drdemonprince

[drdemonprince]

this website is cuckoo bananas. for years i’ve been watching trans girls post “hey, have you considered that even though trans guys are obviously treated worse than cis guys, the limited male privilege that they do have access to means that they are taken more seriously, treated less dangerously & just respected more than trans women in most if not all circumstances” and everybody’s been going nuts like, calling us separatists, calling us “divisive” for even pointing out men in the trans community can be misogynistic etc.

and then today, i saw a pretty mild post from a trans guy saying “passing as a man is so weird. other men are treating me with more respect than they treat my girl friends in public now. i used to have to argue & cite 100 sources for anybody to listen to me, and now all i have a beard all i have do is say ‘hey maybe women should be treated better’ and everybody listens to me immediately”

….and then i go into the notes and there’s a bunch of transandrophobia bloggers saying “wow, you really opened my eyes… i never saw it this way before…” like am i going crazy??? am i the only one who sees the incredible irony here? maybe you guys… here’s a thought… should listen to women also?

#yep #it's not irony it's just sexism sexisming #trans men are men

[drdemonprince]

Live now with more Baldur's Gate 3! Let's go into the Underdark!

[drdemonprince]

everyday I pray Zillow makes a comment section

[drdemonprince]

Any chance you'd expand on the hank hill trans guy post? (Sorry, best indicator I could come up with.) The concept interests me as I decidedly know my maleness, yet don't feel impeded by for the most part, any male gendered norms/boxes. I am fairly masculine, though I rarely use those kinds terms to describe myself. I have found I often do stray outside of what society pushed for me when I transitioned, yet I again do not feel it has taken from my right to maleness whatsoever. I am just me, who happens to be male. I have had friends try and suggest I am NB adjacent but I do not feel this way whatsoever. I feel more people are outliers to gender expectation than we care to admit and it's disappointing the way cis-people deny that. Hope this wasn't too long winded, I value your writing and perspective, and wanted to hear more of your thoughts on this.

Yeah, well so many things all get conflated by gender labels, and it's all so personal, you know? Masculinity does not have to mean maleness, and a person's gender identity might be a reflection of some innate quality they experience themselves as having, or a general summary of their tendencies, or their desired presentation, or their sense of affinity with other people, or an interpersonal tool, or something they just go along with because it was given to them by society, or any other number of things.

I think my recent substack piece on detransition goes into this pretty well, and I have an upcoming piece of what @pastimperfection calls "bilateral dysphoria" that comes out next week that delves into it too.

I think I mostly saw taking on a male identity as a means to an end more than any kind of innate reflection of who I was, though I did feel an affinity with effeminate men for a lot of reasons. I think I also discounted how much I have in common with my fellow nonbinary people of all stripes, because that identity became so strongly associated with being an annoying type of queer person that everybody else just wrote off as ultimately being their assigned gender at birth anyway no matter how much they protested. it doesn't help that 'nonbinary' is a catchall term for literally thousands if not millions of very distinct experiences and desires.

transitioning gave me control over how i was perceived, finally, but hormones are a throttle that only go in one very specific direction, and you don't really have all that much control over which changes kick in at which times and what people will make of you once you do start registering to them as some identity other than what you were first saddled with. it's an incredible gift to be able to toggle that throttle. but it's limited, not because medical transition isn't incredible and needed for so many, but because there is no escaping the goddamned binary cissexist logic that influences everything about how people treat you, how you navigate institutions, who finds you desirable and what they want out of you, and so much else.

if you're able to cast a lot of the external societal bullshit aside and feel strong in your maleness, maybe you're stronger than me or maybe our orientation to these things is just different, i don't know. i was never all that sensitive to feedback that i was doing the whole being-a-woman-thing all that wrong. i reveled in violating those rules to an extent. succeeding at being a woman despite my best attempts was what felt super dysphoric. and now i guess im succeeding at being a man, insofar as im always read as one, and it feels just as uncomfortable and objectifying and false. i thought that with manhood i could probably just grit my teeth and deal with it, but i'm finding that i can't.

