just encountered a ‘s*ra is b.b.s kairi’ theory and wow! I never want to see that bullshit again! :)))

It's really important that terfs and radfems make men out to be the ONLY representatives and perpetrators of patriarchy because if anyone found out that women could aid the patriarchy too, it'd be so obvious that's exactly what TERFs and radfems are doing.

"girls can only be victims" "women need to be protected" "men should know better than to date a 25 year old girl child" "only biology and sex based oppression is real" "being a submissive tradwife is empowering despite what TRAs want you to think" "women are biologically weaker than men" "feminism isn't about womens rights it's about how men treat women" "how is that woman supposed to know better, a man should have helped!"

These are all things my misogynist grandpa would say.

And let's be real a lot of TERFs/radfems are white. And also het. Just like he is.

Which is very, very important because for a lot of them gender based oppression is the ONLY way they're oppressed.

And the way white women are oppressed is Different. White women have organizations and foundations and speakers and get invited to the WH. Look at Amber Heard. A white cishet victim of patriarchy with a new movie coming out and So Many other women supporting her bravery. Let's look at the Karens who use white womanhood to play victim and successfully get black men murdered over it.

They have the privilege of being able to do that while having no knowledge about the Indigenous Women's Network or the Loveland Foundation. And when were either of them ever invited to speak or propose a new bill?

Their feminism doesn't need to be intersectional because white supremacist men are willing to listen to a cishet white girl. She doesn't need us because our shared oppressors listen to her without us.

But where does her victimhood go if she admits that to us?

Their entire belief system is based on the idea that you can't be feminist unless they experience oppression. Which probably has a lot to do with them believing "men aren't allies cuz they're all our abusers" and "women are just victims"

White women victims are afforded a certain amount of power and authority the rest of us are not.

Wouldn't you want to maintain the little power you have?

That's why they're "gender critical" until you actually criticize their ideas on gender. It's why you MUST hate women if you criticize them.

It's the victimhood they benefit from and their need to maintain it.

Like how are they supposed to justify being transphobic pieces of shit if they admit trans women are NOT men? If they can't be victims of trans people that would have to mean they're just victimizing trans people, wouldn't it? If they, as white women, admitted race factored into feminism a Lot wouldn't that just make them racist for telling black women it wasn't?

Wouldn't that make them oppressors?

Because if they're doing that then they are taking part in systematically oppressing people they have power over. Silencing them.

And that's not possible because women are just so weak and helpless right? They can't be oppressors. It's men. Men built this system. Not them. Women were helpless. Just like right now while a wave of anti-trans legislation is sweeping.

If only men didn't have all the power and women could do something to help. If only trans women and men were oppressed. But they don't count and they just wanna steal spotlight from "sex based oppression" so they're actually oppressing women so women should not help them.

Because by fighting for gender discrimination rights and bodily autonomy just like radfems and TERFs, trans ppl are stealing the spotlight from "real" victims apparently. And we all know increasing white woman victimhood automatically makes you evil with no need for nuance or critical thinking about it.

....Even though trans ppl are are fighting for the same exact rights that TERFs and radfems are fighting for.

Do you see the ridiculous stretch they have to make?? How superficial it is?

Convenient the justification for a bunch of white cis women to sit around doing nothing again while their keepers call inhumane shots, isn't it?

I'm telling you, what TERFs and radfems Believe in is not feminism and it won't serve any cis people or even them in the long run.

They don't want equality of the sexes or anyone else.

What they want is an excuse to sit around doing nothing and ensuring their own safety AGAIN at the cost of everyone else's.

Because in truth what they want isn't actually that much different. They're the favorite for a reason.

But again....where would that leave these so-called feminists if they admitted that?

And then you have the queer TERFs and radfems which is just wild to me.

Do you have any idea how many radfems are trans lesbians? Or even just trans? Way more than makes any goddamn sense.

Coincidence?

I think the fuck not, mon frère.

TERFs made victimhood their personality by villainizing men and trans women and you couldn't help yourselves when you saw how they used it to position themselves could you.

Radfems even frame it like they're the good bigots because their ideas of women being lesser than men is trans inclusive. Like they're more "valid" as victims so they're Real feminists.

Don't be fooled.

None of that is progress or feminism. That's just Patriarchy's favorite doing what they do best; parroting the same exact rhetoric then looking away while Patriarchy and White Supremacy pass legislatation against the rest of us.

your art and design(s) of donnie has inspired me to give my donnie a long fluffy tail.

and like i headcanon donnie as trans, and i know that female turtles have little short tails but my excuse is that something just went a little weird with his mutation so he has a long tail. that also goes for the fluffy part of the tail, since turtles don't have fur whatsoever

sorry this was random I just wanted to say- also i LOVE YOUR ART!!! ITS SO PRETTY

hell yeah! long tail donnie supremacy!!! go off!!! chase your bliss!!! give him a long fluffy tail! my favorite way to 'justify' donnie's long tail (not that you need a justification) is a headcanon that I 1000% stole from @spectralsleuth that the mad dogz got more than just turtle/human DNA in there...

i mean, they're baron draxum's masterwork! unstoppable super soldiers! the answer to the prophecy! if you wanna make an incredible dish, you don't just use two ingredients, right? so i like to imagine it being, like, mostly turtle and lou jitsu dna, sure, but with, like... a dash of dna from a dozen or so other animals, too. just for good measure. you gotta season the dish, right?

it's fun because it just opens so many doors in my mind. oh, donnie's long tail? yeah, that's the water monitor dna. the way the gemini wag their tails? oh, there's some doberman in there. the sharp teeth? python genes making an appearance! they purr because of the trace amounts of wildcat heritage they have--

It does always throw me for a loop when people look for a moral reason not to like something. You can always just. Not like something. And even be normal about your dislike of the thing!

I've said it here before (not recently, see above point and also the one I'm about to make) that I don't really like the McElroy brothers. Not for any particular reasoning, I haven't heard of any particularly heinous wrongdoing as of this moment. I just think they're largely unfunny and outside of a single podcast of theirs I listened to [The Adventure Zone: Balance] I don't knowingly consume any of their media. I liked Balance, but I've also heard that's their best one, and there were pieces of it that were *too much* of the unfunny humor I dislike about the rest of their stuff [Crystal Kingdom my beloathed], so if that's the best one I'm not really willing to try again with anything... "lesser".

