earlier in the story. "Oh well actually Lyse was also the main character of Stormblood and people didn't hate her as much!" or "Heavensward is the story of Aymeric and Estinien and Ysayle, and the Warrior of Light doesn't do that much!" or "No one complained when Gaia jumped into the Eden raids, or when Emet showed up during Seat of Sacrifice" with the implied conclusion of "Wuk Lamat's not different from any other previous major character, your complaints have more to do with [sexism/transphobia/your crippling insecurity about not being the main character] than the way she's written." First of all people did hate Lyse. I get what you are saying but they very much did hate Lyse.

But Wuk Lamat is different. She's different because Dawntrail is unapologetically, full-throatedly her story. She is there at the start, she is there at the end, she is there basically all the way through except for a brief interlude. She is the character you talk to the most, she is also the character that talks the most. She has more of a complete arc than anyone else in the expansion. The antagonists develop much stronger direct and personal relationships to her than they ever do with you. Several major characters have relationships to you through her more than they do with you directly. At multiple points in the story you explicitly step back and are like "Go right ahead, queen, do the main character stuff." She 100% takes your role in certain ways. She's literally a new WL to your WoL!

and that's awesome! Like, holy shit! If you had traveled back in time and told me after Endwalker, "Hey, the next expansion will be almost solely and entirely focused on the character journey of a young woman, and she'll be nuanced and complex and allowed to fail but also allowed to succeed wildly, and her characterization will be interesting and her ideals will be very directly challenged, and she'll get to do some real classic 'sorry my noble opponent but I must stop you, even though I sympathize' shit, and the way she is framed won't feel excessively male-gazey, and she won't get stuck in the FFXII Ashe Miniskirt, and she won't just be someone you watch and clap for while the real protagonist and narrator is some random guy in her entourage," I would've been like "haha, okay, I like FFXIV as much as the next guy but I don't think it's shaken its baseline sexism off enough to do an expansion entirely about a woman and her personal growth and what makes her a good leader, especially after Stormblood's mixed reception. And CBU3 definitely doesn't have the guts to make her even more of a main character than any other prior NPC, and you didn't mention this part future time traveler, but I also don't believe they'll be willing to cast a trans woman in the role." And I would have been fucking wrong!

Yes, Wuk Lamat is the main character. Yes, she does get more attention than other NPCs, or even your Warrior of Light. And yes, that's totally fine, and even something to praise!!! You don't have to run from it to accommodate people who are looking for something to complain about!

[wirewitchviolet]

When Complete BS Becomes "Common Knowledge."

Someone told me they stopped paying attention to someone who reviews movies after one too many mean-spirited jokes about trans people, and it was one of those cases where the reviewer in question definitely had the vibe of someone who'd go around doing that, but I couldn't think of any real flagrant examples. Cut to me watching a movie the other day, remembering that oh yeah, I skipped that one guy's review of it because I wanted to go in blind, and sure enough, that review has this big long crappy 5 minute aside of an out of left field "DID YOU JUST ASSUME MY GENDER!?" routine. So that's a shame.

Now this particular guy rather famously Does Not Get Out Much. Pretty sure he hasn't really have any exposure to a single trans person, or to any real die hard transphobes, and most likely what happened here is he saw I dunno, an episode of South Park or a facebook post from some bigoted aunt, or some Tiktok video, something like that, and just blithely assimilated it into his world view.

But you know, the reality is... to the best of my knowledge no trans person has ever actually said this, or anything similar to this, and we sure as hell don't live in a world where anyone would have the back of someone who did? But you know, here we are.

Now I want to be clear, this isn't some kinda thing where trans people can't take a joke or anything. Literally while I was typing this, some cis guy just tossed this out, and this is a real tired old hokey one, but I cracked a smile, because oh yeah, the whole "programmer socks" bit really is a weirdly accurate stereotype.

And there's plenty of other trans jokes I'll laugh at. Ones directly at my expense. Some real dark ones even. You wanna go off on trans women all having the same like 10 names and them all sounding like we were born in the 1800s, go for it. Other stuff about how we all dress? Coping mechanisms? Low standards? Being too into pickles and sriracha? There's plenty.

But "DID YOU JUST ASSUME MY GENDER!?" and while we're at it, "I identify as..." don't even have the vague shape of something you're ever going to encounter in reality. Like if I didn't know the context of where these came from and hadn't had them posted a thousand times or so by people with swastikas for avatars and such, these probably would get a laugh from me the first time I heard them, because they sound like weird surrealist humor. Like, "don't you hate how every time you go to the laundromat, you have to play chess with the dragon before they let you in?"

But, again, I know the context. And the context is a bunch of fascists want people like me dead, and they're both too scared to pick up a gun to do it themselves and too incompetent to know who to point it at or where to find them. So they sit around with each other and go "hey, what sort of person does everyone hate? Let's all say trans people talk like them!" And because they haven't spoken to a single human being besides each other and the rich parents they're sponging off since getting banned from the Something Awful forums in the 90s/punk bar in the 80s/whatever, they settled on "rich white person calling the cops on somebody for walking down the street" and "didn't I first get into being a hatemonger because I was stupid enough to think that time I saw someone roleplaying he really thought he was a big scary dragon?" Which has honestly worked out weirdly well for them when you stop for half a second to appreciate just how absolutely ridiculous it is to ever imagine cops coming to the aid of trans people.

Like... here's a situation that actually plays out in reality. I have a bad tooth. Dentist says I need a root canal, and she doesn't do them. Refers me to another dentist like an hour and a half away. I walk in, write my Victorian sounding name on some paperwork, fill in all my various medications, wait a bit, hop into the big dentist's chair, so far so good. This dentist busts out the pick and the mirror about to have a look, and goes "hey, so I noticed on your medications you're taking a ton of something called divigel? What is that?" I say "oh, yeah, I'm trans, so I'm on supplemental estradiol." She almost drops the mirror, stares at me like she just realized I'm Venom and if she bent down to look at my teeth I was about to swallow her whole head. She stands bolt upright, says, "your teeth are fine, get out." I'm a bit confused, but I can read a room, so I say "well that's weird, but OK..." and start to leave. I get a "have a nice day SIR!" shouted at me. And then I go out, call the cab company to say my appointment ended early, and get told too bad, it's coming when it's scheduled, and someone snickers. See, at some point in having to take cabs to all my appointments, a driver worked out that this woman he'd been picking up from this address for the past year has a similar voice to and maybe vague family resemblance to who he'd been picking up from that same address the year prior, and after getting the courage to ask me, guess who's constantly having cabs show up late, or not at all, or on time with a driver staring angrily into the rear view mirror while blaring AM radio with someone shouting about all "the gays" needing to be rounded up so they can burn in hell. And I just need to suck it up and live with it. I'm sure as hell not going to pick a fight over it. I'm just gonna stand out in the cold (fortunately with nice warm knee-high socks) waiting for this cab for an hour because I sure as hell can't stay in this lobby.

