#radfems are always wrong | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

milkweedman · 9 months

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I am sorry you've been harrassed by terfs, but the way you are currently trying to weed them out seems a bit misguided. As in, the vast majority of terfs are in fact ok with big hairy CIS men. The so-called men they are actively hating are trans women/transfem people. So by acting like you proclaiming your love to big hairy dudes is the best terf-repellant you seem to be missing the point at best.

i'd love to actually respond to your concerns or whatever the hell it was that you were trying to convey with this ask, but it has almost no basis in reality so i literally cant.

thats the one statement on how effective i think the banners are that has left my queue so far. which is: i hope it works but also have literally 2 other backup plans already in case it does not. i dont know why youre calling that "acting like [me] proclaiming [my] love to big hairy dudes is the best terf-repellant", because thats wildly off target from what i have actually said at any point. everything else youve said is also pretty much either dead wrong or ignorant, so im getting the feeling that you not reading has been a problem for a while.

(ive also not mentioned terfs this entire time--ive been talking about radfems and using the word radfems. they're not the same thing although there's large overlap. so like. thats strike two for zero reading comprehension, buddy. cause you are literally not talking about the group im talking about and youre also inventing whole new sentences that i didnt say.)

#obviously reading ability does not equal intelligence. more about the wild overconfidence of someone who didnt bother to check if they #even read a statement correctly #i misread things all the time which is why i also dont barge into strangers inboxes to insult THEIR intelligence #because i know theres always a chance im completely wrong and i dont want to be an asshole #anon you could give that a try #like what am i even supposed to say to this ? i dont think its the best terf repellant and have never said that ?#but if you know so much about them go ahead and tell us your suggestions for how to get rid of them #im skeptical that they will make any sense at all but im always open to new ideas #(feels nice to be condescended to doesnt it ? i assume thats why you were condescending to me so im returning the favor <3)#anyway other than this fool thank you all for the supportive asks im glad youre enjoying the banners ! so am i :D #way too soon to tell if theyre working (no radfems yet but i usually get a wave of them every couple months so i wont jump to conclusions)#but just as blog decor theyre already great #there are many many asks though and i dont enjoy when this blog is less fiber craft than other stuff #so im reading each one and appreciating them but please dont be upset that im not responding to them or posting them #i have the first 2 i got in my queue and then i got like 20 more so

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essektheylyss · 9 months

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you don't like the inability to go back through the reblog chain because it makes it harder to 'prev tags'; I don't like the inability to go back through the reblog chain because it makes it harder to reblog a version of the post without an annoying comment, especially when some of the blogs involved are deactivated; we are not the same

#not rebloggable cuz I am just whining. I do not actually care about your stance on prev tags.#I have used them on occasion. I find them useful for responding to applauding someone's tags when it's too small for a full convo.#and I am uninterested in my activity becoming a battleground against staff.#but also it does drive me nuts when I'm like 'man this whole chain is great except for the last comment #which is not emotionally wrong but is factually inaccurate on one minute point that I am nonetheless going to split hairs about'#anyway this one was giving terfs too much credit for having come up with radfem theory and like.#terfs/exclusionists as their contemporary movement are new (and more importantly louder and more effective).#but this is a new iteration of radfems who have been kicking since the 60s at least.#audre lorde and bell hooks were not writing against radfems in particular long before you were born #for you to claim that feminism always unilaterally agreed on the fact that men are also negatively affected by the patriarchy.#like it's FINE if you don't know that but. it is a minute point that is nonetheless important to me not to repeat. ANYWAY.#not me going through a whole bunch of wikipedia pages cuz I second guessed myself about facts.#and I couldn't just be WRONG if I was mad about people being minutely wrong now could I.

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hussyknee · 2 months

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Can't imagine ever feeling bad about being single when Reddit exists. Today in cis het men are hot garbage.

Tw for traumatic childbirth, medical trauma, coercion, gaslighting and medical abuse and fucking troglodyte manchild of a husband. Jesus fucking Christ.

#the fact that people are made to push their babies out while flat on their backs will never not be appalling to me #the natural birth position is squatting or on all fours #what the fuck is wrong with western medicine #if i ever have a baby I'd be torn between having it at home with a midwife‚ which honestly feels less scary‚#or a hospital where i can get an epidural because i am really pain averse #my doctor friend says she tries to discourage epidurals because in her experience something always ends up going wrong #the pain is supposed to be a signifier of what to do #and how and when to push #it's unlikely to be a problem for me bc i'm divorced ace disabled and poor #i can't imagine being able to afford a child even though i really want one #still. the patient is the expert on their own body. this rule should be iron clad when it comes to pregnancy and birthing #i think being against cis male gynaecologists is too radfem but then stuff like this happens #obviously cis female gynos and nurses can also be horrible but this kind of numbskullery might be not as common #cis het men are a goddamn plague jfc #knee of huss #r/relationships #reddit

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piplupod · 1 year

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Really sucks to see someone who was clever and kind as a teen turn to "divine feminine" and "law of attraction" and at first she insisted she was trans-inclusive but she's reblogging from open radfems now and I'm just... tired. I'm very tired. It is so exhausting and crushing to see a very clever kind person fall down that rabbit hole turned pipeline.

