#if oppression is based solely in who you actually are

[hazel2468]

Something that I need people to understand, especially on this hellsite. Is that oppression does not depend on who you actually are.

It depends on how the world sees you.

If the world sees you as X identity. They will treat you as X identity, whether you are or not. If the world sees that you are not X identity, but they can use the oppression of X identity as a cudgel to make you act the way they want you to? They will use it.

Oppression is NOT dependent on who you actually are. It depends on how the world sees you. It depends on how people see you and what they decide to put on you because of that.

Oh. And when someone experiences a form of oppression that is NOT based in the reality of who they are? It's still that kind of oppression. It's not "misdirected"- it is still that kind of oppression being leveraged to maintain the current social climate.

[marshmellowtea]

“minorities should not be expected to coddle their oppressors”, “people often get angry and exhausted from having to answer the same questions over and over again”, and “minorities are allowed to be angry about their oppression” AND “you shouldn’t be overly nasty to people who are genuinely trying to ask questions about things they don’t understand”, “privilege can blind people to experiences that may seem obvious to you so sometimes well meaning people are going to ask questions you think are stupid or obvious”, and “people tend not to want to listen to people who they feel are shouting at them for no reason” are all true statements and yet trying to take all of them into account feels like an impossible balancing act most of the time

[veganineden]

On the Evolution of “Happily Ever After” and Why “Nothing Lasts Forever”

A reflection inspired by Good Omens 2

One of my favorite Tumblr posts on the second season of Good Omens 2 was actually not about the series at all, but our reaction to it, primarily the ending. @zehwulf wrote, “I think a lot of us—myself included—got a little too comfortable with assuming [Aziraphale and Crowley would] work on their issues right away post-Armageddon.” We did the work for them through meta, fanfiction, fanart, and building a plethora of headcanons. Who among us AO3-surfing fans didn’t read and love Demonology and the Tri-Phasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach by Nnm?

In the 4 long years since season one was released, we did more than seek to understand and repair rifts between two fictional beings: we were forced to reckon with ourselves too. We faced a global pandemic, suffered traumatizing losses and isolation, and were forced to really and truly look into the face of our atrocities-ridden and capitalistic world. The mainstream rise of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice work, and our participation in this work, showed us that the systems in place were built to oppress and harm most of us, and they are. 

So, what does this have to do with the evolution of “happily ever after”? 

My friend put it best in a conversation we had following the season finale, when she pointed out a shift in media focus. The “happy end” in old stories about wars and kingdoms used to be “we killed the evil old king and put a noble young king in his place and now citizens can live in peace” and we’re transitioning into a period of “we tore down the whole fucking monarchy.” 

If we look at season one, written to follow the beats of a love story, it comforted us by offering a pretty traditional happy ending pattern: you get your fancy dinner with your special someone, the romantic music plays, and you have a place to call your own. Season one’s finale provided a temporary freedom for Aziraphale and Crowley, the “breathing room,” but it didn't solve the problem that was Heaven and Hell, or the agendas belonging to those systems of oppression. 

Is it good enough to keep our heads down, pretend the bad stuff isn’t happening, and live our own personal happy endings until we die? Moral quandaries aside, if you don't die (or if you care about the generations after you), then, like Aziraphale said, it “can’t last forever.” There’s a clear unpleasant end to the “happily ever after” that’s based on ignoring our problems– it’s the destruction of our relationships, and humanity. 

Ineffable Bureaucracy can go off into the stars because they do not care about humanity. 

You know who does?

Aziraphale. 

And Aziraphale knows that Crowley cares about humanity too. (He knows because Crowley was the one who proposed sabotaging Armageddon in the first place, who only invited him to the stars when he thought all was lost, because Crowley would save humanity if he thought it was possible, and Aziraphale knows Crowley has survived losing Everything before, and he will do all in his power so that Crowley does not need to experience that again.) 

In season one and two, we see how much they care about humanity, beyond their orders, to the point The Systems begin to frown at them. Aziraphale hears Crowley’s offer to run away together in the final episode of season two, to leave Earth behind, and just like the first time that offer was made in season one, he declines. He knows choosing only “us” is not a choice either of them can live with for the rest of eternity.

