#you and i probably agree with terfs on some levels in the same way we can agree with tankies that capitalism is Bad. it's our approach that

[eileenleahy]

i deleted the ask cause it bothered me and i didnt wanna see it but recently someone came into my inbox saying i was terfy. why was i acting terfy? for presenting the actual beliefs of terfism. despite explicitly stating my disagreement with them. which is hysterical in itself but i know where that came from. it's partly a misunderstanding of "deplatforming" wherein people act like even talking about a decried ideology is platforming it. which isnt true; in fact you MUST talk about the beliefs you seek to disempower

it's not terf sympathizing to say terf ideology is massively misrepresented. it harms nobody but the people who ostensibly oppose terfs to have a mistaken perception of them, because you HAVE to know what you're opposing to.... well... oppose it. sun tzu the art of war know your enemy etc etc

it is not terf sympathizing to say terfs are gender abolitionists. they are. that is core to radical feminism. you may say "but im a gender abolitionist and hate terfs!!" great. doesn't change anything

it is not terf sympathizing to say that terfs dont believe in any gendered inessential, inherent nature. they dont believe women are inherently feminine and men inherently masculine. you may find terfs who say "males are xyz by nature," but they are not saying that nature is gendered—instead, it's sexed

those are the primary beliefs that differentiate radical feminism from garden variety transphobia. blinding yourself to the ideological bases of what you claim to oppose is a recipe for failure

[cascadianights]

I also sometimes create the strawman, the rich straight white cis abled man who has everything going on & nothing wrong.

But it's a trap. That person exists, but he sure as hell isn't the majority. You're probably not going to run into him on the street, or in a Tumblr argument. The experience and power that person holds is immense, and anything said to knock them down is valid - even if it means redirecting the exact vitriole and hate, the same death threats and "you don't even deserve to be alive" shit that's been thrown at us, and calling it "progress."

If you aren't careful all it does is mutate the very valid, long-standing frustrations you hold into a way to disregard other's real struggles & any information you don't want to hear.

It's how TERFs fueled women's anger and frustration at the men who've hurt them, into anger towards all men and anyone approaching or coming from masculinity. It flattens this huge swath of experiences into one line, a man who learned his whole life the negatives of masculinity and nothing else. It doesn't provide healing for the women who were hurt, it pushes them to be more afraid and see every man as a danger regardless of the situation. It doesn't teach men how not to be dangerous, or how to recognize people teaching them to be. It alienates, everyone.

It's the way white people will internally roll their eyes at a light skinned indigenous person talking about their culture, or interrogate them to be sure they have a right to it. It's the way "white privilege" has become shorthand for "immense class power," both erasing the original targeted points the term is trying to make AND alienating the massive poor rural white population who KNOWS your full of shit saying they've had everything handed to them. It's the way states with white liberal city centers are seen as massively progressive (even if it's only 2% more of the pop that are democrats, gathered in 1% of the state) - and states that vote red every time deserve to be "cut off and sunk into the ocean."

It's the disabled people who need to feel Most Oppressed to validate the reality of their suffering, so spend hours trying to prove that mental disability and physical are separate & put their fellow disabled peers through the EXACT shaming/interrogation/judgement/"its not that bad have you just considered trying" treatment our doctors put us through. It's the way the new acceptable thing in disability spaces is to mock autistics (always portrayed as white and very low needs) for being too annoying/loud/present.

It's the way they can differentiate between a Real queer (who they agree with/can pity) versus a Fake queer (who said some shit they didn't want to hear/hasn't had the exact same lived experiences and could Never Understand). It's the way they can argue for hours about which minute aspect of identity that is only visible sometimes grants unimaginable (and Literally Unreal) safety and power, rather than focusing on the fact that none of us should need to be passing at all times to feel some level of safety.

It's a strawman! That only serves as an outlet for anger that tends to splashback on everyone around you! It has its place, and that place is not in almost every single conversation we have about difficult topics! Your morality cannot be based on finding ways to validate redistributing the violence that has been shown to you! Your political stance cannot be "only the people like me who agree with me should live!" Your MOVEMENT OF PROGRESS AND EMPATHY cannot be based on the cop you never learned to quiet in your mind!!!

We will never succeed if we ourselves are cutting our own communities to pieces.

[liminalweirdo]

I didn't want to continue the other post but I think that connecting transness/dysphora (Not all trans people experience dysphoria and that's okay!) and autism/disability (not all autistic people are disabled and that's okay!) is... not great.

One is, according to many autistic people, simply not right. Autism is a developmental disorder, it's a disability.

Being trans, with or without dysphoria, is fundamentally different from a disorder. Saying "you're born with the autism neurotype, but your disabilities make you have clinical DSM V ASD" is not the same as saying "you're born queer and your gender influences your transness." It has this untone (accidentally or not) of "if you remove dysphoria the trans person is happy/better so if you remove disability the autistic person is happy/better" and this directly feeds into the incorrect idea that disabled lives are somehow Less Than.

Like yes autistic people slip through the cracks of diagnosis all the time and that desperately needs to change, but the autism community has never required a diagnosis to welcome people into the community. You don't need to show your disability/diagnosis papers, that's not what's happening.

Of course we should be listening to autistic experiences outside of our own, and we should be open-minded to people who feel differently to us, but I just think that using trans-centered words (transmed) and translating them to autism words (autimed) is a dangerous step, and not just because language and politics centering trans people is so inflammatory right now.

We can't create a community where someone sees the word 'disabled' on an autism blog and equates that autistic person to a transmed person just because they call themselves disabled.

Once we start using words like 'terf' or 'autimed' in our community we're already dividing ourselves in irreparable ways.

Also there's a danger in using trans terminology to talk about autistic stuff because they aren't the same. I know there's a big overlap between autistic people and trans people, but that doesn't mean transness and autism are the same/should use similar terms.

Disability =/= bad in the same way that dysphoria = bad

For one, autism is a developmental disorder/disability. Whether someone wants to call themselves disabled or not, that's what autism is defined as, AND most of the autism community agrees. We can't forget that queer people used to be called mentally ill (incorrect, not backed by science, and queer people did not agree that it was true). So equating autism with transness in some ways puts queer people right back in that box of "disabled, mentally ill" where those terms really mean "mentally deficient," and are used by non-queers against queer people to prevent them from being able to make their own decisions.

(disclaimer: Obviously this does happen to some autistic people. Some autistic people are unjustly stripped of their autonomy and abused by the people who are supposed to take care of them, but that has less to do with a fault in autism itself and everything to do with the people who are abusing them. The fault is in the abuser, not the autistic person.)

Autistic people who use the term disabled are not the same as trans(med) people who say you need to experience dysphoria/go to therapy/be depressed to be properly trans. Transness and autism are different things, and we probably shouldn't use trans-centered words like autimed to describe people in our community, autism and transness simply do not function the same way.

Disability is going to feel different and more/less disabling to every autistic person no matter your autism levels, your verbality, etc. Like, we need to make sure to respect one another. No one is less autistic or more autistic than anyone else. Autistic people don't suffer more/less because of diagnosis/levels/(dis)abilities, it's going to be unique to all of us.

Anyway, I think we should continue to keep the channels of communication open, because if we don't take care of each other, other people are going to do it for us, and they might do it in ways that harm us. Nothing about us without us etc.

[0junemeatcleaver0]

Feeling just a wee bit torn re: attempting to heal the rift in the fandom. For, like, several reasons.

Not the least of which is the matter of theory vs. praxis. Everyone I have personally spoken to in this fandom has seemed to be on the same page. Racism is bad. Pedophilia is bad. Transphobia is bad. Etc.

But we're gonna have a damned hard time getting to the praxis bit if we can't even agree on how the stuff above actually manifests in a harmful way.

Not liking the casting for the new show doesn't automatically make you a racist. It simply doesn't. There are many non-malicious reasons for being hesitant to accept Jacob!Louis ranging from "I don't trust white showrunners to handle his story with the level of care it deserves" to "even from what we've seen of him in the Louis garb, he just looks like Some Guy™️ (I feel this way about Sam personally--I really think the only one ethereal looking enough to be a convincing vampire is Bailey tbh).

Shipping is not pedophilia. Can it squick you personally? Sure. I'd it well within your right to not want to engage in it? Also yes. There are ways to block things tagged for content you don't wish to see. But exploring power dynamics in fantasy is not the same thing as condoning real life abuse. Full stop. I've already reblogged a great break down debunking the notion that fiction negatively affects reality in any meaningful way and while the post is written in the aggressive tone of someone sick of having to have the same tired argument for the umpteenth time, it is worth a read.

And from what I've been able to gather, most of us are aware of and have blocked that one fuckhead TERF. Good on us for immediately agreeing on something and no, that's not sarcasm. Good job team.

And as far as praxis goes. Well. Again we're gonna have to reign it in and be realistic about what the "how" is going to look like.

Which is where I should probably address my own role in all this. Because I know as discussions continue, this post will make it onto the dash of someone I have long since blocked and they will immediately see it and think, "that's rich, coming from you".

And perhaps. We've all seen the callout post I made a while back. And it's hard for me not to continue to stand by everything I said. I still think that a lot of the white folks who were most vocally calling others (on this platform specifically) racist aren't great at allyship work. With the clarity of hindsight, I think that stems from being young, growing up under surveillance culture, and living in an era where slacktivism feels like the only thing available to them. The cause isn't malicious, even if the effects are.

Do I regret some of my phrasing and things I overlooked? Yeah. When going over the "listen to POC bit", I should have delved deeper into the fact that, quelle surprise, POC aren't a hive mind. You'll hear differing opinions. There's a lot of nuance there and you're going to have to cast your opinion net pretty wide, listen to all these different opinions, and extrapolate from there. Because having 1-2 black friends who agree with you means fuck all in a world where Candice Owens exists. People with opinions that are ultimately harmful to themselves exist in every group, sorry to break it to you. Allyship is hard because it requires building a very nuanced lens through which to view the world. It requires you to acknowledge the Candice Owneses of the world while recognizing the pain and fear that led them to having the opinions they do, as well as listening to and engaging in meaningful, educational discussions with people who hold opinions you view as ignorant. It's work. That's what makes it work. Screaming at someone will not change their mind. Trying to rationally 'debate' someone with illogical opinions will not work because they didn't use logic to form those opinions. And that's hard work! But it does work and it's worth it.

And I don't know that I drove all of that home in my original post.

Do I regret dunking so hard on SM at the end of that post? Yes and no. Working on yourself as a person is a continuous journey and while intellectually I know that the "bully the bullies" approach I took in high school (and that post) stems from growing up in a carceral society where punishment is in much higher a regard than harm reduction and education, I also won't lie to you and claim that deep down I don't sometimes feel like a good tongue lashing isn't earned on a 1:1 basis.

Which is another sidebar point, which is we should all be honest about where we may have individually dropped the ball here, and be honest with ourselves about why we did it to prevent such instances in the future.

At the end of the day, if I'm being 💯 honest, the only way in which I feel remorse for the end of that post is the constant wondering I've done since publishing it about how my vitriol may have impacted SM's friend group. Could they have otherwise seen him as being a disingenuous snake before having to ultimately oust him for treating his friends poorly? I may never know.

Yes, I have been told about that. Alexa, play Everybody Talks.

Anyway. Praxis.

Whatever we all decide moving forward, we all need to be on the same page if we're going to make this thing work. But I think before we get to that point, we're all gonna have to bury the hatchet, whatever that's gonna look like for those involved in whatever beef.

🤷‍♀️

[thechekhov]

Hi! I saw on a post that you're agender and I'm kinda questioning my gender (again) but what interested me more about that post was that you said you believe that gender is a social construct and I'm not really familiar with that theory. I was wondering if you could explain to me what the whole idea is? (bc I kinda only feel like a have a gender in social situations? In my head, my dreams and how I picture myself in the future, I'm genderless idjskahwksjejensj) Sorry for bothering you if I did.

This is a BIG topic and it opens a LOT of wormholes. 

We’re gonna do this in pie slice statements that will hopefully help explain what I mean. Please keep in mind I’m going to simplify many things for the sake of readability.

1) What is a social construct? 