anyways y'all please stay away from new age spiritual shit. use your critical thinking please. spirituality and religion are good things, but the new age movement is not. I hate seeing people I've known for years fall into it and I can't bring them out of it because they get so strangely brainwashed by it :')

#divine feminine always always leads to radfem and terf ideology sorry #theres no way around it #and the law of attraction is ableist and rooted in white supremacy and colonisation lmao #and it almost always leads to falling into the alt-right #im just really fucking tired #she was so incredibly clever and thoughtful and kind but as soon as she started down that path i knew it'd end up here #i was just rly hoping she'd realise and stop before she got to that point #i havent followed her on any platform for over a year but i check up on her tumblr every few months bc i care abt her still #and i rly want to see her realise where she's going wrong but unfortunately i think there's no way she's going to now #shes cut herself off from like. so many people. but the thing that drives me nuts is that she has a large following who WORSHIPS her #and im just... i wish we'd been closer friends so that i could go to her now and try to point out the inherent hate she's partaking in #by engaging in the LOA and radfem rhetoric. im just really sad honestly #pippen needs 2nd breakfast

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celestialautifutch · 1 year

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I don't know if it's just me but I greatly prefer being called afab nonbinary instead of "female-aligned nonbinary". I get that the two are basically meant to say the same thing, but something about the second one runs a little too close to "woman-lite" for my comfort. You do you, not judging the terms people use for themselves, but female-aligned ain't it for me personally.

#afab #afab nonbinary #nonbinary #assigned female at birth #not to mention they just feel like theyre coming from different directions so to speak #afab means assigned female at birth which doesnt imply that the person is actually female they were just designated that way by some doctor #female-aligned feels like its implying that the person will always be female in some way #and I worry that the female-aligned tags will be full of radfems for this reason #but i could be wrong!#lex rambles

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communistkenobi · 1 year

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this might make me sound ignorant but is the radfem part of term not about hating men? they hate trans people, they hate men and they view both as predatory, obviously men are not their primary targets but I feel like it would be incorrect to say that they don't hate men, especially since many of them believe in gender separatism (which is bs for numerous reasons). it's wrong to bring up men every time someone talks about the transmisogyny terfs spew bc that would be derailing the conversation but can men (trans/cis/whatever) not express how they've been hurt by terfs in their own posts or conversations? apologies if ive completely misinterpreted what you were saying I just want to understand the topic better

I’m not disputing that terfs hate men. However, I think it’s an error to highlight their hatred of men as ideologically significant. Sure they talk about hating men, but their political alliances reveal that dismantling patriarchy, or a desire to oppress men, is not a concern for them, given that they support the criminalisation of sex work, the state enforcement of sex as biologically determined, and are allied with the same right wing groups (such as the Heritage Foundation in the US) that want to criminalise abortion and reinstate “traditional” white western gender norms. If you view terf political goals through the lens of hating men, then their political efforts have overwhelmingly been a massive failure. Which I don’t think is very useful analysis!

A hatred of men is also not politically useful in general, because there is no money to be made or political battles to be won hating men. Hatred of men is not a systemic issue because men are not oppressed as a social group on the basis of their manhood. There is no political or financial infrastructure built on the foundation of hating men, nor is there infrastructure dedicated to maintaining a systemic hatred of men. Hating trans people, however, is extremely financially and politically lucrative, particularly hatred of trans women/transfems, because of how transphobia and misogyny intersect with and reinforce one another. There are ample political, financial, medical, and social institutions that operate on the maintenance of patriarchy, many of which terfs share a political platform with. So terf hatred of men is clearly not that big a deal given how willing they are to ally with right wing groups and fascists, who are the last people on earth to tolerate the oppression of men as a political goal.

This is why people (myself included) take umbrage with the continued insistence that terfs hate men as a central foundation of their beliefs. It’s not incorrect to say that they hate men, but hating men is not the problem with terfs. Hatred of men is not an inherently reactionary position anymore than hating cis people is. The problem is the way terfs conceptualise gender, and the political goals that flow from that conceptualisation, which affects all trans people but primarily affect trans women/transfems. The spectre they raise about bathrooms, about sports, is always the age-old transmisogynistic conspiracy of “a man in a dress” “invading women’s spaces” because the historical legacy of transmisogyny looms large in public consciousness, and reinforced by medical/psychiatric institutions in particular, in a way that hatred and fear of trans men does not (autogynephilia exists as a mental illness but autophallophilia does not, for example. Julia Serrano talks about this in Whipping Girl if you want to read more on the subject). Terfs don’t care about trans men in men’s sports, they don’t raise the counter-spectre of trans men being mass assaulted in bathrooms by cis men who discover that they’re “really women” - these are not rhetorical moves that are interesting or useful to them, because it does not position them as victims. Trans men are hurt by their transphobic rhetoric, suffer under transphobic laws that are passed, and face transphobic discrimination from people in their lives as a result of how mainstream transphobia is (and I am speaking from significant and traumatic personal experience on this front). We are not, however, the face of the transgender boogeyman, and we are not the primary target of terfs. We are targets because we are trans, not because we are men. To be dismissive of the claim that terfs hate men is not a dismissal of the pain and violence transmascs go through, because our oppression is not founded on our manhood.

