#anti queer presentism

[a-la-sante-du-progres]

"At the level of my bed, there are two flaming hearts, pierced by an arrow, and down "Love for life". The unlucky one didn't face a long engagement.

Beside [...]

And then again some flaming hearts, with this inscription, peculiar in a prison "I love and I adore Mathieu Danvin. JACQUES." "

From The Last Day of Condemned Man by Hugo, this proves this author didn't believe in heteronormativity that is didn't believe everyone to be straight. We don't know his opinions in detail - although I dare to say this reference is sad but casts sympathetic light on these Jacques et Mathieu. So when we read 1)Hugo is a XIX man, 2)can imagine only heterosexuality and 3)so every one of his characters is straight and 4)there is no gay subtext, at least the 2nd sentence is false, likely 3) and 4) as well.

We also should always remember that queerness being a modern trend and every person born before 1990 being homophobic or ignorant about the existence of queerness is at best queer presentism, more often homophobic propaganda which aim to paint queer themes as a fleeting modern delusion.

(Anyway this book is extremely important to read)

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

since i talked about how Ballister and Ambrosius were a much better enemies to lovers romance than c//a, i also want to mention that Nimona is a much better representation of trans people than Double Trouble or Perfuma ever was.

it seemed like Nate actually put effort into making Nimona's trans-ness (for the lack of a better word) REAL. it actually felt like it was canon and quite well written.

not just the fact that Nimona is a shapeshifter but also the whole thing viewed from a social lens. people viewing her as a monster and teaching their children to fear her too. Ballister telling her to stay in her girl form because it'll be "easier". Ballister initially finding her shapeshifting annoying and confusing. the Director literally being willing to kill half the kingdom in order to kill Nimona (very reminiscent to how transphobia can negatively affect EVERYONE, not just trans folk).

it actually seems like Nate put more effort into making Nimona an actual trans allegory, instead of simply slapping a label and pronouns onto her. i believe Nate drew from his own personal experiences, which is why it feels more realistic and relatable.

and this is what i don't understand about the trans/non-binary characters in spop. if Nate was indeed capable of writing good trans representation, what happened to Double Trouble?

the shapeshifter part doesn't bother me that much (as a genderqueer person, i would LOVE to be a shapeshifter) but what was the point of making them one of the only inhuman-looking characters? or having them invade the heroes' safe space disguised as a little girl? surely Nate knew the real-world implications of this, even if that wasn't the intention.

(i won't really mention Perfuma here because it doesn't seem like Nate intended to write her as trans, it was just the character designer who said that she was modelled after a trans woman.)

[variousqueerthings]

there’s so many ways that queerness exists in texts, unintentionally and intentionally, coded and uncoded and partially coded and baited and confused and limited and expansive, and then there’s whatever is happening with Hawkeye Pierce, M.D. of the 4077th MASH unit

[spiltcandycoatedpunkblood]

really want to say a lot on this radfem inspired narrative about enforcing a gender binary based on biological differences and how anyone vaguely masculine is a threat, like for example with the problem society has with gender neutral bathrooms and also 'safe spaces' that shove anyone aside who isn't a 'woman or nonbinary person' (aka woman lite and stereotypically androgynous and white and skinny), and how we're applying this to the queering of gender and just applying a shit coat of paint to stereotypical presentation and portrayal of gender, but i'm too tired for that, so here's just this.

[r-u-s-a-l-k-a]

gay/bi mike wheeler discourse is so hilarious from my pov. I'm here sitting on my bench watching you all going at each other's troaths virtually, eating popcorn and knowing that Mike is straight, that the Duffer Brothers are lazy and they wrote Will to be in love with Mike because they wanted to take the safer route : sad gay kid pining over his straight best friend. They didn't add a new character for Will in season four because it wasn't suitable for Will and Mike storyline. If Argyle wouldn't have existed and in his place there would have been the new Will's love interest, what the fuck would Mike have done for eight episodes ? Will's storyline would have been different, he couldn't be Mike's counselor. Will and Mike's storylines in season four are attached not because there is this big plot twist around the corner and by*ler will be endgame, it's because of cheap, lazy writing. They didn't know what to do with both of them. So it's really funny reading this whole online discourse "Mike is clearly gay" "Mike is perfect bi representation" when i am here with a bitter taste in my mouth thinking that in good hands, in hands that really cared about queer identity and queer representation Will Byers would have been treated differently.

