#even if TERFs do talk about that. lots of people talk about lots of things!

[cripple-punk-dad]

i hope you don’t mind this but like i’m 14 (not white, trans, gay, that stuff) and seeing a lot of people talk about how a lot of countries are going far right & extremism is coming back in full swing & no rainbow capitalism, etc is kind of scary. how do i like. not be so scared all the time? i just thought you’d know but if this is a weird ask i totally get it

It is scary. It's downright terrifying, looking out into the world and seeing the pattern of hatred, bigotry, and violence that is feels like its only growing more prevalent. Sometimes it feels like I'm on an island in a huge ocean of people who just want me to die, or change who I am, or both.

Not only that, but being 14 is fucking terrifying. You're not an adult yet, so you can't enact 'real change', you can't even drive (in the U.S) so your transportation is limited. You can't (legally) even get a job or anything. The world has done pretty much everything it can to keep you feeling scared. That's really hard to deal with!

This is usually where I'd say something dramatic, like "don't let them get away with that." But that's easier said than done. And that doesn't really answer your question, either. So instead I'll say this: It's hard to be scared when you 1) know your enemy, and 2) have other things to focus on. I don't mean that you should go debate every conservative you see, or even interact with them. But taking the time to understand the ideologies of fascism, alt-right conservatism, TERFS, white supremacists, etc. not only helps you to see how wrong they are, but also how they always fail and will continue to fail. This is also a good time to research and reinforce your own ideologies and beliefs. No one is immune to propaganda, but it's a lot easier to recognize it if you know what you're looking for.

But don't let that consume you. Remember, these people want you to be scared and isolated. If you spend all your time obsessing over everything wrong with the world (which is very easy with social media and the internet) then the people who want you gone will only grow stronger. So it really is a good idea to fight against that by building up a community of friends, and by building yourself up too. What I mean is this: Go outside, look at the ground, find a weird bug you don't know anything about. Read the obituaries in a newspaper. Go dumpster diving. Learn about something that interests you. Write a letter to somebody and never send it (or do). Pick up a weird hobby. You can just start gluing shit together, no one is gonna stop you, there are a lot less rules than you think.

But above all, remember that while history is full of empires collapsing, and wars, and horrors beyond imagination. The fall of Rome didn't happen overnight, it happened over centuries. But even in the midst of all that, people still made art, and had families, and not only survived, but lived fulfilling lives. I promise that you can and will be able to do that too. The sun will continue to shine, the grass will continue to grow, and the Earth will keep on spinning.

[youngpettyqueen]

sure youre a revolutionary trannydyke genderfag but are you normal about people who dont want to be called queer.

[spitblaze]

I will say this once because I'm tired of seeing stupid discourse: anti-transmasculinity is not about being treated bad because we clock as men, it's about being treated as stupid little girls because transphobes think we've been tricked into this.

It's kind of the opposite of transmisogyny- instead of fear and revulsion, it's constant condescension, the implications that we've been whisked away from femininity by scary bad guys, that we're going to cause 'irreparable damage' because we don't know what's best for ourselves, somehow. People fearmonger a lot about the "ugliness" of transfem people, but for transmasc people that 'ugliness' is used as a warning- you'll look like THIS! You'll go BALD! Your top surgery scars will leave you MUTILATED! A lot of aesthetic concerns. Worry about our 'beauty'. Because it comes from that same stupid reactionary 'we gotta SAVE the WOMEN' shit, but this time they have to save them from getting 'stolen away', as if we're being seduced or pressured into this. As if we can't make our own decisions.

For TERFS specifically, they're losing one of their own. We're 'gender traitors', willingly aligning ourselves with the half of the population they consider unilaterally dangerous and evil.

We aren't REALLY trans, we just want the benefits that men get. You don't actually want to transition, you're just trying to avoid misogyny.

You aren't actually a man, you're just a self-loathing lesbian.

Why can't you just be a butch girl? Why can't you just be a tomboy?

Why can't you just be something that I don't think is icky?