So when you see terf political efforts and terf rhetoric, their obsessive focus on trans women as arch villains who need to be destroyed, and you come to the conclusion that a hatred of men is the animating force behind terf political activity - that is a transmisogynistic conclusion, both because you are framing their transmisogyny as something that is primarily informed by a hatred of men, and because “terfs hate men” is a non-sequitur in discussions about the political and social damage that their beliefs cause. If terfs hate men, they do so as a hobby, and I don’t really give a fuck about their hobbies

#asks #even old new york was once new amsterdam #transmisogyny tw #transphobia tw #book club #I haven’t read all of whipping girl btw just excerpts #I need to read it though lol. I’ll add it to the pile #note hell #effortpost

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genderkoolaid · 8 months

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I'm sorry but you people have demeaned the word lesbian so badly... the LITERAL definition of a lesbian is a NON-MAN who likes NON-MEN. How is that so fucking hard to understand? Not you specifically, but people like you have made it into something it's not; the whole "bi lesbian" and "straight lesbian" shit, saying trans men can date lesbians (which is literally just transphobic), straight up just saying lesbians can date men???? MEN???? DO YOU NOT HEAR YOURSELVES?

And now the whole butch discourse lmao. Sure, maybe in days long past it was a broader term, but today when someone hears the word butch, I can guarantee their minds will jump to a butch lesbian. If y'all want it to be the GBT community so bad then just say so

Also I can guarantee that you were one of the mfs laughing at lesbians who used he/him or he/they pronouns back in 2020 lmao performative ass bitch

Definitions of words do not descend from Heaven straight from the lips of God. We make them up! So I simply disagree with your definition of lesbian, as do many others. Personally, I enjoy the definition of "queer love/desire for women." For one, it centers lesbianism around women, instead of centering it around the exclusion of men. And two, "non-men loving non-men" is a definition which utterly erases nonbinary people. If an agender person is dating a neutrois person, they are not lesbians- or gay men- simply because y'all cannot get your head out of your binary asses for five seconds. "Non-men loving non-men" is a definition that attempts to be nonbinary-inclusive but only succeeds in making nonbinary & genderqueer identities palatable for radical feminism and political lesbianism. Honestly, I would prefer someone who defines lesbian as "woman loving woman" but understands that many people have complex relationships with womanhood while still feeling attached to the label of lesbian, than someone who uses this "NB-inclusive" definition and goes absolutely feral over genderqueers who are Doing It Wrong.

Anyways, speaking of radical feminism: acknowledging male lesbians and mspec lesbians is not "making lesbianism something its not." It is just recognizing the beautiful complexity that has always existed within lesbianism.

The lesbian community- which I'm using to refer to all kinds of communities organized around queer relationships to women & womanhood- has always been a haven for a lot more people than cis women exclusively into other cis women. The idea of sexuality-as-identity is very recent, and the idea of drawing a hard line between people who only like people of the same gender and people who like the same gender and more is also extremely recent. Beyond that, trans men and nonbinary people have always taken shelter under lesbianism. "Butch" in the context of lesbianism has always been a trans* identity, a way for people with a queer gender to find community and safety.

The reason why we have this idea of lesbianism as a strict category with hard borders is..... you guessed it..... radical feminism! And specifically "political lesbianism," which essentially placed woman-only relationships as the only true feminist relationship you could have. "Lesbian" became a political identity because of its focus on woman-woman relationships. But that meant that, for political lesbianism to be acceptable to radical feminism, it needed to conform to radical feminist beliefs about what makes a good feminist. Which meant:

No trans women or fems (because they are too male and probably predators)

No trans men or mascs (because they are too male and also traitors)

No bisexuals (because they are too male by association and are also traitors)

No penetrative sex, or at least no strap ons (because it imitates men)

No kinky sex (see above but with bonus "kink is evil" flavoring)

No butch/femme roles (because they imitate heterosexuality; everyone has to be neutrally androgynous).

I believe that much of modern lesbian discourse comes from trying to marry lingering radfem beliefs with modern attempts at trans-inclusivity. So you adapt the blatant transphobia: now, trans women are allowed in (as long as they are palatable to cis women), because they're women! And nonbinary people can also be allowed in- at first they were woman-aligned, and then later as long as they weren't man-aligned. Being butch/femme is Back In Style, but we have to soothe the gender anxiety that butches cause by assuring everyone that only True Lesbians can be butch, and butches are always women, even if they kind of aren't, but regardless they're definitely not men, because butch has always been a lesbian term (except it hasn't.) The discourse is haunted by the ideas that lesbianism is constantly under attack, more than anyone else, and that lesbian culture is unique and special and must be guarded from (male/-aligned) invaders who are probably also sexual predators.

To say that this is all just "days long pasts" ignores both that, in physical queer spaces there very much still are male lesbians and bi lesbians who are accepted parts of their local communities, and that you only see those days as "long past" because of the impact of radical feminism on lesbianism. The only reason you see these changes as a good thing is because you've swallowed radical feminist ideas without realizing it.

Also, "if you say butch most people will think of butch lesbians" is an extremely silly argument. Literally who fucking cares. If you say "man" there are still a lot of people who will immediately think of exclusively cis men (see: every feminist who says shit like "if men could get pregnant). Does that mean that trans men should just give up their identities because other people don't understand them? You dork?