I believe season 3 will provide an opportunity to “dismantle the system,” but I don’t know how it will play out. I worry that Aziraphale has put himself in the now-dead trope of the “young noble king.” (I wish Crowley had told him why Gabriel was dismissed from his duties.) I worry that he would martyr himself as a sole agent for change. I worry that he doesn’t actually know how to dismantle anything by himself: because you can’t. He needs Crowley. He DOES. He needs Crowley, and Muriel, and other angels and demons and humans without fixed mindsets to help him. Only by learning to listen and making room at the table for all can they (and we) move past personal satisfaction to collective liberation. 

Crowley was right when he said that Aziraphale had discovered his “civic obligations.”

So, I think we will get our modern-day happy ending– and it’s going to involve a lot of pain and discomfort, communication, healing and teamwork– and in the end, it’ll all be okay. There will be a time for rest and a time for “us.” 

And most likely a cottage. 

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

 - Maya Angelou

Support the SAG-AFTRA strike and other unions. Trust @neil-gaiman. Register to vote if you haven’t yet. Hold yourself and others accountable with compassion. Read books. Keep doing the work. Rest. Then watch Good Omens 2 again.  

[fuck-hamas-go-israel]

Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? Apartheid?

Throwing around these buzzwords to describe the Israel-Hamas war because you’ve seen them on social media doesn’t make you right, and it doesn’t make you an activist.

It makes you ignorant, intellectually dishonest, and lazy for parroting biased talking points with no concept about what these terms actually mean.

What is apartheid?

Well, it was first used to describe the political system in South Africa and today’s Namibia whereby racism was institutionalised. This manner of governance meant that clear racial segregation would occur, in a manner that benefited the white race and would actively oppress those who had darker skin.

This meant that there were white-only spaces, white people would get prioritised when it came to education and jobs, and relationships/marriages between white peoples and coloured people were illegal.

Is Israel objectively an apartheid state? There are no laws that actively favour one group over the other. There is a sizeable population of Israeli Arabs that can thrive in the same way as the Israeli Jews can. There are laws against discrimination on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Palestinians from Gaza are allowed to work in Israel through a work permit system. There are about 150,000 Palestinians working in Israel, most of which live in Israel and some come from Gaza/the West Bank. They aren’t denied rights institutionally.

Is it harder to get a job or education in Israel if you’re a Palestinian from Gaza? Sure, because of different governments. It’s like how it’s a lot easier for you to find a job in your own country (in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy) than overseas. But you’re not denied the right to apply.

Of course, if you have a history of violence, a criminal record, or your family has ties to terrorists, then it’ll be a lot harder to get an approved work permit. But that’s not apartheid. That’s common sense, and a regulation practiced by all countries that minimally desire to protect their own population from danger.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide

These two concepts can go hand-in-hand. Ethnic cleansing refers to the mass expulsion or killing of a group of people based on their ethnicity. Similarly, genocide is the purposeful killing of a group of people solely with the intention of annihilating them.

Famous examples? The Holocaust, of course, where the Nazi regime believed in the superiority of the Aryan race and decided to declare genocide on the Jews, Romanis, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, people with “Asian features”, and many many other groups. Anyone who they didn’t think was “pure”.

Their aim was to ensure that the Aryan race propagated without having “impure” blood affecting the bloodlines. They even started a eugenics programme called Lebensborn to ensure that more pure Aryan babies were born.

More recent examples? The Rwandan genocide where the Hutus attempted to wipe out the Tutsis on the basis of ethnicity. They mandated that Tutsis mention their ethnicity on state-issued ID cards in order for the Hutus in power to be able to identify them and then kill them.

Or the Yazidi genocide which happened so recently, in which ISIL killed, raped, and sent thousands of Yazidis into conversion camps on the basis of their ethnicity. They also took Yazidi women as sex slaves and raped and tortured them.

Or the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine State in Myanmar, and how there was a mass killing and expulsion of them from the country, forcing them to flee to Bangladesh to take refuge, crating the world’s largest refugee camp.

Or how ISIS killed thousands of people from Christian groups in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Libya because of their faith, leading the US, EU, and UK to label this as religious genocide and condemned their actions.

Has Israel been practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide on Palestinians all these years?

Well, the birth rate of the Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank, and in Israel has been steadily increasing all these years.

So, no. No ethnic cleansing, no genocide. They are free to have as many children as they desire.

The UN Genocide Convention

The United Nations has 5 actions that constitute genocide.

