#terfs just being really weird about women as usual

[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.

[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.

[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

[foxglove-garden]

Reason why I, an intersex trans man, got called a TERF #958465:

I don't support people who say that they're FTF or MTM "trans" or dfab trans women/DMAB trans men.

I don't really care if you're intersex or not, you can't transition to the gender you were raised as. That's just not a thing. It devalues actual trans experiences imo.

I can speak personally about the experience of being raised as a girl and actually being transmasculine and having that affect my experiences. A person who was raised has a girl and identifies as a woman does not have those experiences. A person who is raised as a boy and identifies as a man does not have those experiences.

I can fully respect people who identify as cisgender intersex, or consider intersex to be their gender, or identify as intergender, or even identify as intersex to female or intersex to male because those make sense. If your experience being intersex affected how you were raised and you identify as a different gender than your parents raised you to be, I totally understand that. But "I'm intersex and identify as the gender I was assigned/raised as" doesn't equal being trans.

But no amount of logic in my brain can ever understand how someone can transition to the same gender that they were raised as. It just seems like cis with extra steps to me, it seems like intersex erasure, and it seems transphobic.

I know that it's controversial to critique certain identities, but as someone who is intersex and trans, I feel like my opinion is valid. I don't see "MTM", "FTF", "dfab trans women" and "dmab trans men" as good faith identities.

People are still welcome to use those terms for themselves, but I don't feel comfortable interacting with them.

Usually when I have in the past, they've treated me weird (I've had people from that community insist that I can't be FTM because I'm intersex, I've experienced a lot of casual transphobia from that community, and I've had a lot of them basically pull the whole "transandrophobia is fake because trans men have male privilege blah blah blah") and I just don't want to deal with that.

So yeah, IDC if people criticize this tbh. Unless you're also intersex and trans, it's not really something you can invalidate because I'm talking about my own community.

I'm going to block anyone who leaves comments bothering to say that they don't agree with me because I really don't give a shit if you agree with me. You aren't changing my mind and talking over me is transphobic and intersexist.

[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?

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

Honestly idk I have like a lot like A LOT of unresolved insecurities and rlly weird thought about masculinity, but uhh context is I am a trans man and I have ocd and it can lead to really messed up assumptions

Like this is far from the first time that I'm learning that something I've been obsessing over so much that I just kinda believed it to be true is actually not and i just let my intrusive thoughts win. And most ppl don't think like that, actually

Sorry for the weird ask, i think i do a good job at figuring out those things most of the time bc it's ridiculous (ALWAYS like not a single instance when it wasn't a delusion) but I also read mostly TERF content when I was still figuring it out so maybe it just stuck with me? (Kinda TMI tbf but I had like a couple months straight where it kept me up at night and I would get gender disforia until I manged to finally shut my brain down one way or another)

Anyway this actually eye opening so I'm gonna write it down and talk to my therapist abt it

Again, sorry 😞

Didn't mean to give you a glimpse of my mind, it's a terrible place to see on a good day

honestly anon i think *all* of this is TMI but like im kinda fascinated that you actually came in and just told me all this ngl im very impressed

genuinely don't really know how to respond to this other than telling you my stance on the whole zhongchi/zhongchili thing? not as in like. admonishing you or anything. more- since you mentioned struggling w those things. if nothing else the post where i mention it is buried who knows where lmao

sparing the rest of you with a cut

now this is probably partially because ive been in fandom spaces for like. upwards of ten years now. but ive always been an advocate for unique ship names, as opposed to just the character's names mashed together or putting an 'x' in the middle

aside from the fact that i just think this closes people in on having to stick to one or the other (AxB or BxA for example) and thus keeps them from exploring different facets of the characters, this also, as you've probably realized, just- perpetuates the idea that people HAVE to be one or the other. there's no room for nuance. straight ships of course have their own trove of issues for this, but at least (whether for better or worse, mostly worse if you ask me) people there have a more general consensus on woman-bottom man-top. but for mlm wlw ships? since it's usually two men or two women, people lose that sort of- taken-for-granted system of deciding who tops or bottoms, and so they start going on sketchy territory trying to decide which traits will make the characters in these senarios which role. this obviously usually just results in feminine traits being associated with womanhood and therefore bottoming and masculine traits -> manhood -> topping. which is all bs if you ask me but that's beside the point

this all gets even more cumbersome when, as is the case for me, you don't even write sex scenes. or anything sexual for that matter (intentionally). so why should any of us care whose dick is going where if no dicks are ever going to matter. the most these idiots are gonna do is make out. do we want to assign top/bottom dynamics to kissing? i personally don't. what about the nuance if we do? it vanishes. it becomes boring. we go right back to the childish notion of dominating -> masculine -> man -> dick in hole -> top. isn't that super trite? where's the room for more interesting variation, more characterization? nothing wrong with a character following that exact ruleset, but shit gets boring real quick if that's all we do. and as you're likely far more aware than i am, anon, it becomes harmful for ourselves irl

