#gender being a social construct doesn’t mean it’s not real

[king0fcrows]

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[radfemsiren]

🤍A basic rundown of my beliefs as a radical feminist 🤍

(I don’t represent every radical feminist, but these are usually the standard opinions you’ll find of many radfems. Hate or disagree with them, that’s fine! But know the truth of who I am and what I stand for beforehand)

- there are 2 sexes, the male sex is oppressing the female sex

- femicide, rape, child sex abuse, hijab laws, female genital mutilation, domestic labor, trafficking, war crimes, revenge porn, prostitution… women and girls around the world are being exploited, tortured, and killed because of this oppression, and it must end.

- female oppression is sex based oppression, meaning a woman can’t just identify out of her oppression (for example hijab laws)

- sex is biological and an immutable truth, gender is a social construct

- gender should be done away with because gender roles are male supremacist and result in women and girls being stereotyped, dehumanized, barred from education, safety, bodily autonomy, etc.

- defining women with anything other than biology is misogynistic and relies on stereotypes

- the biological differences between men and women must be acknowledged in order to effectively end patriarchal oppression

- radical feminism is getting to the root of female oppression (radical -> root)

- misandry is not real and is just an extension of misogyny (for example, “men are told not to cry!” Yes because women are seen as inferior and any trait associated with us is seen as degrading/emasculating for men. This is why there is no female equivalent to emasculation.)

- all current religions are patriarchal and made by men to exploit and control women

- access to abortion is a human right and should never be threatened, women are the creators of life and deserve to gatekeep it, as well as exercise full autonomy over our own bodies

- Using sexist gender roles to define yourself is giving these misogynistic stereotypes power (wearing makeup or dresses doesn’t make anyone less or more of a woman, this is misogyny)

- the beauty industry is patriarchal and exploits women, our bodies and our money

- sex work is not work, it’s always exploitation (consent can not be bought)

- the porn industry is patriarchal and relies on trafficking, coercion, and rape to function. It also conditions its watchers to be aroused by violence against women, and results in more real life consequences for women and girls

- women’s spaces and institutions must be protected. Women’s safety is more important than catering to male feelings

- marriage is a patriarchal institution made to exploit the domestic labor of women for her entire life

- BDSM/kink are patriarchal and only center the pleasure and well being of men.

- hookup culture is patriarchal and the risk to reward is not worth it for women to engage in it

- gender ideology is patriarchal and is a direct hindrance to female liberation (we can’t define ourselves or our oppressors, we can’t create spaces away from our oppressors, we can’t create laws and policy based on these definitions, people who are gender non conforming are pressured to alter their bodies to conform to a rigid standard and become lifelong medical patients, etc)

- choice feminism and liberal feminism caters to conforming to patriarchal standards and institutions, and refuses to examine why women make choices under patriarchy

- women of color face oppression on the axis of our sex and race, men of color only face oppression on the axis of their race

- non white patriarchal institutions must be criticized: a mullah is just as dangerous to the liberation of women as a pastor is

- women should decenter the men in their lives just as men have done with women. That means prioritizing us! Engaging in women’s media, art, stories, fostering female communities and support networks, uplifting and empowering their sisters around the world

- being a radical feminist means consistently taking radical action, big or small, we all can do it! Go support a female artist, go donate menstrual products to a shelter, go tell off a man when you see him making a woman uncomfortable. We all can make a difference!

…My feminism focuses on criticism of Islam and middle eastern patriarchy, but there are radfems with many focuses/passions… some in eco feminism, some on uplifting Romani women, black women, neurodivergent women, women with disabilities, prostituted women… some are passionate about women’s sports, women’s art, women’s writing, women’s history, lesbian and bisexual women’s stories… everyone has their passion on here, so before you come to attack, just check out my blog and click around at the different profiles on this corner of the internet…. maybe we might not be the terrible witches you thought us to be. Or maybe we are, but witches are awesome so who cares lol

[rollercoasterwords]

hi there! i saw a post you made ages ago about gender not necessarily being a static thing and being something that can change over a person’s lifetime.

excuse my ignorance in this but do you think that is something that applies to a person’s sexual orientation as well? i always appreciate your insight on these topics.

also, apologies if anything is worded strangely. english is not my first language.

no worries, i can understand u perfectly! and my short answer to ur question is yes

longer answer is i don’t think anyone is born w some innate metaphysical identity that they can unearth to discover their True Self; i think sex, gender, and sexuality are largely socially constructed, though obviously materially rooted. the comparison i sometimes make to explain this to students is to think about an accent—certain physical aspects influence accent (mouth shape, vocal chords, etc) but ultimately the accent a person has is almost entirely shaped by the world around them; babies aren’t born with some “true” accent they have to discover about themselves. but that doesn’t make a person’s accent any less real or “natural”!

i think where some people get defensive abt the idea that sexuality isn’t necessarily static or innate is that oftentimes conservative voices have used this specifically to say that being gay is a phase, etc. this is a very clever trick, in which heterosexuality is enshrined as “natural” and any sexuality departing from that is a phase, a choice, etc, such that many queer people have found themselves cornered into arguing that queerness is also natural and innate, just like heterosexuality. but the ‘born this way’ narrative will ultimately not lead to liberation, because it fails to question the basic premise that heterosexuality is natural and innate; in reality heterosexuality is just as constructed and contrived as any other form of sexuality, and in fact we often see the lengths that people must go to in order to hide this fact. kinda like the wizard of oz behind the curtain (the invention of heterosexuality by jonathan ned katz is a great book abt this!)

