#being a gay trans man often feels like being kicked out of communities on technicalities

[stump-water]

seeing another (i think?) gay transsexual man call himself butch made me sob my lights out in a very long-needed way today

[ancient-bruises-ancient-moon]

ok SO I got an anon I wasn’t gunna respond to but I'm enjoying a vegan chocolate banana cookie dough thc/cbd infused smoothie I invented so fuck it, let’s do this

this isn’t gunna be eloquent at all and I hope what im intending to say comes off correctly. may not, my brain is mush- but here we go!

so last night/technically this morning I reblogged a lot from this brilliant intersexism blog. (highly recommend giving a follow!) which led to...a bizarre ass anon this morning (I'll make another post linking to her blog so ya’ll can follow. she doesn’t need to deal w/ this post after everything else she deals w/ on here- unless u want to ofc!! hi ur cool! ANYWAY...)

I don’t remember the exact wording but it was something like “so ud rather have sex w intersex ppl over trans ppl??”

ummm. I literally never said shit about sex w/ intersex ppl?? like, ever.

was that supposed to be some huge “gotcha!!” ??

‘cause it didn’t work, at all.

1. my body is not a democracy

2. why r ya’ll obsessed w sex as validation

3. ur rly gunna ask me, essentially, if I'd rather be intimate w a deranged narcissistic reality denying manic OR a person with an intersex disorder...and u rly think I'm gunna be like OH NO I’D RATHER HAVE SEX W A MANIAC???

like...it’s rly not ab sex at all but did u RLY think that was gunna work in ur favor somehow?? and if u did, why did u think so? could it be bc u use intersex ppl as pawns for ur arguments but then don’t actually consider them ppl that can be in loving and intimate relationships? do u rly think this is activism? do you feel no shame?? you should be fucking embarrassed. this is so embarrassing for you. 

something ya’ll don’t realize: I worked at a center that offered therapeutic services, std testing, & peer activity groups for lgbtiapqbdsmnlmnop folxxxx

I know how ya’ll speak to your therapists, to your peers when you think no one is listening, I watch ya’ll take credit for things u did NOTHING for, I've watched your violence against anyone who disagrees with you (INCLUDING about tv show characters...like, come on..) Adult trans women using fake IDs to try to get into youth events...and then get MAD AT ME when I have to kick A WHOLE ASS HALF DRESSED MAN GRINDING ON THE FLOOR out of an event for CHILDREN... this is beyond just Tumblr. you’re also like this irl. and often, somehow, even fucking worse.

I had far less intersex clients BUT ya know who wasn’t throwing tantrums, being violent, trying to take credit for things they didn’t do, starting fights, sneaking into events to get near minors?? my intersex clients! NOT ONCE. AND  let’s be real...my intersex clients had good fucking reason to be furious and there were absolutely times that I would not have blamed them in the slightest for slapping tf out of someone...but they didn’t. not once. (ngl tho if they did I would have “not seen” what happened tbh bc I am a very responsible adult lmao- I can say this now bc I left the field so it matters not at all for my career)

ya know who would stay after hours, silently crying in rage bc of the shit trans clients said to them? my intersex clients (the big one was trans ppl telling them they’re lucky they get to ~~choose~~ their sex)

ya know who took the time to use open activist hour to build presentations to teach the LARGELY ENTIRELY INEPT staff (myself included, more below) about intersex issues so the people who come after them can get better help than they were able to receive?? I'll give you one guess. 

I left academia and working in the field w/ ppl bc of my experiences at this place & the direction this tender gender trender shit is taking academia. Intersex people deserve so much fucking better than even having to HEAR this bullshit. I would only go back into the field to work with women & intersex individuals. Probably as a volunteer though, but I digress