(and I only listened to Balance because I saw Cool Art of Taako and Lup and wanted to know more about these trans-and-gnc elf twins, much like I'm only [slowly] listening to Mighty Nein bc I saw Cool Art of Essek and Caleb and wanted to know more about purple elf and ginger wizard)

However knowing that I'm really not their biggest fan, I also... don't go looking for dirt on them? Don't blog incessantly about how much I dislike them? Try to find a moral justification for my lack of interest? I think their brand of comedy is Incredibly Annoying. That's it.

Now for all I know there might be Something they've done that I've just missed by actively refusing to pay attention to them. Or there might not. I don't really care either way- finding out that there is a valid moral reason to not engage with their stuff changes nothing because I already don't like their stuff and so am already not tuning in. Finding out that there's nothing nets the same result, I'm not interested for a completely mundane reason and so they could be the most morally pure content creators out there for all I know and I still wouldn't pursue anything of theirs.

It's not even to say there's not stuff I dislike due to moral reasons- there's a reason I'm not into HP or MCU anymore- just that it's weird to me that people try to look for one. You can always just not like something. You don't even have to justify it. "I didn't like it" is a totally normal reaction that doesn't need further explination.

I pre-emptively block a lot of transmisogynist blogs, to keep them from harassing me. And the notes of any post about trans people that gets popular is such a good source to find blogs to block.

Including the recent posts about Brianna Ghey. The transmisogynists can't keep themselves from spreading their shit on a post about a 16-year old trans girl getting murdered. And it's them defending themselves, saying the typical clichés of "why are you blaming radfems for this, this is male-on-male violence, these men don't read feminist theory."

(note that I use radfem instead of terf, because I have little interest in rehabilitating radfem ideology from its deep-rooted transmisogyny.)

It's just sigh-worthy, and shows such a bad understanding of how structural oppression works.

Yes, transmisogynist violence is overwhelmingly committed by men, as in who directly punches and kills transfems. Yet this violence does not arise in a vacuum, but in the context of a society which is violently transmisogynistic.

The violence is justified by the claim it's to protect cis women from the tranny menace. Trans women are said to be dangerous perverted rapists, who must be kept separate from real women, by force.

It's men who tend to commit that violence, but it's cis women who provide the justification. They are used as justifications passively by men for violence, but also provide active support for it and benefit materially from transmisogyny. Their cis privilege depends on there being an underclass of transfems who suffer the worst of male violence instead of them. Cis women are directing male violence away from them.

And all of transmisogynist radfem ideology is just one long justification for such male violence. despite claiming to abhor it. The call to "legally protect women's spaces" is in the end a call for the very male profession of cops to violently remove trans women from such spaces. And force us to use male bathrooms, where we are at great risk of extralegal male violence. It's in the end a call to remove trans women from women's spaces all together. When you can't use public bathrooms without risk of violence, it restricts how much you can leave your home.

The supposedly moderate argument for "protecting women's spaces" turns out to be downright genocidal. The calls to ban trans healthcare are even more directly genocidal, as it uses state violence to keep us from the healthcare we need, all in the full knowledge that many trans people will commit suicide without it.

Radfem ideology about trans women is thus useful for the patriarchy, because it provides a secular "common-sense" form of transmisogynistic ideology that can appeal to the liberal middle-class in secularized western european countries, like the UK. It's for people who want to intellectually justify their transmisogyny, but who aren't religious and so appeals to christian values don't work. Radfem ideology is transmisogyny for London-based newspaper columnists.

By appealing to this class, radfem ideology keeps transmisogyny within the overton window of mainstream respectable and liberal opinion. It's establishment backlash against the small gains trans rights activists had made by the 2010s.And it has worked, it has kept transmisogynistic rhetoric mainstream, particularly in the UK. UK media is one long storm of transmisogyny right now.

It's true that the type of man who shout "faggot" at trans women in the street probably doesn't read Kathleen Stock. But she serves a different audience and purpose .What Stock does is to dress up the same transmisogyny in genteel language for a middle-class audience. And they listen to her because she is a university professor, the newspapers review her book positively. It all helps keep transmisogyny mainstream and acceptable. And that has effects that go beyond Stock's book and direct audience.

In the end Stock believes the same things about trans women as the "faggot" shouting ruffian: that trans women are perverted rapist men in dresses who prey on real women. And cis women have to be defended by force. It's the same transmisogyny in the newspapers that also causes the violence in the streets.

That is how structural oppression works. By contributing to the pervasive climate of fear and hatred against trans women, transmisogynist book authors and newspaper columnists and terf social media accounts play a role in transmisogynist violence.

Of course they will answer "but we never directly called for violence against transfems." Some of you did, and the rest of you didn't need to. When you paint a group as a threat to innocent women and children, as perverted pedophile rapists, it's works just as well as a call for violence. You don't need to appear too extreme (and get in trouble on social media) by directly calling for mass murder, it's implicit.

So yes, transmisogynist ideologues in general are responsible for Brianna Ghey's murder. They have a lesser responsibility than the people who stabbed her, but it's there. It's they who gave support to the structural oppression that lead to her murder. It was they who painted Brianna and all girls like her as threatening rapists invading women's spaces. This disgusting murder of a 16-year old girl is the natural result of their ideology.