Anyway. Like all things, it boils down to misogyny. Women stupid and gentle, dont know what best for them, evil men trick into taking man juice, must save because lady stupid and dont know what best for them (having babies and being Feminine).

Theres like. Obviously more to this but I'm just a Transmasc Rando explaining this from my perspective, and I'm not the best with words. Anyone is free to hop in and add on to this

[thedreadvampy]

hey fun thing. fun thing I'm experiencing lately. is that the case which every terf journo in the fucking UK is freaking themselves about FINALLY being able to put on the front page - trans woman convicted of rape sent to women's prison - is uhhhhhhhh. really close to home? emotionally? for me? and it's on every fucking newsstand????

(obviously transparent as fuck every time that everyone's suddenly so concerned about the wellbeing of women in prison when all the same publications are usually in the CRIMINAL SCUM PRISONS ARE TOO SOFT TRAIN but OKAY. OKAY. since you suddenly care so much about female prisoners shall we uhhhhh idk address the rate of sexual assaults by guards? police? other cisgender prisoners? maybe rethink the whole 'prison' thing as a whole? oh this is just about how you think trans women are scary again? cool. cool cool cool.)

[cakemoney]

i don't want to put my uninformed foot in my mouth or get involved with the Discourse but i've been seeing the two extremes of reactions to the korean low birth rates issue (on tumblr and twitter both) and i'm just kind of like. look. i feel like "low birth rates (in many countries but especially japan and korea as part of this conversation) are more broadly the result of capitalism/a culture of overwhelming overwork that makes social relationships and having families incredibly inaccessible to young people" and "low birth rates are very much a part of the current conversation about misogyny and social expectations for women in korea especially in the context of reproduction as 'unpaid labor' for women" are statements that can both be true

[sureuncertainty]

at least now i've gone through an important tumblr rite of passage, watching a longtime mutual become a radfem :/

[mariathechosen1]

I don’t even know how to express this, but I just feel this deep rooted love for femininity sometimes and it’s so conflicting. Obviously I know that the whole “Let women be feminine!” thing is stupid, women are constantly expected to perform femininity, but the pure joy I feel from indulging in stereotypically feminine activities, as a very much traditionally non-feminine looking lesbian, is so unreal.

Like- I love you frilly dresses, I love you lace, I love you pretty makeup packaging, I love you flowy skirts, I love you pink, I love you lipstick, I love you florals, I love you reclaiming girlhood.

[cartoonrival]

i feel like people on this site cannot make up their minds about whether they want tumblr to make money so it can continue to exist as a site that isnt driven by an algorithm that tries to read your mind so it can sell Product to you every second it gets or corporations are never your friend and if you put money towards them youre stupid

[haarute]

it's great to see everyone collectively becoming more aware and calling out terf nonsense on sight but also ngl chief living through tumblr during 2012-2018 and seeing not just jabs but also just horrid takes on men on the daily and this just being Normal did a lot of irreversible damage on my person and my own issues

[afarthestarsarewaiting]

One day I will stop looking up triggering things on the internet I promise

[unityrain24]

i- what?? i am not getting how we got from a to b. what is the connection here

screenshot ↓

[euniexenoblade]

since we're talking about call outs lately, i've been called out many times, most of which are made from lies and sometimes by altering screenshots, but the most effective call out i ever got was like, in early 2015 there was a tumblr user everyone knew was a terf, but she would say "actually i support trans women" this was before crypto terfs were as talked about so the language wasn't really there to say "hey this person is a crypto terf." but yeah some people put posts of this woman on my dash and i made a random post on my blog "why do yall reblog her shes a terf" and of course she searches her own name daily, found my post, and replied to it that me calling her a terf was racist. that was it. no other interaction. but she went on all night talking about me being racist and just making things up as she went "oh i bet she says the n word all the time irl" kind of shit that had, like no basis? But her follower base took it 100% and i literally had thousands of anons telling me to kill myself, trying to goad me into being racist (didnt work), and the most concerning thing was i got hundreds of anons being like "what was the point of doing hrt if you still look like that, you should kill yourself." It was like, violent and overwhelming. and on top of it I'd get random young teenager trans people who followed her and bought into her bioessentialism showing up in my messages being like "you give trans people a bad name" "you're why transphobia exists" etc etc it was fucking crazy.