But again, the whole weird myth here posits a world where trans people are all-powerful and control the government and stuff. And the basis for that is like... sometimes people refuse to pass ridiculous laws to stop trans people from doing things we only do in bigots' imaginations at great taxpayer expense, and SOMETIMES someone is responsible enough to double check what's up before they allocate the funds. Like... hell, you know what's exactly as completely divorced from reality and honestly the same people doing to same crap? That wild BS about "schools keeping litter boxes in classrooms because all this acceptance of trans people means we also have to accept kids who think they're cats!" Like... how the hell can anyone actually be stupid enough to believe that anyone else could be stupid enough to believe that they're actually stupid enough to believe such an OBVIOUSLY made-up narrative? Like... lawmakers bring that one up and try to get bills passed on it. Everyone else in the room is socially obligated not to laugh and ask whether they also want to pass legislation against Bat Boy and UFO abductions. This is Ralph Wiggum tier absurdity.

But like... what do you do about this sort of thing, really? As the person ultimately has to deal with the dentists who think I'll bite their heads off, ask to speak to their manager, and drop trou over a sandbox the state mandates they keep in the middle of the room, I'm... not in the room when this BS gets concocted, or discussed, or shared in Minions meme some film critic sees and imitates to try and be relatable and relevant. Can someone else start grabbing all these people by the lapels and shake them and shout questions about how they can be this stupid, maybe invite them back to reality for me?

[sam-the-pancake]

New school year is starting so I'm being reminded of this again. Last year when I got my wheelchair I asked my boss if I could send an email to staff before the start of the school year telling them that I'm a part time wheelchair user and to please be normal about it (not literally that but that's why I wanted to). She had to talk to HR and eventually I was told no because "it wouldn't be appropriate to tell everyone you were pregnant" and I'd have to handle it individually. She said they knew my disability/wheelchair wasn't the same as being pregnant but it was the closest example anyone could think of and had experience with. (Also as a trans masc person comparing my wheelchair to a pregnancy feels extra weird)

But it's SO NOT anything like a pregnancy. When you're pregnant people are generally happy for you. When you start showing and people aren't sure if you're actually pregnant it's considered common courtesy to not ask because the pregnant person could be offended if they aren't.

When you're pregnant people don't run up to you and say "Oh my god! Are you gonna be ok? I hope your pregnancy isn't dangerous! Get better soon!" Even though you're excited to be pregnant. Imagine if for 6-7 months, daily, your coworkers told you "I'm sorry you're sick, get well soon" but you have a happy healthy pregnancy. No ones accusing people of faking their pregnancy for??? Attention? The benefits??? Being lazy?? This is the analogy my boss and HR made me come up with because apparently my disability and getting a wheelchair is the same as being pregnant.

Disclaimer that I know not all pregnancies are low risk or something the person is happy about, but that's not what this is about. I was excited and happy that I finally have a wheelchair and was trying to avoid invasive and depressing comments from my coworkers, and was told I can't give people a heads-up that I'm fine just disabled because it would be like announcing a pregnancy.

[inneskeeper-receipts]

edit: hey to all the people reblogging this from Innes, would you like to please read the rest of the contents of my blog and care about the emotional abuse & beastiality as well? I think that's maybe more important than whether or not Innes is lying about being trans like they lie about so many other things.

Oh so my ex is "coming out as trans" now? Right when I finally start to talk about what he has done and who he really is? FASCINATING timing.

You can't she/her your way out of this one and I'm so tired of seeing cis people lie about their gender experiences on the internet to get away with abuse! Holy fucking shit!!! Especially when I know for a fact that this isn't genuine.

I really do believe in self identification and taking people as they come and believing someone when they tell me what they are, but I knew him for several years and he told me himself that he is frequently purposefully dishonest and/or vague about what minority group he affiliates himself with online so that he can get away with more polarizing opinions by weaponizing the identity politics so prevalent on this website. I cannot trust anything he says about himself and neither should you.

We had discussions on gender many a time and I'll be able to dig up receipts so as long as I am able to get into old discord accounts (&assuming he doesn't delete old messages?), but even when I suggested that he may want to explore his gender identity at one point during one of these discussions he said that he had, and that he was comfortably cis. Which is fine! I love men, I am a huge boyliker, I just think it's healthy to get to know yourself better and going on a Gender Journey can help sometimes

Later on, near the end of the relationship, he would gaslight me and say that he "never identified as cis" & was "always a little nonbinary" and now suddenly he's been trans for 13 years. I'm so tired of this shit?

He does all of this shit for attention. I know it, he knows it. And he doesn't not need attention, it's just that Internet Points don't fucking do anything to help you become better in any way!! He literally needs to go to log the fuck off, get therapy, and become medicated, but I will never be able to trust that he actually is doing that because him lying about going to therapy for a month straight, while giving me details about his therapist (who did not exist) and the therapy sessions themselves (which did not, at any point, actually occur) is the reason why I went no-contact with him.

[velvetvexations]

I think Velvet Nation has their heads screwed on tight and would understand that "I'm prone to attention/praise-seeking behavior" is not mutually exclusive with having some kinna "genuine" moral framework. Like, you could say that literally everyone only ever does something good because it makes them feel good. Ever act of charity either results in dopamine or prevents guilt at not having done so. Everything a human being does is selfish when you reduce the action to it's most basic, chemical level.

But with narcs it's different, there's this assumption that if a narc does something good they're standing there actively thinking "haha, you fool, I don't care about suicidal queer youth at all! I only donated five hundred thousand dollars to The Trevor Project so you would give me praise!". But consider that maybe, like, someone with NPD wants to be the best person they possibly can be? That they might not be satisfied with themselves if they didn't feel they were moral enough?

Some people go hard on being outsiders with rough edges. And you know, why the fuck shouldn't they? Even trying to do good gets them accused of being predators specifically for trying to do good. No shit some of them decide "then let me be evil" and embrace the fact that they're perceived as self-centered assholes. Yet, even then - they're talking openly about it all the time, it's a core part of their identity, that makes it difficult to fly under people's radar to secretly break them into being a worshipful slave.

But guess what? Having been raised by my mother, I can understand why someone with undiagnosed NPD can be a really fucking bad time for someone close to them. I'm so sympathetic to anyone who's actually suffered abuse from someone with NPD, because it sucks, it's bad.

It's like how I feel whenever TERFs complain about trans-identified males appropriating the pain of menstruation - I'm so willing to give any and all people who get periods that that fucking sucks and regardless of gender identity or anything else I understand and appreciate the fortune of not having to go through that. A transfem friend once told someone she was jealous of them menstruating and I was thinking like "I get how dysphoria is complicated and that can be something you have a valid desire for but holy fuck please please please never say that to a cis woman again", not because she was "appropriating" anything, but because shit like that is a miserable time for the people that go through it and it's desirable to respect that. So it sucks when I see TERFs pushing that line as though my respect in that regard isn't worth anything.

