#and the way it's presented as being an inherent part of womanhood that EVERY woman performs

[captainjonnitkessler]

Things I wish women were learning from true crime podcasts: how to spot early warning signs of abusive relationships, how to escape abusive relationships, how easily domestic violence can escalate to murder, how incredibly unlikely it is to be the victim of a crime done by a complete random stranger as opposed to friends and family

What women are learning from true crime podcasts: I am in CONSTANT danger and every day I survive without being murdered by a serial killer is a miracle. I should react to everyone I meet with distrust and paranoia and live my life as if I am in mortal peril and if anyone suggests that might not be healthy then they just don't understand what it is to Be A Woman In Today's Society

#I'm about to get heavily downvoted on reddit lmao #for suggesting that it is in fact irrational to look under your car every time you approach it #bc you think someone might be lying under it waiting to slash your ankles #like cmon. that was an old urban legend when i read it on snopes 20 years ago #anyway i can't stand the like. culture of fear among certain women #and the way it's presented as being an inherent part of womanhood that EVERY woman performs

[luciddownloading]

Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine Labels

I feel that, if we want to make more progress, we need more diversity and complexity when it comes to the labels of Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine.

I still often see it talked about in a very heteronormative way. And, of course, straight people exist. But, if we are only discussing these labels in terms of a romantic connection between a man and a woman, where the woman is the Divine Feminine and the man is the Divine Masculine, we have a problem. Because that just makes it sound like you are just reinforcing old gender roles, which will only fuel the patriarchy that already exists.

I have heard some non-spiritual people give this criticism lately and it's honestly a valid point. And I can understand it making them skeptical.

Now, a lot of people in the spiritual community do understand and teach that you don't have to be a woman to identify as Divine Feminine or a man as Divine Masculine. You can be a Divine Feminine guy or Divine Masculine gal. It's all about energy.

But, I think the spiritual "teachers" who get the most press are often the ones who speak about these labels in very traditional ways.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with a woman being traditionally feminine or a man being traditionally masculine and them forming a romantic/spiritual bond from that. We just can't present that as the only option. Because it can alienate those who don't want that kind of relationship or don't identify with those energies. (And I have to say, as a gay man who identifies as Divine Feminine, I nope out of very heteronormative videos or articles about this topic pretty quickly)

Also, there are many ways that Divine Femininity or Divine Masculinity can manifest.

That's why there is a wide range of masculine and feminine court cards in the Tarot deck. They all express themselves differently; sometimes traditionally masculine/feminine, sometimes not.

That's why there are all types of gods and goddesses who embody various forms of masculinity or femininity.

Being Divine Feminine just means that you are more predominantly feminine and relate to that side of yourself more. You don't have to be a traditional Earth Mother type to identify with it. If you're a woman, you don't have to live up to old-fashioned ideas of being a woman to be Divine Feminine.

Also, if you're a woman, you don't even have to see yourself as Divine Feminine. Period.

Too many articles or videos speak of Divine Feminine energy as this inherent part of womanhood that every lady should embrace and it's honestly a little weird. Not all women are inherently nurturing or secretly yearn to be provided for. That applies to many women and that's fine. But, you can't put everyone in the same box.

There are certain people who prefer to not identify with either, often because they're non-binary or gender fluid. But, it can also be because the words "masculine" and "feminine" can come with so many preconceived notions, judgments, and limitations in our society that some find it triggering and avoid it altogether (and they may have trauma related to that). And I don't think those in the spiritual community should be contributing to that. Using the word "Divine" doesn't make a conversation you're having less misogynistic.

In the end, we all should cultivate our own unique mix of masculine and feminine. We should embrace what truly feels authentic to us, not what we're told we are due to the bodies we were born in. 💜💜💜

#channeled message #collective message #divine feminine #divine masculine #gender roles #gender norms #feminine energy #masculine energy

[roachleakage]

Part of the problem surrounding this whole situation (predstrogen, the subsequent callouts about the Cohost founders) is that a lot of people don't make the distinction between "actual report of a person's abusive actions" and "sourceless claims of an intent to abuse based on little to no relevant evidence".

Don't get me wrong, accusations of sexual abuse toward trans women (and many other marginalized people) always deserve at least a little bit of scrutiny. You don't have to suspend your compassion or accuse someone of being a liar, but taking someone at face value isn't the same as taking them in good faith. Just don't ignore that they could be lying, pay attention to major warning signs to that effect, and don't rush into taking actions that could bring immediate or drastic harm to the alleged abuser.

But even with that in mind, a lot of the accusations I've seen people circulate don't even come CLOSE to firsthand victim reports. Instead, we have people being labeled as various types of predator for behaviors that include: being trans women, doing sex work, having squicky/uncomfortable kinks, being furries, being willing to engage in complex and potentially difficult conversations regarding taboo topics, and worst of all, more than one of these at the same time.

Here is the logic beside presenting these things as "proof": "This person doesn't exhibit the level of disgust or avoidance that I expect around sexual taboos, or does not fully understand the reason why some of them exist. If someone does not automatically and unconditionally accept and enforce a taboo, it must be because they want to engage in taboo actions, including ones that might cause harm. Therefore, this person is dangerous and a predator."

And yes, while I only brought them up directly in the entry about discussions, every single thing I listed is a sexual taboo. Even when, as is the case with kinks, furries, and being a trans woman, they may have little or nothing to do with actual sex. By and large, this is because whenever a person exhibits ANY unexplained desires or behaviors, the default assumption is that they must be "a sex thing". Which is just another way of saying "my tastes represent the human default, yours are irrational, superfluous, and yucky."

And that's how it works. "That thing you're doing is strange > that thing you're doing is sexual > you're obsessed with sexually deviant behaviors > you are a sexual predator."

Trans women get a double dose of this, because they're not just transgender, they are also women - who are viewed as inherently sexual for plain ol' misogyny reasons. But while women of relative* privilege exist in a rotating superposition of being innocent recipients with no sexual agency, and devious seductresses out to ruin men's lives, trans women (and many nonwhite cis women) are permanently trapped in the role of seductress, because their very womanhood is taboo.

The reason I'm taking the time to bring all of this up because any one of these beliefs is enough to secure your participation in this system. For example, you might not believe consciously that being a trans woman makes someone a predator, but if she violates some other taboo, even in a completely innocent manner, you end up sliding right on down the chain to "clearly this trans woman is, though". Plus, you probably unconsciously associate trans women with predation, and while you know consciously that's a transmisogynist belief, the recognition of "evidence" still taps into that hidden bias to make the conclusion feel more solid and reasonable than it actually is.

And so all of this needs to be challenged. Challenge your assumption that "freak" is the same as "threat", that your beliefs and preferences are universal and require deliberate and malicious intent to divert from. Pay careful attention to what kind of evidence you're being shown. Keep a wary eye out for emotionally-loaded language designed to influence how you read a situation - e.g. describing some behavior as "disgusting" or "pedophilic" before you've even had the chance to see what the person did. Be careful and patient with the information you've been sent, and above all, remember that peer-to-peer rumormongering is not equal to an actual victim's testimony. It should always be taken with an immediate grain of salt, and examined carefully before you recirculate it or take other action.

*Within the scope of "being women, and therefore obviously affected by misogyny".

#cw transmisogyny #transmisogyny #predstrogen #purity culture #protect trans women

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

liberal arts major brain: while the modern reader may find it jarring that a heroine so full of vim and so enamored of shorthand and lady journalists as mina would distance herself from the New Woman, a few things bear keeping in mind. first, mina is intelligent and passionate and in her own very protestant way ambitious - she desires above all else to be useful - but she is also very much a normie, and joining the project of expanding the roles permissible for women to take has always required a greater comfort with being part of a cultural vanguard than most people have. we lose something important in our understanding of our history as women and as feminists if we forget how much boldness was once required for nearly every liberty which now we take for granted, and we lull ourselves into the same kind of arrogance that so endangers the cast of this novel if we assume that we are now at last so perfectly empowered that there are no rituals of gender to which we cling out of familiarity and fear, regardless of the story we’ve woven for ourselves about our preference and our choice. truly we ought to hope, every last one of us, that our metaphorical granddaughters will look back at some ordinary feature of our lives and think it hopelessly regressive, and wonder how even smart independent women could have found it acceptable. in some ways mina is every woman with a college degree and a job who isn’t a feminist, she just believes in equal rights, and who would never (contrary to mina’s later prediction about the New Woman!) dream of being the one to propose; she’s my mom, who raised me to be and call myself a feminist and who also literally would not allow me, even after a screaming match in the nordstrom shoe department, to go to my own prom in flats. it’s a mistake, and a misogynist one, to read the attachment of women to gendered norms as inherently revealing of their individual attachments to the constraints of womanhood rather than as a reflection of the genderless human resistance to breaking cultural taboos in the specific context of one of the fundamental organizing hierarchies of basically all human societies, including ours right now, and certainly including victorian england.

second, while the New Women represented an expansion of women’s liberties and possibilities, patriarchy over time has proved durably adept at ensuring that such evolutions always come with a cost. any rallying cry can be coopted into an ideal, and any ideal can be sold; as well as being both scorned and praised, the New Woman could be advertised to, and she was. her radicalism could be eroded as her image was diffused beyond the political and artistic circles in which she arose, and that image could be received by ordinary women as a standard to emulate or fail to live up to. it has been observed that if you trace the course of women’s rights and freedom from the first wave of feminism to the present day, you find moving in tandem with that progress a shifting series of expectations that the modern woman is asked that meet, goalposts keeping her ever at a distance from being permitted simply to exist. you can see this even just in the realm of fashion: as women’s clothing became less restrictive, the demands of bodily self-policing imposed on and internalized by became more so, as new beauty norms rose to prominence, often rebranded as health (thinness) or hygiene (hairlessness) or, in the twenty-first century, self-care (twelve-step skincare routines). it’s interesting that in this, the first and more negative mention of the New Woman, this is the aspect that mina seems to be referring to: the reason she imagines the New Women would look down on her and lucy is not their lack of worldly ambitions or interest in homemaking for their husbands - it’s that they eat too much!

and that’s what i find particularly interesting about the way the New Woman is first invoked in this novel of all novels: she is presented as a creation of modernity distinguished by her disciplined appetite, in a story about a creature from centuries past made terrifying by his monstrous appetite. i’m fascinated by that - by the fact that it would feel logical to me, from my smug vantage point in the future, for stoker to reinforce the virtuousness of his heroes by granting them some kind of bodily asceticism to stand in contrast to dracula’s defiling maw and even renfield’s obscene tastes, but he didn’t see it. it makes it feel, to me, like the novel is not against appetite but against its perversion - and while it’s obvious stoker and i would have rather different definitions of what counts as perverse, that categorical distinction feels significant as part of what has made it possible for me to become sincerely emotionally engaged in this book across our palpable and wide gap in sensibilities and ideology. it’s fine, in the world of the novel, for mina and lucy to have their capital “severe tea” and stroll lazily home on vacation. that’s a small thing, but not a meaningless one, i think.

dumbass brain: damn i can’t believe bram stoker literally said Real Women Have Curves

#dracula daily

[scriptlgbt]

Hi!