the other sticking point i think people often have with this concept is that they think saying sexuality isn’t innate means people can just pick & choose who they’re attracted to. but that’s not how social constructs work! again, going back to the example of accents, just because an accent is socially constructed/developed does not mean that people can just snap their fingers and get a new accent. this is because social constructs are grounded in material realities and have material effects; they’re not just playing make-believe. money is another good example of a social construct that has very real and tangible material effects; i can’t just take monopoly money to the store and buy something.

so…yeah. i think sexuality can be just as fluid as gender. maybe you’ll be attracted to something at one point in your life and that’ll change over time, or maybe you’ll identify with one sexuality and then later figure out a different label works better for you. when it comes to queer politics & queer communities, i really don’t see a point in trying to nitpick or analyze whether someone is REALLY x sexuality, or what the “correct” label is for someone to use, bc i find labels more useful for identifying shared struggles than for like. unearthing buried metaphysical truths about identity lol. i also have found that i personally am much happier not worrying about figuring out my “true” sexuality and just using whatever label best fits my experiences & how i’m perceived in the world

[nekropsii]

I have a very genuine question and I come with no intent of provoking anyone, but what do "masculine" and "feminine" mean if we don't go by stereotypes like wearing skirts and bows or having a certain attitude? Or are you saying that wearing pants is masculine is an outdated concept? I can understand that man and woman go well beyond presentation and stereotypes, but I thought masculine and feminine meant just that.

Gender is an ever evolving social construct and complete genuine horseshit, but there are some declarations of what is and is not belonging to a certain gender presentation that are wildly outdated. So yes, I’m saying that “wearing pants makes a woman manly” is outdated, because it literally fucking is. That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time. Maybe that would mean something in a piece of media from the god damn 1800’s, but it doesn’t mean shit now, and it’s patently ridiculous to act like most women don’t have a pair of fuckin’ pants in their wardrobe in the year of 2024 in the continent of America.

To look at a woman who is hyper-feminine and declare her masculine on the principle that she is wearing fucking pants is weird and sexist because no normal person thinks that way without themselves also being sexist, often to a very substantial and oppressive degree. There’s women’s pants. There is a women’s pants aisle. Do you earnestly think a pair of bedazzled bellbottoms with BABYGIRL printed on the ass and no pockets and zero crotch room is intended for men to wear? Because they’re not. Like, I’d love for men to wear that shit, obviously, but it’s demonstrably not intended for them to wear - again, zero crotch room, no pockets. Women’s pants are a real thing that exist and they’re notoriously built differently from men’s pants. And by differently I mean often built like shit, and this is why some women, regardless of gender presentation, will shop in the men’s pants aisle, and this does literally nothing to damage their own femininity.

In the context of Meenah, it is even worse to declare that she is masculine purely on the basis that she is wearing fucking pants, Jesus shitting fuck Christ, because she’s very, very clearly Black coded. This dips straight into Misogynoir, quite clearly. A big part of Meenah’s character is her femininity, but she’s often labeled as masculine purely for stupid shit like “being mean” and “wearing pants”. It smacks of how every Black woman has to fight just to be seen as herself, because society so often strips people of the choice to be perceived how they wish to be seen on bigoted grounds. Black women are frequently labeled as manly no matter how feminine they are on the basis of them not performing femininity to white standards - not quiet, prim, dainty, minimalist, subservient.

Any little thing gets a Black woman’s Woman Card yanked from her hands. “Too loud”? Scary, manly. “Too mean”? Aggressive, manly. “Dressed wrong”? Sloppy, oversexual, manly. It’s practically the default form of Misogynoir. And here people are, proudly declaring it and defending it using some logic that only works in the 1950’s and back, or proudly declaring that saying that wearing pants makes a woman more masculine by default is a totally normal thing to say by pulling out some absolute Spiders Georg examples. Tone deaf.

It’s… Really not that difficult to parse, but Tumblr has an issue with recognizing any form of misogyny or racism, especially in itself, Jesus Christ, so… What can one expect.

[genderkoolaid]

(different person than last anon) can you give us like actual scientific papers that "nonhumans" are real and not just ppl that need a lot of psychological help? bc like while gender + sex can be very diverse and change w the individual, species is extremely specific and thats why shit like making crossbreeds is so insanely hard and they usually end up infertile bc the genes arent meant to be combined. n also the only example i can think of of any other species having "i am not the species i was born as" thoughts is that one female monkey that was raised so close w people she thought she was a person and she would refuse to breed w any of her primate species bc of it. you would call that mental illness in that monkey because she cannot be a person in a monkey body, just like someone can't be a dog or angel or horse in a human body, so why do you not consider being "nonhuman" also a mental illness?

can you please explain about alterhumanity? I don’t mean to be negative, I don’t understand… “there are only two sexes” is wrong because biology knowledge we have today actually doesn’t support that. did modern taxonomy find out something similar about humans? that’s very interesting, I don’t know a lot about it! but if you do I’d love to read that research!

So I think "there are only two sexes" isn't the best example; the comparison is more like "people can't change their gender because gender is whats in your pants"

Yes, we can look at chromosomes and hormones and sexual organs, and that stuff is related to gender. But to say "gender/sex is a construct" does not mean "chromosomes/hormones/sex organs don't exist." Its pointing out that our relationship to those things is culturally dependent (I wouldn't say "unnatural" because humans making social constructs is natural).

