#and that's all been general transphobia

[retordedd]

I never use this blog because the eddsworld fandom is genuinely the only fandom I've been completely fucking miserable trying to engage with. It's full of trans people and yet the community is SO hostile towards non-afab or non masc aligned in some way trans people. I've had people blatantly refused to respect my pronouns after saying they would. I've been misgendered in a server full of trans people where literally no one else was misgendered because there were pronoun roles. In that same server, while I was uplifting trans people making jokes about being proud of their bodies, they made fun of me for not having breasts. I've had multiple people debate my boundaries like it's a topic of discussion because I asked not to be called dude, a GENDERED TERM. I've had people gang up on me to the point of tears because I dared to describe my experiences being raised with an unconventional relationship to gender. I've been accused of holding grudges and being aggressive for even daring to speak up when I'm tired of being treated this way

And these events don't refer to a bunch of random assholes, they refer to people well known in the fandom. People I've seen on multiple servers. People whose names you say and it gets recognized

The eddsworld fandom has a HUGE transmisogyny problem and it needs to be discussed. The way I constantly feel unsafe when in a fandom surrounded by trans people is completely unacceptable

[genderkoolaid]

i think "nonbinary" can be useful but a lot of times the way it is being used isn't helpful to actually discussing nonbinary people, especially since it is a HUGE umbrella term with very few boundaries. like there are nonbinary men & women, so positioning "nonbinary" as something intrinsically separate from man/woman isn't accurate. or there are times where it would be more useful to name the specific group (like multigender people, androgynes, abinary/aphorians) rather than a much vaguer term

in general the problem is that our language to describe nonbinary existence is basically some scraps held together with duct tape. there's sooo many ways in which nonbinary people are erased or binaried through language. not just through the lack of gender neutral options but the la of blatantly genderqueer ones.

i kinda feel like as of right now, nonbinary-ness is pretty slapdash & all over the place and it would be helpful to have a large-scale discussion on what terminology would be best for discussing things like exorsexism and it's various aspects, and how to talk about nonbinary people without homogenizing us, while ALSO acknowledging the need for umbrella terms that can cover a range of individual identities, even if people don't personally identify with the umbrella term itself. & on that note we should also probably discuss the issue of. like. perfectionism wrt nonbinary language & the way that potentially useful terms get lost bc of it. I don't think nonbinary people can really achieve meaningful equality and inclusion on the same level until we are able to have equally diverse and useful ways of describing ourselves, and a stronger understanding of how we relate to each other as a community.

[gucciguccigarbage]

"wow what photomatt did and said is such bullshit and tumblr as a site has been perpetuating a transmisogynistic double standard" you agree now that it's the big event but are you fucking normal about that double standard yourself? Do you reblog callouts toward queer people that exaggerate personal spats or lack /any/ interpersonal harm at all but reveal those queer people are into something which elicits a disgust response in you? Do you decide that trans women who do terrible enough things, like Christine Chan, are okay to degender or full-on misgender? Or do you notice when others do? Yeah, banning a trans woman for a frustrated hyperbolic violent comment while letting nazis and violent transphobes run free is the corporate sin here and easy to point and jeer at but are you contributing to this environment that makes it so easy to tear down queer people, especially trans women, especially sex workers? If the CEO had managed to have a little more tact, would you be right there with the contingent (which does exist) of people saying it was predstrogen's actions, not her gender, which got her this treatment? Are you somebody who has simply decided to write trans people out of your category of "deviancy" from societal norms rather than deconstructing the moral weight of that deviancy, leaving the marginalized to fall on that sword as those you think you're trying to target for "being into weird shit" go unscathed? How many people who are now joining in to clown on the easy transphobia helped make it possible in the first place?

[woomycritiques543]

maybe let actual trans people and gnc people say what they have an issue with instead of acting like…one episode of a cartoon on youtube that has people do drag is going to result in mass murder?

idk it’s just funny to me that you seem so upset over what you think episode 5 will be

Stereotypes have literally caused genocides in the past, multiple times! Jim Crow laws even came from stereotypes of people like me, people who are poc! Not just that, but the stereotypes being portayed in the newest episode, are the same stereotypes being used as an excuse to try to kill drag queens, and children, right now!

