#also I’ve seen some serious radfem/terf talking points | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stickandthorn · 3 years

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I’m gonna be honest, I’m a little uncomfortable with how immediately and fervently people are shipping Imogen and Laudna together, and it’s not because of the ship itself. In fact if they choose to do a romance I’d actually like it a lot. No, the main reasons why I’m uncomfortable are:

1) Laura’s characters always get treated as shipping objects. Every time. Both Vex and Jester got treated far more as a pawn in some pc romance instead of their own separate characters with their own goals and story, and then when they did something that wasn’t in line with what the fandom wanted they’d infantilize the character or demean Laura’s choices to all hells, being extremely shitty to that character, all under the guise of loving Laura and her character. So when she makes Imogen and the first thing people do is instantly ship her, I get uncomfortable. It’s not even the ship itself, it’s that literally 98% of the content I see for Imogen pertains to shipping her with Laudna. There’s almost nothing about just Imogen, it’s all in relation to Laudna. There’s content for Laudna not relating to Imogen, but not the other way around. It just makes me so annoyed to see her character once again being treated not as an individual with their own shit going on but as a piece of a ship right out of the gate.

2) I hate the weird pressure for Marisha and Laura to have a romantic relationship between pcs. I get there’s some dynamics you want to see between specific players, that’s great, but when it’s say Sam and Liam people want to see romance each other it’s always a very chill, “hey the husbands should finally be husbands” thing, but when it’s Marisha and Laura, there’s an actual, legitimate pressure from some parts of the fandom. I’ve seen people say this is Laura’s master plan to finally romance Marisha, or that they owe a romance to the fandom because of not making Beaujester happen (which is disgusting imo no one owes you any sort of romance in any form that they don’t want to do it), or that they’re obviously setting up a romance right now, or that it’s about time the two of them did a romance and finally they’re doing it omg. And as someone who’s roughly a woman, or at least fem presenting, who’s been pressured into romances in ttrpg settings, it’s a very, very uncomfortable place to be. So to see that happening with Marisha and Laura, to see people expecting or demanding they do a ship together, making conspiracy theories about how they’re definitely gonna romance each other, and then feeling like it’s a betrayal when they don’t (spoilers it isn’t), that just makes me deeply uncomfortable. Like I said, I don’t hate the ship itself. I think the characters are cute together and I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with shipping it, and if it does pan out in game I’ll be happy, I just don’t like the baggage that goes along with it in fandom.

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idreamtofmanderleyagain · 4 years

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Five years ago, the women on this site who treated me like trash over loving Labyrinth and shipping Jareth/Sarah were almost always obliviously consuming Radfem propaganda, or were out and out Radfems/Terfs themselves.

They were the types of people who casually threw the word “pedophile” around against grown women who shipped an adult Sarah with Jareth, aka literally one of the most popular ships for women in fandom for 30 years.

Pretty much invariably, these women had serious sex-negative anxieties, which included a severe paranoia about any and all kink and fetish, and porn in general. I saw a lot of shocking, fear-mongering propaganda surrounding sexual expression. Pretty much invariably, their method of approach involved immediate personal shock-value attacks on anyone they perceived to be “bad.”

Today, you can look at the way some people react to other popular so-called “problematic” ships and recognize the same toxic, fear-mongering rhetoric coming from women who consider themselves regular, trans-inclusive feminists. Sometimes it even manifests in the words of very well-meaning people (including myself here), who feel the need to talk about specific issues that pertain to their own experiences of trauma and oppression.

The people who shit on Labyrinth often seem to not really be able to comprehend that the Goblin King, like the film itself, is canonically a representation of a teen girl’s psyche, a soup of fears and anxieties and desires and dreams. He’s not a literal human adult preying on a literal child, and to read the film that way seriously undermines the entire point of the film.

When I (and people of many fandoms) say “This is fiction, calm down,” I’m not just saying it’s not real so it cant hurt you and you can’t criticize me. I’m trying to call attention to what fiction actually is - artistic representations of feelings and experiences. The Goblin King is Sarah’s fiction. Therefore, he can be anything she or any woman who identifies with her wants him to be, including her lover when she’s grown and ready for such a thing.