Right now I'm (attempting) to write a sci-fi story centered around a human and an alien, and basically it would be the alien trying to get the human back home, all the while the human teaches them about Earth culture (what they know of it) and the alien reacting to it/other biological things humans have (a la humans-are-weird).

My plan was to make this human nonbinary (I've been thinking specifically bigender) as a way to explore both masc and femme ways of moving through society. Taking on both masculine and feminine traits to showcase to the alien how either would work back on earth. My thoughts on their gender presentation would be as androgynous as possible, and that people would be unable to tell if they're a man/woman but would believe either if they were told so. They would also go by they/them, with a pretty gender neutral name.

What's the best way to go about this? Is it insensitive to construct a nonbinary person that's split so evenly down the middle? I know, of course, that actual nonbinary people can have an array of presentations, but story wise I thought this would be the best way to showcase more of the human experience in one character. They're experiences as being nonbinary would be shown too, but I wanted an avenue to bring up different trends if needed.

This wouldn't be the only human character, but they would be the main one, and the one the reader gets introduced to first/know the longest.

Any advice you can give would be amazing! (And thank you for reading/responding this kind of got away from me).

Others will definitely have different opinions on this (I especially encourage replies here) but I take issue with nonbinary characters specifically existing within the plot as a teaching tool. When I was in high school, I was outed specifically so my "friends" could teach others about queer topics as though they had a right to share that information without my consent. So this one hits particularly subhumanizing for me, since I was seen as a teaching tool and not a person.

I realize that in this ask, I am only getting the relevant parts of your story to ask about, so that's all I have to judge off of. There are details of your characters that I am not privy to, where they are possibly written as whole fully fleshed out characters.

I think you should also explore your own fluency in teaching about gender from a nonbinary perspective, like your character will be doing. There are nonbinary people who aren't the same as me and who have different relationships to their identities, but I think about gender every day of my life in some way. When I first came to terms with it 11 years ago, I had to deprogram my idea of what gender can be from the binary way I was trained to, in order to accept that I am a real person and part of mainstream society. At least, that I deserve to be part of it.

I think a lot of people who haven't spent time around [other] nonbinary people tend to have not really decoupled their thoughts from the prescribed gender binary. Gender is not two pillars of "man/masculine" and "woman/feminine" and everyone else in relation to that. In the cultures that exist on earth, we don't even have the same perspectives on what either of those mean, if they exist at all.

And that's another thing - it is inaccurate to say that manhood and womanhood are inherently human in the way your nonbinary character would understand it. There are many human cultures who have 5 or 6 genders as the socially accepted norm. When we ignore these cultures and their genders when teaching about "human gender" in these stories, we are implying that those outside the colonial binary are not human. Even when womanhood (for instance) is a thing that exists in a given culture, that doesn't mean it translates to the colonial enforcement of a given gender. There are many Indigenous people I know of who specifically have said, "I'm kwe, which is different than what English-speakers mean when they say 'woman.'" Or who have said they identify as an Inuk woman, or 'nonbinary' if they have to use that framework.

It is not enough to say, "femme and masc" as though these are a new, more inclusive binary. They aren't, and femme (when used in English) is a very specific queer identity. It is not synonymous with feminine, and feminine doesn't mean woman-like either. At least to me, and the majority of trans people I know personally. And I'm not sure what exactly you mean when you say masculine or feminine traits either. How these things are defined is really, really subjective. And tbh, a lot of us unfortunately think of stereotypes around what these things mean. Maybe not when we think about it and how we actually perceive these things, but it's the kind of thing many just happen to more readily have words for.

Re: "Split down the middle" bigender. There's nothing wrong with having a nonbinary person have a specific identity. This happens sometimes.

Actual advice:

I don't think you should write this character to be a teacher of gender. I think it's okay to explain some stuff when asked and to make general statements with disclaimers, and have those general statements not imply that most people are men or women (because that only accounts for a specific cultural setting, and one where anything otherwise is persecuted in order to uphold certain systems of power, like patriarchy, colonialism).

Another thing you could do is involve a nonbinary co-writer to write with you from the perspective of this character. Or write their dialogue at least, which your writing responds to.

mod nat

#mod nat #nonbinary #bigender #writeblr #trans #writing advice #trans characters #creative writing #writing community #transgender #nonbinary characters #nonbinary character #nonbinary representation #tokenizing #binarism #I hate that our binarism tag is pretty much entirely about aliens but you know what? #I am talking about humans in this instance it's just that aliens so happen to be involved in the story #binarism specifically refers to colonialism so please do not use it to claim ppl who aren't targeted by colonialism experience it

[dykeotomy]

Hi!! It's me again!! Re: the ask I sent you long ago about gender sex & pronouns/similarities between libfem & radfem ideology

Logistically pronouns do equal gender, but I think it's the fact of us being able to use certain pronouns while not being that gender: (drawing from personal experience here so maybe this isnt a very valid argument) I for example enjoy being called a he and I really like being confused with a man mainly because it reaffirms my masculinity. As a gnc woman my masculinity being recognized this way is one of the happiest feelings I can get from social interactions & I bet that for many people it's like that too: they enjoy their femininity/masculinity/androgyny being recognized and being so present in how others view them, so going by different pronouns that dont equate your gender is like extending that feeling to almost every interaction you have & not just punctual ones. I feel like pronouns when used in this way are just a way to make us feel a little happier with ourselves.

When talking about an ideal world I feel like a lot of trans people would agree with you (specially non binary people in my experience they are the ones that advocate the most for gender abolition) masculinity/femininity should not make you less of a man/woman (and lets be honest trans people are the first ones to say that femininity≠womanhood/masculinity≠manhood) and it was never about that. It was simply that man is associated with masculinity and woman with femininity and since he/him are the male pronouns they are today associated with masculinity (at least thats the way it feels to me)

I believe the main reason trans people get dysphoria from gender roles is BECAUSE gender itself is associated with femininity/masculinity. I truly believe that if gender roles did not exist a part of dysphoria caused by gender roles would completely disappeared too: then the only dysphoria felt would be related to your biology

(Expanding on this: I dont believe dysphoria is solely caused by society as you believe because to me gender is simply how your brain registers itself: you just *know* you aren't a cat because your brain registers itself as a human. I believe a similar thing happens with gender: your brain registers itself as a man/woman/other and because your body doesnt reflect that it causes distress probably born from the confusion of your brain *thinking* it is male and your body telling it it's female and I think this extends today to social roles. If these were not to exist I dont think trans people would feel dysphoria from wearing a dress or a suit or engaging in certain activities etc. You'd still have the problem of terms like man/woman not feeling right cause in this perfect world they only refer to biology and a trans person's brain would still be confused by these words because it deeply believes its female/male. Another reason I believe transness as a concept doesnt uphold gender stereotypes inherently is the existence of gnc trans people. I think they just demonstrate that transness is born from dysphoria which is just your brain not connecting properly with the reality of your body)

I didn't pretend to ignore that abortion rights are being taken away from females & intersex people deliberately because we have historically been a medically oppressed group I just wanted to point out that this is a time of desperation for us and we should ignore our differences for the time being in the name of the greater good: for me this is why I believe things like queer discourse (aka asexuals being part/not part of the queer community, the whole pansexuality is biphobic debate, queer being used as an umbrella term mspec lesbians etc etc etc) should be topics to discuss once we've accomplished total equality. Of course most of us won't get to see the day where no one has to sit their parents or family and tell them they are gay and can simply bring their partner home one day and no one batting an eye, but we need to think about the greater good for the community: we need to stop the infighting and come together to overthrow heteronormativity & the same goes for feminism I believe that as of now we shouldn't stop and think about anyone's genitals and simply accept all help whether it comes from trans people or not.

I understand your argument about trans men having removed themselves from female spaces, but I think this is more an issue of bodily autonomy more than trans activism: females with dysphoria who took their own decision to transition being denied of their right to keep taking their own informed decisions and I think thats more of the current society's fault than trans activism because they dont advocate for males/females being denied of sex-specific medical care. The only group denying that are the oppressive systems and their aversion towards females making decisions on their own and taking advantage of their own biology (because really why would you adopt when you can already biologically get pregnant? I think this is just females who are comfortable enought with it making use of their biology while still being awarder the right of other respecting the decisions they made with their bodies aka transitioning) -L.A.

as a gnc woman i also get excited when people comment on my androgyny—i remember being a child and an old lady thought i was a boy and it didn’t bother me at all. i really don’t have a problem with people who like being confused for the opposite gender; i think it’s a non-issue. my main concern with pronouns is when we are actively having discussion that are about sex/gender/oppression/sexuality, and pronouns equating to sex are relevant and important

i don’t think trans and nonbinary people who advocate for gender abolition understand what gender abolition really is—either that, or we just have very different ideas of what it looks like. i have seen many trans people say that masculinity/femininity don’t make you less of a woman or man, but this means nothing when they can’t accurately describe what womanhood or manhood ARE. i have no interest in someone saying “a trans woman who doesn’t go on hormones, isn’t feminine, and doesn’t change their wardrobe is still a valid woman bc femininity does not equal womanhood” because nothing about that person’s material reality changed. how can someone be a “valid woman” if womanhood isn’t based in ANYTHING according to these people?

i don’t think gnc trans people prove much other than transness being influenced by social pressure many times. how many gnc people have just given up one day and decided it’d be easier to just live as the opposite gender because being gnc is hard? there’s so many stories like this. it’s really sad imo.

on actual sex dysphoria: mental illnesses should be treated as mental illnesses. i saw someone once compare sex dysphoria to body dysmorphia and it really resonated with me as someone who has an ED. nobody every tried to feed into my delusions about my body because they knew it was bad for me, even though confronting reality made me extremely upset. over time, it got easier. i don’t think there will ever be a day that i don’t find something about my body to nitpick, but my thoughts are manageable and no longer take over my whole existence. i feel as though sex dysphoria should be treated the same. somebody’s brain registering themselves as the incorrect sex does not give them the right to declare that they ARE that sex, because it is simply and factually incorrect. i think these people need genuine, empathetic medical care to get better rather than just being pumped full of hormones and told lies

i think most infighting is stupid but also inevitable. it’s human nature to discuss and debate every single thing that we find worthy of our attention. if it’s not productive discussion, it’s still gonna happen. of course i think that we should be able to put aside our difference in opinions in smaller fights to be able to come together for things that really matter in terms of life/death, but that doesn’t make smaller topics less important when the time is right. i don’t want to have to constantly be debating life altering things. sometimes i do find ace discourse interesting. yes i said it. yes im chronically online. i do see the irony in this

thanks for the ask :)

#asks

[jockpoetry]

supernatural sees women as a tool for development and strengthening of narratives/motivation and dean sees his body as a tool. is that anything?