May Brianna rest in peace

Also we didn’t like it when a bunch of angry dumbfucks stormed the capital. Just because you’d be doing it in the name of trans rights or whatever the justification doesn’t make it ok either.

i think. that meeting violence with violence doesn't make me a bad person. i think that intimidating, harassing, and if need be violently dealing with people that are literally calling for genocide against me, and people like me, doesn't make me a bad person. you're doing that thing again where you're conflating me simply bringing something up as praise. i didn't like it either that the capitol was stormed. largely because the people doing it, i didn't like.

simply. i was saying that if they could organize that, surely people of a different ideology can organize something else, like that. to a smaller scale. that's it. weirdo.

i think that we should kill our political opponents, because voting and platitudes and worthless centrist/liberal both-sidesing has gotten us here. i think we should kill them expressly because they are advocating that we die first. they cast the first stone. i could literally die because people don't like that i exist. me meeting them with a similar level of violence is not a fault of my own. it's a fault that it's gotten here to begin with. sitting politicians are literally saying people like me need to be eradicated. and we need to do something about this.

to put it in a more quirky, tumblr way, when fascists beat or kill one of us, that's lame as hell. but if one of us kill a fascist, that's based.

i'm sorry that i can't say in any other way, that if a nazi wants to kill me, but i kill them first, i'm in the right. i'm sorry that you're like this. if these statements have bothered you, you're free to go pal. you don't have to stay here. you never have to interact with me ever again. you can block me and never think of me again. please. if me saying that nazis should die make you uncomfy, there's the door. i will never compromise on this point. i'm sorry.

Hey. Idk if this is me growing up or just being disillusioned with inter celebs etc. Im a 23 yr old trans man so I grew up and was inspired by chella on the YouTube community. But now I just…don’t like chella man anymore. I feel like…he became an industry plant? Over the pandemic asking fans for money to send to him directly to help others and not showing where the money was going exactly incident as well as just becoming older I noticed he seemed to almost want to become the next Keith haring or basquiat? He almost…now seems very fake? He takes deals with brands to be representation but doesn’t do much to call out certain brands for their faults etc.

Idk anymore

I give Chella credit in that he was one of the few transmen that I looked up while I was young, especially with him being BIPOC. Showing him to my family helped them understand me. But that's where the inspiration kinda stops, because it was painful to be surrounded by years-in-transition trans men online when I was absolutely nowhere I wanted to be. That was a me problem tho. But I also didn't know much about his whole donation incident.

Ig heres what I have to say. It's not great to view other people as your justification of your morals. We don't know how people have had to live or how they live now, we don't know what decisions they have to make, and we dont know what kind of fears or goals they have. Chella is allowed to do whatever he wants with his art or his modelling career, just like how I genuinely believe anyone else in the world is capable of making the right decisions for themselves (even if we dont like those decisions!). Im not really concerned with figuring out if hes an industry plant or a "class traitor" (lol) or even if he's "fake". To be honest, I'm all for BIPOC folks getting their $. Does that mean I enjoy seeing wealthy BIPOC folk perpetuate classism and racism? No. Just cuz someone is succeeding for themselves doesn't mean people cant critique them. I guess what Im saying is I see waaay too many people online take the things they enjoy and the people they follow as projections of their morals: "no! stop [Insert celebrity name] you're being problematic and its makes us fans look bad!" Like....Okay lmfao. People are grown adults and are going to make decisions for themselves. Just because you might enjoy a celebrity does not mean your morals are based on how good of a person they are.

and youre allowed to not like the same things anymore just like how people are allowed to change, for better or for worse. I think within online communities there is way too much pressure on "looking" like a good person versus actually being one...because sometimes BEING a good person makes you look absolutely vile in terms of online spaces/communities love of isolating, removing, and deleting "problematic" (and vulnerable) people from their spaces with no trial, discussion, or attempt at conflict mediation. Yea yea I do think people have every right to be criticized just as they have every right to make whatever decision they want, but what Im trying to get at is to really stop viewing anyone with a platform as someone you can other once they dont meet your standards. This is not the same as denouncing or critiquing someone for really egregious behavior (white supremacy, harrassment, bullying, interpersonal violence). Once you kinda start living by your own morals without needing other people's actions/behaviors to justify/define them, you learn to focus on building connections rather than destroying them.

again, this is a much nuanced topic and you prolly werent expecting me to go into this. but ive grown over the years and have engaged in some nasty and vile mob mentality behavior that i just dont vibe with anymore. im not really the kind of person now to speculate online or publicly what other people are doing or should be doing or whether theyre problematic or not. I don't really care about Chella man or most celebrities rn. People r just gonna be people, and I will always have empathy for those of marginalized identities. Free will, autonomy, and self determination goes both ways, but so does accountability, transformative justice, and reconciliation.

but also like kill ur idols lol

in intra-christian arguments about LGBTQ+ issues i think there's always two main levels: 'what does the Bible say?' and 'what is our overarching narrative about queerness?', and i think a lot of resources that promote an affirming stance don't always take this into account.

by this distinction i mean that there's a difference between arguments like 'Leviticus 22.18 is about incest' and 'Know them by their fruits and the fruits of being non-affirming stink' - they're both biblically based, but one is defensively batting away clobber verses used as weapons, and the other is casting a broader narrative that gives queer affirmation some kind of weight.

conversely, for traditionalists, the difference is between something like 'Romans 1 says homosexuality is unnatural' and 'we all need to carry our crosses so suffering with suppressing your sexuality is noble and Christlike'. Again, both biblically based, but one serves to tell you what to do, and the other is the underpinning ideological justification.

(incidentally, i think it's quite frustrating that the anti-trans position in Christianity essentially relies on maybe one Bible verse we all ignore anyway by letting women wear pants, and is otherwise entirely dependent on having constructed an anti-trans narrative that is hardly the only or even obvious option for Christians)

so i think there are four quadrants to arguing for LGBTQ+ affirmation: 1) dismissing traditionalist readings of Scripture (e.g. 'Paul was only familiar with pederasty not committed adult homosexuality') 2) offering queer-affirming readings of Scripture (e.g. 'David and Jonathan were gay' or the Ethiopian eunuch) 3) Dismissing traditionalist narratives about why suppressing queerness is justifiable and good (e.g. 'carry your cross', 'gender complementarity', 'your identity is in Christ alone) 4) Constructing narratives about why queer affirmation is good (e.g. 'Know them by their fruits', 'Love is love', 'God created transsexuals the same reason he created wheat but not bread')

Now, I think a lot of arguments you see tend to focus on 1, 2, or 4.

Arguments for 1 I think often lack a lot of nuance and can honestly be quite bad, at least the passing ones you see online ("'homosexuality' as a term was added to the bible in the 1940s" is a huge oversimplification for starters, and i think the idea Leviticus is talking about pedophilia is confusing it with Paul's Epistles). But I think there are definitely good arguments out there, especially in books like Brownson's Bible Gender and Sexuality.

