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a-dragons-journal · 3 years

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i dont "kin for fun" but through tiktok i found out about the whole kin for fun vs actual otherkin... situation ig? im having a really hard time taking it seriously... maybe im just burnt out and bitter from dealing with the worlds current events, and maybe its because on tiktok the only people i saw mad about it were white people, but you're the most reasonable person ive seen talking about it (a lot of other posts have this odd tone that 12 year olds on tiktok saying kin is the worlds greatest opression and it weirds me out) so ig my question is just... why exactly does this matter? why does it matter enough to post about and care about and not just ignore? /gen

Hey! I don’t blame you for being a bit weirded out by it, we’re a weird subculture and we’re well aware of it! xD I appreciate you taking the time to actually look into it past your first knee-jerk reaction, especially considering burnout and the state of things.

I’m not totally sure if you’re asking why otherkinity matters or why the “kin for fun” being wrong matters, so I’ll answer both - they’re pretty well tied together anyway.

The short version:

Otherkinity is an identity. It’s who we are, we can’t choose to pick it up or put it down, and it comes with struggles - though no, ‘kin are not systematically oppressed (though we are pretty badly bullied and, at this point, pushed out of our own words and spaces).

What people calling roleplay/relating to/projecting onto characters “kinning for fun” does is steal our words, make them meaningless, and in doing so, make it difficult or impossible for us to find each other. If someone says “I kin [x],” I no longer know whether they mean “I am [x] on an intrinsic level” or “haha I relate to this character a lot”. I no longer know whether they actually share my experiences or if they’re going to turn on me and call me “crazy” as soon as they realize I’m not exaggerating or joking or roleplaying. It’s done massive harm to the community as a whole because it’s become difficult to tell whether someone is actually ‘kin or if they’ve misunderstood the whole thing - and because antikin rhetoric, which I’m seeing more and more in KFF spaces, hurts far more when it’s coming from inside what you thought was a community space than when it’s coming from self-labeled “antikin.”

There are other words for roleplaying and relating to and projecting onto characters. Hell, there are words for strongly identifying with-but-not-as characters/things, though usually KFF people don’t even seem serious enough for those to fit in my experience. I’m really not sure why these people are so determined to steal and misuse our words, words that were specifically created to mean something else, when they already have their own and are just refusing to use them. (Or, hell, if you don’t feel like those fit, make your own. We did. It’s your turn to put in the work. (General you, not you-the-anon, of course.))

An analogy, if that still doesn’t quite land for you:

Consider, for a moment, the transgender community. I am aware this is a dangerous thing to say, but bear with me. Obvious CW for hypothetical transphobia up ahead is obvious.

Consider if you were part of the trans community (I don’t know if you are or not), having finally found a word to explain why you feel the way you do about yourself, why your experiences don’t seem to match up with those of everyone else around you. Having found a community, a home, full of other people like you, people you never would have met if not for words like “transgender” and “gender dysphoria/euphoria” that were created specifically to describe your experiences.

Now consider if people suddenly stumbled across your community for the first time who were not trans themselves. They see community jokes and lighthearted posts out of context, because Tumblr and Twitter aren’t exactly conducive to making sure people find the Transgender 101 information posts first. They don’t bother to do further research, assuming they understand: ah, these people like to crossdress! They like to pretend they’re a different gender! This seems like a fun hobby, I want in!

They begin to post things like this. They post photos of them crossdressing and caption them “hi, I’m [name], and I trans men!” and things of the like. Suddenly the concept of “transing for fun” seems to be everywhere - and it’s not at all what being trans actually is, but these people either don’t know or don’t care. When actual trans people try to politely correct them, they’re accused of “gatekeeping” - and to be clear, this is not “nonbinary people aren’t real,” it’s “transgender means you identify as a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth, and you’re self-identifying as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% and telling us this is just a fun hobby for you, therefore you’re not trans, you’re crossdressing or doing drag or being GNC. That’s fine, but it’s not being trans - you have other words to describe that, use those.”

(Yes, I am aware these things have a history with the trans community - please just ignore that for the sake of the analogy and bear with me on the slightly simplified version of this. “Kinning for fun” does not have that same history with the otherkin community.)

...And then the response to those attempted corrections, in some corners, turns into “wait, you ACTUALLY think you’re another gender? idk that sounds pretty unhealthy, maybe you should see a psychologist or something :\” and “you’re taking this too seriously.”

I imagine, in this hypothetical scenario, you’d also be pretty fuckin peeved.

(Obviously, in this hypothetical scenario, systematic transphobia would be an issue as well, which isn’t the case for otherkin - again, you’re gonna have to bear with me on the simplification for sake of analogy there.)

(EDIT: this is not an anti-MOGAI/exclusionist argument, this is “you’re literally telling me you don’t fit the definition,” explanation on that here)

The long version, which is probably still worth reading if you have the time and energy:

Otherkinity is... pretty core to who I am, who we as a group of individuals are. We live with being otherkin on a daily basis. Many of us spent a long time feeling different and disconnected and not understanding why until we found the otherkin community. Even people like me, who don’t share that experience and still had social connection - I’ve still had to live with weird differences that I had to learn to mask when necessary; instincts that don’t line up with human society well, feeling body parts that weren’t there and that no one else ever seemed to have, things that other kids grew out of because it was just make-believe for them and I... didn’t, because it was never make-believe for me to begin with. Oh, sure, I played make-believe too - I played warrior cats and house and all those things with the other kids, but there were things that weren’t play-pretend for me too. I didn’t have an explanation for it for a long time - it was just how I was, I was weird, and fortunately for me personally I was okay with that (many of those with species dysphoria or more trouble connecting with humans have more problems from that than I did).