(to be clear, people who think I'm a crypto-TERF, I mean respect towards menstruating people generally, I have no respect for TERFs in any regard and am happy for them specifically to just cope and seethe about it)

The point of this tangent is that I'M REASONABLE. I CAN WORK WITH YOU. If anyone comes to me in good faith I'm not ever going to dismiss that sort of thing. Hell, I said the other day that if someone thought "Mormon" was a slur above simply being disrespectful I'd tell them to touch grass, but if that hypothetical person actually was like "yeah I get why you feel this way but I have these reasons it hurts me and I wish people wouldn't use it so it feels like a slur to me and it sucks that my situation is automatically so irrational to everyone else" I'd be like...I'm probably going to keep saying it because everyone else said it wasn't a problem and it's likely to come up in the future, but I'm really sorry, if you're a follower of mine maybe there's a tag I can use?

My own immense charity and grace in writing that is literally bringing a tear to my eye, which is what being a narc is like. Or maybe that's just because I'm also autistic and get moved by things like that very easily without making a distinction as to if it's coming from me or someone else. But either way, I guess, there are people who want me to just not fucking bother, lest I cloak my narcissism from my helpless prey.

[ask-the-menagerie]

heyyyy im baaackkk im going to chatter about general headcanonsssss (i stole many from different askblogs and i projected onto them so much. y'all don't even KNOW)

henry stickmin. the guy themself.

•nonbinary as hell. they/them (he/him is fine but they'll kill you if you use he/him exclusively)

•biromantic asexual + poly (i fucking swear i SWEAR im not projecting I SWEAR i took this from the ending the cycle ask blog)

•conjures items (Choices) and has control over time. i love powers

•they always need a Source though but they usually have their hoodie

•despises suits !! give them a dress with a hood and they won't cause any mischief during formal occasions.

•loves ellie n charles. you can take this from my cold dead paws

•conveys love through gifts. has to steal a lot of them

•once came home looking absolutely feral, holding a helicopter toy in their mouth and walking on all fours. they gave it to charles

•surprisingly good at walking on all fours. is like a cat.

•very good at avoiding attention. but if they want they could VERY EASILY steal a show

•wears a binder

•has SO MANY SCARS. some linger from Fails and some just. happen. without a fail. hides a lot of them (coughcough revenged bullet scar coughcough)

charles calvin. the man with the plan

•fuck you (projects onto the pilot) (he/him trans guy.)

•fuck you (projects onto the pilot) (also bi, ace, and poly)

•loves ellie and henry. because i need to mention it every time.

•THIS IS THE GREATEST PLAAAN

•this mf adopted by general galeforce. you can't take this from me

•valiant hero charles is just constantly following around his henry. refuses to move on. will fistfight the grim reaper

•has a minimal amount of scars since he's a pilot instead of an actual fighter but he does have a few. and they're not telling a good story.

•he woke up one day with explosion scars and was.. confused. but thought nothing of it. (henry was very clingy that day. suspicious.)

•conveys love through touch. hugs n stuff.

•one time he had.. one hell of a nightmare. henry was the toppat leader and he had to fight them. he.. killed them, he's pretty sure. he killed them. he didn't let henry escape the hug that day. (but they did look.. kinda terrified when he charged at them for a hug)

•has a funny little helicopter necklace. if he's mad at someone he'll take it off and just. hit them with it. it's not like. a knife or anything. it's made of metal and uncomfortably sharp though. it COULD probably draw blood in a panic probably

•has a very poofy jacket because being up in the air is cold i think

ellie rose. she's there ! i can tell you that

•she/her. i have no further comments on her gender

•bi ace poly because i said so. you can't stop me

•obligatory loves charles and henry

•prefers suits over dresses. does have dresses but recently started giving them to henry

•sleeves? no! (cuts off the sleeves from every shirt she owns)

•conveys love through actions because words are shit and cannot properly convey emotions.

•has. actually jumped in front of a bullet for the others. who immediately PANICKED (henry was so damn close to a Retry. but she was fine!)

•loves when henry literally just brings her any red flower that isn't a rose. it's the funniest shit ever to her.

•if henry's being a little shit she'll pick him up by the hood like he's a fucking cat. has told charles to do the same but he refused

•makes and holds grudges easily. also remembers faces easily. Will fuck you up if you wrong her

•one time had a weird ass dream. her and henry were toppats (which she knows is just. wrong. she might've become one before she met hen and charlie but wouldn't give up triple threat for the world) but they were.. fighting? she was threatening them. they.. betrayed her? they wouldn't do that. right? ((toppat civil war <3))

•good at starting fires but won't do it for any malicious purposes. anymore. she used to

[shimenchus]

Just to clarify (and I don't blame you if you don't want to hear me out, since it seems like you're getting a bunch of alarming asks as it is)...

neckspike and that other person weren't trying to say that in a way that was against satoryuga. From their perspective, they simply thought it was sus that a trans person would've started such a thing, and think that perhaps there's something more complex afoot, in terms of what the re-uploader is doing. (Granted, you can disagree about if jumping to conclusions was the best idea. But they aren't saying that Satoryuga isn't receiving hate. Simply that there's more than meets the eye.) I know for sure that at least one of them has also been reporting as much of those death threats as they could, and is firmly on satoryuga's side.

That being said, I have noticed a few comments on satoryuga's post trying to claim that satoryuga is fake and stuff. And by all means, the people who say that have problems. I agree with you that much.

As for the thing about a radroller, I'll look into it. I'll admit, that's not a blog I follow. And by extension, I'll admit that I do have a couple of blind spots in terms of fandom.

However, I do have my worries that there's a more-than-slight chance we have the wrong person in terms of the re-uploader's identity. After everything that's happened, the reveal of this identity seems too easy. That might be my paranoia talking, though.

for sure i'm open to hearing your point of view, unfortunately i'm not as argumentative as i wish i was lol

i don't know if neckspike is actually reporting harassers or not but neckspike literally said it was a hoax and after arguing with multiple people who were more informed on the situation, said satoryuga was not real and was just a social experiment to make trans people look bad. as in, implying that satoryuga was making gifs from september of 2021 up until the beginning of june 2022 for the sole purpose of eventually one day pretending to be doxxed and then assaulted just to somehow get the attention of radfems on tumblr to "make trans people look bad"? why? who does that benefit? she worked hard making gifs just so she could pretend-doxx herself and never post on here again because she purposely turned people against her? does that make sense at all? it's insane.

stacaesar said that one of the people who been @ in the same post as her (diamond, neckspike & again that artist whose name i don't remember lol) had called her a cunt and told her to kill herself because she had shown support to satoryuga. if i had to take a wild guess… neckspike again, right? or is stacaesar in on the psychop and she's a liar who can't be trusted, too?

i feel like saying it's "sus" that a trans person would do this because "no trans person would ever harass someone or threaten them with rape" is odd, anyone is capable of being a violent scum-person and by saying that no trans person would ever do that, you're implying that thea-nymo isn't a real transwoman, but thea-nymo's blog bio clearly says "transwoman"? kind of transphobic to be making that leap, i think. there are lots of transwoman in prison for rape or murder, so why would no trans person ever be capable of wanting to hurt satoryuga? do you really believe trans people the only humans in the world who would never hurt someone?

