hi! i have some hypothetical questions:

is it be possible to have more than one intersex variation? maybe if one was a chromosomal variation and one was a hormonal variation, or etc? can you have more than one very similar variation (e.g. PCOS & CAH)? (i think that one would probably go undiagnosed if that was the case)

is hyperandrogenism outside of hyperandrogenic PCOS always intersex? i assume that hyperestrogenism is intersex too? what about hypoandrogen/estrogenism?

are uterus differences intersex (uterus didelphys, bicornate & septate uterus, etc.)?

and finally a personal question: i have hyperandrogenic PCOS & recently had a total hysterectomy. my surgeon told me i had a very small cervix, to the point where they almost had to convert to an open surgery because they didnt think they could use the cervical opening to pull the parts through. could that be related to hyperandrogenism? or was it just a coincidence/within the dyadic size variation?

thank you & i hope youre all having a good day :)

Hi!

So generally, most intersex variations are pretty mutually exclusive, and it all really depends on the underlying genetic cause. Some intersex variations we don't know enough about the genetic cause or how it functions to really have conclusive information about some aspects of it, and it might be hypothetically possible for some intersex variations to be comorbid. I am not an expert and really can't say more than that, but generally, most people are only diagnosed with one intersex variation.

For PCOS and CAH, that's a bit complicated. Currently, there are several proposed sets of diagnostic criteria for PCOS (Rottendam criteria, NIH criteria, and Androgen Excess Society criteria.) Generally, a key factor of PCOS is exclusion with other hyperandrogenic variations, meaning that you have to rule out things like NCAH before getting diagnosed with PCOS. But there are people who are misdiagnosed with PCOS when they actually have CAH, and people with CAH who have polycystic ovaries. So there is some overlap between the two, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are actually comorbid.

Hyperandrogenism is not always considered intersex. If it's caused by Cushing's, tumors, or medication, that's generally not considered intersex. When it's caused by other congenital variations, it usually is considered intersex.

Hyperestrogenism in people with XY is considered intersex, although it's more commonly referred to as Aromatase Excess Syndrome.

Hypoandrogenism and Hypoestrogenism is called hypogonadism and it isn't always considered intersex, as sometimes it can be caused by injuries or infection. It is sometimes considered intersex, and is associated with intersex variations like Klinefelter's and Turners.

I think uterus differences are a little less clear cut-they aren't usually grouped together with intersex variations, and traditionally haven't been considered intersex. However, if people with uterus differences feel solidarity and benefit from the support of intersex community, I'm not going to tell people that they can't participate in intersex community. This is one of those times when it really comes down to self + community evaluation about whether or not intersex is a label that makes sense.

I couldn't really find any data showing definitively that PCOS causes a shorter cervix, although there did seem to be some association. So I don't really know for that one!

Overall when it comes to defining what is and isn't intersex, I usually refer back to InterAct's explanation of what intersex is:

An innate physical trait that falls under the umbrella of variations in sex characteristics, generally meaning that the variation:

Shows up in a person’s chromosomes, genitals, gonads or other internal reproductive organs, or how their body produces or responds to hormones;

Differs from what society or medicine considers to be “typical” or “standard” for the development, appearance, or function of female bodies or male bodies;

and is present from birth or develops spontaneously later in life

Is often significant or noticeable enough to cause stigma or violence in a person's life, whether through explicit discrimination or implicit ways that society enforces the sex binary

I'm not the authority on what is or isn't intersex, and there are definitely some areas where it's clearer than others. I just generally consider whether or not something is an innate physical trait not caused by temporary factors such as a medication, whether or not that trait causes variations in sex characteristics, and whether that trait is considered within the "typical" variation of dyadic sex characteristics or if it's outside the sex binary in a way that causes societal stigma. I'm not interested in telling people whether they are or aren't intersex or denying people intersex community resources if they feel like their variations meet the definition.

I hope that makes sense!

-Mod E

can i ask you to elaborate on what being ageless means? to you? i think it's really interesting (and i don't want to rely on google info i think it will be wrong) (i'm a little this is very genuine)

thank you for the question!

i think age shares a lot of similarities with gender/sex, which is something you'll get absolutely dogpiled for saying in the wrong company, but it's true. people mistakenly conflate chronological measurements of how much time has passed since you were born with the role you're expected to fulfill based on your perceived age, how you're supposed to talk, how you're supposed to dress, how people will expect your mind to work, etc. just like you are assigned a gender you are expected to perform, you are also expected to behaviourally and aesthetically perform your age as a role.

also just like with biological sex there's a bunch of weird essentialist pseudoscience surrounding age, for example the pervasive myth of "brain development" (often used as a justification for denying rights to younger people) like how people will claim your brain isn't fully finished until you're 25. it's all nonsense and has been repeatedly disproven.

for me, i don't really feel like i fit in with "adults", i don't really feel like i fit in with "kids", i don't feel "old" or "young" consistently, i don't feel like i slot neatly into anywhere on the range of ages you're supposed to be. i'm "mature" about some things and "childish" about others. sometimes i feel younger, sometimes i feel older, often i don't feel like any age at all and more like some kind of creature detached from human ideas of age. like, it's funny to call an animal "little boy" or "old woman" or that kind of thing, right? because there's an absurdity to it, because of course animals don't have a concept of age like that, just like they don't have a concept of gender in the way humans do either. it's largely a social construct, even if people are uncomfortable openly acknowledging that.

how i feel about my age all depends on context and my mental state. i've heard other people express similar sentiments to me, although they're usually scared to explicitly use a label like "ageless" (or "transage" or "chronosian" or any similar terms,) but neurodivergency, dissociative conditions, plurality, and trauma, (among other things,) seems to often play a role in it. the main thing that actually separates people by age is how much experience they have had the possibility to collect over the course of their life, but i don't even remember most of mine. did i ever really "grow up" in a normal way then? it's complicated. (kind of a tangent but people casually use phrases like "growing up too fast" or having "childlike development" etc. in a psychological context but then suddenly when someone acknowledges such things as a genuine part of their own experience, it's looked down on. very interesting!)

think about it like this: would people that don't know my age treat me differently if they knew i was 17? or if they knew i just lied in the previous sentence and i'm actually 25? or if it was revealed that all of these are wrong and my real age is 50? should it matter? i'm still the same person regardless. i just don't want to be constrained by other people's perceptions on me. like if someone treats me like an equal, or exposes me to "mature" topics, or thinks of me as knowledgeable, or any of these other things people do that are often based on a person's perceived age, that should actually be based on who i really am as a person and not something as abstracted as how many times the earth has rotated around the sun since i was born. (people make fun of astrology but still believe in age as a real thing lmao)

sorry for this massive half-coherent ramble but i have a lot of thoughts about it that i've never really sat down and laid out like this, i'm sure by the time i hit "post" on this i'll have thought of even more to add... anyway to anyone who says "you just don't want to identify with your age because you want to abuse kids" i'll say they sound exactly like the same people who tell me the reason i don't identify with my assigned gender is because i want to assault women in female-only spaces. i shouldn't have to defend my identity from bad-faith interpretations of it. (not that you're doing that anon, you were very nice and respectful, but i know some people will read all this and think that way) (also funny of them to automatically assume i'm not chronologically a "kid" lol. some people who experience age differently are legally minors)

Some self-indulgent barely-coherent OC A/B/O AU thoughts from 1:30am last night, yes sorry I am nominally into this horny garbage, if you don’t know what A/B/O is don’t google it on a work computer:

Storm kings: I got attached to the idea of Theseus as an alpha who for some reason was incapable of going into rut (and lacked “normal” instinctual alpha aggression) long before we found out what his canon deal was, and the way that tracks with him being not a true alpha but an imperfect clone of one fuckin hits. (Theseus is perpetually SUPER relieved he doesn't turn meathead when he's angry or horny like some alphas tend to.) I always loved the idea of Theseus helping Marin (and eventually an extremely peeved Rekhein) through their breakthrough heats not sexually, but just by being a soothing presence— in my A/B/O lore I really like the idea that the scent/ close attention/ nonsexual physical touch of an alpha helps with a heat as much as sex with one. Rekhien would find cuddling with Theseus while miserably horny almost more mortifying than just fucking him, but Marin insists it isn’t weird, and none of them have boundaries with each other anymore anyway, and it DOES help, so whatever. The stormchasers give off huge polycule energy despite none of them sleeping together (canon).

Speaking of Rekhien, he’s an omega who disguises his scent and passes for Beta for most of the campaign, because male omegas sometimes get dunked on/ disrespected for it. It’s Marin who ferrets him out and eventually convinces him not to hide it anymore— and she’s correct that they’re powerful enough by that point for it not to matter. Marin is an omega who magically becomes an alpha when she becomes Voc Rocsha— designations work a little differently for the people of the purple rocks, given that they’re not bound by the same biological rules as most species; I sort of imagine that the current Voc Rocsha is the only alpha of her tribe at any point. (I don’t ascribe to reproductive organs/ designation correlation, FWIW/ this is a non-mpreg-focused set of worldbuilding choices, sorry. But we do have mating/ claiming bites because those are hot.)

She’s worried Kitro (alpha) won’t be as interested in her now that she’s not an omega, but he doesn’t care what she is and doesn’t understand why she thinks he would. Drow, it turns out, tend to be very designation-pairing agnostic compared to some surface cultures that lionize alpha/omega couplings.

And Phyn is a beta. The most beta beta to ever normie alongside his hormone-riddled friends.

COS: if your strahd is an omega, you are so correct and valid, but in our game, strahd is an extremely typical alpha, and as I would write a full AU, Barovia has what could be considered some regressive collective beliefs about designations. (Tatyana as an omega and her choosing beta Sergei over alpha Strahd would have made him sooooooooo mad, it's too juicy not to do.) I have always loved the idea of Ismark (omega! which is obviously one of the reasons people don’t respect him) pulling teddy aside in the manor like, ‘hey, just so you know, I know what we are isn’t a big deal where you come from, but here you need to be careful. It’s good that you’re traveling with two alphas so people won't mess with you.’

Hot take! One of those alphas is Nim. Nim has a strong presence and a huge streak of stoic self-sufficiency that screams alpha to me. more importantly, it makes her abandoning her human family that much more fucked up, and is another layer to the maternal abandonment baggage that Borakov takes SUPER personally, as he buys in hard to the alpha-as-protector cultural messaging (which is probably a Barovian thing much more than an elf thing, to be fair to Nim)

Rahadin is a beta, but has some very weird and yikes ideas about designation and social hierarchy— as far as he’s concerned, part of Strahd’s absolute right to rule is simply that he’s The Strongest Alpha. Rahadin isn’t sexuaally interested in omegas because they “need” alphas, which he’s very matter of fact about not being, and Betas are fine, but what he really gets off on is putting “undeserving” alphas in their place. Hence his initial thing for being mean in a horny way to Nim, world’s least trad alpha. And if he's developing bigger feelings, well, maybe Rahadin can have a little unresolved cognitive dissonance about nim's alpha qualities (better than initially assessed, possibly leadership material) vs how much he likes domming her, as a treat.

Teddy and Borakov are, regrettably, the most obvious m/f alpha/omega trad-gender-shit-on-steroids heterosexual nonsense pairing ever committed to fiction. Just extremely classic territorial scenting protective horny bullshit. Sorry to everyone in Barovia.

Teddy goes into heat halfway through the campaign, in vallaki (she’s about four months out from her last dose of military-grade suppressants and hasn’t had a heat since she presented as a teenager, so it’s not pretty). Ismark kicks Borakov out of the entire building when it becomes obvious what’s happening. Strahd can’t get to her for some contrived reason but is sending her dreams telling her to leave the inn where she’s holed up to come find her alpha— unfortunately for Strahd, as far as her addled little brain is concerned, Borakov is her alpha. She sneaks out and finds Bork at the burgomaster’s manor and moves the Bork/ teddy sexual timeline up significantly. Everyone else is baffled that heat!teddy managed to secretly engineer her way out of the upper floor window of the inn while barely able to stand upright, but getting laid is a powerful motivator. For convoluted emotional reasons, Borakov refuses to claiming-bite her ~for her own good, which teddy takes very personally and becomes one of the reasons she later agrees to marry strahd, who is clear that he DEFINITELY wants to bite her for MULTIPLE reasons (and does).

