#sometimes being out as a lesbian is radical enough

[quillkiller]

did your lily ever come out to petunia? And if so, how do you think petunia took the news

i’ve never really thought about this!! but no i don’t she ever does ?? lily always sort of accidentally stumbles into lesbianism in adulthood to me !! as if there’s been a door in the corner of her mind under a notice me not-spell and she opens it and her entire sense of self and what she thought was true just. shatters. it’s a long and tortureous journey for her, really just The Comp Het Girl who really really doesn’t want to learn that she’s a lesbian. but she can’t unsee it and there’s no way to go but through the door and eventually she’s happier and more free than she’s ever been <3

i think tho if petunia was to find out it’s just another thing she’d latch onto to make lily feel bad about herself ?? another reason to call her a freak ?? which is interesting to me because i think petunia too is the absolute picture of comp het. and i honestly think petunia is the type to know she was a lesbian from a young age but choosing to just simply repress it. very similar to how i view bella. like just knowing that yeah okay im a lesbian but that will just never matter. i have other things to think about and there’s no space for me to be a lesbian. so petunia would just sort of lock it up in a box in her mine and throw away the key. maybe in her next life. etc etc

so yeah …..

[pawberri]

thank you for all the posts you've made, your takes are always so refreshing to hear.

I want to know your thoughts (if it's okay with you, you can also totally ignore this) about all the "men hate" I see online. like I (poc transmasc non-passing) get it, there are genuine societal gender problems. transmisogyny does exist-women face more challenges than men do. but it genuinely hurts when women, especially trans women, think it's funny/quirky to call men trash or say they want all men dead or whatever. idk I just am hoping someone else understands, you know?

There's a lot of nuances to this question. First, I just want to caution against focusing too much on trans girls as the perpetrators of this. A lot of the asks I get from trans men seem to really fixate on trans women as the perpetrators of hard line gender essentialism. I really think trans girls are not the main people we should be focusing on here. If a trans woman is saying this stuff, take the time to analyze her ideology outside of that pithy comment and consider how much trauma and how little power she has in the world. That said, trans women are affected by this kind of ideology just like us, and they rarely have the power to wield it against others in the way cis people can. I know it hurts to feel isolated by your own community, but that kinda gets into my second point.

Part of dealing with this is learning an impulse progressive cishet dude have had to get used to over the decade. Sometimes, "men are trash" or even "kill all men" are not literal phrases. They are things women say when they're in the throes of trauma to vent their frustration. "Men are trash" in particular is generally pretty lighthearted and used to complain when you have a bad date or something. You have to get used to analyzing what someone actually means and airing on the side of empathy. You, as a man, are the one with some amount of systemic power over that woman, so you are the one who needs to prove you are dedicated to not being a misogynist. The same thing happens when my friends say they hate white people. I have to assume they don't hate me given that I'm their friend, but that I still have some of the negative traits of whiteness. I need to care enough to be a good friend by being anti-racist and checking myself on my behavior. I need to be willing to prioritize their comfort over mine. That includes not becoming this meme:

Now that that's established, there ARE times when "all men are evil and should die" is an actual ideology. It's an ideology that hurts tons of minority groups before it hurts the most powerful, but it's also not really great if we assume it only hurts cishet white guys. Following it to its logical conclusion, it just proposes a reversal of oppression dynamics. This gender essentialism is a key part of radical feminism, trans exclusionary or not, but it leaks out of that community to general feminism all the time.

As a young person on Tumblr and Twitter, this deeply affected me. I internalized the idea that you can "just be a girl." It was repeated by some trans girls, but also a LOT of TME people. It was framed as trans inclusive, but it's trans inclusive in the way "political lesbianism" is lesbian positive. It posits gender as a moral choice that is completely up to the individual and unrelated to biology. It's the lazy version of "gender is a social construct." I felt sick and disgusting for wanting to be a boy because tons of well-meaning friends of mine had made it clear that "being a boy" was a choice, and it was the wrong one. "Boy" was a social category that could and should eventually be eradicated. Trans women were conditionally supported because they, in theory, made this future possible. This didn't amount to actual support, of course. It was an ideology mostly spread by afab queer people that mostly benefited afab queer people. There were a few trans girls who spread it, maybe some due to genuinely believing in the ideology and some due to social pressure, but there were also a lot of people straight-up grifting as trans girls who used this thinking to feel powerful in a niche community of teens. Remember fucking Yandere Bitch Club???

At a certain point, I genuinely thought of being a man as an unambiguous moral failing, and I lashed out at out trans men because of it. I wanted to feel powerful, and here was a type of man in my community I could shame and exclude. I still feel bad for making a bunch of ~girls only~ stuff in HS that excluded the one out trans dude at our school, my friend, because he was just a ~binary man~ and leaving him with no friends and no community. I treated transphobia like it wasn't a real oppression on its own and, in doing so, perpetuated transphobia. It happens a lot.

I wasn't really able to accept that there was nuance to the concept of manhood until I read this article while struggling to accept my own gender:

This is a pretty seminal piece of writing. It has its flaws, of course, but the empathy and intersectionality it highlights was life-changing. It also shows that this kind of thinking is largely perpetuated by TME people and hurts trans women greatly.

Gender essentialism is a bad ideology, it's a transphobic, transmisogynist, racist, etc etc ideology. It's literally essential to patriarchy. But it's also very easy to repackage into leftism and easy to dogwhistle. As a result, it's natural to be hesitant when you see someone saying they hate all men, but you have to tread extremely lightly and actually care what they're attempting to express. Because, yeah, men as a social class still hold power over women. They still have reason to fear and hate men.

I'm writing a comic about this stuff, actually, so look out for it in the future..........

[velvetvexations]

I'm going to try answering multiple asks in one posts to cut down on hitting my limit and declutter lol

I believe they were hyping themselves up for being a transfem ally who got to clapback to transmisogyny in a way that was totally epic and cool and they want us to fuck them so bad

What annoys me even more about this is that they still call baeddel a slur even though it was brought back for the first time since literally the Middle Ages by a group most agree were completely fucked up, and it's like, hey, shouldn't other people be able to use baeddel in that retaliatory way then? Why can't they have their justice slur?

We understand. One of us identifies as as cis woman and another as a cis man, although funnily enough, while the trans woman and two non-binary members also have physical dysphoria, the cis man is is probably the one who feels it the hardest including wanting giant knockers. We're a strange bunch. It's okay for systems to have a complicated relationship with their body.

We love you, all of you, and we hope she feels the solidarity. <3

Honestly I'm really tempted to next time I shave just because of how good I've been feeling about my butchness lately because of Velvet Nation, and also wanting to triple dog dare transradfems to say I don't look feminine enough to be a trans woman.

tpwrtrmnky 🤝 JK Rowling

creating a series beloved by queer people only to unfortunately have your brain poisoned into obsessively perpetuating transphobia

huge W for trans women though because she speedran that shit

I still don't think we need to be questioning her claims about being ostracized and I'd seriously prefer we stop doing that. It is, however, extremely weird she's still ranting about this like a week or two later, it's pretty clear she bare minimum has a problem with melodrama and should probably limit her engagement with the internet until she can get herself together to not collapse like this when people gently point out something she said not vibing.

Sometimes it feels like transradfems who act like egg jokes are vitally necessary to liberation have the exact same mindset as cis lesbians obsessed with "losing" AFAB people to being trans.

yeah, well, maybe so, but looking like a woman is a privilege and you're a gender traitor

I literally quit Reddit and came back to Tumblr because it drove me fucking insane that the D20 fandom kept calling a high schooler a nepo baby because her dad was a real estate agent.

High fashion, honestly.

Yes.

the thing you have to understand is that being a masculine man is bad but so is being a feminine man, being a man is just bad, that's why trans women are transitioning out of it

I'm so cool and sexy

Thank you anon!

Radical feminism, trans or trans exclusive, is in fact a cult, including frequently attempting to isolate minors away from outside support networks. TERFs and transradfems are the most miserable and sickening mirrors of each other.

