Gonna ring in the New Year by saying that you cannot easily decide who is and is not trans based purely on body type or facial features alone, and doing so often plays into some nasty western societal conceptions of what beauty is.

I'm very much cis and people think I'm trans all the time bc I have big shoulders, a wide jaw line, and a big nose. If I, a cis woman, have those features, that means that those features are not indicative of gender at all and cannot/should not be used to determine who is and isn't trans.

My dad has a friend who is a Polynesian woman. She's super tall, buff, and stocky, and people are assholes about it and keep asking if she's really a woman. That's a huge dick move first of all, and second of all, she's cis! That means that you cannot use height, strength, and stockiness as metrics for being a cis woman.

Women world wide have so many different features that you cannot restrict trans women from the pile without restricting cis women as well. There are examples of cis women being able to grow mustaches and beards, and those ladies get attacked double about a thing their body does because it's not female enough.

The thing that I mentioned earlier about it being a Western beauty standard problem is that there's this idea that all women have (or should have) hourglass bodies with big boobs and big butts, big thighs, small calves, ankles, and feet, thin and angular jawline (although small and round jawline works as well), small nose, thin shoulders, thin arms, no acne, long hair, and be short but not so short that you look 'weird' compared to your partner. That's so specific! Some races just aren't going to have those features and I doubt any race has them all! I don't know any woman who fills every category, and viewing every woman who violates that hyper specific standard as a Judas of some kind is not only insulting but also exhausting. Like damn girl, you really live like that?

I'm just saying that 'being a woman' is a societal group that we as humans made up. True, there are physical differences between male and female, but not so much that we're different ass species who inherently think differently and act differently and do everything differently. We're all human beings at the end of the day. I share a lot of physical features with guys I know and I'm cis and always will be. I shouldn't have to argue with people about whether or not I fulfill the beauty standard enough to be considered a woman, and if I shouldn't have to do it, other people shouldn't have to do it either, whether they be trans or not.

And, to finalize my point, I really truly don't want to he defined purely by whether or not I'm able to carry children. Haven't we, as women, fought against that idea for centuries? Haven't we, as women, struggled historically against claims that infertility makes us not good women? Haven't we, as women, fought for our ability of self-determination and the ability to be seen as more than our sex or gender, and that we have value even after we've done made the baby?

Ladies, I'm just saying that if you exclude the Western beauty standard and also refuse to define yourself by your baby-making propensity (like how we have fought for the ability to do), there's precious little that truly defines womanhood. I am a woman simply because I am. I'm assuming trans women feel the same way. None of us are so different, not really. Don't be insulted if someone asks for your pronouns, and don't be insulted if someone says sir instead of ma'am at the grocery store. Just be polite about it.

Since the wave of mass site migrations there is one REALLY worrisome trend I've been noticing: the number of radfem posts I've been seeing ending up on my dash, reblogged unknowingly by people who think they're just base-level feminist statements, has all but gone back to c.2014 levels. Everything seems good on a surface level, but I spot one dogwhistle, or something strikes me as being a little too absolutist, and I check into that...and sure enough, the road leads back to terf city.

So here's a quick PSA:

Please be careful with your Feminism 101 sources.

See, terfs and their close relatives KNOW we don't like them here, so they don't tend to lead with their well-known hatred of trans women. On top of that, there is a problem with a subset of radfems on this site who purport to be trans-inclusive - i.e., they openly support trans women...but DESPISE trans men (often more than they hate cis men, because of the whole "joining the enemy"/"gender traitor" myth pushed by terfs) or any nonbinary person who aligns partially with manhood or masculinity, especially if they're AMAB (they often think they can "save" - i.e., conversion-therapy - the AFAB ones).

Therefore, on a single-post level, it is very, VERY hard to tell the difference between a basic feminist statement that, yeah, patriarchy exists and that means there are lots of awful double-standards around gender where women broadly get the shorter end of the stick and these standards AFFECT every individual in a society and that's something we should work to change, and a statement that these things are absolute and inevitable, either because Biology or because those double-standards are too deeply ingrained to EVER overcome without giving up and starting over from scratch (whichever is convenient), and the only solution is hardline female wombyn-born-wombyn separatism or at LEAST excluding trans people from public life for, at best, making it too hard to tell who's ~safe~. In fact, sometimes on that single-post basis, they could potentially even be identical - though less frequently than many people thought in the heyday of "OP was a terf so I stole this post but anyway all men are walking rape threats and need to accept that any reasonable person will always hate and fear them on sight".

So what can you, random newbie, do to avoid unwittingly passing one of these messages on without turning into some kind of horrible "feminism is cancer" chud?

Well, one of the easiest ways is the Shinigami Eyes browser extension, but I personally don't like to rely on it because 1) you can't use it on every platform (sorry mobile app likers), 2) in my experience it's somewhat common for "trans-inclusive" radfems to be flagged as safe because someone saw their positivity for trans women but not their hatred for trans men, and 3) I just don't like to promote the use of browser extensions as a substitute for learning what radfem rhetoric is and why it is, in fact, anything but feminist; it is very beneficial to terfs if the ONLY thing you know of their rhetoric is "they hate trans women".

The hard but better way is to actually familiarize yourself with what to look out for. Here is an inexhaustive list:

Category 0: Tags to add to your blacklist

Your blacklist filters out posts with the blacklisted tags in the reblog you're seeing, OR in the root post. Therefore, if a radfem post that looks like it's just base-level feminism does breach containment somehow and end up on your dash through someone else, it will still get caught if it's tagged with any of these:

Terfsafe

Radblr

Radfem

Terfs/radfems do interact/do touch/please interact/please touch, etc

Category 1: Terf-ese and dogwhistles

Some of these, especially those near the top of the list, are immediate telltale signs. Others are less certain, but they should at least raise some eyebrows.

