repeat it after me: ranking tragedies is counterproductive. pitting tragedies against each other is counterproductive. it helps no one, you can bring attention to one tragedy without sounding like an asshole

because so many of y’all wanna get on this app and get bold with black writers, I have a lil sum to say so incoming: long winded rant and a lot of cussing!

the fact that we seem to be the only group in these fandoms to catch hell for creating works centered around is VERY telling and I know the reason why so please spare me the explanations or oppression Olympics about how such and such gets hate as well. I did not ask nor do I care. It’s bad enough that we have to struggle for the tiny bit of canonical representation that we have and even then, it’s a topic of debate by a bunch of sensitive ass crybabies who believe that they are God’s only gift to Earth and that we don’t belong. But to literally be ostracized for creating a safe space within fandom where we are seen, shown and portrayed in any sort of light is soooo fucking aggravating! Every time I turn around, the goalpost is constantly moving for us. If we write smut, we’re doing too much of it, if we write a plus size reader, it’s triggering because some fatphobic bitch is scared of a few rolls and stretch marks and let’s be honest, if we write fluff, angst, etc..you hoes don’t read it. And god forbid we give ur precious favs a fucking headcanon outside of the norm and basic bullshit y’all constantly regurgitate, y’all act like we’re monsters. You want us to pump out content, constantly create stories but then nitpick every detail because y’all are so used to having your way. But let’s talk abt the REAL reason why y’all are mad. Because y’all screamed for the longest that we should make our own spaces because you didn’t want to share them with us. Now that we have, y’all once again move the goalpost (surprise surprise!) now we’re ‘discriminating’ and ‘being racist’ and when those bullshit excuses don’t work, y’all hate raid us and get our pieces slapped with warning labels.

but let’s be very clear, with all the bans, hate, suppression and everything else, we’re still outshining y’all. Still making more unique concepts and creating fics that are far better. Because y’all are lazy, mediocre and don’t want to have to try harder. It’s much easier to keep recycling the same three plot lines and getting us out the way. I could really keep going but I’m not bout to have my page shrouded in negativity. I’m sick of my amazing moots being bullied and harassed, feeling less than and not writing bc y’all are too pussy to say what you really feel w/o an anon button. We don’t owe y’all anything and we’re not leaving. Get over it. To my fellow black writers, I love you so much, please don’t stop writing or feel like you need to change a thing. To the bigots on this app, eat a dick and the balls too. Have the day you deserve.

Can I just say thank you for having well thought out posts about anti-transmasculinity while also not throwing transfems under the bus; I know it's a low ass bar but I've come across too many blogs on here that make some good points only to get incredibly vicious about them and start doing the "um actually *we* have it worse" thing all over again

Wow, I’m sorry you’ve had that experience! Thankfully I’ve seen very very few people act that way. I am firm in never falling into oppression olympics bs and I hope people will call me out hard if I somehow do. I try my hardest to be a good ally to my transfem siblings in particular and I’m sure I can still do better. I think that’s an important mindset for me to have when engaging with these discussions.

Again, I've studied this academically, and these people are spitting the same kind of rhetoric and using the same tactics as 1930s-1940s Nazis. That's an indisputable fact, as anyone who has studied 1930s-1940s Germany will attest. Some of these people even proudly wave the swastika and proclaim themselves to be neo-Nazis, so saying no one should make comparisons is ridiculous.

And if we wait until they get to their endgame before we say, "Okay, we can now acknowledge what's happening," it'll be too late to stop it.

So yeah, both as someone who has studied the topic AND is part of a group the original Nazis targeted (although that second part shouldn't matter), I will, in fact, point out the similarities between the beginning of that genocide and what's happening now.

Hell, I saw this sort of thing coming about a decade ago--it's a big part of why I finally managed to get out of the US in 2018-- but very few people believed my warnings. I should have seen it sooner, honestly.

(I wasn't sure exactly what group the first modern "round 'em up and kill 'em" laws would be passed against, but in retrospect, I should have known they'd go after queer folks first.)

A big part of the reason for pointing out the similarities between then and now is that these same tactics and rhetoric WORKED before, and led to over fifty million deaths, including six million Jews, and about four million Romani, neurodiverse, queer, and simply dissenting folk, among others.

Another reason it's important to point out the similarities is that people KNOW the kinds of horrors the Holocaust inflicted, and they need to understand that the people pushing these laws are the ideological descendants of those who perpetrated those horrors.

Is it a one for one comparison? Of course not; it's been nearly ninety years since the Nazis started out. No organization or ideology remains exactly the same for that long.

But I'll tell you seriously that anyone who tells you not to point out the similarities in rhetoric and tactics, or not to point out that the US far right has allied themselves with literal flag-waving neo-Nazis, is someone you should be very suspicious of, no matter what their identity--especially anyone who tells you that "no one is allowed to raise the alarm, not even members of groups the earlier Nazis targeted, unless they're a member of MY group."

Because who exactly benefits from pretending the similarities don't exist? Who benefits from not pointing out that the people working towards this genocide share ideology and tactics with the engineers of the Holocaust, and in some cases self-identify with them?

The fact that I'm part of a group the Nazis rounded up and slaughtered doesn't make me qualified to make comparisons and raise the alarm; the fact that I've studied the matter does. And I'm not gonna play "oppression olympics" with anyone, but I mean, if I have to play that one card this ine time to be heard, okay.

Again, the Nazis didn't START with death camps. They started by demonizing already-targeted demographics, and claiming only they had the will to protect "good, honest citizens," by passing laws to persecute thise demographics, and linking them in the mind of the public to others that they wanted to eliminate, so that when they went after those other groups, a significant portion of the citizenry would not object.

It's the domino effect as propaganda strategy. If you can convince the public that queer folks are a danger to children, then associate Jews with queer folks--like the original Nazis did, and like the American GOP is going to do eventually--that makes it easier to exploit existing antisemitism and tip people over who might be on the fence. (It was not the only, or even the primary strategy they used, but they did use it.)

The modern US GOP are going after all the same groups that the original Nazis did.

They've been demonizing Jews for decades (witness the "lizard people" dog-whistles, the allegations that Soros funds the "anti-American" left, all the "jokes" about how Jews control the world.

Hell, even their "support" for Israel is rooted in anti-Semitism, because the religious component of the far right believe that practcally all Jews have to return to Israel and die there in order for Jesus to return). They just can't get away with publicly passing laws against Jews... YET. But they will, if they're not stopped.

So they're going after softer targets for now. Casting queer folk as pedophiles (which has been a long-standing accusation), associating neurodiverse people with those "child-grooming" queers (see Missouri's recent legal moves setting the stage for that), Muslims (and by extension everyone who might look vaguely Middle-Eastern) as terrorists, black and brown folks (especially immigrants) as criminals, associating intellectualism and education with being "anti-American," and...