[olderthannetfic]

I’m this anon who asked about radical feminist/trans debates. I appreciate your response and those of your commenters, particularly @elfwreck who described a long evolution of discourse that I’ve missed. I’ve not been intentionally dense…just a woman and working mother who’s been busy as hell for about the last 15 years and focused on getting through the day. I’ve always supported gay rights, never gave it a second thought. With my kids older and more time on my hands, I started exploring fanfic and have been drawn in. One thing led to another and I find myself down tumblr rabbit holes with women raising questions about girls sports and the dangers of HRT for teens and whether lesbians are allowed to not like dicks, with responses that generally amount to “die terf”. I start researching online and find academic papers and news articles, but find essentially a similar message to you and your commenters: “radical feminists are obviously wrong and not to be taken seriously”. No addressing the questions I’ve seen raised. I get the point—one side is indefensible and I missed the boat on seeing the discussion play out many years ago. I suppose I was looking for a short cut through social media which feels silly in retrospect. Regardless, the radical feminists are out there making intellectual arguments across social media on a range of topics, including men in general, misogyny, porn, prostitution. In all likelihood the post that first pulled me in to their viewpoints related to the imbalance between women and their husbands with respect to child raising, housework, and expressing anger over daily aggravations, which rang completely true to my personal experience and that of other women I know. Likely why I now find myself caught up in fanfic escapism. Anyhow, I’ll dig in deeper to academic literature on the intersection of women’s rights, gay rights, and trans rights because I finding myself caring to know this history now.

--

It happens.

A lot of the roots of current feminist debate are in the Feminist Sex Wars of the 80s. Those were about differing ideas around protecting women and the implications of pornography.

(TBH, part of how very old arguments are able to rear their ugly heads again is that this shit is old enough that the youth weren't born yet during those debates.)

While not about trans stuff per se, some of the ideas about embattled women whose territory is being encroached on link back to there. The "argument", to the extent that the anti-trans side has one, tends to be about defending women's spaces. Many of these arguments are coming from a place of genuine fear. (Maybe not realistic fear, but I believe them that they're traumatized and reacting accordingly.) Some, however, are malicious indoctrination.

There have been efforts (sometimes admitted to publicly, often not) to literally infiltrate young lefty spaces with this kind of rhetoric. It's the queer and female youth version of gamer boys getting indoctrinated by the alt right. So people on my blog have very limited patience for anything that gives this shit the time of day.

I don't think there's a particularly good shortcut since it's the culmination of decades of fighting.

But where I'd start would be by saying that a lot of the arguments sound good on the surface but boil down to "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" traps.

If someone on social media is still hung up on "But BDSM is abuse! A woman cannot meaningfully consent because [bullshit we fought about in the 80s]", we have nothing to say to each other.

The anti-kink and anti-trusting people when they say they consent attitudes tend to go hand-in-hand with suspicion of trans people and refusal to let people define their own identities.

Misogyny and unfair work distributions are absolutely real, but there's a certain "war on women" rhetoric that's about as legit as the "war on Christmas".

The "other" side agrees about a lot of the basics, like the fact that a lot of dudes really need to hold up their end of relationships better when both partners work and nobody should be solely in charge of the house.

But some feminist classic like the comic You should've asked is not on "The Feminist Side" as opposed to "The Trans Side". Regular feminism doesn't take issue with trans people. Lots of regular feminism accepts that women are kinky and horny and like impure things.

These feminist basics are often used as a strawman ("Our opponents disagree with this basic idea they clearly do not actually disagree with!") and as camouflage for much stupider ideas, like the notion that trans women would choose to be a demographic that gets murdered in bathrooms a lot. It's not cis women who are in danger from trans women! That's complete horseshit.

A lot of the talk of embattled lesbian space actually means "Oh no, some butches came out as trans men eventually, and we have to acknowledge bisexual women now".

--

Re the HRT thing... Yes, there are dangers to prescribing kids and teens hormones. A family should go into the process with a clear understanding of the effects on bone density and such. These risks can be managed the same as menopausal women manage bone density risks. These are not horrific and unknown problems: they're commonplace medical issues we've dealt with before in other contexts. They don't have to be a big deal unless a kid has some pre-existing bone disorder or something.

The part the transphobes don't tell you is that the biggest danger to trans teens is suicide.

Depending on which study you look at, something like 80% of trans youth have serious suicidal thoughts and maybe half make an actual attempt. Lots of teens have issues, but these rates are staggeringly higher than for cis peers, even cis gay peers who also tend to have higher rates than cis het teens.

Forcing someone to go through the body horror of the wrong puberty is... well... not great for their mental health. So a lot of medical professionals are understandably eager to treat kids and teens early because of the huge lasting mental toll. Taking hormones early can also result in an adult body that passes better. And perhaps people shouldn't have to pass as cis to be treated how they want to be treated, but we live in the real world.

Some people do start treatment and then regret it. That's reality. But it's a small percentage, and the issue is often that they're nonbinary and weren't presented with any options other than cis of their assigned sex at birth or transsexual in the 90s sense where you want the full top and bottom surgeries and you're still very binary. I know people who've detransitioned to a degree, but they're not like "Ah yes, I was 100% cis and a fool!" There was generally something going on, just something harder to pin down.

(In fact, most of the "evidence" of people regretting transition are from contexts where the only way to socially transition and get your government ID changed and so on was to do the full medical transition. The regretters would most likely have preferred something in the middle but were not allowed access to what they needed by punitive laws.)

A bunch of alarmist dickheads want to tell you that trans youth don't know their own minds and that everything will be safer and healthier if they just wait to get treatment. In most cases, this is completely untrue.

There used to be far more psychiatric roadblocks to getting physical medical treatment. What the haters want is for these to return. But they didn't deter trans people back then, and they're not going to now.

--

Re the dicks thing... People roll their eyes because it's such an old canard. Nobody thinks lesbians should be required to like dicks. Nobody thinks lesbians should be required to date trans women either.

But lots of trans women get bottom surgery and don't even have a penis. In any case, whether they get surgery or not, reducing them to a body part is the kind of bio-essentialist nonsense feminism normally strives to debunk.

These arguments boil down to "Have penis, will rape".

--

Re sports... Trans women don't end up being the issue. In practice, when there's a lot of scrutiny, what happens is that black cis women are seen as literally not female enough and racist shitheads demand that their hormone levels be tested and they be branded Not Female for testosterone levels or something.

Whatever this kind of regulation is intended to do, in practice, it establishes a correct way to be female, and that way is to have a body that conforms to a particular "feminine", white beauty standard.

The athletes who end up being attacked are sometimes intersex, which they may not even have known. Sometimes, they're just taller and stronger than other women. Often, they don't look normative enough to a bunch of creeps because they're too black.

The assholes cover it up with a good line of patter, but that's where this ends: treating black women like freaks.

--

The bottom line is that anti-trans supposed feminists try to pretend they speak for feminists in general and that there are two major sides locked in conflict.

In fact, they're fringe weirdos who've gained new prominence, particularly in the UK with the backing of JKR, and the rest of the feminists are over here going "This shit again? Jesus!"

I don't waste time debating their "intellectual" arguments on social media for the same reason I don't debate eugenics-preaching racists or fundie religious nuts.

Hence the lack of good resources on "both sides".

[burningtheroots]

Hey, I'm a cis lesbian and I used to be a radfem. I was sexually harassed by a man during my middle school years and it made me so angry at the world, and thus I started hating all men and thinking they were evil and they should die. Despite the fact I had male relatives and friends who were nothing but kind and supportive and loving to me.

After some therapy and reflection, I realized that I was just taking the easy way out. It's easier to turn your trauma and fear into hatred and anger towards a scapegoat group instead of actually doing the hard work of self reflecting.

Are there evil men? Of course. Is the patriarchy a problem? Definitely. Are there transgender people who are only trans to pray upon others? Inevitable.

But just as there are bad people in every group of people, that doesn't define them. Most trans people I've met know genitalia preference is a thing and respect that. The ones who don't are just full of themselves. Most of them just want to live their life the way they want to live it. In such a short amount of time on this earth, why waste it being hateful to others?

