#binary obfuscation

[alectoperdita]

WIP Snippet Sunday

More stuff from Mob, but from a future chapter either 7 or 8. Finally getting some Jou POV though.

---

"Look, they're not in this life. They're normal," sighed Katsuya without removing the towel from his face.

"You mean they don't know you're..."

"Nah, they know. The amazing part is they don't care. But I don't wanna cause trouble for 'em. They have a white-collar job and everything. Perfectly respectable work."

If you didn't count whatever legal advising was done on Yoshimori's behalf, but hey, the law guaranteed everyone a right to trial and counsel. But Katsuya knew Seto had plenty of other clients. As he told him once, his specialty was actually in corporate governance.

"So why are they with you?" joked Kazuki.

"I'm wondering the same thing, kid," he mumbled under his breath.

Despite Seto's assurance that he wasn't "slumming it," the divide between their education and social class continued to make Katsuya antsy. When they were together, when Seto smiled and laughed for him, Katsuya could put it out of his mind for the time. But when they were apart like now? No matter how he looked at it, he couldn't measure up to Seto's standard.

[transmutationisms]

as far as i can tell that claim about [usamerican] women not being allowed to hold bank accounts prior to the 60s is just incorrect and based on a misunderstanding of what antidiscrimination laws in the 70s were meant to accomplish. which is something i think is actually worth splitting hairs over because 1) wealthy socially powerful white women did hold property, get loans, get credit, collect rents, &c in the colonial period as well as the 200 years following the revolution, & obfuscating that means failing to understand how class, race, & gender actually related to & informed one another, and 2) the narrative forming around de jure rights and an extremely binary black and white notion of discrimination also obscures the ways discrimination against women in the financial sphere actually happened (often piecemeal, locally, varying by institution, with things like subjective biased evaluations of their financial prospects from banks, as well as the role of massive social norms and pressures that cumulatively steered them away from independent possession of capital in the first place) -- which matters because so many of these things still do happen, even to white women but very specifically and heavily to black americans in particular, and this is also lost when we act like ECOA or whatever ended credit discrimination in one fell swoop. also people who make this claim tend to have a very poor understanding of what effect marriage had on a woman's financial status, because again they have an extremely basic understanding of how the category "women" was handled by financial institutions and seem to see it as one monolith when in reality marriage was more of like, another factor that informed (lessened) the degree to which financial institutions considered a woman to be an independent legal person

[jackklinemybeloved]

I could write an essay on Ame’s witchiness and gender… the way she was abandoned for causing too much chaos and should “know better” at age five, how her natural self is something she should be afraid of and keep in check, the difference in personality between a seven year old Ame who doesn’t have to perform gender for anyone vs. an adult Ame who is trying to fill a role in the community and as a result is much more subdued and maternal when talking to the people of Toma, making an effort to “be kind” because any expression of rage was seen as dangerous, “she’s not a girl; she’s a witch!”, her knowing that she is different from her maternal mentor and feeling like she is failing at her responsibilities, her instincts and ways of thinking constantly being put into question by those around her, particularly Suvi who had never felt uncomfortable in the role she was born to fill.

(deep breath)

her veiled explanation of the coven of elders to Keen being “a council of women who recently decided whether I should remain a part of it” (even as she’s obfuscating she emphasizes being an outsider in a group of women), her feeling like an outsider in the binary world of humans vs. spirits (which Eioghorain this episode says is not as clear a binary as humans make it out to be), how often she is accused of being too brash, too impulsive, too much, too foolish, and you should not be this way.

anyway. I have a lot of feelings on this aspect of Ame’s character. for reasons.

[giritina]

Lately I've been dipping my toe into the mess that is transandrophobia discourse, and in the process I've been presented with one question in many forms:

"Do trans men experience misogyny?"

My initial answer was "these terms are all theoretical frameworks for a vast range of human experiences, why would you choose to frame your pre-transition experiences as that of a woman?" This makes sense to me, but clearly isn't satisfactory to many of the people sending me anons. As much as I might want to use my own life as a case study, I can't very well tell these people in my asks box "no, you've never experienced something that could be categorized as misogyny." Still, the question bothers me.

I think that's because the question obfuscates the actual debate. It's clear to me the question we are debating is not one of "experience" but "authority." That is:

"Do (binary) trans men understand what it's like to be a woman?"

My answer? No.

How can I justify that when we have, since birth, been raised as women? Well, because we also have, since birth, been trans men. If we cast aside the idea of transness as a modern social contagion or anything other than an innate, sociobiological reality, this has to be true. Even before you ever came out to yourself, you were transgender. Transphobia has dictated every moment of your life. Your idea of what "womanhood" is is not at all the same as a woman's, be it cis or trans. Why? Because a woman does not react to "being a woman" with the dysphoria, dissociation, and profound sense of wrongness that you do. [If you do not experience these things, a cis or trans woman, at the very least, does not identify as a binary trans man.] A woman sincerely identifies as a woman, and identity plays a pivotal role in how we absorb societal messaging.

