The fact that @staff has completely obliterated the John Mulaney tag and there’s no posts to be found on here about him, when a lot of us (speaking for myself as a gentile autistic/ADHD mid-20’s person) were referencing his jokes for at least a couple years…..

Do the same thing for radfems and TERFs and Neo-Nazis and spam bots. Please. It fills me with so much anger that that’s a thing that’s so prevalent on here.

This site could be so much kinder to so many of its queer users by doing that. I would like to be able to see and reblog trans women’s selfies without them being marked as ‘‘‘Mature Content’’’, like how there’s a million #transmasc and #enby selfies on here. I would like to see and interact with people’s blogs that don’t look just like me.* And it would be such a nice change to not worry about reblogging from the bigots on here.

*trans women! Fat people! People of color! Fat trans people of color! Sex workers! etc.

y’know I respect a fan’s choice about how they want to view mizu but tiny ramble about it here. this isn’t any sort of discussion or ‘matter of fact’ essay, just a simple rant about headcannons about her being TRANS and her SEXUALITY.

Warning: extremely long.

Given the numerous limitations that would arise from traveling as a woman, I find it very difficult to understand why some people believe Mizu is transgender when it's obvious that she is hiding this information in order to survive. This was particularly true during the Edo period, when women were dehumanized and treated like objects because we only ever see them as a slave or working in a brothel (majority of the show at least). They were also seen having to depend on men for nearly everything, as demonstrated in the episode where the mother and daughter were left outside to freeze to death since her husband was not present to accompany them. Along with that subtle hints were presented to us that show how comfortable she is when in touch with her femininity like a few moments in the episode where she came back to Swords-father Eiji’s hut. Though, I can definitely see why people would label her as transmasc with the theory that she must’ve grown so accustomed to this sort of lifestyle, she’d perhaps just become transmasc in the later episodes. We’ll never know!

Next, not gonna lie, I’m insanely guilty of viewing Mizu as a bisexual women despite feeling that she is leaning more toward heterosexuality in terms of her sexuality. I have the biggest fattest crush on her so I have no problem stating how much I'm crying and wailing over this. Like c’mon, let's be real, I guarantee that 98% of simps are female, and I’m sure every single one of us has mentioned once that we can all treat her better than Mikio and Taigen. Speaking of Taigen, I HAVE to admit that him and Mizu do have the best chemistry compared to everyone in the show. It’s clear in the way she pulls him away from those shooting arrows, knocks him out becahse she fears for his safety if he follows, saving him from Fowler's castle even though she could have easily just left him to die and slain Fowler, etc. At first, I would’ve assumed she’d have trauma with men especially after Mikio’s betrayal which might’ve led her to stray away from any romantic attraction with men—or anybody in general. Honestly, I have dedicated my time to search for ANY hint (ok not rlly) that she might be attracted to women, but the only time I ever see her become flustered by one is when she appears to be taken aback by the prostitues she tried to ask for directions to the Shindo Dojo. Plus, there were only two occasions where she interacted with Akemi that people use to automatically ship them which is when she saw Akemi in her carriage (not sure of the specific name) and pinned her down in Madame Kaji's brothel. I can’t imagine them as a couple in later episodes, something I’m been dying to see. Though, it’s hard to determine what was running in her mind during the scene where they both stole glances at each other, especially since there was no sort of indication in her inner thoughts or emotions, so it’s normal to assume the above as well. (Despite that, I’m still rooting for AT LEAST bisexual Mizu because for the love of god and for the sake of all of the gay women here, PLEASE. /j)

I may make jokes about these headcannons like playfully hating on the TaiMizu ships. All in all, I’m sure the fans are mature enough to understand that these are meant to be lighthearted jokes and that people interpret a character and show in various ways and it’s normal! Even if I can’t comprehend the theory or feel as though it is a little too complicated/really negotiable, remember to support what you want, ship what you want, make whatever headcannons, nobody’s stopping you! Don’t be too afraid to just announce what you feel about the show. All I ask is to avoid SERIOUSLY cancelling someone just because of their own feelings and opinions. In the end, they’re stilll fictional characters (😞😞) who have no sort of physical form of any sort so do whatever, as long as it isn’t really THAT problematic in a sense (e.g. romanticising rape), go for it.

(Sorry for bringing her sexuality into this, I’m aware of how the show is definitely not centering on this and not every single thing has to be LGBTQ-related but I noice it’s something constantly brought up in the fandom. As someone whose phrasing and essay writing skills suck, I’m still learning bit by bit about how the world works in terms of differing views on things. I may not support your idea of a character but I RESPECT it! If I came off as rude, I’m sorry, remember it’s just my random midnight thoughts🙏)

"I'll also say that this is sometimes supported by the trans man creators, like Jammidoger. It's not just the trans women, it's not just the essayists […]" & "you should feel gender affirmed from the violence done to you because that's just how men are actually".

Thing is, until I found trans men/masc people talking about transmisandry/transandrophobia online, every time I tried interacting with my local trans community, especially with other trans men/masc people, has included them all parroting or agreeing with the above sentiments, and it's why I stopped going to my local support group or interacting with them at all. Hearing those things from some well-known and respected trans women and men in our local community and getting pushback when I wanted to talk about trans masc issues, was just so disappointing.

Which is why I'm happy Jessie made that video and came to the conclusion she did. I left a comment just about my opinion on the matter, that while yes I've felt left out on her videos and wish she included our perspective more often, I also remind myself that she and her co-writer are both trans femme. So I don't take it as intentionally or even unintentionally leaving us out, it's a side effect of people writing what they know, however, that's exactly why I watch her, to get a better perspective for myself of trans women/femme issues.

But there were also lots of trans men and masc people in the comments who said a lot more about what our issues are and the harm it does to exclude us, how we do face similar or even the same kind of violence for the same reasons as trans women and femme people, and that often, her exclusion of us in her videos (especially the Barbie one) is adding onto the already exhaustive history of transandrophobia from within the trans community. While I've not changed or added to my comment, in the face of those others, it felt lacking, but I'm also really kinda exhausted at this point, since I've been fighting against biphobia from both cishet and other queer people most of my life now, so in the face of transandrophobia, I just have no more fight in me and have resorted to elevating the voices of others who do.

Sorry for the rant, you don't have to respond, I guess I just wanted to say thank you for getting a ball rolling and here's hoping it goes farther than other attempts before this.

Hey! I think I actually saw your comment, I thought about it a lot too which is is cool that it's bringing me full circle here but I do also agree in part that because they are trans femmes their thoughts and opinions are bound to be almost exclusively from their perspective. I do also watch for that perspective in part as well, but I feel that bigger trans creators who talk about trans topics, need to remember that there isn't just that one kind.

They have the opportunity to make a difference, to give others a voice, a voice which severely lacking in these spaces. I'm not going to wholesale blame them for perpetuating transandrophobia or anything, but if you're making a video on trans experiences and then leave out a crucial part of that experience, or at worse, uncritically repeat those same ideas as a bigger creator with lots of followers, it can have a serious negative impact on members of that groups and reinforces it, transandrophobia. This reminds me of the video that Abigail Thorne did called Beauty, Food, Mind. A lot of that video is her talking about how fatphobia affects HER, a thin beautiful actress, and doesn't really even mention much of fat struggles, or get fat perspectives, and she gained a lot of criticism within the fat youtube community for it because she had an opportunity and the didn't take it, making fatphobia only about thin people instead. I will be honest, I haven't had much of an irl queer community, I have my friends and I have gone out and interacted, but I'm disabled, and poor. I don't have the chance to go to any sort of community events or anything other than maybe a drag show every now and again especially here were I live now, I moved and am back in my home state, so it does make me nervous to even seek out and find a local community. online it's easier to brush off that kind of thing, not being considered or being talked down to or ignored, and tbh gaslit, but in real life? In my own home area, in my real domain?

I'm not sure I'd know how to cope with that rn, especially because I too have had some, let's just say not great experiences with in few irl trans people semi community type groups.

Lots of people are hurting and they take it out on each other, so I feel like I have to put on a persona, or be more femme to even be taken seriously and that sucks. So yeah, it's a breath of fresh air to be able to talk about transandrophobia online with other men and I'm happy happy happy we have this, but It is disappointing and I think it shows historically why trans men have tended to keep to ourselves.

Hello, this is my first time requesting/communicating anything on Tumblr, so sorry if I’m awkward.

