#the transphobic comments

[bd-wlf]

Do you guys ever just feel your psyche breaking

[kirby-roth]

Rule

[tahopo]

we truly regressed when people started buying into the genderbending is inherently transphobic thing. yeah that twelve year old being inquisitive and having fun on deviantart was your enemy all along.

[sarasade]

One of the most generally useful things to come out of Hbomberguy's plagiarism video and Todd in the Shadows' similar video on misinformation is how they bring transparency to the internet phenomenon of "I made up a guy to get mad at".

Seriously, I've seen people make up a lot of stupid shit on the internet over the years and it's often just a manipulative attempt to paint a group of marginalized people in a bad light.

That's the TL;DR version of this post. 

ANYWAY here is the long version

Those videos are mostly about James Somerton's plagiarism of other queer people's work. However I'd like to talk about that 20-30% of Somerton's original writing- and oh boy. It's mostly about complaining about White Straight Women and misgendering well-known trans creators such as Rebecca Sugar and calling Becky Albertalli a straight woman while it's pretty common knowledge that she was forced to out herself as bi because she received so much harassment over "being a cishet woman who appropriates LGBT+ stories".

One thing that irks me especially is how in his Killing Stalking and Gay Shipping videos Somerton brings up how straight women/ teen girl shippers exploit gay men for their personal sexual fantasies. This gets brought up several times in his videos.

Being all up and arms about Somerton being a "White Cis Gay Who Hates Women and Queer People tm" is not that useful because the kind of rhetoric he's using is extremely common in fandom and LGBT+ spaces on Tumblr, TikTok and Twitter. We really don't need to bring Somerton's identity to this since he is in no way an unique example.

It's hypocritical to make this about an individual person when I've seen A TON of posts, tweets and videos where queer people talk about these Sinister Straight Women who are supposedly out there fetishizing and exploiting queer men. It's pretty clear to me that this is just an excuse to shit on women and queer people for having any sexual interests. At worst these comments are spreading misinformation about BL, a form of media that has been excessively studied by both Asian feminists and Asian queer women.

This all sounds really familiar and I think it's good that people are calling it out as what it is: misogyny and transphobia. I'd also point out the potentially racist motives behind being this hypervigilant about Asian media.

People can absolutely be misogynist regardless of gender or orientation. I really don't know why we need to create some kind of made up enemy to get mad at. I actually think it's almost sinister how "anti-fujoshi" people call Slash shippers and fujoshi misogynists or claim that they have internalised misogyny while being dismissive about women's interests and creative pursuits under Japanese obscenity laws, China's censorship, book bans in American schools and various other disadvances that are part of being a queer and/or female creator.

I think we shouldn't be naive about the bad faith actors who want to turn queer people against each other. For example Fujoshi.info mentions anti-gender (TERF, GC etc) movement using this kind of rhetoric as well.

Anyway if you want to read more:

- about the false info around BL fandom fujoshi.info

-There is the scholar Thomas Baudinette who studies gay media in Japan. Here is a podcast with him and the scholar Khursten Santos

-James Welker is a BL scholar as well. Here is a podcast interview about the new international BL article collection he edited.

-I've already talked about this Youtube channel by KrisPNatz and his great Killing Stalking video that actually engages with the themes of the manhwa

- There is also HR Coleman's thesis DO NOT FEED THE FETISHIZERS: BOYS LOVE FANS RESISTANCE AND CHALLENGE OF PERCEIVED REPUTATION where she interviews 36 BL fans and actually breaks down why fetishization has become such a huge talking point in the fandom discourse. Spoilers, it's mostly about young queer people and women being worried that they will get judged and pathologized for their interest in anything sexual.

-Great podcast about Danmei and censorship with Liang Ge

[girlboyburger]

people calling me a boy to try and be mean to me is so funny. have you seen my username.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

POV: you block antisemites on this site

[pokemon-radical-red]

I got this comment on a post that I made about being a trans man and noticing how we’re perceived by others. This person is blocked now because I don’t want some transphobe on my blog, but I want to talk a little bit about this.

I like how this person’s trying to convince me that I’m wrong while saying that the only people who would be attracted to us are lesbians who are into butch women. But they can’t use those exact words or else we’ll all KNOW that they’re misgendering us. It’s interesting. Let’s play a game! TERF or transandrophobe. (I’m not scrolling through their blog long enough to find out.)

Okay. Let’s pretend that we live in their world, where trans men are not also a porn category (as someone pointed out in a response comment), and get to the deep cuts!

Now maybe this person defines oversexualization in a different way, and frequently commenting on our bodies—especially our chests—is totally cool and normal to them, because I literally have a post talking about the Tik Tok trend of “oh trans man wants me to respect his pronouns but he has HUGE BOOBS!!! haha this is so funny, guys!” You may notice that in this example here, she claims to feel bad, but then immediately turns around and makes a joke about it. Is describing transmascs essentially as our chests not sexualization? Not to mention dehumanizing considering they refer to this person as “a he/they,” instead of a transmasc or a nonbinary person or anything else.