Social constructs are ideas that are negotiated by social groups. Something being a social construct does not make it ‘not real’. 

For example, money is a social construct. Yes, we have cash - coins, credit cards - but these are physical props that are REPRESENTATIVE of the idea of currency. You have some form of credit to your name - the money is a socially agreed-upon idea of value being represented by bills in your hand, by numbers in your bank account. 

[Description: Two humanoid figures are standing side by side. The right-side figure is holding a rock in its hand. 

Right side figure: Let’s agree that this shiny rock is worth 2 sheep.

Left side figure: Sounds fake but ok.]

Technically, countries are also social constructs. We, as a society, negotiate what a country is, and this can be changed.

[Description: Two figures are standing on either side of a dotted line drawn on the ground. The left figure is pointing down at it while the right figure watches, its arms crossed.

Left figure: Let’s pretend that everything on this side of the imaginary line is mine.

Right figure: ...ok but my house is over there.

Left figure: ... for 3 shiny rocks you can come visit.]

Does that mean canada isn’t real? No. (I mean, obviously canada ISN’T real, but we all agree to pretend it is.) The thing that makes it real is that we are in agreement, and all follow the social rules of pretend to make it seem like the Canadian border, the idea of Canadian citizenship, etc... is an objective fact. (It’s not. These are in fact, negotiable limits and parameters. We have laws in place to define it in legal terms, but those laws can be changed, or may change in the minds of communities. That’s why it’s a construct.)

By that same token, I hold the view that gender, as we largely perceive it in modern society, is a construct. Why? Because it is not inherent; we, as a society, negotiate its meaning. 

2) What is gender? 

People will probably fight me on this and that’s fine, but here’s my (simplified) understanding of gender (from someone who personally has none)

Gender is a social category negotiated by cultures based on your assigned or desired role in your community that influences, among many other things, your physical appearance, your role in family units, your expected position in jobs, etc. 

How I think it happened:

[Description: Two figures are standing on either side of the panel, both holding children-looking figures. The one on the left is wearing purple. The one on the right is wearing green.

Green figure: Hey, I’ve got an idea. What if we separate the babies into two groups based on physical traits they have no control over?

Purple figure: Wh-- okay...?

Green figure: And then limit the jobs they can do and the community ritual involvement available to them based on that!

Purple figure: ... I feel like this is going to backfire on us someday.

Green figure: Nah, it’ll be fine.

The past panel is a dramatic closeup on the purple figure’s face - which is featureless - betraying a deeply doubtful emotion. It says nothing.]

Important points to remember: what gender looks like, what the limits are, what the expectations are... are not inherent to any human biology. We make up gender roles. This is evident in the fact that across the world, gender roles differ by culture. The positions people of a certain gender are allowed to take up are different. What is perceived to be ‘girly’ or ‘boyish’ is different across cultures. 

Simply speaking - currently the (western) model we have, dumbed down, is:

You are assigned male at birth because of physical characteristics

You are raised being told to ‘toughen up’ and ‘boys don’t cry’ and encouraged not to show emotions

You are taught to wear male-coded clothes and discouraged from female-coded fashion choices

You are given more opportunities to participate in sports, encouraged to engage in physical activity, etc

You are not expected to need time off for child-rearing 

Here’s where gender as it works in society breaks down into being not a real thing but instead something we thought up: 

Nothing about having a penis necessitates wearing pants. Nothing about having XY chromosomes means you need to keep your hair short. Nothing about your genome makes the experience of nail-polish different for any human being. 

All of these are arbitrary traits we decided were allowed or not allowed to a specific group of people based on entirely unrelated physiology. 

Even if we delve deeper, there is MORE variation among individuals of the same ‘sex’ than there are, on average, of members of the ‘opposite sex’ when compared to each other. 

Many people use the excuse ‘women are physically not as strong as men’ to say that this has an evolutionary aspect driving these cultural, historical, socially-constructed gender requirements. 

But if there was a physical reasoning behind the culturally-set gender-limited job expectations, then we actually WOULDN’T need a traditional binary gender system to sort ourselves into categories. It would simply be decided as a meritocracy - stronger individuals, regardless of gender, would be given physically-demanding jobs. (Also we know that many jobs thought to be ‘traditionally male’ are just the result of sexist bullshit, so this reasoning doesn’t fly any further than I can throw it which is, coincidentally, not very far. Politics is one such area. Doctors are another. We can go on but I think you get my drift.)

My own example of this is an anecdote when my grandparents came to visit my partner and I in Japan. While we were driving down to Tokyo, my grandmother - who has a PhD in entomology - began to say that driving is a masculine activity and women shouldn’t be driving as it was ‘un-woman-like’. My partner almost immediately fired back that in Japan, studying insects or having any interest in them whatsoever was considered a heavily masculine-coded activity. In Russia, there is no such assignment, and my grandmother was left silently blinking in confusion, unable to come up with any excuse except ‘well, all cultures are different, I suppose...’

Do either of these things inherently have a gendered aspect? Of course not! But we assign gendered ideals to them anyway.

3) If gender is made up and constructed by society, then does that mean trans people aren’t real?

No.

Even if you agree that gender is a social construct, trans people are still real. TERFs don’t get a pass. Why? 

Because gender - as a social construct - still affects our everyday lives, dictates our social position in our community. Transitioning is still a thing that has to happen. The fact that you are NOT easily able to decide your own gender and are ostracized for wanting to transition, abused for dressing the way you want to be perceived, and bullied for wanting people to refer to you with different pronouns - all those are the effects of a social construct that has very REAL impact on our lives.

This is also why I dislike defining trans-ness by dysphoria. Because transgender people are not only their suffering - the suffering is coming from the outside!! Many trans people remember not being concerned about their gender identity in their childhood, because they did not yet perceive the world as being hostile to their desire to fulfil a specific role in society. The issues and self-hatred and dysphoria begins when they express wanting to be themselves - a life which they are forbidden from pursuing based on physical characteristics they were born with.

Does this mean we should try to remove gender from society? If we constructed it, we can deconstruct it, right?

Realistically, I highly doubt this is possible. Gender is so ingrained in our daily lives that it would be difficult. Nor, I would say, would it be necessary to achieve world peace. 

Having social groups - having gender - isn’t inherently a bad thing. The bad thing is when we limit those social groups to specific basic human rights, like voting, or when we forbid them from transitioning from one to another based on things that are out of their control. 

Also, I’m not saying genitals and secondary sexual characteristics aren’t real. Please don’t bother sending me that angry message, I’ll ignore it, I promise. 

But the concept of gender IS something we thought up and maintain and negotiate with each other to this very day. It’s not granted to us by a higher power, nor is it a constant, unchanging thing. It’s a part of the human experience and like everything, it has the potential to evolve - as a concept in our communal memory, as well as on an individual level, for people who feel they want to be perceived differently. 

Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk!

[caecilius-est-pater]

Really now, anti's? Did the meaning change or something because I'm very sure anti means anti-pedo shipping, anti-incest shipping.

To quote that one meme: well yes, but actually no. Antis are to “let’s stop pedophilia in fandom!” as TERFs are to “let’s support women’s rights!” - sounds good in theory, but in practice ineffectual and mostly just an excuse to bully people. I’m going to choose to be optimistic and take this as a good faith question from someone who genuinely doesn’t know, so I’m going to explain why.

The ideology sounds great at the surface level, like hell yeah, let’s get rid of pedo shit! Who wouldn’t agree with that? But once you go past the absolute shallowest surface level and say, OK, now what steps do we take to accomplish that? then you start to hit snags. Legally, the only stuff that’s banned is images/videos/etc of real life children being abused. Things like ship art or explicit fics of underage fictional characters are perfectly fine. Therefore, legally, anyone making that content is not breaking any rules.

If you say, well, I don’t agree with that, I want more things to be banned, then you have to come up with new rules of what should and shouldn’t be allowed. Who gets to decide that? Is there a committee? How are committee members chosen? How do you account for biases in the committee, such as race or age or gender? Once the committee has come to a decision about the new rules, how do you enforce them? What do you do about people or groups who refuse to follow the new rules? How do you spread the news to all of fandom that there are new rules in the first place?

And what about the rules themselves? How do you define “pedo content” beyond the legal definition of featuring real children? Maybe you say, that’s easy, let’s just go with all sexual content featuring people under 18. OK, cool, you’ve now made it illegal for minors to talk about their own experiences. Minors have sex, minors fantasize about sex, minors masturbate, minors experience rape and abuse, and now you’ve just put a gag order on all those millions of people. I don’t know about you, but I think letting people draw/write fictional characters having sex (even gross, weird sex) is the lesser of two evils compared to hurting millions of real, living children.

And anyway, how do you define “sexual content” in the first place? Is it OK if there’s no graphic detail? Is masturbation OK? What about sexual fantasies? How about making out? At which base do you draw the line between “acceptable expression of sexuality” and “pedophilia”? Or is any expression of sexuality not OK? Kissing? Holding hands?

At this point you’re probably saying, gee tumblr user caecilius-est-pater, that sounds both untenable (how are we going to get all of the internet to agree to unite under One Committee To Determine the Rules?) and like an insane unending rabbit hole! Nobody could ever do that! Yep. For better or for worse, we as a bunch of randos on the internet just do not have the power to change the broad planet-wide rules of what does and does not count as pedophilia.

You can probably see how this is a problem for the anti movement, which is all about enforcing those new, stricter rules. The ones that don’t exist and realistically can’t exist. How do you enforce nonexistent rules? The answer antis have landed on is to just make them up, every man for themselves. As you can probably imagine, this... doesn’t work too well, to put it lightly.

Some people think it’s OK to write about CSA as long as the author actually experienced it, other people think it’s never OK and even real life CSA survivors are pedophiles if they write about it. Some people think aging up teenage characters is OK, other people think if they’re underage in canon then depicting them in sexual situations at any age counts as pedophilia. Some people think sexual depictions of characters who look young (art styles with big eyes, short characters, characters with high voices, etc) is pedophilia, even if the characters are canonically adults. Etc ad infinitum.

Which brings us to the two things I said antis are: ineffectual and and a front for bullying. It should be obvious how the movement is ineffectual - you’re never going to get anywhere with removing bad people from your community if nobody can agree what a bad person actually is.

The bullying comes in because it’s very hard to get people to bully someone, but very easy to get people to join a witch hunt. “Let’s all harass and doxx this person because they’re a jerk” isn’t gonna get me very far, but “Let’s all harass and doxx this person because they’re a pedophile” is going to bring out a mob with torches and pitchforks if I can convince everyone I’m telling the truth. And by the antis’ mutable definition of pedophilia that can include anything from teenagers kissing to consenting adults who knew each other as kids, I’ve got a lot of tools in my arsenal to convince people.

And the insidious part is that nobody can defend you without immediately opening themselves up to the same accusations, because if you're being called out as a pedophile for supporting a ship with a height difference, anyone who says, “hey, I don’t think that’s pedophilia” is now also supporting ships with a height difference, ergo supporting pedophilia. (And if anyone is thinking “you’re making all these strawman examples up, nobody actually believes that”, I envy your blissful ignorance but let me assure you, I am not.)

And that kind of situation leads to an atmosphere where everyone is terrified of doing anything wrong or they’ll be the next one viciously attacked, and the only way to keep good social standing is by continously attacking other people whether you agree with the extreme ideology or not, and that’s how you get bullying, harassment campaigns, and anti groups that have become genuine, legitimate cults. I’ve lost the links but there are some truly chilling twitter threads about that if you’re interested.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, whether it was a case of the proverbial road to hell being paved with good intentions or whether the movement was co-opted by people who didn’t actually care about stopping pedophilia and really just wanted an excuse to cyberbully people, the movement has evolved to a point where it’s mainly a harassment campaign with only the thinnest veneer of actually trying to prevent pedophilia. Nobody is out here running charity drives to donate to help abused children or making their own safe spaces where people can view art and fic without worrying about encountering triggering content - in fact, antis have been offered multiple sites to use as replacements for AO3 where they can set whatever TOS they want and have always refused. The only thing most antis do to combat pedophilia in fandom is callouts and harassment.