Let's take homophobia as an example. While any queer person has probably experienced targeted episodes of bigotry, the majority of bigotry we experience must necessarily be broad and social. Boys learn to fear becoming a faggot as a group, but the boy who is a faggot will internalize those messages in a completely different way to the boys who only need learn to assert the heterosexual identity already inherent in them through violence. All of them are suffering to some extent, but their experiences are not at all equivalent. This is despite the fact that they've all absorbed the same message, maybe even at the same moment, through the same events. Still, we don't say that a straight boy knows what it is like to be a gay boy. Similarly, cis women do not know what it is like to be a trans man despite being fed the same transphobic messaging in a superficially identical context. It isn't a stretch to say the same can apply to misogyny.

Because I can't speak for you, I'll use myself as an example for a moment. I'll give my bonafides: I am a gender-nonconforming, T4T queer, white, binary trans man. I am on T, and I have recently come out to my family. I do not pass. My career as a comic writer is tied to my identity as a trans man. I can confidently say I have never been impacted by misogyny the same way as my friends who actually identify as women. This manifested early on as finding it easy to shrug off the messaging that I needed to be X or Y way to be a woman. In fact, most gender roles slid off my back expressly because breaking them gave me euphoria. I was punished in many ways for this, but being this sort of cis woman did help me somewhat. It's easy to be "one of the guys" in a social climbing sense if you really do feel more comfortable as a man. It also helped me disregard misogyny aimed at me or others because it seemed like an shallow form of bigotry. It was something you could shrug off, but it was important for building "unity" among women. I thought this must be the case for all women, that we all viewed misogyny as a sort of "surface level" bigotry. However, for whatever conditional status I gained in this role, there was a clear message that if I did "become" a man, every non-conformist trait about me would just become a grotesque and parodic masculinity.

That was the threat that was crushing me, destroying my identity and self esteem. That was what I knew intimately through systemic, verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. I could express my nonconformity as a cis woman, but if I took it so far as to transition to male? I would be a pathetic traitor, a social outcast. I truly believe that throughout my life people were able to see that I was not just a failed woman, but an emasculated man.

I do partly feel that the sticking point for many is the idea that the sexual abuse suffered by trans men is inherent to womanhood, and therefore inexplicable if trans men are men from birth. While this disregards the long history of sexual abuse of young boys, especially minority boys, I do see the emotional core. I'll offer that the sexual abuse I suffered was intrinsically linked to my emmasculation, my boyishness, despite the fact that I was not out to myself or anyone else. I believe many trans men have suffered being the proxy for cis women's desire for retribution against cis men, or for cis men and women's desire for an eternally nubile young boy. I also believe they have suffered corrective assault that attempts to push them back into womanhood, which in itself is an experience unique to transness rather than actual womanhood.

I'll note quickly that many, many trans men cannot relate to the idea of feeling confident and above it all when it comes to womanhood. Many of you probably tried desperately to conform, working every moment to convince yourself you were a woman and to perfectly inhabit that identity. I definitely experienced this as well (though for me it was specifically attempting to conform to butchness) but I can concede many of you experienced it more than I did. I still believe that this desperate play-acting is also not equivalent to true womanhood. It is a uniquely transgender experience, one that shares much more in common with trans women desperately attempting to conform to manhood than with true womanhood.

One key theme running through the above paragraphs is the idea that "womanhood" is synonymous with "suffering." A trans man must know what it is like to be a woman because he suffers like one. It should be noted that actual womanhood is not a long stretch of suffering. It often involves joy, euphoria, sisterhood, a general love and happiness at being a woman. It wasn't until I admitted to myself I had never been a woman that I was able to see how the women in my life were not women out of obligation, but because they simply were. The idea that you are a woman because you suffer is more alligned with radfem theory than any reality of womanhood.

When I admitted my identity to myself I was truly faced with the ways that my ability to stand up to misogyny did not equate to being anti-misogynist. I was giddy to finally be able to admit to being a man, and suddenly all that messaging that "slid off my back" was a useful tool in my arsenal. Much like cis gay men feel compelled to assert their disgust for vaginas and women after a life of being compelled towards heterosexuality, I felt disgust and aversion to discussions of womanhood as an identity. I didn't even want to engage with female fictional characters. I viewed other people's sincere expressions of their own womanhood as a coded dismissal of my identity. Like many people before and after, I made women into the rhetorical device that had oppressed me. Not patriarchy, not transphobia, but womanhood and women broadly. It wasn't explicit bigotry, but the effects were the same. I had to unlearn this with the help of my bigender partner, who felt unsettled and hurt by the way I could so easily turn "woman" into nothing but a theoretical category which represented my personal suffering.

This brings me to another point: I sometimes receive messages from nonbinary trans mascs telling me that it's absurd to think they don't understand womanhood and identify with misogyny in a deeper way. I would agree that, if you sincerely identify in some capacity as a woman, you are surely impacted by misogyny in a way I am not. However, why are you coming to the defense of binary trans men like me? Less charitably, why are you projecting a female identity on us? Perhaps my experience frustrates you so deeply because we simply do not have the same experience at all. Perhaps we are not all that united by our agab, by our supposed female socialization.

