#don't read terf rags

[pineyw00dsshesquatch]

I was on a rabbit hole for Gladys Bentley, the queer Harlem Renaissance performer. Started reading one article that clearly had a queer voice, but curiously placed unnecessary quotes quickly revealed the source was a TERF rag. Gross gross gross.

[olderthannetfic]

Something that frustrates me about the Harry Potter conversation is a lot of people missing the point behind the motivation to boycott it. They seem weirdly focused on the content of HP when it's actually... not that bad? It's not perfect, in fact a lot of aspects are pretty fucking problematic and worthy of discussion, but not uniquely so by the standards of the fantasy genre. Yes, I know the goblins are clearly drawing on anti-semitic tropes. Yes, the house elf situation is fucked. Yes, lots of not-like-other-girls-style misogyny. Yes, Cho Chang was a fucking disaster of racism. I KNOW THIS ALREADY! I'm not an idiot and Harry Potter fans were talking about this for far longer than JKR has been a TERF. But I'm also a fan of the Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age and the Witcher and a shitton of isekai anime and tons of other fantasy medias which are so much worse. Harry Potter is only moderately problematic by the standards of most popular fantasy media, especially for the mainstream standards of the time period it was written. Worthy of criticism, but not dropping it entirely. And actually reading HP and looking back at JKR's behaviour at the time, much of it seems largely unintentional, just that JKR drew on a lot of fantasy tropes that she didn't properly examine as well as her own unexamined biases and she had some flawed understandings of progressivism that were fair for its day but don't fly now, but doesn't seem malicious. The actual authorial intent at least seems to be pretty progressive at least, even if the execution wasn't the best. And sure, it's not a masterwork but there's a reason it connected to so many people, even if a lot of it was luck and timing. We don't have to ignore that and doing so feels dishonest.

I'm just so annoyed when people try to shit on the contents because they're missing the point and confuse the actual problem in a way that weakens their argument. I don't give Harry Potter money anymore because JKR crossed some lines for me in real life, totally separate from Harry Potter as a piece of media, and I don't want to fund her bullshit because she is so influential it is hurting people. The content of her books is utterly irrelevant to this decision. She could have penned a goddamn magnum opus and it wouldn't have mattered. So I'm sick of people bringing up books that are "better" or ragging on the contents of Harry Potter because none of that is the point and never was the point and it comes across as just taking advantage of a shitty situations to dunk on a popular thing or those who enjoyed it. Yeah, it was a mediocre fantasy series. But it hit the right emotional escapist buttons in a lot of kids even if it had the moral nuance and depth of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles anti-drug PSA. Having to drop it sucked for a lot of people because it can't be replaced and yelling about how bad the writing was doesn't change that because it never was about quality. JKR's TERF transformation was in many ways a betrayal of JKR's intended audience considering how the text preached acceptance and love and starred an abused, unwanted child getting to go to magic school where he's special. Pretending Harry Potter should be dropped because its content has issues obscures the actual problem of a raging transphobic having money and influence and that not everything created by bad people is poor quality so boycotts might require giving up access to things you actually like or are valuable and that's not always an easy decision to make.

JKR was a probably decent person with fairly liberal politics when she wrote Harry Potter. The books, while imperfect, are not more horrible or full of problems a dozen other popular fantasy properties. JKR become a TERF later in life and while she may have had ingrained transphobia prior to this when she wrote Harry Potter, that is not the same as the virulent hate-movement she's part of now and we should recognize how easy it is for people to get drawn into hate-movements. Any argument to boycott should be about how she's using her money and influence to affect real life laws and attitudes unless you want to try and get people to also drop half the fantasy genre.

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[sigmaleph]

in theory, it makes sense. No sex with men, no dating men, no child rearing with men, and no marriage with men. But. BUT.

I don't want to rag on the OP because broadly speaking I agree with their point but god how do you read that and react with 'well in theory it makes sense' and not 'wow I bet this is going to be a magnet for TERF shit'

you can't have a gender separatist movement that doesn't strictly police the barriers between genders, and you're not going to have a movement that strictly polices the barriers between genders and isn't transphobic.