I once took an alarming dive into Beetlejuice fandom to see what content was there (the cartoon was a favorite when I was little). Chillingly, what you’ll find is an extremely wounded fanbase, with a sharp divide between the older women who had long been shipping BJ/Lydia because of their love for the cartoon series (and whom were previously the vast majority of the Beetlejuice fandom), and a massive amount of young people riding the wave of the musical fad who had decided that the entire old school Beetlejuice fandom was populated by literal pedophiles.

I saw death threats. Suicide baiting. Constant, constant toxic discourse. It did not matter how the BJ/Lydia fandom dealt with any particular issues that would exist in their ship, in fact I’m certain that the people abusing them cared very little to even consider if they were trying to handle it at all. The only thing that mattered was that they were disgusting subhuman scum asking for abuse. If you have at any time reblogged recent Beetlejuice fan art or content from fans of the musical, you have more than likely been engaging positively with the content of someone participating in toxic fandom behavior.

Nobody is really sticking up for them, either, as far as I saw. It’s really hard to imagine how painful it must be to have such a large group of people explode into into your relatively private fandom space to tell you that you are evil, vile, and deserve constant abuse, and also you are no longer allowed into the fandom space to engage in it’s content. But I think there’s something very alarming indeed about this happening specifically to the BJ fandom, and I’ll explain why.

The pop-culture characterization of Beetlejuice, which is heavily influenced by the cartoon series to be clear, has always in my mind been a vaguely ageless being who matches with the psychological maturity of whatever age Lydia is supposed to be. He’s more or less like an imaginary friend, a manifestation of Lydia’s psyche. In fact, I would argue that i think most of us who grew up with the cartoon or it’s subsequent merchandizing before the musical ever existed probably internalized the idea as BJ and Lydia as this ageless, salt-and-pepper-shaker couple beloved by the goth community, similar to Gomez and Morticia. In each version of canon he may be a creepy ghost in the literal sense, but any adult who is capable of identifying literary tropes (even just subconciously) would read cartoon!BJ as an artistic representation of a socially awkward outcast girl’s inner world. Lydia’s darker dispositions and interests, which alienate her from most others, are freely accepted and embraced by her spooky magical friend. BJ/Lydia in the cartoon were depicted as best friends, but to my memory there was always an underlying sense that they had secret feelings for each other, which I identified easily even as a small child. In fact, their dynamic and behavior perfectly reflected the psychological development of the show’s target demographic. They are best friends who get into adventures and learning experiences together, who have delicate feelings for each other but lack any true adult romantic/sexual understanding to acknowledge those feelings, let alone pursue them.

Though I haven’t seen the Musical yet, I’ve read the wiki and I would argue that it embodies this exact same concept even more so for it’s own version of the characters, in that Beetlejuice specifically exists to help Lydia process her mother’s death.

This is not a complicated thing to recognize and comprehend whatsoever. In fact, it looks downright blatant. It’s also a clear indicator of what BJ/Lydia means to the women who have long loved it. It was a story about a spooky wierd girl being loved and accepted and understood for who she was, and it gave them a sense of solidarity. It makes perfect sense why those women would stick with those characters, and create a safe little space for themselves to and imagine their beloved characters growing and having adult lives and experiencing adult drama, in just the same ways that the women of the Labyrinth fandom do. That’s all these women were doing. And now, they can’t do it without facing intense verbal violence. That safe space is poisoned now.

Having grown up with the cartoon as one of my favorites and been around goth subculture stuff for decades, I was actually shocked and squicked at the original Beetlejuice film’s narrative once I actually saw it, because it was extremely divorced from what these two characters had evolved into for goth subculture and what they meant to me. It’s not telling the same story, and is in fact about the Maitland's specifically. In pretty much exactly the same way two different versions of Little Red Riding Hood can be extremely different from each other, the film is a different animal. While I imagine that the film version has been at the heart of a lot of this confused fear-mongering around all other versions of the characters, I would no more judge different adaptations of these characters any more than I would condemn a version of Little Red in which Red and the Wolf are best friends or lovers just because the very first iteration of LRRH was about protecting yourself from predators.

