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stormsbourne · 5 months

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alright listen

I know we're all having an evaluation of how eagerly we believe people who present with even the slightest air of authority and frankly good! we all need to be less credulous of people on the internet who tell lies.

but I think there are also other lessons to learn from james somerton. namely about his raging and blatant misogyny, which I've often seen similar forms of in fandom and on this specific site. to paraphrase bombs himself in the ctrl alt del video, if you see shitty behavior within your sphere, it's important to recognize it and try to fix it instead of rejecting it and asserting that no REAL members of the ingroup are like that. and nerds have a misogyny problem. including tumblr. so let's reckon with it.

do you append "white" or "straight" to your comments about women even when those things have little to do with the topic being discussed, just to make your comments seem more legit? (and no, m/m shipping discourse does not give you a ticket to say it's all straight women -- it's fictional characters, james.) do you often theorize about how (hurriedly appended "straight/white/cis") women are responsible for a problem in fandom, nay, all problems in fandom? have you made up a guy based on a single post that annoyed you and extrapolated to say that all (appended signifier to make it ok) women in fandom are like that? do you see women as uniquely fetishizing, uniquely stupid about politics or social issues, uniquely annoying to talk to? do you assume when there's an issue, even a real one and not the fake ones james made up, that a woman is probably at the root of it?

all of this still applies to you if you're a woman. it also applies if you're gay or a person of color or trans. being an oppressed group doesn't mean you are immune from sexism, and sexism is still rampant in everyday life for pretty much everyone.

your shipping and fandom discourse isn't immune from this. no, I'm not talking about how not enough people like yuri. I'm talking about how women who like "bad" ships like r*ylo or whatever are seen as open targets for harassment. how women who are into "bad/problematic" fandoms are seen as idiots and enablers who deserve what they get. how there's an attitude that women who like shitty bad porn must think it's good, must be too stupid to know better, and must need to be handheld and taught about good, acceptable fiction. I've already talked a lot about tumblr's complete refusal to admit that fujoshi wasn't a term coined by delicate japanese mlm to complain about evil women (and I wonder if james contributed to that idiotic concept), but the way I've seen people assert that women into m/m must be straight, must be stupid, must be lying about their identities, must be hurting gay men in real life in addition to wanting some anime boys to kiss ...

I've seen how some of you people talk about amb*r h*ard, is all I'm saying, and I've seen what you've tried to do to dozens of female creatives that, for some reason, you've decided deserve to be taken down or taught a lesson. I've seen the descriptions you use. shrieking, bitchy, whiny, uppity, shrewish, karen (don't get me started on how karen has been turned into an easy excuse for misogyny). you're not bystanders to what james did and is doing, you're a part of it. sure, you might not have the nazi fetish, but you've said things about women that put somerton to shame.

just a thing to keep in mind while the plagiarism discourse is ongoing. somerton is a shithead for many reasons but this is one that's important to remember because I think people often treat misogyny like a lesser crime, a smaller concern, and it's not. just think of what laws are passing and what views popular movements have of women and then, for one moment, consider that maybe your reflexive need to blame women or pick them apart might have been influenced by the Society In Which We Live.

#james somerton #hbomberguy

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missmastectomy · 20 days

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I was hesitant to write this post, but I want to talk about why so many women and teenage girls are getting double mastectomies.

The justification a lot of trans people use for elective double mastectomies is that "top surgery" helps people feel comfortable in their bodies. Traditionally, this surgery was restricted to transmen. In the recent decade, however, nonbinary identified and even non-trans identified women have been getting mastectomies. I remember clear as day when my coworker (who identified as a "cis" woman) told me that at 18 she was planning on saving for top surgery. I myself got my breasts removed when I identified as nonbinary, having been on testosterone for 2 years.

It's important to remember that no person is born wanting surgery. Society creates conditions that are hostile to women, GNC, and gay people, and this hostility encourages a dissociated state. The body is removed from the mind - instead of the body being an intrinsic part of your personhood, a mechanism through which we experience the world, it instead becomes ornamental. This is perfectly represented by all forms of non-reconstructive cosmetic surgery, which risk people's health for entirely aesthetic reasons.

So, why do teen girls want to remove their breasts? For those of who experienced unwanted sexual advances from a young age, the answer is intuitive. Breasts are inherently sexualized. They are not seen as a vital organ that contributes to bodily function and health, but as a decoration, the only purpose of which is to attract men and feed babies. In this way, a woman's breasts do not even belong to her. When men openly gawk at a woman without a bra, when relatives grope at her as a pubescent girl, when we are exposed to an endless stream of hyper-sexualized images of women with their cleavage out, a message is sent loud and clear: existing in a female body is unsafe.

I want to make it very clear that an elective mastectomy and the practices of breast ironing are very different, but there are commonalities in the attitudes behind both. Breast ironing is done to pubescent girls in order to "prevent" her being sexually assaulted or harassed by men, sometimes including male relatives. When I hear stories of girls in the West starving themselves and binding to hide their chests, I can't help but see similarities. When I was binding and restricting calories as a 15 year old, I would have said I was doing it so that I could pass as a man. But I would have been lying to you. I was lying to myself. I didn't hate my breasts because I was "born in the wrong body." I hated my breasts because they were used to justify my sexualization. From my perspective they put me in danger.

We often hear that women's rights in the West have been secured, but you need only look at the war on women's bodies to see that that is a fantasy. When young girls constantly receive the messaging that your curves and boobs WILL attract men and that you will be objectified for it, many will try to opt out.

Take Liv Hewson, for example.

She says herself that her anorexia was a manifestation of "gender dysphoria," but the question remains - where did this dysphoria come from? Why would anorexia develop as an outlet for it? What makes more sense: a young woman was born hating her body and her breasts because she has a gendered, non-female soul, or that same woman hates her body because she has been conditioned as such by a patriarchal society, the same society that encourages extreme self harm and body modification through a multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry?

Gender dysphoria in young women needs to be demystified. It's not special, it's not unique. It is NOT evidence that she needs invasive surgery or steroids to feel comfortable in her body. It is evidence that she is in pain. In order to address the rising rate of transition in young women, we must first acknowledge the conditions that nurture this form of self-hatred.

Transition IS a feminist issue. It is just as relevant in Western feminism as tackling the beauty industry, female sexualization, and violence perpetrated against women through porn. All of these issues are deeply interconnected. When we approach dysphoric women with compassion and encourage them to perceive their bodies as a part of themselves that deserves to remain intact and whole, rather than as their enemy, we take a necessary step towards female liberation.

#detrans #detransition #gender critical #radical feminists do touch #radical feminist safe #radical feminists do interact #radical feminism #misogny #anorexia #sexism #transition #trans issues

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doberbutts · 4 months

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You mentioned in response to another ask that you don't use "transandrophobia" because the trans theory you were taught by trans women told you that "transmisogyny" covered those things and that is a total revelation to me. I've been thinking for a long time that it seemed to me that the idea of transmisogyny *does* cover transandrophobia, it just impacts trans femmes and trans mascs differently a lot of the time. But I had no idea that there has been theory/discussion that says this. I'm more used to the idea of "TMA" with the implication that only trans women are affected by transmisogyny. Is that more of a new thing and transmisogyny used to be considered as a more broad term? And would you trace that change to the same issue you're talking about with a lot of current feminism forgetting how feminism is also a "men's issue"?

Idk if I would call it "new" per say. The word trans-misogyny was coined in 2007 and did not include trans men, but the book in which it was coined did mention that language was likely needed to describe the trans man experience as well. There have been a number of different attempts, but none have really stuck.