(I also just saw the movie today)

Can I request a TMNT Mutant Mayhem x reader for a female reader on their period? For all the turtles? How would they react? Could it also be comforting?

I’m sorry if anything I said was confusing.

If this makes you feel uncomfortable then you don’t have to, and I’m sorry if it does

Let me tell you this right now,all of them needed to have an explanation of a period and what it is. They lived in the sewers all their lives what do you except them to know about women?

𝓛𝓮𝓸💙

-he tried his hardest to understand what was going on

-he was definitely sad that you were in pain,and when he heard it happens every month,he nearly started crying he felt so bad

-he actually owns a heating pad for the simple reason he got it as a gift for his dad,but he somehow didn’t need it(he thought splinters old man bones would have needed it) so he does give you that for your cramps

-your literally laying on an bed an HES wimpy on the floor kneeling at the bed in case you need anything,he literally jumps at any opportunity to help you,he even offered to carry you to the bathroom when you told him you needed to change your pad.

𝚁𝚊𝚙𝚑❤️

- he deadass looks at you once you explain what’s a period is and asks “do you need a bandaid or something?” You have to explain it more to him until he finally understands everything.barely

-he lets you have anything from his secret stash of snacks,and believe me he got the goods.Twix,Hershey bars,Cheetos,airheads he got atleast one of everything in there

- surprisingly out of all of the turtles he’s really warm so there’s no bead for a heating pad just wrap your legs around him while you cuddle

ԃσηηιє 💜

-once you had your first period when you guy were in your relationship,he immediately started tracking it so he knew when he needed to get you important things

-he made a heating pad for you believe it or not,let me tell you it works better than anything you could find at a store

-you need anything?he’s finishing your sentences before you even say what you need

-he playing music for you,bringing you snacks

-anything you need my boy is there

ɱıƙɛų 🧡

-he has made you a period playlist,he shoves a pair of headphones on your ears while he forces you to take a nap

-snacks for days!(specifically 7)

-learns you pad/tampon size so he knows what to buy(he also doesn’t have any shame in buying you period products)

-I hc he’s trans so this is kinda hard for me

-but if u agree with my headcanons he def knows what do,and sometimes he can help u out

Thank you

I tried so hard not to be parasocial about it but this letter thing is fucking me up, man. I've written a few overly flattering letters to evil government officials before myself. but how did someone convince all these reasonable-seeming people (strangers that I do not know) to publicly sign this centrist-ass letter? I understand they probably got Taika Waititi and Jack Black with the everyone can share, peace and love on the planet earth wording, but Jordan Peele? what. how did that happen. it makes no sense to me.

Ok I'm gonna front load my position on the Israel-Palestine conflict before I answer this ask so that no one can accuse me of shit I didn't say. If you want to see what I have to say on the letter itself, scroll to the big font. I'm as anti-zionist as they come I don't think that governments should even exist at all, I consider Israel to be an illegitimate state the same way I consider the country I live in (USA) to be an illegitimate state. I think that if we're going to have countries at all, which we shouldn't, that country should be Palestine and individual Jewish people certainly should be welcome to move there for whatever reason they want, including religious, but that the people who already lived there shouldn't be displaced because of it. And if they wanted me to support Israel on the basis of Jewish people needing somewhere to go after the Holocaust, they should have put Israel in Europe in 1945 instead of in the Arabian Peninsula in 1918. I tend to think the hard core zionists who aren't Jewish are trying to deport diaspora Jewish people somewhere based on the way I have heard other goyim speak about Israel. I am sympathetic to Jewish people who believe this has nuance but ultimately I cannot condone the displacement of Palestinians. That position might lose me followers but really I don't care.

Now that I have gotten that out of the way

(This first paragraph is for everyone who's out of the loop and has only seen the Tumblr posts about this issue, Anon does seem to know what I'm about to say) I do also think this whole thing with the letter is being blown out of proportion a little bit? That's not to say it's a good letter, it does contain language which blames Hamas for the conflict which is the western propaganda line so that countries like the United States and Britain don't have to admit that they caused and are funding this whole operation because they hate brown people. However celebrities are rubes who fall for government propaganda all the fucking time. What the letter itself actually calls for is Biden to facilitate the release of Israeli hostages. I consider this letter to be the vaguely Zionist equivalent of that time all those celebrities got on zoom and sang imagine because COVID was happening. I certainly doubt that the man who produced Get Out and Us supports the genocide and I also question whether the man who directed Reservation Dogs does either. Most likely they were asked "will you sign a letter calling for the release of Israeli hostages?" And they said "well releasing hostages sounds nice."

(this paragraph is for anon) Despite the fact that I think "these 70 celebrities condone Palestinian genocide" is incredibly reductive I would encourage you to see these people as human beings, and more specifically idiot millionaires who are out of touch. I believe that Taika Waititi understands the Maori struggle and generally tries to be a nice liberal but ultimately he is a man who grew up in the 80s with a lot of money who has an interest in keeping that money. His gaff transphobia tweets (which I didn't think were that bad considering he made it in 2013 and wasn't even talking about trans women, but they were still transphobic) and his pearl clutching during the BLM riots made this abundantly clear (both of these incidents are Taika Twitter originals that people have sent me trying to get me to hate him and I saw both of them and was like "that's what I thought you'd say old man"), and the fact that he married Rita "blackfish" Ora. I'm way less plugged in to what Jordan Peele is doing because I've never had an anon send me his call out post but I'm going to assume that the same thing is true of him: he understands the struggle of black people in the United States, despite this moment of basedness I probably politically disagree with him on many many counts. As for Jack Black he donates to autism speaks so he's coming for me and the Palestinians. Although that said so does Gaga and I'm still very much a fan of her.

I've basically had to come to terms with the fact that no celeb that I like the work of agrees with me about politics because all of them are rich and I am a communist. That's not going to stop me from liking their work, it's not going to stop me from bothering some of them at cons when I get the chance. Because again they're just guys. And most guys are idiots. I am an idiot about a lot of things. We don't expect Taika Waititi or Jordan Peele to know about every conflict in the world we expect them to make entertaining and perhaps insightful movies. I am not here because I think Taika agrees with me on all things. I am here because I want to watch a rom com about gay men who murder people, one of whom is just like me for real.

Anyway do your research

Light spoilers for the Barbie movie, but mostly a reflection about myself and gender. (You also don’t need to have watched the movie to read this.)

Something that really resonated with me was the part of the movie where it was said that in the context of the gender roles of our patriarchal society, in order to be attractive to men, women act like they are more vulnerable, less intelligent, and generally helpless, insecure and in need of men’s assistance. The Barbies eventually weaponize this, but it is still a statement about something that projected me back in my high school years.

Back then I had no idea I was queer or anything (it was the mid 00s, we were fed a steady diet of Bush era conservatorism, islamophobia and fascistoid ideas on the corruption of the west and whatnot - the future queer-friendly climate was baaaarely a germinating seed thanks to cultural milestones like Brokeback Mountain, but damn it was a different world, really) but I was perfectly, acutely aware that I did not perform femininity in the way the girls around me did.

I had no knowledge of the concept of performing femininity or anything of that sort, but I remember being very perceptive about the difference in which I related to the “opposite sex” and in which my female friends did (not all of them, of course, but in retrospect they likely were not all heterosexual).

I knew that I couldn’t act like them even if tried, but also that I wasn’t actually interested in trying. Part of me was saddened by it, kind of regretted it, because I believed that I would never be attractive to boys unless I acted like the other girls. (Turns out I didn’t actually care, but back then I just assumed it was something that one just cared about, and blamed my “shyness” for my unwillingness to try going out with boys. Turns out that if someone wants to bang guys, they go and do it. Wild, right?)

But another part of me just couldn’t... summon the willingness to try. I didn’t want to act like I was insecure of my own intelligence and abilities compared to boys’. I didn’t want to act like I didn’t know my own value. I didn’t want to act like I thought I was stupid, and that I needed (wanted) a boy’s support and assistance.

I saw boys as competition, not as objects of desire, not as something to attract. I wanted to show that I was just as smart as the smartest boys. Heck, I wanted to show I was smarter. Later I learnt I was trans and asexual, which explains why I saw myself as a peer to the boys, not as a potential girlfriend for them.

(The biggest regret I have about my adolescence was that I didn’t realize that I should have tried to hang out with the boys more than the girls, but back then we self-segregated based on sex a lot, kind of crazy to think about now.)

