#gender liberationist

[hadeantaiga]

Here's the thing:

Cis people really do feel like the gender they were assigned at birth.

Cis women really do feel like women, and cis men really do feel like men. They experience what we would call gender euphoria related to dressing and expressing themselves as their gender, whether that's in a femme way or a butch way or any other way. They feel joy and connection with their gender, with their sexuality and how it relates to their gender. They wear clothes, participate in activities, and express themselves in ways that affirm their gender identity.

Gender critical radfems and terfs will try to convince you that "no woman feels like a woman". They do this for several reasons. Firstly, it's to try to convince trans men they aren't trans, they're just women with no connection to womanhood because "no woman feels a connection to womanhood". They also do it to try to discredit trans women, by saying "If you feel like a woman, then you're clearly not a woman, because "woman" isn't a feeling, it's biology".

A lot of gender critical terfs and radfems claim they are "dysphoric women", and will try to convince you this is a normal state of womanhood. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no, that doesn't sound normal at all, actually. Most women do not secretly wish they could be men, or more androgynous, or have a penis. Most women don't define their lives through suffering - they love being women.

If womanhood - or manhood - is making you miserable... you might be trans, or you might be gender nonconforming. See if dressing a different way makes you feel a spark of joy and happiness - seek euphoria!

Gender should be joyous, not drudgery.

[fanonical]

anon was saying you have to acknowledge sex to acknowledge transmisogyny, but stay cute

we know its you anon. we can tell by how you still are misusing the exact same concepts in the exact same way. don’t pretend to be somebody else to make it look like people agree with you nobody’s that stupid LOL

[fatliberation]

If its ok to ask; how do you feel about fat kinks? I havent seen any fat acceptance blogs talk abt it. /genq

I know it's a sore spot for a lot of fat liberationists (and yes, I'm quite familiar with why so please do not take to my inbox), I think people are scared to talk about it. personally, I think it is crucial that people with fat kinks are able to access fat liberation spaces so long as they leave the kink at the door. I say this not only because the majority of them are fat people, but because that community is steeped in a deep shame and feeling of brokenness for taking delight in fatness and/or weight gain, which perpetuates rampant fatphobia. and fat liberation is what will heal those wounds. I don't understand it when fat activists tell kinksters/fetishists/feedists, whatever you want to call them to stay out of the fat liberation movement. because what is the alternative? do you want them against the movement? that doesn't make sense at all. I think people are so uncomfortable, disgusted, or afraid of this community they don't understand, that they just wish they wouldn't exist. they aren't going away. kink is akin to sexuality, to identity, to queerness. I think what people really mean when they say feedists should stay out of fat lib is, "kink should stay within spaces designated for kink." we aren't talking about kink when it comes to who can belong in a movement, we are talking about people. it is wrong to equate every person who has a kink or a fetish to a predator. it causes very real harm to those people, because they internalize that message that their kink makes them a bad person who is inherently worthless, who has to hide. if feedists aren't welcome in fat liberation, they aren't welcome anywhere.

I think that people who love fat people, love feeding people, love their own fat bodies, who see their fattest selves as their most satisfying selves, would be natural allies to this movement once they find their way to it and feel safe and accepted here. I want to make it absolutely clear that ANYONE is welcome on this blog as long as they aren't harassing or harming anyone. so many of my followers and biggest supporters are kink blogs. some of my closest friends and fat liberationist allies are feedists. I know feedists who are way more educated and passionate about fat lib and body politics than most people I've met. I don’t wish for anyone to feel alienated on my blog - especially fellow fat folks and fellow fat allies. we are 100% FAT POSITIVE AND SEX POSITIVE on this blog, babey‼️

In fact I feel really glad when I see fat kink/feedism blogs engaging with my content bc it means that person is putting the work in to understand systemic fatphobia, how to be an ally to fat people (if they aren't fat themselves), but also healing their community through education and acceptance. and HOT TAKE, BUT: when it does happen?? when feedists aren't shrouded in internalized fatphobia, shame, and isolation, and instead start embracing this innate, powerful appreciation for fatness, it's literally so fucking beautiful? and so very queer?

choosing to gain weight on purpose as an act of self creation. because it feels Right for you. gaining weight to affirm the relationship you have with your body. getting fatter because you feel so much of your identity (even gender presentation!) is attached to your fat body. feeling sexiest when you're fat. someone else worshipping that about you. giving unlimited permission to nourish yourself and/or others - and taking carnal delight in it. releasing food rules and food guilt through centering pleasure. food and fatness as an erotic and sensory experience. finding feedist partners who also have this ingrained love of fatness that can't be replicated, partners who are willing and eager to support and adore your fat body, NOT merely tolerate it. reclaiming tropes used against you through kink, and turning a loving gaze inward. saying "fuck you" to the system and choosing to take up more space in a world that consistently tries to shrink you. never denying yourself pleasure even though everyone is telling you you don't deserve it. feedism is such an interesting facet of the endless spectrum of human sexuality and I think that once people in that community find liberation and heal their relationship to the kink, it can be one of the most radical forms of self acceptance and exercising complete bodily autonomy.

