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tonight i swore a blood oath to the minimum wage workers at my local subway

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starting a collection of my favourite AO3 author’s notes

honourable mentions

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I can’t get over this fucking photo

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The ableist ass job requirements for the average office jobs are like “you have to be able to lift 15+ pounds and be able to stand, sit for extended periods of time, kneel, hear, reach, speak and see” and the requirements for the presidency are like “can you form a sentence and speak 5 coherent words consecutively? no? how about 4? 4 is okay.”

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The worst part of "not all men" is that it's just a pointless phrase.

Like, okay, so what?

Not everyone is a thief, you still lock your doors at night. You're not generalizing all your neighbors as thieves.

Not everyone is a mugger or a pickpocket. You still keep your valuables close to you when out and about. You're not "assuming everyone around you is inherently a criminal".

The cries of generalizing and not all men are really confusing because they babble on and on about how likely or unlikely certain crimes are....... but then say nothing about what it is, exactly, that they want us to do.

"Not all men are bad"... so women shouldn't be cautious at night?

"Not all men are bad"... so women shouldn't be careful and get the license plate number when meeting someone new?

Like, at the heart of the "not all men" cry is just "your caution upsets me".

And why, why, why, would an innocent person be so personally pissed off and offended by a total stranger not instantaneously trusting them?

"Not all men" Okay, so, what EXACTLY fucking is it that you're asking of us?

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Doctors purposefully give people very conservative life expectancy estimates because it is better for the person to have their affairs in order long before it is necessary than to be shocked by how rapidly their health is declining. This should be obvious but you would not believe the amount of people who are like “My father was given 3 months to live 5 months ago. This is proof all doctors are idiots and stupid. Look at him. He’s fine.” pan to a guy actively doing the death rattle.

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TikTok (asshole of the world, I know, I’m sorry I’m subjecting you to it) has discovered the term ‘lavender marriage’ and decided to shift the definition to mean a man sinisterly pretending to be straight and using his hapless oblivious wife to as a beard and also applied this term to any couple where the husband has any interest in interior design, expresses emotions or acts like a human being in a domestic partnership instead of a douchebag. I know I made a post about it but I’m astounded by the new wave of homophobia I’m seeing creep into the public consciousness.

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The thing about growing up with undiagnosed autism is that you’re a bad kid. And you don’t know how to stop being a bad kid. But you’re pedantic, you hate hugs, you’d rather be alone than attend a family gathering, you play by yourself instead of with friends or family, you make mealtime impossible, you can’t even look your parents in the face, you lie to get out of going to school and when you’re there you complete your assignments correctly but in a way that is somehow inherently wrong. You’re wrong. There is something wrong with you and you can’t identify it or fix it. You can’t begin to explain it. You pull for justifications and apologies. You were a bad kid and there was nothing you could do to be better.

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I'm going to walk through the process of how I went from a trans ace/aro (apothisexual is what I had been calling myself) for seven years to a terf in just a few months back in 2020.

Mostly because like five people from my fandom art accounts how now discovered my main and I want to give my story/point of view so hopefully even if they don't agree with me they understand that I'm not coming from a place of bigotry and hatred, if they decide to read this 💔

Back in 2020 when the pandemic first hit, like everyone else I ended up spending a lot of time online. I had seen numerous comment sections where someone would say something like "Is it transphobic to have a genital preference?" There would be tons of comments under all these posts telling them yes it was. Then I'd see a comment on another post asking what a woman was, and the replies to that would be people saying asking that was transphobic.

Then I saw posts from nonbinary people and trans men explaining their gender journey, and more often than not they would mention not conforming to gender roles.

Then I saw a terf point out that it seems like you can't have gender identities without gender roles existing.

And many many such questions and posts from both sides.

At first, I hated the terfs. Because *I* was nonbinary, bordering on identifying as a man, but with months of isolation due to the pandemic, I was left with those questions floating around in my mind. Eventually, I started to question my own gender identity. I realized that the reason I didn't feel like a woman was because I had never fit in with them.

Then I started to examine why that was. I never wore makeup, I have never shaved, I didn't enjoy any typical "girly" things. I liked catching bugs and collecting bones from roadkill, building things out of rocks and mud in the yard. I never enjoyed any of the shows or movies my female peers did, but I always liked the ones my male peers liked. I hated dolls, but loved dinosaurs. I hated fairies, but loved dragons.

I hated when my friends asked to paint my nails or do my hair. I hated the way I was teased for choosing to wear a one piece with shorts whenever we went swimming, even by the adults.

I always thought I would have much rather been born a man. I hated having a period, I hated having boobs, because bras were uncomfortable and because I was a girl I had to wear them. I couldn't go shirtless in the summertime, but my dad and brothers could. Every month I'd have to deal with the bleeding. In my mind it was so unfair, I wished I could just be a man. I hated how people would always ask me how many kids I wanted and insisted I would change my mind when I said none. I hated how I *had* to wear dresses and heels at formal events no matter how much I protested because it "wouldn't be polite" to not wear them. I hated how I was teased by my friends, siblings and cousins for having hairy legs. I hated that adults would tell me to shave them. I hated that my brothers could play in the dirt all they wanted, but when I did it, I was "ruining my clothes"

And many other such things.

I had asked my trans friends how they discovered their gender identities, and they all had similar stories to mine.

