💊⚫️blackpill take of the day🏴‍☠️

As a lesbian who doesn’t believe OSA women will ever take the political action needed to fully liberate us all, the best thing to do is to support feminist aims that focus on legal rights and material safety, because all that lesbians need to minimally exist happily is basic freedom from the obligation to be partnered with men in order to sustain oneself financially and socially.

Lesbians are a huge chunk of women who will demand more than the most minimal of rights, and that’s why we’re very unlikely to get more (small numbers). But luckily, what we need to survive is actually what liberal women want in the first place and demonstrably are actually willing to fight for.

Feminist priorities that lesbians should care a lot about are:

Ensuring that love-marriages are the standard in your culture, which necessarily means that single women will exist and be minimally tolerated (no lesbian will willingly marry a man, late bloomer bisexual women who married men voluntarily aren’t the same as us 💀)

Ensuring that careers that pay a living wage, ideally all or most careers, are open to women without the requirement that she be married.

Access to financial services and other bureaucracy of life for single women

Equal pay for women (don’t get your hopes up 💀)

Countering homophobia. Like enough that being gay isn’t a reason to be beat up, but not enough that lesbiansexuality is actually seen as equal to heterosexuality, because that’s a fantasy that won’t happen 💀.

Abortion, because rape is endemic to most human cultures.💀

Rape shelters and prosecutions of rapists

Same-sex marriage, duh (and no-fault divorce because it’s convenient)

Pornography, because it inspires male sexual violence

Issues with divorce and child custody, if there are still some women in the culture who are being forced into marriages/raped in those marriages. But honestly not important to most lesbians unless they are worrying about a partner who is bisexual or exceptionally traumatized, so like much less important tbh (i said this was blackpilled!!☠️☠️☠️)

Other than fighting pornography, most liberal feminists agree with all of these priorities and lesbians should support/participate with them despite the fact that their reforms will not free all women, because OSA women do not want to fully free themselves. Lesbians should pursue these rights and not worry about broader cultural issues that are missing, because they mostly affect OSA women anyway.

Feminist issues that lesbians should work on within themselves, while giving up on any idea that the wider culture can/will improve significantly: 

Rejecting beauty standards / gender roles / female self-objectification and not shrinking/making themselves boring 🌟

Building actively positive attitudes towards homosexuality (duh)✨

Combatting denigration/devaluation of women relative to men overall 💫

It is completely useless to pay any attention to things like getting men to treat women better in romantic/sexual relationships (lame!) which is all het radical feminists dream about anyway. 

It’s also useless for lesbians to worry about issues like theoretical murky compulsory heterosexuality (as opposed to literal compulsory heterosexuality in cultures that don’t have love marriages), “cotton ceiling”, etc. that only political lesbians need to worry about because real lesbians will be lesbians if they have the minimal material freedom needed to do so. 

Are you also looking for charitable interpretations of Mein kampf, Audrey Hale’s screed, SCUM manifesto, Stalin etc. Or do you feel more naturally inclined towards compassion and interest for those who identify women as the source of their issues and the “just” group to oppress, than those who land on say Jews, republicans, men, or the bourgeoisie? I wonder what attitudes would give rise to such a bias, if it is present for you.

So I think this is in reference to my post about BAP. To be clear, I don't have any sympathy for people who want to oppress women, which you would know not only if you had read that post more carefully, but also if you've read this blog much at all. As for people who cite the bourgeoisie as a major source of society's problems... I'm pretty sure I'd agree with them! I don't want to "oppress" the bourgeoisie, but I want the social conditions that allow them to exist as such to be changed!

It would not be acceptable to oppress men, republicans, or Jews either, but I don't really know what you're getting at with this list of examples.

But yeah, as a general rule, I am looking to understand everything I read and every perspective I encounter. This doesn't mean interpreting them "charitably". In the context of that post about BAP, it means: if someone tells you they're unhappy, believe them! BAP is a misogynist and racist, and as I was pretty clear about, I have no sympathy for his misogyny or racism. But I do have empathy for his unhappiness, I am unsatisfied with cheap explanations like "well he must just be entitled" or whatever, and I want to understand it better. For the record I have been pretty open about applying the same logic to e.g. TERFs, to radfems that identify as misandrist or so on, to racists, to incels. I understand why some people would shy away from this kind of thing, but someone's gotta do it.