Denethor is a beta. The consorts are a random assortment of designations. Doru is an omega and Miranda is a beta. Ez is a beta, Ireena an alpha, Kasimir an alpha but In An Elf Way. Van richten is drenched in suppressants and scent blockers, so good luck figuring that one out. The soulless inhabitants of Barovia don’t have designations— not even beta. They have no scents at all, which is unnerving.

Inspired by a Six of Crows ABO fic with really great worldbuilding, I was at one point brainstorming world-specific terms for "alpha" and "omega"-- I had loosely settled on "Volk" and "Ovechka" which translate to wolf and lamb in "old barovian". who doesn't love a hunting/ consumption motif for relationships in vampireland!

World torn: safiya is an alpha. Bo is a beta. Faraday is an omega and on some very strong magical suppressants. I go back and forth on tailor but I think I’d go with beta (but attracts so many omegas to his orbit you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise). Chess is an omega and slutty about it but extremely proficient in designation-fuckery magic— ever wanted to try being an alpha? They have something for that behind the bar at Cerise.

Brin is an omega. Most of the jacks officers are alphas. Nera Thorn was a beta who wore the most ghastly fake alpha scent you can imagine. Designations can affect how you get treated in some planes— fae tend to favor omegas and are more prone to tricking alphas, for example.

Unearthed remnants: Sev is a robot, so he does not have a designation. Clay is a beta (though depending on how his deal shakes out, I might make him an alpha who's disguising himself as a beta to support his 'bland' persona. I am not entirely convinced 'clay' is even his real name in actual canon) Aster is an omega and thinks the whole thing is stupid. Eon is a beta and Trollack is an alpha.

the end, if you read all this, wow, I am really impressed and sorry

https://www.tumblr.com/mousegirlheart/712995877228298240/mouse-yaoi-real

Idk it seems ciscentered, trans excluding to treat “male mice” like a coherent thing — rather than some construct we assign to them like how we assign it with amab people — and then further to conflate 2 male mice together as being yaoi and gay… it reinforces being “male” (amab) as a biological thing not something to do with gender and identity.

I don't know if you are a mutual or follower who has just never seen the post before or I'm just a person out of 31.1k reblogs that post had that you are sending this message to over and over. But I would truly love to know exactly how you wanted a news article that is trying to have the catchiest headline phrase this in a way that was more trans-inclusive for the mice. Sure the language isn't the best, but it gets the point across in the shortest amount of words knowing that not a lot of people will actually read or click for the whole thing.

However thanks for this message cause I went back and did actually find the article to fully read it. And yeah it is thinking of cis couples with no chromosomal issues or abnormalities. On good news for you most likely this won't be available for humans until minimum of ten years so you have ten years to figure out the best language for scientists to use to address same sex couples that both carry XY chromosomes and want to have a child that is both of theirs genetically. Especially in advertising. I believe in you!!

That being said yeah a lot of biological science isn't very trans-inclusive in their terminology mainly because its a shorthand to get a concept out to the populous that they will understand.

Honestly makes me think of the first time I was buying adapters for my computer and accidentally didn't realize what female and male parts for adapters were cause didn't even think about how some people would need to connect two different male-ending cables together and ended up with a cord that had a female (place to plug in) c place and HDMI place. Not helpful. And the female/male thing confused me for a little bit before I realized it was literally a reference off of sex.

Now I think of that Anti-gay poster from Australia with the seatbelts. Would it be great if cables had a different term? Yeah but I can't think of one right now.

-But I digress just brain is making silly connections.

Though I do want to point out that the link you sent isn't even the post I reblogged. Cause I specifically reblogged one that had the wonderful addition: "Mpreg (Mouse Pregnancy)" which in my mind is the most important part of that post.

It made me laugh so I reblogged.

Will be honest should I have responded to your message? No probably not, most likely you are a troll or someone that I really don't want to get into an internet debate with. But even more I love responding to people in general. I am a person who will pick up spam calls. I sincerely hope you have a wonderful day and thanks for helping me procrastinate my writing!

Next time maybe talk to me off anon so we can keep going?

CANCEL HETERONORMATIVE ATTITUDES AND PROMOTE GENDER NON-CONFORMITY!

What is heternormativity?

To be heternormative is to hold the assumption that most or all people are straight and cisgender unless stated otherwise; it’s about what we consider the default way of existing to be. (And for a refresher on what terms like cisgender mean: remember that gender identity is where you see yourself on the continuum of gender. If you identify with the sex you were born with at birth, you are considered cisgender. Meanwhile, sexual orientation is who you are attracted to, and can range from being straight/heterosexual to being gay or anything on the spectrum.)

Heteronormativity sets the standard that only straight and cisgender identities are the norm. People and beliefs can be heteronormative, but so can things like institutions, laws, and cultures at large. Heteronormativity is both a form of and fuels things like homophobia, transphobia and gender identity-based discrimination.

Sometimes heteronormativity as seen in the law, for instance, might not acknowledge the existence of non-cis, non-straight folks at all — say, by using gendered and hetero language to describe the rights of married people. Other times, a heteronormative law may technically include non-cis, non-straight folks within it, but with more barriers involved; an example could be saying that trans people have access to a certain right, like the use of their preferred bathroom, if they’ve undergone gender confirmation surgery. That, in this example, is setting the expectation that one’s gender identity must fit a body part-specific binary, and that’s an example of heteronormativity as well.

Why is heteronormativity bad?

Labels, including those related to gender identity and sexuality, are used by many people as ways of identifying themselves and discovering their identities; others choose to avoid labels altogether. No matter which camp you fall into, there are many reasons why heteronormativity is an idea that should be rejected.

If you’re not heteronormative, you’re forced to explain yourself, while cisgender and heterosexual people don’t have to. But here’s the thing, when your identity does not cohere with heteronormativity: You don’t owe an explanation to anyone! It’s no one’s business but your own who you are attracted to, how you identify, and how you express your gender or non-conforming identity!

Assuming that people only identify as either male or female is incorrect.

Some people identify as genderfluid, for instance, which means their identity can move from one side of the spectrum to the other, and other people identify as nonbinary or as genderless altogether. In addition to that, "female" and "male" even as solely biological designations still exclude some people, who are often classified as "intersex." The most important thing to remember is that everyone’s gender can be unique, and everyone’s gender identity and expression is important to respect.

Not everyone is straight. And not everyone is gay or straight. One in five members of Gen Z identify as queer, but even if the technical majority of people identify as straight, it's wrong to assume someone falls into the majority. To make sure everyone feels respected and represented, never assume anything about someone's identity unless they tell you themselves. In fact, some people prefer having no label at all, and that's OK. And even if someone chooses to label themselves a certain way at any given time, that doesn't mean they can't change their mind.

The National Coalition for the Homeless reports that while 20% of young people in the U.S. are LGBTQ, 40% of young people experiencing homelessness who are served by agencies identify as LGBT.

Family rejection and discrimination, caused by cultural views that anything not straight or cisgender is abnormal or even dangerous, are huge factors. “These vulnerable gay and transgender youth often run away from home because of family conflict and then face overt discrimination when seeking alternative housing, which is compounded by institutionalized discrimination in federally funded programs,” the Center for American Progress has noted.

It’s not just in homeless shelters and on the street where LGBTQ youth face harassment and safety issues. Even if families are supportive of LGBTQ identities, the statistics on school bullying against LGBTQ people are alarming. Reporting on data released by the CDC, the Human Rights Coalition found that trans, gay, lesbian and bisexual young people are all significantly more likely to be bullied on school property compared to cis, straight youth. A full 43% of transgender youth have been bullied at school, and 29% have even been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property.

When people who fall outside the narrow mold of cisgender, straight identities are made to feel less-than or even endangered over the way they identify, that’s heternormativity at its most pernicious at work.

Therefore, in the hopes of creating a future where no person who has a non-conforming identity will ever have to fear of discrimination, Hideishi runs this campaign in order to inform people regarding the harmful effects of heteronormativity, as well as to promote gender non-conformity.

Reference: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/heteronormativity-gender-identity-sexual-orientation

What do you think about Feyre being able to summon wings? I’ve seen people say its cultural appropriation and while at first i agreed i started to really look at it differently. Feyre was gifted with shapeshifting powers, and so i so believe Feyre has every right to choose how she uses the power as long as its not hurting someone of course. If she wants to grow fangs, claws, wings, horns or whatever thats her right, its her gift. But then i went into it deeper and i personally dont feel that its cultural appropriation. I see it as Feyre meeting three illyrian men who have become so important in her life, one of them her mate, and i see it as Feyre coming to love where those three come from, even with all its horrible things. Illyria is what made Rhysand, Azriel and Cassian. And i think because of that, she grew to also love their wings bc of what it symbolizes to her; strength, protection, and love. And so Feyre wants to immerse herself in the culture and life that rhysand and her new found brothers belong in, starting with wings. Its like when any individual in a relationship with someone from a different culture does when they want to embrace it and fully immerse themselves in it—its just Feyres way is magical bc fantasy. Its like my white cousin in law who married my hispanic cousin, i mean he looks absolutely different from us yes, but in our hearts we consider him part of our culture bc hes made such an effort to be a part of it and i think thats beautiful. Of course Feyre wants to don wings like her winged mate and her winged brothers and the strong winged females who have come before her. Like i said before, wings to her symbolize a lot to her. To me it wasnt that Feyre just took something from their culture to play around with for fun, she wants to use it to protect her court by learning to fight with the illyrians, by learning their ways. Just because she hasnt done so yet it doesn’t mean she’s forgotten about it, it will just take a tremendous amount of time to be able to do that particular goal. Idk if im making any sense but i’ve written a lot so im hoping i sound at least a bit coherent.

Another question, what do you think of the “What will the clipped female illyrians think and feel when they see Feyre walking around with wings” I’ve always thought they wouldn’t mind bc like with Emerie i never got the feeling she resented Feyre or even Rhys for what happened to her and I feel like Emerie would feel maybe even proud to see such a strong female showing the misogynistic pigs of illyria what a strong winged female can do— and that there will be more one day when the females who are being trained rise up. I know what Emerie may or may not feel is not the same feeling for all the others ofc but thats just my take on this i would love to hear yours.

So sorry for this long ask, I just really admire your thoughts on these characters and their actions and if im wrong in how i think i would love to be told so, and hear an explanation. 💓

Hello! So I chatted with some other people about this to get their perspective. I can't remember who all was part of it, but I think @elains and @eyllweambassador and... can't remember who else.

My short answer is that no, it's not cultural appropriation because wings are biological, not cultural, but it is incredibly insensitive of Feyre to transform herself into an Illyrian.

The problem with appropriation is that generally, it's a privileged person taking something from another culture and benefiting from it, whereas someone from the origin culture would be punish or discriminated against for using it. So for example, a white person utilizing AAVE and not being penalized for it because they're white, while a Black person using AAVE is denied a job because of it. In this sense yes, Feyre is getting all the benefit of Illyrian wings (flying, fighting, the whole wing sex thing which YUCK UGH), and none of the drawbacks (women getting their wings clipped).

So I 100% see where the phrase "cultural appropriation" is coming from, and tbh I'm probably just being picky with the phrasing because while I don't agree with the "culture" part, I do agree with the "appropriation" part.

To me it wasnt that Feyre just took something from their culture to play around with for fun, she wants to use it to protect her court by learning to fight with the illyrians, by learning their ways.

I totally get what you're saying here, and I think that in some cases she was using the Illyrian wings for a good reason (when she was training in acomaf and then flew around defending Velaris), but... she also shifted so that she could have some sexy sex with the wings. That makes me cringe so freaking hard. And again, she got to have that benefit without the repercussions of actually being an Illyrian woman.

I know what Emerie may or may not feel is not the same feeling for all the others ofc

Yeah I think you touched on why it's super hard to answer that part of your question! Of all the characters in the series, Feyre is arguably the most important protagonist, despite no longer being the main character. I just don't see sjm criticizing her much, if at all, and so I don't think she would write Emerie being sensitive to Feyre having wings. And honestly? The fact that sjm wrote Feyre having wing sex just makes me think that she's not at all considering how it comes across for Feyre to do that. Maybe she thought "oh Feyre should be able to shift so she can be a better fighter" and then it was a slippery slope from there? I think that it might have come from what you were saying, that Feyre wanted to share something that her mate experienced, and that her friends experience, and at first she saw it as helping her be useful in the war. It just went too far, imo.

