#the link is to serano's blog

[monriatitans]

June 2024 Wrap-Up

Artist Shout-Outs Shared

Current AI ‘art’ is created on the backs of hundreds of thousands of artists and photographers who made billions of images and spend time, love and dedication to have their work soullessly stolen and used by selfish people for profit without the slightest concept of ethics. – Alexander Nanitchkov

June’s Artist Shout-Outs

Adam Miller

Dora Holloway

Ralph Key

gawako

TIVANIX

Tricia Pathy

Olesya Umantsiva

Varsha Vasudevan

Claudio Fabietti

Jordan Lucchino

Emi Kitori

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Books Read in June

Instagram Mini-Review Posts

Jun. 23rd: The Affinity Between Us

—

June’s Opinions

Blog Mini-Review Posts

Jun. 23rd: Finished a Book! Mini-Review: The Affinity Between Us

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June’s Announcements, VODs, and Videos

Blog Posts

Jun. 8th: Let’s Discuss Some $#!7: Big Changes!

Jun. 9th: Let’s Play Some $#!7!: Super Lesbian Animal RPG Stream – Part 1

Jun. 12th: Let’s Discuss Some $#!7: May Wrap-Up & Behind-the-Scenes!

Jun. 16th: STREAM ANNOUNCEMENT

Jun. 23rd: Let’s Play Some $#!7!: Super Lesbian Animal RPG Stream – Part 2

—

Cause of the Month: The Trevor Project

Pride Month Quotes of 2024

QUOTE 1: Abhijit Naskar

QUOTE 2: DaShanne Stokes

QUOTE 3: Ella Braidwood

QUOTE 4: Ban Ki-Moon

QUOTE 5: Ellen Wittlinger

QUOTE 6: Julia Serano

QUOTE 7: Christina Engela

QUOTE 8: Ivan Coyote

QUOTE 9: Ian Thomas Malone

QUOTE 10: Alok Vaid-Menon

QUOTE 11: Alison Goodman

QUOTE 12: Alex Gino

QUOTE 13: Mia Violet

QUOTE 14: James Kirchick

QUOTE 15: Diriye Osman

Check out The Trevor Project, whose “mission is to end suicide among LGBTQ+ young people.”

—

June’s Neverending Reading List Shares

Jun. 13th: The Affinity Between Us

Jun. 13th: The Bonds We Share

Jun. 13th: Our Divine Ruin

Jun. 21st: The Secret of Clouds

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Crowdfunded Projects Received

June 10th: Our Divine Ruin by Melissa��Sweeney!

June 17th: The Tome of Fey Lore by Fable Spinners 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To expand the Opinions & Truth (O&T) blog, MonriaTitans started The Weekend Game Show (WGS) to educate on and discuss different aspects of game development, and to show why video games can take years to make, to prevent another Cyberpunk 2077 launch scenario. Watch MonriaTitans on Twitch, YouTube, and Rumble!

In addition, she shares educational quotes to promote literacy, the legitimacy of video games as an artistic medium, and regarding a Cause of the Month to raise awareness, while giving Artist Shout-Outs to human artists to combat AI art theft. Want to learn more about the Artist Shout-Outs? Click here! #createdontscrape

The Artists Shout-Out posts can be seen here, Discord, and more!

She is also an artist under the handle TitansMonriArt.

—

Like what you see and want to know when there’s more? Click here to subscribe for updates and/or hit the Follow button! Enjoy what I do? Please consider supporting via Buy Me a Coffee! Lastly, posts may contain affiliate links.

[bitingfaggotry]

nobody is saying trans men aren't oppressed at all, just that we aren't oppressed for being men. we're oppressed for being transgender. it's true that trans men and trans women both have unique experiences but "transandrophobia" or "transmisandry" imply that men are oppressed for being men and exist to detract from transmisogyny. go into the tags of phraes like this and you'll be bombarded with trans men complaining that trans women have more privilege than them, that the wider trans community only cares about trans women, and refusing to acknowledge transmisogyny. we can talk about the issues trans men face without detracting from and contributing to transmisogyny. that's not being a pick me

it's true that trans men and trans women both have unique experiences but "transandrophobia" or "transmisandry" imply that men are oppressed for being men and exist to detract from transmisogyny

to start: trans men and trans women also have similar experiences, this is what i was referencing with the oppositional sexism mention in a previous response. it is a cissexist assumption that trans men and trans women have to be exact opposites in experiences like cis men and cis women. That is where this kind of detraction for the simple concept of defining the differences in experiences of the oppression transgender men face for being trans men, because people take *men* to mean *trans and cis men* or *only cis men* in this. we are talking about *trans men*

rest of my answer under cut

I just unprivated a post that talks about this oppositional sexism within cis black activist groups i've seen, in that unlike trans politics, there was no desperate attempt to separate other marginalizations (being black) from gender. I will never see someone be so desperate to say to a black man "you aren't oppressed for being a man, you are only oppressed for being black" or "you made it like that guys, you choose it, all of that is on you"

no one makes jokes about the ~those other black men~ who care about "antiblack misandry" (are you seeing how ridiculous this is?)

because for one its deeply insensitive, and two it doesn't need to be done to acknowledge that misogynoir exists, and vis versa! the subgroup theory (not even a popular or universally adopted concept) of antiblack misandry doesn't suddenly mean misogynoir doesn't exist

a blanket transfer of cis men/woman, oppressor/oppressed conceptualization of gender in trans spaces means that any acknowledgment of how being a trans man or trans masc impacts the kinds of transphobia one faces, supposedly deteriorates transmisogyny theory which should not happen because they are not binaries, they are *similar and/or different* experiences that do not cancel each other out

You're right, we can talk about anti-transmasculinity without detracting from trans women, yet as we see here, any mention of trans men's oppression gets a "and trans women?" and that can be fair! forgetting to talk about trans women leads to the cissexist assumption that men and women have to be exact opposites, which is why i mention that the experiences can overlap and be similar, here we are talking about defining and describing the differences of experiences

this reminds me so much of the reaction to the term "nonblack" by other poc acting as though acknowledging antiblack racism detracts from other kinds of racism. its defining differences, not what is worse/better or actually exists/doesn't exist. and I bet you can think of examples of how people do detract from other forms of racism, yet that doesn't mean these terms should stop being used

you can call anyone who wants to act like trans women are privileged and ignores transmisogyny a transmisogynist! they are being cissexist too, looking like t3rfs for a woman/man binary, oppressed/oppressor within trans spaces to blame trans women for everything, you should not take what they say seriously

overall this is misunderstanding of how transness impacts gendered oppression from the infiltration within trans spaces of second wave radfems (both the inclusive and exclusive philosophy) that ignore how marginalizations impact men: who are always privileged (not the case for trans men), always never oppressed (ask any cis white woman if they think they oppress trans men or men of color, see what their reaction is)

tldr: cis men do not experience anti-transmasculinity, gendered oppression for trans people is informed by being transgender unlike cis people. also transmisogyny will always exist regardless of whether or not "anti-transmasculinity" is used by a subsection trans men

[vaspider]

youve got a lot of really great thoughts on a transphobia and homophobia, tbh more critical thinking than most people on here, and i was wondering how much you knew about the theory of rapid onset gender dysphoria/if youd be comfortable sharing your thoughts on the ridiculous idea

It was explicitly invented by transphobes as a means of delegitimizing trans identity, and that invention was backed up by a "study" in which the person running the study never spoke to any trans people or to any professionals providing care for trans people, only spoke to the parents of trans minors, and those parents were specifically recruited from forums for anti-trans parents.