So, no. I do not believe that binary trans men know what it's like to be women. I don't believe we are authorities on womanhood. I do not believe that when a trans woman endeavors to talk about transmisogyny, your counterargument about your own experiences of misogyny is useful. I ESPECIALLY do not believe that it is in any way valid to say that you are less misogynist, less prone to being misogynist, or-- god forbid-- INCAPABLE of misogyny because you were raised as a girl. I also don't believe your misogyny is equivalent to that of a woman's internalized misogyny in form or impact.

For as much as members of the transandrophobia movement downplay privilege as merely "conditional," those conditions do exist. They do place you firmly in the context of the rest of the world. Zoom out and look at the history of oppressed men, and you'll find the same reactionary movement repeated over and over. Attacking the women in your community for not being soft enough, nice enough, patient enough, rather than fighting the powers that be. Why do I believe your identity is more alligned with cis manhood than any form of womanhood? Because this song and dance has been done a hundred times before by men of every stripe. Transphobia is real, and your life experience has been uniquely defined by it since birth. This is a thing to rally around, to fight against, but you all have fallen for a (trans)misogynistic phantasm in your efforts at self-actualization. You are not the first, and you will not be the last. Get out of this pipeline before it's too late.

[zan0tix]

Hi tumblr user Zan0tix, I have to say that I love that you draw Jake as big and hairy AND fem. It's such a rare combination outside of mean-spirited caricatures, every time I see your Jake I get a big smile on my face. :)

Hi tumblr user HermitCyclop ^u^ here is a jake drawing for you 🫶

The transmisogynistic demonisation of these features is so maddening!!! I agree! Im glad that the intent (appreciating these features) of my jake design reaches you c:

GOING TO PUT IT UNDER THE CUT BECAUSE I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY. But jake english gender meta because i think about it Too Much and am taking this as an excuse to infodump abt it. 😁

The alpha kids and their specific defiance of both homestucks gendered narrative AND real life societal expectations are so fun to think about to me!! but since we are talking about jake, his specific defiance of both homestucks models of masculinity and femininity in the context of his queerness is like the reason he is my fav character.

He props himself up that he wants to be the adventure "hero" in the homestuck sense (the hardheaded blue femme fatale) and the western media sense (the hardheaded action man) yet whenever pressed to actually act on what he says he always refuses or obfuscates. Because really what he wants is to just be himself! I really love the alpha kids because they all just want to be Themselves, not be restricted and defined by what is expected of them, (all the characters have this but the alphas particularly really hammer this home for me)

The heavy emphasis on their beta selves, the heteronormative archetypes they embodied and what went wrong in their lives that manifest as fears in their alpha selves... im always thinking about it. How differently society affects queer ppls choices in life and then the fact that they all get a second chance and getting to watch them live out that second chance and realize their queerness and them all caring so much abt eachother and wanting to aspire to be better FOR the ones they love!!!!!! it always tugs at my heart strings to ponder😢😢

IM SO GOOD AT GOING ON TANGENTS MY BAD but basically. The alpha kids explicit queerness and how despite the comic itself protesting, they are all shown to be deserving of love (of all kinds) And as a person who super heavily relates to jake, his experience with his own identity (and dirks unending adoration and love for him and likewise jakes belief and admiration of dirk) serves to me as a reminder that yknow! We are all worthy of love!! Even if we dont think ourselves to be (this is just the message of shrek.) and there is always hope to be found in things improving!!!!

But in a text thats explicitly queer and not shy about letting its queer characters do wrong in realistic ways i think this message is incredibly powerful and certainly one of the best things about the comic in my eyes. And i love embracing that in my art of the characters! Drawing queer (but here specifically trans) characters all getting to be proud of themselves and their appearances makes me feel proud of myself alongside them and I think its wonderful to be able appreciate other trans peoples experiences and looks through it too!!

I specifically in homestuck fandom dont really see anybody but twinks (usually dirk or eridan LMFAO) portrayed to be fem in any manner 😢 when jake is the most explicitly feminine man in the comic. (I think the transmisogyny thats kind of rampant in this fandom means people dont want to consider those outside conventional attractiveness being feminine or transfem identities outside binary transwomen if even that😭😭) I am being the change i wana see in the world 🙏 The amount of transfem fat gay bear jake in the world increases by one every time i post

[luxiomahariel]

Random asshole who hates trans men: GRRRR! Why are people in The Magnus Archive (TME) fandom using the tag 😡😡😡

Ma'am, they have used the tag longer than you, ain't my fault that your shitty gender binary 2.0 stuff have the same initials

(also idk anything about the magnus archives, but from what i have seen from mutuals there are some characters popularly HC'd as trans men. Just sayin)

sorry you cant use tma for the magnus archives cuz youre clearly just stealing the abbreviation from trans women to obfuscate the conversation about transmisogyny : /

(joking)

[nonbinarygamzee]

like there is so much merit in stories divorced from our worlds problems that still Have those problems and i think its kind of intellectually lazy to pass off any interpretation of deeply modern human socialization present in a story that Isnt about that as useless. first of all i care more about being trans and conveying trans lives than about what makes "sense". second worldbuilding and fiction in general is a vessel for interpretting the world around us. and third i just do not care to invest serious time and thought into how the alien race made intentionally stupid and silly in ways that play directly into hussies racial/class anxieties functions in tandeom with those things.

