#they have way less people on their side though than like terfs do on the whole so thats why im leaning more toward it being the terfs

[snekdood]

i kinda feel like so long as someone like me isn’t accepted as a part of the queer community that none of us will ever be able to work together for our rights

[redheadbigshoes]

Some asks here got me wondering. Can I ask, why do you think a lot of people in this community, which I guess are mostly white people making shit up, are much more adamant about including men in the lesbian sexuality than the other way around?

I don't understand why they can't grasp the idea of being attracted to women exclusively, going so far to exclude masculine non-binary people and trans women for it, but when I see the other side they don't seem to have the same problems of gay men including women in their sexuality? (Though I think the gay community might be prone to excluding feminine trans men or non-binary people if that was the case, but that's besides the point.)

Sorry for the long ask. I have not gone deep into either of the communities so I apologize in advance for thinking things wrongly. It just feels like they're using terfs and radfems as insults towards lesbianism because their view on women seem more shallow.

I think first we need to understand most of those people supporting terms like “bi lesbian” are not only white but also American, which is important to remember. And I feel like when you’re both white and American and your life is basically online you end up being protected of suffering a lot of prejudice that happens in real life. Not only that but minorities tend to be less prejudiced, so that could also be an explanation of why the majority of people wanting to include cis and trans men in lesbianism are white and American.

[atomicapplebees]

Hi! It wasn’t a “what words should we use discussion” which is my point, it was a discussion about whether transradfems are slightly misogynistic (with their INTERNALIZED misogyny since that needs to be made clear /gen) toward other women through their jealousy-based hatred of afab people and traditionally female bodies. That discussion became a “what words should we use discussion” when velvet mentioned I sounded terfy and I got nervous and scared (again, no resentment or hostility toward her for that)

The misogyny toward cis women was the discussion in the first place. They ARE demonstrably misogynistic toward afab trans people (though like I said in another ask, overwhelmingly they are transandrophobic snd exorsexist first and foremost)

It’s baffling to me that in this discussion I am having to legitimate explain that I don’t believe transfems are male socialized misogynists and I don’t believe transmascs and afab trans people are women. I simply also believe that just because terfs and transmisogynists have had a chokehold on a particular discussion of oppression doesn’t mean we can never touch on any worthwhile part of it again so long as we live

Trans women are women. I believe transradfems have internalized misogyny. Internalized misogyny is absolutely not even the tiniest degree less harmful than other forms of misogyny. Is my stance clear now?

I wasn't actually attacking you in any way shape or form, I don't think anyone was.

It just reminds me so much of trying to give "sex-based oppression" a comeback. When people say "mmmm, I don't like that for Reasons" instead of engaging with why someone might not like that it becomes "so you're just gonna nitpick everything I say??" and freaking out that someone might think you're a secret terf when no one thought that actually, and "well you know what I meant!!" Yeah I do and I disagree and I did address your point actually which is that I fundamentally disagree with "traditionally female bodies" as a category and, like velvet said, misogyny might not be the word for it.

Granted yeah that one paragraph was nitpicky but I was trying to explain why what you said rubbed us the wrong way. I probly coulda worded it better but I assure you my issue isn't because terfs say it, terfs also say the sky is blue, it's because it upholds the afab/amab dichotomy, and I'm on the side of "we can't keep trying to redefine words/terms/shit that were formed to describe an afab/amab dichotomy!"

[tirsynni]

Years ago (crazy to think about how many years, honestly), I started Sands of Time as writing practice to see if I could get into the practice of writing on a regular schedule (it failed). I had a bunny inspired by thinking too much about Ganondorf and his role in OoT and WW, decided it was as good as an excuse as any to work on writing regularly (failed so hard), and it ended up becoming a love letter to a game series which I've loved almost my entire life.

That fic kept going and going and taught me so much about writing, both in general and fanfic-specific. It ended up being far longer than planned, more detailed than planned, and even when I was distracted and tired and side-eyeing this massive WIP, it reminded me of how much I loved the Zelda games and the many details, overt and subtle, in them. Writing was more than just putting words on paper: it was translating the things I was passionate about. Even if there are some definite issues in the fic due to the many distractions occurring during its creation and how sometimes I wrote less because I was passionate to write and more because I was just stubborn about seeing the fic through, it's still a fic I'm very proud of. It is also, without a shadow of a doubt, my most popular fic. It is a fic that someone refused to rec because they wanted to hit lesser known Zelda fics, and holy shit, I preened when I read that.

I have been struggling with fic and fandom in the last year for many reasons, including some serious RL stressors. The other big reasons have to do with the evolution of fandom itself. I'm not talking about the rise and fall of the popularity of certain things. For example, while I'm not a fan of "reader" fic, I feel like it's a fantastic example of the things that can be done with the fanfiction medium and also a way to explore how tropes/genres/random things in fanfiction reflect different cultural changes in the same way horror movies do. What I hate, though, is the rise of negative feelings and negative takes in fandom, transforming it from a fun, collaborative atmosphere into an arena full of witch hunts, deliberately bad takes, and people terrified to write because they are afraid of being attacked for their content, pairing, writing styles, grammar, etc. I love fandom as a love letter to canon, an exploration of canon, an exploration of self and writing styles, among other things. Now it feels like it's no longer that.

Back in the Old Days, people put disclaimers on fics because they didn't want to be sued. Now people put disclaimers on things assuring readers that of course they don't advocate these things, these things are bad, they know it, they aren't a criminal, they aren't a pedophile, they aren't a Bad Person. Now I see people skip summaries just to tell people to stop attacking them for their pairing and to just let them write what they like.

I see people indulging in deliberate bad takes of the original content, of the original creators, of other writers in fandom, of different tropes, of game mechanics... fucking everything. Sometimes it's just a nasty circle. Sometimes it's done to elevate something else, because we all know the only way to elevate something is to put something else down. I understand vent sessions. I understand going to a friend and going "Holy shit, did you see that summary??? Wow!" It should stop life as a quick vent. It shouldn't make up the person's entire personality. It shouldn't require a full online presence. Hate should never be detailed in the comments. Call-out posts should be left to actual nazis, terfs, etc., not to someone who wrote a "gross" or "unhealthy" or whatever pairing. Seriously. If you waste so much time on that, you need to look into some self-exploration and therapy. In all sincerity.

Fanfiction is not a published work. It should be fun. It is put online to be shared with fellow fans. It is something where someone gets excited about something or has an idea about something or wants to explore something or just wants to write some kinky porn and then share it with fellow fans. That's why writers post work and then sit eagerly .02 seconds later waiting for people to comment on it because they want to share their thoughts and love and happiness and excitement and sadness and grief and their general emotions with others and they want those others to respond and share their thoughts and reactions, too!

