#and assume that it is not meant to be gross/transphobic

[aro-culture-is]

Female Aro culture is being tired of media because male characters are more likely to get to actually have meaningful and developed existences without being forced into romantic relationships all the time which leaves you with characters that you dont necessarily relate to being the only thing you can count as "rep"

.

[doberbutts]

I think it's also wild the way people assume the stealth experience is roses and butterflies. I went stealth+DL about being gay for about 2 years at work in order to be able to work in a trade where people generally skew extremely homophobic/transphobic/misogynistic. I had been on T long enough to pass reliably so I thought, ok, cool, this is where my life as a Normal Guy kicks in, this is where I get to flex the old Male Privilege and work in an industry culture that is toxic to everyone but cishet men.

and I mean yeah, materially? I did okay in my profession, I was good at what I did. People were pretty chill to me because my only major flaw to them was being the New Kid, a problem that eased with time. I did have a female coworker who I learned dealt with some hazing that I didn't. I will say, in that particular situation, I had some privilege over her since my sexist coworkers never said anything to me the way they said shit to her.

but here's the thing - I still heard all of it. The gross misogynistic things they were saying were not meant to be about me, but they sure as hell were anyway.

but oh, boo hoo, I had to hear remarks, but you know, I didn't face any actual barriers or opposition right? yeah, okay, I guess not, and I'm not saying it would have been better to be out in this scenario, or to be a woman, but there's a reason I ended up leaving that field. walking into work and feeling like - no, knowing - you have to lie to all your coworkers and your boss every single day or else they'll hate you and treat you like shit is not a great feeling. you never have a truly good day when that is always at the back of your mind no matter what. you never develop genuine friendships or connections at work if they're all built on lies.

I ended up getting so burned out. it was a good job, a union job, and I was making a good income. I had a path upwards to make *great* income if I had stuck with it long-term. but I ended up leaving it for a non-union job at a younger company, with a more "hip" HR culture that seemed like maybe I would be in a better place emotionally. I took a pay cut to do that too. but a lot of my new coworkers had the same attitudes as my old ones - the first week I was there, one of the other employees went around the shop asking each person, "if Kylie Jenner was trans, as in, used to be a man, would you still fuck her?" and most people, including the fucking foreman, said "fuck no." I ended up saying something like "it makes no difference to me, sure, fine, she's not my type anyway" (having to not reveal I was trans and also not reveal that I prefer men), and right in that moment I realized this wouldn't be a place I could be open either, and it would feel the same as the old place.

so the burnout for that job came much quicker. I quit after only a couple of months. I did actually end up telling the HR manager why, given that this company actually had one, but she was the only person at the job who ever knew I was trans (since she saw it on my background check anyway).

so yeah like, being stealth at work? it's not a privilege. it's a defense mechanism, and it feels like shit. you feel every transphobic and misogynistic barb even if it's not meant for you. one could argue that I would have never even been able to get those jobs if I were out, and yeah, maybe, that's possible, but I had female coworkers at both places. And yeah, one could also argue that, in terms of pay, I was likely doing better than my female coworkers. And you might be right about that if I hadn't gotten burnt out and quit before having a chance to build up any kind of seniority. But instead I took pay cut after pay cut until I finally decided to put my life in full reverse and go back to college - where I had struggled severely due to mental illness, and still do - since trades were clearly not the place for me.

I'm just really sick of people who have never actually lived what it's like to have that "male privilege" of being a stealth trans man deciding it's just the great, most ideal way you can exist as a trans person. I'm sure there are some stealth trans men who were able to adapt to that environment that I wasn't. but at what fucking cost?

I have a friend who worked a military job training the bomb dogs. He is 100% stealth to the point where even people who know, who have seen him naked and even had sex with him, often forget that he's transgender and why he has that barrier of access to some things if he wants to remain stealth.

The type of shit that people would just. Say to him. And he was always having to balance saying something or keeping quiet so as not to draw too much attention to his status as transgender. He was provided room and board by his job and thus lived with 5-6 similarly aged cis men in the same house and the amount of dodging them and biting his tongue he had to do to just to survive... And the job wouldn't be chill if they found out, the talk he'd heard made it very clear that he was at all times operating with a noose around his neck ready to tighten at the very first infraction.

Anyway that's what passing privilege is. Is your life somewhat better because you pass well enough that no one questions you? I mean I guess technically. But what happens in the mean time to your mental health? Having to hide large aspects of yourself and constantly worrying and looking over your shoulder to make sure no one is looking too hard at your hips or your hands or your chest. My friend is post-op. He's "done", so to speak, outside of taking testosterone. And yet this was still something he had to keep in mind.

He ended up leaving that job due to some Stupid Workplace Bullshit unrelated to his gender status but he told me that honestly it was also a huge sigh of relief. The money he got was great but it was corroding his soul to stay. He ended up taking a pay cut and working elsewhere that he is still stealth but no longer feels like he's got an axe to his neck in every interaction.

