apollosimps

[apollosimps]

I feel like you deserve some sort of medal or all-expenses-paid vacation trip or something for the amount of times you’ve had to answer variations of a question that always sounds like “okay yeah I’m white but can I go into Black spaces if I’m cool and I bring my special cookies? I know that the answer is usually no, but what if I’m left handed and it’s the last Tuesday in September and I’m wearing my lucky shorts and I do a special little dance first? Please advise”

It's a similar concept to how avoiding stereotypes and being antiracist isn't a checklist, fr. I think it's... Hard, for white folk especially, to conceptualize of just how ubiquitous racism is and how used to it they are, because they're not the ones under the thumb of it. So when it comes time to address it, they believe that there have to be simpler, easier solutions to what is a half-millenium old, complex, difficult problem with endless variations of occurring.

There will never be One Correct Combo that will unlock access to The Full Black Community, no One Solution that will make it where you just can No Longer Be Racist if you do This Thing. 😐 I'm just as sorry as y'all lmao trust I TOO wish it was that easy. It took 500 years to make it this bad. Why would it take one person with the sudden Proper Permutation to fix that? It will always take constant effort.

I mentioned once a couple weeks ago that if I can't get you to give up a TV show or video game with antiblackness in it, how am I supposed to get you to give up the other benefits of white supremacy? You chose an hour on TV over me, but I'm supposed to let you inside my community? 👀👀👀 Let's start with something like that, first.

[apollosimps]

Personally I'm not a big fan of the whole "instead of saying W*ndigo, Sk*nwalker, Spirit Animal, say x y and z" like maybe you can't and shouldn't reduce Native cultures to some pop culture swill made for your easy to consume cultureless identity. Maybe somethings simply aren't for you and you should suck it up and stop equivocating Native spirituality to personality quiz results.

[apollosimps]

rant // early morning apollo thoughts // intersexism will be blocked on sight // OP uses he/him and is perisex

Personally, I think if intersex liberation isn’t a core part of your idea of queer or trans rights, it’s kind of…worthless.

If there aren’t any intersex voices in your movement, I don’t really see the value of it.

[paraphrased] “Rights for me and uhhh I don’t really care about you, you’re kind of your own thing tbh. And i don’t think all of you consider yourselves ‘queer’ actually—”

like come the FUCK on

If your queer movement doesn’t actively center intersex people where it’s relevant, if you only use them as a “gotcha” against conservatives, it’s worthless.

Do you want to talk about bodily autonomy? Do you want to talk about how gender and sex are socially constructed? Do you want to talk about how people are punished and violated for not fitting into society’s neat little molds? Intersex people also need to be right at the fucking center of those discussions, not just trans people. They matter just as much as us trans perisex people do and always will

And they aren’t an accessory to those discussions, they are foundational. There is no one who has been forced into those molds more violently, more invasively, and more silently than intersex people.

Please don’t pick and choose whose rights matter and whose don’t, for the love of all things unholy

[apollosimps]

idk how “the world wasn’t built for us” turned into an example of shitty autism discourse when ever since I got my wheelchair I’m taking -1hp every fifteen minutes as I encounter another obstacle that could have been easily avoided with better architecture, interior design, urban planning, or management logistics

[apollosimps]

Perisex person: "these stupid conservatives, all their arguments can be disproven with the existence of intersex people!"

Intersex person: "so we're welcome and you acknowledge we may not fit in conventional binaries depending on our circumstances. Cool. Anyways being intersex impacts how I view my identity and this is how I label it"

Perisex person: "who the fuck are you. You can't call yourself that. There's only X and Y. This is why conservatives hate us"

[apollosimps]

Uh…am I allowed to post myself? lol

“We love fat trans men! We love fat trans men!” THEN WHERE ARE THEY? WHY IS IT ONLY SKINNY TRANS MEN BEING POSTED. SHOW ME THE FAT GUYS

[apollosimps]

people who attack transmascs for speaking about transmasc issues generally use the argument that the community is transmisogynist. and while this is not the case for the majority and not in any way a valid excuse to silence us, like any community, we do have bad actors and i feel it’s important to call it out when i see it, otherwise i would feel hypocritical

transfems/ women are not uniquely capable of discrimination against transmascs/ men. most of the worst discrimination i’ve faced as a trans man has been perpetrated by cis people.