Not to mention the irony in the fact that so many of the people targeted are, in fact, minors. In their quest to avoid people potentially getting hurt by fictional content, they’re doing real, tangible hurt to actual, living people, including kids.

So that’s how we got here. Being anti-pedo and being an anti are not the same thing, and if you see a reference to the latter, it means a member of a specific pro-censorship movement focused on hurting (mainly young, marginalized) people as “activism”.

[searchingforproofsthatimwrong]

THE JAMMIEDODGER VIDEO ABOUT JK ROWLING (as recommended by a very polite anon)

so I go point by point after the cut but in short: they should read more feminist theory, they are lying, they are not as coherent as they think they are but they make some points, notably about the rapid onset gender disphoria that’ll need to check in more depth later on.Most of their sources were unfortunatly either on points I already knew or already agreed with.  Also that woman ( the “cis” one not Jammy), should really stop thinking being born a woman is somehow a privilege.

So the video starts by saying three things I agree with :

1)      Biological sex is definitely real

2)      Women’s right and girls’ right need to be protected

3)      JK Rowling is entitled to like support and write whatever she wants

 So far so good. Except it then goes on to say that TRA agree with that. Now maybe most do but at least some don’t. Don’t lie to me, Jammie Dodger.  

They then go on to misrepresent what our problem with “cis” is. Are they going to spend that entire video about trans people at destination of the non educated on that subject without ONCE defining what a trans person is? They are aren’t they ?

“TRANSPEOPLE AGREE THAT BIOLOGICAL SEX EXISTS!!” 

see earlier but given the number of people who are saying “sex is a social construct” and “sex is a spectrum” and “a neovagina is just like a vagina”, you may at least put a “most” in your statement here. Anyway this is not the problem we have, we wouldn’t even discuss this if it weren’t for the brain dead morons who argue with us about it.

“my biological sex -the one I was assigned at birth- was female” 

is Jammie here telling me he knows biology exists but his sex WAS female ? It still IS female. You’re a female. Moreover you cannot say I know biology exists and I was assigned a sex. The entire “assigned sex” is a refutal of biology by implying doctors choose a sex for you. This is stupid.

Strawman. They are saying radfems have no argument against “gender identity is a real thing”. The lies. Gender identity is not a real thing it’s just gender stereotypes and gender is a tool of oppression for women, it’s sexist garbage. I also notice they don’t define gender identity, this is starting to be a pattern, this video is aimed to normies but the only thing they defined so far is terf.

They did 5 fucking minutes on “transpeople know that biological sex exists” I am already exhausted.

Oh my bad they defined “gender identity” as “the gender you know you are”. THANKS A BUNCH THIS IS SO HELPFUL . Define gender please I beg of you.  

“They know they are a man but their bodies don’t match” 

okay so you agree that man and woman are words that depends on your body right? Since it can “match”, they are not gender then ? Nevermind he then says that man is their gender identity. This is not making sense.

Ooooooh the floating head analogy never heard that one before, this is a stupid one because gendies also argue that their gender is innate (unless Jammie here specifically says he doesn’t think that I’ll act as if he agrees with that statement) so the good question would be if you were born as a floating head and never even had a body would you still be a woman? And my answer here as well as plenty of people I suspect is “men and women don’t make sense if we’re born as floating heads what are you on about?”

“transwomen needs women’s right too” 

I know you think that is self evident but I’ll ask what exactly are the women’s right transwomen need. Abortion? Affordable periods product ? The right to have places free of male? oh wait. They are male so they can never have that can they ?

“so feminism also needs to believe in gender identity”

 because if we don’t our feminism is only for females and we exclude males. Notice how they didn’t continue their logic by saying how THIS feminism excludes transmen and nonbinary? Because it does, but guess who actually need the women’s right of abortion for exemple?

“transmen don’t need women’s rights” 

I FUCKING CANNOT YOU STILL NEED IT WTF ARE YOU ON ABOUT. OK I need them to define women’s right asap

“well JK Rowling said she supports trans rights”

 funny how you can understand how those words are not a proof that she in fact does but you still started your video by “we support women’s rights !!!”

“adding [to Harry Potter] content that was LGBT+ friendly” 

she added things that were gay friendly. I don’t remember her adding trans characters.

“transphobic” = saying men can’t become women. Whoah. The hatred.

“the lack of belief [in gender identity] is what she wants protected”

 yes and ? Atheism, the lack of belief in a god, is protected. Gender identity existence only proof is some people saying it does exists, it is not a scientific reality in any way shape or form.

“His biological sex was previously female” 

BUT WE KNOW WHAT BIOLOGICAL SEX IS WE SWEAR; Damn they spend 7 minutes on “transpeople know biological sex exists” and then keep acting like they fucking don’t.

After that they point blank say that gender identity is more important than sex, having someone who passes as an exemple. What about transpeople who don’t pass? How much you bet this will never be discussed in this video.

Anyway they follow that with that : 

Which is true but defining what a woman is does affect women actually (I know weird right)  so it’s completely irrelevant to the discussion here.

“When a large group of transpeople are telling you something is wrong please listen to them”

 please afford women the same courtesy. We are a large group of women saying males are not the fucking authority on what womanhood is but we are told to shut up. Listen.

“we cannot take the behavior of the minority [online abuse] and group it onto the majority” 

I agree with that statement but the majority still didn’t condemn the abuse. Honestly the people in this video did -just before saying HOWEVER but hey – but it is pretty rare to see TRA actually confronting the people who abused JK Rowling online, they cheered them on more than anything.

It is very telling how they spend more time in this video saying people collecting screenshots of the abuse JK Rowling suffered were “not cool” than the TRA giving them a bad name by actually abusing JK Rowling. They even say Jammy was also insulted online so TERF and TRA are as bad as each other right ?? Being called delusional or idiot is not the same as death threats sorry Jammy. (I doubt the “freak” one was from a terf tbh but even then, this is not even comparable) I mean didn’t you get at least one person saying they were going to kill you ? Because I did, and I have ,like, 200 followers. I find very weird that the woman here said “I received sexual assaults threats and this is as a cis woman!” as if women weren’t the primary target of sexual assaults threats. Yeah it’s the misogyny. What’s new.  You really should stop thinking you are somehow priviledged even when you are being sexually threatened ffs. What gender ideology does to a mf.

 “neither of these sides are innocent” 

oh come on, you cannot possibly means that the men who gave you sexual threats were terfs, this is ridiculous, you are just trying to excuse and diminish what people did to JK as per fucking usual.

 “persistent low level harassment” 

it hasn’t stayed low level tho. Stop trying to say you and JK are receiving the same abuse it’s embarrassing.

JK Rowling’s essay having real life effects on policies for exemple has an element of thruth ,even tho we disagree on wether or not this can be a good thing but your are deluding yourself if you think people assaulting transpeople are the sort of people whose views are in any way influenced by feminists. This is laughable. Also please stop with the guilt tripping, we are not responsible of the mental health of transpeople, we are not their therapists, sorry.

I love how they implied that the guy who forced GNC kids to behave as their assigned gender would somehow give a letter of thanks to a feminist. This is implying “terfs” want the same things as this maniac which is just a straight up lie, terfs absolutely adore GNC people and are mostly GNC themselves.

“What rights of women are actually being eroded by the inclusion of transwomen ?” I am glad you asked !! Well apart from the freedom of speech since “terfs” are losing their jobs and being deplatformed because of this, we have the inherent dangers of replacing sex by gender in what the law protects : https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/firing-mom-because-shes-breastfeeding-sex-discrimination this is a link to a story about a woman who was said being fired for breastfeeding was not sex discrimination because men can lactate. Do you see the problem ? Moreover there is quotas for women in politics etc….Women fought for their quotas and now males can have them, who do you think an employer would prefer someone who probably will be pregnant at one point or someone who never will ? and let’s not forget the right for women to have women only places :Women in prison are raped by the trans identified males in it .

“I cannot think of a single right that is removed from me”

 good for you maybe you should have actually researched radfems talking point before doing this video ? Your ignorance is not a good argument.  

“transwomen can use the women changing room because they are women” 

you keep saying that but apart from “they feel like women” you didn’t explain how they are women. This is the basis of this entire video and you never explained.  Also allowing any person who say they are women into the women’s changing room does not only allow transwomen does it ? It also allows lying freaks.

“You can protect cis women’s rights and transrights simulteanously” HOWWWWWWWWWWW, please tell me how to keep female only spaces (women’s right) while saying TWAW (transrights apparently according to them).

“transwomen can be the victims and cis women can do the voyeurism” 

true but did you forget we actually live in the real world and in that one males are much more likely to be sexually harassing people than women ? It is a brazen form of lying to tell women that since theoretically other women can also be creeps they don’t have to worry about males. Get a grip. Live in the real world for a change.

“It doesn’t reference transwomen but men pretending to be women” 

apart from “they feel it” you still haven’t told us what the difference is. You are aware nothing from an outside perspective distinguishes the two right ??

“there is no evidence of men pretending to be trans to enter female only spaces” and how would you know they are pretending ? This is the same problem again and again, if you define transwomen as men who feel like women then there is absolutely no way of verifying someone really is trans. And that’s a lie anyway since we do actually have proof of that happening?? There was that video making the room on radblr a while ago of a clear male pissing in the women’s bathroom saying (lying) that he was trans.

Yeah actually radical feminists would accept transmen in their bathrooms, but it’s not an easy question with an easy answer to know how to check they really are transmen. Although notice how they are again only talking about transpeople that passes ? I would feel safer with Jammy in my toilets than Hannah Mouncey for exemple :

  That is so obvioulsy a man in a dress.

“ If a transman with a beard and penis and balls can go into a women’s toilet and that is deemed okay because of his biological sex what is to stop a cis man from doing the same”

 I am sorry but are you saying a transwoman cannot have a beard and penis and balls ?????????? This is incredibly transphobic of you, you said that gender identity Is just feeling like a gender, how exactly does that mean transwomen cannot have beard ? If you want to know, radfem are arguing for a third toilet for transpeople, that’s our solution. What is yours ?

 Ok the next part is racist I’ll skip that thanks

On accusation of TERFery intimidating people and organizations “we haven’t seen these” again, your ignorance is not an argument, I am posting these on Tumblr where cryptoterfs arer numerous. Why do you think that is ?

Are they seriously saying Nike and addidas “accepted” transpeople because they “realized it was the right thing to do” ?????? Those companies employs slaves IN WHAT WORLD DO YOU LIVE IN??

“trying to make transpeople look crazy” 

the clownfish things were said online by real transpeople. We don’t need to invent thing to make transpeople look crazy, if there is  large enough group some people belonging in that group will say stupid shit .

“We support these rights”

 when speaking about women victims of abuse. This is a lie, the Vancouver rape shelter relief is often targeted by transactivists, recently a gofundme for it was cancelled because of transactivists, they are quite litteraly stealing money from raped women. This is not a small, inconsequential part of transactivism. 

“The trans-inclusionist views expand the meaning of women to include transwomen”

 It doesn’t expend shit actually since it excludes transmen and non-binary. If anything it reduces it.

They go on to say that transwomen deserves protection as women because of their murder rate. It doesn’t explain how being seen as women will help them here and anyway it’s a bold lie considering their murder rate is actually quite low. They also fail to consider how depriving transmen and nonbinaries of those same women’s right might be a problem.

Again they make the distinction between transwomen and men pretending to be transwomen without a way to identify which is which. This is starting to get repetitive and tedious. The problem is not that all transwomen are predators is that there is no way to see a difference until the predators acts, until a woman gets hurt, so accepting transwomen is accepting predators and saying transwomen feelings are more important that the women being hurt because of this. I disagree. The tiny tiny percentage of transpeople doing bad things is actually the same percentage as men doing bad things. If your argument could be used to say women only spaces shouldn’t exist at all because not all men are dangerous maybe you should reconsider your argument because I will not reconsider women’s right to have female only spaces.

“If you push transwomen out of female only spaces you push transmen in”

 Yes. I don’t even see where the problem is here.  Now why don’t we analyse the fact that if you push transwomen into female only spaces you push transmen out of them ? I don’t think transmen belongs in men’s prisons, do you ?

