#CISSEXISM/

[anti-sexist-enban]

“Feminism isn’t for everyone! Stop coddling men!”

Honestly? The people I’ve actually been having to coddle lately are the cis women saying these things. Literally all I have been saying is that excluding men from feminism and openly hating them, openly considering them the enemy for the way they were born, hurts the feminist cause in addition to hurting men.

But over and over again I have to hold these cis women’s hands and walk them through the very very basics of feminism, all while reassuring them “it’s okay, I’m not blaming you, I’ve been hurt and traumatized by men too, you aren’t responsible for this.” Meanwhile they’re calling me a dirty evil man who sees all women as walking babymakers who need to serve and tend to men (not even exaggerating, unfortunately), when I’m not even a man in the first place.

In reality, men are not causing harm by existing, while these cis women are genuinely causing harm by openly despising them. I’ve seen how many trans guys refuse to come out, delay their transition, or detransition (as I very nearly did myself) because of man-hating sentiments and people refusing to see that we are affected by sexism. This harms cis men, and it also harms trans women and transfems who get seen as men (either by transphobes or because of how they’re perceived, including closeted trans women/fems). Additionally, it hurts the feminist cause and fight against sexism to drive away half the population from supporting us.

At this point, these folks can talk to the wall, I am not arguing anymore. I will leave that vital work to those with more energy and patience for it than I currently have after being called a misogynist so many times. I will continue to engage in feminism, but I will focus on antisexism first and foremost.

[cat-in-a-mech-suit]

Trans men are men.

Men are cis men.

Therefore trans men are cis men and don’t need rights because they already have them.

[sexysphinx]

Who's gonna help me take off my clothes?

[ariel-s-awesome]

The problem is misgendering and nonbinary erasure.

They inherently can't be straight, but they can't be in a same gender relationship with a binary gender either. Because they're still not a man or woman.

They can be gay in an umbrella sense, but when you specifically refer to them as gay in reference to their relationship with a man or woman you’re implicitly gendering them. Whether you respect their pronouns or not.

On a related note: Don’t call them a lesbian. Don’t abuse the nuance of nonbinary genders to make them aligned with any binary gender(s). There are plenty of characters that are canonically men or women to headcanon as masc and/or fem-aligned nonbinary characters.

Signed, an unaligned agender person.

Edit: I decided to tag other fandoms guilty of this too.

[velvetvexations]

do people still use the term "cisexism" to describe "the type of transphobia which is a result of the assumption that everyone is cis and cis is the default"? "men don't get pregnant" "women don't need prostate exams" etc. i never see it around anymore, is it superceded by another word?

I use it a lot when I talk about how the English language sets us up to fail. It's extremely difficult at times to talk about trans issues in a way that doesn't have implications for people outside a narrow band because we are culturally not built for more than a sex binary.

Take orientation labels, for instance. In a purely binary world where bioessentialism is the assumed truth, they're very simple descriptors that refer to A liking A and B liking B, but with our understanding of gender it starts to break down and get murkier.

I like mostly people who would pass as cis women, regardless of gender identity. It's like, okay, so am I pan/bisexuals? Logically that's the closest I can think of but it doesn't at all do a good job of communicating my tastes. Like I could say I was pan/bi, and people will look at my blog and be like "huh, Vicky says she's pan or bi but for some reason only ever expresses attraction to girls."

The point here isn't to quibble about what I am, I don't use those labels at all partly for this reason, it's that the way we talk about gender has outpaced hundreds of years of societal development so the very words we use have become hopelessly outdated - and not just the words, but even our ability to comprehend a lot of it, because the foundation of all that we are is thickly rooted in our primitive culture.

[lavenderprose]

Man the feminism sure does just leave some people's bodies when they see women dating men who they consider ugly or old or undesirable. 'Why would she date him' she thinks he's hot next question. 'He must be giving her something' yeah it's called love shut up. 'What is he doing to her to make her stay with him' yeah you're right it's probably something really awful like eating her pussy like it's his job. Be so for fucking real. Grown ass women do not need protection from randos on the Internet because their relationship/marriage/lifestyle doesn't make sense to you.

[slugace]

"Piccolo-san and the Son Family, Part Two" by Hoshi Hikaru.

Previous part here: https://www.tumblr.com/slugace/782308963673948160/piccolo-san-and-the-son-family-by-hikaru-hoshi?source=share

This one is chaotic, to say the least. I'm happy I managed to get this out on Piccolo Day! That's one more volume of Head-Cha-La translated.

