#vagina ≠ inherently safe and non-abusive

[so-i-did-this-thing]

hi nicholas! i hope your having a nice day. i have to sound very stupid for a minute, but i could not find a clear answer and im hoping you can help me out. other than being attracted to trans people, what exactly is it that designates someone to be a "chaser" ? i know there ARE distinctions, im just in the dark about the issue and i'd rather not be. it seems like indifference to trans experiences might be part of it, judging by your recent tags? thank you for the help if you answer this 🙏

For me, a "chaser" is someone who is attracted to transness in ways that objectify the trans person, seek to control how they present, and even invalidate their identity.

In my own experience with my BFF-turned-abuser, he framed me as a "safe" (ie, no balls touching) way to engage with his bisexuality. Whenever he called me "best of both worlds", I felt reduced to my vagina. He was obsessed with me staying twinky and non-threatening to his own masculinity, to the point of him discouraging me from starting T. My transness was a dirty little secret to him and he was ashamed whenever I tried to stop being stealth, even among friends. He wanted to control my presentation so that I could satisfy his fetishes. I never felt like a man around him. All this and we never even fucked. (I was not interested in him sexually, thank god.)

Compare to my spouse, who engages with me sexually with an understanding and respect of my boundaries, and who has never sought to control how I present myself to the world. I feel validated and safe, and being told my dick is hot feels like it being attached to *me* only magnifies any of its inherent eroticism.

We all have our preferences and, yeah, trans bodies are hot in some cool and unique ways that can make people go feral. That's cool and can actually be affirming and sexy. But it becomes a problem when you only treat people as their parts, and especially when you treat them as sinful secrets, despite your own enjoyment.

Trans women tend to be far more eloquent on the subject, and I encourage you to find and listen to what they say here, am happy to amplify any comments on the matter.

[bunnyshideawayy]

telling cis women we’re “fragile” because we want to be CALLED women is the same thing telling women who don’t want their man cheating on them that they’re “insecure”.

i like to think myself a progressive person.

i’ve NEVER had an issue with trans and non binary people, people who want to identify as something non human all together, and yes i recognize the small but still very real number of intersex people- however the line has to be drawn somewhere and the line for me is when it goes from how a single person wants to address themselves to thinking it’s okay to relabel a specific group of people to be more broad and therefor “inclusive”. as a cis woman i’m not going to call myself a “birthing person” or “person with vagina” to make someone else more comfortable or to make others feel more included. i am a woman, period.

womanhood is something that has historically, been the only thing that is constantly stripped from women and redefined based on how society perceives women themselves.

in this society you will be hung on a WALL for misgendering someone, on purpose or not, but when cis women say we want to be acknowledged for what we are - women - we are gaslit and told that womanhood is not defined by things that make up a woman: biological sex, the ability to birth and carry babies, all the inherently feminine qualities that women possess, and therefore we should use terms that include “ALL PEOPLE”. we literally get misidentified on purpose to make others, some of which are not women and have never been women, more comfortable.

“well what about trans men! they can get pregnant!!” okay? what about trans men? last i checked even if they still have their female reproductive system they, as people who now identify as men, probably aren’t setting out to get pregnant. trans men, non bionary persons, and intersex persons should be the only exception to rule meaning THEY should be referred to a “pregnant/birthing person”- not that “pregnant/birthing person” should be a normal way to address someone while “pregnant women” is the exception.