[dr-wuffles]

Hey Queer men and transmen! As someone who used to live as as man socially in the fucked up, homophobic, "men don't cry", Macho society we have: - You are not weak or wrong for feeling like your feelings are not recognized.

-Queer male spaces, especially Andro/achilliean spaces are often plagued with incredibly shitty takes on vulnerability as it relates to masculinity and gender presentation. -You deserve to talk about what is hurting you and what is bothering you

-You deserve to feel vulnerable

-You deserve to be complimented and taken care of.

-Anyone who has an issue with this can go fuck themself and is no better than the alpha male loosers we shit on.

[causalityparadoxes]

"The Doctor and Master use Theta and Koschei when they're alone. Those are their real names so they use them when they're soft with eachother :3"

I am killing you with lazer beams

[abominable-space-they]

I think so often about the way the nickname The Tooth Fairy was always a hint about what was really going on, behind the veil, behind the fairy tale we're given.

Because it doesn't make sense for Francis to have accrued that nickname organically. His crimes have no relationship to what the tooth fairy does.

But if your design is finding all the little gifts the monsters leave for you in the dark and in exchange remaking them in their own image.

So that the monster on the outside matches the monster on the inside

Then the moniker the tooth fairy makes a little bit more sense

If you fancy yourself a predator who re-makes monsters so that they may become that which they always were, what they need to be, and in so doing remake yourself into the monster you always were, like Frankenstein

Well then The Tooth Fairy makes a little more sense

Frankenstein, a story about forbidden gay love.

And if your forbidden gay love is Hannibal the Cannibal who bites to fight & fuck... but also to love.

Well then the Tooth Fairy actually kinda makes sense

And if you have a bitchy mean sense of humor when you feel belittled and your husband loves a corny punny joke that tells the truth in a way that everyone will refuse to see, well in that case, The Tooth Fairy is a perfect sensationalist serial killer nickname for Will Graham

[luckyladylily]

So a few months ago there was the discourse about would you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods. I didn't want to touch it while the discourse was hot and everyone dug in hard because those are not good conditions for nuance, but I waited until today, June 1st, for a specific reason.

I'm not going to take a position in the bear vs man debate because I don't think it matters. What is really being asked here is how afraid are you of men? Specifically, unexpected men who are, perhaps, strange.

People have a lot of very real fear of men that comes from a lot of very real places. Back when I was first transitioning in 2015 and 2016, I decided to start presenting as a woman in public even though I did not pass in the slightest.

I live in a red state. I knew other trans women who had been attacked by men, raped by men. I knew I was taking a risk by putting myself out there. I was the only visibly trans person in the area of campus I frequented, and people made sure I never forgot that. Most were harmless enough and the worst I got from them was curious stares. Others were more aggressive, even the occasional threat. I had to avoid public bathrooms, of course, and always be aware of my surroundings.

I know how frightening it is to be alone at night while a pair of men are following behind you and not knowing if they are just going in the same direction or if they want to start something - made all the worse for the constant low level threat I had been living under for over a year by just being visibly trans in a place where many are openly hostile to queer people. You have to remember, this was at the height of the first wave of bathroom law discussions, a lot of people were very angry about trans women in particular. My daily life was terrifying at times. I was never the subject of direct violence, but I knew trans women who had been.

I want you to keep all that in mind.