It just goes on and on.

Don't just take my word for it. Please dont just take my word for it. Read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Read They Thought They Were Free. Read Mein Kampf (if you can do so without throwing up). There are a lot of sources, but if you just read those three books, and look at current patterns, you'll see the similarities, too.

Or maybe you'll think I'm being an alarmist. Like the "alarmists" who spoke up in 1930s Germany.

This might be a somewhat controversial opinion/rant, but as a black queer woman (i really id myself as being more genderqueer, but since i'm afab there are just things about womanhood growing up that has just stuck with me as formative experiences.), I find it really difficult to build community with queer men, even in fandom. I've tried to have friendships with transmen, but so many just feel the need to ramp up misogyny to 1000 to validate themselves as men, and then with gay men, some will say the most out-of-pocket, misogynistic things but because they're not attracted to women, it's somehow okay, I guess. But lately, there's been this trend among queer men of saying and doing misogynistic things but justifying it by stating they're talking about white, cishet women. But the thing is, there's nothing in what they said that can be specifically applied to only white women. It's a target to all women (I refuse to play the oppression olympics of who has it worse). And now I see other queer women in fandom saying the same things to each other. I typically stay in anime/manga and danmei fanbases because that's where a lot of my interests are now, and I don't have to deal with USAian nonsense as much. But now that 7 Seas has unfortunately decided to translate more danmei into English that's changed. A queer male fan of a popular series has been unfollowed en masse by danmei fans for saying wildly misogynistic things about the author. Everyone all week has been scrambling to figure out where this came from. "He only ever said these things about cishet white women," but you guys... he was always talking about us the whole time. Now, I just don't know. Now I see why men aren't generally welcomed in or are common within romance-genre circles. It's just really frustrating to see the same thing over and over again. I'll add on that the only genuinely cool queer men in fandom I've met have come from yuri circles. The ones who try to talk about BL are, from my experiences, generally misogynistic, toxic, and feel as though everything should center around them because they're men and in BL the characters are men, as well. But when other women don't want to form community with them, they scream about 'homophobia' and 'fetishizing gay men.' No, you're just an annoying, awful person to be around, and the queer male yuri fans didn't want to deal with you either. Has anyone else, or you specifically, dealt with this? Is there a way to become friends with more queer men in BL spaces who aren't... like That? Or are there specific things/patterns to look for as far as who to avoid?

--

God, so much of this sounds so familiar.

I've known a sad number of trans dudes who overcompensate in dickhead ways. A lot of them do calm down a few years into presenting publicly as male, but it's infuriating to see that crap even if it's temporary.

I will say that two of my close circle of offline friends are trans men, including one who came out during the time we've all been friends. The defensive tomfoolery is in no way inevitable. Both of these dudes are nonwhite and have experience in various other geeky and queer spaces beyond BL (gaming, drag queens, etc.). Maybe that broader perspective helped, or maybe they're just nicer and more mature people than a lot of the little jerkfaces I run across online.

TBH, I often have better luck in offline meetups because to show up at all, people have to be a little more comfortable with getting along with others and behaving themselves. It's also sometimes easier to detect the people you want to back away from slowly when you can see how they treat people in person.

One of my neighbors is a cis gay guy. White, able bodied, middle class, yadda yadda. Exactly the demographic you'd expect to be the worst in certain spaces. He and his partner have lots of queer friends, and plenty of them aren't fellow cis gay guys, which is basically my litmus test for non-annoying cis gay guys offline. (Toxic cis gay dude culture is its own kettle of fish with a different set of issues than defensive trans boy culture, but I've encountered it plenty too.)

This neighbor is interested in geikomi and was delighted to find out I'm a fellow nerd and eager for all my nonfiction book recs about queer Japanese stuff. We don't necessarily overlap in our manga tastes, but there's still a lot we do share. When I ramble on about how AFAB queer people and/or bisexuals study history that's presented as cis gay men's history because that's all we have for most historical periods, he's like "Yeah, that makes total sense!" and not "Mine and not yours!"

I think the key here is that this is a dude who is secure in his identity, who's getting both his media and queer community needs met, and who's in his 40s, so he has some god damn perspective and doesn't need to pretend BL is aimed at him.

A lot of the little jerkfaces make me think "Did your preschool teacher not teach you how to share your toys?"

--

To be honest, there seem to be plenty of dudes hanging around my tumblr. A few cis. Many trans. But they're not going to bring it up incessantly in some defensive "you know I'm not a cootie-having girl, right?" way because who does that?

It comes up when there's a discussion about trans shit or BL as #ownvoices or whatever. (And, in general, any dude worth hanging out with will not think BL as an industry is, or should be, anything of the sort—even if he's expressing his own sense of queerness by writing some.)

On the flipside, I have seen some pretty extreme "no boys allowed" clubhouse nonsense in fandom. It's less common than it was, and past shitty dudes have often been the inspiration, but it can still be a bit much. The nicer class of fandom dude is often pretty hesitant in certain spaces because he's expecting to be met with hostility and is trying to figure out how to participate without tromping all over everyone. (TBH, the guys worrying about this are rarely the problem, but you know how it is.)

I've had dudes send me private messages being like "this thing you said seems kind of stereotypical and anti-man", but in the adult capable of conversation way, not in the tantruming 5-year-old way. And we had a conversation, and they stuck around.

I think having a very clear "It's not #ownvoices, fuck off" stance deters a lot of the more pestilential set. Being equally clear that everyone is welcome and that male yuri fans and female BL fans are pretty equivalent makes the guys worth knowing come out of the woodwork.

In 99% of spaces, I do not give a fuck if some man has his precious feelings hurt by a double standard or default suspicion of men... But fandom is a little unusual because of the demographics and relative power here being so different from in most spaces.

I've definitely seen some people who think women liking BL are fine because we care about characters' personalities, while male fans are all predators or all write f/f that is just fetishy porn or m/m that sounds like Nifty.org and not other fanfic or whatever.

And, yeah, I'll shut down the dumbasses crying in my inbox because I made a joke about Nifty and "coke can dicks" (the kind of guys who have clearly never read m/m that's aimed at dudes outside of fandom spaces), but at the same time, we should extend a little benefit of the doubt to our fellow fandom members of whatever gender. There are usually plenty of men facepalming right along with me at these inexperienced young fools who cannot bear to share.

I think you're just running into the problem that the loud people whose identities you know are often using those identities to browbeat other fans on social media.

--

There are fewer men in BL spaces than women or nonbinary people, so one will typically end up knowing fewer men.

Honestly, I think you find the reasonable people and get rid of the unreasonable ones in the same way regardless of gender: Gatekeeping bullshit is a red flag. Very Online understandings of oppression are a red flag. Enthusiastic and clueless blanket endorsement of own voices as a concept is a red flag. Lots of talking about "fetishization" or even "appropriation" in a very online way is a massive red flag. Monetizing fanfic or seeing other pro authors as competition instead of peers is another. (Professional jealousy and fear about earning potential are behind a lot of bad behavior.)

