#Cis privilege is ABSOLUTELY A THING

[trans-cuchulainn]

having complex feelings about gender stuff recently but i don't really know how to put it into words. some of it is about the self-erasure that becomes necessary when you try and talk about medical misogyny you've experienced as someone who isn't a woman but who is perceived by the world as one. some of it is about no longer feeling connected to female-centred stories of a kind you used to enjoy as a teenager because they always feel alienating but also not liking your own emotions about that because you should be able to enjoy stories that weren't written for you, it's just that they don't feel like stories that even allow space for you to exist in. but shouldn't men be able to enjoy women's stories too? but you're not a man. but you're not a woman. but the stories are about and for people who look like you but you're not one of them. but you would have been them if you lived in those worlds because nobody would have seen a difference, and that's viscerally uncomfortable, and impossible to enjoy--

and some of it is about looking for stories you could exist in and only finding stories that are profoundly unrelatable because they're only ever about characters who knew they were trans since puberty and had access to transition care in their teens and you didn't figure it out until adulthood and also that's not legally available in your country so that would never have been on the cards in the first place. or people who figured it out in adulthood but they're so certain and they're so ready to take risks and they'll change the world for a chance to become themselves because they know what they're aiming for. some of it is not being sure what you want but knowing you'll always have to be certain about it enough to fight for it because you're not going to get it any other way. some of it is not wanting to be an activist, not wanting to agitate, not wanting to have to resist every goddamn second bc you're just trying to exist in the world, but the only way anyone will ever give you a modicum of what you need is if you put all your energy into the struggle for it--

some of it is about feeling an ongoing tether to the experience of being a woman in a bad way but no tether to the experience in a good way and there's a weird kind of mourning in that, and a self denial, and an inability to reconcile your own contradictions in a way that feels comfortable. some of it is about feeling pressure to experience gender differently and to opt in to something else if you're going to opt out of what you were given but you don't want to do that either. and a lot of it is constantly self-policing your own emotions and thoughts and being convinced you're doing it all wrong somehow because you see other people being so free with their genderfuck, so unencumbered by expectations, so easily able to get it right for themselves and other people, and you're still misgendering yourself half the time in your mind because you don't even know what the right words would be at this point when you still have scars shaped like being a girl even though you're not a girl and you can't talk about them without doing yourself another piece of damage

like. i am who i am because i was thought a girl and maybe because i thought i was a girl and maybe i still don't understand why i'm not a girl but in my not-girlness i no longer feel i have any access to any kind of womanhood that doesn't hurt but i don't want to police myself out of femininity just because it isn't all that i am anymore

#spending too much time in spaces that are dominated by women and still treat womanhood as marginalised within that space #if you try to point out that as a transmasculine person you have no voice you are treated as an invading man #but nobody has ever seen me as a man. probably nobody will ever see me as a man. i do not have a man's privileges or advantages here. #and yet. #i don't know how to talk about any of this because i don't know what i'm trying to say #only that it feels sometimes like i would be more welcome in 'diverse' spaces if i were a woman #but it is the very fact that i am not a woman which is marginalising me the most a lot of the time #especially at the moment with all the violent media rhetoric and legislation #and when comparatively privileged cis abled white women are congratulating themselves on the diversity of their communities #and trans disabled people can't gain access to them. well. #(and not to mention PoC but that's not my place to speak from) #and then medical stuff. i have tried to talk about how i was misdiagnosed and ignored as a teenager #and people have literally to my face told me that's part of being a girl/woman #as if i hadn't just told them i'm trans. i'm not a girl just because i suffered from medical misogyny #don't add your violence on top of what was already done to me you absolute fucker #the only thing i share with women is the bad parts of how the world has treated me. i guess that's what i'm getting at #and that's a shitty thing to share and i don't want it anymore #personal #gender fuckery

[hoeterra]

Not to sound like whatever the gay version of an incel is but I wish we talked about pretty privilege more

#personal #I hate that the conventional white gays will get to come back here #post a handful of thirst traps #and go back to being just as influential as they’ve ever been #obvi posting a body online is 100% valid #but a) we put too much value in physical beings being the right kind of pretty and really this only perpetuates that #and b) how many times on twitter did someone get popular with thirst traps and zero content #then post an absolutely rancid borderline/blatantly conservative/facist/racist take #get ‘canceled’ #disappear for a week #come back with more thirst traps #and suffer no consequences #It feels like a lot of people put more stock in what pretty people had to say simply because they're pretty #not because they're any authority on the subject #and that coupled with a larger following simply because they're pretty led to a lot of weirdness in gay spaces on twitter #basically I’m salty that there’s not more conversation around pretty privilege and how it intersects with #white privilege and male privilege and cis privilege and financial privilege #and how it intersects hugely with ageism #especially in queer communities #and how people with said privilege have a lot of things easier #and largely seem to be completely naive to that

[doberbutts]

The problem with the concept that there are trans men who don’t have male privilege is that it seems to imply that there are trans women who DO have it, which is a concept that is widely agreed to be unequivocally transmisogynistic. Any rebuttal for this?

My rebuttal is; I know trans women who have lived in my house and sat on my couch and watched movies and played videogames with me who have told me to my face that they did receive male privilege on a similar incredibly conditional, individual, and situational basis similar to how I am describing for trans men, how it relied on the closet and total stealth, and very aware they had to be of the line they were toeing, and how much worse they are treated now that they are out and transitioning, and how afraid they are to say it because of rabid people online who are looking for any excuse whatsoever to hurt them when they deal with that enough in their everyday lives.

I am forever reminded of this older interview (mid-90s early 2000s I think) of transgender Japanese citizens and this one person who was probably what we would call a trans woman. And, like my butch friend, was trapped in a situation in which there was absolutely zero room to breathe. They were amab, married to a woman with multiple children, working as a businessman to support the family. They said how they always felt like a woman on the inside, and how they knew that could never be a reality for them, so they didn't see much point in pursuing anything because it would break their family apart. The only thing they could do was make various cute needlework girly things during their daily commute to and from work. They had some cover story for their wife that they were buying them from a shop for their daughters or something.

Do you think that this person, who is perceived by everyone around them to be a cis man for several decades, does not benefit from male privilege in any way despite probably not actually being a man? Do you understand what I'm talking about when I say that this is a topic that needs to be discussed with far more delicacy and nuance than "man privilege woman not privilege"?

Do you think that all of the accounts of trans women out there saying "when I came out and started identifying as and passing for a woman, people suddenly started treating me much worse" and "I frequently have to boymode because otherwise my life is too dangerous" aren't discussions of exactly what I'm talking about?

Privilege is a tricky, complicated thing. It's also something bigoted society bestows upon you, and not a moral critique of your own existence. TERFs and MRAs both have poisoned the well, but that's not a reason to completely disregard the much-needed grace that has to be had during these conversations.

Personally I think any trans person's experience with "male privilege" is shakey at best and entirely contingent on a wide number of factors that you can't just point at their gender and say yes or no. I think it's way more complicated than that. And I don't think anyone is lesser for having or not having it, either. Gender is a morally neutral thing. Gender presentation is a morally neutral thing. It is okay to exist. It's okay to have a complicated existence.