I think I've gotten a lot of new followers lately, and many of them may not have realized, like, what I'm about. Universal compassion and non-judgement are two values that I try to practice in all serious matters in life; sometimes they run afoul of the kind of the ways that the discourse expects you to talk about things. It is what it is.

So I made a comment on reddit where I started to sorta derail and I think the information is good enough to share here and in the trans tags for people not understanding wtf is up with all us “transandrophobia truthers.” 

This isn’t a particularly nuanced post. I left out how racism and ethnicity ties into trans men’s lives and “male privilege.” I think that’s an important part of the conversation and I’ll follow up with that in a reblog down the line. 

Anyway, context. I follow r/nottheonion, which posts actual headlines that sound like they should belong on The Onion, a popular satire news website that has an unfortunate record of their worst and most unbelievable headlines coming true. The particular headline here?

J.K. Rowling's new book, about a transphobe who faces wrath online, raises eyebrows

I’ve included the comment that I replied to for further context:

Reddit User: Did [JKR] ever say anything about trans men? I've only seen nasty things about trans women from her.

Me: Oh yeah. Reread the manifesto. About half of all explicit trans hatred is that trans men are women and girls trying to escape the perceived shackles of societal womanhood. I did a word by word breakdown of her manifesto because I got tired of being told (mainly by women) that JKR hadn't talked about trans men at all.

Plus let's not forget she showed her colors commenting on gender neutral language surrounding menstruation and pregnancy. Something that by and large does not effect trans women.

TERFs generally treat trans men, AFAB nonbinary folks, and CAFAB intersex folks as brainwashed and confused by the patriarchy and the people encouraging them to transition. They see using HRT as poisoning ourselves (T being poison is sadly such a common talking point in trans circles that I've seen young cis boys become scared of their own puberty) and top surgery as mutilation. They like to take pictures of barely healed phalloplasty scars to scare people too (nvm the fact that again, bottom surgery for men is under discussed in trans and even trans masc circles! People don't even know you can even get the necessary tools to get an erection or the other options besides phalloplasty!)

For the above group that are "too far gone" for TERFs to scare back into the closet, we are seen as monsters and gender traitors. They actively want us dead so we can't influence younger folks with our existence.

Oh and this isn't touching on corrective rape from TERFs. At all.

And as you can see there's a lot of leakage from general radfem ideology that leaks into mainstream and intersectional feminism. It's unfortunate because already trans masc folks are one of the most invisible groups in the trans community (the only other group I would consider more invisible are AMAB nonbinary folks, especially if they're not feminine and/or like masculinity). Trans men statistics are horrifically erased because they get recategorized as women.

A lot of trans men choose to disengage and "go stealth" because there's a lot of tangled up self loathing and reactivity towards masculinity in feminist, esp queer feminist circles. Of course, this leads to misconceptions like trans men have an easier time transitioning and have male privilege and completely ignores that a lot of trans masc folks can't or don't want to go stealth. And it ignores how conditional this male privilege actually is.

I'm also ignoring here how a lot of trans men disengage with queer spaces because of how unfriendly it can be. There's a variety of reasons, from people assuming they're straight (or actually being straight) to the general hostility that can be felt in the undercurrents in most gen queer feminist spaces.

This isn't to say that trans women don't have it worse. Hyper visibility and hyper invisibility are just two sides of the same coin at the end of the day, and this toxic mindset around men and masculinity hurts trans women just as much, if in different ways. But I hate seeing the hatred TERFs spew at trans men getting boiled down to nothing more than infantilization. Because while yes that is a lot of it and it's not something trans women get a lot of (because they're seen as men, so violent and dangerous and predatory), there's so much more and it's all just as bad as what women are getting day in and day out from TERFs.