This post doesn’t really have a moral, except maybe that it’s so incredibly fundamental for kids to know about the facets of gender and sexuality. I was smart, I understood things that I was not given the tools to conceptualize but I still managed to understand some of them, but I still lacked fundamental tools to understand the whole picture.

But also that gender non conformity just... happens. I didn’t have the conceptual tools to understand any of it, but I was gender non conforming and I fundamentally knew it, even if I didn’t have the words for it. You don’t catch gender non conformity from the outside; you have it, and from the outside you learn to understand what it means and how to navigate the world the way you are.

I’ve felt suddenly very close to my teenage self thanks to that scene in Barbie. She was a girl, she didn’t have the tools to be anything but that. But she was a girl in a way that didn’t conform to what being a girl was supposed to be according to the gender roles of the world she was in.

As a child, I was absolutely a girl. I played with Barbies with other girls. I wore dresses and skirts and read books with girl protagonists and watched movies and shows with girl protagonists. You can see the clues of my future gender and sexuality in my childhood, but only if you know what you’re looking for. I was indeed a girl. But I didn’t grow into a woman, I grew into something else, and teenage me - the age when you are in between childhood and adulthood, the age I was supposed to go from girl to woman but didn’t - was in between those. Still a girl, but without the germs of womanhood.

I wore a pink Barbie shirt to the movie theater (literally a Barbie shirt, with a print of several Barbie dolls on it). It felt like a homage to girl me. It was also campy enough to feel right for my current me, of course. But mostly it felt like something that had to do with my past girl self. The entire movie felt like something that had to do with my past girl self and how that intersect with current me. I’m not a woman, but I was a girl, and the movie said something about my past girl self, but also to current me, the one who knows they’re asexual and trans. It’s hard to put into words, but the fact that the movie said something about non-conformity to stereotypical gender roles and to heteronormativity (including allonormativity) through the lense of girlhood femininity... it felt like something that wrapped together past me and current me.

We’re not two different mes. It’s still me. We are one person. I am one person. I am that girl and this transmasculine person. I am me. (And I am Kenough. We are all Kenough even without what society says we must have to be complete.)

Hi! I just found your page and I’ve recently been trying to get into radical feminism. I found reddits like /fourthwavefeminism and I thought they were pretty eye opening. I just don’t know if I can get on board with the whole trans thing. Trans people have never bothered me (personally) as a woman so I would really just like to hear another woman’s opinion on how they negatively affect us. (This is genuine curiosity as a woman who does want to identify with radical feminism but is unsure.) If you dont wish to answer I understand but I thought I should try to ask anyway as I love your posts.

hey girly ! thank you so much for the ask! and ill check out that reddit group!!

as for your question:

im going to start this off by saying i am in no way denying that gender dysphoria is a real disorder. it is real and hard to live with, but i do believe that there are better ways to deal with it than going into surgery and socially transitioning. (like taking care of your other existing mental health problems, improving style of life, going to therapy?????)

just like body dysmorphia, it is something that affects how you view yourself and your body, but nobody is going and promoting plastic surgery to those with body image issues.

in my stance and radical feminism in general, it is harmful to women because males, that have been oppressing females for centuries, are now pushing us out of own spaces and redefining our “labels” with their male privilege. it also re-enforces harmful gender roles and stereotypes, as the ideal “transition goal” of most TIMs is a bimbofied sexually appealing feminine woman.

its worth noting that some TIMs are attracted to transgenderism because of kinks like forced feminization/sissy, consensual non consent, ddlg, or even the idea of being a lesbian. this is inherently sexist because its showing that they see us and our existence as something to jerk off to.

on the topic of trans identified females, or ftms:

i think that most females that are attracted to the idea of being transgender because of how it is perceived socially by media. in quarantine, we saw an influx of TIFs (myself included 😐😐) because people were lonely, and wanted a community where they felt accepted. i also believe that most TIFs ultimately identify as male as a subconscious way to escape misogyny.

apologies if this is too long, i tried to split it up into smaller paragraphs so its easier on the eyes.

TLDR; TIMs enforce negative stereotypes for women (therefore upholding the patriarchy and male supremacy!) by their rampant consumerism and view of womanhood as “dress makeup long hair painted nails big boobs vagina that smells like flowers”, and TIFs are subconsciously attempting to escape misogyny.

I don’t have anyone else to ask, so here I am. What do you think about the term “boy lesbian” ? I just saw a TikTok where a person said they were a boy lesbian not a woman lesbian? I got the same vibe from that as when a lot of people on TikTok tried to say identifying as lesbian was excluding an it should be called non men loving non men?

well my short answer is that i think boy lesbians are cool + sexy + i wish they would all come over 2 my house so we could kiss w tongue <3 however i am sensing from ur message that this is perhaps a concept that u are a bit wary or skeptical about (? might be reading tone incorrectly but that is the vibe i'm getting lol) so i will put a longer answer under the cut:

so i feel like what you're asking when you say "what do you think about this" is essentially "do you think people should be able to call themselves 'boy lesbians'" which. is a source of online discourse that i typically try to avoid because i think discourse about who's "allowed" to identify a certain way in the queer community is basically pointless and does more harm than good. like, at the end of the day, there's really no use in policing who's "allowed" to call themselves what, because people can literally identify themselves however they want and you can't control that, because identity is an inherently personal and subjective experience. and so anytime people do start trying to strictly police identity + draw clear boundaries around who's "allowed" to use which labels, usually the result is just alienating and ostracizing other queer people who we should be in community with, as we share overlapping political struggles.

but. looking specifically at the term "boy lesbian" (and terms like it). i know a lot of people immediately get up in arms going "the whole point of lesbian is that there's NO BOYS!!!!!" but. personally i do not think that's true. every label currently used by the queer community is historically and contextually specific; most labels like 'gay' 'lesbian' and 'trans' are umbrella terms that include broad and varied communities of people who do not all share exactly the same identities or experiences. and the label 'lesbian' as an umbrella term has not always been used + conceptualized historically the way it's used today; it has also not always been 'exclusively women who aren't attracted to men' or whatever other definition people try to claim. many lesbians, especially gender nonconforming lesbians, have complex + nuanced + fraught relationships to gender + womanhood, and there has specifically always been a lot of overlap in (using today's terms) transmasculine and lesbian communities. leslie feinberg's stone butch blues comes immediately to mind as one example of lesbian experience that does not align simply or perfectly with womanhood and is much more nebulously transmasculine. at the end of the day, it's impossible to draw strict definitional boundaries around umbrella terms like "lesbian," because to do so will always inevitably fail to account for certain people who do identify with the term--and what right does anyone have to tell someone else that their personal experience of identity isn't "allowed?"

like - defining lesbianism as either centered around womanhood or positioned against manhood both inevitably devolve into gender essentialism. if you say "lesbians are women who love women," that requires you to provide a strict definition of "woman," something that is essentially impossible without resorting to gender essentialism. if you say "lesbians are nonmen who love nonmen," then you run into the same problem with defining "men." this is because both "men" and "women" are also historically + contextually specific umbrella terms used to define social categories of people, and not some sort of pre-existing inherent natural identities.

so then you might be saying--but wait a second, if all these labels are so fluid and nonspecific and personally defined, then what's the use of labeling anything!!! aren't you just saying that none of it means anything?!

no, not at all! what i'm saying here is that trying to draw strict boundaries around labels that have to do with gender + sexuality is at best pointless and at worst harmful, because gender and sexuality are inherently personal experiences and you can't police someone's own sense of self, nor should you try to. but there are three areas where labels are useful and do matter:

1 - personal value

labels are useful for individuals trying to understand themselves and how they relate to the world. people can find comfort or joy or simple understanding by labeling themselves in relation to the world around them; this sense of labeling is deeply personal and up to each individual in terms of how/to what extent they want to partake in it

2 - community

umbrella terms like "woman" "lesbian" "man" "trans" etc are all useful in socially specific contexts for identifying shared experiences + building community. if i say to someone "i'm a lesbian," and they say "oh i'm a lesbian too," i'm not going to assume that we have the exact same experiences of gender + sexuality that fit some made-up set of rules, but i am going to recognize that this person has certain experiences which overlap with my own, and we can build a community around those experiences. this is the way that basically any label works in a social context--if i say "i'm american" and someone else says "oh me too," i wouldn't just assume that we've had the exact same "american" experiences, because america is a vast country with a huge diversity of people + lifestyles + environments etc etc, y'know? social labels like these are useful for identifying broad overlap in experiences, but because they encompass such broad groups of people it's silly to try and make strict rules about who's "allowed" in the group--especially if your goal is to build community