I went to college starting in 2010, so roughly 3 years after Serrano coined the word. While in college, my school's GSA wanted LGBT elders to come and talk to all the scared freshly-minted adults who were trying to figure out this being gay thing. The woman who ran my GSA found a Trans woman who was willing to be my mentor and sponsor, she wrote my letters for me back when that was still necessary for medical transition, and we met frequently for her to teach me more or less how to be trans safely. Some things she did not know- how to bind safely, how to attach a semi-permenant packer, etc. But others she knew very well, because she herself dealt with both being seen as a man by society as well as the effects of testosterone on her body for decades before she transitioned.

Anyway. This woman was great, and is a significant portion of the reason I'm still alive to this day. And she is who taught me the word transmisogyny, and that it should really cover all trans people because all trans people experience an intersection of transphobia and misogyny. Whether that was popular theory at the time or not, that is what us young kids learned directly from the mouths of trans women at my college, which to me means that others were also learning this particular version of transfeminist theory.

Unfortunately by the time I dropped out of college in 2013/2014, online trans spaces were having stupid arguments such as "transtrenders are bad" and "neopronouns are bad" and "nonbinary people are cis people who want to feel special" and "trans men should be hunted for sport" and "trans women are incel nazis" and. Well. I went "wow this place is a cesspit and I feel like no one here has actually talked to another transgender person face to face" and then did not engage with the online community. So I don't really know how common or popular the understanding I was taught was at the time, though it certainly seems quite rare now.

(As a caveat I don't really think trans people of any gender have anything that isn't similar with each other when it comes to oppression, outside of certain bodily things that can't be helped because that's literally the thing we're transgender about, and I think we all experience very similar oppression but sometimes with a different hat)

As for what caused this particular defining to fall into obscurity? I really can't say. I don't know how popular the transfeminist theory the trans women who spoke at my GSA meetings taught us actually was in the broader world. Every once in a while I meet someone who lived through that same time who remembers that theory, which tells me it had gained at least some traction if it was being discussed in multiple parts of the country, but... that's really it. And it's pretty unpopular theory nowadays, I get people calling me a scumbag and claiming that I say transmisogyny doesn't exist just for mentioning that the theory I was taught includes trans men in the discussion.

But I don't think it's specifically the whole TMA/TME thing. I think it's a lack of understanding of what oppression and what intersectionality are, how they operate, how they work, how we define things through them. There are many people who believe that men do not experience misogyny. But, they do, that's why it's an insult to a boy to call him a girl during a moment of femininity or vulnerability, as a means of calling him weak because girls are believed to be weak. There are many people who think intersectionality turns oppression into additives, as though stacking marginalizations like dnd buffs. This also falls apart because oppression is not like quick math where you add a +5 to every roll if any part of your identity is privileged and a -7 if any part is oppressed.

I've had people get mad at me for saying that straight people experience homophobia while we also have sitting politicians that make jokes on live TV about how they'd drown their (presumably straight) children if they found out their kids were gay. For saying that GNC cis people experience transphobia when butches are getting kicked out of bathrooms and drag queens are getting jumped in bars. For reminding people that when Sikhs are killed due to being mistaken for Muslim in this country that hates Muslims over a national tragedy our Muslim population did not cause, it's still considered and called Islamophobia, because just because Americans are too stupid to tell a Sikh from a Muslim doesn't mean they weren't spurred into that hate crime by their rampant hatred of Muslims and the sight of a turban and long beard.

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transmascissues · 1 year

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a lot of people aren't going to want to hear this, but if you actually want trans men to stop "playing up" our assigned sex/"female socialization" or "walking back" on our manhood in conversations, here's what you need to do:

accept that it is possible for men (yes, 100%-men-and-nothing-but-men) to experience gendered oppression, including misogyny. accept that it is entirely possible for captial-m Men to have a lifetime worth of experiences with misogyny. accept that it is possible for men to be not just hurt by but systemically oppressed under the patriarchy. accept that being oppressed for one's gender does not require any proximity to womanhood. accept that it is possible for men to experience the things you call "women's issues". stop calling the misogyny specifically directed at us "misdirected". stop acting like our manhood somehow cancels out the oppression we've experienced. stop considering yourself more of an authority on our oppression than we are just because we're men and you're not. stop supporting activist spaces that expect men to "shut up and listen and be good allies" while everyone else task about their oppression. stop simplifying the complexities of gendered oppression to "man = privileged, woman = oppressed". you would distance yourself from your identity too if people used it to gaslight and silence you about your lived experiences.

stop acting like being a man makes someone somehow "less trans" or "less queer". learn how to view all trans people as equally trans and equally part of the community. unlearn your tendency to view manhood and masculinity as inherently less queer than other gender expressions. stop talking about how trans men are "the weakest link" or making "jokes" about how much worse we are than other people in the community or blaming us for all of its problems. stop acting like being men means we have less of a right than other trans people to speak on what it's like to be trans. you would distance yourself from your identity too if you knew that doing so would mean being more accepted by the community you rely on.

deconstruct your belief that cis manhood is the gold standard of manhood. stop telling trans men that it's transphobic for them to assert that their experience of manhood might be different from that of a cis man. stop trying to pressure trans men into never acknowledging how their transness makes their experience of manhood unique by accusing them of "misgendering themselves" or "saying trans men aren't real men". accept that trans men are not cis men and never will be cis men and are still 100% very real men anyway because cis manhood is only one type of manhood. understand that if you hear "trans men are different from cis men" and think that means "trans men aren't men", you're the one who's actually saying cis men are the only real men. you would distance yourself from your identity too if people said that claiming that identity required being exactly the same as a group you're not a part of.

get yourself a personality that isn't just talking about how much you hate men. stop telling all the men in your life how much you hate men and acting like their willingness to just take it is a measure of their moral goodness. stop making "jokes" about how trans men are "joining the enemy". stop talking about how much you wish you weren't attracted to men, or how much of a shame it is that someone else is. stop acting like womanhood and femininity are inherently pure and good and harmless while manhood and masculinity are inherently gross and evil and dangerous. stop acting like there's something inherently corruptive about existing as a man that fundamentally changes someone the second they come out as one. stop acting like it's funny to say you want to kill all of us as if there aren't countless people actively working to eliminate us. you would distance yourself from your identity too if everyone you knew spent their free time talking about how much they hate it.

help put spaces and resources into place that take trans men into consideration. stop getting mad at trans men who "call themselves men but still want access to women's spaces" and start looking at the world around you and asking why we want access to those spaces. open your eyes and realize that there is nothing out here for us, that all of the spaces and resources catered toward our experiences are marketed for everyone except us. ask yourself where the hell we're supposed to go when every clinic specializing in care for our bodies is a "women's clinic", when the only men's shelters are really just for cis men and the people advocating for "inclusive" shelters see all men as a threat to be warded off, when no one is willing to make an actual place for us and we have no choice but to just find the place that looks the least risky and hope they let us stay. put some effort into making this world more hospitable for us. you would distance yourself from your identity too if the resources you need to survive were offered for every identity but yours.

actually show trans men some fucking love for once in your life. find it in your heart to actually give a shit about trans men, to see us as real whole people who are deserving of love and community, to see our needs and feelings as worth your time and energy. care about us, care about our lives, care about our health and happiness and well-being instead of abandoning us the second we come out as men. start valuing our presence in the community and realize that we actually have a lot to offer if you could just listen to us. ask yourself why you're so comfortable leaving us to fend for ourselves in a world that wants us dead and is currently being very loud about that fact. you would distance yourself from your identity too if the community that supported you for years suddenly stopped caring about you the second you embraced it.

y'all will spend all day talking about how horrible it is that some trans men emphasize that they were assigned/raised female but nobody actually cares why so many of us do that. no one actually bothers to ask why we would put so much effort into being recognized as men but be afraid to fully claim that identity. no one wants to consider that they might be part of the problem, that they might be partially responsible for the thing they're complaining about.

if you want trans men to be able to stand firmly in our manhood and not undermine it with a million disclaimers, you have to actually put in the work to create an environment that's less hostile to trans men who do stand firmly in it.

because right now, regardless of my own personal opinions on the ways some trans men talk about their experiences as "afabs" or their "female socialization" or being "men but not like that", regardless of what issues i personally have with those kinds of statements, i can't blame them. not one fucking bit. and if you actually looked at how the world treats us - how our own community treats us - when we do fully own our manhood, you would feel the same way.

and if you aren't willing to do these things - which are literally just basic respect and care for other human beings, by the way - you don't get to complain about the ways trans men deal with how people like you treat our manhood. you can't expect a problem to disappear when you won't even acknowledge the part you might play in causing it.

