#transphobia tw ///

[samwisethewitch]

Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won't radicalize you into a hate group

It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that's generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.

Unfortunately, these "self-sufficiency" skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the "good old days," a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.

In the spirit of building safe communities, here's a complete list of the safe resources I've found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.

Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:

Making It by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen [book] (The big crunchy household DIY book; includes every level of self-sufficiency from making your own toothpaste and laundry soap to setting up raised beds to butchering a chicken. Authors are explicitly left-leaning.)

Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by Mercury Stardust [book] (A guide to simple home repair tasks, written with rentals in mind; very compassionate and accessible language.)

How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis [book] (The book about cleaning and housework for people who get overwhelmed by cleaning and housework, based on the premise that messiness is not a moral failing; disability and neurodivergence friendly; genuinely changed how I approach cleaning tasks.)

Gardening

Rebel Gardening by Alessandro Vitale [book] (Really great introduction to urban gardening; explicitly discusses renter-friendly garden designs in small spaces; lots of DIY solutions using recycled materials; note that the author lives in England, so check if plants are invasive in your area before putting them in the ground.)

Country/Rural Living:

Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler [book] (Memoir of a lesbian who lives and works on a rural farm in Maine with her wife; does a good job of showing what it's like to be queer in a rural space; CW for mentions of domestic violence, infidelity/cheating, and internalized homophobia)

"Debunking the Off-Grid Fantasy" by Maggie Mae Fish [video essay] (Deconstructs the off-grid lifestyle and the myth of self-reliance)

Sewing/Mending:

Annika Victoria [YouTube channel] (No longer active, but their videos are still a great resource for anyone learning to sew; check out the beginner project playlist to start. This is where I learned a lot of what I know about sewing.)

Make, Sew, and Mend by Bernadette Banner [book] (A very thorough written introduction to hand-sewing, written by a clothing historian; lots of fun garment history facts; explicitly inclusive of BIPOC, queer, and trans sewists.)

Sustainability/Land Stewardship

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer [book] (Most of you have probably already read this one or had it recommended to you, but it really is that good; excellent example of how traditional animist beliefs -- in this case, indigenous American beliefs -- can exist in healthy symbiosis with science; more philosophy than how-to, but a great foundational resource.)

Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer [book] (This one is for my fellow witches; one of my favorite witchcraft books, and an excellent example of a place-based practice deeply rooted in the land.)

Avoiding the "Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline"

Note: the "crunchy to alt-right pipeline" is a term used to describe how white supremacists and other far right groups use "crunchy" spaces (i.e., spaces dedicated to farming, homemaking, alternative medicine, simple living/slow living, etc.) to recruit and indoctrinate people into their movements. Knowing how this recruitment works can help you recognize it when you do encounter it and avoid being influenced by it.

"The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline" by Kathleen Belew [magazine article] (Good, short introduction to this issue and its history.)

Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby (I feel like I need to give a content warning: this book contains explicit descriptions of racism, white supremacy, and Neo Nazis, and it's a very difficult read, but it really is a great, in-depth breakdown of the role women play in the alt-right; also explicitly addresses the crunchy to alt-right pipeline.)

These are just the resources I've personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!

[memingursa]

Guy certainly knows about it

[fujoshiribbon]

once i said butch girls who call themselves dudes and boyfriends are cute and i got put on a blocklist for supporting “invalid identities” which is fucking hilarious. cant a guy dyke it up in peace in the privacy of his own home

[nyancrimew]

Why do u call yourself a transGIRL if you are over 18? That's pedophilic .

this one is always sooo funny to me, cause like ok, when some random cis woman calls herself or her friend a girl or something she's quirky and cool, but when a trans person calls themselves a girl or a boy we're suddenly pedophiles! hmmmm i wonder where that rhetoric comes from?

[pieisnotreal]

I feel like with the photomatt shit one thing that got lost in the whole thing was Matt CONFIRMING that the deleting of blogs run by transfems a couple years ago was because someone on the mod team WAS a terf and was able to do this with essentially no consequences.

[communistkenobi]

They put Tayy Dior’s name in quotes as if that was a fun little nickname her friends called her. It places emphasis on the fact that her name is ‘unofficial,’ and given that legal name changes in places like the US can be expensive, difficult & time consuming, the ‘unofficial’ nature of transgender peoples’ names is commonplace. Using deadnames of trans people in media reports is an endorsement of the difficult nature of this process.