I think that the bigger issue for Illyrian women is not whether or not Feyre walks around with wings and they take that personally, but whether they continue being oppressed in the way that they are. IMO acosf set the stage for Illyrian change, with Emerie training and becoming a Carynthian, with Illyrians working against the IC, with the creation of the Valkyries and the potential there for more Illyrian women to join them. Feyre has only been a High Lady for two years, and while yeah, Rhys didn't tell her that it wasn't appropriate to have their wings, he's also never been threatened with having his wings clipped. He has a much bigger responsibility here because he has been the High Lord for hundreds of years, and he should be the Illyrians' women's champion. Instead he's like, "I'm the most powerful High Lord in history, too bad I can't prevent other people from being abused, it's so great for my mom that my dad saved her, even thought neither of us could do anything for other Illyrian women, for reasons 🙂"

Someone I was chatting with brought up the Illyrian tattoos as being more culturally appropriative than the wings, and I totally agree with that. However, Rhys said that it's how things work in the Night Court, so it's something he has taken and shared with everyone in the court.

I know a lot of people are torn about this issue, and I don't blame them at all. I think what it comes down to is sjm being white and not thinking about how this would come across to people irl whose cultures have been appropriated. It's insensitive and what makes it even worse is the way that Illyrians are characterized as being so backwards and misogynistic, while also being one of the main non-white peoples we get to know in the series.

At this point, I am clinging to the fact that there are those hints that change is coming to Illyria.

Notes on what a supernaturally created world would look like

from “A Lorebook of Mytholinguistics”, Justin B. Rye, 2019

(Book V)

[…] there's no reason to imagine the first appearance of the “gene for magic” would be in a sapient species. And genes aren't trying to make life nicer for their carriers; they aren't even working for the benefit of their species; no, the only thing a gene “wants” is to maximise the dispersal of copies of that gene itself. So feel free to go and visit some biosphere where the wildlife has developed thaumaturgical powers, but don't come back. If you arrive early enough to find it ruled by parasitic para‐wasps that can turn you into a willing host for their larvae, you're relatively lucky, because all the non‐magical parts of that insect are vestigial. Give it another million years and the place will be a witch's cauldron of cell cultures whose sole purpose is to pump out clouds of retroviral hex‐chromosomes. As you step through the portal, they'll be rewriting your genome as a new pool of octarine goo. […]

In our world it has famously been said that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution; in theirs, nature is fundamentally inscrutable, since it's the product of the conflicting whims of beings that transcend mortal comprehension. Earth's flora and fauna naturally fall into families sharing large sets of characteristics (toothy, furry, viviparous mammals versus beaky, feathery, oviparous birds) just because all the members of a given family share a common ancestral bodyplan. A biome that was Intelligently Designed de novo last Wednesday, with each individual creature a separate expression of its maker's artistry, is never going to end up organised this way. […] Folkloric secondary worlds do often seem to nod in this direction by having furry/feathery hybrids like griffins and owlbears and whatnot, but there shouldn't be any coherent taxonomic groupings to hybridise – the things that look something like lions and something like eagles are liable to turn out to reproduce via acorns. Come to that, if the existence of half‐elves is anything to go by there may not be any such taxonomic units as species. […]

[…] we should anticipate that the creatures tailor‐made for domestication by a beneficent providence would resemble perambulatory mushrooms rather than geese or goats. And in the absence of evolution, and in particular of fast‐evolving pathogens, none of these organisms have any use for overengineered adaptive immune systems. Indeed, if predators and parasites and prey aren't all locked in an eternal genetic red‐queen's‐race, there's no point leveraging chromosomal variability with a fancy diploid reproductive mechanism. In other words, there's no practical need for sex – if the powers that be have nonetheless taken the trouble to differentiate living things into what appear to be males and females, don't be surprised if the particulars turn out to be kinky in the extreme. […]

Then there's the physiology of the elves themselves. Obviously they aren't going to have any evolutionary vestiges like tailbones or wisdom teeth; everything's there because it's biologically or aesthetically appropriate. […] Their hands aren't feet that have been put through a minor redesign to make them work better as manipulatory appendages, they're organs designed purely for their current role. And similarly, while we upstart monkeys do our talking with repurposed masticatory organs […] they have articulatory organs that were designed with that function in mind all along. Imagine if elves' oral/digestive and nasal/pulmonary tracts were unconnected, and they had something like the syrinx of a parrot built into the latter, so they could drink and sing simultaneously… or come to think of it that sounds more like dwarves.

(Book VI)

Notice that these chosen peoples didn't first spend countless generations as savanna hunter‐gatherers […] they were seemingly equipped with an instinctive urge to settle down in bronze‑ or (in the case of dwarves) iron‐age communities right from the word go, or whatever the word was.

This may or may not have required them to be equipped with brains! Supernatural Creators have metabolisms based entirely on miracles, so they habitually produce the sort of split‐level metaphysical systems hospitable to hocus‐pocus, where instead of everything working through traceable and mundanely materialistic causal mechanisms, there's a separate plane of occult essences. In such a cosmos, living things are special because they're full of élan vital; caterpillars turn into butterflies because they're attracted to the right Platonic form by morphic resonance; and magic works because the meaning of your incantation is a thing in its own right that can have a direct impact on whatever it refers to. So instead of elves being able to think for themselves because their skulls are crammed full of the kind of cells that have signal‐processing and data‐manipulating functions, each elf gets an immaterial soul hovering somewhere nearby in an adjacent dimension.

If organisms are animated not by adenosine triphosphate but by a ghostly vital essence, having a cerebral cortex as well as a soul is redundant – look at ents, which are remarkably nimble thinkers when you consider that their heads are made of solid wood.

Another thing I would like to speak about this is my opinion I don’t want to talk over other trans people or the community I’m not speaking for the community as a whole this is just my personal opinion and I would like to state that I respect you and please respect my opinion and the opinions of others. Thank you. Here are some topics brought up that I’ve seen and I want to jsut state and voice my opinion if I offend you in any ways your are free to scroll. I value your opinions your thoughts but please be mindful and respectful of others.

THIS IS HELLA LONG BTW SORRY IN ADVANCE

(But please read the whole thing you don’t have to if you don’t want to)

1. "The vast majority of the individuals who have been examining this are cis, which is an issue first thing"

It truly isn't, there is no issue with this. There's nothing amiss with cishets imparting their insight, since anyone can have an assessment on anything. I see what your saying in some cases the don’t but as you saw on my other post they do in some events and cases the have a freedom to voice there opinions though.

2. I still can't seem to see a 'genderbent' rendition of a male character who needed bosoms and a dfab body. This is the first and most clear motivation behind why 'genderbending' is innately transphobic - it accepts that actual characteristics and sex are something very similar, and that you can't be female without additionally being dfab. (I will say AFAB)

Indeed, more often than not genderbent characters are not given characteristics and such generalizations. In any case, what's the issue with that? There's no issue playing into generalizations. You presently can't seem to see a genderbent adaptation of a male character who needed bosoms and is AFAB. That is narrative, and individual stories can't be acknowledged as obvious proof. Regarding why, the banner appears to introduce their conviction of actuality, when it clearly isn't. There's a lot of male genderbend characters (genderbent to be female) who do need bosoms, yet for what reason would it be advisable for it to significantly matter? Generalizations or not, there ought to be no issue here.

"It expects that actual attributes and sex are something very similar, and that you can't be female without likewise being AFAB." This is indeed another supposition, not a reality. Actual characteristics in sexual orientation are not something very similar, but rather it plays into the reality and generalization that actual attributes in sex jobs/sex generalizations are something very similar, to which they (as a rule) can be. You can be female without likewise being afab, and (expressed by and by) there are numerous characters out there that are trans and were being genderbent (tragically, however we shouldn't actually genderbend trans characters since it eradicates their sexual orientation except if when they're genderbent they're as yet trans, the exact inverse way.) and you could discover numerous trans characters being genderbent or such in games, manga, and media by and large.

3. "This is cissexism, and this is transphobic. The message that 'genderbending' says is that you should have bosoms and a v/gina to be female, and you should have a penis and a level chest to be male. I ought not need to clarify why that message is transphobic."

This isn't cissexism. The genuine meaning of cissexism: "Cis-sex-ism. Noun. Prejudice or discrimination against transgender people.” Stop twisting word’s definitions to fit your appeal and opinion. Stop believing threads such as this when they can’t even use the original definition properly. Genderbending is as simple as twisting someone’s gender so they fit into the stereotype. (a majority of the time, at least.) Biological genitalia are biological genitalia. Gender is defined by your brain, but we obviously cannot show that fact if there was a genderbend, because humans brains quite obviously do not show outside of the skull.

4. “The way 'genderbends' are completed likewise has unmistakably transphobic suggestions by they way it changes out the actual attributes of characters to make them 'the contrary sex' (The notion of there being ‘opposite genders’ is some fresh bullshit that I’ll cover later in this post) For instance, by giving a male character curves and breast’s while 'genderbending' him, the message is evident that this character was cis regardless."

This is being made way deeper than the notion actually is. Switching out physical traits to play into gender roles and gender stereotypes is not bullshit whatsoever. Giving a male character breasts and curves is as simple as what the action actually is. Genderbending, nothing more, nothing less. Nobody is actually reading into how detailed this is besides the original poster. But my issue is, what’s wrong with the message that the character is cis? Is there something wrong with cis people or there being cis characters? Trans people can still fit into these categories, and assuming trans people look different from cis people (whether in fiction or not) is transphobic, not characters fitting into the ‘cis’ category in your opinion. Once again, there is the assumption that the character was cis to begin with (unless the character has been stated on their wiki or in canon to be cis, to which most aren’t usually.

5. "'Genderbending' naturally infers that all characters are cisgender of course, and deletes any chance of these characters being trans. this isn't as plainly transphobic as the main point, yet it is hurtful to trans individuals inside being a fan spaces, as the presumption that all characters are cis until unequivocally expressed in any case pushes us out of media and eliminates whatever portrayal we may attempt to make for ourselves. "

Genderbending doesn't suggest anything, the first banner (and rebloggers) are indeed assuming. This obliges the hurried suspicion false notion, which is a coherent error that shows when a argument I’dbadly made. Genderbending doesn't suggest that all characters are cisgender as a matter, however it infers that the individual who composed this accepts so. There are cis looking trans individuals, and there are so to state, "trans looking" cis individuals. It doesn't eradicate any chance, in light of the fact that there can even now be trans individuals with genderbends, just as the way that there is trans genderbends out there. (despite the fact that it's avoided upon, obviously) It isn't unsafe to anybody at all, considering genderbends are quite often for no particular reason or investigation, there is no supposition that all characters are cis until expressed something else. (also, regardless of whether there is, the thing that's the mischief in that. there's no damage in having cis individuals not be expressed and trans individuals being expressed, on the grounds that cis individuals are the greater part.) It doesn't eliminate any portrayal at all, and I'd prefer to check whether operation really had any sources identifying with that, considering this has no sources at all and explicitly lies on striking allegations and suspicions.

6. "The third issue with 'genderbending' is that it is reliably cis male and cis female, and that is it. I have never seen people 'genderbend' characters by making them nonbinary or intersex. I have never seen a genderbend of a female character which made her a trans male in light of everything. 'Genderbending' proposes that there are only two choices concerning sex: cis male and cis female. There is nothing of the sort as nonbinary individuals inside this philosophy. Intersex individuals are bizarre, best case scenario. Agender individuals are minimal better than a far off fantasy."

