JUST SAW SOME CRAZY MISOGYNY AND MISOGYNOIR ON MY DASH SO NOW YOU ALL HAVE TO SUFFER THROUGH 10 FEMINIST POSTS IN A ROW😘

Honestly, going with the most charitable interpretation of what a world post-gender abolition looks like from what I’ve read from “gender-critical” users, this is where I think trans people would place in it:

Wome would be liberated from the patriarchy. (This is at the top because this is where most gender critics here on Tumblr are going to stop - i know it’s an oversimplification, but much like gender critics claim they’re more concerned for “women’s safety”, I’m more concerned here with the safety and well-being of my fellow trans people.)

People would get to wear whatever we want - or whatever we don’t want - with zero or low judgment or threat of violence.

Bathrooms would be divided into Men’s rooms and Women’s rooms, and if you’re going into one you’d better have the right “natural” “parts” to be there. If not it’s to be assumed you either made a mistake or had nefarious intentions and would be dealt with accordingly.

Kids would be allowed to wear whatever they want, play with whatever they want, and not have gendered expectations and roles shoved onto them.

Hair on women, facial included, would not be an issue.

People will have zero problems using the pronouns and names assigned to them at birth, by virtue of the sex they were born as.

Media will not shove gender onto kids either.

This will get rid of gender dysphoria because…again, being charitable, kids raised without gendered expectations and roles won’t feel the need to be the other sex to “escape”, or “mix up” gender and sex.

On the rare case that gender dysphoria is biology-based, clearly therapy would be needed to help them “accept their birth sex.” And gender dysphoria would be treated like a “normal” mental illness, thought of like anorexia or other types of body dysmorphia, and not “catered to.”

So, to sum it up: Trans people wouldn’t exist because in the post-gender abolition Utopia, people would be perfectly happy with their birth sex, would just use the pronouns and name assigned to them at birth, if you were caught in the wrong bathroom you’d be assumed to be there by mistake or arrested if not, and gender dysphoria would be therapied out of them.

…so unpacking this:

Why would gendered bathrooms even be needed in a post-gendered world? Presumably one of the goals of women’s liberation and abolition of gender would be to eradicate, as much as possible, violence against women. If that was successfully done…why would there even be a fear of unisex bathrooms, if predatory behavior against women is no longer an issue?

I wore androgynous and “tomboyish” clothing before I transitioned. I wore a lot of whatever I wanted before I transitioned, mostly sweatpants, t-shirts, and sweaters. It didn’t lessen the feeling of “wrongness,” nor did that feeling improve until I fully embraced being trans and what that meant.

For the above, I imagine this is much, much harder for trans women - for all the talk of being free to wear whatever you like and that clothing shouldn’t be gendered, apparently the farthest a lot of gender critics are willing to go is “rockstar dandy David Bowie.” Women are allowed to be butch and masculine…but not too butch and masculine. (See: Every single TERF crying over a transmasculine person “ruining their body” girl shut up)

This goes towards policing how trans people clothe themselves too. For trans women, if you’re too feminine you’re “appropriating womanhood;” if you’re more butch you’re just a man claiming to be a female to get access to women’s spaces. For trans men, too masculine and you’re considered a traitor, “ugly” or lost dating material; if you’re not masculine enough you’re just pretending to be trans for clout, or brainwashed by the patriarchy. Non-binary people get mocked and dismissed no matter what the fuck they do. And this is even without the trauma that intersex people face from birth for having an abnormal body that doesn’t fit the sex binary, including non-consensual surgery done on them as a child and then covered up.

(As an aside - every single cis intersex woman I know on this platform? Has been “accused” of being trans. BY GENDER CRITICS. It’s sickening.)

Point being; for a group concerned about gender abolition, trans people have a very small gender expression allowance that is tolerated, at best.

We can’t win, to put it bluntly. Maybe our gender expression will be allowed in the post-gender abolition world that’s going to definitely come in…the next few hundred years. For realsies, pinkie promise uwu.

Gender identity is not simply cultural. There are trans people who have a biological basis for their dysphoria as well. Again, I can only speak for my own experiences, but - on a fundamental level, the fact that my body is built for being impregnated and giving birth is like something out of Alien, and the thought of my body being capable of doing that is something I reject on every single level of my body, even the levels I can’t even reach. And there are people around you who A) see this as good, and B) want to force you to carry that crotchburster until it’s ready to pop.

