#you are in THE women and queers hobby space!!!!!!!!!!!

[velvetvexations]

___ is really just proudly admitting to sexually harassing intersex people now. (None of the people she harassed are "AFAB trans women" anyway, that's just what she assumes any intersex person is if they won't tell her what's in their pants)

I promise you that if I talk about her she's just going to jerk off about it, she has no audience relative to major TRFs like apricot-aligator, the best thing to do is block and try to forget her.

TRFs really do an AMAZING job of proving that radfem bullshit and manosphere bullshit are basically exactly the same worldview taken to SLIGHTLY different conclusions Like it's always been like that but when you get people unironically saying shit like "women are allowed to wear pants now so TEE EMM EEs aren't oppressed at all anymore but maybe they should be because of all the power that being able to give birth inherently gives them, cisfeminism has gone too far smh, femoids AFABs don't deserve rights actually" and "oh so you're saying I can just exist without either hurting women or becoming their loyal knight? That women can speak for themselves without me!? That I could even be HURT by a pathetic, weak, delicate little WOMAN!? You're saying I'm not a real man!? How DARE!! Get behind me, milady, I'll protect you from this foul ruffian who would speak such cruel blasphemy!" and calling these super progressive intersectional transfeminist things to say it really does make it all that much more obvious

it's really funny they have a new hobby calling transandrophobia Nazism "reactionary" ain't it

TRF transmascs after headcanoning the flavour of the month as transfem and putting TME in their bios: Alright that’s enough activism for now 👍

I owe them so much.

>see someone post a funny joke including trans men >check the comments >people somehow instantly joking about how transandophobia isn’t real and is made up by delusional women Why. It literally wasn’t even related I’m gonna scream

I'm sorry anon. <3

I'm so incredibly frustrated about the whole "transandrophobia isn't real" stuff because I can literally be like "A lot of trans and queer spaces, especially with younger people, see masculinity as inherently bad an actively discourage it and that's bad for trans men since masculinity is what most are transitioning towards" and get the answer of "so you hate trans women" if I use the words transandrophobia or anti-transmasculinity

So you hate trans women?

“No one is immune to being reactionary or insecure. If you have a reactionary gut response to what is to you a new form of progressive politics, that’s something to meditate on and unpack on your own terms.” Sometimes people disagree after thinking about it. This is not a difficult concept to understand.

No, it's transmisogynistic to breathe without a trans woman's permission, actually.

wild how a lot of the "trans-androphibia isnt real" boils down to "in My experience You haven't had this happen to you

lmao fr

I think it’s so funny when TRF people think being socialized into a gender is passively just looking at one of your parents and how they do the gender and if you happen to be looking at the parent who’s the opposite gender, you’re gonna be picking up that gender and be forever trans. When in actuality, both parents are going to be socializing you by showing how both genders act and literally TELLING you how both genders act. My mother told me men don’t cry, my father told me girls are more smarter. My mother told me girls are more sensitive, my father told me men must never show weakness. Socialization can be passive but unless your parents were neglecting you, it’s not ONLY passive and it’s never ONLY one gender. And sometimes, the socialization doesn’t even work.

Yeah TRFs are very confused by the concept of socialization because they heard how TERFs use it and just fully noped out of the entire concept because they're not clever enough to understand that TERFs wildly distort things to be worse than they are. It's amazing TERFs haven't convinced them to detransition because they seem to believe nearly everything they say.

The person who initially did the bomb threat against transmascs being a tankie is hilarious. Somehow idolizing powerful cis men who caused millions of deaths are a-okay but trans men? Yeah, die.

they just don't like trans men and kulaks ig

you're marked red on shinigami-eyes this extension really fell off the more people started using it fbjhgffd

moderation is also actively shit lol

‘it is bad to hate someone for an aspect of their identity they cannot control’ does not stop being true when the person is a cis man. what in the fucking world is happening. systemic oppression aside it is still fucking mean to hate someone for something they cannot control

eyyyup

saw a post about how hating trans men makes you transphobic and immediately saw someone in the notes saying its not transphobic when *i* do it because i have a fear of men and that includes trans men. hello?

(post about hating trans men being transphobic pt2) the direct quote from it is actually worse holy shit "the only reason im not considered transphobic is because i actually have a minor fear of men and that includes trans men. any other reason for hating trans men that isnt trauma or phobias is transphobia!!" this makes me feel really good about being a trans man and i feel very validated because people being afraid of me means im a real boy /sar

they should go hide in a hole somewhere while the rest of us get this activism thing done

in what capacity did jkr turn to terfism about trans men first? what do you mean by that?

the first thing that ever triggered her was trans men getting SRS, hating trans women came after

LBR the "only trans women get predatorjacketed and have spurious harassment campaigns against them" crowd has only ever been fucking disingenious b/c when predatorjacketing and harassment was happening primarily towards (mostly neurodivergent) cis women and transmascs online, they all said we were "too online" and "cared too much about fandom drama". I haven't trusted a single one of these motherfuckers since 2018 when they aggressively whitewashed the harassment me and my friends got from anti-shippers because "why are you arguing about cartoons with children online". And they do it to this day! Literally any time anyone goes "we tried telling you when antis were using all these strategies against us" they go "how dare you compare MY LIVED EXPERIENCE to FANDOM INFIGHTING" like people weren't getting spammed with accusations of being child molesters for years.

Yeah, all of that sucks too, and I'm so sorry.

[theophagie-remade]

Not sure whether this can be considered a hot take or whatever but something that I really dislike is that there really doesn't seem to be a distinction between fanbase and fandom in many people's minds anymore, which is really grating because you'll see comments from self proclaimed fandom members like "I like [thing] but I'm not one of those crazies who care about ships lol, weirdos 🤪". Because shipping is one of the core elements of fandom, so if you really can't stand it that much maybe the problem lays within the fact that you entered a community that does not fit you

(Which isn't to say that you have to ship something, anything, to be a fandom member, but accepting the existence of shipping as a common practice should be the minimum lol)

[ramenheim]

About prev reblogs: I have never seen TME used to complain about & demarcate cis men's behaviours.