Arguments for 2 I think, to be honest, are often far too speculative and anachronistic to be helpful - we can certainly read David and Jonathan or the centurion and his slave etc queerly, but I think it goes too far to definitively project it back onto them for the sake of arguments. I think there's fruitful potential in reading things like Gentile inclusion in Acts queerly, or perhaps even, idk, the Book of Job. But these are easily the most spurious and least helpful arguments (which is not to say the Bible can't be interpreted pro-queerly; just that that comes out more in #4 in constructing pro-queer narratives).

Arguments for 4, I think, are actually quite powerful because they provide the underlying engine of actually wanting to be affirming. It's all well and good to argue dry technical points of ancient Hebrew or Greek exegesis, but if there's otherwise no compelling moral issue at stake - oppression of LGBTQ people, rejection of love, the risk of being locked into legalistic thinking, even just alienation from your LGBTQ+ loved ones - why would anyone care?

BUT on the other hand, they can also lapse into cliche and feel like arguments from emotion when they get prioritised over arguments about the actual text/theology. Which is frustrating, because in a sense these arguments are 'more important' - what's going to keep you committed to an affirming position long term, a realisation that the meaning of 'arsenokoites' in 1 Corinthians is ambiguous, or wholeheartedly believing non-affirming theology is ripe with bad and harmful fruits?

Finally, arguments for 3, I think, are relatively lacking. Arguments constructing pro-queer narratives implicitly counter anti-queer ones, obviously, and I think a bit of work has been done around dismantling gender complementarity (albeit not always in the context of LGBTQ+ issues) and the whole 'my identity is in Christ' (probably thanks to the Side B community tbh).

But I feel like there are other narratives that have gone not really explicitly addressed, like 'we all carry our crosses', 'Christians are called to be in the world and not of it; LGBTQ+ inclusion is a secular whim'. And I think these especially are narratives that we progressives are inclined to just dismiss out of hand, because they just feel inherently culty and authoritarian; they don't start from a place of good faith, the assumptions are faulty, let's not bother.

But I think it would be worth picking these apart further for the sake of people stuck in homophobic churches - fruitfully deconstructing what 'carrying your cross' means and the role of suffering in the Christian life, or clearly identifying where LGBTQ+ affirmation comes from within Christian theology, or working out why it's not a problem the secular world took the lead on this (because the Holy Spirit is working throughout history and is not so weak as to be limited to the church, because the church's role isn't necessarily been to be the only arbiters of moral progress, because religious institutions becoming corrupt and losing sight of justice is not a new concept to Christians etc)

I am always thankful for people of marginalized identities being loud about their video game blorbos because of the beautiful branch of analyses and discussions they make from it. I am so serious.

I love that I can just look up videos doing gender based reads of Amy Rose and Carmelita Fox.

I love it when there's that one girl character in any given game and all it takes is the right woman here on Tumblr seeing one too many bad takes about them being too mean or them getting angry in one scene to create the most beautifully nuanced essay as a result.

I love when artists properly show love to dark-skinned characters and give them the best outfits to show off their features and give them the love and respect they deserve.

I love seeing seeing trans people come on here and casually write up a thorough education of gender and sexuality using their favorite JRPG or racing game or whatever.

I love people who disregard everything and don't need an elaborate justification for their favorite characters. The people who say "this character is Ace because I said so and I like it" are just as powerful as the people who support their reads with a mountain of support by the text.

I love seeing other autistic people casually giving a rundown on disability studies because one too many people kept picking out all the autistic traits of that one character they liked.

I love when fat characters don't get their fatness erased and not being objectifying about them either!

I love when there's that one character who is tucked in the background with little consideration to their existence and artists and writers go "no, I'm going to make them the most interesting character ever."

I love that there's that non-white character who didn't have that much thought put into their design and people run with it and make the most loving designs.

I love when Black character can have fanart or people gushing about them in a space without having to look at "comment deleted" 500 times too.

I love that people are calling out the misogyny baked into so many reads of Yukari Takeba.

I want someone to publish literature about Dixie Kong.

I love that there's more talk about how messed up Nintendo's writing of Ganondorf is.

I am no stranger to seeing racism, misogyny, queerphobia, ableism, and all the other -isms in such spaces, but I do want to also shout out and thank the people who create spaces to identify with, speak to, and critique characters they put more thought into understanding and create a space that welcomes other people to do or feel the same.

Spaces like this aren't destined to be awful spaces and I love the way people out there will carve out even a small little comfort for others to feel seen and welcome in how they show defense, analysis, and even loving criticism toward the characters they like.

So y'know, have fun with your games and may you be as weird as weird and loud as I am. You're doing the lord's work

it’s obviously important for ppl to criticize misogyny particularly transmisogyny in trans male communities since thats a trans community issue but if ur also tme and the only thing u ever exclusively talk about trans men for is talking abt us as bigoted misogynists (usually there’s a ‘binary’ slapped in front of it) i genuinely think you need to put the phone down go outside and remember that whatever insane misogynist guys online are saying is not a necessarily a reflection of like things adult men outside of a weird fringe group of freak transmisogynist dudes on tumblr who think the boys should get our own word JUST like the GIRLS or its NOT FAIR!! or whatever (and one coined by a fucking terf at that..) are saying, or justification for behaving weirdly about an entire diverse community of trans people.