My body should not be capable of doing that. Period. The end. And any amount of “body acceptance uwu” therapy you try to put me through to “fix” it is going to look shady as fuck. Might as well bring a pro-lifer CPC counselor in at that point.

There’s a lot more I can touch on - the fact that woman’s liberation is often isolated from other forms of oppression and that this post-gender utopia will not have even a ghost’s chance of happening unless we are all liberated, the way that the “scientific” argument of “define woman lol” is metaphysical in nature rather than scientific, the fact that this world they want trans people to live in means us living as something we fundamentally are not -

But I’ll be blunt again.

In a post-gender world, trans people wouldn’t exist. And those that do would be relegated to the same dark shadow of shame that hangs over people with mental illnesses.

And honestly, that’s a terrifying thought.

(TERFs don’t bother interacting if your only comment is going to focus only first bullet point. As I said, this post is primarily concerned about what trans people’s place would be in a “post-gender world” and the place and safety of trans people in it. Don’t derail.)

Mod bella is on kiwifarms

That’s the gross TERF site, right? If they are, I have a message:

Trans women are women.

Trans men are men.

Gender and sex are both social constructs.

Gender =/= gender roles. Eliminating gender roles won’t get rid of gender.

Patriarchy isn’t the only tool of oppression out there and not addressing other forms of oppression means not freeing women entirely from oppression, because women will still be oppressed for race and other factors.

Trans people are oppressed on the basis of being trans.

Oppression exists on multiple axes. Gender is one axis. Being transgender is a different axis. That means cisgender people can oppress transgender people, even if they are oppressed on the axis of gender. Just like white women can oppress people of color or straight women can oppress gay people.

There is a T in the acronym for a reason. Trans people matter.

Transgender people are super important to the history of the LGBTQIA+ community. You can’t erase their importance or our history. 

People don’t identify as trans or nonbinary to escape gender roles, to escape oppression, or to become oppressed. We identify that way because that’s who we are.

Being trans and nonbinary aren’t about presentation or not fitting in gender roles. I don’t identify as nonbinary because I think I’m too masculine to be a woman. I am super feminine, I wear makeup and dresses and heels and revealing clothing when I can, but I am nonbinary because I feel like I am not a woman and I know I am not a man. It’s not misogyny or a dislike of womanhood that makes me feel this way. I am a feminist and I love and support the women around me and fight for women’s rights. I just know I don’t belong to that category, and I don’t have to to believe women should not be oppressed for being women.

Trans men can be feminine and trans women can be masculine. This doesn’t disprove their gender. Men are still men even if feminine and women are still women even if masculine. Trans women don’t owe you femininity and trans men don’t owe you masculinity.

Any feminism that doesn’t support the most marginalized women there are is shit feminism. Trans women are much more likely to be murdered than you are. They are marginalized in ways you don’t understand. Not including them in your feminism is wrong.

Trans women are not rapists or abusers just because they are trans women. Cis women can be rapists and abusers too. It’s not one’s identity that makes someone abusive or a rapist. Assuming all trans women are bad people is transphobic and makes you a bigot.

Men are not inherently evil because they are men. 

People are allowed to be angry at their oppressors. That means trans people have a right to be angry at cis people.

“Cis” is not a slur. It just means “cisgender.” “Cisgender” means that you agree with your assigned gender at birth. Have a vagina and identify as a woman? Congrats, you’re cis. That’s not an insult. That’s just how things are. No one is attacking you by calling you “cis.”

“TERF” is also not a slur, it does not mean “lesbian,” and the reason you are being called a TERF is because you’re a transgender exclusionary radical feminist. You identify as a radical feminist, and you exclude trans people from your activism. That is what “TERF” means. That’s it. It’s not an attack. It just means you’re a radfem who is transphobic. 

You wouldn’t call the word “misogynist” an attack on men, so why is “TERF” supposedly an attack on you? Hm?

Transmisogyny is still misogyny. Trans women face misogyny. They need feminism because they are women. 

Men get called out for transphobia too. It’s just that men can’t be TERFS because radical feminists don’t allow men to identify as radical feminists. But radical feminists can be any orientation, which means TERFS can be any orientation. So again, “TERF” does not mean “lesbian.”

All cis people are capable of being transphobic. That includes men. We call out men for transphobia all the time. The fact you ignore this happening and never listen to trans people doesn’t prove otherwise.

If you’re willing to compromise with or work with conservatives, misogynists, and other people who harm women just so you can harm trans women, you’re not a feminist. You don’t care about women. You’re just a bigot.