“Transpeople don’t dispute biology and don’t impact how female only diseases are treated” 

eat shit. They do impact this, every woman trying to say “female biology” get shit thrown at her faster than you can blink, stop lying to me Jammy. Do you think I would get called a bleeder, a fetus carrier, a motherfucking birthing body if transactivism wasn’t trying to erase sex ? Don’t you think the sentence “men can have periods” is not eroding biology ? Fuck off

Back to JK, Jammy is saying her disabling comment on her blog was not conductive to a conversation, I have to salute the straight face he says it with because do you really think a nice educated conversation would have taken place on JK Rowling’s essay ? They flooded her children’s book tag with porn for fuck sake.

“Thre is no explosion in young women who wishes to transition” sources ? Because it does seem to be true :https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jsm.12817

“the detransitionners rate is actually really low” hard to know but most people who transitioned did it not so long ago since transgender is a recent trend, we will have to wait and see to have a more robust number. But maybe they are right on that one, this is not going to be the one argument that changes my views unfortunately. 

“Does that mean we should stop people from getting plastic surgery then ?” 

lol you don’t know the radfem stance on plastic surgery do you ?

“There is more significant transphobia than homophobia” 

sources ? Because transition is used as converstion therapy in Iran so it is at least untrue in one country. 

“If transmen transition to escape womanhood why is there transwomen ?” 

You really didn’t research this did you ? the radfem answer is that transwomen are either gay men who have gender disphoria OR AGP (autogynephiles) read this if you want to learn more about it: https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-elephant-in-the-room

“why would people who have male privileges choose to give that up” 

you are assuming they lose their male privileges but I will need sources on that because most transwomen do not pass and are treated more as special men than as women.

“We have already shown you that transphobia is far more rife and damaging than homophobia” 

did I miss that part ? When ? You just said that ? Without backing it up ?

“anti trans narratives constantly contradict itself” 

No we do not, we are feminist so we OF COURSE we analyse men and women differently, this is an issue of gender which radical feminism posit as an hierarchy, trying to explain transwomen and transmen with the same arguments is doomed to fail because they were not equal in their relation to gender to begin with. Do you think black people trying to pass as white do it for the same reasons white people try to have more black features ? Of course not.

“What am I a lesbian or a homophobe ?”

 You are both, you are a lesbian in denial with a deep case of internalized misogyny and homophobia. You know yo can be both sexist and a woman right ? Well it’s the same here.

I heard “Simone de Beauvoir” and I knew they were going to be really fucking stupid with that “One is not born a woman but rather becomes a woman” quote and THERE IT IS! Please read the book. She is not saying male can become women if they try hard enough, she is saying basically the same thing JK Rowling’s quote said which is that “womanhood” as it is forced on women is alien and not natural and the point is that we should not accept it, it’s a feminist quote on femininity and I am so sick of men using it to say that they are women.

Transactivists acting as if sex recognition patterns don’t exists is exhausting so I won’t comment on “nobody checks if you have XX chromosomes before passing you over for a promotion” other than to say : passing over for promotions happens a lot when women are pregnant and after giving birth stop acting as if misogyny is unrelated to our reproduction capacities it is fucking insulting.

“transwomen will support [fights against tampon tax and FGM] too” 

FGM was a bad choice here considering transactivists tried to stop a bill against FGM .  I will need sources here actually since I never seen a transwoman fighting for women’s right in my life.

Ok I let a lot passes here because I’m tired but we are 48:40 in the video and fuck you “intersectional feminism” is not about males. It was for black women. It is not reductionist to say women are people with a vagina, this is just a definition, and one that applies to 50% of the population at that, there is litteraly no definition of woman that includes more people than that.

Imagine thinking “women are people with vagina” is reductionist but not calling women “vulva owners”. Please , I am begging for coherence.

“transwomen who experience greater abuse than cisgender women will ever experience” . 

This is revolting. I don’t have any other words. I am glad this is the end of the video because I would have stopped immediately if this was at the start. What abuse transwomen can experience than ciswomen cannot ? Because I would have thought forced pregnancy was horrific but maybe this doesn’t compare to being misgendered?

“most people are comfortable with transwomen going into women’s bathrooms” https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39147/bsa34_moral_issues_final.pdf

It says 13% of women are at least uncomfortable with sharing bathroom with transwomen, why are we ignoring their wishes? Because 0.1% of the population wants to ?  Whatever, the really interesting thing in this study is that for this question they defined “transwomen” as someone who has gone through all the steps to become a woman aka someone with surgery. I find extremely misleading that this is used for bathroom bills which defines transwomen as male identifying as women. Do you think the numbers would be the same if they specified the transwoman in question still has a penis ? Which is the case for most transwomen btw?

[genderfluidlucifer]

Response to being asked to give  an opinion on Connie’s calout by residentevil-4

(Tw: CSAM, rape fic, incest fic, predatory behavior, racism, ableism, kink mention, nsfw mentions. Minors should probably dni.)

“Connie and I know each other irl and went to school together for 3 years, although they now live in a different state and have cut contact with me. We went to a private therapy school in Manhattan as we're both disabled and were deemed unable to attend public school. Even though we were pretty close, Connie didn't like having photos taken of them, so I don't have any selfies of the two of us; however, these are from our sophomore and senior yearbooks which at least confirms that we were in the same year at school. People who have seen Connie's selfies should be able to confirm that that is what they look like. First and foremost, Connie is not TMA. They are intersex and the two of us have discussed intersex issues both in person and online, but they are still decidedly CAFAB.” Ok so first off, I want to address this part of the callout. To be honest...was it really necessary to literally doxx Connie ehre? Because this textbook definition of doxxing. Yes Connie’s done some shitty things but I freally don’t think that what they’ve done warrants this level of doxxing. Or...even better, any doxxing. This feels like a really unnecessary breach of privacy, revealing sensitive information on Connie’s childhood that they choose to confide in you with. I really don’t agree with this aspect of the callout as it feels very invasive and bordering on stalkerish.  Btw when I say bordering on stalkerish I’m not directly calling you a stalker Bonnie. Just so we’re clear. I am not defending Connie supposedly faking being TMA. Because faking being TMA is a very serious issue. HOWEVER since I don’t know Connie irl and to be quite frank it’s none of my business what the nature of their agab is. Were not close and I’m certainly not going to like lead Connie onto thinking we’re friends just to confirm this with them because that would be creepy. So to be honest I’m going to take this part of the callout with again of salt for now.

[ID: A cropped screenshot of a numbered list Connie posted to their blog hadrosaurs in response to an ask. 

“3. I’m TMA And that’s completely irrelevant. I’m not accusing them because of their gender I didn’t even know their gender when they said that to me saying that they said that because they fucking said that and the reaction to it was incredibly alarming. Don’t fucking say that stuff to people.]

I mean I”m not a trans woman so take this with a grain of salt if you want but...I don’t see how this is really proof of Connie being deliberately transmisogynistic? Yes Connie gives iffy retellings of mistakes they’ve made in the past. I’ve seen that on their blog before and I won’t pretend it doesn’t happen. BUT here they sound genuine enough and to be honest a growing issue I’ve seen with callouts as of late is. A person confirms they in fact did not do the thing they were called out for. And then the people who make the callout choose to see it as proof of incriminating behavior anyways. To be honest it’s a big problem and it’s also incredibly unfair to the person being called out. If you’re so determined at that point to see the person as bigoted no matter what they say then of course anything they say can be seen as proof. So I’m going to have to pass on this bit of evidence. “Connie responded: “Final note: I have spoken extensively with several trans women about using TMA to describe myself. I will not be getting into discourse about that on this blog again. All that leads to is people demanding my medical records and calling me slurs. If you wanna have a thoughtful conversation about it direct message me cause it’s not happening again here.” Again this really doesn’t seem all that self incriminating. Connie mentions here that they’ve talked to rl trans woman about whether or not they can be considered TMA. Connie really doesn’t have to disclose that personal information to people for any reason. Yes even when people are e including this ask response in a callout. And considering lots of people DO get invasive about Connie’s medical history ans general personal life over matters like this? I feel their reaction is pretty understandable here. “Connie has constantly compared “exclusionists” (or anyone, really) to TERFs, even when the people in question are not transmisogynistic, trans exclusionary radfems, or are even transmisogyny affected themselves.

“ Gonna have to disagree with this part of the callout too. Lots of ace inclus blogs, even some run by trans women , have proven that the ace exclus movement was started by swerfs/terfs. But the blog that has the most evidence for this is courteousmingler on tumblr. I suggest you check out that blog’s archiving of the history of ace exclus rhetoric before rushing to call me a transmisogynist for disagreeing with this part of the callout. I looked through all of the evidence for Connie being racist and tbh as a black ndn it all feels incredibly flimsy. It’d be one thing if Connie was using their experiences to derail and invalidate the discussions about how black people are oppressed But they weren’t doing that there at all. This part of the post feels incredibly biased. And like OP is looking for things to be mad about. Going to have to pass on this list of evidence. Also uh I seem to recall that residentevil04 got called out for some questionable behavior as well. “Both me (insepsy, hi) and ezrat have had really weird spikes in activity on our Statcounters, both on the same day. (Saturday, 4/17/21) For both of us, majority of the pages looked at by these visitors have been related to or about Connie, or have been posts that Connie would find "problematic" such as the f slur untagged or something related to "panphobia"/aphobia. I’m sorry but...none of the proof of cyberstalking holds any water. Visiting someone’s blogs and rbing posts to disagree with them is not cyberstalking. Keeping tabs on urls that an abusive person who has harassed are using so you can block them (in this case with kyoshi) and warn your mutuals is not stalking. As a victim of rl stalking it’s...really weird to call this legit stalking at all. Much less claim that you have damning proof of it being stalking when no such evidence exists in the callout. Besides after Connie and nonbinarydave called out one of kyoshi’s buddies for sending a death threat hate anon to nonbinarydave’s toddler st4lker partly admitted to doing it a few times. Then other mutuals in kyoshi’s toxic social circle clearly began joining in. Making side accounts where they tried to spin a false narrative of nonbinarydave’s daughter being one of their alters (ableist as hell.) And also trying to do it in such a way that they thought would trigger nonibnarydave’s psychosis (also ableist as hell.) If you’re going to drag Connie for their mistakes and never let them move on from those mistakes then it’s only fair to do that to people you agree with who also do toxic/bigoted things. ALso the fact that your wording here suggests that you think panphobia and aphobia aren’t real makes me doubt this claim even more. Exclus and their allies are notorious for mislabeling inclus disagreeing with them as stalking. “connie said that they would release that info at a later time and the minor began to argue with them that they had a responsibility regardless of their complicated relationship with age. in this argument connie for a time kept their age ambiguous and at one point told the minor (who confirmed in a later ask that they were severely traumatized by adults) that they obviously weren’t traumatized. connie quickly deleted this ask and any mentions of it and the next post they reblogged was about how wrong it was to try and quantify or discount others’ trauma. on my old blog i @ed them in the replies and asked if they had just done that. connie admitted to it and said it was fucked up but quickly blocked + deleted my comment. i can’t remember whether or not connie apologized to the minor, they may have? but yeah. i thought that was pretty weird.”] I do agree with some of the concern here that adults shouldn’t over expose minors in discourse. I’ve been contemplating this for awhile myself. And trying to figure out how to take better steps to avoid including minors who are triggered by discourse in discourse, especially. HOWEVER I have one little issue with this addition to the callout. If that is the case then exclus and their allies need to practice this as well. You cannot ignore the fact that the reason a lot of minors are getting involved in exclus discourse is due to adult exclus and their allies forcing minors to pick a side in the discourse. Y’all are not at all exempt from this problem. I still remember an ex mutual of mine trying to convince a minor to agree that aces can’t face corrective rape. And based on how aggressive it got with me when I tried to avoid giving an opinion on the matter, I can’t imagine that it would’ve reacted better to the minor refusing to give an opinion or to the minor outright disagreed. Refusing to put these standards on exclus and their allies is both hypocritical and quite frankly very transparent. The claims about them glorifying dark topics on AO3 through their fics also seems unfortunately legit. I mean those asks of shaming people who ask their viewers to not romanticize or glorify abusive relationships in their works is very damning. I’m very disappointed to see that Connie has taken being an inclus to the point of validating antis anti culture wholeheartedly. I can’t think of much more to add to my opinion on that part of the callout. As for the issue of Connie interacting with pro shippers in the past, I do know that this claim is legit. I’ve seen it before and so has Breeze. This was why for a brief time we decided to stop following their blogs. Because it was triggering to have pro shippers put on our dash. And sometimes we just don’t feel it’s worth it to always let people we’re platforming know they’re rbing triggering stuff. So sometimes we just quietly unfollow and choose to not interact until we’re sure they’re filtering what they do and don’t rb in some way. I definitely don’t agree with that behavior. And if they’re still doing that I”ll deplatform again. “The anon asks: “A weird question but do you know any other stimboard blogs with your follow criteria? (No radfems, racists, fandom antis, etc.) I was hoping to find more through your “similar blogs” but a lot have no anti-antis for their DNI or allow truscum/transmeds and exclus. :(“

The user responds: “I know of @turtle-pond-stims, @outofangband, and @kinaesthetics! 🍂🍄" “[ID: A cropped screenshot of an ask sent by Connie from their now-deactivated blog, butch-with-a-tortoise.