Prior to anything: Agender doesn't exist. Non binary isn't actually viewed as a gender what I am saying is Non-binary is not technically considered a gender Non-binary (also spelled nonbinary) or genderqueer is a spectrum of gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine‍—‌identities that are outside the gender binary and there is no “opposite” to genderbend a non-binary person there is no "inverse" to genderbend a non-paired individual. In the event that somebody endeavored to "genderbend" a non-binary individual to a male or female, individuals would get vexed regardless of what they wanted. There is indeed, nothing amiss with male and female genderbends. YOU (conversing with operation and the individuals who concur) continue expecting that they're cis, which is more transphobic than what you guarantee is transphobic. You can't "genderbend" a non-binary nor intersex character, or it would be designated "transphobic" or "eradicating their personality" to which it's definitely not. You could ensure that something contrary to non-parallel is intersex (since individuals who are intersex are hermaphrodites, brought into the world with both genetalia logically) however that would likewise recieve more disdain. It doesn't infer anything, and without fail, you expect that a character is cis. For all you know, they could be stealth trans, or openly trans but you never looked at their wiki; or they could not have their gender specified on the wiki or in canon. Agender does exist what I am saying is the gender your trying to portray or the norms when you look it up Some people's gender changes over time. People whose gender is not male or female use many different terms to describe themselves, with non-binary being one of the most common. Other terms include genderqueer, agender, bigender, and more this is. That is what I am saying in that area that people don’t identify as any gender as he/she or some are fluid. yes you could do “opposite” to genderbend a non-binary person. But if someone attempted to “genderbend” a non-binary person to a male or female, people would get upset despite it being what they wanted. But that would be transphobic and defeating the purpose of there identity as a whole. Sorry some of my Japanese was switched out and there are some words do not exist in English I apologize if anyone got offended. Yes you can genderbending a cis male/female to a non-binary individual but that wouldn’t be called genderbending would it?

7. “‘Genderbending’ ignores that it is impossible to make a character ‘the opposite gender’, because there is no such thing as an ‘opposite gender’. Gender is a spectrum, not a binary, but you wouldn’t know that from the way fandom spaces treat it.”

Gender is binary, however binary doesn't mean two. Gender is chosen in the brain. It IS difficult to make a character that is non-binary or intersex the contrary sex on the grounds that there is no opposite gender of non-binarynor intersex, at any rate in the event that you would prefer not to be called transphobic or more. You can make a cis individual a non-binary person but that wouldn’t be called genderbending?? The frigidity of genderbending is when a character's gender is changed. Usually in fanfictions or fanart. The name should be changed since it is heavily confusing since genderbending also means in other definitions gender bending is sometimes a form of social activism undertaken to destroy rigid gender roles and defy sex-role stereotypes, notably in cases where the gender-nonconforming person finds these roles oppressive.

8. “Of course, there are some reasons for ‘genderbending’ cis male characters into cis females that will always get brought up in discussions on the politics of ‘genderbending.’ The most frequent is that cis girls, who only see themselves as one-dimensional characters in media, want to have characters like them who are just as multifaceted and developed as the male characters that we are given, so they make their male faves female to give themselves the representation they desire. This is a decent reason for ‘genderbending’, but it does not excuse the fact that the way in which ‘genderbending’ is done is inherently transphobic, and it gives fans yet another excuse to ignore female characters in favor of focusing on their male faves.” This whole spot I shouldn’t even have to explain. This is once again being read into way too much, there is no ‘politics’ of genderbending. There is just genderbending, plain and simple. Cis girls can want to see stuff in genderbending, as can cis guys when they genderbend a female character male to see how they’d react and such. Genderbending has no politics, besides that it’s “transphobic” to some.

9. “Another reason for ‘genderbending’ that I’ve heard is ‘it’s for the sake of character exploration - like, what if this character had been born as male/female instead?’ This excuse is cissexist and transphobic from first blush. The idea behind it is that someone ‘born as female’, aka with breasts/vagina will automatically be a cis female, allowing fans to explore what that character’s life would have been like if they were female. Why not explore the possibility of a character being designated female at birth, but still identifying as male? Why do you need a character to be cis for you to find their personality and life interesting to explore? Why do you automatically reject the notion of your fave being trans? If you want to explore what it would have been like for your male fave to have struggled with sexism, consider them being a trans woman, or a closeted afab trans person.”

Yes, character exploration. It’s not cissexist nor transphobic. Whether the character was genderbent cis or trans, it’s not about their genetalia to ‘explore’ the character, but that’s just what you thought it was. Character exploration in this case as in “How will people treat them differently due to possible sexist/misogynist laws and/or character behavior that’s normally in males inside a female, or vice versa? How would people and the law treat this female character who’s shy, if she was a male? How would people and the law treat this male character who’s obnoxious and loud and determined, if he was a female?” Not “How different will this character’s life be because they have a penis or v/g?” You reducing character exploration down to genitalia is blatantly transphobic more so than you think, as well as just downright rude.

10. ‘Genderbending’ does harm trans people. It perpetuates dangerous cissexist notions and the idea of a gender binary being a valid construct, erases nonbinary and intersex people, and others trans people. These are what we call microaggressions - they are not as dangerous as outright harassment and assault, but they enforce and support a system and ideology in which we are other, and we are worthy of hate and violence because we do not fit in.

Genderbending does not harm all trans people inherently i am talking to a group of people which is moderately huge but I am not speaking for all of the community whatsoever, considering trans people also like to genderbend characters. It plays into stereotypes and you thinking gender is a spectrum is more harmful that getting upset that someone thinking “How would people treat this character if he/she was the opposite gender?”. It does not erase non-binary nor intersex people, because you could throw them in if you really wanted to, but you’d also be the person who would call that act transphobic or ‘erasing their identity’. This is not a microaggression whatsoever, but rather a personal grudge based on assumptions you think are true, and treating your opinion as fact. That is all.

I don’t see or think why genderbending as a whole is transphobic the name should be changed though but genderbending as a whole is not bad sure they’re are issues but It is not transphobic.

Andrea Long Chu is the sad embodiment of the contemporary left

Andrea Long Chu’s Females was published about a year ago. It was heavily hyped but landed with mostly not-so-great reviews, and while I was going to try and pitch my own review I figured there was no need. Going through my notes from that period, however, I see how much Chu’s work—and its pre-release hype—presaged the sad state of the post-Bernie, post-hope, COVID-era left. I figured they’d be worth expanding upon here, even if I’m not getting paid to do so.

Chu isn’t even 30 years old, and Females is her debut book, and yet critics were already providing her with the sort of charitable soft-handedness typically reserved for literary masters or failed female political candidates. This is striking due to the purported intensity of the book: a love letter to would-be assassin Valerie Solanas, the thesis of which is that all humans are female, and that such is true because female-ness is a sort of terminal disease stemming not from biology but from one’s inevitable subjugation in larger social contexts. Everyone is a woman because everyone suffers. Big brain shit.

But, of course, not everyone is a female. Of course. Females are females only some of the time. But, also, everyone is a female. Femaleness is just a title, see. Which means it can be selectively applied whenever and however the author chooses to apply it. The concept of “female” lies outside the realm of verifiability. Suggesting to subject it to any form of logic or other means of adjudication means you’re missing the point. Femaleness simply exists, but only sometimes, and those sometimes just so happen to be identifiable only to someone possessed with as a large a brain as Ms. Chu. We are past the need for coherence, let alone truth or honesty. And if you don’t agree that’s a sign that you are broken—fragile, illiterate, hateful, humorless.

Chu’s writing—most famously, her breakthrough essay “On Liking Women”—establishes her prose style: long, schizophrenic paragraphs crammed with unsustainable metaphors meant to prove various fuzzy theses simultaneously. Her prose seems kinda sorta provocative but only when read on a sentence-by-sentence level, with the reader disregarding any usual expectations of cohesion or connection.

This emancipation from typical writerly expectations allows Chu to wallow proudly in self-contradiction and meaninglessness. As she notes herself, explicitly, meaning isn’t the point. Meaning doesn’t even exist. It’s just, like, a feeling:

I mean, I don’t like pissing people off per se. Yes, there is a pleasure to that sometimes, sure. I think that my biggest takeaway from graduate school is that people don’t say things or believe things—they say them because it makes them feel a particular way or believing them makes them feel a particular way. I’ve become hyper aware of that, and the sense in which I’m pissing people off is more about bringing that to consciousness for the reader. The reason you’re reacting against this is not because it contradicts what you think is true, it’s because it prevents you from having the feeling that the thing you think is the truth lets you feel.

And so she can get away with saying that of course she doesn’t actually believe that everyone is a female, the same as her idol Valerie Solanas didn’t actually want to kill all men. The writers, Chu and Valerie, are just sketching out a dumb idea as a fun little larf, to see how far they can push a manifestly absurd thought. If they just so happen to shoot a gay man at point blank range and/or make broader left movements so repulsive that decent people get driven away, so be it. And if any snowflakes complain about their tactics, well that’s just proof of how right they are. Provocation is justification—the ends and the means. The fact that this makes for disastrous and harmful politics is beside the point. All that matters is that Chu gets to say what she wants to say.

This blunt rhetorical move—which is difficult to describe without sounding like I’m exaggerating or making stuff up, since it’s so insane—papers over Chu’s revanchist and violent beliefs. Her work is soaked with approving portrayals of Solanas’ eliminationist rhetoric—of course, Chu doesn’t’ actually mean it, even though she does. Men are evil, even as they don’t really fully exist since everyone is a woman, ergo eliminating men improves the world. Chu goes so far as to suggest that being a trans woman makes her a bigger feminist than Solanas or any actual woman could ever be, because the act of her transitioning led to the world containing fewer men. Again: big brain shit.

I’ll leave it to a woman to comment on the imperiousness of a trans woman insisting that she is bestest and realest kind of woman, that biological women are somehow flawed imposters. I will stress, however, that such a claim comes as a means of justifying a politically disastrous assertion that more or less fully justifies the most reactionary gender critical arguments, which regard all trans women as simply mentally ill men (this line of reasoning is so incredibly stupid that even a dullard like Rod Drehar can rebut it with ease). Trans activists have spent years establishing an understanding of transsexualism as a matter of inherent identity—whether or not you agree with that assertion, you have to admit that it has political propriety and has gone a long way in normalizing transness. Chu rejects this out of hand, embracing instead the revanchist belief that transness is attributable to taking sexual joy in finding oneself embarrassed and/or feminized—an understanding of womanhood that is simultaneously essentialist and tokenizing. When asked about the materially negative potential in expressing such a belief, Chu reacts with a usual word salad of smug self-contradiction: 

EN: You say in the book that sissy porn was formative of your coming to consciousness as a trans woman. If you hadn’t found sissy porn, do you think it’s possible that you might have just continued to suffer in the not-knowing?

ALC: That’s a really good question. It’s plausible to me that I never would have figured it out, that it would have taken longer.

EN: How does that make you feel? Is that idea scary?

ALC: It isn’t really. Maybe it should be a little bit more, but it isn’t really. One of the things about desire is that you can not want something for the first 30 years of your life and wake up one day and suddenly want it—want it as if you might as well have always wanted it. That’s the tricky thing about how desire works. When you want something, there’s a way in which you engage in a kind of revisionism, the inability to believe that you could have ever wanted anything else.

EN: People often talk about the ubiquity of online porn as a bad thing—I’ve heard from lots of girlfriends that men getting educated about sex by watching porn leads to bad sex—but there seems to me a way in which this ubiquity is helping people to understand themselves, their sexuality and their gender identity.

ALC: While I don’t have the research to back this up, I would certainly anecdotally say that sissy porn has done something in terms of modern trans identity, culture, and awareness. Of course, it’s in the long line of sexual practices like crossdressing in which cross-gender identification becomes a key factor. It’s not that all of the sudden, in 2013, there was this thing and now there are trans people. However, it is undoubted that the Internet has done something in terms of either the sudden existence of more trans people or the sudden revelation that there are more trans people than anyone knew there were. Whether it’s creation or revelation, I think everyone would agree that the internet has had an enormous impact there.

One of the things I find so fascinating about sissy porn is that it’s not just that I can hear about these trans people who live 20 states away from me and that their experiences sound like mine. There is a component of it that’s just sheer mass communication and its transformative effect, but another part of it is that the internet itself can exert a feminizing force. That is the implicit claim of sissy porn, the idea that sissy porn made me trans is also the idea that Tumblr made me trans. So, the question there is whether or not the erotic experience that became possible with the Internet actually could exert an historically unique feminizing force. I like, at least as a speculative claim, to think about how the Internet itself is feminizing.

Politics, like, don’t matter. So, like, okay, nothing I say matters? So it’s okay if I say dumb and harmful shit because, like, they’re just words, man.