1. Killing members of a target group

Israel is targeting Hamas officials with the aim of wiping out the terrorist group and ensuring that such a deadly attack on Israeli soil doesn’t happen again. I suppose you could call it genocide against Hamas, but they’re killing Hamas because they’re terrorists, not because they’re Palestinian. Shouldn’t everyone believe in genocide against terrorists?

But look at Black Saturday. Look at Hamas’ rhetoric. They repeatedly call for the annihilation of Israel and genocide of Jews. When will the media start believing what they say, word for word, instead of trying to spin it into “hmm maybe they want to kill all the Jews because they’re freedom fighters!”

War has collateral damage. Of course the innocent civilians don’t deserve to suffer just because of the actions of their government, but there have been warnings given to the Palestinian civilians prior to Israel striking the areas. There are consequences of attacking a country first, and then having that country attack you back.

2. Causing people of the group serious bodily or mental harm

The UN refers to sexual violence as the prime example of non-fatal harm.

Sexual violence has occurred. Hamas have kidnapped and raped women and even paraded the bodies of half-naked women around. But I f Israel had done the same, it’ll be the first thing appearing on everyone’s BBC push notifications (without even being confirmed as true).

3. Imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group

Many people refer to the blockade that Israel imposed around the Gaza Strip as an example of this.

This blockade was imposed by both Israel and Egypt in 2005. Its aim was to prevent smuggling of weapons into Gaza, and isolate the reign of Hamas to the region. This was to ensure the safety of Israel and Egypt.

Did this blockade pose serious challenges to the Gazan civilians? Of course. But that’s a consequence of having a terrorist government. If you have a terrorist group running your country, don’t be surprised if neighbouring countries are extra careful about who or what they allow in or out of the borders.

Many authorities from other Arab nations have also expressed approval of Egypt’s border restrictions, and even encouraged Egypt to flood the terror tunnels that Hamas has dug under the city. As a side note, other Arab nations have not historically been very kind or welcoming to Palestinians. Syria has killed over 4000 Palestinians, and many Arab countries are now refusing any refuge for Palestinians. But no one cares about that because it doesn’t make Israel look bad. All they do now is use the images of dead Palestinians under the hands of Syria and reuse them to propagate fake news.

The blockade has been labelled as a human rights violation because of collective punishment. Many humanitarian organisations believe that the blockade has caused the Palestinian civilians disproportionate harm.

Contrary to popular belief, Israel isn’t disallowing humanitarian aid from coming through the borders. Fuel, food, hygiene products, clothes, and shoes have been coming through the borders regularly for years. The Gaza Strip also has electricity and internet access and water.

Do all these items reach the Palestinian civilians? Well, there has been evidence that Hamas has been intercepting a lot of the supplies sent by humanitarian groups. This is not surprising since the UNRWA tweeted that Hamas has stole fuel from hospitals in Gaza in order to launch more rockets at Israel (but quickly deleted it after realising that it goes against their agenda to paint Hamas in a bad light.) In addition, the returned hostages have mentioned that there are many aid supplies hidden in the terror tunnels by Hamas. Instead of giving them to the civilians, they are hoarding it for themselves.

There has also been video evidence that some people are reselling these aid items in stores at exorbitant prices in order to turn profits. This has been well-documented for the last 10 years.

Is blockading the region to mitigate terrorism a disproportionate response? Well, it’s like asking if heightened security and stricter border control at airports is a disproportionate response after 9/11. Is being cautious and worrying about the security of your country an irrational reaction to the constant threat of terrorism?

4. Preventing births

Gaza’s population growth rate per annum is about 1.99%, which is the 39th highest in the world! Their population is allowed to propagate freely.

Israel isn’t preventing births of Palestinian babies.

5. Forcibly transferring children out of the group

No, Israel hasn’t been taking Palestinian children and forcing them to convert/keeping young Palestinian girls as sex slaves. Like I said, if this was truly happening, all the news outlets would be so quick to publish the story before verifying it.

Can we trust the UN Genocide standards?

The UN is known for corruption and have been exploiting the Palestinian people by selling them the humanitarian supplies instead of distributing them for free, which they should because these supplies literally are donations.

The UN also has differing standards of what they would label as genocide. For example, they refuse to call what China is doing to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as genocide, even though the situation does fit many of their own criteria.

Hence, to all of you out there overusing these terms without knowing what they mean, make up your own mind about things. No one can force you to believe anything and no one can force you to change your mind.

