#terfs just being really weird about women as usual

[velvetvexations]

My early socialization experience was weird as hell.

My mother wanted a daughter to treat like a doll with all the extremely gendered nonsense that entails - and was also a second wave radfem and former political lesbian, which...yeah she was half all in on the gendered shit, but also half in weird denial about it. My dad...is the one I got my auDHD from, and the result was that he raised me exactly the same way his parents raised him - which was also very gendered, but he didn't notice that. He didn't notice how differently they treated him and his sister. He just noticed what they did right by him and what he wanted to repeat. He taught me how to use tools and rebuild car engines and be handy and outdoorsy; while my mother was giving me the whole "oh sweetie don't get your dress dirty (: oh yes you should be a #girlboss in STEM but fixing a chair is too dangerous for you to do alone why don't you get your dad to help (: are you suuuuure you can lift that 8-pound object???" thing, my dad was teaching me how to operate a forklift and training me with good lifting technique and encouraging me to haul shit twice my size and letting me learn the kinds of lessons that can only be learned by minor injury. Damned near the only thing he WASN'T doing was the whole "man up" schtick, but even THAT I kinda got a detoxified version of; there was a lot of value placed on keeping my complaints in perspective, building my emotional regulation to the...best of my limited ability, and trying to solve problems independently - again, his WHOLE thing was pretty much just "what would I repeat from what my parents did to me? What would I change?" With absolutely no regard paid to "what was different for my sister? What would have been different if I'd been a girl?" Because he straight up didn't notice that shit.

As a result I fundamentally don't care that he can't quite get gendered terms right for me, because whatever, he's always treated me like just a she/her boy anyway.

Meanwhile, like I said, my mother considered herself a feminist, full on tried to force herself to be a lesbian about it in her 20s, and yet she STILL constantly underestimated my physical strength, treated my appearance like it was the most important thing about me, and kept pushing me to sit down and "be polite" - but she usually didn't SAY these things had anything to do with me being a girl, and in many cases probably didn't even realize they were herself. "Girls can do anything boys can do - but also if you fight back against your [also prepubescent, but male] bullies They Will Kill You To Death They Are Stronger You Cannot Win" was a sentiment I got (in much less clear terms) ALL THE TIME from her through elementary school. She was obsessed with my appearance, in that distinct radfemmy "well sure butches are cool but uh by butch you still mean skinny in form-fitting clothes with a pixie cut, right?" kind of way. She would never say I should dress "more ladylike" and would get angry at family members who WOULD say that out loud - she even introduced me to the concept that crossdressing is fine (sometimes) and that trans men exist (in which she made it clear she thought of us as just weird butch women) - but she would get really, really weird and cruel if I wore jeans she considered "unflattering".

And that's just the thing, about why all flavors of radfems are wrong about how "socialization" does and doesn't impact people! She never tied gender to a good half or so of those messages, so even after I started transitioning, they still felt like they were always aimed at me. Meanwhile, I got the same kind of auDHD from my dad that made him never see the gender of his own upbringing, only "things my parents did that I would repeat vs. things they did that I would not" - I only realized just HOW aggressively gendered my mother's behavior was by studying sociology years later.

Terfs are wrong that early socialization is destiny, everyone responds to the same messages the same way, and GNC "men" are treated wonderfully.

T[i]rfs are wrong that we all ONLY ever internalize messages aimed at our ACTUAL genders and trans men can just shake off misogyny because it's not REALLY aimed at us, regardless of whether that claim stays in the realm of "because WE know deep down that something is off when we're being called the wrong thing" or gets all the way into the batshit belief that everyone has ESP for people's essential soul gender and GNC men ARE treated just fine and it's ONLY eggmode trans women who get mistreated (and they all do regardless of how well they do or don't perform masculinity) and trans men are all totally raised as men and never treated misogynistically in the first place because of that soul gender ESP.

And ALL radfems are wrong that there's a rigid, universally applicable set of rules as to what socialization looks like based on your gender - just because there ARE broad patterns that DO need to be acknowledged doesnt erase the fact that from person to person there's a LOT of variance for a LOT of potential reasons, and that ends up meaning that in order to figure out what it means for trans people, you DO have to do a whole individual level examination - including by diving into the whole dysphoria-inducing disaster that is being perceived as the wrong gender and all that comes from it.

Also I sometimes half-jokingly identify as cis-bigender because between the thing with my parents, the fact that when I hit puberty it became apparent that I'm actually intersex, and the fact that I'm pretty sure I'd have been on the femboy-transfem cusp had I been AMAB, over 10 years into transition I finally feel manly enough to go high femme when the mood strikes, and I've finally gotten comfortable calling myself a girl when it's funny, I think that's a very fun label and about as accurate and honest as any single term comes.

I wish I could frame this ask.

[ventbloglite]

GC's, TERF's and other such transphobes claiming to be feminists like haleysaphicorner really baffle me in how incidentally sexist and just downright strange and unusual they are about women. And by women I mean cis women, and the concept of being a woman, womanhood etc (as well as the no-brainer hatred of trans women.) whilst claiming to defend them!

In their attempts to 'save' women and the concept of womanhood, they say things which actively degender women (including cis women), reduce women and womanhood down to sex only and place suffering whilst being born with a vagina as the only thing which truly shows womanhood outside of sex. All whilst judging the body types of other cis women, based on attractiveness and stereotypical femininity as well as choice of lifestyle, dress and personality traits. All of this which is done by the patriarchy. All of this which is done by the worst kinds of misogynistic cishet men you can think of. These things they are saying to 'protect womanhood' are exactly what has been used to oppress women for centuries. And they don't see it.

In your race to be 'critical' of gender 'theory' and destroy trans peoples ability to identify as they feel instead of what others tell them to be, you are directly contributing to the lines of misogynistic thinking that oppress all women.

The Patriarchy wants to see you as just some female, fit for your biological purposes and inherently defined by them! (Periods, having female reproductive organs and genitalia, being able to conceive and give birth, having large or at least noticable breasts). There is a huge difference between refusing to be seen as 'weaker' because of these body parts, which you may or may not view as special/valuable and insisting that they are the only or main thing of importance about being a woman at all.

The Patriarchy wants you to value yourself based on your level of conventional attractiveness (having the 'right kind' of 'female' body).

