Mum accidentally ended up under a pile on when she said death threats against DV survivors were not okay when JKR was brought up by someone totally ignorant of the past decade's drama and the very angry very sweary 'death to joanne' replies poured in. She was then labelled a terf by some teenagers for asking why their anger was directed at jkr and not the tories in power which made clear she was British and an older woman.

She's very literal and doesn't believe in death threats against paedophiles either, just that they should be locked up. That's just how she is... Readmore for length.

So I had to explain what trans exclusionary radical feminists were, how they labelled themselves & it's not a slur and how outrage online isn't rational and often isn't focused at the systemic issues but fallen heroes also often turn into the biggest scapegoats.

The thing that really got to her was the disproportionate energy people had for hating jkr but not other authors or politicians who are far worse, the energy for outrage but no political/community engagement elsewhere.

I wasn't really able to explain why people have energy to be mad at jkr but don't do any offline activism or even get that angry at politicians, there's a sort of passivity, the sense that the game is rigged I guess but people feel maybe they might have the power to make jkr uncomfortable talking smack about marginalised people in public ??

It's hard to explain, on some level I feel like people enjoy bullying and when there is a righteous reason then it's ok to engage in such "fun". On the other, I'm seeing this strange manifestation of trauma where people will be vicious with people who fail to live up to perfection (and that definitely includes trans women - think Hot Allostatic Load: it's a great article that explains something I've seen play out too many times but also isabel fall and the lady who made the mistake of griping about being locked out of the local lesbian scene and ended up painted as the evil pervert who coined the cotton ceiling - she was just really lonely and rightfully sad) with the stored anger and pain that deserved to be directed at multiple systemic issues and instead comes out like a firehose on a peer who is no longer a 'good' peer so they're the enemy. I'd love to read any psych studies but I'm not sure what key words. I know a lot of people are noticing this: energy for rage, apathy for even minor changes we can make. I've seen multiple "stop with the 'omg look at this terf who deserves to die' when you're just retraumatizing trans people by boosting" in the same way that people of colour had to beg for folks to stop boosting black and brown people being brutalised, just graphically making people relive that trauma but please boost actions and learning instead. You know what I'm talking about? Right.

I know the world is terrifying right now but the way social media has raised folks to channel it is not healthy let alone constructive. I'm not sure how to help and not sure how mum can ever regain her purity in the eyes of the little book group she's in. She doesn't like gender, she's actually long been gender non conforming but doesn't know any of the vocabulary. She's still processing trauma from DV and being in a cult so being told how to think gets her hackles up even when she's trying to be as logical and fair as possible. I'm scared the gender crits will reach out and say "hey we're real feminists who care about women, we don't even hate trans folk, come hang out with us and leave behind the rude meanies".

I don't know where to start. With pretty much all other marginalisations we have had people in our life to relate to. Mum's got lesbian, gay, black, Muslim, jewish, sex worker, disabled and mentally ill friends but zero point of reference for trans folk above 14-15 (a friend's child is autiqueer). If any of her friends came out as trans she'd be eating every book available and ready to advocate for them at doctors appointments but right now it's just an abstract concept that makes no sense when she's never been feminine enough to be more than a failed woman and never been that attached to gender.

How do you explain gender dysphoria to someone who's never experienced gender euphoria?

This is someone who never once questioned the anger behind some black lives matter posts, never took wypipo or 'white woman tears' personally because of course anger comes out messy and of course people don't like to think they're racist and have to deliberately learn to be anti racist and will mess up.

The problem here is that it's very hard to talk gender with someone alienated from anything gender related except misogyny.

I remember back when I got into feminism and she'd given up on all that because it didn't have anything to say for working class women who love men. Womanism had the keys to her heart: loving men + hating the patriarchy that crushes their souls along with yours, not wanting the capitalist dream but a different society.

If you've read this far you deserve dog pics, thank you for letting me rant. I'm going to try and find some books by older trans men and women from similar working class backgrounds (no showbiz) and some intro to Judith Butler. Maybe something on the left eating it's own to explain why these younguns don't know how to just boycott and never listen to jkr again.

Replies are welcome, reblogs not. This is delicate and personal. Please have grace. She's trying. I'm trying.