[discyours]

If we assume a great number of trans people are on the autistic spectrum it still makes me wonder -since they didnt ”internalize” the role that they were being socialized into since the day 1 (well-the attempts to done by society and family) why did they internalize the opposite instead? I would assume if they don’t see the difference, say screw the differences - then why jump from one box to the other saying no i dont belong to this box and never did but my true self belongs to this particular box instead of idk saying both boxes are rather…dumb. That would make more sense to me if i think of autistic people and yet i see so much clutching and rigidity but maybe i’m wrong and the demographic i’m describing could be different and come with other reasoning, experiences and feelings. I know it’s a gross generalization from the start as i am aware every single individual has unique experience of it all- still i think we can agree there are some similarities that can be drawn here and there, in big lines. I would totally love to hear what you think. You are very insightful when it comes to it all, thank you for taking your time to be on this blog

The Autistic Experience varies a ton, but something that's pretty consistent in my observation is a combination of 1, a need for rules and structure in order to make sense of the world, and 2, an inability to follow rules that don't make sense (because respecting authority for authority's sake is just a social convention).

What counts as a rule is gonna be different for any given autistic person than it is for neurotypicals (and often, other autistic people), and what does and doesn't make sense to us is also likely to vary a lot.

A lot of autistic people DO throw out the idea of a gender binary because "there are only men and women, despite the fact that intersex conditions exist and despite the fact that you don't identify with either social role" is not a rule that makes sense to them, and is therefore worthless. A lot of autistic people identify as nonbinary or agender. I'd say that might actually be more common than identifying as binary trans, but I don't have any statistics to back that up. But they aren't just throwing out the rules, they're replacing them with new ones that do make sense to them. Rules about what's transphobic for example (which can, within their framework, often be anything that reinforces a gender or sex binary). Or rules about what does and doesn't constitute being "cis". For other autistic people, the sex/gender binary DOES make sense to them, and the concept of nonbinary/agender does not fit within that, therefore does not make sense, therefore becomes worthless. When I was a transmed I never would've even considered if I felt more "nonbinary" than male. It just wasn't something that existed within the framework that made sense to me (which at the time was that your "brain sex" determines your gender and that my brain was "the wrong sex" for my body, but that there was no evidence for "nonbinary brains"). And I subscribed to other rules about gender dysphoria. What it meant, what caused it and what treated it.

In either case it can be incredibly painful for people to disagree or to cast doubt on your understanding of things, because it feels like they're literally trying to tear down your entire framework for understanding the world and yourself. Letting go of that rigidity can be really difficult and that makes autistic people vulnerable to getting caught up in extremist worldviews, but that doesn't mean our opinions are worth less than neurotypical people's.

[dervampireprince]

Have you ever thought about doing Sherlock? A bit taboo i know, old fandom and such, but I feel like you’d be brilliant at it. Just a suggestion from having some nostalgia here, non the less hope your having a wonderful day.

TW: homophobia, racism, albeism (specifically against autistic people), transphobia, mention of jokes about rape

if you don't want to read this entire answer because the TWs are uncomfortable for you, then tldr no because the show contains bigotry and the main cast are gross/have said gross things. i don't want any arguments about the show, i don't think you're a bad person if you like the show, i just personally am very uncomfortable with it and with the lead actors so i will not make any fan content of it and would ask for no one to request this fandom again. i can not like the show and you can like it and we can get along these things can coexist.

all of this post is /nm , i am not angry at you anon, i am just explaining why i have the feelings i have about the show which you do not have to read if you do not want too, no hard feelings.

full answer under the cut, read at your own discretion:

i assume you mean bbc sherlock since you said taboo? and if so, the answer is no. and i don't think it's appropriate to call sexism and homophobic 'taboo' like it's a guilty pleasure. i'm not going to voice for a show that is at worst bigoted and at best a really bad adaption of sherlock holmes as a character.

this isn't meant as a mean attack towards you. when i watched the show when it came out i was a young teen and didn't see the bad in the show. and then when i was older and i got more familiar with the writers and uncomfortable with them i looked back on the show and realised how terrible it was. and look it's fine if you like it as an adaption of sherlock or like certain scenes of the cinematography or acting performances that's all fine. but.

but. hey maybe you're saying 'taboo' because you just think the show is cringe because of how the fandom acted or because of superwholock so sorry to burst anyone's bubble but this show and the people associated makes me so uncomfortable and angry so sorry you opened a can of worms.

irene adler's story is adapted terribly. in the books she's the only person to best sherlock. in the show? she doesn't. she loses. and then is a damsel in distress. oh and also is treat with such lesbophobia as the male writers have her be gay, literally say she's gay, but then falls in love with sherlock cos i guess she just hadn't met the right guy yet. that's such a gross narrative. and the queerbaiting. i know that word gets thrown around a lot. let me remind people of what it actually means. when a work of fiction purposely baits that characters will be queer while knowing they will never make the characters queer. so many people make comments within the show about john and sherlock being boyfriends, john being gay, etc, etc, while the writers knew they were never going to make them gay.

also the actor who plays has said disgusting things about autistic people, the actor who plays john has a consistent history of making racist and sexist jokes as well as joking about rape, and his ex wife who played his wife mary watson on the show is a terf. so. i mean she's claiming she's not a terf but she's following so many terf accounts and you don't do that by accident, said she supports 'legitimate trans people' which is a transphobic phrase as theres no such thing as an unlegitimate trans person, and doesn't think trans women are women. so. and the head writer, also has a history of sexist comments but when i searched to see if i was right they're mostly old so maybe he's grown up since then idk i don't follow him and don't want too.