And then I found the word “otherkin.” And suddenly everything fell into place, and I had an explanation for the things I’d been experiencing, and there were other people like me. Something I’d assumed didn’t exist. I found others who shared my unique experiences, who were talking about how to cope with the instinct to growl or snap jaws at people instead of expressing annoyance in a human way instead of just saying “that’s weird, don’t do that”, who were talking about dealing with phantom wings and tails, who understood me. I wasn’t weird, I wasn’t broken, I was exactly what one would expect from a dragon living in human skin. I found an explanation for myself. I found a home.

That is why otherkinity matters - it is who we are, it’s not something we can walk away from (certainly not most of us, anyway), and it’s something many of us need the support of the community to help deal with on a daily basis. Being a nonhuman in human society isn’t always easy, but it’s not something we can just magically stop being - it’s core to who we are, we (generally) didn’t choose to be this way, and we (generally) can’t choose to stop. Which is fine - the vast majority of us can cope with it just fine, with a little advice and help and space to be our authentic selves in. We found each other, we built this community from the ground up to make a space and words to make finding each other easier - or possible at all.

Thus we come to the second half of our story.

It was only a couple of years ago that the “kin for fun” trend started getting big. It had existed before that, of course, but it only started going mainstream two, maybe three years ago, from what I can tell. Suddenly people were treating “kin” like it meant relating to, projecting onto, roleplaying as, or just really really liking a character or thing - not being that thing, which is what it actually means. Not long after that, it became hard to tell whether someone saying “I kin this” meant they were that thing, that they were actually part of our community - or that they really really liked that thing and either didn’t know or couldn’t be bothered to learn that that wasn’t the case for us.

Not long after that, it became relatively commonplace to hear phrases like “otherkin are ruining kinning!!” and “you’re taking this too seriously” and “idk, if it’s that serious for you that sounds unhealthy. maybe you should get some help :\” (all directly quoted, or as exactly quoted as I can remember, from things KFF people have said to me or people I know).

It is a special kind of hell, I think, to be told “you’re taking this too seriously, that’s unhealthy” by people who are taking words created to describe your experiences, not theirs, and misusing them to mean something that you do for fun on a weekend instead of something that’s intrinsic to your being.

Perhaps more importantly, like I’ve said, it’s making it almost impossible to know whether someone who says “I kin [x]” is actually ‘kin or if they’re misusing our words to mean something else entirely. The entire point of words is to communicate ideas, and once you start misusing words to mean something totally different than what they actually mean, that communication falls apart and suddenly we might as well not have those words at all. Especially when the community is small enough and obscure enough that we’re starting to be outnumbered by the misinformation. We’re being run out of our own words, words we created to describe our experiences specifically - because we’re a small community that the wider internet can easily drown out by sheer numbers of people who either don’t know any better or don’t care to learn.

That’s the harm it does - the harm it is doing, right now. That’s why it’s important enough to post about. That’s why it matters - because we’re fighting desperately to hang onto our own words so that others like us can actually find us. Because we’re seeing young nonhumans go “this isn’t a kin, I actually am this” and screaming “No, I’m so sorry that this is what the misinformation has done to you, that’s exactly what otherkin means, you have a place here, please don’t let these non-’kin misusing our words drive you away from the very community you’re looking for and that you belong in.” Because we can’t even communicate effectively about our own experiences anymore except in semi-closed spaces like Discord servers and forums (and the number of Discord servers overrun with KFF people is absurd).

......This got very long. Hopefully it at least explained why it matters so much to me and others a bit better ^^; Thanks for hearing me out, and thank you again for looking into this beyond your initial knee-jerk reaction - I really do appreciate it.

(For further reading, if that text wall didn’t blow you out of the water completely, I recommend my “kin for fun” tag, which has more posts like this in both short and long form.)

#probably should've put this under a cut but oh well #otherkin #kin for fun #kinnie #kinning #rani talks #asked and answered #anonymous #rani talks A LOT apparently sbfldkngjlksdf #i have a lot of feelings on this #long post

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detransexual · 3 years

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Im struggling with femininity at this point in my detransition. I have so many thoughts about it, ill try to not go on forever but bear with me.

I know i dont have to be 100% gender non conforming, i know a long flowy dress in summer isnt exactly anti feminist, but it certainly isnt rejecting the ideals that are already in place either. I dont like wearing makeup, it fucks with my perception of myself, but being able to cover up the ever present shadow of facial hair is really relieving. I dont like wearing bras, but a very slightly cupped/padded sportsbra makes a (surprisingly) big difference in making me look like a flatchested woman rather than a dude. I dont like the concept of plastic surgery or surgery in general, but i would love to look more normal even without prosthetics or just a bra, i would to look a little closer to what i should have been like. I miss them the most in the context of sex, and it makes me sad that i always bound and hid them from my girlfriends rather than allow my whole body to be loved and seen as acceptable. Even though im happier about my chest now than i was pre surgery, i wish it had just been a reduction, scars (even of the size i have now) wouldnt be nearly as painful a reminder than the (almost, there's still like, a little more breast tissue than a bio male with my body weight/muscle/fat ratio would have? ) complete lack of tissue.

There are things im happy about, and i was actually a bit sad to notice my body hair has gotten lighter and that my clitoris is not as sensitive or quite as "full"/big as it was on T, because im still really happy about those changes, they've both made me feel MORE comfortable as a woman and in my body.

I dont think id dislike my voice as much if people, particularly (or perhaps exclusively?) other women, still recognised me as a woman with it. Its not a bad voice, its just not really mine, and its not a voice i can freely use without thought or consequence. my voice was already quite deep, especially if i wanted it to be, so it would have been better as it was.

There's still a lot that i dont know where i stand, and since ive always been unsure of who i am and shit, and since ive been so certain in things i was wrong about, its hard to commit, its scary. Both permanent changes and coming out again are very distant, both because i need time and because it takes time to get help again.

But all of this is making me struggle with femininity, it makes it easier to pass, and in turn not be reminded of the whole ordeal, although it also makes me more focused on it, which is probably gonna turn out just as harmful as when i was focusing on the opposite in my original transition.

