People on this webbed site have their brains explode when we try to talk about how trans men of any sexuality are oppressed, so I genuinely do not think your brains could handle it if I said the Scary Privileged Straight Men ™ are oppressed, but at some point we're gonna need to talk about how your "ewww straight man" jokes directed at trans men is genuinely just TERF rhetoric.

I just realized something interesting about the way people treat AFAB transmascs and trans men. They aren't allowed to talk about the misogyny they experience for being afab because it's somehow misgendering themselves but people claiming they don't experience transandrophobia, but only experience ("misdirected") transmisogyny isn't misgendering them?!? Somehow?!? Now how the fuck does that make sense??? It's almost like people just want them to stop talking about their experiences with oppression entirely.

But that can't be the case, that would mean that they're bigoted and trans men are men and therefore can't be the victims of bigotry! (<- sarcasm)

Yeah, I think a lot of it comes back to a very basic aspect of transphobia that is often overlooked:

Trans people are whatever gender is most convenient in that particular situation.

Transmascs are men when it furthers the goal of shutting us up: men can't experience misogyny, men can't be oppressed, men can't be victims of bigotry.

Transmascs are women when it furthers the goal of excluding us from gay male spaces: these straight women are just gross fujoshis preying on gay men!

Transmascs are men when it furthers the goal of painting us as dangerous aggressors: testoserone makes you violent, testosterone makes you dangerous, men are unsafe to be around and should be excluded from women's spaces

Transmascs are women when it furthers the goal of excluding us from conversations about reproductive rights: we don't need to specify "people who get pregnant", because women need to be centered in this conversation. Transmascs (if they're included at all) should just accept that they're women for the sake of this conversation.

So yeah, of course transmascs are simultaneously men (can't experience misogyny), and women (experiencing misdirected misogyny/transmisogyny- nothing unique to transmasculinity), and both (not the real target, not really hurt by this).

The logic doesn't need to be sound, because this is already standard in the way we think and talk about trans people. Nobody questions it. 🤷‍♂️

there is a clear refusal in cultural radfem spaces to accept the possibility that any other source of social oppression and ostracisation could intersect with the the patriarchy. even when they use lesbians as a shield to attack trans people, they aren’t doing so because they truly care, but because they know we do (cue sartre quote about antisemites and language). these radfems view femininity as the be all end all of oppression, that the intended result of all historical crimes against humanity (e.g. colonialism) was to further oppress women, not for any other reason other than the fact that they were women disregarding the other, perhaps more pressing motivations (e.g. white supremacy, cisheteronormativity, capitalism).

radfems are so so ignorant of the many many ways patriarchy hurts far more than upper-middle class white cis straight women. julia serano has already clearly described how this affects amab trans people in her article why are amab trans people denied the closet?

but it absolutely extends to gender non-conforming cis women, cis men, enbies, trans masculine individuals, and really anyone who isn't them, because of one very simple reason:

cultural radical feminism is a childish ideology and ultimately a hate cult.

people who ascribe to cultural radfeminism are unable to comprehend that forces of oppression continue to push even if they personally aren't victimized, or that one can wield oppressive power without being aware of doing so. additionally, since they believe that femininity is the apex is all oppressive actions, they do not believe that they are able to be the oppressor or wield such power.

if you haven't experienced it, it doesn't exist. if someone insists that it exists, they are lying, maliciously and callously in order to hurt you specifically. but if you have experienced it, it is the first issue any organized movement should address.

fucking juvenile. these are people who failed to develop social object permanence, and their movement is simply solipsism disguised as activism.

sorry if this has become tangential, as someone who was bullied to an absurd degree for being 'feminine' when i was a child, who was called every gay slur under the sun all because i liked doing fucking ballet. i despise what these 'feminists' have attempted to turn feminism into. to me there is nothing feminist about a cultish obsession with hate and deliberate ignorance. i have no patience nor sympathy left for these shitheads.

the world is so vast, so beautiful, and with the input of so many different creative and diverse people, a better world is possible, it has to be, because i can't imagine any world where a hateful conservative ideology such as this can become so prominent being the best humanity can create

other than hell.

That poor dude...you answered to him in the best way possible. But I have a feeling that he's young like maybe at least 18 -20 still learning so I can't really blame him. I was once in his position I said something like that as well. It was because I was lost because my family was homophobic as well so I said random crap when I was his age, im still young myself only 23 so still learning myself but i have faith in him I hope that break he said he's taking helps him out a little. I'm just glad nobody is legit angry or him or well I hope they aren't, some people can't express themselves fully like that. Especially if you Live in a state where you really can't but I try but I live in Texas so...call it a "gay intuition" but I feel like it's because he also lost someone important to him that he was really close to and he might also live somewhere that he can't really show himself and he's scared too because looking through the post he made on your stuff he seems liked a good dude he just needs someone there like a lot of people do because like another anon said some people can't really express themselves. So when that no56yu dude returns I hope he's somewhat better, because I also get it somethings do get screwed into your brain, you try to get it out of your mind but something is stopping you from doing it. Maybe thay why he said that? Idk I'm just saying some stuff I had from my own experience

Thank you sm for your kind words sugar! I do try to formulate myself in a way that serves to educate rather than attack because we won’t get far with that mindset

I also understand when you say that he’s young he has a lot to learn, we all come from different walks of life I can’t compare my growth to anyone else and be like “why didn’t you educate yourself faster” however it is important that we do try to educate each other and start to learn about our history and it’s clear that this isn’t ops own thoughts like this is the usual argument you’ll see all across social media when pride month is mentioned any negative feelings aren’t specifically targeted at op but rather at society for making someone who is part of our community speak/ think this way

Pride month is the perfect month to educate yourself about lgbt history and I do want to say how important it is to educate yourself because what happens if you don’t is you’ll have a group of oppressed people who will attack people in their own community

I don’t rmr the term but someone equated it to ants in a colony where they’ll kick out the weak ants so the colony doesn’t suffer. That’s why for example trans ppl will talk down on people who use neopronouns bc “it’s pushing it” “yeah these aren’t real pronouns” they fear of losing the sliver of privilege that they have and that’s why they attack their own

Same with gold star lesbians why do you think they exist? Because society has told them that of course every woman wants a man and when they’ve finally convinced society that there’s a group of people who don’t want anything to do with men, you’ll get gold star lesbians who fear that lesbians who have been with men previously will ruin the little privilege they have

I do want to say that if you continue life that way it’ll come a day where you’ve erased your own identity despite staying in the frame of what’s considered acceptable

You're young, so I'm going to say this as nicely and clearly as I can: "radical feminism" is just white supremacist patriachy in a pink hat.

