“The Barbie Movie is anti-men!”

No. The Barbie movie was just not made for u s. I honestly didn’t find the movie all that relatable outside of Allan but it’s still a GOOD movie! I wasn’t bored during it, it was funny, the music was good, it’s thematically a great movie. I was just not the target audience and that’s okay!! Seeing my 49 year old mother crying at the end of the movie was all I needed for the movie to make me happy, knowing that it touched my mother in a way that other movies don’t often do. And that’s okay :)

Barbie is a movie for anyone who has lived the female experience, especially older women like my own mother who grew up playing with Barbie. That doesn’t mean that you can’t relate to it just. As a human being, and I have lived a female experience briefly in my life but I didn’t relate to the movie. And that’s okay! If you relate to this movie fucking awesome!!! I’m so glad that there’s a movie that means a lot to you :) /gen

I’m just beefing with the other men on the internet who didn’t relate to it like me, yet they insist it’s a bad or “anti-men” movie when it’s clearly not???

Also shoutout to Allan he was literally made in a lab for the transgenders

Only critique? I wish it was more anti capitalist and anarchist but that was never really the point so I get it I will wallow in my corner praying for a progressive movie to arrive that fulfills my genderfuck anarchy goals. ( Idk maybe I’ll write something to fulfill my own dreams ❤️❤️ )

really annoys me that a lot of my old art inspos that I also looked up to for their identities keep coming out as transmasc. like they can do whatever they want im just being a petty little hater. it was just important to me to see someone i could look up not only for art but for my own personal identity its late and im not the best at explaining but it meant a lot to see that being a masculine woman was just allowed. to be a cis woman who wanted to be seen as just some guy while also being a woman.

it feels that maybe being a masculine woman is wrong in a sense when half of the people i watch state that it was used as a bridge for them to find their identity (again fair enough power to them hope theyre doing well im just being a little hater) and the other half on my goddamn recommended on tiktok/youtube shorts state that being a masculine woman is just, attention seeking mental illness. maybe im wrong and a bad person, everyone i used to heavily relate to their experiences in femininity no longer express it in a way that i can see as inspirational and its trouble finding people i can relate to as closely again. sorry im not sure if this was ment to be shared on anon or not byt im paranoid of being cancelled if i misphrased this i wanted to go to sleep an hour ago

you're not a little hater i think you are just frustrated! and that's understandable.

i struggle a lot with the idea of femininity as a whole because having grown up Under That Roof i find it very difficult to reconcile "i am a daughter and that is important to me" with "i am not a Feminine Girly Girl though". in the end that made the most sense to me when i tentatively crossed over the line and said "maybe i'm not a girl at all. maybe i'm a daughter to my parents, and not even a girl at all to everyone else?"

i grew up as an awkward tomboy, rejected femininity and tried to present more "masculine" without really understanding why i was expected to present either way. i usually look at it this way: for a long time i WAS a girl. and some part of me still is that girl who grew up like that. so women's issues will always be important to me, and the idea that women should be allowed to present themselves however they want ("masculine" but still a woman, for example, fits here like a glove!) is especially important to me.

i have friends who grew up assigned male, too, and the idea that men can't even put on a dress without someone going "omg She must be trans" is ALSO hurtful believe it or not. (see drag queens and also the wider ongoing discussion on gender vs presentation vs the binary). it feels like no matter where you sit, someone is going to insist you have to be something. everyone is very excited about gender but sometimes people can be a cis man and wear Feminine(C)(TM) clothes and sometimes it's a cis woman wearing a suit or t-shirt and jeans and refusing to perform the Tits Manifesto and that's still a ciswoman if she says so.

for me that pressure manifested as going "fuck this i'm nonbinary i am not interested in gender" and sometimes that includes deliberately manspreading when i can see someone is trying to interpret me as female. or hunching to hide the tits. but i don't think i'm transmasc and i don't really want that label on me. i just don't think of myself that way - i'm nonbinary and i don't WANT to "present as masc" or "present as femme". i just want to present in a way that cuts people off when they try to box me in. nipping it off in the bud. culture of No Not Like that.