I already know that a love letter to feedism coming from a fat lib blog is gonna piss people off. I'm going to lose a lot of followers, I'm going to get a lot of hate. but. kink in general is SO demonized and SO misunderstood and as liberationists we should also be open to sexual liberation. so much of this discomfort around feedism comes from a lack of education and understanding about kink in general. feedism doesn't = fatphobia in the same way that bdsm doesn't = misogyny or abuse. quite the contrary, if practiced ethically, with informed consent. every community has assholes. especially when those communities are small, ostracized, and so young that there are next to zero resources for self acceptance, safety, education, and accountability. in fact, the assholes are the ones that you're going to SEE because every respectful person is staying away and out of your business. if you've been harassed by someone with a fat kink, that is so shitty and I'm sorry that happened to you. I know it happens a lot. try to remember that what you experienced was abuse, not kink.

what consenting individuals choose to do with their bodies is entirely their business and there is nothing wrong with kink. (and I will not stand for sex-negative, puritan bullshit in my inbox, thank you very much.)

reminder: fat pleasure is fat liberation.

[johannestevans]

i've been listening to a lot more fat liberationist stuff recently and like...

so obvs i already had some backing in a lot of the basic theory, stuff like institutional anti-fatness in medicine, fashion, travel, etc, but like

so as a really thin guy who's always found it impossible to gain weight, its been unbelievably emotionally and mentally liberating to hear people talking really casually about the disability that's associated with thinness

so like being really thin, you lack additional joint and bone support - if you fall, you have less padding and less STRUCTURE to protect your bones from breaks and fractures, right?

obvs theres plenty of fat people that do have issues with bones and joints, im not saying thsres not, its just that normally i feel like im the lone person saying "being this thin is bad for me and is part of various health problems i also have"

and idk its just like. my whole life i was such a sickly child lmao

like i couldnt stand for long periods except "long period" would often be like. any period. i didnt understand how my peers were just standing for so long and just weathering that, bc to me it wasnt possible at all - i breathed badly, my joints were fucked etc

and looking back and realising as i get more disabled like the extent to which i was similarly disabled in my youth, and how i lacked the language to verbalise or sometimes even recognise my own pain and struggle

but also like

the treatment of me as so evil and lazy because i wasn't exercising, or because like. a PE teacher would pick me out as an example because i was so thin, and then be furious that i wasn't remotely physically fit, and that i was disabled

i remember multiple times esp from cis female teachers just. frothing rage at my diet and the things i ate, or when i wrinkled my nose at talk about diets, bc i was so thin so i had to be doing The Right Things, and if i was that thin and doing bad things i had to be punished

and its bc a lot of these ppl thought of fatness and being fat as a punishment, a target for abuse that people deserved, and bc i was a young disabled trans guy like. i deserved punishment for my laziness and nonconformity, and it became a lot about my weight

like expressing that i wanted to gain weight, that i was cold all the time, that i had no energy etc, that eating was hard but that i enjoyed food, all of that was met with such fuckin aggression and really sharp policing, esp from PE teachers and esp from women

and obvs all that is to do with the way that diet culture particularly targets women and those perceived as women, and the desire to engage in lateral violence to police others into complying with gender roles etc as they were upholding them

but idk like. fat liberationist politics is imo inherently tied up with disability liberation, because of the way that "health" is weaponised as a symbol of being good or deserving, and how fatness and disability are both used as targets and symbols of evil and punishment

MOST OF ALL for fat & disabled people

but for nondisabled fat people disability is often threatened as punishment - if you don't become less fat, you'll (deserve to) become disabled

and for disabled thin people, if you don't act less disabled, you'll (deserve to) become fat

and its not a punishment to be fat or disabled or sick. its just how some people are. its not BAD to be this way - and what makes things hard for us is not something inherent to the badness of our bodies, but instead the lack of kindness and accommodation anybody is willing to extend to them

[genderkoolaid]

I'm sorry, I don't understand how gender liberation and gender abolition are different. Isn't the goal of both to get rid of all gender stereotypes and masculinity/femininity and let everyone do what they want? /gen

So first off I wanna say these are my subjective understandings of these terms; some people agree with me but I've seen others who use both "liberation" and "abolition" interchangeably.

My definitions:

Gender abolition = getting rid of gender entirely, creating a completely genderless society Gender liberation = ending gender as a tool of control, allowing people to engage with it on their own terms

Gender abolitionists view gender as being inherently harmful, while gender liberationists view gender as being neutral and capable of being used in positive ways. An abolitionist standpoint may be that nothing should be considered masculine or feminine; everything should be gender neutral. A liberationist perspective may be that while nothing is inherently gendered, people can self-define "masculine" and "feminine" (or anything else) as long as they are not forcing others to live by those definitions. I started identifying with liberationism instead of abolitonism because I felt that abolitionism can easily end up as a form of cultural colonialism. I feel that when we understand gender as a social construct, we can take control over that construction and shape gender in more healthy and liberating ways. The beauty of being a sapient person is that we can reflect on our cultural creations and consciously construct and re-construct ideas like gender as we learn more about the harm of genderism and sexism.