When I really started to think hard on it, I realized I didn't want to be a woman because of how *others* saw women.

I myself had never thought women had to do any of those things, yet I didn't want to be a woman because I don't? I realized I wasn't practicing what I was preaching.

I sat and thought on it for a few weeks, then I made a post. At the time, I had only been posting FNAF art and pride stuff for years.

In my post, I had asked what a woman was.

I asked "How do you know if you feel like a woman? What does it mean to be a woman?"

Most of the comments called me a terf, some said to educate myself. I told them that's what I was trying to do by asking, but they never answered my question. Some longtime followers of mine gently explained to me that asking that question comes across as transphobic, but they also did not answer.

A very small minority of the responses *did* answer the question though. Their answers can all be summed up to this:

"A woman is someone who identifies more with the feminine gender roles of their culture than with the masculine"

So I thought to myself "is that not sexist?"

It seemed to me like conservatives thought female=woman=feminine

Where liberals thought female≠women=feminine.

Neither of these felt very palatable or feminist to me.

I wanted to ask more questions, but I was already clearly on thin ice with my followers, so I made a brand new throwaway blog.

I started by asking the same question in my first ever post.

"What is a woman?" Excluding the hate comments, what I got was very similar to the first post I had made on this blog.

"Someone who identifies with the more feminine side of the gender spectrum"

So I asked if women had to be feminine.

They said no.

So I asked what Blaire White and Storme Delarverie had in common that made them both women.

They said "they identify as women"

I asked what that meant.

Nobody had a response to that.

I was then put on a terf blocklist.

For a whole year after the fact, I received rape and death threats. People telling me to "choke on glass" or "I hope you get raped by a transwoman and like it" and "Spare everyone around you and kill yourself you hateful cunt" and many, many, MANY more.

Several asks and comments just like that every day for months. They slowed down after a while, but I still received them for a full year until it finally slowed to only a couple each month.

Eventually, a radfem found my post. She was kind to me. She explained that a woman is an adult human female, and that women don't have to be anything at all. They're just people. The only thing that makes them a woman is that they are female, and nothing else.

And so, for the first time in my life, I had actually gone to a radfems blog and read it without hating. I actually listened to what she had to say.

I saw something she shared. It was defending lesbians. The post was just an image that said "genital preferences are not transphobic, lesbians don't owe trans women sex"

But the comments. Oh boy, did they not agree. An endless wall of "trans women are women" and "you not wanting to date trans women is because you see them as men, work on your internalized transphobia" "do you only see women as their genitals?" (as well as the rape/death threats that are under any terf post)

The women who's blog I found this on had commented. "Lesbians are female homosexuals. No amount of repeating trans women are women will change their sexuality. "

Knowing what I knew about how trans activists viewed womanhood: Either there's no definition of woman *at all*, or there is a definition but it needs there to be sexist gender roles in order to work

I made a new post, very similar to the one I shared here last week. I assumed most trans activists didn't support gender roles, because I liked to assume the best, and went with the other definition instead (anyone who identifies as one)

"If women can have any personality (masculine, feminine or anything between), can look in any way, can have any interests or hobbies, and have any type of body,

What is a lesbian? What is it that makes lesbians only attracted to women?

Why would a lesbian be attracted to an extremely butch woman, but not a man who is identical in all categories except for him identifying as a man? Why can a lesbian be attracted to a hyper feminine woman, but not a man who is the exact same way, except identifying as a man?

The only answer I got were "because lesbians only like women"

Which explains NOTHING. If I questioned it further, I was told I was being hateful and bigoted.

After going through these loops, having these conversations, over and over and over again with many different people, the ONLY thing that makes sense to me is a woman is an adult human female and a lesbian is a female homosexual.

Women are women because of their bodies, not because of a feeling they have. Lesbians are lesbians because they like pussy but not dick. Not because they draw the line at a pronoun.

Saying this is NOT "redusing people to their bodies" any more than saying "humans have opposable thumbs" is reducing people to their thumbs. Yes, people can loose their thumbs, or be born without them. It doesn't make them not human anymore. Just as women can loose their vulva, or be born without one, it doesn't make them not women anymore.

Eventually, I realized that I'm not asexual. That the "gender envy" I felt towards trans men was actually just attraction. I always thought I didn't like women, but that was because I didn't like *feminine* women, and that was the only kind I knew, as all the masculine women I knew were trans men.

When I came out with this- that I'm just attracted to masculine afabs, and no amab, regardless of gender identity- the responses I received made it IMPOSSIBLE for me to ignore the homophobia that is running rampant in the trans movement.

So please try to understand how I got to this point 🙏 Thanks for actually reading this btw

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it's crazy that sexism can even affect animals. the way people assume all dogs are boys. the simultaneous way people will get genuinely really mad if you dare mistake their pretty princess for a boy despite the fact all german shepherds look the same. the refusal to buy pink toys and accessories for male pets. i recently met someone who insisted they never adopt girl cats because they're always meaner than boy cats. i feel like im losing my mind. they're literally cats.

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Reblog to cast heal on prev

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Being 22 is weird as fuck. Someone 5 years younger than me is effectively 3 sniffs old + just born. Someone 5 years older than me can have a PhD. I know someone my age who recently realised that by buying a bed they can sleep on something more comfortable than the floor but other people my age have kids. there are people younger than me becoming world-famous musicians and athletes. what the fuck is going on

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