Chu can’t fully embrace this sort of gradeschool nihilism, though, because if communication was truly as meaningless as she claims then any old critic could come along and tell her to shut the fuck up. Even as she claims to eschew all previously existing means of adjudicating morality and coherence, she nonetheless relies on the cheapest means of making sure she maintains a platform: validation via accreditation. This is all simple victimhood hierarchy. Anyone who does not defer all of their own perceptions to someone higher up the hierarchy is inherently incorrect, their trepidations serving to validate the beliefs of the oppressed:

I like to joke that, as someone who is always right, the last thing I want is to be agreed with. [Laughs] I think the true narcissist probably wants to be hated in order to know that she’s superior. I absolutely do court disagreement in that sense. But what I like even better are arguments that bring about a shift in terms along an axis that wasn’t previously evident. So it’s not just that other people are wrong; it’s that their wrongness exists within a system of evaluation which itself is irrelevant.

Chu has summoned the most cynical possible interpretation of Walter Ong’s suggestion that “Writing is an act of violence disguised as an act of charity.” Of course, any effective piece of communication requires some degree of persuasion, convincing a reader, listener, viewer, or user to subjugate their perceptions to those of the communicator. Chu creates—not just leans on or benefits from, but actively posits and demands fealty to—the suggestion that her voice is the only one deserving of attention by virtue of it being her own. That’s it. That’s what all her blathering and bluster amount to. Political outcomes do not matter. Honesty does not matter. What matters is her, because she is her. 

This is the inevitable result of a discourse that prizes a communicator’s embodied identity markers more than anything those communicators are attempting to communicate, and in which a statement is rendered moral or true based only upon the presence or absence of certain identity markers. Lived experience trumps all else. A large, non-passing trans woman is therefore more correct than pretty much anyone else, no matter how harmful or absurd her statements may be. She is also better than them. And smarter. And gooder.

Designating lived experience and subjective feelings of safety as the only acceptable forms of adjudication has caused the left to prize individualism to a degree that would have made Ronald Reagan blush. And this may explain the lukewarm reception of Chu’s book.

While they heaped praise upon her before the books’ release, critics backed off once they realized that Females is an embarrassingly apt reflection of intersectional leftism—a muddling, incoherent mess, utterly disconnected from any attempt toward persuasion or consensus, the product of a movement that has come to regard neurosis as insight. The deranged mewlings of a grotesque halfwit are only digestable a few pages at a time. Any more than that, and we begin to see within them far too much of the things that define our awful movement and our terrifying moment.

The bulge-nook standard is fanon; in HS proper "nook" seems to mean "ass", not vag, if anything, "bone bulge" only seems to be used as profanity rather than legit discussion of body parts, and there is no implication of tentacles of any sort. That aside, let's assume trolls do have dimorphism which would make transition meaningful; why would they be allowed to? Why would breaking that part of your assigned birth role be even semi-okay when caste roles are enforced by torture and death?

I responded to the nook/bulge thing already - though I’ll just mention this here again: 

Hussie absolutely sucked at using any of these words in any way that wasn’t insulting/joking, and also failed at using them coherently (sometimes referring to nook as interchangeable with ass or as its own thing, and even using bone bulge in one instance to mean skull). It’s clear that there’s something there, but that Hussie never thought it through beyond what he was implying - so naturally fanon came in and cleared it all up because Hussie had an entire canon he could do things with and then just did not. I think there is reason for the prehensile dick thing, but I don’t specifically remember what - and admittedly I don’t want to search through the entirety of Homestuck to figure out whether or not trolls implied they have wiggly dicks. I already did that once to figure out how frog breeding worked. It was not fun.

Onto the part about sexual dimorphism - honestly, the only way that I can finangle it is that trolls care more about castes than about gender? That gender has so little influence on their actual society compared to the strict division between blood that you can quite easily get away with transitioning pretty much no questions asked - especially since even Sollux, a lowblood, was able to transition without issue. 

If it wasn’t for Sollux, I’d probably say that it’s something only highbloods can get away with, and that they can only do so because HIC isn’t there to impose her strict rule - but then, surely highbloods would use a transitioning lowblood to enact their violence upon if it was really that much of a strict rule in their society? Why would Sollux be able to get away with the act of transitioning when even Eridan faces transphobia from his lusus for identifying as nonbinary?

This is part of the problem that comes with writing what was clearly set up to be a species without sexual dimorphism, but without making it entirely clear or deadset; there’s just things that don’t make sense even when you DO put it into a sexually dimorphised content. Alternia just isn’t built around a care for gender or for assigned sex. Its entire focus is on blood; it’s what they use to suppress lowbloods, and it’s what they use to create a natural order of things. 

Like, what importance does assigned sex have on Alternia? Well, as far as we can tell, next to nothing; though HIC is the woman in power, it’s never suggested that there’s an inherent matriarchy; it’s a fuchsiarchy. It’s because she’s fuchsia, not a woman, that makes her ruler. All of her closest in power have been men; GHB, the leader of an entire religion, and Dualscar, one of the top Orphaners in the world. So it’s not even as if we can suggest that only women can attain power on Alternia, because the truth is that they’re just as likely as the men to be stuck in specific positions based on their blood.

In terms of physical strength, too, there’s more of a bloodcaste divide than a male-female divide. Vriska outright states that highbloods are made of “stronger stuff” than lowbloods - that they can take more damage before they go down - and Equius’ physical strength, though considered a mutation, isn’t inherently because he’s male, since we know that Sollux, Tavros, and Karkat are weaker than even Gamzee. We’ve also seen Kanaya exhibit incredible feats of strength, though again, that’s not because she’s female so much as because she’s a rainbowdrinker. 

There’s not even an inherent divide on the basis of jobs; female rustbloods are just as likely to be sweeping floors as male rustbloods. And this doesn’t even go into the fact that we’ve seen nonbinary trolls in Friendsim who never really mention gendered issues - which is incredibly easy to forget, honestly - both highblood and lowblood. Like, even under Trizza’s reign - which is MUCH more brutal than Feferi’s - there’s no discrimination based on gender identity. 

So what exactly is the issue with being trans on Alternia? The fact of the matter is... there isn’t one. Everything we see of them points to bloodcaste being the biggest societal issue and the biggest biological factor used to suppress Alternians, not gender - and we’ve seen time and time again that gender identity isn’t really questioned on Alternia, either. So, even if the trolls were sexually dimorphised and could transition, they wouldn’t face anything like the experiences and transphobia humans do; it’s just not an inherent factor of their society. Hell, it might actively confuse them more than anything else. But this is completely disregarding that everything above points to a society that would put more emphasis on a gender structure based around the class system - something I’m going to go into on another post. 

Again, it’s one of those things where you can just tell that it’s a cis man’s take on society, because he genuinely couldn’t think of how society would work without a gendered structure. Well, now he’s got a gendered structure on something that doesn’t need one, and trying to figure out how trans issues have any impact on that society is almost impossible to rationalise without eventually realising that the society very likely would not care. 

can I ask you for advice? my sister started using terms like cis and people with uteruses recently, how do I like. explain why that’s BS, I get so heated so quickly I can’t form coherent arguments lol

god, same. how old is your sister? and how deep is she into gender shit? Big discussion below the cut.

I know a lot of people's argument with “cis” is that it means “comfort with your gender role,” but I’ve never thought that was a good argument to make because genderists don’t view it that way. They just view it as “not trans” and when you frame it like that, opposition to “cis” just seems like opposition to a really neutral concept that no one should have a problem with. but I think there are a few arguments that would be harder for them to dismiss:

- pointing out that splitting the category of women into two and then giving half to male people, is just an instance of oppressors appropriating the language of the oppressed. I know a lot of people don’t like to use the race analogy, but you could ask your sister if she would agree that white people have the right to call themselves black and force black people to call themselves “cis.” If she says it’s not the same thing, ask her why. Point out that in both cases, a class of people with privilege is claiming the identities of a class of people without. Don’t let her say that transwomen don’t have privilege. They are male. Whatever other axis they may be oppressed on (race, sexuality, even “trans” status), they retain privilege from being biologically male (if she denies this, or denies the existence of sex, point out centuries of female oppression. ask her the basis for it, if not sex). Should men have the right to claim and redefine womanhood or is this just another assertion of entitlement and power?

- When you refer to someone as cis, you’re imposing your own belief system or worldview on them. Whether genderists realize it or not, arguing the existence of a “gender identity” is equal to arguing the existence of a “soul.” Both are unprovable assertions based on belief. Not everyone believes in a soul. Not everyone believes in an internal gender essence. If she doesn’t believe religious people have the right to force everyone into a believer/heretic dynamic, and to identify themselves according to that dynamic, then she can’t argue the same for the cis/trans dynamic.

- I found THIS POST in my archive that makes a good practical point about “cis” and its implications. When “women” are oppressed and “woman” is a matter of identity, “cis women” could simply choose to opt out of their oppression. Another thing you might want to look at is Callie Burt’s paper on the Equality Act, the section titled “disappearing sexism: cissexism and the cis/trans hierarchy,” where she points out that the shift from a male/female dynamic to a cis/trans dynamic obscures the reality of sexism by conferring privilege onto female people, and therefore paints any female-centric (i.e. feminist) focus as bigoted, cissexist, or transphobic. 

As for “people with uteruses” arguments, I think you can just tell her it’s dehumanizing to refer to women by their body parts. Or maybe ask her what’s wrong with the words woman or man (why not “women and trans men” for female people or “men and transwomen” for male people, if we’re trying to be inclusive? if she says not all women have uteruses, tell her that some women do, so the language is accurate. if she goes further and says that the word “woman” shouldn’t be used when only female people are being referred to, ask her if the reverse applies, and if transwomen shouldn’t be able to use the word “woman” when they’re only referring to themselves. If she says no, she’s telling on herself. point out the inconsistency and ask if what she’s advocating is actually inclusivity or if it’s male dominance and female erasure). 

You could also ask if less than 1% of the population’s discomfort with the correct language for their bodies justifies an entire overhaul, imposed on the other 99% without their consent or input, at high risk of creating confusion. Or maybe point out the women who don’t speak English as a first language, or who are unaware of the names of their body parts, and the burden this language imposes on them. 

I can’t find any examples of this on hand, but I also know there are instances of organizations redefining “woman” but not “man” in their materials (planned parenthood I’ve seen do this, but I can’t find it on their site now). You could ask why she thinks that is, why the word “woman” offends, but not “man.” Or ask her how often she uses/sees others use the words “penis haver” or “sperm producer.” (it’d be really effective if she says the word “man” without thinking while you talk to her, but that’s just me being petty). You could ask why it’s only women being stripped of their words and what, in general, the effect is on an oppressed group of being denied a word to refer to themselves as a class. ”Pregnant people” and “menstruating people” are two distinct types of people with absolutely no overlap; if you’re pregnant, you necessarily aren’t menstruating and vice versa. But they are both female and oppressed for it. Losing the ability to refer to them together as part of a cohesive class (along with cervix havers and vagina havers, all these disconnected groups) erases our ability to name and address female oppression. 

But honestly, I think the best argument that really cuts to the heart of it, is just that it’s dehumanizing. Women aren’t a collection of body parts or biological functions. Animals have uteruses. Animals menstruate. Animals have vaginas. Women, while sharing those female characteristics, are human beings. They just happen to be female, as opposed to male. Referring to us as “uterus havers” or “vagina havers” or “menstruators” or “bleeders” or “people who get pregnant” is to put our bodies first and our personhood second. Its sexist.

As much as it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, you might also consider using genderist language while talking to her, like calling tims transwomen and using she/her pronouns, or at least avoid calling them men. It’s good to remember that it’s a cult mentality and if she pins you as one of the Bad People, she won’t listen to anything you say. But I mean, that’s up to you and your relationship with your sister. I am curious to know your relationship with her, like if she’s younger than you and how close you are. But good luck either way, anon. the best thing you can do is anticipate her counterarguments and be prepared. 

