betab1te - Tumblr blog

[betab1te]

still getting a lot of notes on past posts. depending on ethical implications and popularity i'll go back and delete certain ones. especially if they're aimlessly antagonistic or 'rallying'. some of my posts from that time were good, because radfeminism is good in its fundamental form. there is a hermeneutical issue where, to an extent, the posts are important to keep, which is why i'm being selective and only choosing the specially damaging ones.

the kinship syndrome (or something a-KIN to it) that goes on in radblr dialogues is kind of crazy--i had a vague feeling of weirdness at the time with the sharpness of terms attributed to "the other" in relation to "us". but it also makes sense. differentiation is a defense mechanism, usually socially traumagenic. and it is usually based in some materiality, some fundamental difference between groups (religion, ideology, nationality, sex, sexuality), but its the amplification of it, and refusal to engage in dialectics or dualist viewpoints, that exposes the dark underbelly of it. in cases like this where people feel that their group identity is under threat, they often define themselves through differentiation to "the other"..

but also it seems sometimes confused--there's a conflation between shared ideology, shared sex, and shared experience that interests me still. a lot of nuance there. having been in the mindset, i can understand it, but still it's difficult to pick apart. the flag there is it being difficult.

i don't think that the conflation between ideology and sex is confused because of ignorance, i think it's confused as a consequence of the way that terfism is structured; the terf identity requires common ideology, but it also requires common sex, because shared experience is crucial to the ideology. so there's a lot that goes into reconciling both.

on the one hand, the radfem ideology lends itself to experience--it is materialist in nature, hence why it is so often compatible with marxist theory. it uses the conflict perspective. on the other hand, that lent-to experience is sex-based-- so radfeminism it requires a thorough, intuitive, and retrospective understanding of the experience of sex-based oppression. terfism splits off from this when it says, "radfeminism does not require just an understanding of the experience, but complete lived experience". so it sets a certain criteria for the ideology, a certain standard, based on the fact of the matter of materialist thought.

"you must be born female in order to truly understand female sex-based oppression in its entirety." we can all sort of see this, and it's hard to try and deny without being epistemically unethical, so trans-inclusive radfeminism decides to be inclusive in varying doses. it allows, certainly, for variance in an understanding of gender. it allows for people to choose transition and supports them, regardless of whether it is a cope--because we are all coping, really, and there is a difference between autonomy and agency. inclusive radfeminism, in that way, allows for nuance and diversity of understanding among the oppressed group. in other words: this is not a cult; we need not all think the same.

terfs are stricter. they say, there is one correct & epistemically just sect of radfeminism, one correct radfeminist perspective, and it can only exist in an exchange between females. this is affirming not just hermeneutically, but sigilistically. we can now practice attribution. there is a need for critical discussion between just females about their oppression (the exclusion of males or amabs is necessary for "pure" or true epistemic justice--this is agreed upon by plenty of feminist theorists, and not at all a strange take), and so the "sexually oppressed from birth who are clued into it" become the in-group, and all others become the out-group. this includes those whose ideologies--understandings of gender, for instance--don't align, and those who are blind, willing subordinates, not yet clued in, and those who are amab and whose experience with gender in society is mixed.

what makes the conflation hard to reconcile is cases in which we are forced to face the existence of people with similar ideas who do not share our experience, or similar experience who do not share our ideas. so this three-pronged filtration not only keeps us tethered to a very particular corner of feminist theory, but reinforces a sense of confusion and dissonance with the outside world, which really only further affirms our embedded traumagenic core beliefs.

radfeminist disourse on here, from its nastiest to its most civil, is a window into the transition from uninformed traumatic experience to informed traumatic experience, and all of the retrospective anger that comes with that. people who are staunchly anti-terf and refuse to engage might miss out on crucial observations that clue us into the mechanism of terfism. understanding the mechanism is important; if we don't understand where something comes from, then we give it more power than it actually has. we also doom ourselves to make the same mistakes, in other contexts that give rise to the same mechanism, in the future.

a terf community is cathartic for women, especially those particularly affected by sex-based oppression. it solidifies identity. terfism is not a good mechanism by any means, but it is an adaptive one--it is traumagenic, and i am referring to a generational, worldly trauma, something so old that history can't remember it. it seeks to redefine, to strengthen, through differentiation and attribution. this is the same mechanism that lends itself to nationalism, particularly in sectarian landscapes.

it's all very interesting from a social theory perspective.

there is also a lot about standpoint epistemology in feminist theory, which is important to consider when we talk about materialism and perspectives.

i'm not proud of the ways i've engaged with terfism, particularly in my practice of attributing generalizations to "the other". nor was i proud at the time; it leaves a bad taste in your mouth even then, and keeps you angry at the same time. but.. it is fascinating to look back on. they are like miniature cultural artifacts to me. we are taught to understate the female struggle, but it is this mechanism of sectarianism that tends to lend itself to the longest-standing and most devastating traumas.

[betab1te]

Two dykes share a kiss at the first ever Dyke March. Photographer Carolina Kroon, Manhattan, 1993. Full image | Source

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It's so over

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x

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i hope everyone involved with hamilton dies

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ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE + memes/text posts (1/?)

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Men shalt pay 150 yen in silence

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To elaborate, I started going to a liberal arts college to study philosophy.

Originally I was like.. ooh.. this college has a culture problem..!

But then I was put in a small communal-living dorm full of stoners and all/any enbies, a mystical place where things mattered but in a different way

Met a lot of trans girls and they were normal (woah) and actually sometimes really important and special people

In realizing I was intersex and loosening my grip on my identity, I fell into a more comfortable form of living..

The best of both gender critical and gender abolitionist worlds is pure fluid existence.

I also took courses on feminism and autonomy, and learned more about materialist theory (Marxism/radfeminism/CRT) than ever before in my life (big). I've come to the conclusion on my own terms that these theories, perspectives, and approaches are pretty much compatible with trans inclusion even if you're gender critical.

You just need to adopt the compatibilist mindset.. similar to how there are free will/determinism compatibilists (the correct ones) who marry two seemingly incompatible concepts by broadening the discussion w/ etymologically and epistemologically critical questions

I can't put it all out there just yet but

tl;dr I was right, but now I'm even more right

Gonna be real with you guys I went to a gay ass college and my experience with it clashed well with my gender critical beliefs so now I'm just trans again.. to all the terves out there thanks for watching, it's been real

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being a burden is ok and cool actually we are pack animals

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wizards are predisposed to evil bc that's just what academia does to you

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Trans 1 is gender malleability .. trans 2 is complete gender deconstruction

When you detransition you don't really revert back you just become more trans.. trans 2. Its impossible to relearn gender once it's been unlearned

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When you detransition you don't really revert back you just become more trans.. trans 2. Its impossible to relearn gender once it's been unlearned

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you really believe in that "Han Dynasty" crap?

What?

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yknow i, too, am generating letters in the most algorithmically probable order

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Tall metal structures, they're all beautiful animals to me

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me if meowing was a sin tbh

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Gonna be real with you guys I went to a gay ass college and my experience with it clashed well with my gender critical beliefs so now I'm just trans again.. to all the terves out there thanks for watching, it's been real