#where are the culty trans lesbians?

[autolenaphilia]

I don't have much of a stance on baeddels, because i'm not good enough at tumblr archaeology to have one. I have actually done research, because trans women are interesting to me. It seems to have been a small tumblr clique of trans women in the early 2010s? And they had some particular transmisogyny analysis? They imploded around 2014, after only getting started around 2013, as these culty cliques tend to do due to sexual abuse and personal conflicts.

But i can't get any firm grip on who they were and what they believed. It seems lost to time. There is not much evidence as blogs are deleted and are not archived well. Like this post tries to be a comprehensive explanation of who baeddels were, but if you check the sources it's mainly links to non-baeddels explaining what baeddels believed. There is like one archive link that doesn't fully work. The post is essentially third-hand hearsay. Of course I suspect the primary sources are mostly gone at this point. Because the baeddels mainly existed on social media, so much is erased or lost, they are mostly a memory at this point. It does feel like tumblr archaeology, this feels like trying to understand some early christian sect who we only know from accounts of people who opposed them.

Like the baeddels didn't publish books to my knowledge, or seem to have been in the habit of writing manifestos or explanations of what they believed. Like it's not with radfems where you can easily read Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex or Ti-Grace Atkinson or Janice Raymond to find out what kind of bullshit they were on.

I'm not convinced the baeddels were like a distinct movement with a well-defined ideology, as that post linked above seems to argue. That they explicitly believed that gender is a choice and choosing to be a man is bad. There is just not enough evidence to do that. Like the primary sources the post have is screenshots of self-described baeddels making mean-spirited posts about transmascs. A lot of it is pretty bad, but doesn't create a picture of a well-defined ideology. I'm not convinced there was really a "baeddelism".

Like I haven't been convinced the baeddels were anything but a specific clique of tumblr trans lesbians who found out about the word baeddel and reclaimed it, believing it to be root of the english word "bad", had a transmisogyny analysis and had some bad, hateful rhetoric directed towards transmascs. Like none of that makes for a distinct ideology, no matter how incoherent.

Part of it that it seems that the baeddels were a relatively small group, that probably had an outsized impact on tumblr discourse. Like I've heard assessments that are like the core baeddel group was like 8-10 people.

The closest thing I found to a baeddel manifesto is this medium post which was published years after the baeddel clique seems to have imploded, and I don't know the connection the person who wrote it had to the original baeddels. I don't know if they thought this is a good summary of their thinking or not. Most of the text is defensive and presents what is basic transfeminist analysis as baeddel theory, which I don't think they can claim? It's not a reliable guide, especially being from 2017.

If you argue that baeddelism is something like "Transmisogyny exists, it's a real systematic oppression that transfems face, and yes, even TME trans people can perpetrate it", I guess I'm a baeddel? This strikes me as basic transfeminist theory, a basic transmisogyny theory as Julia Serano put it. If this is baeddelism, most transfeminists are baeddels.

And here I think the problem lies with "baeddel" as it's used today. They were probably never a well-defined ideological group, but tied together more by personal relationships (which is why they imploded when those relationships turned abusive) and some shared rhetoric. And a lot of what they actually believed is lost to time, due to them only being online and on tumblr specifically.

So "baeddel" has become such a loose word that it can be removed from the context of the tumblr baeddel clique and applied as an insult to practically anyone. The way I seen it used it often means "transfem who writes mean things about transmascs". But more worrying is that basic transfeminist analysis/transmisogyny theory or criticism of transmisogyny perpetrated by tme trans people are labeled as "baeddel".

It seems similar to how people don't have a good handle on who radfems/terfs actually are and what they are, so they label basic feminist analysis as "terfy" or define terf as "self-proclaimed feminist who hates men". I have written extensively about radfems here.

The post about baeddels I linked above actually does this kind of thing to the baeddels. It calls them "transinclusive radical feminists" and describe their ideology as radfem. Which I strongly doubt is true. That's because radfem ideology defines womanhood through biological essentialism and believes cis women's biology is why misogyny and patriarchy exists. It's hard to have a strong transmisogyny analysis with that kind of theoretical grounding. Trans women are neither women or targets of misogyny when you define womanhood that way.

