#trans people are allowed to objectify me

[bunny-storm]

Get my pretty name out of your mouth

‼️They/Them pronouns only, female-only attracted people DNI‼️

$enbystorm

[optimistc-apathy]

essay in the tags

I think the thing about it for me is that transmascs have the fundamental right to tell you what our experiences with misogyny and male privilege are, not the other way around.

You don't know what we go through unless we tell you. I don't know what other transmascs go through unless they tell me. Cis women, other trans people, even people with the exact same identities, the exact same life trajectories- none of us know what another person is experiencing or has experienced, let alone how they have interpreted and internalized those experiences, unless they tell us. Even then, we will only ever have access to an imperfect version of that true experience filtered through several layers of language and our own perception & biases.

Does this clash with what feminism says about men's experiences? Yes, absolutely! A lot of (generally mainstream) feminism believes that women Know what men experience better than they themselves do, colored as those experiences are by bias and privilege. And this is a fundamentally isolating, egotistical belief. It cuts us off from each other, it prevents us from connecting, and it shuts down meaningful conversation before it can happen. It says women are pure and perfect, and men are sullied by privilege; that anyone touched by privilege cannot be trusted, and should not trust themselves.

When cis men say they've never experienced privilege, the answer should not be, "you don't know that," it should be vulnerability & curiosity. Why do you think that? I find that hard to believe for these reasons, but I want to know more. I want to co-create understanding with you. Are you curious about me, too? Will you offer me this same kindness? (And if not, they're probably not worth your energy!)

And y'know what, maybe they haven't actually experienced the things you think they have! Maybe the framework you are using is imperfect- maybe it works on a systems analysis level, but it doesn't apply universally. Particularly when we're talking about marginalized men!

This idea that experiencing privilege means you cannot be trusted, ever, to understand that privilege or to know when you have or haven't experienced it? It's so fucking dangerous. Case in point: transfems should be able to talk about the ways in which they might have experienced male privilege without it immediately discrediting everything else they have to say, up to and including about their own identities.

We cannot operate like this. A framework that denies people's self-knowledge will never be capable of liberating anyone.

So yes, actually, some transmascs may experience conditional male privilege at times. But will you, do you believe transmascs when we tell you that we don't?

[genderqueerdykes]

trans men and women learn a lot from each other when we get close and it's a wonderful thing. it's okay to be dysphoric about manhood. it's okay to be dysphoric about womanhood. it's okay to not like he/him pronouns, to not like she/her pronouns. it's okay to not like how strangers gender you. it's okay to talk about these things with each other, to share mutual disgust, to see how it affects one another and how it shapes our identities and experiences.

it's okay to talk about the things that make you uncomfortable together. it's not invalidating each other's experiences to have conversations like saying "i'm so tired of being seen as a man no matter what, and being around people who treat me like a man" to a trans man and having the trans man respond by saying "i feel the same way about people who treat me like a woman" and agree to not project one's trauma on to the other

it's okay to be vulnerable. it's okay to admit when we don't understand certain parts of each others experiences, too. we do NOT have to act like experts and like we've "read the book" on what another person's gender is. even if we think we know a lot about that gender, we don't know everything, because we don't know everyone. literally. it's okay to go "i don't understand, but I'll call you whatever you identify as." and be receptive without knowing exactly what they mean.

we don't understand many things in life. that's fine. it's okay to just listen and not talk for once. you don't have to try to speak as though you've lived as a trans man when you're a trans women, and you don't have to speak for trans women if you're a trans man. we are allowed to advocate for our own experiences and simultaneously listen to other queer experiences and respect their boundaries, spaces, and needs.

there is a lot to learn about the challenges that trans women face, the unique struggles that come with some being raised as boys and the troubles that come with that, being seen as a feminine boy, being subjected to homophobia- getting called faggots and other slurs. some were raised as girls, some are intersex, and some are afab or other birth sexes, and the mixing of masculinity and femininity and cause a lot of issues when it comes to how society treats that person

there are lots of conversations that have to be listened to when it comes to the transmasculine experience and how nobody but transmasc people can articulate what it's like to live as a transmasculine person. no one can speculate on it, because it is such a unique experience. it is a complicated matter of several different types of prejudice that no one else can quite understand where it comes from and how it feels unless they've been there

it is so deeply rooted in misogyny, where people treat us like "stupid, confused women," like we're "destroying children" that we're 'destroying our bodies', that our hormones make us "unstable, irritable and emotional," and that we are unreliable narrators. we get called hysterical. we get told we're "ruining a pretty girl" or wasting our "pretty" features. we get lectured about how we need to be attractive and how testosterone will ruin that by our own parents. we get told we can't dress masc because it will make us "ugly" or "butch" or "dykes".

people hate it when we bind our breasts, cut our hair, hide our curves, change our gait, and stop wearing makeup. they lose a "girl" to ogle and become enraged, upset or uncomfortable. while the transmasc person is trying to navigate life in a way where they don't feel objectified, it becomes a matter of even worse objectification because now antimasculism is introduced into the mix and the experience becomes transandrophobia.