The Patriarchy causes you suffering and tells you it's 'because you are a woman/what makes you a woman'.

And TERF's etc believe it and promote it themselves because they hate trans people. Literally their hatred of trans people actually seems higher than their love for women and hatred of misogyny. It's a total misdirection that misogynists are laughing at. Fight the trans 'enemy' instead of the patriarchy and the Big Man laughs.

They would rather decide that animals have evolved these techniques because of a fear of rape* and the hatred of the bogies they make out of men in order to 'prove' that being female/a woman is based on suffering (ignoring the high rates of rape for trans women ofc). They would rather decide that they (and all cis women) are more of just a female and less of an actual woman, actively degendering women down to their base state, a less human state (and not in a fun therian way), a less of a person if you will, than share a gender with a trans person. Or in the case of trans men and AFAB nonbinary people (they are not ready to learn about intersex people), share a sex with someone who is not a woman.

If that's the hill they want to die on, then theyc an die on it. But they clearly have no respect for or understanding of women, womanhood or themselves which isn't dripping in misogyny as well as transphobia. Astounding how you can belong to a gender and so vastly misunderstand that you are more than 'just a female' and that womanhood looks different and is valid for every woman who should never be reduced to just genitalia or made to believe in 'divine suffering' instead of trying to actively change things for women so they don't have to suffer.

By the way; * I don't know about the spiders, but female ducks evolved that way not because 'all' duck sex is rape because Duck Patriarchy or some shit you believe to have in common with ducks (again in terms of actual human on human rape and sexual violence you do directly share that with trans women), but because it gives them active control over who does and doesn't get to impregnate them. They will relax their vaginas to allow a drake they like to actually ejaculate where he needs to, and keep it contracted and difficult to navigate for those she doesn't no matter how hard they try. Ducks are not walking away with trauma from 'being raped' and considering it 'part of what makes them a female'. They're walking away confident that this idiot just shot his load into an random pocket whilst her beau gets to make eggs with her. Have a source I guess.

[euniexenoblade]

since we're talking about call outs lately, i've been called out many times, most of which are made from lies and sometimes by altering screenshots, but the most effective call out i ever got was like, in early 2015 there was a tumblr user everyone knew was a terf, but she would say "actually i support trans women" this was before crypto terfs were as talked about so the language wasn't really there to say "hey this person is a crypto terf." but yeah some people put posts of this woman on my dash and i made a random post on my blog "why do yall reblog her shes a terf" and of course she searches her own name daily, found my post, and replied to it that me calling her a terf was racist. that was it. no other interaction. but she went on all night talking about me being racist and just making things up as she went "oh i bet she says the n word all the time irl" kind of shit that had, like no basis? But her follower base took it 100% and i literally had thousands of anons telling me to kill myself, trying to goad me into being racist (didnt work), and the most concerning thing was i got hundreds of anons being like "what was the point of doing hrt if you still look like that, you should kill yourself." It was like, violent and overwhelming. and on top of it I'd get random young teenager trans people who followed her and bought into her bioessentialism showing up in my messages being like "you give trans people a bad name" "you're why transphobia exists" etc etc it was fucking crazy.

but i lost like, no followers because everyone around me understood, this woman was a terf. this all set up the real one though.

later in the year a teenage "communist" trans girl made some snarky comment about me being racist on a post of mine blowing up. i ignored her cuz like, who cares it's just some random teenager. but i guess people were looking for a reason to hate me cuz that blew up, lots of people just took that at face value no need to investigate. when someone finally did send the girl an ask being like "hey how is she racist" she replied "I dont remember but I know she is" and even more people just took this as 100%. the thing is, i do remember her being one of those "you make trans people look bad" terf following young trans people, it's not that she didn't remember, it's that she didnt want to admit she followed a terf and she believed a terf just saying shit. I lost like 3/4s of my followers, i had a lot of people i thought were my friends just stop talking to me, and going forward every time i got a call out there would usually be a line of like "also she's racist, everyone already knows this" all cuz this girl needed to make a snarky comment cuz she just loves terfs.

the thing about the "i dont remember" bit is it made some weird game of telephone. "I dont remember" became "oh she's racist, i think she says the n word" which became "she called black bloggers the n word" like people just made shit up about me and connected it to this call out. and when id be like this isnt true id be met with a "this is just known, youre a known racist" and it's like, to this day i will still find people be like "hey good on you for growing as a person and not doing that any more" and its like I NEVER DID IT TO BEGIN WITH

[perseruna]

heyyyy do you have any details/sources for the ca*ill being a jackass thing? ngl i watch twn for yen and jaskier so i was already planning on continuing to season 4 but i'd love some reasons to be actively excited for the actor switch. but i haven't kept up on the behind-the-scenes stuff so i'm kinda lost on that front if you're up for sharing any of what you know!

okay guys buckle up this is THE anti henry cavill megathread xoxo

First of all him dating a teenager as a 33 year old fully grown man literally gross and disgusting.

Also as this quote implies they started dating a year prior and only went public when she was 19 so they supposedly started dating when she was 18.

His entire dating history is a MESS. Sure the women he dated are not him, but he chose to date them, I wouldn't even associate myself with people like these let alone be in a relationship with them. He dated the infamous transphobic TERF Gina Carano, albeit before her loud controversy, but I doubt her harmful views were any different back then. His current gf has a history of doing black face.

His "Me Too" comments.

His comments on the Me Too movement are literally so vile. If you don’t want to be called a rapist, just don’t rape women, it’s literally as simple as that. They’re even more foul because they’re promoting the idea that women lie about their abusive for fame, promoting that harmful rhetoric especially in our times is incredibly dangerous.

Now onto his on set behavior.

We can't talk about his set behavior without mentioning the deuxmoi set leak. Here's the transcript of it:

[Transcript:

There’s something I really really wanted to read to you guys--it has to do with why Henry Cavill left The Witcher. I know that was something that you guys were super interested in when it happened, and I just recently got this message. Somebody was like “Hey, do you want to know what really went down?” And I was like “Sure!” So let me just read it. It says:

“At the beginning of the show, Henry was good to work with. A lot of difficult demands that made people feel like he wasn’t a team player, but that’s not unusual for a really big star. Though in TV it truly usually doesn’t happen until the second season. But in season two and three something shifted and he became really impossible for women to work with, which is always a big problem, but even worse here because the showrunner is a woman. He would try to overrule her and try to get changes made last minute across the board without her knowledge, which, if you know anything about showrunning, is completely fucked. The showrunner has to sign off on every miniscule detail down to the buttons on a costume. Female writers and directors were suddenly being completely ignored on set, unable to do their jobs. Every department head was complaining. He started making comments—it wasn’t a sexual thing, he wasn’t grabbing anyone or being lewd, but it was disrespectful and toxic all the same.

