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nny11writes · 4 years

Note

For the fic writer ask game: What’s a trope that you’d like to never hear about as long as you live, let alone write? (Feel free to rant :) )

Hahahaha, sorry were you looking for one trope?

I’m usually so positive so now you’ve done it. You’ve unlocked me complaining about random shit that doesn’t usually matter. Because the damn busted wide the fuck open! Okay, so I’m going to approach this as outside of smut fics with intense kinks I can’t stand (vore, foot fetish, scat play, etc), because that’s me getting squicked and/or triggered and not just tropes that I wish would die in a fire.

My only disclaimer up front is that if you love most of these (hopefully it’ll be obvious which ones I will not forgive/excuse you from), that’s awesome! Go for it! Read it, write it, print it out to loving re-read and paste on the walls! Fandom is, in large part, about finding your niche and enjoying what you enjoy pretty much shamelessly. So I’m not passing judgement on anyone who enjoys reading or writing (most of) these.

CW: rape, sexual assault Also I’ve had a shit few days, so if you don’t want to read someone just being negative and bitching this is probably not the post for you friend. But it all below a cut so people can avoid!

Crossover Fics/Rule 50

My main gripe with this is that without fail a series I love get crossed over with a fandom I either don’t care about or hate. Every time I’ve tried to force myself to read one it’s never worked out for me. Sometimes fics aren’t properly tagged and I’m getting into the setting only for other characters from another fandom to suddenly show up and literally I instantly loose interest. The closest I got to writing a crossover fic, was on FF.net where I had all the characters I wrote for “talking to me” when I hit a big wall of writer’s block in the hopes that writing something so different and strange for me would help. It didn’t. It was interesting for 0.2 seconds to wonder how characters would interact, but then I instantly lost interest because I end up leaning so heavily of character tropes to make it work which, for me, isn’t fun to read or write.

Like, just write fusion! I like fusion! I’m currently writing a SPOP-SW fusion! It allows me to play with characters in a fun world that I already understand, but without the frustration of characters becoming more 2D or very OOC (or both) to force them to interact with one another. Rage Fics

Honestly? If you write and post rage fics, fuck you. Full stop. Fuck you.

I’m about to tangent, but I swear it’s related. This is the equivalent of someone tagging a character or ship or fandom they hate in a post bashing them or blasting them to hell and back. Fucking beyond rude and obnoxious. That’s what rage fics are cranked up to 11. You are 100% allowed to hate on fandom/character/ship/trope/whatever the fuck, but when you do that shit you are forcing people who enjoy the media to see/interact with your BS because you fucking tagged it to show up where we are. A great example here in SPOP is Catra. I love her! I understand why some people don’t, and they’re 100% allowed to hate her and resent that so many people like her. Recently I went to the Catra tag to find art and fic, maybe some of the top notch meta this fandom puts out if I was lucky, and got stuck seeing post after post after meta post comparing her to another character in the show to explain why she’s an awful person, badly written character, and anyone who likes her (but didn’t like the poster’s fave) was an idiot/asshole/troll/bitch/dumbass and you know what? I went from having a decent time decompressing after a shitty day at work to getting fucking sent around the sun with stress. Like, bro, I’m here to ENJOY myself thanks, and when you tag things I go to for fun and fluff when I’m out of spoons and ready to snap to ranting about hating it, you make me want to scream.

Y’all don’t know how many people are lucky that I write up responses in word so I can get it out of my system and then just DELETE the whole fucking thing. Rage fic is that same fucking set up, but instead of being a relatively quick post (where I can block the poster here on tumblr), it’s a fanfic that people are going to continue to click into over and over and over again for fun only to get body slammed. There’s no way to warn people on AO3 if something is a rage fic beyond not leaving a kudos and dropping a comment. I don’t know a lot of people who read comments first so it doesn’t always work.

If you post rage fics, grow up. Stop that shit. Fuck you. Instead, try not purposefully interacting with fandom that makes you so mad that you think doing this is an appropriate reaction. Block tags, block users, regulate comments, go whole fucking hog. You should be able to enjoy fandom too! But if you can’t do that without tearing down other people in fandom then you make me want to beat you over the head until you self-isolate to play by yourself in a different sandbox. Seriously. Fuck you if you do this.