It also highlights the absurdity of appealing to ‘official’ legal records of name and gender marker - which official records? even when you go through a legal name change process, it’s not a single application that changes it everywhere. At least in my experience in Canada, and I believe this is the case in other federated states, you have to separately change your photo ID(s), your birth certificate, your federal/national records, your tax records, your employment and tenant records, your bank records, your billing records, and so on. These are all separate applications/appointments. And legal name and gender marker are separate applications. I had to essentially obtain a set of permission slips from a provincial office that allowed me to change my name and gender marker on municipal, provincial, and federal records. There isn’t one single ‘official’ record that informs all other records of your ‘real’ name and gender marker, it is a collection of diffused departments & offices that do not communicate with one another and must be altered one at a time by the individual themselves. In many cases, states retain a record of your original name and gender marker even after applying for a change, meaning it is literally impossible to ever fully change your name and gender everywhere, administratively speaking.

So, which record is the ‘official’ record for trans people? Cis people treat ‘official’ records of legal names and gender markers as if they are uniform, centralised, and coherent in order to contrast the ‘unofficial’ nature of a trans person’s “preferred” name and pronouns, to highlight the fundamental fraudulence of our lives that go against the rational objective nature of the state, but there is in many states no single official record, for trans and non-trans people alike. That is because when cis people insist on calling trans people by their deadnames and ungender them, they are not actually referring to official records - as official records can conflict, and there is no agreement on which single record is the authoritative one - but are instead treating sex and name assignment at birth as if it is sacrosanct. This first ritual of naming, of gendering, and of recording the results of this ritual is the actual ‘official record’ they are referring to, a ritual that can never be altered or forsaken.

Tayy Dior’s name is not a nickname, it is not a quotation to insert into her “real” “official” deadname, it is not a preference. It is her name, and the media - even “trans inclusive” media - is making sure that it is, at best, the second thing they call her as they gleefully report on her violent murder

[one-time-i-dreamt]

Wow, Daegu (South Korea) went from not protecting Daegu Pride in 2018 the way they should've to receiving education sessions on Queer culture and becoming public allies and vowing to protect Pride from then on and doing exactly so every single year culminating in this year when their hobgoblin of a mayor tried to destroy Pride, and now even protesting in favor of Pride? Growth.

It's important to note that the courts also supported Pride and the mayor publicly threatened the police chief, yet the police still went to protect and support Pride.

"South Korean news agency Yonhap estimated that about 500 protesters and 1,500 police officers were at the scene. The festival ultimately continued, with the parade taking place as planned."

[runawaymarbles]

"trans women" aren't real women and need to be in asylums for the safety of women and female spaces

Having conducted a scientific study of all the trans women in earshot, I can report with confidence that some of them would consider being in a facility with only other trans women a fun and sexy time. And they also agree that your tax dollars should fund this

[spitblaze]

dont draw, creativity is for girls and fags, unless you're doing serious art, in which case men make contemplative serious art about the depths of their misery and important things and women just make cutesy unserious art about their feelings, unless you're transgender in which case trans men only make cutesy unserious art about their feelings (but they can be part of the Big Boys club if they're misogynist enough, they just need to remember their place as lesser men) and trans women make serious dark art about the depths of their misery (but its not as good as cis mens art and if she makes something with the barest whiff of optimism then she's a twee faker) and nonbinary people make art about mushrooms and frogs or whatever

[twinliches]

where is that post that is like at a certain level of serving cunt misgendering becomes funny because i had to attend a funeral in my conservative hometown and the urge not to wink and do finger guns at every old person who looked at my mother puzzled as she answered the question "and who is this young man?" with "that's my daughter" through clenched teeth was immeasurably hard to supress

[fujoshiribbon]

Transfeminine readings of Anthy are a good way of weeding out bioessentialists who believe a story about girlhood and patriarchy must strictly be about cis girlhood - when in reality, everything that Anthy represents can just as easily, if not more suitably be applied if she is a trans woman.

[uncanny-tranny]

One thing I have seen - even from other trans people! - is this specific implication that while it's inevitable that trans men pass, but trans women are essentially doomed if they want to pass.

I could talk for days about the intricacies of passing for trans people in general. I could talk for hours about why some trans people want to pass, and that it shouldn't be forced. I could talk about the intricacies for trans men and others when it comes to passing because the dynamics don't play out the way it does for cis men a lot of times. But what gets me is the idea that trans women could never pass, that those who do are essentially anomalies is... nasty. It's got nasty implications, and it's feels even nastier when trans people do it.

Trans women, trans men, trans people of all types shouldn't be required, pressured, or forced to pass. That is true. But to say that passing is nigh impossible for an entire subsect of trans people will never not read as evil.