To end on a more humorous note, my favorite instances of TERFs getting owned are when they're shown a celebrity photo and say "oh that's definitely a man" when... Nope. Just a woman. Showing they can't actually tell who is and isn't transgender

ok, here we go: Breakfast Anons Experience in Radfem/Terf tumblr (long post) (tw terf/radfem ideology, transphobia, homophobia, sexism, mentions of rape/SA)

so, earlier this year, i got pulled into the terf/radfem side of tumblr and was active in it, on and off, for about 3-4 months. i dont remember how i got in but it was lilwly something inoffensive that most would agree is a fundamentally good and important perspective to have, like how damaging the porn industry can be, female genital mutilation and abortion rights. looking back, i think it was that unrestrained defense for women that made me start going through their blogs because of course i dont think women should be mistreated or abused simply because they are women. i was never able to be pretty and easily feminine like the girls i grew up around so seeing that comradery around women who felt like i did made me feel seen.

unknowingly, that arguement for women spiralled into men being the sole problem, then men being useless scum that only perpetuate the patriarchy and then it was "all men are monstrous, porn-addicted, misogynistic, rapists in waiting who will do whatever they can to belittle, abuse, use and destroy women whatever chance they get so they should be eradicated for the greater good".

the radfems, the small circlejerk group that they are, would all reblog from and follow one another, and when i eventually got convinced to join the circle by making a seperate account for my own blog (yeah it was that bad) i found myself seeing the same posts over and over from the same 30/40-odd blogs that all agreed with each other and said the same things. that blatant and unquestioned hatred for men is extremely central to their beliefs, which i understood because, even besides the radfem mindset, im generally uncomfortable around men too, and they gave tangible reasons why i should be.

near all of them are lesbians or febfems (female exclusive bisexual females) and being a lesbian myself, the idea of being with a man romantically or sexually repulsed me like it did them so i felt accepted, finally, for who i was. theyd post and repost articles upon articles of "men pretending to be women" who had been charged with assault or rape of children and women and female prison inmates; they'd post and repost pdfs of famed radfem theory by Adrienne Rich (?) and books like The Scum Manifesto which is essentially their "bible"; theyd explain and reexplain society, the patriarchy and the world according to their logic, and because of that, I didnt question their calls for womens seperatism, for women to only be in relationships with other women (romantically/sexually or platonically), for male babies to be aborted without second thought and for all men to be wiped out from existence entirely. and of course THAT spiralled into trans women also being a big problem.

they preached that men are rapists and abusers who get off to it, and trans women are also rapists and abusers who get off to it so much they need to "pretend to be women" or, even worse, "pretend to be lesbians" to force "actual lesbians who dont like dick" to sleep with them. but at the same time, they kept preaching that trans men and afab nonbinary people are lost, innocent, manipulated, self hating lesbian girls/women who couldnt deal with the internalised homophobia and internalised misogyny so mutilated themselves to pretend to be men. and the trans men who "called themselves gay" are homophobic straight girls who have an addiction to gay porn and want to force "actual gay men who dont like vaginas" to sleep with them. there were even some "tehms" or "trans exclusionary homosexual males" in the group but they were few and far between.

the ideology is a self consuming and never ending spiral of despair, hate and misery. and one thing i learned from it is it is so, so easy to hate.

while in it, as much as part of me felt understood and finally seen by other women who experienced certain things and had some of the same thoughta as i did, i also felt so grimy from all the hate and bitterness and cruelty i was reposting and eventually posting myself towards trans and nonbinary people. i would log out and go back to my normal inclusive blog and feel so much guilt and disgust, partly for thw reasons i mentioned but also because i knew i was attracted to trans women and nonbinary people (not that i ever made that clear), both things of which the terfs claimed made me actually bisexual "because trans women are actually men" when i know for a fact im not. im gay through and through.