Troll Fics

Did you think I came on strong for rage fics? This is worse.

If you do this? Fuck you. You get NOTHING but my pure rage and if I find this shit I will report you however I can and then shout from the rooftops about it. And I’m sure if you do write troll fics because you enjoy being purposefully offensive and triggering then you’re probably delighted that my reaction to just thinking about this is wishing I had the power to fuck up your life.

Like, the ONLY thing I can say for rage fic is that at least typically the person writing it actually enjoys some aspect of the fandom or fandom in general.

Troll fics are just meant to be offensive on purpose and if you write and post that you’re a bad person. No exceptions. You can make different choices and work to become a better person or a good person, but right now, right this second as you do it? You’re a bad person. You should probably figure out why you get so much joy out of posting things with the sole purpose of hurting/triggering/being cruel to others. And you might need help to do that. I legit think you should reach out to people with different opinions from your own to try and break out of it. Get a therapist. Do fucking something worthwhile, because posting troll fics is not worth anyone’s while. Fuck you. Rape as a Backstory

I hope I don’t have to fucking explain why this makes me want to literally explode. I’m purposefully not writing that as R*pe so that people with rape tagged don’t see this.

If you think that rape is the only way to push your story forward or is a great way to give a character “free and easy trauma”, literally stop. Just. Fucking. Stop. There are other ways. Really look at your work, really think about /why/ it’s so important to you that the character /has/ to be raped. Most of the time the real answer is you don’t have a reason you just chose it because you either don’t care, think it’s not a big deal, or never considered other possibilities. There are stories where rape does need to be included, stories that address the topic kindly and/or tag appropriately for it. I’ve read some of these that were really amazing, both short (<1k) and long (>100k) because the author actually took a hot second to address the topic in an intelligent way. Whether that was to dive into how it’s harmful, address their own trauma, or (honestly) even for the smut porn of it but with all the proper tags on it. If you have it to be purely enjoyed by yourself and/or others with dubcon or noncon kinks, cool, good for you, TAG IT APPROPRIATELY. Fucking bless writers who still use “Dead Dove/Do Not Eat” tags y’all are doing great work. But the vast majority using this trope?

They aren’t that, they aren’t anything like that at all, they aren’t always tagged correctly or at all and that’s by design, it’s often for shock value or a quick ‘well that’s why they’re anti-social’, it’s sometimes used as an excuse for one character to swear off sex until the “right person” comes along to “cure them”, and they shouldn’t have ever been posted.

Redemption Equals Sex/Sexual Karma

I know this is spring boarding a bit, but please stop writing these two tropes.

I’m exhausted y’all. And not just because I’m asexual. This trope is disgusting and usually comes with heaps of sexism, racism, and homophobia. If you want to write smut please just write the fucking smut. I’m literally posting smut fic and am planning to work on another one tonight! JUST WRITE SMUT WITHOUT MAKING IT DISGUSTINGLY ANTI-MINORITY GROUPS AND PLAYING INTO HARMFUL STEREOTYPES. If bad guys become good(ish) guys because a woman saw past their barriers, took care of them, are a surrogate mother, and then had wild and kinky sex with them then it’s a bad fic. Likewise, if a character is punished for having sex, or is sexually assaulted to show that they’re now bad then it’s a bad fic.

If a character’s suffering is rewarded with sex to “cure” them and “make them better” then it’s a bad fic.

There are so many ways that this shit becomes a seriously harmful fic.

Please. Please, stop doing this. I am on my knees. Stop!

I am sick of ‘Draco’s in Leather Pants’ (can’t fucking believe I’m whipping that term out again holy shit what year is it) getting redeemed because they slept with someone and now found a reason to care. Sex leading someone on the path towards redemption is so EXTREMELY rarely handled in a way that’s well done. Just. Don’t. Be an unapologetic villain lover, slap them in an AU where they aren’t a pure villain, but don’t do this. Like I wrote above, I’m also just sick of (usually, but not always) dudes who put rape in to punish (usually, but not always) female characters or to punish weak/pushover characters (usually, but not always males). And equally tired of traumatized characters “casting off their shackles” to enjoy wild and kinky sex because someone with a magic dick/strap/fingers/tongue “showed them it’s okay” and “made it all better”.