This is why "trans-inclusive" radfems are so often not really trans-inclusive. You can't really take the biological essentialism and transmisogyny out of radfemism, and have it still be radfemism. So accusing the baeddels of doing that doesn't really hold water. Baeddels seem to have had a lot of man-hating rhetoric and separatist ideology, but that is not what defines radfem ideology.

And I do mean it seems to be applied to trans women doing basic transfeminist analysis or using transmisogyny theory. Turns out I was wrong about baeddels not publishing books, because apparently Julia Serano was basically a proto-baeddel and Whipping Girl is the tap-root of baeddelism.

Like look at these two posts.

Calling Serano a radfem is hilarious. Like she is not even remotely that. But I'm actually worried about how transandrophobia/misandry people have this view that Serano and Whipping Girl are this fountainhead of evil "transandrophobia", based mostly on some bad quotes. Because if you cancel Serano and Whipping Girl, it's a way of canceling transmisogyny theory, because Whipping Girl basically created the concept. I'm not saying that criticism and disagreement of Serano and her ideas are bad, but there is this attempt at canceling her. Due to transmisogyny, any mistakes a trans woman make are magnified and used as part as an attempt to destroy her career and isolate her from community. And Serano being such a major transfeminist that it would be a major loss.

And trying to describe her as baeddel-ascent is especially telling. The word is then entirely disconnected from the tumblr clique who claimed the word and whose crimes (which i do not necessarily deny) gave the word its modern power as an insult.

Two more screenshots:

The term is so vaguely defined that this kind of paranoia worries me. Like if you believe that there is this evil cabal of "transmisandrist" trans women still around, and not calling yourself a baeddel is no defense, I don't see this ending happily due to transmisogyny. The transmisogynistic current of call-out culture will practically get people hurt by this. Especially if it seems that critcizing transmisogyny, especially from transmascs seem to be enough to be labeled a baeddel.

The original baeddel clique might have done some horrible crimes. But I doubt they represented some distinct ideology that we need to root out of trans spaces, especially as no one can define and primary sources on what the baeddels believed is scarce.

And that's because of how online they were. I do not want to minimize any abusive content they might have sent, but it strikes me how insignificant the baeddels were. LIke they seem to have existed largely online and wielded their influence mainly on tumblr. They never seemed to have wielded any kind of institutional power. And that's not surprising, if you are a trans lesbian you don't have much power.

The actions of self-described baeddels might have been a problem, but unlike say radfems they seem to have been a very minor problem Like Janice Raymond was working with the Reagan adminstration to deny trans people healthcare, and in my country radfem groups today provide the Swedish government a feminist alibi for not taking action to improve trans rights. Radfems have had a very demonstrable effect on institutional transphobia.

You can't say that about the baeddels. And they probably were nasty to transmascs, but i suspect their greatest victim was the poor trans woman who was one of them, but who was raped by a leading member.

It's kinda insane how they, a small internet sect, have become this boogeywoman to wield against trans woman talking about transmisogyny, including major figures like Julia Serano.

[fierceawakening]

Okay, so I have more to say here, and the more I have to say is likely at least a little controversial, so. PLEASE DO NOT ASCRIBE IT TO OP OR TO ANYONE ELSE IN THE THREAD, IT'S MINE.

I've thought a lot about this, and the more I think about it, the more I feel that the way the left gets cult'd is through encouraging lack of empathy.

Now people use that word in a LOT of ways, so please read what I have to say before you assume I said "People with certain personality traits are valorized on the left" or something, because while I actually might think that too, it's not what I mean here.

What I mean is that the culty stuff on the left dismisses people's feelings, and not only that it TRAINS PEOPLE to see ignoring people's feelings as a form of growing strength when it's actually the beginning of transforming into a bully.

Think about how people respond when someone in an online convo is confused by a statement like "men are trash" (or the predecessor "I drink male tears" which seems to have poofed though I don't know why.) When the person says something like "that hurts my feelings" or even "I don't understand," there's a flood of sarcasm about how privileged people's feelings have been coddled for generations, and marginalized people don't have to do that any more.

...Did you catch that? I just showed you the recruitment tactic, though it went by kinda fast.

The way the culty versions of the left recruit people is by telling us that we don't have to be nice.

This is actually REALLY appealing. Most people, definitely including most marginalized people, have days where we just DON'T WANT TO BE NICE about something that really irked us, godDAMN IT ALL.