i knew it was all wrong but they explained awat my guilt too, one of them told me the guilt was because id been brainwashed to blindly support "trans activism" so it will feel incongruent but what im doing is in fact the right thing. so i couldnt or didnt do anything. i felt part of a community that was actually fighting for something tangible, something rooted in apparent reality. i felt like what i was doing was important for society. i was speaking out for the rights of women. how could that bw wrong? it's wrong, but doing so at the expense of others is wrong

eventually, the guilt got to me more than that self-appointed importance did and i ended up deleting the account after it spiked my depression. i couldnt believe what id done, couldn't comprehend the hate id perpetuated and the people i may have hurt. i felt horrible being part of a movement that attacked innocent people who just wanted to live for the sole reason that the way they wanted to live was different from the assumed norm.

and then, by some magical move by Fate, i came across a recently published horror novel by a trans woman named Gretchen Felker-Martin called Manhunt, which is the story of two trans women, an indigenous trans man, nonbinary people, a black female doctor, and a terf who all have to live, fight and survive through a biological apocalypse where men and anyone with high testosterone become cannibalising monsters. and it literally changed and saved my life. i mean that with all seriousness.

now my favourite book of all time, it opened my eyes to so much internalised transphobia i didnt know i had, gave me actual pride about my gender and sexuality and, despite how brutal and painful the novel is (while i highly recommend the book SERIOUS tw for rape, intense transphobia and general crimes against trans people and people of colour), it gave me hope beyond anything id ever felt. i felt truly seen, understood, and loved as a trans and queer person, and a person of colour (i am black), by that novel and it was the key to me finally leaving the radfem/terf mindset and ideology behind. and while im still on a journey towards healing, i am now of a mindset and belief that is inclusive, kind, loving, exalting and full of love for the ENTIRE intersectionl lgbtqia+ community.

and, scene.

Thank you so much for sharing! I’m glad you were able to get out of that space ❤️

I feel you on the guilt element as well. I wasn’t ever a full blown TERF, always respected trans folk for who they are, but I was an ace exclusionist and a “queer is a slur!” person - both of which terfs are often involved in - for a while up until I saw the damage that was going on, stopped and reanalysed. Now I’m way happier and a better, more inclusive person ❤️

Thanks for the book rec as well! I’ll deffo have to look into that ❤️

Hi! Since you've done a lot of post abt how the patriarcy hurts and affects men too, and how being a men doesn't make you an inherent oppresor for a lot of reasons. I'd like to know what you could thing about this post? Mostly the last post and it's tags, but if you want to you can tackle the discourse abt Valerie Solanas and the SCUM manifesto!

https://www.tumblr.com/beatifiq/720946967341105152

First red flag is that I already have that blog blocked so I'm sure we're in for a doozy.

Let's get into this. Anything indented is quotes; they are from multiple different users, all of them self-identified radfems.

---

I have never read the SCUM Manifesto; I understand it's a very cathartic piece of work for some feminists but I have never found the idea of erradicating men from the face of the Earth to be cathartic or "utopian", it seems rather dystopian and eugenicist to me. I can see why radical feminists and terfs are fond of quoting it; I can see why any woman who has been traumatized by men would find it soul-healing.

It's not a piece of literature for me, and that's all I can really say about it.

I also do have to agree that dismissing it as a piece of literature beacause the author happens to have a mental illness is ableism.

Sure - being called a pussy etc doesn't make a man a woman. Being a woman makes someone a woman, and that includes trans women.

"Radical feminism doesn't make a distinction between different groups of male people…From a radical feminist perspective, trans women and amab nonbinaries are men."

- Yeah, that's what makes radfems horrible people.

"The reason why many radical feminists don’t want to be called TERFs is because it’s a misnomer. Radfem efforts include trans identified females."

- Puhlease. I cannot barf hard enough. Radfem efforts do not include me or support me in any way, shape or form. Radfems actively harm me every chance they get.

"Just my take here: the reason why we’re unpopular is because we resist female social conditioning to be accommodating and to placate others."

- You're unpopular because you're transphobes and a lot of you think a future without males is a "utopia" instead of a eugenicist hellscape.

"Trans identified males still benefit on the basis of their male biology. Hormones, clothing, and cosmetic procedures do not obfuscate this truth, it only speaks to salience and extent of that privilege."