Despite the term ostensibly lumping together *almost any gender configuration that isn't binarily trans woman*, the only times it's used recently is to complain about (trans) ppl that get lumped in with cis women (as intersex ppl trans or otherwise are *never* factored into this dichotomy anyways), including cis women themselves.

I have never once seen it used to delineate trans women from cis men, even as it gets used to delineate cis women's experiences from trans women's experiences. I have only seen /haphazard/ acknowledgement of non-binary experiences included in TMA, but only really as an afterthought or when it's framed as the precursor to 'fully realizing trans womanhood'. I've only seen intersex folks brought up if they elect to use the terms TME/TMA for themselves, with bizarro interrogations into 'how' they were raised/had their genitals 'corrected' only once they individually disagreed with the terminology or had a confounding opinion in a public discussion.

It is regularly used to delineate trans men from trans women; but its users almost uniformly deride any attempt by trans men to coin a term to describe their own unique combinatory transphobia that isn't TME; again despite TME literally just supposing to mean 'transmisogyny-exempt'.... so why would it be used to discuss trans men's *unique* experiences with hatred directed at the fact that they either "are/aren't (real) men" by anyone who wants them to suffer?

It's been *changed* into hastily recycled AGAB terminology bc of wider recognition of the flaws with /that/ but without the driving flaws of that **tool for analysis** ever being fully addressed; and therefore has gotten subsumed into the 'new euphemism' for the Innie vs Outie false dichotomy as its usage became more widespread.

I think it still is a useful discussion tool ONLY when it's viewed *as a tool* and not some inherent marker of identity. It is DEFINITELY just bigotry when used as a NOUN that has negative behaviours ascribed to it, esp in the context of complaining about trans men** as a whole homogenized group, instead of highlighting individual behaviours/belief systems for the harm they contribute to against TMA trans/nb ppl.

Young queers really need to stop swallowing the tradcath radfem juice of "Women Pure + Good & Men Bad + Evil" [**that tumblr feminism has always had a problem with] and acting like you aren't being a transphobic shitheel by adding the word Trans in front of it-- & This is ESPECIALLY a problem when non-trans "Allies" do this, as it sets up trans women for failure whenever they make a mistake/can be reframed as 'being a cause-traitor' since women are punished more harshly for any percieved failure of Righteousness, AND allows them further to enact their unbridled transphobia onto trans men (& enbys/genderqweirdos) and pass it off as 'being an ally to trans women'..... despite them just being extremely transphobic (+ misogynistic + homphobic + intersexist) & then hiding behind """"TMAs"""" as a negative PR meatshield.

TL;DR if you are using TME to mean (nc)AFAB in vent posts, just have the guts to fucking use that as the word & see how it reads then.

(**since transmasc & transfem do not imply either a 'starting' or 'finalized' gender state; they are personal adjectives in and of themselves. Please do not warp them into new innie vs outie binary divides).

[**see related: the raw ass treatment of 'AMAB enbys' on here and in similar online/irl "feminist" environments. (Which was one of the driving factors behind the original TMA/TME coinage & is where I still find useful inter-trans discussions utilizing it as a term; importantly I don't think the term should stop being used altogether!!)]

[dungeonmastersconsortium]

Thinking this morning about the twitter thread where someone said "we need more queer spaces that don't revolve around alcohol and aren't super loud, it's impossible to make new friends" and when people pointed out that it's actually really possible to make new adult friends, and suggested a local movie night, they said they wanted something more quiet. And when someone suggested that there are actually loads of shared communities around various hobbies that are great ways to meet friends and learn to do something new, they said "You people are misunderstanding me, I don't want to spend money, I don't want it to be loud, I don't want to be around alcohol, I don't want to go to burlesque or drag shows, and I don't want to have to learn a new hobby, I just want to meet new people"

Like, what the fuck did they think community is? How the fuck do you propose meeting people? I'm all for inclusive resources but at some point, as an adult, you have to realize that if you want certain things in your life to change, you have to be the one to make changes. If you want to go out and make more friends, you have to be willing to GO OUT AND MAKE MORE FRIENDS. You have to go where the people currently are.

You have to learn a new hobby and go play card games with the trans women and enbies, or put up with some noise and go watch films, or go play pool in the dive bar with the dykes in the dark back corner, or SOMETHING. But at some point you have to say, "the problem is my unwillingness to try to adapt to fit into a community, rather than expect a whole community to be built on me without any effort from me."

Queer spaces that already do exist have a hard enough time staying open, you can't expect MORE and MORE to be made unless YOU want to go make one and see for yourself how hard it is.

If you want a community, you need to be willing to participate in SOMETHING.

[ranticore]

Now that you mentioned it in the tags; I really enjoyed how you did the queerness of characters in-text and I saw you mentioned more than once before how they consider/call themselves gay or anything and I was wondering if you'd be willing to elaborate on that (in Ironwall, MVF etc), but more from a writing standpoint than a worldbuilding one. Hope Im making sense lol

i looked up the invention of the word 'homosexuality' and found that it was invented 6 years after stbh is set

ghksjdg i mean there's more to it than that but it meant that my language was constrained, which also means that the characters' language is constrained as well. i have to think about ways i want this to come across to the reader. at the time i was thinking about how the basic concept of "btw this character is not straight/cis" is communicated in some of the stories i'd read, and one that stood out to me was a comic i read in a fully fantasy setting where the writer brought the narrative to a juddering halt to explain exactly how gender & sexuality are handled by the people here. as in the characters essentially turn to the camera and give the main character a lecture. i really didn't like it, the author's hand was too visible behind the panels.

but i took it as a learning exercise as well on what i didn't want to do. i didn't like the neon signs pointing at any instance of non-heteronormativity and i also don't like stories that market themselves based on the characters' gender identities, particularly stories which do not involve a coming-of-age/character learns to discover themselves narrative. it's a book about two trans men but it's not a book about being trans. that's none of the reader's business, that's hidden from you (particularly in islin's case, intentionally). i never wanted to foster a sense of voyeurism towards trans people particularly knowing that most readers, statistically, will not be trans. crucially the characters are stealth to literally everybody but like 3 people. their transition is done.