I think both kind of have a "do what you want" mentality, but abolitionism looks more like "nothing is masc or fem, so you can do whatever and not think about gender" whle liberationism looks like "anything can be masc or fem or literally anything else, so you can decide how you want to engage with gender." Both would probably reject gender stereotypes like "men do x/feminine people do y" since both acknowledge that gender isn't an inherent trait (although inherent traits may lead people to identify with a certain gender).

Its hard for us, right now, to imagine a version of gender completely dissociated from the harms of genderism and sexism. But I believe that it is possible for gender roles to exist in a post-gender world, where someone engages in these roles not out of habit or expectation but because they have Seen The Truth (that its all made up) and decided to play with it anyways. Either way, a society based on gender abolition or gender liberation would have a fundamentally relationship with gender and sex than we do, so its hard to say exactly how these may look when put into practice- ultimately I think that it would depend on whether or not the people in a given community have the collective desire to continue constructing gender.

[viviennelamb]

If you're a real artist of any kind, never read opinions from non-artists or people who haven’t taken any risks in their lives. Remember, you're not a feedback reader, you're making people like you feel less alone and perfecting your craft and process. When it comes to your art, think of this and nothing else.

The ordinary person doesn't know what devotion is like because their brains aren't even 1% functional.

They're not full nor complex people either, they're an ego programmed to please others so they can fit in. Uncreative people target anybody different from them. This is why they’re into politics and activism and can’t stand that anybody thinks differently than them. This is the Ego's nature.

I was there at some point too and it was repressive, but now I'm free. Those who aren't free judge because they're prisoners of their own minds. always remain aware of envy and the crabs in a bucket mentality. Doesn’t matter if they’re race, gender or sexuality liberationists, they are against you if you’re a real person and will hate you for being free without needing their help.

I know a lot of the people reading this are looking to break through their mental barriers and I must tell you the obvious... life is a millisecond in cosmic time and you must act quickly on the opportunities presented to you.

Nobody is rewarded for being "the most liked by egos.” When you die, you need to leave something that somebody can unearth and feel like they hit the jackpot to read, listen and look at and cherish for the rest of their lives.

There's no time for preoccupation with what zombies think. If you have time to worry, you need to add more work into your schedule (all real work is Spiritual, everybody else is just a busy body).

Successful people are too busy winning, or at least learning how to win, to judge people who are focused on their own craft. If you see somebody doing them but you’re judging instead of being inspired, you’re average and always will be until you decide to go for what you’re most scared to do.

Play your role to the fullest and you'll stop being depressed regardless of what the world shows you. When you're doing all that you can, you'll be lifted out of your depression. Most people are long-term severe melancholics because they’re not creating, but believe they're well and project that depression unto those who are sane and healthy.

Since being a depressive is normal, those who have the drive to do what they love everyday, regardless of what anybody has to say about it, are deemed unwell because it's not socially acceptable to serve your soul. Everybody wants you to be their social slave instead.

Beauty isn't balanced or normal, it's extreme and rare.

You keep daydreaming and thinking "if only I could..." you can! The second you decide to go for what you want, everything becomes available to you. You don't have to plan, just make the vow and act immediately and once you iterate and record what works and what doesn't, you're making progress.

If you want a shortcut, find a mentor. The more you stay in the freeze state nothing happens. Your conscious mind cannot comprehend "how," so forget attempting to understand or map out the trajectory of your life and just act.

Even if you're an aspiring artist, stop reading stuff you can't relate to, or negative people who judge others for stepping out of the box because that affects your mental health and therefore your art, even when it's not directed at you.

That fear they meant to direct at others doesn’t actually affect the supposed recipient, but the individual saying it as well as their peers. Now their peers are secretly scared to be open with somebody they thought they trusted.

By the way, the highest art is the Art of Self-Mastery. Once you take back full control of your mind, senses and body, you're well on the path to achieving the purpose of life. Even better if you share the process of achieving your purpose. Don't wait until everything is perfect.

Sure, people will think they know you even though you only share 0.01% of your life, but at the end of the day, you're stopping yourself from doing what you're meant to do. Any obstacles you face is a test to show yourself how much you really want something. Think of these obstacles as checkpoints.

Once you get going, you will get real life checks to show you how strong you've gotten and how much you've improved in your role/craft. Stay locked in regardless.

The vast majority are extremely mentally unwell because they don't create or share anything that brings light into other people's lives. That stagnancy, as well as their hatred of the soul is the death of the mind.

Never listen to a dabbler who only creates once a month even worse, once a year, tell you anything about your creation. Just nod and smile because you're listening to an opinionated slave.

Remember, the only thing the ordinary person produces daily is an orgasm and poop. It would take the fragile and mindless a month to write a post like this, same with the art you're driven about, but they will judge and dissect what you do when they haven't done anything, ever. They don't have the discipline to write and release something in the same day because they're too busy arguing and gossiping about what a random thinks.

Only intake art and perspectives from people who are utterly and crazily obsessed and then you'll feel like your heart is finally waking up, which is what happened to me. Only then will you reach that point of being unable to feign lukewarmness and soullessness anymore.

Once you begin to exit mediocrity, you will see people's hatred toward you (which is really toward themselves) leaking out as false concern, fighting, and creating dossiers on strangers yet this person doesn't even keep a daily journal of their own thoughts. These individuals exist for you. They're waiting for you because their life consists of talking about others, so give them something to talk about.

