#the phrase in and out of terf context is still a problem

[talkingontheinternet]

notes

sorry since realizing my gender i have zero tolerance for the whole “man hating” angle of being queer i hate i hate it i hate you. stop. you are hurting people.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for implying my sister’s a transphobe?

For context: i’m a nonbinary girl and at the time had recently broken up with my trans girlfriend of a year. I also have very different political stances than my sister, which historically makes me very frustrated (she’s a liberal so very into making sure people have rights but never acknowledging the structural problems that cause minority hatred/prejudice).

So my sister and i were playing a videogame together and having a great and fun time. We were switching the game and there was an add for Hogwarts Legacy on her home screen, which we both saw. I genuinely don’t remember who commented on it first. Either i said something like “ugh, please don’t get that godawful game” or she said something like “oh i wanna get/play this game”. Knowing me it was probably the former. A throwaway comment for sure. Either way, that started a little argument between us.

More context: my sister and i both grew up as avid potterheads. I was even more obsessed with it than her, as a lonely middle schooler with no friends, harry potter was my favorite avenue of escapism and basically my main coping method. Which is why i was so devastated when, in 2020, i found out about all the terf shit jkr had been posting and supporting. It felt like losing a close friend, and so it’s a subject around which i have a lot of pain thinking/talking about. But my sister (cishet) usually thinks I’m overreacting. She doesn’t support jkr’s rhetoric but doesn’t think that supporting her or her work monetarily is a bad thing whatsoever. Mainly she believes it simply won’t make a difference to her bottom line.

Anywho, we were arguing about Hogwarts Legacy and how i think that she shouldn’t give jkr any money regardless of how closely she was involved with the production, since she’s getting profit from it regardless. Sister brings up that she’s seen trans people who want to buy and play the game, and that i’m not the authority on the issue. I tell her that the people saying that are not the majority of the community, and that maybe she should listen to the person who’s actually trans and sitting right next to her. She disagrees, and i say “then just don’t call yourself an ally”. I don’t quite remember what she said, but the argument didn’t last long after that.

We continued playing whatever videogame, and then i excused myself to have dinner. When i came back k stopped by her room to share a fun fact, and she confronted me about how much it hurt her that i said she wasn’t an ally. She told me that she had put in real work by taking an intersectionality class in college, and by attending trans rights protests — all of which i’ve never done (mostly because of mental health issues i won’t get into). She was crying and upset, and i told her i was sorry for having that conversation at a bad time, and for how i phrased my thoughts, but that i didn’t take back what i said about her not being an ally and to say i was would be lying. I didn’t say much more because i saw how upset she was and didn’t think that was a good time to argue about my opinions - so we decided to talk about it later when she was calmer.

I still haven’t started that conversation because i haven’t decided if what i said was unnecessary and made me an asshole, or if what i said was justified and she needed to hear it. It’s been a few months now and we’re both back in college and living hours away from each other in different countries.

So, tumblr, AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[mouseratz]

it also seems like a lot of people rightly picked up on terfs' problems with gender bioessentialism, but in doing so, completely ignored the other half of the equation: the idea of "gender socialization" also being this weird, innate, mythical force. I'm not implying it doesn't occur at all- clearly, parents raise people they perceive to be their sons vs daughters somewhat differently...but this varies a lot based on cultural norms anyway, and is only a piece of your whole upbringing regardless, even if it's very strict and has a negative effect on you, and people do treat you differently in the here and now based on what gender they perceive you as. the phrase isn't totally useless.

However, I've seen the idea of "gender socialization" that it's something that truly determines parts of your personality in this unshakeable way, that it has created you as a product of their vision (when, in reality, if it was that effective and internalized so completely, trans people wouldn't exist at all. you'd just be more comfortable as your assigned gender, because your personality already has been molded to fit it perfectly) actually seems to be really popular in otherwise progressive places and goes totally unquestioned. and it's weird as fuck!

people then, in the same breath they criticize transphobes' assortment of assumptions based upon assigned sex, turn around and start talking about how they just feel nicer around "female socialized" people and feel threatened around "male socialized" people. do you see a problem here?

banging pots and pans. assigned gender doesn't fucking matter and it never has. it is assigned for a reason. someone chose it for you! they made up all this shit about you based on the genitals you had when you were a baby! doesn't that upset you? why are you desperate to recreate a binary? it's somehow even worse to go from "genitals of baby is the reason you are a gender" to "the way people treated you as a child is the reason you are a gender". it's not better, in any case! if we want shit to get less transphobic (and in the context of recent discussions, transmisogynistic specifically) we have to throw this one out. it's not a good idea. it sucks. I don't want it, why do you still want it? female and male socialization isn't a thing. not in the way you're talking about it.