But at the very least, do your due diligence and educate yourself before spouting tired buzzwords. Repeating misinformation doesn’t help anyone and can be very harmful.

[theotterpenguin]

the performative accusation that shipping zutara (and occasionally this criticism is levied at jinko/zukka) is colonialist apologism has been addressed in some excellent posts, explaining the inaccuracies and problematic implications of this logic far better than i ever could - like this post and this one and this one and this one and this one.

and i know this topic has been talked about to death, but if you could indulge my contribution for a moment, i just find it interesting how this sentiment results from the cognitive dissonance of atla fans being unable to reconcile with the idea of their favorite show's political beliefs not lining up with their own.

atla is a largely philosophical children's show that at its core deals with themes of love, redemption, and destiny vs. free-will. atla examines these themes through an anti-colonalist, anti-imperalist lens that deconstructs the idea of racial divisiveness and the idea that people of different ethnicities are inherently different. this is message is pretty explicitly stated by guru pathik:

Guru Pathik: "The greatest illusion of this world is the illusion of separation. Things you think are separate and different are actually one and the same." Aang: "Like the four nations?" Guru Pathik: "Yes. We are all one people. But we live as if divided."

and also by uncle iroh:

"It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If you take it from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale. Understanding others, the other elements and the other nations will help you become whole."

this theme is developed across three full seasons, with the crux of this message culminating in zuko's friendships with the gaang - despite coming from different nationalities and different backgrounds, they have all had their own experiences being hurt by the fire nation and work together to take down the oppressive fire nation government. the question of destiny vs. free will is also explored through zuko's character - despite starting off as an antagonist, he develops into a symbolic representation of how the fire nation's oppression hurts its own citizens. he unlearns the fire nation's imperialist propaganda while simultaneously unlearning his father's abuse. rather than following misguided beliefs of what he thought his destiny was as the heir to the throne, instead he forges his own path.

thus, to claim that zuko can never form a deep and meaningful relationship with any of the gaang because of his nationality goes unequivocally against the themes of the show. and a major part of this is because these are fictional characters being used to analyze different theoretical questions within the show and in some cases, are used as symbolic representations of different philosophical ideas - their friendships and their character arcs serve a purpose within the text that cannot be easily transcribed onto real-life dynamics between people.

it's illogical to criticize fans who are choosing to understand atla at the level of the themes that are presented by the text - who are interested in exploring similar philosophical questions brought up by the show through the context of relationships.

if you don't like the themes of forgiveness and redemption that atla explores, your criticism should be aimed at the writing of the show itself rather than other fans. because you are giving far more thought to the "implications" of a close friendship or romantic relationship between someone from an imperalist nation and someone from an oppressed nation than the writers ever did. (and if you fall in this camp of people, i would hope you wouldn't be reblogging fanart of zuko and the gaang together while simultaneously claiming zuko could can never escape the sins of his ancestors and can never form a deep relationship based on trust and intimacy with katara or sokka or jin - because that would just be hypocritical).

and as a side note, people seem to apply this flawed logic to zutara far more than other ships solely because the show spends the most time exploring the complicated nature of fire nation imperalism in the interactions between zuko and katara in the latter half of b3. this is because they've been juxtapositioned against each other and paralleled with aang since the beginning of the show in ways that toph, sokka, and suki are not, who have mostly been used to examine different themes. there simply isn't enough time to explore these complicated themes with all the other characters, even if they theoretically exist in zuko’s dynamics with these characters, so the writers focus the most on zuko's relationships with katara and aang, and these relationships are given far more narrative weight, so have more content to criticize. but zuko and katara also canonically become friends by the end of the show. if you want to discount the existence of their friendship, claiming that it will always be tainted by the fire nation's oppression regardless of what is shown in the text, then you also have to discount zuko's friendships with aang, suki, toph, and sokka - because even if this isn't shown as a permanent barrier to their friendships in the show, it’s also not shown as a permanent barrier to his friendship with katara. if your logic is solely based on the idea that a person's identity in a relationship as a colonizer or a victim is fixed and unchanging regardless of character development, this would apply to zuko's friendships with everyone else as well.

