#because a man who will attack a trans woman as someone who is not a woman will most likely attack a trans man he does not see as a man

[werewolfbneimitzvah]

vent post. There are two stories i was told in my teenage years that even before i had a real concept of trans issues made me uninterested in discussing the supposed sacredness and safety of separated sex-based spaces.

First, when i was like 13 or 14 my PE teacher told us about a time she went to a women's public restroom, some guy was hanging out outside the bathrooms, she didn't think anything of it, went to the bathroom, and he walked in after her and like, creeped on her over the top of the stall. She was ok, she wasn't telling us this to scare us, just telling us what to do in situations like that (and iirc she was telling the whole co-ed class this, not just girls, bc it's useful for everyone), but this taught me immediately and forever that there's nothing actually keeping these spaces separate really, that anyone can be a creep in any space, and that establishing a space like that as for women only isn't actually particularly useful for safety.

Second, when i was 16 i was at an anime convention, a friendly acquaintance of mine and i ended up in conversation outside, and he showed me his bare wrist and told me he'd been kicked out. A female friend of his had stepped in dog poop outside, and between that and the stress of the convention she'd had a bit of an emotional breakdown, so being her friend, he started comforting her and ushered her into the women's restroom so they could wash the poop off her shoe together. And because he was a man who went into the women's bathroom, he got kicked out, no matter that he was doing something that was actually beneficial to a woman. Punishing a woman's friend for supporting her was supposed to... protect her somehow? This made it clear to me that a no-exceptions rule separating the sexes like that wasn't actually inherently good for everyone.

And this isn't even getting into me as a child needing to accompany my younger sister to the restroom when we were out with just my dad because she had certain support needs past the age he felt comfortable bringing her into the men's room with him. And what if I'd been born a boy, or she'd been the first born? Who's helping her then?

And of course even putting all this aside, we should always prioritize compassion and support anyway. But i never even needed to meet a trans person to know that "keeping men out of women's bathrooms" is silly nonsense. But trans people also need to pee anyway and as humans they have that right, so leave them the fuck alone. your precious women's restroom is just a fucking room with a door, holy shit give it a fucking rest, if someone is attacking you in the bathroom that's bad and if someone is in there to pee that's good and it doesn't fucking matter what their junk is or was when they were born.

a woman could have done the exact same thing to my PE teacher and it would have also been bad no matter how "supposed" to be in the restroom she was, and no one should ever be punished for helping a crying friend wash their shoe.

Anyway i know I'm speaking to like-minded folks here, i just think about those two stories literally every time bathroom gender shit comes up and it pisses me off.

[lord-radish]

imagine thinking that trans men are inherently bad or evil or predatory on the basis of gendered privilege and societal power structures. cringe

[nyancrimew]

Sorry, it was unfair of me to send that to you without proper context since you might not be aware of these issues. Irredeemable media refers to any thing with a creator or content  that is harmful and/or bigoted. Of course every piece of media has problems, but irredeemable media is when those problems cannot be ignored and are an indicator of someone's beliefs. 

For example, Harry Potter is irredeemable media because every one knows that JK Rowling is a transphobe, but some other piece of media like Twilight would not be considered irredeemable because even though Stephanie Meyer has done some bad things, they are not as widely talked about, so someone who posts about Twilight on here isn't completely likely to be a bigot, but a Harry Potter blogger would. Also, I know the "to be cringe is to be free" people like your blog, but a lot of the time, what is considered cringey on here is actually based on what is irredeemable. No progressive person or reputable blogger genuinely makes fun of My Little Pony fans any more, however plenty make fun of Hazbin Hotel fans and the such because that content is irredeemable and shows someone's beliefs. So usually, a piece of media being considered embarassing to like on here usually indicates that it is irredeemable.

As for why the other pieces of media are irredeemable, Hazbin Hotel is made by a woman who has many well-documented accusations of bigotry against her and has drawn zoophilia art, not to mention how her work leans into stereotypes about gay people (having a gay man character be a sex addict, a lesbian be named after the female body part Vagina, etc.) or at least that's what I've heard. Attack on Titan is created by a known fascist and many illusions are made to nazi imagery and nationalism in the anime. Captive Prince has a racist premise that sexualizes slavery and non-con. 

People can tell you that liking irredeemable media doesn't say something about who they are, but that's fundamentally false. If someone is uncaring enough to still post openly about these types of media, it's clear they don't care enough about not supporting bigotry. Yes, even if they don't give money to the creators, because they are still willingly exposing themselves to bigoted or harmful content and enjoying it.

The previous ask was not meant to be accusatory. Rather it was meant as a concerned question. Believe it or not, there are still some users on here who indulge in these pieces of content, a few of which hide behind the excuse of being part of a minority (Black, trans, whatever) or simply deny how bad their media consumption is to escape accountability. I wouldn't want you associating with those types of people and have that ruin your reliability on this website.

Hopefully this ask has educated you more on these issues and you'll be able to spot irredeemable media in the future and block it out.

incredible essay, you get a C for Creativity

[ftmtftm]

I've been scrolling through your blog, and I saw your post about discussing the racialized nature of gender. As someone who has several transmasc POC friends, and someone who's a nonbinary POC themself, I wanted to give my 2 cents.

It's important to understand that "woman" in the "man vs woman" gender binary is a colonialist, white supremacist construct, especially in Western countries where you are the numerical minority. My trans friends aren't on T, they haven't gotten top surgery, we are all quite young. But they all have numerous stories about being addressed as "sir" which brings them euphoria but as one person said, while we were making fun of the amount of white people in our club, "Due to my race and skin color, I get masculinized."