Anyways. The funniest part of this ask is how damn confident you are that I was apparently hating on he/him lesbians three years ago. Idk how to tell you this but I'm a boygirl gaylesbianbisexual and have identified this way for years. I have been personally terrorized by shitty lesbian identity politics, the same ones you are repeating now, which told me that if I was even 1% male then identifying as a lesbian made me a disgusting predator. Which caused me years of suffering because no matter how hard I tried, I could not ignore my multigenderedness and how that affected my sexuality. Sowwy but you look silly as hell and your argument is bad and you should feel bad </3

#this made me laugh out loud tho thanks for that !#m.#ask box

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pillarsalt · 2 months

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hi um

I was? transmasc but recently I’ve been seeing a lot of really misogynistic sexist transphobic stuff from trans community and it’s just been totally accepted, even by other transmascs. It’s been going on for a while but recently there was a murder of a nonbinary afab person and yet the whole trans community here has been silent, instead screaming about a transfem user being banned or something? This isn’t the first time an afab trans persons suffering has been dismissed, but now right after this awful death, i see transfems making posts about how transmascs talking about their oppression are terfs.

I didn’t want to think about it but all i could think about was that it was weird how despite everyone claiming trans men have all this privilege, trans women always come first…they get the most representation, they get the fame the admiration and the opportunities, their voices are always the loudest and their problems always always come first no matter what.

But despite popular belief trans men’s issues aren’t actually less significant, in some cases we suffer far more than trans women especially in regard to sexual violence. Yet we are silenced. We are frequently left poor, we are discriminated against for our sex we are discriminated against for being trans we are discriminated against for being perceived as lesbians. Yet we are made to be silent?

Why are our voices less important than trans women’s?

And all I could think about was that this is how females are treated in every other area.

I don’t know what else to say… I tried so hard not to reach that conclusion because I don’t want to be transmysogynist but I kept coming back to it and I couldn’t find an argument against it. This is how females are treated. This is what male privilege look like. And if trans women have male privilege, then why the fuck am I sitting here letting them talk over me?

I just feel really really angry. Your a blog who I liked your art but I blocked you when I discovered you were a radfem, but I sort of had you in the back of my mind for some reason and now I feel lost and confused, and I don’t think I want to be part of the trans community anymore.

Hey anon, firstly I really appreciate your willingness to have an open discussion with me. This must be weighing on you pretty heavily.

Secondly, holy shit, you're right. While the entire website is treating this user's ban as a national travesty, I haven't seen a single person talking about Nex's murder despite how much they claim to care about trans people. That's really fucking low, and this situation does very much encapsulate the state of misogyny within the trans community.

And you're right, this IS how females are treated in every other area. Throughout history, the suffering and injustice women face is minimized, laughed at, ignored, and when we want to talk about it, we're shut down and told we're making people uncomfortable and our pain isn't that bad. And here we are again, with a female person's death outweighed by a male person's inconvenience.

The denial of sex-based oppression that permeates trans spaces is a blatant lie that can only be held together if nobody is allowed to acknowledge it, and those who do are punished. If the trans community truly stood behind what they say, discussion would be encouraged! The foundation of their movement would be backed up with facts and replicable science! But instead, they'll call you a bigot for pointing out systems of oppression you can see with your own eyes. Because if you do, transwomen's position as Most Oppressed, and therefore the final authority on what's right and wrong, collapses. You are correct when you say that it seems like transwomen always come first; I don't remember who said it first, but just look at magazine covers featuring trans people -- the transwomen are fully clothed CEOs, athletes, movie stars, but transmen mostly get on magazine covers for... being pregnant and half naked. Misogyny is built into every society on earth, and individuals simply calling themselves something else doesn't change that. And when you give male people free reign to be as misogynistic as they want without consequence, they'll grab that opportunity and hold on like their lives depend on it. The way they weaponize transmen's sex against them is indistinguishable from what 'cis' men do to 'cis' women, but if you ever speak out about it, somehow YOU'RE the one hurting THEM. They do not want transmascs to find solidarity with other female people, because then they would have to face the reality of their own place in a patriarchal world, and face the fact that there are experiences exclusive to female people and that we have the right to speak about it. I mean you see shit like this and the motives become completely transparent:

I do find it funny how hard the trans community and their allies work to prevent anyone from hearing what radfems have to say in case they "corrupt" you with mere words. A lot of the time, it's simply listening to transwomen themselves that sparks the feeling of "something's not right here" in your brain. That's what happened with me too. I'll tell you that most of us also used to be proponents of trans activism, many formerly identifying as trans too. You are seeing through manipulation, and I know it's quite shocking to realize. Even when I first started having doubts about trans rhetoric, I thought "well everyone else agrees about this, so I need to shut up and be nice about it even if I don't agree." It's an unpleasant place to be in. The cognitive dissonance is exhausting though, and it becomes impossible to ignore.

The mistreatment of transmasc people in the trans community by transfems is brutal, and It's hard to watch from the outside because I just want to say "Hey, you know you don't have to take this shit, right?" And you really don't. You are not at all a bad person for recognizing the frankly absurd amount of misogyny in the trans community. Feeling lost and confused is shitty, but it's normal for this situation. The best thing you can do is keep observing, keep reading, form your own opinions, and never let anyone tell you to shut up. Above all, prioritize yourself and your mental wellbeing. If you need to remove yourself from gender-related spaces and discussion for a while, that's totally alright. Just know you're not evil or a bigot for not blindly agreeing with everything the trans community has told you. Your opinions and experiences are worthwhile too.