No one is asking you to like dick by telling you that trans women are women. You’re not required to date or sleep with trans women. We just want you to call them women and recognize that people who do date or sleep with trans women are, in fact, attracted to women.

Stop telling lesbians that dating trans women makes them bi. It’s offensive to tell someone that their orientation is wrong and that they aren’t really that orientation.

Thanks for talking about me. I’m always happy to please a fan.

Bye, ladies. Have a nice day.

- Mod Bella

It’s a clammy summer night. You’re 24, and you call a suicide hotline.

The nice lady who answers is probably in her seventies. She is very understanding as you explain to her that hundreds of people, thousands of strangers, are saying awful things about you, that some of them seem to really want to hurt you. You don’t know why. You’re just a writer, and you didn’t expect this. But some of them tell you in detail their fantasies of your rape and murder.

The nice lady is very sweet as she asks you if these voices ever tell you to do things. Yes, they tell you to stop writing. You inform the nice lady about this in a creepy whisper because your family is sleeping nearby and you don’t want to wake or worry them. These strangers tell you you don’t deserve to live, let alone have a newspaper column. Do they tell you to hurt yourself? Yes, every day.

The nice lady tells you to hold the line, because if it’s alright, she’s going to transfer you to one of her colleagues with specialist training.

No, wait, you say. You’re not hearing voices. You’re not delusional.  The nice lady can Google you. This is really happening.

* * *

The internet hates women. Everyone knows that by now, and nobody precisely approves, but we’ve reached a point of collective tolerance. It’s just the way of the world, and if you can’t handle it, honey, delete your account. Stop engaging online. Cut yourself off from friends, family, and professional contacts, shut down your business, blow up your social capital, stop learning, stop talking, just stop. Or else.

The U.N. Broadband Commission tells us that one in five young women has been sexually harassed online. Amnesty International’s latest report suggested that over three-quarters of women and girls expected violence and abuse if they expressed an opinion online. “Online” is the least significant word in those sentences. I have been asked enough times if “the internet is bad for women.” And yes, there is reason enough to warn your daughter, your partner, your friend to watch out for herself online, to think twice before “putting herself out there.” You’d warn her in much the same way that you might warn her not to walk through town alone at night, not to wear a short skirt, not to let her guard down, not to relax, ever. And the message is the same: The future, like the past, is not for you. You may visit, but only if you behave.

* * *

You’re 23. You’re an aspiring writer and the blog you write about gender, sex, and welfare from your roach-infested bedroom is nominated for a major prize. You get to go to a fancy ceremony. Your parents are proud. You put on your best shirt and try to look comfortable. All the other nominees are older, and most of them are men, and as you are stashing fancy food in your rucksack to take home and share, one of them comes over and whispers gleefully in your ear: How does it feel to be a hate figure?

You should have taken it as a warning. This is about the time when the death threats start.

* * *

The year 2010, according to a recent report from Manchester Metropolitan University, was when the snowball of new feminism got up enough momentum to become a threat to culture. That momentum came from the internet. “The ability to call out sexism and misogyny on social media has revolutionized the feminist movement,” writes Dr. Emma Turley, one of the authors of the paper.

When it comes to feminism, simply describing the world as so many of us actually experience it can be a radical act, and that’s what a lot of women started doing in 2010 in numbers too big to ignore. However, the report goes on to note that “Social media can expand the means to proliferate misogynistic and sexist narratives, and shame women and maintain power inequalities in the offline world.” The year 2010 was also when mob harassment started to be weaponized against women online in an organized way. That’s no coincidence. Just about exactly when women started to use the internet to organize in ways that kept patriarchy awake at night, it started to become a truism that the internet was a dangerous place for girls. This development is always described in the passive voice, as if there weren’t a lot of people out there determined to make sure it stays that way.

It’s easy to blame technology for this, and people do. I do. I have been known to tell concerned friends and family who are wondering why I suddenly seem so scared of my phone that “the internet is being a bastard today,” not because I really think that the internet is a sentient machine capable of specific and malicious bastardry, but because it’s sometimes too depressing to acknowledge that one is surrounded by moral illegitimacy on all sides.

Let’s be daring for a minute and consider an alternative theory: The internet does not hate women. The internet doesn’t hate anyone, because the internet, being an inanimate network, lacks the capacity to hold any opinion whatsoever. People hate women, and the internet allows them to do it faster, harder, and with impunity. It’s developed into a form of relaxation after a hard day of being ground on the wheel of late-stage capitalism. Melvin Kranzberg’s statement that “technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral” holds true here: The internet lets us be whoever we were before, more efficiently, with fewer consequences.