I would even argue that the people who have engaged in Anti-shipper behavior over BJ/Lydia are in intense denial over the fact that BJ being interested in Lydia, either as blatant predatory behavior a la the film or on a peer level as in the cartoon (and musical?) is an inextricable part of canon. Beetlejuice was always attracted to Lydia, and it was not always cute or amusing. Beetlejuice was not always a beloved buddy character, an in fact was originally written as a gross scumbag. That’s just what he was. Even people engaging with him now by writing OC girlfriends for him (as stand-ins for the salt-and-pepper-shaker space Lydia used to take up, because obviously that was part of the core fun of the characters), or just loving him as a character, are erasing parts of his character’s history in order to do so. They are actively refusing to be held responsible for being fans of new version of him despite the fact that he engaged in overt predatory behavior in the original film. In fact, I would venture to say that they are actively erasing the fact that Musical Beetliejuice tried to marry a teenager and as far as I’m aware, seemed to like the idea (because he’s probably a fucking figment of her imagination but go off I guess). The only reason they can have a version of this character who could be perceived as “buddy” material is because...the cartoon had an impact on our pop cultural perception of what the character and his dynamic with Lydia is.

We can have a version of the Big Bad Wolf who’s a creepy monster. We can have a version who’s sweet and lovable. We can have a version that lives in the middle. We can have a version who’s a hybrid between Red and the Wolf (a la Ruby in OUAT). All of these things can exist in the same world, and can even be loved for different reasons by the same people.

I’ve been using Beetlejuice as an example here because it’s kind of perfect for my overall point regarding the toxic ideologies in fandom right now across many different spaces, including ones for progressive and queer media, and how much so many people don’t recognize how deeply they’ve been radicalized into literalist and sex-negative radfem rhetoric, to the point where we aren’t allowed to have difficult, messy explorations of imperfect, flawed humans, and that art is never going to be 100% pure and without flaw in it’s ability to convey what it wants to convey.

This includes the rhetoric I’ve seen across the board, from She-Ra to A:TLA to Star Wars to Lovecraft Country. We don’t talk about the inherent malleable, subjective, or charmingly imperfect nature of fiction any more. Transformation and reclamation are myths in this space. Everything is in rigid categories. It is seemingly very difficult for some of these people to engage with anything that is not able to be clearly labeled as one thing or another (see the inherent transphobic and biphobic elements of the most intense rhetoric). They destroy anything they cannot filter through their ideology. When women act in a way that breaks from their narrative of womanhood (like...not having a vagina), then those women must be condemned instead of understood. Anything that challenges them or makes them uncomfortable is a mortal sin. There is an extraordinary level of both hypocrisy and repressive denial that is underlying the behavior I’m seeing now. Much like toxic Christian conservatism, these people often are discovered engaging in the same behaviors and interests that they condemn behind closed doors (or just out of sheer cognitive dissonance). As an example, one of the people who talked shit to me about Labyrinth was a huge fan of Kill La Kill, which to my knowledge was an anime about a teenage girl in like, superpowered lingere (hence why I stayed the fuck away from that shit myself). Indeed, they even allow themselves plenty of leeway for behavior far worse than they condemn others for, and create support systems for the worst of their own abusers.

Quite frankly, I’m tired. Instead of talking about theoretical problematic shit, we need to start talking about quantifiable harm. Because as far as I can tell, the most real, immediate, and quantifiable harm done because of anybody’s favorite ships or pieces of media seems to consistently be the kind that’s done to the people who experience verbal violence and abuse and manipulation and suicide baiting and death threats from the people who have a problem.

#Beetlejuice #Labyrinth #toxic fandom

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genderfluidlucifer · 3 years

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Response to being asked to give an opinion on Connie’s calout by residentevil-4

(Tw: CSAM, rape fic, incest fic, predatory behavior, racism, ableism, kink mention, nsfw mentions. Minors should probably dni.)