"Gender critical" - literally a synonym for terf just used to make the ideology sound more legitimate; they often claim that terf is a slur

"TIM/TIF" - "Trans-identified male/female", a way to delegitimize trans identities

"Febfem" - female-exclusive bisexual woman; a bisexual woman who rejects her attraction to men; essentially a modern term for "political lesbian" (a group which claimed that lesbianism is not a sexual orientation that some people just Have, but a political choice to reject men)

"Butch flight" - the claim that trans men are butch lesbians transitioning to escape lesbophobia and gain male privilege

"Adult human female" - this very simplified dictionary definition of "woman" is something of a rallying cry

"Let girls be tomboys/butch" - some people say this in response to old repressive gender roles in things like dress codes, or even people holding trans women to a higher standard of femininity than cis women, but if that is not explicitly the context it's very likely that this means "stop the evil plastic surgery racket from force-transing every little girl who even looks at a truck, which they're TOTALLY doing"

The inverse, while less common (terfs tend to be very open about not wanting men to be feminine in any way because of "deception" and "false security"), is also one to look out for - sometimes it's a statement against binarism and gender essentialism, sometimes it's basically an assertion of the Blanchard "feminine homosexual man vs. autogynephilic man" model of what a trans woman is

"Compulsory heterosexuality/comphet" - an aspect of heteronormativity whereby it's common, especially for younger people, to try to force themselves to experience heterosexual attraction when they don't. Useful as it may seem, the term was coined by radfems. Most people who are not terfs or other radfems who want to discuss it will discuss it under the umbrellas of heteronormativity and amatonormativity

Hogwarts houses - this is a sneaky one; far from everyone who read those books or even enjoyed them is a terf, but since JKR's full-tilt descent into fascism via the gateway of transphobia, terfs HAVE been using this as a way to seek out their own and mark themselves as safe; let this also serve as a reminder that if you are NOT a terf PLEASE REMOVE THIS FROM YOUR BIO; it WILL both draw them to you AND cause you to be immediately distrusted by anyone else, saying "I DO NOT CONDONE THE VIEWS OF JKR" will not help because terfs can and do lie about that too in communities where they have to stay crypto, at best you're granting them plausible deniability

Referring to men and women as "males" and "females"

Usernames referencing "female" reproductive anatomy - may be a good sign if they're attached to trans-positive modifiers like "boy" or "they", but a username like "divine-vagina" or "ovariesofpower" (note these are theoretical usernames, not ones I've encountered in the wild; if someone does have one of those usernames and isn't a radfem I'm deeply sorry) is probably a terf

Hatred of makeup and plastic surgery - look, no one likes the beauty industry, no one is going to dispute that beauty standards are a nightmare, but this is frequently a smokescreen for hating gender confirmation or anything that helps with the "deception" inherent to transness; be ESPECIALLY wary of anyone talking about "TikTok plastic surgeons trying to sell their services to impressionable teenage girls", this usually translates to "gender confirmation surgeons telling young transmascs that there are options for them", and remember that you either believe in bodily autonomy or you don't, there is no third option

Category 2: Ideological concepts to look out for

This is some of the beginnings of crossing the line from feminism to radfem bullshit - if the rest of the post seems cool but starts heading in these directions, don't assume it's hyperbole; get it as far away from you as possible.

Patriarchy, men-oppressing-women, is THE root system of injustice from which all others spawn. Some will acknowledge that other factors may intersect, but will still claim that they are lesser. Bringing up the long history of white women getting men of color, especially Black men, killed via weaponized fragility and false claims of sexual violence, is just a series of flukes and pointing it out to refute this notion that men vs. women outranks all other inequalities is just whataboutism.

Because patriarchy is so far-reaching, it affects every individual, and because it trumps all other axes of oppression, this means that in every interaction between any man and any woman, the man will be the one with more power.

Men, due to socialization, biology, or both, are categorically incapable of recognizing women as full people. This is not only a broad pattern, but an inevitable fact, true of every individual man, no matter how hard anyone tries to change it.

There is a singular Universal Female Experience. According to terfs, this is an external force; trans women don't have this socialization experience, therefore they can never truly know what it's like to be a woman. According to tirfs, it is internal; trans men process their experiences internally as men from birth to death and therefore have no claim to truly understand any experience of misogyny directed at them.

The experience of being a woman is, first and foremost, suffering. It is therefore to be expected that a certain subset of people would transition to try to escape it - but it's the wrong answer, and this practice of either self-destruction or betrayal must be stopped at all costs. Anyone who wants in on the miserable experience that is womanhood, on the other hand, is at best insensitively looking at a burning building and going "wow, that looks so warm!", blissfully but cruelly unaware of the misery of the situation, and at worst is lying to satisfy a fetish.

Women are categorically incapable of abusing men, because patriarchy outranks all, down to the individual level. Some may also say that this is true because of biological differences in physical strength. (Very feminist, isn't it, to say "the strongest woman is still weaker than the weakest man and nothing can ever change that"?)

There is, fundamentally, no difference between a person with some subconscious misogyny problems and an incel mass shooter; both will abuse women, and therefore both must be treated as threats.

Because the power differential between men and women is so great, a woman cannot TRULY meaningfully consent to sex with a man; all sex between a man and a woman is rape.

Because rape is such a common trauma among women, the very existence of men - or penises, for that matter, even fully clothed ones - in a space where a woman doesn't expect them is traumatic and itself tantamount to rape.

Lesbians don't just have their own unique flavor of oppression experience like any other queer subgroup; they are in fact THE most uniquely oppressed and vulnerable of all, because being a lesbian is first and foremost not about attraction to women, but rejection of men (recall the ties to political lesbianism). Some radfems will embrace contradictory labels or slightly varied personal definitions for other queer subgroups - but if you're anything but a Kinsey 6 who would never even consider making an exception, and 100% a binary woman, you CAN'T identify as a lesbian. You cannot identify as a lesbian if you wouldn't dump your partner or try to conversion-therapy "her" if "she" came out as transmasc. To a tirf, you cannot identify as a lesbian if you're on the butch-transmasc cusp, if they're willing to admit such a cusp exists in the first place. To terfs, you cannot identify as a lesbian if you would ever date a trans woman, let alone if you ever have.

Again, this is far from being an exhaustive list, but it covers most of the most common things that set off my own alarm bells. Additions are more than welcome.

Remember, the danger of letting radfem posts slide because they seem okay on the surface is twofold: one, you're directing more people to their blogs and exposing them to more people they may then target, and two, when those concepts that cross the line bleed out into your gender theory, the result is bad for you and everyone around you.

Okay I can't stop thinking about the Barbie ending. Cause like as absolutely hilarious it was (the whole theater howled) it also is the perfect button for the theme of the movie, coming out of girlhood into womanhood. (this is going to be a very cis reading because, well, Greta is cis and was clearly drawing on her own cis experiences - terfs do not interact)

The first thing Barbie experiences in the real world is being catcalled and objectified, which reminds me a lot of a passage from Tina Fey's book. She talks about how she went to this women's conference when she was working on Mean Girls and they were asked how they knew they were becoming a woman. And pretty much every single one said it was when some dude said something gross to them out of a passing car. It's such a universal experience to get catcalled at 13-14-15 year's old, when your body is only just developing. And that's what Barbie also experiences first.