i know im always saying this but transgenderism beam trumps any other reason for holding a particular idea of troll anatomy/socialization to me i dont care i dont care

[vsa-pieldepapel]

u talking abt how a majority of the fandom still views kris as a boy whether they admit it or not reminded me of the youtube vids of the roaring knight battle, and how a lot of casual deltarune fans keep referring to the knight with male pronouns, despite the fact it’s literally only referred to in-game with it and them pronouns, AND clearly being noelle’s older SISTER.

no, of course the main antagonist of the game is a guy, of course the non-gendered character is a man actually

i don't think this is a casual fan thing though, the subreddit for kris/ralsei is literally, unquestioningly called "Toothpaste Boys" despite that being misgendering or whatever (and a casual fan is not gonna be making ship art for reddit they just play the game and fuck off). for any zoomie that hasnt been around for this long tumblr was once the male tears website 10-11 years ago, before it woked itself back into the same run of the mill sexism that used to be criticised, namely: Fandom worships male characters and undermines female characters; if a female character is too strong or too complex she must be some sort of trans (because women are only demure and sweet and feminine energy girl dinner don't you know) and mostly male characters have personalities and complexity. see for example the obsession with jevil and spamton, and, way back when, sans and papyrus. it's always been like this, this has always been the sexyman yaoi website. Kris being assumed male is downstream from that; because kris is a complex character they must be a tortured boy- if you go to ao3 and filter specifically for "female kris" and "afab kris" and look for the most popular fics they are ALL about kris having intercourse with spamton, or some other male character, often nonconsensually, and it's mostly fics with kris as a boy that afford them will and motivations (despite both groups of fics insisting that kris is Non Binary and Uses They, Thank You, only one of the assigned sexes at birth is being treated as a human being, and it's not female non binary kris). It also happens because tumblr wokism left wing nonsense is not left wing in any way that matters, it's literally built upon saying what my parents don't like to be cool and subversive, without questioning what exactly my parents said that is wrong. So all of the same conservative biases like male as default, a very basic sexist tenet that has caused things like medical care for female people to be vastly neglected, stay basically intact while pretending that they're being subverted somehow. This is why people are calling the knight and kris he: they're not reading, they're not filtering for the most basic biases of being raised in our world that they pretend they are, or often both. This is also why people are coping themselves into knots about how ralsusie is yuri and one of them is trans and non binary and autistic and italian and a quadruple amputee, because my parents are a heterosexual couple with emotional commitment, and i can't do that, i can't afford to believe that a heterosexual relationship can have an interesting chemistry and narrative beats, so i'll use that loophole to get away from it, to make it weird and "queer". it's incredibly shallow once you spend a while away from fandom spaces and think about it. It's also incredibly sexist to suggest that a boy and a girl can't be gnc and just be themselves, that they must be in denial about their "true self". Which I honestly would not criticise if people admitted that they're massive hypocrites. Like stop pretending at least. I'm sure the it and they for the knight is in fact playing with this, given both candidates for the role are female, and it's meant to obfuscate this fact (despite it being obvious lol) for narrative suspense and so that it comes as a surprise to the characters. In that regard, I'm very excited. Toby's good at writing compelling female characters and treating them with the same respect as the male cast, which makes the fandoms absolute lack of that even funnier LMAO TLDR: people filter media through their upbringing, education, and social biases, and tumblrinas are illiterate children or emotionally immature adults who have never questioned anything outside of "how can i make my parents big mad" so they have all the biases of your average conservatoid including "male is the default human, female is the other"

[morganmnemonic]

I'm Helen posting again. I just want to give a shout out to these two lines of dialog in particular.

(episode 146)

(episode 187)

Helen says "back when I was Michael" and "I was never Michael." And both sentiments are completely true to her despite the obvious contradiction.

I think this is why Jon had such a hard time with her in particular. The Eye sees truth as a binary thing. Either something is true or it isn't. Either something happened or it didn't. Either Helen was Michael or she wasn't.

The distortion does, at times, represent lies. But I feel like with Helen like this it more often represents messy and complicated truths that defy easy understanding.

Helen was Michael AND she wasn't. That's the most accurate way to describe whats happening here, and something that a person will never be able to comprehend while still holding on to the idea of Truth as something that matters.

Its not about adding a layer of confusion to obfuscate the sensible reality underneath. Its about reality itself being fundamentally confusing.

[littlefeltsparrow]

Even though Rhysand is established as a victim, the text is averse to exploring his trauma in any meaningful capacity that might not serve his masculine image. His trauma is repeatedly framed as a noble sacrifice and at times, is used as a means of communicating his sexual prowess to the reader despite the context being utterly inappropriate. Amarantha’s abuse of Rhysand cannot simply be recognized as the actions of a cruel and perverse tyrant, the text needs the reader to know that Rhysand was not emasculated by that abuse.

