#and that same section in trans women was the same in cis women

[genderkoolaid]

Is there anywhere I can read more about nonbinary medical transitions? I’ve never heard about it before, but as a cis woman, I am trying to educate myself about the issues others face and make sure that I don’t perpetuate myths / falsehoods.

Anything else that you think could help me understand about being non binary too would be appreciated. Again, I’m learning as I go.

Thank you.

Phallo.net and metoidioplasty.net both have sections on nonbinary bottom surgery; I don't know if they have sister sites for vulval/vaginal-making surgeries. transfemscience.org has an article on nonbinary estrogen HRT options.

Some basics on nonbinary* medical transitions:

Nonbinary people can want any or all of the same things a binary trans person can want out of medical transition. We should be allowed to get any or all of the same treatments a binary person can get without having to lie about who we are.

(Also its just generally important to remember that abinary people (those who do not identify as men or women) are only part of "nonbinary" which can include a wide variety of men, women, menwomen, womenmen, others and etc.)

Hormones: Some people will go on HRT for a certain period of time to get some effects, and then go off it (or switch to a different kind, if they've had a gonadectomy) to get other effects. Some people will go on a lower dose of hormones to get effects slower or to a lesser extent. Some people will use certain hormones to counteract certain effects (for example, DHT blockers inhibit androgenic hair loss & growth, SERMS inhibit breast growth)

Surgery: Some people will transition by getting sterilized a way cis people typically do (hysterectomy, vasectomy, gonadectomies). Some people will get breast reduction but not removal. Some people will get breast implants. Some trans people will only get "part" of bottom surgery (vaginectomy, orchiectomy). Some people will get both a penis and a vagina (through phallo/meta or peritoneal pull through vaginoplasty). Some people will get a large clitoris or a small penis. Some people will get "nulloplasty" and remove external genitals entirely.

*nonbinary here not so much referring to gender identity as much as medical processes that are used to actively creating an outside-the-binary body.

#m. #ask box

[buggbuzz]

my gender is like meat leaf i think. boy materials in the structure of girl. like im a girl made out of boy things but not in a transman way like i like being female im just. a girl-leaning boygirl. maybe??

#u dont understand ive been insisting to all of my friends for like 6 years that im NOT a trans man #i cannot be proven wrong at this point i'll lose it #and anyways im not actually a guy #im definitely a girl just like. a type of girl that scientists haven't discovered yet #and that sounds like a joke but im soooo fucking serious #im a fucking student geneticist dude #i think theres some autosomal gene (or probably multiple) that regulate gender in convoluted ways #probably linked and i think there's probably multiple types of fem and masc genders not to mention non fem OR masc genders #codominant? incomplete dominance? is it different on different scales? #its a completely possible and furthermore plausible concept like from my perspective it'd be really weird if gender genetics weren't a thing #i think theyve already lowkey been proven to be a thing cause of that paper comparing trans brains to cis brains #& finding a link where trans men had a certain section that was the same as cis men #and that same section in trans women was the same in cis women #its an OLD study too #anyways i want to research this one day but i also dont because i dont trust humanity with that information #but if i found proof that it exists maybe it could seriously back trans people with scientific evidence #not that they should fucking NEED it testimony should be fucking good enough #ive been bio obsessed since i was born and im a natural skeptic #but when i was 11 i asked a trans person i knew like 2 fucking questions and they answered me and i was like 'yeah this makes sense' #figured anything that didnt make sense was just something i didnt understand yet #and now that im older and in college level biology and genetics classes i know i was right #it would be really really weird if trans people didnt exist did you know that? all the kinds too like nb genderfluid agender genderq demi #i dont fucking care it makes SENSE #'nonbinary' was a good term to adopt because it really just fits perfectly #nothing in biology is ever ever ever truly binary especially not a neurological and psychological phenomenon #especially not in a species with a brain so overly complex and tangled up like HOMO SAPIENS?? #are you kidding?? the fact that we even have a concept of art and music let alone have talents and passions for them is proof alone dude #that shit doesn't help us survive its a modified version of pattern recognition and uncanny valley #combine that shit with the fact that intersex people exist?? like #nonbinary gender is literally the combination of intersexuality and human neurology

[variousqueerthings]

A striking demonstration comes from research investigating the risks people perceive from technological, lifestyle, and environmental hazards (like nuclear power, smoking, and ozone depletion). These studies routinely find that women perceive higher risks to themselves, family, and society from such hazards.

[...] Flynn and colleagues then subdivided the sample by ethnicity as well as sex, and discovered that one subgroup stood out from all the rest. Society seemed a significantly safer place to white males than it did to all other groups, including nonwhite men. 

[...] Flynn and colleagues then established that it was a particular subset of white males who were particularly cavalier about risks: those who, in response to the social justice movement’s currently fashionable suggestion to “check your privilege,” would take significantly longer than others to complete the task. These men were well educated, rich, and politically conservative, as well as more trusting of institutions and authorities, and opposed to a “power to the people” view of the world. A number of studies have now replicated this socalled “white male effect” with other large U.S. samples, and the research points to it being “not so much a ‘white male effect’ as a ‘white hierarchical and individualistic male effect.’” 

[...]

Interestingly, a recent study conducted in the more socially egalitarian and gender-equal Sweden failed to find the “white male effect.” This national survey of nearly fifteen hundred households found that, all else being equal—and in stark contrast with the U.S. data—Swedish men and women had very similar perceptions of lifestyle, environmental, technological, health, and social risks. 36 The survey found instead just a “white effect,” with people from foreign backgrounds, who are subject to social disenfranchisement and discrimination, perceiving risks as higher than did native Swedes

- Testosterone Rex, Cordelia Fine

(bolded by me)