#also i'm glad you like my art :) thank you #ask

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hersoftembrace · 8 months

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Hello. I have never really used tumblr before. I apologize if I have misused tags, or am doing something I shouldn't be, but I need help. I am reaching out to radical feminists / terfs because I need a different opinion for once in my life. I have always avoided these topics or opinions because I grew up with the side of the internet that say radfem ideology is harmful and bigoted, and I carelessly took those opinions. I am only now realizing I should be getting my own opinions, which should've been obvious, but it is difficult for me.

I am AFAB, diagnosed with autism and gender dysphoria, and have ID'ed as a trans man throughout most of my teen years, but now as an adult, I am questioning my transgender identity. I am terrified to admit this to my trans friends, who would likely despise me for even considering asking the opinion of radfems. I have no one to discuss this with in a healthy manner. I am worried my gender identity stems from wanting to escape womanhood, just wanting to start a new life, or to get rid of self-hatred. I notice I often 'wish' I could be a cis lesbian, as if I couldn't, because of the way I chose to identify. I am worried and I am scared I am making wrong decisions. I am worried I am not listening to enough different opinions and making my own. Is there anyone I could maybe talk to? Am I welcome here? I am very sorry.

#radblr #radical feminist safe #radical feminists do interact #radical feminism #gender critical

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loverofdoves · 9 months

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some epithets i found on theoi.com surrounding the theme of justice, civil safety, and the ability to be accepted by the gods because some people think our gods are not welcoming to those who are othered by society and don’t care about our individual politics, so i just have to prove them wrong

Aphrodite:

Aphrodite Pandemos - common to all people

Aphrodite Xenia - of the foreigner

Aphrodite Nikephoros - bringer of victory

Apollon

Apollon Akteios - of the foreigner

Ares

Ares Laossoos - he who rallies men

Artemis

Artemis Philomeirax - friend of young girls

Artemis Soteria - savior

Athena

Athena Eryma - defender

Athena Soteria - savior

Athena Poliatis - of the city

Athena Xenia - of hospitality, of the foreigner

Demeter

Demeter Thesmophoros - bringer of laws

Demeter Panakhaia - of all the greeks

Demeter Praxidikê - exactor of justice

Dionysus

Dionysus Eleuthereus - of liberation, freedom

Dionysus Saôtês - savior

Dionysus Politês - citizen

Dionysus Agyieus - protector of the streets, the ways

Hermes

Hermes Agoraios - of the marketplace

Hermes Hermêneutês - interpreter, translator

Hermes Pompaios - the guide

Poseidon

Poseidon Asphalios - secures safe voyage

Poseidon Laoitês - of the people

Zeus

Zeus Koryphaios - chief, leader

Zeus Amboulios - counsellor

Zeus Xenios - of hospitality, strangers

Zeus Phyxios - of refuge

Zeus Laoitês - of the people

Zeus Sôsipolis - city-savior

Zeus Eleutherios - of freedom

(all epithets found on theoi.com)

TERFs/Radfems/Racists/Homophobes/Ableists/etc. don’t clown on this post, just take a moment to learn and move on instead of harassing like you always do.

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hadeantaiga · 10 months

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that radfem arguing that misandry/hatred of men/etc isn't real because people "don't hate the male body" is wild, because the amount of radfems i've seen that talk about how "disgusting" masculine bodies, penises, etc are. like even aside from your points on how they're wrong, like.. there are people that very much DO hate the male body for its innate traits lmao

Yupppp, it's really predominant in radfem circles. "Penises are instruments of harm and it's not possible to have consentual PIV sex, it's always rape" is like, way more common in their spaces than people think. I have also seen "penises have destroyed countless lives".

Like. They are absolutely sexists. They just think it's justified.

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nochd · 7 months

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This came across my dash via the #lgbt tag yesterday. I don't want to engage with the OP because that would get me into fights on radfem tumblr and I don't have the energy for that. But the post itself I think is worth answering, just because it's so neatly and exactly wrong.

(Not that my answer is going to spread very far, because I have 37 non-bot followers, of whom I think roughly 35.5 are just here for the nude photos. But anyway.)

Even if I agree just for argument's sake that the existence of intersex people proves that some people can have "nonbinary" sexes, or "third" sexes, and that "sex is a spectrum," how does that have any relevance to people who are not intersex? Like okay, let's "agree" for the moment that intersex people are something other than male or female. How does that make YOU, as a person who is not intersex, something other than male or female? Saying that intersex people's existence somehow makes sex "complicated" for you specifically is like saying that the issue of whether or not you can hear is "complicated" because some other people who are not you suffer from hearing loss or deafness. Like sorry but for 99% of the human population it is not "more complicated" than born with perfectly normal male genitalia = male and born with perfectly normal female genitalia = female, and chances are you fall into that 99%. Sex is not a social construct or a nebulous enigma of a concept. It is not debatable and made up in the manner that gender is. You cannot philosophize about whether there are two sexes any more than you can philosophize about whether humans have two kidneys. Someone having a missing or malformed kidney or accessory kidneys does not change the fact that humans as a species have two kidneys. Humans are gonochoric just like nearly all other animal species on Earth.