Just, don’t. Be a fucking decent human being and don’t.

Character/Reader Fics

I...I really just don’t get this? It’s very uncomfortable to me and I’m assuming that’s due to me being aroace, I can’t read them and if I try to I either become so uncomfortable I stop or so rage filled I stop.

I don’t mind 2nd person stories, but most of the ones I see are character/reader fics and it’s...like, it’s just bad. Not “cringe” just enjoyable for me. I can’t explain why I hate this so much considering I do enjoy some 2nd person fics. Idk, I really don’t have the words to explain why these bother me so much. :\

I ain’t got an alternative, if you like these you like them, and if you don’t you just don’t. Thank you for tagging so I can avoid. Have fun on your own! Song Fics and/or Audio/Sound Cue Fics

Sorry guys, I just hate it. I can’t really read a fic and listen to music at the same time, it becomes background noise 100% and detracts from both for audio cue fics.

Fuck, just realized I don’t know if people know what those are. Audio/Sound cue fics are fics where you’re reading along and all the sudden there’s a link or URL that you’re supposed to follow to help set up the next scene/enhance it. Hate it. Hate, hate, hate. It detracts from your story and makes it weaker while being annoying and breaking me the reader out of my enjoyment of your story. Hate! Telling me in the A/N that this (or these) are the song(s) you listened to while writing, song(s) you based the story on, or even that you think they’re good songs to get you in the mood for the story is totally okay! I’ll probably ignore it unless I went head over heels for it, in which case I WILL go back and listen to all of them. (Why hello Rhythm and Blues, you punched me in the face and I now listen to every song even vaguely mentioned in the story or A/N, you’re that good, it’s so fucking good guys, I can’t stop talking about this fucking series it’s just so good?????????) Song fics are also typically in this boat for me. And I want to be really clear, not fics where a character is singing in the fic with lyrics written out. That doesn’t bother me, that song is now effectively part of the story and draws me in. But if it’s paragraphs of description before suddenly cutting it’s annoying. Why, oh why, do I put up with this misery? Still looking for a reason For now it is a mystery to me Why, oh why, do I put up with this misery? Still looking for a reason But for now it's ancient history to me

So yeah I’m making an example to complain about the example.

But question.

Was that needed?

All I did was make overly explicit my feelings in this text that was already there in what I’d written. Song fics feel to me like writers who aren’t confident that their writing is good/understandable/relatable and so they are desperately throwing someone else’s creation into their own in the hopes the reader will get it. Friend, I promise you, we’ll get it without the song! The song lyrics detract when they’re just floating out there, and have taken goods fics and made them frustrating. Either that or you think you’re so amazing that your shit don’t stink and the rest of us idiots can choke because of your brilliance. I’ve found several song fics that if I copy and paste them into a word document and delete the song out, I really enjoyed the fic itself on it’s own merits in a way I literally couldn’t with the lyrics in there. Again, if you are weaving music into your fic, weave it in. Have characters sing, write the lyrics out as a character is listening to the music, quote the song in your fic (preferably without it being super obvious. I’m not saying my take on that was the best, but I did write a Catradora fic on giftly request based on a song and I 100% used lyrics from it in my prose and built my whole plot around it without breaking out to quote the song explicitly), just do something that’s not, like, punching me in the face because “clearly I couldn’t get it” or from a fear that “they won’t understand”. At best you seem insecure and unsure about your story, which is fantastic without the song. At worst it seems like you’re saying your fic is so beyond the average reader that we would never understand your vision without someone else’s original content in it.