“Connie and I know each other irl and went to school together for 3 years, although they now live in a different state and have cut contact with me. We went to a private therapy school in Manhattan as we're both disabled and were deemed unable to attend public school. Even though we were pretty close, Connie didn't like having photos taken of them, so I don't have any selfies of the two of us; however, these are from our sophomore and senior yearbooks which at least confirms that we were in the same year at school. People who have seen Connie's selfies should be able to confirm that that is what they look like. First and foremost, Connie is not TMA. They are intersex and the two of us have discussed intersex issues both in person and online, but they are still decidedly CAFAB.” Ok so first off, I want to address this part of the callout. To be honest...was it really necessary to literally doxx Connie ehre? Because this textbook definition of doxxing. Yes Connie’s done some shitty things but I freally don’t think that what they’ve done warrants this level of doxxing. Or...even better, any doxxing. This feels like a really unnecessary breach of privacy, revealing sensitive information on Connie’s childhood that they choose to confide in you with. I really don’t agree with this aspect of the callout as it feels very invasive and bordering on stalkerish. Btw when I say bordering on stalkerish I’m not directly calling you a stalker Bonnie. Just so we’re clear. I am not defending Connie supposedly faking being TMA. Because faking being TMA is a very serious issue. HOWEVER since I don’t know Connie irl and to be quite frank it’s none of my business what the nature of their agab is. Were not close and I’m certainly not going to like lead Connie onto thinking we’re friends just to confirm this with them because that would be creepy. So to be honest I’m going to take this part of the callout with again of salt for now.

[ID: A cropped screenshot of a numbered list Connie posted to their blog hadrosaurs in response to an ask.

“3. I’m TMA And that’s completely irrelevant. I’m not accusing them because of their gender I didn’t even know their gender when they said that to me saying that they said that because they fucking said that and the reaction to it was incredibly alarming. Don’t fucking say that stuff to people.]

I mean I”m not a trans woman so take this with a grain of salt if you want but...I don’t see how this is really proof of Connie being deliberately transmisogynistic? Yes Connie gives iffy retellings of mistakes they’ve made in the past. I’ve seen that on their blog before and I won’t pretend it doesn’t happen. BUT here they sound genuine enough and to be honest a growing issue I’ve seen with callouts as of late is. A person confirms they in fact did not do the thing they were called out for. And then the people who make the callout choose to see it as proof of incriminating behavior anyways. To be honest it’s a big problem and it’s also incredibly unfair to the person being called out. If you’re so determined at that point to see the person as bigoted no matter what they say then of course anything they say can be seen as proof. So I’m going to have to pass on this bit of evidence. “Connie responded: “Final note: I have spoken extensively with several trans women about using TMA to describe myself. I will not be getting into discourse about that on this blog again. All that leads to is people demanding my medical records and calling me slurs. If you wanna have a thoughtful conversation about it direct message me cause it’s not happening again here.” Again this really doesn’t seem all that self incriminating. Connie mentions here that they’ve talked to rl trans woman about whether or not they can be considered TMA. Connie really doesn’t have to disclose that personal information to people for any reason. Yes even when people are e including this ask response in a callout. And considering lots of people DO get invasive about Connie’s medical history ans general personal life over matters like this? I feel their reaction is pretty understandable here. “Connie has constantly compared “exclusionists” (or anyone, really) to TERFs, even when the people in question are not transmisogynistic, trans exclusionary radfems, or are even transmisogyny affected themselves.