“well what about teens/kids? they aren’t women” i fear that pregnant children shouldn’t be apart of this conversation at all. its actually disgusting to me that yall (the people ive seen use this argument) would even use kids who have most likely been abused as a “gotcha!” talking point. how about call them what they are, too, *pregnant children*. then we can have a conversation about why and how they ended up as PREGNANT CHILDREN.

now let’s get into the inherent misogyny that comes along with essentially telling cis women to suck it up and make room in their womanhood for people who aren’t women. “my womanhood isn’t defined by my ability to have kids or what’s between my legs” expect motherhood and womanhood are inherently connected. to deny one means to deny the other, you literally cannot have one without the other, so striping the womanhood out of motherhood and telling women they can’t define themselves by what they are biologically made to do is by definition- misogynistic. 98% of the time if you’re born with a vagina and uterus you are a woman, a female, biologically your sex is that of XX. (and if you’re a woman who doesn’t want kids that’s cool, too, but you still have to acknowledge that womanhood and motherhood go hand in hand.) and telling women who have to fight for any resemblance of a safe space that they must shove over to make room in their safe spaces for people who are not, or do not identify as, women is inherently misogynistic. dehumanizing and degrading women who have told you time and again that they WANT to be called women- not “person with a womb” not “pregnant person” not “female presenting person” is inherently misogynistic (and a little hypocritical as i’ve already stated you’d be hung on the wall for misgendering a trans person- why is the same respect not given to cis women? misogyny.)

now i want to end this rant by saying i understand that there is a slippery slope. i understand this includes some while excluding others, and i could get into the statistics and biology that comes along with it but that’s not what i want to do. because i recognize just like how one side is taken to far in the name of inclusion and progression, the other side can take being exclusionary to far such as cis women being mistaken for trans women and harassed for that assumption. because i also understand womanhood and how a woman acts, looks, thinks, etc is not solely defined by what is traditionally considered feminine or “womanly”. but i would also be delusional if i sat here and told you i was okay with being disregarded as a woman just because society is attempting to rewrite what a woman is to fit a more inclusive ideology. and i dont mean inclusive as in including woc, or disenfranchised woman, or any other women who don’t fit the norm.

if you want to call yourself a damn bird then that’s cool, and i will make sure i refer to you properly, but women as a whole aren’t birds and shouldn’t be referred to as such. its not fragile to say i am a woman and want to be acknowledged as such.

anyway rant over and all of this is to say i wish people and more specifically women on the left would actually care about women as a whole and our issues like they claim they do instead of arguing over wither we should even be called women! the usa is literally facing a national abortion ban (with some states offering the death penalty to women who get one) that will put thousands at risk or will even kill thousands but the left is on twitter arguing if the bill should say “women” or “birthing people”. while femicide, familicide, and rape is on the rise globally the left and right both are finding new ways to pin the blame on women, ironically the only time the left will use the term “women”. if anything this has reinforced that women who take pride in being a woman, refusing to conform or be quit or stay out of the way or make room, will always be a target. the moment we speak out we are crazy, insecure, fragile, jealous, argumentative, whatever else.

[genderqueerdykes]

Hey! I'm a cis girl living in a community that's fairly accepting of queer people in general. I'm also a minor.

I am also extremely confused by this entire thing about men and mascs being hated in fem and AFAB non-binary spaces.

Like. I'm not very active in the queer community, but this whole thing seems incredibly nonsensical to me? You're all living on the same ship, you're just pushing a bunch of random people off it and helping to widen the hole in the hull! If the queer ship sinks then they all go down together, right? Why hasten the end when you could stop it?

On a less related note, the idea of nb people being inherently feminine is also weird to me. I have met three nb people in my life and all of them were AMAB, which might change my perception about this, but I thought the whole point about nb people being not male or female was that they weren't male or female? If people don't identify as a girl then they immediately seem more masculine to me, not because I think they're a boy, but because they've explicitly stated they aren't feminine. Why would AFAB non-binary people be feminine because of a random letter on their birth certificate?