Then there's the scene where the Mattel men (and they're all men of course) try to put her back in the box. The shot of her hands being strapped down was so unsettling to me and I think that was Greta's intention. Maybe this is a huge reach but it almost felt like it was a metaphor for sexual assault. And I don't think it's a universal experience to be sexual assaulted, especially as a teenager, but I do think it's unfortunately still pretty common.

Then she gets back to Barbieland and has to confront the patriarchy head on, has to learn how to deal in this world catered towards men, has to learn how to develop a sense of self even though she's become depressed by the state of things. Depressed by the fact that she's changing and she doesn't know how to stop it. The "I'm not pretty anymore" moment is played for laughs cause the narrator rightfully calls out that this is an insane line to come out of Margot Robbie's mouth. But I think it speaks to going through puberty, to not feeling like you're at home in your own body anymore (hell this is the same scene where we see the Growing Up Skipper doll, a doll who's breasts can grow and shrink at her human's will - talk about body horror).

And because this is a movie centered on the hero's journey, Barbie and friends are able to get the patriarchy out of Barbieland and work towards a more equal future, but the real next step in Barbie's individual journey is seeing her creator (and this is where the gender swapped Adam/Eve myth of creation stuff really comes into full force but that's a whole other post altogether) who in a lot of ways is just Barbie's mother ("mothers stand still so daughters can look back and see how far they come" !!!!!). It's her mother figure that gets Barbie through that transition from girlhood into womanhood, who assures her that while things might not be perfect, it's still worth experiencing. (And of course there's the theme of mortality as well, that what makes the human experience special is that it's not infinite)

So that final button of Barbie going to the gynecologist for the first time is actually just the completion of her arc. I saw some people being like "I thought she was going to a job interview!" and I think that was absolutely an intentional misdirect, but I don't think her going to a job interview would've hit as hard. (For a lot of reasons, but the main one is it's a very capitalistic idea that you become an adult when you start to generate your own wealth) It had to be her going to the gynecologist, something only adults usually experience, not children. She's no longer a girl anymore, she is a woman.

sorry to bring this to your inbox but i got nowhere else to bring it and i need a yell. I was going through the transgender tag for more information on the CEO's transmisogyny debacle and came across a post that started out by stating that transmisogyny has been on the rise on tumblr as a whole; reasonable and true. but they started their list of examples with "1. The entire concept of transandrophobia" and I just.

What the goddamn hell is wrong with you*? (not YOU you THEM you) Why the fuck are you throwing your trans brothers under the bus for the actions of a pissbaby CEO? There's a wave of false reports and deletions - TARGETING TRANS WOMEN - and your response is to try and shift the target to transmascs for... talking about their experiences? Your response to outside harassment is to try and spark more infighting? What's your fucking problem????? We need to be coming TOGETHER not picking a fucking target to spit on!!! Christ alive. And people wonder how it's so easy for terfs to turn us against each other. God.

Ok rant over thanks for listening

I just want to challenge your wording here a little bit; did you check this person's blog and how they identify? Do you know if they're a trans woman, a trans man, nonbinary, etc.? Even what they might have said on their blog about how they identify should be scrutinized- we don't actually know who this person is, and they could for sure be lying. It's really, really useful for people outside of our communities who want to stir shit up to pretend they're not outsiders at all.

The post you're describing is horrible either way, and you're 100% right that it's stirring up harmful infighting. I think it's really easy to see that kind of thing and think, "oh my god, people are falling for it! they're actually fighting each other now!!"

It's a scary thing to see, and it's incredibly hard to ask critical questions when we're afraid, or otherwise emotionally activated like that. And there's nothing wrong with being emotionally activated, either; of course you are! That's some really hateful, really wrong, and really dangerous shit! Sentiments just like that one have caused so much harm to our community, and so much harm directly to individual, vulnerable people- probably people you know. Certainly people I know.

But it's reactions from that state of emotional activation that lead to the success of these kinds of infighting campaigns. We get activated, we make assumptions and act from that activated place, other people get activated and do the same, and the cycle continues.

What's worse, you're the only person who saw the post in question; I can only react to what you're telling me. I can't go look at the post, check OP's blog, and answer any critical questions about the nature of the situation. I have no way of knowing whether this person might be transfem, or just a TERF trying to stir shit up. I don't even know if the OP was an anon ask sent to someone else. I don't know how many notes the post got, or how big OP's audience is; I can't really conceptualize the amount of harm the post has done. I don't know if anyone has debunked it in the notes, or if OP has since posted an update denouncing that original sentiment.

Again, that's not to invalidate your emotional response, or even really question how honest you're being here. For all I know, you did check all of those things, and this is worse than I think it is. It certainly seems pretty realistic to me, just based on my own experiences with these kinds of conversations.

I just want to push back on that wording a little bit because like... as much as it is a real problem that a lot of transfems really firmly believe that Transmascs Talking About Cis People Being Transphobic To Us is the most serious & urgent form of transmisogyny facing the transfem community today, it's also a real problem that transmacs will jump on that same line of thinking in an effort to paint themselves as "one of the good ones".

Cis women will often throw transmascs under the bus in the same way in order to avoid Cis Guilt, oftentimes avoiding talking about their cis positionalities- which leads people to assume that, because they're talking about trans issues so much, they must be trans themselves! Which, again, perpetuates this illusion that "the trans community is full of infighting" and that much more dangerous to various trans people.

(Granted, this is a complicated issue; I don't think it's wrong for cis people to talk about these things, and I don't think trans people should have to out themselves in order to do so, either- but I have absolutely seen this pattern taken advantage of by hateful anons, TERFs, radfems, and cis women who revel in being called "honorary trans women" for bashing transmascs frequently enough.)

Is this post demonstrating the success of cis people's efforts to stir up infighting in the trans community, or is it just an example of cis people trying to stir up infighting? And if you know it's the former, how do I know? How do all of my followers know? Is it better to understand it as one vs. the other?

I'm sorry this got so long and off-topic; I'm sure this isn't what you were looking for when you sent me this ask, and I'm sorry for criticizing your wording over providing the emotional reassurance you probably needed a lot more than this. And also, I do feel a responsibility to think about the people reading asks before I think about the people sending them (particularly if they're on anon), and I felt this was the message that most needed to be received from anything I could say in response. I hope you're able to find the emotional reassurance you need regardless, and I appreciate you bringing this to me in the first place. 💙

I keep seeing people calling Callum Snake boi what does that MEAN

Little slice of fandom history and also because it's my fault (TLDR at the bottom in bold):

Years ago, a few days after S1 came out and when JK Rowling wasn't an outspoken bloody TERF there were discussions of what Harry Potter houses the characters would fit into. The general consensus for Callum seemed to be that he'd be a Ravenclaw because he's clever and artistic, but I argued for Slytherin (whose symbol is a snake) because I saw him more so as ambitious than just curious and more selectively loyal when it comes to his motivations, etc etc.