But if that’s not enough sexualization for you, or you think that it isn’t valid to be upset over that, you can look under the cuts for the disgusting descriptions of our bodies from some transphobes. From some of those “ladies who just like butch,” since they’re innocent and aren’t oversexualizing us because “nobody oversexualizes ftm trans folks,” as the person in the screenshot said confidently.

I wanna say trigger warning for disgusting oversexualization of trans men (including trans men who are in their teens!) under the cut, but huh… the commenter said that nobody oversexualizes trans men, so this can’t be right. (On a serious note, please do heed the trigger warning before deciding to open the rest of the post.)

[proshippers-against-censorship]

*squints*

Beware, arachnophobes.

Extra beware, arachnophiles.

[dazeddoodles]

Raeda smut writers: *Flips coin* Cock it is

Transphobes: If you're short you have a vagina

[stiffyck]

Every time I see something transphobic I’m transing one more hermits gender.

Starting with-

Cleo. Cleo already uses she/they and they are an icon.

[cannibalismyuri]

i think the thing abt terf idealogy is that its so Sad. imagine calling urself a feminist and saying what makes a woman inherently a woman is her uterus. her ability to produce children. is that what women are? is that what women need to be?

[doeeyeddyke]

was feeling myself today and i think other fat queers should too, and so i do hereby announce this month

Fat Fag February

[mlmshark]

Well guys we’ve finally reached the point where the “transmasc specific transphobia doesn’t exist” crowd has gotten to the point where they say that someone calling a trans man dramatic, slurs, or straight up being told to kill themselves for being trans men is “just being rude”, not transphobia at all because “actually transphobia can only be transphobia if it’s directed at trans women because of the patriarchy”. Fucking crazy

[owlishhhhh]

[god-tier-bastard]

making a d20 tiktok is fun and all until the taylor swift crossover fans get a hold of it?? how do they balance being a fan of taylor swift and also brennan "no good billionaires" anticapitalist king lee mulligan?? idk but i just posted a comment asking just that so heres hoping i dont get doxxed about it 🤞🤞

[nrc-counselor]

Since this discussion has been going around recently and has revealed a fair few instances of transphobia in this fandom that I wanted to my point clear: I despise the trope that "everyone finds our Yuu is a girl" because a lot of people who are writing it unintentionally embed their work with transphobia.

And while I know I do not have enough followers for this to actually make a change, I want to explain what I mean so maybe someone will think about how they write this trope.

More often then not, this idea that Yuu is a girl is inherently attached to them being cis with this revelation occurring through them either menstruating or people realizing they have boobs (yes I've seen this one a fair few times) instead of the fact that Yuu just identifies as a girl.

Ignoring my other views on this trope, assigning girlhood or proving Yuu is a girl by claiming their sex or aspects of their sex is what defines that is a problem and a big one. Not all afab people are women nor do they identify as such. Someone being able to menstruate, have boobs, or even have a vagina does not make them a woman no matter what. Similarly someone being amab does not make them a man or mean they must identify as one.

By putting this idea up that Yuu is a girl and that her proof being a girl is her being afab or her menstruating, two things occur. For the menstruation as proof of girlhood, this unintentionally attaches menstruation to girlhood or as proof you are a girl which as explained above borders closer on transphobia than people realize. This also implies there are no other afab people at NRC aka no trans men or nonbinary people who would need the same products, and I only mention this because there are a few instances in these stories where period products are unable to be found in the nurses office because "NRC is a boys school" which isn't this gotcha people think it is.

2) I cannot say this enough but attaching boobs or having a vagina as what makes you a women is not only transphobic but borders on misogyny in ways that we need to talk about. Your sex does not always define your gender.

As we get to the end of this discussion, I want to be clear in saying that I don't think the people writing these are transphobic. I honestly believe a lot of people are writing it this way because they are cis and have never had to or thought to separate their gender from their sex. As a result of never having to question it, I think they do not realize they are writing it this way.

Additionally, I am not saying your Yuu has to be gender neutral or can't be a cis women. Do what you want: your ocs are not my ocs and I have no control over them. What I am saying is that if you are making x readers which are intended to include as much of your audience as possible, please think of your trans and nonbinary readers. I am not saying that you can't have Yuu go through menstruation or write a one shot about it. You can! Hell, I can give recommendations for those.

All I am asking for is that if you are going to write a piece that uses the "everyone finds out Yuu is a girl" trope then please take my advice and look it over and consider if any of this stuff is unintentionally transphobic. I know I can't stop you from writing that and I am not trying to. I am just trying to share my voice and concerns about it as a trans person because as of late, people have not been taking them seriously especially in this fandom