ive always been very open that for me, gender is a thing I Do, and i guess to those who know me well it wouldnt be surprising to hear that i have gotten tired of Doing Being a Man and dont feel like playing that particular gendered game anymore. I tend to get bored of things! and find the flaws in things. and find my comfort in being fault-finding and contrarian and not being a joiner. and thats okay. i learned a lot along the way. not having to try any more is a huge relief. i can just do whatever. and know actively that people will more often than not be wrong in what they make of me.

maybe it was natural feeling for you to decidely 'know' your maleness without a care for masculine standards because that is the right identity for you! and maybe i only feel secure in the "not knowing" realm and in letting go of what people think of me or finding any kind of tidy categorization for it because that's the right spot for me. for now. until i find a new interesting way to be unhappy and striving for more and different again. :) that's just part of being alive, for me.

[drdemonprince]

have you defined the meaning of “white woman brain” anywhere and if not, can you? /gen

Many Black and brown feminist writers have discussed this phenomenon and I encourage you to seek out a lot of writing about this subject, because there are a variety of perspectives, but to distill it, white woman fragility brain is a phenomenon that is not exclusive to either white people or to women, but is especially common among those who can weaponize white womanhood, and it consists of the following qualities:

A view of oneself as a helpless victim that is constantly in threat of being attacked, especially by strangers (even though statistically, this is not the case).

A refusal to consider oneself as capable of doing harm to others, especially a lack of consideration toward others' body autonomy or consent. (even while being highly concerned about one's own autonomy and consent).

A generally passive or passive-aggressive orientation toward the world: seeing oneself as a romantic or sexual object to be approached, but never wanting to initiate (or feeling that one never can), never feeling comfortable directly communicating displeasure or one's desires, believing that others instead must guess at it. (and then resenting people when they don't, but never expressing it).

A tendency to cry, excessively berate oneself, complain about being made to feel "unsafe," or give up when criticized or challenged, especially when challenged by people of color.

A tendency to associate a person's body type with how much of a threat they are. For example, feeling unsafe around people with penises and expecting a social space to accommodate that fear to cater to you, a fear of people who come from cultures where it's common to speak loudly, a fear of those who are large, assertive, and/or darker-skinned.

Instinctive fawning-type responses to stress, and a pattern of feigning happiness, agreeability, and ease when one is not genuinely feeling it, and expecting all other people (but especially other women) to feign happiness as well, paired with a deep-seated resentment of anyone who violates this illusion and expresses any negativity (being especially punitive toward women of color).

Instinctively "smoothing over" conflict between other people before it even begins, even when healthy conflict is necessary and not at all your business-- often performed by gossiping behind other people's backs, triangulating information when it is not yours to share, asking people to alter their behavior in order to avoid a reaction from somebody else, presenting your concerns as if they were somebody else's ("what will people think!"), tone-policing the airing of grievances, derailing hard conversations with more light-hearted topics, and excluding people who are known to be candid and assertive.

Here are some articles on elements of the phenomenon and why it is so dangerous:

Now, I single white cis women out a lot when I am describing this phenomenon, because they have the most to gain from exhibiting these qualities, but make no mistake: this is a pattern that many types of people can and do use. I have seen white trans women use white women's tears to silence critique. I have witnessed women of color being passive-aggressively derailed and silenced by a Black manager who was in a position of institutional power over them. Multiple of the women who sexually harassed me in the story linked above were not white. And LORD knows I see plenty of t boys falling back on this shit, as well as cis men from wealthy backgrounds. It's a mindset that has deep colonial roots and we all must be on the look out for it in ourselves and others, and we must be vigilant in uprooting it.

[drdemonprince]

okay i'll admit it i fucked up. manhood is so heavily presented as being the default type of being in our society that i think i did believe on some level that i could male-transition my way into a state of gender neutrality. i really tried just-some-guyificiating my way into not being perceived. intellectually i knew this wasn't the case for most men, i have heard and taken seriously their complains about how restrictive the identity is for them, but i thought becoming a guy would feel like being just a person, for me. when you transition into a particular gendered social role, you can't easily shrug off the projections made onto that role even if you think they're stupid and oppressive and you want to float on unbothered by it for the rest of your life. god fucking BLESS the hank hill trans guys but im not just not up for the task.