[the-time-travelers-admirer]

So, I decided to check my past url tag to find something that someone had written for me and the posts tagged under my past url is just sickening...

People are calling me a pedo, a groomer, a sicko, a weirdo, a terf, a transphobe, an ableist, and saying I'm sickeningly lusting after Aidan because they've taken everything I have ever said or posted blatantly out of context and saying that me saying that I'm not a pedo is an excuse and a cover up to hide how I really am...

Cool... Just... Cool... Awesome... Great... That's really great...

I only keep bringing up that I'm not a pedo and that my feelings for Five has absolutely nothing to do with how he looks is because people have thrown nasty accusations at me because I treat, love, see, validate, and respect him as the elderly man that Five actually truly is. And I have even stated time and time again how I am not attracted to Aidan at all. And I'm still not and I never will be.

And that one person going around and posting about me didn't "politely ask me to call Vanya Viktor" they spammed "His name is Viktor" in a nonstop row on every single post where I was talking about S1 and S2 and the past, and referring to the actual character when they were Vanya in the show to keep my posts from being confusing timeline wise. I blocked this person immediately because they were being obnoxious and nonstop spamming my notifications like an immature child.

I was obviously not trying to deadname anyone, but now I have people calling me a transphobe and a terf too on top of everything else.

I don't think I'm going to post about Five or TUA anymore. I'm done.

Will I lose my will to write for Five too?

Who knows? It's a gamble at this point of how many more hits I can take.

People can say whatever the fuck they want about me I don't care anymore. I'm no longer defending myself from shit or deflecting it.

The people that actually know me, have actually spoken with me, and have truly read my posts and stories and understand the deeper meanings and context to them know who and how I truly am.

Again, people can say whatever in the fuck they want about me, spreading lies and rumors about me are their problem, not mine.

And when I say the phrase "It's not a sex thing." I actually mean it, because it's truly not. It's nobody's fucking business, but I am a sex abuse victim that is excruciatingly Demisexual and has little to no sexual desire ever. I can't even say I have a libido. All of my attraction and feelings towards Five are all purely emotional and mental. But, who the fuck actually cares to actually take what I say and write at face value. I am the most transparent person you will ever meet, I don't even have an online persona. But, what the fuck ever.

I'm trying to not let a bunch of strangers that don't know me at all ruin things that bring me joy, but damn is this getting exhausting.

[edwardforkhands]

Asking for help to become not transphobic

This is a long rant, very unorganized. Sometimes I don’t know where I’m going with it. But basically, I’ve been on terfblr in secret for the last 3 years or so, and I’ve become transphobic during that time. I want help to try and change. If anyone could point me to any articles, documentaries, studies, etc to help me get out, I would appreciate it. If you can add in your own two cents, that would be appreciated as well. I’m not sure how much I’ll respond to replies or reblogs on this post, or DMs, as I’m pretty shy and non confrontational (hence why I was on terfblr in secret). But I will read everything!

Basically I agree with a lot of things terf believe, but one thing I want is to find a way to escape the transphobic side of everything. I want to be a radical feminist minus the trans exclusionary part. I’m pretty leftist and progressive, but I hate being bigoted in this way. I almost feel like someone that’s fallen down a neo nazi rabbit hole, in the ways that I have to hide my true beliefs from friends and family. The problem is, I just can’t find a way to for my brain to make peace with a lot of principles of present-day trans activism.

I feel like the only way to make progress is to first just flat out say I’m transphobic. In many ways I’m not, but in a lot of ways I am. That way when I ask my questions, people aren’t just like “that’s really transphobic of you to ask” and shut me down. I want to be kinder, but I need to be able to say what I think. Like how you need to be able to write out your math in order to find any mistakes. But the way things are now, my math looks perfectly fine to me.