When an individual can't be honest and haplessly spends their life energy, they become afflicted with loneliness, anxiety, and a chaotic mind regardless of how many bodies they pile around them and how much validation they get. Most people are unskilled, emotionally, and socially retarded for this reason.

When I read stuff from those individuals in particular I'm severely underwhelmed... it's all misinformation about other people's lives and it's not even at least entertaining. I’m looking for anything real from them and there’s nothing but there’s nothing but race policing and sexual harassment.

They don't know what it's like to strive for something bigger than personal comfort and social validation. When their useless life ends, all that will be left behind of their existence is documentation of their sex-addiction, their list of diagnosed mental illnesses, ideology fights, and gossip.

Also, the people who say they wish they could meet certain artists are all lying. They would've been part of the crowd who judged them if they lived during the same time, especially the ones who pride themselves on being conformists whose best accomplishment is getting a girlfriend.

[aloeverawrites]

We should start pitting hate groups against each other, it's really fun. Like they want to pit demographics against each other, we should do the same thing. Rn I'm focusing on men's rights activists and terfs, and I think it's gonna work lol.

Look terfs hate men and trans people, and mras hate women and trans people, so if we can convince them to leave the opposite genders and trans people alone and just fight the opposing ideology then we could take a nice break and watch two hate groups destroy each other.

Chill with the intersectional feminists and men's liberationists and work to help men, women and non-binary people instead of spend our time fighting them.

And both groups are recruited by the fascists alt-right so if they're fighting each other that won't work.

Hate groups are trying to untie with each other and divide the oppressed. We need to stick together to divide them.

Hey terfs that have just joined the party, so the sentiment I'm hearing is that MRAs are terrible and you guys are not. I can see why you don't think transphobia and therefore you are very unhelpful in the fight for equality, so from that perpective I see your point. And MRAs have been involved in more actual terroism.

Where you guys shine is helping far right conservatives (cough nazis) pass laws that are gearing up for a fascist society. Here's a video about it, prominent terfs are support pro-life, homophobic politicians and some terfs are fully calling for eugenics against trans people.

These politicians aren't going to stop with trans people, they hate gender non-conforming people and women too. So if you're going to hate trans people at least don't shoot yourselves in the foot by supporting terfs who are fully working with the alt-right. And don't worry I'm looking through my section of feminism trying to nazi-proof it too, it's a little easier as they tend to keep themselves away from trans people because they hate us, but it's still good to keep an eye out.

[queering-ecology]

Queering Ecological Politics

“The articulation of sexuality and nature [can be used] as a form of eco-sexual resistance” (21). Gay urban culture, at least according to mainstream media, is tied to lifestyle consumerism. Social acceptance comes not because of queerness but because queers are good consumers.

The editors argue that we must reorient our politics towards a queer ecological perspective; “a transgressive and historically relevant critique of dominant pairings of nature and environment with heteronormativity and homophobia” in order to counteract the “environmentally disastrous (and often ethically void) lifestyle consumerism” (22) we feel trapped in.

Queer ecology then offers “new practices of ecological knowledge, spaces, and politics that places central attention at challenging hetero-ecologies from the perspective of non-normative sexual and gender positions” (22). The editors then demonstrate how (queer) literature has been used to challenge ideas of heterosexuality as natural by positioning same sex relationships as innocent/natural and heterosexuality as the thing that needs to be ‘learned’. There has been a lot of work done within environmental literature with queer ecology but also in these same oft hetero-naturalized parks.

Many gay men (and other queers) have used public green spaces to ‘cruise’. These spots have also been impetus for community activism. “Shortly after the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York, a popular cruising area in Queens, Kew Gardens , was destroyed by extensive tree cutting. ‘Within a week…there were public actions showing conscious visibility, and the first gay liberationist environmental group, Trees for Queens, was formed to restore the park” (Ingram, 1997a, 47) (27).

When we consider environmental politics through issues of race, gender, and sexuality we expand the understanding of ‘what counts’ as an environmental issue; when viewed from a queer, feminist, anti-racist perspective, the environment is understood as “where we live, work, play and worship” (2004, 1)(27).

Greta Gaard’s article ‘Toward a Queer Ecofeminism’ (1997) is one that I plan on also reading and summarizing. But the main points that are made are, “Western culture’s devaluation of the erotic parallels its devaluations of women and of nature’ and “queers are feminized, animalized, eroticized, and naturalized in a culture that devalues women, animals, nature and sexuality” (29).

Gaard emphasizes the concept of ‘erotophobia’ as a bridge between heterosexism and ecological degradation, and it opens the door to considering environmentalism as sexual politics, “as a form of aesthetic and corporeal struggle against the disciplinary logics of heteropatriarchal capitalism” (29).

Queer Ecology then involves the ‘opening up of environmental understanding to explicitly non-heterosexual forms of relationship, experience, and imagination as a way of transforming entrenched sexual and natural practices towards simultaneously queer and environmental ends” (30). All the chapters/articles in the remainder of the book should share this fundamental supposition: “scrutinizing and politicizing the intersections between sex, and nature not only opens environmentalism to a wider understanding of justice, but also deploys the anti-heteronormative insistences of queer politics to potentially more biophilic ends than has been generally imagined”(30). The editors finally dedicate the remainder of the introduction to laying down the upcoming chapters, which I do not feel the need to summarize as I will probably end up summarizing most of them eventually.