[hirkyy]

hi!! so I saw your post, but I promise I'm not here to be a dick. while I get where you're coming from and I 100% agree women should be allowed to complain and speak out against their oppressors, most of the discussions (at leas the ones I've seen and engaged with) regarding the "hatred of men" and some of its roots in terf garbage aren't talking about that kind of stuff! they're specifically referring to actual discrimination and abuse that happens towards men specifically because they're men- how they're "naturally aggressive/abusive" and how its in their nature to want to rape and violate women.

where the TERF stuff comes in involves how these ppl don't see trans women as women, and only think they're out to prey on them by easily gaining access to their spaces- rarely are trans men painted so passionately as predators in the same way trans women are. butch lesbians (such as myself) at times are also attacked because we're also seen as predators and creeps for being more masculine.

now is the unkindness and discrimination towards men on the same par of what women have faced? absolutely not, but it's also not about that. it's never been about how men have it worse than women and that women shouldn't be allowed to speak up. that's not to say there's never some moronic fuckbag out there that says otherwise, but i promise they're not relevant to our viewpoints and ragging on them is 100% justified lmao.

but!! i apologize if i misread what your post was about, i just. wasn't completely sure bc of how some things were worded. sorry also for the massive text wall and if i sounded rude at any point aaa. i hope what i've said's been helpful if need be!!

anon, with respect to your commitment towards being courteous and civil, i stopped reading after "actual discrimination and abuse that happens towards men because they're men", which is not a real thing.

i made a post talking about how infuriating it is that women are expected to cower and grovel to their oppressors because any expression of anger is immediately punished and twisted to make You the evil one and then the conversation is immediately hijacked to be about "misandry akshually" and you're all doing the same thing right under it, honestly the commitment is impressive.

being a misandry truther won't loop right back around to supporting trans women, you know

[scentedluminarysoul]

On the topic of censorship and this post:

I don't remember exact details, but something like 20 years ago, a German yaoi fanfiction site got sued. I think a parent saw their teen reading smut or something, and it got blown up to a pedophilia issue.

The site, which had very explicit warnings and a pretty good tagging system and etiquette, very dedicated mods, was forced to only show fics rated adult (yk, 'lemon' fics as it were) from 10pm to 6am, to prevent minors from accessing

Obviously a huge blow to the traffic. Idk if the mods did it or not, but explicit fics just started disappearing, getting deleted, and the site went completely bust shortly after

A huge site for mlm fics, gone. Because of censorship "to protect the children' because 'pedo icky'

If you're in favor of censorship of 'pedophilia', people will always use that to hurt queer communities

Baby queers, I BEG of you. We've been around this specific block so many times

If you don't like something THAT'S FINE AND VALID

But what it isn't is a moral issue just because you find it ick

I personally find A/B/O to be really gross and problematic. What do I do about it? Simple: I don't engage in it. The end. I avoid reading about it and trust people to tag it properly. Yes, sometimes it won't be ragged and it'll spring up and surprise me. Has happened in the past. But so what.

Sometimes you are confronted with things you find uncomfortable. It's unavoidable, actually. You need to learn how deal with it.

I closed the fic and that was that. I didn't start a petition to ban it forever yes I whined about improperly tagged fics on this here webbed site. But I what I didn't do was harass the author. A fellow human who made a mistake. They're completely entitled to write whatever the fuck they want to write

Anyway, rant over

Censorship bad

To repeat the point from the other post:

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

Edit: pertaining specifically to "pedophilia bad", how would even start defining it? What age of consent would you go by? For the whole internet? 16? 17? 18? 19? 20? 21? 2-fucking5???

Because ho BOY have you SEEN this here webbed site?

People will say it's "pedophilia" if people are different heights. If one partner is petite. If the age difference is more than 5 years even if both are adults. If they engage in consensual kinks. Size kinks. Role play. People believe in the 25 immature brain bullshit for real and see everyone below it as children unable to consent. I've talked to people who think asexuals, adhd-ers and autists can't consent. It's a fucking mess.

And that's not even getting into fiction, where adults with adult minds can look like children. And if you say surely that's pedophilia because they have small bodies, possibly underdeveloped, then I want to ask you: what's your opinion on little people? Disabled folks of sound mind with less developed bodies? Flatchested women? Men with small dicks?

Like, have you EVER even properly thought about consent at all? Like really? Who can give it and what it means? Because I have. Thanks to fiction, where I can do so safely.

Everyone has different icks they'll pretend are universal moral issues and definitely pedophilia. This is why you don't start with censorship in the first place.

If you think something should be banned because you, personally, feel disgusted by it:

Congrats. That's how every bigot operates. That's how TERFs work. You really wanna be that?