[tinkerbitch69]

I’m sure this one will attract the terfs like flies but I’m gonna say it anyway cuz I haven’t heard anyone express or discuss this exact take but here goes:

‘biological sex’ categories are just modern day phrenology

Like first off it’s based around the idea that someone’s ’biological sex’ is dependent on the convergence of multiple factors I.e chromosomes, hormone levels, genitalia, etc. But the idea that any of these indicators are inherent to the ‘biological sex’ they are attributed to is disproven by both intersex people and trans people. I.e Many cisgender women are born with a Y chromosome. Trans women with so called ‘male’ physiology can develop breast tissue and estrogen levels on par with someone with ���female’ physiology.

Now the existence of these traits and the effects on the body is verifiable if disputable, but the modern idea of sex involves the assumption that these physical traits are indicative of someone’s character or capabilities. (i.e high testosterone means someone is more aggressive, high estrogen prevents high levels of physical achievement etc.)

How is this any different from assuming someone’s skull shape says anything about their intelligence?

And the fact that the modern ideas of what it means to be ‘biologically male’ or ‘biologically female’ were formed through deeply racist and violent phrenological research kind of supports this fact. So why do we assume these value assertions about individuals because of their physical traits are in fact true when the others are clearly false (obvs not everyone does think that sadly but generally speaking phrenology is scientifically discredited)

So when people claim we need to acknowledge the ‘biological reality’ of sex, both disingenuously and sincere,

do we though???

Yes we need to acknowledge the fact of generalised physical differences between people but I think we should question the idea that these physical differences indicate anything about a person’s personality, behaviour or capabilities and the validity of ‘sexual categories’ especially.

Side note: if this is like the stalest possible take in intersex discourse I apologise, I am merely a humble perisex trans woman who has engaged in way too many arguments with my increasingly right wing mother about imane khelif over the past few days and thought I should share my thoughts. Y’all are awesome and people should listen to your takes on sex and gender more often 🫶

[7fff00]

tfw a binary trans woman describes hrt as inherently feminizing because she finds that framing gender-affirming and you, a nonbinary person, are like, could we maybe not describe having breasts as an intrinsically "female configuration," actually?

[fallloverfic]

I'm not sure why this is apparently important to say but I didn't make Olrox a bottom in fics because I see him as femme. If you equate being femme with being a bottom, that's a you problem. I write him as a bottom because back when I was thinking about how to set up Mizrox's and Alurox's dynamics in October 2023, it was just easier to write and more fun to make Olrox the bottom (and honestly I had arguments for doing it either way or just making them all versatile; Adrian is versatile, and what he chooses is partner-dependent; I could see Olrox being vers depending on the partner, too; Mizrak is more difficult to parse, but I did draft early versions of You reluctant demon and Too much conversation where the positions were reversed, and ultimately went with what's published). If folks want Mizrak or Adrian to be bottoms, that's perfectly fine, live your dreams (Adrian canonically bottoms at least once anyway; Mizrak bottoms for Olrox in my fic, Being Tender, largely because of logistics of tiny human + giant snake). And if you want to write femme bottoms, go for it.

Also, if you see a guy with long hair and assume that means he's femme, that's a you problem (the 80s called, they'd like a word with you). Especially from ethnic groups where both men and women historically have long hair. And it kind of mm... plays with racist patterns of emasculating men of color. Olrox is a hot buff dude whom I personally see as very masc. He's not as buff as Mizrak, but man's still buff (not that femme folks can't be buff, but I find it strange that people seem to either be ignoring how buff he is or focusing solely on the fact he has long hair for the "he is femme" arguments). And his style of dress was typical for men - particularly wealthy men/men hoping to rise in station - at the time. Please look at the history of high heels. There's an argument to be made for androgyny, but also just... learn more about different cultures? I also don't personally think Olrox is androgynous at all (no shade on androgynous folks, but he just isn't), despite comments insisting otherwise. Then again, lots of folks like to remove his beautiful square jaw...

Also not sure how to explain that people of all genders, historically, have worn jewelry. Often as a statement of class/wealth/family. Jewelry/an emphasis on said jewelry is not an indicator of being femme.

Obviously if anyone wants to write/draw him as femme, that's fine, knock yourself out. Just been seeing some weirdness in the tags for a while.