Continue to fight for female-sex rights, that is important. Fight for gay rights, fight for women rights. But all of these can be achieved without fearing or hating all men and transgender people. If anything, that just gets in the way of achieving real change.

Sorry for sending such a long ask. I'm not trying to be rude or mean. It's just, I worry sometimes about the young people in this community because I see myself in it, and how scared and unhappy and angry I was all the time because I refused to actually work through my trauma....and of course, like I said, this is not me saying there aren't things wrong with the world. There are. But not everyone is out to get you, this world is beautiful.

I'm not trying to invalidate in feelings you may have. As women we are dealt the short end of the stick from birth, and it is important we keep fighting. But fight against the real enemies; the lawmakers, the corporations, societal expectations. But "men" and "transgender" as a group as a whole are not your enemies...and using intentionally proactive language like that, it harms your chance of people wanting to listen since you're insulting people based on something as fundamental as their gender or sex. I think all of you could achieve great stuff for women if hating the "other side" wasn't in the equation.

Anyway, sorry again for the length. You might think I'm being ridiculous and this may never change your mind. And that's fine. I just felt sharing my perspective as an ex-radfem may be interesting or helpful, or something.

Hey! I‘m sorry for the late response, I wanted to have enough time to reply throughoutly & was quite busy this week.

First of all, I‘m sorry that this happened to you and I‘m glad that you had support from your family and friends.

However, I think the assumption that radfems, and me in particular, blindly turn their trauma into hatred is incorrect and doesn’t take into account that radical feminism is a feminist theory which analyzes, exposes & fights systemic oppression.

It‘s a fact that every man is complicit in & benefits from misogyny and patriarchy to a certain degree, which doesn’t mean that we think every man is an evil predator. As for me, my standard is that a man has to be 0% misogynistic — which is the minimum, I expect further allyship — to be "good". Somehow women are looked down upon when they have such "high" expectations when it comes to members of their oppressor class, and I‘m aware that it‘s nearly impossible to find a man like that in our current world, but does that mean I should tolerate even 0.00001 of misogyny from a man? No. It means I‘m perfectly justified to center women & particularly like-minded women in my life.

As for transgender people, I don’t hate any dysphoric (!) person for being dysphoric and trying to live their life. I actually care a lot about the well-being of dysphoric people, but I‘m also well-aware that the TRA ideology (which doesn’t equal individuals with actual dysphoria) blatantly attacks women‘s rights & protections, and while many trans-identified people respect sexualities as they are, my criticism of the movement is still valid.

And I understand & respect where you‘re coming from, though I think that radical (=root) feminism is often falsely mistaken for extremism, which it is not. Since discovering radical feminism and other radfems, I actually feel much more understood and safe.

Women‘s rights & liberation don’t have to be palatable to men, and everything I share and say on my blog is backed up by facts. I don‘t "hate men", I hate misogynistic men — and it‘s on them not to be one of those.

Anyways, thanks for sharing your experience and being friendly. It‘s quite refreshing. xx

[holeymolars]

"Jewelle Gomez suggests that butch and femme were the first instances of transgender within queer culture, the brave and unexpected appropriation of gender roles, the practice of gender trespass. But transgender presents a quandary that any future theorization of butch/femme will have to address. Heather Findlay articulates part of the problem here when, implicitly refuting Gomez' postulation of a continuity between butch/femme and transgender, she asks whether there are any butches left in San Francisco who are not in the process of becoming men. On the one hand, lesbian scholarship wants to affirm the specificity and irreducibility of the butch as part of lesbian history and culture: a butch is not a man, and ought not to be seen as trying to be one. On the other hand, what do we make of the number of butches who seek to cross over the line between butch and man? If we do not try to think through that relation, how will we be able to acknowledge and understand the desire is clearly motivating an increasing number of butches as they make the transsexual turn?

The questions posed by transgender promise to become some of the most vexing and most important for the radical theorization of gender in the next decade. Is transgender a betrayal of lesbian identity, or is it the radical extension of the butch/femme challenge to gender norms? Does it support the most idealized and recalcitrant forms of gender norms, or does it expose the way in which every body 'becomes' its gender? Does it to submit to a medicalization and normalization of the gendered body, or is it an active appropriation of medical and surgical resources in the services of making a life more liveable? Can we say for sure whether cosmetic surgery that seeks to enhance the ideal femininity of a body is radically different from transsexual surgery, or that either are radically distinct in their cultural meanings from piercing, as Lisa Walker asks? These questions have no easy answer, for once we accept that gender norms constitute our desire and fantasy, and seek to enter into the rearticulation of those norms, do we occupy a place outside of that circle by which we can judge: this is subversive, this is not; this is radical, this is reactionary? Making life liveable, taking lesbian lives out of the shackles of shame, developing a vocabulary that is rich enough to sustain such lives in language, may sometimes entail entering int radical uncertainty over what the borders of being a lesbian are."

Judith Butler, Afterward in butch/femme: Inside Lesbian Gender, edited y Sally R. Munt, 1998

[owlbelly]

this is so so so petty but

sometimes i think about this couple i met in college who had this incredibly queerer-than-thou vibe & positioned themselves as fairly gatekeepy experts on gender stuff (both identified as genderqueer, part of the reason i felt like it wasn't available to me) & also as super politically radical, which intimidated me at the time as a "GNC but cis i guess" monogamous lesbian who thought marriage equality was the most important civil rights issue for queers

& the fact that they went on to get married (there was never even a barrier there since they had different birth assignments & could pass as a straight couple), have a baby & open a fucking microbrewery. also i'm not even sure either of them identifies as trans anymore?

which is obviously not the kind of track my life took lmfao like i am not here for the "who's queerer" shit but by the standards they were holding people to in our early-20s! it's a little bit rich!

sincerely wishing them all the best, they seem really happy, but i sort of wonder now if all that shit was just defensive on their part & covering a deep anxiety that they in fact were "not ___ enough"

anyway don't confidently lay out the criteria for being queer/trans or leftist enough because the people you're posturing to will remember it & have a laugh about you later if you don't measure up to your own bar

[opinated-user]

i'm going to ignore for a second how LO has shown that she's just as gender essentialist as any other terf, in both her own works of fiction as in reality, or that she has even defended a radical feminist that SWERF use as their foundation for their nonsense. those things do contribute to the why i call out LO as terf adjacent, but let's put them aside for a moment. why do people call you a terf when you're a queerphobe or when you generally treat queer people as the enemy to take down? because terfs are the one weaponizing queerphobia in a real world sense.

this picture was used as an illustrative example of "lesbian being pressured by trans woman to have sex", in this infamous articles from the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-57853385 terfs are currently using queerphobia as another way to create division in the whole community. once they have managed to convince enough people that queer should be erased, who do you think is going to be next? but not everyone is from the UK in the first place, which would be a moot point to make because do you think terfs care about that? they only see you legitimatizing their position that nobody ever should be called queer, that queer is a bad word to use, that the people who call themselves and their community queer are bad selfish people who want to force you into accepting their identity. it doesn't matter if you're from the US, Canada or any other place, they'll use that as further proof that they're right and that other people who also "force them" to accept their identity are equally as bad and should also be erased. take a guess as to who that could be refering to. as a sidenote... do you really think the UK is the only place in earth with terfs? it's where they're the most prominent and have the most political power, that much is true, but terfs exist everywhere and sometimes they do get to have an impact if given the chance. why do you all think there has been an increasing number of anti trans law in usa? why do some states have outright banned drag performances? let me be clear about this. not being queer is fine. don't wanting to be called queer is fine. correcting people who call you, you individually, the person, queer is totally valid. as long you respect the right of queer people to exist and understand our need to have our own queer community, because we'll always have that as human beings that we're, we can all coexist no problem. but queerphobes like LO don't do that and it's disgusting to even pretend so. she has made post after post about how we, queer people, are self hating morons who are beneath her. she has told anons writing to her about how they should change the name of their identity. she has actually said that "people who reclaim queer should choke". she has made an entire video full of misinformation with the express purpose of convince people in general that they should never use queer, ever, and comparing the people who do with the most hateful horrible kind of people you can meet. i have a whole tag called "lily orchard is a queerphobe" because she has done this so frequently, so blatantly and so obviously that i'm actually baffled that she thinks she's foolling everyone by reducing her hatred for us as simply "don't liking to be called that word." anyone can visit that tag and see that it goes a lot harder than that. i don't know OP, but if all they ever said was that they don't want to be associated with that word because of personal negative experience with it and never said anything about queer people as a group or as a community, then yes, it would be wrong to immediately call them a terf on that basis alone. that's not the case of LO, as i argued above. she might not be exactly the same as a terf... but does she ever make their work a little easier by normalizing their ideas.