There is no "war on women", there is just white cis men in positions of power that have managed to convince white cis women in positions of (slightly less) power that all their problems come from trans people, not the cis men, and that the solution is to make it so that no trans people are visibly existing anywhere in public.

But, spoiler alert, there have always been trans people, and there always will be. The Nazis tried to erase all traces of our existence in the Thirties (that's what the infamous book burning was about), but we are still here. And it should give you pause to realise that you are literally aligned with the literal goddamn Nazis of Nazi Germany in "the trans question". And also with the current fascist dictatorship in Russia. Is this really where you want to be? If not, why would you think they're right about this but not anything else?

You're never going to live in a world without men or masc-aligned people, so to think that every single one of them is a predator just waiting for a chance to pounce is going to cause you a massive amount of self inflicted mental harm. Likewise, to think that no woman or fem-aligned person is capable of causing you harm is going to leave you super vulnerable to the ones that do.

I'm not expecting you to answer this, I'm just hoping that you think about it.

If radical feminism is just white supremacy in disguise, how come most radfems seem to be POC? A considerable portion of them not even living in white countries?

If it's "white cis men" causing all the problems for women, how come women are oppressed globally? You think women killed by morality police have white men to blame? Honey, no. It's all men. It's a male problem.

I do not think that trans people are responsible for the patriarchy. I just think it's a super regressive way of thinking, and I post about it a lot because here on Tumblr, trans activism is the norm. It makes me feel that much more like I need to speak my mind.

For example- I think of trans activists like I think of tradwives. Sure, they aren't responsible for sexism, but they aren't exactly helpful in women as a whole breaking those chains. Woman is not a feeling, and someone born and raised as a male can't know how it feels to be a woman. When a male identifies as a woman, what he's identifying with is whatever caricature of womanhood he has in his head. We don't need transition. What we need is to normalize gender nonconformity.

On top of that, many trans activists are holding the acceptance of homosexuals back. Insisting that it's a "genital preference" and that gay men can never attracted to females, or that a lesbian is a "woman loving woman" and lesbians who don't try penis are "fetishists" it's the same homophobia conservatives have been throwing at us for years under a new coat of "progressive" paint. Before -if you were a woman who didn't like cock- you were a dirty sinner. Now you're a bigoted genital fetishist. It's all the same.

Trans activists are aligned with Nazis in that regard, isn't that right? The reasoning and the execution are different among all three groups. Surely you can see that? No radfem want trans people dead. We just want all these gender roles to stop. We want the repackaged homophobia to end.

It really isn't cool to call everyone who disagrees with you a nazi, by the way. It really downplays what a nazi is.

I'm not going to dignify the "not all men" portion of this with a response. Look at some violent crime statistics or something.

And no, of course I don't think women won't hurt me. Nor do I think all women are good people. I don't think I've ever said anything to make you think that?

I'm sorry for taking so long to reply to this, and I'm sorry for keeping it so short. But I don't want to repeat myself over and over and over again to everyone who says these things to me. I HAVE thought about it. That's why I'm here.

i'm talking to a beloved friend about how upsetting the whole "bi lesbian" business is to me as a lesbian, but he believes that labels aren't important, that it isn't really hurting anyone, that people should live and let live, that this stuff divides the community, etc., and i don't know what to say to that or how to convince him that it matters and i'm wondering if he's right. you're one of the most well-articulated blogs i know, so i wanted to ask what you think (unless it's too upsetting/controversial of a topic). what would you say?

sorry I took a while to answer this I just never feel like i have the head space to give a decent answer!

i mmean first of all assuming your friend isn't a lesbian that's pretty rich of him to assume its his place to decide. one thing I run into a lot is people who aren't lesbians and don't understand the relationship between lesbians and men is not comparable to the relationship between gay men and women. there's complex dynamics of oppression and misogyny here but to put it very bluntly, basically every lesbian either has, or knows another lesbian who has, been sexually assaulted by a man specifically because they are a lesbian. the politics of sexual availability are just utterly incomparable between lesbians and gay men and it's frankly extremely heartless not to care about WHY lesbians can be more protective of keeping men out than gay men are with women.

secondly, ironically, it's kind of just essentialising labels to use terms like this. the words lesbian and bisexual are both super clear about what they mean. when I hear the term bi lesbian im honestly just confused because some of them mean a bi girl who prefers women, some of them mean a bi girl who somehow identifies with lesbianism politically(?), or a perjorative against lesbians who are dating trans women, and more often than that it doesn't seem to mean anything in particular and is just a useless and confusing term stuck on in front of the word "bisexual" which was already explaining the situation fine on its own. I have literally seen people using the term who were gay trans men so I mean who the fuck knows 😭😭😭 there just isn't a question being asked to which "bi lesbian" is the answer.

thirdly, there's literally only one word to describe a woman who is never attracted to men. there are so many words for sexual fluidity or whatever that it's just capricious to decide you also need the ONE which applies to us. and people claiming words don't have meaning or whatever like yes and we apply meaning to them it's how we communicate. people calling themselves bi lesbians KNOW what the word colloquially means and that's exactly why they want to use it, it literally has that appeal to them because of us 😭😭😭 but you can't be a lesbian at your core based on vibe or something. it, like every other label, is something you pick to fit to what you're already doing. like you can call yourself a lesbian all you want but if you're not Doing Lesbianism then you're just essentialising some inherent meaning to the term that doesn't exist. any meaning it has is imparted by us, lesbians, doing lesbianism, regardless of how non-lesbians feel about that!!