#just saw yet another bit of socialization discourse and im so tired of the back and forth that i gave in and decided to Post About It #people love to notice trans men doing a thing and get mad at the thing without ever wondering why the thing happens in the first place #it's honestly incredibly dehumanizing #because it treats us like one dimensional things with no motivation other than Do Bad Man Things #instead of as whole complex people whose actions are motivated by complicated mental processes #transandrophobia #transandromisia #transmisandry #virilmisia #virilphobia #anti transmasculinity #trans men #transmascs

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drdemonprince · 4 months

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I'm a trans guy and tbh I feel like I don't fully understand the transandrophobia debate. Based on my understanding of intersectionality & transfeminism, I think that trans men (largely) experience transphobia and misogyny, while trans women (largely) experience transphobia, misogyny, *and* transmisogyny -- I also think it's necessary to discuss issues that specifically affect men without describing them as forms of oppression or discrimination against men. But that's just accounting for intersecting identities (including both marginalized and privileged identities) rather than only accounting for intersecting oppressions, right? I feel like some people using the term "transandrophobia" either seem to be confusing these two concepts or mistaking gender essentialism for discrimination against men (though some just use it to describe a subset of transphobia rather than an intersection, it seems like). In any case, even though misandry isn't a real systemic issue, I can understand why some people feel like there's missing language or frameworks when it comes to discussing the ways men, and trans men specifically, are treated (and the ways they/we treat each other). I'm not sure what better alternatives are available, but I'm sure some are possible. I'm wondering if I'm misunderstanding something or if you have any other thoughts on this. Thanks!

It sounds like you understand this 1000% better than every sincere transandrophobia poster. Not every unique experience is a locus of oppression that needs a systemic oppression label -- but yeah, of course, it merits being talked about.

For example, lots of trans men have a hard time in coping with the shift from being treated with emotional deference and warmth by strangers, to suddenly being treated quite coldly or even in a mistrustful way by strangers. That is a real, painful experience -- and it's one that is wrapped up in damaging gender norms that do also negatively affect cis men. It's not androphobia, but it is a consequence of sexism and the gender binary that sucks, and it merits speaking about.

Where things get dicey and fucked up is when men (either cis or trans) take a painful experience like that and declare that it means they're actually more oppressed than women.

(And, as Lee ButchAnarchist often points out, women's emotions are even more policed than men -- yes men are denied tenderness and warmth from total strangers, but they are showered in affection and caretaking by the women close to them, and they are allowed rage a whole lot more than women, in general. so it's overly simplistic and sexist to say men are more societally emotionally repressed. this dynamic plays out among trans men too -- we are given a lot more latitude to be emotionally explosive. trans women, meanwhile, are told they're being "scary" if they have any negative emotion. This is all also racialized -- Black people of any gender are basically never afforded the chance to voice negative feelings in public no matter how much they police their tone.)

I think a lot of trans masc people have a sudden rude awakening that being treated as a man can be painful and complicated, and that the gender binary harms everyone, and that there is a social price to pay for the privileges of being deferred to, respected, and so on. They also don't want to acknowledge when they are being respected and deferred to -- owning up to having any male privilege feels dirty and wrong to people, which is silly because it's just a reality, it has no moral bearing on the person experiencing the privilege. And of course it's often an incomplete privilege because of sexism and transphobia. But it still happens. Particularly within trans spaces.

I don't think this conversation will move forward productively until more trans men are capable of acknowledging that many of us have privilege and that we are very capable of hurting other people, being sexist, and speaking over trans women. And that's why we gotta make this transandrophobia stuff just completely socially unacceptable in our spaces. It is exactly the same as being a Men's Rights Activist. There are real men's liberation issues! Any worthwhile feminism will also liberate men! There are lots of aspects of the gender binary and patriarchy that are harmful to men, and that's worth talking about. Same with transphobia. But we can't have that conversation when men commandeer it to talk about how actually women have it better and all that vile shit. That talk is used to silence women, trans and cis alike.

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code-es · 1 year

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The women who laid the foundation of tech

EDIT: I noticed that this post ended up being reblogged by terfs. If you're transphobic this post is not for you to reblog. I want to celebrate everyone who is not a cis man in this industry, including trans women and nonbinary people in tech, and it was my mistake to only include cis women in this post when there are so many trans women and nonbinary people who have done great things in tech as well. Trans women are women and just as important.

Here you can read about trans ppl in tech, and please do:

https://www.thecodingspace.com/blog/2022-03-01-six-trans-programmers-who-shattered-the-lavender-ceiling/

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/transgender-tech-visibility-obstacles-remain/story?id=76374628

The morning of women's day i attended a super inspiring seminar about being a woman in tech at a large tech company in my city, and now I'm inspired to share what I learned with all of you!

I didn't have time to finish this post on women's day, but it's not too late to post now: every day is a day to celebrate women!

Women actually laid the foundation for a lot of the tech industry.

For example, the first computer, ENIAC, was programmed completely by women! While men were the behind the scenes engineers, it was women who did all the actual programming of ENIAC.

The women who made up the team responsible for programming it were called Jean Bartik, Kay McNulty, Betty Holberton, Marlyn Wescoff, Frances V. Spence and Ruth Teitelbaum.

I think one woman who is finally getting her overdue recognition is Ada Lovelace. She was a mathematician (also often referred to as the first programmer) who created the first algorithm in 1842, which wasn't recognized until 1953! However, since none of her machines were ever completed it was never tested in practice during her time.

She has since been celebrated by giants such as google, and she has given name to a programming language (Ada). She was also the first person to write about what is today known as AI. Back when she was practicing, computers were simply thought of as calculators. But she had an idea that if computers can understand numbers, then that can be translated to letters, and in turn that can lead to computers being able to handle words, and eventually even write, draw and create music.

Hedy Lamarr was a famous Hollywood actress in the 40's, but she was also an inventor who laid ground for what we use today for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS services.

During WW2 she wanted to contribute positviely to the military efforts against the Nazis, and she tried to figure out how to radio control torpedoes. In 1942 she patented her technology "Secret Communications System", also known as frequency hopping, which laid the foundation for the technology we use today for Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. It wasn't until 1962 that it was first used for its intended purpose, during the cuban missile crisis.

Grace Hopper invented the first compiler, called A-0, in 1955, and was also part of the Univac team, which was the company also responsible for building ENIAC. She also initiated work on the COBOL programming language.

She was also the one to coin the term "bug" in 1947. Computers back then had lights to visualize their working process (which was also a womans idea to implement btw) and bugs would be attracted to the lights, but usually that was no issue - until a bug made its way into a tube which caused the computer to stop working. Hopper taped the bug to a piece of paper and logged what caused the crash - a bug.

Dorothy Vaughan (left), alongside colleagues such as Katherine Johnson (middle) and Mary Jackson (right), was a mathematician at NASA (called NACA when she started) who worked on the orbit for the first ever manned spaceflight and later also on Apollo 11 that would take humanity to the moon!