And again I'd like to emphasize, that since we're young, none of us really have medically transitioned due to financial and familial barriers. Their hair is long, our binders we definitely have notable chests, and even if they dress masculine, it's notable that no one in our communities would ever gender us properly. It's often white people calling them "sir." Again, I think this reflects how gender performances in mainstream queer communities are deeply White. Like, trans boys talk about having haircuts, but only one of my friends has that wavier, more manageable hair that will help them pass. When you've got curly/kinky hair, the standards are different. For a white person, what's the difference between a "girl" Afro and a boy "Afro"? White cis people have a harder time identifying us, and literally talk to any black girl, and they'll tell you about being mocked, dehumanized, and called "manly".

I don't have much else to say. These are just my personal experiences. But if you want to be an ally to POC in the queer community, this is why it's so fucking important to bring in colonialism/imperialism/white supremacy into discussions of queer liberation. My biggest gripe with ignorant white queers is when they ignore their white privilege, and act like "cishets" (AKA the patriarchal system regulating sexuality and gender) is the only enemy. Because cishet POC deal with plenty of shit with being infantilized, masculinized, feminized, seen as brutish & dangerous, the list goes on. Doberbutts had a post saying, "Believe me, your family's going to care more about me being black than my queerness." towards his white partners. Acknowledging and creating a framework that centers these intersections of queerness and race into your beliefs is true allyship. This is why if you're not anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, ACAB...I do not think you care for queer liberation. None of us are free until all of us are free.

Please don't view this post as an attack. But this is my perspective, and I thought you'd be receptive to me sharing my lived experiences.

Oh I absolutely don't view this ask as an attack, and I really appreciate you bringing these things up because you're right! Like, just very plainly: You are right and your and your friends lived experiences are extremely important to the conversation on the racialized aspects of gender.

It gets me thinking about where Misogynoir and the social White Fear of Black manhood intersect for Black trans men in particular. Because Black women and Women of Color in general are masculinized by White gender standards and the ways in which Black trans masculine people are gendered in alignment with their identity is absolutely not always done with gender affirming intent. In fact, it's often actually done with racist intent or is fueled by racist bias when it's coming from White people or even from non-Black POC.

That's kind of restating things you've said but differently, it's just such a topic worth highlighting explicitly since it's extremely relevant to the conversation that's been happening about Male Privilege here the last few days.

I do think I know exactly what @doberbutts post you're talking about and yeah. It's just truth. It's something Black queer people have been talking about for ages in both theory and in pop culture (my mind immediately goes to Kevin Abstract and "American Boyfriend") where Black queer/trans identity is both materially different from (neutral) and is treated differently from (negative) White queer/trans identity in multitudes of ways and those differences are worth sharing and exploring and talking about.

Genuinely, thank you for sharing! I try really hard not to lead these kinds of conversations outside of explicitly referencing back to non-White theorists because I don't particularly feel like it's my place to do so, but I will always provide a platform for them because they're extremely important conversations to be had.

[foone]

So I watched @atopfourthwall 's latest (and possibly last!) History of Power Rangers (Cosmic Fury) and I have to say that I'm very happy to learn that Power Rangers said Trans Rights.

But... It seems like they could have definitely done it better, easily: just make the alien who hates being in a human body have a different gender of human body (than their alien form). Then you don't need to do anything extra in the dialogue, but now the "trans rights" subtext is much clearer.

Or hey, remember that you're a show about TEENAGERS THAT TRANSFORM INTO NEW BODIES. You've basically had a built in trans allegory, you just need to use it.

Introduce a new side character in the ranger's civilian life. A coworker or fellow student or something. Then you introduce a Sixth Ranger character: mysterious and powerful! And you have them be different genders... And then when the rangers finally befriend them, you reveal that they're the same person! A teenage girl who morphs into a man, or a teenage boy who morphs into a woman.

You could even have someone ask if it's weird that they switch genders when morphing, and they go "at first, but then I realized I really like it. Now it feels weird to not be morphed."

And then in the finale you tie it all together: they make a big sacrifice in the fight against the bad guy, and then get restored by The Morphing Grid or whatever. Except now their unmorphed form matches their morphed gender, they got a magic transition.

Bonus points if you brought this up beforehand in the penultimate episode: have them say that they're gonna miss being able to morph after they finally defeat the local gravely-voiced bad guy, since then they'll have to give up their morpher and won't get to be their morphed form anymore. The ranger they're talking to goes like "yeah... I'm gonna kinda miss being this powerful!" because they don't get why they like being morphed.

Extra bonus points: in your season requisite clip show, have it be dream-based... And show that, a la Batman in Batman Beyond not calling themselves "Bruce" in their head, their dream self is the morphed form, while the other rangers are in their civilian mode. You could even use this as part of the plot: they're attacked by some kind of dream monster, which is trying to defeat them in their dreams like Freddy Krueger. The rangers are powerless in their dreams, until they manage to meet up with the sixth ranger, who is morphed in their dream, and thus able to fight the monster, while the other rangers use their dreams to help out: flashing back to great moments in the season, with the dream monster greenscreened in.

(Help, I'm writing fanfic for a show I don't watch!)

Anyway... It just seems they could have easily done quite a bit better without making it too obvious to the point where it feels like a PSA.

[nothorses]

About that "a trans man committing a mass shooting proves trans people really are the gender they identify as" post: women have committed mass shootings too? Okay it's a lot less statistically frequent, but it happens (as the song "I Don't Like Mondays" demonstrates). It reminds me of the time TERFs on Reddit assumed the woman who shot up the YouTube HQ in 2018 was trans, and then when she turned out to be cis, someone immediately speculated she was getting justified revenge on an abusive BF who worked there (though that comment got downvoted and may have been a troll)

I took this opportunity to look more into statistics around mass shooter demographics, and interestingly, there are a lot of myths tied up in this issue.