3 - identifying + naming political struggles + oppression

this follows along the same lines as point 2 -- basically, most queer labels function as umbrella terms meant to bring together people of varied experiences + backgrounds who share common sites of oppression + common political struggles. like, historically, this has been the center of queer community-building--the fact that we are all being oppressed by the same people in overlapping ways. when i tell you "i'm a lesbian," that sentence does not tell you all that much about my own, individual, personal experience of gender. but it does tell you a lot about how i am politically positioned in the world and the kinds of political struggles i might face, and that's what makes that label so socially meaningful. like, the purpose of these labels is not to give everybody insight to the nuances of personal identity; it's to build community + identify our shared struggles with each other.

and i think one reason this discourse gets so heated in online spaces is that people get really angry about the idea of, like, "well what if someone calls themself a lesbian to infiltrate lesbian spaces!!!" which. i mean a lot of that fearmongering is rooted in transphobia quite honestly, but. at the end of the day, if someone is identifying themself as a lesbian, i'm going to assume that they have a good personal reason for doing so, and what matters to me will be knowing that we share a political struggle. i trust that if i encounter someone who's just trolling and "pretending" to be a lesbian or whatever i'll be able to recognize it and just....choose not to interact with that person. but honestly i don't even really think that actually happens--like i said, i think a lot of the fear that drives people to try and create strict definitional boundaries around the term "lesbian" is rooted in transphobia.

and i think something else driving a lot of this online discourse surrounding queer labels is like....this emphasis on identity labels as primarily a personal identifier rather than identity labels as primarily a community-building tool. like, there seems to be an emphasis particularly in online spaces + amongst certain groups of queer people to really want to micromanage identity + create specific rules + definition for each label so that, like, you're getting as much personal information as possible about someone who tells you that label, because you know they're following these detailed rules. but like. a) you truly are not entitled to personal information about anyone's individual experience of gender and/or sexuality and b) that's not the point of these labels!!!!! like i promise you it is so much more important to just accept that these are umbrella terms with nebulous boundaries so that you can take a step back and evaluate the social context in which they're being used in order to then build community. it is okay if there aren't strict rules and definitions! what matters more is being able to look at a specific contexts + the way a broad term can be applied differently in those specific contexts.

anyway. last thing i will say to this whole point is that i personally am someone who identifies to a certain extent with terms like boy lesbian or boydyke, in that my own sense of gender is much more centered around dyke than it is womanhood and i don't necessarily experience lesbianism as something centered around women/womanhood. my lesbianism feels more closely tied to gendernonconformity, genderqueerness, and overlaps a lot with experiences i've heard transmasculine people speak about. but lesbianism is still central to my identity, as i am politically positioned in society as a lesbian and it is the best umbrella term to give people a sense of my identity at a glance, and thus generally the best term for me to position myself within queer spaces + to seek out community. so i understand on a personal level why people might identify as a 'boy lesbian,' and hopefully from this personal anecdote you can understand why someone might too! if u have any questions or anything feel free to shoot me another message; i'm trying to cover a lot of ground in this response so i didn't fully expand on like. every single point bc that would have taken forever lol

Hey Gin this might be a silly thing to ask, but how did you realize you were trans? Cause ever since I saw your trans Stan and Ford I think I had some sort of relivation, it started with just really enjoying the art you drew to me feeling some sort of envy. Either that I want to dress more masculine or that I actually want to be a man, cause honestly when I look at your trans stans I just feel so much gender envy (jealousy?) And on my last period I had a whole crying fit over it starting, which has never happened before. I just don't know if this is actually what I'm feeling or if it isn't. I've had thoughts of telling my mom and fearing the consequence. This is just all so new and I'm honestly scared. I figured I'd ask you since I look up to you and from what I've seen you are quite wise. I don't really know why I have so much self doubt and constantly flip flop over things. It's frustrating, I just wish I could be certain about something for once. Sorry about this, I'm a mess really.

It’s not silly to ask. My answer is unfortunately a little silly, because I’m a goober. I also typed A LOT so its all going under a read more

So, I was 16 and on tumblr even more than I am now, and I was (still am) friends with a trans woman who reblogged a post that was like “Just trans girl things: eating dark chocolate because it has substances similar to estrogen” and I went “Haha i guess I should stop eating it.” followed by “…why do I feel that way” and THAT was followed by quite the crisis.

Trans men weren’t as well known about back then, so I was like “Well, it means nothing, since only women can be trans”. And then I found out men could be trans too and that pushed my crisis further along. And I started to think. About how I liked when people defaulted to male pronouns for me on the internet, or how when i was a kid I would use a crazy amount of shampoo to make my hair look short and flatten my chest in front of the mirror and look at it. Things like that. And I got upset because “no i can’t be trans that’s impossible”. I would google things like “how do you know if you’re trans”, “quiz to see if you’re trans”, ect.

But the idea of being seen as a man was exciting. It was tantalizingly exciting. And I knew it could be possibility for me someday, and I knew that made a part of me happy and I couldn’t un-know it.

Final straw was a nonbinary person I had been following made a post about how they were going to start taking testosterone. And instead of feeling happy for them I just got mad and started sobbing to myself. Because I was so extremely jealous. So jealousy absolutely has its place in figuring things out.

You should think. Think about attaining the things you’re envious about. Does this make you happy? It’s okay if it’s upsetting or scary at the same time. Change often is. But if it makes you happy, excites you, gives you hope for the future, it’s worth thinking more about.

-

You don’t have to jump into telling your mom right away (and I wouldn’t really recommend it till you’re a little more sure of yourself). You can go at whatever pace you want to. I didn’t tell my mom (or anyone in my real life at all) till I was like, 20. And I’d known for 4 years at that point. You’ve sent me a tumblr message, so I’m assuming you’ve got an account here. I’d say asking your friends on this website to address you as male would be a good way to ease into things. And you can see if you like that or not.

For how you dress, again, you can ease into it. Personally it made me happy to dress in athletic clothing (especially tank tops- to show off my non existent guns), or to dress like a greaser (Though I preferred a black t shirt to a white one), or a golfer. None of those things particularly scream ‘man’ but they were man enough to me. You can find things man enough for you. If you want to try out a binder and think you can get one without anyone noticing, my first ever one was a Tri-top from Underworks. They’re like $30 or so. I was able to get away with buying it because I was a cosplay nerd so I just said it was for that.

If you’re the type of person who owns makeup- you could try to find some time alone just to have an experiment of mimicking drag king makeup, or makeup for cosplayers doing male characters. I did that once early on, and while it looked admittedly goofy, it made me ecstatic at the time.

-

Er sorry for things getting so long. But I just want to say lastly that self doubt is both normal and okay. And thinking far in the future (ie- things like coming out to people or hormones or anything like that) might scare you. But you can take things one step at a time if you want to. Play with just looking at clothes, making outfits on pinterest or whatever, imagining scenarios where people address you as male, thinking of names you might like. See what makes you happy, and expand on the things that do from there.

And regardless of what you discover, in the end you will have learned more about yourself. And that's always a good thing.

cw// suicide/ self harm mentions

Just wanted to announce for my like 8 followers that I will be taking a possibly permanent break from this site. Really I just can’t handle it and I know it’s mostly my fault but I also want people to be aware of the effects that ur discourse has on people. I saw a post about how transandrophobia truthers should kill themselves to rid the world of their disgusting presence yesterday and well, I wanted to take that advice but I chickened out and now I just have bruises. I’m sorry. I don’t want this to come off as a guilt trip, and I know some people reading this might think I’m making a big deal out of nothing, and this is nothing compared to the harassment transfems face. Maybe that’s true, and I know it’s a little ridiculous to self harm so dramatically over things people say online, but you know, i really believed them. I wanted to do the right thing, and I mean it.