Similarly, we do divide up species based on reproduction and common ancestors. But "humanity" is also a construct. What it means to be human & who is defined as human can and does change depending on our culture. Not only can some people be excluded from humanity (for example, people of color and neurodivergents), but some people believe they are spiritually nonhuman (whatever that means for them). Some people who have been rejected from humanity identify as alterhuman as a way of saying "you don't want me, then I don't want you" (voidpunk is related to this although not inherently alterhuman). Some people are delusional and identify with alterhumanity as a way of coping with their delusions (and also, yes, you can be self-aware about your delusions). Some people believe in reincarnation or alternate universes or have some other spiritual belief related to being nonhuman. Some people just feel like dogs and enjoy being a dog and it doesn't matter why because they just like it.

Honestly, the monkey does sound like a monkey-version of alterhuman, because (if I can get a little anthropomorphize-y on y'all), it sounds like she did not feel apart of "monkey culture." Obviously we can't know if monkeys have a concept of monkey-hood like we do with humanity, but if they did it would not be hard to imagine how a monkey raised with humans would feel more human than monkey. But regardless... we don't need other species to have alter-species-hood for the same reason we don't need snails to crossdress for trans people to exist. Other animals probably don't have the same complex. abstract social constructs we do.

Why can't someone be a horse in a human body? For the same reason someone can't be a man in a woman's body- because "science says"? Both trans-denial and alterhuman-denial emphasizes biology over sociological investigation, which leads people to just keep shouting "but science!!!!!!!!!!" at people who are more invested in questions of culture and constructs and what it means to be [man/woman/human] in society.

(Also, I'm kind of uncomfortable with how the first ask talks about mental illness. Specifically "person believes harmless weird thing, so they must need Psychological Help for their Wrong Thoughts")

[justsomeguycore]

the whole deal with socialization/conditioning is like. it is absolutely real, but the effects it has on a person are in no way uniform and certainly not permanent. different people take to the conditioning differently. often people realize they’re trans when they reach a point of not being capable of living up to what’s expected of them. when i was little if someone tried to tell me “this is for boys, that is for girls” i immediately would be like “that’s stupid” lmao. doesn’t mean they didn’t keep trying to condition me to be a proper lady but by god it never fucking worked.

and i think that’s the case for a lot of trans and queer people. the conditioning just doesn’t take because there is something inside us that keeps denying it. but even cis and straight people experience this for other reasons - neurodivergence, trauma, disability, even just personality and interests/passions can make a person unable or unwilling to meet the gendered expectations that have been taught to them. just because gendered conditioning exists does not mean there’s some fundamental difference between the sexes that excludes any exchange between them. this idea that your experiences as a child shape your adult self is not incorrect, but it’s also not absolute. we view childhood as flexible, malleable, and adulthood as fixed, but it’s not true. we are still all capable of learning, unlearning, growing, changing. also despite the cisheteropatriarchy’s best efforts, there actually is no universal “girlhood” experience that is distinct and mutually exclusive from a universal “boyhood” experience. humans love our little categories so much but at the end of the day they are total constructs, generalizations, self fulfilling prophecies.

[enbycrip]

We’ve seen it everywhere. But it’s incredibly important that this is seen, discussed and accepted in academic discourse for a whole bunch of reasons.

The misogynist idea that AFAB and AMAB bodies are fundamentally very different and that AFAB bodies are fundamentally inferior is putting up a huge fight atm.

It’s not only “gender criticals”, though they are a big part of this and transphobia is one of the big battlegrounds of it. It’s also the anti-choice stuff rolling across the US trying to define any body capable of pregnancy as having its primary function being a vessel for foetuses.

And to do that you need to play up the idea that those bodies are fundamentally very different, and that AFAB bodies are fundamentally “intended” for pregnancy and birth. Enforcing this fake history where AFAB lives were entirely defined by pregnancy, birth and child-rearing is a weapon in that, and exposing it as ideological rather than evidence-based is *incredibly* fucking important.

This *doesn’t* mean that we should stop pointing out the fundamentally ridiculous nature of considering hunting as important as it is painted in popular culture when most studies consider that 80% minimum of “hunter-gatherer” societies’ food is foraged. It’s a fundamentally Victorian construct that considers “hunting is the active, ‘masculine’ work so therefore it must be the *real* work of a society”, no matter how much evidence is found that foraging was far more fundamental to survival.

It is *so* important to keep on emphasising the constructed nature of not only human gender, but gendered structures in human societies.

There is this huge sociopolitical push from “conservative” religious and cultural forces all over the planet rn to push the idea that certain social structures - fundamentally misogynist ones - are somehow “innate”, “inherent” and “natural”.

Hence the push to attack trans people in particular. We put the lie to so many of their cherished myths just by existing. We are living magic - the proof of human fluidity; the living potential for change; the living promise that things Don’t Have To Be This Way.

[heartless-aro]

What does it mean to feel romantic attraction?

The reason that it’s so difficult to know whether you’re aro or not isn’t just because it’s hard to verify the lack of something. It’s also, at least in part, because romance is an often vaguely defined social construct. It’s pretty much impossible to pin down an objective definition of romantic attraction without that definition being somewhat circular (“romantic attraction is when you are attracted to someone in a way that makes you want to do romantic things with them”), because the boundaries between romance and non-romantic feelings are indistinct and they twist and overlap in odd ways, so that people don’t always seem to agree where one ends and the other begins.