#cordelia fine #testosterone rex #i know some people in the tags are calling her a terf #but a. i cannot find any evidence of that (in fact she seems openly pro-trans) #and b. please do not throw the baby out with the bathwater #this is a very well-sourced text + i'd argue she's very much staying within her lane of research #can one go one further with all of this and point out ex. in this section #that it's not just dependent on race and sex but also (cis)gender #or that there being no distinct traits that one can say belong purely to men or women belongs within a trans politics #or that testosterone as an argument for either *men are all more powerful* or *men are inherently more evil* is considered bioessentialism #etcetcetc. yeh -- but that's not what this exact text is for #i am glad i read it after frans de waal because i think some of the things i was struggling within in his text #(that he would occasionally bring up a queer philosophical and/or political quote out of context without having the prerequisite #academic background -- or indeed quite the will -- to go into it in a wider context -- and he would therefore imo WEAKEN #his arguments accidentally by misrepresenting esp what trans people were/are saying about gender roles when actually #we're very much on the same *side* so to speak) #is exactly what she's doing the opposite of in her text -- she's sticking to what she knows #(this whole book is basically going *both bioessentialism and genderessentialism makes no sense we need to be more complex*) #if she DOES *reveal* herself as transphobic down the line i would be surprised but i would also still value this book/delusions of gender #im highlighting this moment in the book but she also doesn't go very deeply into intersectional politics beyond this point #whether that is a bug or a feature is up to you -- mentioning trans people and disabled people at this point might have been a good idea #simply as a way of highlighting that there are even more nuances to consider than sex race ethnicity #because a lot of her argument is *things are more complicated than the surface makes it seem* #however: might be worthwhile reading some trans and disabled writers for that focus -- those texts do exist #ramblerambleramble

[olderthannetfic]

You recently mentioned that you've been out since your teens. As a person who managed to overlook a shitton of signs and only realized she was bi in her early 20s, I am wondering how you realized you were bi and also how you found out bisexuality exists?

Sorry if the phrasing sounds weird, I only noticed I was bi because I stumbled over the term on tumblr in 2016 and was like "oh, that's possible??" and then my earlier identity crises during my teens due to feeling attracted to multiple genders and being like "I'm crushing on [female person]. Am I lesbian? Nah, I've also felt attracted to [male person]. But I can't be straight either because this attraction feels the exact same. Am I broken?" were suddenly resolved with the realization that bi is also an option and that I'm not broken due to zigzagging between heterosexuality and homosexuality, but rather just bisexual. In retrospect, it's absolutely ridiculous that it took me so long, considering that as a kid I had crushes on Anna and Carter and Doctor from Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, and Vitani from Lion King 2, and back in primary school, I used to go to the kids' section in the library and look at the first pages of a sci-fi comic which had one or two women get out of a lab or space station thingy and go bathe in the nude in the first few pages. I don't remember what it was called or what it was about, but tbh I'd love to find it and actually read it properly this time lol.

--

Horniness. The hornier you are, the easier it is to notice.

But also... well...

The 80s were all about combating the AIDS crisis and trying to get basic recognition of the humanity of gay people (at least in the US circles I was familiar with). The 90s saw the rise of a much more organized bi rights movement.

And then we backslid.

In the 2000s and 2010s, interest in bisexuality as a distinct thing fell off a cliff as far as I can tell. The "hey, it's not just cis gays and lesbians" energy moved first to trans topics and then to asexuality but without bisexuality joining the stodgy old guard.

The 90s were different. I was hitting my teens just as Anything That Moves hit its stride. I bought that shit at the bookstore. Yeah, this was the Bay Area, but they carried it at all the regular bookstores, not just the gay ones.

On Usenet where I spent a lot of my tween years, one of the big groups was soc.bi. I even spotted them having an in-person meetup in a restaurant in Berkeley where I happened to be having dinner with my parents. I didn't go say hi because I was like 14.

My big eureka moment, though, was on alt.tv.x-files when two groups were having a satirical argument about who enjoyed The X-Files more: people who got to lust over David Duchovny or people who got to lust over Gillian Anderson. Someone showed up and was like "Hah! I get to enjoy it twice as much as all of you! I'm bi!"

I was like "That's a thing????" I'd grown up with very liberal parents and lesbian neighbors, but like a lot of boomers, my mom was pro-gay and deeply clueless about all other queerness.

--

So the answer is unsupervised internet access in an age with no algorithms plus things like bisexual magazines actually existing.

RIP Anything That Moves.

[genericpuff]

(disclaimer, this is coming from a heartstopper fan! i love heartstopper this is not hate!!)

i think at least part of the annoyance with heartstopper isn't just that isn't a light fluffy ya series, it's also that its another example of how the queer media that gets the most mainstream attention tends to be this kind of light fluffy ya stuff that focuses on two conventially attractive queer boys or men and it also tends to be written by people who aren't queer men on top of that, so not only can it feel very samey but it can feel like other queer people are relegated to side characters in the stories of cis gay men. and as someone who loves heartstopper i get that on some level.

btw by "written by people who aren't queer men" NOT saying that isn't not written by queer people. alice oseman is genderfluid and aroace, becky albertalli is bisexual, etc. and while i think the point is still valid there is a misogyny element in that a lot of the focus is put on things that are written by women or people they perceive as women while tumblr darlings like good omens and ofmd (written by presumably straight men) don't get the same treatment.

nah y'know what, that's fair, I can get how frustrating it can be for a lot of popular queer stories to feel samey, I've definitely gotten BL-fatigue in the past on platforms like WT and Tapas because many of them ARE the same and feel like they're just piggybacking off trends for the sake of clout (and this is a problem in the heterocis romance stories too, don't get me fucking started on how dark romance has turned into torture porn where vulnerable women are constantly being victimized by rich powerful men and we're just supposed to root for that ??), but it's one of those things where like, what might be seen as just more corny shit could very well be the revelation another person needs that they're gay / trans / etc. that the story helped them realize. there's just a point where i see these arguments against cheesy popular queer stories that teeter dangerously close to being queerphobic and, as you said, misogynist, simply because "it was written by someone who i perceive as a woman so that makes it BAD!"

and I didn't mention it in the original post because I didn't want to @ OP in any way but in the comment section they literally said "i dont think heartstopper itself is all that bad but it has pretty much aimed the direction of all mainstream gay comics towards wholesomeness instead of anything more interesting so i want to destroy heartstopper to destroy heartstopper clones" and that gives me massive ick because it implies their sole reasoning for including it was "chill and happy queer stories bad, if a character doesn't suffer enough then they're not interesting"?? why can't LGBTQ+ audiences have more 'vanilla' stories that aren't all sad and angsty all the time? are we not entitled to the same corny romcom vanilla shit that the heterocis are entitled to? why do LGBTQ+ characters - and by extension, people - have to suffer to qualify as being 'interesting'? You're already interesting, you're you! like i'm sorry, are we trying to scare people straight??? 😭 shit, that's even a plot point that's touched on in Heartstopper itself where Nick is questioning his sexuality and he starts googling shit and it's just ALL the terrifying news stories of queer kids being ostracized / bullied / murdered / etc. and as much as it's important to be aware of the ongoing issues so we can keep fighting for our rights, we ALSO need to find balance and remember to celebrate the stories that AREN'T that because we need something to be hopeful for, something we can find peace in. I don't think Heartstopper is some deeply profound piece of work, but it also doesn't seem like it's trying to be? It's a low stakes celebration of the LGBTQ+ experience that's very warm and comforting, especially for those who are the same ages as the main characters who are often being persuaded by the grown-ups around them that it's a death sentence to be gay / trans / etc.

and it's not like we HAVEN'T had popular pieces of queer representative media that explored things outside of cheesy BL, like are we forgetting about Nimona which explored both the gay and genderfluid experience in a very accessible and fun way while still being mature and not pandering to its audience over how society has made monsters out of queer people?