I guess I just latched onto the word transandrophobia because I thought it described the way I could be assaulted for being a woman in other people’s eyes, and then be told to shut up about it, because I’m a man, after all. I thought it worked well to explain how I could be targeted by the sort of fetishization people put on Asian women, while simultaneously being seen as predatory for being masculine. And while I’m fine to stop using the word “transandrophobia”, I will never stop believing that my experiences exist at some legitimate intersection. I don’t know what it is yet exactly. I’m sorry that I don’t have a better grasp on all this. But because I can’t stop believing in the things I’ve experienced, i guess I’ll always be some sort of “truther,” to some people. And I know it’s wrong to be this— don’t think I don’t feel any shame over it! But I’ve tried to drive out those thoughts before, and they just crept back and back, whenever my back was turned. I cannot get rid of them. I’m not very connected to the big accounts posting about this stuff, so I think I also just don’t really comprehend the situation with harassment and everything that lead people to tell others to kill themselves. However, I do think that if you tell people to end their lives, you should be prepared for some of them to do it, legitimately. Maybe that was the intention all along, and this post doesn’t mean a lot, then. But I prefer to believe that people don’t actually want a lot of their fellow trans people dead.

I’m sorry, genuinely. I saw a different post last week that said we should drive transandrodorks out of every irl queer space until they realize they’re all alone, forever. Well, the people I know irl haven’t driven me out yet, and maybe it’s shitty of me, but I’m going to keep hanging around them until they stop wanting to be around me anymore. They love me so far and selfishly I hope it continues like that. Im sorry, genuinely, but I don’t want to leave. They make me feel like it’s a beautiful thing that I exist. I hope I get to live like that for a long time. They’re also telling me to get off this website so I might not see responses to this post.

You can reblog this if you want, even though it’s very personal. I hope people realize I’m being real with this. I don’t fully understand this discourse and this post will probably reflect that— I’m really not trying to play into a particular narrative. I’m very autistic and take things people say very seriously by default. I just want people to understand how it feels. Thank you for reading this all.

I saw a non-binary person on twitter applauding another tweet about how a lot of cis people really just sometimes label trans masc and afab nonbinary people as femme-presenting and then get angry at those people for not presenting "properly" when they ask not to be misgendered (to be crystal clear, this is something I do see happen, and also applaud this person for saying), but the way they applauded it was amazingly frustrating.

Without including a screencap or the exact wording because I don't want anyone hunting this down and harassing them, their response was, to paraphrase:

"femme presenting does not equal everyone impacted by misogyny."

Now, I didn't respond there because twitter is hell on digital Earth and I don't want my mentions filled with garbage for the next week for weighing in, but I'm comfortable expanding on why this statement is bullshit here. There's a whole other conversation to be had about how a lot of afab trans masc and non-binary people are complicit in silencing our own by pushing this sort of statement, but people more articulate than I am have said plenty on that and I'll leave it to them.

No, what I take issue with is the idea that there is a single person on this goddamn planet who isn't impacted by misogyny. Let's break it down, nice and easy.

MISOGYNY AFFECTS:

1) Cisgender women and girls. Takes the form of cat calling, infantilization, systemic discrimination in the workplace and a disparity of social and economic advantages afforded to cisgender men, high rates of violence against them, high rates of medical neglect, social conditioning that pushes them out of STEM career and education paths either because it's been drilled into them that these are not jobs for women OR because they made a go of it and felt unsafe, underutilized, passed over for promotion in favour of less qualified male peers, and so on.

2) transgender and amab non-binary people. Trans women who pass (note, I do not think passing is important or required to be respected in our identities, so if you're reading this and transmed, fuck all the way off) are treated of all of the above, unless they are openly trans or outed to peers who thought they were cis, in which case this treatment is conditional.

Being outed or not passing doesn't make the above go away, but it adds in shitty bonus features like the possibility of being confronted/attacked/harmed/killed publicly just for existing as trans in public, denial of housing, chronic unemployment (especially in states where you can be fired at will with no reason given as to why), loss of insurance and high rates of homelessness. On top of that, non-binary people often intentionally do not pass, or incidentally are mistaken for male or female. They are misgendered in almost all situations abs are subject to all of the above.

3) transgender men and afab non-binary people. This one is apparently a really controversial take to have these days, but as a trans man who passes and transitioned later in life, passing means jack shit if and when people know that I am trans. If people don't know I'm trans, their acceptance of me is tenuous at best and entirely conditional.

This is a problem for me personally because I a) refuse to pack the first 30 years of my existence in a box and lie about it to impress strangers. All of those formative experiences that are supposed to really affirm womanhood? Tried 'em. Yes, ALL of them. Even the one that transmasc transmeds will swear up and down that if you do them, you are not really trans. You know the one (it's pregnancy if that's not clear!).

I will not pack that away for the comfort of others. I am who I am because of those experiences, not in spite of them. But even if I did choose to pack all that away and keep it secret for the sake of seeming cis to new people, I still have a big 'ol target on my back because I am married to a cis dude. We're both bisexual, but that nuance means nothing to cis dudes for whom the existence of gay people where they can see them is emasculating by proximity. And how do cis dudes treat people, including other cis dudes, who aren't performing masculinity properly? With misogyny.

Cis dudes will treat gay and bi men, efeminate men, men with voices, mannerisms and style outside of a specific masculine archetype, like women. More specifically, women who deserve to be punished for being "that way." That misogyny isn't misdirected, a term I frequently see people throwing around to push back against the idea that afab trans men and non-binary people who have gone on testosterone or gotten top surgery or both are affected by misogyny specifically. It is directed exactly where it is meant to be directed, for all the reasons above and more.

On top of all that, the second someone (including doctors!) knows I'm trans, if they're not chill about it I can expect them to immediately start treating me like a delusional woman who has been tricked into transitioning and couldn't possibly have the agency required to make the decisions I have about my own body. Which is, again, textbook misogyny.

Anyhow, all of these things? If I were to go stealth to avoid them, it wouldn't be a privilege because, again, these things are conditional on remaining steal and honestly I didn't step out of one closet to baracade myself into another. If you have to hide your past and who you really are 24/7, that is not a privilege. The meager bonuses of having strangers think you're cishet are nothing compared to the detriment that living a double life, always in terror that someone will find out and tell everyone, causes. Trans men have worse outcomes with mental health than anyone, currently, and this is part of why.

4) Cisgender men who are visible minorities. Cisgender men with disabilities, who aren't white, who are fat or neuroatypical, or are gay or bi? Being treated "like a man" has conditions that they are either already outside of because of immutable characteristics OR is conditional based on whether they force themselves to conform and tow the line by reinforcing the "conditions" of previously mentioned masculine archetypes.

and finally

5) Able-bodied, neurotypical, cisgender heterosexual white men. Yeah, you heard that correctly!

Cishet white dudes are absolutely affected by misogyny. Let us count the ways:

Cis men are taught from a young age that being "like a girl" or even just being a girl is undesirable, worthy of disgust and/or punishment. How many childhood taunts meant to embarrass, emasculate and keep male peers in line are along the lines of comparing boys to women or denying/revoking their masculinity?

You throw like a girl. You hit like a girl. You look like a girl. Boys don't cry. What are you, gay? You'd better not be gay. You're not a f****t, are you? No son of mine is gonna play with dolls. Why are you crying? Time to hand in your man card. Don't get your vagina in a twist. Why are you mad? You on your period? And on and on and on...

The blatant contempt for women in a lot of formative social interactions for boys between them and their peers and them and their male relatives genuinely makes cis men worse people unless they have the will and fortitude to unpack and unlearn all of this. And boy howdy do we make it hard for them to do that.

I have met grown men so emotionally constipated that they can only talk about their feelings to their significant others, who come to resent them because your significant other is not a substitute for therapy. We tell young boys to bottle their emotions up, and we reinforce this with mocking laughter and ostracization. Sometimes with physical violence. Their friendships with other adult men are superficial and lacking affection, and fall apart if they ever challenge any of this shit. Every word that leaves their mouths in social situations is macho bravado and desperate conformation because you need to be in the In Group. You don't want to be in the Out Group, do you?

So until they figure out (if they ever do figure out) that they have shit they need to unpack and unlearn, they let their own inner turmoil fester, and they take it out on women, men and other people who fail to hit the baseline for what a man is "supposed" to be. They make the people around them suffer, and they lash out. They will enforce masculinity on their male peers and treat the women in their life with patronization and contempt and maybe even violence, because who else are you going to aim at when every formative and ongoing bit of socialization you've experienced from the time you realized that there was a difference between boys and girls and how they are supposed to act, and the resounding message has been that girls and women = bad, and that being compared to either means you're failing at proper masculinity?

Yeah, cis men do a lot of harm to people who aren't cis men. They will also do a lot of harm to people who ARE cis men but aren't "doing it right," including their own sons, and the cycle perpetuates until someone decides to break it, usually at a pretty significant cost.

