yammoba

[yammoba]

But there’s a cruel reality behind the decision to track right: The campaign, once it hitched its wagon to Biden’s policy of unqualified support for genocide in Gaza, really had no other choice. In 2020, the Biden campaign tentatively rode the progressive wave of the George Floyd protests, anger about Trump’s racist border policies, Covid activism, and anti-war protests against Saudi Arabia’s destruction of Yemen to energize the Democratic Party base to defeat Trump. It was, in retrospect, mostly lip service, and certainly no one at the time thought Biden a firebrand progressive. But the broader theme of the campaign was that everyone would have a seat at the table, even if the plate would most likely end up being empty.

Harris made no such pretensions, because any strategy that played to similar themes would have had to address the elephant in the room: the Democratic Party’s ​“ironclad” support for Israel’s elimination of a people in whole or in part. And this simply would not have worked. One can’t really bank on activist energy, youth turnout, and base-mobilizing when those involved — while canvassing together, or running phone banks at each others apartments, or getting drinks afterwards — have to awkwardly address the fact of genocide and their candidate’s support for it. This isn’t to say there was no activist or youth energy in the campaign — clearly there was. But those in charge quickly decided against making this their central theme and vote-gathering strategy, given the uncomfortable questions that would naturally arise from campaigning in these spaces. So Liz Cheney and her negative-2 favorables it was. 

Countless pro-Democratic Party pundits tried to warn Harris. Polls were commissioned. The Uncommitted Movement very politely, and well within the bounds of loyal party politics, begged Harris to change course. But she refused. The risk, to her, was worth sticking to the unshakable commitment to ​“eliminating Hamas” no matter how many dead Palestinian children it required, or the degree to which images and reports of these dead children would fuel cynicism and create an opening for Trump to win. 

... Turning every party advocate into a dead-eyed trolley problem expert triaging which genocide was morally preferable may have made cold logical sense, but it was hardly an inspiring message. Making it less compelling was that, by and large, it was not a position emanating from Palestinians themselves, as virtually every major Palestinian organization and the sole Palestinian-American in Congress, Rashida Tlaib, refused to endorse Harris.

[yammoba]

I am kenshin

[yammoba]

I cant help it. And when im sad it hurts me all the more. I miss this show. I miss this manga. It was something so intensely important to me.it would be such a comfort. But i want to take the creator and shake him, scream at him, rail against him. Fuck youbfuck you fuck you. Fuck all the times i reltated to you. Fuck all the times i felt bad for you.

I want my foundation back. I guesse i have to just keep reckoning with this. Let me thing im a smarter person. While knowing this painful truth.

That feel when a top 5 anime/manga of all time for you is made by a pedo

[yammoba]

That feel when a top 5 anime/manga of all time for you is made by a pedo

[yammoba]

my personal take on "antigonism" is that it's entirely what you make of it. which is to say, i agreed with your post explaining why you felt such a term was necessary, and i do think this mentality of "most of us are normal about each other" and simply assuming we understand each other's experiences by virtue of being trans is reinventing artificial gender solidarity between cis people ("bros before hoes", "girl's girl") but superimposed onto trans people. which can be particularly contentious, given that we're an extremely traumatized bunch with a lot of baggage and massively diverging perspectives on all kinds of things. relating to each other outside of conventional gender relations means we have to put in that much more work to bridge the gaps between us, because we can no longer rely on the common assumptions made about men and women to carry our interactions, if that makes sense.

i do think a whole word for transfem-to-transmasc solidarity does toe a line between being unnecessarily inflammatory and conditionally useful. i'm genuinely glad for the people who felt seen and appreciated by the fact that a transfem made so explicit her stance on intracommunity issues. i'm also sympathetic to the people who feel put-off by such a word. when does allyship become chauvinistic? there is no word for a non-misogynistic man to signal to women that he is explicitly anti-antifeminist, for example. do we need one? i think a vast majority would say no, on account of simply stating he believes in feminist principles to suffice. so i'm wondering what specifically the push was for you to coin a word around tfem4tmasc solidarity, because while i do think trans people as a whole need to take significantly more initiative about rooting out transmisogyny and transandrophobia both, i'm not quite clear on what could signal more clearly a transfem's stance on intracommunity dialogue than just saying "i believe in transandrophobia and condemn all radfems". all feminism, transfeminism included, has had their malicious actors-- the existence of transradfems isn't really anything noteworthy as far as the broader feminist conversations go.

i hope this doesnt come across as confrontational because i think the people who found comfort in the fact that you are willing to go that far for them is truly heartwarming. i just don't want to see us splinter further into microfactions over something like one person coining one maybe-overenthusiastic word on the internet

Sincerely, there is a word for men who are anti-anti-feminist, though, they're feminists. Granted, self-identified "feminist" men have somewhat of a negative stereotype associated to them, but still, feminist men are feminists.