but i lost like, no followers because everyone around me understood, this woman was a terf. this all set up the real one though.

later in the year a teenage "communist" trans girl made some snarky comment about me being racist on a post of mine blowing up. i ignored her cuz like, who cares it's just some random teenager. but i guess people were looking for a reason to hate me cuz that blew up, lots of people just took that at face value no need to investigate. when someone finally did send the girl an ask being like "hey how is she racist" she replied "I dont remember but I know she is" and even more people just took this as 100%. the thing is, i do remember her being one of those "you make trans people look bad" terf following young trans people, it's not that she didn't remember, it's that she didnt want to admit she followed a terf and she believed a terf just saying shit. I lost like 3/4s of my followers, i had a lot of people i thought were my friends just stop talking to me, and going forward every time i got a call out there would usually be a line of like "also she's racist, everyone already knows this" all cuz this girl needed to make a snarky comment cuz she just loves terfs.

the thing about the "i dont remember" bit is it made some weird game of telephone. "I dont remember" became "oh she's racist, i think she says the n word" which became "she called black bloggers the n word" like people just made shit up about me and connected it to this call out. and when id be like this isnt true id be met with a "this is just known, youre a known racist" and it's like, to this day i will still find people be like "hey good on you for growing as a person and not doing that any more" and its like I NEVER DID IT TO BEGIN WITH

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Spicy Stories

JK Rowling: hello children Poe: oh Poe: oh joanne Poe: you're back Rowling: i have concernss Poe: uh we're mostly about just telling stories here Poe: you have your own campfire for your terf stuff don't you? Rowling: yess but they've really been getting on my nervess lately

Rowling: you know how it iss with terf deatheaterss Poe: not really Rowling: alwayss agreeing with everything i ssay Rowling: all "oh yes dark lord" this and "oh spare me dark lord" that Rowling: ssometimess you jusst get tired of hearing "masterful gambit dark lord"

Rowling: i tell you, you don't know how hard it is to run a cult L Ron Hubbard: oh yeah woof big mood Hubbard: people think its all fun, but its actually a lot of work Rowling: I know right????

Poe: regardless, joanne, i'm going to have to put my foot down Poe: this campfire is just for stories Rowling: uhhh actually i do have a new ssstory Rowling: i wass insspired to write after having an argument on the internet Barker: oh damn no shit? Barker: that's wild

Rowling: it's a new harry potter ssstory King: oh man! it's about time, i've been hoping for a new potter story for ages! Rowling: itss about hermione going back in time to help grindelwald, who actually had sssome good points if you think about it

Rowling: i call it Rowling: the time turner diariesss Barker: wow this is not really funny anymore Baker: its like INTENSELY not funny Lovecraft: catchy title tho!

Rowling: i'm retconning grindelwald into a misundersstood idealisst Rowling: who was only forced to make hard choicess because of the unreassonablenesss of decadent weimar society

Rowling: oh also you know that thing where people kept criticizing me cuz technically grindelwald's "evil" plan was to prevent the holocaust? Rowling: well good news Rowling: i've rectified that little mistake

Rowling: like, why would the naziss target transs & queer people, traditionally the most powerful and widely accepted memberss of ssociety? Rowling: would not the naziss, famouss for their love of diverssity, actually approve of them? Rowling: i'm jusst asskin questions

King: actually joanne there's a lot of well-documented evidence Barker: give it up steve King: no no i can fix this King: i'm sure if i just lay out the facts in a logical, well-reasoned manner- Barker: oh god that's so cute Barker: don't you just love him? Poe: that's our steve

King: so you see the nazi book burning of the institute for sexualwissenschaft- Rowling: nope Rowling: didn't happen King: King: well it kinda did, see, as i was saying- Rowling: thiss iss missogyny

Rowling: i don't undersstand you lot at all Rowling: i come into your campfire, i make a sstatement that i really want to be true & you all refuse to accept it Rowling: thiss issn't the way it works over with my terf deatheaters at all Rowling: they love accepting things i ssay!