Connie says: “hey anon I have safe stim blogs. dm me if you want them. And radfems/bigots aren’t allowed to interact. For my own safety (because the community is honestly terrifying) I can’t publicly say on my blogs that I’m safe for proshippers/kinky people but I try to spread word how I can.”] [ID: Screenshot of a post by evilwriter37, which reads, “I’ve been seeing posts about fandom police leaving ao3, and it’s like: Good. We don’t want you here anyway. Go find your own fanfiction site.”

The post is tagged “#Fandom #AO3 #Antis #Purity Culture” and has 87 notes. It was posted on December 21st, 2020.

There is a reply from main-to-outofangband-andothers saying: “there are Silm antis on that site who are against Russigon (Maedhros and Fingon) not because they’re cousins but because they’re both male (coded)”] [ID: A screenshot of an anonymous (though signed off as being from outofangband) ask sent to evilwriter37, which says, “Melkor and Viggo solidarity is ‘Look there’s nothing wrong with keeping my enemy chained up in my personal chambers at all times so please just focus on the war efforts and I’ll focus on the boy* in my chambers’ -@outofbangand.

*boy used figuratively @ antis”

The user responds: “Pfft!!! Hahaha! You’re absolutely right! (And Viggo does refer to Hiccup in canon as ‘my boy’).”] I can’t really say anything to refute this. Because these are all posts of Connie outright stating that they disagree with antis. And not only sympathize with anti antis but are fully against antis. Looks like very damning evidence. Although ngl I’m not entirely against kinky blogs as a whole? Just so long as they truly stay in their lane with their kink content. And don’t force it on others in any way. Or shame people who are triggered by their kinks. It is true that being entirely against kinky blogs no matter what is dipping your toes into swerf rhetoric. Tbh I’m not going to look at the rest. This is pretty much all I need to make a decision on whether or not I”ll continue platforming Connie. Though I will try to get some more  perspective from people who I interact with as well. Because I feel better about making a more definitive decision after doing that. Also in general please don’t not try to get an opinion from me on how I feel about syscourse. A lot of the claims about Connie’s age weirdness and them using their alters as a shield feel like syscourse to me. Especially if this callout was written by one or several singlets. Singlets should never be trying to judge how legit someone’s system is ever. Even if their system friends encourage them to. You can call out a horrible person with a system without trying to insinuate that they’re lying about their alters in some way. Doing otherwise is ableist ESPECIALLY if you’re a singlet. Also in general the reason I stay out of discussions of judging how someone is handling their systems is because it’s syscourse and syscourse is triggering for my system and I. If this post was an attempt to get me to give an opinion  on the validity of Connie’s system I don’t appreciate it. And I would appreciate not being dragged into such matters again, thank you.

In general there’s like a few parts of this callout that feel legit. Which is unfortunately cluttered with obvious bias and obsessive hatred of Connie. I’m not here to stan or coddle Connie. I know they are not a perfect person. Especially since no human being in the world is perfect. But I feel the way this callout was created was very sloppy since a lot of the evidence was messy at best. And some points were very hypocritical as well as there being some no true scotsman moments from OP. In acting like exclus never do any of the thing that they tried to call out Connie for. Which is behavior that I am not a fan of. This is why people need to be more careful about callouts and like make roughdrafts and have a more unbiased person helping them if they don’t feel they can do it on their own. I’m even trying to make a resolve to do better at that myself. So it’s not like I’m unwilling to put my money where my mouth is. Anyways those are all my thoughts on this messy callout. And tbh I’m not going to get too much more heavily involved in this. Because I need to focus on more immediately serious rl stuff more often, like doing what I can to get out of the hellish landscape of a house I currently am stuck in.

[gucciguccigarbage]

I usually try to stay out of discourse so I'll probably delete this later but I just have to say it makes me so uncomfortable to see the rhetoric spreading around that terfs only attack trans women, and that tme people should never try to refute terf points, and tme people interacting with terfs on any level is an act of transphobia. Just feels like playing into exactly the scenario they'd want. "Everyone believes us when we say we support the trans men we constantly misgender and infantilize, and only trans women ever speak up about the harm we do" do you understand what a nightmare scenario that is.

Do you understand you're telling transmasculine people that their experiences of harm are meaningless because it isn't the same kind of violence, and that we literally can't defend ourselves without apparently being transphobic?

Do you understand you're setting up for terfs to act like the only people who give a shit about their violence are the people that they're most violent against? They already DO act like only "TRA"s disagree with them and you want to encourage more people to look the other way?

From a logistics perspective this makes no sense to me, from an emotional perspective you're saying the different (I'll even admit lesser! I'm not saying that terf rhetoric doesn't bring MORE harm to trans women, but it also doesn't bring NO harm to trans men) form of harm done to people like me isn't harm at all or even is support like they claim, and from a real life perspective every trans woman I know who's not terminally online agrees with me that this kind of rhetoric can ONLY divide the trans community.

Jesus Christ have you seen the kind of shit some of them say about Elliot Page, the line between types of harrassment they dole out to trans women vs trans men is getting thinner and thinner and if you say trans men can't defend ourselves against that then you're doing exactly what the terfs want. They don't sympathize with us. I promise you. Transphobia couched in feminism is a genuine threat to all of us.

[tussive]

I have a lot of thoughts on this subject and some of them are touchy and I know many of my followers are trans.  I've never really spoken about most of this publicly, but I was just discussing this type of thing with @fresholivesfromtheolivebar and I thought having a place to organize my thoughts and get them out in a hopefully not too rambly/weird and mostly cohesive post.

I used to identify agender/non-binary for a period of time.  I've never identified as "male."  I don't understand men.  I don't get men.  They talk to me and it's like their way of thinking is completely foreign to me.  That isn't to say I'm not male.  I am very much male.  I was raised male.  I am seen as male.  I have been conditioned as  a male (possibly a faggy male lol) my entire life, including now, and that undoubtably affects how I perceive life and shapes my personality.  I've always mostly had women as friends, male friends generally I lost interest in talking to quickly, and I don't typically udnerstand their line of thinking/reasoning to begin with.

That's Colette quote sums it up really well for me.  "“I have nothing to say to men and never had.  Judging from the little time I’ve spent with them, their usual conversation is sickening.  Besides, they bore me.  I believe,” he hesitated, then concluded, “I believe I don’t understand men.”"

I have several male internet friends, but none who I'm especially close to.  We all go months without talking sometimes, but I do enjoy speaking  with them over shared interests.  William is the exception, but we have discussed these things at lengths and he feels almost (or maybe entirely) the same way as I do.  He doesn't really consider himsself "male" either.

I didn't like agender or non-binary or genderfluid or any of that, because I feel like they carry their own impressions that I didn't feel fit me.  When I was younger, I experienced a great deal of gender dysphoria.  I wanted to be born a girl.  Probably because I always got along better with the other girls school.  I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and her female friends.  My step-grandfather was in my life heavily and I loved him dearly, but I never connected with him on the same level I did with my grandmother.

I thought I may be trans when I was younger.  I looked into things, explored options, spoke with trans women and many of them were very pushy about transitioning.  I was under 18 at the time and one person actually threatened me with calling CPS, lying and saying I was abused, so I could go live with another family and could "be who I really was."

That experience put me off becoming trans a lot, if I'm being totally honest.  But also around that time I was questioning gender roles to to begin with.  Why are certain traits, behaviors and interests considered "female" and others are considered "male."  It didn't make sense to me.  So I just said fuck you to gender roles and started doing whatever I wanted and my gender dysphoria went away.  I still have aspects of my body I don't like and wish were different, but I think that's literally every human.  Mine may be based around my sex to a degree and wishing I looked more feminine, but the core of the problem is the same.

I went by  non-binary/agender for a while, but I didn't really love those because I felt like they came with their own implications, so I stil just called myself a male and would say like "male, kind of" or something when someone asked lol.  I generally say I'm straight, but I do find males to be sexually attractive, but I've never met a man who I was able to connect with emotionally on any level even close to resembling romantic attraction.  William is my only close male friend and I love him like a brother, not someone I want to put my dick into.  I know going by like "newer" more specific terms, I'd probably be like "agender/non-binary demisexual heteroromantic."  But I just feel like that is dumb.  I don't think a label needs to perfectly describe you, just give people a rough idea, personally.    

And like, I love trans people.  Let me say here, I do not view any issue with trans people and if they feel transitioning is their best shot at happiness, they should go that.  I am 100% believe in full bodily autonomy, you should be allowed to do anything with it that doesn't hurt someone.  I do think a minority of people have taken things with it too far and have started trying to "cancel" anyone who doesn't perfectly all in line with their idealogy, but the majority of trans people I've meant online and in person are not that, they just want to be happy in their own body.

That being sad, I do think a lot of "TERF" arguments are valid.  I think having spaces specifically for AFAB people is a good thing.  Being born male or female and raised and conditioned that way within a society WILL affect who you are as an adult, even if you were trans then and just didn't really realize it yet.  I like the "3rd gender neutral" bathroom idea, but I think it should go a step further.  Eliminate all multi stall bathrooms.  Every bathroom should be a single bathroom that anyone can use, regardless of sex or gender identity.

That all said, I view trans women as women.  And the above points aren't really fair to them,* I agree totally.  Like that is genuinely so shitty and my heart breaks for trans people who suffer through as much as they do.  It's not fair that it happens.  (Unfortunately a lot of things aren't fair.  Which doesn't mean "SUCK IT UP PUMPKIN" it just means shit is going to suck a lot and learning to roll with it is the best way to have any kind of peace of mind imo.  But I fully empathize.  I am no familiar with gender dysphoria.  And I still wish I was born female.

I just don't think transitioning is right for me because there's NOTHING that stops me from doing whatever I wanna do, wearing whatever I wanna wear, talking how I want to talk, etc as a male that I wouldn't be able to do.  So it doesn't matter all that much.  If other people want to transition, I fully support them and I think it should be easier for people to do so.

I love trans people, not to pull the "I even have some [x] friends!" card but basically every person I talk to regularly is a woman or trans/nb/queen/etc.  I do what I can to support them whenever I can.

I know some of what I said here probably comes across TERF-y, or whatever the male equivalent of that would be.  I don't claim that term, but I've been called it by random trans people online like hundreds of times.

If you feel like I'm a TERF or hate trans people or don't respect you or what you go through, by all means block/unfollow/message me to d iscuss it further.  If you unfollow, I get it, you won't offend me or anything.  Most of this is just me working out/posting my gender identity again because I feel good about it now really.  The trans stuff is just like there to try to add context of why I don't call myself trans.

(Kinda sidenote: honestly I've been calling myself "queer" more and more.  It's vague and doesn't give any specific impression other than "not cis opposite attracted person" and I think that's a good way to describe myself lol.)

Sorry this is long, sorry if this is confusing, I didn't proofread at all and sorry if this upsets you.  I'm happy to talk with you if you are upset about anything or if you just want nothing to do with someone like me, that's totally fine!

Anyway, if you read all of this, I tank you.  I know it's way too long but I just had some thoughts and feelings I felt relevant to things today and wanted to get  them out.