i never wanted a coming out moment, or an "i'm here i'm queer" moment either - not even because Society in the setting just because i don't like those things. to completely normalise it in the narrative between these characters is the goal - almost to the point of never even pointing it out at all except when it has to be. the vibe i wanted was like... hanging out in not necessarily a gay space, but with gay people, talking about random other stuff. i didn't even like the One coming out scene i had to put in (senca being like "i only fuck women" to bowman so that he would stop hitting on her)

so when writing i had a pretty good idea of what i didn't want. for the setting i had some strict rules to follow as well. characters would not identify as gay or bisexual or even some fantasy equivalent because those were not identities, they were acts. and heterosexuality wasn't an identity either, it wasn't even "the natural way of things", it was the means by which wealth could transfer between generations. if you do not marry, then you are not conforming to your gender. the four unmarriagable men in mvf are all denied entry to normative manhood for many de-gendering factors (disability, unmanly hobbies, vow of chastity, etc) but the culmination of those factors is that they can't marry, which is the whole POINT of being a man. three of them are entirely denied generational wealth - forcing them into poverty (it's not a coincidence that gay people are overrepresented in the criminal organisation)

from a writing standpoint this leaves them in a grey zone. when writing i tried out different language to see if it read nice to me (19th century equivalents to 'boyfriend' etc) and they all rang quite false, because outside of the whole 'can we put a label on something that doesn't officially exist in society' thing, the characters themselves are not the types of people to think that way. Bowman was dating Léa but he was never dating Félix. you can't date another man. the only people who date men are women, and Bowman is not a woman. therefore he is not dating Félix. to give just one example. ultimately for the language used i found that just leaving it as-is worked the best for me.

so after working all that out i wrote tha thing and then wanted to kind of explore - at what point does it become romantic? is there an actual border between romantic and platonic when you've kind of already fallen between the cracks in society into the grey zone where nothing is defined because it doesn't affirm the power of the ruling class. and in these particular friendships, where they've already been all things to one another, they've already done everything together, good or bad, does adding 'romantic love' to that list of things wildly recontextualise it retroactively or does anything change at all? just like the ending reveal of stbh says: who actually is the guy we've been thinking of as 'félix ortega' ? does it recontextualise everything we've just read? no, right? (or does it?)

the usual 'will-they-won't-they' romance plot isn't a factor in the book, we already know they will, they have, they won't, and they refuse to, all at once.

(jean-baptiste thinks of himself as an invert because he is Learned and has read some fascinating journal articles about cutting-edge sexology, and his relation to his sexuality is very very different. it's not something he shares with his closest friends in spaces without scrutiny; his entire life is scrutinised and his social system is predicated on marriage. like i think i said in the book, probably, i don't remember: he and renard are two guys clinging to the same life raft. they hate each other! but if you push the other guy off the life raft, then you're just one guy alone at sea, forever.)

[olderthannetfic]

"Why I don't write F/F" thread proceeded just as unproductively as I expected. It wasn't about moralizing about the women not writing F/F, it was a question about why personal reasons for avoiding a configuration aren't reflected in opposite directions by other groups. Unlike race, gender has an almost 50/50 split, there's a scale to the proportions not there for other types of identity category. "The femslash police suck" is a factor I can understand. But why wouldn't "personal reasons I just don't feel it towards this configuration" end up an even distribution across the population? The expectation for women to write about women isn't a moral rule, it's that if you allow the logic "men in control of stories write about men (and that's why more mainstream stories center men)", then the flip side is, well, why people clamor for more women behind the camera and in the writers' room. Either accept the logic for both sides or challenge it for both sides. Instead we have the worst of both worlds, we accept it for one side and challenge it for the other. Where's the parallel universe where this imbalance somehow resulted in a different quadrant being the smallest proportion of ships?

--

Why wouldn't "personal reasons" be even? Because the kinds of issues people face based on their demographic aren't.

But I think the larger factor is how socialization affects choice of hobbies and volunteer efforts. Cis men and cis women, on average, go in for different flavors. The dudes tend to be more bothered by the idea of "not getting anything back" for what feels like work. When they do do unpaid labor, it's often the kind that accrues glory and career prospects rather than less showy social ties. Open source coding projects where they can be important, yes. Writing fanfic, no.

Looking up any analysis of volunteering and unpaid work that makes such-and-such a part of society function will get you a lot of discussion of this gendered difference. It's pervasive.

Of course, this is just a broad trend. Plenty of guys do write fanfic, and when they dominate a fanfic space, we see tons of fic focused on the female characters they find attractive, including f/f fic.

And if you're asking about cis gay men specifically... well... again, gendered socialization means that the issues faced by cis lesbians and cis gay men are not equivalent. The reasons and ways that people employ allegory to talk about things "too close to home" will likewise not be exactly the same. Traditional US gay male culture goes in for drag and for an obsession with Hollywood divas and The Golden Girls. Plenty is being mediated through female personas; it's just not translating into fanfic specifically. But most people making "Leave the fujoshi alone" arguments are not thinking about cis gays: they're thinking about people in messier identity categories.

The biggest difference is not behavior but simply that cis men are a small minority on FFN, AO3, and Wattpad, the three big fanfic archives. (Some ancient FFN research found that it was 78% female, and that's the archive known for having more men!) The places with more cis guys are much smaller and don't get talked about as much by most fandom history and fandom meta types from the AO3 side of things.

The reason cis men's taste in favorite characters isn't being "pushed back against" isn't a double standard: it's because:

Cis men simply aren't that relevant to site-wide trends on AO3

and

2. The reverse pattern does happen all the time with vanishingly little m/m and lots of f/f

You sound like you think we'd make this fanfic-specific argument about pro media. In fact, plenty of queer women are open that they produce original f/f but not f/f fanfic or they produce f/f fanworks but not fic. A lot of the "too close to home" arguments are specifically about the kind of id fuel, naked-in-public vibes of AO3-style fanfic. Writing that is less id-driven may not feel that same way. A given woman might have a much easier time writing a mystery novel about a lesbian detective who never gets laid on page than a steamy f/f bodice ripper.