When I saw this ask I really made the 🥴in real life. So, yeah anon, I do think there’s something to this.

Quick Disclaimer before I actually launch into my thoughts™: A lot of my read of Dean stems from my experience as both an oldest daughter and a transman. Being the oldest daughter was an experience I lived for many years, but I am also a man. I wasn’t raised as a man, I wasn’t socialized as a man, and even though once I came out upon reflection my masculinity was obviously there. Like I was a man™ before I knew I was a man. Even when I actively tied my identity to femininity for a long time! A lot of my prideful moments were based around statements like: “I was the only girl who (fill in the blank).” 

So I am just putting that out there before I launch into my spiel about Dean/Gender/Tool because they all interlock for me. 

I am also going to apologize in advance because I know this has fully gone off the rails and I’m not even done writing it yet. If this is incomprehensible ! Well, happens to the best of us.

First off, most importantly I guess before we discuss womanhood and Dean and the way both are utilized on the show I need to say that I personally don’t subscribe the whole Dean is female coded thing. 

It’s a read I can absolutely understand. But for me..he’s not. 

He’s a hypermasculine man to the point that when (and because he is written as a punchline, as the stupid™ brother, as the whore™, as the mother/father™, as daddy’s blunt instrument™, etc) Dean deviates from the pre-accepted definition of hypermasculine it’s Wrong. 

It’s Instantly Feminine. 

I think the internet has made the world very black and white, or blue and pink maybe. This point, I think, colors a lot of these discussions. Dean cooks, he cleans and so therefor he’s female coded. When that really just feeds back into the whole toxic masculinity loop. You can’t be masculine and cook and clean and cry. That’s for feminine people only. 

I get the argument! I do, I just think that Dean’s actions are not inherently feminine, it’s just in the vacuum of Female and in the Absence of Traditional Masculinity it makes sense to assign him female coded and move on.

IN FACT the way that Dean is the action hero of the show, the Masculine™ one on the show - but he cries, and he rages, and he cooks (Again and Again) and cleans (Again and Again). The fact he’s macho and confident but he has so little self esteem. Is frankly insane to me. You have this blaze of glory character who is so depressed that they have him kill himself. Twice. In explicitly “I hate myself, I hate hearing all the things I hate about myself, I want to destroy myself” ways. 

On just a regular ol’ network show that is just ungodly bad at times. They let their Male Hero cry - all the time (if I linked every example of this the essay would be...longer than it already is, but just take my word for it). Dean tears up and grieves and shows more than just Angry Horny Violent™ (he shows plenty of that, don’t get me wrong) but he’s Emotional (Again and Again and Again). In many different ways!

I mean, beyond even just tearing up, they make their Male Hero™ face sexual violence in pretty, uniquely horrifying - and queer! - ways.

Let’s make it clear, they did a lot of this unintentionally. 

Or they do it as a joke. 

Off of dean for a moment to say women are plot devices in this show. I could probably count on one hand female characters who have sincere depth to them that have roles outside of progressing plot, filling a filler episode, and who are still alive. Like even characters such as Charlie who are wholly developed, and interesting, are only remembered/mentioned/utilized to progress plots or fill an episode out - and then she dies. For pain™ for plot™ for no other reason than to traumatize a character. 

Which let’s also make it clear Dean’s trauma is also only used as a plot device (as is Sam’s but in a different way, and Cas’ trauma is a whole other barrel of fish we’re not gonna dive into right now). Like wholesale full stop they don’t actually care about what happened to him. Unless it’s relevant in an episode. 

Oh that boys home he was left at when he was 16 for months? Sure we’ll sprinkle that in in the back half of the series. Oh he was covered in bruises and said it was from a hunt (when it’s clear contextually they were from his father but saying the fantastical but true is easier than saying the uncomfortable but true). As Dean says though the story became the story, he was sixteen. He just went along with what John said.

We only see Dean ever truly rage at John, by the way, when either Dean is dead (when he’s between life and death and he rages at John, right before John “apologizes” for traumatizing him, for putting too much on Dean’s shoulders, and fucking dying) or John is dead (the Djinn episode where Dean is straight™ and John is dead™ and he goes to his grave and just yells and rages like he should have to his father in the real world).

Dean’s trauma from being both tortured and torturer in hell? Yeah, we don’t talk about that after it’s Relevant™. Even though it’s clear - especially in the demon!dean, mark of cain era, all those years later - Alastair still has his hooks inside of Dean. I stopped watching originally after s8 ended. I was fed up with the show, and with this whole renaissance I’ve been doing a rewatch and I’m into season twelve now and it really has never come up again. 

Even when he had the mark of cain and he was tasked with questioning and accused of torturing it was “the mark has changed you” and not “you were victim and victimizer in hell for forty years, which is longer than you’ve been alive on earth” (and, was about as long as he wound up living. Which is desperately sad.

Because we talk about Sam’s desire for a “normal” life but, Dean wanted out too. He was tired in the first few seasons of this show, he never had a chance to taste freedom (we don’t count the boys home, because that was a different kind of regimented life, and it was a false freedom) the way that Sam did in Flagstaff with Bones or at Stanford with Jessica. Love for Dean is sacrificing, it’s putting himself/his happiness/his well-being last.

Because Dean only knows love in the context of violence (like all of these fun examples, for starters) is a phrase that I’ve said a lot both in private chats and on here, and I absolutely think it goes to him being a tool (a blunt instrument, a plot device, so both textually and metatextually) instead of a person. Which Cas sees Dean’s shame/guilt and sees that side of Dean because he touched his soul, and saw more than just the Righteous™ man, more than just the tool, he saw A good man, not a machine. 

On the other side though you have how “bad guys” view Dean: Desperate, Sloppy, Needy, Dean’s hole (Again), which is again so wildly counterintuitive to the story of a Macho Man Hero™. You’re using vocabulary that is both queering him and feminizing (and I know this a meme format, but sincerely it is done in a derogatory way it is feminizing. It’s breaking him down to bare parts, to a sloppy hole). 

My whole rewatch I have been absolutely fascinated by how identity and free will is utilized/conceptualized on this show. Castiel has been my main focus, but Dean and how he is framed by himself and others is...fascinating - and frustrating. The writers inconsistency lends itself not only to this unintentionally queer character, but also one that again is incredibly easily read as a non-traditionally masculine character.

As a feminine character.

This show has so few female characters that of course it had to foist the roles/behaviors/plots that a female character might have onto a male character. Which I think is part of why reading Dean as trans (either transmasc, or transfemme) is so easily done like.   

Half of these are shit posts, but you can find trans allegories/textual evidence in this show again, again, again, again, and again. And this is unintentional, they don’t want you to look at Dean and see woman, former future or present. Like a lot of these I’m sure are punchlines for them, because women/queer folk are punchlines to them. 

Sometimes the only women in an episode are random witnesses who get two sentences of dialogue, and then the main guest character is a man. Who flirts with Dean, and Dean is receptive to it. 

They paint themselves into a corner, there are female Rabbi. So easily could Aaron have been a woman instead of a man, but they made the choice to play up the HaHa Dean & Men card. 

Because, again, Dean has filled the slot of Woman™ of Female Lead™ and the flirting would’ve been straight if Dean was a woman. It’s a plot device, they needed to have the guest character be disarming, be cute, make the main character flustered. 

It’s just the main character is a man, because they’re allergic to women. But they still need those female plots, tools of femininity, to move their show forward. I mean I am a big subscriber to transmasc Jo (no idea if anyone else is with me on this one, but let me explain). Jo is in love with Dean (concept) not Dean (actuality). Which, we’ve all had our eggs cracked by someone like that. We were in love with them until we realized we just wanted to be them.

He loved her like a little sister, she loved him like a lost idol. He’s a golden calf and she dies for him, because she believed in him, she was the original character dashed at the altar of the Winchesters. 

I fully believe if she had lived and if this show had a crumb of actual good writing Jo could have been a deeply compelling transmasc character. But I also think she’s a fascinating inversion of Dean. Dean is a Masculine Character who subverts Toxic Masculinity, Jo is a Tomboy™ she’s not your (if you take it straight, literally and metaphorically) average female love interest. She’s angry, she’s not soft at all, all edges and corners and thorns. She isn’t helpless, she’s stubborn but not in a “you’re going to get punished for this” way. She’s right when she’s stubborn. She’s helpful, she’s a martyr. 

I could do a whole other essay just on Jo (and Ellen, and Ash, what a fucking trio!) but needless to say Jo was one of the first...plot device feminine tools sacrificed to this show. She was a regular, she was unique, she was an engaging character, and she still died (to progress the plot? no. for man pain? yeah, for like three episodes maybe, and then it’s forgotten just like the rest of Dean’s trauma, as we mentioned above). 

Dean and Women and Love is a very interesting tool used too because. Boy they sure try to make Dean love women and it fails in small ways, and in big, meaningless, failed het domesticity (again) ways. Not to mention whatever Lust (in the form of a woman) having no effect upon him, when they could have used that moment to assert his Masculinity and Heterosexuality. He behaved normally? And...also...whatever the fuck the Adios thing was!