(and even then I'm sure there are folks who would argue "actually, here are the issues with Nimona" , and that's fine tbh, we can like media and appreciate what it brings to the table while also discussing what it lacks in, such as what we're doing now with Heartstopper! progress is a never-ending journey!!)

and also okay, not me trying to be argumentative in the slightest BUT I don't really get the argument that 'other queer people' are being sidelined for the main characters? unless there's something I'm missing here lol (I will apologize for that because it's admittedly been a while since I've re-read Heartstopper so I should probably go do that to refresh myself on it). like i say that in the sense that Heartstopper is clearly meant to be about two gay male teenagers. just like how Nimona is about a shapeshifter who is not a girl or a boy (they're Nimona!) and a gay man who are both trying to change the system that's other'd them for years for the better. that is the story Heartstopper is trying to tell and it achieves that. it also has a trans character plotline that I could see people arguing feels sidelined but I think there's a massive difference between 'sidelining' and just having a B plot ? my honest take with that is not every piece of representative media is going to be able to cover every single topic, it's just not doable for one piece of media to be a monolith for everything, the same as how one person can't be a monolith for an entire community of people. BUT that doesn't mean works like Heartstopper and Nimona can't inspire others to also lend their voices into the medium and create that representation that's needed. That's why we need ✨variety✨ and Heartstopper is part of that variety by offering a more vanilla cutesy story full of good vibes for people who want that sort of thing.

IDK, I think there's just a lot of nuance that's being missed in that poll, and in the difference between Heartstopper inspiring more people to write happy cozy BL stories vs. implying that it's had an actual negative influence on modern art and media in the same way that series like Homestuck and LO have to the point that people think it needs to be destroyed, like wtf LOL Like they're not even comparable IMO and a lot of the arguments I see people making about why it is just feel a little backwards, and those arguments obfuscate the real issue which is just "popular thing is popular and people like to piggyback off popular shit". That's a fact for basically any niche and genre, these trends come and go. Even if the whole cutesy BL trend passes one day (which it will) it'll be replaced by something else that people will also inevitably find samey and boring after a while. This is not a concept that's unique to LGBTQ+ media, it's universal.

Balance is important and I think finding that balance is as much a responsibility on the shoulders of the consumer as it is on the creator. And I don't think Heartstopper deserves to be put into the same camp as stories like LO which literally straightwashes its canonically queer characters and gives those queer identities to nothingburger characters who are easy to shoo out of the plot to make way for the heterocis ones (while still parading itself around like it's actually 'queer rep' which... it really isn't.) Like all three of the comics in that poll are vastly different, serving different audiences, with different goals and intentions. It's comparing apples to oranges to pineapples.

The worst Heartstopper has to offer is just a low stakes plot that might not appeal to everyone or feel 'samey' which yeah, valid, but in the grander sense of whether or not it's had a negative effect on queer media just for being... cheesy? And inspiring other people to write stories like it? I don't get the argument, it feels like it's severely missing the point of what we're fighting for here - to live happy little unbothered lives - but that's just me ╮(￣ω￣;)╭ I'm definitely not trying to be a dick about it in any way and I don't want anyone to think I'm not open to the opposing points here, I do agree with you on the oversaturation of samey BL stories, but it just rose some massive red flags to see Heartstopper next to frigging Homestuck and Lore Olympus LOL

#ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything #ama #heartstopper

[a-faggot-with-opinions]

Responding To The "Aromantic Manifesto"

So I found this aromantic manifesto earlier today and I have many thoughts and opinions about it. Mainly that it's really bad, and it is homophobic. It uses a lot of big words and complicated language to sound smart, but it's not actually conveying good ideas. I'm going to respond to it piece by piece. By the way, I am aromantic, but I am also gay, so that's the perspective I'm looking at this through.

The main points of this manifesto, as outlined in the beginning, are:

"Romance is inherently queerphobic."

"The organisation of queerness around the celebration and pursuit of romantic desires and pleasures reinforces queer oppression."

"Queer liberation must abolish romance as its long-term goal."

Point 1 is bad because the activism for lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights has LITERALLY been all about being able to love whoever we want to. We didn't fight for centuries to legalize gay marriage to have someone say that us loving someone else is inherently queerphobic. Implying that gay love is somehow oppressing someone else makes you the queerphobic one.

Point 2 is wrong because we've been fighting for our rights for literal centuries, and we've already decided that trying to repress our sexualities for any reason, is actually bad and contributing to our own oppression. The only way to make real progress in solving queer oppression is by expressing ourselves loudly. It's okay to dislike amatonormativity. I dislike amatonormativity. But that doesn't give you an excuse to be homophobic.

Point 3 is even more incorrect. That's because a movement that is fighting for people historically marginalized based on who we love isn't going to have abolishing romantic love as a goal. It's okay to be aromantic and not want romance. The problem comes in when you try to force everyone else to repress their romantic desires because you simply don't like it. That's bad.

The next part is extremely insulting to me as a trans person. They compare gay men wanting to date other men and not wanting to date women to gay men wanting to date trans men. Newsflash, assholes: trans men are men!

If straight people can’t help who they love, then neither can gay people. Nor, one might suppose, racists and transphobes, and people who find disability and fatness unattractive.

This is an obvious homophobic argument. They're implying by this that gay men not wanting to date women is the same as gay men not wanting to date trans men, implying that men who don't love women are misogynistic. It's transphobic to compare the experience of being gay to transphobia. Tell me you've never spoken to a trans person in your life without telling me.

Queer oppression is not just the experience of prohibited desire. It is also the experience of hierarchical and violent desire. It is also the experience of undesirability.

What the fuck are they even saying right here? Queer oppression is literally about the experience of prohibited desire and the lack of experience of expected desire. I can maybe understand where undesirability comes into play, since especially as a trans person I get cis people trying to equate my sexual attractiveness with my worth as a human being, but experiencing hierarchical and violent desire?