[pastadoughie]

i am literally begging people to stop putting sexism and transphobia on my dashboard please fucking think critically abt ur internal biases for 5 secconds and please accept even an ounce of critisism without assuming that someone is attacking you unfairly

alot of you have extremely sexist beliefs that you dont recognize because within social media as a whole these are incredibly normalized, covering blatent homophobia and misandry in tumblr buzzwords doesnt make you not sexist it just lets you be sexist and homophobic and transphobic in a way that is socially acceptable and incouraged within a queer centric space

i keep seeing posts talking abt how people actively like artwork (writing, photography, drawings) more when they find out its of a butch lesbian and not just a dude, and like, if your opinion on a peice of media can change solely based on the gender of the person being depicted by it, with zero change to the character, then that implies an inharent bias against men like, just because its men doesnt mean it isnt sexism

same thing where people think that media depicting gay men is better when it explicitly isnt written by a gay man, like that implies a fundimental disrespect of the work based on the sexuality and gender of the author. if you like an artwork but then you find out its written by a trans women, and all of a sudden you think its garbage, you are transphobic, but when people try to point this same bias out for the works of queer men this is largely written off.

i know ppl will argue abt punching up and whatnot, and while i do in some ways agree with that overall sentiment, i think that we should be striving to uh, not be sexist at all, rather then just being misandrists instead of mysogenists, like, if you only care about sexism when it hurts women/women ajacent people then you dont actually hate sexism you just want it to harm a different group of people, you dont hate the system you just want to be ontop of it and benifit from it

misandry and mysogeny present in different ways, they arent a directly comparable thing, different people have things worse in different ways so its rlly hard to take a group and say "this group has it worse", like yes generalizations like that can help in an extremely broad sense, but the world is not black and white and this kind of shit is mindnumbingly complex, trying to act like there is some kind of objective scoreing system for who is more oppressed then who is just unproductive and harmful

and moreover, someone having it worse then you doesnt make you less deserving of trying to make your situation better, i dont experience racism and in many many many ways i have it easier then poc people, that does not make me undeserving of support and that doesnt make me complaining or trying to better my situation unreasonable

we can care abt the lives and want to better the situation of different groups simoltaniously, we dont have to stop caring about racism because we want to better transphobia

i get that transwomen have it rlly bad and i do not experience the exact same struggles as them, and therefore cant comment on alot of them, but so often i see erasure of queer men in order to give more focus to transwomen, and just because trans girls go through alot of shit doesnt make that ok

one thing that people have to recognize about misandry and specifically transmisandry that you dont really have to see as much with its mysogeny counterparts is that they have far more attention and people care far more about activism for queer women/women in general, queer mens experience and specifically the transmasc experience is very very very often erased and written off even by supposedly trans friendly and queer sorces, people care more about butch lesbians then they do trans men dispite the insane ammount of overlap between the two groups, when researching about historical butch lesbians alot of them are just, trans guys that people are misgendering and mislabeling as butch lesbians because ooooo woemennnnn

being transmasc myself i can say that like, the erasure of trans men is an extremely large issue, for large swaths of history the experiences of trans people arent paid attention to at all, and even looking at media coverage today, if people are going to talk abt transgenderism they are talking about it specifically under the lens of trans women

this is largely because misandry (specifically, people thinking that having cock and ball makese u somehow predatory) makes trans women an easier punching bag, trans women get more attention because they are easier for radfems (misandrists) to be bigoted against in a more violent way, if you assume all men and amab people are violent and predatory by nature then this makes justifying violence against trans women easier

and yea being a punching bag for the media is fucking hard but it does mean that activism for that group is much much much louder, more people are complaining about trans women so more people know abt the specific issues they face

but dispite trans men yaknow, also existing and recieving a shit ton of transphobia and erasure over history they dont get talked about as much, people hate us and are violent twards us but we dont nessasarily get the same outrage for our treatment

trans men are just as often get the dismissal for being women, and the outrage for being men as trans women do we just dont get as much support and thats really difficult! often people seek to treat transmasculinism as some kind of new thing like, i get the comment often that "usually its boys that wanna be girls" and its like, no. its not. its simply that people care less about us

i think that its really easy to misenterpret me here so im gonna just get this out of the way, i dont think that women have it easier then men in a broad socital sense, but also, i dont nessasarily believe that means that my complaints are invalid, being a queer woman is not a walk in the park, and neither is being a queer man, and both groups experience homophobia transphobia and sexism in different ways, so acting as if saying one is objectively worse then the other is unfair and reductive