“He is deeply addicted to video games, to the point where it was like working with any other addict. He was distracted, he was late, he was obsessive, and a lot of people think the misogyny came from gamer world. Video game bro language is not how you talk to coworkers, and he wouldn’t stop. Someone on the show compared it to watching someone get brainwashed by QAnon, like his whole personality shifted. Eventually his disrespect escalated. He would rewrite scenes without even alerting the other actors in the scenes until it was time to shoot. He decided that he didn’t want any romantic scenes at all—no kissing scenes, no shirtless scenes, et cetera. He wanted complete control of storylines but really had no idea of the limitations of TV, structure, budget, et cetera. He formed a weird alliance with one writer who was also a gamer, who eventually got fired after multiple HR complaints were made and after that writer left, Henry did anything he could to hold up production and cause problems.

“Eventually top brass at Netflix was tired of him costing them money with delays and HR investigations and the showrunner was asked to construct a potential exit for him. Netflix reached out to him personally and he was given one final warning, and violated that warning with an email he sent to the entire writing staff right after that meeting. That was it. It’s very disappointing.”

End transcript.]

Now believe me or not, but I know from a really good source that the leak was indeed real.

There's a lot of patterned behavior that tracks with what we know of him and his past controversies.

After that leak came out, there was a lot of people from different places coming to comment that ‘yes’ they’ve heard a very similar story adding a little bit more details of their own.

this quickly deleted tweet from one of the writers/producers:

there were rumors about him being an asshole to Anya specifically.

He went on record that he doesn't "understand" sex scenes. Which I know the sex discourse is rampant nowadays and each to their own, but he specifically signed up for a role that requires those scenes and then refused to do them and was allegedly nasty to Anya about it and with the way he talks about women...

Also it’s important to touch upon the “writer he had a weird alliance with” that man in question is Beau DeMayo of the recent fame of getting fired by Marvel from X-Men ‘97. He was previously allegedly fired from The Witcher for being emotionally and physically abusive. And he allegedly got fired from X-Men for being abusive as well. One of The Witcher writers tweeted this after Beau smeared them for “disliking the books” Beau was literally the first person to start that narrative.

The fact that it was HIS idea not to say lines of his dialogue in S1 and instead grunt. To the point that Joey had to take Henry’s lines and make it his own, so the plot would make sense, he talks about it in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Oyh0t117t0U&, and then once S2 press arrived Henry was talking about how he was trying to fight the big bad writers to give him more lines. Ridiculous.

Everyone is already pointing out that the cast looks so much happier without him, and it’s very true. Henry was never present on close to any BTS pics from filming the previous seasons, or on any cast dinners or birthdays. He wouldn't even do any shared interviews with the other three mains but only had solo interviews which to me was giving disrespectful like you're an ensemble you’re not the only lead here. It felt like he was above them to sit down and answer questions with them. When they were doing press junkets in Brazil and Poland Anya, Joey and Freya would always arrive together and leave together with that man leaving all the events early and by himself. And like people who post quotes from the cast about him being perfect from press junkets as “proof” are insane to me like Obviously they’re going to say nice things about him, not only they're newcomers, and he's an established industry name, but they’re doing PRESS for a show that he’s a STAR of (well, was lmao)

The fact that he never defended Anya from the racist trolls, even though most of them were HIS fans. Like she had to go through so much and that man couldn’t make a single comment about it as a leading man BUT he could make a whole IG post because people were being mean to his gf and calling her out for doing blackface.

And sure people might say that a lot of these are unverified sources, and I’d get it if it was a singular case, but there are a ton of these accounts that all match each other. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

[remember-digimon]

Since it's pride month and I'm a lonely queer person I decided to do a quick rundown of my hc for the DigiDestined's identities. This is disregarding the epilogue bc to heck with that let these kids be queer in peace

Now I don't like to discuss the sexuality of young children purely bc they are children and I am an adult and that's weird so I'm basing this on what little knowledge I have of them in Tri alongside what I know from 01. This is them as adults ok? ok here we go

(also um. I'm a dumb millennial that lives in a corn field so uh. If I get something wrong please correct me orz)

Tai: bisexual. As if there was any other answer. Something about him just gives off 'bisexual guy' vibes. Maybe because I think he'd be a total golden retriever boyfriend and those types are usually bi

Sora: non-binary. Her upbringing kind of forced her into being feminine when she really just doesn't want to participate in gender at all

Matt: I'm gonna say pansexual bc to him it literally does not matter. He likes who he likes. Also demisexual and possibly demiromantic. He has to have a strong connection for feelings to develop

Izzy: Ace all day babyyyy. To him, sex is for making babies, but not in a religious way. He isn't sex-repulsed, it's just not a priority

Joe: the cis-hetero ally of the group. You know he's the designated driver to all the Pride events

Mimi: LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN She's a high femme lesbian and she likes other femmes, butches, chapstick lesbians, just WOMEN. and she beats up TERFs bc trans women are women DUH

TK: doesn't wanna put a label on it right now, man, he's into what he's into and he'll figure it out later, my guy. A few months later he realizes he's bi and has to call Matt at 3am bc he's having a crisis, he got an iced latte that day and the male barista smiled at him and now he's having his first Gay Panic

Kari: also bi, the Kamiya family makes bi people like they have a quota to meet. She hooked up with Yolei once and it was fun. Now they listen to Chappell Roan together ❤️

Davis: the hyperactive gay guy of the found family. Falls in love at least once a month. Is terrible at hitting on guys but they always think it's endearing

Yolei: trans girl, lesbian. The others will line up to absolutely obliterate any transphobes that give her problems. She wants an idyllic lesbian romance with absolutely no children

Cody: aro/ace and unbothered by everyone else's romantic life. Don't bring the 'Tai and Matt used to make out all the time in high school' gossip to Cody, he literally does not care lol