This reads as someone saying that queer romance is inherently evil and we're oppressing ourselves and we're totally at fault for our own oppression. QUEER ROMANCE AND SEXUALITY ARE NOT INHERENTLY EVIL AND SAYING THAT THEY ARE IS HOMOPHOBIC, IT'S 2023. Why is this even a hot take?

The next section talks about the "privatisation of love," which is a model for why they think that queer activism has been missing the entire point. Let's see what this author has to say about that.

While the domestic sphere fashioned by heterosexual kinship relations has been historically designated as private life, queer intimacies have instead been regarded as a matter of public concern due to moral panics associating them with predation and perversion throughout history.

This is a very sloppy, incomplete reading of the way that homophobia works. I'm not going to get into my theory of how homophobia works in this post, but anyone who's actually experienced homophobia in their lives will tell you that this ain't it. For one example of how that's incomplete, in recent years queer people have been encouraged by society and especially the right to hide our queerness and abandon our culture in favor of mainstream society. This isn't trying to make us a matter of public concern, it's trying to make us disappear. This isn't how oppression works.

This next section focuses on how romantic love is allegedly used as a hierarchy.

People who regarded as romantically attractive are invariably upward-mobile, white-proximate, gender-appropriate, able-bodied, slender/muscular etc.

Maybe. Just maybe. That is just a reflection of how society views people who aren't white, aren't gender conforming, are disabled, and are fat. Racism, transphobia, ableism, and fatphobia weren't invented by romance. The way that romance in our society works simply reflects those things that already existed. "I just find them unattractive" has been an excuse to discriminate against people for ages. That isn't because romance is inherently THE hierarchy, but instead it's because it's used as an excuse.

Often, calling romantic partners “compatible” just means their placements on the romantic hierarchy are relatively equal in privilege. Calling romantically unattractive people “compatible” with each other, on the other hand, easily sounds condescending.

I don't have much to say about this. This is simply not how romance works. While compatibility is not a great concept and I have critiqued it before, this ain't it.

Queer romantic ideals remain incredibly heteronormative, only celebrating the most privileged and “compatible” of queers and condemning more marginalized queer people all the same.

This quote is really interesting because it's pointing out a very real issue with society (the fact that society encourages assimilated queers) and tries to blame queer activists for it. No, we do not want to assimilate. Society wants us to assimilate, and some of us try to do so. However talking to most queer activists will reveal that we don't want to assimilate. We want to be treated with basic respect.

Queer romance does not resist heteronormativity as much as it assimilates queer desire, making us hold on tightly to whichever relative privileges we have and hate ourselves for whichever we don’t.

Hello? This is projection. This is exactly what the person writing this manifesto has been doing the whole fucking time.

By peddling the illusion that romance can be made queer, heteronormative capitalism forces queer people to try solve their problems of undesirability and unhappiness privately by finding the “right” partner, rather than directing their anger towards public action.

Gay people in the past got into romantic relationships that often got us killed. Did we do that because of heteronormative capitalism trying to force us to find someone? No. What the actual fuck are these people even talking about.

We propose aromanticism as a counterpublic that responds to queerphobic violence by mobilising public resistance instead of escaping inwards. Aromanticism is a principled commitment to finding radically nonviolent ways of relating to others.

There's so much to unpack in this quote. Firstly, the author believes that aromanticism is a choice. It is not. I was born aromantic and even if I choose to get into a relationship that does not make me any less aro. This is also implying that (gay) romance is inherently violent, which is Homophobia 101.

If you already have a romantic partner, we are not asking you to “leave” them, but to aspire to love them in a different, queerer way.

There's no such thing as more or less queer. If you're queer, and you love someone, congratulations, that's queer love. It doesn't become more queer if you call it something other than romance.

I'm not going to go over the last part, but this last quote is some icing on the cake of homophobia we've just eaten.

Just be aware that similar hierarchies of desirability exist in sex as in romance.

It shouldn't be a hot take in the year 2023 that claiming that all sex is bad is a very culturally Christian thing to do, as well as being very traditionally homophobic. Sex negativity is weaponized against queer people far more often that it is against cishets.

To conclude, I'm just going to say that this manifesto takes real frustrations that even I have with amatonormativity, and turns them into denial that romance exists, and blatant homophobia. It's also very hard to understand, so if I misinterpreted something, please do let me know. While I do think that aphobia is bad, being homophobic isn't a solution and is just going to cause us to be hated even more, as well as alienating gay aros.

#star speaks #aromantic #aromantic manifesto #long post

[locuas642]

I am beating a dead horse I know. but I thought of something else about James Somerton.

Because it recently came to my attention that, right around when the video that destroyed his career came out, Somerton had been fishing for Neil Gaiman to like his Good Omens video.

Now, this in an of itself is nothing weird. youtubers fish for people to share their stuff all the time, sometimes it is reasonable, other times it is rude. and other times is like "Please dont force creators to interact with you". but it is nothing weird or uncommon for what is Youtubers.

Neil Gaiman being associated with Queer content is also nothing weird. The guy was the "Thor god of Lesbians" before Thor was a thing. He is such an ally there is a whole section of the community ready to explain to people the context of Wanda in the Sandman comic. So Somerton trying (excuse the expression) "to get Gaiman-Senpai to notice him" (Yes, go ahead shoot me i deserve it) is also not weird.

but I cant help but see it as part of a certain pattern.

Because we all saw the video, and how Hbomberguy points out the inherent misogyny in a lot of Somerton's views and how he erase people's gender and orientation in order to shit on women (and how that also ties him to transphobia, biphobia, and a lot of other things). And also how he will dismiss criticisms by claiming it is white straight women harassing him.

Except between that video and Todd in the shadows, I did find one particular instance of him talking positively of a woman. Jo Rowling. A Cis Straight Woman who nowadays is defined by the transphobia she constantly tries to rules-lawyer deny she ever expressed.

Obviously, the video wasnt about him Defending Rowling, but it was a weird video in which he tried to claim Rowling was more progressive than she actually was, at one point even claiming when the books were written she was pro-trans folk. Which is a lie. There was this need of him trying to sell Rowling as this tragic figure, this person who changed for the worse. And this was from the guy who was quick to dismiss the intentions of any woman or GNC person.

And then I remembered his weird claims about Bob Iger. This... honestly revisionism of the fight of Gay Marriage (the thing he also dismisses in importance in a different video) as Iger pressuring Obama into making it law among other things that tried to elevate Iger, a Cis Straight Man, into an important role in queer history.