That isn’t to say that romance doesn’t exist or that there aren’t differences between the experiences of alloromantic and aromantic people, but different people and different cultures understand romance a bit differently, so there isn’t really a clear line that separates “romantic feelings” from “non-romantic feelings.” It’s a bit like how a lot of people (especially questioning trans, non-binary, and genderqueer folks) have trouble knowing if they “feel like a girl/guy/both/neither/etc.” What does being one gender or another feel like? What does romance feel like?

I think one of the hardest things about figuring out whether or not you’re aromantic is that no one else can tell you whether your feelings are romantic or not. You have to decide for yourself whether the concept of romantic attraction feels useful for categorizing your experiences and, if so, to what extent? You have to decide for yourself whether you feel that your experiences align with the normative experiences of alloromantic people. “Aromantic” means that you feel little to no romantic attraction, but how little counts as little? What counts as romantic attraction? These sort of things are so easy to get caught up in if you’re questioning whether or not you’re aromantic, but I think the real question to ask yourself is how much you can relate to alloromantic society? Do you connect to the idea of romantic attraction and experience romantic attraction often enough to feel included in alloromantic society, or do your experiences in relation to romantic attraction make you feel unusual, out of place, othered, or alienated by society at large? Do you relate more to the experiences of alloromantic people, or to the aromantic community?

[melancholicmarionette]

Thoughts I’ve been trying to put into words part a thousand—

I think I have the sentiment “I don’t get why people get all serious about gender” but I never know how to say that without sounding dismissive as fuck to people who really need to not be dismissed. But I mean like—okay—

So I’m autistic. This is not news. I don’t know if it’s totally related, but it means I’m used to not really understanding things about the world on a fundamental level, mostly greater concepts that people accept as fact. I’m bad at math and most hard sciences because I am told that pi is a number that never ends and it keeps going forever and that these are how many elements make up everything in the universe and maybe there are more or maybe there aren’t. Like, my brain simply cannot conceptualize these things. I know that these are important things to know, I just have 0 clue how it is possible for a person to know them. But there are people that know better than me. So someone goes “also, there are imaginary numbers” and I’m just like “…okay.” That’s just not somewhere my brain goes.

So when I say I don’t get why people get so weird about the social construct of gender I mean—well by people I mean TERFs, really—life can be filled with so much less anguish and turmoil if you just accept that you are not going to understand something and that doesn’t make you stupid or wrong. Sometimes accepting that things that are not tangible or visible are still valid makes your brain stop hurting.

I’m a woman. If you ask me how I know that intrinsically my go to response is I Don’t Know, I Just Do™️ and if someone, cis or trans or nb or anything else, said that to me I cannot imagine any other reaction than “well, okay.”

Gender is a social construct. We made it, collectively, and it’s changed a lot in the entire time we’ve accepted it. It’s still changing now. So there are a lot of things we can’t see.

Fact that I can’t dispute: penises and vaginas are different from each other. They are fundamentally not the same thing. There are a lot of ways people’s genitalia can look, being intersex is possible. Physically, visibly, there are different body types whose reproductive organs work in different ways. It makes perfect sense to me for that to be true.

Where it gets fucky for me: your random assignment of chromosomes gives you a role in society at birth that you cannot fundamentally change ever in your life. And if you ask why this is, people will just say “god said so” or something and idk maybe your god did, sure, but I don’t know him. He ain’t the boss of me. And then TERFs and the like will go “because nature said so” or “because biology said so” and I’m immediately like no!! No they didn’t, Joanne, you said that!! Biology and nature said one of these types of bodies carries babies and the other helps make the baby, that’s it!!

I don’t cite my vagina when writing about why I’m a woman. It has nothing to say. I don’t know why pi never ends and I don’t know how the fuck we know enough of what a water looks like that we can make little models, but I live in my brain and I know how I feel. I am never going to know another person better than they know themselves and it’s fucked up when people claim otherwise.

So I don’t feel like I can participate in discourse in a meaningful way because I’ll say “this trans woman is a woman” and some chucklefuck with a blue check will say “but they were born with a penis” and my response is so what. Genuinely, so fucking what.

One of JK Rowling’s first transphobic posts was saying that the trans community are trying to deny that sex is real and it’s such an intellectually dishonest take I was taken aback. I don’t think you’ll find anyone outright denying that sex organs that fall within the binary standard are in fact physically different from each other. The hang up is that that assigns you an identity that you didn’t necessarily consent to because you were a fetus at the time. So my automatic response to arguments of that nature, that gender itself is assigned this way and that way and no other way, are unironically “who do you think you are?”

I can’t engage in intelligent discourse with the way I feel because on paper it seems childish. My response to transphobes is oh my god just shut up. And it’s not necessarily because reading the cruel and untrue things they can fit into like 280 characters is draining (because it is) it’s because I just don’t believe any of their points have value. And it infuriates me that these people so consumed with hatred for people they don’t know are affecting legislation and the safety of trans people. And I can’t engage because I don’t believe these people can change and that bleeds through. They are nothing. And if any TERFs (or GC, I think you’re using to sanitize it) have read this far, they think the same about me. Probably that I’m a simpleton who hates women and lives in a bog eating swamp sludge for sustenance and i take offense because I do not hate women please get out of my swamp.