“ Gonna have to disagree with this part of the callout too. Lots of ace inclus blogs, even some run by trans women , have proven that the ace exclus movement was started by swerfs/terfs. But the blog that has the most evidence for this is courteousmingler on tumblr. I suggest you check out that blog’s archiving of the history of ace exclus rhetoric before rushing to call me a transmisogynist for disagreeing with this part of the callout. I looked through all of the evidence for Connie being racist and tbh as a black ndn it all feels incredibly flimsy. It’d be one thing if Connie was using their experiences to derail and invalidate the discussions about how black people are oppressed But they weren’t doing that there at all. This part of the post feels incredibly biased. And like OP is looking for things to be mad about. Going to have to pass on this list of evidence. Also uh I seem to recall that residentevil04 got called out for some questionable behavior as well. “Both me (insepsy, hi) and ezrat have had really weird spikes in activity on our Statcounters, both on the same day. (Saturday, 4/17/21) For both of us, majority of the pages looked at by these visitors have been related to or about Connie, or have been posts that Connie would find "problematic" such as the f slur untagged or something related to "panphobia"/aphobia. I’m sorry but...none of the proof of cyberstalking holds any water. Visiting someone’s blogs and rbing posts to disagree with them is not cyberstalking. Keeping tabs on urls that an abusive person who has harassed are using so you can block them (in this case with kyoshi) and warn your mutuals is not stalking. As a victim of rl stalking it’s...really weird to call this legit stalking at all. Much less claim that you have damning proof of it being stalking when no such evidence exists in the callout. Besides after Connie and nonbinarydave called out one of kyoshi’s buddies for sending a death threat hate anon to nonbinarydave’s toddler st4lker partly admitted to doing it a few times. Then other mutuals in kyoshi’s toxic social circle clearly began joining in. Making side accounts where they tried to spin a false narrative of nonbinarydave’s daughter being one of their alters (ableist as hell.) And also trying to do it in such a way that they thought would trigger nonibnarydave’s psychosis (also ableist as hell.) If you’re going to drag Connie for their mistakes and never let them move on from those mistakes then it’s only fair to do that to people you agree with who also do toxic/bigoted things. ALso the fact that your wording here suggests that you think panphobia and aphobia aren’t real makes me doubt this claim even more. Exclus and their allies are notorious for mislabeling inclus disagreeing with them as stalking. “connie said that they would release that info at a later time and the minor began to argue with them that they had a responsibility regardless of their complicated relationship with age. in this argument connie for a time kept their age ambiguous and at one point told the minor (who confirmed in a later ask that they were severely traumatized by adults) that they obviously weren’t traumatized. connie quickly deleted this ask and any mentions of it and the next post they reblogged was about how wrong it was to try and quantify or discount others’ trauma. on my old blog i @ed them in the replies and asked if they had just done that. connie admitted to it and said it was fucked up but quickly blocked + deleted my comment. i can’t remember whether or not connie apologized to the minor, they may have? but yeah. i thought that was pretty weird.”] I do agree with some of the concern here that adults shouldn’t over expose minors in discourse. I’ve been contemplating this for awhile myself. And trying to figure out how to take better steps to avoid including minors who are triggered by discourse in discourse, especially. HOWEVER I have one little issue with this addition to the callout. If that is the case then exclus and their allies need to practice this as well. You cannot ignore the fact that the reason a lot of minors are getting involved in exclus discourse is due to adult exclus and their allies forcing minors to pick a side in the discourse. Y’all are not at all exempt from this problem. I still remember an ex mutual of mine trying to convince a minor to agree that aces can’t face corrective rape. And based on how aggressive it got with me when I tried to avoid giving an opinion on the matter, I can’t imagine that it would’ve reacted better to the minor refusing to give an opinion or to the minor outright disagreed. Refusing to put these standards on exclus and their allies is both hypocritical and quite frankly very transparent. The claims about them glorifying dark topics on AO3 through their fics also seems unfortunately legit. I mean those asks of shaming people who ask their viewers to not romanticize or glorify abusive relationships in their works is very damning. I’m very disappointed to see that Connie has taken being an inclus to the point of validating antis anti culture wholeheartedly. I can’t think of much more to add to my opinion on that part of the callout. As for the issue of Connie interacting with pro shippers in the past, I do know that this claim is legit. I’ve seen it before and so has Breeze. This was why for a brief time we decided to stop following their blogs. Because it was triggering to have pro shippers put on our dash. And sometimes we just don’t feel it’s worth it to always let people we’re platforming know they’re rbing triggering stuff. So sometimes we just quietly unfollow and choose to not interact until we’re sure they’re filtering what they do and don’t rb in some way. I definitely don’t agree with that behavior. And if they’re still doing that I”ll deplatform again. “The anon asks: “A weird question but do you know any other stimboard blogs with your follow criteria? (No radfems, racists, fandom antis, etc.) I was hoping to find more through your “similar blogs” but a lot have no anti-antis for their DNI or allow truscum/transmeds and exclus. :(“

The user responds: “I know of @turtle-pond-stims, @outofangband, and @kinaesthetics! 🍂🍄" “[ID: A cropped screenshot of an ask sent by Connie from their now-deactivated blog, butch-with-a-tortoise.