[drdemonprince]

i've already seen about the cringey ass lyrics about Sophie and i sure wish she would stopppp but unfortunately i feel that several tracks on the new st vincent album are an instant bop.

#i admit i am exactly her demographic ie boring people who want to think they are weird #as chris fleming put it

[drdemonprince]

i've been thinking about this a lot, in parallel with an observation I heard on the podcast True Anon about the drug of our era being ketamine, and an article i read months back about the biggest trend in music right now being "womblike" sonics. oh, and some trend piece claiming that zoomers always keep their blinds shut? We're in this very languid, interior, dissociative time. or at least the idea of one

I think we are gonna look back on this era of 30 tracks on an album as like a particularly dated excess

[drdemonprince]

it's so funny that in one of the interviews with me that came out this week the one other tumblr user quoted is someone ive personally beefed with. like our community is so insular and trauma brained that youre never more than one degree of separation from somebody who thinks youre the biggest dumbass alive

[drdemonprince]

<3

I'm on Matt XIV's podcast talking about annoying queers and why they are not our enemy!!

@stronghours you'll appreciate that i moved @bpmunny's copy of The Sluts by Dennis Cooper to the bookshelf behind me at their house teehee

[drdemonprince]

STOP SENDING ME MESSAGES ABOUT WHAT CIS MAN YOU THINK I LOOK LIKE.

in fact, stop assuming that trans people want to be compared to cis people in general! it makes me hella dysphoric. it's not helpful, it's not accurate, it's not validating, it's not what i'm aspiring toward, stop it.

[drdemonprince]

Did you see Plane Jane on Give It To Me Straight? I completely see what you mean, at one point she even tentatively referenced a likely "unaddressed social disorder," and I went oh, we see you, girl.

idk if it'd fit the character she's going for, but I wouldn't be shocked to see a Victoria Black-esque acknowledgement and redemption/turnaround in a few years.

shes so autistic. and like, she was pretending to be a straight person until pretty recently in her life so like the levels of repression shes still working on is like, pretty significant. and her mean bitch character is clearly an attempt to reconcile her weirdness with the need to mask. hope she figures it out!

[drdemonprince]

have you heard much about the pda profile being a construct/not real? do you have a take :o

Baby, I'm in the wikipedia page for PDA because of the impact of my criticism

[drdemonprince]

I spent all day & night at Northwestern's Liberated Zone encampment yesterday. Here's a quick log of all that I saw and experienced, with photos & links for ways to support.

[drdemonprince]

people complaining that any critique of a thing they like ruins it for them is such a skill issue. personally i can spend 10 hours a day critiquing the things i like and still enjoy them passionately and wholeheartedly

#in fact that is part of HOW i like it

[drdemonprince]

going back to the old me. in so far as i am ordering a Tinkle Cutter for my hair

[drdemonprince]

To the "shadow work" anon from a while back: Another way that I engage with plumbing my darker side, I just remembered, is through consuming creative work about being fucked up and by having blorbos that are definitely deeply flawed people. So reading books like My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Yellowface, Darryl, The Sluts, and things like that, and listening to music by Lana Del Rey and all the other unhinged BPD girlies that I unfortunately understand the mindsets of (which yes im sorry does include taylor swift ugh blame kontextmaschine for making me realize that and know too much about that, may he rest in peace). Hell, reading kontextmaschine's blog scratched that itch for me. He was brilliant but also totally divorced from most other people's realities and not necessarily a great person. following grimes' fucked up life is shadow work for me. i've written about this in the past, but looking at people's most transparently false self-justifications and impulsive self-serving actions helps me to better recognize them in myself. and sometimes accept my hang ups, and sometimes realize i want nothing to be like these car wrecks and change them. it's a slippery slope if you have fandom brain, you dont want to end up being one of those people that writes serial killers love letters, but ive always loved things by hating them and being critical of them (bpd ha ha) and so that hasn't happened *tooo* much for me. yes i still have a delusion that i can save grimes so im an idiot. but i mostly look to her awful life and use it as a lighthouse. head not this way, lest you dash yourself on the rocks you dummy. etc.