So man or bear is really the question "how afraid of men are you?", and the question that logically follows is "What if there was a strange man at night in a deserted parking lot?" or "What if you were alone in an elevator with a man?" or "What if you met a strange man in the woman's bathroom?"

My state recently passed an anti trans bathroom bill. The rhetoric they used was about protecting women and children from "strange men", aka trans women.

Conservatives hijack fear for their bigoted agenda.

When I first started presenting as a woman the campus apartment complex was designed for young families. The buildings were in a large square with playgrounds in the center, and there were often children playing. I quickly noticed that when I took my daughter out to play, often several children would immediately stop what they were doing and run back inside. It didn't take me long to confirm that the parents were so afraid of "the strange man who wears skirts" that their children were under strict instructions to literally run away as soon as they saw me.

"How afraid are you of a strange man being near your children?"

I mentioned above that I had to avoid public bathrooms. This was not because of men. It was because of women who were so afraid of random men that they might get violent or call someone like the police to be violent for them if I ever accidentally presented myself in a way that could be interpreted as threatening, when my mere presence could be seen as a threat. If I was in the library studying and I realized that it was just me and one other woman I would get up and leave because she might decide that stranger danger was happening.

Your fear is real. Your fear might even come from lived experiences. None of that prevents the fact that your fear can be violent. Women's fear of men is one of the driving forces of transmisogyny because it is so easy to hijack. And it isn't just trans women. Other trans people experience this, and other queer people too. Racial minorities, homeless people, neurodivergent people, disabled people.

When you uncritically engage with questions like man or bear, when you uncritically validate a culture of reactive fear, you are paving the way for conservatives and bigots to push their agenda. And that is why I waited until pride month. You cannot engage and contribute to the culture of reactive fear without contributing to queerphobia of all varieties. The sensationalist culture of reactive fear is a serious queer issue, and everyone just forgot that for a week as they argued over man or bear. I'm not saying that "man" is the right answer. I am saying that uncritically engaging with such obvious click bait trading on reactive fear is a problem. Everyone fucked up.

It is not a moral failing to experience fear, but it is a moral responsibility to keep a handle on that fear and know how it might harm others.

[rebellum]

Me: hey there's a big issue with anti-masculinity in queer and leftist spaces. Trans fems, if they don't constantly perform hyperfemininity and aren't little and skinny and white, are demonised and people call them pedophiles because there's such a dislike of any association with masculinity. Trans mascs are told they're "whiny MRAs" when they talk about the oppression they face. Masculine intersex people are erased or told they should just be more feminine if they don't want people to be scared of them for looking masculine. People act like marginalised men (queer men, trans men, men of colour, etc, intersex men) aren't actually marginalised because they're men. The vocal "all men literally ARE evil" rhetoric isn't actually venting when it's constant and public, it's harming marginalised men and is a contributing factor to teens and young cis (often but not always het) going down the alt-right pipeline, and is directly linked with trans people not transitioning or being too scared to transition because by becoming a man they are becoming "the enemy". There's the idea of "women +" or "women and nonbinary," which positions all nonbinary people as 'basically women' or affiliated with femininity, and in practice ends up pushing away anyone who appears or identifies with masculinity, regardless of their gender identity. Butches are treated as if they're just sex toys, or that they're scary and dangerous because of their masc presentation. This is actually a huge, pervasive issue that is further hurting already marginalised people AND is pushing potential allies away because it's making them feel bad for something they can't control (being men.)