people are so hateful and bitter toward manhood and masculinity. people ask us "why would you EVER want to be a man? NOBODY wants to be a man." they tell us "men are ugly, violent, and mean." people tell us that men are sexual predators, that they're inherently abusive. people tell us that testosterone makes people ugly. they tell us that men aren't or can't be queer. they tell us we can't be a feminine man. they tell us we can't be men at all, that transmasculinity isn't even a thing, that transmanhood isn't a thing. we even get told that the only way to be trans is to be transfeminine, and what we are experiencing is a delusion, hysteria, or a result of us being hormonal from being on our periods and/or HRT.

when we listen to each others' experiences we realize how people who are othered by society are treated. we learn that not only we experiencing this, but so is everyone around us. we do not have to try to make one side's experience more important than another's. we can hold each other up by having conversations and being vulnerable about what's going on, how we're being treated, how we want to be treated, and how the community is failing us and how we can do better.

we deserve to have conversations. there's a lot to learn, a lot to laugh about, a lot to relate to, and a lot to be curious about. these conversations are good to have. it's good to admit when you know nothing about transmasculinity or transfemininity or any other identity. it's okay to ask respectful questions. it's okay to tell people when you appreciate their identities, and them explaining it to you. it's okay to just listen. it really is. we have to learn to listen it's not something that can be avoided perpetually for life. listening to someone else's conversation does not erase yours, it does not take it away from the equation. they exist together.

[xmimikyuusx]

I'm here on my soapbox in defense of the teenaged girls who love yaoi to trans men pipeline get ready. I'm speaking for the heart so excuse me if I sound silly

(If t/rfs see this post, before touching it: consider choking on my nuts)

Growing up, especially in adolescence, I (and probably most people perceived as women around that age) struggled not only with feeling objectified by other people and society at large, but simultaneously, living with a strange relationship to wanting to feel attractive to others. It had been ingrained in me that because I wasn't performing my agab hard enough (to the impossible standard that was every piece of media about women) that I was undesirable. In a very weird way, that is; you're an undesirable woman because you're ugly, you're fat, you can't afford makeup or fancy clothes and wearing them makes you feel like shit. However, if all else failed, you could still be "used" by someone. Maybe I would never be loved, but at least, even if it was hell, someone would find a "use" for me as a sexual object, if I performed feminity just enough.

It all sounded awful. Really, really awful. I remember every time someone would hit on me, would oggle my body, it was humiliating. Even being bisexual, I felt this awful ache in any relationship I was in where I was someone's handbag, I was something for them to have. But at least someone wanted me.

Then, I grew up, and I transitioned. And a whole new world of getting shit on awakens. Because now, I'm nowhere near performing feminity enough. I'm blatantly undesirable. The disgust that comes for trans men's bodies, especially early in transition, is night and day. You're not masculine enough, you're not feminine enough, you're an ugly girl who thinks they can get away from it all if you change your pronouns, which makes you even more pathetic and disgusting in the eyes of people who see you as an object to be desired.

And being told, over and over, that the changes you wanted, the neck hair and the patchy stache and the body hair and the smell of your own sweat that gets stronger as your voice drops, the things that make you happy, they're disgusting, it's another layer of hell after you grew up going through the last five. You felt rejected and outcast before, but now you're something that people don't even want to use, unless they can make you go back to being a woman.

No man looks like you. Except. In fucking yaoi. You get short, vaguely feminine men, who are desired in a positive way. You see men who are allowed to cry and be emotional, and it's seen as a good thing. You see men who can be an equal to their partner, that even if they're short, they're not as strong as other men, they struggled with being taken seriously or are even hurt by people who see them as something that can be used, but they get their happy ending. He gets comfort and love for someone who sees his feminity and finds him attractive without saying these unchagable attributes negate his status as a man. You see this man, who feels like you, being loved, and being able to love, and it's life changing.

You can be a man even if you're feminine. Even if you're short. Even if you couldn't win in a fight if someone attacked you. I'm not saying trans men are always all of these things, but fuck, for me, seeing representation for short effeminate men being loved and valued without being maliciously feminized is fucking impossible outside of gay manga. It helped me so much reading theaw things, seeing what bits of myself I could and knowing that if other people were writing and drawing this, maybe I could be worthy of love, not despite my body, but including it.

I fucking love reading manga with effeminate gay men in it because it feels like me. If other media started giving us short gay men, I'd be more interested, but manga/yaoi has it as a damn staple. Representation is media is life changing. Seeing someone who looks like you when you feel like you're all alone is so fucking important.

If you're going to complain about trans men reading yaoi and wanting to become that, eat shit. I'll become whatever I want for whatever reason makes me happiest. This has made me happy, incredibly, very happy, and has been something I can bond over with other trans men and my partner. You can stay bitter and disgusted with me, and I'll be happy with the people who care about me for who I really am, because I'm frankly over worrying about how other people will react to my joy.