[ur-cute-so-i]

I can't believe this is my brains default state and that I used to be like this all the time

#prove #things my unmedicated anxiety brain has made me think in the last 24hrs #i am using my girlfriends as a prop to i am bisexual and i should break up with them because i dont deserve them #a lie. i love my girlfriends and just because im bummed we won't go to pride together doesnt mean i am using them as props #i am a bad activist because i only got teargassed once during the police protests in 2020/2021 #a lie. just because im not a front line protestor doesnt mean i am a bad activist not doing things for my community #also judging if im a good activist/ally is centering myself and uncessary #im too privileged because i am a white cis Christian and any time someone says dont be afraid to take up space i absolutely should not #this ones a bit more complicated because i am all those things and there are times when i should in fact not be taking the most space #but i can still honor my needs and my space without dominating everyone- i do it all the time #i should have been more eloquent yesterday when i spoke up during the anit union meeting #sure i could have been more eloquent but they were all entrenched anti union folks nothing i said was gonna change their mind #i was only there in case other newbies got roped in to the meeting and they didnt so it was awkward but i said my piece and it's done #plus were gonna win tomorrow- the numbers are on our side #im just boggled that this is what my default was like and now im super proud for being able to do anything from 2014-2020 #if you got this far im fine really #just venting while I wait for my drugs to enter back into my system fully

[onmyyan]

A/N: First Yandere OC he’s a big baby n i love him❤ TWs: Yandere shenanigans, Smut, reader has a coochie, word pussy used to describe genitalia, cis fem reader, ”Good Girl”, breeding kink, feeding kink, cum eating (reader doesn't know) oral (f receiving), shower sex, cursing

Lemme know what you guys think!!

Caspian Delmont HC's

25 year old beefcake

The biggest guy in the room no matter where he is. Absolutely massive individual, standing proud at 6'4 a wall of muscle shaped like a man, definition of scary dog privilege

Smells like cinnamon and warm chocolate

Likes to take Sunday drives in his granddads 67 Chevy Impala, oldies blaring through the speakers he'd put in himself(the only thing he changed about the car)

Old fashioned in the way where he'd lay a man out flat in the street for disrespecting you, then take you to dinner as an apology for having to deal with that crap.

He has an accent, a thick Bronx twang that comes out heavy on certain words, bilingual, speaks fluent Spanish and English, he's mixed with Filipino and Puerto Rican, has a huge family so he wants one with you. If you don't however he'll settle for a small army of animals.

Drinks his respect women juice like water, sees you as his equal and at the same time holds you on this goddess like pedestal high above him.

Boxes in his free time to release pent up aggression, and he's good at it.

Early on in the relationship he is quite hesitant to show you this side as he's insecure about how you view him.

Everyone has always had some ulterior motive when it came to him, he's used to people befriending him out of fear or to use his intimidating stature to their advantage, so when you don't he's both incredibly warmed and confused.

You're genuineness only draws him in further, as tough an act he puts on our boy falls fast and hard.

First time he saw you he was a goner, you were elbow deep in some toffee cookie dough, the tip of your tongue poking through your plush lips in the cutest form of concentration he'd ever bore witness to.

His brain worked a mile a minute as he sped walked his way to the desk next to you, shoulder checking the smaller man who was previously beside you. You looked up at the sound of his body meeting the desk in his scurry out the way of Caspian’s impending mass.

His red eyes widened as they met yours, the smile you gave him was real, he saw it in the way it reached your eyes. The small 'hi' you said as you went back to your work had butterflies erupting in his chest the entire hour of class.

Not one to shy away from his wants he quickly comes up to you after the lesson eager to help you clean up as his own station was miraculously cleared in moments.

He lays on the charm thick, all the while making sure not to come off as too pushy, he visibly lit up when he got you to laugh that first time.

Wants to ask you out immediately but knows he loves a lot harder than most and the last thing he wanted was to scare you away. Forces himself to hold back even though he knew you were the one after about one and a half classes.

Remembers everything you share about yourself, down to the most minute detail about how you like to stay home when it rains because it always makes you sleepy, or how you like when your partner can protect you because people in the past have failed to.

Absolute sweetheart to you, treats you like you deserve to be, 100% worshiped.

Can and has knocked some teeth out to protect your honor, if someone made the fatal mistake of making you cry?

Oh he's calling his sketchy cousin who owns a junkyard on the edge of town and having him leave the gates unlocked for him where your offender may or may not be tied up in the trunk of their car, he doesn't give em' a speech or tell them why he's doing what he is, in his mind they should know. Their muffled screams would be drowned out by the metal jaws and teeth of the compactor his cousin let him use from time to time, he'd have to bake him some macaroons as a thank you- ooh he could ask you to join him! It be such a cute date.

Major sweet tooth, loooooves hand feeding you especially if it's something he himself made it's a physical representation of his love!!

Calls you sugar, pumpkin, honeyy(specifically drawing out the y at the end so its more like a whine) babycakes, muffin, basically any food you can call your s/o he's doing it

He wakes up an hour or so before you so he can stare lovingly without you getting all flustered and hiding from him.

His favorite days are spent waking up late with you on top of him, his big arms holding you securely to his chest, neither of you have work or classes, you'd wake up to him humming some unnamed tune, the timber in his voice lulling you gently awake, he won't leave the bed without at least one kiss, first words you hear are usually something like "Mornin' sugar" followed by the kinda toe curling kiss that shakes all the sleep from your system, I'm talking he only pulls away to breathe kinda kiss, "I'm the luckiest bastard in the world gettin' to wake up with a woman like you warming my sheets." If you two don't immediately go at it like rabbits he'll twirl you both into the kitchen where you'll cook breakfast together, the radio softly filling the morning air, makes you sit in his lap while you eat, he'd be so focused on watching you eat he'd forget to do it himself so naturally you take the time to feed him as well, cue his heart exploding and him getting so excited he all but tosses you on the table, hand cradling your head because he'd never hurt you, eventually you'd be able to keep your paws off each other long enough to get ready, although if he's in the room it will take twice as long.

Nsfw under here❗❗❗❗❗❗❗❗❗❗

Doesn't matter your height or weight this man is throwin you around in the bedroom

His hands are surprisingly soft for how rugged he looks, he's obsessed with trailing them along your body, stares at you like you're artwork.

On one hand he wants to take his time, start at the bottom work his way up your body, kissing, licking and biting everywhere he could. He wants to tease you, taste you get drunk off your sent until you tug him away from your sex, then he'd slide his way up the sweet smile on his face not matching the debauchery he was about to commit.

On the other hand he wants to lay on the bed and have you sink onto his face so he can eat like the starved beast he is, any fears or insecurities about the ordeal fly out the window when you look down to see this titan of a man with tears beading his lashline, begging to eat your pussy, whining to just do it already and he could take it if you'd pleeeease just give it to em'

Feeder kink on max, it all starts when one day your hands are full and you innocently asked him to feed you, all was well and good until his finger lingered in your mouth a second too long, your tongue teasingly flicked the appendage as it retreated, now every time you're eating all he can think about is sitting you in his lap and feeding you. If he could he'd spend every meal with you cockwarming him and his fingers in your mouth.

Service Top? Service Top.

Can and will eat you out until you're a whining, blubbering, mess. More often than not you have to pull him by his hair to catch your breath, of course the light sting from your yanks would only spur him on,

"One more honey? C'mon good girl give it to me. I know you can baby- that's right ride my face." Absolute menace

Shower sex that leaves you feeling dirtier than when you went in

Definitely the type to talk you through it.

"There we go- that's it honey jus' let go f'me." He loves to moan in your ear and see the pretty way your face twists up, loud as hell too, it's a good thing he has a house cuz the man is a screamer.