Day 2 of trying to explain gender as someone who feels emotions *weirdly*

Someone else correcting people on my pronouns for me is like petting a dog

remember when miraculous ladybug finally decided to do an "adrien hangs out with The Guys" episode, like how we get scenes of marinette hanging out with The Girls all the time, but i guess the writers decided that the only way adrien would fit in an environment with a bunch of guys was if they were in a gay night club, and the night club was adrien's bedroom, and they were throwing around rainbow glitter and kissing each other and blasting The Village People so loud that it almost killed his already dead mother and

*non-binary teammate*

jean: okay cool sounds right

*boba tea*

jean: ⁉️😡🤬❌✋‼️🛑

Feeling real ridiculous for not having realized that Baron's "stark father" was the Nightmare King until now

Maybe also worth considering, in regards to Marcille's weird gender views, that humans canonically looking really masculine to elves, combined with her being half human means she might be kinda masc by elf standards-- which probably adds to her feeling like an outcast and means she has to work harder to fit into whatever standards for femininity elves have

based on This

Like all of tumblr, aparently: we 💜 love ✡️jews✡️ and we would 👊 punch nazis and we reblog five 5️⃣ different haukkah 🕎 posts a year we are like so progresive 💁✨️

Also all of tumblr, aparently: death to all jews 🚫✡️ if you're a jewish person who lives in IsNotRaEl then you're an evil 👺 bad jew and you deserve to be raped and murdered ☠️☠️ what? You fled to israel because we were murdering you by the millions??? Well you should have all died lol ☠️☠️ happy hanukkah btw 🕎

Day 5 of trying to explain gender as someone who feels emotions *weirdly*

Labels

I (a nonbinary afab person) am cool with being perceived as a boy but not as a man. These two ideas have very different concepts in my head. Obviously everyone experiences labels differently and not everyone is going to agree with the weird versions of the two that I have in my head and that’s completely fine. I don’t tend to see other people as these either, this is just a representation of how these labels would apply to me personally.

When I think of myself as a boy or of other people perceiving me as a boy it makes me happy. Not to the same extent as thinking of myself as nonbinary and having people who know me refer to me as such, but to a noticeable extent. Being nonbinary feels like me but being seen as a boy feels like a fun character I wouldn’t mind playing or being in the headspace of. Boy feels flowy and like I could just be and act like how I am.

Thinking of myself as a man or having other people perceive me as a man makes me very uncomfortable. As much as I love many of the older men in my life (my uncle, my grandfather, etc) all of them are very manly men. None of them display many ‘feminine’ traits and I think that’s made me conceptualize the word ‘man’ as them, and therefore manly (which I’m not really).

This is an already kinda long post, and I’m sorry for that but I just realized something. For me, the term ‘boy’ feels gender neutral because I’ve been around more boys who have acted the way I act and liked the things I like. They’ve dressed the way I dressed and I’ve been comfortable being around them. Whereas the term ‘man’ almost exclusively feels like it applies to the older men in my life, all of whom dress very differently than I do and like very different things than I do. Although I’m comfortable being around them, it’s a very different feeling then when I was around ‘boys.’ Obviously not everyone sees these terms like this, and I don’t usually see other people outside my family like this, so I’m not saying all men like different things than me and all boys like the same. Words mean vastly different things to people, I just think that it’s interesting the way I see these two

kept awake at night obsessing raving over the idea of someone whose gender is like "im gonna say im a [blank]. but just fyi im lying to you when i say that." like no further elaboration on the nature of the lie and the lie is an inseparable part of the identity. unknowable trickster gender

Most of my Lucifer drawings cuz apparently I don’t show tumblr anything and he’s my favorite

As someone who is genderfae (microlabel under genderfluid), I have a lot of different experiences with gender.

I just wish someone told me sooner that it won't go like "today I'm a girl" "today I'm an enby" but more like ,,, "today I am a swamp witch" "today I am a feminine victorian vampire boy" "today I am a forest goblin collecting people's stares about my gender expression like shiny rocks on the ground" "today I'm an androgynous pirate lady"

Like,,, sure, are those real genders? I don't fucking now. If a cisgender person asked me what I identify as that day, would I answer like that? No, definitely not.

But to my genderqueer, trans and genderfluid friends; do you get me? I can't be alone with this, right?

"This is the gender fuckery and cis+ website"You guys can't even handle trans people who don't want to physically transition

terry farrell is like So genderful in her performance as dax & it drives me bonkers bc it's impossible to explain to people without them seeing it. like you show them a picture & she just looks like a beautiful woman & you have to be like no I Swear. she Sells the woman who's also sort of a man thing. watch her move and talk and you'll Get It. but then you also feel a bit crazy as you say it

trans men who wear feminine clothing (because fuck the idea that men have to dress a certain way to be "real men") 🤝 trans men who refuse to wear feminine clothing (because fuck everyone who's been trying to force you to tone down your masculinity and "accept" being feminine your whole life):

being so strong and rad as hell and not needing to change a single damned thing about their gender presentation