Ken: he is gay and hopelessly in love with Davis. He sighs dreamily as Davis tries to do parkour and smacks into the ground like a wad of wet paper

[kas-eddie-munson]

okay i'm gonna prolly get evicerated for this but

i feel like steve's crush on robin gets disregarded a lot. like to an extent i think it's fine to headcanon that it wasn't very strong or that he didn't *really* like her but it's just... SO popular as a headcanon

like you can like someone, not have those feelings recipricated, and still be friends with them. in fact i think most queer people have experienced this before. unless i'm the only person on the planet whose ever been rejected i guess

(double in fact, lesbians SPESIFICALLY are NOTORIOUS for doing this.)

hell ROBIN, in CANON, had a crush on an unattainable straight girl, and it was (rightfully) never presented as theatening that she felt that way

i also just. maybe it's just because i'm an enby and am interested in trans headcanons more than most but i *know* there's a lot of trans steves out there in fic and fanart, mostly transfem. like #stevie harrington will bring up excusively transfem steve content. it has its own tag

and yet nobody ships transfem steve and robin. it's usually explained away as oh well stevie didn't *actually* like her

but like

trans lesbians don't wake up one day, realize they're a woman, and then snap their fingers and immidiately pass for cis. minus maybe a handful of lucky trans kids with suportive families, most trans women look like steve at one point

like can you imagine how emotionally devestating it would be to, on some level, know you're a woman, confess your feelings to a crush, and then have her reject you because she's only attracted to women? the tragedy writes itself

like i get why people are aprehensive about shipping them. steve is a canonically male character

but i just feel like. if you're making steve a trans woman, and still feel like it's "weird" for her to date robin after coming out and/or transitioning, that maybe. *maybe.* *MAYBE.* part of you doesn't *actually* feel like trans women are women

not all cis lesbians are gonna want to date a trans woman. but plenty of them do. hell, how many fics have i read with transmasc gay eddie and cis gay steve???? people who date trans women, by and large, are people attracted to women, and lesbians do in fact fit that description

now i wonder what the difference might be between transmasc eddie/gay steve and transfem stevie/robin

oh right! eddie munson canonically already looks like a boy, something irl trans people take years (if ever) to achieve

like. especially because it doesn't HAVE to be reciprocated. stevie is allowed to feel things without those feelings being redacted because the person she liked wasn't interested

anyway ONE DAY i'm gonna fuckin write this and incur the wrath of terfs in doing so but I SAID WHAT I SAID

[pillarsalt]

My personal approach for situations like yours with your friend is to act very confused and unaware. Like acting shocked at his name, and then continuing to act super confused and horrified but in a way that makes you seem just out of the loop. That being said, that's kind of non confrontational, and I really respect you for having the difficult conversation.

Oh yes I've used the feigned ignorance technique before, especially with nonbinary women friends (and now I've just realized that over the years I've had more female friends who started to pretend they're not women than ones who haven't, that's fucking depressing lol.) Sometimes with the more empathetic individuals, they will genuinely consider what you're asking and you can actually see the wheels turning (I remember this happening with a college friend NB woman, someone else made a comparison between men identifying as women and rachel dolezal, she said "that seems wrong to me but... I can't really say why.") Unfortunately, trans activism has instilled an easy way to shed any doubt that creeps into the minds of its devotees: you can't think that because it's internalized transphobia, it's TERF rhetoric, that thought is bad and you need to give yourself 100 lashes and listen to transwomen instead. So it's very difficult to get someone who fully buys into this ideology to honestly and critically reflect on it. It's not impossible, but it's very difficult.

We'll see, I'm definitely going to question the name first and foremost, establish that I think it's weird as fuck if he deliberately wants everyone who learns his name to immediately associate him with blowjobs. That honestly gives me the most apprehension because I've never seen or heard him say anything porn-brained, and it makes me wonder how well I really know the kind of person he is, or how much the usual internet cesspools have melted his brain. But I want to give him the benefit of the doubt at least until I can ask him wtf he's thinking.

The book I'm halfway through has put the brakes on my guns a-blazin plan to say my piece all at once though. It's tough because I have the feeling I might only have one chance to relay my position, but just simply delivering a message is not an effective way to have someone hear and seriously consider your point of view. It may have to be more long-term and subtle, not pretending to be ignorant but asking questions that he'll have to really self-reflect on to answer honestly.

I'm hoping that I've proven myself to be someone who cares about her friends and wants the best for everyone, and that he'll see I'm not trying to attack him. If in the end we can say "we have a fundamental ideological disagreement but won't let it come between our camaraderie", that would be actually ideal to me. His nonbinary longterm girlfriend is a STAUNCH genderist though, so the diplomatic effort may all be for naught. I know you are all probably wondering why I'm so invested in this man; besides the fact he's my friend, he is the same age as and reminds me so much of my little brother, and I have this protective instinct about him. About all my friends really. Man it will really suck to lose them. This probably sounds dramatic but I've been thinking about doing my own private goodbye tour with each of them individually, like one last nice peaceful hangout sesh each before everything blows up.

Anyway I need to stop pacing in circles about this for now. Thanks for the nice ask anon <3

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/752012756722614272/some-people-seem-to-have-something-against?source=share

I think a lot of people justify to themselves because there are gay people who have histories of dating the opposite gender before coming out, and there can be a weird reductive attitude fandom can take that anyone who has had relationship with people of multiple genders who doesn't meet a minimum level of "trauma" cannot be anything other than bi. Something that I can't stand as a gay person who fits that bill (had relationships with men before coming out as a lesbian, wasn't traumatized by them but just realized I wasn't into them in the way I was with women). But like, again, as that type of gay person, I think that's a ridic response by those other people in their fandom to what anon is talking about because:

there's a big difference between doing that with CANONICALLY bisexual characters - and let's not pretend that writers having characters casually talk about exes of the opposite gender from their current love interest the way people usually talk about their exes (NOT indicating some change of identity with it) isn't in fact signalling that - and doing it with a straight/unmarked-but-clearly-we-want-you-to-assume-they're-straight-by-default character. The latter I think are fair game for queer fandom to read however, and that's where I get irritated when well-reasoned meta for gay headcanons from people who clearly aren't uncomfortable with bi headcanons for other characters they like (and are often bi themselves) gets conflated with biphobia. But with the former.... idk, the idea of taking away representation from another marginalized group just really does not sit right with me, and I'm going to be more inclined to read that in a negative way and wonder WHY they're inclined to make that argument

Let's not pretend there isn't a whole lot of biphobia in the gay and lesbian communities and that a lot of justifications that people come up with are not in fact designed as a smokescreen for that. Like if they keep making this same excuse for EVERY character I'm really going to at some point suspect it's biphobia. I've seen people I gave the benefit of the doubt to the first time but it was the same arguments for EVERY character where that was ANY possible reading and like after a certain point you've just gotta wonder!