[officialpenisenvy]

Since it seems down your alley and idk if youve talked about it before to my knowledge im really curious about your thoughts on trans exclusionary radical feminist fixation on pederasty (see: germaine greer’s the boy) + lesbian desire in relation to the like, archetype of the ganymede + the relation between that and sexual objectification of transfems and the utilization of said ganymede archetype in art as a sort of “agencyless transfeminine” 

okay so i want to say first of all that this is just me talking out of my ass and basically reflecting out loud (most of my blog is, but especially right now), so i don't know how coherent this will be, and i apologize preemptively if any wording on this is questionable or offensive, that is never my intent. i haven't looked into or researched this subject, so if you have any recommendations i would love to hear them! ramble answer under the cut

im very familiar with germaine greer's the boy, i have read it (as much as anyone can be said to have read what amounts to a pederasty-themed photo album) and reflected on it for some time: while the purported effort of the book is to "reclaim" pederasty from gay men towards women, i feel like the very desire to enable women to be pederasts is entrenched in greer's radical feminist background. trans-exclusionary radical feminism is built around bioessentialism, the assumption that men are ontologically different from women, and specifically that men are essentially evil, strong and predatory whereas women are essentially good, weak and preyed-upon: the young boy, however, somewhat disrupts this paradigm, being as he has been historically and culturally objectified and preyed upon and victimized in the same way women have. though he will inevitably grow up to become the evil strong man who harms women, therefore, the young boy can still be enjoyed by the woman while he is weak and essentially harmless, a more even relationship than that between a woman and a man that still allows a potentially heterosexual woman to satisfy her desire for a man; i don't need to specify that in real life we know any relationship between an adult and a child cannot be even and is more often than not deeply harmful to the child, and that the vast majority of adults who do sexual harm to children do so not necessarily because of physical attraction but because of attraction to their helplessness.

all this above is my attempt at finding a terf-ist rationale for female pederasty, but it does also somewhat mirror societal attitudes to the young boy, especially in a gay male context — starting from ancient pederasty up to basically the present day, the young boy is consistently the feminine or feminised party, at least in part due to his fragility and weakness in comparison to the (necessarily) stronger adult lover. the young boy, who i will now start calling the ephebe in this more archetypal context, therefore becomes a very powerful cultural figure of androgyny: ganymede's gender is important insofar as zeus chooses to bring him up to olympus and train him up as a cupbearer (a social role unthinkable for a girl), but his vulnerability and sort of waifishness are properties both of the ephebe and the girl/woman, and the same goes for all other popular depictions of ephebes, they are young boys noted for their beauty and androgyny who are functionally interchangeable with girls. as many queer people are, i find androgyny to be very attractive in all its variations and potential combinations, and i think that's why im so drawn to the ephebe as an archetype (needless to say i don't want to fuck actual young boys): the fascination with this concept of a beautiful boy who's devoid of most stereotypical characteristics of masculinity and who's somewhat forcibly put in the social role of a girl is to me a similar drive to the one that makes me attracted to very masculine women, i really enjoy the deliberate blurring of gender lines (and it would be pointless to hide that i also enjoy the element of coercion, though that is a recurring theme in my sexuality which is not limited to the ephebe).

obviously, all this discussion is separate from attraction to actual trans women: my attraction to trans women is motivated by them being women, so my enjoyment of a fem trans woman is paramount to that of a fem cis woman, my enjoyment of a masc trans woman is paramount to that of a masc cis woman (so coming from that place of liking androgyny), and so forth. of course, whether or not one is attracted to trans women is secondary to whether or not they actually treat trans women as women and respect their identity — plenty of people are attracted to trans women and behave like absolute monsters towards them.

like you said, trans women are horribly objectified and sexualised: to my understanding there's two broad categories of sexual objectification trans women face, being forcibly put in a submissive position (so basically recycling the ephebe archetype, especially coming from people who see trans women as particularly feminine boys), and being forcibly put in a dominant/active position (especially from people who see trans women as men and thus inherently sexually domineering, and who potentially fetishize their genitals as well). the forced submission, while obviously horrible and transmisogynistic and often meant as punishment for the transgression of manhood, isn't in practice terribly different from the forced submission cis women tend to experience to a lesser degree, so it can be in some measure rationalized as assimilable to the sexual treatment one would receive if she were as a cis woman (intersectional parenthesis demands i point out that cis and trans black women sexually interacting with non-black men are more likely to be put in a place of forced domination than forced submission). the forced domination, however, is pointedly and manifestly transmisogynistic in a way that specifically portrays the trans woman in question as "really a man" and "really secretly dominant", often with a very phallic emphasis, and this can be an obvious source of discomfort and dysphoria for trans women, some of whom will try to counteract that by making themselves deliberately more submissive and pliable and non-dominant, basically embodying the feminine and ephebic archetype of passive sexuality, or the "agencyless transfeminine" like you said.

i am not sure any of this makes sense, i hope i was able to be at least somewhat coherent for you anon! i would really love any input or criticism my transfem followers might have on this, since im obviously only speaking from what i have seen and am not a trans woman myself but just a tme yapper on the internet — again im very sorry if any of this comes off as offensive or insensitive, please let me know so i can correct myself if needed.