So that everyone understands where I’m coming from, here’s a summary of my beliefs:

I agree with terfs/swerfs on a lot of things. I believe there are 2 sexes, gender is a social construct that is not at all innate, women face female-specific oppression, sex work is dehumanizing, there is no such thing as a genital fetish, I think in recent years that some people are transitioning when they not “actually trans,” etc. And there are some more petty things I get annoyed at like saying “uterus owners” or “pregnant people.” I also disagree with the term swerf (though I don’t think terf/swerfs are slurs). I want to protect women and sex workers. To me, this is like calling people who are against child labor “child exclusionary human rights activists.” In my mind I’m trying to do a good thing for them. Sex work is the commodification of consent— which imo can’t be commodified.

But then on the other hand there are a lot of topics on which terfs would disagree with me. I think we should respect peoples’ pronouns, trans people should be able to use what bathroom they want, using someone’s deadname is rude, for many people medical transition is necessary, there are cases where it is appropriate for children to transition, and even if gender roles were totally nonexistent, there would still be trans people.

Here’s where I think I started to get sucked up into “terf” ideology: I think dysphoria is necessary to be trans. I think this was the “gateway drug” that made me into a terf. This stems from my belief that there are two sexes, gender is fake, and your biology is tied to being trans. My understanding of dysphoria is this: It is a state of being dissatisfied with the sex of your body, feeling like it shouldn’t be the way it is. Like how some people feel like a limb shouldn’t exist, and they want to cut it off (I can see how this analogy is a bit transphobic, I just don’t see how else to explain my understanding). Dysphoria is innate, and would exist no matter how men and women are viewed in society. If you don’t have dysphoria, then what is the point of being trans? Is it to change the gender roles you have to/don’t have to adhere to? Could that not be solved by being gnc? And wouldn’t it be more progressive to push to abolish gender? How is transitioning without dysphoria anything other than reinforcing gender roles?

I’m not trying to be bigoted, these are genuine questions and concerns I have that keep me in terf circles.

There are also just so many things my eyes have been opened to on terfblr. Why porn and sex work is harmful to women, why makeup and sexualized clothing is bad, how to read between the lines in advertising targeting women, seeing just how much woman-hate there is everywhere and how acceptable it is in society. These are beliefs I could never see myself abandoning.

Just a heads up: I use the phrase “trans positive” as an antonym to the word “transphobic” (can’t think of a better one atm).

But with the whole trans issue, that’s where I feel like I might have crawled into a hole that I want to get myself out of. I don’t like that in being a terf, many would consider me to be a hateful and bigoted person. I want to be progressive, and on the right side of history. But there are so many things that I see in modern day trans activism that just don’t make sense to me logically, and some that I view as actively harmful. Like reinforcing gender roles, or eliminating the ability to talk about sex-specific and female-specific issues. It seems every few months things that were once considered trans positive to believe are now transphobic. Most of the time, progress like this is wonderful! It’s good when realize they have racist, sexist, homophobic, etc microagressions and work towards becoming better people. That’s great! But a lot of the times the new transphobic things just don’t make sense. For example, I realized saying things like “bitch” or “cunt” casually was sexist, and it made sense. But if I were to say your sexuality is based on someone’s sex, not their gender, that’s transphobic because it implies trans women aren’t real women, or trans men aren’t real men. If they pass, society can see them as being men or women. But biologically, they aren’t. That’s why the word “trans” goes in front of their name. It just doesn’t make sense to me how it’s transphobic to have a sexuality, so having what’s basically a “gender-ality” is the only acceptable thing now. Obviously it would be rude to go around telling every trans person “actually, you’re not a REAL man/woman!” randomly. But when the context permits, like with dating or for female-specific issues, I just don’t see how it’s transphobic to acknowledge a very relevant biological reality.

Trying to say anything relating to feminist issues in a non-transphobic way feels to me like walking on eggshells to escape a maze. It would be easy to give up and just say everything’s related to gender, sex is a social construct yet somehow gender’s innate, and go with the flow but I just can’t if it doesn’t make sense to me. I know I don’t have to understand everything about everyone else’s experiences, especially if it’s not hurting other people, but I feel like in some ways trans activism nowadays is.

