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#anyway. read Fucking Trans Women. now.
werewolf4vampire · 7 months
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hearing the way actual grown ass, non-virginal adults talk about sex sometimes makes me lose my mind
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yea-baiyi · 5 months
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the key to understanding hua cheng’s appearance and how he occupies space is that he’s a transmasc goth who’s committed to red and silver as his aesthetic. ok. the layered hair the outfits the boots the chains. he doesn’t shave off his eyebrows and redraw them only because he is a shapeshifter and so his eyebrows grow the way he wants.
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condescendingbench · 1 year
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Harry Potter Fancast:
Harry - William Gao
Ron - Belmont Cameli
Hermione - Quintessa Swindell
Ginny - Abigail Cowen
Draco - Lucky Blue Smith
Blaise - Rome Flynn
Theo - Robert Sheehan
Pansy - Lulu Antariska
Hannah Abbott - Florence Pugh
Susan Bones - Bree Kish
Lavender Brown - Brynne Rosetta
Cho Chang - Fivel Stewart
Luna - Amandla Stenberg
Neville - Will Poulter
Cormac McLaggen - Callahan Skogman
Oliver Wood - Miguel Bernadeau
Padma - Muskkaan Jaferi
Parvati - Geraldine Viswanathan
Dean Thomas - Jordan Fisher
Seamus - Ben Levin
Daphne Greengrass - Sydney Park
Astoria Greengrass - Josie Totah
Crabbe - Sean Delaney
Goyle - Mason Gooding
Fleur - Indya Moore
Bill Weasley - Kieron Moore
Charlie Weasley - Finn Roberts
Viktor Krum - Chella Man
Fred + George Weasley - Mike Faist
Percy Weasley - Froy Guiterrez
Tonks - Jamie Clayton
Lupin - James McAvoy
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older butch lesbians, living happily as butch women, who say “if I were a kid now I would have been a trans man instead of a lesbian” are a whole lot closer to being trans— not ‘potentially’ trans, not ‘might have been’ trans, but really, actually, literally, trans, in their present lived experience, she/her and all— than they are to being transphobic. but I don’t think any of you are really ready for that conversation.
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sidheboggle · 3 months
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How it feels being lectured to about how mean and evil queer people act while having the audacity to call for solidarity and how basic feminism is thrown out the window when discussing your struggles after watching yall fuckass clowns do this to bi women for years without consequence
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silverislander · 5 months
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got through another church service :) (people wouldn't stop touching me without asking) (got guilt tripped abt not coming around anymore twice) (extremely aware i was being watched and judged the whole time) (everyone only seems to remember my brothers accomplishments) (they still fucking do gendered call and responses in 2023)
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devilishdelights · 11 months
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Just a vent in the tags 😭😭 sorry
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ghost-orion · 1 year
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#personal#i still have like a deep seated hatred for people who like girls and i have no idea why#i've been like this since 15 what's going on. like i can't get to the bottom of it?? where did this come from??#it's bisexuals it's lesbians; straight guys are like. idk not really 'off the hook' but i guess they're like 'well whatever'#cishet guys are like 'well what would i do with you anyway' and i relate to trans straight guys on the basis of being trans#but i just. idk. i just seethe#it goes away when i hang out with -lw people but when i'm alone and i see someone be like 'yeah haha i've been talking to a girl'#or someone 'simping' in the comments of a girl's selfie or whatever i'm like '!!¡!'#and like this has a root somewhere but i can't really find it? i think the closest is like jealousy ig. but idk??#it's not like i want lesbians to be attracted to me lol or that i need everyone to drop everything Look At Me >:[#disclaimer: this is something that i'm working on and i don't tell anyone i'm just putting it here to say it somewhere#it might be like a gender thing. i'm like kinda genderfluid in some way and#and i'm a trans person who considers itself to 'have been a girl and now live as not-that'#so maybe it's like. 'i've been called a pretty girl and now i've abandoned this for an uphill battle of chasing gay guys who fucking hate#trans people'#and by that i mean gay guys around here are just. woof#i am in fact not into transphobes dkdkksks#it's just. idk#if you're reading this and you like women i don't hate you btw jdnjs this is a me problem and you're fine lol i realize how fucked up it is
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isahorcrux · 1 year
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In light of the recent announcement of the Harry Potter TV Show and the fact that this is primarily a Harry Potter fan fiction blog, the below needs to be said.
I am not excited about this show.
If you told my past self 5 years ago this, I’d be shocked.  Five years ago, if they announced a Harry Potter TV show I’d be doing everything in my power to be involved some way or another.  However, in the last five years JKR has shown her true colors and spent her free time and money attacking the trans community.  There are many reasons why I’m not excited about the show or looking forward to it in any regard, but to me the most important is that this show gives JKR more money and cultural capital to further her anti-trans agenda.  This is unacceptable.
I think a lot of us raised on Harry Potter really wanted to separate the art from the artist, dive further into fanfic and fandom and just ignore that the woman who created a world in which we’ve spent most of our lives escaping into.  However, we can’t do that.  It’s come to my attention over the past few days that a lot of people aren’t even aware of the active harm JKR is doing to the trans community.  Most people just say, ‘oh she said some weird stuff on twitter’ right?
Well, yeah.  But, did you also know she launched an active campaign against a reform bill that made it easier for trans people to legally change gender?  You know what happened?  The UK blocked that Bill and Scotland now has to launch a legal challenge to the government block.  She’s also funding a Sex Abuse Crisis Center that excludes trans women.  Yeah, that’s right.  She’s using her money from a book about love and acceptance to actively exclude a marginalized group from a crisis center.  She’s also publicly admitted via twitter that she funds anti-LGBTQ political activity in the UK.
So yeah, there’s a direct line of fans supporting official trademarked Harry Potter anything and that money directly harming transpeople.  Sorry for that rude awakening, but some of y’all are doing backflips to avoid seeing this.
Now, is there a way to prevent Warner Brothers (and Max, lol) from making this show?  Probably not?  After mergers and at a point when the tv and film industry isn’t booming, they need money.  You know what makes money?  Harry Potter.  Which is why they’re rebooting it.  Another question that’s been raised, will the looming writer’s strike affect this?  I would guess probably not?  Most UK writers (and International writers at large) are not in the WGA.  JKR has always wanted the most amount of British people involved in Harry Potter adaptations, so they’ll use the strike to find a UK writer and get them to work.
So what can we do?
Don’t watch the show.  Or, if you do.  Pirate it. In fact, cancel your Max subscription before the show launches.
They’re going to spend A LOT of money on this.  If the numbers aren’t there for them they will do what every other streamer does with an unsuccessful show and cancel it.  They announced 5 Fantastic Beast movies, and yet...where’s that last one?
Anyway, thanks for reading this whole thing if you’ve gotten this far.  Please share with friends who are excited about the show.  Please engage in meaningful discussions with other Potter fans.  Please support our trans friends and strangers.
Once again, this blog says FUCK JKR.
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spacelazarwolf · 2 years
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actually yeah i would like to talk about how other queer people specifically were the reason it took me so long to come out as a gay trans man
(this is really fucking long, but especially if you’re not a trans man or trans masc, i’d like you to read it all the way through.)
as a preface, i’m not a kid. i’m a fully fledged adult who has been in the queer community for about ten years now, both online and offline. most of the queer people i know irl are my age or older. i turn 30 next year. also before you use the words ‘chronically online’, consider the fact that the things people say online are what they actually believe and will take out into the world with them. 
anyway.
when i try to talk about transphobia directed at trans men and mascs from within the queer community, or lateral aggression from trans people who are not trans men or trans mascs (this is not just trans women and femmes, this includes any trans people who aren’t trans men or mascs. i have heard some vile shit out of the mouths of other ‘afab’* trans people), people often respond with “but cishets are the real enemy!!! they’re the ones causing all the actual damage and oppression!!!!!” and while i get the sentiment, that is where you’re wrong my friend. the thing causing my oppression isn’t cishets, it’s the cisheteropatriarchy. cishets tend to be the ones that chug that koolaid most readily, but queer people, even other trans people, have gleefully gulped down gallons of the stuff, and that specifically is what made it so difficult for me to accept myself and come out.