Rowling: it'ss actually really missogynisstic that you all refusse to accept what i'm ssaying asss truth Rowling: even though you all know how badly i want it to be true King: but joanne, it isn't true- Rowling: ssave it for court ssteve!

Mary Shelley: sup fuckers Shelley: i got here late wot's going on? Barker: joanne is doing holocaust denial Rowling: EXCUSE ME it'ss only holocausst denial if you quesstion the murder of jews Rowling: tho now that i think about it i do have some questionss

Rowling: like, would they not have ussed their goblin magic to essscape? Lovecraft: ya know, she makes a good point Sonia Greene: i'm right here howard Lovecraft: Greene: see, this is why i don't talk much

[molsno]

whenever a "well-meaning" tme person starts criticizing trans women for being overly sexual or consuming too much porn or whatever it's obvious they're full of shit and a transmisogynist but it always feels so cruel because a lot of us genuinely did have no other option besides porn to explore transfemininity. like maybe that sounds gross to you but how the fuck do you think it feels growing up your entire life with your ONLY exposure to trans womanhood being fetishistic and dehumanizing porn? do you know how badly that fucks with our minds? how much trauma that leaves us with? have you ever even considered it?

it's so easy for you to sit there and look down on us for being "addicted to porn". of course it is, because it's people like you who created the conditions that banned us from every other avenue of gender expression by calling us sissies and faggots and beating us for something as simple as growing out our hair. if you don't like it maybe you should fucking do something to make it safe for the people around you to explore transfemininity in non-sexual settings. I know you won't, though, because it's much easier to call us pornsick males and laugh at us for being unable to conceptualize ourselves as fully autonomous human beings with value beyond just how sexually desirable we are as fetish objects.

it's fucking infuriating honestly. they'll say they don't believe any of those things and then start talking about how their criticisms of "porn addiction" come from concerns about how it objectifies "females". you know, REAL females, not like those "porn-addicted males- I mean trans women". they're so close to saying the quiet part out loud and it's not fucking subtle at all. next time you wanna talk about how disgusted you are by trannies jerking off why don't you go tell it to your crypto-terf besties, I'm sure they'll happily agree with you.

[decolonize-the-left]

I've noticed a rise in radfems/TERFs in feminism tags and more specifically trying to rebrand as The Real Feminism or True Feminism since it's "for the girlies" or whatever.

I am begging you all to help me bury them.

Because as a teen who grew up during the peak of exclusionary "bi/pan/aces aren't vaild" and "kill all men" era where the concept of misandry THRIVED I'm telling you this feels extremely similar.

And radfem/terf ideology got mainstream from those sentiments being so popular and so easy to tap into. It was framed as being righteous since men were oppressors.

"Women are good and men are just mean oppressors! Look at everything they've done!" is such a common sentiment in those circles.

It also completely lacks critical feminist thought.

And we're STILL dealing with the affects of it over a decade later.

.....So let's talk about JKR since she's currently the Figurehead and favorite of the movement that's trying to rewrite feminist history.

It's 2023. It's a year before a US election where Project 2025 and Trump would happily create a road for trans and queer folks to be imprisoned if not worse.

Which is I'm sure why JKR has been photographed and interacting with multiple members from The Heritage Foundation, people whove spoken for them, and people who attended theyre meetings. She even enjoyed watching Magdalen, who who she credits for becoming a TERF.

But do you know who Magdalen is? Or what else she was saying? What about any of the other people in the photo? Do you know the scope of what JKR was internalizing and how bad it was? Do you know she has ties to conservative anti-abortion groups?

Do you know what The Heritage Foundation? Probably not and they're the worst so let me tell you why it's such a huge red flag for her and other so-called TERFs and radfems to be associated with them.

Because I can tell you right now she heard a lot of things from those people and there is no fucking way in hell that it was just about queer people or just some sex-specific concerns. And it wasn't just passive bigotry.

Anyone who doesn't conform to the idea of a white, straight nuclear family (re: single mothers, leftists, immigrants, gay couples, etc) is made out to be an enemy of the state.