I just saw a post tearing into Moffat's Sherlock series because it lacked sincerity for the audience and source material and instead indulged in its arrogance, contempt, and self-righteousness. My immediate thoughts turned to the Lord of the Rings movies. If Sherlock is remembered, it will be purely in the critical sense, an example as to how a popular series was forgotten and dismissed. LotR remains loved. It is a classic. It is something people repeatedly marathon despite the lengthy watch time. LotR was a love letter to its source material. It wasn't just the writers and directors: everyone involved was sincerely, fiercely passionate about it, and it shows. It drags the watchers in, prompted people who had never read the original to pick up the books, inspired so much fanfiction. It was sincere and passionate and loving and, in turn, its fans are sincere and passionate and loving.

The LotR movies explored and loved the genre, the characters, the message. Even when characters faltered, it didn't make them terrible people. It made watchers hold their breath, it made watchers cheer them on, it made watchers hope. Check out people who do bad takes of Frodo and his struggle with the Ring and watch how many people come out of the woodwork to defend Frodo. There was no tongue-in-cheek humor mocking the source material. There was no critical analysis of "Well, you see, this is how the hero was actually stupid." No. It was sincere. It was loving. It still makes people cry and cheer and happy even when they're wiping away a sad tear or two.

I've read fanfics where the writers insist on the worst takes for the characters. It isn't done out of humor or a teasing love or an exploration into the characters/writing styles/etc. The writers want to drag the characters down, put themselves on a pedestal, and do it not through sincere analysis but by doing the worst possible takes on the situation. This usually relies on going into the source material with a negative mindset and desiring negativity in return, feeding primarily on the negative takes of others rather than looking into the source material or looking for positive takes, or just having a "bad faith" mindset. They go into it with an axe to grind and want to drag everyone else down with them. It isn't one or two fics: it's a growing, poisonous movement which is one of the things driving people out of fandom. It isn't a love letter to the source material. It is hate and disgust and contempt and Moffat writing Sherlock, patting himself on the back all the while and surrounding himself with people doing the same exact thing.

I'm a strong believer in people writing whatever they want to write. You want to write this character being evil? Sure! You hate this character and want to make them OOC to bash them even more? Go for it! I've written so many things testing how far I could go or feeling angsty and wanting others to feel angsty or even feeling happy and grinning like a feral gremlin as people wrote comments talking about how the angst in the story made them bawl. Want to write vore? Want to write character death? Whatever! It is fucking fiction, and it should be something you can enjoy doing. Hell, an asexual person can write two people fucking without wanting to get fucked. A lesbian can write two men fucking. A pacifist can write a murder mystery. It is fiction. Write whatever you want, and I hope that you feel better after doing so, even if it is only in the catharsis way of having a bad day and getting it out by making characters bleed.

Already, I can fucking hear people insisting that all of this makes you a bad person. No. No. If you truly believe that, it means you don't understand writing. You don't understand art. OR it's not a misunderstanding but a deliberate Bad Take, an extension of the poison I described above, because you want to attack someone and you want any opening. See: Republicans going after Drag Queens now, probably not actually believing that Drag Queens are harmful but recognizing vulnerability and knowing they can manipulate others through hatred. If you truly believed that, you would be wondering about Stephen King and other writers, but instead, you use conservative attacks and uncritically promote purity culture and are oblivious to the day when the leopard turns around to eat your face.

It's exhausting. It's a growing trend that is poisoning the water that is fandom and is not only playing a part in driving people out, but is keeping people from ever trying their hand in the first place. It is keeping people from enjoying what should be a fun thing. It is fucking poisoning minds, because this is a damned slippery slope. Hammer/nail and all that. It is seeing one thing as "problematic" and knocking over one tile and then seeing a full domino effect because they never bothered to analyze what "problematic" meant or why they found that "problematic." It is people grabbing a torch with the hope they won't find themselves on the stake.

Let people enjoy fandom. Try having positive takes. Let fanfiction and fanart and fanworks in general be something enjoyable again. Maybe some people use it as a way to vent current political issues. Maybe some people want to explore certain sexual kinks and writing these two (or three or five or seven) characters going at it is a great way to do it. Maybe they had a funny thought and want to share it via fanfiction. Whatever. We can't go online and bash people like Moffat and then casually do the same exact thing. We can't bitch about conservative politicians attacking people and then use the same exact thought processes and methods to attack others.

Let people be sincere in their enjoyment. If you don't like it, find something you do like. Maybe take some time with some tools and explore things which make you happy instead of indulging in deliberate bad takes to tear others down and use those takes to bind yourself to others and their bad takes like barbwire. Remember why things like LotR lives on and makes people so happy and why Moffat's works are going to be used in classes in the future as to what not to do.

[trans-wojak]

I just wanted to say I saw your response to the ask about Nex and I wanted to say that the way you explained your stance is very well thought out…

I hold the same beliefs as you, and I would like to not be on Anon but I fear if my friends found I hold these beliefs that they would call me transphobic and hate me (it is a kinda complicated situation…)

I just want to say I admire your bravery to speak your thoughts and opinions so openly and seemingly without fear of being rejected because of them. I hope one day to be able to have the confidence to speak my thoughts on subjects without fearing to be criticized.

-A shy anon 🪼

I have been criticised a lot for my stance because it creates conflict and many people just dislike conflict in general, which I understand. I just avoid trans spaces online and irl these cause they are predominantly filled with trenders and “non binary”. I prefer LGBT mixed spaces cause atleast those are not just a group made up of women who ID as non binary. Since it’s LGBT and not “trans”, there is less room for radical feminist man hating bullshit cause gay men will tell them to stfu.

Non binary in my experience and research is really just radical feminism lite, it reminds me of “political lesbians” who were straight femcels out of choice. All core beliefs of non binary activism heavily align with radical feminist theory more than it does with anything about trans rights. Contrary to popular belief, many radical feminists believe that medical transition is fine aslong as you retain that you’re a masculinised female or feminised male and don’t assert you are changing your sex or try to be in any of your group’s gendered spaces. Though, this treatment is mainly only directed at trans women - they rarely care about trans men sharing spaces with cis men cause they see it as “rebellious against the evil patriarchy” and benefiting.