*i fucking hate the term ‘afab’ but this post is already so goddamn long
when i first entered the lgbtq community, it was on facebook in the early 2010′s. before that, i’d been stuck in a conservative small town and didn’t even know that not being a girl was an option. so obviously when i encountered a bunch of people that were like me, i was ecstatic and wanted to be a part of their community. because i still thought i was a girl at the time, i was immediately funneled into sapphic spaces. for the most part, they were great and lovely, i just felt left out because i couldn’t relate to the way they talked about their love of women. but i knew i was some sort of fruity, which meant clearly i was just repressing my attraction to women, so i needed to try harder to like women. some of this came from the things i’d heard in those groups, but a lot of it was just pressure from myself to deal with a reality that didn’t make sense.
the longer i spent in those groups, though, the more i ran into rhetoric like ‘men are inherently incapable of love and respect, it is impossible to be in a truly fulfilling relationship with a man’ and ‘masculinity is inherently evil and femininity is inherently good.’ some people tried to have nuance, but a lot, especially cis women, didn’t. in those groups, people were mocked for being in relationships with men, they were told that if they had a boyfriend they weren’t even allowed to mention it in the group because the group needed to be a ‘space completely free of men’, people were told that if they were being abused by a man then it was their fault because they should have been dating a woman instead, they should have known better. i was one of those people who was blamed for my own abuse.
as i started to realize that shit maybe i’m not a girl, there was a lot of pressure for me to make sure that i always stayed within the confines of ‘non man.’ because the second i slid over that line, it was over. i was lost. does that rhetoric sound familiar? it’s terf rhetoric, and the irony is that all of these spaces explicitly condemned terfs.
i was in a group for ‘non men’ and when people in the group came out as trans men, they were asked to leave. the network of groups that this one was connected to was of the mindset that trans men oppressed all nonmen, including cis women. the reasoning given was ‘it would be misgendering!!!!!!!’ but behind closed internet doors, the actual reasons were very clear. on a scale of ‘oppressed’ to ‘privileged’ it went trans women -> cis women -> trans men -> cis men, with nonbinary people being inserted into whatever category was most convenient for argument’s sake. 
after that, i stuffed my doubts down for years, terrified of crossing that horrible threshold from ‘nonman’ to ‘man.’ even now, i still cling to the term ‘nonbinary’ because it makes other queer people view me as a more complex person. as soon as i started tentatively using the word ‘man’ to describe myself without all the disclaimers of ‘but don’t worry i’m not actually a man!!!!! i’m still a person!!!!!!!’, the way people interacted with me changed drastically.
i was the exact same person, still non-passing, still gender noncomforming, still someone with a very complex relationship to gender because of my sexuality and being autistic, but because that word ‘man’ was there, suddenly people felt they had the right to silence me and speak over me. cis women who were being blatantly transphobic dismissed me saying ‘i don’t argue with men’, queer people dismissed me saying ‘stop mansplaining’ and telling me that regardless of my presentation, regardless of how i was treated out in the world, i was still privileged because i identified with the label of ‘man.’
i made a video on tik tok about how traumatic it was to come to terms with being a man as someone who has been hurt by cis men, and an old mutual of mine started tagging me in cis men’s videos about unlearning toxic masculinity, telling me i needed to watch myself if i was going to be a man. another mutual also shared in that trauma, and theirs was exacerbated by a racial element. i tried to make more videos about my experiences, documented by journey with top surgery, but as soon as i started speaking loudly about including trans men and mascs in the fight for abortion rights, everything went downhill.
terfs started to find my account and get my videos taken down. queer cis women claimed i was ‘silencing women’ and used the ‘trans man’ in my bio to claim ‘mansplaining’ despite the fact i am nonpassing and the world sees me as a woman. a trans femme stitched one of my videos to chide me for saying that repealing roe v wade affected trans men and mascs, because i should have been talking about how it affected trans women and femmes and the rest of the queer community, not ‘centering men.’ a trans woman commented on their post in my defense, and they deleted her comment. after that, cis women reported by account by the dozens and i was eventually banned. 
that’s when i realized, men hadn’t caused me trauma. the cisheteropatriarchy had caused me trauma. the system that had allowed my abusive ex to treat me the way he did, that allowed my friends to watch and say nothing, that allowed a woman who was a bystander in a public domestic violence incident to complain to us that we were ruining her day at the mall and threatening to call the police on both of us rather than standing up for someone who was literally publicly being physically attacked. the system that allowed cis women to say, quite literally, that because trans men and mascs were a numerical minority of the people who would be affected by the repealing of roe v wade that we shouldn’t be in the spotlight, that cis women should be centered, that it was somehow ‘misogyny’ to point out that anti-abortion laws quite literally would affect trans men and mascs more severely and in more ways than cis women.
women and other queer people may not have been the ones hitting me or writing these bills, but for years they were the ones telling me my abuse was my fault, that i was morally incorrect for being a man, that i could never love or be loved if i was a man, that i should sit down and shut up, regardless of how much my community was hurting and dying. that i would always be an afterthought, if even.
i think very often about two tik toks i saw of a trans masc person talking about transition, and one said “you spend the first half of your life being subjugated by the sins of men, then you transition and you spend the rest of your life paying for the sins of men” and the other commented about another user’s video saying “a beard, facial hair, stands in the way of this person being perceived as innocent and being perceived as capable of roofieing your drink.”
and i realized that’s part of why i’m terrified to go on t. completely separate from the fact that i have a career which relies on my voice so going on t would absolutely nuke that, i have already experienced so much aggression and isolation based on just identifying as a man. i cannot even begin to imagine how much worse it would get if i started to look ‘like a man.’ i have lamented the fact that i’m forced to lose my softness, whether i want to or not, that the very community that wants to break down barriers and liberate people are the ones who are forcing me into a box for the sake of convenience in online arguments.
and people can mock me and go on about ‘toxic masculinity’ all they want, but this is a hard truth about the community that we really need to start talking about, because i have absolutely no doubt that experiences like mine are what contributes to trans men and masc’s astronomically high rates of suicide, self harm, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, etc.
i feel more like myself than i ever have in my life. and i also feel more isolated than i ever have in my life. there was a moment where things finally clicked for me, and for a fraction of a second i was so excited. i wanted to share my revelation with my community and be celebrated. but then i thought back about the way people had talked about men, trans men, masculinity, loving men, and that little tiny moment of celebration was brought to a screeching halt. i realized that every other time i’d seen a gay trans man or masc come out and talk about their gender and sexuality, the responses had been peppered with ‘sorry for ur loss’, ‘ew lol’, ‘so u chose to become a man?????’, ‘omg u have to date men and be a man????? i feel sorry for u lmao.’
and now as i delve into the dating pool as a gay trans man, i see that all this online bullshit isn’t just ‘chronically online,’ it’s manifested in real life too. the way queer trans men and mascs are treated as entitled for wanting to date cis queer men, the way people respond if we say we’re unhappy with just being a hookup or a fling because we should be happy anyone wanted us in the first place. the way we’re treated as fetishizers and freaks, the way people specifically search through the ‘ftm’ tag on grindr looking for ‘sissy boys/femme bottoms/etc’ then get angry when you don’t respond to them. the way other queer people respond to you when you try to talk about this. the way trans men and mascs who can’t go on t are treated as less than men but also aren’t allowed to talk about their experience of someone perceived as ‘less than men’, the way testosterone is spoken about in queer communities as a poison, as something that makes you ugly and disfigured and gross and dirty when for so many of us it’s literally lifesaving medical treatment. the way we can’t talk about the things we go through without random cis people dragging trans women and femmes into it when, even though there are some concerning trends of lateral violence that need to be discussed, most of the aggression comes from cis queer women.
so when trans men make posts or host events or just do anything to celebrate trans manhood and masculinity, and your first reaction is to make fun of us, project your frustration with the cisheteropatriarchy, or respond with “we don’t need positivity for men”, i want you to think about the number of trans men and mascs who kill ourselves, and i want you to think “maybe i should not say this, maybe i should just do this one thing to make life a little easier for them, even if i don’t get it.”
