fablethevoid - Tumblr blog

[fablethevoid]

what's so striking to me about younger queer generations rn isn't the lack of knowledge about queer history, but the complete unwillingness to engage with it, when confronted with an identity or history they haven't heard of before they react with disgust rather than curiosity. (for example) instead of asking where the leather pride flag came from and what the leather community is and represents they immediately question the need for something like that to exist, not even willing to listen and learn from both elders and peers. this is also more broadly a problem in leftist spaces in general, being reactionary is somehow the default now, and anything that's different or unknown must be an attack and bad. really hoping y'all manage to grow out of this deeply conservative way of interacting with the world.

[fablethevoid]

New Post because situation has changes for the worse:

I've more or less been knocked off EBT SNAP Foodstamps, I've been rejected for every single job I've applied for if various skill sets & experiences

I owe roughly $15,000 in loan & medical debt

My rent is $980 per month

My Internet is $150,

Phone $50,

Groceries are usually $250 a month,

And various supplies/laundry/weed

Anything y'all can spare is amazing you're all saints for the help you've continued to give

Venmo: Redloop

Cashapp: $TropScream

Paypal: tropscream

Please share this as well

[fablethevoid]

i finally got invited back on the it could happen here podcast, this time actually with robert around as well!!

a cool 30 minute primer on stalkerware and what we can do against it!

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i'm sorry but you can't prematurely dissolve the meaning of language around gender before you dissolve the underlying power structures. acting like "trans" and "cis" don't "really mean anything" in terms of social locators isn't helpful or accurate let alone revolutionary when trans people remain an oppressed category of people and those who put that system in place/primarily lord that power over us are, doubtlessly, cis.

it's the same as "male" and "female" as gender locators - yes, there is no essential, inherent difference between men, women, and people who are both or neither of those things. no, that fact doesn't mean that patriarchy doesn't exist and that women aren't an oppressed social category.

also, it is utterly bonkers to me how many people are infinitely more willing to buy into the idea of "binary trans privilege" but somehow think "TME" is completely bunk or ill-defined - the difference there though is obviously transmisogyny!

[fablethevoid]

In contrast with professional drag queens, who were only playing at being women onstage, [Esther] Newton learned that the very bottom of the gay social hierarchy was the province of street queens. In almost total contrast to professional queens, street queens were "the underclass of the gay world." Although they embraced effeminacy, too, they did so in the wrong place and for the wrong reason: in public and outside of professional work. As a result, Newton explained, the street queens "are never off stage. Their way of life is collective, illegal, and immediate." Because they didn't get paid to be feminine and were locked out of even the most menial of nightlife jobs, Newton observed that their lives were perceived to revolve around "confrontation, prostitution, and drug 'highs'." Even in a gay underworld where everyone was marked as deviant, it was the sincere street queens who tried to live as women who were punished most for what was celebrated-and paid-as an act onstage. When stage queens lost their jobs, they were often socially excluded like trans women. Newton explained that when she returned to Kansas City one night during her fieldwork, she learned that two poor queens she had met had recently lost their jobs as impersonators. Since then, they had become "indistinguishable from street fairies," growing out their hair long and wearing makeup in public-even "passing" as girls in certain situations," in addition to earning a reputation for taking pills. They were now treated harshly by everyone in the local scene. Most people wouldn't even speak to them in public. Professional drag queens who didn't live as women still had to avoid being seen as too "transy" in their style and demeanor. One professional queen that Newton interviewed explained why: it was dangerous to be transy because it reinforced the stigma of effeminacy without the safety of being onstage. "I think what you do in your bed is your business," he told Newton, echoing a middle-class understanding of gay privacy, "[but] what you do on the street is everybody's business."

The first street queen who appears in Mother Camp is named Lola, a young Black trans girl who is "becoming a woman,' as they say'." Newton met Lola at her dingy Kansas City apartment, where she lived with Tiger, a young gay man, and Godiva, a somewhat more respectable queen. What made Godiva more respectable than Lola wasn't just a lack of hormonal transition. It was that Godiva could work as a female impersonator because she wasn't trying to sincerely live as a woman. Lola, on the other hand, was permanently out of work because being Black and trans made her unhireable, including in female impersonation. When Newton entered their apartment, which had virtually no furniture, she found Lola lying on "a rumpled-up mattress on the floor" and entertaining three "very rough-looking young men." These kinds of apartments, wrote Newton, "are not 'homes.' They are places to come in off the street." The extremely poor trans women who lived as street queens, like Lola, "literally live outside the law," Newton explained. Violence and assault were their everyday experiences, drugs were omnipresent, and sex work was about the only work they could do. Even if they didn't have "homes," street queens "do live in the police system."

As a result of being policed and ostracized by their own gay peers, Newton felt that street queens were "dedicated to "staying out of it" as a way of life. "From their perspective, all of respectable society seems square, distant, and hypocritical. From their 'place' at the very bottom of the moral and status structure, they are in a strategic position to experience the numerous discrepancies between the ideals of American culture and the realities." Yet, however withdrawn or strung out they were perceived to be, the street queens were hardly afraid to act. On the contrary, they were regarded by many as the bravest and most combative in the gay world. In the summer of 1966, street queens in San Francisco fought back at Compton's Cafeteria, an all-night venue popular with sex workers and other poor gay people. After management had called the police on a table that was hanging out for hours ordering nothing but coffee, an officer grabbed the arm of one street queen. As the historian Susan Stryker recounts, that queen threw her coffee in the police officer's face, "and a melee erupted." As the queens led the patrons in throwing everything on their tables at the cops-who called for backup-a full-blown riot erupted onto the street. The queens beat the police with their purses "and kicked them with their high-heeled shoes." A similar incident was documented in 1959, when drag queens fought back against the police at Cooper's Donuts in Los Angeles by throwing donuts-and punches. How many more, unrecorded, times street queens fought back is anyone's guess. The most famous event came in 1969, when street queens led the Stonewall rebellion in New York City. Newton shares in Mother Camp that she wasn't surprised to learn it was the street queens who carried Stonewall. "Street fairies," she wrote, "have nothing to lose."