Let's start with the arithmetic. If 99% people are of binary sex, that leaves 1% of people who aren't. There are approximately 8 billion humans on Earth. 1% of 8 billion is 80 million -- about sixteen times the population of my entire country. Even just the number of intersex Americans is something like two-thirds the population of my country. This is not a negligible number of people.

There's a deeper error here, one that goes to the root not just of this misunderstanding but of many. Biology is always complicated, at every scale and at every level of explanation. It's messy, it's fuzzy, and it's always bottom-up, never top-down. Everything biological is the way it is because it grew that way. Biology never does the same thing twice.

Why does it seem like it does? Because, of all the ways you can arrange the parts of a living body, only an astonishingly tiny fraction of them actually make a living body. Any genetic mutation that nudges an organism outside of that fraction dies out and doesn't get passed on. Embryonic development is a gruelling tight-rope walk over a vast pit of non-existence.

Now for most of the body's systems, evolution has only had to produce one arrangement that works and survives. There's not an alternative plumbing plan where the oesophagus goes to the lungs and the trachea to the stomach. But for the reproductive system, evolution has to allow for two arrangements that work and survive, and it has to grow them both from the same starter kit.

What it does, therefore, is grow a body plan that works with a continuum of possible arrangements that includes both of those two. Various other points on the continuum may or may not be capable of producing viable gametes, but they're all survivable.

What biology doesn't do -- what biology never ever does -- is run new products on a conveyor belt stamping them into shape with cookie-cutters. The only things made that way are artificial constructs.

#science #biology #sex determination #evolution #embryology #lgbt #intersex #transgender #nonbinary #essentialism #biological essentialism #essentialism is not biological #biology is not friendly to transphobes

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knightingael · 2 years

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The most awkward part of being GNC is the fact that TRAs consistently designate you as “not a woman.” I work in a setting with an androgynous uniform. I’m occasionally asked by customers (usually either older or more rural) whether I’m male or female. The answer, always, is “I’m a woman.” The reaction from young, progressive coworkers nearby is invariably along the lines of “...You are?”

It’s not that they don’t realize I’m female. They just don’t get that I’m okay with that fact, because I’m clearly not “trying” to look/act like a woman. Every time I get a haircut, people ask my pronouns all over again. Because it must be a statement about my gender, right? It can’t just be that I was bored and had a pair of scissors around. Women don’t do that!

The worst response I’ve had was when a nonbinary manager heard me tell a customer that I’m a woman and corrected me.

“Actually, knightingael doesn’t identify as a boy or a girl.”

They went on to explain how I felt - about my body, about my identity, etc. All completely wrong and based on nothing but my appearance and other “gender” markers. This is what radfems resent in TRAs. Even outside of extreme examples like I’ve described above, there is an implicit statement about sex/gender in everything they preach - one that radical feminists have been fighting to dismantle since the movement’s earliest days. And TRAs argue that it’s compatible with gender nonconformity, but is it? It’s bad enough that even if I come out and explicitly say, “I am a woman,” I’m not believed. I must be hiding something. I must be in denial. I must be shy about expressing my “true” self.

God forbid I exist happily in my female body without conforming to gender norms. Is this really the direction we want to be moving in?

#radfem #radical feminism #feminism #gender presentation #gender critical #gender nonconforming

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lostloveletters · 3 days

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I Left My Heart in San Francisco (John Brady x OC)

Summary: John's heart feels a thousand miles and just as many memories away in Stalag Luft III.

Note: Title comes from the song, of course (you don’t have to listen to it while reading, but I listened to it while writing this). Do not interact if you're under 18, terf or radfem, or post thinspo/ED content.

Word count: 1.7k

Warnings: Fluff and angst, mostly introspective. Somewhat non-linear narrative, I guess.

“I won’t get any good if I don’t practice,” John insisted.

Woody smiled, her green eyes sparkling. “Alright, but you watch that pipe of yours. If I smell burning hair—“

He grinned, taking his pipe out of his mouth. “You won’t, sweetheart, I promise.”

Woody braided her hair first thing in the morning, after hastily raking her fingers through it, tugging out any knots that formed overnight. By the heat of the afternoon, enough hair would come loose and stick to her sweaty skin that she’d have to redo her handiwork, already knowing to anticipate the black streaks of grease she’d have to scrub out of it at the end of each day.

Sometimes Holly would be around to give her an intricate and sturdy French braid, able to withstand sweat and hard work. But John had never braided hair before he asked to do hers one evening, and then with increasing frequency as time went on, desperately needing something to lose himself in.

She sat between his legs, still and patient as he ran his fingers through her wavy hair. He parted it in two sections, letting the waterfall of blonde flow down one of her shoulders while he gathered the rest of her hair, silken to the touch compared to the standard blankets and bedsheets they were issued.

A shiver ran down her spine when his fingers gently brushed the nape of her neck.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“You’re fine, honey.” Her voice was soft, almost a low purr that echoed in his ears. He couldn’t remember another time when she called him honey. Usually just Johnny, which sounded wrong coming from other people, even jokingly, since it became hers, but he wasn’t sure how to tell her he liked honey too.

He carefully layered one thick strand of hair over the other until he finished a braid on one side. Looked good, but he knew at a glance he could do better. Woody braided her hair for utility, not just to look pretty, which was a bonus in his opinion, but not her priority.

He puffed on his pipe, shaking his head before setting it aside. “They’re not even. I’m gonna try again.”