So yeah, cis men are absolutely affected by misogyny. They aim it at the expected groups, but also at each other as a form of controlling group dynamics and social hierarchy.

TL;DR- literally fucking everyone is affected by misogyny and has it levied at them to enforce conformity in one way or another, so could we please fucking stop attempting to classify different flavours of trans people as being affected by or exempt from misogyny? It isn't misdirected if the person hurling it at you means for it to affect you, harm you, control you and your expression or all of the above.

This is why, when we classify something as a hate crime or not on a legal level, the identity of the person who it was committed against is not relevant. Assaulting a straight cis man because you thought he was a cis gay man doesn't absolve the perpetrator of having committed a hate crime. If the intention was to commit a crime on the basis of gender identity or sexuality, the legal system agrees that this is a hate crime, even if the perpetrator was mistaken!

TME/TMA is not a functional way of discussing the different ways that misogyny affects all of us, and I would love for young afab trans people to please stop throwing us all under the bus by trying to insist that the misogyny levied at afab trans people somehow doesn't count. You're hurting the rest of us, but you're also hurting yourself and you should knock it the fuck off. It does not invalidate your masculinity to acknowledge that cis people, both men and women, are levying misogyny at us, because they levy it at other cis people (mostly cis people who are minorities in other ways) all the fucking time.

one anonymous thing a follower wants to know: when did you get into radical feminism?

Ohh I am glad someone asked haha. The truth is I was kind of a born radfem. I realized early in life that the world was deeply sexist and misogynistic. Even when I was 11/12yo in middle school, I hated makeup, cosmetic surgery, and the beauty industry in general. I was very critical of it, saying it was misogynistic, and that I was against the idea of altering our faces to fit the box of the perfect woman, to be beautiful in the sexist eyes of society. As soon as I knew what prostitution was, I was against it ; I already thought women weren't products you can buy and that prostitution and consent couldn't coexist. I was also a raging misandrist kid, I realized very young how sexist and misogynistic our society was, and how terrible and violent men were. I was already annoyed by the way everyone defended men despite everything they do. I knew what transgenderism was, but I didn't really care back then, and actually I never thought about it.

Then when I was 12 I started to read feminist things. I of course didn't read Andrea Dworkin right away, I started with smaller books and magazines, and soon enough I was reading bigger books, Simone de Beauvoir, for example. I didn't know there was several branches of feminism, to me there was only one. I knew a lot of things about feminist history, it was just kind of mixed up in my mind. I mainly focused on books and ressources about male violence, domestic violence, unpaid labor, mothers and marriage, sexual violence, and women's rights outside the West (Afghanistan, Iran, Korea...). I didn't read anything about beauty industry and prostitution at that time ; no special reason, I guess I just didn't see any book about it that I wanted to read, or almost no book. I still held the same beliefs about it, however. Bref, it was from by 12 to my 17 (and I was already the annoying and angry feminist for my family and friends).

At 17 I started to get into fandom culture, and as you know, fandom culture is very, very liberal. There I saw people totally disagreeing with me about "sex work" and the beauty industry, literally calling women who were against it "anti feminists". I started to doubt (I was very young, remember this), what if I was just a conservative after all ? I slowly became a bit more liberal, still not wearing makeup but not criticizing it anymore and laughing with "girlboss" comments at shit like "my makeup is powerful enough to destroy the patriarchy". I still hated prostitution, but started to agree that OnlyFans was a cool and easy way to make money. I started to agree with gender ideology, though it never made sense to me before and I had never really thought about it (I had a trans friend and I used her preferred pronouns and all but honestly I just didn't care enough to think about if it was right or not).

Deep down, I still held the same beliefs, I just didn't want to admit it, because I was afraid of being a bad person and because it's hard to accept that you are against things everyone support. It's easier to follow the others, and I was young and a bit brainwashed to be honest (brainwashed against, as I understood later, the evil TERFs !).

At 18, I started to read more and more books against beauty culture and prostitution. I quickly felt confident enough to accept and express my real beliefs. While I was doing so, I became more and more critical of many things in liberal politics, makeup, porn, prostitution etc... and gender ideology. I realized it didn't make sense AT ALL to me. I hid these beliefs because I was genuinely very scared of being a horrible person or becoming one. I didn't want to agree with the evil terfs, right ? I didn't want to become one of them ? But I kept seeing TRA stuff and it all seemed so stupid and ridiculous to me. Plus, I was also starting to see how misogynistic and homophobic this ideology is. For almost a year, I tried to push these doubts away, finding TRAs excuses, trying to find other explanations for their misogyny and homophobia... I was terrified of becoming a bad person. I thought, what if I am being brainwashed ? And kept reading TRAs stuff to try to force myself to believe and accept them. But the more I read, the more I realized that it was nonsense, and rooted in misogyny, homophobia, racism. It was during the time I was starting to accept my homosexuality (and by the way, gender ideology made it 100× harder. I already had a hard time admitting I was a lesbian, but their nonsense made me even more ashamed of it as I felt disgusting for not liking dicks and male bodies. It made my feeling of "damn, there is something seriously wrong with me" even more serious and deeper), so seeing their lesbophobia didn't help their case. I doubted for almost a year, until I made a post that became quickly famous (now deleted on my main, but the reblogs still exist) in which I forced myself to include trans people because I was afraid everyone would call me a TERF if I didn't.

Radfems saw it and replied, being a bit angry at me for what I had said of course. It made me feel soooo bad because I actually agreed with them but couldn't say it on main ! (My online friends of the time could see it, and I didn't want to lose them, back then). So, I didn't reply to them or just blocked them because I was afraid of myself for agreeing with them.

But out of curiosity, I read some posts in the radfem tag after this post. And what a great surprise ! There was a lot of women agreeing with me about makeup and the beauty industry on here ! I wasn't alone ! Not gonna lie, it made me feel so good. For years I thought I was alone, everyone around me didn't see any issue with makeup or prostitution, everyone around me called me crazy, paranoid, boring or stupid for criticizing these things. And now I had found a community of women who agreed with me, and were so smart about it. Their posts were so well written, full of wisdom. They agreed with me, and believed there was nothing wrong with me not liking dicks and males. What a relief and what a wonderful thing to find out. After that, I was almost ready to just call myself a radfem. My ex helped a bit, since she was gender critical.

At first, I just followed radfem blogs through my main, agreeing with everything they said and realizing that "terfs" didn't exist, and that radfems/gender critical feminists weren't evil at all. I read a lot of radical feminist books in six months ; then, around april, I think, at 19, I created this blog, fully accepting my beliefs.

Since then I keep learning everyday, about radical feminism theory and history, about other branches of feminism and their history. I read a lot of books, watch a lot of docs, and write a lot about it in my little notebooks. I don't wear makeup, don't encourage the beauty industry, I volunteer as much as I can, I try to have the most separatist lifestyle as I can, I talk about radical feminism around me (I even have my stickers! I am pretty proud of them haha)... bref, I try to actually be a radfem and not just to criticize gender ideology online.

I am so grateful and happy I found radblr and online radfems !

I am a woman.

I was born and I live in Chile.

And today is International Woman's Day.

And when I went to do breakfast, the first news I saw was of a woman who died after falling from the 10th floor of an apartment. She filed for domestic violence. They did arrested her abuser thanks to the DNA on her nails, as she tried to defend herself.

This is sadly not the only instance of harm towards woman today.

There's still abuse, violence in any form (physical, psychological, sexual, etc), prejudices and just straight up injustice towards woman.

And that kind of stuff is happening ALL OVER THE WORLD. AND THERE ARE CASES WE AREN'T AWARE OF IT YET.

Being a woman is hard. And that's a massive understatement.

Being a human living in this society is hard, but it is hard towards those considered minorities.

Especially women. Even worse for those woman who are also POC, LGBTQ+ (Trans woman are woman, after all), disabled in any shape of form, suffering of mental illness, and those who are currently living in places and countries where they treat woman horribly.

I really do wish for a future where women aren't afraid.

But... It sounds utopic, and I know that violence will always exist.

I'll admit. I feel bad celebrating a date that was supposed to celebrate Women's Rights and Justice for Women... When there is still injustice towards women in this world. Especially me living in Chile, when there's a lot of violence and prejudices done to woman in other countries. I feel shame with the idea of celebrating when there's still injustice towards woman in the world. Even in my own country.

So please...