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scekrex · 22 days
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I know there's a fandom thing going around that Adam doesn't like eating women out but.... bro I need to see trans! male! reader sitting on Adams face and getting eaten out... like..
I mean reader doesn't count cause he's a guy?? right?? it's not the same guys.. (I mean this in like Adams POV)
I also think it'd be silly if Adam WAS inexperienced in that.. category. Like, bro I want to humiliate him SO BAD!! I love his big ass ego but that makes me want to do it more.. So maybe the reader degrading him or talking Abt how inexperienced he is just to get on Adams nerves while he's eating him out?? I think it'd be silly.. Adam would fold if he was ever degraded or something by the reader, I mean he was constantly praised for being the first man, and was given a lot of special treatment so for the reader to make it CLEAR that he won't be the same way?? YES!! anyway I'm a little hungry for Adam guys sorry <3
Tbh I haven't heard of that headcanon yet but while I agree that Adam would not eat a woman out, he'd definitely suck dick and eat out trans dudes idc what everyone else says. To Adam it's just sometimes different to pleasure a dude with his mouth and I stand by that.
Suck it up, big boy
pairing: Adam x trans!male!reader
warnings: language, oral sex, no use of female privates though (it's briefly implied that reader has a biological female body though)
note: not beta read bc fuck you I don't have beta readers
He tried to play it cool, tried to kill the voices in his head that were trying to tell him to pull away and tell you no. He was aware he could stop this at any given point, that you would not give him shit for doing so but he wanted to prove a point. He had bragged a little too much about knowing all the right ways to make you cum, he had dug his own grave when you had brought up that he could simply eat you out then and he had confidently responded with a cocky, ‘Yeah, no fucking problem’.
So when you lowered your hips until you sat on his face and Adam’s mind went completely blank, he wanted to fucking die again - for good this time though. He wanted to melt into the mattress and never come back. Fuck, why did you have to bring up the one thing he had just done once before and back then he had not fucking enjoyed it at all. Maybe that had been due to his partner being quite insensitive about him being inexperienced - you were different in any way and he knew that. It was also an entire different deal to eat a dude out, right? That was not comparable to eating out a woman despite you and his former female partners sharing the same sexual organs. Eating you out would be different, you were not a woman, you were a dude after all, just like Adam himself. Slowly the heavy fog that had clouded his mind lifted and he opened his mouth to let his tongue lick over your front entrance, a quiet moan fell from your lips and that encouraged Adam to keep going.
You were not able to hide the grin that had curled around your lips in victory. You had known it from the start, Adam had not the slightest idea what he was doing down there and for the first time ever since the both of you had started dating, your roles were reversed. For the first time it was Adam who had to learn how to please you instead of the other way around and you had to admit that you liked the thought of it a lot. And despite having no experience, he was trying his best - not that you’d let it slide that easily though. “I fucking knew you were all talk,” you hummed as you grinded your hips down against his face, your body tried to swallow his tongue but it seemed that Adam had other plans since he kept withdrawing it. Either he had other plans or he had no idea what he was supposed to do with himself. You were quick to notice the flinch that went through his body at your comment - the first man was used to a lot of your shit by now, degradation was not one of them. You felt how he wanted to pull back to argue and decided it was for the best to not let him, if he would need a serious break he’d let you know. “Don’t fucking talk about how good you are with your dirty mouth, Adam, show me instead,” you explained as you held his head in place by grabbing a fistful of his brown hair tightly, a needy moan rolled over Adam’s tongue and was sent right through your body.
The brunette’s tongue kept circling your entrance and you impatiently yanked on his hair as you growled, “Just fucking use your oh so magical tongue, dickmaster.” The nickname that usually sounded like a praise coming from your lips now sounded taunting and Adam was overwhelmed by the realization that he in fact liked it. His body reacted by bucking his hips up into thin air. Your free hand slapped his hip bone harshly before you pressed it against the mattress, “Behave, whore, you won’t cum until I taught you how to eat a man out properly.” And your words that sounded like a promise and a threat at the same time made his body shiver in excitement and another moan - this one was a little lower - fell from his lips.
With a shift of your hips your body was finally able to swallow Adam’s tongue and the choking noise that the brunette made at the sudden shift was music to your ears. “For your bragging about how good you are at this you’re pretty fucking weak, hun,” oh and you loved the way his body reacted to your mean sounding comments, the way his hips pressed up against the palm pinning it down, the way his hands - which were loosely holding your hips to keep them busy - would clench, nails digging into your skin to keep himself grounded. His golden eyes were open the entire time, scanning your body and its very move. “You’ve never done that before and it fucking shows,” you moaned as you kept grinding your hips against his face, trying to get is tongue to touch all the right areas, without him knowing where those are that turned out to be more tricky than you would have thought though. “Really thought I wouldn’t notice that you’re basically still a virgin when it comes to eating someone out, huh?” And that word - virgin - made Adam’s walls crumble, never in his entire life had someone called him that, let alone told him that he fucks like one. A high pitched whine left his throat and that sound you liked even more than the choking noise he had made earlier. “And someone like you dares to call himself dickmaster,” you huffed as the hand that had been busy with pinning his hips against the mattress teasingly ghosted over Adam’s erection, the brunette was quick to try and lean into your offering touch instantly. A muffled, “Fuck,” came from the man underneath you - well, at lest that was what Adam tried to say, the sound that actually left his lips sounded a little different. Not that either of you cared, no not really.
“Move your tongue to the right- no the other right, boo- oh fuck,” instructions he could definitely take and execute quite well despite the fact that he had been in a leading position his entire afterlife - he was the leader of the exorcists after all, not a really a position that would teach a person to execute orders well. Yet Adam did what you told him to do and earned himself a throaty moan of yours in return. “Look at the inexperienced bitch finally learning how to eat- oh dear God~” your degrading little comment was cut off by Adam thrusting his tongue all the way inside of you, licking down the inside of your walls and swallowing the liquid your body produced due to the lust flowing through your veins. Fuck, he surely had caught on quickly, huh? You felt the shiteating grin that you were sitting on and you did not like it - well, that was only partly true. You did like it that he seemed to grow more confident in his task, you did not like the control that took from you so the fist of yours that was still buried in his hair tightened in a warning manner. Adam’s hands grabbed a proper hold of your hips and slightly lifted them off his face to respond to your lust filled cry of Father’s name, “Not quite, but I’ll let it slide.” The fist in his hair tightened even more, then you yanked on the sweaty mess on his head firmly, drawing a beautiful sounding moan from your lover as you yanked his face closer to your privates again.
“Shut the fuck up and swallow, bitch,” you bit back a little harsher than you had intented to, but you knew Adam would not take that personally at all - if anything he would comment on it later how hot it was. His eyes locked onto yours as he continued to eat you out, the tongue of the first man was moving so skillfully by now, like it was his second nature, like he had been practicing this ever since he had been created. You knew better than anyone that wasn’t the case though. Moan after moan fell from your lips and the brunette underneath you drowned in the sounds you made for him, drowned in the thought of your body craving his just as much as his body was craving yours. Why was he so fucking good at this? He surely had no right to be, not when he was oh so inexperienced. You wanted to keep the dirty talk and therefore the degradation up but you had not enough air inside your lungs to do so, not when Adam kept drawing those beautiful sounds from you.
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ottogatto · 10 months
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I would like to submit two ideas because I think I'm poking something but not going in fully, so I would very much like your opinions and additions about it (of course, as long as they remain in good faith *side eyes possible antis viewing my post*).
Marauders and surface-level rebellion
I've finally put to words something that really bothered me with the Marauders, though I don't know the name for it.