“Go ahead, Johnny.”

John stroked her hair, thinking about how he wished they had met under different—better circumstances, where she wasn’t under constant threat of losing him. He used to figure that there was a proper way to get to a woman’s heart, the way god intended, or so he’d been told: meet a nice young lady, ask her father for permission to take her out on a date, get to know each other, bring her home on time. Rinse and repeat while trying not to get too handsy before getting a ring involved.

Then the war happened.

Then Woody happened, who probably wouldn’t have described herself as a nice young lady in the first place. No father to ask permission to take her out on a date. He wasn’t quite sure they actually saved anything for marriage (besides the having kids part, thankfully). He figured god would be flexible, all things considered.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“There’s a knot,” he mumbled, brows furrowed in concentration as he carefully pulled at strands of hair to free them from each other.

“When I was a kid, if I had a really bad knot I couldn’t get out myself, I’d just cut it with some kitchen scissors. My hair probably looked awful.”

He almost instinctively asked why she didn’t ask her mom to brush it out, but felt the slightest bit of rage burn in his chest when he caught himself and remembered. “I care enough about you to do this right.”

“You’re also pretty good with your hands.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“I know so,” she said, “and thank you for always being attentive.”

“Are we still talking about your hair?”

“Oh, of course.”

He snickered, working on braiding her hair again. “Of course.”

Neither of them spoke of the future very much, but he knew he wanted one with her. Just wasn’t sure how to go about the discussion without scaring her off, if she’d even be open to settling down. Settling. The word weighed heavy in his mind. While Woody claimed no nostalgia for her native city, a sad fondness laced her voice when she spoke of it, of the excitement and freedom San Francisco had offered her when she needed those things most. Sometimes John wondered if Ithaca would be enough, if he would be enough when all was said and done.

He swallowed roughly. “Take a look and tell me what you think. Be as brutally honest as you need to be. I can take it.”

Woody half-turned to him, an amused smile spreading across her face. Made him feel like he was being let in on a secret the way her smile sometimes did. “You could make my hair look like a bird’s nest and I wouldn’t tell you.” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek before getting up. He followed, almost nervous as she inspected her appearance in the small mirror sitting nearby. She beamed at her reflection, turning excitedly to him. “Johnny, it’s perfect.”

She stood on her toes to kiss him, deep and real, the kind that made any lingering doubts dissolve. Her lips were soft, as if she put on lip balm before he got there. Everything about her was soft, except for her hands, always rough and calloused, but something would be wrong if he felt a smooth palm cradling his jaw, or gliding across the expanse of his shoulders, down his back to cling to him. But he was clothed. Or he thought he was. Lost himself for a moment before he found the sound of her voice again.

“Before I forget—” She slipped her hand into one of her pockets. “Here, I want you to have this. I don’t really have any other photos of me, but I wrote a little note on the back of it for you,” she said. Her cheeks flushed, eyes flicking away from him for a moment. “Just so, um, you know it’s yours.”

He smiled at being handed the photo, a little shadowy and out of focus, but her nevertheless. To Johnny, all my love and more, your sweetheart, Woody. She had drawn a little heart next to his name, Xs and Os after hers. “You look beautiful. Thank you, sweetheart.” He kissed her forehead, the tip of his nose brushing against her skin. “I’ll keep it with me.”

And he did. All the way to Stalag Luft III. Looked at the photo and tried to remember the feeling of her hair between his fingers.

He nearly tore Hambone a new one for taking the photo from his hands without asking, not that he would have let him touch it in the first place even if he had. While far from salacious, having other eyes besides his own on Woody’s photo felt almost sacrilegious. After all, he kept it in the same pocket as the St. Christopher card his mother had given him before he left for basic, its laminated corners curled from his incessant toying with it for reassurance. He hardly looked at it since they bailed. Patron saint of travelers. Some good St. Chris did him.

Buck stepped in and got John his photo back before the situation could escalate further. But the cat was out of the bag. As if it even mattered then, anyway. He did take some pride in everyone’s shock at him and Woody managing to keep their relationship under wraps for nearly four months.

He didn’t expect it to come up again, but he wasn’t exactly expecting Bucky to be alive either. In the midst of Bucky's bittersweet reunion with the other members of the 100th who’d been taken prisoner by the Germans, it was mentioned among the updates everyone was clamoring to give him after he relayed what he could muster of how he survived and ended up there.

Hardly relevant, but Bucky fixated on it after John let one small detail slip out.

“You and Woody? How the hell did I not know this?” Bucky asked.

“No one knew, except for Holly,” he said.

“Holly knew?”

“It wasn’t my idea, but Woody tells her everything. Told her about us the night you two made the bet on that baseball game.”

“That was back in June!" Bucky exclaimed, a strange combination of disbelief and slight betrayal that felt almost out of place compared to everything else going on. "She’s known for four months and didn't tell me?”

“Woody swore her to secrecy or something.”

Bucky shook his head. “You sly dog. Under everyone’s noses…” Clapped him proudly on the shoulder. “Good on you, buddy.”

John smiled. “Thanks, Bucky.”

“Don’t expect any details,” Murph mumbled.

“I’m not telling any of you about my sex life.”

“But there was one?” Bucky asked.