Misogyny is among many things millennials did not invent. Long before Twitter was a glint in Jack Dorsey’s eye, women who stepped out of line were being shamed by Left and Right alike regardless of which wave of feminism they rode.

The most damaging attacks, however, often came from inside the movement. Years after witnessing violent takedowns of other women in the late ’60s, Jo Freeman penned a desperate article in Ms. Magazine in 1975, “Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood,” which rings a note of ominous familiarity for anyone who has watched what happens to progressive women who dare to display self-respect in public:

It is not disagreement; it is not conflict; it is not opposition. These are perfectly ordinary phenomena which, when engaged in mutually, honestly, and not excessively, are necessary to keep an organism or organization healthy and active. Trashing is a particularly vicious form of character assassination… It is manipulative, dishonest, and excessive. It is occasionally disguised by the rhetoric of honest conflict, or covered up by denying that any disapproval exists at all. But it is not done to expose disagreements or resolve differences. It is done to disparage and destroy.

Forty years later, trashing is still progressives’ favorite tactic to deploy against uppity women. When it happens in the playground, it’s called bullying. When it happens in the workplace, the phenomenon is delicately known as mobbing. Again, researchers report high levels of post-traumatic stress among those who have been subject to it. Again, those singled out for mobbing are more likely to be high-achievers, more likely to be potential leaders, and especially likely to be women.

Freeman continues:

Trashing is not only destructive to the individuals involved, but serves as a very powerful tool of social control. The qualities and styles which are attacked become examples other women learn not to follow — lest the same fate befall them. […] This kind of woman has always been put down by our society with epithets ranging from “unladylike” to “castrating bitch.” The primary reason there have been so few “great women ______” is not merely that greatness has been undeveloped or unrecognized, but that women exhibiting potential for achievement are punished by both women and men. The “fear of success” is quite rational when one knows that the consequence of achievement is hostility and not praise.

Trashing is insidious. It can damage its subject for life, personally and professionally. Whether or not people sympathize, the damage has been done. It doesn’t matter if the attacks have any basis in truth: What matters is that she is difficult. This woman who doesn’t have the sense to protect herself from public shaming by piping down, by walking with her eyes lowered. She can be trashed intimately by people who don’t know her, people who are engaging, at best, with a flimsy caricature based on her worst qualities, and she might understand that it’s not really her they hate, but she’s the one getting those messages every day.

In the 1970s, trashing had to be done with analog tools. Today, it is faster, harder, more savagely intimate. It follows you to work. It follows you to bed. Freeman was talking about the feminist Left, but this happens everywhere. In fact, committed hatred of successful women and a destructive obsession with women who step outside their lane seem to be the sole point on which the entire political spectrum is in absolute agreement.

https://longreads.com/2018/03/28/who-does-she-think-she-is/

CAMPAIGN:

1. 