not to mention, no one is saying every trans person on the planet is a rapist but the ones who are threatening satoryuga with rape and gave her info to the mra with the sole intention of that she would be assaulted (or raped) definitely aren't anyone that should be within 5,000 feet of any woman.

rather than saying "these trans people who are rapists aren't trans" or "these trans people are actually other people pretending to be trans to make us look bad" the trans people who aren't bad people should be condemning the ones who are and taking responsibility for their community by not allowing them to speak the way they do and keeping them in check.

it's easy to ignore the problem or deflect the blame and cry "terfs in disguise!" or "4chan/kiwifarms!!" instead of recognizing that there are so many trans people who do threaten women with rape, because rape is something very real that can and could happen to any woman, it's easy to put a woman in her place to keep her quiet when you're threatening her with words like below.

when you look at this image, who is the one that's in the wrong? the one who said that or one who calls it out?

and if you follow satoryuga, there's no way you don't remember how many times she would mention "quietly deleting" asks that were "gross and scary." this harassment had been quietly happening to her for a lot longer than anyone could have known, she was going through this completely by herself all while still being friendly with others and continuing to post here, despite the fact that any of the people interacting with her off anon/on their real blogs could have been one of the anons sending her those messages.

i don't think i'd say the reveal of the reuploader was easy either, it took almost a month and a half but that is definitely the reuploader's real blog, of course he's denying it because he was bragging on the reuploader blog about how "easy" it was to find his real blog but that everyone was just too stupid to find it lol must have been a real shocked pikachu once some women in the fandom actually started exchanging notes and found his blog.

here is a response from twitter user sakurnes (at the bottom) who posted some receipts of some of the posts and people thea-nymo had been interacting with, along with the same speech pattern/phrases being used by both thea-nymo and the reuploader - and sakurne isn't a radfem if that makes you feel better about her post knowing she has no "hidden agenda" or anything.

at the end of the day, most of the people in the fandom who like posts saying things like "lul satoryuga might go blind in one eye stupid bitch terf" usually aren't the same people actually making posts like that. it was easy for thea-nymo to like posts talking about hoping satoryuga dies or that he wants to rape terfs when he isn't making or reblogging the posts himself, keeps his blog looking clean and innocent. who knows what other vile things he was liking or saying privately where no one could see/could find?

obviously there are people who support satoryuga, quietly or not, but it's important to recognize that there are so many people who really don't care that she got doxxed or injured, just because they're reblogging her gifsets doesn't mean they're not out there hyping up their edgelord friends and their pro-rape posts calling her racial slurs.

[uncoordinated-house-cat]

pls rant about nicholas ii 👀

dude i am so glad u asked. i mean, u didn’t ask for the entire rant about both russian revolutions, but here u are anyway. (but also im a teenager history student so this is very biased and i checked most of my facts but not all of them so don’t quote me and if a history person who actually knows what they’re doing finds a mistake don’t @ me) ok so nicholas ii was an absolute ********** and had an iq of -1000 and he was still super convinced that he could run all of russia, which is like a freaking huge country with millions of people who are super poor (peasants made up 85% of the population in 1905 when the first revolution happened, the number of people below the poverty line was probably way higher when the actual revolution happened and he got overthrown but bitch had it cOMING) 

so here’s the thing. nick, a spoiled child who let’s say is twelve years old when his dad alexander dies of assassination (omg i googled the dates and HE WAS TWELVE I WAS RIGHT FHDSJKLAFHSD) has been told, since he was a tiny but no less annoying baby, that he was amazing and very smart and was absolutely entitled to rule all of russia and he was like ‘hell yeah bro this is my divine right wahoo guess i don’t have to pay attention in my ‘how to be a good leader’ lessons cos god chose me to be the tsar so i already am one #thuglife’ 

so he met this girl named alix, who was princess of somewhere irrelevant and incredibly religious (and also deluded but that becomes important later) and he falls in love with her and they get married, which is nice but probably not a good long-term decision because through her friend, nick meets rasputin (and i love the ra ra rasputin song but rasputin was very very problematic) and that’s one of the many, many, many stupid things he does that makes literally every single person in russia (again, lots of people) mad at him. but nick is in love, and he marries alix, and this is all very nice if russia was a substantially smaller and easier country to run and nick was actually a competent leader then maybe there wouldn’t have been a revolution! but alas, this was not the case. 

so as we all know, russia is fucking enormous. for people who have never looked at a map in their entire life, this is russia

and it has more landmass than several continents put together. chonky boi. and the capital city where the royal family lives? well, you’d assume it’s somewhere in the middle ish, since russia’s such a huge country and you kinda need to be in the middle in order to have literally any idea what’s going on and stop your people from revolting under your freaking nose, so put it in the middle. 

but nOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. they put the capital in st. petersburg, a place that’s like five minutes drive from finland, estona, latvia, ukraine (although that would probably take a while but u get the point) and LITERALLY NOWHERE NEAR ANYWHERE IN RUSSIA. ARGH. 

i’m pretty sure the reasoning for this was ‘it’s been there since forever and everything was fine then so we don’t need to change it’ cos back when russia was actually a country-sized country instead of the mammoth it is now (we’re talking 1539, and by country-sized country it was still bigger than most of western europe put together), the country was all the way over to the left, where st. petersburg is, so they probably had the capital there foreeeeeeever. even after they expanded and became mcfreaking enormous bc sOmEoNe (not naming names *cough cough* ivan the terrible *cough cough*) decided it would be an awesome idea to have some expansionist policy, yay, and now we’ve ended up with this monstrosity. and while you might think that having a big country is great, it’s not. here’s why:

- so many people. soooo many people

- how u gonna keep track of all of them?? it takes like 8 years to get from one side of this bad boy to the other

- since nobody can control russia cos of all the land and all the people, the culture just goes absolutely backward. the peasants are too poor to afford food, let alone an education, and it’s not as if nicky is gonna build free public schools or raise wages or anything, lol, so the collective russian mindset is a bit of a dumpsterfire

- if, say, a revolution were to happen, which of course it can’t hahaha everybody know’s nick’s the divine ruler and overthrowing him wouldn’t be possible cos everyone’s so thrilled with their life in a very cold place with no food, awful policies, terrible wages and working conditions and a tsar who cares more about hanging out with his family than actually doing his duty as leader of the biggest country in the world?? then the tsar wOULDN’T KNOW THE REVOLUTION WAS HAPPENING UNTIL IT WAS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY AND SOMEONE WAS HOLDING A GUN TO HIS STUPID TINY PEABRAIN HEAD

and nick did not do a lot to help the russian people to live unproblematic, non-poverty-stricken lives. in the early 1900s, there was a big move to the cities cos everyone was moving to the cities which meant there were more educated people getting jobs or going to university and going ‘hey, our wages are shit, nobody has any food and it seems like the tsar is doing a really bad job and just living in the lap of luxury while his entire country suffers?? should we do something about this??’