finally, in an appeal to emotion, I don't think people who aren't lesbians realise how cruel this shit is. being a lesbian in this patriarchal society is so deeply exhausting and traumatic and isolating and I don't think people realise how much it seeps into every interaction. people don't recognise how vulnerable we are, how small a group of the lgbt community we are, and how little we are made to feel welcome when we really need a community that accepts us for who we are & lets us be us. the fact our boundaries are afforded less concern than like someone's right to feel edgy by cosplaying as us is a case in point!! lesbians deserve some fucking peace of mind!!!

final point but it's important to say that this isn't gatekeeping because no one is stopping you from BEING a lesbian. if you want to be a woman and only date women you can ;I find it kind of funny because if you want to be a lesbian that bad then be my guest <333 we are just asking for the word to be applied accurately. like if we're all in agreement that a word doesn't define who you are then you can't like change who you are by applying an inaccurate word to it

yeah, that makes sense! masculinity isn't an inherently marginalizing factor in itself in the way that femininity is, because of the more rigid and harmful roles and prejudices associated with femininity, but masculinity can factor heavily other forms of marginalization against someone who doesn't fit properly (i.e. anyone perceived as not being a cishet white abled upper class man). masculinity remains an important part of these identities, but it doesn't have the same kind of baggage. i see it less as a 'disguise' for other prejudices, and more as a sort of hypocritical self-justification: toxic masculinity is emphasized against more acceptable targets, used to punish people Othered by society. it's not that toxic masculinity is a smokescreen for the Real reason for oppression, it's that it's a useful way to demonize 'deviant' kinds of perceived masculinity.

i think the thing is that intersectionality is really important when you look at oppression and its roots, and toxic masculinity is a part of the hatred that forms those prejudices. it's not that bigots hate masc queer men for being queer, not masc - both of those aspects of the target's perceived identity work together to drive the hate directed at them. (you'll notice i use the word perceived a lot - that's because generally, bigotry is less motivated by who you are and more by what the bigot thinks you are. look at how toxic masculinity is weaponized against transfems to paint them as evil invading men: the people affected by that rhetoric usually aren't men, but they're seen as having an inherent 'maleness' that makes the idea of a trans woman in a women's restroom so appalling to bigots).

the point that i'm trying to get to, despite my adhd making me go on so many tangents, is that all the different aspects of one's identity are punished together - masc, gay, trans, etc are grouped up in the mind of an oppressor and the hatred against them will reflect that and be informed by all of these different ideas. let's go back to the example of femme trans men: a lot of the transphobia i've seen directed at them emphasizes painting them as stupid, self-righteous, attention seeking girls who don't understand what they're doing to themselves. this kind of hatred is undeniably based in misogyny, but you can't just say 'it's not because they're feminine, it's because they're trans', when both of those things are a part of it. that's the idea of intersectionality that's being focused on, and the post that sparked this was about how people even in feminist spaces can forget about the little biases that contribute to the whole, and unintentionally harm those around them as a result.

my final aside: yeah, thank you very much for being civil and understanding and all! i think the original people on that post are just too used to bad faith arguments from transphobes and the like, and didn't see past the first red flags. and it's a lot easier to just be uncivil than to try and help each other understand where we're both coming from. but thank you so much for listening, and i'm very happy to have this conversation!

yeah for sure! im a little bit worried abt the post spreading tho, i dont think my first response was all that good and then it got quite shitty from then on. im really not looking forward to it getting notes, but either way thank you for this! feel free to tag the first op on our conversation, they have me blocked but perhaps they'd like to add something in the end. this was very nice tho!

I absolutely hate being transgender, why does the universe decided to look at me and go, yeh fuck you in particular.

Why the fuck didn't i conform to being a beautiful cisgender straight girl that lived a normal life. No, instead, I decided that that life was making me want to die, so I had to make it impossibly hard for everyone around me by being a masculine lesbian.

Wich made so many predatory men around me see me as a challenge, facing homophobia on a daily basis (not like that has changed at all) plus an insane amount of sexism, because nobody likes it when you're not what you were supposed to be, and you don't put an effort to not be the perfect pretty girl that just shuts up and accepts a much fucking easier life.

It's not like I ever came out as gay, people just looked at me and went, yeh that's a dyke, and that was fine, it's cool. It took me so many years of maturity and experiencing life as a lesbian to know that the queer community is both an incredibly welcoming place, and literal hell.

People lash at each other constantly in a never ending "who's more valid/oppressed" war. All of that while still figuring out my own attraction and how it worked, not understanding why was I so broken and so different from everybody else.

In my time as a queer kid, pre teen, teen, I was also consuming a lot of trans content. But pieces of shit like K*** G*** as content creators, made me feel like I was watching it from afar, painfully relating to the trans struggles but knowing that couldn't be me, because i was not suffering enough and I wasn't trans enough so I didn't deserve to feel better about my identity.

Plus, i knew what it was like to live as an outed kid, masculine lesbians go through fucking hell and people don't realize it. We're treated like absolute shit, I knew the pain, shame and humiliation that came with an open queer identity and I was not risking it by coming out as trans even if it become more and more obvious that this was not something that was going to go away anytime soon.

I'd want tl say that I'm happy that I could finally come out. I'll lying, I'm not glad, I'm fucking bitter, my childhood was stolen by homophobia and misogyny, my identity was kept secret because I was scared of being myself. It angers me to see kids being made fun of for being themselves but I can't help the feeling of absolute emptiness and dull envy when I see those kids being open and supported by the people around them.

It's not a beautiful feeling, nothing about the non standard or tame, vanilla, sweet, easily sexualized, not made to stand out, non open queerness is.

Everything would have been so much easier if i wasn't like this and it's really hard to not feel broken and completely isolated from the world when you know that.