It started when I read a reblog that said:
I remember Brennan saying “laws are just structured threats made by the ruling socioeconomic class” during an episode of D20 and we truly just had to stan immediately
This is something dear privileged white woman Rowling didn't realize/understand well, since she held a high socioeconomical status even during her """poverty""" stage. It's known that, despite seeming to be defending ideas of fighting against fascism and "pureblood" supremacy in favor of acceptance of the other, her books reek of colonialism/imperalism. The story of the Marauders, a gang of privileged boys like her, is an in-world replica of that problem where Rowling betrays yet again her actual mindset.
The Marauders adopt the "bad boys who break rules" to get style, while completely losing/staining the moral sense in it.
Let's take piracy.
Some people pirate stuff because they consider that the stuff they'd like to get comes from unethical companies that abuse their employees or use modern slavery, or people who spread harm against certain minorities (like Rowling against trans people and thus the LGBT+ community), so while they may want to access the content, they don't want to give them money and might even encourage pirating their stuff to make them lose money.
Some pirate stuff because otherwise it's lost due to unfortunate "terms of use" -- see video games companies like Ubisoft (deletes gaming account after a while), Nintendo (does not bring back old games), etc.
Others pirate stuff because they just don't have the money but they still want to try the stuff that might make them happy and forget that they're poor -- reasoning that the company isn't losing any money anyway, or not much, since they wouldn't have been able to pay for it in any case.
Others pirate stuff because they consider the price ridiculously high or they consider it shouldn't be something to pay for at all. (Like education stuff -- isn't education supposed to be free for all, so that it can actually uphold everyone's fundamental and unconditional ( = not conditioned by wealth...) right to have an education? Oh and before anyone asks: I've DEFINITELY bought the ~15 expensive books that's roughly worth 500€ in total and that my uni asked I buy to study and get my degree...)
Rowling's Marauders is a group that would pirate stuff just because they'd think it would give them an edge, because they'd think it would make them cool to be seen as "talented" hackers who "defy" companies. Companies... that their own friends and families would own, and as such, would find that kind of behavior funny and entertaining (while they would trash other people around for considering it).
Another example. In society, in history, it's been proven time and again that breaking rules -- going against the law -- is an eventuality that's important for everyone to consider, if they want to defend their rights. Anti-racism, feminism, LGBT Pride, etc, advanced because people broke rules. In USA states where abortion is currently being banned, women and minors (+ their close ones) must now consider breaking the rules to get an abortion. (Privileged people don't give a fuck about those people, and if they suddenly decide that (moral) rules don't apply to them and they will get an abortion, they will just take a plane ticket to a country where abortion is legal, fiddling with legal stuff if necessary thanks to the lawyers their fortunes can afford and the lobbies that they're instituting.)
Revolutions happened because people broke rules too. I particularly like the 1793 Constitution in France Because it asserts that the people have the right to break rules and riot if the power in place threatens their fundamental rights:
Article 35. - Quand le gouvernement viole les droits du peuple, l'insurrection est, pour le peuple et pour chaque portion du peuple, le plus sacré des droits et le plus indispensable des devoirs. Article 35. - When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most essential of duties.
(Of course the power in place would state and enforce and make use of propaganda to say that it's completely illegal and illegetimate and that those who riot for legitimate rights are terrorists!)
Breaking rules is at the core of anti-fascism, anti-dictatorship, anti-totalitarianism. Breaking rules is essential when those rules are abusive. Too often, those who put those rules in place really are only setting their rules of the game to establish their power over the others. Or as the reblog says: "laws are just structured threats made by the ruling socioeconomic class".
Rowling's Marauders break rules because they are the socioeconomical class in power. As such, no one can do anything about it, no one will really tell them down for it. They get excused and justified and romanticized by their peers, just like billionaires & politicians are excused by their peers and notably mainstream media (which is owned... by other billionaires). They break rules -- not because they think it's necessary and the morally right thing to do despite the dangers it puts them in -- but because it makes them feel powerful, important, invincible, which for them is very fun. As Snape says: James and his cronies broke rules because they thought themselves above them:
“Your father didn’t set much store by rules either,” Snape went on, pressing his advantage, his thin face full of malice. “Rules were for lesser mortals, not Quidditch Cup-winners. [...]”
They break rules because they're allowed to.
Which is why, in reality, the Marauders aren't really breaking rules or defying anything or opposing an actual big threat. They're a bunch of jocks who are having fun in the playground that's been attributed to them thanks to their status and family heritage (others wouldn't get the same indulgence because they don't get that privilege).
They break rules because they want to look cool, to be the "bad boys". The message has been compleyely botched. Especially with Lily actually finding this hot.
Because Rowling finds this hot:
[...] I shook hands with a woman who leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, 'Sirius Black is sexy, right?' And yes, of course she was right, as the Immeritus club know. The best-looking, most rebellious, most dangerous of the four marauders... and to answer one burning question on the discussion boards, his eyes are grey.
(Anyone has an eyes washing station?)
Another quote:
"Sirius was too busy being a big rebel to get married."
(Nevermind the eyes washing, anyone's got some bleach instead?)
Stanning James Potter for being the leader of a gang that prides itself on breaking rules and always getting away with it -- it feels like stanning Elon Musk for being "innovative" and "a daring entrepreneur" despite being a manchild who exploits workers and modern-world slavery to play with his billions while always getting away with it.
They're not being "rebels" -- they're being bullies and flexing the fact they can get away with it thanks to abundance of privilege. Those are the tastes of a posh British white woman. She wanted the facade -- not the substance (that is, if she ever understood it).
You might say that they did oppose a big threat, the Death Eaters, but again, it's botched because:
they target a lonely, unpopular boy who's best friends with a Muggleborn Gryffindor, rather than baby Death Eaters like Mulciber, Lucius, Rosier, Avery, Regulus, etc.
The leader sexually harasses the Muggleborn Gryffindor because he's sexually jealous of the unpopular boy who dared not take the insult about his chosen House and shut up. Lily is treated as an object, they don't listen to her, and they barely speak about her later. (Lots to say to show that, which I won't do here because this is not the main subject.)
When the Marauders do join the Order, they do it... because they primarily want to adopt a rock-n-roll style and play the "bad boys" again. Or at least that's the message that's given to the reader:
They seemed to be in their late teens. The one who had been driving had long black hair; his insolent good looks reminded Fisher unpleasantly of his daughter's guitar-playing, layabout boyfriend. The second boy also had black hair, though his was short and stuck up in all directions; he wore glasses and a broad grin. Both were dressed in T-shirts emblazoned with a large golden bird; the emblem, no doubt, of some deafening, tuneless rock band.
(God, the Prequel is so cringy.)
They don't choose Dumbledore as the Secret Keeper, they don't tell him they changed to Pettigrew -- even though he literally was their war leader -- James uses the Cape to fuck around even though he was supposed to be hiding with Lily and then Harry (until Dumbledore takes the Cape from him)... and eventually, their group exploded, with James killed off, Sirius thrown to Azkaban, Peter (the traitor) hiding as a rat and Lupin going off to find jobs to survive.
Why did that happen? Because they thought of playing their part in the Order like going on a teenage adventure rather than engaging in a resistance organization. It was, first and foremost, about playing "the bad boys" and having fun.
(Harry half-inherits this. While he doesn't break rules just to look cool, and actually has several moments where he does break rules because it's the right thing to do -- like under Umbridge or, of course, when Voldemort takes power -- he does often get pampered when he breaks them in his earlier years. By Dumbledore, but also McGonagall, however much Rowling tries to sell her as a "strict but fair" teacher. Or by Slughorn, now that I think about it. That's something that enraged Snape, as it brought up memories of Harry's father -- Snape's own bully -- getting the same treatment.)
It's not a coincidence that Rowling not only failed to properly convey through the Marauders the true value of breaking rules, but also lusted over them for adopting that "bad boys" trope. It speaks to her own privilege -- she who never had to put herself in danger and go against the law in a risky attempt to protect herself or other less privileged people.