And then there is the "Stupid Sexy Nazi" stuff I wont even go into detail.

My point is, there was this weird trend in his videos that I noticed. That he would rather elevate straight and their participation in queer history at the same time he dismissed plenty of non-cis gay men. Sometimes even doing revisionism to describe a version of history that did not happen, but which weirdly feels like the version of history he would want.

And again, Neil Gaiman is an ally and there is nothing weird in and of itself for him to want Gaiman to like his stuff. But when taken into context with everything else, both his antagonism with actual queer people, and his elevation of non-queer people, I feel that says something.

#hbomberguy #james somerton #my stuff #probably just ramblings

[nothorses]

In my city we have a lot of places that have “WTF” nights (women, trans, fem) where anyone to identifies with any of those (trans men, fem cis gay men) can come, often for free. These places are like the maker spaces, bike shops that teach bike building/repair, rock climbing gyms and blacksmith schools. I think it could lend themselves to the issues you were describing depending on the particular place but it always came off to me as a good way to be inclusive and make these places accessible. What do you think of that type of wording?

oooh, I kinda like that! I like that it's more explicitly naming "trans people" instead of a specific and arbitrary section of the trans community, and I think it's snappy enough to catch on, too.

I do wonder what they mean by "fem", though; you say it includes anyone who identifies with the term, including femme cis gay men, by why are only femme gay men welcome- what do they think they have in common with the rest that other cis gay men don't? How do they know for sure that's universally true? Why is it so important to exclude non-femme cis gay men?

The use of that word specifically makes me think they're still centering the spaces around cis women primarily, and are not really going to be friendly to anyone who appears too "masculine" to fit in with cis women- i.e., the same problem other spaces have.

I don't think I'd be comfortable enough to go to that kind of space without verification from another trans man, or someone else usually rejected from those spaces (AMAB nonbinary people, non-passing trans women, any nonbinary person who calls themselves a man, etc.), first. Especially considering I generally do pass as cis, and the cold discomfort I have experienced from fellow trans and queer people- even after knowing I'm trans- because of that.

But maybe that's just me; I do think spaces like that should be catered to everyone marginalized on the basis of gender, rather than trying to chop up the trans community into "seems like a woman" and "probably a predator", and I think "WTF" does a better job than anything else I've seen. But I'm honestly wary of anyone tossing the word "femme" around in this context, given how often it seems to be an indication that someone thinks it's shorthand for "woman-adjacent".

But I also like the "This is a space for Whatever" vibe, and again, it could just be me. 🤷‍♂️ I'd love to hear what other folks think.

[angellurgy]

i love how i can say anything abt transness but the INSTANT i try to speak up and imply that women being targeted by terfs for murder and being the main source of anti-trans propaganda by them isnt as bad as trans men being infantilized and treated as stupid girls, i become the target of so many childish men's harassment in private and in public comment sections

you misogynistic fucks only experience terfs online/when you do go irl you only see it through your personal lenses and cant put yourself in our shows, so you just refuse to understand that while both of us are oppressed, the *material* consequences of it are not remotely fucking equal, but you cant get off your high horses for two seconds to try and understand the views of us cause as men, you are propped up for being confident, defending yourself, proving that youre a 'tough guy', even if you refuse to recognize it subconsciously. so instead you blame women for "ruining solidarity" not realizing that this is essentially the same thing as cis men saying that women are 'so woke that theyre taking away mens rights' and similar. i know plenty of trans men and transmascs who renounce the toxic patriarchal attitude you tout, because if its obviously terrible evil. but you only care about the women who speak up, because unlike you, we're an easy target.

trans women can not be terfs. if you think that is so, you are simply a misogynist and a bigot who will do anything to keep up the status quo of privilege. and i have to take the fucking blows for your willful ignorance and oppressive views, by you and the terfs you claim i am, who 'just so happen' to follow your trail of hatred to every trans woman you target.

#im fucking mad at these dms so im gonna post this and just send it every time one of these douche man harass md

[communistkenobi]

re: several recent discussions I’ve seen on here about the dangers of bio-essentialism, in the authoritarian personality the authors find over and over again that highly prejudiced individuals (ie those most likely to be fascists) believe very strongly in A) innate human differences that cannot be altered or negotiated, and B) their own personal ability to categorise people based on these differences with a high degree of precision. the highly prejudiced individual can “always tell” when they meet someone who belongs to an outgroup. This discussion is usually framed in the context of antisemitism, with prejudiced people insisting they can always tell when someone is Jewish, that it is impossible to hide.

There is also a section in the discussion chapters of the book about low-scoring individuals - people who are strongly anti-prejudice (or anti-antisemites, as the authors sometimes call them). These people are not just non-bigoted, but take a conscious stance against bigotry and respond with anger when asked leading questions by the interviewers about minorities. like, “what do you think about the Jewish problem in America?” is almost always answered with some version of “there is no Jewish problem,” or “it’s a Christian problem, not a Jewish problem,” which is not an answer to the question so much as it is a rejection of the question’s premise. This is contrasted with the responses from highly prejudiced people, who treat this question as if it’s completely reasonable and outline what they think “the problem” is, though they often attach qualifiers to it (“the Jews aren’t all bad”) to temper their bigotry. Which is to say, there is an understanding on the part of the low-scoring participants of the role rhetoric plays on prejudice - that “just asking questions” is not an innocent, apolitical act, but one that comes preloaded with assumptions on what you think the answers to these questions should be, or the types of answers you think should be produced.

And to place this in another context - the trans panic that is currently dominating right wing discourse - we can observe extremely similar behaviour. This is best exemplified by the common twitter joke of posting a picture of a cis woman and claiming she’s trans, just to watch transphobes reply with all the ways they can “clock” this woman and tell that she is “secretly” a man. and, it’s worth discussing, that bigots frequently and especially define “male” traits as those commonly found in black and brown cis women, that they are especially fixated on white femininity as the measuring stick by which to judge all other women. but we can see the way that this idea of essential difference in humans undergirds all reactionary thought - without essential ontological categories, you cannot advocate for a worldview that argues for the “good” groups to have dominance over the “bad” ones. But they never prove this base assumption! They point to the very fact of variation within human beings - whether that be skin colour, facial features, ability, sexual organs - and claim that these are indicative of some deeper worth (or lack thereof), but proof of that hierarchical view of variation is never provided.