Rhysand’s essence is constructed on a foundation of masculinity. He must be masculine at all costs because of the rigid (and often essentialised) gender binary in ACOTAR demands it. Within this dichotomy, the masculine is posited as the dominant party and that dominance must be reiterated in order for it to be understood. However, the reality of Rhysand’s victim status contradicts the foundation of his character and creates a situation where Rhysand (the ultimate masculine figure) was dominated and abused by a woman. This reversal of power shakes the foundation of his character and calls the identity of the masculine figure into question.

To mitigate this tension, Maas takes a few measures to preserve Rhysand’s idealized masculine identity. She frames Rhysand’s SA as a necessary and heroic sacrifice that saved the lives of countless people. This obfuscates the fact the non-consensual nature of Amarantha’s abuse and attempts to lend Rhysand some control in a situation where he had none. Although this might have formed the basis for an exploration of how Rhysand chooses to explain his trauma and cope with that reality, his explanation of events is never framed as unreliable or identified as an unhealthy coping mechanism.

[velvetvexations]

She also thinks TERFs don't hate cis men and it honestly might be impossible to obliterate my faith in someone's intelligence - or their intellectual honesty - faster.

see when I first saw the terms TME/TMA I thought "that's a bit weird to list in your bio (like who would write 'homophobia exempt' in their bio for a fandom blog) but I can see the draw if you're writing about transmisogyny and want to be inclusive of how transmisogyny affects more people than binary trans women and the fact that systems of oppression don't operate on the basis of one's personal identity (i.e. bigots aren't going to ask what pronouns you use before calling you slurs)". and then I've seen pretty much everyone who uses the TME/TMA language say "you're TME. you're not experiencing transmisogyny" to everyone — Black cis women, gnc men, intersex people, non-transfem trans people, etc — except for people who explicitly identify as a trans woman/transfem. and even then there seems to be a pressure to be binary and/or medically transition. if you're going to say only transfem-identifying people are TMA then genuinely what is the point of having that language other than to appear slightlyyyyy more inclusive (though not in actuality) and to obfuscate your point to people who aren't already waist deep in online trans discourse. unless the point is of course to create us vs them mentalities in the trans community and essentialize the trans experience into two competing sides and othering people who try to have good faith intracommunity discussions. and this whole thing is just frustrating as a very agender person who refuses to be grouped in as "transfem" or "transmasc" like stop trying to draw binary boundaries around nonbinary identities and then getting frustrated when people don't fit in. you're never going to find a progressive way to stereotype & essentialize genders even if you use a guise of being trans inclusive.

Unfortunately the point is of course to create us vs them mentalities in the trans community and essentialize the trans experience into two competing sides and othering people who try to have good faith intracommunity discussions.

[ukrfeminism]

A lawyer and the government department she works with are being sued after she made gender-critical statements at work, including expressing the belief that only women menstruate. 

Elspeth Duemmer Wrigley works at an arm’s-length body affiliated to the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and is a chairwoman of a civil service network that represents staff with gender-critical views. 

She is one of three key signatories of an explosive letter sent in October to the cabinet secretary warning the impartiality of the civil service was under threat because anyone with gender-critical views was “openly and unlawfully bullied and harassed”. 

The confidential letter, seen by The Times, makes serious claims about a “small number of active gender ideologues” embedded in the civil service who brief against ministers and seek to alter official documents.

Duemmer Wrigley will appear at an employment tribunal next week accused of harassment for several comments and posts shared in the workplace. An employee of another body affiliated to Defra is suing the government department for allowing the network to exist and Duemmer Wrigley personally for her views. 

These include a statement made during a seminar on female autism that “only women menstruate” and a link to My Body is Me!, a book that encourages young children to understand and accept their bodies. A post in which she celebrates “diversity of belief” and explains that being gender-critical is a protected belief has also been penalised.

The Sex Equality and Equity Network (Seen) is an official civil service network with more than 700 members in 50 government departments who support the belief that biological sex is binary and immutable. Duemmer Wrigley is chairwoman of Defra’s Seen network and believes she is being targeted as a figurehead.

The claimant, who has not been named, has accused Defra bosses of creating a “intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and/or offensive environment” and is calling for a disbanding of the departmental SEEN network and, potentially, the cross-governmental network as well. 

Duemmer Wrigley warns that if successful, the case would have a “chilling effect” that could silence all gender criticism in the civil service.

“[It] would effectively preclude any public gender-critical discourse in the workplace,” she writes in a statement. 

“It has been brought at a time when employees with gender-critical beliefs in many organisations, both in the civil service and beyond, are already facing vexatious, chilling or bullying attacks. I believe if this case succeeds, these attacks are likely to escalate. I believe if this case succeeds there will be no place in the civil service for those with sex realist views.”

It comes months after the letter to Simon Case, the head of the civil service, called for “urgent action to ensure that civil service impartiality is upheld, and freedom of belief is respected”.

It warns that unchallenged bias in relation to gender is having a direct impact on policy, based on interviews and evidence from SEEN members across government.

The letter cites efforts from some staff to “remove contributions to government consultations that relate to sex instead of gender” and “quietly briefing external organisations on how to circumnavigate ministerial direction”. 

It alleges there is an “active obfuscation of facts” among some trans activist civil servants to “prevent ministers seeing the impact of trans-inclusive policies” and evidence of internal policy being leaked to “partisan organisations”. 