A lot of it is down to whether you're willing to make yourself a target by publicly telling annoying people to fuck off.

If others can tell what you stand for, they can figure out if they want to hang out with you. Most people keep their heads down a lot of the time, so it can be hard to even hear of them, let alone know if they're your sort of person.

--

tl;dr – Be nice to nice men. Tell shitty men to take a hike. Making friends with men is really as simple as that.

There are larger issues here with what kinds of queer spaces exist and whom they prioritize and with toxic understandings of what representation even means and what should be demanded of whose art. But as you say, a lot of women are also promoting toxic-ass understandings of these things.

The bottom line is that we must resist social media clout-driven understandings of justice. The loudest assholes in the room are rarely worth listening to.

do you have some good sources about how women during the frev thought about universal male suffrage? (i've been uncomfortable with some claims about how the frev was not feminist enough because women got the rights to vote in the 20th century, but cannot back up this discomfort.)

"I am quite limited on certain subjects and this is one of them (I am currently researching the exact thoughts of women during the French Revolution on universal suffrage).

Unfortunately, it has been a great shame that the French Revolution was misogynistic despite the meager rights that were gradually taken away from them over time. Even the greatest progressives like Sylvain Maréchal, who was an important disciple of Babeuf, had as a project to ensure that women did not have a say in the learning of reading.

The fact that misogyny was already present during the Ancien Régime (Marie Antoinette is blamed for all evils when in reality she did not have much say during her husband's reign, to better absolve Louis XVI and the policy of France under this absolute regime) or that Napoleon made the condition of women worse than that of Italy or Spain (I mentioned this in my post 'Women's Rights Suppressed') while being a great hypocrite does not absolve the revolutionaries for what they did in their misogyny.

There was a habit of attacking the wives of their adversaries to better discredit them (like Manon Roland, Marie Françoise Goupil, wife of Hébert, Lucile Duplessis, wife of Desmoulins), which is an interesting parallel on this point with the attacks against Marie Antoinette.

Olympe de Gouges spoke about the rights of women and citizens. Pauline Léon, Claire Lacombe, who demanded the right to organize in the national army. Théroigne de Méricourt, Louis Reine Audu, and again Claire Lacombe fought in the Tuileries and yet, despite being rewarded with a civic crown, they would not have the right to speak on universal suffrage.

Chaumette was a great misogynist, Robespierre too (one could tell me that he supported Louise de Keralio's candidacy for her entry into the academy, but in political matters, it was another story), Danton, Sylvain Maréchal, Amar, etc. I am not here to blame Robespierre and I deplore that there is a black legend about him, but one can see a certain purely political gesture in my opinion for the action he will take towards Simone Evrard.

As much as Simone Evrard is a very intelligent woman, with an extraordinary destiny very underestimated, capable of making very good political speeches (one of the people of the French Revolution that I admire the most), I wonder if the fact that Robespierre personally introduced her into the Assembly was just an opportunistic gesture because he would have had an additional reason to discredit Jacques Roux and Théophile Leclerc thanks to the speech she made while he was among the revolutionaries who approved the restriction of women's rights. Respect towards Simone Evrard regarding her dignity and intelligence (maybe even surely) opportunism, I would be tempted to answer on this by affirmative.

Risking repeating myself, Napoleon being a greater oppressor towards women by taking away the few rights they had, enacting oppressive and hypocritical laws, and even bloody ones concerning them, does not absolve the other revolutionaries of their sexism.

And there is no excuse that it was of their time (in fact, I noticed that this lie is used in my opinion to absolve Napoleon but not the revolutionaries, but forced to see that it fits into the same idea)... First of all, Charles Gilbert Romme was more progressive in women's rights, Marat and Charlier too, Camille Desmoulins thought that women could have the right to vote, Condorcet demanded gender equality, Guyomar opposed the exclusion of women from universal suffrage. Worse than anything, while the clubs and societies of women ended up being banned, which is a regression.

In 1795, for attempting to revolt against the Assembly which abolished the social policies of the Montagnards, they were prohibited from attending assemblies and even from gathering in the streets in groups of more than 5. Moreover, the term 'tricoteuse' to insult women was not invented during the Napoleonic era or the royalist era but in 1795.

What did women think about this? This is where I am quite limited because besides the answers I have given about these women and their actions, unfortunately, there is not much else I can say due to my limited knowledge.

In any case, I hope I have helped a bit to support the aforementioned statements.

In the meantime, I can provide some of my sources: the historian Mathilde Larrère, Antoine Resche who made very good summarized portraits of some revolutionary women on the website 'veni vidi sensi', I would also recommend reading the book by the writer Claude Guillon on Robespierre, women, and the Revolution (even though I completely disagree with some of his books that have been legally condemned, this one is rather good and he had a quite good blog on the French Revolution that I recommend checking out), and the historian Jean-Clément Martin, 'La révolte brisée'."

i finished tell me i'm worthless... boy, was that disappointing.

i'll put this under a break because it's long and tw for antisemitism

most of my original criticism still stands. overall i feel like this majorly missed the mark. it's a shame because i think the core idea is interesting, but rumfitt didn't have the skill to pull it off.

one, i think this book is way too edgy. obviously i read and enjoy extreme horror so i'm familiar with it and i understand the purpose of it here (how could i not, she tells me a billion times directly in the book) but it did feel gratuitous and almost silly. i get that this was the house's influence - the characters are all breaking under FascismTM - but yeesh. this book could have existed entirely without most of this gratuitous writing and would have been better for it.

two, again, way too online. embarrassingly online.

three, some of the choices were.... Interesting. ila in particular was not working for me. it was obvious that ila existed just to counter alice's racism and antisemitism and that resulted in it being so incredibly forced - literally felt like the guy racist people online make up to get mad at. "well what if a jewish pakistani lesbian who is actually a closeted trans man was a T*RF and called me a slur?"

whatever rumfitt was trying to do with these characters, it failed. both characters are just empty vessels. alice feels like the main character, a white trans woman that hides her racism and antisemitism behind leftist speak and performative gestures. meanwhile ila was just a guy that was made up solely to foil alice as a T*RF and weakly attempt to counteract her white womanhood and ila was the flatter character because of it. of course ila is a person that could exist in real life i guess, and i do understand what was trying to be discussed here - this kind of intracommunity conflict, the way marginalized people will turn on each other & become complicit out of fear and desperation (the book literally calculates "intersectionality scores" for the three characters, for fuck's sake) but... come on. yes these people are horrible and the house is bringing it out of them, but could you be a little more subtle, have a little finesse? one of the girls literally has her body broken into the shape of a swastika. come oooonnnnn......