Fantastic Four Vol 1 #238

Tues May 05 2020 [02:04 AM] Wack'd: Have some Wolverine publicity

[02:05 AM] maxwellelvis: It BEGINS [02:06 AM] maxwellelvis: THERE's the John Byrne we know and... sigh because the guy who comes up with great covers like these is still the guy who sabotaged Jean Grey's spinoff attempt. [02:06 AM] Wack'd: John Bryne: fun dude but still a friggin dude [02:07 AM] Wack'd: So here we go. The secret story of Frankie Raye [02:08 AM] Wack'd: Turns out this is naturally what she looks like naked, plus a spiffy pair of elbow-length gold gloves

[02:08 AM] Bocaj: He didn't notice the gold gloves at any point? [02:08 AM] Wack'd: All this stuff just...vanishes when she puts clothes on [02:08 AM] Wack'd: Yeah no Johnny is like "I've seen you in a bikini" and she puts her robe back on and the gold clothes vanish [02:09 AM] Bocaj: "My terrible secret is that I'm a never nude" [02:09 AM] Bocaj: "There are dozens of us. Dozens" [02:09 AM] Wack'd: I understood that reference [02:09 AM] Wack'd: So anyway Frankie has been somehow psychologically conditioned to never notice that a superhero outfit appears on her whenever she's naked [02:10 AM] Wack'd: As well as not to think too hard about the fact that she has no memories before age 14 [02:10 AM] Bocaj: Uh. [02:10 AM] Bocaj: Well y'know what fair enough. I try not to think about that stretch of time either [02:11 AM] Wack'd: Her earliest memory is waking up in a dingy warehouse under an old labcoat [02:11 AM] Wack'd: She lived alone in a deserted apartment and got checks for a thousand bucks in the mail every week [02:11 AM] Wack'd: And was psychologically conditioned not to think about how off-spec that was for a teenager as well [02:12 AM] Wack'd: A lot of nonsense here resting on, essentially, a Somebody Else's Problem Field [02:12 AM] Wack'd: Whoever set all this up probably would've had a lot easier of a time if they just...gave her a normal life? [02:12 AM] Bocaj: I feel that however this explains her fear of fire from earlier on, this cannot have been what the original plan was even a little [02:13 AM] Wack'd: Anyway somehow meeting Johnny started to make the conditioning decay [02:13 AM] Wack'd: She freaked out when Johnny flamed on because it made her think too hard about things, but she was attracted to him in part because of that [02:14 AM] Bocaj: uh [02:14 AM] Wack'd: Anyway Johnny pushes her to explore this whole ordeal further, because she feels like the dam is finally about to break [02:14 AM] Bocaj: I have a dumb thought [02:14 AM] Wack'd: And break it does

[02:14 AM] Bocaj: She was completely naked in that- HOLY BEANS [02:15 AM] Bocaj: she was completely naked in that scene where she had the breakdown in that other issue and she didn't get the gold booties there [02:15 AM] Wack'd: She didn't but also because up until that point she was Somebody Else's Probemed into not seeing them, remember? [02:15 AM] Wack'd: And so we the audience didn't either [02:16 AM] maxwellelvis: Like the clown graffiti all over John's house [02:16 AM] Wack'd: Johnny uses his fire absorption powers to keep the building from burning down and gives chase [02:18 AM] Wack'd: He catches up to Frankie and gives her a crash course in steering and pacing herself before she and her new ecstasy for life burns down New York [02:18 AM] Wack'd: And she explains Frankie Backstory 2.0 [02:19 AM] Wack'd: She was raised by a simple repairman, a good man, who suddenly lost his friggin composure when the Fantastic Four arrived [02:19 AM] Wack'd: Ranting about how dare Johnny call himself the Human Torch, he dragged her to an old warehouse and began raving about old experiments [02:20 AM] Wack'd: Frankie humors him for a bit but while carrying an old oil drum it bursts into flames, leaving her miraculously unharmed [02:20 AM] Bocaj: Simple repairman has a point. Kind of rude, Johnny [02:20 AM] Bocaj: Jim was a war hero, ya dink [02:21 AM] Wack'd: And then dear old stepdad hypnotized her and abandoned her [02:21 AM] Bocaj: 😐 [02:22 AM] Wack'd: A year later a package arrived with a tape recorder and a gold costume. The tape recorder hypnotized her into putting on the costume and then erased her memories [02:22 AM] maxwellelvis: What a drip [02:22 AM] Wack'd: Anyway from all this Johnny deduces her stepdad was Phineas Horton [02:22 AM] Wack'd: But you guys already figured that out, I bet [02:23 AM] maxwellelvis: I forgot who he was. [02:23 AM] Wack'd: Jim Hammond's dad [02:23 AM] maxwellelvis: Oh [02:24 AM] Wack'd: Anyway Johnny decides to become her mentor and, after she tries to fly as high as possible and runs into that pesky atmosphere problem, takes her back to the Baxter to have Reed run some tests and figure out what her limits are [02:24 AM] Bocaj: I'm for once not sad that Ultron killed him after forcing him to turn the original human torch into the Vision [02:25 AM] Bocaj: Until Byrne retcons that to not be the case because dude loves him some jim hammond [02:26 AM] Wack'd: Anyway I misremembered what Frankie's deal was. I assumed android [02:26 AM] Wack'd: But Reed thinks that whatever was in that fateful oil drum was some sort of superscience chemical that mutated her [02:26 AM] Wack'd: Not sure what the point of her being a nevernude was [02:27 AM] Wack'd: Or why Phineas Horton brainwashed his fourteen year old daughter into wearing a strapless bathing suit at all times [02:28 AM] maxwellelvis: The guy labeled Jim a renegade when he showed the first signs of not being completely under his command [02:28 AM] Wack'd: It sure is a good thing this teenager with no parental guidance never did anything where that bathing suit might've become a problem! [02:28 AM] maxwellelvis: guy's a drip [02:29 AM] Wack'd: Reed has proven his hypothesis that biological sex determines how flame powers work I guess??!?!?

[02:29 AM] Wack'd: What sort of cis nonsense is this [02:30 AM] maxwellelvis: Johnny speaks for us all [02:30 AM] Wack'd: What all that means is "after a period of suitable training, we may be calling our friends at Marvel Comics and telling them to start publishing the Fantastic Five!" [02:31 AM] Bocaj: This is a thing that marvel does sometimes [02:31 AM] Wack'd: Good news for all those Spider-Girl fans I guess [02:31 AM] Bocaj: They've decided that Laura Kinney's foot claw is what girl wolverines be like [02:31 AM] Wack'd: *sigh* [02:33 AM] Bocaj: I'll say that Spider-Girl did it better by not saying, as far as I recall, that the difference was because man vs woman. [02:34 AM] Wack'd: Okay so we have another story in this issue [02:34 AM] Wack'd: Well, two, kind of [02:35 AM] Wack'd: First a brief interlude in which it is established at some point the Four will be going to the tiny town of Benson, Arizona to investigate cases of people being "frightened to death" [02:36 AM] maxwellelvis: @Wack'd My primary suspect is this man [02:37 AM] Bocaj: Put those tingles away [02:37 AM] Wack'd: Here's a Sue pinup which I'm mostly crossposting to see if I can wrangle a coherent set of interests out of her bookshelf

[02:38 AM] Wack'd: Pogo's on there. Sue has good taste in comics [02:38 AM] Bocaj: I was about to say [02:38 AM] Wack'd: And now on to our second feature [02:38 AM] maxwellelvis: She's got a copy of Shogun in there [02:39 AM] maxwellelvis: Dangerous Visions, a sci-fi anthology [02:39 AM] Wack'd: Meet Crow T. Rob--I mean, HERBIE 2.0

[02:40 AM] maxwellelvis: "You listen to me, 'Mr. Fantastic', you are NOT my real father!" [02:40 AM] Wack'd: "I want to decide who lives and who dies!" "So long as Franklin is in the 'lives' category I'm strangely okay with that" [02:41 AM] maxwellelvis: "Hey, Franklin, the secret word for today is 'booger'! Booger booger booger booger-AAAUGH!" [02:41 AM] Wack'd: Anyway this is not the only surprise Reed has in store today! [02:42 AM] Wack'd: He also has A Cure for Being the Thing Number Fucktillion [02:42 AM] Bocaj: Panel 2 Franklin does not look like a child [02:42 AM] Wack'd: He looks like a 1950s Western bit player [02:43 AM] maxwellelvis: "Oh great, another cure! How does this one work, and where can I hide when it backfires?" [02:43 AM] Wack'd: Ben is skeptical but as Reed points out science is always marching on [02:44 AM] Wack'd: He has more data than he's ever had [02:44 AM] Wack'd: Ben you've never asked her that before because it's literally never come up before. Fuck she's dated you while you were cured! Remember when you were riding around in that robot suit?

[02:45 AM] Wack'd: Anyway [02:45 AM] Wack'd: The machine blows up [02:46 AM] Wack'd: Welp

[02:47 AM] Bocaj: Could be worse [02:47 AM] Bocaj: At least its not pinecone grimm [02:47 AM] maxwellelvis: Oh that's coming [02:47 AM] Wack'd: Could be covered in bees. That'd be pretty bad [02:47 AM] maxwellelvis: Not for Ben it wouldn't. [02:47 AM] maxwellelvis: Unless they flew into his mouth. [02:47 AM] Bocaj: "Hahah sting you fuckers" [02:48 AM] Bocaj: "This time it is permanent!" Reed shut up [02:48 AM] Wack'd: Anyway this sure is weird nostalgia baiting [02:49 AM] Wack'd: Folks have done plenty of Lee/Kirby throwback stuff but was anyone nostalgic for this, like, at all [02:50 AM] Wack'd: Also like. C'mon Bryne, integrate your story developments naturally. You shouldn't need an entire issue where all that happens is status quo changes [02:50 AM] maxwellelvis: @Bocaj You might know, had Byrne ever written a comic book before his FF run? [02:51 AM] Wack'd: I guess Frankie was integrated a little naturally (even if she went from recent love interest to team member in no time flat) but the Ben is fairly hamfisted [02:51 AM] Wack'd: You can just check Marvel Wiki [02:51 AM] Bocaj: He co-plotted with Claremont I know [02:51 AM] Bocaj: And Claremont was big on the idea of co-plotting. [02:51 AM] maxwellelvis: But this would be his first, like, his first time flying solo? [02:52 AM] Wack'd: Dude has a lot of X-Men credits and some Captain Americas [02:52 AM] Bocaj: His first writing credit was on Iron Fist apparently [02:52 AM] Bocaj: at Marvel [02:54 AM] Bocaj: But from a skim of wikipedia fantastic four was his first extended solo writing thing

In the summer of 2014, I gave birth to a baby boy. He was born with a perfect Apgar score, after a very easy delivery. But my labor had not been smooth—in fact, throughout the day and a half of contractions, I believed there was something decidedly wrong. I also felt that way as I held him for the first time, and he writhed violently under my hands. In a video taken about 10 minutes after he was born, he can be seen lifting his head up off my chest. “Ooooh, look at how advanced he is!” someone can be heard trilling in the background, before her voice is overtaken by my own. “Don’t do that, love,” I say. Then, to the camera: “Does he seem like he’s in pain to you?”

It took my husband and me three years to understand that in fact I was right that day in the delivery room. Our son was hurt. And it will take him years to heal—longer than it should have, and that is on top of the injustice of the original wound—though I thank God every day that we figured it out.

The first breakthrough came when my husband David remembered a book about brain science he had read a decade earlier, by a doctor named Norman Doidge. It changed our lives, by allowing us to properly understand our son’s injury (and to understand why we couldn’t manage to get a straight answer about it from any of the “experts” we had seen). It’s been a tough road, but from that moment on, we at least knew what to do—and why.

A year or so later, we met Doidge and his wife, Karen, for dinner, and it is here that the story may become pertinent for you.

After we ordered, I told Norman I had a question I’d been wanting to ask—and that I wanted his honest answer to it, even if it meant that I had done something wrong. I proceeded to relay to him the entire tale, from the very beginning to that very moment, of what felt to me like our Kafkaesque medical mystery journey.

How was it, I then asked, that it took my husband and me—both children of doctors, both people with reporting and researching backgrounds, among the lucky who have health insurance, and with access through family and friends to what is billed as the best medical care in the country—years to figure this out, and that in the end we only did so basically by accident?

Norman looked at us sympathetically. “I don’t know how else to tell you this but bluntly,” he said. “There are still many good individuals involved in medicine, but the American medical system is profoundly broken. When you look at the rate of medical error—it's now the third leading cause of death in the U.S.—the overmedication, creation of addiction, the quick-fix mentality, not funding the poor, quotas to admit from ERs, needless operations, the monetization of illness vs. health, the monetization of side effects, a peer review system run by journals paid for by Big Pharma, the destruction of the health of doctors and nurses themselves by administrators, who demand that they rush through 10-minute patient visits, when so often an hour or more is required, and which means that in order to be ‘successful,’ doctors must overlook complexity rather than search for it ... Alana, the unique thing here isn’t that you fell down so many rabbit holes. What’s unique is that you found your way out at all.”