The paper which supposedly coined ROGD was taken down for a while and corrected. Further studies have found no basis for ROGD.

What's really interesting is in the cache of emails which became public earlier this year from a former detransitioner there's a paper trail which pretty clearly indicates that the term was actually created on a very heinous website called 4th/wave/now (forgive my anti-search slashes, these people are awful) well prior to the study.

Hey, you want to guess where the parents for this study were recruited from? If you guessed "the one where the term was invented," you're right!

But wait, there's more!

It appears from the journalistic work done by Mother Jones, Jude Doyle, and Julia Serano, that this term was created by an anti-trans activist who works extensively with right-wing think tanks and who went to great lengths to hide that she invented the term.

Jude Doyle:

Finding anti-trans narratives that would “sell” to the general public was a constant concern for this crowd, and Shupe says it didn’t much matter if the narratives were based in fact or not. Marchiano, for instance, eagerly watched the spread of the ROGD theory — “[transfeminist writer and researcher Julia] Serano has already written a takedown,” she exulted in one August 2018 email. Shupe suspects Marchiano’s role is larger than the public knows: “Marchiano never explicitly said she is the inventor of ROGD, but the evidence points to her, and she’s listed as a contributor to the [Lisa Littman] study on PLOS One,” she writes to me. “My ‘opinion’ is that Marchiano and the 4thWaveNow folks are behind the ROGD study, and Littman merely fronted it for them to make it appear unbiased.”

Jude Doyle again:

On July 2, Shupe sent Marchiano a link to Jones’ blog post telling her “you’ve upset Zinnia again.” (Shupe had a tendency to send Marchiano news of ROGD, and to attribute the theory to “you” — that is, to Marchiano — whether Marchiano was explicitly named or not. In the communications I’ve reviewed, Marchiano does not reject the attribution.) Marchiano responded by saying that Jones had done something to “make her nervous” — namely, she’d dug up a blog post about ROGD that Marchiano had written under her own name.

Julia Serano:

If all of this is true — that Marchiano ran YCTP and invented ROGD — then it would follow that Marchiano was also likely skepticaltherapist, the supposed parent of a trans child who invented the idea of “transgender social contagion” in the first place.

Julia Serano again:

Also on March 15, 2016, at 6:07am (so very early in the day, likely before the aforementioned YTCP piece is published), skepticaltherapist posts her final comment on 4thwavenow before mysteriously disappearing. In a reply to someone named Starrymessenger, skepticaltherapist says: 'I wanted to mention that this month’s Psychotherapy Networker is focusing on trans youth issues, and the tone of each article is uncritically celebratory — lots of mentions of “courage,” and “bravery.” You may need a subscription or at least an account to comment, but I have so far.'

At the time of this comment, "Lisa" is the *only* person to have posted a comment on this particular Psychotherapy Networker article, as the 2nd comment doesn't appear until later that evening (7:30:15 PM on March 15th; both 4thwavenow & Psychotherapy Networker appear to be based in the U.S., so the should be only a few hours apart, if at all). Therefore, "Lisa" and skepticaltherapist must be the same person.

Did you catch all of that?

This is a fraudulent "diagnosis" explicitly invented by an anti-trans psychologist who at times has used sockpuppets to manipulate online conversations, claimed at times to be the mother of a trans child, or maybe it was her friend who had the trans child, or maybe she just knew somebody who just randomly decided he was a trans boy after going on tumblr. (Boy, does Lisa Marchiano hate Tumblr, lol.)

After inventing this diagnosis and pushing it on a forum for parents who don't like that they have trans kids, Marchiano then approaches a different researcher and uses this other researcher to launder this term, launching it into the verbal stratosphere, while explicitly working with right-wing groups who used this "evidence" to manufacture anti-trans bills. This list of right-wing groups and individuals includes the Alliance Defending Freedom, the "American College of Pediatricians," -- not to be confused with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the legitimate organization, ACPeds is a fringe right-wing group.

They literally made all of this up, this idea that transmasculine people specifically are being "infected" by online sources, and then they laundered it through a shitty study and tried to hide the laundering they did, so that shit like this can happen:

The president of the American Principles Project, a member of the coalition, recently told the New York Times that his group’s goal is to eliminate all transition care, starting with children because that’s “where the consensus is.”

This isn't about protecting children or any bullshit like that, and it's not about this fallacious "disorder" because it doesn't exist -- and they know it doesn't exist. They know it doesn't exist because they were the ones who made it up.

Like... what else is there to say? It's like if I made up Purple Big Toe Disease and claimed that all people taller than 5'10" and born on a Tuesday have Purple Big Toe Disease and should not be able to buy aspirin, because it's G-d's plan that people who have Purple Big Toe Disease should not prevent themselves from feeling the pain that G-d has planned for them, and then I asked someone to write a paper about PBTD and pretend I wasn't the one who made it up so I could point at the paper and be like le gasp, PBTD is the number one problem! We need to stop everyone over 5'10" and born on a Tuesday from being able to buy aspirin! And then some dude in South Dakota starts writing up bills in consultation with a bunch of Evangelical lawyers to deny basic health care to people over 5'10" and born on Tuesdays.

If it sounds fucking ridiculous, it's because it is.

[autolenaphilia]

I don't have much of a stance on baeddels, because i'm not good enough at tumblr archaeology to have one. I have actually done research, because trans women are interesting to me. It seems to have been a small tumblr clique of trans women in the early 2010s? And they had some particular transmisogyny analysis? They imploded around 2014, after only getting started around 2013, as these culty cliques tend to do due to sexual abuse and personal conflicts.

But i can't get any firm grip on who they were and what they believed. It seems lost to time. There is not much evidence as blogs are deleted and are not archived well. Like this post tries to be a comprehensive explanation of who baeddels were, but if you check the sources it's mainly links to non-baeddels explaining what baeddels believed. There is like one archive link that doesn't fully work. The post is essentially third-hand hearsay. Of course I suspect the primary sources are mostly gone at this point. Because the baeddels mainly existed on social media, so much is erased or lost, they are mostly a memory at this point. It does feel like tumblr archaeology, this feels like trying to understand some early christian sect who we only know from accounts of people who opposed them.

Like the baeddels didn't publish books to my knowledge, or seem to have been in the habit of writing manifestos or explanations of what they believed. Like it's not with radfems where you can easily read Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex or Ti-Grace Atkinson or Janice Raymond to find out what kind of bullshit they were on.

I'm not convinced the baeddels were like a distinct movement with a well-defined ideology, as that post linked above seems to argue. That they explicitly believed that gender is a choice and choosing to be a man is bad. There is just not enough evidence to do that. Like the primary sources the post have is screenshots of self-described baeddels making mean-spirited posts about transmascs. A lot of it is pretty bad, but doesn't create a picture of a well-defined ideology. I'm not convinced there was really a "baeddelism".

Like I haven't been convinced the baeddels were anything but a specific clique of tumblr trans lesbians who found out about the word baeddel and reclaimed it, believing it to be root of the english word "bad", had a transmisogyny analysis and had some bad, hateful rhetoric directed towards transmascs. Like none of that makes for a distinct ideology, no matter how incoherent.

Part of it that it seems that the baeddels were a relatively small group, that probably had an outsized impact on tumblr discourse. Like I've heard assessments that are like the core baeddel group was like 8-10 people.