Anyone they can justify as a "national threat." Yes, they call us all a national threat on their site, their book, and the pamphlets they pass out to politicians. The details are listed on their website including the Mandate For Leadership which is their instruction guide for the next president.

I'm not exaggerating when I say it calls for genocide, prison camps, and eugenic cleansing.

Several people in that photo don't even support abortion, a basic women's rights that JKR claims to care about deeply.

JKR was consuming white supremacist dogma under the guise of feminism.

And she's not willing to admit or correct it which is where the problem lies. She won't even admit to herself that she was fooled or that it's bad or hypocritical.

My concern is that she is not the only person who's fallen for it and there are more everyday.

So it's very important to me y'all learn how to filter out what Actual Feminism is in this age where literal fascism is attempting to take its place.

Firstly,

Real, actual feminism will be welcoming to EVERYONE

Because the patriarchy doesn't only affect women or cis people or white women and it's an insult to every previous feminist icon to say otherwise.

Feminists have been fighting for decades to unite people under the concept that Patriarchy is a system that will be brought down with allyship and solidarity.

They've been fighting so hard and so long to prove that everyone deserves the same rights as men.

That women are just as capable as men and shouldn't be stopped from entering fields of study and sports dominated by men. They've been fighting to prove that women are just as capable and smart as any man is, that men would benefit from it dismantling patriarchy too.

Women fought side by side with the queer community to get Roe v Wade passed in 1973. You know why? Because despite what radfems and TERFs will tell you trans women benefit from protecting and standing up for bodily autonomy.

Do not let bigots tear drive a wedge between two groups that experience gender based oppression and would benefit from the same exact rights.

We have changed history together and they're terrified we'll do it again.

A screenshot from the largest feminist organization active right now, The National Organization of Women.

Notice how the T is included. They even posted this video two years ago when LGBT and specifically trans rights started really coming under attack in 2022.

Trans women are women.

Trans men are men.

ALL women deserve rights.

Every gender deserves equality and fairness.

And feminism is for all of us or it is for none of us.

Because nobody deserves to be treated the way patriarchy treats us.

[daughter-of-sapph0]

one thing about tumblr that I don't see anyone talk about even with all the discussion about horrible changes is what happens when someone blocks you.

how it used to be is that you could still go to their profile, and would be able to report them or block them back. but you couldn't see any of their posts. and if one of their posts did happen to show up on your dash through reblogs, you couldn't like or reblog it. of course, it wouldn't tell you any of this. it would just give an error message or load indefinitely pretending like something was happening, rather than just saying "hey this person has you blocked, so you can't interact with them"

now it's a lot worse. idk when it was, but some change made it so now you can't even click on their blog at all.

now you might say "what's the big deal? why would anyone even want to go to a blog that had you blocked if you already couldn't see any of their posts in the first place?" and while true, there was at least something you could do on that blank blog. blocking them back and reporting them.

here's how it worked in the past. if someone sent me a rude message or tagged me in a dumb post and then blocked me, I could simply go to their blog (which would be blank for me) and block and report them.

now, if somone does that, I cannot click on their blog. in fact, because I can't block or report them, they can keep sending me horrible things, or even do the same to others without any fear of consequences. in order to actually be free of them, I'd have to go onto the desktop dashboard which a lot of people don't use, go to blog settings, scroll all the way down to blocked accounts, and manually type in their url exactly and add them to my list of blocked accounts.

and also, there is no way to report them. if someone is being racist or antisemitic or homophobic, and they have you blocked, you cannot report them at all.

I'm not going to say that this change was made by the sympathizers on staff specifically to protect terfs and white supremacists who spend all their time harassing and stalking and abusing people online while making it harder for their victims to protect themselves or even make those people face any consequences for their actions at all...

but the fact that this change happened around the same time as the whole "scorched earth / partyjockers" situation where staff entirely disintegrated a post and all it's reblogs because op said that one of the people on staff was a hairy potty fan, it's a bit too suspicious for me to call it a coincidental change.