Dumbasses: lol op thinks cis men are oppressed by minorities

[marshmellowtea]

why the fuck would youtube recommend this to me. what about my search history says i would enjoy some judgemental anti kink dissection of a webcomic that op is clearly not the target audience for and how do i fix that immediately so i never see shit like this ever again

[vampire-nbla]

I am not the most well versed in transfeminism and transmisogyny (yknow I’ve been reading the resources people have posted but it takes a while) but I’ve just been mulling over the way some TME people tend to treat transfemmes and everything as we’ve seen and the concept of transandrophobia and how I don’t really agree with it but also I Understand in a way not having a word for experiences I’ve felt are not just normal transphobia and all that as a nonbinary person who used to be gendered as a woman and is now most often gendered as a man and I think kinda the term that describes my experience is misogyny-fueled transphobia? Like it’s not transmisogyny because it’s not the intersection of being a woman and being trans, it’s transphobia because I was once gendered as female and I am refuting that gendering. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone really find a term for this (and this terminology I’ve made is easily confused for transmisogyny so I don’t think it’s a great one) and I’m not sure if it’s because, no one else experiences it or the people most often affected by this sub strain of transphobia are trans men who don’t want to be associated with being affected by misogyny or what so like, comments/discussions open ig I’ve just done a lot of thinking

[nyancrimew]

fyi it helps to actually read articles beyond the headline before sending me asks about whether im involved in something siegedsec did. you can even just quickly go over my profile and see that if it were something im involved in and willing to talk about having been involved in i already would've done so.

so to very clearly put it into words again: siegedsec is a group unrelated to me, i am not the only queer hacker out there (shocking i know), i am not the only hacktivist doing big things (shocking i know), siegedsec has been a source for some of my articles - this is regular source work and doesn't mean im involved with them.

if you do however wanna learn more about the heritage foundation hack you should read the following two articles, i will not be adding any of my own commentary since i haven't had time to look into the leak at all. but it's great work from sieged as always!

[taliabhattwrites]

The Sexed Regime, or: You Probably Have the Wrong Critiques of "TME/TMA" Terminology

Let's begin by looking at an interesting dichotomy.

There's an oddly pervasive idea in queer spaces that a truly progressive trans or post-gender politic underscores the irrelevance of sex. In contrast to patriarchal society's utter fixation on "natal sex", queer existence must be transcendent, a space in which one's bodily configuration is understood to be entirely under one's purview, where presentation is simply something we inhabit and implies nothing about our sexualities or embodiments. It is an idea of emancipation rooted in agnosticism, an anti-patriarchal revolution spurred by the lack of belief in our cissexist society's deranged emphasis on knowing what's in our pants at all times.

It's a very appealing idea, I'll admit.

Here's the thing, though.

The naturalization of sex is the foundation of patriarchy, as well as the basis of the heterosexual regime it instantiates. Humanity is cleft in twain, with one sex marked for reproductive-sexual exploitation by the other. Like most other regimes, this one is also powered by belief--belief in the superiority of the 'male sex', the unfitness of the 'female sex', and most of all: absolute belief that sex is immutable, exhaustively binary, and non-overlapping.

What this also means, ultimately, is that those of us who dare to desert the sex we were conscripted into face different pressures and violence. It is obvious that many trans people are also subject to reproductive injustice, as cis women are, and consequently the transphobia they face is very acutely a regendering impulse, a patriarchal desire to drag them back to the confines of womanhood to fulfill their patriarchal purpose. There is, understandably, a certain amount of solidarity between cis women and trans people who have suffered these aspects of the heterosexual regime.

This is in fact the understanding that gives rise to even liberal-progressive uses of 'male socialization' directed at transfems. Trans women are understood to have been spared certain excesses of misogynistic violence and therefore expected to see and approach the world differently. It is simply a neutral observation, of course, no judgment behind it ... well, until it comes time to deny trans women epistemic authority over experiences of misogyny or womanhood, even their own. After all, can transfems really be said to have a full understanding of patriarchy? They weren't 'raised AFAB'!

Oftentimes, this becomes a double bind of proving that transfems did experience trauma, feminization, and abuse even pretransition, often as children, which is then usually dismissed as "trauma dumping" or "equating womanhood to being abused"--despite the minimization of our experiences being predicated on our "lesser" understanding of the trauma of being "misogyny-affected". So let's not retread that.