[askgothamshitty]

sorry if this ask is kind of loaded but I feel like I'm not radical enough, I know this is going to sound silly and maybe like bait but this has really been stressing me out 😅I'll see takes from TIRFs online who'll say stuff like "if I had a child and they were a boy I couldn't love them" or referring to men as "moids", or saying women with boyfriends/husbands can't be radfem, and I just don't see how that line of thinking is anything but reactionary, even if it's supposedly trans-inclusive? typing that out I feel like makes me sound like a bootlicker for men but I'm literally a man-hating lesbian..but then I see other people agreeing who I respect and I feel kind of crazy for disagreeing and I'm like...am I wrong for thinking this is reactionary, am I just defending men? but I can't understand how categorizing a group of people as inherently evil does not fall into biological essentialist rhetoric.

also counter-productively, as a lesbian, I feel like this just ends up hurting us instead of men, like men aren't going to care if they're predatory but a lot of what is said can be applied to us (for ex: the claim that all penetrative sex is abuse, although to my knowledge this isn't something that has actually been written in any feminist theory and is a misinterpretation of criticisms of cishet sex? I have only seen people online say this anyway) and I just get extra worried that I'm a predator...maybe I just think too much about what random strangers on the internet say idk lmfao😵‍💫

I’ve come across those types, too, and while I sympathize with their hatred of male violence and patriarchal culture, I do think the sentiments they share are ultimately reactionary. Even if they don’t outright say that “males” are born with some “evil gene”, their thinking leads them to the same place - that men are doomed to become oppressors and that relations between men/women can never be revolutionized. This line of thinking, in my opinion, is still functionally biodeterminist, and thus ends up being transmisogynistic. We can see that in the way they often argue that this damning process of “male socialization” also affects trans women since they were AMAB.

I would not say these people represent radical feminism as a whole, though. Most second wave thinkers did not come to the conclusions that we need to, say, ban straight women from feminism or abandon male children. Although they took the prevalence and influence of patriarchy seriously, they still had hope and believed feminism could ultimately change the misogynistic relations and ideologies that make men, men. And if these online radfems are saying things like, “all penetrative sex is rape”, then they’re indicating that they are simply ignorant of radical feminism, since Dworkin explicitly said this was not the conclusion to draw from her work.

As I said, I sympathize with the core feelings these women are dealing with, but their extreme nihilism and lack of faith in the revolutionizing power of feminism makes them ultimately disagreeable. Add in the fact that they adopt 4Chan slang (and sometimes berate male-attracted women with misogynistic language and slurs), and they can be very off-putting and offensive. So you’re definitely not wrong for (or alone in) feeling the way you do.

[libracorpvs]

Hey thank you for liking my post and tags so much!! :) I could have worder things better and nicer (and that typo will haunt me forever lol) but I'm just so tired of seeing radfems endlessly criticize liberals and conservatives for labeling certain types of women as a derogatory group allowed to be hated and blamed for all the faults of the world, and then doing the exact same thing to women who *are even trying to be feminist* but just aren't as radical as them. Like at this point they use "libfem" in the exact same was that TRAs use "TERF" except their problem with them is that their feminism "isn't going far enough" instead of "going too far." And don't get me started on the whole political lesbianism/""bihet"" thing where they outright (finally) admit they think male violence is partially OSA women's fault and some of them even deserve it for "perpetuating the cycle of it by not rejecting men" and OHHHHHGJFHDKFNDLSN

Anyway sorry for the rant this turned into haha, I just feel like I'm losing my mind sometimes when "the last bastion of true feminists who actually care about women" is festering a culture like this (especially in some of the most popular bloggers on here) and you're the meanie for calling out. It's a huge breath of fresh air to find out there are women like you who actually see there's a problem, thank you so much for reaching out!! :)

i loved your tags, they were absolutely spot on!! this weird attitude is so widespread on radblr too, i just don't get it. it's a fundamental misunderstanding of feminism to think that you're superior to other women and no longer subject to the patriarchy just because you've opened your eyes to it. the patriarchy affects us all, it's not an opt-in/opt-out thing! so if your feminist action revolves around blaming women for not being feminist enough to magically end the patriarchy then it's simply not feminism, it's misogyny with extra steps. i made a post along similar lines before and some of the notes are wild. a few people took a screenshot of that post and added their comments as well and it was absolutely bewildering. how are you fighting for women's liberation when you seem to enjoy shitting on the majority of women? on the same post there's also a great tag on there about how if your feminism isn't practical enough to be useful then it's navel-gazing nonsense (so true)

the whole OSA thing as well.... there are patriarchal dynamics around any relationships with men and it's worth scrutinising those dynamics in depth. somehow this has been misinterpreted to mean that we should criticise individual women for experiencing sexuality. it's a normal and innate aspect of human nature..... female sexuality is scrutinised and politicised enough already, how is it somehow a feminist action to further politicise it?? and if it's not about politicising female sexuality, then how come we don't see 174929 posts about disowning your father brothers uncles cousins etc??

you're so right, the main thing that separates this behaviour on radblr from the misogynistic behaviour of conservatives/liberals is that radblr has picked a different group of women towards whom it's acceptable to be derogatory. i was pretty surprised to see this kind of shit coming from alleged radfems too, but there's definitely plenty of us ladies who see all of this and think 'no thank you' so you're not alone!!

[loser-female]

I'm sorry that you've gotten hate over having a boyfriend. This is one part of the radfem community that I too, could never get behind (and I'm as misandrist as we come).

I'm a lesbian radfem from a homophobic country and even though I have quite a liberal family, they are liberal for my country's standards, and I don't think I could ever be openly gay here. It's almost surreal to me to see the idea of a political lesbian - sexuality is NOT a choice!

Women's rights, health and safety - my mother, my sister, my female friends and teachers - are and always will be my priority. But if I could evade the stigma that comes with being a lesbian by simply picking to be straight, hand on my heart, I would. But I'm not straight, just like how some radfems aren't attracted to other women. That's just how it is!

It's not exactly "women's liberation"-ish of this community to shame women for finding partners that they love and trust or to assume that straight members of the community don't have the agency to drive their own relationships.

Hi!

Thank you for this message. I cannot comprehend how horrible it is for someone that lives in such counties, but I hope the best to you.

As you probably figured out yes, there is more to the story, and I discovered radical feminism last year, while me and my boyfriend have been together for a decade, we own an house too (I probably should say husband although we aren't legally married, but USians are weird around these things).

To me, I personally got myself a laugh at those anons, but it bothers me that an actual victim of abuse would receive those messages. I'm not even encouraging women to date men, I actually do the opposite(there is a reason why my links are all negative), but it's obvious even to stones that calling people names and wishing them harm is not a way to promote anything. This is why I choose to make people aware of how men are overall terrible partners.

I can get why and understand that my life choices are unpopular, and people are allowed to say "but that's not a good idea". I think that after all "is radical feminism compatible with dating men" is a good question and that there will always be different answers and this is a good thing! But this doesn't mean people are allowed to say "I hope you get abused". I hope no one gets abused. I'm a victim of child mental and emotional abuse and I'd give everything to prevent even a single person to go through this. I'm a feminist because in my utopian world no one gets abused and when it happens there will be community and resources for them. Not people telling them "but I told you so", "but you should know that men are evil" and shit.

That being said I will always support celibates, separatists, febfems and so on. I believe that in our difference there is good and that we can take collectively valuable lessons.