One of the biggest reasons I think a term would be useful is because so many people feel unsafe in the trans community because of trans radical feminism right now that it can help them relax a lot when they see a trans woman identifies as such. Just reminding people with assurances that most trans women are Normal doesn't really help that when they keep running into ones who aren't over and over.

TRFs are aggressive about this stuff. Seriously, every single day, post after post, their primary form of activism is crying about TMEs stealing kinks and liking a children's toy too much. I feel strongly that should be countered. Even if they aren't the majority, they sure as hell act like it and repeat how great it is that every single trans woman except velvetvexations alone agrees with them.

To be absolutely clear, I do not think I'm the only non-weird trans woman! That is just literally what they say about me! They may be the minority now but that frog is boiling.

IRL transmascs are forced out of spaces and talked over when they're let in because mascuwinity is scawy, No doubt transfems have similar problems because some spaces are TERF-y, but that problem is exacerbated when social media is filled with TRF rhetoric because it gets drilled into people's heads they need to be worried about that, and I don't think "touch grass" is a good response to that.

Hell, what if someone touches grass and then they do happen to end up having people be transandrophobic/exorsexist/intersexist/etc. to them? "Oh, well, that didn't count, try again somewhere else, I prommy that's not Normal."

It's all about volume. I feel very, very strongly that volume is necessary here, to combat the feeling that that radical feminism is around every corner and help people feel at ease and know trans women are with them.

[yammoba]

what happened to male socialization not being real? you were saying that a few months ago and now all trans women are male socialized? what happened?

Male and female socialization in the TERF-y sense is not real, which is to say that gendered expectations do not determine personality. My mom not letting me grow my hair out is an example of male socialization. Despite her trying to confine me to the Boy box, I keep my hair long now anyway. Do you see what I mean? When a trans woman identifies as a woman, she does so partly because in so many ways male socialization did not "take." She is not a man, so the effect male socialization had on her is radically different than the effect it would have had on cis men.

And I don't even think we should keep distrusting cis men the way we do. All it comes down to is that when you are consistently treated as one gender growing up, you generally have substantially different experiences because certain things are generally targeted towards one and not the other. For instance, an AMAB kid could join the Boy Scouts, and an AFAB kid could join the Girl Scouts. These are two very different organizations but if a child was interested in scouting they only had one option. This dividing line, with "boys" on one side and "girls" on the other, is socialization.

It does not mean trans women are trained to be men. It just means that most of them had some experiences tied to being AMAB that AFAB people did not and vice versa. There is a lot of gray area here and every person is a little different, and can even report having being socialized the way more typical of the opposite assigned sex, or a mix of both.

[yammoba]

Was being bullied by my classmates into shaving my legs misogyny or transphobia?

[yammoba]

The two times i was ever bothered by/noticeably flirted with from a stranger-man were:

Roughly age 14: eating ice cream by myself at the local ice cream shop. A guy (probably 22-30s tho hard to tell, some people look older) asks if he can sit with me to chat, asking if im alone and why. "Cause i like hanging out by myself". He asks about the japanese on my shirt and if i know what it says, kinda not really. We have a stilted and awkward convo about anime. And he eventually leaves. An older girl i knew from school who was working there comes up and asks if i knew him and if i was ok. She said he'd been talking to lots of the girls hanging out there and working there. I was like oh, i thought he was just being friendly and felt bad bc i was alone. And she was like, well, if he comes back you can come hang out behind the counter.

Roughly age 15-17: looking at the manga section, at the library an awkward (probably 19-25 dude) came up to talk to me about manga. I was mostly happy to talk about manga. But he asked if I wanted to go somewhere else (i think this is litterally how he phrased it, it was very odd) and i was like "no". Then he asked for my phone number, a few times even tho i said I didnt have one (this was kinda true, my phone was only good for phone calls, and i hated talking on the phone for "fun") and i eventually made up an excuse to leave.

Oh, and i got a few weird internet comments from irl pictures i posted of myself at age 12 on devient art, and a few weird things surroinding some videos I posted to youtube at age 11-12. Not things that really shoukd have been posted but what you gonna do, it was 2007.