#cw: rape #tw: rape #negativity #fandom #fandom negativity #me actually complaining about shit explicitly #and I still edited it a lot to make it not rage ranty #my anxiety won't let me live if I don't #about the author #tag game #writing game #writer game #fic game #fanfiction game #oh my god Imma post now otherwise I'm going to dive back in and scream A LOT MORE BECAUSE MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM #bobkitten

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werevulvi · 3 years

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This is a very long, ranty post that's only lightly edited. It's about me deciding to basically leave radfem, so I wanted to be thorough about explaining how and why. And this is mainly because my blog ended up existing in a radblr bubble, deemed as hostile by other ideologies/groups of people, and I need to break out of that bubble, because I feel trapped in it. I'm not sure how, as I may have to start over with a new blog entirely, but I'd hope to avoid that if at all possible (my blog is my baby.) So I'm thinking that making this kinda post is a good start in trying to change how my blog vibes and what kinda blogs I can interact with in a non-debate kinda sense. Basically, damage control.

A while ago, I made some post about how I wanted to move away from the worst rudefem stuff of radfem, for the sake of my mental health. Well, I've now hit a point of wanting to take further steps away from radfem, pretty much altogether. The main reason for this is that there's still too much focus on ragging on trans women, and trans people in general. It's suffocating me, because I'm not all that detrans and I'm not anti-male. I miss connecting with other trans people, and I miss being part of that community. Truth is I've become really fucking hateful towards my own kind and I've been in denial of it. This has been carving a hole in my heart that my radfem views have carved even deeper, and it has led me to become a quite lost soul.

Do I hate trans women? No, but I clearly act as if I do, and I don't feel comfortable with my own actions and thoughts towards/about them anymore. Are some of them cumbrains fetishising my oppression (misogyny) and/or predators? Yes, undoubtedly. But I am not a collectivist and I can't view all trans women like that. Nor does it sit right with me to treat them all as potential predators. I care about trans women in general, ultimately because I am trans too and their struggles reflect my own. I cannot shit on them without shitting on myself. But it's not just about me. I feel empathy for them, and I want to extend kindness and care towards them. I cannot with any goodness in my heart view them as men. Males, yes, but not men. More on that diffentiation later in this post.

I do not want to politisise their gender identities as women, because I don't want my own gender politisised, regardless if that is man, woman, or otherwise. (More on that later too.) I don't want to trap them in the category of "man" because I do not want to be trapped in the category of "woman" as if our transitions and gender incongruence meant nothing at all. Do our transitions change bio sex? No, and I'm not arguing that. I'm saying transition changes SOMETHING and that that something matters. And in a lot of contexts, it even matters more than bio sex.

But isn't that just an emotional argument, like boohoo, my/their feefees? YES, it's an emotional argument. But you know what: I believe that feelings matter, about as equally much as facts and logic matters. An argument being emotional does not make it necessarily useless or invalid. Grave robbery and necrophilia is illegal due to purely emotional arguments. Perhaps think about if that's useless.

I care about trans women's feelings and comfort, not just their rights, and I care about men's feelings and comfort too, because I do not think individual males' oppression being patriarchy's fault even remotely means that "men cause their own problems" because one male suffering at the hands of other men (patriarchy) is NOT his own fault. And him reaching out to women for help when other men fail him AGAIN shouldn't be hard to understand. Of course it's optional to help him or not then, but I feel like it is truly heartless not to, unless he is some kinda raging misogynist. I see that kinda vibe a lot in radfem circles and it honestly churns my stomach. That kinda man-hating is to me absolutely repugnant. You do you, but I will not support it.

Why do I care about males? Because they're human. They're the same species as me, and I care about them as one human to another. Because I don't believe there's any difference between males and females beyond the physical biology stuff. Socialisation varies from person to person. I've always been a person of principles, so I can't sit around and say I only care about fellow females and all females, because no one choses to be born female - and then in the same breath hate males for essentially having been born male, which they also did not choose. If I had been born male, I'd probably hate radfem, and that says something. It's very fucking lopsided, and barely even to my favour.

And I've been asking myself that a lot lately: Is radfem even to my (a bio female's) favour - or is it only the the favour of some kinda statistic average of a general female who doesn't even exist? I dunno, but it's an important question to ask.

This is getting ranty already, but hey I'm trying.