This article looks into a few studies and databases to investigate the "90% of all mass shooters are white men" myth, and finds that in actuality, "It really depends on what type of mass shooting you’re talking about. Several of the highest-profile mass shootings in recent memory [...] were committed by white males, such as the 2017 Las Vegas attack by Stephen Paddock. But much beyond that, the stereotype breaks down; Muslim man Omar Mateen killed forty-nine people at a Florida nightclub in 2016 on behalf of a terrorism group; white male Adam Lanza killed twenty-seven people in 2012 at an elementary school, though Asian student Seung-Hui Cho killed thirty-two people on the Virginia Tech campus in 2007. And so on."

This article fact-checks the gender-specific claims as well, in the context of trans people, and finds that there have been more claims that shooters are trans than can be reasonably substantiated, and that even this number is overshadowed by the number of cis women who have committed mass shootings.

I bring this up because I think the first article in particular brings a lot of much-needed nuance into the issue:

"The whites-are-overrepresented-among-mass-shooters meme does serve a useful purpose in that it helps displace another myth about mass shootings: that they’re most often perpetrated by angry immigrants from travel-banned countries, and that nothing is more dangerous to America that the scourge of Islamic terrorism. … These are worthy ends, but we shouldn’t have to build another myth to reach them.”

What are we saying when we talk about these kinds of incidents this way?

What I find interesting is that in a lot of these conversations around crime, we recognize that crime is often the result of poverty. Indeed, this study finds that the number of mass shootings increases in countries that experience an increase of income inequality.

We can also often recognize that these numbers are skewed because they rely on media coverage, arrests, and criminal charges; all of which are influenced by societal bias. The first article on mass shootings notes that, "mass shootings with white victims tend to get more attention, both from journalists and those on social media, than those with victims who are people of color. This is a well-known pattern and explains why the public is quicker to react to a missing young blonde girl than a missing young black girl."

Are white mass shooters covered more because their targets- being overwhelmingly people and institutions they have ties to- are also usually white?

If "white men are overrepresented as mass shooters" means white men are particularly dangerous and must be feared, what does this imply about other demographics overrepresented in certain crime statistics? What does it mean when we find this isn't true- is there suddenly just is not an issue of white cis male violence? I would certainly disagree.

And I think this gleeful claim that "trans men are proving their gender" by committing acts of violence- again, far more rare than cis women doing the same- only plays into these issues.

Is crime the result of entitlement and privileged anger, or is it the result of a broken system failing its citizens? Are cis men committing acts of extreme violence because they are all- regardless of race- whiny pissbabies who take joy in hurting others, or is this the result of a system that teaches men they can only express emotion through anger and violence? That human connection is not for them, and that needing things makes them unworthy of manhood, love, or even life?

I'm not saying we need to coddle and woobify mass shooters. I'm asking: is this an issue we fix by fearing and hating and wishing death on whole demographics of people based on how represented they are in criminal statistics, or can we make systemic and cultural changes that meaningfully prevent this from happening in the first place?

Do we condemn groups as Bad because some of them have done violence, or do we examine the causes and work toward meaningful solutions?

Obviously, trans men and trans people in general are not in any way "overrepresented" as perpetrators in mass shooting statistics. But I think the people reveling in any new trans male shooter are making it very clear that they don't care about solving problems; they're just interested in looking for reasons to hate, fear, and condemn this specific group of people they already dislike.

[onesettleronebullet]

I understand what u mean. So when u are nonbinary afab on hormones being clocked as a woman, or as a trans woman, the harassment is rather misogyny not transmisogyny? Bc of the person’s sex or is it bc of their identity? Not trying to counter im genuinely trying to understand better as someone new to being in community

It is transmisogyny and that person at that moment may be being residually affected by transmisogynistic violence but that doesn't make them structurally affected in the same way a trans woman is. Similarly, a white person who is dating a black person may face violence from their racist peers but that does not make them the primary victim of anti-black racism. An effeminate or simply 'unmanly' straight man may be attacked for being gay and might be called slurs but that doesn't mean they are primarily affected by homophobia.

Transmisogyny, anti-black racism and homophobia are the drivers of these violence but its violence by association and proximity to the intended targets. These people are only targets because of their proximity to those who are structurally affected by these bigotries.

[cuntess-carmilla]

A lot of you act like getting a lesbian to be personally interested in your gender identity group is a validation of your personhood and worth as human beings, the same way you all act like individual lesbians not praising your sexual identities is like an active attack (that weird ass anxiety bi people and gay men have about what lesbians think about them beyond those of us who're actively biphobic, homophobic or transphobic).

And by God I do NOT mean misgendering people. If a lesbian categorically excludes transfems from their attractions that's misgendering and I don't support that.

I'm talking, in this case, about people who actively identify as men, either totally or partially, getting upset when lesbians are like "I fully believe you and support you in your identity as a man. As a result, I'm not personally interested because I don't want to be with a man, but I hope you find someone who's compatible with you".

The amount of times multigender people's existence has been brought to my attention as a gotcha... First of all, I'm already taken and I'm monogamous, so...? What does it matter if I, someone who's not looking for a new partner, am not interested in a chunk of multigender people?

Second, even if I was single, WHY DO YOU NEED ME IN PARTICULAR TO BE OPEN TO DATING OR FUCKING EVERY TYPE OF MULTIGENDER PERSON IN ORDER TO, Idk, feel valid in some way? Why do you people want to wear the "A Lesbian Wanted Me" apparent badge of honor? We're PEOPLE, not validation dispensers or ego-strokers.

I like dykes, to the exclusion of men, and my views on gender are trans inclusive. That's what my lesbianism is TO ME. That! Is not! An attack! On other people! Simply existing!

I'm simply not compatible with multigender people who in some way identify as men, the same way a straight woman wouldn't be compatible with me, AND THAT'S FINE. Says nothing wrong about me or you, but it definitely says something about YOU if you take that as a personal attack.