Always makes you cum more than once, competitive bastard makes it a game between himself to see how many times you can unravel before you tap out.

Can you say Pussy drunk? He wants it as sloppy and messy as he can get. Eats you like its his last chance, i'm talking moaning into your skin, pulling your hips down to get you as close as possible, grinding himself against the bed while he thanks you for letting him have his favorite meal.

He's definitely came in your food before sorry

It's just so romantic to him!! The idea of being inside of you-even just a small piece, quells the possessive monster he keeps leashed. For now

Is willing to try anything you want in bed except hurting you, some choking? Sure, impact play? If you asked him real nicely, but anything like degradation he just can't make himself be mean to his baby!!

You could be mean to him though, there's a small genuine part of him that likes when you get a little rougher, he thinks he doesn't deserve you- any of you, so dig your nails in his skin, mark him with your teeth, show him who he belongs to.

Breeding kink breeding kink breeding kink- you get the picture.

If you indulge him once he'll never wanna cum anywhere else.

"Please baby-fuck, please lemme' cum inside please please fuck me fuck me yes- oh god m'gonna fill this pretty pussy so deep yes, yes- oh god baby girl feels. So. Fuckin. Good." He'd thrust as hard as he could at the end, his face scrunching up in the most blissful fucked out expression. Absolutely cried because of how good it felt.

All in all you give him an inch he'll give you eight

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x y/n #yandere male #yandere male x reader #yandere oc #caspian oc #yandere oc x reader #oc x reader #yandere hcs #yandere smut #caspian delmont

[autolenaphilia]

The understanding of feminism on this site is absolutely terrible. To the point where people have no idea of what feminism even is. It’s especially annoying when people on here claim to be feminists, but contradict basic tenets of feminist thought.

And to be fair, feminism is a complicated and not united ideology at all. But let’s try to explain anyway. A basic tenet of any feminism is that society is a patriarchy. Women are oppressed and exploited, and men are the oppressor class. Men gain advantages for being men, which is what male privilege is. And feminism is about destroying this system of gendered oppression, the patriarchy.

This is as basic as it gets. And that we live in a patriarchy is easily proven. Patriarchy theory is a theory, but it’s a very well-supported one. Basic statistics and other evidence prove women are disadvantaged and discriminated against, and that men prosper in comparison. Misogyny is real, it’s an oppression that definitely exists.

Yet this basic understanding consistently eludes people on tumblr, even as they claim to be feminists and say “fuck the patriarchy.” People are at best reluctant to acknowledge misogyny as being real and lack understanding of it.

Talking about misogyny will get you accusations of being “terfy” when it’s just basic feminism. Even transfems get these accusations. I’ve already lamented that many people who are anti-terf (which you should be) don’t know what a terf is. What is actually “terfy” is having biological determinist and cisnormative explanations of who women are and what causes misogyny. In reality, trans women are very much women, and have to navigate the world as such. We constitute an especially oppressed subset of women, due to suffering from an intersection of both misogyny and transphobia: transmisogyny. The recognition of misogyny as an oppression we experience is needed to explain our experiences and suffering. We are not men, and are exiled from manhood and it’s privileges due to rejecting it and not performing masculinity.

Particularly disturbing are people who claim to be feminists and yet argue that “misandry” is a real thing. It’s often not said to be “misandry”, I’ve read words like “antimasculism” (more or less explicitly) used as substitutes for the term “misandry”. It is often phrased in terms of “the patriarchy hurts men too.” That the patriarchy is just harmful gender norms that oppress all genders more or less equally.

And those who adopted this have abandoned feminism, often without acknowledging it. They have abandoned the most basic feminist tenets, such as we live in a patriarchy, a society that benefits men. The idea that men do not gain privilege from being men and are in fact hurt by it is an anti-feminist idea.

It’s an incoherent way of analyzing gender. The question of who is the oppressor class in this analysis is eluded entirely. Who benefits from oppressing men via gender norms? Feminist theory is clear about men being the oppressor class who benefit as a class from the oppression of women. It’s a basic question, yet studiously avoided, sometimes in terms of blaming it on the system, understood as some impersonal monster, not as a system that exists to benefit certain people.

It also misunderstands how masculinity works. Sure, being forced to adhere to masculine gender norms hurts, I’ve been badly bullied myself for breaking them. But even if the patriarchy hurts men, it more importantly benefits them. It privileges men, because that’s the literal definition of patriarchy.

Masculinity benefits men, that’s why they perform it. The proper performance of masculinity is needed for being recognized as a man and thus given male privilege. It gives them power over women (cis or trans), even other men (like gay men) and degendered others, the ability to commit violence against them with impunity. Men who perform it are not the primary victims of masculinity, the victims of the violence done to prove masculinity are. And privilege is what men are afraid of losing if they appear non-masculine. It’s the fear of losing their status, of experiencing just a smidgen of the horrors trans women are given everyday. Men will do violence to avoid that. I don’t wish to downplay the horrors of being an openly gnc man (especially if they are also gay or queer in some other way). but they still have a privileged position compared to women in general, and especially transfems.

Of course, men are oppressed too, but it’s not for being men. Working class men are oppressed under capitalism. A long list of oppressive systems like racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and so on do oppress the men who are affected by them. Men thus often find their male privilege curtailed by these oppressions, especially if they are affected by several at once. And because of this there are indeed situations where women can hold power over men (white women do often hold power over black men in white supremacist societies for example). This does however just curtail their male privilege, not negate it entirely. You just need a more complicated analysis, that takes those factors into account. Still, all else being equal, men hold power over women. It’s when comparing gay men and lesbians, comparing disabled men and women, and so on, that you can truly see the privilege these disadvantaged men still hold despite the real oppression they experience. Women are also affected by these oppressive forces, and their effect is made worse by intersecting with misogyny. Men in oppressed communities still have power and privilege over the women in that community. Their experience of oppression looks different, but that’s due to the absence of misogyny, rather than the addition of any misandry (as another tumblr post put it, and which I can’t find now, so I can’t give credit. Would love to be given a link if you can find it).

And we have to be careful when talking about oppressed men, because their experiences are often exploited to justify anti-feminism. The fact that the oppression is real is exactly why it’s useful, because it can be decontextualized to argue that men are oppressed for being men. Propaganda often lies by omission, than by outright making things up. Warren Farrell, “the father of the men’s rights movement”, used the experiences of working class men dying in dangerous jobs and as soldiers in war to argue that male power was a myth, and in fact “men are the disposable sex” or “the expendable gender.” Those deaths are real, but the context that it’s due to capitalism exploiting the working class is removed, and instead attributed to their gender. The facts that working class women also suffer and die from exploitation and that capitalist men benefit from the exploitation of the entire working class are ignored. It also eludes why women don’t die as these men do. Women are kept out of many “dangerous” jobs and the military in order to justify their subjugation as “the weaker sex.”

It’s a terrible argument, and Farrell and the men’s rights movement he helped create are openly anti-feminist and deeply misogynistic, denying women’s oppression. Yet I’ve seen variations on Farrell’s argument posted by supposedly “pro-feminist” blogs. Queer bloggers here will hold up the sufferings of gay and trans men as proof misandry is real, that men are oppressed for being men, ignoring that their oppression is due to homophobia and transphobia. And still against all reason still use the word “patriarchy” and being feminists, despite denying the analysis of society as a patriarchy where men are privileged for being men.