[gayhenrycreel]

what the fuck is wrong with this community?

why is there a requirement of trans men being subs? combined with the demonization of surgery, this cuntboy fetish thing kinda hurts. i never see any appreciation for, like... any dicks on men. unless said man is skinny, but also muscular to the point that im concerned for his mental health.

there are two (2) types of gay men allowed in the queer community: hairy muscular masculine cis man, and objectified "trans man" who is always white, fem, has no body hair at all, and is treated as a woman in every way. also he has to have a misgendering kink. its a requirement.

this would be fine if there was ANYTHING ELSE ALLOWED.

even irl i don't know any masc queer people at all. i feel very alone. does the queer community hate masculinity? i dont want to go into a relationship if its expected that im fine with being a submissive woman. i dont want to have sex before phalloplasty.

i go into a queer space (any space, irl or online) and everyone is talking about makeup and offering me some and calling me "girl" and theres this idea that men are evil. theres nothing wrong with femininity but radical feminism is never okay. the last queer space i was in irl had this one person who made jokes about how men suck and EVERYONE AGREED WITH HER.

everytime they have an event people offer me makeup and I GET CALLED A GIRL AGAIN.

even worse, the fucking coordinator tried to convince me to preserve my fucking egg cells after i said i want my entire reproductive system removed and stomped on. then she called me "girl".

and i said i didnt like makeup but people just said "are you sure?" like i dont know what makes me suicidally dysphoric.

i cant go into a space for people like me without my gender expression being questioned.

its bizarre that a cishet doctor would listen to me more about my sexual autonomy than a fellow trans person who says i might change my mind about HAVING A WHOLE FUCKING PERSON GROWING INSIDE ME. i have panic attacks about that. i have nightmares. and then she said i should still consider having sex, and when i said i don't want to she told me ill "meet the right person one day". i have a medical condition that makes penetration EXTREMELY painful, and when i try other holes i cant fucking feel anything, and no i dont like being pressured into sex because, shockingly, im not interested in getting raped.

i wont even consider sex until i get every surgery i can get. i just want a relationship that never goes past cuddles. i wish people would consider that i want to be a cis man, especially after ive already said thats what i want.

the cis people in my life always respect my gender. a lot of trans people in my life call me "girl" and tell me shit like "youll get to a point mentally where you dont need surgery to be happy".

i actually had someone say that to me. i said that not having t and surgery makes me suicidal, and they just told me i dont need it. then they said surgery is not necessary, even though ive wanted it for longer than i knew it was an option.

(dont worry gaylord and twobruhsinahottub im not talking about you)

[plinkodiskhorse]

on labels

The back and forth over the use of the word “queer” baffles and frustrates me. I think the arguments, and the term itself, are illustrative of a dialectic. Queer is simultaneously collective and individual, affiliation-group and self-identity, over-arching and specific, degrading and embracing. Until a time comes that all variations and expressions of gender and sexuality (and combinations thereof) are free from social and institutional stigma, queer will never mean just one thing.

Queer, as an over-arching term for anyone who is NOT cisgender, heterosexual, or perisex, acknowledges the overlap and interplay of gender assigned at birth, identified gender, gender expression, sexual attraction. A cisgender, butch dyke (a person assigned female at birth who aligns with that identity and is attracted to other women, while expressing her gender in a “masculine” manner) and a faggy, transgender man (a person assigned female at birth who “rejects” womanhood while dating men and expressing an “effeminate” masculinity) may seem very different from one another but can have MANY shared experiences of “queerness.” Both may be targets of transphobia and misogyny — even when one of them isn’t trans and one of them isn’t a woman — and both may be targets of homophobia. “Queer” (can, should) holds space for all of these aspects of self, even when they seem to contradict one another.

(How can a transgender man experience misogyny? When he is not perceived/treated as a man, but as a “failed woman.” How can a cisgender woman experience transphobia? When she is perceived/treated as a “non-passing” transgender woman encroaching upon “women’s spaces.”)

When this hypothetical cis dyke and transfag both claim the word “queer,” there is (or should be, in this umbrella interpretation of queer) an understanding that “your fight is my fight.” We may not be the exact same flavor of queer, but our liberation is interconnected. My freedom, as a transgender man, cannot be won at the expense of women’s freedom. I don’t mean that just in the sense that I would be morally opposed to that situation; I mean it in the sense that the oppression of women WILL impact my own freedom.

The baroque complexities of queerness become further entangled when considering race, religion, and disability. Can “queer” hold the history of racialized gender in America? That black people have been hypersexualized/virilized and subsequently fetishized and denigrated for this projection. That East Asian women have been seen as seductresses or naturally submissive, while East Asian men are desexualized or objectified as seeming young and effeminate. The stereotypes of the hot blooded Latina and the macho Latino. Can “queer” encompass the deliberate destruction of Native gender identities and the subsequent (current) obfuscating mythologizing by white queers? Can “queer” be a place for people who see their gender and/or sexuality as a manifestation of/connection to the Divine while also being a place for those deeply harmed by religion because of their gender/sexuality? Can “queer” accept people with disabilities as people capable of eroticism even if their bodies don’t allow for some forms of sex acts?