I Want You To Fuck All The Women In Me The female heart carries courage in the chambers that pump blood into lifeless souls, for it has learnt to surreptitiously push itself through tsunamis that dismantled strategically established structures with a mere hair flip. It knows how to put make-up in crowded metros, when all the women wonder why she's so obsessed with the idea of putting up make-up, that she's doing it here in front of everyone, when she could have done it within the confines of her home. Or wait, eyebrows raised, with questions on their otherwise serene morning faces, "why do you need make-up when you're beautiful the way you're?" To the women going to office without wake-up, standing firm amidst unsettling remarks, "your eyes look patchy and droopy", "are you sick or didn't get enough sleep?"Her dark circles are easily ignored evidences,of all the nights she was up convincing her family, to let her go to another town for her undergraduate degree, and from the time she spent breastfeeding her hungry daughter in the middle of the night, or from ensuring that socks don't keep falling off the little feet of her son. To the women who spent 6 hours dressing up, fixing it, re-doing it, deciding it's all been done wrong, so staring over all again, imitating the women on the Internet, finding just a fraction of the perfection she was looking for. We know how years of societal ridicule telling you that you're shorter, darker, heavier, slimmer, taller, than other women or than what men would have liked, has reduced you to a zombie feeding off on other people's shallow validation, and how deprived you're of the goddess that sits in your chest singing victory songs to the gods in heaven, proclaiming how it learnt to fight, from the time when she was a ball of blood and flesh in her mother's womb, hearing carefully drawn strategies to strangle her before she can come into the world only to learn what the world will snatch from her, from the time when genital mutilation was the only way out to keep her from letting things in, from the time when marriage stumbled like an unprecedented warning call over her ears when the only thing she wanted to hear was, "well done, you're meant for great things!", but she forced herself to learn each word of the "Guide To A Happy Married Life", learning how to find happiness in her husband's happiness, and her so-called "conflict of duties" didn't permit her to utter a word to her parents, because daughters can be scarred and sacred and scared, but no matter what, they don't come back home once married because they were never yours to begin with, from the time when she could claim the streets and dance naked celebrating her glory, being unrestrained and beautiful and ugly and melodramatic without giving a fuck to any tag that tried to push itself down her throat slowly choking her and claiming everything she could have been, from the time when liking pink and hugs and romantic movies were blurred lines segregating the dumb whores from the intellectual bitches, from the time when Holi (the festival of colours) was an excuse of a festival for men to feed off her in socially approved ways, leaving marks of their convenient pride over the skin that she proudly wore, over the skin that just wanted to see the colours of life, they showed her the colours of their souls when she was just 7, from the time when they told her she would never be able to walk or dance because she is too fat to move like that and has flat feet that will stifle her aspirations to keep pace, from the time when being beautiful was a warning bell that would never stop ringing and being ugly was "desperation dressed subtle", from the time when standing up for yourself was being a feminazi-sick-hysterical-neurotic-abused-crazy woman, and being silent was ignorant-dumb-weak-powerless-submissive, from the time when glancing through books under bed covers were plans to destroy established civilisations and control systems meant to maintain exploitative structures, from the time when letting a man touch you wherever he wants however he wants defined how much you loved him by surrendering your body-mind-soul at his feet even though he refuses to let you stroke his hair when he "doesn't feel like it", from the time when biting my lip was sexual and uncovering my breasts could wreck havoc  over the most dead faces in the room, from the time when you divorced me and left me stranded in the middle of the road with your child in my womb and I still tried my best to ensure that our daughter could have a relationship with her father despite the abuse that became my everyday life, to the time when social media where I find the illusion of being able to say what I feel, is a careful traitor trading my messenger (a place to initiate communication) in the hands of men, who can't resist telling a woman they don't even know, how much they wanna be frandz with her, and fuck her under the streetlight in a car that stinks of their unfriendly odour, but they say that the hostile smell is of her unclean and hairy vagina, wait but try naming the patriarchal instruction manual that told you to equate a woman's genitals with roses and lemons and peach, so I can have that shit banned, from the time when travelling alone meant being a money bank deliberately putting itself on sale, to the time when a simple activity like travelling alone was enough to get me called "rebellious",when it was nothing more than a statement of my power, defying your suffocating nerve-cracking fear-installing soul-wrenching systems, from the time when leaving my hair open meant a rude declaration of my recklessness on an otherwise warm winter day, and how sitting with my legs spread wide grants you commodious certification to get right between them no matter how much I scream, from the time when sex meant your entire being reducing me to pieces with the blink of an eye, without taking the time to understand what my body wants and how it responds, when it meant letting hormones dictate the anxieties of my confused head and shivering soul, I think today is your day to fuck me, show me how you will fuck all the women in me, because I swear that though the women in me are tired, they will fuck the fuck out of your fragile ego rusting at their fingertips, if you take a close look at us,you will see how we are so tired our bones would've given up on us if we didn't have this perpetual sadness keeping them together,our wombs would have refused to nurture lives if we didn't push hard enough to expel out lives that could live by everything you wanted to kill,our blood would refuse to flow if you weren't following our unchaste moves with the vigilance of a midnight cop, look at us, my dear, we're about to change the world, the tables are turning, the lights are getting dim, keep your shoulders down, don't grin like that in front of me, stop your suggestive wink emojis, step down from that convenient biased system-granted CEO chair that your ass is so accustomed to, your time's up boy, your time's up my boy.

2.