Trans women and males aside, radfem often has a kinda negative view of trans men (and any variety of dysphoric females) that I've always felt iffy about, but first thought I had been mistaken about. It seemed for a long while that radfem is totally supportive of transmascs/dysphoric females, but..... upon closer look, it appears a little bit rotten, sorry to say. Because lately I've come to realise maybe I was kinda right from the start that radfem really is not as supportive of transmascs/dysphoric females as it claims to be. This is probably not intentionally unsupportive, I'm aware, but some of the things that really stand out to me like sore thumbs:

1.) The idea that if gender abolishion happened, no one would be dysphoric or wish to transition medically, is frankly incredibly unfounded. Do you have ANY evidence for that dysphoria is ENTIRELY social, because I've yet to see any reliable study on this. As far as I'm concerned this is just a theory based on essentially the exclusion method that all the biology-based theories are incomplete. So this strong assertion that a genderless society would have no trans people (with sex dysphoria only) gives me this unsettling vibe that radfem is not at all supportive of transition, but would prooobably prefer it if no one was trans - even in a world where gender is abolished and transitioned females are masculine women who just like looking like males, and transitioned males are feminine men who just like looking like females, and I dunno dysphoric nonbinary people would just be men and women who transition in a variety of atypical ways.

Which was always what I envisioned. That no one would be FORCED to be feminine or masculine or anything, because of their sex - NOT that trans people would be forced or expected to accept their physical sex characteristics. Because I don't know about you, but I've personally never based my sex dysphoria on that it's too hard to live as a masculine woman, and I've met tons of other trans people who feel the same way about that. It's a myth about dysphoric trans people, and I think perpetuating it does more harm than good.

Feminism, gender abolishion, etc, probably can't cure anyone's sex dysphoria. And even just striving towards that is a little iffy. How about leave it up to the dysphorics if we wanna be cured? Because I bet most radfems would not wanna enforce a cure for autism if that became a thing, or strive towards curing the world of autism. So why do it with sex/gender dysphoria? Point is I'm just noticing these uncomfortable, kinda hidden anti-trans sentiments behind the gender abolishion idea. I'm FOR gender abolishion, but only if transition would still be available in such a future. But I'm sensing that's not what radfem is actually about, and I've been properly fucking fooled. If so... fuck you for that.

2.) Some of you operate on the false assumption that trans people never pass as the opposite sex. This level of intellectual dishonesty is skewing radfem certain arguments really badly, and makes them appear poorly thought-out at best, and impossible to implement in real life at worst.

3.) The idea that sex segregated spaces can be upheld in a world where some people pass as the opposite sex, is frankly ludicrous to me, if you think of how it would actually pan out in practice. If women's spaces became only ever available for bio women, and males spaces only available for bio men, I'd be banned from both, due to my own transition. (And why the flying fuck would I promote that? I'm not insane.) Because there is no way I can prove that my sex is female, most people do not even believe that my sex is female when I tell them, and I already get tossed out from women's spaces due to that I just look like a man.

People's failure to believe I'm THAT passable irl, is about as frustrating as people's failure to believe I'm actually female, and both those people's arguments on where I "should" go is entirely useless garbage. This doesn't only affect me, but a lot of trans people out there in the world. And then I'm probably more accommodating to this kinda drama, than what most trans people would even be willing to pretend to put up with. I am your faithful lapdog, yet I still get my teeth kicked in for being annoying. To which I have to ask myself: is this kinda martyrdom really worth it? Other trans people often see me as self-hating for being a radfem, and I'm sadly starting to see why.

And to then claim I could just use gender neutral spaces is frankly robbing me of MY female rights. To treat me as a threat to other women is very uncalled for, and yes... misogynistic. And to assume that male-passing females would be welcome in women's spaces in such a world is frankly laughable. Masculine women who have not even touched a vial of testosterone in their lives already have trouble being allowed in women only spaces that have harder rules on "no trans women allowed." This is anti-trans in a way which I cannot support.