Like they have these opportunities to make him Traditionally (toxically) Masculine, but make the choice to...not? To soften him. Because it’s a tool. He’s their female lead, textually he had to take on the role of mother(/father) to Sam, but...I mean this is a million miles long already. I know, but we absolutely can’t not talk about his Paternal/Maternal behaviors. (Which appear again and again again and again, outside of his relationship with Sam even/especially). He’s the mother hen, sage, safety net, beacon, home to so many side characters they meet.

I mean in many ways Jody is also a Dean comparison. Lost her family. Found a new family. She is non-traditionally feminine, but easily flustered and Silly™ (let’s just drop the entire sex talk over family dinner scene with Alex and the boys and looking to them for help, even though she was already a mother, and she’s a cop, and a hunter and this confident no nonsense individual.... She’s not). We are meant to see her as this hard ass, but she makes extra food for the boys to take back to the bunker. She’s deadly in a fight, but also still easily overwhelmed and put into damsel mode, and she cares so much even in the face of adversity.

It’s also fun to see how Jo | Jody are reflections of Dean at different points of his life. Younger, cocky | Older, settled.

Even when the text tries to tell us that he’s not.

When it reminds us that he’s violent. That he is his father, even if he says that Sam is more like John (which was reflexive, which was angry because of Adam and how Sam was behaving like Dean in that episode, and yes there are parallels to be drawn between Sam and John, the show barely dives into them). Instead we’re told that Dean is John (Again and  Again and Again and Again). 

So intensely that a fanfictionalized version of the Winchester Gospels makes it an entire fucking musical number. 

And yet, despite the texts insistence to make Dean Macho Man Father Reborn™ We get this Dean who is silly (and directly compared/contrasted to the female character in this scene), soft, in heels, nagging, and... Sully (you know Sam’s imaginary friend who has the same Haircut Dean has, who is a softer, shorter, friendlier, campier, version of Dean who was a replacement For Dean until the real one let Sam back in? That? Sully?) it’s hard to take them seriously. 

Hell, even when he was A DEMON? What did they do? They had him sing off-key drunken karaoke, they had him doing this ! Like that’s your hero, unhinged, free to be as bad as he could be, and you put him in a cowboy hat in a romance with the king of hell. 

The Female Lead, everyone. Who’s biggest betrayal(s) comes at the hands of his love interest (again, a man even though it was an angel who could’ve taken any vessel! who could’ve been recast, who canonically dies admitting his love to Dean - that one), who he tries so hard to be loyal to. 

The contradictions of his character are laughable. He is so emotional, but if he is engaged about his emotions? He shuts down, or he’s exasperated about being asked about them. It really is Female Lead/Only Here For The Plot disease, because everything is more important than him. How’s he doing? Doesn’t matter outside of the context of how x character is doing or that y character is dead. Or his emotions only matter if they’re done in penance. 

They also really do frame him as Pretty Boy™ in a violent way, or in a derogatory manner. They’ll give us homoerotic shots like this or these and never really acknowledge how these are gay shots. Sorry the gun scene is a a straight up sex scene, the beer sip spilling out over his mouth is oral, the scene where Cas fills up Dean’s glass with whisky is also a sex scene, they do this shit on purpose but accidentally queer it up. If Dean was a woman these scenes wouldn’t even matter. They’d be passing moments, but because he is not just a man but A Man™ they’re insane to see.

Not to mention all of these scenes and all the ones I haven’t linked where Dean dresses up. He performs masculinity, but he performs femininity too. He’s a plot device that is slotted in to whatever role they need. He’s Super Straight Butch Man™ but coaches the lesbian on how to successfully flirt with a man. He’s Action Hero™ who sits through a montage with the same lesbian and yays and nays her outfits, and enjoys himself.

Fuck he loves dressing up, he feels better in these costumes because performing a character is easier than being himself. Because who is Dean? He’s a tool, both textually and metatextually. It is exactly how the women and because of the women on the show that Dean is the way that he is. If there was a more steady female presence Dean would not be half as much of a plot device or half as camp/gay/feminine/non-traditionally masculine/queer coded as he is. 

In conclusion....

#dean winchester #supernatural #spn meta #spn #gender #anon #replies #messages #my writing #ANYWAYS PHEW okay anon i don't know if i even fully got to your point but i woke up at like 3:30 to this ask and i've been fixated on it #HOPE THIS IS EVEN JUST a little bit coherent #the way i meant for this to talk so much more about transness and eldest daughter syndrome and just FORGOT #oops #oh well

[raptured-night]

Hello, I have two questions this time. Why do you think we can’t really compare Death Eaters to Nazis? Why can’t we really compare purism with racism? Oh and do you think Death Eaters are more like nowadays’ terrorists or not?

So, it's no secret that I have drawn attention to the issue of Death Eaters being treated as literal stand-ins for Nazis or blood purism as a literal example of racism. Importantly, there is a difference between acknowledging the ways that Death Eaters or blood purity might work as semi-functional allegories for the Nazis and their ideology, white supremacy, racism, etc., and treating fictional representations of invented prejudices as if they were comparable or on par with non-fictional Nazi ideology, white supremacy, or systemic racism.

An article for Medium makes this point very well:

Silent resisters and ‘I don’t really care about politics’ people deserve our contempt. But what makes those who filter life through fiction and historical revisionism worse is that they are performing a soggy simulacrum of political engagement.

As a woman of colour watching, all I can do here is amplify the call to step away from your bookshelf. Let go of The Ring. My humanity exists independently of whether I am good or bad, and regardless of where the invented-fictional-not-real Sorting Hat puts me.

Realise that people are in danger right now, with real world actions needed in response, and not just because you want to live out your dreams of being Katniss Everdeen.

The problem with discussing Harry Potter’s fictional examples of prejudice as if they were literal or completely comparable with real-life prejudices is that it does lead to an oversimplification of the reality of prejudice (whether white supremacy, racism, homophobia, transphobia --looking at you Jo-- or otherwise) and the very real people who experience these prejudices every day. The fantasy of being Harry Potter up against Umbridge or Voldemort in a YA series where the line between the good and bad guys is almost clearly denoted by the narrator is a far cry from the reality of what activism is or what living under oppression is like for many marginalized people. 

I would argue that this is also a leading reason why the “social justice” (yes, in many cases I believe that deserves to be enclosed in dubious quotations) discourse in Harry Potter fandom trends more towards performative than it does sincere (one need only look at the defense posts for Rowling in response to real marginalized groups criticizing her for things ranging from her offensive representation of Asian people, Indigenous and Native peoples, or her failures in representing the lgbtq+ community particularly in light of her coming out as an open TERF and they can get an idea of how those “I’m an intersectional feminist/social justice ally and that’s why I read HP!” fans quickly shift gears to throw the bulk of their allyship behind Rowling instead) because when you spend all of your time debating fictional prejudices it’s much easier to detach oneself from the reality of non-fictional prejudice and its impact on real people.

Fiction has no stakes. There is a beginning, middle, and end. In Rowling’s fictional world, Harry Potter ends with Harry and “the side of light” the victor over her allegorical representation of evil and he gets his happily-ever-after in a world we are led to believe is at peace and made a better place. In the real world, decades after the fall of Hitler, there are still Nazis and white supremacists who believe in the glory of an Aryan/pure-white race and are responsible for acts of violence towards marginalized groups; even after the fall of the Confederacy in the U.S. we are still debating the removal of monuments erected in their honor (and the honor of former slave owners and colonialists like Christopher Columbus) while the nation continues mass protests over the systemic police brutality Black people and other people of color have long faced (not to mention the fact the KKK are still allowed to gather while the FBI conspired to destroy the Black Panther Party and discredit them as a dangerous extremist organization).

As a professor in literature, I’ve often argued that fiction can be a reflection of reality and vice versa. Indeed, it can be a subversive tool for social change and resistance (e.g. Harlem Renaissance) or be abused for the purposes of propaganda and misrepresentation (e.g. Jim Crow era racism in cartoons). So, I am not underscoring the influencing power of fiction but I do believe it is important that when attempting to apply fictional representations to real-world issues we do so with a certain awareness of the limitations of fiction. As I have already observed, there is an absence of real-world stakes for fiction. Fictional stories operate under a narrative structure that clearly delineates the course they will take, which is not the case for real life. In addition, the author’s own limitations can greatly affect the way their fiction may reflect certain non-fictional issues. Notably, a close reading of Harry Potter does reveal the way Rowling’s own transphobic prejudices influenced her writing, not least in the character of Rita Skeeter (but arguably even in her failed allegory for werewolves, which are supposed to reflect HIV prejudices, but she essentially presented us with two examples of werewolves that are either openly predatory towards children or accidentally predatory because they canonically can’t control themselves when their bodies undergo “transformations” that make them more dangerous and no surprise her most predatory example, Fenrir Greyback, seems to have embraced his transformation entirely versus Lupin who could be said to suffer more from body dysmorphia/shame). 

Ultimately, fiction is often a reflection of our non-fictional reality but it is not always an exact reflection. It can be a simplification of a more complex reality; a funhouse mirror that distorts that reality entirely, or the mirror might be a bit cracked or smudged and only reflecting a partial image. Because fiction does have its limits (as do authors of fiction), writers have certain story-telling conventions on hand through which they can examine certain aspects of reality through a more vague fictional lens, such as metaphor, symbolism, and allegory. Thus, the Death Eaters can function on an allegorical level without being problematic where they cannot when we treat them as literal comparisons to Nazis or white supremacist groups (particularly when we show a greater capacity for empathy and outrage over Rowling’s fictional prejudice, to the extent we’ll willingly censor fictional slurs like Mudblood, than we do real-world examples of racism and racial microaggressions). As an allegory, Voldemort and his Death Eaters can stand in for quite a few examples of extremism and prejudice that provoke readers to reflect more on the issue of how prejudice is developed and how extremist hate-groups and organizations may be able to rise and gain traction. Likewise, blood prejudice looked at as a fictional allegory goes a lot further than when we treat it as a literal comparison to racism, wherein it becomes a lot more problematic. 

I’ve discussed this before at length, along with others, and I will share some of those posts to give a better idea of some of the issues that arise when we try to argue that Voldemort was a literal comparison to Hitler, the Death Eaters were literal comparisons to Nazi, or that blood purity is a literal comparison to racism.