this is my main gripe w ship names like AB and AxB. i use them because i am one person and unlikely to change established fanon at this point, but if i could, boy would i love to propose we start actually being creative about ship names. i was so pleasantly surprised when people started calling mualani/kinich 'pixelshark'. like?? 1) that's so fucking cute and 2) i don't immediately think who tops or who bottoms. yes you can make the argument that this is still in a kinich top mualani bottom order, but it's a massive improvement from like. kinilani. or something.

so when people ask whether i write chili or zhongchi, i wish i could just tell them neither. i couldn't give less of a fuck as to who you think is putting their dick where. it gets all the more... odd, when people assume it's one or the other based on the dynamic i present, which again always circles back to combinations or variations of masculine -> dick in hole -> top. this is of course not to fault anyone for how they perceive my fics! we've started using zhongchili here because it sort of combines both and thus leaves you thinking what is actually going on. like afaik zhongchili isn't used to specify one or the other? we have zhongchi and chili/tartali for that. idk where you got that from anon imma be real

but the point is that i wish i could avoid this mess altogether. i wish i could just put 'marriage chopsticks' or whatever in the ship name and speficy sex dynamic if needed. i wish the fandom would agree to always list ship names in alphabetical order so we could list childe/zhongli for tag purposes and not have to debate who's bottoming

but oh well

[wolfertinger]

god im so fucking tired of nonlesbians boiling down every issue lesbians have to just 'terf shit' you guys are not as slick as you think. we dykes got plenty of community issues, its gonna happen, but you can not brush literally everything under terf shit. especially since lesbians are actually often the least transphobic groups in studies, were just being used as props by cis women who do not actually give a shit about us and have had to fucking work to undo the damage caused by getting double teamed by both terfs and misogyny- it did make us worse. we gotta own that, but you cant just fling that word at us any time you like because you hate that we speak up. gender shit is NOT an issue. butch dykes use he/him since forever since theyre women preforming masculinity. theyre women at their core playing up the role of the guy. nonbinary lesbians who are masc are the same way and they usually have a similar connection. probably about 30-50% of transmen in the world have identified as lesbians at some point not just because its safer but also its just easier to think you might be a girl that likes girls than a guy who didnt know it who likes girls. transmen are in our spaces all the time, and not because theyre really women, but because they often figured out they were men alongside us. theyre literally our bros. if they get called lesbians its in jest about their history, not a statement. because if it was a statement it would be calling a bunch of transmen basically women, which is you know. questionable shit. salem asked if boys can be lesbians, got told 'all guys are a little bit lesbian' and then immediately called himself a dyke, and then said it was cause he loves women in a girl way. the only thing thats playing off is this stupid ass idea that women love other women differently than men do, which in itself has nothing to do with how women actually love other women, its about how MEN love women. its a joke about how men objectify women and often cant fucking help doing it because theyre also in a society that encouraged them to see women as a different species. its not a statement on the nature of girl love or some shit. Its where 'honorary lesbian' jokes with cis guy friends come from, because those guys have proven that they arent weird assholes about women- its not literal. salem is a guy. saying hes a dyke because of how he likes women is saying "im a dyke because i see women as people :)" effectively and the joke doesnt fucking work when its the guy saying it and not the lesbians (and no, transmen are not immediately safer/better. Some of them get it, but a lot of them project their bad relationship with being a girl on women the same way other women can be misogynists. Its just different.) especially not when you do that corny ass shit of immediately leaping to sling dyke around like its a battleax. especially when it feels like the only reason he wants to be a dyke is because he 'loves transbian on cisbian/enbyian porn' and i bet you 100% if salem didnt want to be a feminine tguy with no T or surgery (fine on its own) he wouldnt suddenly be interested in calling himself a dyke. hes absolutely saying it because hes a feminine guy who wants to fuck feminine girls and feminine guys and isnt willing to unpack his own misogynist transphobic shit and instead just calls people transphobes who dont get it.

.