If I am to be barred from women's spaces (which I am) because I look like a man, then I WILL use men's spaces. Because I refuse to be dehumanised and stuffed into a "trans toilet/locker room" for other people's convenience. The majority's comfort does NOT get to override my personal comfort. Especially considering men (in general) are not actually uncomfortable with my presense in their spaces, because I look like I belong there. So there is not even any damn argument to be made against me using male only space. This is not because of me wanting some kinda validation for how much of a "man" I "identify" as or whatever. This is about me not wanting to be dehumanised for my medical condition or for how I choose to treat it. Because yes, barring me from both men's and women's spaces does feel a lot like considering me sub-human, because my physical body is frightening, unsettling, gross, or otherwise inconvenient for "normal" men and women to be subjected to. Fuck that noise. I am just as much human and I deserve the same level of basic respect, and that should not be asking for too much. I will not sink below that bar. That's like telling a disabled person that they "have to" use the disabled space because their amputation (or whatever is their ailment) freaks people out, even if they're capable of using the regular men's/women's space despite their condition. So, I'd say barring trans people from both men's and women's spaces is actually rather ableist.

So how do I think that issue should be solved then? Honestly I do not have a solution. So I'd say skip the sex segregation of stuff like bathrooms and locker rooms completely (but keep it for stuff like sports and rape relief shelters) and let trans people themselves figure out which space suits them best, and only intervene in cases when they make a really poor judgement. The only other option would be allowing ALL females in women's spaces (yes, including fully passing trans men) and vice versa all males into men's spaces, but I'm extremely worried about how exactly passing trans people would be expected to go about proving they're going to the right spaces. So I'd say don't do shit until we have found a better (actually better) solution.

Because I can't sit here and say that trans women should never use the women's locker rooms, while I go showering butt naked in the men's locker room. That would be a very hypocritical double standard. Yes, I think passable and/or post-op trans women can and should be allowed to use women only spaces. Based on that I think passable and/or post-op trans men can and should be allowed to use men only spaces, but I do not think that is a perfect or ideal solution.

3.) There's just in general a lot of negativity towards medical transition and how trans people look; our desires, hopes, goals and our dysphoria. This feeds my self-hatred like fuck. Yeah I'd consider myself a rather strong person in general, but I'm not made of concrete, and I think radfem and gender critical thought has broken me down a lot, which took me a while to notice. I don't even know if the real reason I'm calling myself a woman nowadays is because my dream of being a man in ANY sorta sense (be it fantasy or reality) has become completely crushed. Yet I'm unable to truly be okay with being a woman.

Yes, I truly love my pussy, I'm fine with my reproductive ability (producing ova, chance at pregnancy) and in general I like that I started off on a female ground. I love that I have small hands and feet, and a relatively small frame. I really like my height, that I'm not very tall, but do tower most other females. So there's a lot I like about being bio female, and it's mostly things I can't change about my physique anyway. As for my curves, I seem to sometimes like it and sometimes not. I'm also okay with having cellulites and stretch marks. But what I'm NOT fine with about being female is being driven by estrogen, my body's natural gravitation and persistense towards re-feminising itself as soon as I went off of testosterone, having breasts, having less muscle mass than males, having a higher voice, having little to no body/facial hair, etc. I am not fine with being recognised as a woman, or having most female secondary sex characteristics, or lacking male secondary sex characteristics.

This does make me feel like although I'm actually fine with simply being bio female, I'm only fine with it on the condition that I get to look/sound/appear as close to male as medically possible. And does that make me a man in the bio male sorta sense? No, obviously not, but I'm starting to ask myself: Why the FUCK does it matter so goddamn much?! I am sick and tired of being a political pawn no matter where I go. I just wanna live my life.

And radfem discourse (as well as TRA discourse) is so goddamn far from real life it's honestly pathetic and destructive. Most people really don't give a fuck if I'm male or female, or if I have a dick or pussy. It's only really relevant for my doctors and my sex partners. But outside of those very specific contexts, I do like being open about my bio sex, because it just makes it easier to be open about my life, and I feel like that's a good reason to be open about it. However, being open about it solely because some people on the internet think people's bio sex is absolutely crucial info (outside of the context of sex/dating and docs) does not feel good.

I shouldn't feel pressured to be so open about myself, just to not feel guilty for how I choose to treat my dysphoria. I should not have to feel this guilty.