Instead, I'll point out that people assume a symmetry, a complementarian equivalence, almost, between the experiences of trans people. What I would like to stress is that there is no such thing as a coherent "AMAB" class or a shared "AMAB solidarity" based on shared experiences of oppression, because I have some shocking news that readers may wish to sit down for:

Trans women are oppressed by cis men.

Cis men are overwhelmingly the ones who rape us, beat us, kill us, and seek to abuse us. When we were children, we were bullied and violated for our perceived effeminacy, largely by the cis boys we were most proximate to. Most of us have been around cis men when they've voiced their most dehumanizing, misogynistic thoughts about women, and have been punished for not participating in these rituals of misogynistic rhetoric, too. The trauma of our upbringing involves being locked into spaces with those who sniffed out our differences, our non-conformance, and routinely punished us for being deviant. When we grow up, they are the ones who largely continue to prey on us.

The chief characteristic of transmisogyny is the presumed artificiality of trans womanhood, the idea that we are mimetics, and our womanhood is a farce, a costume whose only purpose is sexual. This dovetails with our disposability--our inability to be women who can bear children, further patrilineality, and secure what minuscule respectability is afforded to the domestically-confined women who continue the male line. As such, our hyperfetishization marks us for extreme violence, as sexual objects that can be freely used and discarded, guilt-free, because after all ... We asked for it.

Why would we "choose" womanhood if we did not want this?

Which, ultimately, brings me to my point: Sex is a social regime of difference imposed on us, but it is, unfortunately, a regime still in existence. My sex is the basis upon which my womanhood is denied and my disposability justified, because the transfeminized are degendered--we are not, as a rule, provided a path "back" to manhood. Our "effeminacy" ensures that we are 'failed' men, because gender is ultimately hierarchal. Losing status, being unmanned, is frankly trivial, and is what underlies the oppression of queer men--trans men included. Most of us are ultimately subject to some kind of degendering, largely due to how a patriarchal society regards those who defy the reproductive mandate, but transmisogyny is a specific manifestation of degendering that trans women experience.

"TME/TMA" may well be an imperfect categorization--all undertakings in boundary formation are imprecise, though not always violent, given that we need descriptive terms to communicate--but the real issue with it is that it's an overly-ponderous and ultimately clunky terminology for the frank reality that the binary sex imposed on us shapes the contours of the violence we experience. I have never experienced the specific kind of misogyny that sees me as nothing but a broodmare, because I'm a filthy troon, that dehumanized abject thing whose only purpose is absorbing (sexual) violence. Yet the acknowledgment that transfems experience forms of violence that others do not--or sometimes, even the acknowledgment that transfems face violent misogyny at all--is much less forthcoming.

Our struggles are indelibly connected, of course, stemming from the same source and promulgated by the same regime that seeks to define us as nothing more than male property. The shape of each is distinct, however, and because people frequently misunderstand the shape of mine, the idea that my struggles are even connected to theirs, that I experience misogynistic violence homoousian with that which they experience, is frequently dismissed, or considered outright offensive.

This is why I talk and write about transmisogyny, and why more people need to become more familiar with how the naturalization of sex and the regime of heterosexuality under patriarchy necessitates our common struggle.

And unfortunately, in order to properly express these ideas, we do need to talk about the regime of sex.

[calder]

please reblog for sample size.

edit

good job dude

edit 2

i have been permanently banned from nukapedia for this post

edit 3

the following posts were screencapped and posted to nukapedia as the other reason for upgrading my 1yr ban to permanent

several patrollers have resigned in solidarity or disgust

you can read the bans and see for yourself, where admins repeatedly vaguely accuse me of presenting these messages under false pretense.

i was also harassed by a nukapedia admin on tumblr who attempted to delete the message before i could engage with it. when i mentioned it to the other acting admin, i was told to re-read the harassment so i might be a better person in a year.