Incredibly confused. We don't have to understand but we don't have to exclude, either (not speaking for the whole girl/fem community here obviously)

it's extremely insulting, you're right. it's upsetting as well because it's coming from people who aren't even aware they're spreading rad feminism half the time. yes a lot of people are aware but a lot of them are

cis women are obsessing over making queer communities "safe spaces" which in their eyes, means weeding out everyone who isn't a cis woman or someone they can perceive to be a cis woman. if someone is "too masculine" they're not longer accepted as non binary and are now men. some trans girls who don't pass hard enough are seen as men because they "look like" men. AMAB and intersex queer people in general get forced out of queer spaces immediately due to transmisogyny, especially lesbian spaces. transfems are not safe in any lesbian space at this point.

idk what to call it but enbyphobia is ridiculous and rampant right now like. nonbinary and gender non conforming people have to either be extremely feminine (because now they're Woman Lite) or they're trans men. the amount of AMAB transfeminine people who try to find community who get turned away is brutal. most of the nonbinary people i know are AMAB. it's such a common phenomenon. AMAB people have more options for being trans than just trans woman. also the collective fear of penises that these cis women have is bullshit as well. these women basically want to ask you if you have a dick or not (or want one) so they can kick you out because they're that transphobic and intersexist.

the fact that AFAB and intersex nonbinary people are treated as Woman Lite is really old. it does not matter if that person is a feminine nonbinary person. they're still nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender or whatever their gender actually is. i don't get why cis women think it's a great idea to shit on other AFAB people so much. why do these people claim they want these to be "women's safe spaces" and then shit on other people they perceive to be women? most cis women have some serious internalized misogyny issues. i don't know why people think it's progressive to profile, misgender and abuse people who had, have or are perceived to have vaginas.

trans men are treated like a danger to the entire community when the entire community is hostile towards them. trans men are not a threat to anyone in the current state we're in. we are not trying to take over spaces that we rightfully belong in. we're not hurting people like cis women want you to think we are. cis women have become obsessed with making queer spaces "women's safe spaces". like no matter what. i guarantee you there are cis women like this chasing gay men out of their own spaces, too. it's just a disaster. we need to accept what the real problem is here.

i'm just gonna say it and people are gonna shit themselves and i don't care:

while women and womanhood are not a threat to anyone in general, contextually, cis women are one of the biggest threats to our community right now. not cis men. cool it on the man hating and accept that we are currently in such a shitty spot because of a lot of very hateful and abusive cis women.

cis women are not inherently safe to be around. cis women are not inherently incapable of abuse. cis women are not 100% harmless. cis women are capable of being queerphobic. cis women are capable of being trans/misogynistic. cis women are capable of being lesbophobic. cis women are capable of being homophobic. cis women are capable of being bi/pan/mspec phobic. cis women are capable of being intersexist. cis women are capable of being aphobic.

it's cis women who are responsible for rad feminism. terfs are cis women. cis women can be abusive. cis women can be transphobic. cis women can be dangerous to be around. can we stop sitting here saying men are public enemy #1 when we have cis women who are actively fucking up our communities every single day? this is a SPECIFIC group of women. not all women blah blah. these are specific people with a specific mentality and it needs to stop. we have to stop letting them dominate every single queer space we have.

the reason we're being torn apart is because we've been brainwashed into thinking they're right because women are inherently safe and men are inherently dangerous, but that is literal radical feminism at its worst and we need to stop repeating it and reinforcing it from within our own communities.

[insufferablewhore]

That would make some sense

I personally never really thought of it because, while it is personal, I have found BDSM actually not bad when done safely (prior conversation with strictly set boundaries and safe words or other made indicators to stop). My mindset has always been: as long as there is consent, discussed boundaries, and said boundaries are not overstepped, then its okay

I do think sex work is a fairly big conversation. While there is a lot of people who were abused and it is a pretty fucked up industry, I really don’t think it’s one that should be abolished, it should just be handled 200 times better than it is. Being set up with random people for hefty sums is not the best, however, say, if it was between people who trusted each other (most likely people already in some form of relationship with communication and consent on both sides) it would be okay

And for the shaved pussies thing, I don’t associate it with a child? If someone is associating their partners vagina with that of a child’s, then yes that is gross and bad. But if someone quite literally just prefers it for another non malicious reasons (an example being maybe someone really does not like the feel of hair brushing against them when engaging in anything because of sensory issues) then I see no problem there