I dont want to buy into exploitative and objectifying behavioirs, but i feel very very isolated and alienated from other women, something ive felt since i was very, very small, but this is different.

Feeling alienated as a kid was rough, and i desperately clung to what was expected of me, trying to fit in, trying to make myself "right", and ofcourse it was painful, but it was more internal than external.

During my trans-identified years, the alienation became explainable, and being alienated from other girls and women felt like a given, ofcourse thats how it was supposed to be since i was a boy! And i didnt feel trult alienated from boys until i was in my late teens and early 20s living stealth, and suddenly i had to pretend to be someone else in order to fit in. there was a huge difference between being the tomboy friend and actually being "one of the boys". You hear and see very different things when they dont think there's any girls or women around.

But after realising i neither could nor wanted to fit in with men, i gradually realised i was no longer just feeling alienated from other women, but i actually was. Its hard to connect with other women, make friends or exist in female spaces when you're no longer seen as a woman if you open your mouth, and i know thats nothing that overt femininity would change, but i honestly dont know how else to "compensate".

Meeting other detrans women has been wonderful, and i definitely wish i knew more gnc and butch women, but i just cant seem to find any in real life, ive yet to find any real women's spaces that arent "for women and anyone who doesnt identify as a cis-man :)".

I dont want to have to be feminine to be seen as a woman, i dont want to reinforce to myself or others that womanhood=femininity, i dont want to reinforce or portray detransition as meaning becoming genderconforming or like "accepting" and falling into stereotypes or "becoming a REAL woman" through femininity and gender roles. I dont want that, but i dont know how to balance what i want for myself with what would make my own existence less painful and what i think is "right".

I want to be able to be a visbly gender non conforming WOMAN rather than being seen as a gender conforming man, but being a gender conforming woman often makes ne appear and sometimes feel more like a gender non conforming man anyway. I dont know how to balance it all, and im torn between wanting to be a boghag and wanting to perform excessive femininity.

#Detrans woes #Personal #Op

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thesquidwizard · 3 years

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I was told reading Philosophical problems with blah blah blah would answer why making 500 genders would solve gender stereotypes I am petty and affable so I read it

If you want my opinions and my mind slowly melting i am kindly putting this under a read more cuz its fucking long as shit

the TLDR is : this drivel doesnt mention the problems of gender stereotypes or neogenders at all its just some guy wanking on why women need to give up their spaces because he thinks their wrong and annoying ( Kathleen Stock especially)

I’d love to @ you lake-lady, but you blocked me for thought crimes and im to lazy to try to get around that ( if you actually read this before recommending it to me, you are very very strong and very very brainwashed)

the first 14 paragraphs are circle talk "GC feminists are wrong, i will prove their wrong, they think "this" it is wrong ill prove its wrong etc etc etc" if you survive that that, They focus on Kathleen Stock in their words "Stock presents an articulate, relatively comprehensive, and moderate form of gender-critical feminism" first: If Margie’s self-diagnosis (“I’m a boy”) is questioned by the therapist, the therapist can be construed as . . . “converting” . . . a trans child to a “cis” one. If, on the other hand, Margie’s self-diagnosis is affirmed unquestioningly, the therapist is effectively failing to affirm Margie in a sexual orientation of lesbianism; something which also looks like conversion by omission. (Stock, 2018e) -They spend 5 paragraphs explaining why Stocks hypothetical girl^ isnt converted to male heterosexualness by transitioning, and not affirming Marges Gender identity is Dangerous They do not address Stocks ACTUAL concern that Gender Affirming Therapy without any kind of therapy and research on GNC and SSA children is conversion by omission because it doesnt take into account if these feelings stem from gender stereotypes and homophobia. Stocks is not concerned that you are converting this girl straight( sex is real she would be SSA either way) she is concerned your transitioning her without affirming her sexuality and giving her support in the knowledge that being a lesbian is okay and perfectly normal.-

Next: concern about female-only spaces is about legal self-identification without any period of “living as a woman,” prior male socialisation in a way which exacerbates the tendency to violence against female bodies, and the fact that many self-identifying trans women . . . retain both male genitalia and a sexual orientation towards females. (stock) If the evidence shows (as, in fact, it is already showing) that some males—whether genuinely “truly” trans or just pretending—turn out to pose a threat to females, and it’s really hard to tell in advance which ones will, can’t we then make a social norm and/or law to exclude all [natal] males from female-only spaces . . . ? (also stock)

-Quotes are separated by garbage but this whole section is what we have all seen before " why must trans woman suffer, just because cis men hurt woman" except its really long it acknowledges male violence rates but refuses to acknowledge we have already seen men (and identified transwoman) taking advantage to hurt woman. This whole chunk is just SOME woman must be sacrificed for Trans feelings-

They do put: Finally, we know that some men who come into contact with children in their work will offend against them. Yet we do not exclude all men from working with children, even if using gender as a watershed would prevent those offenses. Why does the good of minimizing child sexual abuse not lead us inexorably to the conclusion that we must outlaw all male teachers and coaches? Because our practical reason recognizes complexity: We readily see that even the most highly desirable states of affairs (minimizing abuse of children) do not have simple, quasi-mechanistic implications for policy or decision-making, and that they do not justify the indiscriminate suppression of other goods (even less important ones, such as professional vocations).