I worked there when all these new words were coming out too like demisexual android identified diaper baby or whatever the fuck lmao and the trans clients would be FURIOUS when anyone didn’t know wtf it meant

and in contrast our intersex clients were constantly explaining shit to staff/interns/volunteers about their conditions that they should never have had to explain TO THE PROFESSIONALS WHO WERE THERE TO HELP THEM. and I can’t even lie and pretend I fucking knew much, I didn’t. I was hired without even knowing i’d be working w intersex clients- I just needed to show I knew some trans buzzwords. but I put in the time to learn, I read every book any client recommended, any article they emailed me- but honestly that STILL ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH!!!! I should NOT have been hired!!! MY BOSS should not have been hired!!! Actually, the only staff members that actually deserved their job was an gay intersex man. OT but he was so cool and smart and hilarious and like FUN ANGRY like idk how to explain that better lol he was good at getting u pumped up ab shit & good at getting ppl worked up enough to DO something. The only other staff member who actually cared and knew anything was a lesbian woman (of course) but she had recently had a baby and became so afraid for the welfare of her wife and daughter that she went along w trans shit that she KNEW was delusional and unhealthy bc we SAW these trans clients being violent on the Regular. we were legally obligated to call the cops several times. she wasn’t wrong to be afraid but I do think she should have tried to work elsewhere if she could no longer do her job with integrity but that’s a conversation for another day.

agh im just gunna end this post now bc I can rly go on and on but I'll leave the post with this question that I'd very much like an answer to:

how can we as activists be of better service to our intersex sisters? this issue is becoming more and more pressing and I can’t sit back and do nothing for them anymore. does anyone know of intersex only orgs that need volunteers or have suggestions?? PLS LET ME KNOW. I won’t go back to where I was but there’s GOTTA be SOMETHING I can do for the intersex community. let’s figure it out <3 this issue very seriously needs the attention of radical feminists tbh so...let’s do something.

[innuendostudios]

The newest installment of The Alt-Right Playbook: Mainstreaming. If you like this series, or my other work, and want to see more of the same, consider backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, there’s this acclaimed science fiction writer and essayist who’s writing his memoir in the late 80’s. I’m gonna drop the pretense right now and say his name is Samuel R. Delany, he’s been namedropped on this channel before and he probably will be again because he’s my favorite writer. Delany’s writing about his experience as a young gay man in the late 50’s/early 60’s - that is, nearly a decade before Stonewall - and he opts to share a couple of anecdotes, which I will relate to you now.

One is about a time when he decided to come out to his therapy group. While being gay in mid-century New York brought Delany a lot of joy, he found himself describing his life to the group as though being gay were something he was trying to fix. By reflex, he presented himself as lonely and ashamed, though, in reality, he was neither. And, while he did eventually describe himself more accurately, he can’t help but muse, in the book, on the limits of language at the time.

Back then, the word “gay” was explicitly associated with high camp and effeminacy, where Delany is more of a bear, a term that was not yet in common usage. The default term was “homosexual,” which was then a medical classification for what was deemed a mental disorder. “Queer” and the f-word were still slurs that had yet to be reappropriated. So, while all the words to describe himself were, technically, available, they all carried the connotations of the most popular narrative about gay men: that they were isolated, aberrant, and pitiable.

Another story is about Delany being present for a police raid at a truck stop where queer men would meet for casual hookups. By the nature of being hidden in the bushes or secreted between parked semi trailers, any man in attendance could see the men nearest to him, but none could get a view of the whole. But, during the raid, from his vantage point, Delany saw, for the first time, the size of the entire crowd, and was shocked to see nearly a hundred men empty out of the parking lot to evade the cops. In the morning, the police blotter mentioned only the handful of men who’d been arrested, and not the 80 or 90 who got away.

Both of these stories are about how the dominant narrative of the isolated gay man becomes self-reinforcing: A constant threat of police violence meant gay men stayed hidden from the cops and, consequently, from each other. And the terminology of the era being mostly dictated by straight people made it very hard to talk about queerness without reinforcing their narrative.

Delany argues that, among the most revolutionary things the 60’s did to culture, was the radicalization of language - redefining old terms and popularizing new ones - and giving marginalized groups a budding sense of their numbers. In short, two of the most powerful tools for making any marginalized group less marginalized are Language and Visibility.

Folks, we’re talking today about Mainstreaming, the process by which a group or idea from the fringes of society moves towards the center. How strangers become neighbors and how thoughts become common sense. There is a concept known as the Overton Window, which I am not going to describe because plenty of people have done so already - link in the down there part - but, in short: as a fringe group becomes more visible, and their language becomes commonplace, their presence in society starts to seem normal. They become demystified. Some people who thought they were strange and threatening will start to warm up to them, though this does not happen across the board. Many who hated them when they were fringe will see their becoming mainstream as a kind of existential occupation of territory, as in “If this is normal now, what does that make me?”