At least Farrell and his fellow proud MRAs are honest about rejecting feminism and believing patriarchy is a myth. I’m glad at this point that I was and am a fan of David Futrelle’s blog criticizing and mocking the men’s movement, because that has enabled me to recognize and criticize the arguments they use, a thing some people here clearly need some help with.

Often these bloggers bring up the ancient anti-feminist accusation of feminists not being a movement for equality at all, but about hating men and their masculinity. Anything critical of men as a class who holds power over women is understood as “misandry” or “terfy”, and so is any criticism of masculinity as a gender role. Criticism of masculinity are only made in the context of “toxic” masculine norms hurting men, never in terms of how it confers men power and privilege and how the misogyny of hegemonic masculinity hurts women and other people. I suppose in this kind of thinking my earlier criticism of masculinity as a tool for gendered violence is enough for them to call me a misandrist. And like I’m not. All men benefit from patriarchy, but if you are a man and don’t abuse women or are a misogynist, you are okay as a human being in my book. What else can I say?

These criticisms are not just taken as misandry, but as some kind of widespread norm, despite really only being made in feminist and queer spaces. So making a tumblr post saying “it’s okay to be a man, it’s okay to be masculine.” is seen as reasonable, despite that being literally what the vast majority of society already believes (including the feminist spaces that can reasonably be targeted by this statement). It’s a bizarre statement to make in a patriarchal society that favours men and expects them to be masculine. It again echoes MRA complaints about how society has been captured by a feminist conspiracy (with anti-semitic undertones, as any conspiracy theory has, that’s how MRAs answer the question of “who is oppressor class for misandry?” btw).

It illustrates how a bad understanding of feminist theory leads people into some rather right-wing positions, all while clinging to the banner of being a feminist or progressive. Our society is a deeply misogynist one, yet in response to feminist gains it likes to cloak its misogyny in a kind of superficial feminism. And acknowledging misogyny is a real oppression is hard when you grow up and live in a society that justifies it. It’s especially uncomfortable to do so if you benefit from it. It’s more comfortable to deny misogyny. But it’s work that needs to be done. Or else you can turn into basically an MRA while still believing yourself to be a feminist, which seems to be the trajectory of some people on this site.

#my writings #feminism #misogyny #transmisogyny

[txttletale]

not the same anon but ive often seen transfems complain that transmascs will “refuse to let go of femininity” and “misgender ourselves” when we talk about how being treated as girls/women during our entire lives affects us materially and also psychologically. ive never understood that. where do you stand on that? Important clarifications: 1) i dont believe trans women, closeted or otherwise, pre or post transition, have male privilege. i dont believe the upbringing “discourse” is a zero-sum game (where if being raised female means tm experience misogyny, being raised male means tw have male privilege). 2) i dont believe in transandrophobia in any shape or form, I believe trans men suffer bc of misogyny and transphobia, and trans women bc of the same + transmisogyny. 3) im not trying to gotcha you or pick a fight i mean this entirely neutrally. im ready to accept that im wrong i simply want to understand why.

yea i mean, like -- obviously this is a subject that's really easy to bad-faith on either side but i think you're approaching in good faith so i'm going to answer in turn: i don't think any (serious) transfeminists begrudge that trans men have a lifetime experience of suffering directly from misogyny or that they discuss these things. i think there are obvious common experiences and solidarity to be found in these common experiences!

the times where i often see the argument that transmascs are 'misgendering themselves' is when they weaponize transmisogyny by self-infantilizing to paint an interaction they had or disagreement with a transfem as the transfem being 'predatory', 'threatening', etc -- transmisogynist trans men will very often do this, implicitly misgendering themselves by invoking the transmisogynistic spectre of the Big Scary Autogynophile sexually threatening the Poor Innocent Wombyn.

secondly, transmisogynistic transmascs will absolutely weaponize their own misogynistic trauma in disagreements with trans women -- it's not uncommon on this website for trans women trying to discuss transmisogyny to be met with paragraphs of transmisogynistic transmascs graphically describing their own experiences with sexual assault and violence, which again plays into the exact same stereotypes to the advantage of the transmasc in the situation.

similarly, transmisogynistic transmascs will also use language that groups them with cis women in an implicitly self-misgendering way for the sake of being transmisogynistic and excluding trans women. the most infamous version of this is the phrase 'women and AFABs' which gets tossed around quite often in so-called 'queer spaces', but there are also accusations of a universal 'male socialization' (used to paint trans women as aggressive, entitled, dangerous, etc, while trans men are harmless, demure, talked over by loud scary trans women, etc).

so tldr: i don't think any serious transfeminist begrudges trans men for talking about how misogyny has shaped their lives. when accusations of 'self-misgendering' come in is when (certain) trans men align themselves politically with transphobic cis women over trans women and use their own history with misogyny as a cudgel against trans women, or purposefully twist self-misgendering transmisogynistic narratives against trans women for their own personal advantage.

#ask

[ftmtftm]

I think a lot of my experiences as a trans man experiencing conditional male privilege are similar to my light skinned mixed race experience of experiencing conditional whiteness, in that both only take a second for you to slip up and then you're in danger both for being trans/mixed and for "tricking" the people around you (even if you never claimed to be a cis man OR white). Not sure if that makes sense, but when conditional privileges fall away, there's an extra danger involved because people now feel like they have the right to be extra transphobic or racist to you as a "punishment"

No that's exactly it! Both are extremely precarious social positions to be in that can absolutely immediately jeopardize your safety in the wrong social group. Which is exactly why I often hesitate to call "passing privilege" of any kind (in the context of most things, be it gender, race, sexuality, disability, etc.) "privilege" - because it's not.

It's can be a safety tool. It can be something that grants conditional benefits. It can also be granted to someone more easily because they are systemically privileged in other capacities, but I would never say that passing into the majority on the basis of an identity that can (or will) experience violence upon being identified is the same as being systemically privileged.

#asks #anon #edited oppsie typo no one saw that

[ticklepinions]

Everyone should read the following. If we are a community you need to understand a few things.

Are you entitled to say anything you want due to "free speech"? Hell yeah!

Should you? Absolutely the fuck not!

The blatant racism, anti-queerness, transphobia, misogyny and fatphobia I have seen is down right abhorrent. And if you display any of these ideologies or opinions, you simply do not belong here. You shouldn't be comfortable making a safe space for yourself as you make this lovely community unsafe for the rest of us.

There is nothing political about human rights. But unfortunately that's where we are in this life. I'll try not to be biased but certain political leanings tells me all I need to know about you. POC conservatives will always make me laugh. You are nothing but a pawn for the cis/hetero/whites who don't give a shit if you live or die. Nothing but a slur, a body to dispose of. You may share their views but they are not sharing the power and privilege they have with you.

Let's talk about certain individuals who act so tough under the "big strong amurican sharing their views just to get shitted on, fucking snowflakes". Why do you want to be oppressed so badly? Why do you purposely antagonize people and then when they defend themselves you try dismissing them by saying how they're wasting their time... The irony of it all. The sheer ignorance.

I feel sorry for you people. Truly, I do. But I'll be damned if I let any of you try to tear any of us down for having opinions and ideologies (hint hint see the irony?) that fight for the rights of people who don't have them.

And let me get something clear- from the river to the sea. We all should not stop fighting till all of us are free. There are so many resources out there to educate yourself, yet you choose to remain ignorant. You do not belong here. You act as though you are better than everyone else because you have "edgy" opinions, opinions that literally call for the deaths of the marginalized and oppressed. You do not belong here. You have the gall to tell people they are wasting their time, when their sheer existence alone is putting them at risk for isolation and death (by the same bigoted people you support). You do not belong here.