i wish this was a better book. the idea behind the house and the house being its own character is what interested me the most. the house as this symbol of their trauma, this haunted thing that is always looming over them. the walls of the house as the constant crushing pressure that marginalized people feel to conform under fascism. the house is a monster with roots that spread through the entire country. but this was wasted. i wish the book had focused more on that, i wish it was more of a haunted house novel instead of, again, a twitter call out speedrun. this book mentions twitter, 4chan, and tumblr, ila gets "cancelled" on twitter, and i cannot stress enough that the book calculates intersectionality scores. but there is no real commentary made, there is no real reflection or criticism of the "oppression olympics" on display here. it just points it out for us in case we didn't get it, and then later there's a chapter-long ramble that tries to take another swing at it and fails, in my opinion.

it's disappointing that both of rumfitt's novels revolve so heavily around twitter/the internet. i undersand its significance, as a gay person online, but these books are so limited in scope. they will not hold up to the passage of time, and anyone that is not super online will not connect with these stories. of course i'm not trying to say that everyone should be trying to write the next Great Classic, and i don't expect anyone to write something just to appeal to a wider audience, but in my opinion this reliance on twitter and 4chan and "cancel culture" is extremely detrimental and honestly embarrassing to read, and i also feel like i know way more than i should about alison rumfitt and how she spends her time online.

and rumfitt really needs an editor to tell her to pull back on the overexplaining. she seems to be really logged in so maybe she thinks her readers have the reading comprehension of a twitter user, but the overwriting is awful. the few times she does something interesting she immediately undermines it by overexplaining it or fumbling desperately to justify it for the next five pages. she takes quotes and ideas from other authors - audre lorde, shirley jackson, isabel fall, just to name a few, but she seems to fail to grasp what actually made their work so compelling. it's all very flat. she directly states the entire metaphor of the novel within the first chapter - the house is fascism and we're all haunted and possessed by it. and then she beats you over the head with it for the entire rest of the book.

i will say that i can appreciate her attempting to grapple with this conundrum of forgiveness (though i detest that it was presented through a lens of "cancel culture"). ila and alice both do horrible things, and we know why - they were desperate and afraid. but (supposedly, we don't ever see this on the page) they change and become better people by the epilogue. they resist the house, they resist fascism. this needed to be shown on page to work, but instead the book ends abruptly and we are given a single page summary of ila and alice getting together afterwards. where was the character development? what about all the people ila and alice hurt? what about hannah? i'm not asking for a happy ending, but give me something. these characters were literally empty. there was nothing there except the hateful ideologies they represented. ultimately i did not care enough for either of them to be invested in this question of forgiveness or what happened to them after the house. i just wanted the book to be over.

i'm honestly kind of baffled by how recommended and hyped this book is. though i do find this problem pretty often in the indie horror space; if something it gratuitous and shocking (here it's just racist and antisemitic and transphobic) people will rate it higher just because they think it's "transgressive" and that automatically makes it good and smart. it's not. this book is trying very hard to say something but somehow it says nothing to me.... there is no real substance.

damn son I'm literally a transandrophobia poster and I routinely rail against TIRFism and even I think your takes are wack. "AMAB privilege" GTFO with that man. we can lift up transmasc voices and promote trans unity and talk about radfem ingression into trans spaces without making this another AMAB/AFAB oppression olympics thing - that was the whole problem, we should be doing the opposite. stop taking words like TIRF and pretending to be against radfems when you're eating their talking points for breakfast

tirf means trans inclusive radfem, so tirfs actually are radfems! i am one myself. terfs aren't actually a thing - there are definitely transphobic radfems, but radfeminism includes ALL afab people, transmascs included. i'm still veryyy critical of how many handle trans issues. i reblog as much material as i can for my book, which very often includes not-so-kind terms/phrasing, but i do try to use language as respectful as i can in my own posts so i can have actual conversations with trans folks and trans activists, including saying amab/afab and agab instead of male/female.

i do believe that transfem people face unique oppression on the complicated axis of what ppl call transmisogyny. which imo is mostly a mix of sexism and homophobia if someone knows that person's sex/agab, mixed with conditional misogyny if they pass and live their life as afab. if they're outed as amab, they're seen as a gnc man again and with all the violent sexism that comes with that. it's a very complex form of oppression. i know they go through a lot of unique trauma, i'm not denying it.

but i also believe that afab people are uniquely oppressed as well.

if not, then what do you call this if not unique oppression? forced impregnation, abortion/pregnancy issues, period tax, lack of menstruation/uterus research & resources, afab bodies being under-represented in medicine which causes horrific things to happen, afab babies being aborted or killed at birth for being born with a vagina (afab) bc they're seen as lesser, afab upbringing coming with very unique experiences that amab ppl for better or worse will never understand (it is NOT a fucking privilege fuck you), being born with a body type that is very obviously vulnerable against people with penises sexually due to people with bio dicks feeling genital pleasure when they stick it in something, and god knows they will not give a shit about the person below them (look at fucking nature documentaries!!!). they will take off the condom. they will pressure ppl to do anal or give painful blowjobs. they will be creeps or jerks about pregnancy. they will generally put penises above vaginas and amab rights over afab rights, and this shit is DEEPLY ingrained in society. transfems being able to transition is very new, meaning that although they had many struggles before, they were not treated as female and had that (perhaps painful) privilege for MOST of human history. this meant being allowed to open a bank, go places without a husband, not being forced to be impregnated like cattle, not being forced to be a mother stuck in a kitchen, and having SOOO much more generational wealth at their disposal. afab ppl reading abt historical afab oppression is upsetting in a way that transfems will never fully be able to relate to. afab people have a deep, rich, unique culture and faced trauma for thousands of years and us being afab is not a privilege!! we have the privilege of not understanding transfem issues, sure, like a woman not being a lesbian won't face lesbophobia. but then again male-attracted women face violence from men in a unique way!! it's complex af when you're already marginalized

most ppl have an agab-based sexuality too, cis men included, meaning afab ppl are the ONLY *INTENDED* target of cis men's lust and sexual violence and whatever misogynistic bs they say about women, since most cis men are heterosexual. amab ppl face it, and it fucking sucks for them too, but they also only face it conditionally - the very second the cis guy realizes the person is amab, the usual trope is them throwing up thinking back on how they kissed and wanting to punch the "crossdressing pervert" EVEN if the transfem had every surgery possible and looked totally afab. they lose attraction, usually anyway, and physical violence linked to homophobia and gncphobia is the danger transfems then risk. which ofc is absolutely horrible, it can be life-ruining. but not an afabmisogyny experience. they aren't unconditionally sexualized. they are mistaken for afab due to all the surgeries and hormones they took. it's misdirected afabmisogyny due to ppl assuming they were born with a vagina and went thru afab puberty. and then harming them bc they see afab ppl as sex objects and dumb bitches, they see us being born and raised afab as a weakness. they hate us and want us for our sex/agab. most misogyny is about specifically afab people! and yes transmisogyny sucks, it should be called out too for sure. but when fem transmascs pass as transfem post-transition they always are open about experiencing misdirected transmisogyny and talking abt transfem rights etc etc. why can't transfems do the same with cis women and transmascs?? why can't they talk abt how transmisogyny & misogyny against cis women are both bad in different ways? it's always them being victims vs those evil privileged bitches!!