Culty versions of SJ use that. They tell us "It's okay to be angry." They tell us we can, and should, let it out. That it's not wrong to do so.

And this, so far as it goes, is neither bad nor wrong. Just like a lot of other insidious recruitment tactics aren't bad or wrong. Let's take TERFs. (Please. To an island. A secluded one.)

Often what they start with isn't obviously bad and might even be true. "I worry about the imagery in porn" or "Some kinky guys are just pushy assholes with an aesthetic blog" or "Hey, society really loudly tells young women we're supposed to find dicks sexy. What if some of us, you know, just don't?"

But there's a very specific place you're supposed to go from there. Porn and sex work are bad and workers have no agency, BDSM is inherently misogynistic even though the trappings of the culture come from gay men, and trans women are evil predators who are trying to gaslight you by using the word lesbian.

All of which are a LOT more debatable... to put it mildly.

Bad SJ is the same. It starts off by telling us (to pick groups I'm not in to start with and then expand out) that we don't have to pander to "cis feelings" or "het feelings" or "nondisabled feelings" (or "white feelings" or "bougie feelings" or "thin feelings" or "Christian feelings" or...)

Again, did you catch that? It doesn't start with "Don't empathize." It starts with "You're not required to respect feelings that COME FROM PRIVILEGE." Then it gives you a handy list of what those feelings look like.

Which is again great! At least at first. You've got a WHOLE DAMN LIST of annoying shit you don't have to pretend not to be annoyed by! You get to let your hair down.

But... again, there's a trick to it. Quick now: Which of a white person's feelings are "white feelings?" The defensive ones? Okay, maybe. But what if they're feeling more defensive today than yesterday? Are their feelings whiter? Are more of their feelings white?

What you've actually got is a handy dandy checklist...

...that trains you to see someone else's feelings as irrelevant.

Because there actually ISN'T a way to make sure the feelings a privileged person is having are "privileged feelings." The whole thing is bunkum.

You STILL have to empathize with other people. There's STILL no way out of that that doesn't involve becoming a jerkwad.

And then once most people think you're a jerkwad? You're hooked. Because the only people who think "they're a jerkwad, but they're OUR JERKWAD!" are guess who?

The other people in the cult.

So yes, it happens.

Be VERY VERY wary of anyone who tells you they have a hall pass to sometimes be mean with your name calligraphied on it in many exciting whorls.

Everyone is mean sometimes, and no one is required to be nice 100% of the time. And often, people get mean because they're legitimately tired, or angry, or tired of being angry.

That's all true.

But anyone who's making that a selling point is probably far more interested in using you than saving you.

My hypothesis is that in like 10 years gen z is gonna have a big cult boom the way the boomers did in the 70s

[firespirited]

two gripes about tumblr posts I saw today (not by mutuals, while browsing)

one said something like “I wouldn’t trust someone who changed their name anyway” and it was a thinly veiled anti trans thing but wtf

probably said this before but granddad used to get mail addressed to Arthur, Jack and John. His birthname was Arthur, middle name John but went by Jack during childhood, his army days and at work... then he met Nanny who already had a high personality brother called Jack who was THE jack so he switched to John. My grandmother and most of her sisters all changed names to their middle names when they left home as well as switching to classic english instead of the mix of regional english with a strong accent and old anglosaxon dialect. (Turns out their dad also straight up changed their last name when his dad, uncle and him joined the ‘community’). Their old fashioned names belied their culty upbringing and farmer class. I have a whole side of the family with nicknames as they’re David Joneses. Half my friends use a english or french version of their name or a shortened/simplified version because it’s easier than having people mis-pronounce it or stumble on it. I don’t use Ruth except at home because ‘thorn’ sound doesn’t exist in french or german or half a dozen other languages. How on earth do you come to the conclusion that a name change is untrustworthy, what kind of life experience are you having?