but he did do something. oh, boy. nicky, looking at all his ancestors going ‘bro aren’t u gonna expand the country that’s literally the one thing russia is good at u can’t break our streak’ went and conquered siberia. then he built a railway, cos he needed a water outlet for trade and stuff. he called it the trans-siberian railway. he wanted to make it really big, and cross over into manchuria, so he had a bit of a war with china which he won and then he built the railway in manchuria. 

meanwhile, japan has been practising their war tactics a lot recently and while they don’t have much of a reputation in the west (like at all, nobody takes them seriously) and they also want to expand and flex their fighting skills a bit, they cross into manchuria and are like ‘i want this land. gimme’ and nick is like ‘nah fam i’m good’ and japan is like ‘>:( one last warning’ and nick is like ‘lol ur country is tiny and my country is huge have u seen all these buff russian soldiers i have guarding the railway i could crush u with my boot’ and then the japanese launch a surprise attack! on the russian squadron at port arthur. nick made the pikachu face, then the russo-japanese war started. 

uh oh, bad decision! looks like the russians are losing and even tho there’s lots of them there are more japanese and they have better battle tactics, so nick sends more soldiers. thing is, everyone in russia is already super poor so they can’t afford to have the [relatively] healthy, working men go off to war and die, cos that’s not practical at all and now they have even less money and food. fast forward, russia loses the war, nick makes the pikachu face again, stays in his nice mansion while the rest of russia starts going ‘grrr’ as well as ‘brrrr’.

and then this dude called gapon who’s a nice priest guy goes to petition the tsar to have better working conditions, fairer wages, a bunch of other stuff but they’re all very fair and reasonable. nick is like ‘nooooo!!’ and his uncle is like ‘nOoOoO!!!!!!1!!!’ and orders the army to shoot the peaceful protesters, so it gets called bloody sunday. this makes everyone really unhappy again, and it’s called the russian revolution of 1905 cos there are a lot of strikes and even while nick is like ‘haha this isn't happening’ they don’t reeeally accomplish much bc nick stays on the throne, and the russians are very mad but not mad or coordinated enough to overthrow the autocracy. there was this new parliament thingo called the duma, because nick’s only competent political adviser, count witte, was like ‘bro u literally have no choice but to form a new democratic government’ and nick was like ‘oh ok what if i made a government but it’s not really democratic or effective bc they have very limited power’ and witte was like ‘nick nO’ and nick was like ‘hehe nick yes’ and the duma was formed

--fast forward to 1917-- *time vworp noises*

so russia is poor. again. everyone is mad. again. all the men have been sent off to war. again. this time, it’s because of world war 1! 

and yikes, the russian army have it bad. like seriously, those dude were suffering lots and lots. very ouchy, no food, too cold, everyone is dying. it wasn’t great.

nick was like ‘hmm this war seems to be going well anyway look at my children aren’t they cute one of them broke an expensive vase today that’s so funny!!!’ (i made that up but he really didn’t care much and spent a lot of money u get the gist)

lots of strikes are happening. nobody is happy, and this time there are actually some organised people who can channel the rage into a revolution that might actually get something done this time. 

by the way, rasputin has turned up!! *cue the ra ras*

so rasputin introduces himself to some lady who’s a friend of alix, and alix, being super religious and super deluded and also having a sick son -

oh yeah, she had like five kids (was it five? not sure it was a lot) and the first four of them were girls and she was like ‘oh my god who’s gonna rule the country i have to have a boy’ and then she finally had a boy and his name was alexei and everything was great until they discovered that he had haemophilia, which is a hereditary illness that means ur skin is super weak or smth and whenever u, like, bump a table and u would normally get a little bruise, instead u start bleeding like you’ve been shot and yeah it was super problematic and it meant alexei was constantly sick and bleeding

- and so alix said to rasputin, who proclaimed to heal people like he was basically jesus, ‘yo dude can u pls heal my son it’s pretty urgent ngl’ and rasputin was like ‘uh huh lemme just take a look at him’ and he had a check up with alexei who somehow healed?? i don’t know how, he just sorta did, (he still had the haemophilia but alix was convinced it was gone for good) and so she turned into rasputin’s Number One Fan and started spouting all his very false religious conspiracy theories and made him a very important member of politics which was Not Good

and then count witte, the sensible one, was like ‘hmm this rasputin fellow seems kinda shady also he has thousands of STIs i don’t think it’s a good look if ur wife is hanging out with him all the time bc there are lots of rumours and he just seems super sketchy i reckon we should get rid of him’ and nick was like ‘no U’

he just uno reverse-carded him. witte tried to investigate rasputin and then nick was like ‘hmm i guess i’ll dissolve the duma cos ur being annoying’ and witte resigned like two days later. fair. if i had to deal with nick on a daily basis, there would probably be a lot of punching (of him, by me, in case u couldn’t tell bc im full of rage)

and there were a lot of rumours going around about alix & rasputin (which was kinda fair, because they hung out all the time and rasputin was a very sus person) so alix’s credibility was questioned and she was accused of selling secrets to the enemy, which was a bit dramatic (im pretty sure it was because she came from germany, and she was called ‘the german woman’ by a lot of the public)

--- also this isn’t very relevant to nick but i thought it was incredibly funny how rasputin died and it was time for a break from all that serious stuff so ~INTERLUDE~ --- 

note: start listen to rasputin by boney m cos this is where it gets hilarious (and the song also narrates his assassination lol)

so nobody liked rasputin. he had a lot of sex with pretty much everyone, he was very religious but also spouted a lot of nonsense, he was involved in some very dubious stuff and he was in favour of a lot of policies that the general public did not want at all. so a lot of people tried to murder him. and nearly all of them failed!! turns out, rasputin is really difficult to assassinate. there were a bunch of attempts on his life, all failed, before this one dude was like ‘bro i gotta put a stop to this’ so he invited rasputin to his house cos he was rsaputin’s bud (his name was yusupov btw)

dude gave him some cakes. they were laced with cyanide (poison) and rasputin was like cronch cronch, nom nom. did not die. ate a lot of cake. 

yusupov was like ?????????????

gave him some wine. wine was also poisoned. rasputin was like ‘dude this wine is good where can i get some more’ and he drank three glasses of it. the wine was poisoned with cyanide as well, btw. and the doctors who had helped plan this had carefully put enough cyanide in each glass to kill SEVERAL MEN. still not dead somehow???? 

so yusupov went ‘ok time for plan c’ and shot him. rasputin was like ‘ow’ and fell over. yusupov checked his pulse, there was now, he was like ‘ok good job’

and then while they were discussing their cover story upstairs, yusupov went back down to check on rasputin’s body and dude was sTILL ALIVE.

so they shot him again, tied him up, shot him one more time for good measure (and they shot him in the forehead at some point but apparently he was still alive???) and then they threw him into a frozen river. where he died of hypothermia, after having consumed enough cyanide to kill dozens of men and being shot three times, one of which was literally in his head. hhhh.