This is why most “detrans” TERFs you find will have identified as non binary but then switched, usually after trying testosterone and ACTUALLY getting dysphoria. If you go to non binary subreddits, there’s countless posts about being scared to start T cause “I don’t want *insert literal male sexual characteristic*” or even worse “I don’t want to be perceived as a cis male”. The comments are filled with encouragement to start T anyway, saying you can microdose to control effects (a lie, it just makes it slower), suggesting taking certain hormone blockers to literally block male sexual characteristics but get very minimal ones that could be achieved through diet, exercise and voice training. Or worse, suggestions that laser hair removal isn’t even hard or expensive, it’ll work blah blah.

These retards then go on T, get side effects that cause actual dysphoria and then go full blown radical feminist.

At this point? I think anyone who identifies as non binary should be banned from transitioning medically. I don’t think you should qualify for a gender dysphoria diagnosis unless you want to be the opposite sex; not some magical androgynous being to get out of misogyny in society.

Though I do keep my beliefs to myself in many situations to avoid conflict but I also play heavily on my autism as an excuse for things, if the government and society wanna deem me as retarded then I’ll play into it. So, no I struggle with singular they cause I’m autistic. Honestly, I actually do struggle with singular they especially if they look entirely as their birth sex. I just don’t bother putting in effort cause I don’t care about how they feel. The worst woman I ever encountered who got mad at me for this was self diagnosed autistic, had a fucking child and was raising him “as non binary” so she got mad if you used he/him. I’m all for not raising kids with no gender roles or stereotypes but doing that is gonna fuck up the kid.

I also know a woman who started T cause she thinks she’s non binary and immediately stopped cause of body hair growing. Now she complains about her slightly deeper voice and says she wants to get pregnant again but worries that T hurt her. Oh she still retains she’s non binary tho, just that she likes living as a female “cause its way more comfortable” - yeah cause you’re a cis woman!

Anyway sorry for the rant, I’m glad that my opinions aren’t all seen as me being uwu disrespectful and mean cause my intent isn’t to be “mean” it’s to use critical thinking. If you want, you can privately DM me to discuss more on this so you don’t feel so alone in your convictions. It’s one of the reasons I have stopped showing my face online publicly cause trenders tried to doxx me, dangerous at times to not believe in non binary.

[zephyrrydrake]

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my blog! I hope you can enjoy whatever the heck I end up posting here!

Who are you?

If you know who Rydrake6 is, you know who I am. If you don't, I'll introduce myself really quick.

You can call me Zephyr. I'm a tiger/dragon hybrid who likes drawing, making music, writing, making games, and doing pretty much any creative thing you can think of. I'm an autistic trans man and a minor, and I've got way too many creative projects to work on.

Why does this blog exist?

This blog was made because I Reblog way too much stuff on my main. Which honestly isn't really a bad thing, but it is inconvenient when I'm trying to find something I posted like an audio or a piece of art and I have to scroll through a literal sea of reblogs to get to it. Other than that, I kind of always wanted a side blog where I don't have to worry about a brand and stuff. Speaking of which, I'm probably going to stop trying to make a brand out of myself and just create things like people are meant to do on the internet instead of being obsessed with numbers and the possibility of earning a living off of making stuff, but that's not a conversation for this post.

What's going to be posted here?

I don't have any particular idea for what I'm gonna post on this blog, just that there are going to be very few, if any, reblogs. Mainly because of the situation with my main blog. However, a few things that you can probably expect from this blog are looks at creative projects that I'm working on (Music, movies, shows, stories, drawings, ect.), Life stuff (Basically whatever I feel like talking about in my life. Nothing identifying though of course. I'm not stupid.), And probably a few shitpost and memes too. If I do Reblog stuff, you're probably gonna see me saying stuff at the bottom.

Boundaries TL;DR

So I realize that I have a bad habit of writing entire fucking essays when I should just keep it short and sweet, and my boundaries are no exception. So here's a quick summary of all of them.

If you're a bad person who supports bad things or you just make me uncomfortable, you're getting blocked.

Don't come into my askbox asking for money or donations.

You can DM me but I am a socially awkward weirdo due to years of isolation so watch out.

Boundries being broken = block.

Long version of my boundaries under the cut.

What are you doing in my house?

Irrelevant. Now lead me to your stash of waffle fries before I eat your firstborn instead.

Long version of the boundary list

Not sure how effective this section is gonna be. I've been told many times that DNIs don't work, but I'll include one anyways just because. It's less of a "Pwetty pwease don't look at my blog UwU" and more of a "If you're any of the things on this list I will block you on sight." So here are some ground rules.

DNI/You will be blocked on sight if you are a TERF, a racist, a transphobe, basically a bigot of any kind, a pedophile, a zoophile, a necrophile, pretty much if you have any kind of paraphilia that actively causes harm to someone or is just straight up gross, if you condone or consume loli/shotacon/cub content, if you condone or consume feral nsfw, if you are a trump supporter, if you are a zionist, or if you are a right winger of any kind. That's all I could think of for the DNI, you don't have to take it seriously I know that DNIs do not work. But I'm just putting this here so that you know that if you are any of the things on this list, you will be blocked on sight. This list is subject to change in the future.

Don't come into the askbox of this blog asking me to donate stuff or boost your posts. I'm not saying that I wouldn't do it, I'm just saying that I want to keep this blog to just being personal stuff. Normally I'd say go to my main blog, @rydrake6, but I'm taking a break right now to think about stuff.

My DMs are open, just don't be a dick. (Also keep in mind that I have pretty bad social anxiety and just bad social skills in general, or so I think, so I might be a little bit awkward.)

Breaking the boundaries listed above will lead to you getting blocked.

[caffeineandsociety]

One big frustrating thing about trying to fight the exclusionism cycle is that any stereotype that gets invented about who commits lateral aggression...is GOING to be true of a small but substantial number of people, because lateral aggression is not about just individually being a horrible person, but failing to unlearn some very popular shitty ideas.