On the issue of blood prejudice as racism and Death Eaters as Nazis, per @idealistic-realism00.

On the issue of blood prejudice as racism, my own thoughts.

On the issue of Death Eaters and literal Nazi comparisons, per @deathdaydungeon and myself. 

Finally, as I have already argued, the extent to which fiction can function as a reflection of non-fictional realities can be limited by the author’s own perceptions. In the above links, you will note that I and others have critiqued Rowling’s portrayal of prejudice quite thoroughly and identified many of the flaws inherent in her representations of what prejudice looks like in a real-world context. The very binary (i.e. good/bad, right/wrong, dark/light) way that she presents prejudice and the fact that her villains are always clearly delineated and more broadly rejected by the larger society undermines any idea of a realistic representation of prejudice as systemic (we could make a case for an effort being made but as her narrative fails to ever properly address prejudice as systemic in any sort of conclusive way when taken along with her epilogue one can argue her representation of systemic prejudice and its impact fell far short of the mark, intended or otherwise). In addition to that, the two most notable protagonists that are part of her marginalized class (i.e. Muggle-born) are two comfortably middle-class girls, one of whom is clearly meant to be white (i.e. Lily) and the other who is most widely associated with the white actress (Emma Watson) who played her for over a decade before Rowling even hinted to the possibility Hermione could also be read as Black due to the casting of Noma Dumezweni for Cursed Child.

Overall, Rowling is clearly heavily influenced by second-wave feminist thought (although I would personally characterize her as anti-feminist having read her recent “essay,” and I use the term loosely as it was primarily a polemic of TERF propaganda, defending her transphobia, and reexamined the Harry Potter series and her gender dichotomy in light of her thoughts on “womanhood”) and as far as we are willing to call her a feminist, she is a white feminist. As a result, the representation of prejudice in Harry Potter is a distorted reflection of reality through the lens of a white feminist whose own understanding of prejudice is limited. Others, such as @somuchanxietysolittletime and @ankkaneito have done well to point out inconsistencies with Rowling’s intended allegories and the way the Harry Potter series overall can be read as a colonialist fantasy. So, for all of these reasons, I don’t think we should attempt to make literal comparisons between Rowling’s fictional examples of prejudice to non-fictional prejudice or hate groups. The Death Eaters and Voldemort are better examined as more of a catch-all allegory for prejudice when taken to it’s most extreme. Aicha Marhfour makes an important point in her article when she observes:

Trump isn’t himself, or even Hitler. He is Lord Voldemort. He is Darth Vader, or Dolores Umbridge — a role sometimes shared by Betsy DeVos or Tomi Lahren, depending on who you’re talking to. Obama is Dumbledore, and Bernie Sanders is Dobby the goddamn house elf. Republicans are Slytherins, Democrats are Gryffindors.

The cost of making these literal comparisons between Voldemort or the Death Eaters to other forms of extremism, perceived evil, or hate is that we impose a fictional concept over a non-fictional reality and unintentionally strip the individual or individuals perpetrating real acts of prejudice or oppression of some of their accountability. I can appreciate how such associations may help some people cope and for the readers of the intended age category of Harry Potter (i.e. YA readers) it might even be a decent primer to understanding real-world issues. However, there comes a point where we must resist the impulse to draw these comparisons and go deeper. Let Voldemort and the Death Eaters exist as allegories but I think it is important we all listen to what many fans of color, Jewish fans, lgbtq+ fans, etc. are saying and stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by treating these fictional characters and their fictional prejudices as if they were just as real, just as impactful, and just as deserving of our empathy and outrage as the very real people who are living daily with very real prejudices --because they’re not equal and they shouldn’t be. 

#anti-rowling #systemic racism #nazi mention: cw #white supremacy #godwins law #allegory #harry potter #harry potter meta

[janiedean]

Isn't it funny how the whole "stop caring about those evuhl men in wigs and start caring for real wombyn problems more!"-crap comes from those who don't really care for women once they disagree with them. If they really did care for women, they'd not force them to "choose" the pseudo-freedom of having to agree with them. Being freed from one oppressor but then only having one option isn't what being liberated is.

^^^^^

no but like... the thing is: never mind the whole transexclusionary bullshit, these people are a menace for any kind of woman they don’t agree with anyway and are also in themselves exclusionary in general *and* actually perpetuating more patriarchal ideas than they think because sorry but:

the fixation they have on genitals defining you for them is basically penises = anathema vaginas = empowerment, but like.... wow as if societal sexism wasn’t based on the contrary presumption, so you’re basically saying that whatever’s between your legs determines your social status, which...... is exactly what patriarchal societies do so what the hell are we even discussing here

the fact that with the whole vagina = empowerment narrative they have going on they also move ahead the whole ‘having children is a fundamental part of your womanhood™’ which is meant to a) exclude trans women b) saying surrogacy should be illegal means that basically they’re not only discussing the basic principle of bodily autonomy (ie: surrogacy can be a goddamned choice and a woman should be able to do whatever the fuck she wants with her body that included so maybe work in order to legalize/normalize it so no one is forced to) but basically says that no one who can’t have children biologically or won’t have them is Not A True Woman, which excludes any sterile cis woman and any cis woman who doesn’t have children from Being A Proper Woman, which is fucking ridiculous, but like... who the fuck only sees women as good for having children/said that a woman’s #1 role in society has to be having children? wow, patriarchal societies :))))))

(btw: last time I was at a feminist march and a terf organization ended up giving me a flyer with the above bullshit printed on I went up and left and never attended that one march again because I don’t want to share space with anyone who thinks women who say that shit care about women’s rights period so like... sorry I don’t want to share spaces with terfs ever, bye)

this whole obsession with penis = anathema brings to political lesbianism ie faking being attracted to women while pushing the narrative that being attracted to men is bad/brainwashing which means invalidating the sexualities of any single category who’s into men which wow includes people who aren’t straight women (see the amazing ‘bi women into men are dirty with male residual’ takes) *and* at the same time pushes the idea that women’s sexuality has to be what they say it is which lmao

meaning that since most of these idiots aren’t actually attracted to women but fake it they most likely don’t have sex where they’re proactive but at the same time they keep on bitching about how kink and bdsm and so on are misogynist in nature because if it’s a straight relationship either the guy is abusing you or fetishizing you depending on your role and if it’s not then it’s wanting to relieve those roles and if there are dicks involved SHAME SHAME SHAME so like... who has always been on the forefront wanting to dictate what women should or shouldn’t enjoy in bed? ah right, patriarchal societies and various religions/religious cults that preach women’s submission and say that you shouldn’t have sex outside having children/masturbation is bad™/sex is bad™/kink is bad™, so excuse me if this shit isn’t imvho feminist since policing what women want or don’t want in bed is inherently misogynist

this also shows they have a rather phallocentric idea of sex since it’s all about dicks dicks and dicks...... ah, wait, same as your regular misogynist dude who thinks that he doesn’t owe you an orgasm when you fuck but okay then :)

never mind this idea that women are inherently superior to men which automatically brushes under the rug the fact that women can be abusive to everyone either other women or men, that internalized misogyny exists and all the crap that it entails and excludes criticism of what women have to say on account of just being woman, which is ridiculus bc if another woman is sprouting bullshit maybe I should be able to point it out

also again... yesterday I disagreed with them about the trans women issue? I got hours of rape threats and death threats, which is exactly what I’d have expected out of the worst kind of redpiller incel, so where’s the difference? ah right the redpiller doesn’t pretend to care about human rights

also their crusade against FINDING OUT WHERE ARE THE INFAMOUS TRANS WOMEN actually hurts gnc cis women lmao because they go look at ‘BUT DO YOU LOOK SUPPOSEDLY MANLY OR NOT THAT MEANS YOU’RE NOT A TRUE WOMAN’ with all the peace of gnc cis women who happen to be tall/with muscles/whatever and the peace of some of us with pcos and extra testosterone who most likely would not be women enough because of having too much body hair or whatever else *shrug* like.... sorry but that also means that to them womanhood = also presenting in a very specific certain way according to beauty standards/societal attractiveness standards which automatically excludes every single woman that doesn’t perform femininity according to those standards, so again, fuck them because it means you don’t care about women, you supposedly care about a very small number of cishet abled standard attractive non-kinky most likely rich women who agree with your worldview only and if that’s feminism miss me with that bullshit 

and like... this isn’t probably 20% of the worst of terf ideology but tldr: those people are exactly as misogynist as the patriarchy they’re supposedly fighting and I don’t see why I should gaf about a group that pretends to care about all women and then actually doesn’t and as you said perpetrates the exact same rhetoric and societal bullshit that sexist/misogynist societies do. *shrug*

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #anti-terf #i can't even #yesterday's mess was Something #janie rants #misogyny cw #fuck theeeem #Anonymous #ask post

[fibrielsolaer]

Sexual empowerment

Hello dreamers! I once again forgot Tumblr existed. Then again, didn't everybody?

I have no idea if I have any actual followers. I have a few people who've clicked Follow on my page, but that doesn't mean they're particularly invested or all that familiar with me beyond whatever pretty pictures they happen to see on their timelines.

But anybody who is familiar with me might wonder how I can preach all righteously when all I draw is naked furries and half of them have boobs or balls the size of basketballs.

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I'm tired of rape & shame being the only allowed sexuality.

People have developed a hideously unhealthy view of how sex works, and they attack everybody else's sexuality in fear of it.

Our modern political trends like feminism and transgender, and the basic day-to-day operation of our TV and media, are largely founded around the toxic notion that womanhood is weak, gross & shameful and manhood is strong, violent & threatening. The world runs around the childish caricature of "woman slut, man rapist" and people are having their entire self-images and worldview poisoned by this.

Real women with large breasts are shepherded into pornographic modeling only*, or harassed and pressured to "get a reduction" with fear-mongering and misinformation - either defining themselves as someone else's sex object, or mutilating themselves for someone else's Victorian comfort**.

Children with precocious puberty are slut-shamed by their own (female) peers and teachers because they can't fit into standard child-sized clothes.

I don't think a lady with big tits or a big ass is inherently pornographic. She may be a hottie, but this does not make her a free lunch. The "sluts" are the people who think that she is.