As a dialectic, rather than a static fact, queer can hold these things, and there are times that queer will be too broad for all these things and specificity is needed.

As a dialectic, queer is a slur and an academic term. Queer is an acceptable word in a peer-reviewed journal, and has the potential to be “fighting words” interpersonally. What matters is the context and the individual interpretation. And it’s HIGHLY personal.

I was born and raised in Texas from the 90s to the 2010s. I never heard queer used as an insult, except in media from (or set in) the past. If I had heard someone use queer as an insult, my initial reaction would have been confusion. Are you fucking old? Is this the 70s? But I did hear gay used as an insult all the time. And faggot and dyke, if there weren’t any teachers within hearing range. I didn’t really encounter queer until undergrad, as an academic term, an area of study, and then as how my friends self-identified. Because of this, my associations with queer are largely positive.

But I know people who also grew up in Texas, only a 30-45min drive away from where I grew up, who did experience queer as a slur. For them, they may feel more comfortable reclaiming fag or dyke, rather than queer. And that’s their decision to make. And yet, it would be reductive if they were to treat queer as only ever a slur, not as a word with decades of usage in academic and intracommunity contexts.

I like queer as a word that can veil meaning.

It can be a conversation stopper. You don’t get to know the specifics of my gender history, my sexual partners, the roles I take in sex, the acts I enjoy during sex.

It can be a conversation starter. I see you’re different in a way that is similar to how I’m different; let us now ask each other oblique and leading questions that the cis hets around us won’t understand.

I dislike how queer is increasingly absorbed into the corporate rainbow-washing of assimilationists. A company doesn’t get to sell me Pride merch with one hand and donate to anti-trans politicians with the other hand.

I cannot say that queer retains its edge, nor can I say that it has been defanged. I cannot force others to reclaim the word, nor can I gatekeep the word. In the first “queer studies” class I ever had, my professor explained “autonomy” literally means “self-naming.”

There is no right or wrong answer, there is only ever-increasing nuance.

[bunny-storm]

OnlyFans kept forsaking me so I made an account on a similar website, if anyone wants to follow, everything is currently free!!

[redditreceipts]

hi, I’m not sure how to word this right…I’m a transmasculine (NOT TRANSMALE) woman, it’s hard to explain exactly what it means but that’s the closest I’ve gotten, gnc works too I guess though doesn’t fully articulate it.

But I’ve identified as a lot of things since a really early age, generally always circling back to a trans man. Im a survivor of sexual abuse/exploitation, and I would always find myself identifying as the “stereotypical feminine woman” when I was in a worse state and wanted to be objectified, then identifying as a trans male when I wanted to be treated like a human. I figured this meant trans-manhood was what was really right for me, that womanhood was something I only went to as self harm, but recently I thought “would I want to be a man if women were treated like people too” and I realized I wouldn’t.

I support transgender and transsexual rights fully, but I really wish that there was more acknowledgment of sexism. Not just misogyny…sexism.

I thought I was above misogyny, but I’m only recently realizing at age 19 that I didn’t view women as human the way I viewed men as human, and I felt this way because of how I’ve been treated as a female all my life. The way people treat you from birth goes beyond anything a male could comprehend, and it’s so engrained that no one even notices it. We’re not allowed to express emotions or opinions because it’s “too much” and we’re “too loud” especially if we’re not white (which I’m not), we have to do so much more work to be considered an equal by men, we’re talked about in society as objects to be obtained rather than living breathing complex humans, we’re not given margin for error like men are, we’re held to higher standards, we’re constantly forced to prove ourselves in every single capacity in a way men never have to, we’re treated as objects and toys and constantly referred to only with degrading misogynist slurs, we’re aborted for our sex and not given the same education as male classmates and shut out of conversations and objectified before we can even walk, When it’s laid out like that, yeah it’s no wonder so many women (myself included) feel like manhood is the key to humanity. Because It is. Because in society there are people and women, and the current queer community is all too comfortable to bulldoze over this oppression and pretend there’s no such thing as sexism because acknowledging that means challenging their “everyone is valid uwu” shit. Im not saying there aren’t just actual trans men, of course there are, but come on.

Hey :) sorry for the late answer, I've been a bit busy so yeah

I think I kinda get what you mean when you say that you are transmasculine, and I personally think that if that's the best word to describe it, you should go for it! Identity is always a personal matter. I would however argue that identity does not override material reality, and in political terms, we are defined by our biological sex, amongst other things :)

And yes, you are so right when you say that there should be more of an acknowledgement of sexism in the trans community! Women are seen as subhuman, and a woman has to do much more than a man to just be considered a person. That is especially true in the intersection with race and sex.