But much of what is considered standard in society today has gone through this process.

Now, straight folks like myself often think that greater queer visibility and the proliferation of queer language is for our benefit; if our queer friends feel safe coming out to us and we know which words we should and shouldn’t use, it makes it easier for straights and queer folks to be pals! And it is true that no one gets mainstreamed without advocates in the existing mainstream, but let’s not beat around the bush: Language and Visibility are tools of consolidating power. Visibility means having a sense of your numbers. Common language means forming alliances. You get a bunch of formerly isolated gay men connecting with each other and accurately describing their experiences, you’ve got yourself a movement, with or without straight friends.

This is why it’s to the benefit of straight society to tell queer men they are isolated, because isolated queer men are in no position to make demands.

(Just so it doesn’t get left out of yet another conversation, Delany is writing about gay men because the book is a memoir and that’s his experience, but neither he nor I are ignoring that the Gay Rights movement was kicked off by trans women.)

Okay!

While the example I’m using is a positive one that any progressive worth their salt should be in favor of, mainstreaming is a morally neutral phenomenon. Culture is plastic. Any fringe group or idea can become normalized, regardless of its inherent worth. And, for a certain subset of extremely online people with fringe beliefs, who understand the ways mainstreaming has evolved in the attention economy, it can be a weapon.

We need to ask how a group of predominantly disgruntled twenty- and thirtysomething white men congregating on anonymous imageboards becomes a political movement, whose members get profiled in the New York Times, whose writing patterns are recognized by most of the internet, and whose figureheads get staffed in the White House. Where did the Alt-Right come from?

Mainstreaming is not a wholly organic process, because usually the people who get mainstreamed are actively working to become so. But people usually have only so much control over how and how fast this happens: A group expands its language and visibility; if this leads to larger numbers and greater mainstream acceptance, the process repeats, this time with a bigger group and a bigger audience; so long as there is growth, each cycle is more impactful, as the bigger a group is the faster it gets even bigger and the more common language becomes the faster it proliferates.

By all rights, if your beliefs are wildly unpopular, this process shouldn’t work. Your language and visibility don’t expand because too many people don’t want to talk like you or about you. So what do you do then? Well, normally, you either give up or bide your time, but, if you have a lot of media literacy and no real moral compass, you get it done dirty.

If the media doesn’t want to cover you, make yourself newsworthy. Threaten to publicly out immigrants in front of a crowd. Start a hoax about white student unions. Lead a white power rally and leave the hoods at home. Do the kinds of things that journalists cannot, in good conscience, ignore. Once you’ve made yourself news, they’ll feel they can’t publish a condemnation without getting your side of the story, so, bam, you’ve got an interview. The more erratic and dangerous you seem, the more they’ll want to write a profile so people can figure you out; the article about how surprisingly normal you seem in person basically writes itself. If you want to spread a conspiracy theory, send it to a small, local news site that doesn’t have the resources to fact check you; once they publish something salacious, all the bigger news channels will have to talk about it, if only to debunk it. Put provocative stuff in front of politicians; anything they retweet has to be news. In a pinch, you can always piggyback off a famous activist by making takedown videos, or, if you’re really ambitious, harass someone at a conference.

Everyone’s desperate for clicks. If you can generate them, you’ll get your message out.

If nobody’s adopting your language, adopt it for them. Make sure you and all your friends each have half a dozen fake Twitter accounts spamming the same terminology at everyone who discusses race, gender, orientation, or ability. Put every Jewish name in parentheses until everyone on the internet knows what that means whether they want to or not. Hell, don’t even do it yourself: Russia’s not the only one who can make bots. Make thousands of bots. And make sure your real account, your fake accounts, and your bots all talk the same so no one can tell the difference anymore. Make hashtags and get them trending all by yourself, and, while you’re at it, spam all the hashtags for movements you hate with porn and gore so they can’t be used. And if your words and memes still aren’t popular? Just steal words and memes that are already popular. Just decide “this? this means white power now,” “this is antifeminist now.” Saturate the web with your new usage, always insisting that you’re doing it “ironically,” while eroding confidence in anyone who uses these words in the original sense. And never stop insisting that most everyone would talk the same as you if there weren’t so much damn censorship.