Love you. <3 Marcus

[genoshaisforlovers]

Reproductive health has become one of the major political topics of our time and I see many feminists, usually referred to as "white feminists" and "TERFs" who are bewildered at the fact that old men don't understand how ridiculous it seems that they are making life and death impacting laws over specific body parts that they don't even have.

I understand the logic behind this but let me explain how these kinds of things work

If you have a uterus can get your period try to imagine you don't. You don't have to try to imagine you have penis, simply try to imagine if you only about menstruation as well as the average guy and then imagine if someone explained it to you

For one week every month your hormone levels will drop causing the lining of one of your organs to be shed and for that entire week it will come out of your genitals along with a constant flow of blood. Sometimes working lining sticks together in a blood clot and you are constantly passing them at different sizes. Gross but it actually seems much harder when you factor in the effect hormones and blood loss has on someone. Cramping, headaches, nausea, diarrhea, anemia, insomnia, and those are just the most common symptoms people have.

And as soon as it stops your body heals itself in the best way I possibly can for you to give birth to a child and if you don't get pregnant be doing it again next month. Adding to the frustration is has physically you also live in a world where people judge you as abnormal to a point that it will limit how successful you'll be in every aspect of your life. It's so shameful that you do everything you possibly can to hide it from everyone.

You hide your tampons, freak out over a little bit of blood on your pants, make it look like blue Gatorade on commercials so most people grow up thinking all those pads were for people who were incontinent.

Yes, it would be great if we had equality but we don't. For whatever reasons the people who can grow a working penis are in charge. You simply have to try harder. And from most men's perspectives actually have a little bit of involuntary privilege already because menstruation is kept in whispers and it's created a culture where because women are looked down upon because of things like having a uterus people pamper them. Women have an excuse to get out of anything and the only way to prove it to a man would be to put the two of you in a sexual situation. Life is generally easier for women because they may have to pay for tampons and whatever else their insurance doesn't cover but they are constantly getting free meals and there'll always be some guy willing to give her anything else she needs. Not that that's okay; that women shouldn't depend on living off of gifts from men even if we all agree on that there's nothing to do about it right this second. Men get more jobs so they can support themselves and the females in their life. Society can't just simply stop until things are figured out and wait for the right people to be in office, it would hurt women as much as men.

I know that this is probably a little hard to admit to but at least to admit to yourself, you can understand how men could feel the way they do and simply be unable to understand everything. You can understand because it's exactly the same way you feel toward disabled people.

Right?

You don't not like disabled people. You know disabled people, some in your family, you broke a leg and spent one summer in a wheelchair so you get it. In fact, you have allergies or "a bit of OCD." Of course you don't know what it's like to be in a disabled body but it's not completely foreign and not even all disabled people are the same so even if you are disabled you can't claim to know what everyone's problems are.

It's not like disabled people have to keep their disability hidden. Everyone knows that there are disabled people and aside from a few crazy people everyone usually tries to help them. People have to use wheelchairs or something obviously have no way to keep that hidden and that sucks but there are also a lot of disabled people who have things you can't see, like their disability is invisible, so they never have to worry about hiding anything because no one's going to really know how much they are suffering just by looking at them. Besides, you know what pain is and we are all human so no one can insist that you couldn't comprehend it because people are people and pain is pain.

And society already does a lot to help disabled people. There is legislation protecting them which was created by people who had no idea what they were talking about, kind of like with abortion legislation, but that legislation is changed all the time even if the only people who get to change it are more people that have no experience with the it.

And they get to stay home. They get to choose not work. They get to have privileges like their own bathroom stall and we all know how comfortable everyone is with who uses which toilet. They even get their own parking spaces but the spaces are right in the front and if anything happened more than often someone would see and do something because it's not like they live in a world cultured by bigotry toward people whose bodies don't work the right way.

And, and, they do get things for free unlike the free things men give women. They can get free meals without feeling degraded and it must be relatively easy to get these males and then shortly people would get at least one for each day of the week. And the lives of disabled people are important so there are definitely a lot of checks and balances in place to keep all this going smoothly. And people are doing it; I'm sure someone in my city is doing it. Housing is also free and it should go just as easily as the meals. Disabled people can get money for rent or free rent in a group home which normal people pay for. It's the normal people of all genders and sexualities to equally support disabled people who were born into a world where society simply wasn't structured to accommodate people like them. Disabled people do get paid less, like literally as low as $0.22 an hour in America, but they also have to work less and of course it would be impossible to live off of such little money and work more, you would never break even let alone survive. So it's like disabled people are all required to be completely dependent on normal people was that they want to or not.  And there's nothing to feel ashamed for for feeling normal; normal is just simply regular, it just means like, the average. Like the degree that society deems acceptable.

Oh, and, not everyone is born disabled. A lot of people aren't disabled until they are adults, and there's not many people living with genetic mutations resulting in disability because they all die pretty quickly which isn't so bad because it's really just putting them out of their misery. It honestly must feel like kind of a relief to the people around when they do die, having to take care of someone like that is really sad. Sometimes families do some horrible things but it can't be that many more disabled children that are murdered in Third World countries like England. Obviously there are some people that aren't going to want to have a disabled child or friend or partner but everyone loves their children and their nice people like you out there and no one has sexual hangups on prevailing social bigotry so it's completely fine.

Don't forget they also get really great healthcare like in Canada or Australia which you don't know all the particulars about, even if you are Canadian or Australian because who really looks into the laws affecting people that aren't like them? And it may be just normal people who have ever been in charge of or changed those laws but people are better than they used to be. People aren't that ignorant or hateful. No one would ignore like, and entire genocide of disabled people aside from the one that happened last year in yet another Third World country, Japan.

And since we are on dark things let me mention everyone has to deal with violence and rape, it can't possibly be that much worse for anyone who is disabled let alone GSM. Bigotry toward disabled people is not so embedded in our culture that assault and rape statistics would be in the 80–90s regardless of whether the person was white or not or a man or not. And you are sure it's not so much of a problem that given how ingrained this bigotry is that the only social identify they can identity as is disabled, that such a low bar with their race, their gender, their sexuality; nothing could be piled on that could make their likelihood of a happy life let alone survive any worse. But they could be so disassociated in society that disabled people (or is it people with disabilities? I can't remember if so whatever) are not seen as human. That raping a disabled person was the legal equivalent to having sex with an animal in some American states

things really aren't that bad unless you live in a bad place. Like, what? Eugenics is still illegal anywhere normal. It was only until three years ago that it became illegal to forcibly sterilize prisoners in California

BTW, your cities pride parade was handicap accessible because you saw handicap so they could obviously get in somehow and if they could get in they could obviously get in and do everything else

BTW part 2, your tweet or post about how not at the women's March, a trump protest, BLM event, wasn't meant for them. It wasn't meant for disabled people. When I didn't mention disability or disabled people I wasn't saying that they deserve what they get, I'm just saying that this particular thing you said wasn't about them. Unless you specifically say it's about them then nothing is about them. It is going to be dealt with, separately. Surely there must be someone helping anyway, who wouldn't help them? More people will help but they are busy with issues that they are a little more familiar about because

like that ugly is an incredibly ableist term given that disabled people had to wear a sign around her neck that said "ugly" because to acknowledge that means you would have to stop saying normal words, words you didn't even know were offensive and that everyone says them and you haven't heard anyone complain about before. It would be inconvenient. Not that disabled people are an inconvenience, this isn't about them. None of this is about them.

One more thing: I get irony but also satire

[howtospotaterf]

“TERF Rhetoric”

I see this term bounced around a lot, and unfortunately it can be used to mean a lot of things. If I read this in a post it could mean literal code words and phrases directly attacking trans women, it could mean discourse commonly found among well-known TERFs, or it could mean someone is using it to mean an unrelated form of exclusion within the larger community. And these are very different things worth distinguishing between.

Unfortunately transphobia has been in feminism far longer than trans acceptance and many well known and foundational writers in feminist literature are TERFs. This should not mean that we end feminism, but it should mean that we are careful about how we approach writings who’s authors were transphobic. Many commonly cited and honestly valid elements of feminism do come from TERF writers: compulsory heterosexuality, for example, was coined and written on extensively by a terf, and any discussion of socialization with regard to gender will be traced back to radical feminism, and likely have been in contact with some TERF along the way.

The common trend of actual TERF rhetoric is to be something you would agree with. They are good at that. The actual hate message is usually hidden under several layers of obfuscation, so they can recall the “completely reasonable post” that you interacted with later when making their case against trans people’s existence. It is insidious and well worth being vigilant against. And they do it deliberately:

There are plenty more of these.

Essentially the best defense is to know what you’re reading, and be able to explain clearly why something is trans excluding radical feminism. And to do that, thanks to overuse of this term, we probably need to make things more clear.

So to break things down better, and declutter a useful word, here are the main types of things people mean when they say “TERF Rhetoric”:

First: Coded Direct Attacks. You can find a number of these reblogged or archived here, as they tend to be the post that are easiest to identify as definitively TERF. These would be posts about “intruders in women’s spaces”, or people “calling themselves gay because they have an undercut”, or I’ll even include talking about “TRAs/Trans Rights Avtivists.” They’re deliberately misleading posts that sound true until you realize they mean trans people. Of any of the kinds of “TERF rhetoric” that you’re likely to see, assuming you don’t frequent TERF forums, they’re the most directly harmful. The transphobia can usually be seen in the post itself if you read it carefully, which they are counting on most people not doing.

Second: Deliberate Ways to Shift Rhetoric and Identity Politics. These tend to be less obvious. I’ve found posts talking about being “purely homosexual” to be worth investigating the origins of, and despite being an issue much more to do with bisexuality, any discussion of “availability to men” warrants the question of who OP is calling men. There are less concrete code words in Second-Type TERF rhetoric, but their purpose is essentially the same as it is in First-Type attacks: they want you to agree with whatever they say on the surface which is deliberately worded in a way that is open to transphobic interpretation later. The statement itself is usually not inherently transphobic, but will often have wording that is deliberately chosen for transphobic reasons.

Third: Topics and Dialogue Styles Often Seen in TERFs. This is where I think that we should be extremely careful about what we are calling TERF rhetoric. Because TERFs have been deliberately speaking into trans accepting spaces making statements designed to be agreed with, as seen above, it isn’t surprising that some people would be picking up their verbal quirks; and by TERF’s definition of also being feminist, some topics they take up are unrelated to trans issues.

Third Type issues are worth knowing about, and if you see a lot of them from the same person it’s worth finding out what they think of trans issues. But do not go around calling trans women TERFs because they’re posting about the word Queer. Don’t assume everyone talking about vaginas is a TERF or even transphobic—trans people of many genders have vaginas. People speaking about men hitting on lesbians are actually usually not making a coded statement about trans women, because men do hit on lesbians and it’s a problem that should be addressed. Do your due diligence if you see a lot of third-type discourse from the same person, but ultimately most of the people you see interacting with this won’t be TERFs, provided you have some taste with who you put on your dash.

Last Type: Other Forms of Community Exclusion. In short: not Trans Excluding Radical Feminists. I understand being upset by or calling out aphobes, or biphobes, or whatever else but I will be very short: if it is not about Trans issues on some level, then it’s not TERF rhetoric. Do not appropriate this. Make your own words. As you can see above it can be under several layers of obfuscation or degrees of separation! But all TERF rhetoric comes back around to deliberate and active transphobia.

[transfemdiscourse]

Downgrading Your Enemy

I think the reason why people have exclusionary politics is really complicated and no one could sum it up in one post.

Anyway, here is my attempt to sum up why people have exclusionary politics in one post-- but first, a series of tangents.

So our enemies, patriarchy, capitalism, institutions and their defenders, these overarching structures, we all grew up with them. We’ve internalized their logic, to some extent or another, most of us can spend a significant portion of our lifetimes deconstructing all the ways in which our thinking has been influenced by the times we’ve grown in.

Few, if any, will comprehend the true scope of that reality. Call me a Hegelian, but I agree, there isn’t really consciousness without others, there isn’t really a self conception without the way in which others conceive of you.

There isn’t a Lighthouse without the ships. And that means that both Lighthouses, the ideal from across the fog, and the reality you see once you’ve finally grown up and gotten close. 