I also just think it's worth asking what a specific label or another gets you in these cases. There are some different experiences that gay vs. bi people have but it's not worlds apart in the way that some people talk about it, and I'm not sure why in the vast majority of shipping and romantic fanfics you necessarily need to establish that someone is JUST gay and has NO interest in the opposite gender, as opposed to just interested in this particular person (and the rest of their attraction just isn't mentioned because it's not relevant). I feel like so much of this shit in fandom these days from people who do the sort of thing this anon was talking about other people doing are from these young lesbians who are very online and buy into terf-adjacent shit about lesbian culture and experience being this super special separate thing from bi woman culture and like, girls, it's not true. If you go into any real life "lesbian" space you'll meet a ton of bi women too and that's how it should be! Because it's just a "women attracted to women" space and we have that in common. The idea that they're two separate non-overlapping communities is so online and is rooted in biphobia (and often other shitty bigotries like transphobia)

--

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Am I the asshole for telling my mum she's being ignorant?

cw// racism .

I (18MtF) have a really, really good mum all things considered. She's been amazing about my transition, has gone to marches, spoke on radio, written articles and gotten into public spats on twitter (she's a semi-public figure) defending me. We live in the UK, so this is really a big thing on terf island lol. She's pretty good about mental health, and advocated in my youth aswell when I got diagnosed autistic.

Here is where it gets messy. My mum works in education for context, so is very clued in to the news and things. She's a hard-core feminist (I would probably call her a radical feminist to be honest). All of her friends are older women in education and journalism professions, and she speaks to them about feminist topics regularly. The thing is that ALL of them are white. Most of them are upper class (my parents both grew up dirt poor and had to work hard for everything they had). I have a number of bipoc friends, and there has been some weird instances of my mum accidentally breaking out the microaggressions that made me uncomfy, never anything massive, but enough to make me feel just a bit weird.

Tonight we watched the new Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon. Often on the way home from seeing films like this, my mum and I will discuss politics and society, but I usually steer the conversation away from race because it isn't something I want to bring up with her, especially in a space where i cant exactly roll my eyes and go quiet without annoying her. However, race is a key topic in this film. Discussions were going fine, and then my mum did this weird thing I've noticed her do before. I had been explaining that indigenous women go missing and are often barely looked for because of factors of racism and misogyny, she immediately chimed in talking about a very different situation, about the cervical cancer scare in Ireland where tests for cervical cancer weren't carried out properly, but all the women were told they were clear anyway, resulting in many women suffering from a disease that could've been caught much earlier.

Normally I would just move on and engage with this, but it enraged me this time, mostly because it was an evocative film that left me with a lot of emotions and also because earlier that day she'd said something microaggressive about my girlfriend, who is black. I told her that it was obviously awful and I get she was just trying to empathise, but that it was a completely different situation because it didn't have that intersection of race and misogyny. She made some point about how she was "Sure there were people of color affected by the scandal" but I told her that that wasn't the point and that she was being ignorant. She got passive aggressive and didn't talk to me for the rest of the night.

I seriously don't know if it would've just been better to engage with her on that and then steer our conversation back to something more focused on race or to just abandon it altogether or whatever. I guess im also sick of not being able to talk about race at all with her, and feeling embarrassed bringing my friends over because I feel like she's gonna say something. I just don't really know how to bring it up because the only thing she can ever compare it to is misogyny, when obviously these are very different things, but I don't feel like this was the best way I'd gone about it.

Was I the asshole ?

What are these acronyms?

[doubleca5t]

hey min i wanted to know your thoughts on something bc to me its odd to me and idk how to like dissect it?. im a transguy, and id like to think im pretty decent at sniffing out terfs in my social circle. its not like they hide themselves very well, and in my town theyre all either tradwives or self proclaimed femcels, so pretty vocal on the whole hating trans folks thing.

but ive run into this phenomenon of these queer folks who seem ok with me being trans, and afab non binary people, but then turn out to be raging transphobes? but their like sneaky about, because they say they support trans people, and seem to actually do it, but then a transwoman breathes and their calling her all sorts of shit? and its really unsettling because i know these people exist, but these bitches will claim up and down that their trans allies, but the minute i call them out they start saying all the usual transphobic talking points?

idk if im just dumb, but i try to avoid queer discourse, and since all these people are in the community i assume its discourse related? but i could also be wrong on that front and its just the whole ' i cant be racist, i have a black friend' mentality. idk i cant find anything talking about this, and maybe its just my town being weird.

No, this is a very real thing and it's because some of the hangups that people have around trans women are separate from the concept of transness more broadly. Like the fear a lot of people have around "man in dress" can transcend someone's acceptance of other kinds of trans people and their willingness to respect chosen names and pronouns which is how you get stupid ass scenarios like the one you're describing here.

[sapphicsvibes]

ill be honest with you 'transandrophobia' used to be called 'transmisandry' before they realized it was too on the nose, and the originator of the term also openly blogs about a lesbophobic r*pe kink that I dont want to even name.

There's definitely a need for transmascs and trans men to be heard given what I've seen from some transmascs who feel isolated even from other transmascs as they try and find a place for themselves where they feel supported and heard, but as a trans woman 'transandrophobia' shit is not it. it's 90% trans men talking over trans women and the originator of that term joked about being in 'the transmisogynist groupchat' like throwing trans women under the bus to take ownership of trans community will not create a healthy space for anyone.

Personally I think it's something that has to come from trans men being more supportive of trans women without letting the feeling of the invisibility of their plight embitter them against their sisters, like noone else is more able to understand some of what you go through than we are, but I have seen enough transmisogynistic sentiment out of the 'transandrophobia' crowd that I block it on sight, I have a small collection if posts that I've screenshotted if anyone ever asks why. Some part of me still wants to believe trans men could be community to us, but its going to take honest effort from trans men at a community level to make that effort, and right now I just see trans men who want to throw us under the bus to make themselves feel better and gather rapport with other tme queer people. Because it really is as easy as saying 'see these mean trans women say we dont suffer as much say we dont have it as bad as them theyre talking over us' and put words in our mouth instead of building community with us and cis people clap clap clap and reblog.