I had barely started processing this when Norman moved to change the subject: “Now, can I ask you two something? How come so much of the journalism I read seems like garbage?”

Oh, God.

David and I looked at each other, simultaneously realizing that the after-school special we thought we were in was actually a horror movie. If the medical industry was comprehensively broken, as Norman said, and the media was irrevocably broken, as we knew it was ... Was everything in America broken? Was education broken? Housing? Farming? Cities? Was religion broken?

Everything is broken.

…

For seven decades, the country’s intellectual and cultural life was produced and protected by a set of institutions—universities, newspapers, magazines, record companies, professional associations, cultural venues, publishing houses, Hollywood studios, think tanks, etc. Collectively, these institutions reflected a diversity of experiences and then stamped them all as “American”—conjuring coherence out of the chaos of a big and unwieldy country. This wasn’t a set of factories pumping out identical widgets, but rather a broad and messy jazz band of disparate elements that together produced something legible, clear, and at times even beautiful when each did their part.

…

This was the tinder. The tech revolution was the match—one-upping the ’70s economy by demanding more efficiency and more speed and more boundarylessness, and demanding it everywhere. They introduced not only a host of inhuman wage-suppressing tactics, like replacing full-time employees with benefits with gig workers with lower wages and no benefits, but also a whole new aesthetic that has come to dominate every aspect of our lives—a set of principles that collectively might be thought of as flatness.

Flatness is the reason the three jobs with the most projected growth in your country all earn less than $27,000 a year, and it is also the reason that all the secondary institutions that once gave structure and meaning to hundreds of millions of American lives—jobs and unions but also local newspapers, churches, Rotary Clubs, main streets—have been decimated. And flatness is the mechanism by which, over the past decade and with increasing velocity over the last three years, a single ideologically driven cohort captured the entire interlocking infrastructure of American cultural and intellectual life. It is how the Long March went from a punchline to reality, as one institution after another fell and then entire sectors, like journalism, succumbed to control by narrow bands of sneering elitists who arrogated to themselves the license to judge and control the lives of their perceived inferiors.

Flatness broke everything.

…

Today’s revolution has been defined by a set of very specific values: boundarylessness; speed; universal accessibility; an allergy to hierarchy, so much so that the weighting or preferring of some voices or products over others is seen as illegitimate; seeing one’s own words and face reflected back as part of a larger current; a commitment to gratification at the push of a button; equality of access to commodified experiences as the right of every human being on Earth; the idea that all choices can and should be made instantaneously, and that the choices made by the majority in a given moment, on a given platform represent a larger democratic choice, which is therefore both true and good—until the next moment, on the next platform.

…

“You might not even realize you’re not where you started.” The machines trained us to accept, even chase, this high. Once we accepted it, we turned from willful individuals into parts of a mass that could move, or be moved, anywhere. Once people accepted the idea of an app, you could get them to pay for dozens of them—if not more. You could get people to send thousands of dollars to strangers in other countries to stay in homes they’d never seen in cities they’d never visited. You could train them to order in food—most of their food, even all of their food—from restaurants that they’d never been to, based on recommendations from people they’d never met. You could get them to understand their social world not as consisting of people whose families and faces one knew, which was literally the definition of social life for hundreds of thousands of years, but rather as composed of people who belonged to categories—“also followed by,” “friends in common,” “BIPOC”—that didn’t even exist 15 years ago. You could create a culture in which it was normal to have sex with someone whose two-dimensional picture you saw on a phone, once.

You could, seemingly overnight, transform people’s views about anything—even everything.

The Obama administration could swiftly overturn the decision-making space in which Capitol Hill staff and newspaper reporters functioned so that Iran, a country that had killed thousands of Americans and consistently announces itself to be America’s greatest enemy, is now to be seen as inherently as trustworthy and desirable an ally as France or Germany. Flatness, frictionlessness.

The biological difference between the sexes, which had been a foundational assumption of medicine as well as of the feminist movement, was almost instantaneously replaced not only by the idea that there are numerous genders but that reference in medicine, law or popular culture to the existence of a gender binary is actually bigoted and abusive. Flatness.

Facebook’s longtime motto was, famously, “Move fast and break shit,” which is exactly what Silicon Valley enabled others to do.

The internet tycoons used the ideology of flatness to hoover up the value from local businesses, national retailers, the whole newspaper industry, etc.—and no one seemed to care. This heist—by which a small group of people, using the wiring of flatness, could transfer to themselves enormous assets without any political, legal or social pushback—enabled progressive activists and their oligarchic funders to pull off a heist of their own, using the same wiring. They seized on the fact that the entire world was already adapting to a life of practical flatness in order to push their ideology of political flatness—what they call social justice, but which has historically meant the transfer of enormous amounts of power and wealth to a select few.

Because this cohort insists on sameness and purity, they have turned the once-independent parts of the American cultural complex into a mutually validating pipeline for conformists with approved viewpoints—who then credential, promote and marry each other. A young Ivy League student gets A’s by parroting intersectional gospel, which in turn means that he is recommended by his professors for an entry-level job at a Washington think tank or publication that is also devoted to these ideas. His ability to widely promote those viewpoints on social media is likely to attract the approval of his next possible boss or the reader of his graduate school application or future mates. His success in clearing those bars will in turn open future opportunities for love and employment. Doing the opposite has an inverse effect, which is nearly impossible to avoid given how tightly this system is now woven. A person who is determined to forgo such worldly enticements—because they are especially smart, or rich, or stubborn—will see only examples of even more talented and accomplished people who have seen their careers crushed and reputations destroyed for daring to stick a toe over the ever multiplying maze of red lines.

So, instead of reflecting the diversity of a large country, these institutions have now been repurposed as instruments to instill and enforce the narrow and rigid agenda of one cohort of people, forbidding exploration or deviation—a regime that has ironically left homeless many, if not most, of the country’s best thinkers and creators. Anyone actually concerned with solving deep-rooted social and economic problems, or God forbid with creating something unique or beautiful—a process that is inevitably messy and often involves exploring heresies and making mistakes—will hit a wall. If they are young and remotely ambitious they will simply snuff out that part of themselves early on, strangling the voice that they know will get them in trouble before they’ve ever had the chance to really hear it sing.

…

I’m not looking to rewind the clock back to a time before we all had email and cellphones. What I want is to be inspired by the last generation that made a new life-world—the postwar American abstract expressionist painters, jazz musicians, and writers and poets who created an alternate American modernism that directly challenged the ascendant Communist modernism: a blend of forms and techniques with an emphasis not on the facelessness of mass production, but on individual creativity and excellence.

Like them, our aim should be to take the central, unavoidable and potentially beneficent parts of the Flatness Aesthetic (including speed, accessibility; portability) while discarding the poisonous parts (frictionlessness; surveilled conformism; the allergy to excellence). We should seek out friction and thorniness, hunt for complexity and delight in unpredictability. Our lives should be marked not by “comps” and metrics and filters and proofs of concept and virality but by tight circles and improvisation and adventure and lots and lots of creative waste.

And not just to save ourselves, but to save each other. The vast majority of Americans are not ideologues. They are people who wish to live in a free country and get along with their neighbors while engaging in profitable work, getting married, raising families, being entertained, and fulfilling their American right to adventure and self-invention. They are also the consumer base for movies, TV, books, and other cultural products. Every time Americans are given the option to ratify progressive dictates through their consumer choices, they vote in the opposite direction. When HBO removed Gone with the Wind from its on-demand library last year, it became the #1 bestselling movie on Amazon. Meanwhile, endless numbers of Hollywood right-think movies and supposed literary masterworks about oppression are dismal failures for studios and publishing houses that would rather sink into debt than face a social-justice firing squad on Twitter.

To Live Without

Some family friends getting married had a cute idea: with the RSVP, they asked guests to suggest a song for the reception. When discussing possibilities with my mother, we pulled up the most famous scene of My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), when the cast spontaneously breaks out into Dionne Warwick's "I Say A Little Prayer" at brunch. The top YouTube hit for a clip also includes the reprise(?) at the end, and it reminded me what a deeply weird movie it is. Circumstances being what they are, I decided to take the opportunity to re-watch the full film, and well. Spoilers for a 23-year-old movie?

My Best Friend's Wedding is first and foremost analyzed as a deconstruction and repudiation of the standard way the Love Triangle plays out in the mainstream RomCom, and I'm not sure the movie would even work if you were somehow unaware of the tropes associated with it. We're primed to expect the love rival will be evil or selfish or somehow bad, and it only comes on gradually that our protagonist is, in fact, the villain of the story. But then, weirder still, you kind of still want the villain to succeed because it turns out the love interest is pretty much a jerk and, karmicly, their inevitable acrimonious divorce contrasted with love rival's marriage to someone who would actually value her has a better ring to it.

The other thing that is peculiar about the film's structure is George, the main character's editor-slash-gay-best-friend. Originally a very small part, it was beefed up to include the iconic scene and also a completely different moral framing device--and ending--in reshoots.

And that ending. Apparently, she was originally supposed to meet some new guy at the wedding reception and hit it off, but instead George drops everything to fly out to Chicago for the second time in one weekend to be a good (great, honestly) friend. I actually saw the ending once on TV first without the context of the full film. Maybe if I hadn't known what was coming, I could have bought in to the idea that the main character had realized some until-then obscured True Love for love interest, but I kind of doubt it. The film goes out of its way to question her motivations for wanting to stop this wedding, which I appreciate because I probably would have died of rage if it asked me to accept at face value all these events on the basis of a one-month relationship nearly a decade prior. Her actions make it clear she's not interested in a serious relationship/marriage. She also tells us as much before this whole crisis starts. And thankfully, thankfully, the ending confirms it.

Regardless of if you want to take an aromantic reading of the main character (and you certainly could), I feel like the movie is affirming to me and my ilk in that late-90s kind of way. Like, as long as you don't actually think about it and just feel, it's great to see a female character at 28 express indifference about marriage, go through a crisis about it, and then not be proven wrong. When does that ever happen? Aside from real life, I mean.

Because, statistically speaking, people seem to know what they want out of marriage by their late 20s. Despite the meme of the young person changing their mind--especially women as their "biological clock starts ticking"--it doesn't seem to be reality, in either direction. By 28? Your brain is fully formed and more than ready to make decisions that will impact the entire rest of your life.

So, thanks for the deeply, deeply weird ending, movie: perhaps one of the only times reshoots have made a film more thematically coherent, although apparently by accident. Maybe there won't be marriage, and I was never big on sex, but I am 100% on board to keep on dancing.

[Cross-posted to Wordpress]

Pitted dates.

It’s a pun.

Here it is! The dating apps blog post you’ve been waiting for! Although, it’s not exactly about dating apps. It’s also not exactly about dating. It’s a tree with a lot of branches and no coherent thru-plot but all of these things do feel at least a little bit related so buckle up.

To start: a brief background. 

I am nearly thirty. I identify as ace or aspec (asexuality spectrum). I am not hetero... if pressed, I’d probably call myself queer... but generally speaking “not hetero” seems to cover that part of things adequately. I’ve had a handful of long-term relationships and partners. I’ve been single since my last relationship of over three years ended abruptly in 2015. I haven’t dated since then. I’ve gone on a handful of dates in that time, but no repeats and no relationships. 

It took me a long time to move past my last relationship. I probably didn’t even consider dating apps for a whole year. I’m not very socially outgoing and I don’t have much of a friend group in my town so I don’t go out to the bars or anything... which means dating apps are one of the only ways for me to actually start exploring options.

I started with OkCupid and eventually worked my way to Bumble. I can’t afford to pay for anything more involved so I’ve never tried Match or anything like that... and Tinder was never particularly appealing to me either because I have no interest in hook-ups. 

I’ve posted on and off about being single over the years. There were plenty of times, early on, when I hated being single. I felt alone and broken and it wasn’t a good place to be. Gradually I became more comfortable, however. I explored labels a bit more. I learned a lot about myself. I’m at a place now where, though I am lonely sometimes, for the most part I feel like my needs can be met by the people in my life... even though I’m not romantically involved with any of them. 

In response to a blog post from a few years ago, a woman a generation or two older than me sent me a message implying that she was sure I’d settle down and find someone who could make me happy if I just lowered my standards a bit.