anyway if someone is interest in a critique of sherlock in terms of how it works as an adaption hbomberguy has a video called 'sherlock is garbage and here's why'. it doesn't talk about the actors and what they've done or said, it's purely pulling the show's writing apart and how it adapts the characters and while the title sounds click baiting it's a really informative and well made video essay.

this is not meant to be me saying if you like sherlock you're a bad person, because i don't believe that. this is me sharing my stance on the show, as someone who as a teen was a big fan but then grew up and reflected and more stuff came out about the people involved. if you can still find things to enjoy about the show despite what i've said, go ahead. doesn't bother me. but don't ask me to make fan content for the show.

[apocalypse-gang]

I want to SCREAM, like as a trans Arab person the way the fandom is acting like Allison is transphobic for yelling at Viktor is driving me crazy. It feels so antiblack to me that this fandom immediately assumes transphobia when allison had valid reasons to yell at him. He nearly killed her in s1!

Yeah it's really fucking weird and gross to insinuate that her anger is automatically bigotry! So much of this crap really just bleeds misogynoir!

It's also just like.... disregarding the fact Viktor fucked up! He was wrong for lying to Allison! They wrote a trans character character that is flawed and can make the wrong choices, and people are ignoring that, and saying it's bigotry when it's not. Allison clearly states why she is so upset with him.

People just are refusing to engage with Allison's perspective in the situation, even a little bit. Allison clearly went over the line with the basement comment among many other things, but her anger at Viktor is justified in a lot of ways and understandable.

Viktor almost killed her and made her lose her voice for a year, is the reason she ended up in racist 1963 Dallas that literally traumatized her, and her daughter lost in the apocalypse. Then she had to leave the life she spent two years building up with Ray, thinking she'll be with her daughter again, but her 2019 life is erased and her daughter doesn't exist at all. But despite that Allison has been strong, and been Viktor's side. Viktor says he'll do anything to help bring Claire back, but then lies to her about what caused it to protect Harlan, and that pushed her limit. She feels betrayed by Viktor and that he betrayed Claire too, for a near stranger. It was the final straw, she's been being strong, because she loves Viktor, for so long but she can't handle it anymore!

Now we the audience, and Viktor, know Harlan. We know he was a sweet kid who's life was ruined by this power, and he isn't a bad person and didn't mean to do what he did, but Allison doesn't have the full perspective we have. She didn't know Harlan as a kid. She knows him as a dangerous and out of control man, who has a hold on her brother that reminds her too much of his serial killer manipulating ex did. She also knows that Viktor can be too easily trusting and Viktor hasn't actually known this person in the 50 years since they parted ways, and this man even ended up hurting Viktor. And then she learns that Viktor actively lied to her to protect this man who literally doomed her daughter's existence.

When I think of part of why Viktor lying about Harlan hurt so much, it's improtant to remember the end of season one. Allison was the only one to choose Viktor over the world, a world including her daughter, but here, what Allison was seeing, is Viktor was choosing Harlan over Claire, her daughter and his niece. The niece who he said he would do anything to get back to her. What she's feeling isn't that Viktor just lied to protect Harlan, but the lie was dooming Claire.

And also, I do not understand why people are mad she's being emotional or angry....she's literally in her grief of course she's going to be. Grief does that. Feeling betrayed does that.

I've also seen people say the basement and the oversized shirt comment were transphobic, which was like... no? Again, the basement comment was wayyy over the line, we are meant to see it as such, but it wasn't literally or metaphorically transphobic or whatever I saw people say. And the oversized shirt was a dig at his clothing style, and he did an equal dig at her old lifestyle right back. It's like when aluther and Allison joked about Diego's knife harness, it's the usual Hargreeves snark and the most civil Allison and Viktor had been at that point.

I really am just frustrated people are doing this. Part of me wondered if it was because they were infantilizing Viktor as a trans man, but people have been pulling this sort of shit since season one.

[the-owl-house-takes]

Little vent // I swear every single Belos fan I’ve met has been racist towards me and idk what to think. I used to be in a discord server all about the wittebanes but people in there were… something. I always like talking about how Belos being a villain who thrives on bigotry is so interesting to me but I was met with responses such as

“Belos is not racist ur just dumb”

“Oh so you think Belos owns slaves?”

“Belos would never do that!”

“Sounds like ur racist towards white ppl idk”

And other hurtful things, they called me slurs too along with [other slurs meant for other races] and it was not a good time to say the least. Somebody else who loves the trans hunter headcanon talked about Belos being misogynistic and they were told to “kys” another person who headcanoned belos as trans told them that they were being transphobic [they were also trans] and that “Belos isn’t that bad of a guy” … :/ they were talking about canon Belos too. The person who brought up trans hunter in the first place got clowned on for no reason by everybody else - they really really hate hunter.

