#at least not in this bioessentialist way people like to pretend it does

[thriftdyke]

it really does bother me how no one can seem to answer the question “what even is romantic attraction, really.” like some people are like “it’s who you wanna kiss and cuddle <3” and I’m like ok well kisses and cuddles can be either sexual or platonic depending on context. “It’s who you feel passion/desire/arousal for” well that just sounds like sexual attraction which you can have without even knowing somebody so I fail to see how that’s romantic. “It’s who you want to go on dates with” I go on dates with friends all the time plus “date” is a social construct anyway there’s really no innate difference between a date and hanging out. “it’s who you have deep feelings for” great news for you that can be literally any type of relationship. my friend told me she defined it as “who you wanna give roses to” and I’m like do u hear urself??? like the more I talk to people the more I’m convinced romance and romantic attraction is an elaborate socially fabricated illusion that has no real defining characteristics. and like there’s nothing Wrong with it being a constuct but why people are so attached to defending the supremacy of it is something I cannot for the life of me figure out

[fujoshiwarrior]

i dont really write posts like these because usually i figure no one cares, and because it's pride month i wanted to keep things mostly controversy free, but every now and then i find myself thinking a lot about specific things about this site's culture

a lot of people attribute the (relative) peace on this site (compared to how it was some 6ish years ago) to the Great Porn Exodus and while i do agree that was a turning point in tumblr culture, i feel like a lot of the mellowing out can be attributed to the fact that people on here literally just grew up. most of us were teens or preteens in 2014-2016, now most of us are early 20s-early 30s

still though, there are some things i've noticed in the way people here act that haven't really changed since then that's kind of...disturbing? for example, there's this pervasive lack of interest in other people's experiences besides your own---if you can't relate it to yourself somehow, it doesn't matter. people will pretend to care about other groups, because that's what a Good Person does, but they won't do any outside reading or research into other cultures, or issues, outside of what's dropped into their lap on tumblr

i remember some time ago when people were discussing the possibility of anne frank being bisexual, someone said that the possibility of her being lgbt made it easier for them to empathize with her. but shouldn't you be able to feel compassion for her anyway, because she was a teenage girl who was hunted down and murdered by a fascist regime in one of the worst atrocities in human history?

i occasionally see this article spread around, and for good reason, i genuinely think everyone on the planet should read it at least once and then maybe a couple dozen more times for good measure. and then every time you remember it, you should drop whatever it is you're doing and read it again. when i see people talk about this, they talk about how this is essentially required reading in understanding trans people. in spite of that, i constantly see people parroting the same exact sentiments the author calls out as bioessentialist and transphobic. this makes me think most of you just reblog the article without reading it because someone told you it was the Good Person thing to do.

i think a lot of the politics on here, and on places like twitter, are predicated on being a Good Person. you want to be a Good Person desperately, and of course being a Good Person means that you care about other people, especially people who aren't like you. so you reblog, you retweet, you share posts about the life experiences of people who aren't like you. this is the most you do. you don't read books, or essays, or articles written by people about their lives and their experiences, you don't look at studies about issues affecting these populations, you don't read literature written by these people.

this sort of thinking results in a menagerie of different behaviors, one of which is something i call "fandom as praxis" which probably deserves its own post at some point. but above all, predicating your beliefs on being a Good Person leaves you wide open to indoctrination, and ultimately, radicalization. this can happen to you literally no matter who you are as long as this is your mentality. the reason why this can happen is because:

there isn't a single person on earth who truly believes they're a bad person or what they believe is wrong. even the most vile of people, whether they be nazis, a terf, otherwise fascist, or any other strain of evil, believe wholeheartedly that they are good people and what they are doing is right. the only people who truly, genuinely believe they are bad people have probably killed themselves.

you don't have any actual understanding or conviction in your beliefs, so you're just going along with what other people have deemed are the beliefs and behaviors of a Good Person. when what determines a Good Person is changed, you change your behavior accordingly.

when put together, you have someone who is especially susceptible to brainwashing.

some time ago, i had a mutual who seemed like she became a terf overnight. it probably wasn't literally overnight, but it was very sudden. this was in spite of the fact that one of her close friends was transfeminine, and that many others in her circle were trans as well, people i assume would consider her a friend and were probably in close and frequent contact with her. i think the reason for this sudden shift is because of both the reasons i listed, in addition to the fact that the person who indoctrinated her was apparently her girlfriend.

i think i should mention that i don't think just anyone can become a nazi or terf; even with the two reasons i listed, what happens usually is that people start spreading harmful beliefs without thinking too hard about what those beliefs actually imply---this happens on tumblr/twitter literally daily---and the people spreading these beliefs are decidedly not reactionary fascists. i think in order to become a True Believer in genocidal fascism of any kind you have to be a very particular kind of evil, but discussing that sort of thing isn't the point, the point is that average, otherwise "good" people can still adopt these beliefs and patterns of thinking without becoming a fullblown fascist.

as i said in the beginning of this post, i wanted to avoid posting something like this during pride because i think we could all really use some moments of levity in times like these, and so i wanted to keep things lighthearted on my blog for the most part.

but i've also had this sitting in my drafts for some time now, and in a time where fascist and reactionary thinking gets more and more inflamed on the daily, i thought it would be appropriate to post this because i think in our fight against fascism, as leftists and marginalized people we shouldn't start thinking that we're immune to this kind of thinking by virtue of being leftist and/or marginalized, and we can't do anyone or anything justice if we refuse to expand our breadth of knowledge.