i am saying this bc i saw someone today stating that transmedical ideology is something that is especially perpetuated by transfems and that’s just simply not the case. one of the biggest faces of the transmed community in recent internet history was a trans man (kalvin garrah). anyone is capable of spreading transmed ideology, it’s not unique to transfems. you can criticise an ideology without pinning it on a singular group.

if you spread any idea that creates divide in the trans community i am absolutely going to call it out and i will not align myself with you. trans people should be allies to each other always

[apollosimps]

[rant // early morning apollo thoughts // transphobia, TERFs and transradfems in the notes will be blocked on sight // OP uses he/him pronouns]

I hate porn slurs. i HATE porn slurs

If you use the words futa or trap or sh*m*le or tranny or fakeboy or theyfab or hermaphrodite for any intersex or trans person aside from ones you reclaim for yourself I am shooting you with my metaphorical gun

YES even in pornsite tags. Yes even in AO3 tags. I don’t care anymore. I just wanna fucking JORK IT without being subject to SLURS

[apollosimps]

Racism is a value born from your environment that you need to go through fire to get it out of you. There's no "I've stopped being racist" phase. There's only "I need to get it beaten out of me everyday" phase. It's a process that will never stop, shouldn't stop until we die.

[apollosimps]

rant // idk how coherent this is but whatever // transphobia in the notes will be blocked on sight

Ever since I’ve transitioned, it’s seemingly felt like people ignore me more often.

When I was a weird autistic tomboy cis girl, I wouldn’t say I had it great. But I was also “gifted.” I had something to use. There was something to exploit. There was potential for me to fit the mold sometime in the future.

No, that wasn’t very great overall. And I was already kind of a freak. People would avoid me until they thought I was useful, especially after puberty hit and I gained weight. So that’s what I dedicated myself to: usefulness. People pleasing.

Fast forward to transitioning. I became too much of a woke little freak to be useful anymore. I still clawed at those old people pleasing habits. They no longer worked. And some of those efforts ended up being actively harmful, to me and others.

Essentially, the “potential” I had to be molded into the woman I was supposed to be was gone entirely. I’d crossed some imaginary line. I wasn’t human anymore.

Thus, when I realized this, I stopped trying to please. I tried to speak up about systemic transphobia and general bigotry on my university campus, then was told it was my fault for “lashing out.” I’ve tried to say something about the abuse I’ve experienced and was told I was actually the issue for my anger, or it was “both sides.”

When you cross that line—from ‘managable freak’ to ‘irredeemable freak’—people tend to tune you out. After all, they must know better than you do.

All the prejudice and terror I’ve been subjected to has, at most, been confronted on the lines of “I’m sorry that happened to you ):” No justice, no change, no real consequences.

Simultaneously, there are people who deny this reality for me and other transmasculine individuals entirely or even AGREE that I’m the real issue. They:

speak over me about my own experiences or think they know better than I do.

ridicule the use of terms that are meant to explore how transmascs are subjegated.

insist I am automatically given male privilege because I have he/him in my bio.

Worst: attempt to lump me (a transmasculine person) in with rapists, misogynists, and oppressors based off identity alone.

disguise their demonizations behind plausible deniability. Instead of saying, “tboys are privileged over all women and are all rapists,” they’ll say “the trans community has a problem of many transmascs weaponizing their privilege and raping people.” Which is equally bad and inaccurate., but they can and do hide behind it.

It’s sickening and should not ever be tolerated.

While experiencing the misogyny of being a mocked "failed woman" in the eyes of those who don’t respect my gender, I am also dealing with some in the queer community seeing me exclusively as a predatory man. I am in limbo. It’s a limbo that refuses to look me in the eye and truly listen and understand me, no matter what I’m perceived as.

I’m either a bitchy little brat or a predatory man. Both perceptions stem from transphobia. Specifically, transandrophobia. Let’s not get it fucking twisted.

[apollosimps]

Okay so I've noticed this... Tone amongst the conversation tags and messages I'm getting and even in my personal life, so I want to clarify this:

Stop willingly giving grace to racism.

Stop willingly giving grace to "nice" racism.

Every time you catch yourself going "well at least they-" I want you to pause and notice what you're doing. It's not to say that you have to be mean (or that you can't be angry!!) or that you cannot have the thought! Obviously every situation is not the same, and you need to use your discernment.