If you've been following me for any period of time you might know that I tag Very Meticulously, so as a trans person and a trans ally I was like I don't wanna use the TERF's terminology anymore, but having a tag to talk about a specific aspect of Callum's characterization (his wonderfully harsh temper, his intense selective loyalty, his obsessive ambition, etc etc) was still a useful prospect to me. Thus Snake Boi Callum as a tag was born, mostly as a joke? And so I could find metas that talked about his characterization (specifically) as I don't think I had a characterization tag almost at all for a while?

It started to pick up steam in my tags specifically when there was starting to be a little bit of - pushback isn't the right word cause everyone's entitled to their own interpretation and characterization of a character, nor does everyone have to engage with every part of a character's canon personality or actions in their fandom stuff if they don't want to.

But there'd be stuff of people forgetting that he can be pretty mean when he gets angry or not seeing him as selectively loyal to Ezran and Rayla? People would also be surprised but accepting, or resistant, to his growing and consistent parallels in characterization with Viren and Claudia (even if they are all still, ultimately, different from one another).

I saw a fair bit of sentiment during the hiatus of "oh he'd Never ever do dark magic again" (which I never believed even immediately post-s2) or in discussions of how he'd respond to Rayla after she left in Through the Moon graphic novel (set shortly after S3). Some people thought understandably that he'd care a lot about the lie (that he'd get to go with her) and the abandonment, understandably so - they're both shitty things to do, but I also sympathize/cry over why Rayla thought she had to do them, but I never thought he'd think the lie was that important, and focus more on the abandonment aspect as a source of hurt.

Snake Boi Callum as a concept also got some mileage in the development of my Cube Hostage Exchange Theory as well, an ongoing theory since November 2020-ish that Callum will help Aaravos / give him the Key of Aaravos in order to save Rayla's life if she was injured / taken hostage. I don't know if they'll do that scenario now because S5 basically delivered the exact thing, just with Finnegrin instead of Aaravos, but there was some more legitimate pushback to said theory/scenario during the hiatus because people thought Callum would never help a villain like that or take such a big risk for someone he loves. I'm not gonna say that I was wholly right (because I wasn't) and again people can interpret his actions in S5 in whatever way they want, but I will say that all of S5 was one of the most validating experiences of vindication I've ever had in my whole life, so that probably speaks for itself

But yeah, it's a term that's kinda caught on (I would say 60-80% of the fandom sees Callum as someone who would risk the world for Ezran and/or Rayla, with 20-30% - maybe less? - seeing otherwise, hence why I think it's caught on; but again, having an 'unpopular' opinion in fandom doesn't necessarily make it wrong, god knows I've had plenty) and then in the discords I'm in, a few people thought a week based around those traits would be fun and boom. Snake Boi Callum Week was born.

TLDR; Snake Boi Callum is a fanon catch-all / shorthand for the 'darker' / more emotional and torn side of Callum's personality (his ambition, his temper, particularly his fierce protectiveness and selective loyalty) that is being explored by whoever wants to in a fun fandom week. His bio in official series material does read that he values "those close to [him] more than anyone or anything" after all (which again, was very validating after years and seasons of seeing and writing him with that exact sentiment)

The tagging also means that for people who don't agree with this characterization for whatever reason, or whom dislike the emphasis on it, can blacklist it easily (as is the intended purpose with all tags on my blog)

He's a goofy nurturing guy who will Cut You and verbally eviscerate you without question if you hurt his loved ones or piss him off enough, and I love that for him. He's a little snake boi and we think he should have lots of angst (or sometimes not enough when it comes to killing/threatening people) over how far he'll go to protect the people he loves, as a Treat

I don't plan my posts in advance. It sort of defeats the spirit of this whole thing but I do often have some idea of who I am going to post because I know myself well enough. I am not entirely sure I was what Socrate was imagining but here I am, down the path towards true wisdom. So I knew I would most likely post Emma Watson today because I saw her Vogue Photoshoot and I knew nothing would possibly beat that. Not in the sense of me pitting people against each other when I say win but only so much can hold my attention. There are nights where I will see a photoshoot and think that person is likely for the next day but then the next morning there is more new stuff and it either gets drowned out or my attention is drawn elsewhere or just my mood changes. Emma Watson's Vogue stuff was never going to be that because I was having a very tough time conceptualizing what could top it. It just felt unbeatable because she looks so good in them. Anyway, all of this is documented here in my friend Kat's post which to summarize she is only posting Emma Watson to impress me and be more likely. This is often her motive as there are wide swathes of women she told me she was not into, I can't remember the reason but it was probably because they have lady parts and so she doesn't even know how that would work, and I have had to convince Kat these women are attractive. Emma Watson was basically one of those once cause Kat thought she was pretty but in no way sexy or like sexually attractive. I told her I disagreed and because Kat wants to be like me she decided she would become attracted to Emma Watson as well. Anyway, you can see in her post her eagerness to be so like me she'd post Emma first. Which is fine, I'm not making some sort of poster, my photoshop is MS Paint and it's never that good. I am happy to just post Emma and mention that I think we're all lucky she seems so deeply decent and good. She sort of shouldn't be. A child star in a series with anti-Semitic tropes and written by a TERF is already a tough start but also sexualized at a young age and forever being associated with something for children that adults care deeply about is just a really toxic mixture designed to destroy young women but she made it out fine from what I can tell. No, better than fine because again she's a deeply decent person. I do think everyone of a certain age should be so thankful that their childhood heroes rose to the occasion in a way that is so rare. I could go on a deeply navel gazing thing about perhaps there is some value in your hero's feet being revealed to be clay but I also think there is importance in having people to inspire without cynicism. Which brings us about to how Kat looks up to me and how important it was for her to beat me to posting Emma today. Go congratulate her, it clearly means so much to her. Today I want to fuck Emma Watson

So, there's this post I've been mentally drafting for a bit, which in its simplest terms boils down to:

broke: people at work asking 'how was your weekend' are genuinely interested in the minutiae of your weekend

woke: people at work asking 'how was your weekend' are doing so as small talk, and don't care about your weekend

bespoke: people at work asking 'how was your weekend' are probably not explicitly and specifically interested in your weekend, but they probably are interested in you, and in fostering a social bond with you

I think there's a tendancy among those of us for whom Small Talk is not a native language to get stuck at the realisation that we aren't as interesting as we thought, and Janice in marketing doesn't sit there with bated breath waiting for us to come in on a Monday morning so she can hear about the pizza we had for dinner on Saturday night. It kinda hurts, and feels like everyone around is disingenuous, and just pretending to care about us when they don't.