And well, the trans gender community relies on upholding gender. How many transmasculine people do you see being annoyed when they're being called "she", and they say stuff like "You're calling me she? With my short hair? Dressed like this??"

the recognition of a member of one sex as a member of the opposite sex is much, much harder without gender steretoypes. Abolishing gender leaves us with the cold, hard reality of the oppression of the female sex. I feel like gender is all the pretty fluff and mystification of a brutal truth: Women are seen as less than human.

And yes, I also sometimes feel like I have to be super androgynous to be considered human. But I'm not, and trying to change your sex instead of changing the oppressive systems is like trying to be straight instead of challenging homophobia.

Anyways, I'm glad you're here :) Here's a cat with an octopus on it's head for you :)

[rametarin]

Angry about something

Please, please, please, let movements be horrible on their own without saying, "The're the [previous thing] of [subject]"

We don't say the Nazis were the modern Napoleonic Imperialists. We don't say the Napoleonic Imperialists were their day's Golden Horde of Genghis Khan. We don't say Muslim pirates and abductors from Tripoli cruising Europe for slaves and conquests were "totally Trans Atlantic Slave Trading it." Muslims were abducting Europeans for slave applications for centuries before Europeans did it for

And when people talk about modern day Intersectional Feminists, capital P Progressives and oldschool TERF-flavor feminists get nasty in accordance with their values all over a pasttime, a hobby, or a group of people that enjoys something and tells them they're doing it wrong thanks to a VERY unreliably narrated assessment of what they are and why they are, they tend to treat their behavior as if it's the same stock mindset of previous experience related to Christian puritainism and religious evangelism.

Don't fucking do this. Their values are not the same. They come from a different place, and you doing this helps them do something they SPECIFICALLY like to do. First, muck around acting like assholes in self-righteous quests to control how people interpret reality and see things, and when called out for it, have their own controlled mea culpa where they apologize because, "that's just the old Christian White Supremacist in me, the feminism part of me isn't like that and can't be like that because feminism is just good and can't be bad. I'm sowwy. :C"

No. Fucking no. Do NOT fucking allow that to happen. Feminism is not a simple act of seeing women as equal, it's an entire dogmatic baggage that necessitates Class Struggle Theory, the willful adoption of the idea the only thing that matters in sexual politics is that "Women Are Oppressed (TM)" even when circumstances and culture are entirely equal and even handed with them, and that society owes them something to compensate for this inherent oppression- at the expense of men. And that Society is the third wheel in their relationship, automatically there to redistribute from the man.

Feminism bills itself as simply a phenomenon of 'equality'... for women.. but it is no more this than Christianity is synonymous with The Good(tm). It certainly is a shitty way to see the world, but it is not the definition of seeing the world. It boils down to making some very very intensely specific logical leaps and shortcuts out of convenience and then dogmatically insisting these values are immutable and unquestionable.

From that position, we come to the other little black box in the equation. The idea that something that exists in culture that represents an icon or concept, oppresses and exploits that icon, object or group, and that it is specifically wrong to objectify that, but only if it's a woman, a group that is "oppressed." (it's however perfectly justifiable to objectify an 'oppressor.' See how that works.) Right before they say some apologetics like, "It's not MY fault cisheterosexual Judeo-Christian Patriarchy is sexually binary! Maybe if you agreed in more options we wouldn't be having this conversation!"

And it's because of this shitty point of view, they argue that even having big booby fictional characters that are female, boobily boobing down the stairs for the appreciation of the audience, they jump to the next facet of their belief system. Male Gaze Theory.

Built off their idea that Classes Struggle (tm) and Women Are the Obligate Oppressed Class(tm), and that any reference or participation by women is inherently an act of an oppressed political group in bondage to and beholden to their oppressive captors, AND that works of fiction and literature are part of culture, these facets of culture give groups their marching orders, programming and ideas on what they are, mean and even their existence. They believe, uncompromisingly, that your very perception and understanding of reality is built solely upon what books written by the state have to say about what is real and what isn't. That if society writes books about a murderer and don't go out of their way to omnipotently, omnipresently dictate with no ambiguity that, "Murder is bad, ackshully," that you endorse a society where murder happens. And, no joke, this is how they imagine murder, theft and antisocial behavior happening. Because it exists in that cultural bubble like evil waves of energy, just going unneutralized to warp the minds of unprepared people who haven't been told what is right and wrong by society, making them rapists, murderers and exploiters of those weaker than them (and they only care when the person exploits someone weaker than them.)

So they see sexy drawn women as depictions of an oppressed minority being reveled over by a slavemaster class, exploiting their image and the idea of that group for profit (which they also despise) and believe the women should also be profitting off their "exploitation" in fiction, and some sort of state council should exist that oversees the expression or interpretation of women in fiction, or else abolish the work from existing for not fitting their moral and social view of how literature and culture are "allowed" to see women. Seeing this very dour, extreme interpretation about how all men depicting women is exploitation, and by default society is meant for a male, oppressor perspective, is called, "Male Gaze Theory."