But I ALSO want you to realize that you, in no uncertain terms, do not have to "give it to someone" just because they didn't call someone a slur. No, I wouldn't "prefer" racism while polite because I'd rather not experience it at all. And also, tbh, I find the Polite Racists™ far more dangerous. Too many people think someone saying a lot of words while 😁 means it's the truth, that if it's Nice it couldn't possibly be malicious. That could not be further from the truth. There are politicians that smile brightly at babies and vote for death camps the next minute.

Be honest with yourself. Recognize what you're allowing, recognize that sometimes you DO have a choice to not let things slide, and when you DON'T have a choice, you do NOT have to say "well at least it's not worse". 😐 ESPECIALLY if you're not the target of said bigotry! Racism is already normalized in our society, you do NOT have to do your part to contribute by acquiescing to it.

[apollosimps]

Hi, this is the mod of the former pocketdeerboy transphobia documentation blog here to warn you that you might receive some fallout now that the blog is gone. PDB caught wind of it and sicced their followers on me to harass me. I was receiving so many death threats so quickly that I decided I'll just leave it to the rest of the community to collectively take up the task of holding them accountable from now on instead of doing it all as an individual. I was probably not a good choice to do this job since I had no idea the amount of hate I was going to get all at once and I just ain't about to deal with all that when they have such a large following to use against me. But just so you know, before I deleted somebody called antlershade was coming in my DMs somehow trying to trick me into admitting that I was you. They seemed very convinced that I am you so I'm deeply sorry if you get any flak in the near future on account of my actions.

thanks for the heads up. I find the “harassment” I’ve received more dumb than distressing so far. (“bees bees bees bees”? are you fr?) I’ve turned off anon and DMs for now just in case it gets any worse.

I’m so fucking sorry that so many of PDB’s followers are pieces of garbage. Let me be clear: you didn’t deserve death threats or harassment of any kind.

PDB deserves every iota of criticism he gets for his anti-transmasc (and intersexist) rhetoric. Thanks for the job you did in compiling it.

And for those who believe I am this person: …no, I’m not? Y’know multiple people can have shared opinions, right?

Edit: I block liberally. If you’re here to defend PDB for any of their transphobia/intersexism, then you will be blocked. And if you are going to make claims about this user’s actions specifically, then please provide actual evidence (screenshots, DMs, whatever) in the form of a reblog, or you will also be blocked.

PDB and his friends have caused immense harm to transmascs, speaking over them in lieu of listening and repeatedly using a nearly twenty year old book written by a non-transmasc to say we are wrong about our own experiences. If you agree with this, but have issues with how this user handled things, I will be willing to engage.

[apollosimps]

People do get that like. Trans men are men because they're trans, right?

Like.

You cannot separate the 'trans' from the 'man' because that person is not a man if they're not trans. If they're not trans then they're cis. But they're not. Because they're trans.

I genuinely don't understand how to convey to people who say all that 'trans men aren't oppressed because they're men, they're oppressed because they're trans' shit that like.

That's the same thing.

You're literally just saying 'trans men aren't oppressed because they're trans men, they're oppressed because they're trans men'.

That's how much sense you make when you try to separate it out like that. You can't. They are, quite literally, linked by definition.

[apollosimps]

Some additions to The Egg Discourse if you don’t mind (tell me if you want me to make this a separate post):

if someone you know is miserable or suicidal, I think your first priority should not be gender speculation?

Gender identity doesn’t belong to the transes. Unless you are agender, the majority people have some kind of gender identity. Trans, cis, tris, and not-aligned-in-the-trans-cis-binary genders, at their core, are things that need to be respected. If you only stop speculating others’ “true gender” at risk of being transphobic towards us tboys, I think you need to reconsider.

“Trans women cannot ‘turn people trans’, that’s a transphobic stereotype.” True, they can’t turn people trans. That is transphobic. But that’s not what this is about. This is about letting people exist without questioning who they say they are to their face.

The important part:

If you speculate someone might be trans, the single most powerful thing you could do for them is to simply…exist. Around them, in their community, supporting and helping them through the pain.

I may have never figured it out if it weren’t for the trans people in my high school being so damn proud to be themselves. The person who got me here is enby, and now I’m a trans man who, while not fully happy, is far happier than he would’ve been in the dark.

To simply exist is to say, “hey, I’m here. I was brave enough to cross this line you may not even knew existed, and you can too.” You do not need to suggest to someone they actually might be trans to do that.

-☀️

We need egg prime directive because some of you motherfuckers forget that passing trans men exist when we’re not being used as a convenient rhetorical tool for your argument.