The closest thing I found to a baeddel manifesto is this medium post which was published years after the baeddel clique seems to have imploded, and I don't know the connection the person who wrote it had to the original baeddels. I don't know if they thought this is a good summary of their thinking or not. Most of the text is defensive and presents what is basic transfeminist analysis as baeddel theory, which I don't think they can claim? It's not a reliable guide, especially being from 2017.

If you argue that baeddelism is something like "Transmisogyny exists, it's a real systematic oppression that transfems face, and yes, even TME trans people can perpetrate it", I guess I'm a baeddel? This strikes me as basic transfeminist theory, a basic transmisogyny theory as Julia Serano put it. If this is baeddelism, most transfeminists are baeddels.

And here I think the problem lies with "baeddel" as it's used today. They were probably never a well-defined ideological group, but tied together more by personal relationships (which is why they imploded when those relationships turned abusive) and some shared rhetoric. And a lot of what they actually believed is lost to time, due to them only being online and on tumblr specifically.

So "baeddel" has become such a loose word that it can be removed from the context of the tumblr baeddel clique and applied as an insult to practically anyone. The way I seen it used it often means "transfem who writes mean things about transmascs". But more worrying is that basic transfeminist analysis/transmisogyny theory or criticism of transmisogyny perpetrated by tme trans people are labeled as "baeddel".

It seems similar to how people don't have a good handle on who radfems/terfs actually are and what they are, so they label basic feminist analysis as "terfy" or define terf as "self-proclaimed feminist who hates men". I have written extensively about radfems here.

The post about baeddels I linked above actually does this kind of thing to the baeddels. It calls them "transinclusive radical feminists" and describe their ideology as radfem. Which I strongly doubt is true. That's because radfem ideology defines womanhood through biological essentialism and believes cis women's biology is why misogyny and patriarchy exists. It's hard to have a strong transmisogyny analysis with that kind of theoretical grounding. Trans women are neither women or targets of misogyny when you define womanhood that way.

This is why "trans-inclusive" radfems are so often not really trans-inclusive. You can't really take the biological essentialism and transmisogyny out of radfemism, and have it still be radfemism. So accusing the baeddels of doing that doesn't really hold water. Baeddels seem to have had a lot of man-hating rhetoric and separatist ideology, but that is not what defines radfem ideology.

And I do mean it seems to be applied to trans women doing basic transfeminist analysis or using transmisogyny theory. Turns out I was wrong about baeddels not publishing books, because apparently Julia Serano was basically a proto-baeddel and Whipping Girl is the tap-root of baeddelism.

Like look at these two posts.

Calling Serano a radfem is hilarious. Like she is not even remotely that. But I'm actually worried about how transandrophobia/misandry people have this view that Serano and Whipping Girl are this fountainhead of evil "transandrophobia", based mostly on some bad quotes. Because if you cancel Serano and Whipping Girl, it's a way of canceling transmisogyny theory, because Whipping Girl basically created the concept. I'm not saying that criticism and disagreement of Serano and her ideas are bad, but there is this attempt at canceling her. Due to transmisogyny, any mistakes a trans woman make are magnified and used as part as an attempt to destroy her career and isolate her from community. And Serano being such a major transfeminist that it would be a major loss.

And trying to describe her as baeddel-ascent is especially telling. The word is then entirely disconnected from the tumblr clique who claimed the word and whose crimes (which i do not necessarily deny) gave the word its modern power as an insult.

Two more screenshots:

The term is so vaguely defined that this kind of paranoia worries me. Like if you believe that there is this evil cabal of "transmisandrist" trans women still around, and not calling yourself a baeddel is no defense, I don't see this ending happily due to transmisogyny. The transmisogynistic current of call-out culture will practically get people hurt by this. Especially if it seems that critcizing transmisogyny, especially from transmascs seem to be enough to be labeled a baeddel.

The original baeddel clique might have done some horrible crimes. But I doubt they represented some distinct ideology that we need to root out of trans spaces, especially as no one can define and primary sources on what the baeddels believed is scarce.

And that's because of how online they were. I do not want to minimize any abusive content they might have sent, but it strikes me how insignificant the baeddels were. LIke they seem to have existed largely online and wielded their influence mainly on tumblr. They never seemed to have wielded any kind of institutional power. And that's not surprising, if you are a trans lesbian you don't have much power.

The actions of self-described baeddels might have been a problem, but unlike say radfems they seem to have been a very minor problem Like Janice Raymond was working with the Reagan adminstration to deny trans people healthcare, and in my country radfem groups today provide the Swedish government a feminist alibi for not taking action to improve trans rights. Radfems have had a very demonstrable effect on institutional transphobia.

You can't say that about the baeddels. And they probably were nasty to transmascs, but i suspect their greatest victim was the poor trans woman who was one of them, but who was raped by a leading member.

It's kinda insane how they, a small internet sect, have become this boogeywoman to wield against trans woman talking about transmisogyny, including major figures like Julia Serano.

[convinced-yet]

Someone got flagged red for speaking on the oppression of trans men:

Someone else got flagged red for talking about intersex issues. The red links in the pinned posts are links to their own blog posts, which is why they're all red:

More examples of Shinigami Eyes no longer being reliable. It seems some things have changed back to normal (such as TERF blogs getting marked green for a while but are correctly red now, or just random blogs that support trans people getting marked as red):

Wasted my time diving through some "green labelled" blogs with certain takes and their points came down to: -"It's all transphobia and transmisogyny, if you get oppressed for being trans man, it's because people see you as a woman so it's oppression against women or the fact that you're trans." -"If you say that trans men are discriminated against and you don't say trans women are also being discriminated against in the same post, you're being a transmisogynist because you're leaving out trans womens' struggles." -"Stop arguing about who has it worse [between trans men and trans women] because it's obviously trans women." -There's probably more but I found the ordeal too bothersome. Just go into the tumblr search for "Shinigami Eyes", click on some green blogs, and read for yourself if you want sources. -No screenshots here because it was all too lengthy and not easy to format.

From the Shinigami Eyes page:

(From what I've seen, radically calling out transmisogyny is good enough to get you a green label. Who cares if you're infighting/transphobic to other people under the trans umbrella while you're doing so?)

"But transmisogyny--" Yeah it's real but the ones attacking trans women are people who hate trans people, people who hate women, people who hate trans women, and TERFs/TIRFs.

The person who coined the term transmisogyny, Julia Serano, is a trans woman. She even addressed that "transmisogyny" may not be a one-size-fit-all word for the struggles that other people experience. Someone else can come up with a word for that.

Conclusion: Shinigami Eyes is no longer as good as it used to be. Tumblr TERF website + The extension's flagging system being based on user-submitted flags = Not a reliable environment for this extension in current political climate. Is everyone telling you to stop using Shinigami Eyes out to prey on trans women? No. I don't know how many are trying to prey on trans women but I know that a lot of blogs are getting incorrectly flagged red for the crime of... talking about their own trans struggles. Which seems counter-intuitive to the function it's also meant to serve.

hey that post about shinigami eyes seems really wack. i dont know if its true but saying shit like “it’s run by trans inclusive radical feminists who hate all trans men for being trans men” with absolutely no sources or screenshots or even bringing up an example is sus as fuck. it makes me sad i saw it on my dash because it’s completely indistinguishable from a witch hunt based solely on trans misogyny yknow, and so that’s. yknow. the function it’s serving

yeah like i can't confirm it myself bc i haven't been on my desktop tumblr in forever (various reasons including being really busy with work, recovering with work, and my pc is so busted it took 45 mins to boot up properly one time) so i saw that post and my partner had to give me a rundown of what happened

i would normally definitely try to find some sources for you bc yeah i'd like to see those sources for myself too but i'm currently trying to let my blood go back to where it should be

if anyone can like reblog this with sources/extra information, i would really really appreciate it

[pro-abortion-rights]

Do you have any essays about abortion rights from the perspective of trans women? I have what Julia Serrano wrote about feminism leaving her behind as a trans women when we focus too much on birth control inaccessibility and maternal mortality, and I'd like to write a paper on this, especially if anyone knows if abortion rights have been discussed for trans women getting uterus transplants? Thank you!