-And id like to add with the rise in pedo crimes I am 100% down with separating men from children because i do not think any child should be endangered just to keep men in jobs.-

They also put this quote in:

there is clearly a difference between the experience of a child who is treated by others in way that are characteristic of boys and also feels like a boy, and a child who is treated by others in ways that are characteristic of boys whilst feeling that they are really a girl. (Finlayson et al., 2018)

-And are you sure? are you really sure? I feel like there might be differences between social conditioning, experience and feelings. A boy treated like a boy and a boy(who feels like a girl) treated like a boy are still experiencing being treated and raised like a boy?? one just has emotional differences (is it internalized homophobia, Gender non conformity, a developed fetish?? who knows but they still experienced boyhood)-

-Next section says we cant make single stall or any other kind of netrual or trans bathrooms because its to hard? and it hurts trans feels reminding them that they have birth sexes because thats hate speech???-

also this: Our social world is arranged in a way that makes exclusion from the sex/gender they claim—on the basis of a lack of “authentic” belonging (Serano, 2007)—central to trans subordination. As with other forms of social subordination, trans exclusion has not only material dimensions (Blair & Hoskin, 2018; Hargie et al., 2017; Moolchaem et al., 2015; Movement Advancement Project and GLSEN, 2017; Rondón Garcia & Martin Romero, 2016; Serano, 2013; Stonewall, n.d.; Yona, 2015), but also discursive ones that work in accordance with the logic of so-called performatives. Performatives are utterances that do things with words: specifically, they accomplish something in the act of saying it (Austin, 1975). The classical example is marriage—in the act of declaring a couple married, a celebrant brings about a change in their normative status, provided the celebrant is the right person in the right circumstances. This presupposes a normative background (that is a set of laws, conventions, or other rules) governing all those matters: who qualifies as a legitimate celebrant, what the right circumstances are for the performative to do its work, what marriage status means in terms of spouses’ rights and obligations, etc.

-Celebrating a Marriage is celebrating a couples chosen form of representing their relationship publicly and adding each other to their legal family, how is that the same as letting men into woman's bathrooms because they have feelings??-

-Theres more babblery about subjugating trans people by not pretending biology is fake, and that saying they cant just taking womans rights and spaces is denying their reality and existence we find out the author is a gay(cis) man so why does he have opinions on womans spaces and issues who fucking knows ( he really likes the word unintelligible)-

-Im tired, Ive taken several breaks just to stay clear headed( mildly sane) and now we are onto why Trans inclusive practices dont threaten the concept of female, male, lesbian and gay. Okay buddy ole pal bring it on-

Stock (2018b) has also argued that trans inclusion on the ground of self-identification/declaration threatens “a secure understanding” of concepts intimately related to “woman”—namely, “female” and “lesbian.” It is hard to see this threat as a real one. After all, conceptually, “trans maleness” and “trans femaleness” presuppose “cis maleness” and “cis femaleness” as their other—namely, the case of female and male for which no transition, no reaching across, is required: the case of femaleness and maleness already on this side of (= “cis”) their sex.

-At some point i expect to find out Stock implied his dick is tiny or something " gender crit feminists are wrong im gonna argue with just this one" In this section he manages to be long winded and say nothing have a taste:

Stock (2019b) argues, correctly, that “sex [i.e., maleness and femaleness] is not determined by any single, unitary set of essential criteria,” and that “there is no single set of features a person must have in order to count as male or female.” She goes on to state that: (a) “you do still need to possess some” female (biological) sex characteristics to count as female; (b) that this is “a real, material condition upon sex-category-membership”; and (c) that “medical professionals [assigning sex]. . . rely upon an established methodology, aimed at capturing pre-existing biological facts” (Stock 2019b). Stock presents (a), (b), and (c) as if they were true without qualification. In fact, they only describe how, for very legitimate reasons, sex is understood and assigned within the discourses of biology and medicine; but our everyday usages of “male” and “female” may well be more capacious. It does not follow, of course, that there is no connection at all between these discursive domains—biology and the everyday. Rather, something like the biological meaning of “male” and “female” refer to the central cases of “male” and “female” as those terms feature in everyday usages. But those usages, if trans-inclusive (as they should be), will also cover, legitimately and usefully, noncentral cases of those selfsame terms.

-Yes you need to be female to be female, it doesnt matter what you look like how much you weigh your hobbies or tastes you just need to be female. Observed Biology is observed not assigned we dont pop out blank slates until someone says "ya this ones a girl"-

There really is no good reason to fear that such trans-inclusive practices will imperil “maleness” and “femaleness” as concepts. It is the very fact that those concepts have and will retain central cases that puts to rest any such fear. What makes something like the biological meanings of “male” and “female” the central cases of everyday usages of those words is “[o]rdinary-life truth seeking, a certain level of which is essential for survival”; this “involves a swift instinctive testing of innumerable kinds of coherence against innumerable kinds of extra-linguistic data” (Murdoch, 1992). Reproduction is a key aspect of human experience: The existence of each of us and the perpetuation of the human species presuppose it. The extra-linguistic reality of the dioecious configuration of human bodies, which is functional to human reproduction, means both that the concept of “female” and “male” are here to stay, and that their central cases will remain well-understood, even after we give up on trans-exclusionary attitudes, practices, and policies. To put it another way: trans-inclusive linguistic usages, policies, and so on, cannot threaten the distinction between the concepts of “male” and “female,” which hinges on the nondisposability of the central cases of those concepts.

For similar reasons, it is difficult to agree with Stock that characterizing as “gay” trans men attracted to men, and as “lesbian” trans women attracted to women, “leaves us with no linguistic resources to talk about that form of sexual orientation that continues to arouse the distinctive kind of bigotry known as homophobia” (Stock, 2019d). After all, our linguistic conventions make cissexual womanhood and manhood the central or paradigmatic cases of “womanhood” and “manhood”; cissexual (though not necessarily gender-conforming) lesbianism and male homosexuality the central or paradigmatic cases of “lesbianism” and “male homosexuality,” and so on. This will not change. First because of the prevalence of cissexual women/men and cissexual lesbians/gay men, in terms of sheer numbers, relative to trans women/men and trans lesbians/gay men. Second, because of the ways in which the concepts of “man,” “woman,” “gay,” “lesbian,” “cis,” and “trans” sit together with the concepts of “male” and “female,” which reference an extra-linguistic reality, of which, as we have already seen, we cannot but take notice. Given these linguistic and empirical facts, a trans-inclusive use of the terms “lesbian” and “gay” does not carry the dangers Stock (2019d) worries about.