[gandalfsbignaturals]

what is tme/tma? (sorry i’m cis)

they stand for transmisogyny exempt and transmisogyny affected. nominally they are supposed to label people who are targets of transmisogyny (tma) and people who are not targets of transmisogyny (tme), but in practice they are typically instead defined to mean "trans women, trans femmes, and (sometimes) gnc men" (tma) and "literally everyone else" (tme)

unfortunately, as i have tried to argue, this... isnt really how oppression works, especially considering the queer community necessarily resists hard categorization, and especially binaries

whats more, people who are supposedly tme are frequently the victims of transmisogynistic hatecrimes, something the proponents of the terms usually call "misdirected transmisogyny." i have gripes with this, though, because misdirected bigotry is... well, its still bigotry.

when sikhs (and whats more, any brown person who looked a certain way) were facing a monstrous amount of misdirected islamophobia in the wake of 911, the muslim community did not come out and say "well, they arent really muslim, so the islamophobic attacks on them dont count." nor did the sikhs and others use it as an excuse to attack islam! instead, they recognized that the bigots didnt actually care about the specific labels of the people they were attacking. all they cared was that someone was brown, and that they practiced a foreign religion, and that was enough.

likewise, when gentiles are attacked by antisemites for defending or associating with jewish people, those jewish people do not say, "you are not jewish, and therefore this doesnt count." instead, they acknowledge that, once again, the bigots in this instance dont actually care about the specifics of the lives led by those theyre attacking. i cannot imagine a jewish synagogue denying aid to a victim of an antisemitic attack, even if they are not jewish.

similarly, when a queer or gnc person is attacked by a transphobe for performing gender wrong, that transphobe doesnt actually care what particular label or lifestyle the person theyre attacking subscribes too. a trans man with some stubble in a dress is the same as a non-passing trans woman to them. a burly woman with higher than average testosterone going into the womens bathroom is the same as a non-passing trans woman to them. a masculine black woman in baggy clothes is the same as a non-passing trans woman to them. and they will attack accordingly, and no matter how the victim protests that they arent a trans woman, the bigot will not care.

this is all glossing over the fact that, by advocating that people disclose their tma/tme status in their blog description or carrd or whatever, you are effectively asking them to out themself. if you define tme as "not a trans woman," and someone has a trans flag and he/him pronouns on their profile, and you ask them to also include tme on their profile... well, then youre asking them to publicly state what their genitals are. while tma and tme are not defined exclusively based on genitals, it is undeniable that in combination with other readily available information, they can be easily used to determine what someones assigned gender at birth is.

when applied to trans people, tme/tma is just another false binary. it is a poor attempt to categorize a human experience that is simply not divisible into neat little categories, and especially not a binary.

[leezlelatch]

There seems to be some discourse lately about content, the kind of content, and the community as a whole. Now, the last thing I want to do is stir up anything, but I had some thoughts that I'd like to type out, and I appreciate whomever decides to read it.

The purpose of this band is to make us happy. You've heard it time and time again, as long as we go home at the end of that show feeling just a little better, then TF is satisfied. And it seems like lately that happiness is hard to achieve here, on twitter, or wherever else one is active.

On Headcanon

Were you sitting at work today? Home? And suddenly that thought popped into your head, a little scene playing out about Copia, or Terzo, or Secondo, or Primo. A thought that filled you with excitement, butterflies dancing in your belly, which had you smiling because yes, in the world that makes you happy, that is what they are like. That is what they do. That is what they say. It's an amazing thing and it's good and okay, and you should be excited about it. Because you just added another chapter to the amazing story in your head. And you decide to post about it, but...someone left you an anon. Someone left you a comment. Someone vague posted. And it hurt.

This is happening far too often across tumblr, and it needs to come to a close. I understand that we all have vastly different ideas of who the Papas are and how the Ministry works, but that does not give a single one of you an excuse to say anything untoward or foul to anyone else on this platform. And this isn't talking about any particular group because more often than not, posts like this are used to justify the actions of others. You do not have permission to use this to further your agenda. Be kind. Choose to ignore that fic. Choose to stay off that person's blog. Stop making posts at the expense of others just because you don't like a particular aspect of their world.

I promise you'll still be able to sleep at night.

On F! Reader and x Reader Fic

I have seen many posts since I joined tumblr to write for the Ghost fandom that express a dislike toward reader fics, and in particular f! reader fics. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd like to just reflect on my own thoughts on the matter, and once again, I appreciate the time taken to read and perhaps understand where I'm coming from, and know that it is a place of care.

I am a woman. When I write fic, I am writing it to satisfy my own little world in my head. So naturally, I am going to make the reader female, because the universal you is not only the friends I share it with or those kind enough to read, but the you is me. Every sweet word whispered, or gentle touch from a Papa is something I wish would happen to me.

I do not have the right to invade someone else's perspective. I do not understand what it is to be a gay man. I do not understand what a trans person experiences every day, and therefore, I do not feel like it is my place to write these perspectives in an x reader fic, or more so than that, in smut. And otherwise, I'm just not comfortable in doing so. I know my experience, and isn't the first step of writing, writing what you know?

I want there to be inclusivity in writing, but that doesn't start with attacking other authors for writing from their own perspective. It doesn't start with making hostile posts about reader fics, because what's the outcome? You just end up with some people very hurt and unwilling to post their stories because they think it's unwanted.

If you feel comfortable exploring these topics, talk to your mutuals. Say hey, what can I do to gain a better understanding of the content that I'm writing? What can I do to ensure that I'm not fetishizing due to my lack of knowledge? Be a community, and help each other out.

On Notes and Reblogs

A note is not the value of your writing. Whether you receive just a few or hundreds, you have impacted someone. Someone loved your story. Someone is thinking about your story all day. Someone was able to make it through because that one thing line you wrote spoke volumes to them.