Thing I learnt after being in an all girls college:

1) It could be extremely uncomfortable to sit with your legs close to each other, as the touching/rubbing of thighs causes sweat and irritation. And contrary to popular belief, women feel absolutely comfortable keeping their legs apart and airy, when they aren't being monitored by sperm-possessors under the gender-conforming systematic apparatus that sexualises vaginas, hence reinforcing the idea that the vagina should be carefully hidden at all times, as sitting with your legs open grants legitimate authority to the privileged sex to get right between them or puts the sex in their eyes. DAYUM GIRL SPREAD THEM LEGS WHENEVER YOU WANT HOWEVER YOU WANT 2) Women tend to love each other without any inherent impulse to harbour hate or jealously over how the other woman looks/what the other woman possesses. In-fact, when they're allowed to express themselves in a free setting (without being headed by men in lines and classrooms), they recognise their power to RESIST/MANIPULATE systems that strategically reproduce similar societies while subtly accommodating the idea of a progressive flux. 3) In an environment where you don't have the  consistent fear of being groped/harassed/raped shoved down your throat with every breath you take, women LEARN TO UNLEARN pre-conceived ideas of living in bodies, that are pre-determined crime spots, with socially approved criminals, who are just doing what nature has conveniently assigned them to do, and since women are the ones defying the law by resisting the order of nature, anything happening or the mere lack of it is caused either by the inability/ability of women to have caused otherwise. Reading, discussing, sharing (without the fear of threatening traditionally empowered groups), often enables women to work their way through contexts and scenarios while reclaiming their power to bargain with patriarchy and challenge discourses. 4) Timely acceptance of your sexual impulses is the key to recognition of manufactured consent. Only you own your the body you inhabit, and if anyone tries to alter your state of consciousness, refusing to take the time to understand how your body functions and what it really needs, you can show them the unapologetic exit gate from your phenomenal life. I think what I'm trying to say is that I didn't know how the fear of being physically weaker, the fear of being groped/raped/beaten, altered my mind and body so much on an everyday basis, until I stepped into a world where I was allowed to run free without anyone discussing the weird shape of my ass when it moves too fast, or without anyone commenting on my nipples being visible because I didn't wear a bra, or my dark lipstick shade being a subtle invitation to invade everything familiar. I slowly learnt to voice my opinion without a louder (ignorant) voice suppressing mine. I learnt to wear crop-tops without the fear of my waist-line being a mid-day party for hungry hands. I learnt everything by unlearning what FEAR, had almost gradually, with the abruptness and the consistency of a moving fan, injected into my craving nerves. And for the first time, the grass was greener on my side. For the first time, the grass on my side wasn't short"er" or weak"er" or less"er". For the first time, the grass on my side was all that there was, and I was told to run on it freely for as long as I wanted to, without the other side calling the act of running, sexual or rebellious or inappropriate. Of-course, my hair flew and my boobs shook, but it was all okay. For the first time, I was complete. I was whole. I was enough. For the first time, sentences began with, "if she does this/does that, then..." You'll probably tell me I shouldn't have gone to an all girls' college because it alienates the viewpoint of the other gender, and I would look at you with puppy eyes amused at the spontaneity of the moment, where you never realised how the OTHER viewpoint is all that has existed since the beginning of time.  When male viewpoint is all you've known all your life, a certain distance is needed to give you the permission (as it's said) to have your own. To let you have your own as an independent entity, without existing in relation to a fear-installing, soul-wrenching, gender-reinforcing, system. And unless you have your OWN, can you fully accept the OTHER?

Artist: Avnika Gupta Sociology Honours; Lady Shri Ram College For Women, Columnist; Berlin ArtParasites & Thought Catalog

The Redesigned, Renovated and Refurbished project is running a campaign on social media where we invite all of you to transgress, embrace and showcase your true gender performance by wearing whatever you would have/ already do, had their been no regulation and the different spaces you would occupy in those clothes. 

~So o feel I must write this in order for people to not get confused on where I stand:~

~(10 Statements Total)~

💕1. Trans-women are women, Trans-men are men, non-binary people are non-fucking-binary, and anyone who says they are a certain gender, is that fucking gender. And if they say they aren’t any genders, they fucking aren’t.

💕2. Sex-WORK is REAL WORK, and I have no time for slut-shamers or transphobes. Fuck ya’ll, people, especially women, deserve to express their sexuality and own it like hell as human-fucking-beings, and are not born on this world to stifle themselves, nor to live up to some pathetic puritanical bullshit that western white society has imposed on the entire world. Oh, and sex-workers are to be respected, and are damn-well allowed to make money from something that is a legitimate job, regardless of what society says or thinks. If they’re getting paid for sex.... guess what that is? I’ll let you answer that...

.....

That’s okay, take your time.

💕3. ALL Black Lives Matter. Not just the black lives who fit your idea of what a black person is “suppose to be”. All black lives.