I think my opinions on gender are actually unhealthy for me. I understand more and more that people's opinions on gender are largely just based on their own personal experiences with whatever trans people they've stumbled across. There is no objective facts on what gender is and what it is not. If it's an internal identity or just social roles and clothing. If it's somewhat biological or entirely socially constructed. I feel like I've been arguing bullshit semantics that don't even hold water. I'm not saying that bio sex is changable or a spectrum or completely unimportant, or anything like that. When I say gender I don't mean biological sex.

I'm not saying that I'm not biogically female. I'm saying that just because I'm a female, doesn't mean I cannot also be a man - under, not another, but just slightly looser definition of man which is still connected to physical maleness - in contexts where it simply does not, and should not, matter if I do not fit someone else's definition of what a man or woman is. Because maybe semantics are killing discourse more than it's killing real life issues like human rights. Just saying.

But I dunno what I want with my gender or my label. But I think my realisation that I need to scrap my views and values in regards to gender altogether, and rebuild them from scratch... might actually quite likely change my sense of my gendered self (again.) Because you know what? My gender identity seems very highly influenced by my opinions of gender as a whole, and not just by my dysphoria. If I go by just my dysphoria, I think I would consider myself a trans man, which is why I guess I never truly stopped considering that... but my opinions on gender as a whole (women's rights, female liberation, gender abolishion, trans stuff, bio sex, etc) intervene and conflict with that, and makes me wanna be both a woman and a trans man at the same time, which I can't. So I end up being pulled in two opposing directions.

It's just that up until recently my opinions on gender used to matter more to me than tending to my dysphoria. And now I've come to a point where I don't think I wanna have that sorta prioritisation anymore, because it's having real bad effect on my mental health.

And I need to get very real with myself and ask myself if this really is the life I want. Upon knowing that I'm not actually comfortable with my own opinions, and their affects on my mental health is not actually worth advocating for female liberation, which I already know by now. Then my next step is to take a step back and try to consume less media from any and all sides of the discourse, and listen to my intuition again. Hear myself out. This might take a while, and in the meantime I'm just gonna have to say that my stance on feminism, trans stuff, women's rights, etc, is "under construction."

And as for my goddamn gender label... I'm half okay with pretty much anything right now. Transmasc, woman, ftm, trans man, dysphoric female, masculine/gnc/male-passing woman, etc, is all fine. It's not really about how other people label me anyway. How I label myself is the only thing that truly matters to me in that regard. That it's with self-respect, love and care... and not for political reasons.

I think that's just the thing. That I need to stop doing shit I'm not comfortable with just for political reasons.

With that said, I also wanna briefly touch upon other aspects of radfem that I find myself either no longer agreeing with, or just no longer caring about.

The sex work industry: I know it's bad. But I no longer care and I still might wanna become a sex worker one day. At least I wanna try it. Because no I don't want for sex to be personal, private or hidden. I feel like that's just not how I wanna express my sexuality. And sex is the ONLY of my passions I can in any way imagine turning into a job. Because it's the only one of my passions I never get tired of, and also never truly get obsessed with either. Sorry if the sex industry hurt you personally, but I kinda fail to see how that's my problem, or my responsibility, or how it would seal my fate. I don't wanna live my life after other people's problems, and I cannot learn from other people's mistakes (for those who chose it but still got burned.)

Watching porn, engaging in bdsm, etc: After having tried for a couple of years to heal my broken sexuality and to enjoy vanilla sex, I'm frankly giving up. Some say I'd have to go celibate and work really hard on my trauma for it to have effect, which... honestly I'd rather eat a bullet than do that. I saw a sexologist once last summer and oooooh BOY did that go badly! She basically told me I'm just kinky and need to work on accepting myself. That hurt a lot, and made me give up extra hard on psychiatry again (like it was the last drop again) but it made me realise that there just isn't any help for me out there. And that I'm also not willing to do anything drastic to change it on my own.