Whenever some white dirtbag left prick stresses how we should allow racism and misogyny and homophobia and transphobia and whatever so we don't alienate bigoted white cishet men from the cause, it kills any faith I might have had in their politics. I don't think they can express any kind of solidarity with anyone unlike themselves regardless of what token anti-racist, anti-sexist, etc. rhetoric they espouse on the surface.

A person like this derails conversations and makes the movement hostile to any kind of racial/gender/etc. minority, will delay and derail movements to materially improve the conditions for any kind of minority, especially if it means giving up a modicum of unearned privilege, and apparently has such a tissue paper spine that they'd change all their political beliefs and join fascists in the fight against us as opposed to simply ruining things from the inside, if they're not allowed to say slurs. And anyone who supports this kind of person joining the movement, at the expense of whoever they'd inevitable exclude, has shown that they value the presence and nominal contribution of bigoted white cishet men more than anything a person of colour/woman/queer person/etc. could achieve.

Perhaps they think only white cishet men are capable of great achievements. Perhaps they think anyone else has to stick around in spite of harm done to them because they rationally know the movement materially benefits everyone (in theory), as if bigoted white cishet men can't come to that rational conclusion themselves in spite of the """""""harm""""""" done to them by calling out bad behaviour and making them feel uncomfortable about it. And this grace is not extended to anyone who doesn't fit the mold of white cishet men, except perhaps (to a much smaller degree) white cishet women and white gay men. I don't see any of these fucks arguing over how we should try to bring in a bigot like Candace Owens, although I see a lot of racism and sexism directed to her by alleged leftists. I haven't even really seen it for white women (apart from the occasional terf, go figure) and white gay men, although my experience is limited and I'd be willing to believe it happens.

There's this bizarre, classist, and verifiably false idea that the working class is primarily or entirely made up of bigoted white cishet men (while they don't claim it outright, they continuously conflate the two), and that these men of apparent jelly spines will save us all. I'm not innocent myself. I unconsciously bought into this to an extent, and I see many otherwise progressive white people do the same. I thought the exclusion of bigots was a "necessary sacrifice" that would make us weaker in the short term but form a more principled community that doesn't fall to infighting and rip us apart once we succeed in the fight against fascists. But even that was a racist, sexist idea that I had to unlearn. A bigot in the movement is rot that takes you out from the inside.

I'm not against showing kindness to former bigots making an effort to be better (although I also don't outright expect kindness from anyone they harmed), who might not know all the right words and might not understand some things but want to learn and don't expect to be coddled or centred in the movement. I'd side with them over a more eloquent bigot like J.K. Rowling, who hides her bigotry in progressive language, any day. But we don't need active bigots and we can't force them to dismantle oppressive systems that benefit them.

When we accept bigotry, we open the doors to fascists. Don't make the same mistake as liberals and neoliberals by siding with fascists because you think you can control them. Nazbols turn nazi very quickly when they realise communism must necessarily be inclusive. For a current example, look how quickly terfs were to sacrifice reproductive rights by allying with and funding anti-choice orgs, because hurting trans people was more important. Don't for a minute believe the mythical all-white all-male all-cishet "working class" the dirtbag left wishes to appeal to won't do the same.

I think--and this is kind of complicated but try to bear with me, I'm not super great with words + English is not my first language--when discussing on Tumblr, we are discussing in a primarily transgender space, and so it's generally accepted that there is no "trait" of being a man. Being a man isn't really a class of people, it's more of a private way of seeing yourself. This is different from cis spaces, where there is an inherent "trait" of being a man, or rather, lots of inherent "traits." Including having a certain body, looking a certain way, using the pronouns he/him, having a certain relationship to women, et cetera.

So, you have this group of people who are focused on analyzing the patriarchy apart from gender, because men in transgender spaces typically experience what mainstream gender politics call "female" oppression. As in, they experience sexual harassment and assault every day, need access to abortion and fear pregnancy, are subject of violence at work and school, barred from school and not hired based on misogyny, et cetera. Many of them even use she/her pronouns, keep traits that mainstream gender politics consider "female" like by not ever going on testosterone, et cetera. And they are very concerned with framing those as male experiences, because they are men and not "less male" based on their bodies or violecne they face.

So there's a very strong contingent on Tumblr to discuss the patriarchy, not as every individual man having male privielge, but as every individual cis men having cis male privilege, because the idea that there is a "male experience" that is about not experiencing misogyny means that trans men are "less" men for it. Or that they are a "different kind" of man than cis men. Which I beleive is why there is pushback to the idea that trans men oppress trans women, because trans men tend to experience the violence described above. So trans men and trans women both face the same kind of misogyny in many ways, so the idea that either of them oppress the other based on misogyny is not something many Tumblr gender discussions will allow.

Here's the thing though, I do Not believe that trans men oppress trans women. I realise someone mentioned that in a post i reblogged but i added in the tags that I do not agree with that part of it. And as a genderfluid person who is affected by misogyny I also get that trans men are not an oppressive class, you're quite right there.

However I am increasingly seeing posts talking about cis men, they specificy, as also not having male privilege because male privilege isn't a thing. It's the "Patriarchy is responsible for this, cis men aren't" argument that bothers me a lot. Yes this is predominantly a trans space. But we can't warp our ideas of gender politics so much so that we forget the very real oppression cis men regularly enact upon women and trans + intersex people of all kind. Trans men are oppressed in the same gendered politics. Cishet men oppress women - cishet men and women also oppress gay men - cishet men and women also oppress trans people. It's quite as simple as that. But because, like you said, this understanding of power dynamics is being seen as othering trans men, queer people have gotten way more comfortable just dismissing cis men as an oppressor class completely by claiming that cis men lose their privileges when they aren't manly enough (which, as i explained, happens in ALL systems of oppression). I do not agree with that because cis men very very clearly still enact and uphold patriarchy and patriarchal laws that hurt women. There is a very real quantifiable harm that cis men do in this and are complicit in, even if not every cis man will be wilfully misogynistic.