Of course there are ace people who think their sexuality makes them inherently better than allos because sex is evil. Of course there are pan people who think that they need to be a secret special sexuality to be attracted to trans people. Of course there are intersex people who want to be fully separate from the queer community specifically with the logic that being intersex is a "medical condition" while being gay or trans is a "lifestyle choice". Of course there are transmascs who believe every damned callout they see about a transfem and get "bad vibes" from anyone who's a little too clocky - hell, I've ran into one (1) who straight up lived up to the terf stereotype of thinking the only problem with patriarchy is that he was born on the wrong side of it. Of course there are transfems who believe that no one else on the planet experiences any oppression that REALLY matters, or think "AFAB privilege" is a thing, and of course there are white trans girls who posture about the violence rates of trans WOC and claim it as their own oppression to wield as a weapon against other queer people while blatantly ignoring actual trans WOC. Of course there are nonbinary people who think that having a "cool" and "subversive" gender makes them inherently more radical than stereotype-loving binary trans people-

Because one, there are literally millions of queer people in the world, we are not a monolith; and two, none of these attitudes are remotely unpopular among cishet people! These shitty misbehaviors are just the things that we've all been told are true about these groups of people, and the ways we've been told to act about it, for all of our lives, in a patchy coat of rainbow paint - yes, even those last two; scratch off the glitter and what's underneath is just "racism doesn't real white women are in INTENSE, CONSTANT danger ESPECIALLY from scary scary Outsiders so if you're a woman scream and attack the dangerous Others before they attack you and if you're NOT a woman make sure to protect (white) women like a precious inanimate resource" and "(binary) trans people are delusional LARPers so in love with gender stereotypes that they think liking pink makes them women and/or liking cars makes them men". Oops!

In reality, even though people who do this shit DO exist, they're far less common than cishet people who hold to the same ideas, both due to the numerical minority status of out queer people AND the fact that yes, even though the rate is not 100%, queer people are more likely to be willing to unlearn these ideas than cishet people, even the ones that don't directly apply to them - but that's not the narrative that an exclusionist's focus on lateral aggression spins. Exclusionism takes the existence of these lessons yet to be learned and paints them as the unique realm of other queer people. It positions other queer people as more responsible for these ideas than the cishet hegemony that created them, because other queer people are easier to hurt.

And, whoops! Just like that, you become exactly the kind of person you're complaining about.

[villainessbian]

yep, it does not go through, like I expected

there's way too many of you that have been beaten down hard enough that you cannot recognize when you're hunkering down and shutting off your brain

all criticism is TERFs. All people that do not whole-heartedly agree with you when you literally claim that something that is happening is not happening is somehow merely somebody close to "praising glinner and jkr"

jesus christ you give me a headache.

and by the way, this is coming from in-house. from a transwoman. But chiefly, a transwoman that has experienced the brunt of what misandry is really like, and how much misandry goes on to fuel transphobia

you say the shit terfs say when you say men aren't subject to misandry

It's not that your message does not go through, it's that I know it's wrong. I even explained why to you, but it looks like... it's not going through.

You can take "knowing more than you do" and rename it "hunkering down and shutting off our brain" but you being a bitch about being wrong doesn't make you any less wrong.

"all criticism is TERFs" no. "You lot (trans women) are part of the problem why men's issues aren't taken care of, it makes me sick and you keep being disappointing by perpetuating the system of gendered violence" is in fact textbook terfspeak though. Literally. Every single point and term of reference. Get better.

"by the way, this is coming from in-house. from a transwoman" so, apart from the fact that even the way you write "trans woman" is the way that terfs push to dehumanise us, I still hope you get better. When you realise that the pick-me MRA act doesn't solve anything and that generation upon generation of feminists were right all along no matter what reddit says about how men's suffering is really caused by women and especially minority women.

So to repeat myself until it "gets through," shut up. Stop talking to me until you drop the MRA bullshit. You wanna know which side of the discussion you're on? Glinner also openly believes in misandry and that "terf" gets thrown as a term of abuse for not agreeing with "us lot."

But surely you have another load of separate, uneducated reasons why you agree with him so let me pre-empt this with a third and final DON'T UNTIL YOU STOP. I don't care nor wish to know why you're desperate to belittle any trans woman who knows even just a little about feminism, and then parrot known terfs, and make MRA points. No one does. No one gives a fuck and going anonymous doesn't hide (because you literally just got all cross with me about it before you switched to anonymous asks) that you are cothica-keywitch, and you're worrying in general. You get angry when people explore themes of violence in fiction, you attack people without checking first whether they deserve it, and you rapidly switch between social justice and femcel speech. Holy shit, better yourself before you tackle the big social questions like "is the oppressor... ACTUALLY THE VICTIM"

[butchbarbieagainstterfs]

Anyone can call themselves anything and identify as anything, that doesn't mean that they share consistent ideologies.

Generally you do share a consistent ideology though: you don't like trans folk. You do not want them to exist.

And I am sure you will claim that isn't true, but you constantly side with people actively trying to make life harder for trans folk. If trans people stopped existing tomorrow, you would be glad of it.

And if I shared a view on a marginalised group of people with literal nazis, particularly the majority of nazis, I'd be reanalysing my beliefs asap.

In the same way that there is no central trans authority who reviews all the Correct Trans Points of View, there is no central gender critical or """"terf""" or radical feminist authority who reviews all members for ideological consistency. I disagree with these people and I think they're interested in the topic for the wrong reason (easy dunkings on trans people) but I have no power to kick them out or even to explain to all of them why they're wrong.

Yet if one trans person says or does something you disagree with, it apparently represents us all. Consistently. I only bring stuff like the original screenshot because it is a consistent thing within your movement.

You bring up that tiktok comment section and I just want to say that I disagree with people saying that stuff. I do think people need to lay off the "egg" jokes for example and have said as much myself before, because someone else's gender journey isn't any of our business and it is weird to claim someone is trans when you do not know that is the case.

That said, I think it's far-fetched to pretend trans men are forcing testosterone into the veins of gnc women who do not want it and I think that if you are going to transition because people on TIkTok made jokes about it, you maybe shouldn't be on the internet unsupervised.

if you care about women, then consider why so many women who used to wholeheartedly agree with you (myself included) left your movement. Why are so many lesbian women, bisexual women, gnc women, autistic women, and third world women disillusioned with the feminism you're offering? Why do we feel that you have failed to advocate for our needs? Do you understand why we are "defectors" or "radicalized"?

I have actually considered and written about this before and, based on what a lot of you have told me, many of you left simply because one trans person said something you didn't like. Which...suggests to me you were never really an ally to start with.

Many Nazis don't start off as Nazis. Is it okay for them to become radicalized just because they didn't like some things they saw? I say this because they agree with you on trans folk btw. They showed up multiple times in support of Kellie Jay Keen

Also: be careful not to speak for entire groups of people. I am a lesbian, gnc and autistic and you have done far more harm to me than any trans person ever has.

Because of your movement, people like me are getting harassed in the women's bathroom. You as a gnc woman might accept that. I do not.

Your movement has perpetuated the idea that I can't know myself and what I want for my body because I have autism. You as an autistic person may be okay with that. I am not.