[librarycards]

The term “social transition” has a non-trans history in the psychology of adolescence. In the 1980s, it was an operative metaphor for describing adolescence through the American trope of a rocky period of self-making, what one psychologist in 1978 termed “the difficulty of adolescence as a transitional period.” The primary “transition” that concerned psychologists at the time was school, where social shifts in friend groups and hierarchies from middle school to high school affected a young person’s self-esteem and mental integrity, resulting either in positive self-actualization or, if the social transition went poorly, “problem behavior.”³

The term “social transition” was only later adopted by psychologists and psychiatrists looking to powerfully expand their jurisdiction over trans youth to include entirely non-medical practices that often spur parents to reject or harm their kids: wearing a dress, cutting or growing out hair, wearing a binder or a bra, wearing makeup, or adopting a new name and pronouns. Making those banal but concrete practices of changing gender into psychiatric events was intended to convince anxious and angry parents that they shouldn’t put down their children. By the same token, tying practices of clothing and self-description to healthy development overinflated them with a pathological degree of significance, upping the ante and creating a lucrative target, both for parents of trans youth who wanted to stop their children from transitioning and, now, politicians.

I don’t mean to imply that psychiatry directly caused HB 2885, just that it clearly holds one part of the blame for inventing the root vulnerability that Gragg has taken advantage of in Missouri. If anything, the attachment of sex offender felonies to a teacher complimenting a teenager’s haircut exposes, once and for all, how fraudulent the medicalization of transition has been all along. Gragg can claim the right of the state to control children’s dress and speech (masquerading as the rights of parents) through teachers and counselors, in part, because psychiatry and medicine first claimed the right to regulate trans youth’s practices of transition.

Still, the causal events that led to HB 2885 run far deeper than the shallow history of “social transition” as an especially foolish psychiatric fiction. Here lies the far bigger problem raised by this bill. Not only will psychiatrists prove to be the least effective political allies of trans youth in Missouri, but contemporary queer and transgender culture’s elevation of the private right to dress as the sine qua non of politics is also quite useless as a political strategy.

Part of what I gather stuns in bills like HB 2885 is their audacity. The law would target the most conservative, least politically subversive of all transgender practices: individual style, identification, and language-use. In the case of minors, “social transition” is also a cheap compromise offered to young people who are refused blockers and hormones by disapproving parents and doctors, but that compromise is offered in a broader queer and transgender culture that has elevated self-identification through style as the ultimate arbiter of being transgender, making it much harder to advocate for a genuine right to transition for anyone, teenager or adult.

[...]

Students have very limited First Amendment rights on school campuses, meaning that they cannot present themselves as private individuals enjoying the right to dress as they please.⁷Their self-expression is governed from the outset by a competing set of custodians, from parents to schoolteachers, to psychiatrists and doctors, to the Missouri House of Representatives. Trans youth’s interests are therefore materially extraneous to the mainline of contemporary queer and transgender culture, whose architects were wealthy, college-educated adults whose prior enjoyment of full-citizenship was the very reason they demanded only the affirmation of a right to dress.

I suspect that part of the genuine shock of bills like HB 2885 is that most people reasoned that LGBT liberalism’s elevation of the private individual over all other political concerns would inoculate dress and language from state interference. It evidently has not. What perhaps has been misunderstood, then, is how the state exercises power. The law cannot prohibit being transgender, for there is no such state of being. The state has no need to target people’s interior selves, either, for the law can seize people where it always has, in concrete social practices that it simply declares are the undesirable traits of transgender people—namely, practices of transition.

Jules Gill-Peterson, The Unimportance of Wearing Clothes. [emphasis added]

[queertations]

"MRA’s set their sights on combating feminism, whereas everything in my work about gender and transmasculinity vehemently supports intersectional feminism, only pushing back on white supremacist cis centered feminism that fails to be intersectional, and thus, leaves out massive portions of people who do indeed need intersectional feminism."

Not transmasc invisibility, but erasure / Antitransmasculinity as erasure by S.L. Void

[nonvirminas]

a reminder

It doesn't matter why someone has a feminine and/or masculine gender identity without being a woman or a man.

Even if the gender identity in question has a specific reason for developing, such as alienation from white/thin/neurotypical/etc. binary folks, clicking with certain stereotypes without wanting to be grouped with women/men or anything else, that doesn't make these nonbinary identities themselves problematic or fake.

I bet a lot of cis women/men aren't overly invested in their own gender identities, and they just repeat what they were assigned because they don't want to identify as anything else either. It's just that non-cis identities are overanalyzed and dissected, since those are seen as problems that could/should be "solved" in place of accepting someone's actual gender identity.

[pickle-the-lad]

I don't like how Afabris is not inclusive to intersex! So I coined a new term.

Brischest

This is a term under the altersex umbrella, meaning "One who wishes for or is happy having a flat chest." This can be with or without nipples of any kind!