again i do not say this to like dissuade ppl from discussing legitimate problems but like a couple points- 'binary' trans men r capable of talking about it ourselves, and we do, and we’re not the ones whose posts get shared about it. and second: if you’re only bringing us up to talk abt how shitty particularly TRANS men are you might have a problem you need to deal with? this is not a shocking statement. like at some point someone has to point it out to you and sit there and take the shit and patiently explain to you it’s that the problem comes when its literally the ONLY thing you bring us up for and act like we're not capable of talking abt this ourselves, and that its a problem how comfortable ppl r for letting ppl speak over/for us if the only similarity they share w trans men is.. an agab and not being cis (yikes!). or if theyre transmasc and male aligned in some capacity but dont have any interest in engaging with or considering themselves a part of like trans men, THEYRE the ones who need to talk abt it, bcuz the (usually 'binary') Trans Men wont (not saying those ppl cant or shouldnt but they may be treated differently for doing so)

first ppl liked using transmeds existing to throw up justification for treating us like a bigoted monolith you (uniquely) Just Dont Feel Safe Around and its normal to make assumptions abt us being transphobic especially if we don't identify by labels deemed 'safe' and Inherently More Radical, and now its pretending we all collectively cant recognize our privilege thru our intense blinding hatred of women and its up to you to save us from ourselves and beat some common sense into the inherently bigoted stupid about gender patriarchy dicksucker boys. like i dont know im tired of it when trans men being accused of only existing bcuz we want to be patriarchy bootlickers i guess is always what radfems have thrown at us, so its not like this negative perception of trans men filtered thru a supposedly progressive lense is new. a lot of adult trans men dont talk abt like particular hot shit thats discussed a lot on here rn (the 'trans misandry' shit for example) bcuz its was not a problem in the spaces we're in and we knew it was stupid as fuck right away and barely worth talking about to say 'yeah you know that thing we all know is stupid and bullshit? its stupid and bullshit'. bcuz we're not fifteen years old or weird misogynists. we have brains, don't hate women, and we dont all know and hang around the same people.

anyway dont take this post as a stand in for serious discussion and calling out misogyny (again especially transmisogyny) w other men, those posts do need to exist, i am not trying to say this stuff shouldnt be talked about. what i'm specifically pointing out is a frustrating pattern in the perception of and discussion of trans men that ppl probably dont realize theyre participating in. i do think it is very important to talk abt community issues and criticisms but if its literally the one thing you bring up trans men for i think being aware of that behavior has no NEGATIVES here. also do have to bring up i specified other tme ppl early on bcuz this isnt smth ive experienced or seen from transfems and their position as like the affected party of transmisogyny is automatically like .. if they have issues w trans men it is pretty inherently coming from a different place than like, a cis womans, or a tme nonbinary person, or a transmasc person with issues with trans men, or a cis mans, etc. tme ppl who are on a very different ground here, whose behavior is straight up different anyway

Its honestly very concerning how popular ContraPoints video on "Transtrenders" was. I want to make a post discecting it briefly because I feel the video does a disservice to young trans folk looking to learn, instead leaving them feeling unjustified in their indentitiy under the guise of some radical acceptance One of the main issues with the video as a whole is how natalie breaks down existing understandings of trans medicine as a tool to try and unseat transmedicalist talking points, and show how being trans is about personal experience and "feelings". While its important to critique transmedicalists, what she does here is undermine what many people see as the best justification for trans existence without replacing it with anything. She does this in my opinion, because she honestly doesn't have anything to replace it with, and doesn't understand the real basis for gender in the world. Saying this is all well and good, I can critique anyone for not giving good basis for thing but its no help if i don't give anything of substance to back it up either, so heres a brief explanation of why transphobia is a problem, based in actual socio-political analysis.

Patriarchy is an economic structure which has been built up across centuries of accumulated surplus value which was passed down through the eldest son of the ruling class. this is a vast over simplification, but functionally this means there are systems in place in society which privilege men, give them access to more wealth, better positions, and control over non-men. Patriarchy has grown and changed over time and held different shapes depending on the society, we no longer have eldest sons inheriting royal rule (in most places), but we continue to have men as the group with the most economic and social agency in our societies. This privilege that Patriarchs have is constituted not of some magical benefits bestowed upon them from an abstract "system" but are instead taken directly from those who are not men. More specifically, men and Patriarchs take labor and resources from those whom patriarchy considers "non-men". Reproductive labor goes unpaid, women are under privileged in political society, we often don't get choices over our bodies. This isn't merely a coincidence, but serves specifically to give men power and confer more benefits onto them. Because of this, there must be systems in place to manage who is let into the patriarchy, who can be a Patriarch.

The most universal way of doing this is by deciding whether or not someone is a man and conferring onto them certain benefits as long as they uphold this structure, and ostracizing them if they are not. They do this ostracization because if this structure is not upheld artificially through oppression of women and bullying of nonconforming men to keep the categories of man and woman or even man and non-man distinct, the privilege given to the in-group starts to fade. In the same way that "White" is an artificial construct created and upheld to facilitate racism like slavery, imperialism, housing discrimination, and unpaid labor, so too is "manhood" and "womanhood". These constructs appear to be based in existing biology, so they often go without question, but race is also based on such "biology" and that does not mean its a founded construct. The basis for both "race" and "gender" break down once you look at higher level understandings of these concepts. Not all people with xy chromosomes are men, not all people of African decent have black skin, etc etc... I could go on about the "exceptions" for quite some time but you likely know many of them already. These are categories created fundamentally to give one specific category an economic advantage and justify their oppression of those who are outside of said category. The reason we need to respect trans-ness isn't because there is something inherently justified about being transgender, nor because we just have to be really nice to everyone and treat their feelings as absolute truths. Its because the systems which confine us and define gender so rigidly exist purely to oppress and extract value from others. These borders are deeply unjustified and we need to tear them away. We do not need to justify existing outside of the borders, but instead challenge the borders in the first place. Contrapoints fails to meaningfully do this Natalie focuses almost entirely on the arguments surrounding justifications for transness and gives little thought to the justifications for patriarchy. It is treated as a default, always existing, status quo that is unquestionable. It makes me wonder how aware of it she really is, she seems to get stuck in justifying her own existence. the "Transtrenders" video focuses on a discussion between several characters where the primary issue at hand is how to justify being trans, should it be done through medicial, scientific frameworks? or should it be done from a kind and accepting view of others? She makes arguments against the former for being flawed and the latter for being unfounded, but she never actually replaces it with any critique of society, instead saying: "Okay, so what am I supposed to tell Jackie Jackson then? What am I supposed to tell the TERFs? That I'm a woman because reasons?"

"No, not even because reasons. Just because you are."

"So it's what, a leap of faith? Oh great. I'm sure that's gonna convince all the rational skeptics. Justine, it makes us sound completely delusional."