[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]

re anon who talked about claims that white people can't be nonbinary, I have seen it. this was The Discourse in a corner of the internet i was in in like 2021. this person kept literally saying white people can't be nonbinary and quite a lot of people were agreeing with her.

isn't it sad this is the world we live in

It's funny (sarcasm) how many TransRadFems go on and on about how awful they were treated when they were still perceived as "feminine/gay cis men" and how being misgendered as a man as a trans femme is terrible (which is true, of course), but then turn around and say that (trans/cis) men/people who are perceived as men/etc don't ever experience anything bad at all ever. Like.... If that was true, you wouldn't have experienced any abuse while in the closet and would be happy to be misgendered, because it would give you more "privilege" to be seen as such. And yet, somehow, you realize that both of those things aren't actually true and that (real or perceived) manhood does actually come with a lot of oppression. But only when it comes to trans femmes, for some reason, and never trans mascs. It's almost as if you do know that trans mascs experience gendered oppression for being both trans and men, but deny it simply because you're a bigot and want to get away with being a transphobe. Hmmmmmm. 🤔

sometimes they'll admit to trans men being perceived as women but with the caveat "being treated as women is our best case scenario!" as though trans men aren't, just as trans women are, seen as deviants that need killing or correction rather than "just" your average every day cis woman

"Ohhh trans men think of themselves as women/AFAB which is badddd" actually I think of myself as a male cursed by a powerful wizard :)

wizards and magical hot springs are the number one leading cause of trans people

Male cursed by wizard here again tho. I do actually kind of feel a disconnect from the wider transmasc community, as I never feel like I was a woman or experienced what it was like to be one? But that's because I am extremely autistic and weird and have thought gendered expectations were ridiculous for as long as I can remember, and as such have been largely dehumanized by my peers in a way that most girls and "girls" haven't, if that makes any sense? But that doesn't mean other transmascs are wrong for feeling connected to womanhood on some level, it's just not something I can relate to at all. (I don't relate to manhood either for that matter, but that seems to be a more common experience)

gender is a wildly complicated thing and takes a lot to really examine, it's usually different for everyone in small ways

"trans men don't experience misogyny if they pass, but trans women always experience transmisogyny regardless of whether we pass or not" is a WILD fucking take. imagine 'we can always tell'ing your feminist theory as a trans woman. could fucking not be me.

soulgender sixth sense is especially sensitive to trans women whose gender is super special and radiates an aura of purity

Crazy take, feel free to tell me im wrong but i dont think anyone is inherently binary or nonbinary unless specified. I think that every single person on this earth has a slightly different gender (humans are akin to snowflakes and i do not mean this is a derogatory sense). You could put a group of perisex cis women into a room together and all of them would have varying degrees and opinions on what their cis-woman-ness means to them and the same goes for every other label and identity group. And just because someone defies whatever cultural and social norms of identity that have been put on them doesnt automatically make them nonbinary.

it's all just words

What do you think of the "drag is misogynistic" discourse? To me the argument I see is "they're cosplaying being a trans women and thats bad" Which.. sounds exactly like a terf argument but with the word trans slapped in it.

it's a TERF argument and I'm not even into drag

Every time I remember the blahaj discourse I want to simultaneously laugh & light a votive for the trans community's mental health. I am being told by folks who are younger than my personal obsession with sharks (22+ years running let's go!!!) that I cannot possibly fathom the appeal of a stuffie in the shape of a shark, and if I get one anyway, it's appropriation. And yeah, that discourse died pretty soon out of the cradle, but holy shit! It existed! I really hope, for the sake of all involved, that they feel sheepish in the future; better the embarrassment than doubling down on such a — frankly! — ridiculous mindset.

your AFAB man brain simply can't comprehend the true transfymynyn nature of sharks

Idk if this makes me racist but like. It is actually pretty uncomfortable seeing people use non European cultures having 3rd (or 4th or 5th or 6th etc) genders as proof transphobia is a western thing or whatever. Like. Idk I'm biased but as a (relatively) binary trans individual, I don't want to be relegated to a 3rd gender..? Id like to live as any other man, not some 3rd or 4th category of woman-that-acts-like-a-man. I'm happy for the people that see themselves in 3rd genders, but for me it just feels like a painful reminder of how otherized trans people have been historically.... (also I think it's kinda gross to prop up non European cultures as inherently so much better and great and a homogenized soup of betterness instead of. Yknow. Nuanced cultures with their own unique problems and bigotries and positive qualities. Like indigenous cultures don't have to be perfect for colonialism to be bad actually. But that's a separate thing)

yeah it's such an over simplification

just saw someone compare trans women to the omelas child I hate it here.

hard to overstate how much of a pathetic worm one would have to be to say that about themselves with zero irony

help a post appeared on my dash saying "trans men benefit from male privilege" and one person who reblogged it had "transphobes DNI/transandrophobia truthers DNI" on their header

yeah that's the people you wanna put out there first as a DNI trans men who think they're oppressed