Idk, I’m rambling on tumblr late at night bc I can’t drop this into a conversation. I’m tired. Trans right are human rights gender is a social construct and I may be a mud creature shambling through the bog

[canichangemyblogname]

Y’all really keep equating harm with oppression. A straight person does not face homophobic oppression (and certainly doesn’t face straight oppression). A man does not face misogynistic oppression (and certainly doesn’t face misandristic oppression). A cis person doesn’t face transphobic oppression (and certainly doesn’t face oppression for being cis). But are these people still HARMED by these systems of oppression? Yes. Harmed, but not oppressed.

There is more to oppression than bullying or emotional stress. Oppression is legal, cultural, political, wide spread— systemic. A cis het man is not oppressed by the patriarchy, even if he is harmed by it.

As I said in another post “Man-ness (the state of ‘being a real man’) under the patriarchy is defined very narrowly, designed in a way so that most people lose.” You cry? Not a ‘real man.’ You wear pink? Not a ‘real man.’ You help with chores around the house? Not a ‘real man.’ You want to take paternity leave? Not a ‘real man.’ You don’t want to work 12 hrs/day in a physically demanding and/or emotionally taxing field? Not a ‘real man.’ Everything you do can disqualify you from being considered a ‘real man.’

Now, the reason for this is a system of ordering society that is predicated upon the idea that men and women are fundamentally separate with their own “natural spheres” of behavior and norms. The lines between “man/male” and “woman/female” are oft drawn based on misogynistic assumptions and a priori conclusions about dominance and power, like “men are active and women are passive” or “men are dominant and women are submissive,” and they often tie this into biology (“women are submissive because their anatomy is designed to receive penetration during sex and men are active because their anatomy is designed to penetrate”).

Beliefs about who a man “should be” are often a reflection of an individual’s reductive ideas about women, and those reductive ideas exist as a result of living in a system constructed through misogyny and a worldview predicated upon misogyny. The whole ideology is built upon an a priori assumption that women are inferior or submissive. These assumptions build into worldview conclusions like the following: “Women are naturally suited to the home and naturally nurturing because they can give birth. As men do not give birth, they are naturally suited for ambitious pursuits and the workforce. Ergo, taking paternity leave is against a man’s nature.”

A practice or idea can be rooted in an oppressive worldview under a fundamentally oppressive system, but that doesn’t mean that anyone and everyone affected by that system and idea is being oppressed by it. A boy is not oppressed by misogyny when his coach screams at him “You throw like a girl.” A white kid is not oppressed by racism when his mother tells him, “Only thugs, criminals, and blacks get tattoos.” A heterosexual kid is not oppressed by heterosexism when the boys on his hockey team call him “gay” for liking anime. Are these hypothetical people facing harm from a narrow-minded system and worldview? Yes. Gender and racial policing do cause harm. But are they facing oppression? No. The pain of insult is not oppression. The words in those scenarios are being used to try and reinforce a behavior or instill in the child a certain belief system that is reproduced through the systemic disadvantaging of another group. They serve the function not of harming a member of a ruling class, but of reinforcing divisions and teaching the child about how the world is “supposed” to be ordered and how they— the child— can order it that way.

Oppression is about power and whether people in a dominant class can use the political, social, economic, and cultural systems in a given society as tools to further their worldview, often at the expense or exclusion of sociopolitical minorities. A society’s systems are a tool that a ruling class can wield to reinforce a specific way of living as “legitimate.”

“Yeah, but my cis het brother cropped one of his T-shirts and this homophobe called him gay.” Okay. I bet that hurt. Those words are certainly indicative of that person’s narrow worldview. Goes to show how the narrow definition of “man-ness” is used to try and reinforce proper deportment so according to the patriarchy. It would be incorrect, however, to suggest this was oppression.

Your cis het brother will never walk into the County Clerk’s office with his fiancée and be told that they— the Clerk— won’t sign or legitimize their marriage certificate. Your cis het brother won’t walk into a leasing office with his wife and be told, “Sorry, this is a family community; we only sell to families.” Do you see what I’m getting at here? He’s generally not going to think twice about what he wears and where he wears it like a gay kid would because he doesn’t have to worry that a heterosexual man might murder him and get away with it by arguing that your cis het brother is a homosexual who made an unwanted sexual pass at him. Your cis het brother’s fiancée cannot defend her murder of him in more than half of US states by arguing that she was unaware he was trans (even then, this defense is utilized near exclusively by cis het men after their murder of trans women). Is this making sense?

[swordwithribbon]

abolishing gender identity = there are zero genders, no one has a gender, it is impossible to have a gender, being nonbinary or trans doesn't exist because there is nothing to identify out of, everyone on earth is genderless bc gender is a rightwing male invention and upholding it in any form is part of the patriarchal scaffolding holding up male supremacy, heterocentrism and capitalism.

abolishing gender identity =/= i've got a dick but i hate football therefore i must not be a real man, i've got a vagina but i've also got a personality unlike all those other silly brainless bimbos so i must be nonbinary, if you don't fit the rightwing definition of masculinity and femininity that means you're special and not just normal.

there are two sexes* - one of which has oppressed the other since time immemorial - and there are zero genders. oppressors cannot identify out of their privilege and oppressed people cannot identify out of their oppression. a white person cannot decide they're one of the good ones and identify out of their white privilege, and a male cannot decide the same either.