We put so much of our energy into worrying about notes that the reason we started writing in the first place is lost. It becomes a chore. There are a hundred WIPs sitting in our folders because it becomes so goddamn painful just to work on one.

No one owes you a reblog. No one owes you a like. And even though it's nice, and it's gratifying to see nice comments on something you worked hard on, notes cannot be used as a currency between followers or mutuals. It just becomes a poison. Your entire tumblr experience is going to be marred by the constant worry that you aren't good enough just based on a number.

Learn to appreciate the ones who do read. Allow your story to make you feel good because there it is! That thing you've been thinking about. It's written down. You brought it to life. That is far more valuable than a tumblr note.

If you've reached this point, thank you. Everything you're feeling is good, and okay, and we're gonna get through. Because even now? When it feels like things are more hostile than happy? You still have Ghost. And you still have everything.

[coochiequeens]

A young female student was violently beaten by a trans-identified male in the hallway of an Oregon public school.

The shocking incident occurred at Hazelbrook Middle School in the Tigard Tualatin School District, which is right outside of Portland, Oregon.

The brutal beatdown captured on video shows the trans-identified student, a biological male, throwing multiple blows to the female student's head after he violently grabbed her hair, yanked her back and forth, then knocked her down flat in the school hallway.

As the girl lay on the ground, he viscously grabbed her by the hair, dragging the girl across the ground before violently assaulting her further.

"I didn't do anything! I didn't do anything!" the victim can be heard pleading to the trans attacker, according to the video.

"Touch me again, b-tch," the trans student threatened before walking away.

The female student stands up and walks over to the person filming the incident in tears and says, "I can't breathe."

The victim's mother posted about her daughter's "horrific" attack on social media, demanding answers from the school and threatening legal action against the trans attacker.

"Yesterday my daughter was attacked at school by a biological male student dressed as a girl. I cannot even put into words my anger at the situation after watching this horrific video nor my distraught knowing I can't do anything because I will ultimately, end up in jail. To the school- Where were the supervisors? Why wasn't anyone present in the hallways? I don't want excuses, I want answers. Of course, the coward that he is fled after putting hands on her," the mother said.

"HIS name is, [omitted] and as of right now the police cannot find him. We WILL be pressing charges. I want everyone to see this video. I want everyone to share this video. Assaulting someone is never ok BUT a boy/man should NEVER lay hands on a girl/woman and that's on the parents for not raising a decent human being. Clearly, [omitted] isn't a human of good values or morals," she continued.

"In fact, he doesn't seem like a good human being at all. He is known for being a bully and has done this to several girls. He is clearly, targeting females. [Omitted], if you see this just know we are coming for you and we will not stop until you are punished in the court of law to the furthest extent. You will NOT get away with this," the mother said.

The Tualatin Police Department said on X that they are aware of the incident but "because it involves juveniles, we are unable to comment further."

After video of the incident began to circulate on social media, Hazelbrook Middle School made their X account private.

It's unclear what led up to the attack but many have speculated that it might have been planned given that the incident was captured on video. It was later revealed that the trans-identified student has a history of violence against other female students.

A second video emerged on Thursday showing the trans-identified male brutally beat two other female students in a separate attack.

"This was certainly planned given multiple people were filming. All involved should be suspended and he should be charged with assault as a male," said Riley Gaines, a women's rights activist who uploaded a video of the incident to X.

The debate against allowing trans-identified males to invade female-only spaces has been a hot topic across the United States over the past few years. Supporters of the transgender policies say that they "save trans kids' lives," while critics say that allowing men into women's bathrooms and changing rooms is a safety concern.

Parents across the country have taken this issue up at school board meetings, expressing concerns about the potential of sexual assault which occurred in Louden County, Virginia, when two female students were raped by a male pretending to be a female in the girl's bathroom.

Ben Edtl, a parent of a student at Hazelbrook Middle School, sent photos to The Post Millennial that show LGBTQ propaganda and indoctrination occurring inside the school. 

[joannechocolat]

On media storms, and transphobes, and free speech, and the establishment.

(Dated 22nd August, 2022.)

Unless you were asleep last week, you’ll have noticed I made the news. I made the news a lot. The Daily Mail (twice); the Times (twice); the Telegraph; the Observer, plus radio and any number of online and international outlets, including UnHerd, where stories go to die.

The story has taken many forms. That J.K. Rowling feels “betrayed” by my “lack of support” for her: that my views on trans rights makes me ineligible for any public role; that people are calling for my removal from the Board of the SOA; that I’m a monster because I replied to a post from a satirical Twitter account with - shock, horror - a smiley.

I haven’t talked to anyone in the Press, in spite of many journalists asking, so this “story”, was taken from Twitter, where stories evolve at such a rapid rate that by the time they make the broadsheets, no-one really knows what shape the story started out at all.

But this is what it has become. I’ve been repeatedly (and wrongly) accused of a number of things, which when you unpick them, boil down to one thing. That as Chair of the Society of Authors (the authors’ trade union), I’ve abused my position to discriminate against people who don’t agree with my support of the trans community.

Full disclosure: this isn’t new. Ever since I was elected Chair in 2019, I’ve been getting increasing amounts of abuse, pressure and demands for “debate” from people with gender-critical views. Some of them are colleagues; some women I once considered friends. Some of these women now have become single-agenda tweeters, railing night and day online about what defines a woman, and spreading misinformation and fear about the trans community. Many of these women claim to be afraid, and to have suffered cancellation for their views. Some of them feel that as Chair of the SOA, I should have taken their side in Twitter debates, signed petitions, joined hashtags to validate their beliefs.

But here’s the thing. The SOA represents everyone. It has over 12,000 members. It needs to stay neutral to represent all its members equally. And it has a strict policy of non-intervention in Twitter debates between members, even when they get nasty, because Twitter can be a nasty place, and the SOA can’t be everywhere. That’s why I tweet in my personal capacity unless I specify otherwise. 