The episode is literally going to show Moxxie, in drag, as a "danger around children" by depicting him trying to harm someone in front of kids, the exact type of stereotypes that

When if the media stopped constantly representing drag queens as "a danger to children", would attacks like this would have happened?

Actually... NO! Because this happened because of generations of misrepresentation, generations of public misinformation.

This isn't about "this makes this happen". It's about representation. -and the fact that so many of you forget what representation is to benefit a cartoon made by a cis white passing woman is actually disgusting. This episode literally has stereotypes that can and will cause more problems for the lgbt+ community, same for how Angel Dust caused more people to sexualize gay men being molested because of people like Ralphielle, same for how the pilot and episode 4 of S2 caused more people to say the r slur. This shit effects people, universally, it's not a "you have to be ___ to see that something is causing issues" ordeal. Misrepresentation is a universal problem that effects literally all minorities, all of us! Drag queens being misrepresented as a "danger around kids" is why the laws trying to ban them are happening... in the first place! Representation effects the reputation of us all! So speculation or not, do I, and multiple people from the trans community who have now said the same thing, have a right to be concerned? Yes! Yes, we all do, stop gatekeeping because you want to get off to Moxxie's femininity. It's gross, and people do have a right to be concerned.

Stereotypes are not "harmless". They effect all of us, the more stereotypes show trans women as a "danger" to kids in the bathroom, the more that drag queens are seen as a "danger around kids." The more that black lives are seen as "savages." The more that people who are disabled are seen as "stupid and useless". All of the stereotypes in Helluva Boss are stereotypes created from generations of oppresion. None of this is "ok."

There are literal threads about stereotypes like this being wrong everywhere. This isn't "for" me to "look good online/white knight", that would involve making assumptions with no other says.

This is for them, to say what they've all been saying now for DECADES! Trans lives are not "a danger to kids", these stereotypes need to stop, not just for their safety, but for the safety of all the lgbt+ community against conservative stereotypes!

EDIT:

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL!

-and just to make it worse:

They even had the violence be done to the ONLY DARK SKINNED KID IN THE ENTIRE EPISODE!

HOLY SHIT Vivienne, this is some of the most unsubtle version of queerphobia in a cartoon that I have ever seen. Literally, all the episode does is fetishize Moxxie for being in drag, while he's meant to be disguised as a minor, while also literally, having even worse since Moxxie here isn't depicted as being a danger "around" kids like I thought he would be- he's a danger TO them! Which is even worse!

Because this year, an entire church full of children was attacked by transphobes for these exact assumptions about the drag community! These stereotypes have now gone too far, way too far, and now I wish that I begged harder for this episode to be post ponned because THIS YEAR Florida is planning to even cause physical harm to the drag community- for these exact stereotypes, that were originally created by conservatives... in the first place!

The Helluva Boss fandom even called the trans genocide "GOOD LAWS!" THEY'RE NOT EVEN BEING SUBTLE WITH THEIR TRANSPHOBIA ANYMORE!

This is literally how Vivziepop stans responded to my post trying to warn Spindlehorse to post pone this episode- they aren't just transphobic, Vivziepop stans actually want the trans community dead.

THIS EPISODE IS LITERALLY CAUSING MORE PEOPLE TO WANT THE TRANS COMMUNITY TO BE KILLED BY THESE LAWS! THIS IS A REAL FUCKING ORDEAL AND WE NEED TO STOP NORMALIZING THE STEREOTYPES IN THIS SHOW BEFORE THINGS GET ANY MORE OUT OF HAND!

Look. Stop turning your heads away and look at the harm the stereotypes from this show have now caused!

Again, for the last time, actually read my posts because so many of you said "But it's not going to be-" while not even looking at the previews, what I wrote, or anything! For fucks sake- Stop excusing Helluva Boss's stereotypes just because you want more episodes of a cartoon. These fictional characters are not more important than real people! It's a public show, and conservatives can and will see this episode it weaponize the imagery as a means to cause harm to us, the exact same way 4chan did so after episode 3 of S2. This shit is really getting out of hand. Which is all the reason why that my video on the Sallie May controversy will be released, Vivziepop will be held accountable, and I will make sure that not a single piece of vital info is excluded from that video in question.