-I keep going back and checking the date this was published in 2020 clearly this man has neither been online except to stalk Stock, nor talked to a human who actually believes what he is arguing against. No one is mad at transwoman for liking woman or vise versa its the kind of woman and men they go after and EXPECT romance and validation from ( ie lesbians and gay men, ie threatening what lesbian and gay mean in "inclusive" climates) fucking knob.-

I dunno if this is translated or the writer isnt english but he keeps using subordination where "opression" would be used and umm. anyway onto "Overemphasizing Sex-Based Subordination"

first he explains the difference between paranoid and paranoid structuralism there is so much fucking bullshit then we get to some quotes! that are bullshit-

Even assuming that the socialization of trans girls mirrors that of cis boys, the fact that trans girls do not identify with maleness can be expected to make a difference to the outcomes of such socialization (Finlayson et al., 2018).

-this guys back, love this guy doesnt know you dont fucking socialize yourself-

It is a mistake to treat “violence and discrimination against trans women . . . as if it were unconnected to that faced by cis women” (Finlayson et al., 2018).

-Finlayson marry me your so smart, that big brain of yours is sooo sexy. Anyway transwoman and "cis" woman face violence from the same people.. Men. but it is not for the same reasons and most transwoman who face violence are brown and black sex workers( if your gonna care go wholesys not halfseys). As opposed to woman who face violence no matter their class, race, nationality, age.. etc etc etc-

Saying “Not giving people everything they desire is not a denial of their humanity” (Allen et al., 2019) amounts to an insensitive dismissal of the serious argument that trans exclusion is ipso facto harmful.

-I want an affordable home and access to food and water whenever i am hungry, you want me to pretend reality doesnt exist so your feefees dont get hurt-

The claim that women “are a culturally subordinated group . . . [while] at best, trans women are a distinct subordinated group; at worst . . . members of the dominant group” entirely discounts the ways in which sex, gender, and cis/trans status intersect. These intersections produce more complex, shifting, and context-dependent power relationships than are captured by the M > F formula.

-Sex based oppression is actually like jello, sometimes woman are less oppressed or oppressed slightly more to the left, I too can just kinda say words-

A dubious assumption underlies this statement: “[T]he fact that our concept-application [of, e.g., ‘woman’] might indirectly convey disadvantage towards some social groups [e.g., trans women] is not itself a reason to criticise the concept use, because the concept use has a further valuable point” (such as “to pick out a distinctive group, relative to recognisably important interests”) (Stock, 2019e). The dubious assumption here is that the “valuable point” of a restrictive use of the concept will be lost if the concept is broadened. The assumption is dubious because even in its broad, inclusive use, the concept retains a readily identifiable central case.

-Yes you dunder head if we start calling lizards mammals we lose the point of what makes a mammal a mammal, which complicates and endangers our way of researching and understanding mammals by making woman "whoever the fucks wants to be one" we loss the ability to easily talk about things that are exclusive to woman the more female language is edified the harder it is for females to unite to talk about womans issues, womans health, girls puberty, womans oppression etc etc.-

-my fuck i dont even care to learn this mans name and i have a personal hatred just for him, i hope ya'll have noticed he uses several different "sources" for his arguments and yet pins GC feminism on Stock alone. Anyway here we go into Doing Philosophy and Debating Policy in the Age of Social Media and Digital Platforms ( i think this man nuts every time he types out philosophy)-

my god we have brough Plato into this, Stocks must stand alone but we are at fucking plato, anyway this section actually has some brains in it there drivel but also truth:

Needless to say, in real-world face-to-face exchanges, unalloyed communicative action is known only by approximation. But there are very good reasons to think that the distance between the ideal (namely, communicative action) and the real is especially wide in the context of the quasi-spoken digital media used to construct (and respond to) the gender-critical case against trans inclusion. Stock (2019f) herself, discussing the reception of her arguments, has complained about countless “half-arsed takedown attempts” by “online philosophers,” crediting, conversely, philosophers she meets offline with “interesting, constructive, and charitable” objections. She also notes that social media siphons “users into paranoid, angry silos” (Stock, 2019d), and that “when reading disembodied words on a screen” it is “easy enough” to engage in “projection” (Stock, 2019a). Why and how do social media and allied platforms have this potential for distorting genuine communicative action?

First, they enable new manipulative communication practices, such as flaming and trolling. The popular support base of gender-critical academics makes ample use of these, though gender-critical scholars are also at the receiving end. Rather than using the quasi-spoken features of social media and allied platforms with a view to genuinely advancing understanding, online activists may exploit these features for strategic aims. Common techniques include drowning a post or blog with irrelevant comments; exposing the blogger to ridicule; deflecting attention from the point she made; forcing her to address spurious objections; pretextually professing a failure to understand, demanding endless further explanations; and so on. Some of these techniques are available in spoken exchanges, but social media and allied platforms magnify their power by enabling “widely-distributed individuals to organize and galvanize around issues of common interest [or] political advocacy” (Stewart, 2016); and by facilitating the use of nonverbal or nonargument-based, but effective, communicative devices, such as memes, gifs, and emoticons.

Another way in which these digital media distort genuine communicative action is by affecting the motivations of the blogger, or micro-blogger, herself. Specifically, they facilitate the interference with genuinely communicative goals (reaching understanding) by noncommunicative, strategic aims. I will discuss three: acquiring influence, career progression, and venting.

In traditional academic communicative practice, one’s recognition as an expert is supposed to follow from the credit that accrues to one as a result of the soundness of one’s research methods and arguments, judged through peer-review processes. But “in the era of social media there are now many different ways that a scientist can build their public profile; the publication of high-quality scientific papers being just one” (Hall, 2014). Veletsianos and Kimmons (2016) have found, by examining a large data set of education scholars’ participation on Twitter, that

being widely followed on social media is impacted by many factors that may have little to do with the quality of scholarly work . . . and . . . that participation and popularity may be impacted by a number of additional factors unrelated to scholarly merit (e.g., wit, controversy, longevity; p. 6).