* if you're about to say something ableist about people with DSDs/"intersex" people, and claim they don't have a single sex because you're too stupid to understand how sex-linked disorders work, don't bother. i've heard it all before and it's all anti-science nonsense not dissimilar to anti-vaxx conspiracies.

thanks for the patronising explanation of what gender abolition would mean, although i already knew all of that lol. it’s interesting hearing such radical gender abolitionists such as yourself because i actually agree— abolishing gender would almost certainly be beneficial for everyone. but, none of you ever offer a practical and realistic way to achieve this: it’s always “gender doesn’t actually exist” but it does, you said so yourself. yes, it’s not a biological reality in the same way sex is and it is constructed but things that are sociological are still real. gender is a social reality.

being transsexual is at its core a medical condition caused by gender dysphoria aka gender discongruence. i find it abhorrent that anyone who hasn’t experienced such a challenging condition (which, as we all know, causes the trans su*c*de rate to be so high) would attempt to debase transition as “not liking football so i’m not a man”. you sound ridiculous. transsexuality is gender dysphoria being alleviated by a social and usually medical transition. interests have literally zero impact; if liking feminine things made you trans, all effeminate gay men would be transitioning, but they aren’t because there’s no dysphoria.

on a seperate note, other “trans umbrella” identities that you mentioned (e.g. nonbinary) are literally what you’re aiming for. nonbinary is a gender identity that defies all other binary ideas of gender, but for some reason this still upsets you because it’s being referred to as a “gender identity” and as such upholds in the loosest of ways gender norms. well, to that thought i ask: what’s the alternative? being transsexual or nonbinary or anything that goes against the conservative and very reductive idea that amab = man and afab = woman is rebelling against those conservative ideas. transsexuals are in favour of gender abolition. being trans is one step towards your utopian description of a genderless society, which, as an aside, we probably won’t ever arrive to unless society completely dies off and starts anew.

in regards to “identifying out of oppression” im not sure if you’re claiming i said this is possible, but i’ll give my thoughts. a trans woman who “passes” as the sex to which she has transitioned (and so is socially a woman) holds much less social power than a social man. yes, there are things that trans women cannot identify out of in the sense that they will always be biologically male, and so will never experience sex-based oppression e.g. oppressive abortion laws. but, a “passing” trans woman can and will inevitably experience misogyny as she lives as a woman day-to-day, just as a trans man in the same position will be treated as he is— a man— and be able to benefit from the social and daily privileges that this comes with. when people see a stranger, they see them as they are, not their genitalia or chromosomes or sex organs etc. so, yes, in part, oppression that isn’t tied completely to biology can be transferred.

as a final note, the racial comparison you mentioned is completely irrelevant as being “transracial” 1. doesn’t actually exist, and 2. even if it did, there would be no grounds for it to be valid as race dysphoria isn’t real. so you can’t really make a comparison between the two.

[feminist-bitches-only]

My current belief system (always subject to change) in case anyone found my blog and is wondering:

I am not a libfem

- I don’t find centering men in my feminism as empowering (ex: it is a myth that men’s mental health isn’t taken seriously while women’s is. When has women’s mental health ever been taken seriously??? We should be able to label our oppressors as men without being labeled as bigoted generalizers, as any other oppressed group is able to label their oppressors).

- Plastic surgery, makeup, and shaving are absolutely not empowering and I truly don’t believe there is any woman out there who truly deeply believes that these are simply personal choices that you would make regardless of social influence. In fact, certain plastic surgeries being considered as gender-affirming care is extremely misogynistic (ex: if you are on estrogen and grow breasts, but you’re unhappy that they are smaller than you want them to be - that is a symptom of misogyny & insurance should not be covering additional breast implants under gender-affirming care, thus enforcing the idea that something like breast size makes a woman).

- Sex-based oppression is VERY real. Thus, spaces for afab people should exist in addition to spaces for all women because of this & afab imagery is empowering to afab women and should not be shamed or called trans-exclusive - it is for the purpose of empowering afab people. Who are oppressed.

- Gender abolition is the goal. Gender has been constructed for the purpose of oppressing women, and has been clearly show to be used as a tool of oppression against trans people as well. Additionally, considering gender is constructed, it is perfectly valid for some to experience attraction based on sex vs gender.

- Gender-neutral language can sometimes borderline on offensive (but usually not as bad as radfems make it out to be). Additionally a woman’s issue can still affect people who are not women (ex: abortion access IS a woman’s issue [affects women mostly and is an issue of discussion only because it’s used as a tool to oppress women], but also affects trans men/enbies). If you would not say that poverty & underfunded schools are faced by the Black community just because there are also white people who face poverty, do not try to say that calling issues like abortion women’s issues is a problem.

- Misogyny against straight women/cis women/white women/etc. is still misogyny. While intersectionality increases the burden of oppressions, misogyny is still a very VERY real oppression that is often not even labeled - it’s just seen as part of living in this world as a woman (ex: rape, sexual harassment, and stalking are often not considered hate crimes; cunt, bitch, and slut aren’t considered slurs by the general public).