And what I never noticed growing up in the 1990s, because I was less than ten years old at the time, is that the women of that era agreed with me. The 1990s are marked by sexually-charged "bad bitches" like the Spice Girls or Lola Bunny who are in sole control of their lady areas. That's why Lola says "Don't call me doll". A doll is the most frequent metaphor for a sexual abuse victim - a toy - and no one is entitled to Lola just because she's hot.

I don't even want to go that far. I don't need to make a whole cast of cock-teasing Bayonettas. I just want Daisy and Lily to be allowed to breathe.

But changes are done by pushing as hard as you can and seeing what stays. To that end, somebody will always try to censor you as hard as they can, so you gotta give the Queen a pair of huge tits and see if they let her keep 'em. I mean a duck. Give the Queen a pet duck. Hell, give her both, see which one survives management.

So yes, sometimes I draw an incongruent number of characters who are rather more endowed than necessary. For every average-sized pair of boobs you won't let a woman have, I'll draw three women with pairs bigger than their heads. Maybe I'll draw one with four. Fuck you.

* There are many women and men who are quite comfortable working in the sex industry. Sex workers should not be uniformly treated as victims who need to be saved. There are, however, also women and men who are unable to find work outside of the sex industry because they are too well-endowed to be "presentable", and there are sex workers whose bosses act like their pimps, and all of them are treated by society like public use fucktoys, and this is repulsive.

** At the same time, women who have undergone mastectomy due to cancer et al. are treated as "less than women".

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I'm not going to pretend that my personal attraction to over-endowed characters isn't a factor in my history of drawing them. Of course it is.

And I'm not going to pretend everything I draw turns out the way that I want, in quality or in message. It pretty much never does.

But I do not categorically treat endowed characters or people like "sluts". Certainly some of them are sluts, but not because of their proportions.

People who shame others for sexuality in such broad strokes are part of rape culture. They have developed a hideously unhealthy view of how sex works, and they attack everybody else's sexuality in fear of it.

But we've already been over that.

#rant #sexuality #sexism #rape culture

[ambidexterous-lesbian]

A different approach to gender

Hi, here is the low-down on who I am and why I’m posting this: I’m a 22 year old trans woman from North Carolina. I grew up in a backwards ass town, and I got into philosophy when I was about 15. When I was 20, I had several things happen (life events, surfacing memories) that lead me to the conclusion that I was transgender. I’ve been in transition since then, and the whole time I have searched for some sort of philosophical justification about why I am this way. Why it is that I can have this identity, and it be respected. I’ve been through all the iterations of transpolitics, talked to other trans people, talked to GC feminist, and turned ideas over again and again in my head. Ultimately I don’t aim to invalidate anyone, in fact the opposite is true. We, the trans community, aim to welcome and validate all identities, and yet, the current state of discourse is appalling. We’re arguing left and right, and the thing that we all want to believe, that we are all valid, often gets fucked and twisted by the people who stand against us. It is truly my belief that this is because the most progressive policy (that people simply *are* what they identify as) has no philosophical backbone. So, this post is going to try to take you through my own reasonings on the matter, and how I did in fact arrive at the conclusion that people are what they say they are.

### Part One: The Female Brain/Soul or some other shit

When I first came out, I latched onto the classic narrative of being “trapped in the wrong body” it was simple, it was to the point, and it provided a since of validity by staking some claim that gender exist in the soul. Now there are other variations of this stance, some of which argue the same from a biological stand point. Regardless, most of these views break down into some kind of essentialist thinking. In my case, I believed I was a woman, on some plane of existence was my soul, and that was the soul of a woman, but what does that even mean? What are the essential qualities of womanhood? Was it the fact that I liked doing dishes? That I saw myself as weak? Or was it that I liked to be held? I do not see how any answer to that question doesn’t harken back to the olden days where white men wrote books about “the fragility of womanhood”.

Now, there are other issues here. For example, let us say that sometime in the next few years I reexamine my life and come to the conclusion that all this trans shit was hogwash and detransition. I wouldn’t be the first, and I wouldn’t be the last. Hypothetically, every trans person could come to the conclusion that they were wrong about their identity, and change it. They apply some other label to themselves then what they currently use, and hell every cis perosn could do the same and become trans. Here is what I know, I spent twenty years shamelessly living as a man. For a lot of that time I was happy, and I was secure in my identity. Now, because I identify as a woman *now*, some trans activist will argue that I was ALWAYS a woman, and therefore invalidate my identity as a man. Alternatively I could start identifying as non-binary, by doing that do I retroactively invalidate myself as a woman? Is the conclusion to be drawn that I was just trying to figure things out? Now, all of these are possibilities, so how is it that we can make the assertion that the “X is a Y” in any immutable sense? We simply can’t.

There are also some arguments in this vain that propose that there is some inherent biological thing that makes one trans. Conveniently, this mystical structure has yet to be identified. Even if it was I find it hard to believe that the trans community will accept it, because inevitably someone, lacking in the component, will identify as trans, and then we’d make up some other reason as to why they’re valid. So, here’s the skinny: arguing that transness, or gender, is anything more than something socially constructed has some pretty terrible implications. Either it breaks down into something sexist, or some kind of unenforceable gate keepery that we have fought so hard against.

### Part Two: Whateverism and Performativity

Performativity is a school of thought that was originally presented by Judith Butler in 1991, the basic premise being this: Gender exist as a set of socially constructed roles and expectations, and ones gender is determined by how they fit into and fill those roles. When co-opted by trans people though, this creates a bit of an issue. A trans woman is only valid assuming she fills the societal ideal of womanhood, thus reinforcing the sexist ideas found in that ideal. Meaning that when asking a trans woman why she is a woman, she parrots back all these sexist ideas about fragility, and daintiness, it is because, according to this paradigm, that is what being a woman is.

There are a lot of trans people that recognise the sexism here, and the fact that it invalidates many trans people who fail to live up to a societal ideal, as well as non-binary individuals. Because of this, there is a new school of thought that I've dubbed whateverism. This is the one that makes little sense to most people. The idea that it's whatever, that it doesn't matter what people wear or look like, but simply that they say they are a thing and are therefore a thing. This is the one I take the most issue with, because as of right now it exist as a liberal attempt to be all inclusive, and in doing so renders language almost entirely meaningless. This is the school of thought that 52 genders exist in, not as 52 cumulative categories and sub-categories, but as a multitude of distinct separate entities. This is the biggest divide among trans individuals right now, and for that reason it is what I'd like to argue for.

### Part Three: Pragmatism

There is a school of epistemological thought known as pragmatism. It preaches that a thing is true if it is beneficial to consider that thing true. The best example of it being used is in the field of psychology. A person is not schizophrenic because of some inherent brain issue, or because they simply present the symptoms of schizophrenia, rather they are schizophrenic because they do have a set of experiences, and it is *beneficial* to consider them schizophrenic. Put another way: We label someone as schizophrenic because it allows us to contextualise their experience a certain way, an prescribe treatment based on that experience.

In the same way, gender exist as a framework through which we contexualise our experience, it is a tool that provides us with a way of understanding ourselves. Most of us have had that framework handed to us at birth, and conditioned to think and behave in a way that conforms to the behaviours and experiences in societies framework of that gender. Now, I'm not arguing that this isn't bad, or that society wouldn't be better off without it, instead I am simply saying that everyone, trans and cis alike, uses the framework of gender to think about themselves. Some people are able to overcome the worse aspects of whichever set of ideas they've been handed, and some people are not. For some people the act of labeling themselves non-binary, allows them to think of themself outside of the shitty framework they've been handed. This is the source of all the female non-binaries, of all the people who choose this label and profess themselves to be enby, without changing much about their presentation or physiology.

So, it's obvious that I agree that gender is bullshit, that it's a made up thing that is oppressive, and yet I still identify as a woman, and see my identity as valid. The reason being is that for some reason, the framework of masculinity is not something I can overcome. Maybe it's because I like to wear dresses, maybe it's because I like dick and harbour some internalised homophobia, but ultimately it doesn't matter because it is healthier for me to identify as a woman, that identity conflicts less with the person I find myself to be, and all the hormones and the dress-up serve to validate that view of myself, and put me in a better state for fighting the oppression that all of us face under gender.

#trans #transgender #gender critical #queer stuff #queer theory #philosophy #critism please

[sayruq]

I love how you like to claim that femininity is some kind of western invention. Also got is one show among the myriad of show were traditional feminine women are held up as the ideal. Maybe read stuff by women from non-western countries(SK, Nigeria, Brazil, Japan) and how they talk about the detriments of femininity and girls/women being forced to conform to it. I was raised in Nigeria and I've been living in the US for over 10 yrs seeing idiots like you deny it disgusts me.

The only person I see with a shallow understanding of sexism is your dumbass. In fact it's clear you actually don't understand sexism at all or why we women experience what we do at the hands of men. To explain it to idiots like you femininity is not innate. No girl or woman has ever been born feminine. However, feminine women are not worthless or useless b/c they conform to the desire of their society. This is basic stuff for anyone who actually gives a fuck about women.

Also did white people force Chinese men to get a fetish for small feet forcing Chinese girls to have their feet bound, broken, and deformed to make themselves feminine and attractive to these men? Are you so stupid that you don't know that that is femininity? Being able to knit or sew is not inherently feminine but has been deemed so by men to devalue women's skills b/c men know that by calling things feminine aka relating it w/women it is akin to putting it down.

And as someone who only cares about Sansa from got and has liked multiple feminine female characters and will continue to do so w/o any problems seeing you spreading lies and bullshit about traditional femininity in our society and in the media is repulsive. You also have the audacity to shit on and put down women who are actually telling the truth about the reality for women around the world in regards to femininity while deluding yourself into thinking you're in the right is embarrassing.

Can you read? Do you need classes because I’m struggling to see where I said femininity is a western invention? I feel like talking about how western centric this website and its discourses are gives you physical pain to make you this mad. Nice to see you skipped over the point about colonialism and really everything else. Anon, you simpleton, my point was that maybe be more intersectional with your feminism which is apparently far beyond your capabilities. Yes, anon, feminine behaviour is taught just like masculine behaviour is taught because we live in a society and that involves socialisation. You can take a break after every sentence because I can tell it’s really difficult for you to follow along. Yes, anon, women are oppressed everywhere including Nigeria which you have definitely been to. Yes, the patriarchy has destroyed the bodies and lives of women. I have not disputed any of this, you just came here to be angry. The way you, a Nigerian/America or wherever you’re actually from, react to characters on TV isn’t the same as me. I’m not worried about lipstick on Carol Danvers so much as colorism because lipstick isn’t as prevalent in my society. So characters you think are over-represented or whatever aren’t imo. Saying that all feminine characters aren’t groundbreaking is untrue for female characters belonging to marginalised groups.