Your movement has told me because I'm not transphobic, I'm not really a lesbian. You as someone who is not a lesbian need to be incredibly careful about who you use lesbians against tbqh.

Just like I won't give up on socialism because right-wingers and nazis are attempting to infiltrate it, I will not give up on the notion that biological sex is a meaningful category, axis of oppression, and necessary for feminist analysis. When conservative normies stop caring about the issue, I will still be here, because I am an autistic bisexual gnc woman, my experience as a female person has indelibly changed the course of my life, and I am committed to nothing less than the liberation of female people, and social justice more broadly.

No one has said you cannot talk about your experiences. But trans people exist too and are going to talk about their experiences as well. Your issues are not more important than everybody else's, nor are they a universal experience. We can talk about more than one issue at a time and this is not the oppression olympics.

I've experienced something like this myself in real life, where two acquaintances decided without telling me that I must be non-binary because, well, someone like me couldn't possible be a woman, right? gnc women are not taken seriously by any "side".

I'm sorry you were told that. I myself was called a boy by a cisgender woman (I'm genderfluid but she didn't know that and neither did I at the time) simply because of how I present. I know she does not speak for all cisgender women and your acquaintances do not speak for the majority of trans people. Nor do they make terfs making the same kind of "jokes" okay.

I'm going to block you now because I am not sure you are here in good faith and I really do not want to dedicate my time and energy writing long posts unpacking rhetoric that I have already unpacked multiple times for free. But please consider reading through this and thinking about why I feel the way I do. I have told you why I think you feel the way you do. And consider: I am not the only person you claim to want to protect that feels this way either.

Some tweets from TERFs about Emma Watson simply because she got a haircut again.

“What does she actually DO these days, apart from wringing every last drop of her fading fame out for clicks and pics?” You’re thinking of JK Rowling, not Emma Watson ❤️

[nothorses]

hey uh random question about a post i saw earlier- asking you this because you're more or less a reputable source but uh are trans mra an actual thing or closer to hyperbole. what I'm trying to say is i saw a post (by someone i won't reveal now because i don't wanna start shit up but i could tell you in another ask if you wanted to) that compared a post on discrimination men face in their daily lives (trans men weren't specified but op's url left no doubt about that) to MRA and was also tagged "#transandrodorks" so uh yeah !

asking cause i wanna hear both sides on this issue and all. the person who made that post has made more than a few iffy statements about trans men so yeah. my current stance is that transandrophobia is helpful in describing the specific oppression transmascs face, such as hard-to-access reproductive care

have a good time of day

If there are actual "trans MRAs", I haven't met them. I have, however, definitely been accused of being one!

A short list of things people have accused me of being a "trans MRA" for:

Saying male privilege was not designed to include trans men, and if it can, it excludes us.

Saying trans men, as a class, do not posses privilege on the basis of being trans men.

Saying trans men have higher rates of lifetime sexual assault and suicide than trans women do (a real statistic repeated across several individual studies) though trans women have higher rates of other forms of violence and marginalization.

Saying trans men experience discrimination that is unique to trans men.

Talking about Baeddels, just like, in general.

Using the word "transandrophobia".

Saying testosterone does not turn people into horrible monsters.

Talking about Joan of Arc's relationship to masculinity and the possibility of transness.

Defending trans women and discussing transmisogyny as a real issue that must be dealt with.

Some of it's been from transfemmes, and some of it's been from TERFs, but the vast majority of the people who have said this have been cis women.

That's not to say there aren't transmascs who make shitty arguments or say and do shitty things- aside from the fact that that's just true of any group, in general, I have also seen transmascs who get misogynistic or transmisogynystic in their arguments for the existence of transandrophobia.

But this isn't unique to us, either. Baeddelism is an entire movement built around transfems getting horribly transphobia toward both trans men and nonbinary people as a whole in their arguments for the existence of transmisogyny. Does that mean it doesn't exist? Does that mean all transfems who believe in transmisogyny are like this?

Obviously not.

There are always going to be people who take these things too far, who use real issues and useful concepts as bludgeons against groups that should be- and are- our allies.

We need to make it clear we don't condone that and we don't want to be associated with that, but we also can't be held responsible for that as an entire demographic. It's unfair to associate us with it anyway, despite the work we do to make our separation clear.

And I'd be super suspicious of anyone trying to discredit the concept of an entire marginalized group experiencing unique marginalization just because some of the voices in there might be, or are, using that concept the wrong way. Transmascs shouldn't have to be a flawless group of perfect individuals in order for any of us to be believed when we talk about our lived experiences.

[just-antithings]

So, hear about the latest drama?

Someone got banned because they accused a tumblr staff member of being a child rapist for liking *Harry Potter* and *Spy x Family*. And now antis are trying to claim that that person got banned for saying nothing more than “staff member likes HP”.

Yea I caught wind of it from a GC before shit hit the fan today. A lot of the criticism is unfounded and in the end amounts to no more that people being mad about fandoms and ships... However, I have to agree that staff being so on top of this looks bad to a degree. The average tumblr user can report someone harassing them 5 times and never see any action taken, and we can clearly see now it's not because staff can't handle it, seeing as how everything to do with this has been handled very very quickly. It's a whole fucking mess I must admit but I think most people are mad for the wrong reasons.

That being said, people on tumblr have gotten way to comfort telling people to kill themselves. What do we even know about this staff member, besides her pronouns and fandoms?

Also to the op who "outted" them for liking HP, like why? If the goal wasn't to get them harassed why was it even brought up? OP could have honest to god just ignored it and then none of this would have happened. Why do people on tumblr care so much about what strangers read/watch/play in there free time? Why is that anyone's business even?

At the end of the day even if every single person on tumblr completely dropped HP I doubt Terf Rowling would notice, cause it's not going to stop the thousands of people going to Harry Potter world at Universal, it's not going to stop ABC from playing a Harry Potter marathon every holiday season. So at some point these people have to admit they don't actually care about what affects her they just want to bully people.

On the plus side all the stealth antis came out of the woodwork so I got to clean up my following list.

At the end of the day though both sides handled it poorly and I couldn't care any less than I already do about this situation.

[vergess]

The good Samaritan IS the 'localized' version. The thesis is, "your internal beliefs are less valuable than your external actions."

Another version, eg, is the Reason for the Atheist

It's a story about identifying a person's actions not their background data. And, I think it's worth emphasizing that the audience is, in fact, a specific character within the narrative, same as Jesus himself.

With that in mind, I have 2 points to make.