what i'm saying is:

i still (and will always, and am constantly reminded because i don't "pass" well) remember what being a woman is like. and let's be honest, so does wider society, because most people are still operating on "awww you had a baby is it a boy or a girl?" terms, and then Assigning Stuff depending on that.

but rejecting that assignment doesn't always mean having to transition. i had to scrutinise this concept a lot over the years, and i still scrutinise it now. am i nonbinary or am i just a woman who is so, so, so, sick of being expected to be a woman?

for me, the answer has become "i'm not going to look at it too hard, and i'm most comfortable when i introduce myself as Nil Zero None Gender. so i guess i'm nonbinary."

for other people who grew up as women, the answer may be something else, like: "i'm a woman and being a woman doesn't mean having to twiddle my hair and giggle and That's That On That"

i was born in the early 1990s and grew up not knowing what a trans person was. the word "transgender" didn't hit my vocabulary until i was about 16-17. i saw rocky horror and thought it was a one-off weird film that someone just made up from their head. omg a man in women's clothes? made up [laughcry emoji] (i loved the film anyway and looking back now, it's hilarious that all i knew was cisgender and yet i still Felt The Film So Important To Me)

so i think a lot of people grew up not having a choice. and now there's a choice, a lot of people are going "oh my god thank goodness" and taking that choice. i think the large numbers of transmascs could be partly helped along by the sheer relief of not having to Perform Girl any more (take this with a pinch of salt i'm only one person).

but this doesn't (and shouldn't) detract from the experiences of women who were assigned You're Woman and still consider themselves women. because this is 2022. women face their own issues (inequality, pay gaps, discrimination) and this has been going on for a truly archaeological timespan and it needs to be addressed, with or without the transgender discussion. preferably with! because we are stronger that way and can make better and more nuanced points by referring to the way trans people are treated.

i don't quite know how to end this post but - it IS frustrating that the presentation of your gender (woman) feels like it's being minimalised, as if people are jumping ship like rats escaping a sinker. i understand that feeling completely. but the Woman Battleship is not actually sinking, i promise!

i think what you need to do is find other cis girls/women like you, (like. preferably who support trans rights and aren't bigots and understand there is a wider scope here), and try to connect with those women. because they are out there! and i do NOT doubt in the slightest that that frustration is present in them too. i think the more you discuss it (while - PLEASE - still keeping kindness to transmascs in mind, they really are just experiencing something you don't experience yourself, it's not that deep and maybe it's helpful to sit back and go "not for me but aight") - the more you'll feel comfortable with your presentation and understanding of yourself as a woman.

women's rights are still being shat on. i won't beat around the bush here. it still sucks to be a woman. and transitioning helps an individual to come to terms with their own self, but we are all still going to have to fight the same fight because the fight is still there. an employer isn't going to give you the same treatment as the male employees just because you look like a woman with some beard scruff, unfortunately. people like you (cis woman) and me (no gender) and transmascs (transmascs) have to link arms in this matter. we know the same trouble and it still hurts and it's still raw.

so i guess the full tl;dr is: i was a woman once and it sucked and that's why i want every cis woman to know that i understand and cannot ever stop understanding. there are Expectations on women and if i ever see a woman EVEN POLITELY asked to "wear a skirt please. women have to wear skirts for this" i will start biting. women don't have to perform anything for anyone. women are women who are women because they are women. anyone who thinks there has to be a performative element can die mad

Hi, same anon from before (i would have replied in the og post but i dont want people insulting me on my blog, sorry). I have been reflecting for a long time actually and i know that my thoughts are wrong. The sad thing is that I didn’t use to think this way. Ironically this started after i started questioning my own gender identity and im mad because if i was not going to be 100% cis then *at least* i could be a trans man. I hate this stupid middle ground that im stuck with (which funny enough, is similar to my experience with bisexuality since i’m “mostly straight” or heteroflexible).