This article seems to have a good overview of trans women in the abortion rights movement, and feminism in general. Also, to be clear, what Julia Serano said was that she is pro-contraception and pro-choice, but that feminism should be inclusive of infertile and transgender women as well. Here’s a link to a blog post that quotes her and isn’t actively trying to smear her, though I don’t agree with everything in the post.

As far as I know abortion rights for transgender women who get uterus transplants are speculative at this point, except that such abortions are unlikely to be elective after the immense cost and effort of a transplant, but are likelier to be for unforeseen medical situations. Obviously pregnant transgender women should be afforded the same abortion rights as any other pregnant person.

[icaruskey]

Yeah this is a surprising take to kinda wake up to tbh, especially after yesterday I was talking to some people, white and not, about wanting to properly dissect Whipping Girl once I graduate, especially regarding how she treats non-white trans identities, and the first thing Greyson said was that if I were to do that, I need to make sure I look at how white academics have created terrible spaces for indigenous interviewees and basically read up and create guidelines for myself on how to create a safe environment for protecting the autonomy of marginalized people and not just use them as some sort of gotcha against Serano's shoddy research.

I'm not saying anyone is perfect (especially not me, though I'm not anywhere near a big name in this game), but I do know two out of three of these people and have seen how false accusations have been twisted, very much like how the "drama" around Saint is used to demonize hymn and transandrophobia as a whole.

Anyway, I decided to poke into miinaneendeg's blog to see if there's anything with like screenshots, etc. The most I see is some stuff from spacelazarwolf, which I kinda have complex feelings about anyway because there was the whole thing with Narvin that happened and (well) it's not the time or place to try and unpack that and that exacerbated the issue all around.

There's no links with anything else though and it makes it hard to sift through and find the facts and idk

I'm very tired.

I'm tired of the black men, indigenous men, and men of colour that are continually erased when people try to frame transandrophobia theory as a white theory. the concept was coined by a trans masc of colour and a lot of us that continue to talk about it are not white. stop using "white people bad" as a bludgeon to silence trans men and mascs. (many of whom aren't even white.)

not to mention the absolute fucking double standard. if you were tagging your anger towards white trans women as transmisogyny specifically to bait trans women to get mad at you and "prove your point" it would be recognized for the absolute clown behaviour that it is.

[gcintheme-blog]

Debunking Serano’s “Debunking”

Julia Serano believes he has “debunked” radical feminists in this article published on his blog yesterday. I would like to take some time to deconstruct Serano’s arguments and debunk trans activism’s “debunking.” Because of all the fallacies and straw men in the article, this post will be a long one. Grab a snack and join me. Serano, this is rhetorically addressed to you.

Your second sentence in this article:

From pre-interview conversations we shared, I knew that my interviewer planned to ask me about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s comments from earlier this year wherein she claimed that trans women are not women.

And in the article you link to for a source:

Adichie, who is not transgender, responded: “So when people talk about, you know, ‘Are trans women women?’ — my feeling is trans women are trans women.”

Notice how you’re dishonest in the second sentence of this article? You begin by touting yourself and your interview for the New York Times, and then immediately, falsely, cast skeptical feminists like Adichie as the villains. While I wouldn’t disagree with Adichie if she had said trans women aren’t women, she didn’t say that and you begin your piece by framing “popular” feminists (Adichie and women like her) as a natural enemy.

Moving on, you talk about your own book for a while, and then:

Women who insist that trans women are not women often object to being called “cis women” under the false assumption that it somehow undermines their femaleness — this is not at all the purpose of this language....In other words, referring to someone as “cisgender” simply means that they have not had a transgender experience.

You do not get to determine other people's analysis of your writing, especially if you want to falsely put words in Adichie's mouth. If you are going to claim that trans feelings are what matter over other people speaking, then you cannot simultaneously tell anyone who feels undermined by putting a prefix on our oppression that we are wrong.

I could say "In other words, referring to someone as 'he' simply means he was born with a penis and has been treated accordingly by society" and you'd call me a bigot. You cannot support, for instance, the idea that misgendering a trans person is violence if the alleged offender meant no harm because according to your logic, the intent of words matters more than the effect.

How many times have women heard men tell us not to take their words negatively? “Calm down!” “Relax!” “It’s a compliment!” This is tired.

While some cisgender people refuse to take our experiences seriously, the fact of the matter is that transgender people can be found in virtually every culture and throughout history.

This is not an argument. Sexism has occurred in virtually every culture and throughout history. So has rape, murder, and child abuse. Longevity is not relevant. You cannot argue that it lends legitimacy or validates your claims.

While cis feminists who claim that trans women are not women obsess over questions of identity (“How can a ‘man’ possibly call ‘himself’ a woman?”), they purposefully overlook or play down the fact that we have very real life experiences as women.

Actually, we don't obsess over your identity. You do. Radical feminists are focused on material problems whereas you are the one constantly blowing about identity validation. I have never asked how a man can call himself a woman because society allows men to call themselves anything they want, including the biologically impossible.

You do not have experiences as a woman. You have experiences as a man masquerading as a woman. They will never be the same as our experiences.

Forcing trans women into a separate group that is distinct from cis women does not in any way help achieve feminism’s central goal of ending sexism.

Spaces free from men does help our goal by allowing us to organize women like you to come and tell us who we are and what our goals should be. Men forcing themselves into women's spaces is sexism.

Other common appeals to biology center on reproduction — e.g., stating that trans women have not experienced menstruation, or cannot become pregnant. This ignores the fact that some cisgender women never menstruate and/or are unable to become pregnant.

A man has never become pregnant. Where are women who do not menstruate or are unable to become pregnant complaining like you are? I have never become pregnant and never once did I doubt that I'm a woman. Society has treated me from birth as a female with the potential to become pregnant. You do not have that potential.

Women’s genitals vary greatly, and as with chromosomes and reproductive capabilities, we cannot readily see other people’s genitals in everyday encounters.

Women do not have penises. Diversity in vulvas and vaginas is not a penis. We can evaluate the sex of 99% of the people we come across at first glance. I PROMISE you that men know I have a vagina when they sexually harass me on the street even though they can't see it.

When I lived in Spain as an Iraqi girl, I was sometimes mistaken for a person of Romani heritage and treated as such. (One specific incident comes to mind where I was patiently waiting to use a cash machine and the current user tried to shoo me away, believing I would try to rob her.) While my phenotype might appear to be that of a Roma girl to some people and I have had “real experiences” of being an Iraqi mistaken for a Roma person, that doesn’t make me Romani. It doesn’t give me the history of the Romani people or the struggle of their daily lives and common discrimination.

And frankly, what could possibly be more sexist than reducing a woman to what’s between her legs? Isn’t that precisely what sexist men have been doing to women for centuries on end?