I assumed it was because of toxic Hunter stans because they’re terrifying or the way he was handled in the show? But no they hate hunter because apparently “he should’ve died over belos” these people despite claiming belos wasn’t that bad were obsessed with writing/drawing belos abusing hunter in the most horrific ways possible… You guys realize child abuse isn’t… cool right…?

Outside of this server I had been told rlly icky things - I just want to talk about Belos without becoming an apologist or sexualizing him :( Another Belos fan whom I got along with for a little bit began talking about how Belos was right? I thought it was a joke at first but they were being serious. Before I blocked him I asked him what he thought of other groups of oppressed people out of curiosity - got met with slurs as expected..

Another Belos fan, they were a minor and they were just - really really focused on how sexual they could make Belos. How badly they wanted to rail Belos and why they wanted “somebody like him irl so badly they’d die” I’m a minor too and I tried to explain to this other kid that maybe you shouldn’t do that?? They just told me I was weak lol

Idk what else to say, I’m sure there’s some normal Belos fans out but I haven’t been able to find them :( I’ve been in at least 5 wittebane servers and had similar negative interactions like the ones listed above… I only used one server as an example because the other 4 get pretty gross too… I just needed to get this off my chest

-

[thessalian]

Thess vs Transphobic Bullshit

JK Rowling continues on with her TERF bullshit.

Basically the situation is this: Graham Norton, a very well-known and reasonably well-respected TV host, happened to say to a journalist that, if people have questions about trans issues, they should talk to trans people, trans experts, and the parents of trans children. (I assume that last is either to help them understand how to be supportive of trans people below the age of majority, or to understand just how shitty a transphobe can make a trans person’s life.) Basically it was, “I’m not the one to ask this stuff; ask the people who are actually affected by it”. Which is a good thing. Owning your privilege feels like it should automatically include handing the people who are being oppressed the microphone and just standing back.

This was her response. Basically she was saying that because Norton said, “Hey, how about hearing from the people who are affected by this instead of getting your takes on things from a cis celebrity”, what he actually meant was, “I am defining what a woman is and am also totally cool with the death threats and rape threats that TERFs get for disagreeing”.

Apparently, this took off with her various followers to the point where Graham Norton got hounded off Twitter. His account is now shut down. General consensus is that he took it down himself. I gather there’s only so much people are willing to take in these sorts of situations.

I got this from Reddit, from a subreddit I follow that talks about what’s going on in this fucking country. The flare used for this post, and posts like it, is “TERF Island”. And honestly, the responses in that self-same forum just highlight the problem that is, unfortunately, a national thing. A small but incredibly vocal minority saying shit like, “I don’t want men using women’s bathrooms no matter how successfully they’ve convinced themselves they’re not men, or how much like women they look”. Which ... we have been over this countless times. A trans woman is not going to get her dick out in front of people in a woman’s bathroom, because there are cubicles. Also consider that trans women may well be straight trans women and have no interest in men that way, so why the hell would they bother? And finally, no one, cis or trans, with sexual assault on their minds is going to stop because of the sign on a fucking door. Not to mention the fact that this obsession with people’s genitals is just creepy and weird. And yet, this country is changing its laws to allow trans women to be banned from women-only spaces “if it seems justified”. Which ... I mean, this country’s government ‘justifies’ the most egregious shit, so...

I am tired of it. I am tired of people being entirely defined by their birth genitalia - and I don’t just mean in terms of their gender expression. I mean that no one talks about trans men sexually assaulting cis men and boys in the men’s room. Because apparently, according to these so-called “feminists”, you can only sexually assault someone if you have a penis. The implication is, in fact, that it’s the penis that makes you want to sexually assault people. Which is just a gross way to look at men. I’m tired of the “men are defined and ruled entirely by their genitalia” bullshit. I mean, we’ve all seen the news stories of women who have committed sexual assault on men, often minors, when in positions of authority (like a teacher to her student, for instance), and it honestly disgusts me that so many people are just like, “Well, I bet he enjoyed it. He’s a guy; what guy wouldn’t?” Sexual assault is a shitty thing and it has nothing to do with what’s in their pants. Sometimes, some people are monumental shitlords. That’s not their genitalia; that’s just them.

So, yeah, JK Rowling does not deserve anyone’s money or praise. Harry Potter wasn’t good enough to absolve her of this. Nothing she has ever written or will ever write could possibly be good enough to absolve her of this.

[sky-fire-forever]

Okay, this might sound weird as shit, but seeing the way LGBTQ+ people my age act about the LGBTQ+ community is genuinely so strange to me as a second generation queer person.

My mother was a single teenage lesbian mother who grew up in bumfuck nowhere northern Florida. For people unaware: If you're not in a Big City, Florida is southern culturally. Especially northern Florida and we lived literally less than half an hour away from the Alabama border. My dad's family lived in Alabama and is about as southern redneck as you can get.

My point is that people now are so out of touch with queerness and how the queer community used to be and how it was for many, many years. The queer/LGBTQ+ community today is so, so, so online, which it didn't used to be. It genuinely feels like people do not know their history and are actively trying to erase it in a lot of cases.

I was raised surrounded by queer people. I was raised by lesbians who proudly called themselves dykes and gender nonconforming gay men who were called faggots their entire lives. I genuinely didn't know that dyke was a slur until I was a young teenager. It was just used around me so much that I accepted it.