Which is why when bigots claim they’re “just pointing out the facts,” or say shit like “oh so we can’t even say women and men are different now? We have to ignore biology?” this is an inherently bad faith question. They rhetorically marry “variation” with “measure of value,” and force you to now pivot to talking about the fact that like, human beings are different from one another, rhetorically ceding ground to the premise that human variation inherently determines the value of a human being.

And following this logic, the only way for us to achieve a perfectly equal society would be for us to live in a world where every human being looked and behaved the exact same. And like, uh, how exactly would we achieve this? Which set of parameters for appearance and behaviour would we be following? Who gets to decide what those parameters are? The ONLY logical conclusion to this essentialistic thinking is state sanctioned mass death and subjugation programmes, because there is no other way to get rid of ontologically “bad” people. These hierarchies only have value when they are socially and politically enforced. This is why you should be wary of anyone “just pointing out” that human beings have different physical characteristics. They are not pointing out a neutral biological fact about human genetic diversity, or sexual dimorphism.

edit: altered the spelling of anti-Semitism to antisemitism. Apologies for the improper spelling!

#the authoritarian personality #antisemitism tw #transphobia tw #this is not like super novel or anything #but essential categories just always suck. they will always lead you to reactionary conclusions

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for being mad at my best friend for crushing on this girl?

I know the title sounds bad, but hear me out. Also, this happened two years ago, but I just remembered it and idk how to feel about the way I felt back then.

So, my best friend at the time will be called D (then 17F) is a trans girl and I am nonbinary. She was already out at the time and I was not.

There was this girl in our grade, who I’ll call L. L had some political views that reminded me of radfems and transmeds. L was also a lesbian. L was very heavily transphobic against nonbinary people and she heavily defended the gender binary as much as she could, like all the time. She made fun of nonbinary people a lot and it hurt me a lot, because in the previous year (before she was open about those views), she and I almost became friends and I had had a crush on her.

When she showed that transphobic side of hers, my feelings disappeared quickly because I was very hurt by that. Obviously, L didn’t know that I’m nonbinary but it still hurt.

D and I at first were both very against all the things L was saying, but over time D and L ended up sitting together in art class. While I got to sit alone (for context: I hate sitting alone in art class because it was one of the only classes where I had friends (aka D) and i already had to sit alone in most other subjects and I was very lonely). I got pretty jealous of D spending time with L while I was alone.

I want to point out that D chose of her own free will to sit next to L, the teacher did not make her do that.

I however felt bad about being jealous, so i didn’t say anything to D except that I was unhappy to sit alone in general, but I don’t think she understood what I meant.

Eventually, I heard from D that L had talked bad about nonbinary people again (she apparently called us stupid and confused). But D also said that L had defended D against some people who were misgendering her. I wasn’t surprised by that bc L viewed D as a “real trans person”. On that note, L also said at one point that she supported trans people, but nonbinary people don’t count as trans to her.

D brought this up to me and seemed to agree with L and I was so shocked by that that I didn’t know what to say.

Eventually, D confessed to me that she had a crush on L and might even be falling in love. I tried to be a good friend to D and tried to support her externally, but internally I felt really hurt that D would feel like that about L when L indirectly insulted me all the time. Obviously; L wasn’t attacking me personally, but it still felt shitty as hell. But I also know that D can’t control her feelings. In the time that D was crushing on L, she changed quite a bit. One time she even misgendered me in the comment section of my own post and called my by my deadname in a private text convo between us even tho she knows that I hate that.

Eventually, that topic of “super straights” appeared on tiktok and L defended that a lot and was very vocal and supportive about how trans women and cis women are not the same and vice versa with trans men. And how no straight cis man would ever want to be with a trans woman and stuff like that. D was active on tiktok at the time too, on the other side of that argument obviously. This cause D to distance herself from L and she seemed comfortable from me. I did try to comfort her, but internally I couldn’t help but be happy that she finally stopped liking L and I admittedly also wasn’t surprised by L having those views and I didn’t really feel bad that D had to learn of that side of L like that.

So AITA? I think I should’ve been more sensible of D’s feelings, but she also wasn’t very sensible of mine, so idk

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[theriverbeyond]

I guess we can't know Mizu's gender til he tells us, but tbh I think he's a gay man. In the scene in the brothel, he only has the response and flashback when it was two men kissing, not the man and the woman. He also bound his chest when it was only him and Swordmaster at the time. It's possible living as a man has affected him that intensely but he's actually a woman deep inside, but I personally don't think so. However! I don't get onto anyone for thinking differently because we Just Don't Know Yet.

I agree!!! this is how I see him... as either a gay man or transmasc nonbinary. idk i've read/watched a LOT of stories about women who dress as men for battle, freedom, etc, and this storyline definitely seems to be framing his gender as something different

and obviously I won't get on anyone for viewing him differently (especially if they identity with the character!!) but I also think that unless and perhaps even if explicitly proven otherwise, I will personally be treating Blue Eye Samurai as a trans story and Mizu as a transmasc person. Because honestly, I feel like we HAVE been told his gender, in ways far more extensive than many cis characters in media have their gender told. like.... most characters in media don't have a "JSYK, I'm a man/woman!" moment. they just Are and we the viewers understand. I think Mizu's gender is clear and I as a viewer am Understanding. (spoilers ahead!)

like u said, he bound his chest and presented as a man when it was just him and Swordfather, who is totally blind. you'd think that if he didn't have at least SOME kind of gender fuckery he would probably have just done the voice and dispensed with the rest of it at least while inside/not training/for sleep? and you'd think after Ringo saw him naked, if he wasn't trans he would probably unbind around the campfire/etc when it was just them. and if his male presentation was really just a front, after Fowler says Mizu's bones "break like a woman's" (and clocks him, basically) and he runs away to London you would think Mizu would dispense with the disguise while on the ship. but he doesn't do any of those things!!!!

he COULD have snuck into Fowler's fortress dressed as a woman, as one of Madame Kaji's workers, hiding his sword under the dress. and I was actually really EXPECTING it to happen... it truly seemed like the most logical way for him to sneak in, and you could still have included the epic fight scenes. But he didn't? the story made a concious choice to reveal that women often went in via the (for lack of a better term) sex worker tunnel system, and then made the concious have him sneak in *as a man*, using that same tunnel. that feels important idk!!