Delany’s experience was having few words to describe himself that could conjure images of a gay man in a loving community. What the Alt-Right does is shout “you just call everyone you don’t like Nazis” while their people are giving interviews wearing Nazi paraphernalia; they even imply that calling dudes marching to the tune of “Jews will not replace us” Nazis is somehow antisemitic. Meanwhile they ask to be called identitarians and race realists. They want to stigmatize words that conjure images of white fascism - which, again, they very explicitly support - and replace them with words that conjure images of clean-cut philosophy majors.

And where Delany saw a group of 80 or 90 gay men reported in the papers as a group of 4 or 5, the Alt-Right wants to get reported as being much larger than it actually is. They want to draw attention to themselves by any means necessary, up to and including violence, but to ensure that, any time the cameras train on a violent act, there is a man in a suit ready to distance himself from it; to paint the picture that, but for a few bad actors, this is a peaceful movement of young, presentable intellectuals.

This isn’t simply a battle between different ideologies, this is a battle over the definition of normal. The Alt-Right knows how plastic culture can be. Their anger comes from the normalization of things they hate, and their movement exists because they believe anything that becomes mainstream can be made fringe again. Which is why, if you wanna cater to them, you promise to reassert old norms.

Much as we’d like to believe people are driven by morality, most people are driven by the desire to be normal. And when the news is filled with images of swastikas, iron crosses, and tiki torches, the guy in the suit with the fashy haircut looks pretty normal by comparison. And that’s why he wears the suit.

Thankfully, the plasticity of culture cuts both ways. Just as surely as we can lose all the ground we’ve gained over the last half-century, everything the Alt-Right does to make itself palatable can be undone. (In fact, it’s maybe beginning to happen.) It’s going to be a long road that will probably require changes to how media platforms generate traffic and a lot of new politicians. But I want you to keep a phrase close to your heart: this is not normal.

That phrase has become something of a mantra since the election in 2016. It can be misused: white supremacy, sexism, and every other kind of bigotry are part of the fabric of American life and always have been, so, even if this is more extreme than the ushe, it’s not by nearly as much as most privileged people like to think. So I want you to treat it less like an observation and more as a statement of intent. Whatever shit the Alt-Right pulls, I want you to say: this is not normal; this is not normal; this is not normal.

We will not let this be normal.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

on FUCKING kissing. and other shit

i’m still just. as bowled over as i knew i’d be about getting to have the triumphant nice gay kiss of resolution. like, i dont think i’ve seen that in any movies ive watched. not that many of them like, have a gay mc in the first place. usually you maybe have a couple peripheral side cast gays w a lil subplot and they get to say “i love you” or something. idk. or for some reason whats up with dramas where like, the initial Gay Encounter w kissing is often also a sexual encounter which is fine but the point is its like “oh, wow drama” right. and then the bit where they maybe manage to actually come together is like, too solemn for kissing? its also fine to have other moments of physical intimacy besides kissing, thats fantastic tbh. and i can’t say “wow what a trend in Major Releases W Gay Love Stories At The Core” because there’s not enough fuckin data for any real trends. but anyways maybe the ol Finally They Kiss thing is more seen as a like, ~romance genre~ thing rather than serious movies. idk. anyways getting sidetracked

my point is i think thats the first movie Gay Kiss Of Resolution that i can remember seeing. and it gets me, man. it hits me hard. i’m like. electric. not just because its like “wow this is a new one for me” obvs but because i’m gay and i like things that are very gay and very sweet and cute and that was all of that. so much in that film was ferociously endearing. like, thank god for gay love getting to be charming and nice and lighthearted and even exuberant. yeah babye

and for the past couple months ive been thinking on twitter threads about ppl who were Gay Teens Coming Out years and years ago who went to see the film w a parent or other sort of relation and it prompted a discussion where the parent is like. when you came out, was it bad? was i very bad about it? and they said how the answer was well, kinda, yeah. and getting to have this whole talk about a decade or so after the fact, because the movie shows such earnest support, and the recognition of the failing of anything less than the fullest kind of support.