The knee-jerk reaction to women talking about being oppressed needs to stop just because some men who are oppressed in other ways (poc, trans , gay, etc) get uncomfortable about it being worded that way. (Before tumblr's reading comprehension strikes again, i say some men not because the number of oppressed men is less but because most men oppressed by some other axis understand this nuance and aren't discomforted by these discussions and don't feel the need to say "Not all men")

Tumblr has a dominantly trans userbase. It also has a dominantly Western userbase. And this userbase often likes to act like "women getting raped for simply because men feel entitled to them" is a thing of the past, amongst other arguments I've heard, and use that understanding to argue that cis men cannot be oppressors. When indeed they very actively are

I was talking to @hussyknee and she suggested I post this.

At every turn I am reminded that white people, especially cis white women feel absolutely entitled to keeping marginalized people as pets and accessories, as tools to be used to raise them up while they stand on our backs and pierce our skin with their heels. Or even strictly as a fetish with no real human value or soul. I know I'm saying this as a white person, and I know there's probably of better way to say it but I've never been good with words and I am talking about white women(and some afabs in general) here and I wont beat around the bush.

I have rarely met a white woman of any other demographic who gave a shit about me, my community, or our struggles. I was always her fun gay friend or cute little build-a-boy she could dress up. (I have a negative physical response to being called "cute" and that's mostly because of white women.) It was always about them, and how I was her ticket to other gay men and the attention and how she could feel holier than thou for being so kind to a nasty little faggot like me who society loathes so much while getting a front row seat to my gay life so she could, I don't know, get her rocks off or something. If that meant half heartedly supporting gay rights, then sure that's fine I guess, but you know she's really here for the pet fag. (and most don't even do that beyond performative I LOVE THE GAYS)

I can't even trust a majority of white queer women, personally. I know that's so incredibly taboo to say these days. I've had countless mspec and even lesbian white women treat me like accessories and pets and feeling absolute entitlement to my time and even my body. I'm constantly thwarting advances from mspec women and wlw who will not accept no because I'm a trans man and they're into that, so therefore they're entitled to my vagina.

(But if I say that, even on my own time when m to f rape isn't even being discussed, I'm erasing man on woman rape and silencing female victims being a misogynist. Funny how that all works out.)

That's without even getting into the women who go to gay bars then have the nerve to get mad when the gay men don't give them enough attention, or worse, get pissy/disgusted when a woman hits on them?

It so frequently becomes a narrative about how "Oh, women feel safer with queer men! You're just misogynist/over reacting." I could go on. Yeah okay, but I don't mean Emily whatsHerFace who just goes to a gay bar with her friends and minds herself and get drunk. I mean the majority who want to keep me and my fellow queer men as pets while never wanting to think about the fact that wlw exist.

When it comes to them, what about me, my life, and other queer men's psychological well being and safety? What about us, who are being used as toys and exploited to make these white ladies look good and moral and get attention and book deals for all they've done to help these lowly queers?

What about queer amabs who were exploited by the fucking Aids Angel and their families? When will white women truly be held accountable for their abhorrent behavior without being able to scream that they're oppressed too? This is such normal entitlement for them, she's not special, just a little bold. When will they be knocked down a few pegs?

Those men watched their loved ones suffer and die around them while they too withered away and she fucking banked on that, like so many other white women I've come across in my brief twenty-five years of life, over fifteen of those have been as a queer man.

She directly paraded one of them around to sell the story of his dead partner! She inserted herself into their lives and forced herself into some savior with lies and bullshit all for the renown and fucking money. Her own fucking woke points or whatever, and that is so disgustingly normal for too many white women.

It's like when these white women insist on adopting a kid in each fucking "color" and throwing them around on social media begging for attention because they adopted some poor brown orphan. Or who want a pet east Asian boyfriend because they listen to Kpop or watch anime or just in general. I am looking directly at the Asain Boyfriend Tags of the mid-2000s. (Which, I'm aware straight abled South Korean Men aren't marginalized in SK, but it's the same principle. Different, not really human, free grabs as a pet.) They're the same with disabled people, it's all the same shit.

Not in severity, because you can't even begin to compare that. But in the entitlement. The pure, unfiltered entitlement and privilege that makes them believe that they're entitled to all of this. Entitled to be furniture in our lives, helping us only when it suits them and makes them look good or when they can play with us like dolls, or get their rocks off to us without giving a shit about us as humans.

Then they cry misogyny and hate again the moment anyone says a damn thing against them. Using crocodile tears to avoid being held accountable for anything. I know six year olds who can take responsibility better, honestly pathetic. Toxic femininity at it's finest.

Anyone affected by white afab folks making them fetishes or trinkets can add to this or if you're wlw and have been excluded by fag hags, I wont gatekeep too much but if you're just going to try to argue about points to silence us like "but POC and gay men can be toxic too!" or try to argue that I just hate women, this isn't the post for you. Because 1. That's not relevant 2. Because I'm fucking tired of kneeling to white women. I'm tired of being fucking stepped on and my humanity torn away because they looked me and decided I was up for grabs and I'm tired of seeing them do that to others. I'm Disabled, I'm Queer, and no you can't keep me as a damn pet or wear me like a fucking dog in a purse.

just to continue in your post about the new SMT game being really queer. i think persona 5/ P5R were still taking baby steps after P4's mess of homophobic and transphobic writing. Like there was definitely some questionable stuff like those two 'fashion men' that bother Ryuji when you first go to the red like district had to get a different english translation in Royal because people rightly got offended. but then the game does a 180 and has Lala Chan, a drag queen who legitimately cares about akira and him not getting exploited by ohya, making sure he doesn't drink, offers him a job, and makes sure he isn't out at night in the Red light district. which showed that the writer's could make positive rep of a queer person so im really glad SMT is proving that even more!