further, a channel was collectively scolded last month by an admin who had been triggered upon being compelled to review the messages of the anti-Woke mod. during an argument, the mod had compared transness to blackface in defense of JK Rowling, earning him a 3-day ban. when i said i was traumatized from dealing with his targeted harassment of myself and my queer peers throughout pride month, i was accused of "emotionally manipulating admins"

all of this had begun two months ago when someone shared a personal anecdote about a racial microaggression they had experienced and wrapped it up with "such a white thing to say." for weeks thereafter, this woman was namedropped by the mod whenever racism came up, as an example of a racist. he would ultimately accuse her of being no better than a holocaust denier because she said "the far left is not associated with mass murder and bigotry."

during the mod's three-day ban he participated in the coordinated monitoring and harassment of a minor. the user sent five replies to the effect of "you are never to contact me in private" and "stop talking to me" before the mod stopped messaging him. this was not addressed when the mod was unbanned. however, the morning before this, the woman mentioned above was banned for leaving an incredulous emoji react face on a backhanded admin post targeting her.

the mod believes he is protecting the community from "reverse racism." he has also asked me if i "think hostility towards white people is justice" and when i excused myself from the conversation he asked if i was "triggered"

at one point i announced i would be absent for several days to attend a funeral. the mod invoked me by name and characterized me as a bad person while i was attending my grandmother's service

he remains on-staff, surrounded by silence. my 1yr ban was prompted by my confronting the community with proof of him stalking a minor, but that incident did not come up at all in the text of my ban

please reblog for public awareness. please show this to every fallout fan you know.

[fefairys]

this is one is important as fuck i see so many people not understand this and it drives me crazy

"Sburb ruins, mythic challenges, and personal quests generally tend to come off as shallow busywork, stage props, or set pieces in a spurious Hero's Journey. Rose either faintly glimpses this truth at this early stage, or she's just hitting her rebellious teen stride. Either way, she doesn't take the surface value of the quest seriously at all, and only wants to smash it apart and loot the secrets. My sense is that the average reader reacts to this impulse unfavorably. Because readers watch the formula play out so often, they are trained heavily to respect the journey of the hero, to anticipate and crave its fulfillment, to see it as something verging on contractual in their relationship with a story. So a gut-response to this recklessness is like, "ROSE, NO! STOP THAT! You simply must complete your quest and play the rain!" What comes with this view is the feeling that her evolution as a character is only being delayed for a bit while she gets some anti-narrative foolishness out of her system, and then we'll get down to business and watch her do her quest, play a whole BUNCH of rain, and reap the narrative satisfaction. There's just one problem: she never does that. This candy-coated Kiddie Kwest is at no point ever taken seriously by Rose or the narrative itself, nor should it be.

When trying to parse character arcs, we look out for certain beacons. So when we hear "play the rain," we're like, ah, GOT IT. That's Rose's arc. Once she finally gets over this destructive teen bullshit, she can wise up, play the rain, and her arc will be finished. Wrong. This is almost a red herring arc. Her quest on this planet, its patronizing presentation, its intrinsic shallowness, is a mirage surrounding her that represents a fully regimented series of milestones for achievement and personal growth, much as society dubiously presents to young people in many forms. The true arc-within-the-arc is actually an upside-down version of what it appears to be. What Rose is doing now, which seems to be misguided recklessness taking her further away from the truth of herself, is actually better seen as a good start to her real journey: breaching the mirage of regimented growth, exposing it for the charade it is, and pulling the truth out of it. The real conflict in her arc comes not from the fact that she refuses to take it seriously, by destroying it and taking shortcuts. It's the opposite. It's that, upon trashing her planet, she continues to have this nagging sense that she should be taking this quest seriously, much like how a young adult may have a nagging sense of guilt that they aren't "being an adult right" by the time they approach adulthood. And this nagging, unanswerable guilt arises from the truth that the regimentation of adulthood is completely fake. It was always a mirage. Learning this, making peace with it, is part of the growing process for many, and it is for her too." -Andrew Hussie

intrinsically queer as fuck, too, btw