(Here's a useful read to expand on those worldbuilding issues.)
2. Dark Magic, obscurantism and conservatism
For context: Opinion: The Dark Magic/Light Magic Dichotomy is Nonsense (by pet_genius).
The idea of "Dark Magic" as something that's repeatedly told to be "evil" magic and where you cross the line of the forbidden, while hardly putting in question that notion that was (for some reason) enforced by wizard society, is another blatant example of Rowling betraying her mindset of privileged British white woman.
Rowling couldn't put herself in the minds of a society of "outcasts (witches & wizards) deeply enough to consider they would not see any magic as "Dark" at all (being a ""Muggle"" concept), or that Dark magic is only magic that requires something unvaluable to be traded off -- like one's soul or health or life or sanity. Instead, she has Dark Magic defined as "evil" magic, even though her own books show that you can do evil stuff with normal magic, and that you can do morally good stuff with Dark magic. This thing happened because Rowling could not think past her own little world and instead she poured a conservatist mentality (+ typical "Muggle", anti-witch prejudice) into the HP (wizard society) worldbuilding without considering that there could, in fact, be fundamental differences between the two worlds that include thinking of magic differently. (This has a lot to do with Rowling's wizard world being a pro-imperalism fest.)
"Dark Magic" feels like a lazy, badly-executed plot device to tell the reader who's a good guy and who is not. Because of course, that's how things work in real-life, huh… (Did she ever hear of "don't tell, show"?) It's used as an excuse to define who's evil (teen Severus) or not (James), who's worthy or not -- not how their magic was used. Which is a BIG problem:
“I’m just trying to show you they’re not as wonderful as everyone seems to think they are.” The intensity of his gaze made her blush. “They don’t use Dark Magic, though.” / “Scourgify!” Pink soap bubbles streamed from Snape’s mouth at once; the froth was covering his lips, making him gag, choking him —
Even worse, Rowling doesn't follow her own in-world moral framework. Dark magic is acceptable for some people (Rowling's partial self-inserts: Dumbledore, Harry, Hermione to Marietta...) but not for those that Rowling hates (Snape, who ironically represents the closest thing to rebelling by unapologetically obsessing over the Dark Arts). Again, this is at best unadressed in-world hypocrisy, at worst an expression of in-world and out-universe privilege (I get to do this and stay a good guy, but you don't).
There could have easily been rightful criticism of whatever could be defined as "Dark Magic". What if Dark magic was just something defined as "Dark" usually because the power in place doesn't want the people to touch it? Is abortion or contraception or a sex-altering or a goverment-threatening spell, Dark Magic? Is foreign or ethnicity-specific or female-centered or queer-centered magic, "Dark"? How about showing why (Muggle-raised but also neurodivergent) Severus thought Dark magic was so great, showing his point of view, while also establishing where the true limits are? If Lily can't be the one who sees past the "fear-mongering anti-intellectualism/propaganda", how about Harry being the one who does, thanks to him relating to Snape on a personal level? How about making Hermione go from someone who condems Dark Magic, to someone who entirely changes her point of view and understands that this is all bullshit -- effectively showing the dangers of only following what the books say, without putting them into question or thinking by yourself? How about a nuanced view of Dark magic as something that requires a significant sacrifice, which is conceivable for something they see as equally or even more important [Lily's life for Harry; Snape's soul integrity for Dumbledore]? How about making the Death Eaters, people who deviate that legitimate interest, rather than just evil guys who thrive in Dark magic for its supposed added evilness? How about showing that Dark magic was just a notion invented by Muggles to throw "witches" (real or not) to the burning stakes -- later taken by the witches and wizards in power to define, in the magical community, what was okay or definitely forbidden because it's the trademark of those who represent a threat to the magical community (understand: people who riot or strike or protest against the ruling socioeconomical class' politics)?
But there was none of that.
"Dark" magic in HP merely seems to be a weird concept that at best accidentally takes the form of an in-world obscurantism, at worst is just the trademark of someone who cannot imagine a "hunted, ostracized" community with a different culture and mindset than her own. Aggravating is the fact that she used "Dark magic" as a plot device to magically cast some people as good and others as never bad – again, probably reflecting her own questionable mentality.
The fact Rowlnig invented the notion of Dark Magic and had her world consider it seriously as an evil thing instead of being open-minded seems to be less telling of her wishes to show a wizard society that can be as prejudiced as the muggle one, and more of her own bizarre world where you must be evil if you are knowledgeable in or interested in certain "taboo" things (RIP neurodivergents).
Rowling glorifies the Trio and the Marauders for breaking rules. Yet when it comes to actually breaking expectations and norms, notably in the wizarding society -- like the use of another magical species as slaves, or the blatant anti-Muggle prejudice held by everyone including "good guys" (or anti-centaur while we're at it), or stupid anti-knowledge prejudice like "Dark magic is evil" -- there is none of that. At best, it's surface-level opposition that comes out as white savior syndrome. At worst, the protagonists make it their noble code to enforce those norms, and "sinful" characters (Snape, for one) are punished for not conforming. Too often, those sinful characters are punished by the "good guys" with the very thing that they apparently oppose so fervently.
Without ever adressing the fact that those characters were ("morally") allowed to do that because it was just, in the end, a matter of who gets the privilege to do that, and who does not.
There.
Do you have anything to say to develop on those ideas? I feel like I'm reaching my knowledge limit and I'd like to see if those ideas can be expanded.
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genderkoolaid · 9 months
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It's honestly really validating to read your thoughts on butch identity. I kept myself from fully accepting I might be a gay trans man for a long time because being a butch woman was so integral to my identity (I wept after finishing Stone Butch Blues. It was like being seen for the first time) and I hated that it felt like there was no way I could be both. So I was sort of performing trans man comphet and trying to convince myself I liked women just so I wouldn't lose that word. There's so much gender nuance to being butch that I feel like gets lost when we only focus on the sexuality aspect of it.
"There's so much gender nuance to being butch that I feel like gets lost when we only focus on the sexuality aspect of it." Yes!!!!!!
I came out very young (elementary school) as a lesbian, and cut my long hair to a pixie in the same year. And then shortly after began realizing was I was trans as well. I spent essentially my entire life being visibly queer and visibly queer-masculine a lot of the time. And this affected so much, because I latched onto "butch" extremely young and that became my model for my gender. I never shaved largely because, due to reading about butches, I felt that it was part of my path, even though I also knew it distanced me from others. My sense of masculinity and masculine fashion has always been deeply butch, regardless of my gender. Its such a deep and integral part of me and has been my whole life. I truly feel that I can't not be butch. I don't relate to a lot of "female socialization" both due to being autistic and being visibly queer; I always knew that, while being categorized as "girl," I was also never going to be a "real girl," and everyone knew that. Becoming a butch adult felt more natural than puberty.
Which is why its so annoying that people center butchness on sexuality, and specifically romantic-sexual attraction to femmes!!!! Because while I have, in fact, dated femmes (arguably I dated too many cis femme women who I felt I had to walk on ice around to avoid scaring them with my butch gender), like I said, my butchness is a natural part of me. Being queer is a part of being butch, but the way we talk about butchness makes me feel like people can only view it existing in relation to romance (and femmes). And obviously because of radfeminism, trans men & mascs' unique relationships with butchness have been largely ignored in any way besides "I used to be butch, but now I'm a Normal Straight Man!" & also the general erasure of transmasculinity in lesbian history. Lesbian spaces have always been a haven for trans people, because for a long time in the West, your options were generally "move to a new town and go completely stealth for as long as possible" or "find your local lesbians and be a dyke within a community." There's a reason "butch" has always held so much gender nuance. Radclyffe Hall, who wrote the famous lesbian book The Well of Loneliness, has been argued to have been transmasculine- but the idea that butches may truly call into question the gender binary causes too much anxiety, so we have to constantly re-affirm that butches are above all else women. I'm a firm believer that butch4butch relationships have long been a way for gay trans men to indulge their desire for men within the context of lesbian identity (because all the trans guys are fucking each other and always have been).