That means Transgender Black people, Lgbt+ Black People, Alternative black people, Atheist Black people, Satanic Black people, Black People who are Witches, Muslim Black people, Weird-ass Black people, Kawaii Black People, Cottagecore Black People, Vintage Black People, Cosplaying Black People, Poor Black People, Disabled Black People, and the Candace Owens’ because they need help. They truly need help. Omg.

💕4. R*pe and other forms of s****l a****lt are wrong, and the victim is a victim no matter their gender, and no matter what they were fucking wearing, and I cannot believe people even think it’s the victims fault for a crime a fucking predator chose to commit. Men who were sexually assaulted are victims, women, non-binary people, etc, a victim is a victim, and I dare somebody to laugh at someone who is amab who was a victim of sexual assault. Y’all are truly disgusting and this shows exactly why the patriarchy should be destroyed. It hurts men, women, non-binary people, and literally everyone else. It must be stopped.

💕5. Men are allowed to be feminine, women are allowed to be masculine, non-binary people are allowed to be masculine, feminine, androgynous, etc, and nobody owes you a form of expression just because they’re a certain gender.

Trans-women don’t owe you stereotypical femininity, or femininity at all, Trans-men don’t owe you stereotypical masculinity, or masculinity at all, Non-binary people don’t owe you androgyny, and can look cisgender, and still be non-binary.

Nobody owes you shit just because your perception of the world is binary and stereotypical.

💕6. Clothing does not have a fucking gender. Yes, I myself may perform stereotypical femininity, or call something “girly”in order to give you a clear picture of what I’m trying to describe, but that does not mean that I honestly believe that clothing actually has a gender, or is reserved for a certain type of gender. I only dress and act a certain way for fun, and because I enjoy it, and nothing more.

If clothing truly did have a gender, then it would be haunted in some way, because it’d be occupied by a gendered spirit, because cloth doesn’t have a conscience on its own.

💕7. The human body is not wrong, nor is it disgusting. Well... shitting is disgusting, obviously, and so are infections and viruses, but that is not what I mean.

The human body having genitals and sexual urges is not something that should be seen as disgusting or wrong, and it’s wrong for people to force others to believe that they’re somehow wrong for feeling certain urges, or having body parts.

I remember growing up thinking that having sexual thoughts and urges was wrong, and was never told otherwise. And yes, I also grew up being forced into having a Christian mindset, so the idea of sex being wrong made me scared of my own body, and myself, and made me feel ashamed of my own body for years before I even realized that what I was forced into believing was the only thing that was wrong, and disgusting.

To make things perfectly clear: Not liking sex is perfectly fine, and loving sex is also perfectly fine... What is NOT perfectly fine is forcing your problematic ideas onto other people, in order to make them feel like who they are, and what they’re doing is wrong.

If what they’re doing isn’t harming anyone, nor themselves...

✨💕Leave Them The Fuck Alone.💕✨

If someone does not like sex at all, respect that. If they do like sex, respect that. If they are also asexual, respect that or else. I have no time for aphobia. NONE.

✨💕Oh, and asexuals are still asexual regardless of whether or not they enjoy sex, or have had sex. Asexuality is based on attraction, not action.💕✨

💕8. 🌸😜😙🐳🐇🐙✨The male gaze is disgusting and should be destroyed. Fuck the male gaze. I hope it burns.✨🐙🐇🐳😙😜🌸💕

💕9. Colorists, Featurists and Texturists beware. I don’t got time for yourself, and never did.

Black people with 4c hair, pitch-black skin, wide noses, and big lips are extremely beautiful and I dare you to say otherwise. The natural-hair movement is an absolutely joke because the black women who claim to care about black women only care about black women who either don’t look black at all, or are closest to white, and have hair, and features in general, that are closest to white as well, and shit on black women especially who live freely, and unbothered, with 4c hair that is not done in any way. Black women are allowed to have hair that is undone and not “of the standard”. We will live. We shall live. With or without your permission, which I personally don’t fucking want. Ew.

💕10. Black people who abuse children and make excuses for their abuse deserve to have their hands broken.

Any human being who puts their hands on anyone, especially a child, and then tries to paint the child to be the bad guy in order to justify their toxic agenda, is a foul and vile human being who deserves to have their children taken away, and needs to stay away from children in general, as well as non-human animals, because we all know they’ll pick on any living being who can’t stand up for themselves, nor speak for themselves.