At no point in this equation did their greviance or conceptual principles cross over with Puritainism or Christians. They are their own totalitarian beasts, and like the Nazis are not Napoleonics are not The Mongol Horde, FUCKING TELL IT LIKE IT IS AND ACCEPT RADICAL FEMINISM IS JUST LIKE THIS.

You can somehow see one radical conservative and condemn the entire conservative or right-wing party as inherently racist, white supremacist and homophobic, but you can't acknowledge that radical feminism has more Ls to its name and more bad ideas and more bad values than rejecting the idea that trans men and women aren't men and women. All their ideological supremacism, all their logical leaps, all of their antagonistic marching into any fandom and demanding the fandom most conform to their ideas of what is mentally, emotionally an socially healthy, are their own. They are not Puritans, they're fucking radical feminists. Do not use the bad behavior of past groups as an ablative shield when you fucking mean what you mean.

"Well complaining about feminism makes me sound like some kind of CHUD..."

That's a you problem. In the past, complaining about the Church when it was synonymous with power would've made you a "pagan" or an "unbeliever." And before the T in LGBT got traction, it was just "anti-feminist" for a biological man to argue with a woman, giving them infinite instant Ls, even if they did identify as a woman. It starts somewhere.

Call it like it is and just realize radical feminism is rotten from the top windows of the attic to the foundations.

[genderqueerdykes]

i'm struggling a lot with what to label myself. I've always felt a connection with butchness, but my idea of "masculinity" doesn't really seem to gel with the predominant image and fashion.

Part of it is that I'm disabled. I'll never be able to comfortably wear jeans or suits or hard leather men's shoes or workboots. Usually it's just crocs or something soft on the inside. I'm usually just hanging out in a t-shirt and sweatpants. I'm also just a big fan of small accessories like a single earring or a bunch of rings.

It also means my partner has to help me with a lot of things. I wish I could do more "chivalrous" things like helping with heavy objects or fixing things but like. I can't do that. I do try to be a loving and supportive partner, but I mainly do that through cooking or helping them schedule appointments or keep track of things their ADHD makes it hard for them to remember. I feel like this all means I can't really fulfill the butch role?

I flirted with the idea of being a "soft butch" for a while but I was told that it was a fake meme scale thing, like futch. I know a lot of people on here are like "do what you want forever" but I'm just very confused and I specifically feel like I don't have a claim because of my disability.

i wanted to say that i feel you very deeply there, and i wanted to relate to your experience, because i totally get it-

i have to dress for comfort and to accommodate my disabilities, so i get what you're saying. wearing boots is hard for me, i have to wear sneakers/trainers or other shoes that are comfortable while being supportive- that's why in most of my pictures i'm wearing the same shoes, because i can't really deal with a lot of different styles of shoe. being autistic also makes this difficult

i've actually written about how the "chivalrous" stereotype for butches is dangerous and completely leaves out disabled butches, you may want to give it a read and see if it helps you feel a bit better, because you're not alone, that stereotype bugs me deeply-

butches do not have to be strong or "chivalrous," butches are simply masculine queer people. to essentially force butches to be stereotypical cis men is uncomfortable, and it's not fair to the butch. you are allowed to be butch in whatever ways are accessible to you- if you can't align with that stereotype, then break it. you're not meant to fit into a mold! i'm tired of the idea that all butches have to be clones of one another:

butches can do whatever the hell they want!

you're butch no matter how you present or behave because you said you're butch! i hope this helps, take care of yourself!

[velvetvexations]

Venting a bit but I was reminded of f1nn5ter, the streamer who did a lot of crossdressing content and recently came out as genderfluid and looked him up, and like good for her I'm glad she's figuring stuff out and has a relatively good audience from what I've seen. Not personally my style of content to watch but I'm glad trans people are thriving.

But it really made me think about trans respectability in a way. Like I saw a post a while back that was like the true test of how accepted trans people are is how attractive/fuckable they are to cis gazes and it's very very true. The internet loves seeing a white, conventionally attractive, skinny as hell, physically androgenous trans person wear cute outfits but there's none of that love left over for people like me, the fat hairy trannies who might wear the same stuff but don't rate high enough on the fuckability scale to deserve even shreds of respect. When conventionally attractive trans people dress up or try to look cute or attractive it's liberating and iconic but when I do it's just a joke or pathetic

It's not about respecting trans people it's about who can be objectified and who's garbage but it sucks to see when certain types of trans people get even that often largely conditional acceptance cause it makes it feel like trying to get anywhere when I'm never going to fit into what cis society views as valuable(attractive to cis people) is futile

(this isn't to say conventionally attractive skinny trans people don't face transphobia or that objectification is a universal good or anything, just an observation/complaint about how much things like fatphobia and beauty standards intersect with transness)

This makes me think of someone who used to go by the name of Lord KaT and came out as a trans woman recently. She isn't at all the thin, conventionally attractive, ideal trans beauty and in fact was coming off of being a minor-to-mid name in Gamer Gater "neckbeard" circles. I don't think she does a ton of content these days but I have to imagine she might have been able to find herself sooner without those expectations of who's allowed to be accepted.