- They don't actually, you're just fucking ignorant and don't listen when people who aren't you open their mouths.

So overall, it's run-of-the-mill transphobia and radical feminism. Nothing particularly groundbreaking here. A refusal to acknowledge intersectionalism, the lumping of all men and all "males" into a single category of "evil oppressor who doesn't deserve any compassion at all", and the lumping of all "females" into a category of "forever oppressed unless we murder all men tee hee".

Hi! I relate to your post about finding popular radical feminist texts scientfically outdated, out of touch with modern agendas and kind of woowoo cringe. I find that it helps to think of them as political manifestos armchair psychologizing in order to agitate women into political activism, who more of less had to say things that were familiar enough to be recognized in a day where most of the thought WAS straight up awful. Kind of an, "i am whatever you say i am", or "i know what you are but what am i" tactic which certainly served a purpose there. I reccomend the author of Sexy But Psycho, her other books, and more over, its easier to get radfem analysis through interdisciplimary texts written by women to uncover the social makeup of women's oppression.

Sorry for the long ask!

Yeah, I see what you mean. I do think it’s worth reading older books, even if just to see where radfeminism came from. I think my main problem with Dworkin is the massive amount of love she receives from people on here vs say, Angela Davies or Audre Lorde who I’ve very much found are still relevant today.

As for Sexy but Psycho, I’ve heard the testimonies in the book were released against the victims will, so it’s not really a book or author I’m willing to support. I have read Invisible women though, which was very good. Planning on reading doing harm soon, with medical misogyny being my main interest, being the one area I might actually be able to do something long-term

Saw your separatist posts and I spotted a Scrote and defective in one of them in the replies 🤢 please block them, how the fuck do they even get here can non-separatist gender critical weirdos stop bringing the brain dead right to our posts, this is why I hate that so many posts have now bend focusing on troons instead of our main focus which is radical feminist theory and separatism I hate the word terf cuz now every Tom,dick and Karen is being led to our spaces bc they think they’re radfem

I do block men on sight (though I sometimes give in to the urge to argue first because it lets me blow off some steam) but I don't know what post you're talking about, so if he's not already blocked (which seems unlikely), I'm not blocking him tonight.

Troon posts are annoying, yeah. I get why we have to discuss it, but it's so clearly nonsensical I get frustrated that it's even a topic at all. How can anyone not see it? It seems like such a waste of time. But I suppose that's the whole point: if we're busy defending what we have (and the more nonsensical it is, the more efficient, because you can't win at chess against a pigeon blablabla), we don't have the opportunity to try for more.

People who are barely gender-critical and get mad when someone criticises piv calling themselves radfems drive me crazy too. But for as long as I've been here, I've always seen a majority of radfems being staunchly against separatism and pro sucking up to men, and there's no radfem manifesto as far as I know, so I suppose that's what radical feminism is after all.

Ultimately I think it's just a word to find other like-minded women, so I'd rather call myself pro-separatism. It seems more honest.

clarifying: i didnt mention radfems' transphobia because i genuinely dont know if it was a thing in the 70s (considering how little was known abt trans people even existing back then, i kinda doubt it, but idk tbh). anyway, i thought you might not have had the historical context for the manifesto, or that maybe you saw it linked somewhere and and decided to post it here too without reading it. but since you seem to believe its aphobic to dislike misinformation being spread, nevermind lmao

Dude, I was the first one literally providing context in the comments of that post, it’s not my fault that you jumped to conclusions and came in my inbox yelling about it. Also, you just made assumptions about something the authors of it literally never talked about. Were radfems shitty? Yeah, a lot of the time. Were these specific radfems shitty? We can’t know. But they wrote some good shit in that manifesto and that’s what matters to me. I don’t care for anything else because ultimately I’m not looking at the authors, I’m looking at the content of what they wrote. And it’s hella relevant to the asexual experience. Period.