(and to the fucking terfs here, being transfemmasc is because I am multigender. I appreciate being stuck up for, really, I am not genderfluid, I actually prefer microlabels but I won’t go into explaining the ones I use, but I experience all of my gender as inherently trans no matter if its on the feminine, masculine, androgynous or any other side of it because I experience gender in a very non typical way. But again, thank you for sticking up for me and giving the time to explain your reasons, it came off as a lot more insensitive without reasoning, moreso because I am still learning due to growing up in a not great environment that normalizied a lot of things, so I may be uneducated and not realize)

i’m glad we’ve talked about this!!

i agree that as long as bdsm is not safely and consensually, then there isn’t much issue for either parties. where i grow concerned is why people are so often aroused by this kind of violence and how it can lead to even more sexual assault and misogyny.

and as a neurodivergent person, i COMPLETELY understand sensory issues that can be caused by hair. however, in my experience, the overwhelming majority of men prefer shaved pussy because it looks younger. not to mention how current beauty standards are youth obsessed and pedophilic which plays a huge part in this topic :(

(thank you for explaining and i’m sorry for assuming any labels 😞🙏 and i love that we got the chance to talk about this!! it’s always hard to unlearn these types of things, especially growing up in an environment that normalizes it but i think it’s really great that you reached out and we had this conversation <3)

[briefnytw]

Defining Sex & Kink Terminology (Part 2)

The BDSM-kink world has its own vocabulary to help acquaint people to the community. The terms and phrases help people understand the many different types of sexual attraction, as well as strengthen a culture built around safety and consent. Below is a small list of terms that one may commonly find when diving into the world of sex and desire. This is by no means an all-encompassing glossary, as there is an ever-growing amount of facets to BDSM.

Munch (noun) - a social event for kinksters, usually held in a public space not designated for play or sex e.g. bar or restaurant; an event for community to gather, talk, share interests, or plan events.

PIV Sex (noun) - an acronym that stands for "Penis in Vagina" intercourse.

Play (noun, adjective) - a general term to indicate BDSM actions; or precedes specific BDSM interests.

Power Exchange (noun) - the act of exchanging power, from one or more parties to one or more other parties, often in the form of control and/or sensation.

RACK (noun) - an acronym that stands for "Risk Aware Consensual Kink" that encourages a consent-culture and safety-oriented attitude that could include more inherently risky play.

Sadist (noun) - someone who likes giving pain.

Sadomasochist (noun) - someone who likes to give and receive pain.

Safeword (noun) - a pre-negotiated word that either party can use to pause, check-in, or end the scene or play; functions in the same "no" or "stop" might otherwise.

SSC (noun) - an acronym used to refer to "Safe, Sane and Consensual"; one of the first acronyms to first come onto the scene in the early 80's that described an aware, safety-oriented kink world to differentiate between abuse and SM.

Subdrop (noun) - an emotional, psychological, or physiological state that can sometimes come after play; usually involves feelings of loss, loneliness, abandon, worry, misgivings about the play or one's identity as a kinkster, and sadness.

Submissive (noun, adjective) - also called "sub;" to give up control.

Subspace (noun) - also referred to as "flying," or "floating"; a state of mind referring to a blissed-out, otherworldly place bottoms can go during heavy play; usually a combination of endorphins and adrenaline that, in the right mix, have an almost drug-like affect.

Switch (noun) - someone who likes being both a top and a bottom; also could refer to a flexible, wooden rod.

Top (noun) - the person giving sensation or doing the action; not to be confused with a dom(me), who can create and control the scene while still receiving sensation or the action.

Topdrop (noun) - an emotional, psychological, or physiological state that can sometimes come after play; usually involves feelings of loss, loneliness, abandon, worry, misgivings about the play or one's identity as a kinkster, and sadness.

Topspace (noun) - also referred to as "top frenzy"; the counterpart to subspace, and includes feelings of all-powerful euphoria and a desire to never stop.

Vanilla (adjective) - used to describe non-kink oriented sex.

Image Source: GQ Magazine