-This section like every section goes on forever but we finally finally reach our conclusion-

Cooper (2019) has invoked a legal pluralist perspective to argue that it is possible, and may be desirable, for gender as conceived by gender-critical feminists (as “sex-based domination”) and gender as conceived in trans-affirming terms (as “identity diversity”) to coexist side-by-side in the law. Access to women’s spaces is just the kind of policy matter that need not choose between one conception of gender and the other: it can and should be granted on the basis of both. While a compelling feminist case has been made for inclusion (Finlayson et al., 2018), the best feminist case against inclusion suffers from a number of argumentative fallacies (Aristotle, n.d.), and is at odds with well-established and sound uses of practical reason. Many problems in gender-critical thought are consistent with the explanation that paranoid structuralism is too often presupposed in gender-critical work, rather than being treated, productively, as a hypothesis. The nature of the publication outlets favored by gender-critical feminists (social media, blogs, etc.) is also likely to be implicated in generating some of these problems.

I think one of the things i would like anyone who managed to read this entire thing to take away from this is that not ONCE were male bathrooms or male spaces mentioned, not once did this apparently "cis" gay man say that he welcomes and wants transmen in HIS spaces or that he has even thought about it

(((( also he didnt even mention neo genders so my original question 100% unanswered, even fuckface magee doesnt think demiboys are real. He doesnt want to or even mention solving sex based oppression he just wants woman to stop fighting to keep men out))))

#gender critical #gender critical feminism #GC #radfem #terf friendly #anyone with a strong brain try to read the original piece its contras brother i swear to fucking god #id say radfem friendly but he doesnt touch womans issues he doesnt care #trans exclusive

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afearing · 5 years

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since apparently theres no consequences for delivering unto this website extremely long and good takes i will present to you my hot take on the ace d'escourse, with no sources because I Dont Feel Like It. its more words than is reasonable bc i have been stewing in this for like 4 years and if i dont type it out at some point im going to fucking lose it. no, literally, it’s 3 pages long in word about shit no one cares about anymore. please remember to like and subscribe.

some background on me, i id’d as ace for something like 8 years, from the first time i read the wikipedia page on it back in maybe 2009 or thereabouts. i also id’d as aro for about a year in 2016. that is to say, i have a lot of compassion and understanding for asexual individuals and feel i understand the inclusionist side of the argument pretty well, as i never questioned inclusionism until maybe 2014 or so, when the discourse blew up. i took some time off tumblr because i was so fucking distraught to think that, as i id’d as aroace at the time, that i had to come to terms with not being lgbt. lol i was a little too attached to being ‘gay’ because... fun fact, past dumbass self... you are gay. anyway, i really dont want anyone to feel that i hate them, but after i cooled off a little bit i realized that the exclusionist take on asexuality just makes more sense. hopefully i can explain why clearly enough.

i really believe that what is understood as aphobia is 100% of the time simply a manifestation of our culture’s expectations surrounding sexuality. while “expectations surrounding sexuality” as a very broad topic does indeed cover both the lgbt community and people on the ace spectrum, facing these issues does NOT make a person lgbt. i subscribe to the idea that lgbt is for people targeted directly by homophobia and transphobia. ace issues ARE super important to talk about and the whole inclus/exclus nonsense is entirely because this discourse has been put under the wrong category. im aware that probably most people will not care that much about my opinion on the correct framing of asexual activism as i no longer id as ace but i think this is important for everyone. sexual expectations also weigh on straight individuals, especially women, and i’m going to describe a few examples to try to demonstrate why i believe both that it doesn’t make sense to consider asexuality lgbt as well as why it does make sense to frame it as an issue based mainly in misogyny.

call out post for myself, i use reddit, and i think the r/childfree community is a good example of what i think the framing should be like. although it’s acknowledged that not wanting children has larger social consequences for women, both men and women talk about their issues in the forum, including horrific accounts of reproductive coercion and rape, the intersections with race/being lgbt/ageism (although they could do a LOT better with intersectionality, many posters do touch upon it), profoundly cruel comments made by those who have/want children, difficulty finding an understanding relationship partner, discrimination at work, misunderstandings and even hatred from family and acquaintances, discrimination in healthcare, etc.

i think you can tell where i’m going with this. even though being childfree cuts against the expectations for sexuality in most societies, even though it leads to unfair judgment from others, and even though they face discrimination on the basis of the way they express their sexuality, childfree people do NOT frame parenthood/childfreedom as an axis of oppression, nor do they claim that their lack of desire for children makes them lgbt. it’s not even a question if straight childfree people are straight, because duh? nor if the presence of lgbt childfree people makes the whole community fall under the lgbt umbrella, because it obviously doesn’t.

to drive the point home, the reason why this is NOT an axis of oppression is because parents face a ton of issues as well! they also face reproductive coercion as well as judgment over the number of kids they have, constant scrutiny and moralization over every aspect of their parenthood style, judgment based on parents’ age/wealth/sexuality/marital or dating status/race, housing and employment discrimination, especially for mothers, the government hating poor parents and cutting their benefits, and more i’m sure i’m not thinking of. again, this is due to societal expectations of sexuality. to complete the analogy, people who aren’t ace face their own set of challenges and discrimination. part of homophobia/biphobia is tinged with hatred of our sexual attraction; no one except for straight white men is allowed to really express their sexuality without backlash, and even then there is this shame leading to a lack of proper sex ed and horribly unhealthy understandings of sexual attraction in a large portion of the populace. so calling aphobia an axis of oppression is just not right. and in addition, the large proportion of lgbt aces doesn’t make asexuality lgbt, that’s not how groups work.