First: The people who pass the dying man aren't a cop and a priest. I get that "priest" is how people translate rabbi, but it really interferes with the way people conceptualize rabbis at all. And I'm certain christian Americans don't generally know who/what levites even are.

The people who pass the dying man are more accurately a teacher and a doctor. Both are, in this case, members of groups that are trained to save lives and handle emergencies around dead bodies (American school shooting statistics are... dismal).

Those are the people who turn away. Who don't even check if the thing on the side of the road is alive, though they would have obligations to a corpse too.

And THEN the foreigner from the other side of the war, stuck in the same neighborhood by careless colonizers. THEN, after a DOCTOR walked away from his maybe-dead body... this person we don't know, who walks like a soldier and clearly fought for the other side. This person that WE, THE AUDIENCE have been taught to see as the insurmountable Other comes along, and he walks towards the could-be corpse. At best WE expect him to be killed quicker.

But the Man We Distrust checks for a pulse. Cleans and bandages the wounds. Feeds and hydrates the body. We, the audience, know the traveller is alive. We never actually see the traveller respond to any of this treatment; we can only assume.

What matters is not the traveller, after all, but the kindness shown to the traveller. What matters is the shared respect for human beings, between the audience and the Samaritan. The "we're not so different after all."

It's a story about the hypocrisy that exhaustion breeds, and how to identify both failure of duty among each other, and the responsibility of kindness to each other.

Both Jews and Samaritans were exhausted, colonized peoples. And tension from that exhaustion could easily lead to Yet Another War.But resolving that tension allows one to direct the anger of exhaustion to the people responsible.

See, my second point is, we keep forgetting, there is a villain in the story.

Here's how I would localize it today, for the rural baptist area I grew up in.

Dying man: A little blond white child, still dying

Rabbi: Elementary school teacher, social worker, etc

Levite: Pediatric doctor, nurse etc

Samaritans: An "obvious gang of thugs." Mostly Latino and Black men. Wearing similar clothes and """walking aggressively"""

The gang of thugs from the actual story itself: Cops who thought the kid was a school shooter. TERFs who thought the kid was trans. Nazis who heard the kid was Jewish. Rich businessmen who starved the kid to death in the streets. Whatever actually hurt the dying child in the first place.

The moral is, simply, that our allies are not defined by the names they use or their mere proximity to us. They are defined by HELPING US AND EACH OTHER.

And who is "Us?"

Not the people actually hurting us, that's for damn sure.

The closest a cop is getting to being in this story is as the gang of thugs who nearly killed the traveller in the first place.

I'm attaching an English la copy of the parable below.

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested [Jesus], saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

He said to [the lawyer], "What is written in the law? How do you read it?"

[The lawyer] answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself."

[Jesus] said to him, "You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live."

But [the lawyer], desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?"

Jesus answered:

He said to [the lawyer], "What is written in the law? How do you read it?"

[The lawyer] answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself."

[Jesus] said to him, "You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live."

Random thought brought on by seeing a veterinarian sign on the drive to Coffee Land, but I think Jesus would really appreciate people localizing his parable of the Good Samaritan.

Because, like, it's a good story, right? When the administrator-guy and the holy man wouldn't help the injured, the Samaritan went out of their way to make sure the injured man was able to get the help they needed, paid out of their own pocket. And that's good and all, but what even is a Samaritan? Do you know?

Well, they're a ethnoreligious group from northern Israel who follow Samaritanism, which split from Judaism sometime around the 11th century BCE. There's only about a thousand of them left. But around the time of Jesus, they were not very popular with your average Hebrew. Remember the Seleucid empire that was oppressing jews? There's a yearly celebration about it, involving a candle that lasted for 8 nights. Yeah. So at the time the Samaritans had taken the opportunity to point out they're not Jewish, they're Samaritans, so they wouldn't be persecuted. So they were seen as, like, selling out their brothers and sisters in the faith. Then by the time the Romans took over the whole area, the province of Judaea contained Samaria.

So basically the Jews and the seen-to-have-sold-them-out Samaritans were stuck in the same province, thanks to some Romans consolidating the areas they'd conquered. Tensions between the two groups were high, and I don't imagine either of them liked each other very much at all.

To a Jew of the first century CE, a Samaritan is basically the worst kind of person you could be, and that's exactly why Jesus used them in the parable of the Good Samaritan!

The parable isn't about Samaritans. It's about how the worst person you can imagine is a better person than the people you idolize and uplift, if that person takes care of their fellow man. It's about how you should love your neighbor as yourself, and who is your neighbor? Everyone. All people are your neighbors. Help them when they need help!

And that's why I say it should really be localized. You should tell this parable differently than it was told in AD 29 or whenever. Do you hate Samaritans? Probably not! You probably barely know who they are, even after I did some explaining up there. So why use them as your example? If Jesus was here, I don't think he would have done that.

So like, if you were giving a sermon on the good Samaritan in the 1960s to a white church, you should be like "so the policeman walked past, and the pastor walked past, but then a poor black guy saw the injured man, and got him help at the local hospital."

In the 80s, his rescuer is Soviet. In the 2000s, they're a Muslim, from Afghanistan or Iran.

Today? Maybe they're trans.

As an American, there's been many times that "Mexican" would have been the best choice. Maybe even today, especially if you specifically make them an undocumented migrant.

But yeah, the point is that you pick the group of people most hated by the audience you're talking to, and make the point that THEY ARE A BETTER PERSON THAN YOU and ALL THOSE YOU UPHOLD AS PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY if they help their fellow man. If your worst enemy is lying injured in the street, you call the ambulance, you pay their doctor, you get them help. That's what Jesus says you should do. That's loving your neighbor, that's the Great Commandment.

And in the Roman province of Judea back in the first half of the first century, when talking to a Jewish audience, that meant the rescuer was a Samaritan helping a Jew. That was just the context for that one particular telling of the story. It shouldn't be told the same way today, or in the future. It should be an evolving parable, always changing, always adjusting the nationalities and situations and genders and everything. It's not a story about a specific event, it doesn't pretend to be history, it's a metaphorical lesson about what makes you a good person.

This parable is basically in the form of an "X, Y and Z walk into a bar" joke, and just like jokes, it should be updated over time. Those don't stay funny though the decades, as cultural attitudes shift. And this parable hasn't been updated in nearly two millenia, so it's long overdue.