Trans men who feel isolated deserve a healthier community, and trans women deserve better than 'transandrophobia' rhetoric in our community.

The idea that it stemmed from a term like transmisandry is weird to me. Transmen aren’t oppressed for being men, that’s just transphobia. Misandry doesn’t exist. 

I also had no idea that it started from someone who did weird shit like that - it really makes me scrutinize the people who use the term harder. How can a group like that actually be a safe space for anyone if the creator supports that shit?

but as a trans woman 'transandrophobia' shit is not it. it's 90% trans men talking over trans women and the originator of that term joked about being in 'the transmisogynist groupchat' like throwing trans women under the bus to take ownership of trans community will not create a healthy space for anyone.

This is genuinely terrifying but at the same time, not surprising at all. And I say this because I mean, this is literally what I’ve seen. I had no idea about the group chat, which is insane in itself, but when you say 90% is speaking over trans women, that’s literally what I see in the tag. Even when I look in the transmisogyny tags, it’s usually, if not always, filled with posts that are tagged transandrophobia, and I feel that more and more posts about trans fems gets buried. (That and the whole, perish afab trans fem people getting a lot more vocal).

To me at least, it’s just repackaged misogyny on all fronts, with a sprinkle of lesbophobia. 

I think the sad thing about your take on community is that, it shows that a lot of trans men have not really shed their transmisogynstic mindsets that they grew up with. They still have these ideas that trans fems are inhernetly dangerous to them, and that trans fems are trying to hurt them, and this is a mindset that was implemented in their since before many of them identified with their grandness or even knew they were trans. We grow up in a society that spoonfeeds us terf beliefs and reinforces those as we get older. And as people who grow up thinking we are cis women, we are often times made to be the main victims of trans fems. 

And even when we do come out as trans, etc., some of us still think those harmful thoughts and don’t bother to challenge them. It is because we are trans, that we think we are above challenging and dismantling thing harmful thoughts. What I’ve found with the transandrophobia people, is that, this community gives them space to validate those thoughts. It gives them a safe space to feel truly victimized by transfems thus, they don’t actually feel the need to challenge those thoughts because people in those group are telling them that it’s a normal part of the trans man experience. 

Also, it’s crazy because I find the whole movement excludes trans mascs who aren’t trans men. I am trans masc but I’m also not a man, and I have trauma from men - both cis men and trans men, so a group like that just isn’t for me. I’ve been dealt a bad hand by both trans and cis men LMAO. So like, I don’t feel at home in such a community.

And some of the things i've seen these men say about lesbians......

But anyway, I do think trans men deserve a space and a term and a healthier community but the transandrophobia group is really big unfortunately.

I’m really sorry for any transfems who are often times stuck in the crossfires of this and made to feel unsafe or just bad for existing.

[velvetvexations]

I try not to complain about this too much, because I know that as a nonbinary person that uses they/them pronouns, I can't really hope to ever understand the pain of being degendered. I really, really don't want to be that guy that's like "it's not so bad, you should just not complain about this microaggression!" But like - some people misuse the concept of degendering as a way to harass trans people for "misgendering", because they use gender-neutral language as part of normal speech.

One time I was engaging in the most frustrating pastime in the world, aka fighting TIRFs on twitter, and at one point I made a tweet referring to a trans woman I wasn't familiar with as "this person", in the context of "I'm sure this person isn't usually this off base...". And someone replied to that with some bullshit about how that meant I was a transmisogynist.

The thing is, wtf should I have said instead? If I'd said "this woman" or "this lady", it would have sounded weird and actually MORE misogynistic, like I was particularly calling attention to her gender. If I'd used her name, or her pronouns, it would have also sounded weird, because I didn't know her, and I was referring to her in an indirect way.

And it's just uncomfortably too close to the TERF thing of "you can't say 'people with a vagina', because it erases women!". Women are in fact people, and it should not be offensive to refer to them as such. Like, sure, if you're a trans woman and someone consistently avoids referring to you as a woman, by all means, call them out! But I don't think it's transmisogynistic to refer to a trans woman that you're talking about indirectly as a person, because trans women are people and that's how English works. Anyway, I'm just saying, I know your pain lol

In the Soviet Union they murdered a lot of peasants who had very slightly more land and cows than others to fulfil what you might call their "campaign promises" to redistribute land to the poorest. In Maoist China the Cultural Revolution were a horrifically chaotic and uncontrolled few years of in-fighting with truly disturbing levels of violence (including literal cannibalism) in persecuting random people for literally no reason.

Given how many baeddels are tankies, it's unsurprising. To paraphrase Voltaire, on this website it's good to harass a few trans people to encourage the others.

[vintage-bentley]

Aw tumblr killed an old ask about nanny Crowley and my response…but because I had Things To Say I want to make a post lol

Anon made the AMAZING point that it’s weird that nanny Crowley is considered good gender representation, because it’s literally a man disguising himself as a woman to gain access to and “corrupt” a child. Which is exactly the stereotype that trans activists fight so hard against.

And I never thought about it that way, but it’s so true. And I firmly believe that if a woman had written this, she’d have been absolutely vilified for it. It would’ve been considered a metaphor for “TERF views”. But since Gaiman is a man, everything he does is going to be interpreted favourably—as we’ve seen with nanny Crowley. It’s pretty obvious to me that this is just a case of a straight man (who has a history of writing homophobic jokes into the story in question) wanting to write a “man in a dress” joke. He’s said that wasn’t his intention, but he only said that after receiving praise. He just got lucky that people chose to interpret it that way, because his fans are incredibly loyal ass-kissers.

Anon also said it’s odd that people tend to interpret nanny Crowley as actually being a woman despite him just crossdressing and still being played by a male actor (when technically, he could’ve changed into a woman if so desired), and I agree. It really goes to show how embedded gender roles/stereotypes are in the minds of so many fans, that they can’t seem to separate gender from clothes. Crowley dressed a certain way, so he must’ve changed his gender/sex to match. It’s ridiculous! Clothes are just clothes!