[lesbiansanemi]

Gay trans men be normal about women challenge. Especially trans women and lesbians

[keelanrosa]

terfs when a study shows literally anything positive about trans people/transitioning: 'hm i think this requires some fact-checking. Were those researchers REALLY unbiased? Because if they were biased this doesn't count and if they weren't knowingly biased they probably were unconsciously biased, woke media affects so much these days. Have there been any other studies on this? Because if there haven't been this could be an outlier and if there have been and they all agree that's a bit odd, why aren't there any outliers, and if there have been and any disagree we really won't know the truth until we very thoroughly analyze them all, will we? Were there enough subjects for a good sample size? Did every single subject involved stay involved through the whole study because if they didn't we should be sure nothing shady was going on resulting in people dropping out. Are we 110% sure all the subjects were fully honest and at no point were embarrassed or afraid to admit they didn't love transitioning to the people in charge of their transition? Are we 110% sure none of the subjects were manipulated into thinking they were happy with their transition? In fact we should double-check what they think with their parents, because if the subjects and their parents disagree it's probably because they've been manipulated but their cis parents have not and are very unbiased. How many autistic subjects were there because if there weren't enough then this doesn't really study the overlap between autistic and trans and if there were too many then we just don't know enough about what causes that overlap to be sure this study really explains being trans and isn't just about being autistic. How many AFAB subjects were there because if there weren't enough this is just another example of prioritizing AMAB people and ignoring the different struggles of girls and women and if there were too many how do we know sexism didn't affect the results. Was the study double-blinded? We all know double-blinded is the most reliable so if this one wasn't that's a point against it even if the thesis literally physically could not be double-blinded. Look i'm not being transphobic, i want what's best for trans people! Really! But as a person who is not trans and therefore objective in a way they cannot possibly be, i just think we should only take into account Good Science here. You want to be following science and not being manipulated or experimented upon by something unscientific, right?'

terfs when they see a study of 45 subjects so old it predates modern criteria for gender dysphoria and basically uses 'idk her parents think she's too butch', run by a guy who practiced conversion therapy, 'confirmed' by a guy who treated the significant portion of subjects who didn't follow up as all desisting, definitely in the category of 'physically cannot double-blind this', completely contradicted by multiple other studies done on actual transgender subjects, but can be kinda cited as evidence against transitioning if you ignore everything else about it: 'oOOH SEE THIS IS WHAT WE'RE TALKIN BOUT. SCIENCE. Just good ol' unbiased thorough analysis. I see absolutely no reason to dig any deeper on this and if you think it's wrong you're the one being unscientific. It's really a shame you've been so thoroughly brainwashed by the trans agenda and can't even accept science when you see it. Maybe now that someone has finally uncovered this long-lost study from 1985, we can make some actual progress on the whole trans problem.'

[theophagie-remade]

I don't have much to say about Magne other than there was an Attempt, but. That time when Twice and Toga got angry with Overhaul for misgendering her was already indicative of what I'm going to get at in a sec, and obviously it was especially relevant because it was a direct show of respect and support from people who very clearly cared about her (and who called her big sis already as it was!!) (×2 imo because Twice was intentionally written to be the readers' insight into the LOV, and the character with whom they were supposed sympathise with the most at/since the beginning, so it's especially important that the first one who spoke up was him), but the story's progression (especially in recent years) is what most assures me that despite a rather poor execution (definitely not the best, but also certainly not the worst) Horikoshi did mean well with her. "People bound together by the chains of society always laugh at those who aren't" :(

[babyyfaceddemon]

When you meet your former best friend after years of no contact again after they moved back to your city and on the second meet up they start spouting transphobic shit out of nowhere

[coffeeworldsasaki]

Imagine having both your zodiac sign and that intj whatever the fuck bullshit in your description and thinking you can ever be right about anything

[liebelesbe]

I love you journaling thank you for absorbing all of my stupid & silly & depressing & weird & random & long thoughts <3

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

ok but can we as a society stop assuming that just cos a queer person is under the age of 30, doesn't mean they haven't experienced some form of bigotry directed at them because of their identity lol????