After losing so many years to illness I'm doing the best I can. And doing the best you can involves compromises sometimes. I always pictured myself living alone, but I'm not able to(and it didn't happen anyway). There is so many things my health took from me, and now I'm finally starting to be okay with how things turned out.

About political lesbianism, there were few interesting things going on radblr a couple of weeks ago, it's a really weird and homophobic idea that has nothing to do with women loving women. It's the kind of thing that happens when you hate men more than how much you love women.

I hope your country "will get there" in terms of gay rights soon enough, you deserve to live your life fully in your own truth.

Again, thank you for reaching out to me, but in reality I should have been reaching out to you and reassuring you.

[quillkiller]

butch dyke ginny is actually the only ginny that exists

LITERALLY!!!!!!!!

that girl has 6 older brothers!!!!!!! molly must’ve been overjoyed when she had a girl and could finally start buying girls clothes. and the comp het…… ginnys crush on harry when she was TEN ? and then she just never fell out of love with him ??? and i know for a fact that molly watered that seed whenever she could so harry could finally become part of the family fr. she dates around at hogwarts looking for male validation because all she knows she knows through femininity and how she’s being percieved through the male gaze. molly wants her to be her perfect princess daughter. shes not allowed to get down and dirty with her brothers. she’s ALWAYS seperated from them. molly wants her help in the kitchen and to go shopping and to learn how to be harrys perfect wife. and i dont even really blame molly for this either she got overly excited after being surrounded by boys and its the early 2000s!!! late 1990s!!!!

but finally ginny gets to go to hogwarts and she gets to play quidditch and she gets to be loud and brash and take space. she finally gets to be unpleasant and ’like her brothers’. which always sort of makes her ’one of the boys’ however she never ever will be because all her male friends want to fuck her. she’s still a girl to them. and im suuuure she was a pick me girlie and ’not like other girls’. then shes the saviours girlfriends and shes the wizarding worlds darling and she doesn’t have her own personality outside of being a woman. a daughter. someones girlfriend. sister. someone men want to fuck. SHE WAS POSSESSED BY VOLDEMORT WHEN SHE WAS 11 AND IF THAT ISNT A METAPHOR FOR COMP HET I DONT KNOW WHAT IS…………… her entire life is ruled by men, surrounded by men, while also having to be the good and perfect girl.

after the war and post hinny breakup she starts seeing a therapist/mind healer and they work through all of this and how femininity feels like a costume on her and how she can’t stand seeing herself in the mirror and how mens eyes on her make her feel dirty and she wants men to find her repulsive. she wants to be like her brothers, wants to fit in with them, doesn’t want them to feel like shes a ’girl they have to protect’. she cuts her hair short and starts wearing charlies jumper he forgot at her place once and she stops wearing makeup and men stop looking at her and she’s so relieved and so free and then she meet pansy in the waiting area (shes seeing the same therapist) and pansy calls her handsome while trying not to drool

and then they start dating and pansy talks about her own experience with lesbianism and her experience being femme and how she cant avoid men wanting her but she’s comfortable presenting herself the way she does and after everything that’s happened, her comfort means so much to her. pansy talks about how she knows shes subscribing to patriarchal standards but sometimes just existing as a lesbian is radical enough. she feels good about herself and she’s tuning out mens eyes on her but she wants ginny to watch her. she wants ginny to think she’s hot and she wants to straddle ginny and be her girl. its not a perfect world but having dinner with a handsome woman darting her eyes all over her body makes her forget about that and maybe that’s enough!!!!!!!! maybe desire isn’t bad!!!!!!! maybe being desired feels good and doesn’t have to feel violating!!!!!!! maybe excluding men entirely makes them both free!!!!!!!!!

im a little insane about them. 🧍

[yugotrash]

but really tho idk if it's a terminally online disorder but this weird position of reading and agreeing with so much of radfem theory but being a guy so thats not my community but also not belonging to even that tiny group known as "tehms" for a variety of reasons really alienates me lol.

No, it's not a terminally online disorder. Most humans need a sense of belonging to a group or community. This is straight up monkey brain feeling and it's completely understandable. I'm a het woman who wants a partner so i have no cards in radical feminism myself at least not entirely but I'm also not performing enough feminist acts to consider myself even just a feminist. Agreeing with the ideas and ideals of a group you can truly belong to does such and alienates.

i can predict the answer is "just dont seek community based on your politics/homosexuality" and id like that but that assumes that those things wont be an issue for any random group of people. and being a homosexual and agreeing with radfem ideas does shape the way i think the opinions i express a lot its not like i can hide either of those without a good measure of discomfort for very long. i have radfem friends of course but the sex distinction is understandably something that will permanently divide us and the gays tend to be retarded cumbrained or womanhating or all three so thats not gonna be "my people" either.

Yeah, sometimes it is impossibly to find a whole, ready-made group, but, and i know I'm the last one to preach as i don't practice it, you can try and start such a group, irl or online. It's gonna be difficult but I'm sure there are some other men here, maybe not necessarily homosexual, who might share the radical feminist views you have. It's not perfect, but at least they're not cumbrained, which is a low bar but it's more than nothing. And it doesn't require you to hide your homosexuality or how it affects you as homosexual because these guys are also empathetic towards lesbians. Again, not perfect, but a step in the right direction.

I know for a fact there are some "tehms" on this site who do not abide by the chronic brainrot others demonstrate. They're focused more on women's rights and while yeah, they will sometimes talk about how some guy is hot, or how trans-identified women and girls are awfully rape-y, they still put the risks to women higher up on the list, or, more precisely, women's rights before their own comfort, which i find to be charming and considerate.

maybe one or two guys out there but who knows where and who. and its not so easy to complete forswear the idea of finding friends or even god forbid a partner to relate to,,

Yes, there won't be many of them, and it will not ever form a large community (mostly became most men do not find anything worthwhile in feminist critique, and many men, gay or straight or bi, are just constantly thinking with their dicks, but, and i can't believe I'm gonna say these words, Not All Men. You're special, but you're not THAT special that there is only one edition of a person with such views and circumstances as yours. And that's perfectly okay, you are special in other ways. But the thing is, there surely are like-minded people, either online or offline, and I'm sure you can either find them or even reform some existing ones, to agree with you more, and maybe even find love.

~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~

Sorry for the long ask, i hope your birthday went well and that you had fun. Happy belated birthday and may you manage to find a sense of community and shared sentiments both irl and online as soon as possible 🩵

~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~·~

I'd reach out to you non anonymously but granted i do want to keep my main blog a secret and do not want to be seen as a pick-me or something.

thank you so very much for such a thoughtful message, i do feel much better about the whole thing now. it's good to be reminded that one is not really that special <3

[lastoneout]

Okay reblogging again to counter a thought process I've been seeing pop up recently in queer spaces and in the notes a little:

Yes, it is true that radical feminists and TERFs view trans women as men, however, that does not mean they are using men as a code-word that exclusively means trans woman 100% of the time and they actually have no problems with cis men at all. I cannot stress this enough, when TERFs say "men" they mean ALL of the people they view as men. They are absolutely 100% talking about cis men AND trans women AND amab nonbinary people AND intersex people(who they always seem to classify as men no matter what). They are not okay with cis men, especially cis men who are marginalized like black or disabled or gay men. There is NO world where a TERF or radfem would ever be okay sharing their "women's only" resources and spaces with cis men. Like they want to have special bars and shelters where they get to do pants checks and DNA tests before they let you in, they are NOT okay with cis men.

The foundational belief of radical feminism and thus trans exclusive radical feminism is that men BY BIRTH are inherently evil, predatory, misogynistic monsters who are not only capable of hurting women, but WILL do so if given the chance. Not might do so, WILL. It is only ever a matter of time in their minds. The reason TERFs hate trans women is because they view them as men who have "proven" themselves to be dangerous, being a trans woman is the same thing as being a sex offender to them. This is also why they will ally with cis men sometimes, they are slightly more willing to associate with men who in their eyes have yet to prove themselves actively dangerous and who have the kind of power they can wield against the "proven predators"(like if you're a cis perisex man who will attack the "predators" and respect their shitty conservative nonsense about women needing protection they will tolerate you) but make no mistake, they do not think there is a single man on this earth who is truly safe to be around, and they will not welcome them onto their "safe spaces".