Maya Forstater, executive director of Sex Matters, a human rights organisation that campaigns for clarity on sex in law, policy and language, said: “This is a shocking case, which follows revelations by civil servant whistleblowers about a ‘culture of fear’ among gender-critical civil servants across Whitehall. 

“It is not reasonable to view the existence of a network of gender-critical colleagues as ‘harassment’. 

“The civil service needs to have a robust culture of integrity, objectivity and accountability, and treat all its employees fairly. Civil servants should not expect to be kept “safe” from encountering ideas or people they don’t agree with.”

A government spokesman said: “We are unable to comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”

[bidotorg]

"From the very first episode, Elizabeth is flanked by her ever-reliable, tirelessly loyal, and impeccably prepared assistant Blake Moran (played by Erich Bergen). The series initially coded his character in a way most will read as gay. It was all the Hollywood clichés: too coiffed, meticulously neat, even a bit of the stereotypical 'gay' accent. And yet the show curiously held back from embracing his seeming homosexuality. He did not call himself gay, we did not see him in any relationships, and his character consistently made a concerted effort to obfuscate the sex of the people he dated, a fact remarked upon by his peers. In time, we learn that this was a deliberate choice made by the writers, not to perpetuate the cowardly trope of having a queer character whose queerness exists only by inference, but to turn common sexuality assumptions on their head.

"In season three, we finally see Blake meet an ex-boyfriend at a bar, and the two get into an argument that at first appears to be over the fact that Blake refuses to own his sexuality as a gay man. But it turns out that Blake is actually bi, which his former lover rejects. The encounter upsets Blake so much that the usually private and even-keeled assistant holds up Secretary McCord’s motorcade to come out as bisexual. In a bi speech for the ages, he voices the pent-up frustrations so many bi people feel about being erased or misunderstood for not fitting neatly into a 'straight' or 'gay' binary. He says the words so many shows and films avoid: 'I’m bisexual.' He even calls out 'biphobia' by name. There’s a moment of uncertainty where he — and the audience — hold their breath to see how Elizabeth will react. She wordlessly steps out of the car and embraces him."

[nothorses]

Hey this is vaguely related to the conversations you were having and I hope you’re ok with me dropping it in your asks. But when I came out as FTM I felt like I was forced to try and fit into this patriarchal idea of cis manhood by others. Like I couldn’t just be a person with a wide array of interests and desires if I wanted to be a man. Even by like, trans allies and other trans people.

I often see even other trans men using toxic masculinity but trying to be “positive” about it like “you aren’t a man unless you are comfortable in femininity or engage in politics this way” or even “do [blank] for these other marginalized communities” boiled down to “repent for being a gender traitor” IMO.

I feel like this sort of thing is tied to this like “binary vs non-binary” in a tangible way. I’m just not sure and I could be wrong and I’m curious about your thoughts. It’s been on my mind for weeks, these kinds of patterns in trans spaces and discussions and I personally have no conjunctive answer.

I think I understand what you're getting at, and I have definitely noticed this kind of thing in my own experiences and relationship to gender. I identified as nonbinary for as long as I did because I legitimately felt pressured to; I was surrounded by people who felt, and implied, and stressed, that masculinity and manhood were bad things & it was somehow morally superior to be nonbinary instead. I was afraid of being, or being seen as, aggressive and dangerous and morally reprehensible, and identifying as nonbinary felt like the Better Thing To Do.

This isn't, like, unique; Baeddels openly believed that this was the better way to go, and/or that nonbinary people were just Secret Trans Men pretending to be "non-men" in order to "avoid accountability":

Which kind of reinforces the myth that Being Nonbinary Is Morally Superior in and of itself: "trans men are just pretending to be nonbinary because it would make them Better People, but we all know that they can't really be nonbinary" is not actually challenging this assumption that being further from manhood would be morally superior. though denying the fact that nonbinary people can exist at all is still incredibly, disgustingly exorsexist.

this line of thinking didn't just come from this one specific strain of radical transfeminism. radfem ideology as a whole is, imo, more like a pink coat of paint on regular-ass cisheteropatriarchy. I think the ways in which radtransfeminism understand trans men and nonbinary people are incredibly indicative of this; trans womanhood has been sort of half-unpacked, but there are still so many deep anxieties around trans men and (some) nonbinary folks "betraying womanhood" and "infiltrating women's spaces", "mutilating" our bodies, etc.

I mean, it's internalized transphobia. my grandma wants to call me "grey" instead of "greyson" for the same reason that my trans ally lesbian peer wants to use "they/them" pronouns for me instead of "he/him": it obfuscates my connection to manhood, and in many ways, my defiance of the gender binary they're comfortable with. it makes my gender identity sort of "uncertain", and positions me a little closer to womanhood. it's more comfortable for them.

when I did identify as nonbinary and use "they/them", I was consistently misgendered as "female". again, I was being nudged back toward womanhood and the identity that was more palatable for others (including some trans people!). I was being nudged back towards the gender binary.

there is clearly also a trend here of nudging nonbinary people back into the binary in the "other" direction: again, the above example of Baeddels insisting that nonbinary people who were AFAB are "actually" trans men. Truscum often believe the same of dysphoric nonbinary people. Baeddels tended to believe that nonbinary people who were AMAB were "actually" trans women in denial, too. Exorsexism is a hell of a drug.