My issue is that you are all focusing your anger on feminine women instead of the patriarchy to the point of lying about them being held up as ideals in Game of Thrones and other shows (my favourite part of your ask is your claim that Sansa is held up as ideal in GOT lmao). Which is it anon, are feminine women devalued or are they idealised? It can’t be both because femininity is tied to womanhood (which yes isn’t a single thing, is fluid, a spectrum etc etc) and women are looked down on everywhere. You can take another break, I know your brain is hurting from having to read so much. The problem with posts like that is it wasn’t telling the reality of women the world over which was my point, the sexism I live through is affected by colonialism, islamophobia, ethnophobia etc. Also the usual arguments of destructive beauty standards like fighting in heels or inappropriate clothing aren’t present in Sansa which was @cmollyo and @cleverjonquil‘s point. That’s why they said ‘Sansa begs to defer.’ Whatever OP and others were complaining about can’t be applied to every female character.

My favourite thing about this anon is them getting mad because I don’t think feminine women should get attacked, that femininity isn’t celebrated and I think Sansa is a groundbreaking character on TV. How many Sansas in fantasy series do you know anon who supposedly likes many feminine characters on TV?

#Sansa Stark #sexism #feminism #game of thrones #anon thinks i'm a man which is funny #i'm not even celebrating femininity either #that's what's funny #i'm not saying it's good or anything #Anonymous

[galaxyholly]

Let’s talk about labels.

So, with all the “political” discourse around minority groups lately, I’ve noticed something that’s left a sour taste in my mouth every time I hear it. (Or really a lot of things)

Labels.

Every minority group has them. “Gay” vs. “Straight”, “Black” vs. “White”, “disabled” vs. “abled”. 

Usually, labels are used as handy signifiers for a distinguishing trait, such as being homosexual. They’re used to distinguish something from a group, usually as some kind of utility of understanding. And they can be useful! Saying, “I’m gay” rolls of the tongue a lot easier than, “I am an X, and I am sexually attracted to X.”

But lately every time I hear labels like that, I can’t help but wonder if labelling is counter-productive to everything these groups stand for.

Language is powerful, its meanings, usage, and implications can change peoples’ minds like the snap of a forefinger and thumb. Obvious examples are like Cold War propaganda. We still have the majority of Americans assigning everything left of killing the homeless for sport as socialism (That’s a quote from somewhere, lemme know if you guess it.) 

Labelling isn’t an exception to this. There was a study done in recent years that illustrated this power in ways not really studied before. It involved telling a group of kids that they were gifted, and telling another that they didn’t achieve the gifted status. Both groups were taught using the same curriculum and methods, and by the end of the study, the “gifted” group had an IQ difference of 10-15 points. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just labelling these students caused sort of a “placebo” effect on their academic performance/ intelligence. 

[Citation at the bottom]

What does this have to do with minority groups? Well, I think it contributes to their perceived abnormality in our society. Most of these groups just want to be normalized, or treated just as well as the most well off groups and classes of society. Equality.

But the irony of campaigning for equality under a label, is that the label and the group status inherently separates and de-normalizes the group itself. If gay people are equal to straits, why do we even need a name for it? Can’t just saying, “I like X.” do the job? It’s nearly the same amount of effort to express, and it doesn’t involve boxing yourself into a narrow definition, nor does it separate. Does that make sense? You might have heard of this, but its called Heteronormativity and it sucks. As a wlw myself, I get tired of the label.

Maybe a more clear example would do good. If the color of your skin means nothing about who you are, why then do we call people “black”,”white”,”yellow”?

Before anyone tries to tell me that my idea is heading into culture erasure, give me a moment to explain. I do think culture is important, and I am by no means trying to force anyone to let go of any labels, or adopt others. I just want to open conversation as to what could be more helpful than the labels we have.

For instance, what do I think about when hearing the words black vs. white?

As a physicist, I would think of white as being the combination of all wavelengths of light, and black being no light present at all.

As someone indoctrinated into a protestant Christian belief system (I’ll be healing from that one for a while), white reminds me of all the imagery associated with god and angels, and black as associated with satan and demons (red too).

I mean, anyone can attest, it’s just classic symbolism. So what does it do when we assign groups of people those colors as labels. Well, it brings a lot of those connotations with them. Labelling in this way, using a noun as the label makes the label into something inherent in people. Think of the difference between, “I am a black person” vs. “I am a person comes from a unique culture and background.” In the first example, the person is black. It’s read as an inherent quality of someone. In a movement that’s saying that the color of your skin means nothing of who you are, the label of “black” only signifies a difference, which isn’t true. I don’t think POC or “People of Color” helps much either. It still plays into classic imagery, of white being pure, and other being less pure. It still makes the label out to be something that’s inherently part of the person. Which, yes, my skin color is a part of me, but as it means nothing about the content of my personality, so it seems odd to even mention its existence in reference to myself or my life.

This is my suggestion. Since skin pigment has no bearing on a persons life, why not just never mention it? Obviously this doesn’t do justice to the fact that people are severely oppressed due to their skin color. Fighting for rights or talking about culture that stemmed from oppression are the instances where sometimes a label is needed. So why not develop a better language model. Calling someone a “person affected by systemic oppression” doesn’t roll off the tongue, but the connotations are infinitely better. It conveys nothing inherent about the person, and the only separator is easily demonstrated to come from others, which means its not inherent, and not really a separator.

I think this can be applied to so many other groups. The most egregious example I can think of would be the term “transgender.” 

This language, much like racial language is extremely outdated and inaccurate, and as always, created by WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants). The fact that a label exists at all, much like with poc, really irks me.

This is a group of people who are essentially just forced into the incorrect gender/presentation from birth, and many are self and medically-described to have been born in the wrong bodies.

One such sub-group is called “Trans Women.” These people are just women. They were assigned the wrong gender/gender roles/gender presentation at birth due to the archaic ideas of gender in Western society. Science, all accredited medical institutions, and psychology all confirm that “trans women” are just women. It’s the same with the men of the movement.

So, if you haven’t seen the issue yet, let me point it out. If “Trans women are women”, then why on earth do we need so say the “trans” part in the first place? Mathematically speaking, if [trans women = women], then the trans part is equal to zero. It’s a useless term. And yet, it’s everywhere. If you go to the reddit forum r/asktransgender, you literally can’t find a single person referring to a woman as just a woman. There’s this obsessive need to always attach “trans” in front of everything these men and women are associated with.

This isn’t even getting into what “transgender” implies in the first place. Much like POC is to black, transgender is to transsexual. People fighting to get rid of discriminatory and antiquated language with a history of use in disparagement only to replace with another useless label that just has less bad history of use.

“Transgender” is defined as:   denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex.

If everything says that these people are who they are, then why does “birth sex” even factor in? The use of this word makes it even worse. These people have to say, “I am transgender.” This is again, making the label inherent to the person’s being. Essentially relegating their whole life to being that person whose internal sense of identity and gender doesn’t align with their “birth sex”. 

How about, “I am a woman”, or “I am a man”, or “I am a nonbinary person.

The label carries around so many connotations. If someone is a woman, then why do they need the classifier, “trans” before her description? What does that confer? Their genitalia? No, some get surgery, and some don’t, so how is that helpful. Also, why do people think they have a right to any information on a person’s genitalia? That’s so weird and creepy. I would argue that these women know more about womanhood, and have a more intimate relationship with it than women without the experience of having a gender incongruence.

It also implies that they are going from one gender to another, hence the “trans” part. Which, is just inaccurate, considering that these people just are who they are from birth. Looking like a man doesn’t make you one, and vice versa. Nor does genitalia. Hopefully I don’t have to explain that one to you. 

So, why not say something like this instead. “I am a woman and I have a gender incongruence.” Gender incongruence is defined as the mismatch an individual feels as a result of the discrepancy experienced between their gender identity and the gender they were assigned at birth (GIRES, 2018, 2018).

First, this definition has nothing inherent about the person. “Having” a gender incongruence isn’t the same as saying, “I’m gender incongruent.” Once the person has fixed this incongruence through medical, social, or presentational means, they no longer have an incongruence, and are just a man/woman/enby.

Like said, if they’re just men and women, why the trans part? It only separates, and since they’re the same, the separator means nothing.

There are intersex women, infertile women, women who were brought up with tons of brothers, not being allowed to be “girly”, who never had a gender incongruence. So don’t try to say that there’s anything that can separate women who’ve had a gender incongruence to those who haven’t. 

I know this was really long, but I hope you got something out of it. Let’s stop labeling everything we see. It’s often inaccurate, and a really poor way of approaching. Let’s use the framework of oppression and culture instead.

If you’re in any of the minorities I talked about and you want to correct me or talk about this post, let me know.

Love, Holly

-xoxo

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/alternative-truths/201005/why-its-dangerous-label-people label theory readup

#labelingisbad nomorelabels equalityforall

[designatedheckingadult]

I am having complex trans lesbian identity feels. Warning, this is long and word vomity and probably doesn’t make sense.

Figuring out your identity as a trans woman is fucking nightmare. Every trans woman goes through this to some degree or another, but I rarely see it articulated, so I’m gonna start by talking about that. Okay, so I came out at 30, not long after I figured out I was trans. I had wanted to be a girl since I was a pre-teen, but nobody tells you that’s an option. Even if you’re vaguely aware of the existence of trans people, it never crosses your mind that it’s something you can just do.

Point is, by the time I said “Hey world, I’m a woman!” I had a good couple of decades of pretending to be a dude and wanting to be a girl saved up. So I started experimenting. It’s very much like being a teenager, except while the average teenage girl can get away with wearing whatever she damn well likes, a tall, broad 30 year old trans woman can’t. It’s not just “Do I like this, do I look good in this?” There’s a whole list of stuff that goes through your head.

I don’t like how this looks.

Does it look bad?

Is it just me hating myself?

Is it because I’ve been subjected to a lifetime of media talking about what is appropriate attire for a woman of a given age?