[notanotherblorbo]

Today was hard can someone tell me something beautiful about trans people

[prettycottagequeer]

ok maybe I'm a little late to this BUT I'm gonna do a to-do list motivation thingy because I've had the worst two weeks since I started college :)

SO these I should start on asap:

50 I make the snack I really want but I haven't had the motivation to make

100 I clean my dorm. another thing I've been meaning to do for a week

150 I do the presentation about mid-victorian fashion I've been putting off (due Monday)

200 I start memorizing the monologue that was due a week ago (now due Tuesday)

these can wait longer:

300 I spend time outside. It's so nice but I'm getting stuck scrolling because I feel like shit. vicious cycle ect

500 I start setting a better weekend routine (aka getting up before noon)

1k I start working out again. I was doing a routine to get more masc and build muscle and I liked it but life hit me like Crowley driving the Bentley and I've missed like 3 weeks

2k I buy my first binder. I've been coping with sports bras for almost a year now and I haven't been able to justify spending $50+ on a binder even though I know I'd love it and use it everyday.

Do I tag people? I don't know but I'm going to. @the-globe-theatre-maggot @weirdly-specific-but-ok @howmanyholesinswisscheese

here's just some context if you want to read, feel free to skip. some of this I've talked about in the maggot server, some I haven't, but I really just need a place for this to go that's out of my head. tw homophobia, transphobia, car crash(??)

How I Have Been Run Over By The Bentley Going 90 In Central London What Feels Like 50 Times In The Last Two Weeks

I'm going to college about 4 hours away from my parents, and it's been really nice. They.. suck, to say the least. transphobic/homophobic ect, super traditional conservative catholic, racist, all of it. so i tried to move somewhere where I wouldn't have to think about them and I could be myself and do what I can to be happy. March 1st was the start of my spring break, which meant going home because the dorms close. I was already not excited, but I was prepared. the problem with being away from home is I forget just how bad they are. My optimism gets the better of me and I think maybe this time they'll be better. so I decided to not hide my septum piercing.

that was a mistake. it starts a whole fight where they say we know you're trans, you're actually a girl and you always will be, we have the bones argument, they think I'm being influenced by demons or something (if only they knew about crowley) because I want to change my name, and they tell me that going on t will completely ruin my body and give me cancer and other things. They're also mad about my dyed hair, septum, and general style, and say I'm setting a terrible example for my (5) younger siblings and make it a point to tell me just how much of a disappointment I am. I think I'm pretty cute and fun but y'know, whatever. very fun time. I lie so much, don't give them any more details about my identity, and say I'm not planning to go on t to save my ass. which is all on instinct which makes me feel worse because if I'm really trans I should be able to stand up for that, right? maybe I'm faking the dysphoria.

the next morning I wake up really sick, and spend the rest of the week sick and feeling like shit because I'm home and back in the same place and situation I was a year ago that I thought I escaped. at one point I pretty much lose my voice but also kind of get gender euphoria from it. it's weird.

On Friday it's time for me to drive back 4 hours to school, and I make it about 3/4 of the way when google maps takes me on a random gravel road and I crash my car, really crash my car, like sideways-in-a-ditch-windows-broken-crawling-up-out-the-door crash it in the middle of nowhere. (I was fully paying attention to the road, it was raining and super slick) I call my parents because I have no one else to call and I sit in a Subway for 3 hours while they drive to get my car. when they get there they're (understandably) really mad, and they tell me that I'm not mature enough to be going to school so far away and I need to get my shit together and stop depending on them. which. is probably true. but made me feel even more stupid about the fact that I crashed my car. I get back to school and I'm still Very Sick with no energy or motivation to do anything. So I've spent the last week trying to get better and honestly to do anything. it hasn't really worked. I'm a lot better health-wise (Not emotionally), still sick but I have a lot of work due, so I really need a push to get started

[sarasade]

One of the most generally useful things to come out of Hbomberguy's plagiarism video and Todd in the Shadows' similar video on misinformation is how they bring transparency to the internet phenomenon of "I made up a guy to get mad at".