[goldieclaws]

I am once again grateful I look into things myself to make my own opinion on X topic bc I saw a video how 'ppl are being so mean to GirlfriendReviews for playing the terf game wehhh' and it was SO bad it made the girlfriend cry, so I went onto the stream, read the chat replay and there were, at MOST, 2 or 3 people saying (very politely, mind) how playing the game is bad bc it keeps Rowling relevant and in the spotlight. There were a few 'trolls' I couldn't read bc they'd been banned, but judging how chat and mods were saying 'separate the art from the artist!/the couple are ragging on the game anyway (ironically barely happened in what I had seen up to that point)!/keep controversy out of chat and let them enjoy the game!', I would assume they were just fellow trans ppl who were more aggressive with their words that made the poor cis ppl pee their pants oh no :((

And when the boyfriend/husband made his stance on Rowling known, it was so incredibly weaksauce?? At most he called her a boomer, but also her work is good/has had a positive impact? He didn't even comment on the transphobia or the racism or even the antisemitism when he had JUST interacted with a goblin no less. It came off as more as 'I don't wanna offend the masses' than 'I care for the wellbeing of those affected by Rowling's bigotry' (ironic with the game you're playing that started all this, huh bud?).

they really thought having donations go to the Trevor Project would erase them advertising a game with deep roots in antisemitism, racism, and transphobia bc of its creator and her product. My life, as well as those also affected by this, is in danger most of all bc I live in the UK homie (y'know, the place Rowling has most control over when it comes to trans lives and all?). my life (and jewish, non-white ppl etc. as well of course) should always be more important than dunking on Rowling. Always has been and always will.

Cry harder cissy. LGBT+, Jewish, and non-white lives matter more than your feelings, especially when what you feel (rejection, anger, sadness) lasts for just a few hours, compared to what we must endure for the rest of our lives. We are not 'controversies' we are human beings, good lord.

[grandhotelabyss]

Heh, it’d be interesting to see the thought you hinted at a while back about how Red Scare-ism can never really be properly TERF-y written up in some moderately disreputable rag.* Incidentally about the hippie/fascist thing I was just commenting something similar to a leftie associate, adding to the point about Morrison et al that of the great *leftist* American novels are secretly libertarian (some Hemingway, Dos Passos, much of what passes for leftism in PKD) as well. Underlying reaction is a disposition of the profession I suspect. Forget women, if civilization had been left to novelists we’d all still be living in grass huts!

* I won’t share my own thoughts on this atm (although my gut mostly agrees with you!) because much like the thing about Chu being dishonorable I almost have too much to say. I won’t do it, but it would be a fascinating project to try to do “an intellectual history of the red scare girl” from the 2014 Lana del Rey fan to the present.

I nominate Pariah the Doll to write up the anti-convergence of Red Scareism and TERFism. (Somebody should commission me to be a commissioning editor. Who commissions the commissioners?)

I never know if I should make a bigger deal about it or not, and I'm sure you know this, but I literally wrote one of the first "Lana del Rey is right-wing—and that's pretty much fine" essays, and got it published in a mainstream left-lib literary journal in 2014. This would have been impossible after 2016, though it's probably doable again, if not in that precise organ.

(Alex Perez said that middle-aged conservative or conservative-adjacent men's obsession with Lana seems forced and pathetic. I see what he means, but I think it's partly because she's one of the only post-monoculture stars who actually has a universal appeal, has something to say—or different but equally vivid things to say—to 45-five-year old men and 15-year-old girls.)

Agreed on novelists—but maybe just American novelists. There's that Dick quote—I came upon it in this book—where he calls himself a fascist but says he's trying to teach the fascist worldview to the masses, to everyone; but since the fascist worldview involves subjecting reality to one's will (he cites Mussolini to this effect, but it could be Nietzsche or Crowley or for that matter Emerson, and in any case Mussolini liked William James) then fascism for everyone is just anarchism, i.e., anti-fascism (since for Mussolini fascism was also a collectivist cult of the state and not a billion proliferating individual micro-realities). I didn't read and don't necessarily endorse the whole book, but the occultist John Michael Greer's political tract The King in Orange essentially ends by saying that American ethnogenesis is not yet complete—the true American has not yet been born—and this bone-deep libertarianism seems to have something to do with the ongoing nascence of this novel humanity. It's why I prefer outré neo-pronouns to "they" and am somewhat wary—this will irritate people, too, I'm sure—of gun control. We're running a very particular experiment here; maybe we'll all die, but still, let's see how it plays out. As our girl sings, "And if you don't like it you can beat it, beat it, baby." Of course I have other days where I think completely otherwise; I am only one generation out of Europe on my mother's side after all. Woodrow Wilson, however, did say in a speech delivered to newly naturalized citizens—I only read this because it's in the back of the Norton Critical My Ántonia—that their very desire to come here in the first place meant they'd been Americans all along.