It’s funny to be that despite Crowley still clearly being male during this scene (which was the intended joke, unfortunately, that straight normie audiences pick up on in my experience watching with my family), the fandom insists that he changed into a woman (never mind that they apparently believe males can be women, yet in order to see Crowley as a woman they give him a female body). And then they usually proceed to fetishise nanny Crowley.

It’s even worse when they make a point of how irresistible Aziraphale apparently finds female Crowley. Because they just cannot stand the thought of a gay character and must represent heterosexuality, the notoriously underrepresented sexuality.

[catgirlforeskin]

I am the Essentialism anon.

Sorry, I am kind of afraid of making statements with anon off because I don't want to deal with controversy.

Firstly, yes, it was inspired by a post like "You say that I am a transphobe for saying that femboys and trans women are basically the same, but you are wrong! Transphobes say that your biological sex is what matters, not their gender identity. I say that neither sex nor gender are real, none of it matters, so being femboy or trans woman is not different! I am not a TERF, I am very progressive!"

Now to stupid philosophical talk.

Part of my inspiration came from the addition, but yeah, it was like this.

It's an absolutely cruel idea, at least from my perspective and experience. Aside from its inability to describe emergence of gender dysphoria, it basically excludes closeted trans people from "really" being their gender on the basis of not being socially treated as one. They do say that it doesn't matter because none of it is real, but like, there are other people who are recognized as being their gender. You can't solipsism away from it, and this framework offers nothing else. If you live as your CASAB then you participate in society as your CASAB, by their ideas. I hope that they are not stupid enough to openly say it, but if the only way to make your conception of "gender is what societal dynamics you are placed in" is to not apply it to trans people then your conception is just transphobic.

Moving on to gender essentialism. In its practical usage gender essentialism means attributing certain qualities to certain gender. Qualities that are attributed are usually based on existing conceptions of femininity and masculinity, that are based on current iteration of patriarchal system. You can pick different set of qualities, obviously, but it will not make more sense. In this regard, I think that its correct to say that gender as defined as set of qualities is socially constructed, and usually with obvious purposes.

Now, that's the reason that I am on anon, but in any other way it doesn't add up with my experience.

I don't attribute any innate qualities to gender, but I do consider gender an innate quality itself, with no additional conditions or qualities. An eidos, if you will.

A good comparison is electric charge. Its polarity and ammount influence the movement of the charged object, but it doesn't define it. The movement is defined by interaction between the particle, the electric field, and other particles. Particles with same charge can still behave absolutely differently.

The innate gender of person influences their actions through lifetime, but it doesn't define them - the set of material conditions, culture, and gendered social dynamics do. Still, it says nothing about their personality, and people with same gender can otherwise have nothing in common, and their life stories may be absolutely opposite.

Continuing the electric analogy (I literally invented it for this ask so it's raw and has a lot of unfortunate implications, but that's the only comprehensible comparison I have), the constructed gender roles and gendered societal dynamics are like magnets that move people into their socially constructed roles, and patriarchy is the set of those magnets and wires, created to power whatever machine it is currently manifested as.

While laws and material conditions are definitely what patriarchy is based on today, I think that it's daemonic effectiveness and persistence and some other qualities can't be described without analysing the ways culture and society can influence human behaviour far beyound what should be called rationality.

It is probably becoming too complicated, unfortunately.

It probably sounds weird and nonsensical, but I think that it's the only way I can properly explain my experience. My desire to be a woman was born out of pure being, it certainly wasn't born out of being treated as one in my childhood, or out of desire to be treated as one by society. Nobody realistically would think that being treated as a woman by society is desirable, especially considering that I am a lesbian and low-key gnc (which dispels the other explanation of transness). And yet it certainly is desirable for me. Not because I like it better, but because manifesting myself and actualising my gender is that important, I don't think that anybody here needs to hear it.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that the only not inherently essentialist (wow what a combination of words) conception of what makes someone belong to any gender that I was presented with was the thing about "that's how you fit in society and your experience of it". And it sucked hard and overall messed me up a lot. I said that realistically nobody would like to be treated the way women are treated, and yet that's exactly what I wanted. The experience of the most cruelest kinds of misogyny is oftentimes presented as "what makes women women", which is a no nuance radfem take, you are right, but it was more or less accepted as being the "treated" in question by my surroundings, so obviously the fact that I was (almost) never catcalled or told to do traditionally feminine labour at school or whatever in fact gave me a lot of dysphoria (and low-key guilt, to be honest), because if this experience is what defines being a woman, then what am I? And it all started long before I cracked, so it did involve things beyound just societal conditioning or whatever.

You may say that I took it to extremes, and you are right, healthy psyche is not something I possess, but the same goes to seemingly less traumatic parts of what socially constructed female gender entails. Trying to make yourself into acceptable image of a woman is certainly the experience any girl has, and even more so if she is trans. But treating this image as what does it mean to socially function as a woman definitely did a damage to me. It's one thing to get into popular media that you hate but consume to fit in or being docile the way "proper" women are and the whole other one is developing the fucking comphet.

At least now I do have the cis woman ammount of gendered trauma, you stupid girl.

I don't, like, accuse anyone who says that gender is just socially constructed of my suffering, it's just that after dealing with this bulshit and patriarchy I feel everything bad about everything even remotely like this.

(I am better now but what happened over years can't be forgotten)

None of it matters because I am what I am and so is everyone else. I am not "a man becoming a woman", I am just innately a woman placed in circumstances that are antithetical to my being, and even the proper societal definition of a woman is unfitting and traumatic, it is and it always was the experience of a woman, however weird and rare.

Just a charged particle that has to go against the current, and even then she doesn't have the designated place, even though the magnets forced her to go there.

None of it would make sense otherwise.

Sorry for incomprehensibly venting about my stupid life and strange ideas in your inbox. Feel free to call me a mysticist and a charlatan and anything you like.

A lot of that makes sense to me, yeah

To your initial point about the people who say trans women are just femboys because gender/sex aren’t real, I think most of these people do still believe in and enforce a sex binary, whether they realize it or not. The posts usually boil down to grouping trans women with femboys/traps/whatever and against cis women/tme lesbians, and the only reason to do this is if you believe in sex essentialism.