The gender critical lobby has had real difficulty understanding this. Over the past two years, I’ve been under increasing pressure to “speak out” about individual cases (I can’t); ally myself with transphobes (I won’t) and “denounce” death threats to J.K. Rowling (which I do, but apparently not often enough.) Over the past two years I’ve received countless abusive tweets, urging me to kill myself, or resign from the SOA, or hoping that I would die of cancer, all from the gender-critical lobby.

The latest eruption began last week, with the stabbing of Salman Rushdie, a man whose life has been under threat since most of us can remember. Last Friday, an Islamist fanatic managed to get close enough to stab him, leaving him with terrible injuries. The literary world was shaken. Friends of Rushdie’s spoke out in horror. But those of us who only knew him for his books were also deeply shaken and upset. Because this wasn’t just a violent attack on an author, horrific though that may be. It was an attack on free speech, a principle all creators hold dear.

Free speech is a term that has been misused a lot recently, especially by people wanting their say, but denying it to others. In fact, free speech is like oxygen: you can’t remove it from someone else without also losing it yourself, which means that, if you believe in free speech, you can’t then go around deciding who deserves it and who doesn’t. Rushdie is a great writer. But even if the victim of the stabbing had been a minor writer, a bad writer, or a writer with problematic opinions, the same attack on free speech would have happened, threatening writers everywhere. The principle of free speech matters. And it matters to all of us.

I wrote about this a bit on Twitter, where many authors were still upset, struggling how best to respond to the horrific attack. Twitter being Twitter, there were also a number of angry Islamist accounts, crowing about the Rushdie attack and targeting anyone who expressed sympathy. Some were abusive, some even threatening. Several people I follow were sent messages on the lines of: Shut up or we’ll come for you next. I got one myself. So did J.K. Rowling. But on Twitter, size matters. What J.K. Rowling, with her 14 million followers, says is instant news. So when J.K. Rowling announced that she’d had a death threat from an Islamist account saying: You’re next, her name trended for two days, and Rushdie’s all-too-real attack was overshadowed by a Twitter threat.

Now, it isn’t up to me to decide whether the death threat was credible, or whether J.K. Rowling should be afraid. I don’t know how many threats she’s received, or how many she thinks are credible. Having had them myself, I know they can be upsetting and frightening. But a threat on Twitter is not the same as being stabbed in the eye, and I didn’t see the need to comment.

 Instead I put up a poll, asking fellow-authors if they’d ever received a death threat. I wanted to use it as a way of talking about author safety. As it happened, Chuck Wendig had been posting about his latest death threat the day before Salman Rushdie was stabbed (a weirdly specific death threat, in which his correspondent expressed the hope that Chuck would be, er - raped to death by a dolphin), and the tone of my first poll reflected the jokey nature of our interchange. In the light of the Rushdie stabbing, though, I realized that wasn’t appropriate. I deleted the poll almost at once and started again with a more neutral wording, but the folk on Twitter who watch me for any ammunition they can use had already screencapped it and passed it around. It made the papers, variously as: Harris  Mocks Rushdie or Harris Mocks Rowling, but I was doing neither.  Death threats – to anyone, including J.K. Rowling – are absolutely wrong. They’re also a crime. Crimes are for the police to sort out. Free speech, however, is a legitimate principle for a union to uphold.

But free speech isn’t always the speech that you agree with. Free speech can be confrontational. It can be unfair. It can even be upsetting. I’ve upset a lot of gender-critical people with my own use of free speech; my refusal to join their hashtags, sign their petitions, enter their debates. That doesn’t mean to say I don’t believe in theirs, or that I wouldn’t fight for their rights as fiercely as for anyone else. But that has never been enough for the people who want me gone.  

Since last week, the wave of people demanding my resignation – or just my removal – from the SOA has grown. Many of those who have joined the “debate” are not members. Many are not even authors. Nearly all are transphobes, though. Because that’s what all this is about. Not all gender critical people may be transphobes, but all transphobes are gender critical. Graham Linehan has been posting about me since 2020, calling for me to be dismissed. He doesn’t know what the SOA does. He doesn’t care. He’s just one of many prominent transphobes who believe that someone who believes in the rights of trans folk doesn’t deserve a voice of their own.

I have a trans son. He came out very recently, and I haven’t discussed it online. Last week, I discovered that some of my principal detractors had found out about this. After talking to my son, and with his permission, I went public. I love my son more than words can say, and I didn’t want anyone to think that I was ashamed of him. Kathleen Stock, among others, gloated that this was proof of my bias. She (rather chillingly) denounced me for having “undeclared trans-identified offspring,” and claimed that this was the “real” reason for my support of trans folk. Kathleen Stock finds it hard to believe that someone might uphold a principle without having a personal interest. Actually, I’ve been a supporter of trans rights for much longer than this. Like I said, I believe in supporting the rights of all marginalized groups.

So, just what are they saying now? That I’m jealous of JKR? I’m not. I love my life, and I love my son, and I wouldn’t change that for anything. That because of my pro-trans beliefs, I should be cancelled or lose my job? That would be ironic, wouldn’t it, coming from people who are claiming to have been cancelled for their gender-critical beliefs. And full disclosure; it isn’t a job. It’s an elected position, as part of a Board of twelve people. It’s voluntary, time-consuming, often thankless, and unpaid, and I do it because I care about authors’ rights. All authors’ rights; whether they’re famous of not; whether I agree with their politics or not.

But this assault isn’t going to stop. Given how many people pretend to be “fearful of speaking out”, they’re certainly doing a hell of a lot of it. I’ve had open attacks this week from a certain sector of the author community – all London-based, all cis, all white, all influential people (many of them men) with lots of friends in the right-wing media – saying that they are coming for me. One person compared it to the March of the Ents, going after Saruman. The literary establishment, is seems is desperately afraid of progress.