I have personally seen the growth and the evolution of the queer community in the past few decades. I remember when I was in elementary school and I was the only person who knew what a queer person was. I remember having to teach other children that "my mom kisses girls and it's not gross". I distinctly remember that in third grade, I told a peer that my mom kissed girls and my peer asked me if my mom had ever tried to sexually assault me (because I was AFAB and this child assumed that a lesbian was naturally predatory)

Kids were not allowed to play with me because their parents were afraid that their children playing with the child of a lesbian would make their kid gay.

I remember being a child below the age of ten seeing people protest the idea of gay marriage being legalized. I remember my mother and I driving past a Chick-Fil-A and seeing a person dressed in a cow costume, holding a sign that said "God Hates Fags" on one side and "Chick-Fil-A Anti Gay" on the other.

And I knew even then what that meant. I knew that people hated my mother for existing, that they hated people for loving who they loved.

And it was terrifying!!!

Growing up the child of a lesbian back then was fucking alienating and genuinely traumatizing. My mother did all she could for me, but younger queers these days seem completely unaware of just how hated we were for so long!!

And I see so much stuff online now about how "only these people can say dyke" and "straight drag queens aren't queer" or "queer has been used as a slur, so it can never be reclaimed" and other bullshit and it infuriates me!!

The queer community is tearing itself apart! My mother, who has told me how her mother seemed to love her less when she came out, who has been out as a lesbian since she was fourteen, who has been openly queer and has raised me on queerness since my birth, doesn't understand all this new infighting.

Of course she doesn't!

She doesn't understand all the different pride flags or all the different terms or any of it. If she spoke online about her experiences as a queer person, so many people would attack her! Would call her homophobic or transphobic or whatever just because she's not caught up on how quickly things have changed.

It's just so baffling to me how queer people who don't know any queer people outside of their own generation don't understand what it was like and care so much about appearances versus reality.

And it's not a bad thing that our language has grown and evolved. It's not a bad thing that our community has changed. But constantly trying to focus on the "aesthetic" of queerness, on sanitizing it, on ignoring anything "problematic", rewrites the history of queerness.

I guess my point is to listen to queer elders. You'll very genuinely learn things.

[girlking]

js u kno some goth wrestling stans did a call out on u bc u said no wrestler is unproblematic lol but stans shitty wrestlers w allegations

i have decided to stay away from wrestling tumblr for my own mental health. i assume there was a miscommunication and it resulted in this whole mess. i don’t think “no wrestler is unproblematic” – i think everyone has flaws and has made mistakes, but certain flaws and mistakes are much worse than others. i got informed of my favourite’s problematic behaviour and i obviously cannot support them anymore. what i was asking from the community was how do they deal with their favourites being problematic as well (on different levels and in different ways) – i’ve seen fan accounts for wrestlers i know have done cancel-worthy things, yet there is no discussion of those actions or accusations to be seen.

it was never meant to be “i can like this person because you like that person” – i didn’t communicate it clearly and it was interpreted like that. i meant it like “i am losing my favourite and that sucks and makes me sad, how do others in this fandom deal with finding out problematic things about their favourites.”

i said something along the lines of “i want to stop finding out these things” and i’m pretty sure that was the thing that got misinterpreted – i am still not going to be doing fbi level background checks on anyone, but i will be googling things before going all heart-eyes-emoji online. it’s disappointing as there are so many figures in wrestling that have done and said things or supported people they really shouldn’t – i would rather not find out about them and just enjoy the show but of course that’s not how it can go either. i was also struggling with the difference between “i like seeing you on my tv and enjoy watching you wrestle and do your thing” and “i support you as a person, including all views and opinions.” i didn’t know how the difference was viewed/treated, especially because as earlier mentioned, certain wrestlers are still very much liked by tumblr, even with all their problematicness.

but yeah, as i said, i’ve left wrestling tumblr for now. i got so many death threats and just horrible, gross messages. i don’t want to have anything to do with it. i learnt my lesson and will be making better choices in the future. i’m kind of sad in a way over the fact that one of the characters that got me into wrestling is now completely ruined, but it’s for the best because i would never want to be viewed as someone who agrees with their opinions: i don’t, and i don’t think they’re acceptable in any way.

if anyone wants to discuss this with me further, i am more than happy to have a non-anonymous conversation. i’m on a holiday right now and don’t have access to a stable internet connection but i’ll be home on monday to answer anyone who wants to talk. i can understand how this situation got to be the way it is – what i don’t understand is how the tumblr community can condone the behaviour of those users who came into my inbox telling me to kill myself or that they are going to doxx me, or even much worse things that i don’t want to think about anymore. for that reason i deleted the whole side blog and i don’t think i’ll be back for a long while, if ever.

also, regarding your message: i don’t really know who stans who and what most individual wrestling figures have done (which is exactly how we ended up in this mess) so i’m not going to judge anyone before i do some serious googling. i just hope this clears things up. i’m going to keep watching wwe and enjoying it and figuring things out on my own, it’ll be slightly weird after this whole episode but oh well. at least i won’t be unintentionally supporting anyone transphobic anymore.