Which leads me straight into gripe n°2 about so called “forced diversity”. Where is this white straight able-bodied skinny mostly-male world? ? ? I live in the middle of nowhere at the moment, a small whiteass town surrounded by farmland, hours from a hospital or a fastfood chain and still have maroccan neighbours opposite and a vietnamese lady upstairs. I was raised in a town with such a reputation for being white trash, they set a white trash parody movie there (but filmed it in the south - heathens!) and our local actors get famous for playing hooligans or the like... but I still had friends of different ethnicities in class and our neighbour was a Kurd refugee. There were two “chaste gays” and a lesbian at church (because sex outside of marriage = bad and marriage wasn’t legal, yeah the whole thing was messed up, I know I know) and the disabled weren’t locked up in attics. They roll and walk with walkers and talk to invisible people or sign to eachother around town. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Do these posters live in a fraternity and then just stick to their frat bros for socializing later in life? At some point you go bowling or to a bar or shopping or something and see normal bodied ladies and people with melanin right? Do they have a sort of visual filter for similar and filter out the different? I am trying to understand how you don’t encounter or register diversity at least in public places. How does the concept of a woman firefighter seem wierd to someone when they come round and sell you the yearly calender and there are a bunch of women firefighters in the group photo. Army has a spokesperson on the news and it’s a woman lieutenant speaking in jargon to soften the optics of us having bombed another wedding party.

My sis says when she visited Virginia it was segregated by suburbs (she was shocked people didn’t mingle) but that’s Virginia right?

I just don’t get it, you try to put yourself in people’s shoes and i’m trying so hard but their argument like, falls apart anyway because it doesn’t make any sense.

[moku-youbi]

^^ that story is basically me and my mom. I mean, you could just switch a couple words and pronouns and the reason why she was exposed to fox news, but just...everything else. My mom raised me to be a feminist, to be liberal, to believe in racial equality, taught me that everyone was equal and deserved to be treated as such. Taught us about birth control and was pro choice and how a woman’s body is her own. She never batted an eye when my sister came out as bi in the mid-90s. Welcomed my now wife with open arms. I used to say that if she was any more open-minded her brain would fall out. If it weren’t for her intelligence and her liberal-mindedness, I’d have never made it out of the small, backwater, Appalachian town where I grew up. I wouldn’t have escaped the ultra religious family  (she defied the Church of Christ when my sister came out by supporting her, and I mean the culty Church of Christ), I wouldn’t have escaped the casual racism of everyone around me, I wouldn’t have seen a world beyond the narrow, conservative bullshit that surrounded me. When my dad died she went back to school to become a social worker to help pregnant women addicted to pain pills (which is a huge thing in Southern Ohio) figure out what to do.

She remarried this conservative guy. He seemed like a nice, decent dude. She told him straight up when they started seeing each other he better not have a problem with the fact that her daughters were lesbian or he could hit the road. She easily accepted that my nephew was trans. 

I’m not even sure she processed fox news for the most part, but it was ALWAYS ON. It was a joke between my wife, sister, and I, that even when no one was home, both the upstairs and downstairs tv would blare fox news. Mom would do other stuff--work, play on her computer, colour--but fox news was always there.

And still, when she mentioned her support of Trump for the first time, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. Such complete and utter shock. Never in a million years could I have anticipated it. I tried to talk to her about it, but she just spouted the fox news rhetoric of calling Hillary a liar, or saying Trump had “good ideas,” though being incapable of expounding upon either point. I gave up in tears. A week later was the last time I spoke to her, the Halloween before election.

I kept waiting for her to come around. I kept waiting for the thing Trump would do that would be one step too far. She touted that conservative bullshit about how “she’d protect us” when we brought up concerns about our marriage, or our nephew’s ability to use a bathroom without being hassled. Like the only gays or trans people who mattered were the ones in her family. I eventually realised that no matter how disgusting Trump was, no matter how awful the things he did, she was always going to justify it. My sister told me a while later that our mother was now pro-life.

I’ve gone through a grieving process, because my mother is, for all intents and purposes, dead. The woman who raised me, that strong, intelligent, beautiful, brave woman was killed by fox news.

[22degreehalo]

>There were also people arguing that ‘lesbians’ were not ‘women’ because ‘women’ were defined by their relationship to men and ‘lesbians’ removed themselves from that whole relatiohship and therefore were not women.

Yeah see it's exactly facts like this that make me so frustrated when aro/ace women are completely erased from the conversation. Like it should go without saying that 'women who aren't attracted to men' includes aspecs but hoooooo boyyyyyy even the most inclusive allos I come across seem to not really twig that 'not attracted to anyone' includes no attraction to men. (Or women, as it were.) Cause Liz (who is lesbian ace) definitely reported something similar to me, that when she was transitioning she got a vibe like 'what's the point of being a woman without dating men?'