and not just quickly mention it but ACTUALLY speak up about it, uplift afab voices, and be genuinely good afab allies? where are the posts from transfems calling out transfems' afabmisogyny? why can't transmascs or cis women write posts abt it without being met by death threats and terf accusations? i know you think you can only further transandrophobia discussions by tiptoing around the existence of afab-exclusive misogyny. i know talking abt transmasc-unique issues already leads to insane amounts of bullying from afab & transfem folks. but i'm tired of transfems getting away with shitty behavior. i'm tired of cis women being only seen as oppressors against transfems. something needs to change. i truly believe that radfeminism isn't a lost cause, and in fact there are more and more transmasc radfems, and even transfems who are strong radfem allies. people are finally waking up to the realities of afab oppression!! they're finally embracing nuance!

misogynistic behavior from transfems gets brushed under the rug and them being amab is seen as completely irrelevant, anyone bringing it up is a bigot, while afab folks are more than open to their agab being a factor in conflict... it's unfair. as you've shown, transfems and the ppl speaking for them refuse to have nuanced talks abt afab oppression, they view it as "omg we're all oppressed!! shut the fuck up theyfab go bootlick those privileged cis cunts! no one wants to hear about your issues for longer than a minute, only listen to MINE!! being afab is a PRIVILEGE i didn't get to grow up afab stop rubbing it in my face!!!" what sucks is that transfems and transfem allies used to be soooo much more respectful of cis women and transmasc people's rights too. literally NO ONE used to say that being afab genuinely meant you got benefits in society. no one. like holy fucking shit. the past 20 years has been a fever dream!!!

i'm 100% for transfems living their best lives, transition included, and i've heard many horror stories of transfem-specific experiences i'll never truly understand. but it's not a strict oppressor/oppressed dynamic all the time. just because you're not oppressed on every axis of oppression ever doesn't mean you have no struggles. it's fucking insane that i keep needing to explain that to people, like oh my god do y'all not understand that someone can be both privileged and disprivileged in society in different ways, and might need to both have their voices boosted sometimes and ALSO need to take a back seat other times??? this ain't us cis radfems OR transandrophobia activists just playing oppression olympics. this is an oppressed group talking abt their unique struggles and being mocked to hell and back. and it's sad that it's seen as catty and selfish and bitchy. but as an afab woman i'm not surprised lmao.

and yeah you might speak on transmasc issues, but do you speak on afab rights? do you call out misogynistic bullshit that transfems say about cis women too? do you speak on cis women's oppression as well, about how they're oppressed by amab people too and are oppressed in a different way than transmasc or transfem folks, for being afab and ALSO identifying as women? do you mention how afab people are a uniquely oppressed class of people, or are you too scared of stepping on transfem toes bc they're seen as the top of the oppression pyramid and will harass you off the site?? why is saying that amab people as a class have privilege over afab folks on an oppression axis controversial? what about that feels like an attack?

if you're transfem or otherwise are amab and live perceived as afab, and you aren't afraid to recognize that afab oppression is its own thing and deserves its own voice and its own movement, ily bestie. i see you. i see more and more of you lately and it warms my heart. we aren't enemies, we can learn from eachother. thank you for working thru that initial knee-jerk reaction and learning to be a good ally to afab folks. i wish you the best <3 and if you're transmasc you DESERVE to have your voice heard too. you deserve to speak on afab rights and for transfems to want to be good allies to you too!! ALL afab people have unique voices that need to be heard for once!

neilcfreak hasn't been seen in the fandom in a *long* time, so kind of fucking weird and obvious that nalyra gets a bait ask (which she knows is a bait ask) saying it *must* be bullying that caused it and listing every way neil was a good person. where tf has neilcfreak been much in the last year? besides a few months ago when she was trying to cover up for white fandom. nobody cares about u girl, nobody is rly sending these asks about u except ur own friends (or u lol).

anyway who wants neilcfreak's racist receipts :)

last year, ao3 was getting called out for never following up with their promises made in the wake of BLM 2020 to better protect users against racist harassment. neil and a black user commented on the same post, the black user replying to neil's comment u can see above of "if u don't like it make ur own site lol."

this white user (futureevilscientist) then random af pulled the asks out and tagged the black user at the start of the post to talk all this shit AT them fsr?

then later, neil shows up herself.

this is the part u cannot *cannot* say is not racist. neil is directly replying to a reblog of *someone else's main post* and placing full blame for a "call out post" on the *black* user.

she then pulls out her white jewish shit to speak over the main topic, which is racism / antiblackness.

playing oppression olympics can be done by any marginalized group but it usually works the best for white ppl because white ppl get the most sympathy when doing this (u want the most shining example, how often are we talking about white gay oppression in this fandom above racism / antiblackness, which is the *actual theme* of the show...or even gay oppression through a black pov, since u see louis experience that constantly. how much are we told that this show is rly about white gays and nothing else?). ppl assume whiteness is more innocent by default so will pile more on a black user for "being aggressive" towards a *white* jewish user without needing any proof. that's what neil was counting on here. she also then had a bizarre, loud breakdown on her account for extra assurance she'd be seen as "the real victim" (for making a stupidly racist comment in public). ohh yeah weaponize those white tears girl. she then "quit" tumblr for a while and when she came back, as mentioned in the linked post above, she had to again mention "drama" for good measure. "remember how I was bullied off this site u guys :("

white fandom was all over her dramatic distraction posts btw (nalyra commented on them too, so she is v aware this happened). v few people reached out to the black user or cared about the shit they were dealing with.

these white fandom ppl *never* have any receipts of bullying either, they just *say* it happens and flock to give hugs so it looks like lots of support is happening for a real "issue." but it's not real. everything they do is meant to manipulate u. this nalyra ask is still doing that.

when ur told what to think about someone or u can't find evidence of things happening beyond what anyone, even a group of ppl, *tells u* is happening then u need to rly remain suspicious of the reality of it.

these are asks that the black user got after this stuff happened. so now we've created a new issue from nothing and we're not talking about racism or how ur bullying a black user over literally nothing anymore. now it's suddenly all about poor neilcfreak and her white jewish identity and victimhood from a big, bad black fan. she's gotta make this all make her look like the real victim to cover up how embarrassed and stupid she felt for being called out on saying racist shit.

this is why white ppl need to understand these abusive techniques and get on ppl's ass when they pull this, not just leave it up to black and brown ppl to do. white fandom will cry all the white tears possible and claim ur talking over a white jewish person, being antisemitic. it's an attempt to emotionally manipulate u, keep talking (think of how often claims of antisemitism are used to shut down anyone being pro palestine, it's the same shit). this is racism. this is weaponizing an identity to cause harm to a black person cuz u were caught saying racist shit and want to deflect. if neilcfreak wasn't a huge racist she'd have *also* called this out and told ppl to stop doing this on her behalf. that would require her pulling her head out of her ass first tho and not sending these anons herself prbly.