When Vaughan started at what was then called NACA, segregation was still prevalent in the US and she was not allowed in the same areas in the office as her white colleagues. Another department was formed for the black staff, and when the director of said department unexpectedly died, she was appointed as the new director and thus became the first ever black woman at that position at NACA/NASA. In 1958 when NACA becomes NASA segregation is forbidden, and that is when Vaughan and her colleagues Johnson and Jackson started working on programming the orbit and later also Apollo 11.

Continuing on the same track of NASA and space, Margaret Hamilton was the Apollo project's first actual programmer. Hamilton became the director of software engineering at NASA in 1965, and she was also the person to first coin the term !

In the image above, she stands next to all the handwritten code that was used to send humanity to the moon. During the early stages of the project when she would speak of "sofware engineering", software development was not taken as seriously as other forms of engineering, and it wasn't regarded as a science, either. She wanted to legitimize software development as an engineering discipline, and overtime the term "software engineering" gained the same respect as any other technical discipline.

And lastly, if you're a woman in STEM, I want to highlight and celebrate you! Being a woman in a male dominated industry is not easy, we often suffer from sterotype threat and are not seen as our own individuals, but rather "the woman" in a room full of men. But just as these women, I'm sure you will achieve greatness!!

Here are some additional resources if you'd like to learn more:

https://www.history.com/news/coding-used-to-be-a-womans-job-so-it-was-paid-less-and-undervalued

https://digitalfuturesociety.com/programming-when-did-womens-work-become-a-mans-world/

And this was mainly my source for this post, but it's unfortunately only available in Swedish:

Thank you for reading ✨

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xxlovelynovaxx · 1 month

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Okay, this is not without a point, but (screenshot):

(A post and reblog which read: Nonbinary legit means outside established gender ideas yet you racist, transmisogynist, otherwise bioessentialist assholes keep bothering amab nb people because you think theyre too masc or whatever to be nb. Hey newsflash not all nb people are androgynous-femme white stick thin transmascs with undercuts - and - We're never making it out cisheteropatriarchy without you analyzing your beliefs on who is trans or nb enough)

If you think "transmasc" is the default nonbinary person or even considered to be the default nonbinary person, perhaps you haven't unlearned your bioessentialism either. And like, sure, maybe they don't think that way and meant "afab nonbinary person" by "transmasc nonbinary person", which is itself bioessentialist as those aren't equivalent in either direction (there's plenty of amab transmasc and afab non-transmasc nonbinary people), but the specific issue they're talking about (being perceived as too masc to be nonbinary) actually very specifically prominently affects transmascs as well.

It's almost as if your sex OR gender OR presentation being perceived as too masc can cause this, and also that trans people's AGAB (especially transitioning and intersex trans' peoples AGAB) can be misread by other trans people. Like do you think that all AMAB nonbinary people face this forever, or could this perhaps have a whole lot to do with passing as binary and AMAB people who transition and pass as cis women might in fact face this less than AFAB people who transition and pass as cis men? Never mind that this affects people who are androgenous in an additive way (tits and a beard, as an example) rather than a subtractive way (neither masc nor femme characteristics).

I'd also wonder about how they seem to be conflating "nonbinary" with "nontransitioning" in the way they describe the theoretical standard "femme androgenous transmasc" nonbinary person and think that AMAB nonbinary experiences are somehow universal.

Like, newsflash, anyone who appears masc enough gets hit with the essentialist (bio AND gender) antimasculinity that is such a problem in the queer community. Anyone who appears femme enough typically doesn't, though there are always exceptions. This includes presentation, perceived sex, and perceived gender. Butch trans people in general also face this regardless of gender.

Also this is bothering me especially so. AFAB≠transmasc. AMAB≠transfem. AFAB transfems and AMAB transmascs exist. Nonbinary people who aren't transfem OR transmasc, or who are both, exist. Transmasc/transfem as a new binary just excludes the majority of nonbinary people, because not all nonbinary people are "masc" or "femme" and in fact that's kinda the whole point of nonbinary as a gender category, not JUST that most nonbinary people aren't "men" (only*) or "women" (only*)

*because multigender people who experience binary genders are also just as nonbinary as any other nonbinary person

But (screenshot):

(A comment marked as by the original poster which reads: Transandrophobia believers don't rb this btw. heart emoji I'm late but whatever)

Ah, right, you haven't unlearned your bioessentialism. You seem to think only AMAB nonbinary people face exorsexism, or perhaps you don't even understand that exorsexism is a specific type of transphobia to nonbinary people and think AFAB nonbinary people "only" face transphobia. And I shudder to imagine your opinions on intersex trans people in general.

"Transandrophobia believers" like sorry not sorry I actually believe that transmascs face specific targeted transphobia and that transfems aren't the most oppressed, and also that all trans people can experience any type of specific transphobia and that bigots who famously don't respect trans people's internal identity and infamously can't "always tell" don't choose to be bigoted based on either your ontological identity or your physical sex. It's almost like I base my understanding of oppression on actual material experience and not just what I want to be true so I can pretend I'm punching up at vulnerable people in my community

Also wtf (screenshot):

(A comment marked as by the original poster which reads: Proshippers also don't rb i fucking hate you all)

Like not surprised this person has dogshit views lacking any critical analysis whatsoever but honey sweetie baby pie this is just sad

Anyway take your own advice and analyze your own beliefs on who is trans or nonbinary enough and also unlearn your own bioessentialism because simply saying "only AMAB trans people face more than basic transphobia and are the most oppressed" is bog standard gender essentialism and bioessentialism, and in fact treating all AMAB trans people as transfem or transfem adjacent is WILDLY exorsexist and misgendering a WHOLE lot of nonbinary people

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foundfamilywhump · 6 months

Text

serious word of warning about a server that's been making the rounds

i've debated about making this post a lot, for a lot of reasons. i'm concerned about making it as a trans person and as a relatively new blog, though i've been involved in the whump community for years. i hope you'll hear me out and i'm not looking forward to whatever backlash may come my way, should anyone actually pay attention to this at all.

the short version is: the whump discord server 'whump lovers collaborate' (@/whumplovers-collaborate) is unsafe and hostile to trans people and the server owner will not take action to shut down transphobia, nor will she allow her mod team to do so. i am certain this would apply to other bigotries as well. i know this because i am trans, and when i called out some disgustingly transphobic commentary being made by a member of the server i was blamed for causing drama, essentially, and there was a rule added to the server not to talk about 'controversial topics' or get into arguments, and that was all that was done.

the much longer version is under the cut. i just can't sit on this anymore after seeing that the server got advertised in the whumptober server (to no fault of the whumptober mods who didn't know about any of this, they're fine) and also seeing hundreds of notes on posts broadcasting it. this server is unsafe for trans people and the server owner is actively enabling bigots. given the whump community has a bit of a transphobia problem in some places, i wanted to make sure no trans person or ally was unwittingly walking into that without warning. i'd appreciate it if you would spread the word as well, to keep trans community members and allies safe.

so, here's what happened:

i was in the whump lovers collaborate server for a while earlier this year. in february, a member of the server started spouting off some extremely transphobic rhetoric, including talking about inherent biological differences between men and women, that women are inherently and unchangeably weaker than men, that men have a 'biological instinct' to protect women, and other things. (there was also some bizarre commentary about how abuse or assault committed against men was inherently less upsetting, and often funny to witness because of this).

seeing this and being unwilling, as both a trans person and someone who believes it is important to not let bigotry go unchallenged, i stepped in and called out these statements for being both factually untrue and steeped in both misogyny and transphobia. this person and i went around and around in circles as he asked 'genuine questions' which were just thinly veiled excuses to continue needling me on the subject. eventually, i shut it down by saying that this was not the appropriate venue for a transphobic cis person to get educated about the nuance of the trans experience and trans issues, but what he was saying was transphobic and he needed to stop now that he'd been told that.