The parallel universe you ask about exists. It's horny imageboards full of fan art of anime girls.

The reason you sound judgmental and are getting "unproductive" responses is that you're phrasing things as though we're refusing to solve a problem. In reality, we're attempting to analyze the situation that exists. It's a descriptive approach.

[bengiyo]

Hi, i'm a newish bl drama watcher from thailand that just started watching thai bls. i'm a bit ashamed to say that for a long time as a gay man living here i've been avoiding bl shows like the plague cuz of both the fandom reputation and of misconception from my yaoi era which i leave far behind. i'm just want to ask how did you got into watching thai bls and what were you preconception before you got into it.

Welcome to the Tumblr side of BL fandom. I'd actually like to also hear more of your experience with yaoi and BL as a gay person growing up in Thailand if you're willing to share.

For me, I'm a Black American from the Gulf Coast (the South). I grew up in a Catholic city and spent my entire adolescence in the closet. Despite having a sense of who I was as early as 8 years old, I kept most of that to myself. Because I didn't talk about it much with people, I found out most information about queer media and queerness from the internet.

I entered BL via queer cinema. I think the first explicitly gay character that I remember from TV was Marco from Degrassi: The Next Generation. There were probably others, and definitely more subtle expressions, but when I think about the oldest gay character I remember and connect to, it's Marco. I don't like counting things like shipping Shawn and Corey on Boy Meets World or Tai and Matt on Digimon for oldest gay characters. Sailor Moon can't even count because we got a censored version of it in America.

I got access to satellite television away from observing eyes around age 16 and started watching content on Logo back when they aired gay content regularly. I watched basically whatever I could late at night. It's how I saw movies like Get Real (1998), Beautiful Thing (1996), and Bent (1997). It's also how I saw Queer as Folk (2000-2005) Noah's Arc (2005-06).

After hitting adulthood I mostly got lost in video games and standard American TV for a while, but I did basically show up to any Gay Event in TV. I appreciate that Stef and Lena from The Fosters (2013-2018) were some of the only TV lesbians to survive the horror of 2016.

I watched a bunch of movies in this time, many of which appear on the Queer Cinema Syllabus I made for a hypothetical Westerner new to BL and queer cinema, which @wen-kexing-apologist has decided to try to complete.

I got into Thai BL in 2018 accidentally. I started seeing gifsets of Kongpob telling Arthit he'll make him his wife passing around Tumblr and was basically like, "Right, what's all this then?"

I had watched a few Thai gay films, mostly notably Love of Siam (2007), Bangkok Love Story (2007), How to Win at Checkers Every Time (2015), and The Blue Hour (2015), but this was the first time I was seeing a long series made available so easily from any Asian country.

From there I got into Make It Right (2016-17) and Love Sick the series (2014). Once I realized that yaoi had moved beyond manga and a few anime adaptations, I went looking for a lot more. I basically haven't left since I started in about 2016 with SOTUS.

There's my basic entry into the genre. I don't think I was as worried about fandom and worries at the time because so much of being a fan of queer cinema was a mostly-private experience for me for so long. I didn't realize that BL fans active in the space would predominantly be women or queers figuring themselves out. It took a while to adjust to that, and also to adjust my expectations of the kinds of queer stories BL distributors were willing to fund.

That being said, I tend to agree with @absolutebl that BL has a useful role in normalization for non-queer audiences who encounter it. I like cheering BL when it does things I think work really well, and also deriding it when I think it does things that are offensive to help nudge the genre and offer my perspective as a gay man.

I like the place we're at right now where there's way too much to watch for any person with other hobbies and responsibilities because it means that people can pick and choose what's to their tastes.

More often than not, I'm probably most-invested in something airing from Japan because of my melancholy nature, but there's so much variety these days that it's okay if you don't like everything. I certainly don't!

I'm glad you joined us on Tumblr and look forward to your thoughts!

[kittyit]

One thing I don't like about trans critical spaces is how they are focused on trans women being unattractive and 'cringe.' this is just my personal experience, but I have been sexually victimized by multiple trans women, most of whom passed, many of whom were skinny and beautiful and most of which had high brow tastes and no interest in anime or other cringe topics. one of these TIMs was a serial sexual assailant and I think probably attracted to underage boys, and she was also beautiful and charismatic. Meanwhile, I also know multiple trans women who are good people and don't infringe on female spaces but who are conventionally "ugly", broad-shouldered, and have masculine interests. It also seems like the only thing TIMs criticize about each other publically is being "ugly", large, or fat.

my position has consistently been for about 15 years that mocking someone's appearance is not a feminist act. it simply isn't.

mocking appearance is essentially a cruel hobby, it's primate social aggression we're using our huge brains for. it's really fun, and that's why almost everyone does it. i sometimes do it too, in private, in intimate company, and it's enjoyable. i say this to clarify that despite my position, i don't set myself apart or above from women who do it. i do it too. and it's constant in basically every subculture online. julie bindel actually posted on her facebook recently troubled about this same thing. as you said, it's so common in queer/trans circles too, the long-forgotten 2013 values of tenderqueerism fallen to the wayside. stan culture, politics, just basically everything...i really can't stress enough that in my opinion, it is a hobby

mocking appearances is not feminist or activism. it quite often is anti-feminist. it's kindergarten stuff to not judge a book by its cover. it doesn't matter what a male person looks like - he is still male and all considerations that apply to male people apply to him. i don't need to think a male person has a hideous appearance to criticize him for any of the oppressive acts he's doing. focus on appearance (or other unrelated personal attacks) often takes the sting out of a criticism of someone's character, morals or actions and makes your argument easier to dismiss. and of course the now mocked & dismissed concept that when you rip into someone's appearance, you do friendly fire to anyone around who shares those features. but of course this doesn't matter to anyone because it's 1. so fun 2. we're so used to it 3. everyone is doing it 4. so who cares? (I do. However)

i also just can't really scrape up that much finger wagging anymore at women who do spend a huge amount of time blowing off steam mocking the insane parodies that trans women present as. it's basically evil imaginative play. it's just not activism and acting like it is, as you said, is really detrimental to radical feminism being understood as a feminist way of thought that deeply affects women's lives.

as for the rest of this, have you read pronouns are rohypnol? you do not have to call a serial rapist pedophile you knew she. there is no one here but us, he cannot hear you. i encourage you to free up processing power in your mind, especially if you've survived trans male violence. calling the men who harmed you he can be a turning point in reclaiming your own sense of reality, it was for me

[butchpillowprince]

Freshly manufactured butch again, and thank you for the answer before!! Would you actually have some advice for newly identified butches? Things you wish someone would have told you years ago when you first started out?