I am not a radfem

- There is literally no reason to misgender or deadname trans people. I cannot ever read posts on this site with purposeful misgendering without believing it is in bad faith (I don’t consider sex-based terminology as misgendering [it is perfectly okay for someone to have female/male biology but identify as a man/woman], but I ascribe to afab/amab terminology since it seems so be more affirming/less dysphoria-triggering to the trans community).

- Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary people are non-binary. While it is completely fine for you to base your gender off your sex [ex: I am a woman because I am an adult human female], it is not okay to act as if everyone’s gender needs to be determined that way. This is a major flaw of radfem ideology - if gender is a social construct, why would people be forced into a gender identity based on their sex??? Makes no sense.

- Queer is a good, empowering term. Anything can be used as a slur, doesn’t mean people can’t identify with it. I ascribe to the belief that slur reclamation greatly decreases a slur’s power. It is perfectly okay for people to not want to put their sexualities/genders into very neat boxes. Who cares if you could get a more specific understanding of someone’s sexuality with a gay/bi label?? Why is it any of your business to get a specific reading of someone’s sexuality?

- Trying to insinuate that you know someone’s sex based on shit like their facial features is embarrassing as fuck and incredibly misogynistic. I can’t imagine the embarrassment of being anti-patriarchy to only go to a cis woman and claim they’re trans because you think their shoulders are too broad or something lmao. Or, in the case of trans women, claim you know they’re trans because of *insert feature that many cis women also have here.*

My main interest: bringing communication and building relationships between the feminist & trans rights movements. Both of these groups are fighting their own oppression and I genuinely believe that they misunderstand each other’s concerns, goals, and experiences. I think that we are stronger together and as oppressed groups, we are not each other’s enemies. We can work together to stand up to the patriarchy, without dismissing the trans experience, and stand up to the gender binary, without excluding the afab woman experience. But as oppressed groups, we need to listen to each other. Lateral oppression is not, has never been, and never will be cute. ***For this reason, you will not see me tagging posts as “radfems dni” or “tras dni” or any variance of the two. People need to be able to interact and understand each other’s thoughts and concerns to be able to bridge this gap. I will not tolerate bad-faith conversation, however.

[0olong]

Trans Facts: Introduction

This is a set of resources for countering common myths about trans people, trans rights and trans healthcare, hosted by Resisting Transphobia in Edinburgh.

While committed anti-trans activists are extremely prominent in trans discourse, the bulk of people with worries about these things do not fall into that category. Many people simply have fears because they have been misinformed by politicians, the media and those prominent transphobes. With such people, it is worth correcting them on matters of fact, carefully and gently if you can. That is where this resource comes in: it provides a run-down of most of the common myths, with references where relevant.

Following the preamble, these are the facts in question. While this is a mythbusting resource, it avoids repeating the myths, since on some level that serves to reinforce them.

Sex is not binary.

Gender is a social construct, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.

This is not a dispute between scientists and trans activists.

Feminism is fully compatible with trans inclusion.

Trans people do more to undermine gender stereotypes than to reinforce them.

Nobody is being silenced for saying sex is biological.

Nobody is taking away hard-won ‘sex-based rights’.

Trans people’s rights are definitely under threat.

The category of ‘woman’ is not being erased.

It is not too easy for kids to access trans healthcare.

Kids are not ‘being transed’.

Puberty blockers are largely reversible, and have been used and tested for decades.

Puberty blockers are not the same thing as cross-sex hormone treatments.

There has never been a gay or queer liberation movement without trans people.

‘Cis’ is not a slur.

‘Detransitioners’ are not being ignored.

There is no evidence for ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’.

Being transgender is not a kink.

Please share this around - we desperately need more cis allies, in particular, to be equipped to confidently correct their friends and family members who have picked up lies about trans people. We could also do with a lot more people writing to media organisations and regulators to flag up when they are sharing disinformation.

Thanks everyone!

[sh5]

I’m so so so so sorry. no one should have to read my late night ramblings on society

@maple-leaf-in-autumn honestly, I need to do some Foucault reading to articulate exactly what I mean, but in skirting around his (and other’s) theories, what we are taught of justice is a societal construct that is based on humiliation and punishment as the thing upholding “justice”, when really what it upholds is the institutions of power. punishment should stop crime in our current theory, but it doesn’t, with nations upholding stricter police forces with more punishment actually having more crime, along with economic and discrimination issues.

with this in mind, the recourse I want is some sort of retribution for being misgendered, though I wouldn’t want that same punishment if i made that mistake (which I make frequently). this gave me a moment of pause, a moment of considering that “justice” as I’ve been taught it is simply a myth of victims being “given satisfaction” (if we want to take it back to medieval terminology and senses of justice), when in actuality, our actual systems of justice rarely target the “right” people (only 28% of pedophiles who are convicted serve jail time). just as many queer people i know deconstruct the societal institutions of gender and patriarchy, I think we can deconstruct why we as leftists push for prison abolition and the cessation of the death penalty; our forefathers in this realm of thought (George Jackson being the first to come to mind) have already made these connections, we as modern leftists are getting the drippings of their philosophies on social media decades later without a name or face attached and with poor education on radial ideologies in our schools, but rest assured there are people smarter than me who are saying this better than me decades before me.