I just wish all this made sense to me and I could happily say I support everything trans positive. I don’t want to be transphobic. In some ways I’m not, but in so many ways I am, and I want to change. But I want things to make sense at the same time. Currently it feels like terf beliefs align with common sense, while believing a lot of principles of trans activism takes so much mental gymnastics.

Obviously if you don’t want to respond you don’t have to. It’s not your responsibility to change me— it’s my responsibility to change myself, and fix my beliefs. But if anyone is willing to listen or help, that would be appreciated. I feel like a lot of terfs start out where I did— initially trans positive, but had just one or two issues that brought them to terfblr, and they come out the other side transphobic. Hopefully helping me will help at least one other person down the line.

I feel terrible interacting with trans people, knowing I follow and listen to so many terfs. I have so many conflicting feelings and beliefs and I wish things could balance out the right way.

[samtheultimatetransguy]

bro you're kicked out of the lgbt we don't one anyone who defends john lennon please turn in your membership card at the fuckin desk on your way out

I don’t like John Lennon. The point of what I said was not to act in his defense. The purpose was to correct misinformation.

I’ve made a lot of posts on here talking about the huge problem with social media and how people tend to believe anything they read without fact checking or asking for a source. Here are some completely false things I’ve seen people accept as fact:

Angler fish are as big as humans if not bigger

The phrase “curiosity killed the cat” originally ended with “and satisfaction brought it back”

Joe Biden sealed a dog underground

The infinite chocolate thing

Benedict Cumberbatch is a transphobe who hates autistic people (this one didn’t get much circulation thankfully)

A ton of rumors about various blogs (not going to name names for their sake) about people being racist, TERFs, nazis, etc.

The point of my reply was not to say John Lennon did nothing wrong. The point was to say there is no real evidence pointing toward him being racist.

I do see now, it may not have been my place to speak on the matter. I am not black, so perhaps what I say on this subject doesn’t matter.

All I said was that Yoko Ono wrote the lyric, not Lennon. Does that negate that Lennon was still at fault for saying the n word? No. He shouldn’t have said it at all, and he certainly deserved to be held accountable.

But the fact remains that someone saying “obviously he was racist because of this song title” is being said completely out of context and intentionally ignoring other information, which is a very common theme I see on all social media platforms.

Because for a lot of you, it’s not about the truth. It’s about what you want to hear.

[zwoelffarben]

Not to put harry potter on my blog, in this, the year of queen terf 57, but rowling's problem isn't that she tells instead of shows; she does a lot of showing; but, what she shows us are worldbuilding and plot inconsistant to each other, and then she tells us explainations forwhy to ignore the mundi-narative dissonence (which reflects her own cognitive dissonence about how she perceives the world as a Blairite (derogatory)) instead of resolving that dissonence.

I won't abide by anyone using rowling as an excuse to wrongly malign Telling. The goal of teaching writing should to inform storytellers of the strengths and weaknesses of all the various different techniques in the medium, describing what each one does, and letting them decide how best to use them; it shouldn't be prescribing one technique as universally bad and another as good; because, then you run into problems where you well, unknowingly perpetuate a racist colonialism, or I suppose more politely, a western centralism.

So anyway, Telling

Telling as a writing tool can do two things well and two things not so well. It can conveys information concisely and unfiltered through the perspective of a character.

Being told X isn't the same as a character saying X, because that character can be wrong in any number of ways, they could be lying, misinformed, simplifying to the point of innaccuracy, or unrealistically delivering this information 'as you know bob' style, although, I hesitate to say unrealistically because I semi-regularly use "as you know" witin my friend group of neurodivergents to quickly remind people of the context, and Letterkenny uses, "as previously established," to the same effect quite well; and when you're told something, unless its heavily signalled that the narator's an unreliable character in the story, it just is that way.

The second thing is conciseness: and this is what pisses me off the most about those telling v showing examples. The telling's always bad because it's the same length as the showing example. Telling's is at its greatest when it gets in, informs you of something, and gets out: telling will consistantly be at most half the length as showing if the two examples are of equal quality.

In a seporate vein, the juxtaposition of showing and telling can inform an audience about what Chekov put there to be a helpful tool that will help us later and what he put there as set dressing. If you show someone a gun in act one, you'll tend to want to show it going off in act three, yes: that's setup and payoff. But, if you tell someone there's a gun on the wall and instead show them the anime girl figurines, well that dichotomy signals to the audience that the anime girl figurines will be 'going off' in the third act instead and the gun's there for set dressing or maybe characterization.