Seriously, I've seen people make up a lot of stupid shit on the internet over the years and it's often just a manipulative attempt to paint a group of marginalized people in a bad light.

That's the TL;DR version of this post. 

ANYWAY here is the long version

Those videos are mostly about James Somerton's plagiarism of other queer people's work. However I'd like to talk about that 20-30% of Somerton's original writing- and oh boy. It's mostly about complaining about White Straight Women and misgendering well-known trans creators such as Rebecca Sugar and calling Becky Albertalli a straight woman while it's pretty common knowledge that she was forced to out herself as bi because she received so much harassment over "being a cishet woman who appropriates LGBT+ stories".

One thing that irks me especially is how in his Killing Stalking and Gay Shipping videos Somerton brings up how straight women/ teen girl shippers exploit gay men for their personal sexual fantasies. This gets brought up several times in his videos.

Being all up and arms about Somerton being a "White Cis Gay Who Hates Women and Queer People tm" is not that useful because the kind of rhetoric he's using is extremely common in fandom and LGBT+ spaces on Tumblr, TikTok and Twitter. We really don't need to bring Somerton's identity to this since he is in no way an unique example.

It's hypocritical to make this about an individual person when I've seen A TON of posts, tweets and videos where queer people talk about these Sinister Straight Women who are supposedly out there fetishizing and exploiting queer men. It's pretty clear to me that this is just an excuse to shit on women and queer people for having any sexual interests. At worst these comments are spreading misinformation about BL, a form of media that has been excessively studied by both Asian feminists and Asian queer women.

This all sounds really familiar and I think it's good that people are calling it out as what it is: misogyny and transphobia. I'd also point out the potentially racist motives behind being this hypervigilant about Asian media.

People can absolutely be misogynist regardless of gender or orientation. I really don't know why we need to create some kind of made up enemy to get mad at. I actually think it's almost sinister how "anti-fujoshi" people call Slash shippers and fujoshi misogynists or claim that they have internalised misogyny while being dismissive about women's interests and creative pursuits under Japanese obscenity laws, China's censorship, book bans in American schools and various other disadvances that are part of being a queer and/or female creator.

I think we shouldn't be naive about the bad faith actors who want to turn queer people against each other. For example Fujoshi.info mentions anti-gender (TERF, GC etc) movement using this kind of rhetoric as well.

Anyway if you want to read more:

- about the false info around BL fandom fujoshi.info

-There is the scholar Thomas Baudinette who studies gay media in Japan. Here is a podcast with him and the scholar Khursten Santos

-James Welker is a BL scholar as well. Here is a podcast interview about the new international BL article collection he edited.

-I've already talked about this Youtube channel by KrisPNatz and his great Killing Stalking video that actually engages with the themes of the manhwa

- There is also HR Coleman's thesis DO NOT FEED THE FETISHIZERS: BOYS LOVE FANS RESISTANCE AND CHALLENGE OF PERCEIVED REPUTATION where she interviews 36 BL fans and actually breaks down why fetishization has become such a huge talking point in the fandom discourse. Spoilers, it's mostly about young queer people and women being worried that they will get judged and pathologized for their interest in anything sexual.

-Great podcast about Danmei and censorship with Liang Ge

[communistkenobi]

I’ve been thinking a lot about fandom recently, both as someone who has engaged with it regularly for over a decade on various platforms and also as someone who has increasingly become disenchanted with those spaces. Not only because of pervasive issues of (especially anti-Black) racism, misogyny, transphobia/homophobia, and the like, but the particular way those things take shape within fandom.

At the most basic level I think fandom has a fundamental methodological problem with the way it approaches texts, be they shows, books, movies, etc. What I mean is that people almost invariably approach fandom at the level of character, often at the level of ship - your primary way of viewing a text is filtered through favourite characters and favourite relationships, as opposed to, say, favourite scenes, favourite themes, favourite conflicts.