[bioh4zards]

I’m sorry, I’m not understanding why AFAB is transphobic? I thought that term was meant to be more inclusive?

f!reader isn’t all that great because there are women with penises. So wouldn’t afab!reader be better because it’s more inclusive especially for fics where reader is gender neutral? (Using they/them pronouns and not she/her)

I’m not trying to start anything, I’m genuinely confused.

The problem really boils down to that it goes right back to assuming someone’s genitals based on someone’s assigned gender at birth, regardless of if they’re ftm, mtf, or nb. Given fanfic terminology that’s been around since basically forever, people will get what you mean when you use f! or m! reader, while trans!reader will be more telling if it’s written with a trans reader in mind, and plenty of trans people will go even to f!reader or m!reader as is appropriate for their taste.

It also doesn’t help it’s almost always the case where afab!reader almost exclusively is always written with she/her and uses feminine language to refer to the reader. Using gender neutral language makes it a little less gross to be using terms meant for nuanced discussions about trans people, but it’s once again not terms people should really be using it outside of. These terms are important to understand the context of and wrap around to being NOT inclusive when used incorrectly, and this is almost always the case in these scenarios.

I hope that makes sense and I’m glad to have these discussions even if I come off as abrasive that’s just how I talk. (‘:

[jinxedshapeshifter]

wanted to agree with your good doctor post

i hate this trend of being seen as a bad person if you enjoy media that has anything problematic in it..it takes away focus from actual issues to play a game of oh im a more moral person than you

agree yeah of course the transphobia shit was weird but if people assume all austistic people are like this one tv character then that's their fault.. and we barely get any representation and even less as main characters so it's not fair to tell people that one stupid moment means they can't like a show

i saw people saying shauns meltdown was unrealistic and that's why they were memeing it but no it's not unrealistic and allistic people were using it to bully autistics.. i saw it referenced on random autistic people's posts for a while after

my big gripe with the show however is that they support and, i think, work with autism speaks which sucks obviously

Before I respond to this ask, I want to make it clear that I know the issues I’m going to discuss are potentially sensitive — you’re free to criticize me but do it in a constructive manner and don’t be an ass over it lol.

Yeah, I looked into the Autism Speaks stuff and while I couldn’t find anything directly tying Autism Speaks to The Good Doctor specifically, Freddie Highmore is tied to them (as in he made a video for them or something like that). For now I’m giving him benefit of the doubt with a massive serving of caution, since as I mentioned it feels more like he did a lot of personal research consulted with actual autistic people and not with people who claim to know about autism. Like to be completely honest, The Good Doctor does not feel like it was written with input from Autism Speaks, at least to me.

(Sent this to my drafts so I could formulate a more accurate/proper opinion on the trans thing. Basically started writing a response, paused, watched She [season 1 episode 14], and now I'm back to finish my response to this ask)

With the transphobia thing, from what I know, by the end of the episode Shaun was being respectful of the patient’s preferred pronouns and he was the one to suggest removing both testicles once it was found that one had cancer and should be removed. That alone had me like “He’s just confused by this, he’s not trying to be a dick” which was actually my mentality at one point, which I think is why saying Shaun is transphobic pisses me off so much honestly. “Transness was a confusing concept to him, therefore he was transphobic” is a gross take honestly. He grew up in an abusive home, then was homeless, then probably never got exposed to the concept of being trans. Why would he not be confused? I know I was as a kid; it doesn’t help that I was raised by Mormon conservative grandparents. Now I identify as non-binary.

I’m not saying you can’t criticize Shaun saying “you’re a boy not a girl” but I also think it’s disingenuous to say he was actively being transphobic or disrespectful because he wasn’t; he was simply confused because it was a new concept to him and was stubborn about it, and that’s not an uncommon thing in my experience. Outside of that, he was trying to learn. He didn't hesitate to ask questions (even asking if he was being inflammatory because he was told he was by one of his colleagues when Quinn got her CT scan earlier), and he even took one of Quinn's analogies to heart at the end (comparing her transition and the freedom that came with it to floating in a pool).

Piggybacking off of that, Shaun is an incredibly empathetic person. I didn't actually realize it until I was scrolling through TikTok, but there are multiple types of empathy (I think this is what is meant when people say "autistic people struggle with empathy"; you might not struggle with one kind of empathy but you might with other types of empathy). The episode She is an incredibly example of this. Empathy can show as an attempt to get to understand why someone thinks how they do; Shaun's subplot in She exemplifies this (I didn't know what else to call it besides a subplot lol). In doing this, Shaun also seems to really bond with Quinn, and I'm gonna be honest, by the end of the episode I was genuinely crying.

To address the "Shaun's meltdown was unrealistic" I also found out that shutdowns are essentially internalized meltdowns (as in they're two sides of the same coin). There are so many ways that meltdowns and shutdowns can present; a lot of my meltdowns have involved me self-isolating and throwing things, vs tantrums which usually involved yelling and no longer happen as I am 19 and have grown out of them (although meltdowns have also in the past involved me yelling too, although it wasn't as common. Granted I experience shutdowns a hell of a lot more than meltdowns).