For me, it took me a long time to realise and properly internalise the idea that small talk isn't pointless noise, just because it doesn't mean what it says on the tin. People are interested in you! Just maybe not in the exact ways you thought. They're probably just as interested in you as you are in them, and this is their way of extending an invitation to connection.

That was going to be the whole post, but then my brain did that thing where it connected some dots which probably aren't really dots, and don't connect at all, so take the following musings with a big ol' helping of salt, but...

In autism assessments they ask about trauma. As I understand it, they ask this because autistic and c-ptsd traits overlap so much it can be hard to untangle exactly where those traits are coming from.

I was thinking about this, and I got to seeing a kind of logic to the groups of people for whom 'lovely weather today, isn't it' is a typical social opening gambit, compared to the people for whom 'hey, here's my childhood trauma wrapped up as a funny anecdote' is a more solid introduction.

Maybe, if you're the sort of person who is privileged enough to be able to assume that your basic self will be largely palatable to most people, the relationship model of gradually increasing intimacy makes perfect sense.

If you're someone who can't make that assumption, either because of being part of a marginalised community, or because of trauma, then that simple path towards a relationship becomes a trek into unfamiliar wilderness, where you have no way of knowing at the outset whether the road leads you somewhere beautiful, or around a blind bend and straight off a cliff. You don't want to invest weeks or months talking about weather and weekend plans before you find out that Janice in marketing is actually a white supremacist or terf.

Why does all this matter? Well, maybe it doesn't. But I've been really fucking isolated for a good few years now, because I figured out that people didn't care about my weekend plans, and I got stuck there, and spent my time exclusively interacting with people who matched my internal model of relationship building by starting deep. And don't get me wrong, I built myself some wonderful relationships, but not many.

Recently I've been trying to broaden my horizons, and build bonds with people who aren't exactly like me, and there's so much joy in it, y'all! Sure, it's a bit of extra effort to consciously walk myself through the conversational template of 'question?' 'reasonably brief answer with reciprocal question' etc, but I've met some people I really like, and I'm excited to spend more time with.

And when you're doing these things consciously, you have the option of asking for a map, before plunging into that wilderness. Maybe when they ask about your weekend, the part of your weekend you highlight is one that subtly points at whatever topic you might feel unsafe about, in a non-confrontational way. You saw a drag queen when you waiting for the train. You gave a fiver to the homeless lady outside Morrisons and had a chat about the book she's reading. In a lot of cases, you can weed out the people you really don't want to be cultivating early on.

I don't have a clever and pithy closing statement, so I'll go with awkwardly earnest, instead. A lot of the people I'm building bonds with aren't going to ever become my closest confidantes, but that's okay. We need best friends, but we also need acquaintances. We need whole communities. Sometimes love is lying in bed with someone at 3am discussing your deepest hopes and fears, but sometimes love is also the woman twice your age at the local knit & natter who remembers that you like sugar in your coffee.

Hello everybody! (CW: LGBTQ-phobia is mentioned)

I only wanted to know whether I'm real transgender or transTRENDER... Let me explain now. Sorry for being so long, but it's my most honest confession.

I was a stupid boy ("girl") till I was 8 and never realized I was not cishet 'cause my parents "censored" everything connected to LGBTQ+ and "unobtrusively" convinced me that I was a straight girl (tbh, politics and sex were also forbidden topics in our house; interestingly enough, my family ain't religious, all of them are atheists). I didn't even have a thought that a boy could like boys and "a woman may want to be called a man." I gave no thought that I might not be what my parents want me to be: a straight girl who loves her husband and has children.

I only learned the word "lesbian" when my aunt accidently said it (I was 8 y. o.), and after I asked my dad the meaning of this word. He got absolutely furious and only said, quoting, "These are mentally ill girls who need to be rap... ahem, who need to have s*x with men." So, like, you know now how it was in my family.

I "had" a "crush" on my best friend when I was 9-10. It was totally made up by me because EVERYONE (our parents, friends, classmates, and even teachers) would ship us, not even listening to our "no." My dad was absolutely happy that I "have found a future husband, like every normal girl," and I just felt disconnected from this. Not only with the "found a future husband" part but also with "every normal girl" part, too. Nonetheless, I suppressed every thought like this.

I only got internet access when I was 10-11 y.o. I was getting into puberty and hated my chest: I couldn't find a reason to explain this to my parents, who knew about me disliking my growing breasts. Subconsciously, I wanted to be like my the most favorite guitarist (he's a man) from the band of my childhood. I couldn't understand what was wrong with me and why I couldn't be like him. But I quickly thought it was because of my chest and was actually right.

The first time I saw the word "transgender" was when I turned 12. I learned about the pronouns and felt a strong connection to she/they and he/they set. I tried using "he/they," but I stopped in a day due to the simple fact that it felt unusual. I immediately banned myself from thinking of this, putting a limit: I can only be an ally. The problem was that I never had any strong position because my parents were constantly brainwashing me. So, I have seen some posts about radical feminism... and sooner became a TERF.

Honestly, radical feminism helped to accept my aroaceness, but it's the only good thing it has done to me. I started hating men simply because they were men, and I also started wishing death on all trans people for "supporting gender stereotypes." I had no reason for this: I was just brainwashed by TERFs when I was 13. I didn't support the whole feminism: I only hated trans people because... why? (P. S. I still hate myself for this period of life) TERFs forced me to think I am proud to be a girl, even though I MYSELF (!) never believed in it. Also, it is worth saying that being radfem was actually quite popular (if I can say it) in my country in 2020-2021 / 2022 (maybe it's still popular now, idk), so many girls were (or are) into that.

Deep down, when I looked through the photos of my favorite guitarist and thought he was handsome... and I felt jealous since I'm not like him, but I quickly restricted myself from thinking of this. I didn't know it was gender envy.

When I was turning 14, my ex-friend helped me to realize I had masculine features. And then I realized I was a guy with he/they pronouns (I go by he/him now). And I felt... relieved? It’s as if my life has acquired colors that weren’t there before this moment. I had no idea what my name was... My deadname always seemed to me so usual, but not mine, and my inner boy was almost killed with TERF's f*cking ideology. I googled some boy names and... I found an amazing one, which was the best for me (even if it wasn't typical for my country).