Jules Gill-Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny

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[fablethevoid]

New Post because situation has changes for the worse:

I've more or less been knocked off EBT SNAP Foodstamps, I've been rejected for every single job I've applied for if various skill sets & experiences

I owe roughly $15,000 in loan & medical debt

My rent is $980 per month

My Internet is $150,

Phone $50,

Groceries are usually $250 a month,

And various supplies/laundry/weed

Anything y'all can spare is amazing you're all saints for the help you've continued to give

Venmo: Redloop

Cashapp: $TropScream

Paypal: tropscream

Please share this as well

[fablethevoid]

Please Help A Transwoman Out

Hi folks. I didn't think I'd have to make another one of these and I'm sorry. I don't ask for anything usually. Basically, I just got fired from my job. I had a prior post where I was ill for months and I had to take days off from work. Unfortunately, I got fired from that job for poor work performance because of my health and I'm freaking out. I'm asking for donations and help until my unemployment goes through or gets denied or I get a new job.

I'm honestly thinking of getting a job in town but it's not really safe for a trans woman but I'm really desperate. Any help would be appreciated as I'm unsure how to pay my bills at this time. I'll add my stuff down below. I need money for bills and food. Bills come first as I don't need food really. So that would be really nice. If you can't help, please like and REBLOG. I'm sorry to ask again. I really am. but...I am faltering at this whole living thing and everything this spiraling and I need a way to place my feet on the ground before I become homeless or worse. I've linked my payment things below if you would like to help. I've given nicknames since idk how Tumblr is about this. Cash App has a fake name and other two has my legal name, initials are D.A., so any help would be appreciated.

Payton Pals: harphazardly (Legal Name on this one and a picture of a plush Flareon)

Cashmere Applications: $Generallyalive (Has the name Chuck on it)

Venice Monet: mindnum (Also Legal Name)

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What's distressing, but also important to understand, about JK Rowling hitting the "Denying trans people were targeted in the Holocaust" point is that it's kind of the last stop before she just goes full alt-right weirdo.

Joanne is denying the Holocaust (if a group was targeted, denying they were targeted is Holocaust denial) and that's going to lead to pushback from historians and experts. But Joanne is too deep in to believe what anyone who disagrees with her says, so she's just going to dismiss what those historians and experts tell her. And once she's disbelieving them about that one thing, well it's just a tiny step to start disbelieving them about other things.

This isn't by accident either, transphobic circles are swarming with far right agitators, ready to use hatred of trans people as an in to recruit people into their causes. They have handbooks for this sort of thing and they are, unfortunately, good at it. I suspect Joanne will be spouting coded versions of Great Replacement stuff by the end of the summer.

This is not a plea to try and pull Joanne out. She's too deep in, and even if she wasn't, she's already demonstrated an inability to examine her own prejudices, an unwillingness to hear criticism and a weakness to flattery. She is perfect recruitment bait for people who know what they're doing, and my impression is she's surrounded herself with people like that.

No, this is to understand two things: First is to use her as an example, to understand how a well meaning liberal can chase their own prejudices down a very dark rabbit hole. We are none of us immune to propaganda and even if we can't change what's happened to her, we can at least use it to protect ourselves.

And second is to understand that one of the main reasons you can't pull Joanne out of the transphobic pipeline is cause she is the pipeline now. She is the transphobic banner bearer now, she is funneling money and attention to these groups, she is their most famous celebrity and she is helping recruit people. Being able to show people how far she's gone, how deep into the right wing rabbit hole she's going, is important to help other people who still think she just "Had some concerns" know where her path leads.

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how the fuck is killing a whistleblower good optics. did they think they could keep it quiet

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The way gnf’s fans are reacting makes me think I’m crazy. The way George and Dream have chosen to handle this is so, incredibly dangerous. Even aside from all the manipulation and lying

The way they’re trying to twist what consent is to get George off the hook, to thousands of impressionable young viewers, could legitimately cause people to sexually assault others / not realize they’ve been sexually assaulted. So, just to be clear

Consent needs to be stated. Assumed consent is not consent (and especially not from someone you just met).

People under the influence of alcohol or drugs don’t have the judgement to consent. Nothing they say or do can be treated as consent.

It is never the responsibility of the person receiving sexual attention to say if they’re uncomfortable with it. It’s the responsibility of the instigator to ask.

Fame, influence or large age gaps can create a power imbalance that messes with consent.

Once again, unfollow me if you still support George, Dream, Sapnap or Wilbur

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here’s a fucking reminder since so many content creators (AND THEIR FANS) cant seem to get this through their head.

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if you're transgender you have to live.

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i am NOT trying to stop people from celebrating girlbulge and other aspects of trans bodies, but, like, theres literally nothing inherently sexual about being able to see the lump of a flaccid penis in pants that fit the way all modern pants are designed to. its so normal. its so fucking normal and they should be allowed to wear jeans in peace. its not sexual when cis dudes dont tuck, or when trans dudes wear packers, so lets stop sexualizing women who are literally just standing there. trans women with the very reasonable "not wanting to risk damaging their testicles by tucking" stance arent open season for unsolicited sexual comments. please get normal about penises

(explicitly clarifying a second time so no one twists my words, if some lady wants sexual attention re: her dick, thats her choice. obviously. but i feel like "talking about a woman's genitals when shes literally just chilling is sexual harassment" should be common fucking sense in 2024)