"Well Tiffany, delusion is what separates us from the animals." Which is an extremely unhelpful answer to give after tearing down what is to many, a key aspect in their reasoning for why they are justified in their identities, and while it is partially correct that trying to use one of the specific theories she outlined earlier to justify trans existence is an exercise in futility, she can't seemingly offer any alternative than some kind of "because I said so" when there ARE very good reasons to be in favor of trans acceptance, and historical reasons for our existence. In failing to do so she misleads perhaps an entire generation of trans people into thinking theres no real justification for their existence

The justification comes from understanding that the premise is false, that the forces which try to bind people to a specific societal gender role are themselves the issue.

She tries to point out that we dont need to justify transgender existence because the frameworks which hold us to cisgender existence are the real problem, but without ever talking about these cisgender standards in an actually meaningful way, instead talking abstactly about societies "expectations" or whatnot, where she should could be attacking the real economic forces of patriarchy. She should be tearing down patriarchy first and then using that to liberate trans existence but instead she tears down trans existence without touching patriarchy or any of the coercion or exploitation that arise from it. I consider this a great tragedy, and a prime example of her failures as an educator.

It's fascinating to think about how similar TERFs and incels are as bigoted groups that have been recruited to great effect by white nationalist evangelicals. In both cases, a departure from the rigid expectations of binary gender would do these people a world of good and yet because they're suffering so much under those expectations of binary gender, their bitterness, anger and dissatisfaction with their respective lots have instead seen them being weaponised against minorities on behalf of the actual, literal neo-Nazis who want to see those expectations unequivocally enforced.

Like, we all know what incels are about, we don't need to talk about them, but TERFs in particular are an interesting bunch for just how handily they've been convinced to work against their own interests in the name of inflicting bigotry on trans people. The vast majority of TERFs seem to be older cishet women, and for all of their vocal pride in their womanhood, they do not appear to enjoy being women at all.

The thing is, enduring some long, awful, inescapable suffering can feel radical, in a weird way. Your suffering becomes noble and your ability to stoically bear it becomes a lynchpin of your identity, and such is the case with these women who've made the misery of their lives as wives and mothers part of their personalities. The narrative that men are all inherently violent, predatory oppressors and that women are all inherently victims of those men plays neatly into this mindset; since you're naturally and inherently victimised by men just by virtue of being a woman, there's nothing you can do but endure your suffering, and the best way to be a woman, therefore, is to suffer nobly and make it a core part of your identity.

You might imagine how trans women, who not only willingly choose to participate in womanhood but also enjoy it, might upset someone who's spent half a century living and thinking in this way.

(You know when people who clearly hate being parents get pissy at folks who chose not to have any kids, call them "selfish" or butt into conversations to go "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT 'TIRED' MEANS, TRY BEING A MOTHER!!" and stuff like that? Yeah. It's the same deal.)

You really can draw a straight, clear line between this suffering-based identity crisis and the ways TERFs try to define womanhood in such a way as to exclude trans women. They're so desperate to defend their own version of womanhood, which is defined by the Noble Suffering they've spent their whole lives believing to be inevitable, that they'll reach as far as they have to in order to exclude trans women from the experience of womanhood, even if it means dragging us back to the fucking 1950s and defining women by their genitals and their ability to bear children. If they didn't, they'd have to face up to the fact that their suffering was never inevitable, that they didn't have to endure anything, and that they could have been enjoying womanhood this whole time and having fun with it like trans women do.

Everything else is just justification for this. It's all window-dressing to hide this underlying fear of the misery they've defined themselves by having all been for naught. If you check in on what TERFs are saying on a semi-regular basis, you'll note that the angle they take to attack trans people changes on the weekly; at the moment it's trendy to say that trans healthcare "medicalises and sterilises children", but a few months ago it was all about "common sense", and before that it was about "protecting women and girls". There'll be another excuse in another few months' time, because TERFs don't genuinely believe any of this stuff. It's all about scrambling to find something, anything that sticks, while covering up this underlying fear that their identities will be invalidated by the revelation that they've suffered for nothing all their lives and that there is no nobility in that suffering.

That's why they never talk about trans men. Trans men are almost never mentioned, except when it's convenient to characterise us as poor, lost little girls, robbed of our god-given ability to have babies by the evil trans cabal that brainwashed us. TERFs are obsessed with trans women, and trans men are a distant afterthought. That's why.

Of course, the other convenience of perpetual victimhood is that you can freely be as vile as you like to other people whilst still maintaining your innocence. You can only ever be a victim, never an oppressor, so no matter how awful the vitriol you spew at marginalised people may be, you'll always remain pure and utterly unblemished. Your actions are virtuous, your intentions without sin. Don't worry about it.

As it was with incels, TERFs have likewise been duped into serving the interests of the patriarchy and of, again, actual, literal neo-Nazis and their allies because blaming a minority and directing their anger with the shitty lot that our cisheteronormative society has given them at that minority is easier than trying to enforce real, positive change or facing up to the fact that they might just have wasted their lives on misery. They are the fucking same, exactly the fucking same.

Fucking with gender and making what we want of it benefits all of us.

I think there is a great deal of benefit in accepting that we don't honestly know what Tolkien felt about a good many subjects, or how he'd imagine them in or not in his world - and that has exactly zero bearing in whether *we* can take his world and imagine it however we want, and include the people we wish, and enjoy the fantasy just as much with or without the author's "intent".

The reason for this is that it puts the onus on proving that Tolkien *might* have thought *something* based on *this obscure quote* in order to justify including it when the honest truth is we need no greater justification than it makes us happy to do so.

I am not in the slightest against using quotes or passages to support things, but I do want to say that it may in fact be counterproductive at times to allowing true unfettered inclusion if a suitably vague quote cannot be found to support it.

Hi anon, thanks for the ask! I'm not sure which post of mine sparked this, but I think I get where you're coming from.

The point you're making is actually why in my posts about racial diversity in Tolkien, gay characters in Tolkien, and trans characters in Tolkien I made a disclaimer of sorts that you don't need permission from the source material to interpret it in the way that feels right to you.

But the reason I do think it's worthwhile to make these posts (even though I see the value of what you're saying) is that I feel like a lot of people in fandom genuinely don't know how open the source material is to these interpretations.