But yeah, I think you're right; I think the common thread between all branches of transphobia is a desire to protect the gender binary, and I think that necessarily problematizes any idea of a socio-politically "binary" trans person.

It's important to understand how exorsexism is unique beyond that, too; there are still differences between the experiences of trans people who do identify exclusively as one "binary" gender, and trans people who don't. I just think the categories are less perfect and binary (lol) than folks tend to think of them.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Colin Wright

Published: Dec 2, 2024

In the annals of academic absurdity, there are moments that make even seasoned critics pause in awe. “Loving the Brine Shrimp: Exploring Queer Feminist Blue Posthumanities to Reimagine the ‘America’s Dead Sea’” is one such moment. This is not a parody—though it reads like one—but a “serious” paper, or so the author insists. In what is best described as a surrealist love letter to brine shrimp, the author, Ewelina Jarosz (she/they), wades through a soup of critical theory, environmental activism, and performance art, asking the reader to reconsider their relationship with brine shrimp—not as mere crustaceans but as symbols of queer resilience, ecological ethics, and, somehow, hydrosexual love.

This paper is part of a growing tradition of postmodern scholarship that prioritizes ideological signaling over intellectual rigor. Following in the footsteps of infamous works like the 2016 “Feminist Glaciology” paper—which posited that glaciers are gendered—“Loving the Brine Shrimp” sets a new standard for academic ridiculousness. Its culmination in a cyber wedding to augmented reality brine shrimp makes feminist glaciers seem like a grounded scientific pursuit by comparison. But before we arrive at the nuptial climax, let’s examine how this spectacle unfolds.

Love at First Shrimp

The article begins innocuously enough, discussing the ecological crisis facing Utah’s Great Salt Lake. However, it doesn’t take long before it veers into woke lunacy with concepts like “hydrosexuality,” which refers to a “more-than-human sensuality and sexuality emphasizing fluidity and relationality” that “offers a cultural understanding of water as a non-binary substance connecting all bodies of water on the planetary scale.” Hydrosexuality, she argues, challenges the “hegemonic notion of the autonomous and bounded human subject” by embracing “watery thinking.”

If you’re struggling to imagine what any of this means, join the club. The author’s language is a masterclass in obfuscation, using terms like “hydrophilic logic” and “multispecies ethics” to mask the fact that she’s anthropomorphizing liquid.

The absurdity intensifies when she links hydrosexuality to the brine shrimp, praising these creatures for their “swirly sexuality” and reproductive versatility. Apparently, the shrimp’s ability to reproduce via live birth or parthenogenesis (which the author incorrectly calls “pathogenesis” throughout the paper) is a triumph over binary thinking, making them paragons of queer resilience that subvert the oppressive structures of settler-colonial science. Yes, really.

Settler Science and Capitalist Cysts

The paper is rife with accusations against “settler science,” a term the author uses to describe any scientific practice associated with Western colonialism. She argues that early studies of the Great Salt Lake objectified its ecosystem, reducing the brine shrimp to mere commodities. Even the shrimp’s Latin name, Artemia franciscana, is critiqued as a tool of imperial domination. Naming a species, she asserts, reflects a “biology of empire” that erases Indigenous ways of knowing. By this logic, taxonomy itself is a colonial plot.

The author also condemns the commercialization of brine shrimp, particularly their use as fish food and their reinvention as the whimsical “Sea-Monkeys” pet marketed to children. This, they say, constitutes “environmental violence,” a term that appears to mean anything they dislike about human interaction with water-based ecosystems.

Drawing from perspectives offered by queer death studies (Radomska et al. 2021, p. 2), the brine shrimp’s ambiguous status and reproductive agentiality, hovering between the “living” and “non-living” in a state scientifically referred to as cryptobiosis, were reinvented for entertainment, concealing environmental violence.

To support their critique, the author invokes “low-trophic theory,” a concept they describe as prioritizing the ethical interdependence of organisms in an ecosystem. While the principle itself might have some use, the author’s application of it veers into parody. She laments the capitalist exploitation of the shrimp’s reproductive system, framing the harvesting of brine shrimp cycts as a form of ecological oppression. This is all delivered in the impenetrable prose of critical theory, with phrases like “queer ethical field studies” and “feminist blue posthumanities” sprinkled heavily throughout.

The Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp

The paper reached peak woke in a section titled “Loving the Brine Shrimp,” which recounts a performance art piece called Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp. This event, staged on the receding shores of the Great Salt Lake, involved artists, scientists, and augmented reality brine shrimp. Participants made vows to the crustaceans, marched in a procession, and capped it off with a communal bath in the lake. The author describes this as “making love to the lake,” a phrase that may haunt frequent swimmers of the Great Salt Lake for the rest of their lives.