I was looking for a different receipt to end on but found this instead, so let's talk about this too since we're here

here's neil after this shit went down, trying to make anne rice all kinds of marginalized identities so ppl can excuse her abusive shit too. she never said she was queer and she never identified as trans. u can't just label ppl shit because stuff they said sounds "close enough." she did enough harm as a cishet white woman can u all fuck off already with wanting to find more excuses for never wanting anyone to criticize this piece of shit.

good riddance, wretched bitch.

Bisexual women have privilege over lesbians because they are OSA, I'm not calling any bisexual woman basically straight. And biphobia is real, but does not negate the privilege bisexuals have over lesbians due to their OSA.

If bisexual women want to call other bisexual women "straight homophobes", go ahead.

again, this isn’t the oppression olympics, we all have our own struggles. i don’t see the purpose in telling me this

30 years of Operation Garzón

This summer of 2022 is the 30 year anniversary of the Olympic Games that were held in 1992 in Barcelona, Catalonia’s capital city.

For that reason, it’s also the 30 year anniversary of a wave of arbitrary arrest and torture that the State of Spain orchestrated against Catalan people for being pro-independence.

Spain was terrified that Catalan independence supporters would show their cause in front of the TV cameras that had come from around the world to film the Olympic Games (and the 500 year anniversary of Spain’s conquest of America, which Spain was also celebrating that year, and which Catalan independentists protested against for being an imperialist celebration), because they did not want the world to know that there is political dissidence and that there are oppressed people fighting for a change. That’s why the judge Baltasar Garzón ordered the arrest of people related to the Catalan independence movement.

They arrested 45 people with no proof of any crime and accused them of being terrorists. They were accused of belonging to a short-lived armed struggle group called Terra Lliure who had killed 5 people (4 of which were members of Terra Lliure itself who had an accident). However, Terra Lliure had already dissolved by 1992.

The arrested people were members of grassroots pro-independence organizations, a mayor and two journalists, very few of whom had had any relation with Terra Lliure. Catalan newspapers’ headquarters and different headquarters of the pro-independence organization Moviment de Defensa de la Terra in Catalonia and the Valencian Country were also registered by the police. The 45 arrested people were judged in 1995, and 18 of them were sentenced guilty (with no real proof, because it wasn’t true).

How did the police get confessions for something that wasn’t true? Judge Garzón ordered 25 of the arrested people to be locked up by the police and to not allow them any communication with the outside world. Out of those, 17 were tortured by the Spanish police:

During the first days they were arrested, they were not allowed to eat nor sleep. After three days, some of them were given a sandwich but it was extremely spicy and all of them described it as so disgusting they couldn’t eat it.

Some of them were not allowed to use a bathroom for days. At least one of the arrested (Xavier Alemany) was forced to lay on piles of excrement and urine for a long time and do push-ups in it.

They were locked alone in cells that had no windows nor lights, and when the policemen where in the cell the arrested person was blindfolded. The arrested did not know how many days had passed or if it was day or night.

The cell they were locked in was very small (even 1 x 2 metres) and smelled horribly. At least one of them said that once he had the blindfold removed and he could see it was full of excrements.

They were beaten in all their bodies, including critical parts like the head, chest and genitals. The hitting includes kicking, beating with fists and with objects such as a book and metal bars wrapped in newspapers. Some report to have been hit so hard on the head with the book that they momentarily lost conscience after each hit.

They were forced to stand naked as the police hit them.

They were forced to stand for hours on their knees on tiny spikes that teared their flesh.

The police tied a plastic bag to the arrested person’s head and took turns to strangle them while other policemen (even 8 at a time) beat them. To asphyxiate them even more, the police also put smoke inside the plastic bag before tying it on their head, or burned a cigarette inside the bag so that it would take in the oxygen. They would asphyxiate the person until they were about to pass out, thinking they were dying, only to give them a little bit of air just to start over again and make their suffering last longer.

The policemen violently submerged the arrested person’s head in water to the point of drowning them. When the person thought they were about to die, they took their head out and asked them to confess. They repeated until the arrested person agreed to confess a list of actions the police were reading out.

The police tied them to cables and told them that the cables were connected to an electrocution motor and that if they didn’t confess to being terrorists they would be electrocuted. Some were electrocuted repeatedly.

They tied cables around detained men’s testicles, sexually harassed them for hours saying sadistic sexual comments and threats.

While torturing them, the policemen shouted insults against the detained person, against Catalonia, against Catalan people as a whole and against Catalan cultural symbols, including a lot of Catalanophobic and misogynistic hate speech. They were also forced to shout “viva España” (long live Spain) and “viva la Guardia Civil” (long live the Civil Guard, the Spanish military police force).

They were forced to listen to their mates being tortured.

They lied to the detained people saying that they had also arrested their families and romantic partners, and told them that they were being taken to Madrid to be tortured, that the policemen would record the torture and make them listen to the sounds of their loved ones being tortured in stereo.

They said they had arrested their girlfriends/wives and threatened to rape them. At least one of them reports that when he had to hear the screams of the other arrested people in the cells near him, the policemen said one of those voices was his girlfriend being raped. The policemen also explained in very explicit details how they were raping her.

A few of the arrested men were also threatened to be raped themselves, as the policemen untied their trousers while laughing at them, though they did not do it.

Some were told that their mother had had a heart attack when she heard they had been arrested for being a terrorist child-murderer and that she was dying in the hospital, and similar things about other family members.

They pointed a gun at their head and placed the gun inside their mouth, and threatened to kill them if they didn’t confess to what the police wanted.

They were threatened with a tube on their mouth, saying that if they didn’t confess they would make them swallow water until they died drowning.

They were constantly being threatened with worse tortures, often electrocution in a bathtub.

They were also threatened to be killed and throw their body down a cliff, the harbour or the river.

They were threatened to be taken to a mountain, killed and left their body there, which the policemen said they did often and nobody found out.  (Note: it’s true. Around those years, the Spanish Government had founded the GAL, a paramilitary group that kidnapped, tortured and murdered Basque people accusing them of being terrorists. @beautiful-basque-country has talked about it before.)