[theirrepressibleheiress]

A rough timeline of the Irrepressible Heiress's bullshit

This is very late, maybe a bit more unwieldy than is ideal, and has spoilers for Ambition: Nemesis towards the end! However, here it is at last so there's info about the Heiress out in the world.

The Heiress was born to a minor aristocratic family, and grows up as more or less an average grammar or private school aristocratic surface kid.

They don’t really try or engage too much, are all around unremarkable, but have a few friends, but are very close to their older brother, in a kind of “loose admiration, see each other occasionally and always enjoy catching up” way

The Heiress’s brother was a Prefect and generally kind of the golden child when they were both at school - as the younger sibling going through a lot of the same teachers that expectation definitely weighed on the Heiress - their brother told them not to worry, pointed out their own strengths, etc. Everyone else was definitely much more “why aren’t you as good as your brother”, though not always overtly.

Once their brother leaves school, the Heiress ends up putting him a bit on a pedestal and seeing him much more rarely.

During the Heiress’s last year of schooling, word reaches the surface that their brother died on a business trip to the Neath.

The newly-in-line-to-the-inheritance Heiress does not take this well - they don’t quite stop completely but it’s definitely something everyone around them notices.

The instant the notion of foul play reaches them, they blow all their savings, social capital, everything, to get to the Neath

They fully just jump on the first ship towards Italy - by the time they reach the Cumaean Canal they’re broke.

This gives them what is by all accounts a terrible idea - they make the last leg of the journey by picking fights with zailors until they are detained and (after insisting on being tried in the Neath) brought to New Newgate

After their escape, they spends a bit getting in with criminals, doing petty crime, chasing up little leads, just kind of blindly fucking around, as well as doing a bunch of assorted detective work and not really thinking about the contradictions in those last two.

To be honest they don’t really think a lot about their plans or how they got here - they threw everything away for this and are now desperately trying to justify it and navigate the mess they’ve landed in

This is also around when they start questioning their gender and realising a small part of why the expectation to be their brother always stung.

Around this time, they meet the Violant-Scrawling Apologist (@violant-apologia's character), and fall into an ill-fated relationship

Eventually, this coalesces into getting a university position and curiosity about the Neath’s deeper mysteries and weirdness going on, especially as those tie into the fate of their brother.

As they follow more leads and get further through Nemesis, they become more single-minded, more pro-Revolutionary and very fervently Liberationist.

This, combined with the Apologist doing Seeking and shifting towards White on the Chessboard, is not exactly a recipe for a long-lasting marriage.

Right before divorce, the Heiress ends up heading to the Avid Horizon during the Missing Month part of Nemesis, and sees the Apologist’s ship wrecked on the ice. The Apologist is alive - he’s just turned back from SMEN - but it’s around this point the Heiress realises how far apart the two of them have drifted.

When the Heiress returns to London after all that, the Apologist files divorce proceedings. The process isn’t overtly hostile - there’s no fight over property or similar, but political barbs are exchanged and the two of them realise just how opposed they’ve become.

Soon after, the Heiress fights through the rest of Nemesis, culminating in the resurrection of their brother. Whether deliberate malice on Cups’ part, or just some freak occurrence of the process, he has most of his memories but is left persistently unable to accept that his rescuer is the person he used to call brother.

From there, the Heiress helps get him on his feet in terms of lodgings and explanations about the Neath, but the pair’s interactions are rocky - sometimes they have almost that once-lost closeness, sometimes one will make a reference the other misses. Sometimes, he will pause at the word brother, as though trying to work out if it’s addressed to him.

[hadeantaiga]

"Abolish gender!"

NO.

liberate gender

Free gender from the confines of the patriarchy and give it to everyone in whatever ways they want it.

[baeddling]

Not to write an essay abt it but the thing that frustrates me the most about fans of "transandrophobia" theory is that not only are they completely illiterate when it comes to basic transfeminist theory (they will deny this and often attempt to smear Julia Serano as a "gender essentialist" truly proving they have never genuinely engaged with her work), but they also parade around other marginalized groups of men to claim men as a political group are oppressed, proving their illiteracy of any liberationist or feminist theory. Men do not face "anti-man oppression" by society, even marginalized men. They're affected differently than marginalized women of the same socio-economic groups specifically because they are not subject to the misogyny aimed at those women, and not experiencing transmisogyny or misogynoir or lesbophobia on top of homophobia or transphobia or racism is not a special new form of oppression in any way.