throughout this interaction, mods were emoji-reacting and responding to other things. at no point did any mod step in to help me or shut down the transphobia or at all intervene in what was happening. after i shut things down for good, one of the mods said 'thanks for keeping everything respectful' which was a truly laughable thing to have said in that situation.

after this, the server owner made an announcement that said, among a few other things about Not Fighting: "Friendly reminder that we are all here because of what we have in common, our love of writing We are not here to debate controversial issues Or say harmful opinions If you cannot hold a conversation without being civil and without escalating conflict, back away from the channel, and cool down All involved in a conflict are responsible for turning a chill space sour No matter how right you think you are (I’m not saying no mention of controversial things is allowed per se, I’m saying be civil, if that means avoiding controversial topics, avoid away)"

this is not an appropriate response to one person espousing blatant transphobia (among other disgusting views) and being called on it. a rule was added that if a mod or the server owner asked you to change the subject from a topic, you had to do so immediately and there should be no more discussion of it 'by any of the participants'. no rule was present to begin with making clear that bigotry was not tolerated, nor was one added.

subsequently, the server owner made it clear she had no interest in protecting marginalized community members, and that she blamed me for what happened because i refused to allow rampant transphobia to proceed unchecked.

when either asked by other server members about what happened or when asking server members who left why they left (which is a weird thing to do on its own) the server owner responded by essentially throwing a fit and asking what she was supposed to do? kick the transphobe out? she whined about how the person saying something should be done about the transphobe was assuming that she hadn't already done anything.

(she also said that she hadn't done anything. the person was not warned, muted, banned, there were no consequences. but she whined about the assumption that she hadn't done anything about it.)

she also said that it wasn't just the transphobe's fault. "[transphobe] was not the only one at fault there in that others contributed to the conflict by engaging them, drawing out more of their unpleasant opinions. If I punished [problem person] alone, the others might think that they were in the right" that is a direct quote from the server owner. i was clearly the person she was speaking about, and she refused to enforce consequences on the transphobe because that might lead to me thinking that it was okay to call out transphobia and protect myself and other trans people in that space.

when i spoke to a few of the other mods about what happened, the response was disappointing, to put it mildly. the mod team had apparently tried to argue with her and get her to enforce a no bigotry policy but she was afraid of causing arguments and didn't want to deal with conflict, and so refused to do so. this is not acceptable behaviour for someone who is in charge of such a large space. you cannot be this conflict-averse and also run a server of hundreds of people, especially if the outcome is protecting bigots.

the mods i spoke to also got defensive and upset when i pointed out that by not expressing disagreement with the owner's actions and by throwing up their hands and saying 'oh well, nothing we can do!' they were also tacitly endorsing transphobia and a community that protects transphobes at the expense of trans people. they were unwilling to do anything in the moment, and failed to do anything after the fact either.

i have screenshots and proof of all of these events, but i didn't add them here bc i didn't want to make this even longer. please feel free to contact me directly if you would like any further information or to see proof of what i have mentioned here.

in short:

please do not join this server. you will not be protected there, as the server owner cares more about making it as big and as popular as possible than she does about keeping her server bigot-free. please do not promote this server or allow this server to be promoted in your own spaces either. please do your part to keep trans people in the whump community safe.

#whump #whump community #whumpblr #idk what else to tag this with ugh #long post

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genericpuff · 3 months

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(disclaimer, this is coming from a heartstopper fan! i love heartstopper this is not hate!!)

i think at least part of the annoyance with heartstopper isn't just that isn't a light fluffy ya series, it's also that its another example of how the queer media that gets the most mainstream attention tends to be this kind of light fluffy ya stuff that focuses on two conventially attractive queer boys or men and it also tends to be written by people who aren't queer men on top of that, so not only can it feel very samey but it can feel like other queer people are relegated to side characters in the stories of cis gay men. and as someone who loves heartstopper i get that on some level.

btw by "written by people who aren't queer men" NOT saying that isn't not written by queer people. alice oseman is genderfluid and aroace, becky albertalli is bisexual, etc. and while i think the point is still valid there is a misogyny element in that a lot of the focus is put on things that are written by women or people they perceive as women while tumblr darlings like good omens and ofmd (written by presumably straight men) don't get the same treatment.

nah y'know what, that's fair, I can get how frustrating it can be for a lot of popular queer stories to feel samey, I've definitely gotten BL-fatigue in the past on platforms like WT and Tapas because many of them ARE the same and feel like they're just piggybacking off trends for the sake of clout (and this is a problem in the heterocis romance stories too, don't get me fucking started on how dark romance has turned into torture porn where vulnerable women are constantly being victimized by rich powerful men and we're just supposed to root for that ??), but it's one of those things where like, what might be seen as just more corny shit could very well be the revelation another person needs that they're gay / trans / etc. that the story helped them realize. there's just a point where i see these arguments against cheesy popular queer stories that teeter dangerously close to being queerphobic and, as you said, misogynist, simply because "it was written by someone who i perceive as a woman so that makes it BAD!"

and I didn't mention it in the original post because I didn't want to @ OP in any way but in the comment section they literally said "i dont think heartstopper itself is all that bad but it has pretty much aimed the direction of all mainstream gay comics towards wholesomeness instead of anything more interesting so i want to destroy heartstopper to destroy heartstopper clones" and that gives me massive ick because it implies their sole reasoning for including it was "chill and happy queer stories bad, if a character doesn't suffer enough then they're not interesting"?? why can't LGBTQ+ audiences have more 'vanilla' stories that aren't all sad and angsty all the time? are we not entitled to the same corny romcom vanilla shit that the heterocis are entitled to? why do LGBTQ+ characters - and by extension, people - have to suffer to qualify as being 'interesting'? You're already interesting, you're you! like i'm sorry, are we trying to scare people straight??? 😭 shit, that's even a plot point that's touched on in Heartstopper itself where Nick is questioning his sexuality and he starts googling shit and it's just ALL the terrifying news stories of queer kids being ostracized / bullied / murdered / etc. and as much as it's important to be aware of the ongoing issues so we can keep fighting for our rights, we ALSO need to find balance and remember to celebrate the stories that AREN'T that because we need something to be hopeful for, something we can find peace in. I don't think Heartstopper is some deeply profound piece of work, but it also doesn't seem like it's trying to be? It's a low stakes celebration of the LGBTQ+ experience that's very warm and comforting, especially for those who are the same ages as the main characters who are often being persuaded by the grown-ups around them that it's a death sentence to be gay / trans / etc.

and it's not like we HAVEN'T had popular pieces of queer representative media that explored things outside of cheesy BL, like are we forgetting about Nimona which explored both the gay and genderfluid experience in a very accessible and fun way while still being mature and not pandering to its audience over how society has made monsters out of queer people?

(and even then I'm sure there are folks who would argue "actually, here are the issues with Nimona" , and that's fine tbh, we can like media and appreciate what it brings to the table while also discussing what it lacks in, such as what we're doing now with Heartstopper! progress is a never-ending journey!!)

and also okay, not me trying to be argumentative in the slightest BUT I don't really get the argument that 'other queer people' are being sidelined for the main characters? unless there's something I'm missing here lol (I will apologize for that because it's admittedly been a while since I've re-read Heartstopper so I should probably go do that to refresh myself on it). like i say that in the sense that Heartstopper is clearly meant to be about two gay male teenagers. just like how Nimona is about a shapeshifter who is not a girl or a boy (they're Nimona!) and a gay man who are both trying to change the system that's other'd them for years for the better. that is the story Heartstopper is trying to tell and it achieves that. it also has a trans character plotline that I could see people arguing feels sidelined but I think there's a massive difference between 'sidelining' and just having a B plot ? my honest take with that is not every piece of representative media is going to be able to cover every single topic, it's just not doable for one piece of media to be a monolith for everything, the same as how one person can't be a monolith for an entire community of people. BUT that doesn't mean works like Heartstopper and Nimona can't inspire others to also lend their voices into the medium and create that representation that's needed. That's why we need ✨variety✨ and Heartstopper is part of that variety by offering a more vanilla cutesy story full of good vibes for people who want that sort of thing.