[asktheconductors]

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(Updated; 29/10/22)

[doberbutts]

Hi hi! I've been reading your posts about the Depp and Heard case and you offer a really refreshing perspective! I have a friend who was really invested in the case and she would update me regularly even though I was intentionally avoiding talking about it because of how sensitive of a topic it is and ofc she was very adamantly on Depps side. It sounds to me like both Depp and Heard might be victims in their own right and they both made their own contributions towards the toxicity of the relationship.

I think this case being televised has revealed the biases of those watching, for sure. It amazes me that there's so many "he tried to get a psych to say she was crazy on the stand!!!" as though she did not do that as well. And yet nothing about how the argument of "well he's an addict you can't trust addicts" isn't equally damaging to addicts that aren't hurting anyone and are trying to get better because addiction is a health problem you weirdos.

I think their individual claims are equally plausible. I also think the only people who truly know what happened are, well, the people they happened to or around. I think it is very possible for a bigger, older man to be beaten up by his significantly younger partner, I think it is very possible for said bigger, older man to fly into a rage that makes said younger partner fear their life even if the younger partner technically hit first. I think certain claims are pretty easy to prove or disprove- let's be serious, to my knowledge the dogs are yorkies. Humans don't shit the same size as a yorkie so all we have to ask is how big the shit was and that puts that point to bed, no pun intended. Sorry but what comes out of me and what comes out of my chihuahuas are very distinctly different in size. But I think some of it is much harder to prove since there were no doctors involved except for the finger: how can anyone prove they were assaulted with a bottle or held down for a cavity search? How can anyone prove they were hit in the face multiple times before striking back? How can anyone prove who landed the first punch? How can anyone prove if the first punch was out of self-defense?

The only thing I know for certain about this case is that they had an awful marriage. It must have been hell. It is better for both of them to be out. But I think in terms of domestic violence, it often takes something very extreme and yes I do mean more extreme than some bruising and a cut finger before it becomes very clearcut what's going on. There are often signs seen by those closest to the conflict, but as far as courts go it is notoriously tricky to get any domestic abuse charges to go through without that extreme event because often there either is no evidence to back a legitimate claim or the interpretation of the evidence could go either way. It's easy to claim a black eye is from something innocent or a dispute from both people throwing hands that got a little wild. It's less easy to claim a broken back and brain injury from being bodily picked up and thrown down the stairs by a man twice your size- as what happened to my sister- is from anything besides that man trying to kill you.

BUT I do think that the people who have made this their latest fandom hyperfocus blorbo meme factory are gross. It doesn't matter who you believe. You are running the chance of mocking a DV survivor if you're wrong in your belief. You're running the risk of calling a DV survivor a liar. You're running the risk of making a mockery of someone who is reliving some of their worst moments in front of a TV camera. I think those who are doing this can pick whoever they feel is the right answer without resorting to TERF behavior or to misogyny.

Lastly, I think everyone needs to remember that this was not a domestic violence trial, it was a defamation trial. The jury did not rule that there was no abuse coming from Depp to Heard, the jury ruled that even if Depp was abusing Heard, there was evidence she was abusing him too, and thus it is defamation to claim that she was the innocent victim of domestic violence. Similarly, they also ruled that Depp was wrong to say she made it all up for the money, thus it is defamation to claim she was making things up or fabricating evidence solely for financial gain. That means it's likely the jury believes they were hitting each other, not that only one was harming the other and the other is a perfectly innocent sweet angel that could never do anything wrong.

[wyvern-of-the-evening]

This is the only time I’m going to waste on you.

“I saw from the notes” you saw ONE person, who is also a “TERF”, claiming as much (which means if this person is faking it was a “TERF” calling it out). Even if it’s fake, it’s an easy mistake to make when they’re repeatedly telling people they’re going to rape or decapitate radfems. “Females aren’t inherently safe to be around either” and yet the statistics show that people born female are less likely to rape and kill me. Overwhelmingly it shows that. Let’s pretend for sake of argument though, that we are just as dangerous, at least I can fight another female. Male muscle mass and testosterone would mean I’m immediately at a disadvantage. I have a better chance living after a fight with a woman than I do a male.

Also, let’s not pretend your side never makes shit up or pretends to be radfems. This isn’t a one way street, and it’s been that way since I stopped being a TRA.

So safe to be around

[a-room-of-my-own]

A while before the latest hoo-ha about Judith Butler, I had just been reading her again. Though she claims her critics have not read her, this simply isn’t the case. I read Gender Trouble when it first came out and it was important at the time . That time was long,long ago. She was just one of the many ‘post-structuralist’ thinkers I was into. I would trip off to see  Luce Irigaray or Derrida whenever they appeared.

I got an interview  with Baudrillard and tried to sell it to The Guardian but they  didn’t know who he was so its fair to say I was fairly immersed in that world of theory.  For a while, I had a part time lecturing job so I had to keep on top of it. Though Butler’s idea of gender as performance was not new , it was interesting.  RuPaul said it so much more clearly in a  quote nicked from  someone else “Honey ,we are born naked, the rest is drag”

What I was looking for again , I guess is not any clarity – her writing is famously and deliberately difficult-  but whether there was ever any sense of the material body. She wrote herself in 2004 “I confess however I am not a very good materialist. Every time I try to write about the body, the writing ends up being about language” . 

Butler from on high ,cannot really think about the body at all which is why they (Butler’s chosen pronoun) are now the high priestess of a particular kind of trans ideology.  The men who worship Butler are not versed in high theory. The fox botherer had a “brain swoon” at some very ordinary things Butler said. Mr Right Side of history nodded along in an interview. Clearly neither of these men are versed in any of this philosophy and would be better off sticking to tax law and the decline of the Labour Party. Butler is simply a totem for them.

Butler said in the Guardian interview for instance  “Gender is an assignment that does not just happen once: it is ongoing. We are assigned a sex at birth and then a slew of expectations follow which continue to “assign” gender to us.”

So yeah? That’s a fairly basic view of the social construction of gender though I take issue with the assigned at birth thing ,which I will come back to and why I started reading her again in the first place.

This phrase “Assigned sex at birth” is now common parlance but simply does not make sense  to me. I am living with someone who is pregnant. I have given birth three times and been a birthing  partner. I know where babies come from. There is a deep disconnect here between language and reality which no amount of academic jargon can obliterate. 

Babies  come from bodies. Not any bodies but bodies that have a uterus. They grew inside a woman’s body until they  get pushed out or dragged out into the world. 

The facts of life that we are now to be liberated from in the form of denial. Only one sex can have babies but we must now somehow not say that. The pregnant “people” of Texas will now be forced into giving birth to children they don’t want because they are simply “host bodies”. The language of patriarchal supremacy and that of some of the trans ideologues is remarkably close, as is their biological ignorance.