[thedreadvampy]

last night in the pub after the anti terf protests I was talking to this guy whose PhD was in I think linguistic constructions around gender? the phenomenology of gender? idk I was quite drunk and it was very loud. anyway we were talking about defining gender identity and he was increasingly enthusiastically going STOP. SHUT UP. I HEARD PEOPLE SAYING THE EXACT SAME STUFF AT A GENDER CONFERENCE LAST WEEK. YOU'RE ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST THOUGHT WHY ARE YOU NOT DOING A PHD????

and I was like first of all ayyyyy ✌️😘 second of all pal you expect me to like. Justify my thoughts academically? I've met doctoral candidates you bitches are all miserable. and third literally all I was actually saying was stuff like 'there are different definitions of womanhood that are useful in different contexts' and 'there are different meanings to gender in a social and in an individual context' and 'in a lot of liberationist contexts "person who experiences misogyny" is the most useful definition, but aside from finetuning what that actually means and how it relates to people who are subject to misogyny but don't consider themselves women etc, where does that leave us in imagining a post-oppressive womanhood if we don't fill in subscribe to a gender abolitionist standpoint, which I don't, because I like being a woman and find joy in it' and like. all of those are not Deeply Considered Academic Theories as much as they're Having Thought About My Experiences In The World

so I mean fair play bc I do think it's a good sign if your academic theory is something that a layman can come to on their own terms. imo the job of academics is not to invent theory but to codify it and make it explicit and specific. so like if your theory is reflected in where people outside academic philosophy end up that's probably a positive. same as Marx right, like Marx didn't invent the idea of capitalist alienation or collective action but he did codify it and make it easier to build off.

Like I appreciate this. I appreciate when we can recognise that a theory that people NEVER come to outside academia is probably. not a very useful theory.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

The thread got locked before I was able to post my reply to this but I actually think this reminder is important enough that I'm going to post about it here too. My response:

"This feels like a fitting time to remind people that the split between words like gay/lesbian and bisexual/pansexual/etc is actually fairly recent history still. Lesbian used to mean "any woman who has an interest in women" regardless of any additional interest in men or other genders, and it was, in fact, due to prominent political lesbians (a precurser to modern day radfems which is what the term TERF references) that the term was narrowed to exclude "women who also like other genders besides women" from the lesbian community.

Your sister called you a TERF because the reasoning and definitions you are using come DIRECTLY AND EXPLICITLY from the political community that term references. Your sister continues to identify as a lesbian sometimes because it is fully her right to do so, and ABSOLUTELY NOT YOURS to deny her language that reflects her experiences. Your response is to continue denying her the right to her language. You should probably read up on some community history before you decide to make another "joke" about this fight you keep starting with your sister.

Maybe you could start here with Stonewall UK's resources on the history of bisexuality: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/short-history-word-bisexuality#:~:text=In%201859%2C%20anatomist%20Robert%20Bentley,understand%20this%20as%20being%20intersex.

From the text:

"But if people in the past didn't use the term 'bi', how did people attracted to more than one gender describe themselves?

There is no simple answer to this question. Some didn’t use an identity label at all, preferring not to categorise their relationships. Some understood themselves as heterosexual, while others identified as gay or lesbian. Others described themselves using percentages or ratios, such as ‘60:40 gay:heterosexual’. When the term ‘gay’ was first popularised by gay liberationists in the 1970s, it often linked radical politics and same-gender attraction, but didn’t necessarily exclude people who were attracted to, or had relationships with, multiple genders.

One interviewee I spoke to during my PhD recalled: “There was a general understanding that sexuality was some sort of spectrum, and that people would move along it from time to time”. It’s also important to note that this terminology is particular to English-speakers in the West, and that elsewhere in the world there has been a diverse range of approaches to sexuality and gender that often reject binary categorisations. In many cases, these approaches have been restricted or prohibited as a legacy of colonialism.

It wasn’t until the late 1970s that the current understanding of bisexuality, as an orientation or capacity for attraction, became widely accepted in the UK as "the more common usage". Around this point, we started to see bi groups and events being established. The UK’s first bi group, London Bisexual Group, was formed in 1981, followed by other groups in Edinburgh (1984), Brighton (1985), Manchester (1986) and Glasgow (1988), as well as a London-based Bisexual Women’s Group. A magazine, Bi-Monthly, was founded, as well as two bi helplines in London and Edinburgh, and the UK’s longest continually-running LGBTQ+ community event, the annual BiCon."

Bisexual inclusion under the language of lesbian or historically equivalent terms was the norm until nearly the 80s, when political lesbian/radical feminist ideaology began to argue that their inclusion diluted or endangered the community. A good place to read up on how this process occurred is Out History: https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/lesbians-20th-century/lesbian-feminism

From the text:

"In essence, lesbian feminists tried to untie lesbianism from sex so heterosexual feminists were more comfortable. But they still had to find an effective way to address the accusation that their masculinity was somehow complicit with men and patriarchy. Lesbian feminists responded by distancing themselves from stereotypes of “masculine roles,” maleness, and patriarchy. One way they were able to do so was by disentangling lesbian sexuality from heterosexuality and re-conceptualizing heterosexual sex as consorting with “the enemy”. They capitalized on dominant assumptions regarding female sexuality, including ideas of women’s romantic and nurturing sexuality versus men’s aggressive sexuality. They were then able to draw a distinction between lesbian sex and heterosexual sex, claiming that lesbian sex was “pure as snow” since it did not involve men. For example, “…the male seeks to conquer through sex while the female seeks to communicate” and “…lesbians are obsessed with love and fidelity” (Echols, 218).