yeah! playing a lot of atlus games over the years, i can pretty much tell that there is at least one writer trying to get out queer narratives since hashino took over, and you can even see it in p4, otherwise naoto wouldnt actually be a trans guy written like a trans guy, he would have the initial bait and switch and then accept his identity as a "woman" from there on. but you can tell in what's actually written in the game, he doesn't identify that way as a character and hes not comfortable with the way the game progresses after his arc, it's very clear to me that some members of the writing team want to write queer-accepting narratives but as long as hashino is the director of literally every single atlus game, they're not allowed to do so openly, so they just go for subtle character quirks and lighthearted jokes (thinking about the "honey im home" scene in p5) to slip under his radar. i do notice this in p5 and p5r too as you said, the way the characters themselves are written feels like a queer friend group and the way they interact just doesn't compute in my head as them possibly being homophobic people, like hashino evidently wants them to be. and the way they focus on narratives of consent and reclaiming sexuality for ann (and in turn take away the persona-typical gross pervert qualities of the best friend character for ryuji), and the very heavily-coded, tatsujun-based romance story with akeshu, you do think for a moment that maybe p5 is different from the others, maybe it can be better, maybe we're just overreacting about hashino. but then they drop their really bad jokes and say bigotry-filled lines that make no sense in the context of the character at all, and you're reminded that as long as hashino is here, atlus games are still outright hostile to women and queer people. obviously smtv is not a social game so we can't see how that's developing now after hashino is gone for good, but the overall vibe of the game feels like you let the good writers who want to write games free of bigotry relax, and got rid of the oppressive air over the whole thing. despite what edgy smtbros want you to think, smtv is very funny, and while there are lines of dialogue about (demons) being gay, i have yet to come across a single bad-faith joke. all the queer jokes so far feel like queer people wrote them, and the character design of the protag, both in human and nahobino form, feels like he's made to be recognized by trans and gender nonconforming people before anything else. it feels like coming home to p2, back when the atlus writers didn't have to conform to whatever boring close-minded bullshit hashino wanted the games to be, and i cannot wait to see the future of that in full force when another social game comes out. maybe we'll actually date boys again in p6! who knows!

historically, people viewed being gay as indication that a person was traumatized or emotionally stunted from some kind of dysfunction in their lives. for instance, gay men were gay because they had overbearing mothers and absent fathers. and even though that's considered outdated now, I do know lesbians who claim that traumatic histories with men in some part influence their sexuality. I think that is fine and they're within their rights to feel like that.

and yet I am not allowed to say this about my transness, or about my feelings of potentially being aro/gray-a. for years I let myself be influenced by this idea that trauma is not a good or valid enough reason to reject labeling yourself as cis/straight. I felt pressured into this idea that functioning normally means conforming to gendered expectations and finding a single partner that I bond with romantically and sexually. so I rejected the idea that I could be aro/ace (because that would be conceding that not wanting those things is normal and we know that is bad and wrong) and I almost detransitioned after identifying as trans for 8 years because I felt that being a survivor of incest and CSA impacted the way I viewed my gender, and little girls who are traumatized by their dads can never be anything but that little girl, because allowing us to transition would be conceding that it is okay and acceptable to be trans and not finding it to be abnormal and only permissible in the worst case scenario.

this came to a head where I was letting this kind of ideology completely run my life and it ruined my mental health and I lost almost every support network I had as a consequence. I was in a dark and desperate place trying to fulfill my inevitable role as mother and housewife until, one day, I had a sudden realization: that, regardless of what happened, I can't change who I am.

I've gone to therapy for years at this point and found that my confidence only improved after I started taking testosterone. for once, I was able to feel good about myself. ironically, I've been comfortable being much more feminine and being referred to as a girl since starting T -- so much so that I sometimes go put wearing dresses with my boyfriend, despite not having worn a dress publicly by my own choice since 2010. and recently, I've started reconnecting with ace and aro spaces, and I've found that I actually feel much better about myself and much less pathologized. whereas the culture I was in before told me I'm either a bad person for not really understanding love in any sense, or that I had some untreatable mental condition, I've found people saying no, it's fine to perceive others differently, and it doesn't make you bad or defective.

it's strange to me to call yourself a progressive and to tell someone else that the way they interact with themself is innately wrong because it doesn't subscribe to existing medical institutions (as if psychiatry has ever been liberatory in place of oppressive at any point) or because it differs from what most people feel or think. maybe I am trans and aro and ace-ish because I was traumatized and because I have x y and z mental diagnosis, but that doesn't make it any less correct of an identity. if it helps someone to heal and grow, then why treat it like a problem to be fixed? mind your own business.

Hey, I'm trans and I want to say that your views are really harmful to our community. Lesbians, gay men, and transgender people can coexist, and sometimes transgender people are lesbians or gay men and that's okay. If you just listened to what we were saying instead of what you think we're saying, maybe then you wouldn't have those views.

Lesbians don't have to like trans genitals, and neither do gay men. However, you do have to accept that we are the gender we say we are, just not a type of person of that gender that you're attracted to. And we're allowed to be upset that you aren't attracted to us, like a lesbian can be upset that a girl is straight, but we can't be mad at each other for liking who we like.

And that post was saying that looking for signs that you were trans isn't very helpful, as everyone is gender non-conforming to some extent. I used to love pink and wear skirts, but that never made me a girl. I love computer science and the color blue, but that isn't what makes me a man. It's just the knowledge, self-awareness that you have deep down, that something is wrong with how people perceive your gender. That's what being trans is.

I hope this makes you understand.

Hey, I appreciate you trying to help and educate me. But I used to be trans, I'm still disphoric, and I have listened to trans people, that's what got me to this point. You're not just preaching to a non-believer here. I'm an apostate.

I don't hate trans people, contrary to popular belief. I don't think all trans people are saying lesbians have to like penis, but the trans movement at large is pushing for that. I don't think all trans people are saying homosexuality is immoral, but the trans movement at large is pushing for that. I don't think all trans people are trying to outlaw sex-based protections, but the trans movement at large is pushing for that. I don't think all trans people are pushing for woman to be defined by stereotypes and to women put in their place, but the trans movement at large is pushing for that.