Same as above, but for women of a given size.

Fuck it, I like it, I’ll wear it.

But what if it genuinely and objectively looks terrible?

But what if it’s just conditioning?

Does it look too masculine?

Am I “not trans enough” if I wear this?

Is it going to get me read as a man?

Does it look too feminine?

Am I “trying too hard?”

Am I doing “performative feminity?”

Do I look like a man in a dress (or other feminine-coded article of clothing?)

AHHHHHHHHH!

*repeats*

Slowly, you start figuring it out. You find the middle of the Venn diagram of what you like, what you can afford, what you can get in your size and what looks good on you. Thing is, it’s not just clothes. It’s everything. Every aspect of your presentation, your mannerisms, how you walk, how you talk. All the while you’re bombarded with conflicting, confusing messages, some supportive, some decidedly not, about masculinity, femininity, maleness, femaleness, queerness. 

How do you tell the world that you’re a woman without coming across like you’re trying to tell the world what a woman is?

Visibility is a huge thing. The “best” I can ever hope for is to be read as a trans woman. I’m 6′4″, I’m broad, I have a voice that never gets read as anything other than male. I just hope that people clock me as obviously presenting as a woman and treat me accordingly. But even that is a minefield. It reduces the chances of being addressed as “sir,” but it increases the chances of verbal abuse (or worse) in the street.

And then you add butch and femme lesbian identities and things get really messy.

I have a really complicated relationship with being attracted to women. As an AMAB person, it was the default and there was nothing to question there. It’s not something I’ve had to examine in that way. On the other hand, I’m trans and ace and after a lot of examination of those factors, I realised that what I thought was the expected sexual attraction to women, was actually wanting to be those women. It’s a whole other thing, but the short version is that liking girls has never been an issue in and of itself. I never had to come out as a lesbian, it was just a footnote on coming out as trans.

However, it’s really hard to get away from the butch/femme dynamic, especially if you’re community-minded and inclined to understanding and activism. Talking to people, reading about their experiences, grokking the difference, for example, between a butch lesbian who experiences dysphoria and is on T and wants top surgery and a straight trans man who does the same, is all really important to me. All of that leads to more self-examination, gazing into the abyss and all that.

My instinctive reaction as a trans woman has always been to reject butchness. It’s internalised fear of being too masculine. When you’re aggressively interrogating every aspect of yourself and exterminating unwanted maleness (especially when you’re absolutely terrified of exhibiting any kind of subconscious toxic behaviour) it seems really counter-productive to embrace that kind of gender non-conformity. Even when you’ve accepted that you are not a man and butch lesbians are not trying to be men, it feels like dangerous territory. Last night, as the result of conversations about Zarya from Overwatch, of all things, I was given some new perspectives on butchness. I always thought I had a pretty good handle on that, my first ever openly queer friend was a butch lesbian, I read plenty on the subject. Never thought I was an expert, but past Butch Lesbian 101, y’know?

What really struck me was that all these things I was hearing about butch identity that really resonated with me were things that I’d actually picked up from my mum. My mum is a simply amazing woman. A kick-ass single parent who exudes grace and style, while also having a shed full of tools and a passion for DIY. There’s a damn good reason I took her name as a middle name when I legally changed mine. I’m a practical person who fixes things (and if I can’t fix something, I try and learn how from the person I get to do the fixing.) I hold open doors and walk on the road side of the pavement. I want to defend and protect those around me. I’m sure and confident (anxiety aside) and I make damn sure that I’m listened to when I have something to say.

For the last few years, I’ve been kind of afraid of expressing those parts of myself too strongly, because they’re so often seen as masculine. The conversations I had last night made me realise that I’m not any of those things because I “used to be a man” or whatever, but because that’s how my mum brought me (and my brother and sisters) up to behave.

Five years into my life as Caelyn, I’m just starting to reach the point of not giving a fuck what other people think. Case in point, I actually bought a men’s denim jacket recently and Rune bought me a men’s flannel shirt. They fit right. They’re comfy. They look cute. And they don’t make me less trans or less of a woman.

I’m thinking that I need to treat myself, my personality, the traits that make up me, the same way. I am all those things I talked about and there’s nothing inherently manly or masculine about any of them. I’m a woman and I learned those things from a woman and they’re an inherent part of my womanhood. And maybe, that makes me butch.

#do not reblog #lesbistential crisis #trans #trans lesbian #lesbian #butch #trans butch

[lesbian-ed]

I've always identified as lesbian since I am female and I like females. But lately I have started to wonder if there is something to the genderists idea of gender. I hate my female body and want to look as masculine as possible, and I have always only been attracted to women. I have started to wonder if I am a transman after all. I don't know and I'm confused!!!

Hi, there! 

Okay, so, first of all, I’d like to say that a lot of lesbians find that they do not experience gender the way they’re “supposed to”. In fact, gender-nonconformity in childhood is directly linked to homosexuality (in other words, gay people have been proved to be more gnc [x]). Society has created a unreachable mold for womanhood, and equated it to femininity. If you don’t match femininity, then it makes sense you wouldn’t feel like you have any claim to womanhood.

Society has equated womanhood to high heels, make up, dresses, long hair, for a really long time. It’s not even just accessories: society also equals womanhood to a certain body type (usually thin) and a certain behavior (quiet, submissive, caring, nurturing, etc).

All these ideas of womanhood are what create our concept of the feminine gender. If the genderists have it right, then that would mean that if you don’t match these stereotypes for femininity, then you are automatically not a woman. Well then, what about butch dykes? Are they not women at all? Does that mean that the moment that women stopped wearing dresses/skirts-only and started wearing pants we all transitioned into men?

Does that mean that every time a woman cuts off her hair, she instantly becomes trans?

The “genderist idea” is that gender performances (aka the way you present yourself) dictates your very core, and that every performance you do or do not put on makes you either woman or non-woman. 

Well here’s the thing that the genderist idea completely disregards: you have experiences which are unique to you as a woman. A lot of women hate their bodies, hate their breasts, their femaleness. I know I did, for a very long time. And I fell down the rabbit hole of “if you just try real hard, and believe really strong, then you’ll become whatever you want to become”. The genderist idea asserts that being a woman is not inherent, but made up, that it can be co-opted. 

Well, think about yourself. Think about periods, for example. Do you know any men who personally understand periods? Do you know any men who get what women go through when they have to go out of the house on their periods? Do you know any men who understand the experience of cramps, PMS? 

I wouldn’t think so. Those are womanly experiences, female experiences. No man can begin to understand what it is to be on one’s period, because that is a biological reality that only females go through.

So forget all the frills and lace, all the make up and hair care… Focus on your core functions. The way your body looks, the way it behaves… No man could ever understand that. Nothing about you is manly, because you were born female. In fact you are female since you before you were conceived, since you were but a sperm. (x) 

Female and therefore womanly experiences are not about how much make up you do or do not wear: it’s about the body you were born as. 

Genderism does a very disingenuous thing: it acts with the patriarchy to separate gender non conforming women from other women. It others us, tells us we’re wrong, weird. So of course you couldn’t be a woman when you don’t wanna wear pink and high heels, right? Because women are born wanting to wear pink and high heels, right? Women literally come out of the womb ready to throw on a barely there dress, 10 inch heels, and be consumed by the male gaze, right? 

But do you actually believe that? Look at the history of women, look at the women in your life, look at strong women. Do you actually believe that the main factor of all those overlapping experiences are clothing preferences? Do you sincerely think that looking masculine would completely separate you from us?

I’d argue not even transitioning would separate you from us.

I’m not saying this as a radical, forget all about that. I’m saying this as a person who has started “socially transitioning”. I’m saying this as someone who fell into transgenderism and regrets it daily… Transgender ideology harms gender-nonconforming women. It tells us that our bodies are commodities, that our bodies are up for grabs. It tells us that the experiences we have had as women are useless, and shouldn’t even be brought up or named.

Do you sincerely believe that hating your body + dressing masculine = you not being a woman?

Do you understand that female self hatred is just femaleness? 90% of women hate their own bodies (X) So why are you different from all those other women?

Because you dress “like a man”? Why are comfortable clothes considered “manly”? Why can’t women be comfortable AND stay women?

Why is short hair and plaid “a man’s thing”? 

Look, I don’t know you, but I assume you don’t actually believe that. 

The path to transitioning is one with endless consequences, you might not fully be able to grasp right now. Before you go down it, I please that you please reconsider. Your worth and value as a woman and as a human being is not defines by your clothing style. Your worth and value as a woman is not diminished by gender-nonconformity. 

I beg you please take care of yourself, please understand that your experiences as a female who does not conform to femininity are important. And they are not so othering. A bunch of other women feel the same way or have felt the same way. I recommend you search for us, because we are right there. The dykes, and the “are you a man or a woman”, and the detransitioned, and the pariahs of society. We’re here, we exist. 

You don’t need to turn your back on yourself as a woman and as female in order to be happy. That path does not lead to happiness. All it leads to is a deeper, more acute sense of self hatred, except then everything you hate about yourself is highlighted by the fact that all your friends agree with you and want to help you get rid of it. Your body is not something you own, it is something you are.

Being female is not an afterthought to you, it is everything. It has shaped all of your experiences since you were born. 

Wishing you were a man is part of your life as a woman. Most women will wish that, because being a man = power, safety, stability. Men have it better in so many social aspects, of fucking course we wouldn’t settle for being lesser than. 

But let me tell you, you don’t need to transition in order not to settle, all you need to do is understand your own worth as a woman and a person. Real feminism is a great help with that. Please stay questioning and critical, don’t let the gender trend ruin you. You deserve better.

[Here’s a very good talk about why it is that transgenderism is harmful to women/females.]

[And here’s another similar post I’ve written on this subject]

I hope I was able to at least get you questioning. 

TL,DR: Don’t go into this without kicking and screaming for yourself. Fight for who you are, there is life as a butch lesbian. Presenting masculine is not against yourself as a human being. It just is. Women can be masculine and still be women. Womanhood does not equal femininity. Feminine and masculine are genders not sex. Womanhood is defined by femaleness (aka XX chromosomes). You have always been a woman/girl. Don’t let genderists steal that away from you, there is strength in being a gnc woman. Also plz check these out [x][x][x].

/Mod A

#homophobia #misogyny #tranistioning #detransitioning #gender critical #mod a #answered asks