like honestly i liked a lot that like, the issue wasn’t that simon was particularly worried about rejection, or some terrible kind of abuse or violence like gay kids who had to keep it a secret because their parents might even have pulled shit like kicking out a gay kid, like implying they’d even kill them if they’re gay. and he wasn’t exactly worried about like, hate crimes or anything either. because its not like the Awful kind of homophobic reaction isnt a concern anymore, but it isnt to everyone, and it wasnt always to everyone. its not even accurate to say that noncishet people prior to like the late 20th century always were rejected, always were closeted, always were miserable. there’s all kinds of stories and it’s nice to hear all kinds of them. like, the Gay Tragedy was as we know the only way to get a gay story of any kind past the rigid catholic moral guide for Film back in the day, and not so shocking that thats the kind of gay story that tends to be most palatable to the heterosexuals. and they have, what, like atonement and shit or something? and yet also i’m not saying that tragic gay stories should be off limits, or dramas, or anything. just that of course movies are limited to Bury Your Gays, Kill The Trans Kid, Show The Tragedy Of Not Being Cishet Coz That’s What’s Gritty And Real And I’m Okay With Them If They Die. we deserve every genre and plot structure. it would improve all of them.

anyhow like i was sort of getting to. i really appreciate how simon like, isn’t ashamed of being gay, isn’t in denial about it, isn’t afraid of his parents or friends or community finding out, doesnt feel particularly endangered re the idea, but still feels like he can’t. i really liked the bit where he upsets his sister cuz he’s so fuckin stressed about having just been outed and his privacy invaded in front of his whole damn school but he’s like super conflicted about like, why would i be upset at being out, why would i be ashamed just because i didnt come out before, etc etc. and i liked that he felt his coming out to his parents went badly just b/c it was a bit awkward. because the small issues are just as big a deal, people wanna act like the defining part of being gay is a certain level of agony. and so you get ppl questioning if love, simon is “necessary,” like a gay protag has to be justified for the technical benefits it might afford, like if its not about suicide or self loathing or ostracization or violence or being disowned or etc etc, its not REALLY about being gay, and it can’t possibly help gay kids because its just unrealistic. because even if you have worse problems, seeing an overall happy gay love story where he gets the guy and has all the support of family and friends and community put out there will just be meaningless to you. and obviously its just as pointless to argue that this is the be all and end all of gay films, like we only needing ONE gay romcomdrom type film, we only need ONE gay y.a. movie, this is THE gay film for those categories now people, it’s over. like jesus we’re owed so many. give us the nondystopian y.a. movies back, and make em gay!!! GAY

anyways what is the point? i like that it was shown its difficult to come out even if you only expect “small” bad issues, because even having to have the smallest fear that the people in your life will think less of you, or love you less, or see you as any bit of a disappointment or flawed, is really fucked up and difficult. like i said, it was way too real when simon was just a bit uncomfortable when his dad made just a bit uncomfortable gay jokes. i like that he felt fucked up over being outed even though he wasn’t necessarily ashamed of being gay. and i mean i know part of it was that he was afraid that the other guy was gonna get scared off since that was being exposed too, but i liked that element also, because of the tension between the joy of getting to like...Be Gay with a guy you like and enjoy it, but also know that the whole thing is tenuous and uncertain and you’re both a bit afraid and the whole thing might crumble at any moment because it’s not easy to take “privately being gay” into it being everyones business and public knowledge. because even the little shit you have to deal with is a concern, and even in the most “it’s probably totally okay” situations, you don’t KNOW that its okay, because homophobia is still the default even amongst like. the libs who think they’re totally not homophobic.

and plus yknow the whole thinking you’ll be treated different thing. like coming out is going to HAVE to be some Big Deal and you’ll have to be imposing something on everyone who knows you when really you’re just being the fuck yourself. and the idea that suddenly everyone’s gonna be uncomfortable with you or think you’re someone else or just look at you different because they were cool with you when they thought you were straight. and anyways

also i seriously forget the dude’s real name but i love that it was the first guy simon thought might be blue. damn i know they said it like fifty times in that one scene lol...but anyways yknow i’m like “hmm walking in on him maybe messing around with a girl could just be Gay Crisis shit yknow” and it was and thats kinda fun lol. like, i’ve read some fics in my day!! that is not a nail in the coffin!!

anyways what i want to say is getting a sweet triumphant gay kiss scene is just. so fucking beautiful for the soul. i’m fuckin reveling in it. now that ive been writing about it for half an hour i should go ahead and try to get my rewatch in, right. yeah