In fact, one of the arrested (Joan Rocamora) reported that he was taken on the police van to a waste ground, and there they threatened to kill him and again to rape his girlfriend, asking him “do you not remember what happened to Mikel Zabalza?” (Zabalza was a Basque man tortured and killed by the Spanish military police). Then, the police pretended to be throwing him down a cliff (he was blindfolded and couldn’t see what was happening) and held him in the air, then put a gun in his neck and asphyxiated and beat him up again. Another arrested man (Jordi Bardina) also reported that when he was being asphyxiated and drowned, the policemen laughed and repeatedly mentioned Mikel Zabalza.

After having been beaten, they were forced to stand up on their feet for hours holding their arms up in the air. When the arrested person eventually fell down of exhaustion or lack of sleep, they were punished with more beating.

Of course, they were forbidden from speaking Catalan (their mother language) during their whole arrest. They could only speak Spanish.

They were forced to learn by memory the answer that the police wanted them to say, and repeat it over and over again as a rehearsal for the trial. If they didn’t accept this fake confession, they were tortured again.

These sessions went on all day long, the police officers were replaced by new ones with each change of turns. At least one of the arrested people, Marcel Dalmau, tried to commit suicide while he was arrested because he couldn’t stand the torture any more, but the police came in while he was at it and beat him up so much he couldn’t move. He was taken to a hospital where he was forced to declare that all his injuries had been self-harm and he was banned from mentioning he had been tortured, and he was also threatened even more to confess to being a terrorist or else what had happened to him “would be nothing comparated to what would happen to [his] family and Carme” (his wife). The next day, he was taken from the hospital directly to the Spanish National Audience (Madrid) to declare. He asked everyone how Carme was, but they refused to give an answer, still pretending she had been arrested too.

Quim Gil, the journalist who covered Marcel Dalmau’s story, found out after the newspaper was printed that his text had been changed to say that Marcel was guilty and had two guns, and included a falsified letter signed by Marcel confessing to this. Quim Gil resigned from that newspaper the next day.

Others, like Xavier Ros, explained that they were allowed to speak with the lawyer that would defend them right before the trial. The lawyer was chosen by the Spanish Tribunal and convinced them to sign everything that the Spanish police was accusing them of, saying it was the only way to get released during the duration of the trial; that if they didn’t sign they would be in pre-trial jail. The thought of being left alone with those policemen locked in a jail again was reason enough for them to sign and confess to things they hadn’t done.

Others denounce that the lawyers, judges, administration officers, etc saw them with clear signs of having been tortured on their bodies and ignored it, and that the lawyers that were chosen to defend them showed no interest in the case.

During the days that the trial lasted, the arrested people were still being locked in cells uncommunicated from the rest of the world. The policemen visited them and told them that if any of them denounced having been tortured, they would “meet [them] on the streets and have an accident”. Still, soon after the trial they looked for a forensic doctor to denounce they had suffered torture. Other members of the Catalan pro-independence movement published the story of their arrest and torture in a pro-independence self-published magazine. The Spanish military police soon came and arrested them for having published it, and also tortured them in the same ways.

Despite the torture allegations, the Spanish judge Garzón ordered to NOT investigate it. Instead, he accepted the “confessions” done under torture in order to sentence them as guilty.

12 years later, the European Tribunal of Human Rights condemned Spain for having refused to investigate this case which was clearly torture. Judge Garzón still denies that there was torture.

The Government of Spain at the time of the tortures was the PSOE party. They are still the Government of Spain right now in 2022, and they have never accepted responsibilities.

Sources: “El fill d’un dels independentistes torturats a l’Operació Garzón recorda el relat esfereïdor del seu pare” (in Catalan), “Les tortures de l’operació Garzón, que ara fa 30 anys, explicades en primera persona” (in Catalan), “Ramon Piqué: ‘A la sala d’interrogatoris, m’estrenyien la bossa al cap i em feien agenollar’” (in Catalan), “Cinco torturados en la ‘Operación Garzón’ de 1992 recriminan al exjuez que ignoró sus denuncias” (in Spanish), “'Operación Garzón': anatomía de una represión silenciada” (in Spanish), “Las mentiras reiteradas del exjuez Garzón” (in Spanish), “L'espantós testimoni de les tortures de l'Operación Garzón: «Vaig tenir la necessitat de suicidar-me»” (in Catalan).

Hi!! 😊

How are you doing?

I haven't been the most active on tumblr lately but I saw all the toxic anons asks just now, I haven't looked much into it but I am so sorry that happened.

I can't believe people sometimes, you are one of the most understanding and mature person I have seen on any social media platforms by far. Some people get really triggered by the simplest things said or done, these people think they are the intellectual ones, they obviously aren't.

I don't get it why people gotta target an awesome person like you again and again when you haven't said anything wrong, you just said the truth and stated your opinion and looks like these people can't comprehend general sense.

That's the problem, too many idiots in this world. We can't do anything about them, they are gonna take offense to the most normal thing said. I really hope they don't bother you anymore, even if they do I think we can only ignore them.

Anyways, I wish you the best and hope you're doing great. Sending lots of love and warmest of hugs🫂💕

🧡❤

Hi Kika,

That's incredibly sweet of you! Thank you so much for all your continued support and encouragement!

I won't lie and say all the attacks don't sometimes get to me. It's depressing and frustrating, especially when people accuse you of being something you aren't, and state it with the authority of speaking a factual truth. These people don't even know me, haven't ever interacted with me before, don't know my background or anything. But they say as certain as they would that the sky is blue that I'm a racist, all because I had an opinion about a certain aspect of a TV show, and because I said white people can experience racism too. When I pointed out that I'd recently gotten a racist message from an anon regarding me being Jewish, I got told that I'm playing the victim and that antisemitism isn't racism. But yes it is. And that really is the difficulty with the culture today. It's so easy to throw these labels around, and to also dismiss other people's experiences in some absurd attempt to rate or qualify ones trauma over another's. As they say, it's the oppression Olympics, and white people just aren't allowed to participate. Ironic, isn't it, that white people are excluded on the basis of race, but somehow can't experience racism? It would be funny if it weren't such a destructive concept.

Anyway, I'm ranting a bit. I guess I'm just burnt out. So I really appreciate your kindness as always. You're such a cool and intelligent person. One of my favorite people to talk to on here, and I'll always be so appreciative of your friendship.

White Jewish people really having a fun time right now discoursing about what is and is not definitionally genocide as if genocide knocks politely on the door and asks permission to begin instead of ramping up slowly over years of cultural violence and eradication efforts until one day the rhetorical threshhold for physical violence gets passed and blood pours through the streets.

Anyway if you want one of the more conservatively stated yet internationally recognized definitions of genocide, here's what the UN has to say:

Definition

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

I'm not interested in having a debate with any fucking one about whether or not the trans community is currently among those in the US experiencing what meets the criteria for genocide in the US because as a matter of course the US is arguably in the midst of efforts to enact a genocide against a LOT of communities at any given moment and the trans community is just one of them. My fellow white jews can sit down and shut the actual fuck up with their "trans people weren't targetted during the Holocaust so stop comparing the two" oppression olympics bullshit.