Here’s the thing, though. I’m stubborn. I’ve never fitted into the London literary scene, so the fact that it now feels the need to mobilize against me means very little to me. This week, I’ve had death threats, attacks in the media, and countless abusive messages. I don’t care. I’m not afraid. I was elected to this role to help protect authors’ rights. That means yours, whoever you are, and those of all other authors. If you’re a member of the SOA, then we have elections yearly. You too can stand for the Board, and be elected, and add your views to the diversity of views already expressed there. Till then, I’ll do what I’ve always done. Raise awareness of authors’ rights. 

They grow us tough in Yorkshire.

[aranock]

Just had someone claim that I maliciously stole ideas from a friend without acknowledgong them when said friend is litterally in the video, and I was in the video I supposedly took thing from, despite my not even once thinking about either thing as being even remotely similar. Like not even slightly an influence. Also I am pretty open about when something influenced me. I don't exactly hide it. Idk I feel like people are really stretching to find anything they can hate Jessie and I for this video with. Like really? Really?

Anyway just to be clear The Editor is not a ripoff of my friend Neil from The Leftist Cooks video on metamodernism, great video btw go watch it. I wrote the editor in because as I was doing the script editing proccess on Jessies initial script and came up with a new structure and worried that if I didnt draw attention to this people would maliciously misinterpret part 1 without getting to the part 2 twist. The Editor is LITTERALLY representing what I did in the script editing proccess for this video. Though there role and purpose expanded to represent more broadly what editing and editors do to works, reinforcing the points we make on art as collaborative and the importance of the influence of for example Marcia Lucas on making the original trilogy as good as it was. If there was any inspiration for The Editor it was chatting with my friend @wonderful101gecs about Pathologic and Brechtian Epic Theatre. I wanted to disallow the audience from suspension of disbelief and force them to reconcile with the world as it is and with how narratives are manufactured. Even then its pretty loose inspiration. The Editor was just a natural result of needing a purpose fulfilled and rounding out my layers within layers structure. Im not sure if it was Jessie or I that named them that, but we made them a named character because we worried at one point early on if we didnt do that people might get really shitty towards me. Like originally in the script it was just "Aranock" and as they became a character I pushed it further towards them being a sort of amoral embodiment of concepts masquerading as a villain who was masquerading as a Hero, pretendint to be the great person behind everything. Thus I came to "oh I need a second rug pull" and thats where layer 5 came from because I needed to really REALLY make the audience go "oh I need to question the narrative" and not treat The Editor as the great man myth. Layer 1, the animation, came from a desire to have a narrative layer below the documentary and video essay layers, below any meta layer. So yeah originally this was just a long very direct essay by Jessie about the making of and politics of star wars, my reediting of those become layer 2 and 3, with some small bits of those ending up in layer 4. Oh also some elements of what became the editor and of the script existed before I even began my youtube channel. Like I have been kicking around aspects of these ideas for over 3 years. The Editors opening monologue is almost all from something I wrote about a year before releasing my first video. So yeah I was not stealing stuff from a video by my friend that released last year, and frankly its really shitty that people assume that of me.

Also I'm tired of how frequently people have been specifying out just me to be shitty about. Attacking my voice for being feminine, being weird about my body. Really makes me feel great. Love being a trans woman making art on the internet. Love how y'all attack me if my voice sounds how you perceive womens voices should sound and you attack me when it doesnt. Im tired people suck, and its really weird that some of you want me to sound more "manly", but thanks for the validating my self taught voice training I guess????

[talisidekick]

Thanks for being so compassionate! As someone who's had to defend himself from assault pre transition and assault and attempted trafficking during transition which has contributed to some agoraphobia centered on thoughts like "damn, wasn't safe off T not safe on it", it's been rlly scary seeing ppl shrug off how transmascs are endangered in real life in service of discrediting transandro discourse. Cool seeing who's really real I guess????? anyways hope you're well and warm. Srry about my run on sentence lmao

There is absolutely nothing to apologize for. We only get to see one side publically, and that's pretty much just trans women issues. Media likes to cover just us. I rarely see news stories about just trans men. We don't see the stories about trans men getting stalked or followed around in stores by total strangers, getting attacked in public, rarely a mention if a trans man gets killed. It's happening but you don't see it. You don't see a flood of forum posts about the constant dismissal of, unique brand of hatred around, or the types of dangers faced by trans men.

My introduction to questioning my gender was actually FROM transandrophobia. The reason for this is I've had more of a curvy figure since ... well forever, even though my body was producing T on it's own. I got A LOT of compliments on it by pretty much all my friends (which were mostly girls, and yes that probably should have been a sign but I'm a bit thick sometimes, okay?) because I was "unconventionally sexy" because of it. I'm now remembering I do have a shirtless picture somewhere from before I was on HRT ... I'll work up the nerve to show that at some point to prove that point. Anywho, because of this, a random ass stranger had been following me as I went to grab a few things from a walmart after my shift. It was weird as fuck. Uncomfortably close, constantly looking at me but not what they were pretending to, and I kind of knew this dick was waiting until there was no one in the aisle before pulling something. I'd been mugged before at 14 and 15 so at 24 I was kind of like "I'm not getting stabbed in a damn Walmart" and just made sure to be quick. I got out of the store and met up with some old work friends and just let them know someone was following me and I wanted to wait them out. Props to my friends at the time, they bullseyed the dude (to be fair he wasn't being stealthy) and called him out. And he yelled back "You'll never be a real man" to me. My friends laughed at him because as far as we all knew, I was cis. But this would happen two more times in the same week. A lady would tell me I shouldn't be doing "this" to myself with a full body gesture, and that god "loves" me; and a college colleague flat out dismissed my concerns on something because "only a real man would need to worry about that". It got me wondering if this was a new fad, to hate on someones manliness, and upon looking that up I learned about what exactly transgender meant, the experiences of trans men and women (just a bit on women, my concern was on trans men at the time), and thought it was kind of cool there were people who'd know two sides to the gender spectrum. But it must SUCK to have to go through the bullshit I did and actually be affected by it. Like, no one has any right to tell another man they're less of one.