If an elephant (Israel) has it's foot on a mouse's (Palestine) tail, tell me which one is truly the one at risk. There is a gen0cide going on. If Israel is trying to reclaim it's "land" why bomb it? Why destroy it? With a military with their degree they should be able to eliminate all these "terr0rists" with minimal to no "collateral damage" (aka the 30,000 innocent Palestinians, 2/3rds of which were woman and children, with countless injured, orphaned, homeless and starving). Why bomb hospitals, mosques, sacred places? Standing with Palestinian people is not antisemitism, it's anti gen0cide and war crimes (a multitude of which Israel has shamelessly committed).

And I'm not on anon. I stand for the people of Palestine. I stand for justice. I stand for equity. I stand for the freedom of all oppressed people.

And I implore everyone who follows me to educate themselves. The right path does not lead you to discriminate against the marginalized. Continue to fight my friends, continue to amplify the voices of those unheard, continue making this community and those you belong to, safe for all and unsafe for those who think otherwise.

For you @knismosexual + @littleonelee

I hope you truly reflect on how your actions impacts this entire community and the communities you live in. Until you learn how to act right, unfortunately this community isn't for you. You shouldn't feel welcome here. You shouldn't feel like you belong here. DMs are wide open if you have any thoughts. But again I say, supporting transphobic, racist, anti-queer, misogynistic, discriminatory views is not simply an "opinion" or personality to adopt. You are hurting real people, accepting the deaths and harassment that plague them every single day. You have no place in this community.

#twordpinion #tword community #tickle community #ticklepinion #tword content #tickling #important #important post #free palestine

[drdemonprince]

Hey, I just wanted to thank you for your honesty and willingness to explain how queer spaces can be a lot less transphobic than discourse within the trans community can make it seem. A lot of the past few years for me have been spent closeted out of fear that reactions around me would be uniformly hostile. Things are obviously going to be different for me as a transfem, but I have a much easier time being optimistic now!

I am so glad! Listen, the people who post online all the time about how miserably hard it is to find a place for oneself as a trans person create a kind of reverse survivorship bias. They are the people who have already convinced themselves it's best to forever remain closeted or that forging any kind of accepting community for oneself is impossible. Often, they are also people who once harbored unrealistic fantasies about just strolling up one day into a pre-existing community that was perfect for them, not realizing that we must form our relationships painstakingly one by one (it tends to be the white eggs/unhappy lonely trans people who are most prone to thinking of community in that way). there's plenty of trans guys who are doomers like this too and they really tend to actively encourage one another to remain locked away. it's like incel kind of behavior when it's taken to its most extreme form. sometimes, it can be outwardly really nasty homophobic shit too (especially among "afabs" who complain about "cis gays" never accepting them and being super privileged). in its milder form, it's just extreme trauma brain.

The people you do not hear from so much are the people who are busy out in the world going on dates, acting in plays, getting their asses spanked in dungeons, playing tabletop roleplaying games, and going to farmer's markets with their three also transgender wives. Those are the people who know (that is to say, have learned!) how to interact with their fellow queer people, have spent some time out in the community, and in all likelihood have many rich friendships with cis lesbians, cis gay men, enbies, asexuals, bisexuals, straight ish poly people, and everybody else under our big umbrella.

I don't want to be overly pollyannaish because of course trans people have a tough time, and especially trans women have unfortunately to be on the lookout for really vile transmisogyny. But I think when people are wounded and traumatized by these things, they sometimes make the entire world sound incredibly unwelcoming, which creates a self-limiting feedback loop of isolation and mistrust. That is what trauma does! But it is not the truth. and we only learn otherwise when we give other people the chance to prove our worst fears wrong.

Like, just for an example, this Sunday I was at a silent book club at Dorothy, a gay bar on the west side that skews lesbian but is for everyone. I'd never been there before but it was an absolutely charming experience! Dozens upon dozens of lesbians draped over couches and curled up in chairs with their books, quaffing cocktails, alongside a few random dots of gay and/or trans men. Trans women were just a natural completely unremarkable feature of this environment. I couldn't even tell you how many t girls were there. It would be like counting plus sized girls or butches at this lesbian function. If it's a good lesbian function, there's gonna be a diverse crowd and it won't be weird or a big deal to anyone, they'll just be like any other women there. a lot of the big lesbian events here in Chicago (like Strapped) are organized by trans women, so of course there's a robust trans femme presence there.

And all of these groups at this function were getting laid. the couches were overflowing with women, so many that girls were grabbing pillows to sit on and huddle together with their books on the floor. Girls canoodled and cuddled on couches. I saw a cis alt girl covered in facial piercings flirting with a very prim and proper trans girl who was dressed like a victorian governness. they didnt know one another, but after the silent book club hour was done, they left for a while together, then came back with some food. across from me and my friends, i watched them gathering up on the couch, the space between their bodies slowly closing up into nothing over the course of the evening. they flirted and touched and then left the bar together to (and im no expert on body language but i could pick up on this one) fuck eachothers tits right off.

and of course plenty of other lesbians and wlw paired off or tripled off and had their fun too. again, just like steamworks, fat people, thin people, black and brown people, white people, disabled people, neurodivergent people, trans people, older people, younger people, everybody was there. like any good queer space, it was just a reflection of humanity. there is always more that can be done to make these spaces more broadly accessible to full community. but part of that is by putting ourselves there.

again i dont mean to make it sound like finding and making one's space is easy! especially not for trans women! but I also don't want people to get seduced by the hopeless jadedness that some foment online. there are spaces that some trans women I know will never go to -- even an explicitly trans affirming bookstore like Women and Children First gives many trans women I know bad vibes they cant quite explain but all feel (the store is owned and run by old white cis lesbians, it's not surprising to me that it's a little fucked no matter their good intentions) -- and ive heard people say transmisogynistic stuff at events, particularly from "ill date anybody but cis men" type t boys (my brothers, i hate you). shit can be tough. very tough. but also, the world isn't all uniformly as hostile as it's made out to be. there are people who are desperate to meet you. I hope you will come out to find them.

[jedimaesteryoda]

Where I live three schools attempted to pass measures requiring the teachers to notify the parents if their kids are trans, or basically forcibly outing transgender kids to their parents. Thankfully, there are a large number of people coming out opposing this measure, but unfortunately, the "parents rights" crowd is also coming out in support.

I've argued with people on social media supporting the policy saying the parents should be obligated to be notified if their kids are trans, it is their right. The subject of "parent rights" is actually historically familiar.

Hegel, himself a school principal, was a proponent of universal public education, explicitly saying "The State has the absolute duty to make sure that children receive an education." He noted its value towards society allowing poor families to "rise above their condition" and have the children "develop talents" that would otherwise be stifled by poverty. While his position is pretty much modern, he had his opponents who stated it violated "rights of individuals" specifically "those of fathers over their children."

Hegel criticized such arguments, saying it took from the ancient tradition of Rome that reduced children to "things" and saw the child as the property of their parents when "he must be a member of civil society, has rights and claims within it, just like those he had within the family" and "children have the rights to be educated to live in civil society, and if parents neglect this right, civil society must intervene." In other words, he saw "parents' rights" as reducing children to property with no rights rather than people deserving of their own rights, especially the right to an education.

Let's say CPS comes over and takes kids from a horribly abusive household, would that action be considered bad for violating the rights of the parents to their kids? No, because to do so would come at the cost of the kids' rights to a safe and healthy environment.