Possibly the idea that a woman is a collection of stereotypes rather than a biologically oppressed class? Acknowledging I have a vagina and my life has been a certain way because of it is not reductive. I never said it defines me; it makes my life significantly different from yours and as a radical feminist I am trying to fight against that. You're the only one using that argument.

So it is hypocritical for any self-identified feminist to use “biology” and “body parts” arguments in their attempts to dismiss trans women.

Biology is directly tied to our oppression. We need to point that out to fight the oppression. Is it a black person playing into racism by pointing out that she is black? Is a Jew hypocritical for pointing out that antisemitism happens to her because she is Jewish? During the Holocaust, people with Jewish heritage who self-identified as atheists were STILL murdered along with practicing Jews. They couldn't identify themselves out of the ghettos or the concentration camps because your identifarianism is made up.

The main thrust of this assertion is that women are women because of socialization and/or their experiences with sexism. But what about me then?

It's NOT ALWAYS ABOUT YOU.

You're not a woman. There is your answer.

Or what about young trans girls who socially transition early in life, and who never have the experience of being perceived or treated as a man?

Socialization literally starts in the uterus. There are cultures with superstitions that doing certain things will "curse" a pregnant woman with a female infant. I can see you don't spend a lot of time with children (alhamdulillah--thank god) because you would see how early that socialization begins and reflects in their behavior. I’ve already written about how society disadvantages female infants.

A young girl is forced against her will to live as a boy. Upon reaching adulthood, after years of male socialization and privilege, she comes out about identifying as female and begins to live as a woman. Do you accept her as a woman?

Children are not forced against their will to live as their biological sex because biological sex is natural trait for human beings . Children are forced to conform to gender roles but your insistence that womanhood is just a collection of those roles is actually upholding the problem.

Saying "you are a boy" is not the same as being told what “boy” socially entails, or that you cannot do feminine-labeled things because you are a boy. You were NEVER a young girl so don't act like a victim in that sense. I'm sorry society forces children to uphold gender roles but radical feminists are the ones out here fighting them.

More often than not, people who claim that trans women aren’t women make both the biology and socialization arguments simultaneously, even though they are seemingly contradictory (i.e., if biology is the predominant criteria, then one’s socialization shouldn’t matter, and vice versa).

Biology is the basis of that socialization. Radical feminists are not arguing conflicting ideologies. We acknowledge that socialization is assigned to us based on our material and unchangeable biological sex. This is not contradictory in any way.

Much like their homophobic counterparts who make appeals to biology (“God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”)

Creationism is not biology. You're trying to undermine biology and evolution with an example that you know is religious and not scientific at all.

The trans-women-aren’t-women crowd desperately throws the entire kitchen sink at us rather than attempting to make a coherent argument.

I think I've made a very coherent argument but trans activists ignore that argument and set up straw men, like you just did in the sentence immediately before this one. You're the one who has it wrong.

While gender socialization is quite real, all of us are capable of overcoming or transcending the socialization that we experienced as children.

So now you're acknowledging gender socialization but saying we can overcome it. This is blaming women for our own oppression because we cannot socialize or identify ourselves out of it. Even trans men cannot escape their socialization and the attacks against their female biology like anti-abortion laws.

If I could transcend my socialization, I wouldn't wear makeup, but my job requires me to look "presentable" and this means wearing makeup in my society. If I could transcend my socialization, I would be much firmer with men who interrupt me but I know they will likely react with more hostility and I have to prioritize my safety over shedding stereotypes. It's hardly an option really.

The "Male Energy" and "Male Privilege" Fallacies

The way you've put "male privilege" in quotation marks and followed with the word "fallacies" makes me extremely nervous for this next section because it sounds like you don't believe male privilege exists. But I will read and judge fairly...

In my many years of being perceived by the world as a cisgender woman, I have never once had anyone claim to detect “male privilege” or “male energy” in me.

This is because your male socialization means you are more likely to react with hostility or violence when being criticized, and our female socialization makes us less likely to criticize men, out of fear or concern for your feelings over ours.

Do you think male-identified males have these conversations with women or with each other all the time? I have never told a man he exudes "male energy." I've never even heard of this. It's bizarre. It’s also unrealistic to believe people tell you every thought they have about you. I’m sure people have thought things about me—both flattering and unflattering—that they’ve kept to themselves.

Male privilege is a very real thing. In my booking Whipping Girl, I talk at length about my own personal experiences of having it, and subsequently losing it post-transition.

Why do you have male privilege in quotation marks in every previous line? It's very obvious you don't think it applies to you as you've stated this directly. That's the same line of thinking I've heard from most male self-identified "feminists" who really just want to deny their own culpability. We've all heard it.

The fact that the trans-women-aren’t-women crowd constantly harp about trans women’s real or imagined male privilege, yet refuse to acknowledge or examine their own cisgender privilege, demonstrates that their concerns about privilege are disingenuous.

"Trans women's real or imagined male privilege." So which is it then? You aren't putting forth a coherent argument.

Cisgender privilege is not real. Women are not privileged more than men in the world, and accepting the reality of your body and how it means you are treated in the world is not a privilege unless you argue that being transgender is a mental illness, in which case those without that mental illness do have some advantages. But the trans lobby takes offense to that.

There are numerous problems with this line of reasoning [that trans males are caricatures of women]:

1) It relies on a highly negative view of feminine gender expression (that I have debunked in my writings) and implies that conventionally feminine cisgender women are also behaving superficially and/or reinforcing stereotypes.

If you do believe that women are an oppressed group, then naturally if follows the oppressed group cannot be blamed for their participation in that system to the same extent as the oppressors.

I have been socialized from birth to act feminine according to my culture’s standards. You haven’t. When you imply that acting out my oppression make you oppressed too, it’s insulting. First, it makes a joke of what I am forced to do to live safely, and second, it implies if I acted differently, I wouldn’t be oppressed as a woman, which isn’t true.

2) It ignores the many trans women who are outspoken feminists and/or not conventionally feminine.

Lots of men call themselves feminists but it doesn't make them feminists or make them women. Calling yourself a feminist doesn’t make you a feminist any more than calling yourself a woman makes you a woman. (It doesn’t make you those things at all.)

3) Trans women do not transition out of a desire to be feminine; we transition out of a self-understanding that we are or should be female (commonly referred to as gender identity).

If there is no discernible biological condition that defines someone as a woman, as you argue before, then what are you transitioning to?

You are just adopting feminine stereotypes (but picking and choosing, mind you) and saying that makes you a woman. It doesn’t. Womanhood isn’t a feeling or an inner identity and to imply this is anti-woman because it sets the foundation for blaming us for our own position within an oppressed class.

4) Trans women who are conventionally feminine are not in any way asserting or insinuating that all women should be conventionally feminine, or that femininity is all there is to being a woman. Like cis women, trans women dress the way we do in order to express ourselves, not to critique or caricature other women.

You are asserting that feminine stereotypes make you a woman instead of what you are: a feminine man. And, by your language “[imply that] femininity is all there is to being a woman” you are implying that femininity (which is a set of cultural stereotypes) is at least part of being a woman. This is in conflict with your “identification only” mantra and it is proven false by every proud gender non-conforming woman and man out there.

5) This line of reasoning accuses trans women of arrogantly presuming to know what cis women experience, when we do no such thing. In reality, it’s the cis women who forward this accusation that are the ones arrogantly presuming to know what trans women experience and what motivates us.

You literally said in your last point: “Like cis women, trans women dress the way we do in order to express ourselves.” I do not dress the way I do in order to express myself; I dress this way in order to avoid violence in an extremely patriarchal society where women are expected to be covered or attacked. You just claimed to know my experience and motivations and you got it completely wrong.