This is also why radical feminism is so exclusionary, and what I mean when I say it does not offer ANY of us a future. It, as an ideology, does not believe it's possible to create a society with true gender/sex equality. They are not fighting for that and they never have been.

Men(including trans women and amab enbies and intersex people since they seem to think all intersex people are men) are a lost cause, there is no saving them because being a dangerous predator is baked into their DNA, and the only way to protect "real" women is to give them the power to make as many "female only" safe spaces as they possibly can, and advocate for women to distance themselves from men outside of those spaces. This is why political lesbianism was born, radfems believe it's good to stay away from men even if you're attracted to them, as well as why they tend to be biphobic and hate butches, our connection to men and masculinity taints us in their eyes. They also hate trans men because they view them as women who have betrayed their sisters by seeking to become men and escape the eternal subjugation women will always face(because again, to them it is impossible to change this and to be a woman is to suffer) and then subjugate and harm more women with their newfound man powers. Their masculinity taints them and makes them either delusional women who need to be "saved" and/or predatory freaks who are going to spread their illness to other women, whichever will hurt the trans man in their crosshairs the most at any given time.

They also sort nonbinary people in to man and woman and treat them accordingly. That's why you will hear stories of TERFs harassing nonbinary individuals in shelters and other spaces to find out of they're "really a woman or not", they think sex is all that matters and whichever you have determins how much you can be trusted and how you should be treated and where you should be excluded from.

(Also to be clear TERFs also do want trans men and afab trans people and intersex people to die. They just have a different way of going about it. They hate all trans people and everyone outside of the false gender/sex binary, never forget that. They might say it's out of love, but that doesn't mean it won't still end in death.)

It is SO important for us to recognize that TERFs and radfems hate men. They hate trans women because they view them as men, and they hate all people they view as men. If we ignore this we leave room for radical feminism to creep it's way unto our communities, or even worse, end up with people trying to make a trans inclusive form of radical feminism, which is IMPOSSIBLE. We must recognize our enemies to fight them, all of their beliefs are important to know so you can target them even when they aren't walking around being transphobic.

You need to be aware that they are anti-kink/sex work/porn, that they do not believe it's possible for any woman to have privilege over any man regardless of other dynamics(a white woman screaming and crying and calling the police because a black man stood near her is justified in their eyes), that women are inherently safe and men are inherently dangerous no matter what, that bi/mspec women are disgusting traitors for not giving up on men and they must constantly vocally hate themselves for it as penance, that women cannot abuse anyone, let alone men, that intersex people are subhuman and deserve to be excluded from society, that non-white expressions of femininity are lesser and a sign the person isn't a "real" woman, that they push women to never overcome their man-related trauma because living in constant debilitating fear of 1/2 of the population is good actually, that they use ace/aro and bisexual exclusionism to recruit, that they are overwhelmingly intersexist and racist, that anyone they view as a man dressing as a woman for any reason(trans or gnc or drag) is a misogynistic predator who must be destroyed, you NEED to be aware of ALL of this.

We cannot boil the vast, rancid ideology of radical feminism down to exclusively hating trans women and no one else. We HAVE to face them as they are, combat them wherever they pop up, ESPECIALLY if they aren't being transphobic. We need to stop talking about men and trans mascs and bi women and anyone else associated with men like they're gross and evil and deserve to be mocked/excluded, we have to make room for identities and gender expressions that don't make sense to us, we must liberate ourselves from all gender and sex binaries and STOP BEING GENDER-ESSENTIALIST. Like we REALLY cannot allow exclusion and bio/gender-essentialism to flourish AT ALL even if it's against people you don't understand like afab trans women and intersex people and bi lesbians or cis cross dressers/femboys/transvestites or trans men.

Radical feminism is evil and unsalvageable. It's legit basically conservatisim with a pink hat, half of these people, when you actually look at their beliefs, are nearly indistinguishable from a republican politician. So do not play down it's nature. I know it's nice and easy to think as long as we shut down transphobes then the radfems will go away, but radical feminisim is so much more than transphobia and attacking only the people who are openly mean to trans women will get us nowhere. The problem is massive and it's not easy to target and if you truly do want to actually make the queer community a safe place for us all then you have to know how to fight this shit whenever it rears it's head, even if it sounds reasonable at first. Especially if it sounds reasonable at first.

There is no room for exclusion and divison and hatred in our future and that's what radical feminism stands for. Do not accept it when it shows up, fight it with everything you have. We get there together or we don't get there at all.

Unity, not division, will lead to our liberation. Never forget that.

*grabbing young queer people by the shoulders* listen to me. radical feminism is inherently transphobic. you cannot rehabilitate it or reclaim it or make it trans inclusive, I don't care what the people on twitter who claim to be authorities on queerness say. the foundation of radical feminism is nothing but bio and gender essentialism and biphobia and aphobia and anti-kink rhetoric and intersexism and yes, misogyny. it does not offer a future, not for bi people, aroace people, sex workers, not for kinksters, or intersex people, cis women, or trans people regardless of gender and you should care about those people. it will never result in queer liberation because it is an ideology of exclusion and hatred. you gain nothing by buying into the idea that half the population is evil by birth or by transition. you gain nothing by acting like women are perpetual victims who can't think for themselves and are tainted by their association with men. being a man or being attracted to them is not a sin. if we truly want to stand a chance of dismantling the patriarchy we actually NEED men on our side especially marginalized men. they are our allies.

the problem with terfs is not just transphobia, it never was, the radical feminism is also so unbelievably harmful. you cannot save it and it will not save you, stop drawing lines between queer people and join hands with them instead. remove people who are actually harmful, not innocent people who happen to have the wrong sexuality or gender or job. we get there together or we don't get there at all. we need each other now more than ever. do not listen to those who seek to divide us even if they are queer. we all deserve so much better than the hell radical feminism pretends is a liberated future.

I do not blame anyone who fell prey to this rhetoric, I know it feels good to have a common enemy and lash out at those you think are siding with them however they do it, but men, especially marginalized men, are not your enemies. and it's never too late to realize that and change for the better.

[inphront]

17, 27, 40

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

anon anon anon i am KISSING YOU ON THE MOUTH for letting me give this infodump. ok SO i have two wips rn but i'll give the lore for my original work rather than my fic since i. y'know, was the one to come up with that lore. gonna go ahead and put a cut in now because this reply will be long as hell even before factoring in the remaining questions.

ANYWAY the story follows Miriam, formerly Zekaria, a woman who used to be the Oracle of her people's church. She lived in the Temple and was considered their primary line of direct communication to God-- she had the gift of prophecy and the ability to speak with God's voice, and was considered the most holy figure within the church. She took on this mantle at 10 under circumstances that were unusual but not unheard of (typically God, through the current Oracle, chooses a successor who trains throughout their teens and takes over the title and the gift of talking to God at the same time as they come of age. Zekaria, meanwhile, just kind of spontaneously started hearing from the divine at the same time as her predecessor spontaneously stopped and had to be rushed into the formal position), and thus spent all of her teenage years in a position of religious authority (or at least, as a religious figurehead; the High Priest made a lot of the big decisions). In this time, she got to know God very well. God sometimes appeared to her in human form when no one else was around, and the two wound up in a clandestine lesbian relationship, as you do.

So this was all fine and dandy, except that eight years before the start of our story, Zekaria's life came under threat, and God took on human form in front of everybody in order to take the blade for her, getting Herself martyred in the process. Obviously, God dying fucked with the religious order somewhat. The priesthood scrambled to figure out what this meant religiously, what it meant to have God exist in a human body and for that body to be dead. The corpse refused to rot, and the Temple eventually took to worshipping it. The body became their most prized relic and they started developing religious rituals around the never-healing, never-decaying stab wound in Her chest, and around the idea that they had to take good care of Her body because it was not truly dead and someday She would come back to claim it.