That what I want is to have a sex life that I enjoy. So... I'll go back to what simply works for me: bdsm sex. That's not entirely without some reluctance and hesitation, and I do plan on going about it in safer ways than I previously did. Like for example only doing it with people I trust and know well, use safety words, etc, as a bare minimum. I'm learning everything I can about safer bdsm practices, well before actually diving into it. But thing is that I like such extreme "kinks" that it's never gonna be entirely safe, and.... I guess I can't be fucked to care anymore, and I'm tired of even just hearing about the preachings of how bad hardcore bdsm is. Like yeah, I know it's bad, now shut up now and leave me the fuck alone to live/ruin my own damn life.

And as for porn: I never quite quit it, just reduced it by a lot. Again, not denying the harms about it, just not caring enough to change my habits.

Conclusions and wrapping it up: Basically, I've always been a Trauma Queen and I just wanna be myself again. I don't think my former views (more egalitarian/equality based rather than female liberation, and neither individualist nor collectivist) were bad or wrong, but rather that how I implemented them into my life and disregarded danger which was bad. Bio sex matters, but I think gender matters too, and the world is what it is. I have to accept that if I'm gonna have the slightest chance of living a happy life. I can't force myself to live according to feminist ideals for the sake of women in general, when those ideals smother my flame.

I cannot claim that either of the things radfem stand against are all inherently bad. I cannot claim that transitioning shouldn't be a thing, even in a perfect world, because I wanna bring my testosterone with me everywhere I go. I cannot claim that there's any "one road fits all" to happiness for all people, or all women. I cannot be a hypocrite who only values female lives when male lives are at core equally valuable. That has nothing to do with pandering to men. All it means is that I want a world where men and women can live in peace together, and if that's not possible, then at least I wanna live my own life in peace with myself, making whichever decisions I see fit for myself, and surround myself with both men and women who are respectful and decent people. I do not want to try to force my life to fit an ultimately flawed ideology. And all ideologies are flawed.

I'm flawed. We all are, and that is okay. Yes, I wanna strive towards happiness and some health and safety, but not ultimate health or 100% secure safety. Health and safety should not come at the expense of fun and happiness, if at all possible. Because I still need some amount of danger to find enjoyment in things, and I think having fun and getting bitter lessons is more important, than being healthy and safe. I've always thought that. It might just even be a core value of mine, and it does conflict with radfem values. What matters to me in life is in conflict with radfem values. I need to learn moderation and to balance fun with health, happiness with safety, and transitioning with reality. But what I do not need is to wingclip myself because of what matters to other people.

Radfem has taught me a lot of good stuff, it has made me aware of a lot of shit I didn't wanna know, but now it's time to move on and leave it behind me.

Please note that I do not mean to demonise radfem as inherently bad, fearmongering, transphobic, etc. It still has a lot of good points that I agree with. And I may still likely reblog and interact with radfem posts that I do feel are good and/or interesting. I just don't wanna lock myself to radfem as an ideology anymore. I do not think radfem is the ultimate truth, and I do not think there even is ANY ultimate truth to such things as gender.

I'm saying that I declare myself no longer a radical feminist because I am no longer dedicated to the cause as a whole. Not that it's suddenly all bad.

I wanna spread my wings and just be my problematic, true self... this sex-crazed, kinky tranny who deep down loves being a transitioned female, but also don't want for any female to suffer oppression simply because of how they were born, but also sees trans women as "women enough", values male lives and their opinions, etc! Whatever else I might think and feel which I haven't figured out yet. Instead of a forcing myself to become a perfect pawn for completely sex-based feminism.

I may adopt some of my old TRA views back, as well as some of my old libfem views. I will not limit myself to only one school of thought, ANY one school of thought. Please remember that if you're thinking I'm gonna go back to be a TRA libfem entirely, because that is NOT the case. What I'm breaking out of is the tribalism and extremism of radfem: the radical part of feminism. Because ultimately, that radical part of feminism, what I've been describing (perhaps poorly) throughout this post, is what's become suffocating for me.

I need to find myself again, beyond EVERY ideology that's telling me how I should think, feel and live my life. I've had enough of that shit. I need to think and feel freely, and live my life for myself.

Thank you all for your patience with me.

#radfem #leaving radfem #some criticism but i do not hate you #re-evaluating myself and my values #not directed at anyone specific #not like id remember who said what anyway lol #this became more of a vent than i had anticipated #excruciatingly long post

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