Connie says: “hey anon I have safe stim blogs. dm me if you want them. And radfems/bigots aren’t allowed to interact. For my own safety (because the community is honestly terrifying) I can’t publicly say on my blogs that I’m safe for proshippers/kinky people but I try to spread word how I can.”] [ID: Screenshot of a post by evilwriter37, which reads, “I’ve been seeing posts about fandom police leaving ao3, and it’s like: Good. We don’t want you here anyway. Go find your own fanfiction site.”

The post is tagged “#Fandom #AO3 #Antis #Purity Culture” and has 87 notes. It was posted on December 21st, 2020.

There is a reply from main-to-outofangband-andothers saying: “there are Silm antis on that site who are against Russigon (Maedhros and Fingon) not because they’re cousins but because they’re both male (coded)”] [ID: A screenshot of an anonymous (though signed off as being from outofangband) ask sent to evilwriter37, which says, “Melkor and Viggo solidarity is ‘Look there’s nothing wrong with keeping my enemy chained up in my personal chambers at all times so please just focus on the war efforts and I’ll focus on the boy* in my chambers’ -@outofbangand.

*boy used figuratively @ antis”

The user responds: “Pfft!!! Hahaha! You’re absolutely right! (And Viggo does refer to Hiccup in canon as ‘my boy’).”] I can’t really say anything to refute this. Because these are all posts of Connie outright stating that they disagree with antis. And not only sympathize with anti antis but are fully against antis. Looks like very damning evidence. Although ngl I’m not entirely against kinky blogs as a whole? Just so long as they truly stay in their lane with their kink content. And don’t force it on others in any way. Or shame people who are triggered by their kinks. It is true that being entirely against kinky blogs no matter what is dipping your toes into swerf rhetoric. Tbh I’m not going to look at the rest. This is pretty much all I need to make a decision on whether or not I”ll continue platforming Connie. Though I will try to get some more perspective from people who I interact with as well. Because I feel better about making a more definitive decision after doing that. Also in general please don’t not try to get an opinion from me on how I feel about syscourse. A lot of the claims about Connie’s age weirdness and them using their alters as a shield feel like syscourse to me. Especially if this callout was written by one or several singlets. Singlets should never be trying to judge how legit someone’s system is ever. Even if their system friends encourage them to. You can call out a horrible person with a system without trying to insinuate that they’re lying about their alters in some way. Doing otherwise is ableist ESPECIALLY if you’re a singlet. Also in general the reason I stay out of discussions of judging how someone is handling their systems is because it’s syscourse and syscourse is triggering for my system and I. If this post was an attempt to get me to give an opinion on the validity of Connie’s system I don’t appreciate it. And I would appreciate not being dragged into such matters again, thank you.

In general there’s like a few parts of this callout that feel legit. Which is unfortunately cluttered with obvious bias and obsessive hatred of Connie. I’m not here to stan or coddle Connie. I know they are not a perfect person. Especially since no human being in the world is perfect. But I feel the way this callout was created was very sloppy since a lot of the evidence was messy at best. And some points were very hypocritical as well as there being some no true scotsman moments from OP. In acting like exclus never do any of the thing that they tried to call out Connie for. Which is behavior that I am not a fan of. This is why people need to be more careful about callouts and like make roughdrafts and have a more unbiased person helping them if they don’t feel they can do it on their own. I’m even trying to make a resolve to do better at that myself. So it’s not like I’m unwilling to put my money where my mouth is. Anyways those are all my thoughts on this messy callout. And tbh I’m not going to get too much more heavily involved in this. Because I need to focus on more immediately serious rl stuff more often, like doing what I can to get out of the hellish landscape of a house I currently am stuck in.

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bumblingbitchcraft · 5 years

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Sorry about all these posts about "male witch pride" it's just that I've been getting kinda upset lately about how much hate there is towards male witches.... I've been here for a while mostly observing, reblogging tips and whatnot mostly keeping to myself because up until now the most discourse I've seen is about which type of crystal/herb is best for what. But this is just a whole other level of wtf, like c'mon really?

Let's be honest, historically, hundreds of men and women were tried and killed on the accusation of witchcraft and no amount of denying or trying to word it like "oh but women were the main focus and it wasn't just about witchcraft" can change that fact. Also, not to mention you're taking something serious and arguing about things that are barely related to the entire point if the whole thing. Like you do realize we're talking about a tragic event in which people were killed right? Why do we have to turn something like this into discourse, that in the grand scheme of things means literally nothing?