Gender is a social construct. I don't have to accept that anyone's gender is anything because gender was made up to oppress women. Your sex, however, cannot change, and as a homosexual I am exclusively attracted to the same sex. Nothing to do with anyone's gender. I'm not attracted to identities or pronouns, I'm attracted to female bodies.

There's a difference between someone being sad someone isn't attracted to them, and that person feeling so entitled to a group of people who are inherently not interested that they send rape and death threats and try to "cancel" those people for their inherent, immutable sexual orientation being "discriminatory," as if our bodies are a public utility they are being denied access to.

I understand feeling deep down that something is wrong with your gender. Trust me. I'm the same way. But it does not change your sex, it does not the biology or social structures or lack of attraction from others that is associated with your sex. And often the feeling that it is wrong arises from internalized homophobia and/misogyny, that one isn't like "other girls" so she must not be one, that it's wrong or predatory for one to be homosexual so they must be the opposite sex instead.

I can coexist with trans people. But my rights as a woman and as a homosexual cannot coexist with the trans movement. I hope this makes you understand.

i wish more than anything he could have had this. i love you man

i really fucking do

my love for nirvana and immense respect for kurt isn't something i ever expected. after being a huge fan of jonghyun too as a musician, a person who had things to say, a human being. the people around him. i fucking hate that kurt is gone and i was like...2. i got into hole when i was like 25 really heavily and refused to listen to nirvana. didnt' care about these white boys. but there's a reason why people love this band and why they loved kurt. i get mad sometimes at his death—selfishness—and then i make jokes to deal and cope. we all do with everything. it's just that and this is from a cis person...but i know so many trans people or people on the gender spectrum who have read his journals see him as someone struggling with gender. and after years of thinking and becoming such a huge fan i think that was honestly the truth. i think at this point we're all pretty sure he was gender queer or struggling with identity.

his aversion for oppression, his stand with the marginalized, not accepting racism, homophobia, transphobia BECAUSE THAT IS THE HEART OF DIY (spurred by my black people cos ofc it is and we do everything) and i wish that he could have beeen better.

to me it seems like his pain with his crohns (or wahtever he had) lead to his intense struggle with drugs because that's pretty common when needing pain management. on top of that, his family's history of MI. on top of that, his life being hounded and not being prepared for it (this i think is the idea of white privilege at work and wasn't naive of him necessarily, but...it's just something he thought wouldnt happen to him. that's whiteness at work as who they were as a diy fucking anti pop anti capital punk band. sonic youth said 'we didnt sell out, we made them buy in') and his rship with courtney. he said without court he might be gay or bi.

i won't read his journals, it's too fucking much for me and i dont feel allowed or maybe i will when i can handle it, but i know reading about them and him and hearing the way he changed his songs and his abhorrence for bravado, for men that talk about women as disposable and sex objects, for not being able to enjoy a punk band, for the whiteness and maleness. krist novoselic was a 6'7 fucking bassist and dave grohl is a sizeable dude with hideous tattoos. back then, no one said a fucking bad thing about them. come as you are.

we know that suicide is a state we get into. when you go to a psych ward you see that it's actually calm and an ebb/flow. it is extremely fucking boring. the thing is we don't know if these feelings last forever. we can't go back and time and history cannot change. it was his decision, like jonghyun's, to end his life. but i know there could have been longer. if they got help. i try not to resent courtney especially not now with people being irresponsible and unearthing the FBI report on him. he killed himself but it was definitely emotionally sparred by her and she should have told people what happened weeks before his death.

but no one failed him per se. his suicide note is full of hope and it kills me to see. he should have been able to be whoever he wanted. been a son, been a daughter, been anything.

whenever i hear the changed lyrics or see him in a dress or hear distress i dont know. i wish we didnt lose him but i also know that no one wants to go back to that time. it wasn't necessarily great but it wasn't all bad. and i wish commodity didn't destroy legacy. i wish we werent's so obsessed with the death and gore instead of the liveliness and hilarity of this band and of kurt. and i wish we could talk about him more and the idea that maybe there's so much going on with it; i have many critiques for things they have done, things kurt has done as well.

i'm talking in circles but i genuinely just get bummed. every day he is still dead. but this dude man......i love him a lot. i'm so glad nirvana gave what they did to the world. getting to know kurt so long after the fact is fucking hard sometimes. it is frustrating. but focusing on the positives too or trying to understand another perspective has given me a lot of insight. and i always try and remember that it wasn't just one thing, that nirvana were a band, it wasn't just him, and he could have been better but it just didn't work out that way. it's not solely about his internal pain and the narrative of a tortured artist is suffocating.

he wanted to be a star, make this insane pop song, and when he got it he didnt realize it became everything he hated. he was already struggling and all this shit hit a point. i have mad respect for them still. dave grohl said billie eilish is the kurt of her gen (about 2 yrs ago) and that drives me up a wall for various reasons. antiblackness and class. fuck that. these dudes were poor as fuck trucking it through washington with other bands and the basis is blacness and black art they were trying to fight and make it and give a shit man. it didnt turn out the way they could handle but they were not PRIMIING themselvs for musical stardom. no artist who cares would do that. but if you get the recognition you want because who doesn't, it comes at a price too.

this is why i critique commodity and capital so intensely. i participate, and i will have to as an artist. i don't have a desire to be poor because i've lived a life that gave me space to see what i want to do. i have class privilege (and a lot of debt) and i am grateful. but it isnt like i dont want peopl eto know. it's just that i know that i can't give in and accept and demand nothing and then decide to hoard it to myself. taht money that goes in funnels out and is not for me to keep. there is no trickling down. dont paly yrself.

artists like kurt and in a sense like MF Doom (rapper who only came out to be seen when he wanted to) or DMX even it's like....man u came out fucking fighting to be heard you know. do your thing. make your shit. be amazing. esp black people. DMX had a fucking face for a camera. hopefully i'm gonna watch belly at my best friend's house on the 28th.

i wish everyone who deserves to stay can stay until their body releases them in the most pleasant way as possible. jessica walter's death made me sad, but she was older and i'm so happy she got to live. same with cicely tyson. at the same time, the young deaths over drugs, suicide, accidents....id on't really get it. why is kissinger alive but these people can't stay? how did this come a somber tale of death instead of just i fucking love kurt cobain lmao

he's def one of those ppl that im like u rock. him, robeson, seberg to an extent. hm who else. wong kar wai, jenkins, joe (thai filmmaker whose name i cant spell.) all those people who are running forward on their own and beating their chest. yea i like that. an award is just another award. what matters is possibility and action.