Also that lesbian continuum sounds culty as fuck lol. Nothing like implying that your entire moral system is defined by how much you sacrifice for the person spreading the rules.

Honestly I think the biggest flaw in all this political lesbianism thinking is that they want it both ways. Being a lesbian is so much harder and dangerous and that makes it okay for them to attack bis/aspecs/trans people etc. because they have it worst. BUT, being a lesbian is also the best most fulfilling and wonderful perfect thing and all women should be encouraged to do it because it'd fix all their problems and they'd live in a utopia. So it's this weird cognitive dissonance where non-lesbians are traitors taking the easy way out and leaving them to rot rather than standing in solidarity, BUT also they're stupid idiots who are just asking to be abused and honestly it serves them right for betraying lesbians who are Nice and would've Treated Them Right.

It's just... clearly inherently self-serving when you look at it. It pre-emptively decides that feminism is defined by how you treat Certain Women and those women can retaliate against other women however they like without it ever being accused of 'not supporting women.' OH, and the double standard when men's sexuality on women is inherently damaging and disrespectful but women's sexuality on women is inherently Good because... they're not men!! And you can tell men are bad because LOOK at all these degrading things they do to women!! It's such a catch 22...

And when you bring in that this all heavily revolves around romantic and sexual relationships, and how doing that with Others is Bad and you have to prove that you're fully committed to the cause by Doing Them with These People (like that awful old quote about 'how can you call yourself a feminist if you don't Love Women')...

Because OKAY I reached a point lol: the thing about when men harrass other men for being idk gender non conforming, some people just shrug because it's 'just men hurting men', but those two men are NOT in the same group. It's high status men bullying low status men. (Also we need a term for 'hatred of gender nonconformity' because it's associated with sexism and homophobia and aphobia and transphobia but it's not strictly any one oft them.) That's what the whole political lesbianism thing is. The talk about women in solidarity implies everyone's on the same level but they're not - it's inherently about some women being Valid and Right and other women being treated based on how they're perceived to act towards those women.

you mentioned how political lesbianism and lesbian separatism are the roots of TERFism in an answer to some anon - could you elaborate on that? i thought TERFism was a thing before political lesbianism

also on a separate but related note, was "lesbian" more of a cultural/feminist identifier rather than a label of sexuality at the time? that's the impression i get from the (admittedly limited amount of) feminist literature i've read from that period, and it's been confusing me for a while. i think it should also be clarified that reading all that was an attempt to understand radfem ideology but i'm also horrible at identifying radfem ideology so i cannot be sure whether that's an appropriate use of "lesbian" as a label. one of the things i read was the woman-identified woman (is that radfemmy?? no idea lmao)

The “TERF” label is relatively recent- within the last 10 years- but the ideas themselves have been around for some time. You might also be thinking of radical feminism in general, which is was born out of second-wave feminism: the shift from “women’s rights” and advancing equality through legal changes like voting rights, to acknowledging patriarchy as a social/cultural system.

Radical feminism as a term now describes a kind of “man-hating” feminism that hasn’t advanced beyond that second wave; the intersectionality of the third wave isn’t there. So radical feminists generally view “woman” as the most oppressed group, and see patriarchy as a system which uplifts and privileges all men on the sole basis of manhood, and oppresses all women on the sole basis of manhood, without acknowledging underlying complexities (like white womens’ unique privilege at the intersection of being both white and women, separate from white privilege alone).

So everything kind of follows from there: if radical feminists believe women are the most oppressed and victimized group, and that men are inherently oppressive and dangerous (whether by biology or social conditioning), lesbians- who cut men out of the equation entirely and only engage with other women- must therefore be the most oppressed of the most oppressed. The Ultimate Victim. The Most Endangered.

Political lesbianism is seen as radical and necessary for one’s safety; the ultimate feminist choice, the best way to keep men out. It’s Women’s Spaces, Forever. Lesbian separatism is fairly similar; lesbians are The Ultimate Victim, so naturally they should be kept far away from everything related to the evil men who can only hurt them. Protecting Women’s Spaces.

TERF ideology comes from these movements, which started in the 70′s and 80′s. It uses these arguments and follows the exact same logic; women are the most oppressed, men are inherently dangerous, therefore trans women are a ploy to get men into women’s spaces- and trans men are a ploy to steal away vulnerable women.