I had two profound experiences today, extremely unrelated in context but both thought provoking after the fact. The first experience had to do with me getting my first library card in 18 years and how I was very anxious to go into the library for any reason other than to print something.  I will detail this experience in a different post but long story short, all of the embarrassment and shame I felt because of my learning disability melted away and I ended up spending nearly two hours just browsing books. I left feeling to included and happy, I actually cried tears of joy.  Fast forward to the second notable experience of my day. Tonight I went on a date with my flat mate to “Naked Girls Reading: The Feminist Propaganda Edition”. Naked Girls Reading is apparently a sort of “brand”, started in the US as a protest against the ways women’s bodies are usually sexualized when naked. The theory is exactly what it sounds like, performers are completely nude and read aloud to the audience.  I had never heard of this amazing concept, so I jumped at the invitation. ESPECIALLY since tonight’s theme was feminism. I figured naked women reading feminist works sounded AUHMAZING.  [Rest behind a cut for length and transphobia]

The event was hosted by a popular personality in the New Zealand LGBTQPIA scene. They are a self labeled transvestite that MC’s events as their drag king persona, Hugo Grrrl. I assumed, if it was hosted by a gender diverse person it was going to be fairly inclusive.  Welp, you know what they say about assuming. 

Things started promising as Hugo opened their monologue with my favorite greeting “Guys, gals and nonbinary pals”. Hugo then went on to talk about some of the topics of the night including body positivity, body hair, porn, sex work, sex positivity, etc. It sounded really exciting and inter-sectional, I was pumped.

Within the ten minute monologue there was also the disclaimer that “Although this is called “Naked Girls Reading”, gender is a spectrum and the binary is bullshit.” (woo, yeah!!) ”...We only call it that because it was started in America and we didn’t come up with the name.” (Wait, what?)

Ok... but you could literally just call it “Naked People Reading” or “Naked Folx Reading” or ANYTHING else if you want to TRULY be inclusionary. I wasn’t even concerned about the title UNTIL Hugo made the point to say gender binary is bullshit... but then to say “meh, we didn’t come up with the title we’re just being complacent in it” Was sort of shitty.  If you are trying to include people, then INCLUDE them. Don’t say “Hey I’m not transphobic, BUT....” There was no point of this disclaimer other than to point out you recognized a problem but would rather go along with it than change one word of the title of the show.  Things only went down hill from there. A few minutes later as Hugo was wrapping up the monologue they wanted to get the crowd pumped before introducing the performers for the evening. To do this, Hugo had “all the women cheer!” (which they did) then followed by “now all the men!” (which they did). It turned out it was just a set up to make the men a punchline of a very stereotypical “feminist hate men” joke. These jokes are always obnoxious and yes, I recognize Hugo was trying to connect to the large feminist audience so we could all laugh at how society views us...but again, we were back at only acknowledging the gender binary. 

Now I realize many people right now will think I’m being extremely cynical. “Kit, you can’t say someone is being trans exclusionary if they are a queer that self identifies as a transvestite!” But I can because they were.  If you are going to mention nonbinary people. If you are going to make a point of talking about how the binary is bullshit. If you want to have a disclaimer that gender is a spectrum. It’s ALL or nothing.  Inclusion isn’t “I acknowledged you, you should be happy” it’s “I acknowledged you AND included you with everyone else as if we’re all the same.

The monologue is over, I am properly uncomfortable and agitated, the performers come out. From the promises of topics, I expected diversity. Again, that nasty assuming sure got the better of me.