Anyways. yeah. let butches exist beyond our sexuality. Understand that "butch" carries so much color and cannot be reduced down to a simple binary concept.
(Also anon, if you haven't, you should read this article about transmasculine comphet wrt gayness).
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severalowls · 10 months
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Hi I played myhouse.wad here is my thoughts on a narrative thing people seem intent on brushing off in favour of tired tropes.
Spoilers for myhouse.wad do not read this if you havent played it go and play it blind thx
So Thomas and Steven are heavily heavily implied to be husbands. The use of Intensely, Notably impersonal language in the journals is a whole other point to analyse irt its authorship but I digress, my (first) point is: Thomas is also Probably trans.
So in the airport you go into the womens bathroom and theres a pill bottle on the way in that says "needs a refill..." and then you do a little loop around the mirror and theres blood in the mirror then blood all over the place and blooddemons spawn in all around you... then you leave and there's a full pill bottle that says something like "such a relief" and when you come out the bathroom signs have switched and the bathroom you came out of is now the mens room.
Now the Le Reddit/gamer dood prevailing interpretation is apparently that this is... a coincidence? That the meticulous insane modder(s) who created this entire mindbending feat of technology Simply Forgot and its a total coincidence. Fuck off.
Now the prevailing theory also seems to be that the airport bloodbath is actually Thomas's father, evidenced by the same empty pill bottle being in the hospital room with the dead man. Nah, that's because they're both Thomas's fuckin pills and that's Thomas.
Steven (the PoV character as it were) is in the same hospital because this is a representation of the critical inciting event of the entire meta narrative: both of them having died, together, at home (probably in a house fire).
Everything we see in the mod represents scenes and events in their lives, and this is the point where Steven departs from the mortal coil and goes to join his husband Thomas, who is flatlining but nonetheless sat bolt upright, locking eyes with Steven who, in the context of the wider story is putting his affairs in order through the medium of Doom. CRUCIALLY this one hospital scene, where the video game gameplay rules of Doom (you die, you reload a save) are defied and we pass into a (god damn it) liminal space between the abstraction of the game and Death, is the only point where they are reunited.
Which then suggests to me that all the "Liminal Space" stuff and Backrooms references aren't just Fun References, but the Thematic Core of the piece, the passing between worlds. Hell, even the narrative being split between docs and the mod. It being a mod for a game at all.
Anyway I'll save this going on 10000 words because I could probably write interpretation for hours but... Myhouse.wad good.
Edit the following morning: There are hints to an "Anna" which the average Gamer assumes is some sadface ex-wife, but the main points where this is referenced are the airport scene and "S+A" in the bonfire/beach endings. Steven and Thomas are described as having reconnected with high school crushes/'friends'. The main time in your life where you're likely to carve your crush in a tree is when you're a teenager.
Steven had a crush on "Anna", reconnected decades later once he'd transitioned, the scenes of the game represent primarily parts of their life together, and in the final moments of the game (bonfire/beach endings) he's reflecting on when they met as kids.
Airport scene, besides the symbolism of journeys and beginnings, could also reference a miscarriage Thomas had at some point, possibly pre-transition since its where "Anna" comes up? (Stillborn baby is referenced a couple of times in the journal + baby bottle item ingame)
Anyway, myhouse.wad good.
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ftmtftm · 6 months
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something i wanted to ask, genuinely, is if you think the labels transmisogyny/misandry and the way theyre used can really be helpful
i personally think they can be but with how so many ppl try to frame it as "exclusive" forms of oppression just doesnt help at all. yes, transmisogyny does mainly happen to trans women/fems, but a lot of ppl refuse to believe it could also happen to trans men/mascs. and i believe it can go the same way with transmisandry as ive seen multiple ppl describe wut it is and see how it could be applied to trans women/fems. and that doesnt even acknowledge intersex ppl, whether theyre trans or not. i feel like labeling it in specific ways to say "this is an intersection of oppression" without going "this is an exclusive experience" is beneficial to all sides, but ppl try to gatekeep with labels like "tma" and "tme" and so on. its like saying a gay guy cant call themself a dyke bc "youre not a lesbian and therefore u cant reclaim that slur" even if theyve been called a dyke before. it really just feels like the labels of transmisogyny and transmisandry is used as a way to fuel the fires of oppression olympics by saying that "if ur a trans man u experience less oppression than a trans woman." and it seems to be mainly fueled by the idea of "woman (oppressed) + trans (oppressed) = really oppressed" whereas "man (not oppressed) + trans (oppressed) = not as oppressed" when its nothing like that.
its also incredibly hard to find Any information about transmisandry. i always see "trans men just have it/pass easier" and even other transphobic statements of how going on T makes trans men more aggressive and assertive. i feel like tumblr has been the only place ive seen any genuine discussion about transmisandry and even then its not great or very informative.
i believe that both transmisandry and transmisogyny should be acknowledged as real forms of oppression rather than being used as a way to oppress ppl further.
i dont wish to cause an argument as these r just my thoughts and i genuinely want to hear yours on it too
So the TL;DR my opinion sort of boils down to "Yes, I think they can be incredibly useful terms when used with intention and clarity of purpose" but there's a lot of nuance to that opinion. Basically though - I mostly agree with you on a conceptual level anon. I just wanted to write an essay.
(and also I don't fully address some things in this ask because frankly I'm burnt out and don't want to talk about them at the moment and I made this blog to talk about my special interests anyway. Sue me ‪¯\_(ツ)_/¯‬)
Something I've been noticing in my reading of Intersectional/trans-inclusive Feminist literature, combined with my engagement with trans activism, over the last few years is: We're all very, very afraid of talking about sexism right now and it absolutely makes sense why.
It makes sense because the conversation has been ground to dirt by TERFs constantly yelling about "sex-based oppression" as a means to be transmisogynist and degrade the womanhood of trans women. However the response to this has been deeply flawed in my opinion.
Instead of actually addressing sexism as it's own distinct form of oppression under an Intersectional lense, we've simply made a hard left into only discussing gender informed oppression and only legitimizing gender informed oppression in the form of misogyny. It's a very uninformed response in my opinion actually - but that also makes sense because it's currently very hard to be informed on general feminist theory and politics at the moment because Radical Feminism is a fucking plague.
In reality though, sexism and misogyny are two different forms of oppression that often overlap because gender and sex are different classes of identity that often overlap.
This degradation of language - both from TERFs conflating sex and gender and from Intersectionals/progressives separating the two so hard they don't even acknowledge sex - is what I think is part of the cause of this problem that is leaving trans men / trans mascs with a massive hole in our ability to discuss our experiences. And not just trans men either!!! It's also nonbinary and intersex people as well who are harmed by this void.
So that begs the question: How do we actually talk about sexism in an Intersectional Feminist, trans inclusive, capacity that combats Radical Feminist rhetoric on sexism?
And the answer? Is carefully, consciously, and in a manner that is aware of several different experiences within the nebulous concept of female identity.
I will actually be using the word "female" as a term a decent amount throughout this post. For the sake of this discussion I am defining "female" as anyone anyone who presently identifies as female due to their assigned sex as well as anyone who is socially treated/viewed as female due to their gender, legal, and/or medical statuses. In this post "female" is an umbrella term that includes cis women, trans men, trans women, nonbinary people, and intersex people who feel that definition applies to them in relation to their sex.
Because the fact of the matter is that Patriarchy and our society at large hate women and they hate people who are assigned female and they hate people who are female and those are distinct categories of people with a lot of overlap and a lot of differences.
Female identity is like venn diagram of sex informed experiences that cis women, trans women, trans men, nonbinary people, and intersex people all have a place in for various different reasons. It's a diverse category of experiences and this should be a touchstone for solidarity, not division in my opinion. The experiences and needs of one group don't inherently negate the experiences and needs of another similar group, even if they conflict, you know?