during his marriage era, despite dressing as a woman i just literally could not see him as one. He was eventually attracted to his husband, definitely, but the entire section felt somewhat like watching him in drag, and the times when he presented most feminine felt viscerally uncomfortable. especially the end, when he put on makeup as a way to try and present himself as less-of-a-monster specifically right before the betrayal. i don't how how to really articulate it but like. his husband had a husband. TO ME

i think Akemi's storyline also makes me think Mizu is more of a transgender story than a woman crossdressing for freedom and power reasons. Akemi is a female character that is presented to us explicitly as someone who strains against the social expected norms for womanhood. through her, we (the audience) also learn about how women's opportunities are severely limited, and through her, we see her rebel against those to seize her own power within that social hierarchy. like as a character she functions to give us a foil for Mizu on what their other option could be, and it just feels. really not Mizu!!! like the contrast just feels huge in terms of being able to directly compare Akemi, who doesnt want to be a woman because of the social/cultural burden, to Mizu, who seems to reject womanhood for intrinsically different reasons.

the way people clocking him is framed feels VERY trans in a way I am not sure I can articulate. But basically, the way the narrative acknowledges but also brushes over those multiple reveals (Ringo at the Lake, Fowler during the final battle, etc), the way everyone in the story still treats Mizu as a man despite and through those multiple reveals basically without batting an eye, is NOT how I would write a cis woman being recognized. to ME

also yeah. he only reacted in the brothel when two men kissed.

tl;dr transmasc mizu sweep!!!!

#i want this show to get another season so bad but im also scared what if they go back on all this characterization n make him do girlpower.. #blue eye samurai #mizu #spoilers #akemi #blue eye samurai spoilers #ask #anon #long post #SORRY FOR THE LONG POST i guess i had thoughts to share

[blamin8r]

These are my personal designs/references for SMG4 because of how much I draw fan art for it. You can tell which ones are my absolute favorites to draw based on how much I’ve changed them basically. It’s organized by Recolors, The Girls, Non-Human, and Excess (sorry Kaizo)

Mario: I gave him stitches on his outfit because of how often he explodes and gets hurt (Luigi fixes his clothes since that’s less expensive than constantly replacing them), and those dark marks on his face from when Zero grabbed him and did that weird crap during the 10 year anniversary video. I also gave him a star pin on his overalls too.

SMG4: There’s so much. I made him shorter, changed his body type, gave him darker skin, scars from when he was possessed by the TV Adware dude (and other various scars), eyebags, a jacket, IV on his gloves, and the arrow from the USBs. He also has the arrow on the back of his jacket, but I haven’t drawn his back view before with this design so that’s never been visible in my art yet.

SMG3: I made him even shorter than SMG4, gave him longer hair, matching scars to SMG4, darker skin, a cape, black gloves, platformer boots, the USB arrow, and I changed his body type. The back of his cape has the same skull design that’s on his hat and boots too.

Luigi: I didn’t change too much to him, just his shirt, a flower pin, and some scars. Also he’s round like Mario but not the “skinny brother” because I don’t personally believe in that. (Though whenever he takes off his shirt he immediately becomes a buff man because SMG4 logic)

X: This one was fun. He already has dark skin on his recolor self, so I also went ahead and gave him curly hair, a beard, eye bags, a beanie, hoodie, changed his height, and gave him a cool weird eye thing because why not. He and FM also have similar eye colorings to 3 and 4

FM: He’s the only recolor I decided to make not chubby but instead kinda fit since he’s a police officer. I also gave him a police styled hat, badge, different shirt and gloves, longer hair, a bunch of scars, piercings, and steel toed boots. He looks pretty cool :D

Minion: Parts of her design I did out of pure spite. Her body type matches SMG4’s but she’s a bit shorter, an overalls skirt thing, matching hat, pink gloves, some long socks, and I kept her mustache but just made it smaller. Why? Well, I haven’t headcanoned SMG4 as trans (unlike what a lot of my friends and mutual have done), but I did do that for Minion, because in my mind, she basically has SMG4’s exact body type, including the reproductive organs. But she’s still a woman. And I also believe that women (cis and trans) shouldn’t have to feel shame for having facial hair or body hair, so I kept that there, again, out of spite for people who really feminize her body in a stereotypical way in their personal designs for her.

Meggy: I’m not an extremist for Inkling Meggy or anything, I do like her as a human, but I’m still not sure why they chose to make her a human and not just a squid that’s not Nintendo styled. So instead I just gave her some other squid attributes, like the typical tentacle hair thing, but also some fins on her arms and legs. Her skin is a little darker and she has freckles now. I made her outfit more black and orange themed because I personally hate the dull whites and browns on her outfit. To reference two of her other outfits, I had her keep her college jacket tied around her waist, and her glasses on her shirt since I feel she probably needs them for reading still. I also gave her more sports styled clothes like her shorts and the knee pads. And I removed her goggles because I despise drawing them, she has too much accessories on her head and that one section is so annoying to draw. Lastly, I made her a bit muscular because there’s no way every single one of the girls has the exact same body type.

Tari: Her design just got updated when I was in the middle of working on this, and it’s really good so I only changed her body type by making her chubby and added a gradient to her hair.

Saiko: Her outfit is cool minus the colors, so I gave her a more pink and black theme for her outfit colors. I also made her more muscular and gave her some scars since she’s known as the more violent one in SMG4 who carries that massive ass hammer just casually.

Melony: I looked up where watermelons came from, and they came from Africa apparently, so I made her black (also because all the human characters are white/light skinned so I changed that) and I think it makes sense with her hair too because of the thingies that come down over her ears. It also makes the pointy things behind her hood make sense too. I changed her body to have more body fat and gave her some stretch marks and cellulite to go with it. I like her hoodie, but you can’t tell me that’s all she has on, so I also gave her some shorts, since she gets sexualized so much.. She also has shoes too, those socks would be so nasty otherwise. Her diety form is gonna have actual armour because that makes more sense than just a different colored hoodie.

Belle: I changed nothing about her, not because I don’t like her or think her design is perfect or anything, (she’s great and I miss her ;-;), but I actually chose to keep her as is just because people who look like her and have her body type still exist, they’re just not the only one or the main one. Humans vary a lot.

Karen: I didn’t change much, but since she’s a single mother, I made her body look a little more like a middle aged woman, and gave her a sweater her kids made for her too that she wears proudly.

Shroomy: I know there are multiple characters that are technically naked, but I felt that Shroomy should at least have a Boy Scouts outfit on, he lives in a world with Toads which do have clothes so it didn’t feel right to have just the badge thing over him

Bob, Rob, Boopkins, and Jub Jub: I kept them as is because there’s not much to their appearances anyway, minus a few rips and tears for Bob’s outfit.