I went to the psychologist (who turned out to be an impostor and did not have a diploma). She said I was the girliest girl she had ever seen, and I'm faking it.

I have changed SO many labels, trying to find the most suitable one, but now I just label myself transgender man and don't give a damn. I have two names now: the one I have chosen when I was 14 and the most recent one when I realized nobody's gonna call me by my first chosen name. Both feel nice for me, and I'm even thinking of getting the other two (I'm fascinated by Janick, Dariusz, and Friedrich, honestly, but I believe 5 names will be too much for me). The guitarist I adore is still my gender envy. 🤣

I WANT to look like a man and transition... but I always think I'm not trans enough. I nearly killed my real self, letting my parents and TERFs decide who I am. What if I'm not trans and just faking it? What if the internet has brainwashed me, and I'm not real trans? I don't wanna be a "typical masculine man" or a "typical feminine woman," I wanna be myself. And my real me is dead. What if I'm just a gendervoid and can turn into everything: girl, boy, nonbinary, bigender, etc? What if I have lost in my dreams and I'm a girl? What if I'm just a transtrender?

Sorry for being so long. Thanks for reading. Sorry for taking your time.

you are 'trans enough', and even if you decide your not later, thats fine. you can be whoever you want, forever. i'm happy that you figured it out, despite terfs and parents.

also, you dont need to apologise for sending something, its what this blog is for!

I saw the new about the ai porn thing after seeing some post about it and I’m so disgusted and more disgusted by some people reaction to dismiss what is happening just because of The Who like you don’t have to like her or her music to recognize who big of an issue this is , and real femenism is not exclusionary (that’s why the real white femenism and terf are an issue ) and shouldn’t be determined by who you like and who you think deserves rights , the whole point is to be universal , if it happens to someone in such a position of power you can guess the position of risk every woman is in right now

people forgot that white feminism is bad because it excludes the voices of marginalized women; and started using the term to...exclude women they personally think are bad. congrats on missing the entire point! seriously, though, you don't get to decide that someone isn't a person worthy of defending just because you don't like them personally. you can't do that and still call yourself an activist.

hi that post about the Velma plot synopsis is literally very obviously an excerpt from a biased third-party article, not what the show is actually about. You can tell via the way the last sentence of the excerpt is worded, as it’s intentionally condescending and meant to portray the show itself in a negative light.

Not to mention, that excerpt gets a couple things wrong, actually. In referring to Daphne only as an “orphan,” it’s effectively omitting the fact that she has two adoptive mothers who are indeed present in her life and have good intentions, regardless of whether or not the effects of their actions are ultimately positive or negative. To be entirely clear, they’re a bumbling pair of lesbian cops who are bad at their job. like yeah acab whatever but my point is that Daphne isn’t the cruel, miserable one-note character that excerpt makes her out to be; it’s all just facets of the character that the show hasn’t even gotten the chance to fully develop yet, because we only have 2 episodes out so far.

And the implications of Fred’s portrayal as rich, white, and privileged…..yeah? i mean, he is? but again, that’s not the only facet of his character we get to see, and it’s very clear that the show has at least some plans in mind for his arc and character journey. You’re not meant to just hate him completely; I’m fairly certain the intent of his character is to watch him slowly change and connect better with the other mystery inc members as we get further into the show.

Because that’s the thing! I’m pretty sure the characters are meant to be assholes to each other right now!! This is a prequel - therefore, we already know they’re all going to end up being friends with each other. VELMA is just showing us that, in this continuity, they weren’t always that way towards each other. That’s the whole point of the show; it’s showing us the journey!

Is it perfect? Absolutely not! Not all of the jokes land perfectly, and I personally think the storytelling & pacing could use a fair bit of revision, but it deeply saddens me that everybody seems to be more focused on insulting the show and its creators rather than engaging in constructive criticism of it.

there are a lot of issues and controversies surrounding the show, I know, but I do have to point out that the exact moment it was revealed that three of the characters would be reimagined as POC, people started tearing the show to shreds, and we barely knew anything else about it! So forgive me for taking all the egregious hatred and disgust people have for it with a hefty grain of salt!!

Ugh, I’m trying to cram as much into one post as possible, but here, let’s talk about the TERF thing. The accusations I’ve (very suddenly) heard of Kaling’s bigotry are DEFINITELY an incredibly important thing to be aware of, and I have no intention of defending her or her behavior, but I am positively BEGGING you guys to look into these things yourself rather than simply taking some internet rando’s word as bible for what is and isn’t ethically pure to consume. I’m literally a trans person, but I’m not going to assume someone’s evil because I saw ONE screenshot of them supposedly liking a transphobic tweet; that’s not a reliable source of information!!! Research her and her actions yourself before coming to a conclusion!

If the things you find out about Kaling make you uncomfortable with engaging with the things she creates or contributes to, that’s entirely your call! HOWEVER, it’s also not an inherently bad thing to watch and engage with things made by people with contrary perspectives to your own; when you keep an open mind and engage with things critically, you’re exposing yourself to various viewpoints, styles, humor, & perspectives that, even if they aren’t necessarily your thing, are still important to understand and be aware of.

by no means am I telling you that you have to watch the show; I’m only asking for everyone to be a bit more open-minded and a bit more civil in their discussion of media as a whole.

If you are a TERF or a radfem and you want to stop being a TERF or a radfem I can help you.

I haven't been in your exact shoes, but I've worn similar ones. Let me see if this story seems familiar to those of you who were "blackpilled" or "radicalized":

I was on a forum when I was in my early 20's. It was about women's health, and I hung out on the abortion debate forum threads. I hung out there long enough I ended up becoming one of the moderators.

As time went by, I became a bit offput by the way some of the pro-choicers treated the pro-lifers: being rude, sometimes even personally insulting people and crossing what I felt was the "line" of defending women's rights and just being plain old aggressive.

Sometimes, it seemed to me that the pro-lifers were the ones being abused and oppressed, not the pro-choicers. So... I went and found a popular pro-life forum. I started reading their point of view. I can't clearly remember if I was doing it to "know thy enemy", of if I was already feeling sympathetic to their point of view. I only knew that the health forum was a Pro-Choice zone and the pro-lifers were treated like invaders, so I think I wanted to go to the Pro-Life zone and see what it was like over there.

This did not make me popular on the health forums, and I remember I got removed from modship and banned for defending some of the pro-life users and telling off some of the pro-choice users for what I felt was ove-the-top behavior. I lost all of those friends and that whole community because I was defending pro-lifers.