The wedding was not merely symbolic; it was, according to the author, an act of environmental advocacy. By expressing love and commitment to the brine shrimp, the participants hoped to challenge capitalist commodification and foster “multispecies solidarity.” The participants even asked the brine shrimp for their consent to marry, which the shrimp apparently gave telepathically to some participants, while the author seemed content in problematically assuming their consent after proclaiming, “I didn’t hear a no.”

The use of augmented reality (AR) technology added another layer of surrealism. Instead of interacting with real brine shrimp, participants directed their vows toward a giant AR projection of the creatures.

The author describes the procession and bath as transformative, blurring the boundaries between human and non-human bodies. For most readers, however, this spectacle is less an example of profound ecological insight and more a testament to the unchecked excesses of woke performance art masquerading as legitimate scholarship.

I am not sure if you’re sufficiently prepared for this, but below I present to you Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp in its entirety, which has been appropriately overlaid with Mystery Science Theater 3000 silhouettes by my good friend Dr. Rollergator.

[ Watch: "Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp" ]

A Crisis of Peer Review

While the paper’s content is laughable, its publication raises serious questions about the state of academic peer review. How did this article, brimming with jargon and palpably absurd, make it through the editorial process? Are journals so desperate to appear progressive that they’ll publish anything cloaked in the language of decolonization and queerness? The answer appears to be “yes.”

However, one thing is certain: the academic community must reckon with the consequences of allowing such work to proliferate. At a time when public trust in science is already dismal, papers like this undermine the credibility of legitimate scholarship. When even the most basic standards of coherence and relevance are abandoned in favor of ideological grandstanding, the credibility of academia itself is at stake.

* * *

As we reflect on the surreal spectacle of Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp and its academic context, one thing becomes clear: we need a term to capture the moment when scholarly work crosses the line from odd to outright ludicrous. I propose “marrying the shrimp” as the academic world’s answer to “jumping the shark.” From now on, this phrase will signify a project so absurd, so detached from reality, that it becomes a parody of itself.

Let’s explore how this term might find its place in academic vernacular:

“Oh Steve? Yeah, he really married the shrimp with his last research project.”

“Yeah Sally, your thesis wasn’t groundbreaking, but at least you didn’t marry the shrimp.”

“That journal used to have standards, but now they’re marrying the shrimp left and right.”

The phrase could also be used preemptively, as a warning to those teetering on the edge: “Careful, Karen. Your proposal on the patriarchal dynamics of Tupperware parties is dangerously close to marrying the shrimp.” Or, as a compliment when someone narrowly avoids absurdity: “I thought your case study on the history of medieval cheese wheels was going to marry the shrimp, but you really pulled it together!”

In an era where intellectual rigor often takes a backseat to performative absurdity, it’s important to keep a sense of humor about the bizarre trajectory of academic publishing. After all, what else can we do when purportedly serious scholars convene weddings for brine shrimp or ascribe nonbinary identities to water?

Alas, these are the times we live in.

--

==

How did we ever let these mentally ill retards gain institutional and societal-wide power?

[c0rpseductor]

first of all the thing about gender is that it’s stupid

second of all the idea that there are only two genders specifically is stupid. of course nonbinary identities and experiences are real but i don’t mean this statement in that way; what i mean is that western society creating two rigid gender categories that operate on a pass/fail basis where failure of one does not place one squarely into the other territory undermines its own argument of gender as a binary system into which everyone slots neatly. flunking out of manhood doesn’t automatically mean people see you as a woman, and vice versa for flunking out of womanhood. you get shunted into a sort of asterisk category, “failed man” or “failed woman” or “general failure at gender,” and there are tons of intersections beyond being gnc that might see you in a “failed” category or simply expelled from the system entirely and effectively degendered — race, disability, even to a degree your fucking BMI. linguistically or rhetorically perhaps there are “two genders,” but even within the hegemonic conception of gender there are a much larger number of discrete material experiences of gender. if the same gender is applied so differently to different groups that their material experiences related to gender are totally disparate, how the fuck are those actually in practice the same gender beyond that we label them as such?

this isn’t to say that one should degender members of other groups or some shit like that either, i just want to point out that even within hegemonic conceptions of binary labels there’s a huge degree of variation and nuance. and i point this out specifically because i was thinking about how often other TME people talk about gender, specifically the labeling aspect. i feel like there’s often this idea that contradictory labels that obfuscate any understanding of a person’s material experience (more specifically, that obfuscate whether or not a person is TME) are essentially a higher form of interfacing with gender, more enlightened, etc. the classic 5D chess description. it’s been pointed out that there’s often an element of transmisogyny in it, that trans women’s interaction with gender is treated as lesser by contrast because they’re “just” binary women, not some kind of Swiss army gender strategically labeled in order to win every sort of online discourse. of course this is ridiculous on the face of it, but furthermore it’s ridiculous because it presupposes a uniformity of experience within binary gender categories that is fully fucking fictional. it’s ironically more regressive, not less, to flatten existing complex material experiences within the binary and its “fail states” into what essentially feels like “boys do one thing, girls do the other, and absolutely every other possible experience belongs to a third thing, so if you at all belong to one of the first two categories you must be leading an incredibly shallow life.” like making the box smaller and just inventing a broader third box is not progress it’s just a total failure to engage with literally fucking anything