*sigh of relief* he finally died. fINALLY. the dudes who assassinated him got exiled but nothing worse than that because everyone in russia was like ‘well someone had to do it’

~~END OF INTERLUDE~~

now shit is getting rEAL. i mean, not for nick, obviously. but everyone else is like ‘ohmygosh rasputin is dead we actually got something done yay!!!’ 

so it’s february 1917 in petrograd. nick is on holiday with his family 800km away with literally no idea what’s going on. 15 million russians were away at war, and 1.7 million had died. lots of strikes and protests are happening. bIG protests. people were breaking into stores to get food, because of the awful food shortages, and it was very very cold so everyone was slightly extra mad. the police shot at some of the people who had gotten up onto the rooftops, so they protests turned into riots. all the people who were on strike from work joined the riots, and the women workers who had come out for international women’s day marched around the nearby factories and got another 50,000 people (including students and teachers) to join the riots (which was A Lot) and by the 25th of february the riots had gotten so big that pretty much every business in petrograd was shut down. literally everyone was rioting. 

the tsar was like ‘hmm that doesn’t look good’ and ordered his army to shut the riots down. there were about 180k troops in the city, but only about 12k were actually able to fight bc the rest of them were all injured from the war. they didn’t want to suppress the riots by force bc a lot of women were in the crowds (guess chivalry isn’t dead?) so when the tsar was like ‘no u gotta do it’ the troops were like ‘fuck u’ and either joined the riots or yeeted outta there. hooray!! 

the tsar was like ‘ok everything is under control’ (partly bc his official informant gave him the wrong info rip) and didn’t accede to any of the rioter’s demandsor do anything for a while. and here’s the thing. the tsar’s cabinet sent a telegram to nick saying ‘bro u gotta resign, we’re literally on the verge of revolution’ and nick read it, wrote ‘lol’ in his diary and refused to answer. 

the next day, there was another telegram saying ‘bro, u GOTTA resign. the revolution is happening now. if u don’t resign, the entire monarchy will be overthrown and ur reign will be o-v-e-r’ 

and nick wrote an entry in his diary saying ‘what nonsense is this? i can’t believe they’re sending me telegrams about this rubbish, as if i’m going to do anything’ (and im paraphrasing bc i don’t have my book w me but he definitely used the word “nonsense” and wrote a bunch of awful stuff about it) 

the next day, nick got another telegram that basically said ‘welp. country’s over. good while it lasted, revolution is happening now and it’s too late for you to do anything about it bc u didn’t listen to my numerous warnings to resign’ and nick was like ‘wait should i... do something about this??? hmm... yeah!! i’ll go up to petrograd and show ‘em who’s boss!! can’t defeat the absolute power of the tsar, huzzah!!’ 

and he went up to petrograd and got arrested. he had no choice but to abdicate, adn then he and the rest of his family were put under house arrest. there was a bit of an argument about whether they should be exiled to some western country, but all the western europeans were like ‘we don’t want nick u can keep him’ so they put him under house arrest in one of his palaces, where nick pretty much just chilled out with his family until they were all executed because everyone in russia was still very mad at them. 

(and in 1981 nick and his family were recognised as ‘martyred saints’, which is fine for the rest of them but nick absolutely did not deserve it)

thus concludes my very, very long rant. i spent way too long writing this, but my history teacher would be proud of me.

[wetwareproblem]

like... what part of "it's not transphobic to not be attracted to trans people" is transmisogynistic to you? what part of "you need dysphoria to be trans and anyone who doesn't have dysphoria isn't trans" (truscum ideology) is transmisogynistic to you?

Okay, let me break this down for you:

1. The entire “not being attracted to trans people” line? It comes from and is advanced by TERFs. In particular, there’s some very specific wording patterns and tactics that show that origin, because they’re entirely unaltered from the actual-literal-TERF version: The constant shift to making it about the speaker in particular and portraying them as greedy or demanding, making it about how they “don’t wanna date you.” Except... it wasn’t about me. It was never about me. I might be greedy, but for fuck’s sake I have six partners! I’m polysaturated! I never indicated that it was about me in the slightest!

The entire point of this shift is to take it away from the actual societal structural problem, and make it about that greedy trans woman who demands that you date her and fuck her or else you’re a transmisogynist. Zero points for guessing where exactly this caricature comes from, because if you pay attention I just told you.

2. It is about a societal structural problem: Trans women, like a number of marginalized groups, are simultaneously hypersexualized and desexualized by western society. We’re sex objects who exist solely to titillate - but don’t be caught being titillated by us, because everybody knows we’re disgusting and ugly and unfuckable. Expressing our sexuality comes with a significant risk of violence and, for TWOC, murder. Refusing us our own sexual agency, while at the same time rendering us down into sex objects for cis consumption, is oppression. Oppression aimed at trans women in particular is transmisogyny.

3. Trans people, and trans women in particular, are incredibly diverse. We’re all over the world, in every shape and colour you can think of. Literally the only trait that all of us share is that we are trans. So... the only reason you can be ruling us out as a category is because we’re trans. Saying that an entire group of marginalized people is undesirable because of their marginalization is, in fact, bigoted as fuck. Most of tumblr seems to understand that putting “no rice, no beans” in your Grindr profile is fucking racist; why, then, would it not be transmisogynist to say “no trans women, cis women ok?”

(Hint: You’re about to respond with a stereotype that is demonstrably not true of trans women as a category. Don’t do that.)

4. Perhaps you missed the part where the dude in question was literally talking over a trans woman about an oppression she faces but he does not? If this were literally any other combination of “dude who doesn’t experience this oppression” and “marginalized person who does,” would you think it was okay? Because... yeah, that’s an act of active bigotry. What do we call bigotry aimed specifically at trans women again?

5. I’ll end this section on the same question I’ve been asking every time y’all push back on this: Where the fuck do you think all the trans women are? Why exactly do you think we’re not interested in your movement, if it’s so very safe and I’m making all of this up?

(Hint: Trans women are clearly seeing something that makes them want to steer clear. You may want to ask what that is.)

As to the dysphoria part... you’re gonna have to show me where I said that was transmisogynist. (I mean, believing that would have literally killed me, but that’s still not oppression or bigotry aimed at trans women in particular.) It’s blatantly and wildly wrong, as stated by the people who literally defined gender dysphoria in multiple official documents and confirmed by the world’s leading experts on trans people, as well as the world’s leading cis experts on trans people (since I know cis opinions are so very important to the transmed community). So... yeah. It’s wrong but not in itself transmisogynist.

Are there any other Social Justice 101 topics you need cleared up?

[iodos84]

In light of certain discourse about bisexuals, the concept of coming out, and POC "coming out", I wanted to share my story. I want to show that "coming out" isn't possible for a lot of us, and some of us are not given an opportunity to positively come out at all.

I am one of those people.

I've liked both girls and boys for as long as I can remember. However, I live in a very homophobic town and even complimenting a girl growing up would have slurs thrown my way [or worse]. I wish I was kidding; I was just trying to be nice one time and compliment a classmate on her eyeshadow. She spit out, "What are you, a fucking d*ke?" Everyone from teachers to classmates thought I already was some type of slutty satanic lesbian because I wore lipstick, purple, and Metallica t-shirts. Again, I wish I was kidding.