This argument needs to be based on fact if it's going to happen at all and a lot of people don't have all the facts. A lot of the pushback against male witches comes from the modern Americanized version of witch trials which is mostly focused on the women affected. But if you look at it globally (which all history should be), there are some places in which men were the main target (Scandinavian countries mostly I believe) and others it was women. However, none of this changes the fact that men have always been a part of witchcraft just as much as women have.

I know a lot of radfems/terfs/etc will try to say that "women own witchcraft" and this is what I'll say about that; I know that you believe that this is another instance of men trying to claim something that doesn't belong to them. You believe that witchcraft is a woman's sacred space to break out of the box given to you by evil men. Well guess what? Witchcraft doesn't belong to anyone it is a thing accessible to everyone because everyone regardless of gender, sexuality, race, religion, etc has the ability within them to connect with the world on a higher level every single person is innately able to become a witch.

I won't be able to change their minds but that's okay because that isnt the point of this. And in reality it doesn't matter what a handful of other witches think. I know that my craft is valid and valuable.

The point is, no amount of arguing can change history and no amount of discourse can stop something that's already happened.

The point is we, as witches, are supposed to support each other and lift each other up. We're supposed to work together and break out of preconceived gender stereotypes and divides not play into the Hollywood definition of what a witch is.

The point is, it's 2019 this is not the time to be having an argument that belongs in the 1950s. Arguing about what gender should be allowed to do what is completely above us.

The point is, as witches I thought (hoped) we were better than this and in all honesty, I'm disappointed in our community for that.

- a slightly pissed but mostly disappointed male Witch.

#male witch #discourse #long post #rant #witchcraft #witchblr #witches #baby witch #ecletic witch #i'm gettin real tired of this shit #y'all making it into something it never needed to be #can reblog

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freedom-of-fanfic · 6 years

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radfem lite(tm) and tumblr discourse

identifying radfem dog whistles: that is, radfem ideology when it’s not obviously and blatantly transphobic or anti-sex worker

nobody likes TERFs or SWERFs - or so we like to think, even if we don’t entirely know it means to be a terf or swerf. but the truth is that radical feminism - the overarching worldview that contains within it both TERF and SWERF ideology - is fairly widespread and even popular here on tumblr. it’s just that most of the time it’s not identified as being radfem/terf/swerf rhetoric unless the transphobia (or anti-sex-worker sentiment) is blatant and open.

this is the first of a series of posts intended to help fellow people on tumblr identify and understand what I call ‘radfem lite’ - radfem rhetoric that is not obviously transphobic or anti-sex-work, but naturally points one towards becoming a radical feminist (that is, abandoning intersectional feminism, eroding belief in free will (particularly in regards to consent), embracing binarist thinking & gender essentialism, and denying or belittling all forms of societal oppression that are not directly related to misogyny.)

radfem lite rhetoric is frequently a ‘dog whistle’ as well - a phrase or word that has more than one meaning depending on who hears or reads it. non-radfems hear one thing; radfems and their targets hear another. those who become radfems or radfem targets eventually become familiar with the true meaning of the dog whistle word or phrase, but the majority of those who spread it have no idea what they’re really ‘saying’.

some of the things I’ll post about will have overlap with other types of exclusionist thinking, or will have been adopted by those who aren’t radfems so widely that it might seem absurd that it has radfem roots. I’ll try to be clear about why I am attributing a concept to radical feminism when I introduce it.

some things will also have some grain of ‘truth’ to it - the reason why the radfem lite concept seems reasonable to non-radfems. I’ll try to identify that grain of truth, and dismantle or demystify why the reasoning built around it is faulty.

Why am I doing this?

the first and most obvious reason is the number of ‘OP was a terf so I stole this post’ headers i’ve seen that are followed by a post loaded with radfem lite rhetoric. many, many people on tumblr know that terfs (and swerfs) are bad, but don’t know why or can’t identify terf rhetoric if it isn’t labeled ‘terf rhetoric’.

but also: because radical feminist thinking - particularly the anti-porn branch, which bends into SWERF thinking - is highly appealing to fannish tumblr, and forms the basis for a lot of fandom anti-shipper thinking and arguments. I hope that seeing the radfem roots of these arguments will help those leaning into fandom anti-shipper thinking avoid falling victim to radical feminist outreach.

post 1 / some basics

What is radical feminism?