[chocolate-eye-candy]

Don’t ever ask me for advice on how to objectify black bodies

I also don’t like people that only allow cis bi or lesbian women and not gay men or trans people. It screams I only like gayness when I can sexualize it

[schizosamwincester]

Crossdresser Dean Winchester.... 👀 he canonically likes panties... so.... Dean wearing dresses and wearing lipstick............

Okay but I don't think you understand the full context here. I am basing this off the fact that I hooked up with a guy who was literally Dean. Like. Spent the whole time talking to me about all the girls he fucked in the military. Including a lot of really objectifying stuff, which like... My dude. I'm a trans guy. I have been treated like a woman. I'm still treated like a woman. You really think I want to hear that? He had a tattoo for his dead service member grandpa, which... yeah dean has that for John. You know he does. Also a tribal and a dumbass revolutionary war one.

Absolutely just liked to hear himself talk. Really was an ass about the fact that I do not let people touch my genitals during sex, which... Yeah you know if Dean Winchester has a pussy in front of him and wasn't allowed to fuck it, he wouldn't take it well. Made comments that I'm sure he thought were slick charming jokes but were in fact disgusting and did make me say "dude you can leave if you're not going to respect my boundaries."

The worst part? He literally had a patch on his shorts that said Winchester. And his first name was Sean.

Anyway my point is this. We don't just think it would be hot if Dean was in panties and dresses and lipstick. We *know*, for a fact, that Dean puts on a full female ensemble, takes pictures of himself in them without his face, and uses them for his grindr profile to hook up with random dudes. We know that he has taken a picture of his ass framed in a skirt while he has a dildo stuck in it. This is now a fact. I have real actual proof of this. He's sent pictures of his dick peeking through panties to everyone who was online.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

as someone with an eclectic taste in video games something that’s really fascinated me is seeing that there’s actually a very large amount of the audience for pornographic video games that aren’t perisex cishet men. like, that’s the stereotype right? but it’s just not true. if catered to, the audience ends up being way more diverse than that. if there’s pornography that centres a female pov, women like it. if there’s pornography that allows for all sexualities to be represented, people of all sexualities will like it. if there’s pornography that experiments with gender, gender roles, and binary ideas of such trans and intersex people will enjoy it.

and like, i think that’s something that’s sorely missing in conversations about the ethics of pornography? pornography isn't naturally something that only appeals to perisex cishet men, because you can find pornography that appeals to way more people than that easily if you look outside of the mainstream industry and into indie projects, like video games. because those projects actually allow all people to have a seat at the table and be catered to, not just to exist in ways specifically designed to appeal to perisex cishet men.

our ideas on sexuality are constructed, not inherent. sex and sexuality are normal parts of humanity that everyone can enjoy if they wish. enjoying sex and sexually explicit content is something any group of people can do (and not enjoying it is also fair and valid). but society constructs sexual desire as something that exists to benefit cishet perisex men and objectify anyone who isn’t that. it’s a whole sector of the human experience that is denied to them.

and like. idk i think that’s why the idea that sexuality is inherently violent and oppressive strikes me as inherently conducive to the status quo of oppression itself. culturally, sexual desire and enjoyment of sexuality is something cishet perisex men are granted and everyone else is denied, and bc heterosexual men aren’t into each other it means only one party is permitted to enjoy it, and that is violence and oppression, but it’s not something solved by demonising sexuality. sexuality is a privilege in that it is a basic part of humanity denied to people, instead of being something harmful certain people are granted. and the solution to that is to allow sexuality and desire to be a mutual, fun thing for everyone, not to treat it as inherently bad in and of itself. sex doesn’t need to be exploitative. it should be a positive experience people of any gender, sexuality, and whatever else can mutually engage with if they wish and not do so if they wish not to.

[transenbyconfessions]

hello to everyone who is (questioning being) a trans guy or transmasculine and who has experienced worries over liking or preferring mlm relationships within fiction, i promise you youre not a creepy straight girl or woman objectifying gay men and that it makes a lot of sense actually !

for me it was a clear sign i experienced a connection to masculinity, actually ;; the relationships seemed more appealing to me because i could understand (if not sense) the resonation i experienced with men loving men without having to worry about all the societal gender norms that reality possessed. it allowed me to be myself without being reminded of cis society and the fact that cis guys would misgender me (and it was even why i considered being lesbian despite liking fellow boys, i did not want to be the girl dating a boy in the relationship and so i proceeded to avoid such perceptions that cis boys would hold upon me by refusing to consider dating boys in general)

so if you prefer mlm relationships above straight ones or lesbian ones while questioning being transmasculine, then it could be a very reasonable sign you're gay and trans, actually ! i was in a fandom with a lot of young people (from the ages of 11-14) creating gay relationships within their stories and i highly suspect many of them might've realIed they are trans later as well :)) it's what happened to me pfff

just a confession from a trans guy here, in the case where it gives others insights on their feelings !

Submitted April 20, 2023