The other thing with that: can hospital personnel even do that? Can they force residents to switch departments like that? Can you force a surgical resident to switch to pathology like that?? After medical school you enter residency to study your specific field of medicine that you want to go into (for example, if I want to go into neurology, after med school I'd become a neurology resident). Residency DOES NOT FUCKING WORK LIKE THAT AS FAR AS I KNOW????

Not just is Shaun's meltdown realistic, hospitals don't generally work like that, you can't force residents to switch specialties like that lol.

Anyway long post over, I am so normal about The Good Doctor :)

[keepthisholykiss]

rachilde for lesbian writers week?

I am going to assume that this ask was in good faith and hope that we are just miscommunicating. Rachilde was, by most accounts that I am aware of, not a lesbian. I am going to use they/them pronouns here because the reality is we do not know their gender as they understood it. Rachilde was a complicated writer who hated women, they had lots going on there with gender and sexuality and wrote extensively about how much they hated women. I would not categorize them as a lesbian because I don't know that, even if they were ever involved with women, that they actually liked women in the first place. I could be wrong, I stopped most of my investigation into them fairly early because they did not appear to fit my subject matter for my thesis which was lesbian or otherwise sapphic literature. But I just wanted to answer this thoroughly because self-hating queer writers were certainly prominent in the long nineteenth century and how we analyze them is complicated but still important.

There are other writers around this same time that were most likely bisexual or lesbians who also took antifeminist viewpoints publicly. Most notably would be Eliza Linton who wrote in columns about how horrible she thought women were yet she privately flirted with and wrote fiction that indicated an intended desire for women.

My posts this week are meant to showcase a variety of lesbian (or presumed lesbian) writers from the time period I just got done studying for my master's thesis. Rachilde is not mentioned in that thesis because, from my understanding, that was a person who would never want to be associated with lesbians or women at all. My brief, in good fun, posts this week are to celebrate lesbians. I am a lesbian and I want to share the beautiful art made by queer people to share their love with each other. I don't want to spend this time talking about people who hated us. Sorry anon if you really did mean this lightly I just have been inundated with asks and general gross feedback from transphobes and homophobes when discussing sexuality or gender in the past and I don't want to have that again.

[wcamino-confessions]

@ the ask abt batfink and his friends

frankly, we talk about people that under our concern as they are usually apart of the public group chat that we manage. we don’t deliberately talk negatively about people UNLESS they’ve deemed themselves a negative person to be around, thus forcing us to talk about them in the private gc, which is basically a second modchat. if someone dms a mod talking about another person in the public groupchat making them uncomfortable, it’s human nature to assume based on an impression that they already had. we aren’t talking shit behind peoples back, we are literally just moderating and discussing whether or not we want someone in the garden, to put it very simply.

assuming that this ask was about tizzy and chekmix, i think it’s very fucked up that you would take this as harassment when we are finding screenshots of them both being extremely EXTREMELY ableist and transphobic….spreading this gross chainmail on WA69 that tizzy and chekmix claim to be making fun of “people who fake disorders”, but they are obviously blatantly making fun of the actual symptoms. removing an ableist person from a space that is meant to be a space safe for people with mental disorders isn’t harassment. get ahold of your self and stop defending your friends when you KNOW they were in the wrong. it’s not shit talking if someone is in the wrong, it’s talking about shit that they did. 🙂

if this has any spelling mistakes just ignore it pls

[coolxatu]

Hey did you reblog the "yeah it's called bisexual" bc you thought it was just funny, or do you dislike pans ;-;

i think pansexual is a useless term at best; and at worst, actively biphobic and transphobic.

ive spoken about this topic at length before but basically i used to identify as pan back in 2012-2013 before i learned the whole reasoning behind it was based on two gross misunderstandings:

one, a presumption (made by tumblr users that had never actually interacted with the offline community) that bisexuality is inherently transphobic/nonbinary exclusive (its not).

and two, the language that was used during pansexuality's creation often described it as "attraction to men, women, and trans people" basically considering being trans itself as a 3rd gender, which is obviously an idea rooted in transphobia. this misconception also contributed immensely to people associating bisexuality with transphobia, assuming that "bi" automatically excluded this "3rd gender".

my third reason for disliking it is mostly a personal one. pansexual is an identity that literally came out of tumblr in the early 2010's. its an identity with no history, no past to look back on. you wont see its flag in old pride photos.

i like knowing bisexuality has old roots. i like knowing its flag is older than me. i like knowing the purple stripe in its middle represents nonbinary people. i like knowing bi has never ever excluded trans people.

people can identify as pan if they want to, i really cant stop you, but many people including myself only did so because they didnt know bisexual already meant what pansexual says that it means. i think its important that people that use pansexual understand that when they claim it.