RATHER BE DEAD THAN COOL

I'm making this post as a response to something that went down between me and another Tumblr user yesterday.

Trigger warning: this talks about corrective rape (no graphic detail or anything) and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, especially asexuals.

I saw a post earlier today talking about how more needs to be done than just saying LGBTQ+ people are "valid" and "including" us. It said that we also need to get rid of the LGBTQ+ panic defense, pass anti-discrimination laws for housing and employment, get trans people access to healthcare, stop the murders of black trans women, marriage equality, allowing trans kids to go by the names they prefer, and banning corrective rape. I was about to like and reblog the post (it is ABSOLUTELY true) when I saw other people's reblogs.

One person reblogged it, asking what "corrective rape" was, to which the person who wrote the post replied, and I quote, "lesbians who are raped by men in order to 'turn them' straight. i believe this term can also be used for gay men who are raped by women, but it is far less common." Alright, there's no real problem that jumps out immediately here. However, when another Tumblr user reblogged the post mentioning that asexuals also faced corrective rape but didn't want to talk about it since there's so much acephobia (and I do admit, this person was focusing a bit too much on themselves, but still that's no excuse), the original person responded back, and I quote, again, "hey the term 'corrective rape' was literally invented by and for lesbians..." and proceeded to accuse the other person of derailing the conversation, being morally wrong, and playing the victim.

Angry that anyone would ever be so ignorant, I responded with:

(I didn't realize at this point that the person who made the first post was the same one who replied with the anti-asexual comments.)

The first issue with the poster's comments is the obvious hypocrisy. This person is saying that the term "corrective rape" can be used about lesbian women and gay men, but when asexuals get involved, all of a sudden it's only supposed to be used for lesbians. What about gay men, then? The only logical conclusions would be that the term was only made for lesbians and that the original poster is wrongly saying they can be used for gay men as well, or that the term can be used by other marginalized groups and they are wrongly excluding asexual people. Since the term has already proven to include asexual people, it's obviously the latter. This is not even to mention that a fourth Tumblr user replied that the people who popularized the term "corrective rape" applies to asexuals too, disproving the original poster's entire point whether or not they were being hypocritical.

It's here that I'd also like to share some quotes I found online:

And:

Even the definition of "corrective rape" says that it's based on sexual orientation or gender identity (which includes asexuals):

At this point, there's no excuse for the original poster's behavior, however, unfortunately I cannot show this to them because they have blocked me. They also replied to my initial responses, however I can't even read what they said aside from what I can see in my notifications because they blocked me. (What I can see from the text in my notifications is, "i didn't get mad at them, y'all don't know what 'mad' is. what i said, if ANY OF YOU could read, was that they were...") I'm only 15 years old, and even I can recognize this behavior as not only childish, but immoral.

(Note: I am chosing not to name individuals because I don't want anyone to harass them. While certain people involved in this are definitely in the wrong, no one gave me permission to put their accounts out, and I don't want anyone to harass them in response to their remarks.)

Now, I can't know this for sure since they blocked me, but what I anticipate they said was that the person who brought up asexuals was derailing the conversation (and whether or not this was their reply, I do know they said this in one of their previous posts, as mentioned above). Still, the original post was about the ENTIRE LGBTQ+ community - which includes asexuals - and even the replies were about corrective rape, which happens to asexuals as well, as I've already proved. There is no doubt that this person was purposely excluding asexuals, even though they are absolutely affected by corrective rape and need to be included in the conversation.

Even I've seen asexual people be affected by other's acceptance of corrective rape of asexuals. A friend of mine's mom has said to their face that they need to be raped by a guy to show them that sex is enjoyable and that they aren't asexual. And this is just in my short, fifteen year life. This isn't including the countless asexual people who have been raped because of their asexuality. Discounting these people's experiences as "not corrective rape" is denying sexual assault and their actual experiences.

Now that I have all that said, it's important that I get to why I shared this, and what the root of the issue is.

When people say that "a stands for ally" or "asexuals don't need to be included in LGBTQ+ because they don't face discrimination," they are not only being ignorant, they are discounting the lives of likely millions of people. They are feeding into the lie that asexuals don't experience discrimination, and things like corrective rape against them are justified, even if that's not their intention. Being perceived as a burden (having family members and others want to "fix" asexuals, saying that there are more important issues to focus on like gay/lesbian rights over asexual rights, and many more), and not having a place to belong (not being included within the LGBTQ+ community, being perceived as "different" because asexuals don't experience sexual attraction, and more) also leads to increased risk of suicide. Are people really willing to risk people's lives to feel comfortable?

This is the exact same thing that happened (and is still happening) to lesbian, gay, and other groups within the LGBTQ+ community (and has happened to asexuals in the past too, although that is less talked about). Cishets didn't include, accept, or even treat gay and lesbian people anywhere near equally under law, and now gay, lesbian and other groups in the LGBTQ+ community are turning around and doing the same thing to asexuals (as well as nonbinary people, bisexuals, pansexuals, aromantics, the list goes on). And it costs people's health, physical and mental, and ultimately people's lives.

Either you include asexuals and protect them under law or continue to be ignorant, this time by choice, to the atrocities happening to asexual people. There is no inbetween. And if you are a member of an oppressed group and decide to take the second route from here on out, you are also a hypocrite.

Tldr; Asexuals also face corrective rape, and they need to be included in conversations about the LGBTQ+ community, even if a user on Tumblr argues against that.