Which brings us to the present topic of outing trans kids. The proponents are saying it is the "right" of the parents to be told if their kids are trans regardless of their child's consent. They don't mention the child's right to consent, nor do they care, since it is not about the best interests of the child but the parents' control over their children. If a child has not disclosed their identity to their parents, then it is not unlikely that there is a good reason for it. Their parents may be transphobes, and such parents may respond to the knowledge of their child being trans with abuse, by trying to "fix" them, force them to be cis, up to and including conversion therapy, and in a number of cases kick them out, or the teen runs away with LGBT teens making up around 40% of homeless youth. Both actions can increase the child's chances of suicide with ~30% of trans teen girls admitting to having attempted suicide. In the worst cases, there are parents who kill their trans kids.

A parent is supposed to provide for their child in material terms with food, clothes and housing as well as emotional support, but a parent should not say "I feed and house them, so I have a right to . . ." as parenting is not a contract given kids did not choose to be born. "Parents rights" is BS as parenting is not a right but a privilege. The child is the one with a right to a safe, comfortable environment, and so long as the parent provides them that, their privilege of being a parent is respected.

Children are people. Trans people are people. They are members of civil society, and have a right to consent and safety. Don't support outing trans kids to their parents. Period.

#transgender #trans rights #protect trans kids #trans kids #trans rights are human rights #transgender rights #trans #trans rights matter #hegel

[femmespoiled]

ID: Video that is a stitch made by @professorneil on tiktok.

The person in the video stitched says: "which is that it seems like quite a lot of people, particularly white liberals, will very often take on all these different queer and neurodivergent labels and feel as if they have to be oppressed by something because…”

And the person stitching said video continues by saying: “so, yes, this is absolutely a thing and not only is it a documented sociological phenomenon, but sociologists have come up with a name for it and it’s called the race to innocence and sometimes also the race to the margins, it’s the same thing. Now when Mary Louis Fellows and Sherene Razack coined this term back in 1998, they were thinking mostly about white feminists within the multiracial feminist movements, so bear that in mind as I read from their article, it is more broadly applicable, absolutely, yes, but that is their focus here.”

The person in the video proceeds by quoting from the article mentioned: “When a woman fails to pursue how she is implicated in other women’s lives and retreats to the position that the system that oppresses her the most is the only one worth fighting and that the other systems (systems in which she is positioned as dominant) are not of her concern, she will fail to undo her own subordination. Attempts to change one system while leaving the others intact leaves in place the structure of domination that is made up of interlocking hierarchies.”

The person in the video continues: “So, Fellows and Razack are implicating and critiquing here that the very second wave feminist, white feminist idea that all women share a common struggle, which it is only possible to suggest if you are ignoring the unique oppressions of queer women, women of color, women in poverty, etc. When faced with that challenge, the people who occupy a position of privilege, so in this example, the straight, middle and upper-class, white women will say “That’s not the issue that we’re talking about here, we’re talking here about being women, we’re talking about patriarchy, misogyny.” They will race to innocence; they will race to their own marginalized identity categories in order to avoid admitting that they have power and privilege and are also the oppressor. And, sometimes, that race to innocence is very calculated (in this part the screen in the video shows text that reads: *and defensive!), it is deliberate, it is strategic. I might be avoiding talking about my male privilege, my white privilege, when I am also discussing being a wave slave because I want to preserve those privileges, while attacking the oppression I feel, but it’s, at least, as often, if not more often, something that we are doing reflexively, uncritically. It is easier to claim solidarity, it is easier to feel empathy, if we are doing it from our own position of marginality, it’s easier to speak credibly from a position of oppression and to do so with authority, if you also possess privileges that allow you to appear unbiased, neutral and to do so safely, if afterward you can retreat to a place of privilege. So, it is certainly possible that, at least in part, this explosion of straight, white, cis men leftists claiming neurodivergence is explained by some sort of desire to claim oppression, to build those alliances, to feel that empathy and to access that credibility, but even if it is sincere, it is still dangerous. Of course, it could be strategic and insincere. When you race to innocence, race to the margins, be mindful of the privileges you’re leaving at the center.”

END ID

- Here is the article mentioned in the video, if you want to check it out (in PDF):

The Race to Innocence: Confronting Hierarchical Relations among Women

#b discusses racism #and other marginalized issues #video #btexts #took me a while and i was supposed to do this yesterday so I'm very sorry but here it is #race to innocence #race to the margins

[transhuman-priestess]

The single worst aspect of "good rep/bad rep" as a method of media criticism is that it's perfectly tailored to dovetail with the popular conception of "death of the author" in the absolute worst way.

A trans woman villain written by a trans woman is no longer a way of the author exploring morality and the human condition through a familiar lens, it's "bad rep" and therefore can be discarded out-of-hand without any critical examination.

Meanwhile, a trans woman written by a cis person, who is ancillary to the plot, but without agency, such as a shopkeeper or a bystander, can be considered "good rep" simply by not doing anything. If "representation" is all that matters, then the most moral inclusion of a marginalized identity is one in which that character functions, not as an actual character, but as a prop, an object that exists solely to make the author and the audience feel better about the story being told.

I don't want to write stories with cishet villains and vaguely trans minor characters. I want to write stories about queer people. I don't write every character with the intention of them being trans, but every character I write could be, and when that is the baseline for a story, sometimes characters who are part of my in-group are going to do things which are morally repugnant.

I get it, it's uncomfortable to think of your in-group as containing anything other than "good people", but the world isn't cleanly separated into the morally pure marginalized blorbos and the evil 100% privileged evildoers. But I'm just so tired of every queer character having to be a paragon of pure incorruptible pureness. It's boring, and worse, it's a terrible way to tell a story.

#writing about writing #queer representation #ivy michaels

[motheatenscarf]

Amidst all the James Somerton fallout, I think it's important to remember not to moralize whether or not you or others fell for his grift.

Obviously, if you were rallied into being one of his attack dogs on social media when he put some pretty heinous hits out on people, uh. You might have other problems and should probably evaluate how you spend your time online and how you treat other people before you start caring about the rest of the points I'm about to make. Priorities, etc.

But for the rest of us, it's surprisingly easy to miss just how awful a creator can be.

If you only watched his videos that caught your interest, if you don't really follow creators on social media, if you skip livestreams because watching Some Guy talk unfiltered into a bad camera angle with shitty lighting for hours on end sounds like a fucking nightmare to you, you're not really gonna catch most of this shit. At least, you're not gonna catch most of it from any perspective but the one he tries to spin.

This is a reminder to be skeptical and to trust your gut and check sources if something sounds wrong, but also. Uh. That's still the creator's responsibility not to plagiarize and to fact check their work. You're not morally obligated to be as thorough in curating your experience as someone who is making sure they take every ethical precaution before absolutely destroying a "creator's" credibility in a video like H-Bomb's or Todd in the Shadows'. You're literally just some guy. Most people, myself included, watch these videos as background noise while doing at minimum one other task, you're not gonna google every damn thing he says, especially not on media analysis, where the POINT is to have one's own opinion. THEY'RE the ones trying to be "influencers," or, laughably, "creators." The standards are on them.