some more on what i mean by ‘expectations around sexuality’... in terms of my experience in the US, there is some blueprint in many people’s minds of what a person should be like in terms of sexuality, and that is something like “cishet, abled man, who is neither ace nor aro, who gets laid regularly (but not to excess) starting no later than 18 and ending no later than 28 when he settles down with one cishet abled wife, also neither ace nor aro, who has only had sex with up to three committed boyfriends, and they have precisely two children, approximately two years apart in age, whom the parents can financially and emotionally support to the utmost, because they are also moderately to very well off, and the parents work under traditional gender roles to raise their children as conventionally as possible.” and if you deviate from this script in ANY way that’s viewed with moral panic and scrutiny by someone. and the connection to misogyny is that women are seen as sort of the bastions of sexual morality. we are punished especially harshly for nonconformity.

if you’re poor you’re fucked because either you don’t have kids or you can’t send them off to private schools and feed them fancy organic shit. if you’re lgbt or polyamorous or aro or ace? fucked! if you dare to reproduce as a disabled person, and if your disability impacts your parenthood, especially for women, you’re practically crucified even in liberal circles. if you have too few kids or too many (don’t you know only kids turn out weird? / how can you possibly raise 5 children properly?), if you have too much sex or too little, if you split up the work in your relationship not along gender lines, if you do unconventional things in your parenthood, like accept your trans kids or move a lot or any number of other things, the social judgment rains down like the fires of fucking hell. meaning practically no one can escape it!! huge bonus to the screaming crowd with pitchforks if you’re a person of color or a woman, mega ultra bonus to women of color.

but does that make everyone i just talked about lgbt? no! although every single one of the groups i mentioned is tangentially related through this issue, even though all of them face a lot of horrible problems and discrimination, that does not make those issues inherently lgbt. again, they are tangentially related and i could see a good case for solidarity among many of the groups mentioned; all of them are fighting for greater acceptance of different kinds of relationships, greater acceptance of seeking happiness and being who you are rather than pressuring everyone to conform as much as possible to the LifeScript. but all of those groups are equally related to the lgbt community - that is, tangentially only. just as you can be childfree and straight, a stay-at-home dad and straight, a straight woman of color, so too can you be polyamorous and straight, ace and straight, or aro and straight.

that’s it for my main point. ace and aro people? your lives are hard. i’m not going to downplay it in any way because i know there are a lot of people who actually hate your guts. fuck, i’ve seen people full-on shittalk asexuality, in the internet and real life, in the most blatant of ways, so it’s not just something you can necessarily escape by logging off. not as much so for aro people tbh but i predict as much once the Public gets more wind of your existence. i fully believe that you face a higher risk of sexual assault; discrimination in relationships, housing, and the workplace; horrible comments from everyone who thinks their shitty opinion on your sexuality and love life matters; and I believe you that that hurts and is terrible and that you deserve a place to discuss and provide support.

but. those issues are not exclusive to you. they’re not exclusive to lgbt people, or oppressed people, and so those issues don’t and cannot make you lgbt, nor do they make ace/aro vs. allo an axis of oppression. our communities intersect, yes, considerably, but you are not a subset of lgbt. perhaps our rhetoric can help you, but because straight ace and aro people exist you cannot and should not consider yourselves lgb+. i think you understand that the issues you face are a form of oppression, but they are the result of the toxic and misogynistic sex culture in this society, which, yes, targets lgbt people but also, practically everyone, including groups which are definitively absolutely not inherently lgbt, such as parents, gnc straight people, poc, disabled people, the list goes on.

to conclude, what really converted me to being an ace exclusionist was the example of a straight grey or demi ace. how could you possibly argue that someone who falls in love with the opposite gender only, but with more conditions or less frequently than someone not aspec, is lgb+, can call themselves queer, etc.? exactly what material reality does that person share with a gay or bi person? i think that their issues fall in line with aspec community issues but extremely clearly not at all with lgbt ones.

the end but post script since i brought up orientation modifiers: perhaps it isn’t my place to say, but i don’t think that microlabels are very healthy and that it would make more sense for the ace community to work on expanding the idea of what sexuality is than to try to create a label to describe every single person’s experience of their sexuality. not that i think you should necessarily kick grey ace people out of the aspec community or that they’re not valid or whatever, but that perhaps it makes more sense to say that some people experience sexual attraction less frequently, and that’s alright. i don’t know. i spent sophomore year of high school poring over those mogai blogs looking for some new orientation label that would make me go like, oh my god that’s me! and believing that if those labels helped people feel that way they weren’t doing any harm. but what actually finally made me feel like that was expanding my understanding of what attraction is and a better conception of lesbian issues and why i might feel so disconnected from my sexuality and why i might be obsessing over every interaction with a guy looking for signs i was attracted to him but feel super disgusted whenever they exhibited interest in me. i spent so long trying to go like maybe im cupioromantic lithsexual and feeling terrified that that i had such a weird and esoteric sexuality that no one could ever possibly understand enough to be in a relationship with me... like, ok dyke! i know a lot of people have had similar experiences and i don’t think i know a whole ton of people now in college who are still doing that, which makes me think those labels are more harmful than not.

i guess that’s anecdotal but it’s easier for me to believe that a person could cling to those labels due to internalized homophobia than actually have a new form of sexuality heretofore undiscovered throughout all human history, but that’s just me. and so many of them just sound so unhealthy, like dreadsexual. i really wish people would work on expanding what not being asexual can mean and look like and i dont think there would be this drive to create these labels anymore. even demisexual which i think is probably the most mainstream conditional orientation, i think many people who have never heard of it and are perfectly content not to would describe the way they experience sexuality a similar way and just consider it normal. sexual attraction isn’t necessarily having your nethers set aflame upon first making eye contact with someone, it looks different for every person and it’s alright to just be how you are without making it part of your whole identity.

The End II. this is 2,200 words. if you read this far you’re a fucking mad l- *the academy cuts my mic line while looking directly at the camera like in the office*

#text post

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shockerstopperz-blog · 7 years

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The Last Stand

I am really hopeful that this becomes my last post.