Using this ideology, lesbians successfully billed lesbianism as an ultimate form of feminism--a practice that did not involve men on any emotional level. In this way, heterosexual feminists were seen as inferior because of their continued association with men. Lesbians took on a “vanguard” quality as the “true” bearers of feminism."

Another great paper on this history and the way its impacts continue to present within the community is L v. B and Feminist Identity: Examining Lesbians’ Bi-Negativity and Bisexuals’ Lesbian Negativity Using Norm-Centered Stigma Theory: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359801347_L_v_B_and_Feminist_Identity_Examining_Lesbians'_Bi-Negativity_and_Bisexuals'_Lesbian_Negativity_Using_Norm-Centered_Stigma_Theory

This is a research case study of how one lesbian magazine participated in the construction of an "us vs them" barrier within the lesbian community in order to recast the historic presence of bisexual women as an urgent and unwelcome invasion. While DIVA was surely not the only lesbian publication to participate in this work, it provides an excellent example to understand how that work was done: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17405904.2014.974634

From the text:

"In the 1970s and 1980s, lesbian feminists quarrelled over definitions of lesbianism that appeared at times to include bisexuals (see Rich's, 1980, lesbian continuum, which ultimately elided any perceived distinction between exclusively lesbian sexual activity and ‘woman-identification’) and by turn to cast bisexual existence as unwelcome ‘infiltration and exploitation of the lesbian community’ (Zita, 1982, p. 164). The ‘issue’ of bisexual inclusion became increasingly visible as the gay liberation movement abandoned a constructionist critique of sexuality and gender categories and opted instead for an essentialist, quasi-ethnic homosexual identity. The idea of being ‘born gay’ produced campaign gains by problematising homophobic arguments revolving around choice, but simultaneously reinforced the homo–hetero binary (Barker & Langdridge, 2008; Epstein, 1987; Evans, 1993; Udis-Kessler, 1990). In this way, an ethnic gayness rendered bisexuality indefinitely liminal, outside of both heterosexuality and homosexuality, and claimed by neither. Mainstream media, too, depicted sexuality as dichotomous (Barker et al., 2008).

It is precisely the imagining of bisexuality as something (constantly flitting) between these two supposedly immutable realms that appears to be at the root of any ‘trouble’. Bisexuality has been conceived of by members of the gay community2 as a ‘stage’ between rejecting a heterosexual identity and ‘coming out’ as homosexual (and as Chirrey, 2012, shows, is constructed as such in coming out literature); those claiming it on a permanent basis have been derided as cowards who are ‘really’ gay, but wish to retain heterosexual privileges (Esterberg, 1997; Evans, 1993). Bisexuality in these terms is thus derogated as an illegitimate sexuality (McLean, 2008) and is imagined as an alternation between two separate worlds, for which promiscuity is a necessary condition (even in positive appraisals of bisexuality, Welzer-Lang's, 2008, participants largely describe a sexual identity premised on multiple relationships; see also Klesse, 2005). Both like and unlike ‘us’, the bisexual woman is able to move in either realm, an ‘amphibian’ (Babcock-Abrahams, 1975) whose transgression between categories threatens boundaries and the identities constructed and maintained within – an ‘awkward reminder’ (Baker, 2008, p. 145) of internal difference and potential inter-group similarities where (the illusion of) the opposite offers comfort and validation (Taylor, 1998). The links they forge between the constructed lesbian and heterosexual worlds allow bisexuals to ‘infiltrate the lesbian and gay community, use its facilities for their own gratification, and then retreat into the sanctuary of heterosexual normalcy’ (Humphrey, 1999, p. 233). It is in this light that we can understand McLean's (2008) participants' decision to preserve the assumption of homosexuality in ostensibly queer spaces. Bisexuals have been denigrated as neither committed to gay politics nor oppressed enough to be ‘our’ concern (Evans, 1993; Ochs, 1988). Further, by linking the lesbian and heterosexual worlds, bisexuals form what feminist lesbians consider(ed) a conduit through which ‘our world’ is contaminated by contact with men (see Wolf, 1979). Bisexuals are thus dangerous pollutants, in Douglas's (1966) terms."

You don't need to agree with your sister's decisions around her identity in order to respect them as well as the history she is tying herself too by making those decisions. You DO need to understand that our language as a community is in a constant state of evolution, and many people will have very personal reasons for maintaining older/more historically associated useages of our language/terminology.

[genderkoolaid]