It reminds me a lot of the people who say “sexuality isn’t real, we’re all just bi to some degree heehee XP” but for gender. It’s never meaningful abolitionism, it’s just trying to deconstruct someone else’s identity and say “umm actually mine is the only real, natural one”

A lot of people also just outright don’t understand what something being a social construct means, which is why we get these stupid takes about gender. How gender is constructed in our society is political, it’s the main means of enforcing patriarchy, but like, taking that to say that gender isn’t real at all is a bit silly. It would define trans people out of existence

Also saying gender isn’t a thing to enforce a sex binary is the basis for a certain hate group everyone here loves to talk about, I’m sure that isn’t a coincidence

[butchbarbieagainstterfs]

Last night I went to the club and danced on the floor (I'm usually the only one who does) and these three women joined me and we eventually went outside. We got to talking (we were flirting for a little bit on the dancefloor) and swapped numbers and I told them I study archaeology and one of them said "Oh you can dig up my bones anytime". I reciprocated the flirting but then she said "As long as you identify me as a woman bc I promise I have XX chromosomes". I thought that meant she was trans because trans women are the only people I've ever heard making those kinds of jokes, but TURNS OUT no. Then she and her friends just started talking about how trans women don't get periods, and then how they don't like being called cis, and how they "totally have trans mates who don't agree with 'that movement'" like fucking hell. So I got up and left because I just wanted nothing to do with these people, and they said "oh we've scared him off", like no I just don't want to fucking talk to you anymore, especially if you'd bring up your shitty politics completely unprompted. I guess maybe they'd thought I'd brought it up because I was wearing a he/him patch on my vest, but from my perspective it came completely out of nowhere. I was totally ready up til then to be friends or possibly more, but they really couldn't stop themselves from bringing up their dislike of trans women. TERFs are truly obsessed. So I got up and left and blanked them for the rest of the night, even when they tried touching me again and waving bc they just ruined their chances with me. Nobody fucking brought it up, but they are just so obsessed they think it's a casual topic for flirting. I was so disappointed it probably soured the rest of the night for me, and I actually made a point to dance with the trans women at the club (even though they're much older) just in case they still thought I'd be interested in them. How fucking unnecessary the whole thing was, and how it just made shit worse for everyone involved. TERFs literally can't help themselves.

That’s so weird, I’m sorry that happened ❤️

By that woman’s logic, even though I’m afab, I’m only half a woman 🤷🏻 bc I have mosaic chromosomes. (I guarantee you that she hasn’t even had hers tested though skgsjhs)

[gwemmieee]

Sometimes, I get involved in posts here that attract the terfs, and I peer in to make sure I block anyone who's highly likely to send me hate (which has already happened a lot in just over a year on tumblr), and it's hard for me to unpack how often terf blogs hide behind edgy language that I actually sort of agree with. Stuff like women's liberation, supremacy, etc.

I am afraid of men after how much and how consistently they have traumatized me. I sometimes feel like I hate men, but I don't like to assume and judge and hate people I don't know, so I don't trudge too far down that hole. But I genuinely do think that femininity is superior to masculinity, and I do think that masculinity as we know it is only a positive force when it's used to defend others from violence, and otherwise it is at best a neutral/centrist force. And I don't know if or when any of that will change, because I have no desire to go out of my way to be closer with any man I've met so far--at least no desire strong enough to overcome the fear and trauma. And that's really saying something considering that I'm sexually bi and can find men attractive.

And almost every time I look at a terf's page, it's filled with words that seem to see eye to eye with me. Stuff about women being better, men being predators, etc., but it's all so much more sweeping and generalizing and judgey than anything I'd say (in public). But sometimes when I'm in private and really frustrated, I'll say stuff like that too, so I get it. I also see fully positive stuff sometimes and I get excited! Just today, I saw one reblog some science debunking that biological women are weaker than biological men, and that was wonderful. But she hates trans women, so I still had to block her.

As I keep reading through their pages, most of it is just them policing other people. I find a lot of hateful stuff that contradicts feminine superiority, or that has nothing to do with it. They see people who are taking longer to grow up because they've been abused and had to spend time unlearning that abuse in order to not perpetuate it on others, and they talk about those people as if they're subhuman predators, as if there's some kind of race to be all the way grown up and they're a bad person for falling behind. They get irrationally angry at people over innocent terminology disagreements or not being their ideal kind of consumer. I don't actually see much hate thrown at masculinity at all--I see a lot more hate thrown at people who it seems like they are more likely to tolerate than men, but they throw vitriol instead because those people are just not quite good *enough* for them. "This is what's wrong with our community." "This is who we need to kick out because they're a problem." I also see a lot of them digging out a single social media post saying something extremely nasty out of rage, then doing this weird magic trick where they take this leap of logic into suddenly talking as if that person represents every single other member of whatever demographic they feel like putting down this time (usually transfems). And it's weird. I understand the irony that I'm doing a version of that right now, but the key difference is I'm talking about a political camp that people have voluntarily chosen to rally behind, not a gender identity that is intrinsic to their entire being.

It feels like they're confused. Like, the way they speak about men, women, masculinity, and femininity, I would be forgiven for suspecting that they genuinely think masculinity is just a Y chromosome and a penis and femininity is just an X chromosome and a vulva, and I'm really glad I have no clue what they would say about intersex folks because I don't expect anything pleasant. So it's like, they're saying this high level stuff about the superiority of femininity and the predatory nature of masculinity that I actually really identify with, but they're not basing it on actual femininity and masculinity like I am. They're not considering the deeper nuance and reality around how men and women tend to behave and how that affects where our identities lie. It seems like they really do cling to the delusion that having a penis at birth means you will always and only be a predator, while having a vulva at birth means you will always and only be perfect. And... that's just so sad and limiting and out of touch. Are any of them actually interacting with and trying to listen to anyone who challenges their bubbles of thought?

I think it says a lot that they feel so safe and empowered to shit on people in public in ways that to this day my repeatedly abused and abandoned ass is still terrified to do even in private most of the time. And I'm very frustrated that they have such a monopoly on public speech that can voice the more negative sides of my own feelings around my own trauma around masculinity. The only way I can feel better is by consciously choosing to believe that most lesbians aren't like these lesbians. That most sapphics don't tolerate hate, including this brand of it. We shouldn't be dwelling on hating masculinity. We should spend more time loving femininity.