There is no foetal heatbeat at six weeks for instance. When a baby is born , doctors and midwives do not randomly assign a sex, they observe it and they do it though genitalia. 

There is a question over a tiny percentage of babies ,less that one percent with DSDs but even then they are sexed with doctors having  difficult conversations with parents about what may happen later.

Somehow, though when I read the way in which this is now all discussed it is clear to me that the people talking have never been pregnant, never had a foetal scan, never been near a birth , never miscarried, do not understand that even with a still birth babies are still sexed and often named. 

If you want to know the sex of your baby you can pay privately and know at 7 weeks ((*49-56 days from the first day of the mother’s last menstrual cycle). A 12 week scan will show it. That is why so many female foetuses are aborted . I have reported on this. 

Talking to paediatricians about this is interesting because they do indeed have to think through these things that we are being told are not real eg. that sex is just a by-product of colonialism for instance.  Sometimes pre-conception , geneticists will be looking at chromosomes because certain diseases are more likely in men or women. Males have a higher risk of haemophilia for instance.  

One doctor told me “When babies are premature, the survival advantage of females over males is well known throughout neonatology. This is sometimes something we talk about with parents when there is threatened premature labour around 23 weeks' gestation and options to discuss about resuscitation and medical interventions. In fertility treatment (or counselling around fertility in the context of medical treatments) it is pretty inherent to know whether we need to plan around sperm, or ova + pregnancy.”

She also said that if she involved in a birth that “assigning” isn’t the word she world use. “Observed genitals a highly reliable observation, just like measuring weight or head circumference which is also done at this time. “ Another doctor said that anyone involved with a trans man giving birth  would be doing the best for the patient in front  of them. 

Sex then is biological fact. A female baby will have all the eggs she will ever have when she is first born which is kind of amazing. It is not bio-essentialist to say that our sexed bodies are different nor is it transphobic to recognise it.

Except of course in my old newspaper ,The Guardian who are now so hamstrung by their  own ideology they have got their knickers in such a twist they can barely walk.  They completely misreported the WiSpa incident , basically ignored the Sonia  Appleby  judgement at the Tavistock. Appleby was a whistle blower ,a respected professional concerned with safe guarding. She won her case. The cherry on the cake this week was an interview with Butler, themselves (?) in which they went on about Terfs being fascists and needing to extend the category of women.

Does anyone EVER stop to think that most gender critical women are of the left, supporters of gay rights, often lesbian and that this is not America? We are not in bed with the far right. This is bollocks. Just another way to dismiss us.  

As we watch Afghanistan and Texas ,to say Butler’s words were tone deaf is to say the least. But they didn’t even have the guts to keep the most offensive stuff in the piece and overnight edited it out without really explaining why : the bits where Butler described gender critical people as fascist. Perhaps because the person their “reporters” had  defended against  transphobia at WiSpa turned out to be a known sex offender,  perhaps because someone pointed out that Butler was throwing around the word fascist rather like Rik Mayall used to do in the Young Ones. 

All of this is rather desperate and readers deserve better. When I left that newspaper I said that I thought and expected editors to stand up for their writers in public. Instead they go into some catatonic paralysis. I may have not liked this interview but it should never have been cut. Stand by what you publish or your credibility is shot.

But this is about more than Judith Butler and their refusal to support women . Butler is not really any kind of feminist at all. What this is about is the large edifice of trans ideology  crumbling when any real analysis is applied. Yes, I have read Shon Faye’s book and there are some interesting points in it and I totally agree that the lives of trans people should be easier and health care better . I have never said anything but that.

What Faye does in the book is say that there can be no trans liberation under capitalism so there will be a bit of a wait I suspect. 

Yet surely it is the other way round and what we are seeing is that trans ideology (not trans people – I am making a distinction here ) represent the apex of capitalism .

For it means that the individual decides their own gendered essence and then spends a fortune on surgery and a lifetime on medication to achieve the appearance of it. Of course lots of people spend a lifetime  on medication but not out of choice.  Marx understood very well that the abolition of our system of production would free up women.

Now it is all about freeing up men. Who say they are women. Quelle surprise.  

 Nussbaum’s famous take down of Butler is premised exactly on the sense of individual versus collective struggle “ The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is the loss of a sense of public commitment. In this sense, Butler’s self-involved feminism is extremely American, and it is not surprising that it has caught on here, where successful middle-class people prefer to focus on cultivating the self rather than thinking in a way that helps the material condition of others. “

Such thinking now dominates academia. There is simply an unquestioning  rehearsal of something most of know not to be true thus Amia Srinivasan writes in The Right to Sex  “At birth, bodies are sorted as ‘male’ or ‘female’, though many bodies must be mutilated to fit one category or the other, and many bodies will later protest against the decision that was made. This originary division determines what social purpose a body will be assigned.”

What does ‘sorted’ mean here? A tiny number of intersex babies are born. A tiny number of people are trans and decide to change their bodies. The feminist demand to challenge gender norms without mutilating any one’s body no longer matters. What matters now is this retrograde return  to some gendered soul. This is not something any decent Marxist would have any truck with . Of course one may change over a lifetime and of course gender is never ‘settled.’ We are complex people who inhabit bodies that often don’t work or appear as we want them to.

But not only is there a denial of basic Marxism going on here , what becomes ever more apparent is  that there is a denial of motherhood. Butler said “Yet gender is also what is made along the way – we can take over the power of assignment, make it into self-assignment, which can include sex reassignment at a legal and medical level.”

Self-assignment is key . One may birth oneself. No longer of woman born but self -made. This is a theoretical leap but it also one that has profound implications for women as a sex class. We are really then, just the  host bodies to a new breed of people who self-assign.

Maybe that is the future although look around the word and there isn’t a lot of self-assignment going on. There are simply women shot and beaten in the street, choked to death or having  their rights taken  away. There is no identifying out of this , there is no fluidity here . This is not discourse. It is brutality and do we not have some responsibility to other women to confront male violence ?

Instead the hatred is aided and abetted by so called philosophers describing  other women as Terfs. It is utterly depressing.

The sexed body. The pregnant body. The dying body. The body is in trouble when we can’t talk about it . I thought of Margaret Mary O’Hara’s  beautiful and  strange lyrics and what they might mean. I await my child’s return from the hospital as hers is a difficult pregnancy and thank god they are on the case. The sex of the child she carries does not matter to me at all .

It simply exists. Not in language but within a body. 

Why is that so difficult to acknowledge?