You can see where this is going.

So, I now only had the pro-life forum for community. And at first, there was a lot of love-bombing and "patient" explanation of their viewpoints. There were a few people there who were aggressive to me, but I mostly avoided interacting with them. I was slowly indoctrinated into the pro-life way of looking at things. I still felt that a woman should have the right to abort if she was going to die, but I was, at one point, so deep that I was against abortion in the case of rape and incest. I, regrettably, made Gaia Online pro-life art collectibles.

Cringe.

Anyway, I was now in my mid-twenties. Again, this was over 10 years ago so the exact sequence of events is a bit fuzzy, but I remember getting into more and more arguments with some of the more aggressive forum members. At some point, one of them, an older man, decided to google the email I'd used to sign up for the forum with, and found my LiveJournal. He basically cyberstalked me, and tried to use posts I'd made over there to prove I was a bad person. This thoroughly freaked me out, and of course none of the moderators on the pro-life forum did anything about it.

Eventually, I left.

I ended up becoming pro-choice again pretty much instantly; I don't honestly think I was ever truly pro-life in my heart. I was saying what my new friends were saying, I was playing along. I could see the surface logic of their arguments and didn't know how to refute them. I never really truly internalized any of it - and for that, I'm fucking grateful.

So those were my cringefail years spent as a pro-lifer, all caused by the inciting incidents of seeing pro-choice people be "mean" to pro-lifers online.

So if you saw a trans person being mean to a terf online, and decided to go check out what the terfs were saying, and accidentally fell into their hole...

You can crawl back out again. And I'm here for you when you do.

Hi! Just writing to let you know that radical feminism isn’t “pure hatred”, and that the vast majority of women who support it don’t care half as much about people identifying as trans as they do care about protecting marginalized women worldwide (whose issues are fundamentally unable to transcend their biological sex in the way alternative feminism dictates). You said in the tags of a recent post that you’ve spent “so many years trying to understand” radical feminism, which is confusing, because it’s a relatively straightforward approach to feminism. No radfem is ever going to dictate how someone should or shouldn’t dress or behave. The single defining feature is just that radfems argue that how someone dresses and behaves should not be conflated with biological sex or be indicative of a societal gender norm. The entire concept is that boys can wear dresses and girls can wear pants and they are still male and female. Radical feminism strives for the elimination of gender and gender roles!

Genuinely hope you have a good day :) you don’t need to reply to this, I won’t see it anyway, but you really don’t have to prove anything to anyone either. Your beliefs should be yours, not something you feel the need to repeatedly reaffirm to an online public to stay socially acceptable.

Peace:)

Hey anon, thanks for the polite message, I do appreciate it. I'm gonna use this ask to share my perspective a bit more, and while you definitely don't have to continue this conversation if you don't want, if you have any further thoughts I'm happy to hear them!!

Essay below about my history with the phrase and community of "radfems/terfs"

I do acknowledge that in my original post I used the term "radfem" in that tag where I meant to use the term "terf", however in the past 10ish years I've found that the people who use these terms to describe their identity haven't given me any reason to differentiate the two terms.

When I joined Tumblr in 2013, I had already been involved with the queer community for a year, learning about the different corners of the community and our history. At that point, I had accidentally stumbled across the small "radfem" community that had started leaning into the "terf" category of identification on Tumblr specifically.

I remember this movement was relatively small but in any post I saw celebrating trans-ness or gender, there would be somebody with a "radfem" tag in their username trying DESPERATELY to shut down the joy. Comments filled with "you can't change your gender!" type beat, y'know? At the time, I figured it would die out and I moved on.

Suddenly a few years later, I'm on Twitter and I see a particularly famous children's author involving herself in the community I had forgotten about years before, liking posts about whatever the current drama was about and getting herself involved with the whole "you can't change your gender!" type beat, and whaddya know, it BLOWS up.

Now, let's take a few steps back. I'm somebody that struggled with fitting into same sex groups for my entire life. My childhood sport was same sex, my gym classes, the bathrooms, all the things that people don't really think too much about. For me, it came with a body rocking form of anxiety about things like my body being witnessed, the possibility of getting made fun of (which happened if I wasn't keeping an eye out), trying to fit into conversations that I wasn't really interested in because it's what people my sex and my age were talking about, I was getting denied opportunities from my parents because I was interested in activities that weren't typically for my assigned gender.

Funnily enough, I came across some old posts of mine from 2014, 3 years before I came out, that are absolutely mourning my assigned sex and begging to be anything other than my assigned sex. I didn't want my assigned sex to be perceived, I wanted my gender to stop controlling my life. Once I realized that being nonbinary (or agender, as I prefer) was an option and I could partially transition in order to become more androgynous, it has made my life MILES better. I have never thrived so happily in my body without my reproductive organs and a minor level of HRT, and I would encourage anyone looking for androgyny to discuss HRT options with their doctor because it seriously changed my life.

NOW, let's come back to how that's relevant to "radical feminism". In the last 10 years that I've acknowledged that phrase, I have never met a person who uses that phrase with the intention of including transgender people. I would genuinely like to know if anyone knows any people who identify as a "radical feminist" with the intention of including transgender people, cuz they're not doing a very good job of making themselves visible right now.

I live in a country that already has 3 different regions currently attempting to remove transgender people from the vocabulary of anyone under the age of 18, something that I would've THRIVED with the knowledge of as a teenager. If I knew that puberty blockers were an option, I would've avoided 8 years of incredible intestinal pain, dysphoria, depression and more. That's my choice.

I'm of the same opinion that anyone should be able to wear whatever they want and present however they want, along with identifying however they want. If a boy wants to wear a dress then that's so good for him, but if it's an 18 year old trans boy who wants to wear a dress, he is still valid as a man, whereas I've seen typical terfs argue that a trans man wearing a dress means he wants to stay a girl, therefore should just identify as a girl.

If we're genuinely talking about a group of people who identify as "radical feminists" and don't have a single opinion about transgender people I would like to know who they are, because from my perspective "rad fems" are the exact same group of people as TERFs.

To wrap this all up, my fiance is a transgender man. He was actually a huge influence to help me come out myself and better my life, and I'll forever be thankful for his kindness and education. My best friends are all trans or genderless, my sibling is nonbinary, the 3 different women I would run away with if they asked me to are transgender women... ahem

I love transgender people. I love people who play with their own genetics and put themselves through years of medical stress to be the best versions of themselves. Transgender people have been the kindest community I've ever interacted with, the most selfless group of individuals, the most in tune with their own minds and bodies and the world around them. I love their resilience and their strength in a world that wants them to desist, and I will always be on the side of transgender people.