Thanks again!

You're welcome, and thanks for stopping by again! :) I love this question.

My advice for my past self when I was first transitioning toward androgyny/masculinity:

When you spend months dwelling on whether or not to cut your hair short, that's your sign to cut off all your hair. Do it.

Ditch your women's clothes, especially the pants (no pockets) and the panties (ugh) and the bras (barf). It's okay to embrace your natural chest and just wear sports bras. One day you'll even wear a binder and make yourself flatter. Remember when you were a feminine teenage girl and your flat chest was your biggest insecurity? Yeah. Now you love it. :) And you're not a girl, lol.

Buy the bowties and neck ties. The men's dress shirts and shoes. When it's time for your next wedding, go to a tailor for your first suit. Life is short, get the rainbow hair for Pride. Your first relationship won't last, but being in butch4butch love, even fleeting, will change and heal you. Your first butch4butch hookup will too. And no, they won't be the same person, sorry.

Read George's Boi. Explore your butch4butch sexuality. When George's Boi inspires you to write erotica, fucking go with it.

Queer community will also heal you. Keep seeking it out even when you don't find it in certain cities or spaces. Be yourself. Explore yourself. Question your gender. Try new names and pronouns if the idea tickles your fancy. Even if you end up being cis at least you reflected on yourself, and who knows, maybe you'll learn something new about you.

Butch community is hard to find but surprisingly easy to build. When you have ideas for a new butch project, just do it. Make it happen and you'll watch friends and community appear beside you.

It's okay to not be hypermasculine or the butchest butch in the room. Embrace the masculinity that is authentic and comfortable for you. Don't feign interest in hobbies or drinks or mannerisms that aren't really yours, don't worry over measures of physical strength or ability, don't feel pressure to top during sex exclusively or even at all, don't worry about not fitting a certain body type or stereotype. You're butch which means you're another beautiful iteration of butchness. And, it's okay to stop calling yourself "soft butch" because you feel like you're not butch enough to just claim the word "butch" alone. You are butch. You are. You are. You are.

I'm proud of you. Welcome home.

[saintsenara]

As someone who isn't the biggest Hermione fan and keeps it quiet because greater fandom LOVES her, I'm honestly gagging for more of your Hermione takes. Especially your takes on fanon Hermione, who I can't STAND. Have a good one x

thank you very much, anon - there are dozens of us!

hermione is certainly the character i struggle to find common ground with the most - and this has been the case since i first read philosopher's stone as a child.

[which has actually been a really fascinating pop-culture experience - i think we tend to overlook, both because the media landscape and its representation of child and teen girls has changed since the 1990s and because of jkr's increasingly harmful views on gender, just how groundbreaking hermione was as a female protagonist in media which wasn't marketed primarily or exclusively towards girls. there is a reason why so many girls and women identified with her when the books were coming out - and it was very interesting for me growing up to not be one of them.]

the cause of my beef with hermione is for the incredibly petty reason that i find people who possess many of her more... striking traits quite difficult to deal with in real life, particularly if they don't acknowledge [which people in the hermione vein often don't...] that these traits are things it might benefit them to work on in their interpersonal relationships...

but this doesn't prevent me recognising that canon!hermione [and any real person like her] is interesting - and that her more annoying traits work well with her more straightforwardly admirable ones to create a fully-rounded character who, from a fanfiction perspective, is a great vehicle for all sorts of tropes, themes, and storylines.

which brings us - of course - to fanon!hermione...

fanon!hermione is, at her core, another brick in the wall of mary-sues. she's beautiful, and so clever she can solve millennia-old puzzles without batting an eyelid, and she's preternaturally emotionally intelligent, and she's morally spotless, and she's always right, and the story's preferred romantic partner worships the ground she walks on, and anyone who doesn't like her is punished.

i don't think - to be clear - that there is anything wrong, per se, with people wanting to write fanon!hermione [nor, to be frank, with other flawless fanon versions of female characters, oc mary-sues, or self-indulgent self-inserts - i'll defend the right to have fun with characters to the death]. this is a hobby, and people's way of engaging with that hobby doesn't have to appeal to me - it's fun escapism sometimes to write a character who is wonderful and perfect and beloved and has a sexy partner; and when it comes to accusations of writing someone "out-of-character", let she who is without sin cast the first stone...

but i also think - and [sigh] here comes some discourse - that fanon!hermione is part of a slight... girlbossification of female characters in the harry potter fandom [and presumably in others, i just don't follow closely enough to know] which i've always been a little uneasy about.

i understand why this happens - this fandom, like many, has an overwhelming preference for making blorbos of male characters and for imagining these characters in slash relationships. the treatment of female characters in slash subfandoms - i.e. tonks in wolfstar spaces; lily in jegulus spaces - is often straightforwardly misogynistic, and even in cases where it isn't, female characters are often shuffled quietly to the sidelines, except when they pop up - often suddenly in a queer pairing of their own - to benignly cheerlead the male couple.

and i think it's good that this is challenged - as i also think it's good that the heteronormative vibes of a lot of slash are challenged - and that we, as a fandom, are increasingly interested in female-centric works [whether focused on a romantic pairing or otherwise] and discussions. i hope these continue to take up fandom space.

but i have also noticed that the way female characters are written and talked about in these context is - as i've said - quite #girlboss in its approach. the focus is on women as clever and competent and feisty and unruffled and brave.