TELLING IS A USEFUL TOOL: STOP MALIGNING IT AS BAD OR LAZY WRITING AND CALLING THE STORYTELLERS WE DON'T LIKE TELLERS (derogetory) ESPECIALLY IF THAT'S DEMONSTRABLY UNTRUE TO ANYONE STILL WILLING TO READ THE SOURCE MATERIAL (dont) IN THIS THE YEAR OF QUEEN TERF 57 (this is an ironic turn of phrase mocking not venerating rowling).

What Are Your Opinions On Harry Potter's Magic System

"system" is a strong word for that situation

[snarktheater]

"rejection of femininity by women is its own problem" ok what the fuck? have you even heard of butch lesbians or ever read anything they're written on the subject of femininity, feminism, or the lesbian identity? like, are you actually trying to say that not wanting to be feminine for a woman is a problem???

Short version: no, I am not saying that, trying to say that, implying that, or any variations thereupon. “It’s a problem” doesn’t mean “it’s wrong, always, and you should never do that”. It just means it’s worth examining, especially when portrayed in fiction, when things have no reason to be the way they are, ever.

Long version:

There’s nothing wrong with being butch. All the power to you.

Butch female characters, especially sympathetic portrayals of such, absolutely lack representation across all media, and need more of it.

There’s a difference between someone being butch because it’s the gender expression they’re comfortable with, and someone expressing hatred towards femininity. Let’s focus on the latter, since that’s what I was talking about and you’re the one who even brought up butch women. I mean, there are plenty of examples of feminine female characters who hate femininity, and they’re also part of the problem I was referring to.

You can’t really untangle open hatred of femininity from misogyny, any more than you could untangle forcing femininity on others from misogyny. They’re both part of it; the gender role is enforced and devalued at the same time. That’s how it works. Effectively challenge the system requires upholding neither of these—femininity must become neither mandatory nor inferior.

While a woman feeling or expressing hatred of femininity is not inherently misogynistic, expressing that hatred does inscribe itself in a larger system of devaluing femininity.

A real woman is still entitled to feel however she wants about femininity because 1) she’s real and 2) she has a lived experience with femininity and specifically having femininity pushed upon her by the patriarchy.

Basically: the action of hating femininity, by default, contributes to misogyny as a system, but we can exercise empathy towards the women who do to add context around her individual choice to hate femininity and understand why she does.

[Tangent: this does not prevent a woman who hates femininity from being an asshole. The choice to reject femininity for oneself is perfectly acceptable, but once you start, say, harassing women for embracing it instead, now we might have a problem. Especially if, say, those women are trans women for whom embracing femininity is an important part of being recognized as women at all. I’m mentioning it because, you know, TERFs have been extremely vocal of late]

A fictional woman…is fictional. She is not real, has no real feelings of her own to speak of, and her history is crafted by the author. I know that fiction is supposed to reflect reality and generate empathy, but this is crucial: nothing in fiction is real.

Therefore, a fictional woman rejecting femininity lacks the personal feelings and history that can excuse her expressing hatred of misogyny.

That doesn’t mean you can’t write a character who hates femininity; just that you have to consider your story as a whole rather than the character as an individual (because she’s not, she’s a part of the story). Just like with any representation of a real-life oppressed group, you have to dig deeper and address the problematic element head-on.

Anna Lightwood and her authors do none of that, at least in Every Exquisite Thing. She hates femininity because masculinity equals power and she finds that liberating, which may seem correct under patriarchy a first glance.

But…it’s not. Butch women are not men—even Anna’s own narration, she admits everyone who sees her immediately knows she’s not male, which in and of itself is a whole other problem but besides the point of this discussion—and do not benefit from male privilege. But the story just takes as a given that gender identity, gender expression, and gender as an oppressive system are all intrinsically linked, and concludes that therefore, hating femininity is justified and maybe even rational. Or…really, it doesn’t conclude anything—it just states it, and that statement goes unchallenged.

It’s past 1am, so I’ll cut this short here. Hopefully this is enough of an explanation.