Instead I get two skinny women and one average sized woman. They all appear to be white (although one was painted head to toe in blue and pink body paint as a My Little Pony...and later I learned she isn’t actually white.) They’re naked. So I can tell body hair isn’t really happening. A bit of bush but perfectly smooth everywhere else. All have shoulder length or longer hair and present very feminine.  Idk, again, maybe I was just so cynical by this point that I let my critic get away with me. I just wonder how hard it would be to find a more diverse cast? Am I just too deep in tumblr culture to expect to see different size bodies at a feminist reading? Or people with actual body hair, especially since there was a point of mentioning it in the monologue? Tattoos? Scars? Short hair? Disabilities? More racial diversity? (Again, the one woc was painted blue. And I feel shitty for thinking she was white but they could have included dark skinned people too.)  Introductions are done. The de-robing has happened. We now have three naked women sitting on a couch. Let’s read “feminist propaganda”! Some pretty typical stuff, Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem, big names of the feminist movement. There was a reading of an MRA’s post from some MRA website. (Why are we giving MRA’s an audience at a FEMINIST reading?!) Intermission.  During intermission, I got up the courage to go speak to Hugo and mention why I was peeved at the start of the show with the women/men division of the audience. They shrugged and said “well it was a set up to a punch line” I smiled and replied, “I realize that but don’t you think trans folks are the punch line enough?” They tried to back track but it got awkward and I walked away. Hugo does some “feminist” trivia during the break. Throwing prize bags of tampons and chocolate to whoever shouts the correct answer. 

One question asks what does “SWERF” stand for. A woman yells the answer and Hugo repeats it back to the audience and says “Sex work exclusionary feminism isn’t feminism. Sex work is real work!” It would have been so easy to also educate about TERFs. They don’t. The irony is not lost on me. 

More trivia. I win one. I’m told, “Here enjoy these tampons!” I catch it and yell back, “Not all women have vaginas” I turn to the women at our table and say, “Hello, I don’t need tampons and I hate chocolate. Enjoy” They gladly accept. Back to the readings... A dramatic reading of Spice Girl lyrics. Some very heteronormative erotica. A reading of a radfem manifesto of the 70s (that included very acephobic commentary) And then, the woman painted as a MLP says she’s going to read Ivan E Coyote.  Now, for those of you who haven’t been blessed with reading their works or seeing Ivan perform (I just saw them again last week!), they are a trans writer from Canada. Very well known in LGBTQPIA circles. AMAZINGLY pure and moving stories and poems and “literary Doritos”. They are an amazing human being and have quickly become one of my favorite queer authors.  SO I AM STOKED!! This night has been so cishet heavy and I’m crank, I am READY to end it with Ivan. Ivan has written four of five books, has mountains of published poetry and she chooses to read a piece that is so personal to me. She prefaces this with a quick word about Ivan being an LGBTQ author. But fails to mention they’re a trans masculine person who identifies as a Tom Boy.  The piece starts out as a love letter to femmes who are often erased from Queer culture because they are “assumed” to be straight. But then turns to Ivan’s journey through figuring out they were trans and how they became jealous of femmes sometimes and how they will never be seen as who they are. How they will always be coming out of the closet over and over and over. Because their identity isn’t “visibly recognized” because it’s outside the binary.  I sob every time I hear this poem because it is so personal to me. The first time I heard it was when Ivan performed in Chch last August. I was in the midst of struggling with how the world saw me and this poem touched a part of me I thought no one would <i>ever</i> understand.  I sobbed again tonight. My flat mate patted my hand. She sobbed too for the same reasons. The journey to figuring out your identity can be so isolating, terrifying and lonely. But when you hear your story being told by someone who is on a stage, with an audience, talking as if your journey was the most normal and natural experience....it’s an emotional time.  After she finished, the performer stated “As a cis woman, I obviously do not identity with the narrator. I do however think this poem speaks to me as a femme. Because we are often overlooked.” (This gets cheers from the audience) I feel sick inside. This cis woman just spoke the very personal words of a trans person bearing their soul and claimed it as a poem for her.  No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to bend it to your whim. If you want to include poetry or stories about the trans experience, YOU FUCKING INCLUDE TRANS PERFORMERS.  Thank god the night was over.  My flat mate and I are sitting at our table deciding how to make our own event called “Naked Queers Reading” and how much better it would be. We’re minding our own business when out of the corner of my eye I see a crowd around the stage area.  Of course. There’s a man who has taken off his shirt to pose with the naked women so he can get his buddy to take his picture. Of fucking course there is. That’s when we left.  I don’t know if I am just lucky to live in such a comfortable Queer circle of friends that I’ve become blind to the world of heternormative, patriarchal bullshit or if I am truly too fucking cynical to go out in public...but fuck was I disappointed with tonight.  Anyway, if you made it through this entire post, thank you. I promise I’ll post a really lovely story about the library tomorrow. Right now I want to watch Ivan E Coyote performances on YouTube and drink my tea from my Unicorn Elixer mug. 