[fandomshatelgbtqpeople]

Has anyone talked about the intense biphobia of the Spop fandom already? There is not a day where Glimmer, Bow, Entrapta, Hordak are not called cishet despite being canonically or extremely heavily implied to be queer, just because they dare to be in different sex relationships, or bi creators are not called "gross cishets" or "lesbiphobic" for shipping something other than femslash. Given with how ableist this fandom is too, and how very many people repeat the man-hating, covertly transphobic and racist parts of TERF rethoric, the only way to thrive in this fandom is to be a cis white abled lesbian who never experienced peer abuse and loves Catradora

Before getting to the meat of this ask, I want to address one thing. I feel like the ask conflates "never experienced peer abuse" with "loves Catradora." You (the general you) have got to stop assuming you can know a single thing about someone's life based on what they ship. Shipping is an intensely personal experience and people ship the things they ship for a lot of complex reasons. You have no idea whether someone else's interpretation of the relationship aligns with yours, what parts of the characters or relationship they relate to (if any), why they latch on to the ships they do, or what they get out of shipping at all. If I'm misunderstanding what you (the anon) meant, I'm sorry for going off about this on your ask, but it's still generally true.

Now, back to the actual question, the outlook that anyone shipping an m/f ship is homophobic/traitorous is what you get when you see shipping and advocating for more/better representation as one in the same. If the only reason to ship is for representation, then anyone with an m/f ship must not want any of the competing slash ships to be canon, and what reason could there be for that other than homophobia. This is something that's widespread not only in the spop fandom, but in a lot of fandoms. Particularly ones where the fans are younger, because that particular mentality is very new. That's not to say older fandoms can't also have biphobia, but it tends to manifest differently.

The thing is that most people don't consider "what would be the best ship from a representation standpoint" when they latch onto a ship, or at the very least, it's not their most important consideration. Even if a person wants their ship to be canon (not everyone does!), it's possible to acknowledge, that "this is my favorite ship because I really relate to some aspect of it, but I understand that [other relationship] would probably be better representation for x group." And that's not even getting into the very complex discussion about competing representation needs, both between different groups of people and within the same group.

Anyway, long story short, yes these things are issues but they're issues with fandom as a whole, not with the spop fandom specifically.

[radghostgirl]

labels- bi vs pan

when i talk about my sexuality, i use the term bisexual. however, i am attracted to people of all gender identities. i use the term bisexual because recently i have educated myself thoroughly on the history of the queer community, queer theory, bisexuality, and the history of bisexuality.

essentially, sexuality is a spectrum. our attraction goes up to two ways on the spectrum. towards us, away from us, or both. homosexual people experience attraction in the direction towards themselves. meaning they are sexually attracted to people who are the same gender identity as them. their arrow moves one way- as in homo.

heterosexual people experience attraction the opposite way- they’re attracted to people who identify as something that is not their gender identity.

bisexual people go both ways: towards their own gender identity, and away. meaning bisexual people do not like men and women because of the term “bi” meaning two. bisexual people are attracted both to their same gender identity, and others.

this is where the debate surrounding the term “pansexual” arrives. pansexual is meant to mean bisexual, but attracted to every gender (including non-binary, third gender, gender fluid, and transgender people). bisexual and pansexual people are the same. but some people will use pansexual to imply that in some way, bisexual people are only attracted to cis men and women.

which is blatantly false. never mind the fact that the bisexual flag has a purple stripe for nonbinary people. never mind the fact that the literal 1990 Bisexual Manifesto outwardly states not to assume the concept of “two genders”.

bisexual people have been dating people of all gender identities the whole time. and bisexual has never meant that it excluded trans people. there is a false interpretation of the term pansexual that somehow, bi people are discriminating against non cis folks. which is both biphobic, and transphobic, as well as overall gross!

all of that to be said, i don’t hate people who identify as pan. the term pansexual was not around when i came out, nor was much education on queer theory or history. i formed such a strong bond with the term bisexual because it was what i used to describe my identity. it was finally a word to describe who i am. i recognize that there are many people who have that experience with the term pansexual, and i in no way want to invalidate them or take that away.

but i want people to be aware of what bisexual means. it’s the same thing as pansexual. on top of that, all bisexuals are different. certain people will have preferences, certain people won’t. this idea that bisexuality doesn't include anyone outside of the gender binary is false. and the idea that bisexuality means a limited amount of gender identities is also false.

i could make a whole post about the history of bisexuality, but instead i will simply link some articles that explain it in depth. TW because some of these are much more aggressive, and at points more insensitive, than i am about this.

i admit i struggle with the idea that people need a whole other sexuality label to imply that bisexuals suddenly only adhere to the gender binary, or are transphobic. i struggle to see how this isn’t inherently biphobic. if your reasoning is that it’s too complicated to describe basic queer theory, that in and of itself is homophobic. if you're not willing to educate yourself on the history of bisexuality, on queer theory, or about the community in any meaningful way, but you're willing to argue against and invalidate the identities of millions of people throughout history? you're just a piece of shit.

that being said.

i am not going to run around telling pansexual people their identity is invalid. if you came out as pansexual and that term meant to you what the term bisexual meant to me, i won’t ever take that away from you. (i literally cannot emphasize enough that i am not trying to take away a term, to cancel anyone, or to say they're wrong or fake. i simply want to spread education that our very fucking cishet society keeps trying to squash. i won't let them pretend it doesn't exist.)

i just want to push for education, acceptance, and awareness.

bisexuality is valid in and of its own existence. that is all i am trying to say.