And for the isms, phobias, and misogyny, well. Frankly, for my own perspective, I gaslight myself all the damn time when I see red flags. Good Allyship™ has been telling me for years to ignore my own discomfort when someone criticizes a privileged group, especially one I'm a part of. I'm a cis asexual white-passing and probably neuroatypical woman, I am constantly trying to be aware of my own relative privilege while simultaneously doubting my own reaction to things. Despite this, I'd still liked to think I'm a skeptical person, but nobody's immune to everything. Everybody has weak spots.

If you got duped or fell for James' scam, that sucks. I feel ya. I fell for it too, I've seen probably 40% of his catalog over the last couple years and really liked what I'd seen. I recommended his channel and videos to people even if I didn't always agree with every point he made, but it felt important to at least consider what to me seemed like a unique perspective that had value or added to a conversation. There are red flags within his content, his analysis, his rate of publishing, his weird diatribes, that in retrospect, really all added up into things I should have known better than to ignore. But, for reasons I'm interrogating and am adding to my list of things to be aware of about myself, I didn't ignore them, and got grifted. I donated to his patreon a few times, probably gave him like $20 grand total over the years, about as much as I've given H Bomb. The important take away here isn't to be ashamed of the fact that you were fooled, it's to remember that you're fallible.

And it's good to recognize that about yourself. Everyone is, and the ones who say they aren't are lying. They're either gonna be the next person to feel really stupid and foolish when they fall for a scam, or are themselves the grifter.

No one is immune.

#James Somerton

[doberbutts]

One of the things that really confuses me (I'm a cis woman of color) is this doubling down on the idea that Black men aren't oppressed because they're men, they're oppressed because they're Black, gay men aren't oppressed because they're men, they're oppressed because they're gay, trans men aren't oppressed because they're men, they're oppressed because they're trans, etc. It feels like people are being intentionally obtuse. You can't separate my identity as a POC from my identity as a woman. I am treated the way I'm treated because I'm a woman of color, those two things work together. That's where discussions of intersectionality originated. So to say you can separate a privileged identity from an oppressed one is just.... not how anything works?

I constantly see "masculinity isn't criminalized/demonized, Blackness, queerness, transness are" and it's like.... no, that's not how this happens. Marginalized men face specific oppression based on the intersection of their identities. It seems like lately people are willing to understand that for women but not willing to for men and I just don't know how we make any progress if radfem rhetoric has become so pervasive that people are refusing to see lived realities rather than some abstract hypothetical they've come up with.

Personally I think this is due to (white) people seeing and liking black theory that they personally agree with or that makes sense to be applied to their own lives, and then cut out all the parts that are inconvenient for them to have to reconcile. Much like how many, many, many black feminists who are cis women have said "hey, white feminists, stop it with the all men are rapists thing, it actively contributes to black men getting lynched for crimes they didn't commit because it gets weaponized unfairly against our brothers" and white feminists collectively forgot how to read and abandoned their listening skills while still praising other parts of black feminism that talk about domestic violence and sexual assault and oversexualization and reproductive rights and rightly taking black men to task for their continued complacency in this.

The phrase "intersectionality" originated in black feminist theory. I do not trust any white person to fully understand black feminism when they use it as a bludgeon to make the inconvenient bits be quiet. Much of what is on this blog is black feminism. It is inconvenient for white people to have to consider how their words and actions may harm people of color while still lifting themselves up.

As you have said, you cannot separate the "of color" from the "woman" parts of your identity. You are a woman of color. That changes how both sexism and racism works against you in a system that is both sexist and racist. I, in the same manner, cannot separate the "trans" from the "man"- if I were not a man, I would be a woman. I am AFAB, if I am a woman, I am not trans. There is no "you experience this because you are transgender, not because you are a man". In order to be a man, in my body, I have to be transgender*. Just like there is no "you experience this because you are black, not because you are a man". I am a black man. The black experience is inherently, often forcibly, gendered. I can tell you exactly how people treating me changed in a "before" and "after". I can tell you that yes, some of it absolutely stems from the "man" part, they treat me this way because I am a black man.

But people often misunderstand intersectionality to be, exclusively, axis of oppression. And so they say, well learn intersectionality, men aren't oppressed and thus it's not an axis of oppression to combine. But that ignores that some men are oppressed, marginalized men are oppressed and often with a very gendered slant. And it ignores that, like how you cannot separate the "woman" from the "of color", neither can you do that with men.

Men are not the default. They are slightly less than half the population, same as women.

*re: in order to be a man in my body I must be transgender; yes, I am intersex. However I have been out as transgender for 17 years, and discovered I am intersex 6 months ago. So for me, that is very much the case. For other intersex people who were assigned female at birth, that may not be the case. This is something that works on an individual level but cannot be broadbrushed as there are many different opinions among intersex people regarding our cisgender vs transgender status.

[pluckyredhead]

Can you please say more about the Lanterns' politics?

I am so glad you asked me about this because I've been thinking about it since I reblogged that post but also I'm definitely about to get yelled at lol. ANYWAY THIS IS GOING TO BE LONG.

Tl;dr: John is the only one with a coherent political position or an up-to-date voter registration.

Hal:

So something interesting about Hal is that his stories are often very political but his character is not. With one extremely obvious exception, he rarely talks about politics; rather, he serves as a means through which to tell political stories, usually unintentionally.

What do I mean by that? Well, for example, in the Silver Age, his love interest would occasionally be possessed by a misandrist space jewel that would force her to attack him, but always lose because women are inherently inferior to men and prefer to be subjugated by them anyway. That's the original Star Sapphire concept. It's wildly misogynistic, but it doesn't mean Hal the character is misogynistic. But it's also a very political story, even if I don't think the writer was deliberately trying to make a point so much as...being an average, thoughtlessly sexist guy living in the 60s. (Carol continues to be the subject of mindbogglingly sexist writing and art well into the 2000s. Fucking comics.)

And so you have Hal Jordan, whose love life was ruined by his girlfriend getting promoted above him and who called his best friend by a racist nickname for decades; Hal Jordan, poster boy for chest-thumping post-9/11 kneejerk patriotism; Hal Jordan, lightning rod for a certain kind of regressive bigoted fanboyism. Choosing Hal as the Lantern for a particular story over John or Kyle has come to signify something very specific, but none of that is necessarily reflective of what Hal himself believes.

So what about Hal himself? Well, when we first meet him, he's the epitome of privilege: a white, straight, cis, Christian (I know he's canonically half-Jewish now but that's only as of the past decade or so), ablebodied, upper middle class (Geoff Johns retconned him to have a working class background, but in the Silver Age, he had one uncle who was a millionaire, another who was a judge, and a successful politician brother) man with a flashy job. Privilege tends to lean Republican; even if he is from California, I suspect Hal voted for Eisenhower in 1956.

In GL/GA, the word "Republican" isn't used to my recollection, but Hal is definitely presented as...I'm going to say conservative by I mean lower-case C. He doesn't have deeply held political beliefs, but he's traditional. He doesn't question the system, because he's never had to. He resists things that challenge the way he's always understood the world works, and that's very relatable - most people do! And he will absolutely argue with Ollie, who certainly isn't always right about everything. But he's also willing to listen, and have his mind changed, and certainly reachable via appeals to compassion and fairness.

Once the "relevance" trend of the late 60s-early 70s was over, Hal's stories default back to ostensibly politically neutral, although obviously nothing is actually politically neutral. In the late 80s and early 90s he's the most unpleasant version of himself, and that has political manifestations, like when he allows John to be imprisoned in apartheid South Africa for a ridiculous and unnecessary crime Hal himself committed. It's extremely fucked up, but again, it's less because of Hal's actual opinions and more because Christopher Priest wanted to write about apartheid, even if it does make Hal look incredibly, horrifically racist.