It’s a lot for the human mind to process. It’s difficult, for example, to have compassion for every human being on earth. It takes work, and perhaps no one is up to the task. I was interviewing an author recently, and she pointed out that we compartmentalize, we shrink the amount of people we care about. We care about our family the most, our people (the ones in our immediate vicinity) a little less, our country a little less, and so on. This way, we have an amount of people to care about we can process.

We have goals that feel achievable. They do not really need to be rational, then. 

It is for this same reason that we punch down. We get angry at TERFs on Tumblr, when the larger patriarchal institutions pose a much greater existential threat. We spend our time trying to win arguments on here, because that feels achievable. We can win arguments, it doesn’t take that long, and no one really has to win; our friends will congratulate us either way. 

It stands to reason, then, that this is the same reason people choose to be TERFs, and sorry, but yes, transmedicalists too. 

When TERFs punch down at trans people, particularly trans women, they are bringing the patriarchy down to a level they feel they can beat. Dismantling overarching structures is hard; we’ve been trying for a long time and it can often feel like we haven’t really made any progress. It doesn’t feel like a fight we can win, and that leads to despair. 

The kind of despair the conservative feels when it seems like the world keeps getting worse and capitalism isn’t solving the problems.

But hurting trans women? That’s achievable. It’s not even particularly hard. Trans people, particularly trans people who still feel bothered to engage with these politics, are usually at a pretty sensitive time in their lives. All it takes is some good old standbys, making fun of the way trans women typically look, finding their pictures and making fun of those if you can, calling them a man over and over. If there’s one trans woman it doesn’t bother, no worries, there’s another one it will.

And to someone who has downgraded patriarchy into the form of these vulnerable women, each time one cries, or loses their temper, or deletes their account, feels like a victory. It feels like a win, in a world where wins seem impossible, or at best they seem so large they don’t feel like something you achieved. 

The same goes for transmeds. They look at GNC trans people, or MOGAI identities, and they feel like it has to be them. It has to be them, because I can beat them. I can’t beat cisnormativity, I can’t beat essentialism, but I can beat teenagers on tumblr. 

Because dedicating yourself to fighting real problems-- structures, social constructs-- actually sucks. You will despair, often. You will feel as if it’s hopeless and no one will be able to convincingly cheer you up. 

But, and this is for any of you TERFs, transmeds, fascists, whoever, who are still reading, there’s a benefit to fighting this fight. It’s real. 

The comfort you give people, the gratitude they give you in return, the friends you make, they’re all real, and lasting. It’s the flower that never fades, the metal that never tarnishes, the house that never crumbles. It’s scary, I know, and it’s almost too much to think about, I know, but I’ll be here.

And if no one else will be here for you, then you be here for others, and I promise, you and I, we’ll make so many more people like us. Maybe that’s how we can start to change our culture. 

This is probably the last post I’ll write for this blog, but my messages will stay open. I’ll respond to them when I can. 

Take care of yourselves.

[sophygurl]

WisCon 43 panel Learning to Hear the Dog Whistle

[Just wanted to say this was one of the panels I suggested and I’m so glad it went through and that I was able to make it to the panel. This is something so many of us need to work on, and I’ve made it a practice to point out when I think someone has unwittingly passed on a dog whistle-ish message, in large part because I hope/want for others to do the same for me when and if I do it, myself. Anyway, I learned a lot and this panel was really good.]

Political dog whistles are meant specifically to target one audience who agrees with you, and perhaps to trick others into agreeing with your subtle and covert language. It's important for us to be able to recognize these dog whistles, often used by racist, transphobic, and other bigoted groups. How do we learn to listen for and recognize these whistles when they are used specifically to dodge our ears?

Moderator: Heidi Waterhouse. Panelists: Seth Frost, Keffy R. M. Kehrli

Disclaimers: These are only the notes I was personally able to jot down on paper during the panel. I absolutely did not get everything, and may even have some things wrong. Corrections by panelists or other audience members always welcome. I name the mod and panelists because they are publicly listed, but will remove/change names if asked. I do not name audience members unless specifically asked by them to be named. If I mix up a pronouns or name spelling or anything else, please tell me and I’ll fix it! 

Notes:

Heidi started the panel off saying that the panel was obviously not full of all kinds of representation (example: the panelists were all white), so they were going to miss some stuff. The hope was that they could impart more generally how to recognize dog whistles. [They also had a lot of audience additions later on]

She also said that when we talked about racism and antisemitism, etc. - we’re talking about a set of behaviors vs. individual people. She suggests giving someone a chance to walk back a dog whistle you’ve just heard them use and asking them if they know what they’ve just said.

Seth said he knows more white supremacy dog whistles than even he’s comfortable with, and he points them out whenever he sees them.

Keffy doesn’t know as many as he’d like, but he lives on social media and finds it important to recognize them whenever possible.

Heidi took a moment to define dog whistles - intentionally coded language meant to be covertly used within a group or community. For example: “interested in ethnic heritage” ~might~ mean someone is really into their Scottish heritage and actually eats haggis on purpose, but it also might mean they’re a white supremacist. 

Seth used an example of a time the host of a TV show he was watching had a spider web tattoo on his elbow - without context he didn’t know if it meant the host just really thought spiders were cool or if he was a white supremacist. For context, Seth would have needed to see other tattoos, or what his political affiliations were, etc. Another example is Norse stuff, which can be totally innocuous, but is also something white supremacists are co-opting. 

Keffy brought up seeing the number 88 on people’s user names - it might mean they were born in the year 1988, or it could be a white supremacist signifier. 

Seth added that many Nazi’s are not smart. They use this “bullshit numerology” where 88 = HH = Hitler. However, 88 is also a lucky number in Chinese traditions, so that’s another example of something being used in multiple ways and not knowing without context how someone is using it.

Seth also talked about the 14 words - a white supremacist mission statement. So “14 words” or even just the number 14 can be a white supremacist dog whistle.

Heidi brought up the fact that we’re using dog whistle in it’s negative sense, but all in-group communities have their own language they use to recognize one another. 

One example Heidi noticed was a show Forged in Fire about blacksmiths. A lot of them wore Thor stuff due to that connection, but slowly over time less and less of them continued to wear Thor-themed things as they’d had it pointed out to them how white supremacists were using those symbols.

Keffy talked about one way to notice if something is being used as a dog whistle or not is to pay attention to who shows up when you see it. When, for example, TERFs swarm to a post using specific language, it’s time to look up the terms used and understand how they’re being used. 

Keffy explained what TERF meant, and used scare-quotes around “radical feminist” because he doesn’t see them as being particularly feminist or radical - especially not in the sense it was used in the 80′s. [yup]

Keffy also mentioned the use of pattern matching. If someone is using XX or XY in their bio - well, that’s not bad in and of itself, but if you take a moment to look at their page and you see them harassing a lot of trans people, then you have your answer.

Seth added that watching how they interact with others can be important. If you think they’ve used a dog whistle but aren’t sure, it’s okay to put some distance between you and them to just observe who they’re interacting with and how. 

Keffy said it can be important to have friends from many different groups, and if someone tells you that something is harmful to them - listen and believe them. We often learn by being told after accidentally reblogging or retweeting something, and that’s okay. You just have to believe that people know better about their own oppressions. 

Heidi talked about how bigots were using the triple parenthesis around names of Jewish people to mark them on twitter - some Jewish people and allies started to use the triple parenthesis for themselves intentionally as a sort of “I am Spartacus” protest. There was a big discussion about this in regards to reclaiming vs. causing harm due to generational trauma. It was important, in that instance, to listen to the Jewish people whose trauma was being triggered, and to believe them about not doing this.

Keffy added that he stopped retweeting as much from people who were using it because his followers had told him it was a trigger for them. 

Seth said, as a Jew and trans person, “If I ask you to stop using a hurtful thing, that’s a big show of trust”, so he thinks about that when people come to him in a similar manner. 

Heidi posed the question of having scripts for when we call out our friends, or when it’s time to ping an ally to help us out.

Keffy said he’s not that organized to have a script, but he does have some friends that he’s asked to take over. Gave an example of taking T and shifting pronouns, had a friend with a more masculine sounding voice call the pharmacy to ask about it first due to concerns about not being taken seriously.

Keffy also talked about the term calling in, rather than calling out, which is a more personal and quiet approach. He’ll usually DM someone or talk to them privately about these things - unless the discussion has already spiraled out in public.

Seth also said he doesn’t have a script for this, but in person he’ll usually just comment with something like “oh that’s gross” and if asked why, he’ll explain with as few words as possible. 

Heidi agreed, saying that person is probably freaking out internally, and won’t hear a lengthy response anyway.

Keffy said no matter how long he’s been working on social justice stuff, when he’s called out/in, he still feels shame or defensiveness or both. It can take time to work through that, so expecting a full discussion right away might not be realistic.

Keffy also advised that if you ask an ally to do this for you, make sure they’re actually getting the right point across.

Heidi shifted the conversation to how to support people being targeted. The first step is to believe them when they tell you something. The point of these dog whistles is to seem like they aren’t a big deal, when they are. 

Seth agreed, saying they throw just that much doubt about how they’re being used, so that people aren’t sure if it’s something bad or not. He advised defaulting to at least a base level of politeness when asked to stop using something - you can just stop. 

Keffy gave an example of “drinking the kool-aid” to refer to something being cult-like. Keffy gave some background on the phrase coming from what happened in Jonestown. The leader was very abusive and he did dry runs of giving his followers laced drinks. They were punished and even killed if they didn’t drink it, which made it safer for them to assume it was fake again and to just drink it. Knowing all of this, we can see that no one was really consenting to drinking the laced drinks. Hundreds of people died, and their family members and loved ones can be very triggered by the callous and casual use of this phrase popping up in what seems like otherwise-innocuous instances. 

Heidi gave another example - death marches. These kinds of phrases are used so commonly that we sometimes forget, or don’t even initially know, the history of them or the gravity of that history. 

Seth talked about the trouble with hearing dog whistles when other people don’t. It can be very isolating to have other people saying “no I don’t hear anything.”

Heidi said a panel like this could easily become a “you’re not aware/angry/anxious enough” discussion, but really the world expands more when we learn more about it. 

Seth talked about the main stream media often using antisemitic language that they may or may not be aware of, or mean. Examples: coastal elites, bankers. Keffy added that it’s gotten to the point where if he hears George Soros’s name brought up, he just stops listening. [RIGHT?!]

Heidi put it to the audience to give more dog whistle examples for us to be aware of.

One audience member talked about the “from (whichever city is nearest)” being code for black, poor, and violent. It was pointed out that Chicago is used as code for this nationwide. 

Another audience member talked about Reagan’s “welfare queen” mythology that was put together on purpose and is still ongoing today.

Someone else in the audience asked how to tell if someone is trying to recruit you as an ally or just accidentally passing on a dog whistle they weren’t aware of.

Heidi advised looking for other clues in their language and interactions. Keffy added that this is why dog whistles are so insidious. The welfare queen myth became a meme that people began to believe in. So if you explain the history and context of it’s origins and watch how people respond to it - bigots often respond to these sorts of things by telling on themselves. You can tell in the reaction how they meant it once it’s pointed out to them.

An audience member gave another example  - the peanut gallery. It has racist origins due to segregation - black people had to sit in the balconies and the myth was that they were unruly and tossing peanuts into the theater.

Another audience member talked about “urban” being used as code for black people in a negative sense. This audience member is a white teacher of mostly non-white students and urban can be used professionally as just a definition but she has to be careful about usage due to it’s other association.

Someone else in the audience talked about intelligence, but I missed most of what they said about it. 

Keffy added on to that, by adding that IQ is just racist, and if it’s not being used to be racist, well then it’s still ableist so it’s still wrong. [good points]

An audience member talked about how eugenics is used as a dog whistle for “less intelligent people shouldn’t breed.” 

Another audience member talked about gas stations and other places often owned by immigrants proudly displaying signs saying “American owned”. This is code for saying “this is the white gas station” for racists and xenophobes. 

Someone else in the audience brought up the issue of faux dog whistles, such as the ok symbol. Another audience member replied that the problem is that they become associated with the bigotry anyway. 