The things that stick out to me about these experiences is my age at the time. Especially becsuse i looked way younger than i was and was frequently mistaken for being a middle schooler in high school and a high schooler in college. I didnt wear makeup, and when i did dress "feminine" i often didnt do a good job, or looked like a wanna be mall-goth. The first one will always be the one that sticks out the most in my mind. The other one i do put mostly down to the guy being awkward, and just wanting to talk to someone with similar interests. Ice cream guy tho. The fuck were you up to dude?? Go flirt with girls your own age. Forever shout out to that other girl tho.

[yammoba]

It is odd, because when i was coming of age, and becoming more aware of misogyny and how it might affect me, it was rare for me to experience the "loud" forms of it. Catcalling, unwanted advances from men, being talked down to (ok, maybe that happened but i dont think i was really aware/confident enough to pick up on it happening to me). Part of it is probably the area i grew up in and the way my family is. At the time i assumed it was because i was ugly. Which is nonsense, and I even knew it at the time, from reading about what other women experienced. It absolutly caused a kind of disconnect. Tho one i think was also caused by other things. Tbc: i dont wish i was sexually harrased, i consider myself extreamly lucky. But its this kind of thing that when i was an adolescent the retoric was "every woman gets harrased". And well. I guess i dont count anyways???

[yammoba]

The thing is, is both true that I've experienced opression "as a woman" because thats what I look like to most people. And because of how this sort of body is understood in the medical system. And I was also ostracised from women and treated strangly because of -something- not being able to recognize for years what it was. I wasn't recognized as a woman by peer groups because I wasnt one. Because I didnt act like one, because I was "weird". Because I didnt have what ever it was that lets you pass the vibe check of gender. I've struggled with self dobut because of the pervasiveness of infantilization of non-binary and transmascs. Ive struggled with the idea of "betraying" womanhood even though I've never felt like i belonged.

Ive read writings from all kinds of other trans people that say they've had similar experiences. Getting what ever "benifits" or facing whatever opression is associated with their agab, but also feeling this indecribable ostrisization before even knowing they were trans, let alone anyone else knowing.

Call these experiences what you will, but part of the nature of being trans in this world is to experience life from many angles (not just two binary sides!). These angles often result in facing all shades of opression throughout ones life, but they can also grant one wisdom, and perspective, it can be the cause of countless positive experiences and joy as well. To be clear: Im not saying the opression is the cause of the wisdom, but that being trans is. Being opressed is not inherent to being trans and we must never forget that even if our suffering must be adopted into the core of our heart to make it managable, it shouldnt have to be that way.

It doesn't do any of us any good to be prescriptive with the "types" of opression that any of us can and can't face.

[yammoba]

i hate it when a heavily allegorical movie has a massively flawed main premise because it usually makes the movie suck a bit and you can’t point that out without people acting like you didnt understand the allegory

[yammoba]

i think im going to lose my fucking mind actually.

this little make believe game that yall are playing where ur all pretending that we have always been passing as cis men is honestly just really sickening to read. as if trans men have never been sexually harassed or abused because society perceives us as women. im genuinely of the opinion that u all just do not believe trans men face misogyny and thats so unbelievably fucked up and just not based in reality. its actually disgusting and vile.

[yammoba]

dems didn’t “throw” the election. neither side ever “throws” an election. as i said before, the cool kids call that idea “coping.” there’s no such thing as losing when you’re a ruling class politician taking turns on who gets to press the big red lockheed martin button.

[yammoba]

Small Town Organizing for Anarchists

This zine contains a wealth of helpful suggestions for anarchists living in small towns who want to create anarchy. Topics covered include finding other anarchists, deciding on what projects to work on, figuring out how to relate to liberals, and doing a distro—this zine is full of good ideas and advice.

Not only for small towns, the authors of the zine state: “If you can count the active anarchists in your areas on your fingers, this guide is for you.”

Read more…

Lots of people have been asking me how to get organized if they live in a rural area, or just anywhere without an active scene. Just stumbled upon this, hopefully it helps. Affinity groups and collectives can make a huge impact in a small town if they can establish themselves successfully

[yammoba]

imagine banking your whole campaign on “shy harris voters” and spending millions on ads telling republicans they can “secretly vote dem 😉” just for them to. not do that. just like every other election.

[yammoba]

[yammoba]

Campaign tip: if the opponent is going far right in order to court an increasingly far right voter base, try going moderately right to appeal to neither the left nor the right