IDK, I think there's just a lot of nuance that's being missed in that poll, and in the difference between Heartstopper inspiring more people to write happy cozy BL stories vs. implying that it's had an actual negative influence on modern art and media in the same way that series like Homestuck and LO have to the point that people think it needs to be destroyed, like wtf LOL Like they're not even comparable IMO and a lot of the arguments I see people making about why it is just feel a little backwards, and those arguments obfuscate the real issue which is just "popular thing is popular and people like to piggyback off popular shit". That's a fact for basically any niche and genre, these trends come and go. Even if the whole cutesy BL trend passes one day (which it will) it'll be replaced by something else that people will also inevitably find samey and boring after a while. This is not a concept that's unique to LGBTQ+ media, it's universal.

Balance is important and I think finding that balance is as much a responsibility on the shoulders of the consumer as it is on the creator. And I don't think Heartstopper deserves to be put into the same camp as stories like LO which literally straightwashes its canonically queer characters and gives those queer identities to nothingburger characters who are easy to shoo out of the plot to make way for the heterocis ones (while still parading itself around like it's actually 'queer rep' which... it really isn't.) Like all three of the comics in that poll are vastly different, serving different audiences, with different goals and intentions. It's comparing apples to oranges to pineapples.

The worst Heartstopper has to offer is just a low stakes plot that might not appeal to everyone or feel 'samey' which yeah, valid, but in the grander sense of whether or not it's had a negative effect on queer media just for being... cheesy? And inspiring other people to write stories like it? I don't get the argument, it feels like it's severely missing the point of what we're fighting for here - to live happy little unbothered lives - but that's just me ╮(￣ω￣;)╭ I'm definitely not trying to be a dick about it in any way and I don't want anyone to think I'm not open to the opposing points here, I do agree with you on the oversaturation of samey BL stories, but it just rose some massive red flags to see Heartstopper next to frigging Homestuck and Lore Olympus LOL

#ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything #ama #heartstopper

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yuri-for-businesswomen · 4 months

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i think it's misguided to claim that trans activism goes against the interest of feminism. it's in the best interest of the movement to include ALL women, including those that don't have periods, can't get pregnant, women with "unattractive" bodies, etc. you don't have to be trans to experience any of this.

there are SO many cis women that are not affected by the causes you listed. post-menopausal women, infertile women, women who have had hysterectomies, etc. surely you would agree that feminism is still for them. i think the same goes for trans women. they face a unique kind of misogyny that feminism needs to address, and that means by tweaking the definition of woman.

the fluidity of the definition of woman is not harmful to feminism. its not bad or scary that more people can be helped by feminism. this happened in the 1960s and 70s with welcoming lesbians into the movement. people were concerned that doing so would hurt the movement; of course it didn't. alienating trans women is not the answer to your concerns.

"who are womans rights for ... if woman is a feeling one has or doesnt have and not a fixed characteristic?" the only thing ALL women have in common, is the feeling that they are women. trans men arent women because they dont have this feeling, and trans women ARE, which is why feminism is for them.

i understand being scared that feminism will lose all meaning, and that women will no longer be easily defined. but the concern of feminism is recognizing that fact. gender is enigmatic and that's not something to be afraid of. feminist theory has asked the question of what a woman is for decades.

this is stupid.

women who dont get periods for whatever reason are still and have still been affected by menstruation in their lifetime. when a younger woman doesnt get a period thats a sign of a health complication. infertile women are of the birthing sex so the whole topic still affects them, a lot. etc. none of this affects trans identified men, but it very much affects trans identified women.

this has been said a million times before and im sick and tired of this bullshit but what the fuck does feeling like a woman mean. its a circular definition. being of the female sex is the only definition of woman because any other meaning of woman is subjective and individual. feminists ask: what does it mean to be a woman? not: what is a woman? feminists over the centuries have been very aware that women are of the female sex and men over the centuries have been aware women are of the female sex and are to be subjugated and excluded.

men who outwardly „identify“ as women face the same as effeminate men who dont „identify“ as women. its homophobia and the backfiring of male ideals - its a male issue. men who dont adhere to masculinity are sanctioned by other men; men who are effeminate scare masculine men because it shows that femininity is not a natural state for women and that gender roles and norms are arbitrary which is an attack on what they deem the natural order of men dominating women. men are not able to articulate this but thats why they do it.

therefore trans identified men should go back to how it was when they were transvestites and transsexuals who belong with gay men. marginalised men deserve their own advocacy and women deserve their own advocacy and when it fits we can work together.

edit: i skimmed past the lesbian part at first. what the fuck

#ask

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nothorses · 1 year

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In my city we have a lot of places that have “WTF” nights (women, trans, fem) where anyone to identifies with any of those (trans men, fem cis gay men) can come, often for free. These places are like the maker spaces, bike shops that teach bike building/repair, rock climbing gyms and blacksmith schools. I think it could lend themselves to the issues you were describing depending on the particular place but it always came off to me as a good way to be inclusive and make these places accessible. What do you think of that type of wording?

oooh, I kinda like that! I like that it's more explicitly naming "trans people" instead of a specific and arbitrary section of the trans community, and I think it's snappy enough to catch on, too.

I do wonder what they mean by "fem", though; you say it includes anyone who identifies with the term, including femme cis gay men, by why are only femme gay men welcome- what do they think they have in common with the rest that other cis gay men don't? How do they know for sure that's universally true? Why is it so important to exclude non-femme cis gay men?

The use of that word specifically makes me think they're still centering the spaces around cis women primarily, and are not really going to be friendly to anyone who appears too "masculine" to fit in with cis women- i.e., the same problem other spaces have.

I don't think I'd be comfortable enough to go to that kind of space without verification from another trans man, or someone else usually rejected from those spaces (AMAB nonbinary people, non-passing trans women, any nonbinary person who calls themselves a man, etc.), first. Especially considering I generally do pass as cis, and the cold discomfort I have experienced from fellow trans and queer people- even after knowing I'm trans- because of that.

But maybe that's just me; I do think spaces like that should be catered to everyone marginalized on the basis of gender, rather than trying to chop up the trans community into "seems like a woman" and "probably a predator", and I think "WTF" does a better job than anything else I've seen. But I'm honestly wary of anyone tossing the word "femme" around in this context, given how often it seems to be an indication that someone thinks it's shorthand for "woman-adjacent".

But I also like the "This is a space for Whatever" vibe, and again, it could just be me. 🤷‍♂️ I'd love to hear what other folks think.

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punkeropercyjackson · 9 days

Text

Why Percy Jackson is a transfem character and always has been

So!!Obligatory 'i'm a trans man,not a trans woman' disclaimer but this analysis is based purely off 1.Percy's canon personality,relathionships and story and 2.Irl transfeminine experiences that i know a lot about thanks to having a lot of transfem friends.Said friends have also listened to my reasoning behind tgirl Percy and agreed with me if not having the hc for her already and every other transfem Pjo fan i've seen i don't personally know also say her narrative is trans woman's one too and they always understand Percy's characterization better than anyone else in the fandom(certainly better than 'himbo/malewife/babygirl-coded/slutty bisexual Percy' believers)and as a Percy kinnie it's been the take that's felt most correct to me ever since i first read Pjo,10 years ago much,MUCH before i even realized i'm queer.So with that,let's dive into why Percy is a girl quasi-canonically,including that Rick Riordan has refered to her as straight but never cis!