As a trans woman, I will be the first to admit that I cannot possibly know what any other woman experiences or feels on the inside.

Then why have you spent this entire article constructing straw man arguments and insisting radical feminists believe things that we simply don’t? Your second sentence was a lie about something feminist and woman Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie said. How could you assume you have anything in common with us?

But the thing is, the trans-women-aren’t-women crowd cannot possibly know what any other woman experiences or feels either!

Actually, I do know what other women experience and feel because I am a woman. We have a shared experience as an oppressed class that you are not a part of. I’m glad you are acknowledging that you don’t know how we feel, but women around the world have the common experience of our biology and our socialization as the lesser sex according to that biology.

It’s the cis women who attempt to exclude us who seem to have a singular superficial stereotypical notion of what constitutes a woman, or of what women experience.

When you call the shared experiences of women under patriarchy “a singular superficial notion” you are arguing that sexism does not exist. Sexism has to have a definition in order to fight against it and that definition is the oppression of women as a class of people based on our reproductive biology.

Some cis feminists will extrapolate from this [trans people’s claims of sexed brains] that all trans people must hold highly essentialist beliefs about female-versus-male brains, and therefore that we are an affront to feminism. Often, they will make this case while simultaneously making essentialist claims themselves (e.g., regarding reproductive capacities) in order to undermine our identities.

The idea of different male and female brains is an affront to feminism because we know scientifically that our brains house our personality traits, intelligence, and memory and thus significantly affects how we act within society. Arguing that women have fundamentally different brains from men supports sexism by allowing men to argue our social circumstances are actually brought about by biological determination and that our lower place within society is valid because we are less intelligent or naturally drawn to certain tasks.

As a biologist, you should know that genitals serve a completely different purpose than the brain and does lead to different lived experiences for men and women. Even without the social construct of gender, women have pregnancies and men do not. To point out that male and female genitals are different is acknowledging material reality, whereas you are trying to construct your arguments upon subjective “identities.”

Radical feminists argue this material reality should not place women at a lower position within society or designate certain roles for us that have nothing to do with biology. Radical feminists accept our realities as people with vaginas and uteruses and the biological consequences of those things. What we do not accept is the unnecessary and oppressive social roles that have been created based upon them.

But here’s the thing: Rachel Dolezal is one person. In sharp contrast (as I alluded to earlier), transgender people are a pan-cultural and trans-historical phenomenon, and comprise approximately 0.2 – 0.3% of the population.

Prevalence does not make something good or healthy. A lot more than 0.3% of the population is sexist and that doesn’t mean sexism should be accepted in society. Since you can’t undermine that Rachel Dolezal acted out stereotypes and then called herself a black person and how this is directly linked to the trans phenomenon, you’re trying to argue that the problem is small.

According to the American news networks, white people “identify” as people of color to check those boxes on university and job applications to take advantage of affirmative action all the time. People confess to doing it. So the problem of people moving into spaces designated for certain marginalized groups—including people of color and women—is not small like you make it out to be.

I am Iraqi and I plan to study in the United States which means I have to require a special visa and still face possible rejection as a result of Trump’s travel ban on my country. (I’m not a Muslim, but the ban targets Muslim-majority countries and I live in one.) Still, I checked “white” on my university applications because it clearly states Middle Eastern people are white during that process. Marginalized Americans worked hard for those distinctions and I will not undermine their work by claiming to be someone I’m not. Maybe we can discuss a separate Middle Eastern category in the future, but I’m not going to claim to be black or Pacific Islander.

I have never once in my life heard a trans woman claim that our experiences are 100 percent identical to those of cis women.

Then what is your article even about? Why does the idea of women having our own spaces without trans women bother you? What is under threat here? Your “identity,” as you state above?

The problem isn’t that we (i.e., trans women) refuse to acknowledge any differences, but rather that the trans-women-aren’t-women crowd refuses to acknowledge our many similarities.

Feminism doesn’t focus on similarities because sexism doesn’t. “Why don’t we just all come together because we aren’t that different” says the person in a position of institutional power. Society tells people we are different and then as soon as you want something we have (that you have relegated us to) you claim to be just like us. Please.

There was a time in the 1960s and 1970s when many heterosexual feminists wanted to similarly exclude lesbians from women’s organizations and from feminism. The justifications that they forwarded were eerily similarly to trans-women-aren’t-women arguments: They accused lesbians of being “oppressively male” and of “reinforcing the sex class system.”

Lesbians are women and feminism is the movement to liberate women from sexism. Lesbians are biologically female and therefore women, whereas you are not. Many previous “feminists” have been racist and antisemitic as well, but people with common sense know black women and Jewish women are adult human females and therefore included in feminism. Biological males do not belong in feminism. Do not appropriate the struggles of lesbians.

Trans women are women. We may not be “exactly like” cis women, but then again, cis women are not all “exactly like” one another either. But what we do share is that we all identify and move through the world as women.

No, you are not women. You are biologically male and socialized as boys and then men. Not all women are exactly alike but we all have the shared experience of being biologically female and being treated accordingly. You do not have that experience. You do not move through the world as a woman, but as a man pretending he is a woman.

I said at the outset, forcing trans women into a separate group that is distinct from cis women does not in any way help achieve feminism’s central goal of ending sexism. In fact, it only serves to undermine our collective cause.

Sexism is rooted in biological sex. You are a biological male and in this way you are distinct from biological females and we do not have to include you in our mission to liberation ourselves from oppression by men.

What is our collective cause? What are your goals and how do you hope to achieve them? What are you doing to help women other than writing about how we exclude you because you are a man? How do you define sexism?

Your piece is riddled with incoherent arguments and you attempt to paint radical feminism as illogical when, in fact, radical feminism can be used to logically dismantle all your arguments and point to a clear foundation for women’s oppression.

This work starts with a falsehood and ends with a vague assertion that feminists, by asking for our own spaces free from men, are hurting ourselves when actually, you have only argued how these actions hurt you and men like you. You have blamed women for our own oppression throughout this article and yet you expect us to take you in with open arms and validate your identity because that is the only thing that you believe ties you to womanhood.

It doesn’t, and we’re not here to entertain you.

[genderblenderpodcast-blog]

(Gender Blender Podcast)

cw: nonconsensual medically unnecessary surgeries, suicide, medical trauma

Tai talks to Pidgeon Pagonis about the interactions of intersex people with the medical industrial complex, their new film “The Son I Never Had,” the place of intersex people in the LGBTQI umbrella, and the need for support systems for intersex folks. Dr. Cary Costello from the University of Milwaukee also joins to talk about the words endo sex and ipso gender, and the opportunities for coalition building between trans and intersex communities.

Pidgeon (Chicago, IL) is an intersex activist, educator, and filmmaker. They are a leader in the intersex movement’s fight for bodily autonomy and justice. Their goal is to deconstruct the dangerous myths that lead to violations of intersex people’s human rights, including common, irreversible medical procedures performed without consent to make bodies conform to binary sex stereotypes. Pidgeon has a decade’s worth of experience giving talks and facilitating intersex workshops around the globe. In 2015, they received the LGBT Champion of Change Award from the White House. They can be seen on the cover of National Geographic’s January issue titled, Gender Revolution. This past Spring, they instructed Introduction to LGBTQI Studies at DePaul University.

Dr. Cary Costello is an academic and scaler of boundary walls, intersex by birth, female-reared, legally transitioned to male status, and pleased with zir trajectory.