All of this, of course, then calls into question the institutions of justice in our own lives. It calls into question how we raise our children and how we were raised. Modern theorists have said that “cancel culture” (i know, i fucking hate that term being used to discount accountability, but hear me out) is entirely based on this millennium-old institution that prioritizes punishment over supporting victims. Though I have many pushbacks to this, I think this is applicable when talking about small-time callouts, callouts for people with like 100 followers who wrote RPF when they were 12, people who are not “dangers to society” (said with tongue in cheek). We are those people who are effected by this (not at all new) need to publicize and categorize every mistake made to a larger audience for the purpose of shame or personal revenge (like people writing callouts about their ex). Even though you and I probably haven’t done anything abhorrently cancelable, this is a institution we are influenced by, or at the very least, the people in our lives are influenced by. This is why I fear being “canceled” for being manipulative in my real-life friend group of very-online queer people, because even as a person with a disability, many ableist attitudes have been repurposed into leftist language.

but unfortunately, to really internalize these concepts, sometimes you need the crack in the shell that breaks the institution open. I was already well aware of the injustice of the police; I lived in a heavily policed neighborhood where I witnessed (racial) injustice in action, but I started questioning the institution of justice as a whole (as Foucault and Jackson do) when I realized: I want justice out of emotion. My need for justice comes from an overinflation of offense that comes from a literal mood disorder. No one else in my life, even the person who was initially bothered by and told me about the misgendering, would ever be as harsh as I was being in my mind. Justice fulfills an emotional need, but I do not want my actions (nor the actions of my government) to be based on emotion. This was the real tipping point for me.

Also my best friend gets mad at me every time I say a Saw victim “deserved” it, and at some point I started to deconstruct that lmaoooo

[max--phillips]

hey! as a fellow queer person, i’ve been intrigued by your stance about sex as a construct. i work at planned parenthood and have a degree in women’s and gender studies, and im interested as to where you’re getting your information because it just isn’t entirely accurate. you’re right about gender being a social construct/existing on a spectrum but sex is definitely not a social construct. the word sex literally just refers to biological characteristics that develop as a result of testosterone or estrogen dominance during the first weeks of development. you’re right about intersex people, but their existence only further proves that sex is real. sex does not equate to gender, and someone’s sex often is different than their gender. but that doesn’t make sex a social construct.

So, you're absolutely correct and I agree with 99.9% of what you've said here. Sex is a real tangible thing that is definable. But let me come at it with some other examples: race is also a social construct. Language is a social construct. The way we define continents is a social construct. When you get down to the nitty gritty of it, pretty much everything is, in some way, a social construct; just because something is physical and definable and true doesn't make it not a social construct.

Humans define everything we experience. And all humans are inherently biased in one way or another, but they are always influenced by the society they live in. That means any definition, no matter how empirical and scientific it is, is biased based on the person who is defining it.

All that's to say: "sex is a social construct" is really shorthand for "the way sex is defined is a social construct." It does not mean that I think that like, vaginas and penises are fake or anything like that. It just means that the way we define sex, the parameters and expectations and all that attached to those definitions, are socially constructed. So no, the physical reality of having a body and that body having the parts that it does is not a social construct, but the concepts of "male" and "female" as we have defined them as a society are. I hope that makes sense, but if you'd like me to try to clarify anything please let me know !! (Edit based on another ask I just got: I do mean clarify anything I said about my thoughts on this, not like, on the topic in general. I’m not an authority on this.)

[graphophobiac]

Counting Crows

One for sorrow.

Chest constricting, winding tighter and tighter and tighter. The pain is unbearable. A lump in the throat, tears in the eyes. You cannot breathe, there is no air to fill your lungs. Nothing to grant reprieve.

Two for joy.

The cord snaps, the pressure gone. Your chest rises and falls with frantic breath, calming warm wrapping its arms around your trembling body. Inhale… Exhale… It’s alright now. You are safe.

Three for a girl, four for a boy.

Gender is a funny concept. Far beyond the other social constructs that you can barely understand. Gender is the least of your concerns; boy, girl. You don’t feel like either. Definitely not a boy. Being feminine is nice, but you are not a girl.

Five for silver.

Oddly, you prefer silver to gold, you still get to be on a pedestal with two others, but there is less fanfare, less added expectations of achieving the same next time. With second, silver, there is room to do better, but from the top the only way is down.

Six for gold.

The metal of victory, glistening in the sunlight. Malleable by bare hands, forcing you into the shape those around you want you to be. There is not a single regard to your wants, only expectations, more and more, uncaring if you buckle under the pressure. You must go on. You must win.

Seven for a secret never to be told.

But those jewels were never truly real. Empty congratulations echo in your head. You are not the person they want you to be, that they believe you are. You despise them for it, but can never correct them for fear of being ostracised, alone forever.

Eight for a wish.

You wish to be human, to be allowed to make mistakes. But you are not. You cannot be human. You must be a perfect robot, incapable of failing even the smallest amount. For even the smallest mistake means you are unworthy of any love. Any love you receive is meaningless.

Nine for a kiss.

Their lips press against yours, holding you tight, cradling you like the most precious porcelain ever to be crafted. They love you, they said so. However you cannot help the nagging voice in your head questioning every kind gesture, every act of love, wondering if they mean it or if they do those things because they pity you. It infects your mind. But right now, they are kissing you and holding you, and that’s all that matters.

Ten for a time of joyous bliss.

For a moment, you are free. The loneliness you are so deathly afraid of is the only thing that doesn’t judge you. The darkness, your bed, your clothes. They do not judge you. They allow you to make mistakes. Loneliness is your closest friend and your biggest enemy.