[including female villains, there are a lot of girlboss bellatrixes knocking around...]

and great! it should be! - but from what i've seen this also comes accompanied by a resistance to the idea that women can also be boring, unintelligent, self-infantilising, vain, arrogant, ignorant, talentless, meek, domestic, rude, dislikable, conservative, incurious, complicit in their own victimisation, plain wrong, and so on, and not only still be worthy of exploration, but be worthy of these characteristics not being automatically considered bad things for someone to possess and it not being seen as letting down the sisterhood to explore a woman who possesses them.

and, sure, hermione cannot be described as many of these things - but she is...

self-righteous; cruel; petty; from a privileged class background in the muggle world which blinkers her understanding of the class structure of the wizarding one; stubborn; terrible under pressure; shown by the text to be intelligent largely due to an ability to rote learn; a people-pleaser with a tendency towards a slightly hagrid-ish blind loyalty; extremely deferential to authority and willing to tolerate cruel treatment from authority figures [i.e. snape]; the most childlike of the trio [she takes her schoolbooks on the run and reads through them for comfort! she's an enormous animal lover!]; interested in one of form of stereotypical femininity [knitting! wearing pretty dresses!] even if she rejects the form of stereotypical femininity liked by e.g. parvati and lavender [and anyone who thinks she's not going to get along with her mother-in-law because molly's a housewife is dead wrong - she's having the time of her life helping put together a sunday lunch at the burrow]; possessed of a filthy sense of humour [i will never understand why emma watson said that the key to playing her was to be prim...]; someone who obviously wants to be liked and to be loved; and so on...

[and also, by the end of the pre-epilogue narrative, eighteen. she's often written in fics in a way which makes her sound like she's seen a lot of life - especially if the fic wants to claim she's "too mature" to bother with men her own age... but she hasn't - she's a teenager, and the reason she's so unpolished and abrasive is because literally all teenagers are unpolished and abrasive. it's just one of the mortifying agonies of growing up.]

we should love this. it makes her thorny and messy and mixed-up and human - and i am perfectly delighted by explorations of her character which delve into unravelling this tangle.

i just like her less as someone who is there to be right and beloved and uncriticised.

unless it's by ron. everyone should be uncomplicatedly adored by their wife guy.

[manstrans]

“Men can go to hobby groups and-“

Women can too? I spent like 16-17 years as a woman??? I was invited to hobby groups and groups to chill and hang out.

I felt safe in these spaces?

They’re not spaces to share emotions, feelings and struggles while being able to learn and grow as people?

Like, I dunno, I also grew up where a man deciding he wanted to shave his legs because it feels nice got him called a woman, and shamed so much he stopped doing it and lived in discomfort.

Sounds systemic and unsafe to me.

Hobby spaces aren’t safe spaces in the same way that spaces carved out to be safe spaces are.

Also marginalized men exist.

Men of Colour, Trans Men, Gay men?? Queer men as a whole?

Men targeted to uphold patriarchy that are then discarded once the patriarchy is settled.

A black man wanting a space where he isn’t treated like he’s inherently dangerous isn’t just important because he’s a man, but because that idea he is inherently a threat for being a BLACK man is dangerous.

People can’t remove that from conversations about gender either.

Race will ALWAYS matter, and every time I see conversations where people are saying “men don’t deserve safe spaces I should be allowed to bash ALL men (except trans men who are men lite/especially trans men who are traitors to womenhood)” I just think, “so white women convinced you men of colour oppress them for being men, as if white women still don’t get these men punished for being black.

Gay men don’t really 1:1 oppress straight women either.

Men being isolated and kept from their OWN communities is an issue. White supremacy does in fact allow outer groups to strengthen itself until it no longer needs that outer groups strength then it discards them.

There are black neo-nazis. There are gay ones. There are trans men bigots.

There are white women neo-nazis.

Bigots who have fallen into bigotry, and into extremism, usually are fed the ideals and it’s so easy to keep them there by pointing at something vitriol and saying, “look, see, they hate you, they’re your enemies, they deserve your hate and ire”.

Like, idk, that 12 year old boy isn’t good and innocent from his racist and harmful ideals he’s slinging around, but if no one helps him out of those beliefs he’ll be a 25 year old man with those harmful beliefs.

And I don’t know any way of thinking that says a 12 year old listens to horrible bitter put downs over like, long understanding conversations.

Like, even if you personally (broadly, not at you) don’t want to lead someone from those ideals, someone has to teach. Someone has to willingly pull people away from that.

People talk about rehabilitative justice and then turn around and say, “hey I think you’re harmful for existing and you deserve suffering”.

As if that helps somehow?

This just rounds back to, as well, marginalized men exist, and the Men vs Women dichotomy is literally Radical Feminism which ignores the racial factors of oppression. Which is how white women get away wish racism to black women while also saying “we need to stay united”

^^^^^ long but worth reading

[craftyworx]

Welcome to my Happy Place!

This is a safe space for any body type, any identities, any skin color, any disorder, any typing quirk, and any religious beliefs!

However, please note that anything Christian or Mormon related makes me very uncomfortable due to past experiences, but all Christians are welcome as long as you dont start telling me what God I need! I am my own God, thanks for the offer though <3

You will also not be judged about your interests. Liking something is absolutely okay, even if the creator is problematic! But if you support the creator's actions, it's a problem and you should leave.

Current status: AHHHGHGHTUUUHSHFJKGHDKFHUTH

DNI CONSUMER / CREATOR OF NSFW POPPY PLAYTIME OR NSFW TADC, OR IF EITHER IS A "KINK"

Seriously, I write all the ppt character's as children, so it actually disgusts me. And both feel child coded (color-wise) so it makes me extremely uncomfortable. Plus I'm a minor. Longer DNI list at bottom.

!!ASK BOX IS ALWAYS OPEN!! U can ask for art requests or just ask a question! I LOVE questions !!

My About Me is below The cut!

Name; Sketchy or Crafty !