Links:

- Writing by Julia Serano http://www.juliaserano.com/writings.html

-Pidgeon’s Everyday Feminism article: http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/06/intersex-lgbtq-misses-the-point/

-I Want to Be Like Nature Made Me, Human Rights Watch Report: https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/07/25/i-want-be-nature-made-me/medically-unnecessary-surgeries-intersex-children-us

-Dr. Cary Costello blog post on the Ideology of Natural Sex: http://intersexroadshow.blogspot.ca/2016/08/the-problematic-ideology-of-natural-sex.html

[infiniteglitterfall]

I was wondering if you had any queer and/or social justice books you could recommend? (Also completely different topic but what does "Don't be a dick, Alan" mean? Is it a quote or reference or something?)

excellent question! it is an in-joke with myself. someone was being a passive-aggressive racist douchebag on Nextdoor, and I replied with “Don’t be a dick, Alan.” which i think we all know is surprisingly pithy for me. I thought it would be a good thing to use to replace the default text people see when they write an ask. I didn’t realize at first that I had actually replaced the text of the “ask me anything” link on my blog. But it didn’t seem to stop people from sending asks, so I left it there. I can’t say it STOPS people from being dicks, but most people who send me asks are very nice either way. Queer/social justice is kind of a broad topic (two broad topics really) so I’ll just give you a sampling of my favorites and my to-reads: Boys Like Her: Transfictions - I don’t know how it would hold up today, but it was amazing in 1998. IIRC, at least one of the authors is intersex and trans, and writes about that, and there are a lot of pieces about being genderqueer and/or queer in general. (The book is “a provocative collection of fiction and images from Taste This, a queer performance group including Anna Camilleri, Ivan Coyote, Zoe Eakle and Lyndell Mongomery.”) 

I really need to read For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly, by “undocuqueer” poet Yosimar Reyes. He wrote A Poem So That The Weight Of This Country Does Not Crush You. He is an amazing author/activist; I follow him on Facebook, and even his Facebook posts are perfect: 

“My art is for my Undocumented people I could care less if the average American doesn’t know why I can’t become legal and I am no longer going to answer that question. They can go on google. My priority is making sure my people don’t despair. My audience is my own and I’m unapologetic about that!”

“You think it’s just about a social security number but just imagine how much that number gives you access. There are so many young people of color that give up cause this country tells them it’s not their home and they were born here. I know this country is not mine to claim according to some people but when is this country going to acknowledge that they uprooted me from my home? When are y'all going to start facing the violence of your history?” 

Sunnybrook: A True Story With Lies, by Persimmon Blackbridge is short and colorful, and groundbreaking for me in exposing the ableism in the mental health industry, and helping me understand disability rights around mental health in general. It’s “he hilarious and angry story of a young woman who fakes her way into a job that changes her life. One cover-up follows another as Diane hides her learning disabilities from her new employer, the ‘Sunnybrook Institution for the Mentally Handicapped’ and her girlfriend. But her dreams of becoming ‘a professional’ are threatened by her identification with the inmates at Sunnybrook. And when Diane meets Shirley-Butch at the bar, her lesbian identity and her psychiatric history become irrevocably intertwined. Moving back and forth between Diane’s job and her personal life, Sunnybrook is by turns funny, tragic and sexy. It is a riveting and visually arresting story about a group of people whose lives are made up of small acts of resistance, who steal moments of joy whenever possible.” Very Tumblr. Persimmon Blackbridge’s entire body of work is amazing, lots of radical queer working-class mentally-ill fiction. I loved Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, which is sort of a combination of a memoir and a stroll through people who transcended gender norms throughout history. It’s not a well-sourced historical text arguing that each person was trans, it’s basically a trans person going “look at this, these people’s experiences were similar to ours.” 

I don’t know how it would hold up today, but there are two books that do a more “real”, rigorous, intentional historical exploration of trans people that I really want to read: Transgender History, by Susan Stryker (a bi trans historian) and um… 

Ok, and that’s the only one, because I thought the other one was an updating of Transgender Warriors, but it’s actually a collection of trans writing and art from people all around the world: Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. One review says, “The editors have made selections representative of the diversity to be found in the global trans* community - those sharing their thoughts and experiences express a range of gender identities - and some decline gender identification all together. While many of the voices come from North America, there are contributors from all around the world - Spain, Singapore, Mexico, Argentina, Kenya among others - and from a multitude of ethnic backgrounds. The contributions range from the deeply personal to the highly theoretical, from formal essay to autobiographical narrative to poetry to visual art.” 

I need to read Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution, by Shiri Eisner; River read it last year and the bits I glimpsed (or got to hear out loud) were too good. 

Ditto Queer And Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some Of Our Lives, where Nia King “discusses fat burlesque with Magnoliah Black, queer fashion with Kiam Marcelo Junio, interning at Playboy with Janet Mock, dating gay Latino Republicans with Julio Salgado, intellectual hazing with Kortney Ryan Ziegler, gay gentrification with Van Binfa, getting a book deal with Virgie Tovar, the politics of black drag with Micia Mosely, evading deportation with Yosimar Reyes,” [oh hey!] “weird science with Ryka Aoki, gay public sex in Africa with Nick Mwaluko, thin privilege with Fabian Romero, the tyranny of "self-care” with Lovemme Corazon, “selling out” with Miss Persia and Daddie$ Pla$tik, the self-employed art activist hustle with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinha, and much, much more.” On the “bi trans author” topic, I really want to read Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, by Julia Serano. She is a very clear and well-reasoned writer, and it also seems like a “very Tumblr book”: “Among LGBTQ activists, there is a long history of lesbians and gay men dismissing bisexuals, transgender people, and other gender and sexual minorities. In each case, exclusion is based on the premise that certain ways of being gendered or sexual are more legitimate, natural, or righteous than others…. Serano advocates for a new approach to fighting sexism that avoids these pitfalls and offers new ways of thinking about gender, sexuality, and sexism that foster inclusivity rather than exclusivity.” I have a lot of concerns tho because at least one reviewer noted that she totally leaves race out of it, which ?????W HYYYYYYYY???? why would you do that when talking about feminism OR inclusivity?????????? It’s possible that Whipping Girl would be a better read; it’s certainly an extremely highly recommended one. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color is old but is still fucking amazing, and was ground-breaking as hell. I can’t do it justice, click through and read the reviews. As one of them says, it’s a must-read. 

Back on to-reads, “Born on the Edge of Race and Gender: A Voice for Cultural Competency “ by Willy Wilkinson is one I’ve only flipped through in the bookstore but it looked really good and fun. “This poetic, journalistic memoir shines an intersectional beacon on the ambiguity and complexity of mixed heritage, transgender, and disability experience, and offers an intimate window into how current legislative and policy battles impact the lives of transgender people. Whether navigating the men’s locker room like a “stealth trans Houdini,” accessing lifesaving health care, or appreciating his son’s recognition of him as a “transformer,” Wilkinson compellingly illustrates the unique, difficult, and sometimes comical experiences of transgender life.”

ok, i think that is a good start! 

[silver-and-ivory]

I like your formal blog. The writing on Derrida's binaries was interesting and made me think that I'm not as philosophically educated as I'd like to be---alas, tomes of philosophy literature are often earmarked with dust (sometimes even virtual dust in the modern Internet library) and provoke twinges of pain upon inspection. That's just another way of saying that I've struggled in reading things like Heidegger's Being and Time yet loved Camus's fiction. Recommend me some sources for philosophy?