This is reinforced through the architecture of dominant platforms that host fan content, particularly AO3 - there are separate categories for fandom, character and ship, and everything else is lumped together in “Additional Tags.” You cannot, for example, filter for fics on AO3 by the category of “critical perspective” or “thematic exploration”. There is no dedicated space for fan authors to declare their analytical perspective on the text they are writing about. If an author declares these things, they do so individually, they must go out of their way to do so, because there are no dedicated or universally agreed-upon tags to indicate those things, and if your fanfiction has a lot of tags, that announcement of criticality gets mushed together in a sea of other tags, sharing the same space with tags like “fluff and angst” or “porn without plot.” Perhaps one of the few tags closest to approaching this is the tag “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat,” which doesn’t indicate perspective or theme but rather that there is, broadly, some kind of “problematic content” contained therein - often of a sexual nature, frequently as a warning about “bad” ships.

Now this is not an inherent problem, as in, it is not inherently incorrect to approach a text and primarily derive pleasure from it by focusing on a given character or relationship. And I think a lot of mainstream media encourages (even requires) audiences to engage with their stories at these character- and ship-levels. The political economy of the production of art (one which is capitalistic, one that seeks to generate comfort, titillation, controversy, nostalgia, or shock for the purposes of drawing in viewership, one that increasingly pursues social media metrics of “engagement” and “impressions”, one that allows for the Netflix model of making two-season shows before cancelling them, as well as a whole host of other things) enforces a particular narrative orthodoxy, one that heavily focuses on the individual interiority of specific characters, one that is deeply concerned with the maintenance of white bourgeois middle class values of property ownership, the nuclear family, normative heterosexual sexuality and gender, settler-colonial ideas about community and environment, etc. If you do not care about the familial drama surrounding Shauna cheating on her husband in Yellowjackets, for example, because you think the institution of monogamous marriage and the nuclear family is stupid and violent and heternormative, then you will have a difficult time engaging with the show in general. We exist within a deeply normative (and frequently reactionary) media environment that encourages us to approach art in a particular way, one that privileges the individual over other narrative components (settings, themes, conflicts, ideas, political and moral perspectives, structure, tone, etc).

All of which culminates in priming fans to engage with art at these levels and these levels alone, even when that scope is deeply inappropriate. A standout example I recently encountered was browsing the fandom tags on tumblr for the movie Prey - a movie that recontextualises the original Predator film by setting it in colonial America to make the argument that the horrific violence of white colonists and imperial soldiers is identical to the violence we see the Predator do to human beings. It is a movie that makes the argument that, despite this alien monster running around killing people, the villains of the franchise are these occupying soldiers and settlers, an alien force who themselves have just as little regard for (indigenous) human life.

And when browsing the tags on tumblr, what I found was dozens upon dozens of horny posts about how hot the predator monster was. Certainly there were discussion of the film’s narrative, and these posts got a good amount of notes, but the tags were heavily dominated with a focus on the Predator itself. People were engaging with this film not as a solid action movie with interesting and compelling anti-colonial themes, but as a way to be horny about a creature that is, ironically, a stand-in for white settler indifference to (and perpetuation of) indigenous suffering. And if this is your takeaway from an extremely straightforward film with a very clear message, this is not merely a failure to comprehend the content of a text, this is something beyond it - a problem that I think is due in part to the methodological problem of approaching all texts as vessels for bourgeois interiority, individual but ultimately interchangeable expressions of sexuality, perhaps best-expressed by the term “roving slash fandom,” a phenomenon wherein fans will move from one fandom to the next in search of two (usually white, usually skinny) guys to draw and write porn of, uncaring of any of the surrounding context of the stories they are embedded in, and consequently dominating a large sector of fandom discussion.

This even gets expressed in the primary ideological battleground of fandom itself, the ridiculous partitioning of all fan conflict into “pro-“ and “anti-“ shipping compartments. Your stance on engagement with fandom itself historically was (and still is) always first filtered through one of these two labels, describing your fundamental perspective on all texts you engage with. And both of these two labels are only concerned with shipping, as if all disagreements about art can only be interpreted through the lens of what characters you think are acceptable to draw or write having sex. Nowhere in this binary is space to describe any other perspective you might take, what approaches you think are valuable when interacting with art, what themes or stories you think are worth exploring. It’s not just that the pro/anti divide is juvenile and overly-simplistic, it is a declaration that all fan conflict must be read through the lens of shipping and shipping only - the implication being that any objections raised, and criticisms offered, is ultimately just bitching about ships you don’t like.