A quick reminder as to why this exist or started.

People were talking their trash while I ignored them, who ever, as I became older, it was more than obvious that a lot of my hard work was going to waste and felt the need to address the problem.

For one, no one has to believe me when I explain my problems as people harassing me and bullying me, to health issues compounding the situation.

It is one thing to be healthy and work your entire life with nothing to show for it, and another to not know if you could continue working for another year due to fatigue or some pain or another, and still not have anything to show for it.

That is the catalyst for all of my get rich quick schemes: if I could work for five years, let it be towards a project where I could make enough money to not have to be concerned about having a job.

That sounded like a smart idea, except I needed a job to jump start the process of buying computers and learning to program.

That is where the second problem presented itself: people bullying me to be friends with them with the belief that I had to hire them in my company. They were actually telling me that I had to hire them. And of course getting a job since then has proven difficult.

If I wanted a job, then I had to be friends with the people that hired me.

Let me go over for the last time the health issues and issues that affect my decisions and difficulties with obtaining and keeping a job.

The belief that that some have of they could bully me to be friends with them or do without a job is rather interesting when you take into my account my health situation.

The most prominent was my fatigue issue. The pain issue is mainly since my back started giving problems.

My opinion is that, I never had to consistently push my body prior to me having a job in this country, so that probably masked the problem. I did have shoulder pain from lifting concrete mortar that went away eventually, but not much else.

So the pain issue was since 1994.

The fatigue and weak muscles were so bad growing up that I could not have climbed trees if there were no low lying branches.

Imagine climbing a pole where you use your legs to push and your arms to pull.

I had trouble pedaling a bicycle, and was aware of the weakness in my legs while climbing the steps in our home.

Jumping was always an issue. I could not jump far.

Then my weak arms that fatigues easily as well meant driving long distances was a concern, because even when I placed my arm on the door to rest it, my arm would cramp. For that reason, initially I used to mainly drive on surface streets, the reason being, the stop lights provide my arms some rest time.

Well, by 2004 after having a job for some time, I was spending money on protein powder and a 40lb hand weight set.

I also started shopping at GNC, and other stores that sold supplements.

And before you knew if, some of my fatigue went away. I was now driving further distances where fatigue was no longer a primary concern for my arms.

The reason I was able to keep that job for so long was the caffeine from the sodas. A job meant I could go buy the 12 can of sodas.

The point is, taking up weight lifting and using the same supplements as professional lifters provided some relief from my chronic fatigue and muscle weakness.

Further research has provided supplements that can and should provide relief, except they are expensive.

Redbull always made me more tired and made my muscles fatigue faster. I still dont know why. I am not even certain if it allows me to stay awake longer, but I guess it does considering how bad my chronic sleepiness is without caffeine.

If you see me peddling my tricycle with relative ease, though not fast, caffeine is behind it. Without caffeine I have to pull my tricycle behind me for every incline.

Some of the supplements that could benefit me include the following:

Gingseng: small boost in energy, helps me tolerate the cold weather much better. That helped while I was sleeping on the street.

Caffeine: the primary source of energy when I need it to stay awake or walk long distances.

Taurine: only used in some energy drinks. also helps balance the jittery feeling from caffeine. not sure about the energy boost.

L-Carnitine: this should provide an energy boost at the muscle tissue level. cannot say it worked or if it was the caffeine.

Between Taurine and L-Carnitine, I would say their most noticeable effect is, my muscles feel youthful, by which I mean, I can bend and stoop with relative ease.

It could be something else that was responsible, because these drinks also had B-vitamins. They could have created a synergistic effect, such as the carnitine was able to push the vitamins into the cells.

What ever the case, the muscle pain I experience now, this very moment, usually does not exist when I am using protein powder and bcaas.

Now, is that sustainable? I dont know, because I have never had the financial resources to find out.

All I know is, while using protein powder and working out doing arm curls in my apartment, I was able to drive a toyota corolla to indiana and a toyota minivan back, and the round trip took at least four hours, with me only taking a break for the paperwork and to eat a meal with soda.

So, the conclusion here is, caffeine does provide me with enough energy to function.

Having said all that, I was already told by two doctors to stop using caffeine. Obviously, at the time I was using excessive caffeine. Like most people that work in the tech industry, I was using at least five cans a day, and that was just to keep me from falling asleep during the day.

My point behind that lengthy detail of my health issues, without addressing my depression and difficulty at times concentrating, is the intent to remain on section 8 until I am certain that the problems that led to me being in the situation now, would be remedied.

Until I am confident that I would be able to show up to work with enough energy, I intend working on that in the safety of my section 8.

But I do love how some people feel they dont have to show me respect like they show white men.

Take that little punk at loaves and fishes that wanted to make a big scene about me not saying hi to him, where if it was a white male, there was nothing he could say, or the female that was with him.

And as I said, the only reason I decided to start a conversation with her was because I thought she was a volunteer, but lucky for me, I was not white so she did not feel obligated to respond to me out of respect. If it was a white male she probably would have been shaking in her boots out of respect.

Well, I decided before they made her speak to me later, to ensure that she was not going to.

Well, I guess me being black meant I wished she was interested in speaking to me which meant taking care of that belief.

But as I said, them not needing to show me the same respect as they show white men meant I no longer need to have to deal with these people, especially if I would need to consider a job in the downtown area, providing I manage to remedy my health issues.

I find it strange how sam at the voa told me to just let those guys see my penis, they are just curious, except on two separate occasions, after showering, sam and sheridan were leaning again the mens urinal and looking at me and smiling as if they wanted to see my penis, because for some reason seeing my penis would make them happy and for some reason makes me and them friends.

Why would a man be curious about seeing another mans penis is beyond me, but as I said already, a lot of these people work in these environments because they are sexually attracted to men and perversion.

Well, let me go review writing resumes and see what jobs I could apply to, then continue trying to see what they say about research on boosting energy and muscle strength.

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