“But what if that’s a trans woman who’s slowly dying inside because she can’t live as her true self?” You give that person the space to figure that out. That doesn’t mean do nothing, it means check in with them and make yourself someone they can turn to without feeling like you’re going to impose your ideas on what their gender secretly is or should be on them.

But as a side note, what if that’s a trans man who has spent literal years on hormones and thousands of dollars on surgery to alleviate the gender dysphoria he lives with and so the average stranger will at least gender him correctly and he just hasn’t told you because you’ve made it clear you are not someone who can or should be trusted with that info? What if you’re about to trigger his dysphoria by insisting that no actually he must secretly be a girl deep down and he totally wants you to call him she/her and joke about slipping estrogen and spiro into his coffee? Are you going to just apologize and stop like a reasonable person who just realized they’ve been acting like a piece of shit when he finally can’t take it anymore and tells you he’s trans in a desperate effort to get you to stop with the egg jokes? Or are you going to blame him for “making it awkward” and “it was just a joke, calm down you hysterical bitch pooner”?

Also if you hit on me when you’re exclusively into women and do not stop when I tell you I’m not a woman, I don’t care if you call it “preordering”, you are the reason I carry pepper spray.

[apollosimps]

I swear people do not know how to read on this site

Lol you want citations? Okay. I’ll give you three. Not that you’ll, uh, read them.

MY CLAIM: Transmasculine individuals face elevated and unique challenges based on their transmasculine identity.

1. Pediatrics, Jun 2019, Murchison et al

TITLE: “School Restroom and Locker Room Restrictions and Sexual Assault Risk Among Transgender Youth.”

Trans boys: 26.5%

AFAB non binary youth: 27.0%

Trans girls: 18.5%

AMAB non binary youth: 17.6%

Findings: Restroom restrictions on transgender people cause an increase in SA rates.

***NOTABLY: ALL types of trans children are more likely to experience sexual assault. As such, while it is increased for trans boys and masc youth, trans girls and fem youth deserve to have their SA address with just as much urgency.

2. 2015 US Transgender Survey. James et al.

On trans men:

Hid past transition to avoid discrimination: 36%

Quoted: “I’ve tried shelters. The men’s one aren’t safe for trans men: if those men find out who you are, you’re opening yourself up to physical and sexual violence. And when I turn to the women’s shelters l, I was too masculine to make the women comfortable.”

Never or only sometimes treated with respect by law enforcement officers in the past year: 62% (Trans women: 51%; NB: 70%)

Lifetime sexual assault: 51% (Trans women: 37%; AFAB NB: 58%; AMAB NB: 41%)

These are all things I have experienced. -☀️

3. Dec 2020, Donovan and Barnes

TITLE: “Help-seeking among lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender victims/survivors of domestic violence and abuse: The impacts of cisgendered heteronormativity and invisibility”

—

The public story of DVA has ramifications at individual, interpersonal and socio-cultural levels. Many LGB and/or T victims/survivors do not recognise or name their experiences as DVA because they do not see themselves in the public story. Marcus, a trans man, described his first serious lesbian relationship (pre-transition) with an older cisgender woman who was very controlling and abusive. When asked whether he thought he had experienced DVA, he made a comparison to ‘battered wives’ to explain why he thought he had not:

Oh it’s a hard one…. on paper it probably seems like that [abusive] but . . . I’m not going to sit here and say that I didn’t cause problems because I was so unhappy and [that] I wasn’t a horrible girlfriend to be with…. So . . . I think it had very dangerous elements to it…. Like it wasn’t easy for her to be with me, and I kind of don’t blame her for being the way she was [pause] and…. I was never like a battered wife, you know. (Marcus, white trans man, queer/pansexual, aged 20)

For Marcus, the ‘battered wife’ provides the template of what DVA might be; he cannot see his experience reflected there and consequently he cannot name his experiences as DVA, despite the ‘dangerous elements’ in that relationship including forced sex and micro-regulation of his activities. Marcus also engages in self-blame, perceiving himself to have been a ‘horrible girlfriend’ responsible for his ex-girlfriend’s behaviour.

—

Voilà.

The second to last paragraph was clearly refering to those like you. It seems.

Also, what claim did I make that needs citation in my post?

Hell on Earth.

Oh no. Yay. I’m back on here, somehow. So much for the “defunct” in my blog description.