For instance, as I write in one of the linked posts, there's a misconception that Tolkien only drew on Northern European myths, languages and cultures, and this leads people to believe that his protagonists all have to be white. It's an uninformed and ultimately incorrect conclusion to draw, but it's still very widespread.

Likewise, a lot of people just assume that because of the time period and his religion that Tolkien must have been a homophobe, and they think he'd be horrified if gay people, I don't know, saw themselves in his characters? But I'd be willing to bet that lots of LOTR fans literally don't even know that Tolkien had multiple gay friends. (Heck, I've been a Tolkien fan for ages and I found out about his friendship with Mary Renault this week, although I already knew about W.H. Auden.)

So I guess the reason I write these posts is that I like to challenge the prevailing assumptions that Tolkien's world has to be straight, white, etc.

It also makes the exclusionists really mad. Of course, they can never refute what I say, they just froth at the mouth, because how dare I imagine any of Tolkien's characters as gay, bisexual, asexual, trans, or any race other than white.

But aside from a few miserable trolls making fools of themselves in my notes, the responses I've received to these posts have been overwhelmingly positive. So, thank you, followers!

Back to the question at hand, I think you're right that there is a benefit to accepting that in many cases we don't really know what Tolkien thought about many different topics. Fans have spent decades theorizing about obscure and contradictory facets of canon, and we will spend decades more doing the same, and we will never really know a lot of things. Which is okay!

I guess part of this hinges, though, on what you mean by a vague quote. The quote I cited in my post about trans characters is maybe obscure, although I hesitate to call anything obscure in the Silmarillion fandom. But the fact that Tolkien was friends with gay people isn't a vague quote or something, it's just a fact. The fact that Tolkien based Minas Tirith in part on the Byzantine Empire and in part on Ancient Egypt isn't a vague quote, it's a fact. Does that make sense?

(I'm linking to these posts because I really explain what I'm saying better there.)

I wrote the post on racial diversity in Tolkien in part because I was so sick of people calling themselves "Tolkien purists" and insisting that Middle-earth is exclusively white, and I wanted to set the record straight and say that no, you are not Tolkien purists. (The same goes for the homophobes etc.)

That's really where I'm coming from with my posts on these issues.

i did an interview yday and i sort of touched on this but not all of it, so i'm sharing these notes

i draw and write what i do because i want my work to look like me and i want to see me in it.

i'm not good at letting gender be a "vibe" or a "moodboard", intangible like that. in fact "my gender is __ even though i don't look like it, yeah it's my ‘aesthetic’" is pretty distressing for me. lack of embodiment and living exclusively thru projection/formless reflection is distressing. the queerness and queer sex i was formatively exposed to and gravitated toward was... classic, hard, hairy, leathery and even difficult to pin down with titles but still highly physical, or elicited that response/impulse in me. a lot of memories are lost to me and i don't know how to recover them— and so much time spent without another soul to reflect on it. i remember the first internet porno spam i saw. leafing thru erotic coffee table erotica. European comics about bears and twinks hooking up on the Mediterranean. Blixa Bargeld's strap-on harness. wet messy yaoi. but little for me to Be, in a real way.

it's so fucked and also only a teeny tiny example of a far bigger thing but i'll always remember when i first posted a picture of myself on deviantart, i think i was like 15 or 16, and people were like "oh i expected someone skinnier." this clearly really stayed with me, and it isn't an outlier. although it didn't shift anything then, things like this built up over time and my relationship to/presence in my work very slowly evolved. socially and in school, from the top down or among peers, there was no incentive or encouragement to draw trans people, fat people, anyone outside of stock shit, at all. you could work and labour and be rewarded for breaking yourself in half, all the while it's happening in a viciously transphobic environment. 

over the years things have changed for better and worse as we pursue "representation" and "visibility," but i was really burnt by fluctuations in online culture that lead to trans men having to Be One Thing with either proper scars and muscle, or a textureless circle, and the sex they have is supposed to be smooth and tearful and deferential in service to the man or woman— or image of masculinity/femininity— they're with. and you still get fucking harasses for venturing outside of this, both in the work and as a real living person. i'd rather just be called a woman or a slur because at least that's an honest reaction, and not this cruelty, pity, disguised as care.

however, i also want to say that i was never given the benefit of the doubt that i was sweet and small and shy. there are the benefits of whiteness, certainly. but not transness. i've never been treated that way or protected by it. not with friends or family or police or the court. i don't think "sweetness" is neutral or that it's the most pressing issue that trans men face. being ill is its own strange degendering or forcibly gendered experience. being fat and ugly is its own degendering experience in which i have more in common with fat people of all genders. being seen as violent, visibility of transition only increasing this baseless expectation, that you can turn on a dime, that it's all harm or just plain difficulty waiting to happen and that's justification for being treated as an unreliable narrator of your own needs, your own life, that you need to rein it in or someone needs to control you to set you right. and that most of this is not seen, is a bigger problem than this strange idea of sweetness, this strange idea of being protected by your transness. protected by your assigned birth. do not remind me of my assigned birth. i'm trans because i'm not that. the people who DO benefit from protection in life, their visibility is like, completely disproportionate versus the reality.

if it is as big an issue as they say, then i think about like... if children are the most vulnerable people then being seen as a permanent and incapable child— especially at the intersection of things like fatness and neurodivergence, for example, where you're seen as untrustworthy, clearly can't take care of yourself— as property, but also as a womb, as a body for taking, facing domestic, sexual, medical abuse and neglect, homelessness and forced hospitalisation... death. revulsion, abuse and murder aren't the results of supposed smol beanification. it feels so mythological to me. so yeah i wasn't aware this was the way other people characterised us til mid-2010s tumblr— in which i learned in past tense that there was some pervasive way of handling us. i admit there are times i certainly would've liked to have been protected. but this idea of meek non-threatening sweetness (and, perhaps, wielding that like a threat when convenient) fell completely flat to me and many of my friends, especially ones working-class and nonwhite, or mentally ill in socially unacceptable ways, or with bodies seen as too sexual or built too big... so, aggressive, ha ha.

so i don't show this in my art either, not currently. it's alien. it is a concept i'm aware of only thru a game of telephone.

i show trans men being misgendered and deadnamed and pushed and pulled, the dressage, touched and beaten and abandoned. i've been told that portraying the real things we go through is tantamount to me committing those very same hate crimes and i've been told my work just has a “bad vibe” on sight. yes i do show trans men being punished from all sides despite every effort to ping pong between everyone's preferences. the exhaustion of trying over and over only to fail to please and suffer the consequences of abstaining, or giving themselves over to the performance forever until they burn out. art is play the way leather is play. and in my work trans men can be found both suffering from and playing with roles and expectations, the violence, reenacting these sources of trauma among each other.