Radical feminism - which encompasses, among others, subgroups such as trans-(women) exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs/TWERFs), and sex-worker exclusionary radical feminists (SWERFs) - is an ideology that holds that the most important and severe axis on which oppression occurs is patriarchal social structure and its inevitable product, misogyny.

By discounting all other forms of oppression and marginalization as being of lesser or no importance, radical feminists (aka ‘radfems’) naturally conclude that those they perceive as men are unable to experience meaningful societal oppression and those they perceive as women are unable to experience meaningful societal privilege. As such:

it is impossible for a (perceived) woman to have a mutually beneficial friendship, business partnership, romance, or sexual relationship with a (perceived) man.

Further, their perception of how oppression works is frequently concerned only with the binary sex organs one is born with (or ‘closest to’/that which was surgically created for intersex people).

The belief that a (radfem-perceived) woman cannot have a good or beneficial interaction - especially sexual interaction - with a (radfem-perceived) man, which (like misogyny) belittles and degrades the ability of women to make decisions for themselves, encourages activists to focus on modifying and correcting the behavior of perceived women rather than focusing on modifying and correcting societal inequalities caused by gender/perception of gender. This misplaced focus disproportionately harms sex workers* and/or any (perceived) woman having sex or in a line of business that radfems consider ‘degrading’ to women**.

The reduction of gender identity and experiences to sex organs alone leads to inclusion and/or exclusion of people from ‘womenhood’ based on whether radfems perceive a person as ‘born male’ or ‘born female’. This causes disproportionate harm to trans people (trans women particularly), leading not only to misgendering, but accusations of sexual assault/attempted sexual assault, (mostly directed at trans women), exclusion from gendered spaces to which they belong, and erasure.** It also harms anyone who does not identify with a binary gender by reducing their experiences to their agab, and anyone who does identify on the gender binary but does not ‘look’ sufficiently like the gender they identify with (which may include those who identify with their agab.)

(*this is because radfems believe that only people they see as women are sex workers and their only clients are people they see as men.)

(**all this potentially leading to even more severe consequences, such as being assaulted, attempting/committing suicide, or being murdered, among others. the consequences of radical feminist ideology are severe.)

Why is all radfem ideology so dangerous?

if you’re wondering ‘what’s the problem with radical feminism when a radfem isn’t a TERF or SWERF’, this is why radfem ideology as a whole is damaging and harmful to embrace:

because its ideology is, at heart, transphobic, and leads to trans people being harmed or killed or otherwise put at severe risk.

because its ideology is, at heart, anti-sex work, and leads to sex workers being harmed or killed or otherwise put at severe risk.

because its ideology is, at heart, based on the existence of a gender binary created by sexual dimorphism, and leads to erasure and harm of anyone who does not identify on the gender binary

because its ideology is non-intersectional and therefore belittles or ignores many axes of oppression and marginalization that can have as much as/greater effect on any given person’s quality of life

because it flattens societal structures to a single dimension (sexism), encouraging black and white thinking: namely, all (perceived) women are inherently good and all (perceived) men are inherently bad

this harms (perceived) women by putting them on a pedestal, expecting them to be ‘better’ than other genders in every way, only to be knocked off if they don’t appease radfem standards of female behavior

it erases the harm that women with axes of privilege over other women can do to those other women

it erases the harm that women with equal privilege can cause to one another (abuse in a relationship between two lesbian women), and the harm that women can do to those who are not women (predatory women who prey on men/children are erased, for example)

dismisses the victimhood of victims/survivors of oppression or harm who are not seen as women

because its aggregate societal effect is to reinforce patriarchal social structure, misogynistic dismissal of (perceived) women, and magnify sexism, primarily by putting pressure on (perceived) women to perform womanhood to radfem standards while ignoring (perceived) men as being beyond hope of reform.

because all of this hurts everyone, regardless of their gender, and disproportionately harms those marginalized by additional axes of oppression (such as race, sexual orientation, etc).