[tls12lessthan3]

ok so. the thing about jang hayoung is. her being transgender is explicitly meant to represent her autonomy as a person, and show how limited kim dokja's understanding of twsa is. like jang hayoung as the character kim dokja knows from twsa is perhaps the character who brings up the biggest questions re: character's personhood because kim dokja literally designed her, she's his oc. so we are forced to question her the most - are her traits and personality more attributable to her own choices, or are they entirely kim dokjas, for example. kim dokja knows everything about her, she was entirely his idea, and it leads to all sort of ethical dilemmas about exactly how much she can be considered her own person and what exactly their relationship to each other is.

or it would, if jang hayoung doesn't neatly sidestep all that 'does she even truly exist outside of kim dokja's perception of her' nonsense by looking firmly into the camera and saying yes, obviously. he doesn't even know im a girl! so her gender is used to establish both her autonomy as a real human being AND demonstrate that kim dokja really doesn't know as much as he thinks he does, because hey it turns out even if you create them yourself people are sort of unknowable. i wonder if that relates to any of jang hayoung's themes about communication or something

anyway. these are two ideas firmly shoved into kim dokja's face by jang hayoung's gender identity, and they are two ideas he is deeply uncomfortable with. they force him to confront some thoughts he's been deeply suppressing and conflict heavily with his worldview. and unfortunately, sing shong decided to represent this discomfort with what jang hayoung's gender establishes by showing it as discomfort with jang hayoung's gender itself. that is not to say that kim dokja isn't being organically transphobic when he misgenders jang hayoung, just that that distaste for a conflict within his (gendered) worldview represents his distaste for a conflict within his (reader) worldview.

and this is bad. this is clearly a very transphobic and specifically trans misogynistic way to demonstrate this idea. its genuinely very distasteful to me that they decided to use a trans woman character like this. it casts a dark cloud over her character and the interesting things her transness represents - as well as one over the entire novel, not helped by the many other instances of transphobia we see. and i want to clarify that i do see it as bad and distasteful before i draw the following comparison, because as much as i love reclaiming homophobic and transphobic parts of the stories i like, i am deeply cautious of doing so without clearly acknowledging the harm they cause. also, i am a trans man, so i want to tread carefully when it comes to transphobia against trans women specifically.

but i do think its notable that sing shong clearly establish this link between transgenderism and autonomy and struggling to be understood within the story, and then give us a main character who's entire life has revolved around chasing those latter two things. a character who spends the arc jang hayoung stars in either in an opposite-sex-transformation or learning a 'woman only' sport as a 'man'. yoo joonghyuk, just like jang hayoung, is a character who challenges kim dokjas ideas about what it means to be a person vs character. yoo joonghyuk's entire arc is about chasing that autonomy that jang hayoung so clearly establishes through being transgender. yoo joonghyuk spends multiple arcs trying to get through to kim dokja that he does not understand yoo joonghyuk just because he happened to read about him in the way that jang hayoung clearly does when she declares herself a woman.

this is a line that the story draws for me, not one im drawing on my own - this is a link between the autonomy yoo joonghyuk wants and the gender identity jang hayoung has that orv has already firmly established (although in a frequently transphobic way). and i think thats extremely interesting to acknowledge and explore, i think its a very clear part of yoo joonghyuk's character in this arc that never really goes away. and thats (part of) why yoo joonghyuk's end is [transition]

[communistkenobi]

I was listening to Behind The Police (podcast about the history of American policing) recently and at one point the hosts were discussing the tendency of white supremacist/fascist violence to have this element of absurdity to it - ie, people dressing up in white KKK robes and calling themselves wizards while attacking black people - and the point of this is to deny their victims the decency of “straightforward” experiences of violence. To later recount that a group of wizards attacked you makes you to sound absurd to whoever you’re talking to, and it becomes more difficult to make sense of. it’s all “just a joke bro.” your discomfort and fear and confusion and pain is the punchline. and modern right wing discourse is so laughably deranged as to be a joke in itself (perhaps best epitomised by the now-memetic phrase “the fluoride in the water is making the frickin’ frogs gay”), but this is of course deliberate. the rhetoric of “satanic pedophiles are sacrificing children in the basement of a pizza restaurant” or whatever is employed because it distracts from the real message they’re trying to deliver (ie, antisemitism). it isn’t just a denial of reality but a very particular form of cruelty that makes it more difficult for the victims of right wing violence to be taken seriously, to make sense of what’s happened to them.

and it feels like the same thing is happening now with transphobia - rhetoric that insists on “protecting children” from trans people while the US is actively loosening their child labour laws (x) (x). this isn’t a case of mere “hypocrisy,” this is rhetorically deliberate. the rank absurdity and insincerity of their words is meant to deny you the ability to think clearly, to distract you, to make you sound like a crazy person, to enrage you, all the while they get to carry on as if they aren’t saying or doing any of these things

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I expected nothing less from a single mom who works two jobs, who loves her kids and never stops, with gentle hands and a heart of a fighter

[nerves-nebula]

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Don’t think too hard about spy vs spy it’s not thematically important (unless you want it to be i guess) I just wanted to give slash something weird and old to be interested in and I remembered being fascinated by this old copy i found in a good will when I was younger. also donate to faten ok bye