SMG2: I made his body a little more proportional so that his head was at least not larger than the rest of his whole fucking body, and I gave him some excess scars since he and SMG1 have been around for the longest, and have probably been through a lot together. I also gave him sleeves, shoes, glasses, and matching gloves that all the SMGs now have. His antenna thing is also thicker because I don’t wanna make it too thin.

SMG1: His body is also more proportional, but that’s mainly because I didn’t like making his torso long. I also gave him clothes to match 2 a little more but darker. He’s got excess scars as well, and his gloves are opposite to 2’s similar to how I made 3 and 4’s gloves opposite of each other. He’s also got glasses like 2, and they match their head shapes.

Kaizo: I fucking love Kaizo, he looks so damn cool to me, so I kept his outfit the same, just changed up his body. He’s more muscular and has more demonic features (pointed pupils and ears, tail, more sharp teeth, forked tongue, claw-like nails), as well as a bunch of scars everywhere on his body. Plus more body hair, and based on a Kaizo design I saw elsewhere (I forgot who made it) but I made the ends of his hair dyed red because it looks cool. And piercings.

Swag and Chris: I love these two, but I couldn’t think of how to change Swag and Chris besides making them a buff and old. (To me, they’re at least in their 30’s or 40’s). I do believe in dilf Chris tho, so make whatever assumptions you want from that.

Whimpu: I actually really don’t like Whimpu, mainly for his personality, but also because of the Waifu Factory episode, it just really made me uncomfortable with how objectified and dehumanized the anime girls were in it, and he was a big part of that. Still, I wanted to change him a bit since his design is a little plain. He’s still plain, but a bit less. I added acne, buttons on the tie, and a shirt pocket with a pen in it.

Steve: I hate how I end up drawing Steve, but I didn’t want him to look too human in a normal way, because a part of his charm is being this weird block dude. So he just looks like a more blocky human with dirty clothes, a lot of scars, and a beard.

#smg4 #smg4 fanart #smg4 art #smg4 mario #smg4 characters #smg4 luigi #smg4 swag #smg4 saiko #smg4 smg3 #smg4 meggy #smg4 melony #smg4 tari #smg4 karen #smg4 bob #smg4 boopkins #smg4 shroomy #smg4 smg1 #smg4 smg2 #smg4 chris #art #digital arwork #digital fanart #procreate #character reference #character ref sheet

[telumendils]

the thing about the terms "tme" and "tma" is that, while i imagine they are useful to transfemme people in certain contexts, they are still not only actively intersexist terms, but i've often seen them used to silence trans men and transmasculine people, including myself.

i made a post once expressing my anger about jkr's transphobia and was told "this isn't allyship." i said "i am literally trans" and the person's response to that was "lmk when jkr starts targeting tme trans people lol," as if there is not a whole section in jkr's terf manifesto doing this exact thing (which there is; i read it).

(it was NOT a trans woman or transfeminine person who did this afaik, and i am not blaming trans women for it, but it was someone who clearly felt that defining me by the term tme was enough reason to tell me my thoughts and feelings weren't valid or important enough to the conversation and so i should keep my mouth shut. nvm the fact that this person had no way of knowing what my genitals look like or how i was assigned at birth; they just assumed.)

and i mistakenly took this as an opportunity to discuss my discomfort and skepticism about these terms in a public space. i brought up how it doesn't seem like you can really classify an entire group of people as exempt from transmisogyny when afab cisgender women of color are often subjected to transmisogyny because of how their racialized features are also masculinized by whiteness. but i was met with more silencing. i was told "that's not really transmisogyny" even though i was clear that i did not believe cis women experienced transmisogyny in the same way that transfemmes do.

idk. as i mentioned, i can see how the terms might be useful in certain contexts. i'm not trying to say we should never use them at all. but they do exclude intersex experiences and the experiences of women of color, plus i've seen them used as a blunt object to silence transmasc people just trying to talk about transphobia and their own experiences/anger, and this troubles me.

#queer #trans #intersex #intersexism #bee.txt #i've just been thinking about this a lot and wanted to get the thoughts out here

[campgender]

excerpts from Amber Dawn’s “Touch ≠ Touch Screen” that i thought particularly resonated with the most recent iteration of conversations on transmisogynistic + whorephobic censorship on tumblr & other social media

image description: three screenshots of a poem from the collection My Art Is Killing Me (2020) with stylized spacing.

excerpt 1:

Just survivors, I’m talking only to you now (literally you).

Did your abuse fever teach you to solder belonging and harm?

Were you seen and were you shamed in the same

original place? Did you inherit

a coercive dichotomy?

Anxious arousal hand

me downs?

Does your public network see you and hate you in looping rounds?

Does logging on harm you? Does all this somehow feel familiar?

excerpt 2:

Let’s talk about 2018 when

FOSTA-SESTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Stop

Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) was passed as law by US Congress

on April 11, marking the first ever exception to Section 230.

So after twenty-two years, yes, twenty-two years, social media platforms

where made responsible for user generated content if that content may be

intended for sex work yes

all sex work, yes, consensual sex work and, yes

anything like a butthole or a female-presenting-assumed nipple, and yes

responsible for or in authority of images, words and phrases

that mend desire together

with age, race, size, orientation, disability, labour

economics and any bodies subject to other-ness.

And with other-ness, I’m talking about

fat babes in neon green lingerie, about two brown men

kissing, about trans women being radiant and using

their real fucking names. I’m talking about

masculine-presenting-assumed folk with baby bumps. I’m talking sexual

assault survivors showing off the scars on our inner thighs. I’m talking about

women posting screenshots of the violent Tinder messages we receive

every damn day. I’m talking about

speaking up. I’m talking language

reclamation. I’m talking decolonizing

sexualities. I’m talking gagged faggots

about dyke march photos

torn down. I’m talking

about locked accounts.

excerpt 3:

viii.

I’m talking about this—

power holding backlash.    How dare we get those likes

those shares, take up virtual space

speak truths, share strategy, love our ash and phoenix

bodies, rise up or dig deep, whichever way or all

directions at once.

We can be nimble AF

but how dare we?

Make the internet

white relentlessly white again

str8 cis thin and norm again

Redesign the sightline

of hating women.         I’m talking about this

power holding backlash.

I think about this a lot—

what it means to spend upwards

of two hours per day

on platforms that believe

we should not legally exist

un      see      able

end image description.

#poetry #amber dawn #whorephobia #transmisogyny #fosta sesta #social media #invisibilization #isolation #censorship #image described #mac’s bookshelf #she refers to tumblr as an e–mpire built on smut in the same poem