They no longer needed an Oracle, since God could no longer be reached by just talking to Her. They offered Zekaria a much less prestigious position within the Temple. Now, as it happens, our girl was Big Mad about having her gf's corpse paraded around and thought God would generally disapprove of all this, plus she was dealing with a fuckload of grief and survivor's guilt. So she went off on the priesthood, and they branded her a heretic, said she was bitter about no longer having the power and acclaim of being Oracle and ungrateful for God's sacrifice, and threw her out.

Flash forward to the beginning of the story. Zekaria has changed her name to Miriam. She's a bit of a social pariah because she's one of very few people not participating in civic religion/attending services at all, but literacy is rare outside the Temple, and she's managed to make a good living as a scribe. That and she's rooming with a local midwife, Ruth, one of very few people important enough to really get away with being an atheist. Ruth is delightfully butch and deeply jaded, having been radicalized by watching various social policies around childbirth play out. As of the start of the book (and currently I don't expect it to properly change over the course of the story), neither one of them has acknowledged wanting to fuck the other one. This causes many problems. Miriam's grief, like God's body, has been frozen in time.

Our plot kicks off with Miriam deciding to partake in an act of civil disobedience: she is going to sneak back into the Temple and bandage God's wounds, in hopes that it might make the priesthood and the people realize She deserves different treatment (and also in hopes that it'll help her process shit emotionally). So she makes it into the Holy of Holies in the dead of night, and while she's there, the plans get Badly fucked up by the fact that she witnesses the High Priest violating the body and impulsively steals God's corpse, which is about the highest-profile crime she could possibly have committed. The rest of the story follows Miriam's travels as she makes a desperate attempt to find a place where she'll be able to safely give God a proper burial, accompanied by Ruth (who is ride-or-die for Miriam, but contemptuous and increasingly jealous of Miriam's dead ex).

Anyway, that synopsis is already long as fuck, but hey, your ask was for the minutiae, so buckle in there's more! The worldbuilding thus far is based around city-states. Ihevzi, the city Miriam lives in (and promptly leaves with God in tow) has been in the process of... peaceful?... cultural expansion into neighboring areas and is slowly taking on a more nation-state type build. Within recent years, things have started getting a lot more aggressive and unstable because religion was their biggest cultural export. Having a God who functionally died in battle caused a lot of unrest in neighboring cities: it skewed public perception of Ihevzi towards both weakness and generosity while simultaneously driving its political reality towards brutal demonstrations of strength. The assassination attempt against Zekaria was blamed on a neighboring city who had difficult relations with Ihevzi and framed as an attempt at sowing discord so that they could swoop in and take over the whole region. In reality, Ihevzi's own Minister of Defense was hoping to start a war. She hasn't quite succeeded yet, but there's been consistent skirmishes, and that certainly looks to be a likely future. I don't know how much of this will end up in the text, which is in no way a political thriller; Miriam just wants God buried and could not give fewer shits about whether there's a war.

I have the vague shell of a conlang, too, or at least a couple rules I can use to make up words when it suits me. It's based around Proto-Semitic, with most of the words stemming from triliteral roots (the words for humanity and divinity are both derived from the root h-'-h, with H'h generally considered to be the true name of God). An unbelievable amount of the plot beats I have planned are in fact reskinning and/or subverting the books of Exodus and Numbers, so that linguistic group made sense as a jumping-off point.

I've planned an entire prequel as well, which means I've worked out a lot of details of Zekaria and God's relationship and have no clue how many of them I'll reference in the proper book. The two of them were honestly somewhat falling apart by the time of the murder, but Zekaria couldn't really leave because how do you break up with God, even when you don't live and work in a sacred building? God couldn't very well leave either due to not wanting to ruin her girlfriend's whole life (forget people having guilt complexes ABOUT God, we're bringing this one all the way to the top). Aside from all the religious themes, the book is HUGELY about self-sacrifice as an act of violence, the difference between power over survival and power over guilt, and whether there are right choices to be made in the midst of a dynamic as fraught as theirs was. Miriam first saw God's physical form at sixteen, and they got together shortly after that. Obviously, banging The Lord Herself is a pretty substantial blasphemy and not really considered an option, so nobody ever found out about it. Perks of being the Oracle are that you have access to a lot of inaccessible spots, and if you tell people to leave you be, they do it, so she could get away with divine lesbian sex. God dressed modestly, except for always being barefoot.

Okay I could continue but this is already SO much and you asked two more questions so I'll leave it there but yeah that's dead gods (a working title idk what it'll actually be called and would love suggestions), please please please send asks and DMs if you ever wanna hear more about it.

NEXT QUESTION!

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?

So a couple years ago I wound up in Thailand for a month helping a friend of my dad's with a screenplay he was writing. Absolutely terrifying for a million reasons, given this was an all but complete stranger who was trusting me with a story that was leagues outside the realm of what I usually write (courtroom drama based on the first case his dad, who was a public defender, ever worked) and was obviously very important to him. I felt completely unqualified to be where I was and like I had a ton to prove to this guy who was giving me the experience of a lifetime. Writing the character of his dad, who was the protagonist, was especially stressful because he was obviously looking at him as an actual person he wanted to honor rather than as a character in a story, which left me trying to piece together his flaws and his drive and all the typical character questions in ways that wouldn't seem disrespectful. All around a very cool experience that also scared the shit out of me.

40. Please share a poem with me, I need it.

A kinda lengthy excerpt from "The Body," part of an anthology I never finished:

Sometimes, when you’re both sure no one is looking, you and your body sneak out to the border between you and have conversations from opposite sides of the wall. 

You aren’t sure which wall it is anymore; there are too many to keep track of. Your body beats itself bloody against the bricks, wailing, gnashing its teeth, chanting:

man-WALL-woman-child-WALL-adult-good-WALL-evil-one-WALL-many-me-WALL-you-WALL-us-WALL-them-nature-WALL-culture-human-WALL-divine-mind-WALL-body-WALL-mind-WALL-body-WALL-

Please, you ask it, afraid it will hurt you itself. Calm down. 

Are you the [house] or its [inhabitants]? 

Are you the [weaver] or the [tapestry]? self-WALL-other, feeling-WALL-reason-WALL-

Are you ?????? OR???? past-WALL-future-WALL-success-WALL-failure-WALL

Your body isn’t much for conversation. 

Will you trust me again?

WALL-WALL-WALL-

You say “again,” but you’re unsure it ever did. You can’t reach out a hand, because your only hands are attached to your body and it is pounding at the barricades with them. It hasn’t trusted you since you built the border, since you trapped it on the other side.

WALL-WALL-WALL-WALL-01001000010001010100110001010000!

The story goes like this:

A great many people tell a small child to collect bricks and stones because someday they might need them to build something big and strong. They show the child the big, strong walls they have built. Fortresses and dams and barriers of all kinds.

The child wants to be big and strong, and they like pretty rocks. Their collection is bigger than any other child’s, and everyone knows they are destined for greatness.

They build fragile towers in their spare time. They make colorful mineral spirals in the dirt. They’re pretty, but they aren’t big or strong. The child’s collection of rocks shrinks every time, as they cannot bear to see their art undone.

The others grow worried and begin to throw bricks and stones at the child. “To build with,” they shout, enraged and terrified, but the child ignores them. The child does not mind to be in pain provided they can still build sandcastles and decorate them with little pebbles.

This goes on for some time until, as punishment for the child’s insolence, they are separated from their physical frame. God cleaves them in half, mind-WALL-body-

Upon seeing their body beaten and bruised from the crowd’s projectiles, the child is wracked with guilt. How could they have allowed their innocent form to be so terribly battered? How could they have permitted such harm to befall another? They vow to protect it better.

From the objects they’d collected and the objects the people had hurled, they build a mighty wall around their body, such that nothing launched in their direction would ever touch it again. It is the biggest and strongest wall the people have ever seen, and they heap praise upon the child and lay down their weapons with pride. The child is glad to have kept their body safe.