I think my friends knew. I was the girl with Anne Rice erotica and a dresser full of junk food in her room. Some of my friends were more open that they were queer, but I always hung back in the shadows. I pushed the boundaries in other ways, but I honestly didn't think I'd find someone who saw my value. I didn't even see my own value. Boys openly shared their revulsion about how they "hated" me, but still tried to grab my thighs. I was in love with idiots. I wrote poetry that my male teachers said was romantic as hell but should have sounded alarm bells to anyone actually paying attention.

Then there was Diane.

I am not even sure it was real romantic tension, but my friend Diane was my defacto dance partner for slow dances in high school during my freshman and sophomore year. She was a year ahead of me. She had these rope-like scars up and down her arms that she said were from a heroin overdose. It always felt like there was something there, but neither of us said anything. I am absolutely terrible at small talk, which is hilarious considering that I successfully worked in sales for a long time. She and I would always wind up sitting together as the couples stepped away. We would slowly walk to the dance floor with her softly looking me as I consistently broke eye contact. It was too much and I didn't feel like I was enough. I was absolutely terrified that others would pick up on us dancing and there would be worse ramifications than the time I wore white pants and the sequined buttefly top.

Years and years later when I was attending a friends' wedding, my partner asked me to dance. I started crying on the dance floor; I missed how intimate those moments were and I had missed so many of them.

I had absentee parents, but my brother was also intermittently a ward of the state so we always had the government at our door. I even had a social worker assigned to me until I turned eighteen, to make sure I stayed out of jail. She didn't help me navigate my trauma or any of that shit, she simply was there to keep me out of jail because I kept fucking up so bad. She was always professing how trustful she was, so to test the waters I told her that I liked girls AND boys. I was fifteen.

"Oh, Kat. That's just a phase. You'll get past it soon enough."

I think that was when I really gave up on trying to get the adults in my life to listen to me. It literally felt like a door was slammed in my face. As an adult, I've felt like this many times with my own father listening to his diatribes about how perverted we are within the queer community. And both me and one of my sisters are out to him. I've had a few "friends" within the queer community tell me that I'm mistaken or that it's not a thing to be bi. That you have to choose one or the other. It gets worse when they find out that I've dated trans women.

I don't talk about this stuff to just unload a bunch of unprocessed trauma into the world. Like anything else in my past, I'm exhausted from carrying it around and I just want to move on. But this feels more complicated than reconciling my family completely shirked their responsibilities with us. I am hoping that by sharing my experience, I shine a light into a dark area that a lot of us are in. This stuff really hurts people. And think of how many people, especially kids, choose methods of escapism or death because anything is better than living in such an unsafe space?

I told my partner earlier today that there are some deep wounds because it was never safe to be completely "out" here, it's not safe even within our own family. But as I get older, I feel this overwhelming urge to start being more vocal again, to be as authentic as I can. I am also incredibly lucky that I have my chosen family.

[thedreadvampy]

"my entire maths class is BS based on the wildly inaccurate claim at the beginning. my teacher told me 2+2 is 4. it's not 4 it's 3. you know? 1 2 3? which is exactly why 2x2 is 3."

[responds to my post about how TERFs hold a simplified and nonsensical version of a meaningful idea by saying that you, a person who self-identifies as a TERF, hold that version of that idea]

(actual points below cut. friends pls block the tag #terf nonsense if you don't want to see. terf nonsense. bc as you know I cannot leave well enough alone even when something is obvious bait.)

people don't. interact based on sex. they interact based on percieved gender, which is often but not always founded on some physical sex characteristics.

you can shout 'we always know' all you want but for starters the amount of TERFs who've claimed with great confidence that I'm a Definite Actual Man when I'm a cisgender woman (I know this bc I am currently extremely on my period) suggests that people don't actually have magical Biological Sex Radar. as does the number of butch lesbians I know who are regularly mistaken for men (not called men perjoratively but like. people are surprised to realise they're women) and have to repeatedly remind people they're women bc ppl slip regularly back into treating them as men. I know trans women who've been in a community for decades and when they've mentioned that they were living as men until their 30s people have been surprised or full on disbelieved them and again people forget. I know a lot of my friends are trans and I still regularly have to consciously remind myself that my friends experienced adolescence as a sex other than the gender I know them as.

Even if you personally magically knew everyone's physical and chromosomal sex and even if that was the only gendered signifier you (consciously or unconsciously) took into account in interacting with someone, you're not the only person interacting with them. I'm interacting with people. the people who call my mum 'sir' because she has short hair and trousers and is 6 foot and they aren't really paying attention are interacting with people. people who think that everyone with facial hair and large hands must be biologically male despite many cis women having facial hair and large hands are interacting with people.

and spending literally five minutes in the world looking critically at how people interact with each other would tell you that physical sex is not the only defining factor in whether someone is treated as a man or a woman. the only reason you think it makes any sense at all to connect socialisation and sex directly without the intermediary of percieved gender is

a) you've started with the a priori assumption that sex is real and gender isn't

b) you've started with the a priori assumption that trans women are make in every way that counts

c) you literally do not have a solid conception of what socialisation means other than Proof That Trans Women Are Men which is why instead of saying anything to address any of the criticisms of that idea of what socialisation is I've put forward, you just reiterate that you believe the thing I already said you believe.

also please shut the fuck up or bring an actual explanation of how you think a purely sex-based form of socialisation works. because right now all you're doing is proving my point that we can't talk about the absolute basics of social reality without someone coming out of the woodwork to try and make it mean something utterly unrelated both to usable social theories and to reality.

I do not actually care about your arguments, because I'm trying to engage with the actual problems creating massive gendered inequality, poverty and susceptibility to abuse not waste my time pissing around with people who claim to be feminists while stubbornly refusing to understand any form of feminist theory more nuanced than Penis Inherently Creates Violence Uterus Inherently Attracts Subjugation. but if you are going to make them anyway could I suggest you come up with something a bit more robust than 'you're wrong to say X doesn't mean Y, because X means Y.'

honestly what really annoys me is how much transphobia strips us of very useful language by making it be commonly understood in Very Weird Ways

take 'female socialisation' as an example. it's a common TERF dogwhistle which makes it really hard to talk about but also. the way that it's used to undermine trans people betrays that some people are working really hard to twist concepts to suit a trans exclusive worldview.

like. nothing about the concept of gendered socialisation implies it's exclusive of trans people or directly connected to passing, or that it's reliant on childhood experience, or that it's static.

female socialisation just means people interact with you as if you're a woman. male socialisation just means people interact with you as if you're a man. it doesn't say anything about who you are as a person but it does affect how you behave and react.

the way it's often framed by TERFs is like. you were understood as a boy at 4 so you're Male Socialised Forever. but that's a weird fucking way to understand social development. like it kind of implies that you just Stop Socially Developing after a certain point. you are who you were when you were 10 and after that you never learnt or changed at all? that's weird. what's that about, guys, are you unchanged by any social interactions you've had in adulthood? that's not. good.

like I think anyone who's watched anyone they know transition can probably recognise that gendered socialisation Is A Thing. it takes a wee while to adjust to the expectations and norms and experience of being reacted to as a man when you're used to being treated as a woman, or vice versa. and knowing what it looks like from outside isn't the same as experiencing it from inside.

but like. that's a process all of us go through throughout our lives, adjusting to different ways of being received socially. there's a difference between being perceived as a child and as an adult and as an older person. you socialise differently in different spaces, with or without your intent. if people treat you differently you react differently and if people hold you to different expectations it changes how you understand yourself.