This whole situation would actually come back to help me 2 years later in finding myself. I'd only really looked up trans men and curiosity mid covid lock down would lead me to look up non-binary and then trans women. However, transandrophobia is how I, a trans woman, got her start. So it boils my blood when I see people talk about T being toxic or trans men having it easier. It shows a complete lack of understanding and a lack of acceptance and willingness to empathize. Trans men and trans mascs have different issues, that doesn't make them lesser, and while those issues may not affect me, it doesn't make it less of my problem to help deal with where I can. I know certain issues I'll have no experience on, no idea how to help, but that doesn't mean I can't still offer to be support. Everyone should be doing the same, and shame on those who aren't.

You deserve equal treatment and support in your fight for it, not dismissal. Those that dismiss the issues of trans men aren't allies, they're transphobes. And fuck transphobes.

[doberbutts]

I think about how I, as a white trans man, have been a target of transmisogyny since i was an actual child because I naturally have broad-ish shoulders and dark body hair and when i was younger my voice was deep for a kid my age. and how I'm supposed to just nod and smile and accept that I'm "tme" when the fact I pack but can't bind gets me groped and interrogated, when I can't really pass as a man or woman and people will make assumptions one way or the other, when after being out for 10 years I am still perceived as a woman who is secretly a man, how am I exempt? What is meant to shield me?

Yeah every time I've asked how someone can possibly be "exempt" from oppression they have faced themselves, I get told "being mistaken for tma isn't the same as actually being tma" which like. Yeah, sure, being mistaken for anything isn't the same as actually being the thing.

But, um. If people can be attacked and killed due to a case of mistaken identity, I feel like "exempt" probably isn't the word you're looking for, and "tme" people have absolutely been attacked and killed for being mistaken for trans women. Not just other trans people but cis people as well.

[drdemonprince]

I don't know if this a place to share, or if this even relevant to anything, but i want to share an observation. I've been around queer groups for a decade or so, usually just observing and listening, and something i have observed is that very slowly trans women (specially out trans women and non-passing ones) seem to have incredible being reduce in meetings and talks. Like i used to see way more of them but now it is becoming less and less. For some reason they seem to have been push out of the spaces very subtly and nobody seems to care (i don't have an explanation of this at all). On the other hand the amount of trans men and trans masculine folk seem to have maintained some consistency. I don't exactly know whats going on this communities, but there seems to be something that is pushing trans women away, while not having the same effect on trans men. I don't have any solutions, just wanted to share because i feel like as a trans woman I am less and less welcomed in queer spaces but can't really pin point why is that.

Thanks for your message anon and for sharing this observation. The thing is: We know what is going on! Trans women talk about this all the time! Trans men and other TME trans people speak over them, sexually harass them, downplay their concerns, talk about them having "male" socialization, take advantage of their emotional labor, ignore them, don't give them room to be vulnerable, nitpick their stories of abuse and mistreatment, disbelieve them when they have been victimized, and all the while complain that they are so much more visible and have so many more resources than trans mascs do (which just is not true) and talking about how disgusting penises are.

You probably have not noticed these dynamics happening directly; most men are oblivious to sexism to an extent, and even men who have experienced plenty of sexism themselves as trans guys can miss these dynamics when they are experienced by trans women. It also is the case that a lot of the worst abuses happen behind the scenes: there are a lot of predatory people who are trans or enby yet behave as invasive chasery creeps to trans women, all while constantly indicating to trans women that they will not be believed if they come forward about abuse -- and in fact will be accused of being the abusers themselves.

I have multiple trans women friends here in Chicago who simply cannot show up to certain queer community events like beach days or club nights because they know there's a specific "afab enby" there who will grope them and then accuse them of abuse. There's entire self-defense guides designed for trans women meant to address this specific issue because it is so widespread.

And that is just one issue that a lot of trans women face in gender diverse or generally queer spaces. At a queer/pup karaoke night two weeks ago, multiple drunk bar patrons harassed and physically attacked a trans woman there, and then when the cops arrived, they tried to arrest the trans woman. (Thankfully all the bar staff and event organizers were very very clear that she was not the one provoking the fight -- but the cops still didn't really believe them. The man who attacked her is banned from the bar now forever. She isn't. If she'd been in a slightly less sympathetic crowd, who knows what would have happened).

In another local queer community group I used to attend, a trans femme board member was accused of abuse in the vaguest terms possible -- by someone who has now, years later, been outed as abusing multiple women close to him himself. Most people in this group have no idea about it, of course. It all happened in shadowy conjecture and whisper campaigns. I could go on and on and thanks for your patience but you get the picture.

I don't know what the vibe is in the groups you frequent, and I can't guarantee that any of the trans women have dropped off the map because of anything as severe as this, but I pretty much can guarantee there are some dynamics there that are making them uncomfortable. My suggestion? If there were any trans women in the group that you liked, try hitting them up. Ask some of them out for coffee. Ask what she's been reading or watching lately. Go to the museum or a show. Be her friend. Don't pry about why she stopped going to the group, just be a friendly, supportive presence in her life. In time, you might learn why she and others like her stopped going to that space. or you'll just have greater gender diversity in your life and your support circle, which is really important. Some trans spaces are utterly ruined by the presence of a few toxic trans mascs or aggressively afab-identified people. But you can help to build better spaces one relationship at a time.

Thanks again for your message.