Sorry if your inbox is a bad place to vent about this, but I'm so sick and tired of the way Go To Therapy is slung around these days, both as a stealth insult to imply someone is 'crazy' and needs to be 'fixed', but also as the genuine go to (often only) advice that treats it as some sort of fix-all solution. I was deeply traumatized by therapy as someone who's been in and out of it since pre-k and only finally decided to stop going for good in their 30's and being bombarded with the advice to Go To Therapy in every online space I'm part of is exhausting and triggering to the point that I have the word Therapy blacklisted on tumblr. And I can't like, talk about it without being told I just had the wrong therapist and need to keep trying until the right person magically comes along to fix me, as if I haven't spent my whole life trying to force myself into the mold of recovery. Someone not being able or willing to keep trying to heal in the Approved way is often treated as a red flag and a moral failing, and even my own closest friends have this idea in their heads that therapy is absolutely good for everyone and the only valid reason to not be in therapy is not being able to afford it. I'm just tired and I don't want to heal anymore because I don't think I'll ever be healed enough to satisfy anyone, I don't want to get up over and over and over, I want to stay down and rest.

love you anon <3

[haunting-hufflepuffs-basement]

From the fandom asks thing: 4, 9, 10, 16

Im curious

OHOHO! Let's start some fights, shall we?

4. what was the last straw that finally made you block that annoying person?

So the only people I have blocked actually are people that I think most people would automatically block on sight: scammers, people trying to find out where you live, TERFS and homophobes, etc. I've never really had anyone bother me over things. I'm lucky that way!

9. Worst Part of Canon:

Oh gosh. Okay, so I want to say it's the really weird surface-level worldbuilding that leaves a lot of plot holes, but there's actually something worse for me: the misogyny. And not like, there are characters that behave misogynistically, like the misogyny inherent in the writing. I'm about 90% certain that Harry Potter doesn't pass the Bechdel Test. Yes, I know the perspective character is a dude, but even the conversations Harry OVERHEARS between two girls are either glossed over or about a dude or both. The amount of prominent male characters vs. the amount of prominent female characters is frankly kind of ridiculous. There are other things you notice when you read the books as well, like how the women are far more likely to cry than the men and this is treated as a bad thing or a character weakness for the girls. Or how Ginny doesn't really have much of a character in canon (I kidnapped her and made her my own, canon doesn't deserve her) despite being just as prominent if not more important than some of her brothers and Harry's supposed love interest. Stuff like that. Also the fatshaming. Pretty privilege is REALLY prevalent in this fandom, but the books certainly didn't help by making most fat characters evil and disgusting (the Dursleys, Peter, Umbridge, etc.).

10. Worst part of Fanon:

For me, it's the notion that Peter isn't competent. Guys. Peter in canon is a cowardly slimeball, don't get me wrong, but bad at being a wizard---NO. He blew apart an entire street and killed 12 people, chopped off his own finger and transformed into a rat, and made it look like Sirius had both done the curse and killed him. He was successfully passing information to the Death Eaters for over a year and wasn't even CLOSE to getting caught since Sirius, James, and Lily still made him Secret Keeper. Those things didn't have anything to do with riding someone else's coattails, it's just Peter being damn good at his job. He was actually good at magic you guys. Probably above average actually, seeing as how he was able to hang with James and Sirius. You just don't notice it because James and Sirius are INSANELY good at magic. (Also the whole thing about making 11-15 year old Peter visibly and notably evil and bad or not a real friend or not part of the group and also the fact that he doesn't get redeemed half as much as people like Barty, Evan, and Regulus because there's that pretty privilege again. Drives me nuts. Anyways.)

16. You can't understand why so many people like this thing (trope, headcanon, characterization, etc.)

I will level with you all, I do not understand Drarry. And this isn't me not getting enemies to lovers or the Slytherin x Gryffindor appeal or the quidditch rivals or WHATEVER because I like Jegulus. But for all the similarities that Harry and James have and even for all the similarities that Regulus and Draco have, I don't like it. I think one of the biggest things is that people do usually put in the work with Jegulus stuff to "redeem" Regulus and have him unlearn his unhealthy behaviors, whereas in Drarry fics it tends to get glossed over. It also probably has something to do with the fact that Harry spent 7 years HATING Draco. I don't think that was "obsessed with him because I'm secretly in love" that was genuine hatred you guys. I don't buy it. Meanwhile Regulus and James have 0 canon interactions for me to judge their relationship with, so anything they do in fanon feels more plausible, especially seeing as how he canonically became friends with Sirius, who likely would have had some similar problems to Reg, despite Sirius' best efforts. Obviously no hate if you ship it, I just don't understand it. It's not for me, so I tend to avoid it like the plague so that I don't rain on everyone else's parade.

Thanks for asking! Everybody let me know why I'm wrong in the notes, and you're welcome to send me more asks about anything all the time always and forever!

[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.