Which, again, I think is a fundamental error of methodology. It leaves no space for people to discuss the political and moral content of a work, the themes of a piece of art, the thorny issues of representation not just as expressed through individual characters but entire worlds, narratives, settings, and themes. You are always hopelessly stuck in the quagmire of “shipping discourse,” and even rejecting that framework will inevitably get you labelled as either pro- or anti-ship anyway - and you will almost invariably be labelled an “anti” if you express any kind of distaste for the bigoted behaviour of fans or the content of the text itself, again reinforcing the idea that this is all just pointless whining online about icky ships you personally hate.

And this issue is best perhaps epitomised by reader insert fanfiction, circumventing any need for you to project onto a character by literally inserting yourself into fiction, primarily in order to write/read about a character you want to fuck. This then intersects in particularly disgusting ways with real world politics, such as reader insert fics about Pedro Pascal going with you to BLM protests. Even if this is (incredibly over-generously) interpreted as a very poor attempt at being “progressive,” it still demonstrates that many (white) fans are often incapable of thinking about anything outside of a character-centric perspective, quite literally centring themselves in the process, and consequently they think it’s totally appropriate to do things like that. The fact that this is also frequently a racist lens is not coincidental, because again, a chronic focus on (fictional) individuality prohibits any structural perspective from entering the discussion, which necessarily excludes a coherent or useful perspective on systemic issues, where people come to the conclusion that the topic of police brutality is little more than a fun stage to enact whatever romantic shenanigans you want to get up to with a hot guy.

I will stress, again, that it is not a moral sin to have a favourite character, nor is it bad to enjoy reading about two guys having sex in fanfiction. I enjoy and do those things, I engage with fandom often through a character-centric lens (see my url) - because it’s fun! But I think that this being the dominant mode of engagement inherently excludes and marginalises all other approaches, and creates a fandom space where the most valuable way to talk about media is to discuss which two characters you most enjoy imagining fucking each other

[cyclocarbon]

i am so very sick of people bringing up trans men as some sort of rhetorical gotcha when talking about trans bathroom bans. ‘haha conservatives say they want to keep ‘men’ out of women’s bathrooms, but what about trans men then’ is not really a useful takedown by any means.

the transphobes pushing this legislation do not want trans men in women’s bathrooms or vice versa. they want trans & gender nonconforming people of all genders & presentations to feel unsafe in all public bathroom facilities.

and i keep seeing these talking points dredged up again and again. how transphobes supposedly do not know that there are trans people who look indistinguishable from cis people with or without hormone replacement therapy. how they are so silly for wanting to force passing trans people into bathrooms that do not correspond with their gender identity & presentation. how ridiculous it is that transphobes want people to carry their birth certificates just so they can prove their right to use a bathroom.

the fact that passing trans people & people with nonconforming gender presentations exist is perfectly congruent with the intent of transphobic bathroom bans. these bills are being pushed not just to humiliate people by subjecting them to cruelty, although that certainly is a part of it. the goal ultimately is to limit trans & GNC people’s access to public life.

access to public restrooms, showers & dressing rooms is essential to navigating public life. not being able to use the bathroom when needed can have significant detrimental effects on one’s health, physical or otherwise.

transphobes generally are well aware that some trans men look just like cis men. just as they are aware that some trans men & transmasculine people look gender nonconforming. they are not truly suggesting that these people should use the women’s bathroom. what they really want is for trans people to not use public bathrooms at all.

transphobes know that women’s restrooms are not safe for trans men. they are not safe for gender nonconforming people of all genders. that is why they want to make men’s bathrooms unsafe for trans & GNC people too: the goal is to make all options unsafe. this is and always has been about keeping people who do not conform to cisheteropatriarchal standards out of public life.

there is little need for another quip about how ‘illogical’ transphobes are for ‘wanting trans men in women’s bathrooms.’ transphobia does not operate by logical means in the first place. but even so, this position only seems illogical if you do not consider its actual intent. transphobes want trans people out of public life by any means: forced out of public spaces, forced to hide, forced into the closet, forced to detransition. understand & counter what they really mean.