Let’s talk pocket deer boy. He’s a little (big) cis boy who has haunted the transmasc Tumblr space for a while.

What is his debauchery, you may ask? Let’s take a gander at the most recent post about this topic.

Voilà! So, clearly, if you know anything about basic debate, he’s acting in very bad faith. I don’t really claim to know who the asker is or what their intent here was.

They could honestly be a TERF for all I know, especially with their use of “AFAB/AMAB” in that manner. Even so, that isn’t conclusive.

But to summarize, they said:

Hey, you insist that trans men universally experience male privilege when they are perceived as men, and if they don’t, they can pass as cisgender easily and reap the benefits of perception as a cis woman. Meanwhile, you insist that trans women cannot experience male privilege. This is a double standard.

Hey, PDB. That’s not saying “trans women are male.” That’s just saying visibility and perception affect how people treat you AND you are being hypocritical. Which…is just reality, here.

If you don’t think it’s hypocrisy, you have to say why exactly instead of pointing to literature exclusively. You need to (1) state your exact claim, (2) use the literature to back it up and (3) ideally, quote it (or give a page number/reference). That’s what the literature is there for. This is basic academia. I’ve never seen you use direct quotes or even reference something specific.

Additionally, when feminist theory contradicts lived experience, criticism is warranted and necessary. It is anti-feminist to insist otherwise. So, simply throwing a book at someone does not mean you won the argument by default.

If you ever see someone who accuses people of antisemitism because they support Palestine, this is the same tactic. Foes that mean they couldn’t be antisemitic? No. But, nevertheless, when faced with a contradiction in your worldview, it becomes easy to solve! Accuse them of some kind of personal bigotry!

A lot of people in the transfeminist space on Tumblr hold this mindset. If you are dehumanizing, threatening, degrading, or otherwise grouping all transfems together as the “bad guy group,” that is transmisogynistic. What’s not is pointing out instances of incoherent “transfeminist” logic and transmasc dismissal.

PDB will not have some big change of heart anytime soon, I’m sure. However, it’s important to know the tactics of exclusionists and how to spot them so you don’t start hating yourself or falling for it in your own communities.

-☀️

[apollosimps]

Oh no. Yay. I’m back on here, somehow. So much for the “defunct” in my blog description.

Let’s talk pocket deer boy. He’s a little (big) cis boy who has haunted the transmasc Tumblr space for a while.

What is his debauchery, you may ask? Let’s take a gander at the most recent post about this topic.

Voilà! So, clearly, if you know anything about basic debate, he’s acting in very bad faith. I don’t really claim to know who the asker is or what their intent here was.

They could honestly be a TERF for all I know, especially with their use of “AFAB/AMAB” in that manner. Even so, that isn’t conclusive.

But to summarize, they said:

Hey, you insist that trans men universally experience male privilege when they are perceived as men, and if they don’t, they can pass as cisgender easily and reap the benefits of perception as a cis woman. Meanwhile, you insist that trans women cannot experience male privilege. This is a double standard.

Hey, PDB. That’s not saying “trans women are male.” That’s just saying visibility and perception affect how people treat you AND you are being hypocritical. Which…is just reality, here.

If you don’t think it’s hypocrisy, you have to say why exactly instead of pointing to literature exclusively. You need to (1) state your exact claim, (2) use the literature to back it up and (3) ideally, quote it (or give a page number/reference). That’s what the literature is there for. This is basic academia. I’ve never seen you use direct quotes or even reference something specific.

Additionally, when feminist theory contradicts lived experience, criticism is warranted and necessary. It is anti-feminist to insist otherwise. So, simply throwing a book at someone does not mean you won the argument by default.

If you ever see someone who accuses people of antisemitism because they support Palestine, this is the same tactic. Foes that mean they couldn’t be antisemitic? No. But, nevertheless, when faced with a contradiction in your worldview, it becomes easy to solve! Accuse them of some kind of personal bigotry!

A lot of people in the transfeminist space on Tumblr hold this mindset. If you are dehumanizing, threatening, degrading, or otherwise grouping all transfems together as the “bad guy group,” that is transmisogynistic. What’s not is pointing out instances of incoherent “transfeminist” logic and transmasc dismissal.

PDB will not have some big change of heart anytime soon, I’m sure. However, it’s important to know the tactics of exclusionists and how to spot them so you don’t start hating yourself or falling for it in your own communities.

-☀️

[apollosimps]

returning to hellsite to post this