Just as a general psa if you see someone using asexuality to defend purity culture and attacks on open displays of kink and sexuality, just assume they're a bad actor and don't take it seriously.

A couple years ago at the height of "ace discourse" (read: that massive exclusionary harrassment campaign we've for some reason decided to treat as normal) people pretending to be ace in order to post low key bigotry or just "cringe" and bait people into attacking them were all over the place. I'm not saying that none of them were you know, stupid teenagers genuinely being wrong about things, but hey those kids didn't deserve to be harrassed either as it turns out.

Regardless, that toxic site culture has just made actual ace people less likely to speak up and frankly decimated the community that existed here, so while pobody's nerfect and there's always a possibility that post deriding other people's sexuality as an attack on ace people is from an ace person who just happens to be shitty, I feel the odds are pretty good that that's just what they want you to think.

And not to sound conspiratorial but like. You all get how "Queer is a slur" discourse was used to springboard exclusionist talking points into the mainstream, yeah? You know that the ace exclusionist to terf pipeline is like an acknowledged thing? That even at the time aphobes were pretty blatantly transphobic and openly misgendered outspoken nonbinary ace people in order to deride them as "cishet girls" because that's what fit their narrative? You see how all of those exclusionist talking points have lead to a more hostile environment for trans people and a more divided community, yeah? And you understand that the attack on kink and open displays of sexuality is an extension of that, right? That the goal is in part to exclude trans people from public life by branding us as inherently sexual and deviant?

Okay, considering all of that, do you think maybe it would be convenient for those types of people, to leverage ace discourse in order to attack kink and public displays of sexuality? That laying the blame for purity culture at the feet of ace people would help their cause? Either they get the moral justification they need for the next step of their crusade and shame people out of healthy and open acceptance of sex and sexuality, or they reignite exclusionist debate by placing asexuality in opposition to the rest of the queer community, or both. That's a can't lose scenario.

Like I said I don't have proof and I'm not trying to fear monger and make accusations, but I do think it's something to keep in mind if and when you see asexuality and purity culture bullshit being tied together. That there are certain groups of assholes who would definitely benefit from you taking that at face value.

The LGBTQ+ doesn't care about SA victims of any kind tbh...

Tw: very dark topics mostly around SA in this post so if you can't mentally do that then please keep scrolling.

Lots is SA victims don't go to pride for their own mental health and nobody has ANY right in shaming just gonna say that right now.

I'm gonna say it the LGBTQ+ doesn't give a flip about SA victims of any kind.

The LGBTQ+ is as drenched in r-pe culture as the rest of society.

As a LGBTQ+ person who is also a SA victim, I don't feel safe in my own community because the LGBTQ+ treats us just as bad if not worse then the rest of society.

Ima go over a few things many SA victims I know have heard, seen and hold much issue with.

1. " you can't be a golden star _____ if you've been r-ped"

This is a very common thing in our community, I think the golden star labels are dumb if I'm honest but I really pay no mind UNTIL SA victims are being told them having sex and being r-ped are somehow the same... R-pe isn't sex. R-pe is r-pe. Virginity can't be taken by r-pe and neither can a gold star.

2. Victims being told they're acting entitled for wanting a safe space.. So does everyone else just get a safe space but the people that most likely need one for mental health because SA is VERY traumatizing just not get one??? Like wtf is this mentality???

3. The " you owe { kinks/fetishes} your consent or you're being LGBTQ+phobic"

This one comes up more times then it should... Like this is an ongoing debate in our community??? I've heard it a lot and yeah no. Nobody owes anyone consent. That's not how consent works.

4. There is no winning if a SA visits pride events or stays home.

When SA victims say they're triggered by unconsentual kink/fetishes around them then they're told by their own community " STAY HOME!!!" like yeah that hurts a lot but it also hurts when they are told " stay home" and do in fact stay home AND THEY STILL GET SHAMED for not " supporting their community" and " kinkshaming" by not going.. Like there is no winning for SA victims there..

5. If you've been SA-ed by another LGBTQ+ person the community is kinda known for trying to silence their own so cis/het society won't know that we aren't always a "big happy family" that can have bad people in it just like every other community. Ima say it point blank for y'all, No matter what you never silence the victim.

6. Justifying when our own people are r-pists or when they're ab-sers..

This happens a lot like a LOT. Here's the thing, no. That's just it,NO. A r-pist is a r-pist, an ab-ser is an ab-ser. I don't care what they are, there is NEVER justification for that sort of thing.

7. I hate the fact our community still debated on if it's okay in exposing/bringing minors into kinks, fetishes and just adult sexual stuff in general like NO. That's just pedophilia. It's predatory and illegal.

8. The shaming and emasculating of butch lesbians if they've been r-ped by a cis man.. I've been told by butch lesbians it's very common and that's just disgusting. Should not happen.

9. How okay our community is with the racial slavery kink/fetish and other racist fetishes just being okay and justified in our community even though many POC have explained it makes them feel extremely unsafe..

10. How much our community mostly the cis people in our community fetishize the SA of trans ppl and other queer spectrum people... It's just gross and very r-pe culture vibes not here for it..

11. The weird justification of LGBTQ+ ppl being okay with unconsentual touching cause " we're both LGBTQ+!" or " I'm _____ and have no attraction for you so it's fine". NO IT'S NOT FINE. STOP TOUCHING PEOPLE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT INAPPROPRIATE WAYS, THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION.

12. The shaming of sexually repulsed people in general, it's just not okay.

That's just a few issues from off the top of my head but yeah it hurts so much and I love our community in many ways but also hate it.

Also don't comment " that's never happened towards me" like great for you, Doesn't mean these aren't real issues that harm others in our community.