It's a concept I've actually adopted from disability activists, who often talk about the ways in which disability activism often has to address conflicting needs because sometimes some disabled people's needs are in direct conflict with each other!! Conflicting needs are not something unique to disability activism though.
Most groups and classes people have conflicting needs within themselves and I think there's a lot to be learned in gendered activism from disability activists in this regard. I think often in activist discussions a lot of people stop when situations stop impacting them directly instead of trying to find commonality and empathy with similar experiences. It's easy to have knee jerk reactions, it's harder to pause and contemplate.
So, let's actually contemplate transmisogyny and transandrophobia/transmisandry as terms for a moment.
Transmisogyny was coined as a term by Julia Serano in 2007 in her book The Whipping Girl and I do think it's incredibly useful for describing the ways in which transphobia (the broader oppression of trans individuals) intersects with misogyny (the broader oppression of women) in specific ways wrapped up into a specific term.
I've engaged in a lot of criticism of The Whipping Girl because, well, I think for just about every excellent idea Serano posits about the trans feminine experience she undercuts it with White Feminist rhetoric and simple "cis men and women are opposites therefore trans men and women are opposites" type rhetoric that harms her arguments more than helps them. HOWEVER! Serano herself even articulates that misogyny and transphobia may intersect in ways that impact nonbinary and trans masculine individuals differently from trans feminine individuals, and that additional language may be required to fill that gap in The Whipping Girl!!
So now there's a bit of a linguistically philosophical discussion to be had here on the function of language and what language we can actually use to fill the hole trans men experience with our language - which is also where we dive back into talking about concepts like conflicting needs and sexism.
When creating terminology (or jargon), one must take into account several things like clarity and context, which is why personally - I do not like the term "transmisandry" at all. I use it as a tag because I know some people prefer it as a term and I'd like my posts to reach that audience as well. Generally speaking though - I think any inclusion of "misandry" as a term will always be a nonstarter in most discussions on gender. It's much too loaded of a word because of it's association with the misogynistic actions of MRAs among several other semantic reasons.
An argument could, I think, be made for a term like "transsexism" which would describe the intersection of transphobia (the broader oppression of trans individuals) and sexism (the broader oppression of female individuals) but I think that is still too broad if we want to talk about trans masculine experiences specifically. (Though I do still think it may have contextual use as a term quite frankly - that's just beyond the scope of this post).
So? Then we come to transandrophobia and a conversation on misogynistic, sexist responses to masculinity in people society forcibly identified as "female women" under patriarchy.
I want to state that off the bat that I take a lot of issue with the way people dismiss trans men's experiences as just "general transphobia" or "default transphobia" because... Why are you automatically treating a man's experiences as the universal default? Especially when there are things based on the intersection of his manhood and marginalization that he experiences that women of the same marginalization don't?
I have this issue with most other conversations about the intersection of marginalized identity and manhood honestly. It actually really reeks of unconscious misogynist bias to me. But I digress, that's not the subject of this post.
I think a lot about Brandon Teena and the motivations for his murder. I think a lot about Lou Sullivan's diary entries about his loneliness and isolation with regard to being around trans women and lesbians - as well as his history fighting for his right to medical transition. I think about P. Carl's musings about the ways in which his entire community abandoned him once he came out as a trans man as opposed to a lesbian woman. I think about Irreversible Damage by Abigal Shrier and the way she manipulated - if I'm remembering correctly - YouTuber, Chase Ross into misleading interviews that skewed his words and stories to attempt to "prove" her points about how "our girls" are being manipulated into transgenderism via social contagion spread through platforms like YouTube.
I think about the ways in which trans mascs - particularly those on HRT - actively avoid medical care because of the deeply gendered nature of gynecological care and also because we are treated like medical freaks and abominations when we do try to seek that care. I think about the ways our bodies are inherently, deeply impacted by the overturning of Roe V. Wade and how our decisions to not carry children via abortion or hysterectomy - or our desire to carry children - are met with the phenomenon of medical misogyny like any other woman or female individual but in a way that also explicitly intersects with our transness.
I think about the ways in which Patriarchal society sees my "female" body in direct opposition to my identity as a "man" and how that is something that needs to be "corrected" back into "female womanhood" via rape and assault. I think about my own corrective assault a lot. I think about how the 2015 National Trans Survey actually found higher self reported instances with sexual assault in trans men than in trans women. I think about how I personally see that as a touchstone of solidarity with my lesbian siblings and especially with my other butch siblings who also have their expressions of masculinity treated as deviancy that deserves corrective action.
I apologize for diverting into less of an academic musing into prose and also for diverging from the subject of this ask directly into a much larger essay - but I am simply so tired of trying to say that I and other trans masculine people are people worthy of having our own language for our own experiences instead of just being dismissed as a privileged class - quite literally on the basis of our own oppression.
Especially when people use the words of someone like Julia Serano to say we don't deserve that language when she herself posited that maybe we should have it. Especially when Kimberlé Crenshaw - the woman who created the theory of Intersectionality that Serano is attempting to engage with in The Whipping Girl - has stated that one of the goals of Intersectionality is to create language for and give voice to marginalized identities that otherwise are not given language and voice.
So - What do you call it when trans masculine people are explicitly targeted on the basis of their trans masculinity? What do you call that intersection of sexism, misogyny, and transphobia that misgenders and attacks trans masculinity explicitly? Because that isn't "general transphobia" - that is transphobia motivated by a Patriarchal desire for control over the broader "female identity" that society is seeing as "too masculine".
It's trans-andro-phobia. Transphobia targeted at a particular group of trans individuals on the basis of their masculinity in a way that intersects with a sexist, misogynist, Patriarchal desire to control perceived/forced female identity and the subsequent interpersonal and social ramifications that come alongside that systemic abuse.
Focus, intention, and clarity of purpose.
---
I do want to add that there is absolutely something to be said about the fact that these conversations are all extremely White at the moment.
Radical Feminism is a deeply White (and White Supremacist) movement. Conversations on Trans Feminist theory in general are still deeply White as well. Julia Serano is very much a White Trans Feminist, and as such most responses to her work by other White trans people tend to be, well, very White.
I myself am even contributing to the prevalence of Whiteness in the conversation because even though I am Ashkenazi I am also still White. I might be informed by and am actively using concepts formed by Black Women and Ethnic Minority Women as the basis of my own theories, but that doesn't erase the context of my own race in this conversation either.
I really do not want that to be lost upon people, especially other White people. A racialized context matters in this conversation because Race and Gender really cannot be fully separated from each other in conversations about power and systemic oppression.
Bonus TL;DR - Read The Will to Change and Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks. Read Audre Lorde. Read Kimberlé Crenshaw. Read Leslie Feinberg and Judith Butler. Read María Lugones. Learn the concepts they are presenting and then also learn how to apply those concepts in a consciousness and self aware manner.
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ultraviolet-cello · 4 months
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Aw man. Today's the last day of @tristampparty and I am surprisingly sad about it. I'll be catching up the days I missed at some point, but I've chucked all that I've written, including today, into a google document and I apparently wrote 7.5k words over the course of episode 6 to today.
That's! A Lot!
I really wanna thank everyone who reblogged and gave me their additional thoughts/commentary, and special thanks to Revenantghost for organizing this whole thing! you do good work for this fandom i am giving u a gold star
With that, here we go into Episode 0 - High Noon at July. CWs for pregnancy discussion and a less detailed than last time but still present analysis of sexual assault and transphobia, marked with a [CW] Ofc, spoilers for Trimax and Tristamp
Cowboy kid Knives is something u can pry from my cold dead hands but it's also,,, I don't watch a lot of westerns, but the way Knives describes it seems like he likes the high action and justice. Which yea. yeah.
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A lot of ppl interpret Vash then saying that he doesn't like that sorta stuff as him having always had pacifistic tendencies but I don't really read it that way? I just see him being rather similar to Trimax Vash - chill kid with his own interests and hobbies and Knives being the very oversensitive kid so outshines him initially.