I dont think by any means that trans men are “confused lesbians” or anything of the sort. I didn’t want you or anyone else reading this think that I believe that bullshit. Trans men are men and im jealous of them for being men, as in that way they’re able to escape misogyny and lots of other benefits. Im angry because they were born with the same genetic configuration as i was and yet they get some of the benefits that cis men are born with. And yes, i resent men in general but I don’t believe they’re evil and I DEFINITELY know that women are not saints. I have tried to get away from these sort of posts, but yeah on twitter women i know (former highschool classmates) are constantly sharing stories of rape, murder and abuse perpetuated by men against women. They don’t directly say “men are evil” but they do perpetruate fear of men and in this pandemic that has really affected me (it didnt use to before)

Whenever i bring this to my therapist she tells me to think of something else which is a temporal solution but it doesnt help my problem. I don’t think she understands but also i cant change therapist.

I hope i could have made myself more clear in this :( i dont wanto be a bad person

And no, unfortunately im not transmasc. Im comfortable in my body as it is (whenever i dont think that because for what i look like im more likely to get r*ped)

Honey, I don't know how to say this without sounding like I am telling you what your gender is. Of course that's up to you. But you have just found so many ways of saying that ~unfortunately you are not transmasc~ that I can't help but get the feeling that... maybe... you are?! You know... me as a cis woman, I don't feel sad about not being a man. I don't envy men for their gender, I don't envy trans men for """escaping womanhood and misogyny""". Which, as Tiger pointed out in their reblog, isn't even true - transmascs are also often subjected and targeted to misogyny because transphobes are misgendering them as they please.

I also think you are soaking up way too many things about sexual assault, if that's so present on your mind. That's not healthy. Yes, rape is something that happens in this world and we should talk about it and try to prevent it. But a) rape is never the victim's fault and no matter what someone's identity is that doesn't make it any better or worse. and b) if this topic upsets you so much that you are literally worrying about it all the time then maybe take some time off. Log off twitter for a while, use a blacklist to filter out the topics that upset you so much. It is not healthy for anyone to constantly worry about how "likely" it is that you will get raped. I don't know if you have experiences any sexual trauma but whether you did or not - if this makes you so anxious then maybe that's also something you need to deal with. And if your therapist isn't helping you then maybe you need to find a new one (one who is also specialised in queer and gender things, if this one isn't?)

It's another aspect of radical feminism to paint a """universal female experience""" that consists of suffering and inherent victimhood and I feel like you are somehow paddling in that stream as well. The thing is that for many woman, myself included, this is totally unrelatable. Yes, misogyny is a thing that exists and it affects different people in different ways. But it's not on my mind 24/7. The fear of being raped isn't on my radar at all, unless I find myself in a situation where someone is actually harrassing me. I don't feel shackled by my existence as a woman when I just live my life and I certainly don't experience my statistical likelyhood of being sexually assaulted as an inherent part of my gender. That is all to say that: what you are experiencing and what you are attributing to your (apparent) connection to womanhood is NOT a universal experience and you can break out of that. You are not doomed to view womanhood that way because this is a narrative - one of many - and you can choose to rewrite it to your own liking.

Whether you come out of that as a non-binary person who may or may not be woman-aligned. Whether you realise you actually are transmasc or maybe """just""" a gnc cis woman.... that doesn't really matter at this point in my opinion. Because you have so much negativity associated to literally any gender option that I think you gotta try to clean the slate and rebuild a more positive or at least neutral look on things.

"yes, i resent men in general but I don’t believe they’re evil" is not a healthy or even at all reasonable way to think. Why resent men in general? What justifies that? If you on principle despise half of the human population then this has got to take a toll on your mental health so please try to figure out a way to dismantle what makes you think like that and learn to think more critically about blanket-statements that are being made about men (or any gender).

Maddie