Prounouns; xe/they/she/it (in order of pref!)

Age; 16

Hobbies; Art, Writing, Animation

Imp Notes !

I'm bad at communicating, and sometimes I may shut myself away from everyone! So if I don't respond to your message, please don't take it personally. I'm still healing and growing.

I get anxious very easily (tryna work on that) and I have social anxiety, so i'm sorry if my words get fumbled or i seem awkward lol

Pls use tonetags every now and then :] Sometimes I can't tell when someone's joking lol

I am

Unicornkin

Fictionkin (craftycorn, doubles / other craftycornkin dni sorry)

Audhd

Butch Lesbian (idk i just like women)

Bestest Friends!

@s4gefr0g @ch0cocrave @akalikestodraw @uzi-goober @ramitola @hollow8007 @daaxolotlartist @dirt-fish

U can ask to be added if we're mutuals and we've talked a lot before!!

!!DNI!!

Terf, Lgbt-phobe, Bigot

Zoo, Pedo, Map, or enjoyer of such content

Body shamer

Anti-Furry / Anti-Otherkin / Anti-Therian / Anti-Satanist

Pro-Israel

Pro-Life

JK Rowling supporters

Vivziepop Supporters

Under 13 / Above 20

NSFW blogs

PLEASE DO NOT ASSOCIATE/TALK TO ME ABOUT

Tadc

Hazbin / Helluva (unless you're a mutual)

Stressful topics (unless you ask / warn first)

Little Nightmares (mmm don't even bring this up thank youu)

Moots are free to ask for my tadc and ppt boundaries!! And my triggers. Strangers may not ask for these. I don't wanna be harassed yunno?

If a stranger wants to talk to me abt ppt, ur free to ask for my ppt boundaries >:] I'D LOVE TO DISCUSS LORE W/ SOMEONE-

Tags (this is here for me LMAO)

#Save - something cool

#Save2 - inspo >:0

#fav - things that made me smile

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#save3 - idk atp

#friend_ref - YEYAHH

Credits

Star Border

Unicorn Border

"This user is a unicorn"

"This user is a Queer Satanist" (edited by me, f2u w/o credit)

[tired-fandom-ndn]

The fact that Alastor is canonically more comfortable around women is so interesting to me.

He doesn't seem to mind it when Rosie and Nifty touch him or enter his personal space. Rosie also seems to be aware of his plans to some extent. Mimzy has been using him as a get out of jail free card for DECADES before he told her to stop.

Meanwhile, when he interacts with other men it is usually much more hostile. He humiliates Vox, keeps Zestial at a distance and refuses to share information, has a rivalry with Lucifer, and we all remember how the Husk scene went.

And that makes the idea of Alastor being in a lavender marriage in life so much more interesting, too.

Because Alastor is good with women, he genuinely LIKES spending time with them. Chances are he got along well with his wife, possibly being close friends.

And the more I think about it, the clearer I can see Alastor being raised by a single mother and developing "girly" hobbies, such as cooking or sewing, and being used to housework. A well-dressed man who hangs out with plenty of women but never makes an advance. There would be rumors about him being gay, and men would hate him either for getting too close to their wives, for being a pansy, or both.

Alastor, in hell, waiting patiently for his wife. Because she was his friend. Because she never loved him and he never loved her, but extra souls never hurt and he'd rather keep her close than let someone like Vox get his hands on her.

[context]

GOD ANON HOW DID YOU READ MY MIND

Like this is EXACTLY what I was picturing holy shit. Alastor raised by a single mother (or with a very absent and/or abusive father), taught how to cook, clean, sew, and garden. I headcanon that he was also a hunter from a pretty young age, but even then they worked together to make an income from the hunting, not just eating or selling the meat but also making clothes from the hides and furs. Alastor is, at his roots, a homemaker which was NOT at all typical for men in his time.

His mother also taught him how to respect women and treat them well, always the perfect gentleman, and that combined with his "oddities" and distrust of men definitely led to his friends being almost entirely women (probably with scattering of queer men). The rumors about him would've been RAMPANT, especially when combined with the racism he'd be facing anyway (Word of God says he's mixed, I headcanon him as Black and Choctaw on his mom's side, white on his dad's), which would just drive him further away from forming any sort of relationships with other men.

I think his wife (I've been headcanoning her as Black too, from a lowerclass family like Alastor's) was probably one of those friends, one of the many women who was easily charmed by his bright smiles and kindness but maybe one of the very, very few people who saw a hint of sharpness in his smile or heard the little thread of truth in his darker jokes. She didn't truly understand Alastor, not like Mimzy did, but she saw enough that he trusted they could have a relatively happy and open life together, with him using their marriage as a shield against suspicion. And the fact that their marriage would benefit her too, giving her more freedom than she would get from living with her family and letting her carry on her relationship with her own lover, was absolutely a bonus.

And they were happy. She didn't tell him about her lover, he didn't tell her about his little hobby, but they were happy. They made a home together, laughed and gossiped over meals, and filled their house with constant music and warmth. Their garden was the envy of their neighborhood (and if she wondered where he got the bones and blood their flowers loved so much, she never asked) and they were the life of every party they were invited to. They didn't love each other, but they didn't need to. They were friends and that's all that mattered.

And yeah, I think Alastor absolutely waited for her or sought her out in Hell. Maybe he never found her and was content in the knowledge that she made it into Heaven. Maybe he found her a few decades after his own death and offered her up a simple contract, something to protect her from other overlords while giving her as much freedom as an owned soul has. He keeps her on as one of his reserved souls (like I mentioned here) and they share meals together every so often and sometimes he summons her to act as a background singer or play an instrument to accompany his singing.

They never talk about their previous relationship, partially because it's just not important to who they are in Hell and partially because it would put her in too much danger. Alastor probably mentions having been married in life a few times and everyone just assumes that Mimzy was his wife and that her contract keeps her from talking about it.