That’s what they truly want. To take their own unchecked anger and trauma, from being abused themselves as children, out on someone who not only has nothing to do with that, but does not need that at all. A living being deserves to feel safe and secure, no matter what they did, or who they are.

And they deserve to feel human, and to make mistakes, and feel like they can learn and do better from that, and grow as a person without fearing for their life. Whether that’s occasional, or on a daily basis.

Just because you can have a child, doesn’t mean you deserve one. Just because you can adopt a non-human animal companion, doesn’t mean you deserve one.

~.Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.~

~.Pinkie.~

Evidence of primary research 2

Appendix B: Batchelor, Z. (2016) Email to Jasdeep Kang, 1.12.16

 Zeinab: Do you identify as a feminist?

Jasdeep: Most definitely. But also I feel it’s important to bring up the intersections of class and race alongside any feminist rhetoric, since this dialogue is usually missing from western feminism. 

Zeinab: To what extent do you feel women’s bodies are sexualised in British media (E.g advertising, photography, fashion) and how do you think this positively/negatively effects attitudes in society?

Jasdeep: Cant' speak on British media’s behalf, but in terms of America- our media is truly fucked. The heteronormative cis-gendered female body is completely sexualized. 

Zeinab: With your own photography, how do you feel you are representing the female subject?

Jasdeep: I want to celebrate femmes who incorporate daily acts of resistance within their lives. whether it’s patriarchy, whiteness, xenophobia, or our own mother’s encouraging us to stay “timid” and "settle down", these femmes actively take a stance towards creating a new culture. i want to give people a space. I’m not here to necessarily tell their story, that’s up to them, but I hope to work alongside them in exploring it. 

Zeinab: How do you think that, as being a female, ultimately changes the representation of portraying girls as a subject?

Jasdeep: Being a female, I want to deconstruct the micro-aggressions, especially the passivity that we endure on a daily basis. Even though I cannot understand everything that the individuals I photograph/film are going through, I can at least give them the comfort in knowing they can express it. Sometimes when working on pieces i notice that not all class, race and sex are spoken about within the same context- there is a huge puzzle missing when we only one person is “talking”. I hope to create a conversation and take responsibility in the work that I create. 

Zeinab: Are your intentions to disengage from the traditional male gaze, if so, why and how?

Jasdeep: YES, always. It’s our story to tell. Not his story. I want people to question everything about the process of creating content. Who was behind the camera? What was potentially discussed before or after? Im out here trying to bring out the most unique part of each individual. That short period where the person is either being filmed, photographed, etc. is a sacred space. 

Zeinab: Your work takes a focus on youth and the cultures we identify with, what are your intentions by choosing this subject matter?

Jasdeep: Is there is a safe way to tell a story that is not yours? I’m always learning how to approach this given the different people that i either film or photograph. I’m not trying to tell a story that is necessarily mine. I don’t want to contribute in any type of erasure that is pivotal in telling a story. My intentions are to find what is missing between the stories that are constructed “for us” but not "by us". My intention is to capture after listening, not only observing, but actively listening to who I am photographing or filming. 

Zeinab: How do you think the representation and the notion of youth has evolved? In particularly, the representation of girls. 

Jasdeep: I love the internet. I feel like there are so many more modes to communicate and create intimate spaces online. I think the notion of youth has evolved given the different tools we have now to connect with others who are going through similar experiences. 

Zeinab: Do you believe that subcultures still exist?

Jasdeep: Yes. 

Zeinab: How do you think your own individual style reinforces your cultural identity? Do you identify with any particular styles/cultures?

Jasdeep: I usually will incorporate something that either my mother or grandmother has passed down to me. I love seeing their bracelets and earrings on me .Especially when i’m in an unfamiliar space. It grounds me. Carrying a hyphenated identity def reinforces my cultural identity. If I’m wearing a full on salwar kameez (punjabi traditional clothing) i don’t feel quite myself unless i pair my converse or choker with it. If i’m wearing western clothing, i don’t quite myself unless i’m wearing traditional earrings or some bracelets. 

Zeinab: What does the term girlhood mean to you?

Jasdeep: Girlhood to me has no ties. It’s boundless. Decolonized. Now that i can identify how my reality was so carefully constructed. What i benefited from due to the oppression. Girlhood is freedom. I am inspired by my niece and younger cousins, who are in different phase of girlhood. Im almost 25 and definitely not a girl anymore, but have been able to explore so many questions about my identity alongside their actions and my actions when I was in technically experiencing girlhood.