Then jump to the mid-2000s and Green Lantern: Rebirth, and you might imagine that losing his hometown, getting possessed by a giant space bug, becoming a supervillain, dying, and becoming the embodiment of God's vengeance might have some effect on Hal's politics, but that is not what Geoff Johns is here to write. Johns is writing a Hal who teleported in from, like, 1967 - no nuance allowed. He's a summer blockbuster that walks like a man. He's a Baja Blast. He's never had a coherent political thought in his life. In his defense, he has had more and goofier concussions than any superhero I can think of and his brain is smooth like an egg. Still.

Anyway, all of this is to say that I think Hal tends to default to center right positions but can be easily coaxed over to center left. That said, he has never not once in his life had his shit together enough to vote in a single election, not even for his own brother.

Guy:

So Guy's deal is a little bit complicated because his most vocally political era was also in part due to severe and personality-altering brain damage.

When Guy was originally introduced in the 1960s, he had the pleasantly bland personality of all superheroes. Many years later, he suffered a series of major injuries, torture, and a lengthy coma, and he emerged from the coma in 1985 with the aggressive, abrasive personality he's best known for today. Justice League International took that even further, using him to parody the jingoistic, red-blooded American action hero of the 80s.

This version of Guy is a vocal fan of Ronald Reagan and despises the USSR. He's pro-war, proudly xenophobic, and treats women badly enough that it crosses the line into repeated sexual harassment, both physical and verbal. (To be fair...ish, this last also applies to Wally West and arguably a number of other men, and was always played for laughs. It was gross all around.)

Again, this is partially a manifestation of his brain damage. There's also a running gag in JLI where if he gets hit on the head, his personality changes to this cloying, timid, gentle one, sort of halfway between a child and a flamboyant gay stereotype. Hit him again and he goes back to Asshole Guy. I'm not going to pretend I don't find some of the gags funny, but it's obviously all highly problematic, and not just from a medical standpoint.

That said, I don't think we can dismiss Guy's politics or his usual personality as simply a manifestation of brain damage. We see in later flashbacks that he developed the abrasiveness as a defense mechanism from growing up in an abusive home, and as he matures through the 90s, he doesn't actually become a significantly different person, even after his Vuldarian healing factor kicks in and heals his brain. (It's a thing.) I think it's more accurate to say that the brain damage probably affected his impulse control, his filter, and arguably even his paranoia levels.

All of which is to say that as much as I would love to go "Guy's better now, so he's not a Republican!"...that dog won't hunt. I think a really good canon writer could make the case that Guy is pro-union-style working class and also a former teacher so he's at least center left, but as of now canon evidence is pretty firmly on the red side. It doesn't help that the GLC has been written as fetishistically pro-cop and pro-military since Johns got his grubby hands all over it. I will happily ignore the New 52 retcon that Guy was a cop, and you could even try to argue that he dislikes cops because his brother was a corrupt cop who became a supervillain, but I think it's much more likely that he identifies with cops as a Corps member. Although I don't think he would have any patience for killer cops. ("You were afraid for your life even though you were the only one with a weapon? Then fucking quit, coward.")

All of that said, I think Guy is similar to Hal: defaults to center right, can be talked into center left on certain issues but he's more stubborn about it. (They would also both be enraged by Jan 6 and disgusted by the current Republican party - I can't quite argue that Guy Gardner is a Democrat but Green Lanterns don't have any patience for traitors or cowards.) It's also kind of a moot point because he never knows what is happening on Earth and hasn't voted since his pre-coma days.

John:

Oh John Stewart, thank god for you.

John was introduced as an explicitly political character in an explicitly political story. The first time we see him, he's stepping in to defend Black men from a white cop, citing his own knowledge of the law to do so. He shows a much more perceptive and informed perspective on the issue's main plot (a racist senator running for president) than Hal does. Even in the little moment above, we see that he's sensitive to exactly what it means for him, a Black man, to be taking on this role.

None of this is a surprise, since we'll later learn that John's parents were civil rights activists. Not only would he not have had the privilege Hal and Guy did to assume his existence was politically neutral, he was explicitly educated about political realities and progressive advocacy from childhood. He's well-informed, he's passionate, and he's going to tell you when you are being fucking stupid.

John isn't immune from the GL cop/military...thing, although I can't blame Johns for that - it was the cartoon that made him a Marine, and the comics followed suit. But that's never outweighed his origin or his upbringing. Like, he's friends with the DCU's fictional version of Nelson Mandela.

This one is straightforward: John is a staunch progressive. He is, however, in outer space 90% of the time, so he's always at least a little bit out of date. I imagine every time he comes back to Earth he spends the first 24 hours watching the news in abject horror.

Kyle:

Kyle doesn't talk about politics a lot, but when he does, he lands pretty much where you'd expect a young California-born artist living in New York City to land: to the left. My read on Kyle is that he hasn't really thought any of his politics through, which makes sense - he's a character who is led by emotion over reason every time. He doesn't have John's carefully thought-through arguments or knowledge of the law behind him. I feel like when something political upsets him, he's more likely to splutter angrily than make a coherent argument (which: same). When he's given the time to think things through and speak from the heart, though, he can be very eloquent, like in his speech to Terry after Terry accidentally comes out to him.

It's also worth pointing out that his solo appearances were mostly in the 90s, which were prone to avoiding politics or only addressing them in a halfhearted both sides-y way like the story above.

That said, I don't think he ever actually does anything about his political opinions. He never votes in midterm or primary elections, and probably only voted in a presidential one because Alex dragged him along one time. I feel like Donna tried to do the same when they were dating and that was when Kyle realized he'd forgotten to change his voter registration from California to New York. Jennie wasn't responsible enough to Mom him into doing his civic duty, and he's been in space pretty much nonstop ever since, so...

Simon:

In that other post, I said Simon's experiences should have radicalized him, but instead he was created by Geoff Johns. Simon is a Muslim, Lebanese-American man who came of age in the post-9/11 era, and was wrongfully convicted of terrorism and waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay. His reaction to this was...to put on a ski mask and wave a gun around. Like, it's been a while since I've read these issues, but aside from the "ripped from the headlines!!!" of it all, I feel like Simon's experiences largely don't inform his actions or perspective except that he's super angry (fair enough).

The thing about Simon (and Jessica) is that he hasn't been around very long, and most comics don't have characters directly expressing political opinions. It's not a coincidence that these characters are in chronological order and each write-up is shorter than the last. I can think of about three times where Kyle has ever said anything I can interpret as political, and he's been around for 30 years. Simon only has a third of that history. So while one could certainly extrapolate what Simon's opinions are likely to be, I can't think of any canon where he actually says them.

Jessica:

Jessica has even less to go on in terms of explicitly political comics. You'd think she wouldn't like guns because of what happened to her friends, but she has one of her own and doesn't seem bothered by Simon's. I'd imagine she has opinions on immigration as someone whose family is from Mexico and Honduras, but it never comes up. If I were writing for DC, I'd make both Simon and Jess leftists, but as for actual canon proof? I got nothing.

I will say that she probably avoids political discussions because anxiety, and I bet she got really good at voting by mail during her years not leaving the house. She probably votes by mail from space. Maybe John's not the only one with an up-to-date voter registration.

Kilowog:

#green lantern #hal jordan #guy gardner #john stewart #kyle rayner #simon baz #jessica cruz #meta