Trigger warnings:Misogyny,child abuse,ableism,Luke's canon pedophillia and grooming with an alluding to how it applies to Percy being female(that is not dived into!),a slang word for pedophile that's used as an insult to P*rcicos potrayal of her and internalized transmisogyny

Percy's personality

Now,as i've said before,Percy's not all that actually gendered as male-Meaning,none of her attitude or behavior or interests are masculine and are misenterpreted as such due to misogyny and gender essentialism.Percy has poor social skills,anger issues,merciless tendencies,a strong sense of justice,self-worth problems,a very odd sense of humor that always lands and respects women to the point of thinking they're better than men and none of these are gendered traits but a mix of audhd-dyslexia and trauma.The last one is arguably actually a girl thing even if there's an in-universe reason for it(good mom,deadbeat birth dad,abusive stepdad,most antagonists being older men in power and the first older person she thought she could trust was just manipulating her)

Percy also frequently complains about having to act like a stereotypical guy to have to fit into society's standards because naturally,she's just not-She's completely unconvential even amongst 'other male' demigods and this is reguarly commented on.In fact,there's a whole plot in Titan's Curse of her proving to the Hunters that she's NOT a normal 'man' and it's a huge thing that's reinforced as true the whole franchise!Zoe was right about cis men being ass and that's not 'r*dical feminism' and ngl a lot of y'all are telling on yourselves because she never talked about biology in her misandry,especially because Zoe appears to be around the same age as Thalia physically and mentally so it's super icky to throw t*rf accusations at her because she's traumatized by ancient greek men,one of the worst kinds of men ever!And Percy's totally unlike them despite being amab and identifying male not because 'not all men' but because she's actually a woman

This is a direct contrast to how she talks about and interacts with other girls-Almost every female character earns her worship on first meeting,even if she dosen't like them as people.She puts a heavy emphasis on them being girls in her narration and some dialogue too and her descriptions of them are so admirative they come as envious with her own insecurities in her looks.Percy is severely lacking in any kind of masculinity and Piper even pointed this out based on her vibes alone after hearing all about her at camp and thinking she'd be a macho man based off how people talk about her and i'm unsure if this is a common phenomenom but i frequently see and hear people say daughters tend to look like girl versions of their dad's and Percy is said to be identical to Poseidon but with softer features and the idea Percy should tie herself to masculinity due to it being expected of amabs is contradictory to canon's messages in addition to it's irl sexist implications and the sea is frequently associated with femininity(mermaids and sirens,calling ships 'she',pearl jewelry,the term 'Beach Bunny',the moon controlling the tides,etc)

And small final note:The rock music scene is filled with transfemmes and has been for a long time and while blue things are usually associated with boys,it was Percy's mom who got her to love them

Percy's relathionships

Almost all of Percy's friends growing up were girls-Annabeth,Silena,Thalia,Bianca,Zoe,Clarisse and Rachel vs just Grover,Beckendorf and Nico.She thinks The Stolls are annoying as shit with their 'boys will be boys' beat and she hates male gods on sight and implies she finds them being super conventionally attractive to be offputting instead of appealing.Nico had a crush on her until they got closer and realized she's not an ideal man like he thought she was and therefore 'cute but not his type'(I have no opinion on Solangelo but i got beef with the shippers for making this about blonde hair and blue eyes instead of transfem Percy,especially the trope of Percy acting like a kiddy fiddler over what Nico said as a joke)and she takes responsibility of him post Bianca's death and Nico exclusively wishes for older sister figures,never old brother ones

Percy and Rachel is a classic irl dynamic between transfems and their afab friends:Dating to exes to even closer friends.Rachel is a pretty typical lesbian if we're applying irl wlw things too and Annabeth is clearly a huge lesbian-Like seriously,she only ever showed attraction to Luke and Percy and Luke was comphet in her words('You were like a brother to me but i never loved you')and lesbians experiencing attraction to uncracked eggs is semi-common and she's got tons of subtext with Piper and Reyna and shows a strong distaste for the expectations of cisheterosexual womanhood,mainly femininity.Reyna is yet another comphet lesbian-coded who was into Percy.Clarisse,textually butch,calls her 'Prissy' and Piper,canon unlabeled sapphic and gnc,described her as not masc enough for her taste

Percy's relathionships to older male characters combined with her transfemininity,youth and constantly being described as 'other' from ordinary half-bloods by them function with no need for change as a potrayal to how corrupted men in power treat girls-Not women,underaged girls as Percy is 12 at the start and 18 now and we've yet to get interactions with her and male gods in the current canon timeline so all their abuse of her and innapropriate undertones in their behavior towards her were when she was underaged.This includes but is not limited to:Ares' condesension and (non-sexual) assaults,Apollo's very possible constant flirting that would definitely be textual if Percy was intended as a girl by Rick seeing as Apollo had no problem hitting on the Hunters and Reyna and her entire relathionship with Luke.Luke is canonically a serial pedophile,implied to sleep with Kelli and a raging misogynist and Percy was one of the first victim's of his gaslighting and he tried to kill her after framing her his crime against the gods in an isolated area they'd been alone in together a lot and widely noted to have accidentally been writen flirting with her throught the series by the fandom so i can't help but take Luke.rcy as a male explotation and grooming narrative

Artemis,an archaic symbol of lesbians,loves Percy and considers her above any man.Aphrodite gave Percy advice on her looks by saying everyone deserves to feel perfect in their skin to achive true perfect beauty.Persephone,one of the og csa narratives,said she likes Percy because she's 'brave' with the implication being that again,she can tell Percy is different from usual 'male' half-bloods.Hera is the goddess of traditional marriage and holds a violent resentment towards Percy for disrupting the system.Percy at her core is meant to come across as like a male god but not actually being one and actively not wanting to become one out of hate for authority and traditionality

And another small final note to a section:Frank is trans man-coded(his arc is about being emasculated and saying 'fuck you!' by making his own manhood and Mars' blessing is explicitly compared to testosterone and gives him a huge confidence boost)and they're paralleled as fundamentally similar yet also fundamentally different,Nico and her act like an eldest daughter and a middle brother where she's a pseudo-mom to him and queer siblings and Jason falls under transmasc norms(the ex-wolfkid thing,positive and healthy masculinity,creating a new self after loosing his old idealized one and Team Dad)and instantly became Percy's best friend and is her complimentary foil and 'counterpart' so transmasc4transfem realness

Percy's story(and how it all comes together and would've been improved by canonizing her as a trans woman)

Percy Jackson means 'Outcast who looks out for other outcasts'.She's so unique as a character because she was and is still genuinely a huge weirdo,not just nonhuman,she is human even if it's only half-That's only half of who she is(She's totally a Gwen Stacy variant btw).Being a trans girl would do nothing but enchance her core aspects but also work as a fixit to various canon writing problems!