But the body is afraid and cries out, why have you forsaken me? I carried you within me all these years, even as I was wounded, so that you would never be forced to do anything you didn’t want to do. I suffered their many blows out of love for you, and you have cast me aside for the sake of their admiration. You have left me isolated in order to be praised by those who threw stones at us. How could you betray me like this? Have they truly taught you to hate me? self-WALL-other-WALL-

And so now, there are no more stones thrown, but instead the body throws itself back at the stones and flings itself onto the bricks and strikes the barrier with such violence that it is even more bloodied than it was before, and the child is angry that it has discarded their gift.

If you somehow made it to the end of this post, congratulations you are a god. Here's the link to the ask game thank you so much anon

[lettucedloophole]

despite being a tirf, tirf spaces do have a tendency to be terfy as a result of incomplete deradicalization (thus, internalized terfism) & the general ignorance every space but especially feminist spaces have to transfeminism & transmisogyny.

so, i don't mean to challenge that, though i will say personally that part of the reason i became a terf is because radical feminism was so much more effective than liberal feminism, & puts women + gender-marginalized people first in their own activism-- something every other branch of feminism (particularly marxist, & sometimes intersectional) has difficulty doing. and since i wasn't introduced to trans-inclusive radical feminism, & was often told it was impossible, i kept going on that route despite my doubts.

anyways,

terfism only affect trans women: it doesn't, but i don't see the problem in this being the defining characteristic of terfism as trans women stand to lose the most. it should be known that it's also generally transphobic, misogynistic, and often racist + antisemitic, but i firmly believe that trans women being hurt should be enough to pull you from the space. faulting radical feminism in itself as irreparably evil (rather than deeply flawed) leads to a loss of its greater insights (which are helpful to trans women too) & tends to demonize feminism in general, as the second wave is where feminism took shape en masse beyond just votes.

the meaning of womanhood: gender is a social construct created by the patriarchy. sex is an extension of gender, making them both fictions of the patriarchy. this means that there is no way to define womanhood without the patriarchy, as that would be either gender essentialism (gender comes from your Soul, not society, and girls & boys just pop out of the womb liking pink & blue) or bioessentialism (your sex is your gender, or only sex matters, i.e. terfism.) the ultimate goal of non-bioessentialistic radical feminism is to abolish gender (& by extension, sex), so that everyone is just a person who can do whatever they want with no coercion or oppression. this necessitates the destruction of the concepts of man & woman, though this is of course a centuries long effort... they'll continue to exist in the meantime.

women are endangered by men, especially in relationships: this is just... a fact. women face a lot of dv, 90% of the perpatrators of rape are men, 80%+ of violent crime is commited by men, and women need spaces without men, like female shelters and female bathrooms, so that they'll be safe when they're vulnerable. trans, gnc & non-white women should of course be included in these spaces as women, and trans / other gender-marginalized men (i.e. gnc or gay men) should have access to these spaces when they need them. but the destruction of these spaces would equate to leaving gender-marginalized groups in a free-for-all. for example, the reason trans women use bathrooms is not only because it matches their gender, but first and foremost, it is for safety.

socialization: yes, men & women are socialized differently. the alternative to this theory is believing men are more violent and women more timid just because they are born that way, which is bioessentialism. this doesn't mean socialization is stagnant or as simple as 'male' & 'female', and it certainly does not mean trans women are male socialized. intersectionality must be taken into account, and socialization is a lifelong process which may shift over time. it not only matters how the world sees you, but how you see yourself. terfs bastardize the concept with their simplified application.

relationships & sex with men: again, it's just a fact that relationships with women are safer than ones with men. does this mean "always perfect & without abuse"? no. but, this study shows bisexual women have the highest rate of abuse (followed by lesbians, then straight women) & reveals that 89.5% of that abuse was done by men. about 80% of bi women are in relationships with men, so this adds up. meanwhile, a third of dv against lesbians was committed by men, leaving lesbian relationships with the lowest rate of abuse. i don't understand how you mean to argue against facts.

prostitution: you often hear in radical feminist spaces, "coerced sex is rape", particularly in relation to prostitution or sex work. the thing is, adding money into the equation makes it likely that a sex worker is more likely to have sex with someone (the client, john, punter) they would otherwise not have sex with. money is then, by definition, acting as a coercive factor which tampers with or outright violates consent. the ideal would be that you have enough money to live without work, and then you can have sex with whoever you want without a want or need for money making you do something you'd rather not want to do sexually. this is why sex work is inherently unethical. does this mean every sex worker is a survival sex worker who hates what they do? no, i'm happy for the sex workers who are not suffering and are in a good enough financial situation to make their own choices without coercion. but honestly, what kind of fucking feminist movement focuses on the minority of privileged women above the majority of disprivileged women & gender minorities in sex work? these are old studies, but they show most prostituted people want to leave prostitution but can't, and have a history of rape, homelessness, drug abuse, csa, and etcetera. these are vulnerable people, many of which entered the industry as minors, and yet no one thinks trauma & financial coercion may have a part to play for them? no one thinks they're as important to speak of as the minority who are enjoying themselves? by the way, brothels do not fix financial coercion, and having a class of destitute women & gender minorities readily, sexually available for cis men does not help with cis male sexual entitlement. do people think woc and trans women are disproportionately present in prostitution because it's a good job? read this passage; (dworkin was also a sex worker, btw!)

lesbians are the most oppressed: some certified "i hate lesbians because a couple were mean to me online" vibes there lol

"women hate their bodies, cursed to reproduce and have sex with men": it's just like, so strange to see feminist critique of patriarchy being taken as a negative? yeah, women are taught to hate our bodies. yeah, afab people are pressured into pregnancy. and yes, women are pressured into having sex with men, even when we don't want to. and yes, this will continue until the patriarchy is destroyed. it's not all sunshine & rainbows when speaking of oppression. does obfuscating the truth help us in any real way?

this is a lot so i'm going to stop here. i feel like this gives at least, a basic idea for why i disagree with other points that i didn't specifically address. and i didn't specifically address some points because i agree with them; i just don't agree that they're exclusive or inherent to radical feminism.

while a vast majority of this is present in terf spaces, some of this falls into general conservativism or a strawman of trans women's points about transmisogyny. for example, "femininity is oppressed as well as women-- masculinity is rewarded." you can pass this off as conservative, but it's also similar to one of serano's points in whipping girl (and obviously, it wasn't applied in a conservative manner there.)

i don't necessarily agree either-- both femininity attached to anyone & masculinity attached to women or gender-marginalized people are stigmatized, but i suppose me bringing this up is just to say i'm not aware on what op's beliefs are, so this response may hit on some of the wrong points. i hope this is helpful, though.

It is deeply, deeply beneficial to TERFs if the only characteristic of TERF ideology you will recognize as wrong, harmful, or problematic is "they hate trans women".

TERF ideology is an expansive network of extremely toxic ideas, and the more of them we accept and normalize, the easier it becomes for them to fly under the radar and recruit new TERFs. The closer they get to turning the tide against all trans people, trans women included.

Case in point: In 2014-2015, I fell headlong into radical feminism. I did not know it was called radical feminism at the time, but I also didn't know what was wrong with radical feminism in the first place. I didn't see a problem with it.

I was a year deep into this shit when people I had been following, listening to, and looking up to finally said they didn't think trans women were women. It was only then that I unfollowed those people, specifically; but I continued to follow other TERFs-who-didn't-say-they-were-TERFs. I continued ingesting and spreading their ideas- for years after.

If TERFs "only target trans women" and "only want trans women gone", if that's the one and only problem with their ideology and if that's the only way we'll define them, we will inevitably miss a vast majority of the quiet beliefs that support their much louder hatred of trans women.

As another example: the trans community stood relatively united when TERFs and conservatives targeted our right to use the correct restroom, citing the "dangers" of trans women sharing space with cis women. But when they began targeting Lost Little Girls and Confused Lesbians and trotting detransitioners out to raise a panic about trans men, virtually the only people speaking up about it were other transmascs. Now we see a rash of anti-trans healthcare bills being passed in the US, and they're hurting every single one of us.

When you refuse to call a TERF a TERF just because they didn't specifically say they hate trans women, when you refuse to think critically about a TERF belief just because it's not directly related to trans women, you are actively helping TERFs spread their influence and build credibility.