(please feel free to reblog and comment on this post if you want, or in the tags, i would love to hear what other people have to say on this)

[a-polite-melody]

Okay, you know what, I’m likely going to regret posting this considering how the Danganronpa fandom is, but I just need to get it out of my brain somewhere…

I think a lot about the character of Chihiro Fujisaki. Hell, I hardly reblog any fandom stuff, but lately I have reblogged a couple of posts that happened across my dash lamenting about how crappy the fandom acts around this character. There are different groups of people who have decided that there is only one proper way to view the character and that bothers me a lot, and I think looking at canon and a couple of external to canon interpretations will give me a good framework to discuss why that is.

Canon Explanation

Chihiro, a person assigned male at birth, grew up being relentlessly mocked specifically for being weak while presenting as a boy. There is a focus on how men are supposed to be strong, and that weak men are lesser and deserve mockery and how Chihiro internalized that. Chihiro decides to put on a disguise and present as a girl to try to put an end to the mockery, because the mockery centred around being a “weak boy,” and being weak as a girl isn’t something people will tend to mock, and may even pass off as an inevitably. However, Chihiro is a boy. The girl Chihiro is presenting as right now fully exists as a disguise, and Chihiro wants to tell everyone that and start being known as a boy, but first Chihiro wants to become stronger so the mockery won’t start back up or so that if it does it won’t be as hard to handle.

~

Chihiro is a Trans Girl

The explanation given for why Chihiro presents as a girl can read as a transphobic person’s interpretation of why trans women exist: “they’re all just effeminate gay men who pretend to be girls to conform to gender roles.” Monokuma is the person who gives us the explanation of Chihiro’s story, and most people wouldn’t put it past Monokuma to be a transphobe. That’s the case because once Chihiro’s body has been re-examined and Sakura has found out Chihiro’s body has a penis, Monokuma states that, “[Chihiro] may have dressed like a girl, but he was a boy through and through.” This is him being bioessentialist about Chihiro, just as the handbook is, for listing Chihiro as male/boy for having been assigned male at birth, even though Chihiro is a girl.

~

I find this interpretation distressing. If Chihiro is a trans girl, from the moment it’s discovered her body has a penis and Monokuma gives his bioessentialist explanation, everyone begins misgendering her. The entire rest of the trial is triggering in that interpretation, as a trans person who has a lot of social dysphoria. Watching people immediately switch to misgendering once they find out what’s in the person’s pants is a big trigger to that social dysphoria, which is why I personally have never subscribed to the headcanon that Chihiro is a trans woman and preferred the canon explanation.

However, the other day, while thinking about how headcanons function — that they don’t change the canon, and often exist to make canon either better or more tolerable to the person with the headcanon — I came up with another that is super roundabout, but I like so much more.

~

Chihiro is a Trans Man

Chihiro was assigned female at birth. From a very young age, Chihiro was aware that this assignment was wrong: Chihiro is a boy. Chihiro presents as a boy, and is out as a trans boy. When signs of puberty first started, Chihiro asked and was put onto puberty blockers, and somewhere along the line Chihiro’s medical and legal documentation were updated and the gender marker was switched over to “M”. As Chihiro’s peers went through puberty they started mocking Chihiro for not getting strong like the rest of the boys as they’ve all started puberty, to the point that Chihiro re-closets and presents as a girl again for safety’s sake (though maybe still doing gender affirming things like packing, just with something only Chihiro would notice, and retaining the “M” on legal documents), at least until such a time as testosterone-puberty becomes an option once passing the age of majority. That’s where Chihiro is presentation-wise and identity-wise when starting at Hope’s Peak Academy.

~

That headcanon makes it so that everyone starts properly gendering Chihiro through the back half of the trial, and Monokuma’s statement that he was a boy through and through becomes gender affirming. Although it does mean that Chihiro would have been forcibly outed, so I understand that this headcanon could have similar problems with some trans people as the Chihiro as a trans girl one did with me.

Of course, I’m not insisting everyone needs to start headcanoning Chihiro as a trans man; everyone can interpret media in their own way and that’s fine. I’m mostly posting this to maybe give people a different way to think about the whole thing if they found it as uncomfortable as I did.