(also. changing from 'being treated as a man' to 'being treated as a woman' doesn't start when/if you start being read as a cis woman. it happens in any circumstance where someone knows that you're a woman or thinks of you as a woman.)

(they may treat you as a trans woman rather than the way they treat cis women, and that may be in a really shitty way, but although people might think that they think trans women and men are the same thing, they don't act like it - they hold trans women to different standards and react to them in different ways than they react to people they think of as men. being met and understood to be a trans woman is no longer male socialisation. being met and understood as a trans man is no longer female socialisation. even if everyone around you is a transphobic shitheel, that's not Continued Socialisation As Your AGAB bc the subtle and obvious ways people treat you and think about you change when you come out)

like. gendered socialisation is not really about you. it's about the people around you and the conscious and unconscious ways our reactions are shaped by what we know or assume about people. it doesn't say anything about your internal reality, your future or who you are, but it does affect your experience and behaviour in minor and major ways.

but like. it takes some real commitment to misunderstanding social existence to think that a trans woman who's been out for 30 years and is exclusively known as a woman has more male socialisation than a butch woman who's read as a man and rarely bothers to correct people, let alone a trans guy who's been out as long.

gendered socialisation is, very objectively, A Thing That Happens. people who are mostly being treated as women tend to have different social behaviour, expectations, neuroses and blind spots than people who are mostly being treated as men.

but to take that concept and understand it as a reason why Trans Women Will Always Be Men requires:

thinking that social and psychological development stops dead at an arbitrary point, which is fucking depressing

thinking that cis men and trans women are treated identically, which is very provably untrue

ignoring the observable ways that non face-to-face interactions (eg email or online chat) are very visibly altered by informed or assumed gender

thinking that gendered socialisation is a binary m/f switch rather than a cumulative pattern with a lot of variance

ignoring the VERY OBVIOUS FACT that people's behaviour, reactions and self-image changes a lot in the early years of social transition in response to differences in social pressures and expectation

and then like. the fact that people are so determined to misunderstand ALL THESE VERY OBVIOUS ASPECTS OF GENDERED SOCIALISATION in order to prop up their own transphobia

kind of cuts us off from readily being able to talk about the ways that masculine and feminine socialisation materially affect all of us and particularly affect the safety of women and people being treated as women. like how the fuck are we meant to do a feminism when every time we bring up one of the foundational bases of gendered operation we end up having to spend our energies trying to correct these Extremely Basic Misreadings of the ideas involved like no Joanne we're not talking about how Anyone With A Dick Is Dangerous we're talking about how misogyny is invested in every part of how people are socialised. we're not litigating whether being given a toy truck means you'll never understand the Struggle Of Womanhood we're talking about how people percieved as men are incentives to perform violence and people percieved as women are incentivised to manage emotions. get your fucking brain in gear we are literally talking about incredibly basic foundational feminist ideas and you can't even grasp those because you're trying to fit every peg into the square hole of Trans Women Are Oppressing Me Personally By Existing? Trans Women Are The Sole Face Of Misogyny?

like shut up or catch up ladies. gendered socialisation isn't an argument against transness. the existence of attacks on bodily autonomy isn't an argument that misogyny is purely biologically based. the existence of female sex offenders, trans or cis, isn't an argument against heavily gendered patterns of abuse. Bigotry wearing the house of feminist theory genuinely prevents us from discussing or tackling the issues that Actually Exist by poisoning or diluting words and concepts that reflect actual realities into hollow weapons against trans and nonbinary people and I am sick to fucking death of it.

[sounds-of-stormy-nights]

Soo, I probably care a tint too much about this video. What I like about it in particular is the metaphores, I could relate to them a lot, but I never had the words to describe these feelings. The metaphor of the bar created a very vivid image in my mind and that's what I drew.

"To me, pretending to be this man is like living in the trenches. Going to war every day. [...] And even when I'm not in the trenches, when I'm in the line in the bar, somewhere miles from the front, I can't relax. Because I know tomorrow I've got to go right back out there. The war never ends."

To me, it doesn't feel like "standing in line", it feels like sitting alone in the bar at two am in a constant fight between staying awake and falling asleep. Drinking too much in an attempt to forget what you've done, but it doesn't work.

(At this point I should probably clarify that have never been to a proper bar, nor have I drunk more than half a pint of beer, but the metaphor still works and you know, there are other things that get you into a similar state of mind.)

My mother told me to "stop caring so much about what other people think about you". And while that may be some valid advice, it doesn't help with me being trans. I can't let everybody believe I am a woman and just quietly be a man in my head. Because even when I'm alone I have body dysphoria and I always know that I'll have to go out and "be a woman" tomorrow. That's what I've been doing for the past three years and somehow I've survived until today, but it's no way to live.

And while being trans is just one part of me, it is still a piece of the mosaic that is my personality and it is not something that I can ignore.

And while transitioning, or quitting a job will not solve all of my problems it will take take away a lot of the stress. I know that, because I've experienced what it's like to be called by my new name and he/him pronouns. I know what "living as a man" is like. It does take some time to get used to, because Being A Socially Accepted Teenage Boy comes with a lot of expectations, but first, I will not be 16 forever, and second, I would still pick this over "living as a girl" any moment. Sadly the euphoria after coming out doesn't last forever, but at least I won't have to feel the pressure of "living as a wrong gender for me" anymore.

In the video, the character goes on to say goodbye to the audience, Abigail (literally) comes out and talks about her life, how she got where she's now, and how she is finally happy. I chose to draw this scene, because it is where I am right now. I am still in the trenches, mostly. Every once in a while I get a few hours off, but I haven't exactly quit, yet. Hopefully someday, I'll be able to draw the sequel to this.

I think the person in this drawing is supposed to be my past self. I drew Abbys dress, because I wanted to keep the connection to her video and because it would have hurt too much to draw my actual old clothes and look at reference pictures of "me". Plus, anybody could have worn that dress. I'm not totally happy with how it turned out, the back is twisted kind of weird and the legs are also tilted to the side. Apparently, after five years I still can't draw butts lol.

Drawing the chair was a pain in the a**, but as long as you don't pay too much attention to it, I think it's alright. Adding the "spark" under the glass was a last minute decision, because I felt like there was too much empty space. It is too saturated for the rest of the picture, but other than that, it has some nice symbolism. The spark isn't right next to the person, so it cou mean that it was not only captured, but also set aside. The quote especially resonated with me, because yes, I have written some (beautiful or not) poetry about "what it's like", and to somebody else it may look like it's all fine, but this is not the way I want to spend my life.

[15.02.21, edited]

Inspired by https://youtu.be/AITRzvm0Xtg