The thing is, sometimes, you’re writing a blog post about a silly short story that you don’t even hate all that much, and you see that that blog post is already over three thousand words long even though you usually aim for the 2k range, and so you decide not to swerve wildly out of your lane to write a miniature essay on femininity even though you’re a cis man, and so you just off-handedly mention it, assuming good faith on the reader’s part and also that they already have some knowledge on the topic, because honestly, it’s kind of feminism 101.

I mean, what’s next, are you going to ask me “What’s wrong with not wanting to be like other girls? Are you saying all girls have to be identical?”

PS: I don’t know who you are, anon, but the phrasing of your questions reads as really…terf-y to me. Maybe it’s accidental, or maybe, in July 2018, I’m just constantly on the lookout and it leads to some false positives. But I just thought I’d say it, because I’d feel uncomfortable leaving it completely unchallenged.

[notskeletonrants]

Label Free Millennial

Tomi Lahren is a moron and if you follow her and take her points to be meaningful, you’re a moron too. Now that I’ve got that divisive statement out of the way, let’s be clear. These set of old bones are just old enough to still be considered a millennial (read as: adult under 40). I’m also probably about to say something divisive to my fellow progressives.

I am not what you would necessarily call a feminist.

Wait, don’t go. Don’t say that I’m bonesplaining, I just want you to understand the nuance of my position.

I think phrases like feminism are from a flawed language. And if it’s one thing that I don’t like, it’s to be using regressive language. Now, what feminism stands for, I’m all about. Pretty much everything (excepting TERFs and similar splinter groups like that) are tenets I agree with. But that’s the thing, we call them TERFs but there is one word in the name that people can take to mean the opposite of what it means.

Their brand of feminism. Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists don’t share any of the progressive tenets that, say Intersectional Feminists do; IE advocating for minorities, men, trans people and anyone that feels suffering. Bless you, IFs.

And that’s where and why I don’t like people trying to call me by a certain label. Because what happens with that (if you’ve read my stupid rant about boxes) is that when they hear the word feminism or feminist, people that I’m trying to actually have a productive conversation with will shut their ears and brains off, and engage the large portion of their brain that they use to spit ad hom attacks. I think this is the enlarged medulla oblongata.

No matter how much I disapprove, this label has become a signal to them to become idiots and try to hurl insults until I become tired of their bullshit and go away. I will be honest, the only label I like to keep is “dumbass” and “Commander Juan BananaHammock” and if you kink shame me I swear to fuck I will call down my unholy powers upon you.

And, not to bonesplain, once again. I would like to try to extrapolate as to my opinion on why that is.

It is because the leakiest wheel gets the oil. The loudest voices are often the least tempered. Now, Emma Watson, I love her. She’s wrong about necromancy, well her character in the Harry Potter series is, anyway. Ethical Necromancy. Look it up. It’s a thing. Anyway, Emma Watson is an outspoken IF. And that’s probably the first extremely loud voice of temperance and progress that I’ve heard in my history of hearing voices for movements. But, historically, the voices of feminism past the first waves have started becoming these TERF and similar voices. Voices that are not about easing the suffering of the many, but they are voices saying to commit violence on the patriarchal system that be.

What do dudes hear when they hear that?

Well, they hear things like, “these women want you to die.” Hashtags like #killallmen don’t help because it’s hard to understand satire without further context, and a lot of the voices that use this hashtag for satire pair it with serious messages, which helps to further confuse the issue.

I know, you don’t want all men dead. What you want is women’s voices to be seen with the same gravitas as mens. I agree. And I’m not saying I can fix the problem. Only stating the problem I see and the understanding that I’m trying to get behind.

Until the regressives no longer see feminism as strictly the voice of violent reactionaries, I can’t really call myself a feminist solely for utility purposes. And I’m so sorry that that is the case.

To quote a complete moron antifem, “I’m a millennial, we don’t like labels.”

Ugh. Why. Why do I do this to myself?

Is it the self hatred? Wait, that’s where the binge drinking comes from.

Let me not end on that bit of stupidity.

Let me say that if “feminist” didn’t mean “TERF” to the people I’m trying to convince, I would be comfortable using that label for myself. But until that happens, it closes off an avenue of conversation to possible future allies and possible future feminists and possible future operators of the guillotine for our white christian supremacist leaders in the American replay of the French Revolution.

I kid, I kid.

Probably.  Vive les squelettes!