Listen, help and protect your fellow women. Your family (either biological, legal or even your found family), your friends, your acquaintances, etc. And if you can, listen help other fellow women, even if you don't know them personally.

Support victims, bring justice, and protect women.

ALSO SORRY FOR SO MANY ASKS DJHDFJHDJHD

but do you or any other radblr lesbian girlies have advice for dealing with a "conventionally attractive" body aka an oversexualized body? big ass, big tits, small waist. I hate how i was groomed into believing that coping with sex was okay. i hate how i tried "being more feminine". like i can never get that money back and i can never take back the times ive let those men use me. it sucks. what sucks even more was that ofc it was other women, the handmaidens, who were the main ones to perpetuate that agenda. Because if men were like "yeah its okay to wanna be raped again <3 and getting with men to play out past trauma" then everyone would know their intentions. but no, it was seeing all the women be like "omg this helped me a lot <333 !! and im so much more happy now!!". showing off their age regression stuff. god i hate it. Without those women, there wouldnt have been anything to begin with. I wish more women saw through that BS.

also, to cope with gender dysphoria (like actual gender dysphoria) all ive been doing is just objectifying myself. since my body is very "feminine". its the fucking Porn Artist stereotype. I hate it. I feel like a walking object. I feel like its why I wanted to be a boy, like i wish I had no tits and no ass. because then i wouldnt be sexualized. Buying clothes to "hide" my body doesnt help because then i feel bulky/stuffy and overwhelmed. I hate how i use my body for social validation since because my face is deformed, its all I basically have.

lol im kinda glad though that I struggle with this in a way.... because it made me detrans. Especially seeing as i didnt even feel accepted as trans since I was a transmed. And then seeing these "omg trans healthcare saves lives, tho!!" people go about supporting literal AGPs truly peaked me. When my one ex friend group all trooned out at once, all the men being AGP anime / porn obsessed freaks who previously made fun of my trauma and victim mentality (despite me literally being marginalized) .... now theyre all pretending to be oppressed despite being white men from upper middle class families. Like damn, I AM NOT being in that community then. If that gets accepted? Yet me and my gender dysphoria diagnosis at a young age wasnt? Then nah. Its all nonsense.

i wish lesbian spaces werent taken over bc all this shit be isolating. Like im so sick of sex and porn and all that, i want LOVE goddamnit. Love and friendship. I am so burnt out, dude.

HIIIII MY LOVE, thank you so much for your ask

ugh i can feel first hand how tired you are with this shit in your wording, and i can relate, its really fucking draining

reading about your journey was really interesting, thank you for sharing it with me, im so happy you feel im a safe space for you because thats what i aspire to be <3

ALSO u dont have to apologize for sending a lot of asks, i love it

i feel for you, mootina

its hard to truly love your body and accept it as yours especially when you see pornsick idiots fetishize it

i read recently about the concept of body neutrality, and its where instead of praising, or hating your body, you simply thank it for doing all it does for you, i think perhaps looking into that will help you feel more in tune with yourself, and your body

also, of course this goes without saying, but feminist literature can help you, and also researching the female anatomy

in my struggles with my body, learning more about the capabilities of it helped me a lot with how i felt regarding it, and made it easier to tune out the fuckery of whatever anyone else has to say about it

i love you so much, ill leave the floor open for anyone else who has advice for you

thank you again for entrusting me with this <3

I know it's a bit late in the season to do this, but I have adhd and finally got my meds so I can put stuff down on paper. This is a list of things I want and dont' want to happen on the 4th season of lower decks. And of course these are just my thoughts on the series, please don't try to yell at me about how my opinions are wrong. I would love to discuss anything here in a civilized manner, even if I have to speak like Mark Twain

Wants:

I want a mariner and Rutherford episode. Not a trio episode, but the an episode where the two of them have an A or B plot story to themselves. They're the only 2 of the original 4 to not have a story for just the 2 of them. I know they're friends and kind of close, but we only get it when they're attached to Tendi or Boimler. I just want them interacting as a pair so we can see their relationship, maybe they don't get along well together when they're not with other people. It's been 4 seasons, they deserve an episode together. (I dont' count the least dangerous game, because while their plots interact, and Mariner specifically tries to break the rules to rescue him, they don't interact as characters)

Tendi and Mariner getting into a fight, like a fist fight for real. Mariner is amazing in a fight, we've seen it multiple times and she's able to trounce Boimler and Rutherford at the same time easily. Tendi is a secret monster too when it comes to battle curbstomping 4 Romulan guards on her own when the mission didn't even come to that, other Orions are terrified of her and while she 'lost' the fight with her super assassin younger sister, the sister had an actual sword and wasn't tired from running around on the planet looking for her 'kidnapped' sister. I don't want it to be a super emotional thing, though it could be

I'm on the fence about wanting any romance, I think Mariner and Jennifer was done terribly, like one of the worst ways to write romance (I'll get to that on my don't wants). But as a lesbian woman, I am always thirsty for sci-fi sapphics. I would love a love story between 2 (or more) women, cis/trans/or nonbinary, even if I'm not sure I can trust the writers do do it justice. I'm just built the way I am. I would also like two or more men in the similar way, it's not my thing, but it's somebodies, and I'm always here for more queer rep.

I'd like to see Boimler and Rutherford interact with Shax more. I know they're not security but they are official members of the bear pack and he seems to have a soft spot for them. I really like that side of him and I like that the two soft but underestimated boys of the original 4 bring out that side of him.

Something Something Enterprise related. I was a very casual view of Enterprise growing up, I didn't watch a lot of star trek just episodes that my brother watched when he got the chance to. But I watched a few of enterprise and it has a soft spot in my heart. Lower Decks is full of easter eggs and references, I hope they have some for enterprise as they had a whole episode about Deep Space Nine and Voyager in the series already. I don't have a particular care, since I'm more of a lower decks fan than star trek, but I know Enterprise isn't everyone's cup of tea but I liked what I saw, (except for the finale)

Something the series always does really good is introducing or reintroducing different alien races that they don't really do any more on the live action because makeup and cgi take time and money and even then can look fake or uncanny valley, but that's the beauty of animation (not that it doesn't cost money, just that you can add any alien race to any scene and it feels like they're meant to be there and they live in that world). It's just really cool to see the variety of aliens that populate the star trek universe and it's easier to include them in Lower Decks than anything.

Scene between Mariner and her mother. I feel like the ending was rushed in season 3 and brushed off as Mariner making the mistakes. When the season her character development was that she could admit that she loved the Cerritos and the people aboard only to be judged and stabbed in the back by her own mother and basically kicked out of her home. Carol had her own reasons, and I get it if it was season 1 mariner, but it rubbed me the wrong way and was done too quickly.

Don't want:

Jennifer to come back in any speaking capacity, especially with Mariner. This is probably controversial, but it's how I feel. I actually liked the character before season 3 and still do really, but I feel like the writers didn't know what to do with her and wrote one of the worst romantic relationships I've ever seen. I can go on and on about this, and probably will on another post I've been saving since season3 ended, but after watching Mike McMahan's interview with Jessie gender (on her youtube channel jessie Gender after dark, I highly recommend it and the rest of her videos, I'm a huge fan) I genuinely don't think that they put much thought into the relationship other than they're going to break up. I don't think if they wrote a scene with Jennifer talking to Mariner they could ever do it justice. Even if it's just been as a background character Jennifer has already been in as many episodes as she was in season 3 which says enough about how little screen time their relationship got. Let it just be dead and let Jennifer be a background character with a cool design

No romance between the main 4. I don't really like the idea of romance between the original 4 lower deckers, (Tendi and Rutherford kind of get a pass since they were genuinely sweet but I haven't gotten any ship tease moments from them in season 3 so maybe the writers forgot about them) I love romantic relationships, but I also love platonic relationships too and the 4 of them are genuinely sweet as friends. I'm not going to hate the show or stop watching it, but I will sigh because for the most part it always seems like 'romantic tension' amounts to this is a boy and this is a girl and they're going to get together because that's life. Which as a queer woman isn't really for me. Note T'lyn is not part of this, she can be with any of the main 4 as long as it feels right and naturally written for all I care. I like her character but she doesn't have the history that the other 4 have that would make me dislike it. Hell let her date all 4 of them and have them remain platonic dating their awesome Vulcan girlfriend

No Peanut Hamper like episodes in season 3 please. I don't even think the episode was bad, it was very funny and very star trek. The issue is that when the older shows did the bizzaro/lower decks/character we never thought of episodes, they had over 20 episodes in their seasons, and I believe were 40 minutes long, (it's been so long since I've seen older live action star trek), they had time to do these episodes without taking time form the plot or the characters that we love. Lower decks has 10 episodes a season like SNW, as is the modern season for networks. 1/10 of the time of the season devoted to a character that some might consider annoying feels like a huge waste in a short season. I know they're probably setting up something for this season's finale or next seasons plot like since Peanut Hamper went to the Daystrom institute with the other evil super intelligences, but it still felt like a lot of time to spend on her when there was to flesh out with characters I liked.