[lifkk]

i’m penning a little response on here so people from other spaces can read my whole rant in one place.

for context, here is the tweet in question:

-

-

my initial gut reaction is here : https://www.tumblr.com/lifkk/765584667298693120/i-shouldnt-be-surprised-but-im-quite

and now here is my little essay on transmisogyny in the melee scene!

i’m generally not online so much but i was shared this tweet and it really lit my fuse so i logged on and poked fun at it. i could’ve guessed without looking but it’s obvious that the community at large doesn’t have an issue with this distinction. let me just say first and foremost that this is simply a drop in bucket of transphobia / misogyny and because lately it has been literally inescapable, im going to approach the few situations i have access to with scrutiny and a critical eye. i’m not going to dispel any ridiculous claims that some might make regarding trans people being jealous or something - none of those are in good faith, so i won’t bother even addressing them seriously. so, let’s get into it!

i’ll start by saying this is inherently divisive. what i am NOT saying is that the distinction between cis and trans is unimportant. i would never say this categorically; there are many times where the nuance is important. this case, i believe doesn’t fit into those times. trans women are women, which means they would also face misogyny. not only does this show on an individual level but at a larger social level too. trans women face misogyny in the same ways that cis women face misogyny in these settings. i’m not sure how im supposed to “prove” this, i think it’s a bit dehumanizing to ask someone of this, but just for example ive had men i’ve met at events harass me and send me dms that were inappropriate, ive felt othered because of my gender which led to apprehension in joining a community largely occupied by men. personally i did not play melee competitively before transitioning. i played some as a kid with siblings and while i was forced into hobbies i fundamentally didn’t enjoy because my parents thought i was a boy, i also had hobbies that were traditionally feminine and ones that were neither. the reason i bring this up is because i see some over generalizing viewpoints as well as incorrect assumptions regarding socialization.

gaming has become a more diverse and accepting space - there are issues that obviously still persist - but to simplify, it’s safer for those who are not white guys to exist in than it once was. trans women were not accepted in these spaces not only because they are queer, but because they are WOMEN. meaning : they are going to have a hard time getting into these spaces because of misogyny. that might look like trans women not having a community behind her passion OR (and i think less acknowledged) it could be a trans women not even trying to engage in a hobby because of the misogynistic barriers in place. all that to say: trans women are facing similar if not largely the same barriers a cis woman would face attempting to join such a space.

i think that some people, with or without knowing it, view trans women as a sort of in between of man and woman. not necessarily in an explicit, invalidating sense where they don’t see them as their gender, but in that they believe trans women went through a growing up and socialization process close enough to men that they are inherently far from cis women in that respect. trans women are simply not socialized as men. they generally do not undergo and accept the roles, expectations and sense of self in society that men and boys do. however, if you think that they do (which in all honesty i can’t blame many people for thinking this because of the rhetoric and language around “transitioning” in cis people’s lives is not nuanced) you can expect trans women to have a similar experience at a young age to boys, and thus imagine them not hitting social barriers a cis woman would. which as i’ve described, is just not the case.

so when you decide to celebrate a woman’s win and you certify it as a win for a cis woman, what are you doing? you’re not celebrating a win exclusive to women because you are excluding a population that broke the same barriers. if a trans woman won the biggest event ever, a victory over all the top players, we celebrate this as a momentous achievement for women, the first to do it; then a cis woman wins the next equally significant event and it was called the “first win for cis woman,” do we not understand how divisive and dismissive this is? how instantly this reduces the win of a trans woman because we imagine she, what, possibly didn’t have quite as hard a time as her cis counterpart? this is not a simply recognition of a specific population. the idea that they MUST and CAN be bisected is simply transmisogyny. a win for a woman is a win for women no matter if they were assigned it at birth or not.

[chainmail-butch]

I was wondering if you might have any advice on socializing and meeting people as a transfem butch? I've not really had any success off the internet and I'm wanting to change that, but it's really daunting given I present in a way that's hard to distinguish from a man. No worries if you don't have any advice, but you seem confident and experienced so I wanted to give it a shot

Confidence, going to the same place regularly, and prioritizing other trans people.

Cis people simply won't get it, and it'll probably take them a lot of time and repeated exposure to figure it out.

Trans women and trans men tend to get it pretty quick and are your best choice for friendships and romantic relationships.

Regularity typically comes with a hobby, so if there are any hobby spaces around you and/or bars, I would try those first. Instagram is a good place to find local queer meet-ups and groups.

[olderthannetfic]

Do you think that more het-oriented fanfic-writing spaces are more gender-balanced? Or maybe only some of them, with significant enclaves of mostly-men and mostly-women?

--

If we're asking about fic writers in aggregate, every study of het-heavy FFN and Wattpad reveals a shitton of women. There are no dude-heavy fic spaces on that scale, het-filled or otherwise.

People like to argue about this, but we're talking the difference between spaces with literal millions of accounts and spaces with maybe a hundred thousand.

If we're asking about individual smaller spaces where fic writers hang out, then yes, there are some that are mostly men at least as far as we know, and those spaces tend to have a fair amount of het.

I suspect but cannot prove that something like Edward/Bella fandom at its height was significantly less queer than your standard m/m fandom on AO3, but it probably wasn't significantly less female.

--

Just based on numbers, I'd expect more dudes to write fic about Ladies Hot than Dudes Hot.

A more significant trend is that men tend to be trained that they should be paid for their labor and tend to have more hope, sometimes justified, of going mainstream with their hobby efforts. That doesn't mean every dude does it with every hobby, but it does have a dampening effect on the kind of gift economy culture we saw on LJ or whatever.

IME, even guys who are doing things for the good of the community are often expecting more direct respect and less of the amorphous social ties that are the currency of many fic fandoms. They might also be more directly solving a tangible problem or doing something that will get them an advantage in their job even if it isn't directly paid. (Compare dudes doing open source coding to dudes writing fanfic, for example. And yes, yes, notallmen, but we're talking big picture here.)

Combine gendered patterns in fiction consumption overall, some gendered social patterns, and social forces against giving shit away for free, and the patterns we see with fic qua fic are perfectly predictable.

The patterns for barely-renamed expies in "original" stories that could one day be monetized, now...