Then, that sort of made me blind with rage. 

Generally, now, it still does. 

I’ve thought a lot about this message and its implication over the years. There are times when I can see how someone might think my standards are too lofty. But what’s the difference between standards, even high standards, and simply knowing what you are and aren’t compatible with? 

I’ve dated enough and been single enough to be VERY confident about some things. 

And yes, there are certainly some deal-breakers. 

It’s possible that there are more deal-breakers than “deal-makers” so to speak, but I still think that’s probably not the worst thing in the world. Especially for someone who is relatively comfortable being single and also relatively busy with work. Dating takes time. And here at almost-thirty, I don’t feel like spending time on someone who I am pretty sure I won’t be compatible with.

It’s not so much that I’m judging the others, either. When on a dating app, I’m pretty careful to only swipe right for guys I think would also be compatible with me. 

If you use the word “spontaneous” in your bio and at least one of your pictures is you sky-diving... you’re probably not right for me. 

If you put in your bio that you’re only interested in women who prioritize dogs and fitness... I’m probably not right for you. 

Is that tied to lofty expectations? Or am I simply being realistic and saving both myself and the other party time and effort? 

I certainly have a type. And I’m sure there are potential partners out there for me that are not that type. I’m not averse to being surprised or trying something a little unexpected. What I do know, however, is that I will never jump out of a plane. And I will also probably never kiss a dog on the mouth. 

My “standards” are basically generated from my knowledge of myself. So, sure, call them lofty. But I’m pretty proud of the effort I’ve put in to understanding myself, and when it comes to dating, there is value in utilizing that knowledge. Here are some things I know about me and the associated “standard.” 

I am not a partier. I don’t do drugs. I rarely drink. If you are visibly drunk or stoned in the majority of your pictures, we probably aren’t super compatible. 

My politics lean FAR left. I don’t even like referring to myself as a “democrat.” I care deeply about social justice issues. If you voted for Trump, we probably aren’t super compatible. 

I am extremely anti-gun. I grew up in a rural area and understand both the sport and value of hunting. I know that I will never hunt though. Could I be compatible with a hunter? Yes, definitely. But could I be compatible with someone who is waving around various guns in 3 out of their 4 pictures? Probably not. 

I am a cat person. Though I don’t HATE dogs, I certainly prefer cats. I have a very low tolerance for small dogs and, in general, I don’t like the way dogs smell. I’ve made friends with a handful of dogs in my life and certainly could again. But if you say that you hate cats in your profile, we probably aren’t compatible. 

I work a lot and I make no money. As a result, I’m tired a lot. I spend a lot of my very limited down time doing extremely low-key activities like reading or art or watching TV. I can’t afford to travel much. Part of the reason I work a lot is because I’m actively trying to hit certain career milestones. I feel like I’m a bit behind. But more than that, I’m very passionate about my work. If you expect to take the place of my long-term career goals, we probably aren’t compatible. If you expect me to hop on the next plane to Europe or Asia or Africa, we probably aren’t compatible... unless you’re covering the costs. 

I’m a feminist. If you’re a fundamentalist Christian or someone who believes a woman’s place is in the home, we probably aren’t compatible. 

I believe black lives matter. If you currently display or have ever displayed the confederate flag, we probably aren’t compatible. 

I’m committed to learning. Not necessarily in school, but from everything in the world around me. If you don’t share that perspective, we may not be compatible.

I am looking for someone who shares some of my interests. 

I’m looking for someone who has other human beings in the pictures they post in their profile... instead of six different versions of the same poorly lit selfie from an unflattering angle. I think I’m probably looking for that last thing so that I’m not raped, stalked, or murdered if we’re being honest. 

I’ve already said that I identify on the asexuality spectrum. As such, there’s very little that I’m naturally attracted to... if I find that, and it’s very rare, that person and I almost never “match.” If we do match and you ask about my labels and I explain them and your instant response is that I must be ace because I’ve just never had good sex, we definitely aren’t compatible. 

I don’t know, all written out, maybe this is a lot. 

But I still don’t think it is. 

For the most part, every guy on dating apps seems to be looking for the same woman. 

She’s thin and into fitness, she has a dog, she hikes a lot, she loves going to concerts and traveling the world and she works hard but parties harder.

That woman can’t possibly exist in enough quantities to please all the men on Bumble. In fact, I doubt that woman exists at all because I don’t understand how you have the time or money to even do half those things. 

So yeah, I may have high-ish standards... but are MY standards even the issue?

If no one on Bumble has any interest in a fat brunette with a lot of tattoos who reads a lot and wears sweatpants more than any other clothes... well, what I want isn’t going to matter a whole lot anyway.

I want someone who loves me for me... who works to understand me... who raises me up but who also respects my independent nature. I don’t think I do well if I feel too needed. I want someone who respects my politics, my philosophy, my dietary/health choices, my mental health journey, my career aspirations, my sexuality... and hell, if that’s too much to ask, I’d probably rather just be on my own. 

I had a big “ah-ha” moment a few years ago when it occurred to me that if I want to have a child, I can do so on my own. I can choose a donor, I can carry a baby or I can use a surrogate; if those things don’t work, I can adopt. My family and friends are a safety net forged in the strongest flexible metal in the known and unknown worlds and I have no question that they would be enough to guide me in that journey. 

Now, if I go that direction, it’s still many years away. But I know I could do it. And that’s enough to wipe away the creeping fear of the biological clock. 

I am not in a hurry. But I don’t have time to waste. I have a never-ending list of books to read and a finite number of years to read them so yeah, I’d rather sit on the couch with my mom and my cat than go on a date with someone I know I won’t be compatible with. 

Are my standards too high? I truly don’t think that shit matters at all. 

There are times when I’m lonely, but I am not alone. And I know that’s also a common occurrence for many people who are dating or married or polyamorous or ace or divorced or whatever. I’m pretty sure loneliness is just a part of the human condition. 

And, most importantly, my needs are largely being met. Browsing dating apps is entertaining at times, even if it doesn’t lead to dates. There are times when I want to be told I’m beautiful, I want to be told I’m powerful generous kind loving passionate giving funny sexy smart creative. Just because I’m not dating someone, however, does not mean I don’t have someone to tell me those things. It’s a wonder what friends and family can do... all you have to do is ask. And sometimes you don’t even need to do that!

Would I like a partner to walk with me through the rest of the world? Sure. But, at the same time, no partner will ever know me the way my best friend does. The way my family does. They may know me in a different way and a valuable way, but no one will know me like the people who have watched me become who I am... through trauma and time and growth and failure and success. And sure, we are always growing and changing and experiencing new failure and success... but I just don’t know. The more I age and the more I think about it, the more I’m pretty sure I don’t *need* a significant other. And that’s a comforting thing, not a sad thing. 

I don’t think there’s ONE person out there for you. I don’t think some all-knowing deity designed your perfect “other half.” You are a whole ass person and that is enough for my god. Even more so, implying you can only be completed by one other human person means you’ll miss out on what you could gain from so many other beautiful people along the way. 

I think it’s okay for me to be honest if I’m not interested in going on a date with a thirty-year-old basement troll. I think it’s okay for me to be honest if I’m not interested in going on a date with a suit-wearing globe-trotter who spends his weekends blowing his income/inheritance with a drink in hand. I can sure as hell promise you that I’m never going to be Sarah who weighs a trim 120 and has a long blond braid and hikes with her dog on the weekends when she’s not tanning on a beach in Spain or tailgating/day-drinking for eight hours at a time.

Is it my standards or their standards or is it something completely different? 

I think it’s human to want to be enough. 

I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel that way.

But the more time and energy I spend on loving and understanding myself, the more confident I am that I *am* enough. I’m not defining “enough” by what a spouse or partner sees/wants/needs. I’m defining “enough” for myself. And if I’m enough for me, maybe that is all I really need.

Maybe, in time, I will find someone to share my life with in a romantic way.

Or maybe I won’t.

And honestly, I would just like to believe that I’ll be okay no matter what. 

Katy Perry offers no respite for the embattled royals

Another blundersome week for the royal crew who, still reeling from Harry’s exodus and revelations about Andrew, now find out that the singer has no Asian heritage

Marina Hyde

Published: 18:28 Thursday, 06 February 2020

Over the past few years, the royal helicopter took off comparatively infrequently from the field by Kensington Palace. Over the past month, however, it has been like an Oliver Stone movie out there. It’s the Platoon of ribbon-cutting, the ’Nam of nursery visiting. Since Harry and Meghan decided to step back from their royal duties, the general stepping forward of other royals has resulted in a huge uptick in forms of dutifully giving a shit that take longer by train or car. At times it’s difficult to decide whether the Duchess of Cambridge is off to haul herself pointedly round another women’s project, or whether they’re simply re-running the defence of Khe Sanh.

Indeed, the two activities arguably have much in common. The royal family has been somewhat under siege in recent months, with the departure of the Sussexes merely the chaser to months of fallout over Prince Andrew’s long friendship with an international underage-sex trafficker.

Let’s begin with Prince William’s decision to lecture Sunday’s Bafta audience about the unacceptable lack of diversity in the awards categories, a topic that had been much discussed since the shortlists were announced. Not that there’s anything wrong with the royals coat-tailing on what other people have been saying. But you do have to salute a family with countless highly paid image advisers who – a mere TWO DAYS later – nonetheless allowed Prince Charles to announce that his new ambassador for the British Asian Trust was … Katy Perry. Look, she may not be British. But she has certainly dressed up as a lot of Asians in her time.

We can probably rule out Prince William’s next keynote speech being a hymn to his father entitled OK BOOMER. But with the best will in the world, arguably the most tangible impact he could have on diversity is having a word with his papa. Alas, people who know about these things say that behind the scenes, Prince Charles and his sons prefer to spend much of their time arguing about money – quite understandable, given how much of it they all have.

For her part, Perry was hardly going to say no to the request to assist the charity in its fight against child labour in India, and prepared a short speech for her investiture in which she appeared to accede graciously to the royal bum-pinching role vacated by Dame Geraldine Halliwell some time in the early 00s.

“In my own personal experience, he has an incredibly kind soul,” Katy twinkled of a prince whose altruism famously extends to allowing his servants to squeeze the toothpaste on to the brush for him. “So kind, that yes, sometimes he talks to his plants,” she continued. “And he asked me if I could sing to his plants. I will, in the future – you have my word, sir.” A reminder that all the best British Asians hail from California.

Against this faintly blundersome backdrop, then, it is in many ways no surprise to learn that a civil servant at the housing, communities and local government department has written to councils informing them that they are to fly the union jack above town halls in celebration of Prince Andrew’s forthcoming 60th birthday. My initial thought was that this might be some child-protection fishing expedition. As the ancient management saying goes: let’s run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. But it seems that it is merely some established piece of protocol, still staggering on, zombie-like, despite the Duke recently being sacked by his mother, and accused of “zero cooperation” by US prosecutors leading the Epstein case.

He, incidentally, can call on the royal helicopter with significantly less frequency than he once did, which must make getting between golf courses on some crappy business pretext rather harder. Then again, perhaps it’s for the best, given his experiences with that particular craft. Andrew recently claimed that his experiences as a chopper pilot in the Falklands had seen him OD on adrenaline and – consequently, somehow – left him biologically incapable of sweating. I’m not sure whether this was one of the plotlines in his de-stranged wife Fergie’s series of children’s book about Budgie the Helicopter. But I can tell you it was at that moment being advanced, on prime time television, as an explanation as to why he couldn’t have been sweatily dancing in London’s Tramp nightclub with the woman who claims she was Jeffrey Epstein’s teenage sex slave.

So not the most coherent and joined-up of weeks for the royal family. In many ways, all it was missing was Jeremy Clarkson deciding to eeny-meeny-miny-mo his way on to the subject of Meghan. Happily, this has now been remedied, and we’ll conclude with the big guy’s thoughts. Explaining that everybody cries, Clarkson declared: “But I mean, as a general rule, you’ve got to get a grip. I think the expression ‘get a grip’ needs to come back into the lexicon as soon as possible. Everybody needs to get a grip. Meghan Markle ... just get a grip.” Strong words, which mean so much more coming from someone who, despite making many millions of pounds a year, still punched one of his underlings because he was too late to order a steak for supper one day. If only Clarkson could be king, as a number of rejected petitions have previously observed. He’s certainly hypocritical enough for it.