This blog is not censored for appeal, nor will I ever post anything to satisfy any form of masses. This blog is my own beliefs, and my beliefs are that trans people are (pardon my pun) rad as fuck.

Hey, I just wanted to send you an ask apologizing, because I may have accidentally caused/added to some of the vitriol accusing you of being a terf.

What happened is that I saw your post get blazed and clicked on the person who blazed it instead of your heading— it directed immediately to the blog of greater-than-the-sword, where I was greeted immediately with some of the most horrible vile shit I've seen said about trans people. So when I reblogged a post talking about how we shouldn't give Tumblr money unless they focus on accessibility— I'm disabled myself and have had several really bad experiences because of flashing ads, which they haven't fixed— I added that the person who started it is a Christian fundie anyway, so why are we supporting it. At the time I didn't immediately link to the blog of the person who'd blazed that post, because I didn't want to be the subject of a hate campaign (It's happened to me before on here) but in hindsight that was irresponsible.

Since then a Couple christian fundamentalists seem to have gone Whole Hog on supporting crab day— And they are big users of blaze, as a demographic, So I think people have been seeing more of their posts and it's gotten worse where it's caused more anger from other people, but I think my addition to the accessibility post spread rather further than I intended it to— and I'd meant more to highlight discomfort with the way that Christian fundamentalists are going All In on the crab day thing. I'm still not in support of it while the website is rolling out changes that are aggressive to disabled users, But your post has been one of the ones gaining the most traction and obviously you do not deserve to be lumped in with the idea being co-oped by a horrible demographic, and I hope you're doing alright.

this is very kind, but i don't blame you. there ARE horrible people talking about crab day, and it is NOT My Concept, i'm just someone whose post about it got blazed, so a lot of people are assuming i'm The Leader of it. and while i obviously think crab day sounds like a fun idea and that giving money now is the best way to motivate tumblr to make the necessary changes, i don't really think it like. matters that we disagree on that point, on any sort of moral level. there's a huge difference between disagreeing with someone on the best way to solve a problem, and disagreeing on whether the problem exists in the first place, and we definitely agree that tumblr has Problems.

i feel like people think i'm getting a ton more hate than i actually am; its mostly relegated to the replies on that post, i haven't gotten any genuine harassment in my inbox or callout posts or anything. there's just a few people going into the reblogs and insinuating that everyone who talks about crab day is super suspicious and probably transphobic, and one or two people just blatantly lying and saying "this op is a terf" in the notes. which is obviously frustrating, and i worry that some people will block me pre-emptively because of it, but it's far from a Serious Harassment Campaign.

saw you reply "ugh terfs" on a post about sex based oppression and i just wondered why you don't think sex based oppression exists? every other trans person i've ever seen has agreed that both sex based oppression and gender based oppression exist, so i'm v interested to know why you're so dismissive of the concept? do you think trans men don't face sex based oppression just because they have a male gender?

Gonna assume this is in good faith, though unfortunately I kind of doubt it. Sex-based oppression does exist. The problem arises when people start treating it like the sole factor that contributes to misogyny and the patriarchy, which I've seen a lot of TERFs do.

I don't know of any trans person who doesn't think that sex-based oppression exists but again, the issue is when (usually cis) people conflate it with misogyny as a whole rather than acknowledging it as an axis of oppression in and of itself.

(One last thing- I'm not going to involve myself in 'TMA'/'TME' discourse at this time, so don't start sending me asks about that one, as my opinion on that matter is too complicated to explain in a tumblr-esque written soundbite.)

I got a message a few minutes ago from one of the Chattanooga Noise Night organizers wanting to know if I was still interested in performing on September 22nd (I am). He expressed concern about some of the personal garbage I'm going through and said that I was missed at the event last Friday.

First of all, my brain still has trouble recognizing that anybody truly feels my absence in a positive way (that's years of complex trauma for you). Secondly, I wasn't in the headspace to be in a live show environment Friday night because of what I learned about the horrible shit my now-ex friend did to hurt others.

Through the course of this past week, I have seen so many Facebook statuses from friends, especially musician friends, expressing shock, rage, sorrow, and a whole other plethora of emotions about what this guy was doing for so many years, all right under our noses and we didn't even see it. He was an in-demand local musician, and even other music scenes around the Southeast are feeling pain over this.

Part of me wishes I could force him to read all of these posts and say "Look at you. Look at what you did to hurt everyone around you". In reality, it wouldn't do much good. From screenshots of text messages I've read, he is trying to make himself look like the real victim in all of this, as if somehow he is powerless when it comes to his own violent sexual impulses. It's disgusting.

It feels like there's a hole in my heart as of late, and this situation is largely to blame for it. Coming to terms with the fact that someone you loved like a little brother and were close to for over a decade had this whole other side of them you never saw. So many of us were deceived, and god, so many others were directly victimized. He feigned support for feminist causes and used that reputation to destroy the lives of women (and men) who believed he was good.

The only good thing I can see coming from all of this, at least on a personal level, is writing music about it. When I return to performing in September, I want to be able to vent all of this hurt and frustration. It's pretty much what I did back in March with another ex-friend, somebody I knew for 20+ years, who "came out" as a TERF on Facebook and started posting awful anti-LGBT content. I've had to struggle with losing both of these people as friends because of their abhorrent words and actions. I still need to scream about it.

sidenote, while going through terf blogs to mark on shinigami eyes and block, i saw a post saying transgenderism is inherently homophobic because it's based on inversion theory. If you don't know, that's the idea that if a man is super gay he circles around to becoming a woman and vice versa for lesbians. And it's like... wow. What an argument.

it's just layers upon layers of wrong. First off, inversion theory didn't invent shit. It was a homophobic and transphobic way to try and make sense of queer people while maintaining the binary. A shit explanation does not invalidate the phenomenon it attempts to explain. Second, this does not account for the existence of gay or ace trans people. We need a different way to explain those and oh fuck it's the fucking homosexual transsexual vs autogynephile thing again isn't it. Third, if modern trans people were created from this theory, why don't we ascribe to any part of it at all? The best i can imagine what they're on about, it's the whole "they're turning our butches trans" thing. Which is silly! Sure, there is some shared history between transmascs and butch lesbians - because those are communities that allow afab people to experiment with gender nonconformity. It is simply assumed that every transmasc is a lesbian who lesbianed so hard they started thinking they were a man, when the alternative explanation, that transmascs and butches are two distinct (with some overlap) groups that happen to share interests, is right fucking there.

just a really weird concept idk