This is all for me for now, I'd like to get peoples opinons on this and honestly anything for lower decks. I like talking with other fans even if it's just through reblogs and replies

how did you arrive at your progressive punk christianity outlook after being immersed in conservative christianity?

ooh!! good question. see I don’t really think what I was immersed in was particularly conservative—in circles I’ve been around we’ve always dissed Americans for being conservative (kinda mean I know) and my dad used to take me to climate change protests in the 2000s and I was always taught the 6 days of creation aren’t literal, the rapture isn’t real, women in stem etc. idk how it was anywhere else but the part of sydney I grew up in was just Like That, there was encouragement to give to the poor to actually end poverty and people actually did even though none of us really had heaps and I guess I wasn’t raised to be okay with entitlement but simply be kind to everyone? And I didn’t even know what conservative was until I was maybe 17 (I thought it was a style of fashion for ages and then I thought it meant conserving nature and history). It was always just Christians are meant to be genuinely kind and not have sex til you’re older and preferably married yknow?? and work hard, like the protestant work ethic was def a thing but somehow in a non ableist way as much as this is possible— I get real impatient with people bitching about stuff getting taken away from them, not realising how much they have when I probably have less and I’m usually giving away as much as I’m able and as much will put me in a state of perceived danger. It’s definitely a form of rebellion against them to see how little I can survive on which I’m working on. I also didn’t even know that so many Christians were transphobic like I thought it was only the extreme theobros. I also had a really lovely geography teacher in high school who was also a Christian and used her faith to drive environmental action, my biology teacher was a Christian and stood up for trans rights and I also had acccss to the internet to read up on clobber passages and hear peoples stories and it was always like ‘oh yeah some Christians believe different things based on how they read this stuff’ and I don’t think it was until I was old enough to actually vote and saw what propoganda was going around I really realised the power dynamic behind it, with the rise of the Australian Christian lobby which felt like it was straight out of the US. I fully thought voting was just liberals if you like fossil fuels, greens to save the environment, and labor if you’re a people pleaser and like fun little rhymes like ‘Kevin 07’ and attempting to be feminist but not really getting anything done. I actually met Martyn Iles once and was like ‘damn this guy is a fake Aussie this isn’t how we do Christianity’. I also got super burnt out by how hard and how biblically I tried to love my classmates on top of the Protestant work ethic about my schoolwork I never really cared about for myself, and was well versed in theology enough to be like HA! Grace means that we don’t have to do all that and can just do our sustainable best, still thinking my view was mainstream. I went to uni to study enviro sci at 17 and I thought my convictions to not drive unless Absolutely Necessary were driven by Christian ethics (which they were, how rigid I was with it was a pda response though). Then over the years realised very belatedly how people often didn’t validate my views and experiences and I’d expect they would (bc they were biblically rooted) and got quite hurt when they didn’t. Spent years in different volunteer ministries trying to put together the kind of community talked about in books like Philippians only to constantly be let down and feel isolated and that only driving me to work harder, despite knowing God’s grace meant I didn’t have to feeling like I couldn’t stop while my earthly needs for connection were unmet, saying yes to things I’d previously said no to because I got a sense of temporary community and belonging every time I joined a new serving team. Tried extra hard to make places inclusive and expected everyone else to be working as hard on it as I was and feel the desperation like I did and got super hurt when they didn’t, oh I guess I’ll have to do it all myself then.

I’ve always struggled with the concept of hell, tbh I heard about it way too young and never had a drop of self preservation instinct in my body only didn’t want to let God down by saying no. I’ve particularly always struggled with the whole urgency motivation like I’m trying, I’m doing the best I can, I listen to people and actually speaking the gospel into their lives in a way that hits home for them (bc I was thinking about how to do this in an empathetic and understanding and autonomy respecting way from a Very Young Age like I used to attempt to evangelise on moshi monsters to get an idea) and shit, I’m like 19 years old at this stage and I’m tired. If only I could just have one last hurrah to change places with someone so they can go to heaven instead of me? Id take it. and I basically worked myself to the point of being that suicidal and kept fucking going because God made me good at science so I can save the planet and end world hunger, and I had this conviction to contextualise (this is what we learned at afes btw) the gospel to really be real to queer folk and indigenous folk and other people of colour and marginalised people (it’s easy to see oppression with my background and my neurotype tbh) and maybe I could make myself suffer now bc God wasn’t gonna let me do that for eternity? anyway eventually left afes bc I was being so stretched and getting so isolated and the work I was doing there wasn’t achieving any of these things and I realised if I stayed I might end up dead and I wasn’t ready to go to heaven yet when my work wasn’t done. or at least so constantly dysregulated I wouldn’t be as able to be kind to others and show them the gospel.

around this time I’m also putting together a pretty comprehensive framework for how to actually solve global problems in a productive way, I’ve unpacked the pride in a lot of Christian mission projects and how they often were a feel good thing but not actually respectful or effective and I’d come up with literally hundreds of ideas for projects I could do to actually help, none of which I obviously had time for I think I was working up to 3 jobs while studying and serving in church and doing my hobbies that kept me kind of sane as well? which was discouraging to say the least, driving a kind of rageful resentment. Around that time I also discover PDA and my whole life makes sense, I start on my adhd meds which I had to jump through a million hoops to get and realise maybe I can finish uni.

a pda framework as I dive more into that and how to be actually neurodivergent affirming and actually recover from burnout long story short makes me realise how ableist much of our concept of sin and holiness really is and how much we need to destigmatise sin and stop using it as a way to intellectualise actual things happening in our brains and nervous systems and maybe we’d feel a lot less hopeless about it like it’s some big mystery if we actually did unpack the fear and threat responses and trauma behind it. Which we always say we will do but practically, church doenst give a space to do that bc you’re gonna be shamed. even for the people who are non affirming I’d be like, but isn’t it a logical step to someone who’s not yet been convicted to celibacy (if that’s something they think they should be) and realised this whole thing is unrealistic, not because the bible is wrong but because people think you can control your own brain by simply trying and trying again every time you fuck up as if that’s not gonna drive learned helplessness or actually traumatise you when you so desperately want to do better? Either that or drive you to be numb about it which I realised is what usually happens, there are certain sins people are blind to in every congregation and they’re actually intellectually unable to be convicted of that as sin because they’re stretched as far as they can go covering all other bases and being like ‘Christ covers that I didn’t Choose To Sin I’m trying not to even though it doesn’t really work’ like I’m a solutions person. if something isn’t working we’re gonna think of a new method and suddenly I understand how my brain works and those of so many others especially those who feel marginalised by the church!

and so long story short when I eventually had to quit what I was doing at church because someone cared enough to realise I hadn’t been doing well for years I was like I’m gonna follow this urge of the Spirit or simply my own head and desire for true connection I often found In exvangelical spaces and hear as many experiences as possible and use it to shape my worldview and get a bunch of hope from people who yes they’ve been marginalised but the gospel is real to them. that’s my only criteria I’m not gonna judge based on theology and I’m not ever gonna think my theological takes make anyone else wrong I’m just gonna be open to listen and shape them so there isn’t any cognitive dissonance and the grace found at the cross is real and practical and doenst have weird arbitrary limits, and I’m also gonna listen to those hurt by Christianity who some might judge as being hard hearted but I know how trauma works. and I’ve been doing that ever since, gradually getting there more and more and I think the best/funniest thing is even in more conservative spaces literally everyone I still talk to has been super encouraging of it and if we have any disagreements they’re pretty minor compared to the fact that we all believe the gospel is for everyone and we all wanna invest in social justice too (which makes me question how conservative those spaces ever were tbh). like there’s def parts of my story I won’t always tell but I feel like I come with a perspective people respect these days no matter where I am, and that’s nice in contrast to being that weird kid trying to do adult things being told either not to worry or that I don’t understand.