all you transandrophobia believers have GOT to get a fucking grip and actually listen to all the trans women telling you why you're wrong. if not one single trans woman is on your """"side"""" isn't that like a big warning sign that maybe your arguments are not as solid as you think they are. like if we remove all the instances of Trans from what you say you're literally just mirroring incel MRA freaks. you can talk about the issues trans men face without shitting over trans women (and tbh straight up lying) about it.

The list from t-e that I took time to organize for shem had a shocking amount of people who don't identify as men.

I don't know what reality you're from, but there's definitely trans women who agree that transandrophobia is A Thing.

Also, there's plenty of things I talk about that don't involve trans women being at fault. The TERF manifesto that Rowling wrote and is pretty evenly split between trans men and women hating? Talked about how media has buried all that shit and how fucking stupid it is for celebrities to go "trans women are women" and ignoring everyone else.

Reproductive healthcare for pregnant trans men or access to things like pap smears have nothing at all to do with trans women outside of like. People assuming trans women are asking for gynecological care.

This might be really shocking to you, but I do think MRAs have a point, even if the way they've twisted their point is utterly hateful. This happened when I was talking to an MRA about how feminism does help men and he asked me when was the last time feminism held a major even to talk about men's issues? I went to Google it to show there was something, however small, but I had nothing.

In feminist spaces, we tell men to step down and wait for their turn to talk about their issues, and we rightfully get mad when women's issues are derailed by men. But... I've not really seen where men get to talk about their problems in any meaningful way. I would post about this in trans masculine spaces and get shouted down by allies who didn't like that I was upset by what I saw happening in general trans circles. I found a single subreddit that allows men to talk about the lack of care for male education, emotional struggles, childcare, men being dv victims and assault survivors all this stuff that we say we care about within feminist circles, and these men talk about it in a way that aligns with feminism.

So MRAs got it wrong. They hate women and they use serious problems to try and twist everything as women's fault when it's not. Sorta like how radfems try and say everything is men's fault... when at this point in time. It's not.

There are a very few powerful people who are determined to keep the world exactly as it is, and yes, the majority of them are white men. But that doesn't mean that all the other men are to blame for upholding patriarchy. Women and children do it too. Because it takes actively undoing the shit you're taught to break away and realize what's truly wrong and do you know how much effort that is?

Especially when you're being told over and over again that you're the problem? That you're blessed and face no oppression, but in reality you're struggling and scared of the future and feel like everyone else around you?

Yeah no. Sorry not sorry I sound like an MRA, but I actually care about the men in society and how much they hurt.

please stop spreading misinformation w the asexual manifesto post. i know some asexuals now may relate to a few things, but that was not the intention, that asexual manifesto is to asexuality something similar that political lesbianism is to lesbians. it was made by a niche group of radfems, and despite what they say in it, it was basically political celibacy, they just didn't call it that bc it wasnt a religious thing or anything similar. it had nothing to do with not feeling sexual attraction.

First off, I’m not making people reblog it. My intention was purely to demonstrate that people were discussing asexuality way before the 2000s. Because yeah, their definition absolutely does apply to asexuality as a asexual orientation, even if maybe they meant something different, since a lot of asexuals related to what’s in the Manifesto. And if we relate, is it really that irrelevant in terms of content? Can’t it really be that other than political this was a legitimate expression of a sexual orientation, even unbeknownst to its own authors? Also because in it, the authors express a state of well-being connected to their lack of sexual activity, and most people just can’t live without sex, or can but will definitely miss it. These women reported a benefit from not having it, which definitely checks out with sex-repulsed asexuals.

Also I wonder why you don’t want people to know about this to the point of somehow asking me to stop other people from reblogging the post. I have my own theory, but I’m ready to hear your reasoning for wanting people to not know about this historical document.