Regardless of version of Trigun (except 98. 98 didn't know shit about knives lmao), Vash and Knives have always started off wanting to coexist and be peaceful; it's just how they reacted to it later that differs. In this case, Knives wants to stand up for his friends and make a peaceful world through that, and Vash is more passive in that he just wants to have faith in humanity.
Not to mention they are kids. Young, idealistic kids. This is pre-Tesla, they don't know the extent of how horrible the world is. The loss of innocence and subsequent breakdowns relating to The Horrors is yet to come.
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[CW] Mmmmm they really don't make the pregnancy imagery subtle now do they dfgkjdfjk
I also think there's like - merit in also interpreting Knives as trans. Not Just because i think he's also very trans coded (A lot of his breakdowns and story arcs have reflections in how some trans men overcompensate masculinity in a Bad Way. That's a very small subsection of trans guys btw but I am speaking from experience. I got better tho). Anyway it makes the fact that Knives is disregarding Vash's bodily autonomy very much Worse if you take the male plants are trans analogy into it.
He's so far gone that he's willing to do to Vash what would be the worst thing to be done to him; Violating his body to rebuild and make him a perfect independent ("remind him of biological reality"), physically overpowering him ("taking the aggressor, commonly masculine role in sexual assault") to do what he wants. Disregarding the wants and needs of the Plants ("women +fem-presenting ppl that he originally set out to protect because he knew their experience and wanted to help and still has that trauma from witnessing that trauma")
Ofc that's just a reading of the scene, but I quite like it as a trans guy because that makes a really good villain with trans themes/motifs! I hate him so much (affectionate)
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No, no she doesn't. Meryl is making a choice and she's gonna damn well stick to it! She's been given agency and she's gonna spend it in the most eldritch horrific scene that someone on that planet could spend it lmao. Well, no Knives takes most eldritch and horrific. Meryl's second tho
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Okay this fucking scene drives me INSANE. This is a memory, clearly, but it's one that's being tampered with. Vash asks Knives if they can get along with humans, and then Knives immediately messes with the memory to make sure that he says that he'll protect Vash no matter what. But that is very clearly not what was originally said, so... What did he say? What was present day Knives so desperate to cut off?
I've talked about the narrative being biased against Knives a lot, but something I haven't talked about is that Knives kinda tries to contribute to that narrative a lot. He wants to seem like he never cared about humans, he wants to seem like he always planned this and was going for justice ever since he was a kid. He tells Vash the Tesla incident was just a small grain of sand, he uses Luida to tell everyone he wants to kill Rem, he's unbearably cruel to Vash to make his point. The only difference is that he wants to be right.
So he doesn't let us see what the kid version of him says, because that would contradict the narrative he's built for himself.
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I really wanna give props to Studio Orange here for both the design and way they modelled the wing here, that's a really difficult task when the guy you're putting a wing on has a tight as hell bodysuit. But the anatomy holds up surprisingly well!
Also many people have pointed out that the plant mech looks a lot like Rem, and Knives staring into the face of a Plantish representation of his mother that is created and controlled subconsciously by his brother and saying he was rejected is. It sure is a scene!
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ONCE AGAIN. INCREDIBLE EFFECTS. I also would like to once again point out the angelic motifs of Knives' design here.
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Also Vash saying this is SO important because Meryl!!! is so important!!! I see a lot of people brush Meryl's space in the story off and it Enrages me because Meryl is one of the most important people to Vash. Aside from our frontline yaoi soldier Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Meryl has one of the most tangible impacts on Vash's character.
When Vash is in his breakdown in Trimax, Meryl is the one to kneel at his side and believe in him; When Vash is having his god awful horrible mindscape time in Tristamp, Meryl does the same. When Meryl is kidnapped in Trimax, Vash instantly jumps out of a window in the chance of getting her back. Vash trusted her enough to fire the ion cannon in the sand steamer episode. He immediately went to July the moment she and Roberto were kidnapped.
Meryl has so much faith in Vash and she's insane for that, but Vash recognizes her and that faith pays off in giving him the strength to carry on. He heard her voice, too :]
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Also oh to be floating slowly down to the floor while you're a meter away from a cube with the power of an atom bomb while someone named Millions Knives is summoning millions of knives in front of u. Meryl has guts, man.
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And now that Vash has gotten his gun back, he's back to using it as a tonfa! (check I think my analysis of episode 7 for more on that). Watching for the swing blocks, the forearm guard, and thwacking the knife tendrils out of the way
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This fight scene has soooo much love and care and detail in it I love it so much actually. From seeing Vash's bullets to all the expressions and beautifully detailed firing, there's so much detail in a quick space that you really have to slow it down to see everything.
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Seriously how strong is Knives to be able to have a feasible chance again Vash's prosthetic - and Vash matches him! Also the chomp
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Now something that I have the shakiest of theories on is that after summoning The Cube, Vash starts moving in a far more controlled manner, he stands still when reloading, he has his movement flurries and then stands still to aim. Which uh. Studio Orange works in 3d, but those are 2d animation techniques. He's moving like 98 Vash.
There's a lot I admire about Studio Orange's use of 3d (I am a mid-tier 2d artist lmao) but I love love love that they're able to get all these really nice, creative camera shots that would be impractical in 2d (all those overhead shots, for example, have a chance of turning about bad/looking weird in 2d, and puts more strain on animators, but 3d you have the models from every angle already. 3d isn't easier by any means, but it does have its strengths)
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Also. how Did Wolfwood get over here, dare I ask. mans climbed a tower in just a few minutes what is Wrong with him
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Also a nice detail, Vash usually has perfect trigger discipline, but he falters here against Knives, probably because he's been already shooting, but hey, he's stressed. I'll give him a break.
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I also appreciate exactly how superhuman Wolfwood is now. Tristamp Wolfwood is on a different level. Like 98 Wolfwood is just some (attractive) guy, Trimax Wolfwood has a lot of gory body horror going on and a subtle kind of endurance/strength, but Tristamp Wolfwood just jumped off a very tall building holding a grown woman and the Punisher and was fine.
Oh hey, same symbol on the tower as was on the sandsteamer and on Vash's wanted poster - symbol of July, probably
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Very horribly, Knives probably did just save Vash's life here. But also the rest of July's life (though ofc he just extended the timer)....
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I'm not quite sure When Vash started using plant bullets, but he's definitely using them now. Also the nails on his prosthetic are a nice touch!
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THE FLYING SAUCER STRIKES AGAIN. I wonder if that's gonna be the basis of the Ark, if that's the route season 2 goes.
I also. Was that allI the Plants collected that escaped in this, or were there a bunch still running in July that get obliterated too? Did Knives inadvertently cause the death of more plants? I mean, when Knives gets revived in Trimax he definitely causes the death of at least 2 plants (there are a couple of bulbs in the background of the blast radius, plus the one that was used to revive him... she uh. Didn't look like she was doing so hot)
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Vash's little speech is always so,,, intense. He has such a strong sense of character and it's admirable how well he sticks to his morals despite it all.
On a more body horror note, Knives can survive a long fucking time trying to grab The Cube. In Trimax he gets hit with the angel arm and practically disemboweled instantly, but Tristamp Knives can take over a minute of just like. being right in the direct path of fire. They're really gonna have to work to reconstruct him. Good luck, Legato!
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UFO SPOTTED !!! LEAVING JULY AS IT IS DESTROYED !! NOT CLICKBAIT !!!
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^ I made that long ago and needed to use it somewhere dfgkjdfg
[RAUCOUS CHEERING]
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And ofc I have to bring up Eriks :] I don't actually have too much to say abt him. Studio Orange strip this man and make him bark like a dog next season or we will riot
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CHRONICA MENTION!!!!! YAYYYYYY
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And that's kinda. It.
Man I have had such fun over the last 12 days, I've really discovered a love for analyzing and theories and putting that out there and chatting with people about Trigun :] I should do this more often lmao but I do want to get back to drawing. I'll find a balance, then!
Thank you all for coming, and Wow if you made it this far I must be doing something right lmao.
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