Percy is femme so that'd give us positive girly girl rep to make up for all the pick me feminism.Annabeth'd have no reason to lash out and give her mixed signals since she's not a boy so their dynamic is improved.Nico's crush fades upon finding out she's a girl so they become best friends and found siblings like they were always meant and wanted to.It causes shifts in the plot that bring a bigger focus on the girlhood aspects of Greek Mythology seperate from romance retellings and a much needed change too:Percy as the hero of the Great Prophecy.Luke was a raging misogynist,a racist,a child groomer,a fucking pedophile and an entire fascist who lied about revolution to ruin society instead of fixing the system.Percy is a lifelong punk,an anarchist and a proffessional instigator and was trying to stop Luke's fuckery from 12 to 16-She's the greatest greco-roman hero ever.TGP was operating on Ancient Greek logic but Pjo isn't Ancient Greece,it's Percy's story-How she forced the gods to change with no choice by SHOWING how much stronger and more etheral she is than them

BUT WAIT,THERE'S ONE MORE FINAL NOTE!!!!!Percy would be a million times happier as a trans femme than as a cis man.She gets to transition and not have to be an ordinary male she's NOT so she starts loving and accepting herself way more as she changes into who she wants and deserves to be and we should all want that for her too.The truth is she's nothing like Hercules,she's unimpressive as a man,Nico believed she was a real male hero but she failed at being a performance of it based off what he knew of men and now they're cool and he thinks Percy's cute but not like that,she thinks aggressively male men are wicked and not all that handsome,Rachel made her feel normal because she's not a normal girl (either),Annabeth has princess hair and had a makeover at a magic spa and she strikes fear into hearts in a way only girls and she wants all that too,she also wanted to be treated like Thalia so bad,Jason is the Superman she's been waiting for her whole life

She's the mom to Nico and Hazel Sally was to her,she's a rocker chick,she was on the swim team in high school and went to protests and did charity events with that frizzy neurotic girl she's attached to the hip with,she loves burgers and desserts,she's got streaked hair,she uses 2000s and 90s slang completely unironically and she just wants people to think she's normal but still get to be herself.The sea does not like to be restrained

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tamamita · 5 months

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Anon who asked about trans men. Wasn’t bait, it was basically asking “do you believe that transmascs face their own form of oppression (terms include transandrophobia and transmisandry)”, because a lot of other ML blogs seem to believe that they don’t face their own form of oppression, similar to how trans women face transmisogyny. The question also isn’t asking if it’s a worse form of oppression than other types of oppression, just that they do have their own form of oppression.

The thing is that you're asking a cis person, so I don't really know since I'm not all too familiar with these kind of issues nor do I believe I have any say on the matter, I'm simply not that educated, which is why that previous anon left me confused. If you have an issue with some of the MLs that harbor this view, I think you should take it with them.

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friend-crow · 5 months

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Female-only spaces aren’t even about threat necessarily. It’s sometimes about shared life experiences that only afab people have

Yeah but that's how this issue is typically explained -- as a need to protect women-only spaces from trans women.

If it's a space for people with certain shared experiences, why not just call it that? For example, if you have a support group for people experiencing postpartum depression, you're probably not going to see a lot of (or any) interest from people who have no experience with postpartum depression. But you might find that some trans men, nonbinary people, and intersex people who were not necessarily assigned female at birth show up, because they have experience with postpartum depression.

And then we come to the issue of enforcement. If you've declared the group is only for AFAB people instead of just saying it's for people experiencing postpartum depression, what are you going to do when a trans man shows up? Like what if he passes really well? What are you going to do when an androgynous cis woman shows up? Are you aware of the many cases in which cis women -- usually women of color -- have been assumed to be trans and persecuted, excluded, and in at least one case murdered for not conforming to a cis, white standard of femininity? There are a lot of AFAB people who stand to be harmed by any attempt to enforce a space as AFAB-only. You will have to choose what is more important to you: actually protecting AFAB people, or excluding trans women.

I'm a lot less worried about the potential for an outsider to be included in a space where they don't belong than I am about the harm that is already being done by the "transvestigator" freaks who are out there on some phrenology type shit, profiling strangers and getting conspiracy brained about their biological essentialism.

#ask #anon

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gothhabiba · 1 year

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Hi! Sorry, I read your discussion of women + femmes. I use that term sometimes to include my partner (transfemme nb). Like I was talking about having difficulty finding cute shoes in big sizes and said like "all my love to women+femmes with big feet." Only online though bc irl id just say like "girls" and everyone would know what I meant. Anyway, what would you suggest in those cases? Sorry again. I know you said go back to square 0 but like. I don't get it. I just mean to say feminine enbies as well as women (cis + trans obviously). I know I'm being dense. I want to do better.

If you're speaking in specific consideration of one person then of course you should use whatever term makes them comfortable & is accurate to them.

When I say that "finding another phrase to use" is insufficient, what I mean is that we shouldn't just keep all of the assumptions that go into the phrase "women and femmes" intact while merely changing their wording.

Perhaps you're familiar with a criticism of the way that a lot of people use the term "afab" as though it meant "women"—despite the fact that the phrase is meant to challenge dominant assumptions about sex, gender, and gendered ideology (the idea, for example, that gender is 'essential' or 'immutable') by pointing out that gender is coercively assigned at birth based on only one attribute (the appearance of the genitalia), some people collapse the term back into whatever they already meant by "women" and so fail to actually rethink what they believe about gender in light of that critique.

For example, when talking about medical care, they'll say "afab" when they actually mean "person who menstruates" or "person who can get pregnant," when these groups of people are not coterminous. Or they will assume that one gender always neatly aligns with one type of "socialisation," but instead of saying that someone was socialised "female" they will say "afab socialization"—which changes none of the essentialist and transmisogynist ideas about birth assignment being destiny, but merely shifts the wording a tiny bit. So what is recommended instead is to actually think about what you mean in any given instance and then say that, rather than assuming that one phrase will always be sufficient and accurate to express what you want to say across different contexts (and that what you want to say will always align neatly with whatever beliefs you already held about the group "women").

This is sort of like that. Saying "women and femmes" makes a gesture towards respecting people's identities, but (besides the other issues I outlined regarding viewing "womanhood" as somehow dependent on "feminine" presentation and aligning with transmisogynist and lesbophobic arguments that women who don't meet the wobbly, uncertain standards of whatever they mean by "femme" are masculine oppressors or w/e—where you will see people outright talk about "masculine people" and "feminine people" instead of "men" and "women") it collapses distinctions and wrongly assumes that overlapping groups are coterminous in the same way that using "afab" to mean "female" does.

Take your example about shoes—by "cute shoes" I assume you must mean "women's shoes," as in "shoes which are intended for and marketed towards the consumer category labelled 'women'"—because by specifying "cute" you're implicitly contrasting it with something else (presumably 'men's' shoes). But do all "women" coincide with the consumer demographic 'women'—that is, do all "women" wear 'women's' shoes? No, obviously not. So thinking about what you actually meant in this instance may have led you to say something more like "feminine-presenting people with big feet."

This is just for the sake of trying to explain what I mean by 'collapsing distinctions'. I'm not suggesting that everyone must do all of this thinking from scratch when casually speaking, which would be silly (like you said, there's a point at which you can just trust the people who know you to know what you mean).

But, like I said, I do think that certain uses of terms such as "women and femmes" or, worse, "women and afab people," (or "women and people perceived as women," or "women and [whatever phrase that must be tacked on because 'women' is insufficient somehow]") indicate a view of gender that is ill-considered, in line with dominant essentialisms and truisms about gender, and therefore implicitly or overtly transmisogynistic. Why would it be necessary or useful to group "women" and "afab people" together as against everyone else? Is "women" actually understood to include "trans women" here—and, if so, how can that be squared with the assumption baked into the term that one's birth assignment always coincides meaningfully with one's experience of gender? How can the internal 'essence' of 'identification' as a "woman" be grouped together with the external experience of being "perceived" "as" a "woman" as though these indicate meaningfully similar things? What are we suggesting about women who are not "perceived" "as" "women" when we use this phrase? What are we suggesting about the nature of gendered perception (is it really always binary and static—you are always perceived either as "woman" or as "not-woman" and these categories never overlap or shift)?

As soon as you start to dig deeper into any of these phrases they devolve into incoherency. An actual ("from square 0") consideration of how gender operates, how 'gendering' occurs (on the part of medical institutions, the family, the public, the individual), &c., will reveal them to be basically useless.

#women and femmes

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