Seth added that everything is made up at some point or another. 

Keffy expanded on that by saying the problem with “just for lulz” dog whistles is that this is how white supremacists recruit a lot of teens and young adults. It might not initially mean what it comes to mean, but it draws people in, which is the point of it.

An audience member brought up the dog whistles of merit, merit-based, and meritocracy - a commentary on reverse racism and affirmative action. 

Keffy talked about commentary in science fiction genres about how there’s no more fun adventure stories because of all of these serious issues and social justice inclusion - codes for bigotry.

Heidi discussed ableism and how lots of times people just don’t know they’re using ableist language, but other times it’s done on purpose as gatekeeping. One example was putting “athletic” as what someone is looking for in a dating profile. Keffy added that you could do a whole panel on dog whistles in dating profiles.

Seth offered the example of people referencing Idiocracy as a dog whistle for eugenics. 

An audience member brought up people talking about dueling accommodations - which is a real thing - but it’s often used to say that we shouldn’t even bother trying to accommodate people. Also gatekeeping through issues like service animals, claiming people aren’t “disabled enough” to use them, etc.

Keffy complained about things like signs saying “be healthy, use the stairs”.

An audience member talked about people casually claiming they have OCD or ADHD when it’s not true.

Heidi asked the panelists and audience to consider some transphobic dog whistles and gave the example “real women.”. 

Seth said when people put “bio female” or “Webster’s dictionary defines womanhood as....” (which by the way isn’t even what Webster’s says but whatever). 

Heidi talked about cis women even being attacked for seeming trans - both sides of the political spectrum tend to do this one. 

Heidi also talked about fatphobia used in this way, such as making fat jokes about Trump - but that hurts all fat people. 

Keffy brought up people who claim that cis is a slur.

I raised my hand from the audience to bring up people claiming queer is a slur as a way of excluding lots of groups beyond gay and lesbian, like trans people and asexual people. Keffy added that this is an effective dog whistle because it sounds social justice-y. Keffy also talked about “get the L out” - lesbians wanting their own group outside of the queer community.

Seth added the phrase “gender critical” as another one that sounds on the surface like a good thing, but is used by TERFs. 

Keffy said they often tweak and claim terms that trans and non-binary people use to make fun of them or take power away from them.

An audience member brought up people using respect as a key-word to keep minorities from being angry and standing up for themselves.

Heidi brought up racist school dress codes, and asked people to add more dog whistles to the panel’s # -  #HearTheDogWhistle. It’s a process to learn these things.

Seth closed by saying if someone tells you a thing is problematic - stop. Do some research. Even if it turns out you disagree with them in the end, it doesn’t hurt to stop and find out more. Respect other people. 

[radfem-moira]

tras made a chrome and firefox add-on to mark pages, social media profiles etc as terfs. It's called shinigami eyes and i think we should massively report it to firefox, chrome and github before it's used for harassement

Pretty sure such extensions have existed for a long time, whether used by neonazis or antifas, to mark people whose opinions are considered contrary to the movement who made the extension. I’m not sure what we can do about it, honestly. I’m also not sure how different it is than the system already in place, which is word of mouth and mob mentality.

I think people need to realize that this sort of all-encompassing filter edited by other users, yes, even “only trustworthy, human-validated users”, is not a reliable way to identify hateful people. What if one of those “trustworthy users” decides to use their position to get back at an ex whom they think wronged them, but isn’t truly transphobic? What if not everyone on the group agrees on what a “TERF” really is (and they probably won’t, seeing how I’ve seen people call others ‘terfy’ or ‘transphobic’ for a bunch of bewildering reasons) and someone’s criteria for the term are too lenient, leading them to flagging people who’ve never even uttered the word “transgender” in their whole lives?

Also, this system encourages an unhealthy amount of black-and-white thinking. I know it’s easier to think to yourself that there’s only two kinds of people in the world, those with you (who agree with you on every point) and those against you (who disagree with you, even on minor things). But the reality is, alt-righters and radfems’ opposition to pro-trans ideology does not stem from the same source and does not call for the same actions. To put someone who says “I think transitioning is not a good coping mechanism for gender dysphoria because it reinforces gender roles and has deleterious side-effects” on the same level as someone who says “I think transitioning is bad because it goes against God-ordained gender roles” is dishonest and, honestly, more harmful to you as a trans person than it is to the people you’re criticizing. It minimizes the danger of the latter category of people - the right-wingers who are against women’s rights and gay rights - while exaggerating those of the former.

Here are some valid concerns about this extension on Reddit:

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

(1/6) In advance, sorry if this sounds clipped but I'm rewriting an 11 part ask because that's just too much and it feels like it would be rude to send such a long question. Somehow it's still long. So my background is: mostly used to aro and ace communities, don't have much experience with the lgbt+ community at large (trying to work on that), the way the aro/ace communities break concepts like attraction down really helped me figure out what my orientation was. Questioning my gender now and

(2/6) having a hard time finding resources that help me clarify my feelings instead of making me even more confused. I started researching thinking that they would be similar to aro and ace resources, going to the root of things and saying “What even is attraction, let’s define it” and breaking it down into chunks instead of trying to tackle the whole thing at once (see the split attraction model). Instead I found many lists of labels and pronouns, trans 101 that was at the same time too basic (3/6) and not basic enough, and “Gender is a feeling, masculinity/femininity/androgyny/etc are feelings too, no one can tell you what your gender is but you”. My request isn’t for anyone to tell me what my gender is, I’ll figure that out myself. But I feel I’m lacking the tools to do it. So does anyone have any resources, be they articles/blogs/life experiences and stories written by trans people/etc that breaks things like the feelings of gender as a whole, masculinity, femininity, androgyny,(4/6) agender, and dysphoria down (not coded behaviors or presentation, but what they actually FEEL like. These are the things that I’m most confused about and most want some sort of answer or definition for) in the style aro/ace resources do for attraction/orientation? To figure this out I need some sort of starting point or foothold or anchor for this instead of “it’s a feeling” when I don’t know what that feeling could be. But “Nobody can tell you what you are” sounds much more like defeat(5/6) than freedom to me rn. I’ve heard it said that gender is experienced differently by everyone, and if it’s really just some nebulous unidentifiable feeling that literally cannot be put into words then I can learn to live with the fact I’ll just never understand it, but… it just seems like there HAS to be some sort of commonality in the feeling of gender, the feeling of femininity/masculinity/all the rest that could be prevalent enough to say what that feeling IS and used to help people (6/6) figure out better who they are and who they want to be. For the ones like me who don’t even know what they’re feeling or what they want to be, just that they don’t want to feel like they do now.

Kii says:You’ve got a lot here, and you’re right. Gender is really confusing, and it really is something that 100 different people will give you 100 different answers about. Some people do feel their gender is best described by more visible aspects, such as behaviors, clothing, desired body, hobbies, etc, but some people don’t, and for them, it is just a feeling that isn’t describable, they just know internally what gender they are and can’t always explain why. 

However, just because there are feelings doesn’t mean that everyone’s feelings are the same, like the commonality you’re mentioning. You know the old “how do we know that your green is the same as my green?” Two people could be seeing the exact same item, both agree that it’s green, but how does anyone know that if I saw the same item through your eyes, I would still call it green? Your eyes might be structured completely differently than mine. Your green might be my purple, etc. I think the same goes for the words “masculine” and “feminine”- I can give you words that I associate with each, but a lot of people might disagree. 

Think of a person that you consider to be very masculine (whether they ID as a man or not)- why do you see them as masculine? Is it because of how they dress? What their body looks like? Because they like cars, sports, etc? How they act or other elements of their personality? Do the same for someone who you feel is very feminine (whether they ID as a woman or not). How is your “masculine” person different than your “feminine” person?

Androgyny is usually described as the intersection or mix of masculinity and femininity, so to figure out what you associate with androgyny, you kind of have to figure that out first.

We have a whole page about dysphoria, since that’s a more concrete concept. There are lots of descriptions there on how different people describe dysphoria and how it feels.

We also have this post, which a lot of people have tried to make helpful to questioning people, as well as this ask where various mods described what gender feels like to them.

Harper Says:I would also suggest a broader understanding of gender (and sexuality). You’re looking for a commonality that is not found uniformly in lived/expressed experiences - perhaps you might find it fleetingly, strangely, but I doubt it will come with much uniform clarity. The assumption that there has to be a commonality, a universality, is one that potentially assumes a (purely) medical/psychological account of gender and sexuality. Experiences of gender will necessarily intersect with other forms of systematic oppression: race, disability, and so on; and so each account of gendered experience has to be uncommon.Try instead understanding gender as part of a wider system of oppression rigged to benefit white cis men. In this, bodies, activities, sexualities, (and many other things) are codified and performed within a system of oppression. This is the way as far as I, and many other thinkers, understand gender. When you ask for gender as “not coded behaviors or presentation, but what they actually FEEL like” I think you misunderstand that gender is easily and always both. The performances, the risks, the transgressions, that commonly make up transgender experiences are inescapably coded behaviours - we don’t live in a society that isn’t oppressive. That is why there is such fear and thrill in a trans woman shaving her legs for the first time, or a trans man using the men’s bathroom for the first time. The emotion and feeling wouldn’t be there if such transgressions weren’t coded in a system of oppression that frowns upon such behaviours. Gender is always on some level something that is done and the doing is bound up with being. To strive for a definition that reduces one to the other or excludes one or the other is as far as I understand it, a misunderstanding, and this is perhaps where your confusion comes from.With this understanding I would then say that it is not very surprising that you’re finding dead-ends and confusion by trying to parse an understanding of gender through split-attraction model type thinking. This is a relatively recent way of thinking about sexuality within the LGBT community, (one that I personally find no stock in), butting up against around thirty years of queer feminist thought, and a whole history of LGBT lives and experiences. You will probably find that trying to think through gender in ace/aro modes of thought is an impossible task without this appreciation of transgender history or an understanding of heterosexuality as the oppressive action of gender.I’m not surprised then, that you find defeat instead of freedom; for many, gender is something that is survived. Freedom can only come with the abolition of gender, that is the end of the “material, social, and economic dominance of men and exploitation of women” (Escalante). So to speak of a commonality, perhaps start reading about how these oppressive systems work. Understanding all of this is not an easy task. Below I’ll feed a few pointers on a theoretical level, and as such can throw up inaccessible language. My hope is that if you do struggle with any of it, from here you can google keywords and hopefully find more sources that suit you better.For the theoretical exploration of such see: Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, and Monique Wittig’s The Straight Mind and Other Essays (see One is Not Born a Woman - I haven’t yet managed to find a pdf for the whole book). Or key words: material feminism, Butler, gender performance, heterosexuality, the straight mind. CW: (this will be quite broad but I know Wittig talks about:) pornography, sexual harassment, slavery.For an account of gender which explores these concepts see Susan Stryker’s My Words to Victor Frankenstein…. In this Stryker mixes a lived personal experience with gender as a trans woman alongside theoretical musings. Key words: transfeminism, transgender studies, transgender rage. CW: surgery, suicide, TERF stuff, pregnancy, birth.I would also recommend investing yourself in transgender voices and histories, so you can see how a varied approach to gender throughout history has been undertaken and lived. How complexities and contradictions have been embodied and embraced complexly by trans individuals. See Paris is Burning for what has become an important moment in LGBT cinema and history. CW death, accounts of violence, mentions of surgery, talk about sex.Also check out One From the Vaults a trans history podcast by Morgan M. Page. (Also available on iTunes, etc. I think.) In this engrossing podcast, Page tells the stories of various trans - or at least gender transgressive - people throughout history, including clips of them, letters, interviews, etc.. It comes with “all the dirt, gossip, and glamour from trans history” and so shows the variety of our trans ancestors throughout history, good and bad, happy and sad; encompassing all different ways of doing gender and different ways of being.In terms of your own personal questioning of gender, I would do as I advised here. Do gender: evoke man, evoke woman, evoke neither. Try things out, see what you feel. Explore yourself and your own embodiment and explore the feelings that arise out of this. At the end of the day, gender isn’t something that originates from books and articles, it is lived and done out in the world.I wish you the very best on your journey!