Just because you're so enraptured by the sancity and holiness of your white skin that you're sure our Jewish genocide is too holy to be discussed in the same breath as any other doesn't mean you're not reinforcing the very systems of white supremacy and violence that will happily murder us next when you try to shut down conversations about the interconnectedness of these experiences. It was literally a month ago that my feed was full of people confidently shouting about how the nazis burned trans literature. You fucking know better.

I'm so tired of this constant need to tear each other apart for daring to suggest that our genocides are genuinely interconnected. They are. Plain and simple. No matter who they are committed against. A genocide against any community reinforces the rhetoric of genocide against communities like our Jewish ones and we should be more inclined to give a damn that some members of our Jewish faith agree with that genocidal rhetoric that reinforces our own genocidal unsafety than with the fact that the other communities suffering rightly point out the connections.

If it seems like everyone is quick to say the big G word right now that's probably because global fascism is rising at unprescidented rates, and fascists seek genocidal outcomes with the kind of tunnel-vision few could ever dream of experiencing. That doesn't mean we deny people the truth of the language. It means we start working together to resist an unprecedented scale of genocidal intent. Never again means for anyone, not just the Jews and if you're truly looking at the world right now and thinking that we're NOT at risk for genocidal outcomes unless we actively resist fascist waves, you're a fucking fool.

It's not doomerism to say that, it's realism. Doomerism says genocidal fascism is inevitable and we should give up. It's not! In fact it's quite easy to resist! But we DO actually have to do so actively, consistently, and across all fronts.

So why the FUCK are you people looking our comrades in arms in the eyes and telling them to get off the field??

I saw a post talking about how we, as transexual people, fall into a kind of third category of gender in society regardless of whether we are binary or nonbinary trans people. And a lot of the takes were like "saying every trans person is secretly nonbinary isn't a trans friendly take" and god I just...... you're missing the fucking point. Whether or not we are binary or nonbinary, whether we are trans masc or trans femme, to cis people we all fall into this muddy category of "not normal". like, the infighting I see over and over again of the suffering olympics, "which category of transgender is most oppressed" bullshit is ridiculous. It doesnt matter to the people who want us all dead, shut the fuck up and help each other for gods sake.

So the latest queer discourse on the godforsaken clock app is that a nonbinary person in a seemingly het passing relationship basically doesn't have a right to call themself queer/say they are in a queer relationship because they have a different experience than gays/lesbians.. People are pulling oppression olympics all over again and I want to choke everyone

It's Callie, and They are Not a Girl

So book Twitter can be a lot of fun, and book twitter is where I found Sir Callie. On a purely superficial level, there was a lot to recommend this book: a nonbinary protagonist (which is just vanishingly rare in my experience with books with LGBTQIA+ protagonists), a cover that absolutely slaps, a blurb from Tamora Pierce, and the author's very fun Twitter presence. So I got an ebook copy of the book (and have since ordered a physical copy; I tried, y'all, but I cannot do ereaders) and inhaled it in two sittings. Let's talk Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston.

*There will be brief mentions of child abuse below, so please take care of you and give this post a pass if you need or choose to! Author Esme Symes-Smith also includes a content warning at the front of this book, so cast an eye over that before you pick up the book! Again, take care of you first. The book (and this post) will be here if and/or when you are ready.*

Sir Callie is all about the experience of gender identity for kids in openly hostile environments, and Esme Symes-Smith knows that their book can be heavy at moments because they include a warning at the front of the book, which is a trend that I am a fan of. Give readers autonomy in making book choices and caring for themselves in those choices!!!

Callie is a phenomenal protagonist, because they know what they want and they are supported in going for it. However, Callie's journey becomes bigger than just achieving knighthood, it becomes about peer support and community building in a hostile environment, and it complicates what "winning" and "losing" look like in a way that is really fascinating. Callie learning in a concrete way that the word is bigger than they are and that they can make bigger waves than they thought possible is stunningly well done.

Another thing the book is not shy in exploring is how even the most supportive parents and allies can sometimes fail in support and allyship. Nick, Callie's dad, is a pretty decent ally. He took Callie away from an openly abusive home life and to a place where Callie could be supported. That said, Nick's experience is complicated by the fact that in the hierarchy of difference--which I'm gonna define in a sec here--he is far closer to what people in power consider "acceptable" than Callie is, and that colors his perception of the challenges Callie faces.

So in a paragraph-long digression, I want to define a couple of things and explain the difference between the hierarchy of difference and the oppression Olympics. The oppression Olympics are all about dismissing someone else's trauma because yours is worse. Don't do this, it's not helpful to anyone but the people doing the oppressing. There is enough space for everyone to feel their feelings, face their trauma, and heal. Now, this is absolutely not what Nick does in the novel. Nick is an openly gay man who adheres to every other standard that the social order deems "good" and "normal," so he gets significantly less resistance and stigmatization from the power structures that be than proudly and loudly nonbinary Callie does. Hierarchies of difference are complicated--and also bad, just to be clear--because where oppression Olympics can and do stop woth individuals, hierarchies of difference are often baked into systems and ideologies, conscious and unconscious biases, and regular and internalized ableism. This is way harder to be aware of for lots of people, and Nick's problem in the novel is that he doesn't recognize how high up in that hierarchy of difference he is. He almost treats his and Callie's positions as on par, and imagines that they will find the same level of mostly acceptance that he did. This is extremely not the case, but because Nick walks into Helston with that lack of awareness, his allyship with Callie takes some hits early on, and he completely misses that Willow is AFRAID of him until Callie says it outright. Nick does eventually get his allyship together, but I don't think he ever actually recognizes the hierarchy of difference operating on Helston. His partner Neal does, but Neal is sidelined from Helston for the majority of the novel.

I think the nuances and occasional failures of allyship are some of the most brilliant things that this book does. And it does not condemn Nick for those failures, it instead gives him chances to apologize and do better, which he DOES. A+ no notes.

The other thing that this book does really well, particularly given the book's intended audience, is showing how different people react to marginalization and abuse. Willow, Edwyn, and Elowen all experience outright absuse from Lord Chancellor Peran, and the book does not shy away from Willow's fear to the point of shutting down, Elowen's masking her anger and seeming fine, and Edwyn's desperation for his parents to love him turning him into something of a bully. The diversity of reactions is important to show, because no two kids ever respond to tragedy or negative circumstances the same way, and we cannot imagine a single acceptable response to abuse, because that's how it gets missed and kids don't get help. Normalizing multiple complex reactions is so critical.

Overall, despite being far too old to be the intended audience for this book, the strength in Callie and their friends and the nuance in the relationships throughout the book are just stunningly well done. If I could put this in the hands of every kid between 11 and 13, I would.