He sighed, resisting the urge to glare at his friend, who up until a few hours prior, he wasn’t even sure was still alive. “We didn’t sneak around for four months just to hold hands.”

Even if that was all they’d done, his relationship with Woody wouldn’t have been any less important to him. Still, it was nice to have actual experiences to pull from, build fantasies that could get him through some of the lonelier nights when he wished he were with her, just about anywhere in the world but Stalag Luft III. The four months that were all theirs became his lifeline.

Four months. Maybe that was long enough for him to ask her to marry him. After writing to his family, that’d be his first order of business. Woody already had his heart, so he’d promise her everything else on top of that he could think of. Let her point anywhere on a map and take her there on a month-long honeymoon. Move all the way out to San Francisco with her. If she said ‘no’ or sent the letter back unopened, at least he could say he tried.

He laid back on his bunk that night, doing his best to ignore the shouting outside. Like the night guards did it on purpose to keep them exhausted. Closed his eyes. Kept her photo pressed against his chest. Tried to remember what her hair felt like between his fingers. Silk compared to the threadbare blankets the Germans gave them for the rapidly approaching winter.

“I won’t get any good if I don’t practice,” he insisted.

She smiled, her green eyes sparkling. “Alright, but you watch that pipe of yours. If I smell burning hair—“

He grinned, taking his pipe out of his mouth. “You won’t, sweetheart, I promise.”

#john brady x oc #john brady #masters of the air x oc #masters of the air #mota x oc #mota #mota fanfic #hbo war #hbo war fanfic #hbo war x oc #ch: woody

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cock-holliday · 4 days

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Always gotta laugh a little when people are like “I don’t believe in sympathizing with [conspiracy/oppressor group] but yes, it turns out X thing IS driving people more towards it, so fascinating, anyway I don’t feel bad for those people at all and actually think they should die but wow, this study really does show how fast people are getting radicalized by [propaganda], anyway, they’re so stupid”

There desperately needs to be a shift from the idea that the two ways to respond to conspiracy/right-wing/bigoted takes are 1. “Wow stupid dumb idiots”, and if you don’t do that, then 2. “Poor widdle babies lemme coddle you.”

It’s such a painfully liberal way to respond to things and misses the point of understanding not equaling agreeing. Understanding and sympathizing are tools of deradicalization.

Most anti-vaxxers are not worth arguing with but the theory and conclusions are worth deconstructing, because more reasonable people on the fence are going to get pushed deeper in by “stupid idiot doesn’t know what’s good for you—trust the government.”

Bigoted conservative blue collar guys are not worth arguing with but the theory is worth deconstructing because small towns being abandoned by “progress” are going to be radicalized by “dumb hicks scawed of technology?” coming from city liberals who will never have to work with their hands.

Zionists are not worth arguing with but allowing either narrative of “all antisemitism is made up” or “arguing about antisemitism is irrelevant because this is about Palestinians” allow Zionists to frame themselves as the only response to genuine antisemitism. Not talking about the actual antisemitism Zionists still face allows them to pretend all opposition is antisemitism, and bystanders who “trust Jews to say what’s antisemitism or not” are convinced antizionism is antisemitism.

Male loneliness as a concept isn’t worth discussing when it comes to violently misogynistic men, but it is worth talking about in terms of how patriarchy hurts even the most cishet privileged man AND much more pressingly: how marginalization of men gets ignored because of the radfem belief that maleness cancels out their oppressed identities.

Americans obsessed with conspiracies about human trafficking are often not worth engaging with but the discourse around it IS. Facing the reality of what sexual abuse DOES happen is necessary, reframing how immigration exploitation allows for much more horrific abuse of migrants than even the most sheltered suburbanite can imagine would happen to their blonde children if they were snatched from their manicured lawns is necessary.

Every conspiracy is rooted in truth. Reasonably disgruntled people are the best recruits because “smart” people dismiss their legitimate concerns and say what’s real is fake, so when vile people acknowledge the truth and twist it, you get radicalized nuts out of reasonable people.

It is essential to understand the root of these issues and attack that, not to convince the most extreme of the camp but to convince those on the precipice that an extreme and often bigoted conclusion is unwarranted. People recruited into cults are either abandoned or feel abandoned by their communities, boys on the internet have their actual worries dismissed and become angry and reactionary and entitled in spaces that accept their rational fears and tell them an irrational conclusion is needed. Radfems took their legitimate anger at the system and warped their conclusions in an attempt at regaining control. People are rightfully afraid of the government and don’t know how to identify propaganda so every move must be nefarious. People exploited and experimented on have justifiable reason to reject mandates—these people are still wrong, but about the conclusions, not their feelings. The feelings must be met with acceptance, and the conclusion picked apart.

All these groups feel out of control, not listened to, disempowered, and isolated. Not all will be right. Not all will be worth engaging with. But so many more people will suddenly slip into a radical pipeline because the only people who listen to them are reactionaries. You do not owe everyone your patience or time or explanations or deradicalization—but if you want to pull people away from these dangerous ideologies you have to understand how they were seduced in the first place. You have to grapple with the seed of truth that allows these wrong conclusions to hold up.

And *I* want fewer people to come to the conclusion that the reason they haven’t been duped is because they are just soooo intelligent and morally superior that this kind of indoctrination would never work on you because 90% of you are DNC shills and the exact puppets that help fuel right-wing radicalization.

#LJsm

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