RE: The label “lesbian”, to my knowledge it was an orientation label first. The social/feminist version you’re seeing might just be from “political lesbian” sources, but I don’t know lesbian history well enough to say.

[fierceawakening]

…people have been weirdly aggressive in response to this post and I’m baffled by it.

All I’m trying to say is that conspiracy theories are weird and elaborate in ways that don’t really make sense. They require you to look at the world as it is and go “no, what I’m seeing people do and say isn’t reality. Reality is something much darker and different.”

And the thing about believing stuff like that is it’s work. You always have to find reasons why people around you aren’t what they seem to be. That’s what I remember most vividly about my own involvement in culty SJ stuff years ago. If a “privileged person” said hello to me I wound up spending my time dissecting, like, did they mean “hi” or did they mean “as a man, i expect you, a woman, to respond when I greet you because I expect your emotional labor?”

And the thing was? When I finally questioned those beliefs and got kicked out of those communities, it immediately amazed me thst i suddenly had MASSIVE amounts of free time. And what I came to realize was that investment in the conspiracy theory took up TONS OF MY TIME.

I was constantly “reaearching.” What do men mean by things? How are women really put down by society even when we don’t think we are? Etc.

And the thing about the research i was doing? It wasn’t resarch. It was “educating myself on feminist issues” and it involved reading approved sources that didn’t “lie about” or “misrepresent” feminis5 “theory.”

So I was spending a LOT of time… enforcing what was forbidden and what was not on myself. Wha5 could I read and what not? Etc.

And the thing about TERFs is… maybe i missed something but they’ve gotten weirder. Ten years ago the people I saw call trans women men were horribly unpleasant people, but they wouldn’t have allied with Nazis, or at least not openly. They would have called fascism “a patriarchal fetishization of dominance” and rejected it, at least publicly. Where now they’re literally tweeting “it’s ok that I’m linking Breitbart because n9 one else is talking about this.”

What that sounds like to me is like where I was a long time ago. Believing the conspiracy is taking work. In order to preserve the belief “trans women are a threat” (and let mr just note they say a lot of “trans men are a threat, they’ll recruit lesbians” these days too) they’re coming up with weirder and weirder ways to detect the perceived threat. Like that whole fracas where they reposted someone’s pics from her lesbian wedding and decided one of them couldn’t be cis because of her collarbone?

So my question is: what keeps you so invested that you forget Occam’s Razor here, and you can’t entertain “i decided I’d be happier if I transitioned” (a very simple explanation) but you can entertain “no, you must want to hurt people, and i know your actual motivations not by talking to you but by theoretical analysis?”

For me, what kept me in culty feminism was internalized shame. I felt like I was supposed to feel solidarity with women as a class (“sisterhood”) and i didn’t (I’ve been abused by women but not men, so I am more initially wary of women bc triggers) and i worried that was bad. So I immersed myself in extremist feminism in the hope that I’d “feel sisterhood.”

The more i didn’t feel It the more i felt ashamed and the more deeply i invested myself.

When they finally rejected me it was kind of a relief. If they didn’t want me as a “sister” then it made sense I didn’t feel “sisterhood” coming from them.

But then of course the whole house of cards fell. Why did I need “sisterhood?” Why was i so invested in it, that I slowly replaced my own reality with that of my “sisters” even as it made me more and more unhappy and more and more bitter?

And I realized that for me, it was because when I expressed feeling alienated around women I was told I was being mean or bad, and I felt guilty and wanted to fix that flaw, even if it meant ignoring my own worries about someone else’s character or views.

So, my question, rephrased a bit: What is the flaw or vulnerability that makes people susceptible to TERF recruitment? Why is it unusually strong, such that people consistently choose more and more cruel and bizarre beliefs over “hey wait maybe not?”

You know, the thing I don’t get about terfs is… what do you actually lose by taking a trans person at face value? Like… believing they are a big conspiracy seems to take work: Who are they? How do they organize? Why? When?

Where believing “I was sad and thought maybe I should try taking estrogen and I’d feel better and lo and behold i was right” is… there’s so much less you have to guess about.

Why is it worth so much effort, to the point of palling around with Nazis, to believe something else?