Oh! Thank you very much for reading my blog and also I am glad that you like it! :)

Yes, primary sources on philosophy are nearly always incomprehensible and boring to me as well. I’m not sure what you would find more accessible, and I can only recommend what has been interesting and useful to me.

Also, keep in mind that I don’t know what you’ve already read, and am just recommending stuff that I think is valuable in terms of philosophy.

I’ve had a lot of success with reading, say, internet articles here, on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or searching terms I didn’t know and finding college curricula as in here. Wikipedia is an excellent source for general overviews and finding connections, but as always don’t take it too seriously. Tvtropes’s Useful Notes pages are of doubtful veracity, but always make for an interesting read, especially the page on political philosophies.

(Suggested search terms: Foucault, Judith Butler, Derrida, performativity, John Locke, social contract theory.)

@theunitofcaring and @unknought here on tumblr are both really interesting reads, and I’ve found interesting things from both of them. I would really enjoy infodumping at you about philosophy, but keep in mind that I am not at all an expert.

If you’re looking for postmodernism in particular, I’ve had luck with just general osmosis in sj. Like, the type of sj where you write long ass articles about queering binaries and complicated structures of oppression.

I’m not sure if you’ve read her before, but Julia Serano has a great deal of excellent articles here. Anything she writes about gender will tend to reference philosophy, like for example this article about cis privilege. Her compendium of essays here are all worth checking out.

I don’t know if you saw this, but I have various links to websites that have been interesting to me on my Serious Blog; I’d recommend looking around some of them as well.

Also, hmmm, are you a rationalist? Because, if not, the person who has influenced me most philosophically is Eliezer Yudkowsky. He wrote a somewhat controversial fanfic here; his more condensed philosophical essays are on lesswrong.

Again, thanks for asking!

Do the followers have any further suggestions for anon?

[autolenaphilia]

Transfem authors of fiction: a list

I wrote a version of this list in Swedish for a meatspace friend, figure I might redo it for a tumblr audience. The books recommended are usually novels, and in case of prolific authors, the one recommended is usually the most successful and acclaimed one. I haven't read all of these, but I'm working on it. The list is in alphabetical order after the author's last name. I added some notes to the list, to introduce the authors and their books.

Nota Bene this list is based on my personal research, and largely reflects my own tastes in fiction, as in what I've read and considered reading. And it is of course not at all complete. And it's a transfem authors list, so no transmasc authors no matter how worthy. And it's about authors of fiction, not memoirs or non-fiction. So no Christine Jorgensen, even if she wrote a book I want to read. And Jan Morris gets in based on her two Hav novels, not her more prolific non-fiction work. Links are to my reviews on this blog if they exist.

Anders, Charlie Jane - SF/F writer, debuted with Choir Boy (2005), but most famous for All The Birds in the Sky (which won a Nebula).

Aoki, Ryka - her latest sf/f novel Light from Uncommon Stars is her most popular, but she has published both fiction and poetry before.

Becker, Saga - Våra Tungor Smakar våld (Swedish author, her book is untranslated, although quite good)

Binnie, Imogen - Nevada

Daniels, April - Dreadnought and its sequel Sovereign. Novels about a teenage trans girl superhero.

Deane, Maya - Wrath Goddess Sing

Felker-Martin, Gretchen - Manhunt (horror novel)

Kaveney, Roz - Tiny Pieces of Skull (also wrote the Rhapsody of Blood fantasy series, plus numerous poetry collections and non-fiction)

Kiernan, Caitlin R. - Usually categorized as a horror author, written numerous novels and short stories since her debut novel SIlk in 1998. The most acclaimed are probably her novels The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl (which won the Bram Stoker Award)

Leitz, May - Fluids and Girlflesh (review forthcoming)

Morris, Jan - Hav (mostly wrote non-fiction, history books and travel literature, Hav is an omnibus of her two novels about Hav, both "imagined travelogues" about a fictitious country)

Peters, Torrey - Detransition Baby

Plett, Casey - Little Fish (Lambda award winner)

Pollack, Rachel - Prolific writer of several kinds of books, including a pioneering career as a sf/f writer. Did her fictional debut with a short story in a 1971 anthology (credited under her deadname) and published her first novel Golden Vanity in 1980, which are literally the earliest pieces of fiction by an out trans person (not memoir or non-ficton) I've been able to find. So very much a pioneer. Her most acclaimed book is probably Godmother Night (1996) which won the World Fantasy Award. Also wrote comics, most notably Doom Patrol.

Rumfitt, Alison - Tell me I'm Worthless

Serano, Julia - 99 Erics (her debut as a novelist after years of pioneering transfeminist writing and poetry)

Thornton, Jeanne - Summer Fun (Lambda award winner)

[illusionnews-blog]

Response to Julia Serano: Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation Link to the article in question: Link to my blog: www.guideonragingstars.tumblr.com source

[emergency-dispatch-needed-blog]

They're not sure. The links I see debunking ROGD are all from medium, which is a glorified blogging platform where even Riley, creator of the Arkh Project creates "articles." I don't know who the red-haired person who wrote the medium "article" (read: blog post) is but another link I saw going around was made by Julia Serano, a well-known activist who goes about her activism by um

bending the truth.

To put pressure on clinicians and doctors to not pay attention when people seeked transition for obviously fetishistic reasons, she said that these fetishes were simply what ALL trans women had and that cis women shared them too, and saying otherwise was bigoted and cause to be fired. The fetishes that she said "all women" (trans and cis) shared? Getting turned on by women's underwear and masterbating in them. Fetishes involving being humiliated and linking womanhood to humiliation and sex slavedom. Not even gonna touch the part she had in the rapey-as-fuck cotton ceiling movement. So if you see her medium article on ROGD going around, be wary about that too. She's done some good, but she lies A LOT for the sake of the cause.

Anyway, yeah. Both sides are shady. There IS evidence that ROGD the way it's being described exists because there have been young women who have SAID that the reason why they transitioned (before soon detransitioning) was legit because their friends were transitioning and they themselves were struggling with other issues. I've also met a few people who've done that. But rn no one knows how common this is as a reason for transitioning.

On the other hand, I know the detransition rate for children is SKY high (can't find any studies for teenagers), BUT parents can still be a horrible, horrible source. My mom raised me but doesn't know anything about me. She honestly sounds like she's talking about a different person whenever she mentions even small things she thinks about me.

Hopefully there's more studies about this so we can see just how big the issue of teenagers transitioning or getting dysphoria because of social influence is, and that we can all look at them objectively instead of having the knee-jerk "NO! EVERYONE WHO SAYS THEY'RE TRANS WAS BORN THAT WAY NO MATTER WHAT! HORMONES FOR AAAAAALL" and "IT'S A SOCIAL CONTAGION! HAVING TRANS FRIENDS LEADS TO TRANSITIONING AND GETTING DICKS!" reactions.

Have you seen Brown University did a study on rapid onset gender dysphoria finding that some people (particularly afab people) use "dysphoria" as an unhealthy coping method like cutting or smoking?

I did, I actually reblogged it here somewhere. It was really Interesting to read about and I actually wonder what some of those people are like when they get further in there transition, is it the same as actual sex dysphoria and it’s permanent or can it be dealt with like depression? I also wonder if they start to feel actual dysphoria towards the sex they’re transitioning to, and what causes all that. And on top of everything I’m wondering if the study is legitimate. I hope people study it more so we can have more information out there.-TTMTS