This stern realism and grim anti-utopianism about what sex with men is and, implicitly, always will be, is nothing if not understandable. The discursive ultra-misandry that was so popular on social media circa 2014 (remember #KillAllMen?) is happily out of fashion, but the anger at men underlying it – which, by the way, was never ironic – has had no material reason to dissipate. With men like Trump and Brett Kavanaugh in the highest offices of the United States government and judiciary, women of all classes right now are righteously filled with rage, disappointment, betrayal and disgust. Nevertheless – as Rooney captures well – the reason that sharing life with men feels like slow violence is ultimately not the men themselves (not in many cases, at least) but, rather, the hierarchies that, flowing through us all, elevate them and suffocate us. The repudiation of ‘sleeping with the enemy’ enacted by some feminists in the 1970s was and remains widely and rightly derided. Rarely, however, do contemporary feminists acknowledge that a lot of sex is experienced as making a gift of oneself to one’s oppressor, despite how nice and love-worthy the guy in question is or isn’t. Rarely do we talk about ‘political lesbianism’ as a poor strategy founded on a factual albeit ‘dramatic’ assessment of heterosex under patriarchy (as perilous for women’s spiritual health). Even more rarely do we seem to grasp that the opposite position – the position of Vance and the women’s movement’s sexual liberationists – shared that same assessment … only, the utopian horizon of post-gender pleasure, in their eyes, made the perils of having sex in the present worth confronting. Thus there are, as Lauren Berlant commented at the 2019 Duke Feminist Theory Workshop, ‘many new sex-negative feminists’ cropping up in our present moment; people who, she suggests, are ‘incompetent about even their own desire’. Whether we are feminist or anti-feminist, most of us are so exhausted, coerced and alienated by capitalism’s work / enjoyment culture that we don’t know how to have really good sex – be it with men or plants or ourselves or the topside of a washing machine.

– "Collective Turn-off" by Sophie Lewis

[mar-im-o]

5 8 16!!

(Response to this post here!!)

5. if you have multiple disabilities: do they affect each other? how?

I study psychology which gives such a fun insight into the ways mental disorders all impact one another. We like to diagnose disorders as if they're independent of one another, when really they're one Big Soup.

So YEAH they all tangle together. I think autism and DID are the most impactful of one another, considering childhood autism is inherently traumatizing and can cause the conditions needed for DID to form. ALSO autism by itself creates a lot of dissociative symptoms and emotional amnesia which are explicitly tied to my experiences with DID

8. does your disability affect how you experience other parts of your identity? (gender, queerness, culture, even hobbies/life goals you're very passionate about)

They're so fucking tied together and I do love that.

I mean, there's the negative parts of it. I stopped playing field hockey because of chronic pain. Autism has severely inhibited my ability to form social connections and join groups/clubs.

But ALSO I acknowledge that I'm nonbinary partially because I don't view gender through a neurotypical lens! Which is COOL! I'm dating one of my partners because I was hyperfixated on a podcast in 2020. I'm so passionate about art because it became a relief from depression and anxiety. One of my long-term projects is explicitly based on my experiences with DID

16. free space to talk about whatever disability issue or experience you want !

[Clears throat]

YOU CAN'T BE A DISABILITY ADVOCATE WITHOUT BEING A FAT LIBERATIONIST

YOU CAN'T BE A DISABILITY ADVOCATE WITHOUT BEING A FAT LIBERATIONIST

YOU CAN'T BE A DISABILITY ADVOCATE WITHOUT BEING A FAT LIBERATIONIST

[precisionnotrestraint]

hello! i am very interested in the reading list on the transformative power of defensive violence, if you still want to share. also i like your pinned post writing a lot :)

Yes, meant to post it at some point anyway, thanks for reminding me to do that - (and thank you, it always means a lot to hear that that bit of writing resonates with someone.)

Here's what I've got so far -

And the Last Shall Be First: On the (Im)possibility of Revenge

"...what happens when revenge is aimed in the direction of revolt? In the direction of insurrection? What happens when revenge is itself not a complete project, or a bad infinity, but a break, an opening onto something else, be it terrifying or wonderful or both?”

Towards a Gender-Disobedient & Anti-Colonial Redistribution of Violence

"The redistribution of violence is a practical demand when we are dying alone and without any kind of reparation, be it from the state or from organized society. The redistribution of violence is a social justice project in a full state of emergency, and it should be performed by those for whom peace has never been an option."

"The basic premise of this proposal is that violence is socially distributed, there being nothing anomalous about the way it intervenes in society. It is all part of a world-making project, of a policy of termination and normalization, guided by racist, sexist, classist, and cis-supremacist principles of differentiation, among others. To redistribute violence within this context is a confrontational gesture, but also one of self-care. It has nothing to do with declaring war. It is, rather, a matter of sharpening the blade so as to better inhabit a war was declared behind our backs, a war which is structural for the supposed peace of this world, and which is waged against us."

Dangerous Spaces: violent resistance, self-defense, & insurrectional struggle against gender

Thirty-One Theses: A Manifesto (Toward an Anarcha-Transfeminist, Youth Liberationist, Anti-Racist, Anti-Rapist Prison Abolitionism)

The reading list is still very short and still feels like an incomplete sketch of these concepts and their interconnections. I'm gradually adding to it (I'll update this post as I do), and I hope to be able to include some of my own thoughts soon.

I hope the readings make it clear that this way of thinking about violence isn't a call for people to go out and commit indiscriminate violence against anyone who's ever hurt them, and that it challenges rather than endorses the notion that experiencing trauma preemptively justifies all acts taken in the name of that trauma. Really, what I'm after here is an understanding of the use of violence that takes into account context, direction, and power, and whether it perpetuates or interrupts oppression.

A few more relevant readings on anti-carceral feminism:

Against Innocence

Of Complaints and Apologies: Feminist Theses Against Carceralism

Intimate Authoritarianism: The Ideology of Abuse