i think that if we want to get anywhere in regards to making it easier to be trans then we need to talk about all queer experiences, you cant just, only care about trans women you have to care about all trans people, and moreover queer people in general, this means you HAVE to be vigilant about people wrapping up sexism in a tumblr buzzword packadge, you need to consume things critically and you are not immune to pipelines, people dont just wake up and become radfems you get continually fed more and more extreme idologies, being fed things that you 90% agree with untill you eventually become completely removed from the groups you were supposed to stand with

you can care about the oppression of multiple groups at once, and if you think activism in any way involves the erasure of a certain group then you have fundimentally misunderstood what youre supposed to be doing, queer men exist and they deserve support and respect and you need to be able to support and respect them without being like "ohh she is soooooo trransfemme coded" like. men can be queer and still be men, they can be queer and still deserve your love and support, i am begging.

also yes i am aware that outside of my specific experience of tumblr people fuckin hate trans girls and women in general and they dont feel the need to do this shit. but that doesnt mean what im talking about is not an issue and is not something that people need to change and address. if you find urself doing this shit you have got to reflect on yourself, you arent immune to transphobia or homophobia or sexism ESPECIALLY if you think that you somehow are magically immune. nobody is. no identity is. everybody is suseptible to this shit and it takes active critical thinking in order to combat it

[that-stone-butch]

im sorry do you actually believe misandry is a thing?

it is my opinion as an intersectional feminist that misandry does not exist in the form of a genuine axis of oppression under cisheteropatriarchal white supremacy, no. misandry does not exist in the same fashion that misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, or etc. exist.

however, 'misandry' does exist in the form of a network of behavior that mocks men in a manner that boils down the behavior of men in general to biological/sociological gender essentialism, and ultimately undermines intersectional feminism. misandry, by this definition, exists as a system of beliefs that drastically oversimplify men and those often perceived as men, and the issues they face.

many people are comfortable mistreating men under the guise of feminism, of mocking men and people they perceive as men in ways that completely contradict their body positivity or any other beliefs that are applied to the 'good' or 'more oppressed' genders.

for example, Betty the 'feminist' sees someone who's walking down the street who she thinks is a man. she sees that he has a patchy beard and is wearing unfashionable clothes, and is out of shape. betty laughs at how little men have to try in order to be accepted in society, she mocks his appearance to her friend. betty's friend points out that the stranger might not be a man based on their appearance, that that person may be closeted trans, or may be nonbinary, or any other non-man identities. betty, remembering the rules of feminism, considering the stranger might not be a man, walks back her remarks and says that the stranger can look however they want.

it is crucial to acknowledge first and foremost that this kind of mockery is bad because it can and often is displaced onto people who aren't men; people who are the victim of cisheteropatriarchal society. but it is, by the same token, not okay to treat a man like that either. men are still people, and basic mockery isn't helping anyone.

it's like pop-cultural feminism has decided that men, (or people wrongly seen as men, that's a whole other can of worms) are some sort of category of people that concepts like respect, body positivity, and other general feminist principles don't apply to. because men are the bad guys. i can't think of anything less intersectional than this behavior.

to say nothing of how the (mis)identification of men as a blanket oppressor class (and thus open season for ridicule and mistreatment) completely disregards any sort of class consciousness or understanding of the effect racism has on like, a fuckload of men.

it is important, if not one of the prime goals of intersectional feminism, to acknowledge the way cisheteropatriarchal systems favor men, and to hold men accountable for harmful behaviors that these systems support and encourages (rape culture, etc). but it is needlessly reductive to target men as the sole perpetrators of these wrongs, and pointless to think that bashing them in this way is going to help anyone ever.

[joyejoyu]

Some sensitive stuff but if you care about current going ons in Palestine I encourage you to read:

I am genuinely devastated by the cognitive dissonance world leaders and celebrities are exhibiting re: Gaza. As a Levantine Arab whose parent’s homes were destroyed in war ignited by Israeli occupation, I am vehemently Pro-Palestine and sincerely encourage people to be critical of Pro-Israeli propaganda. Israel has been recognized time and time again by the United Nations and several human rights organizations as a colonial-settler state that has and continues to commit apartheid. Israel has always been a white supremacist and Zionist project financially backed by America and Europe solely for the benefits of keeping Palestinians oppressed while utilizing the land as a makeshift military base in the Levant. World leaders are lying through their teeth in order to retain all the benefits that come with subjugation. It is not a ‘conflict’ nor is it ‘complicated’. If you don’t support what Russia is doing to Ukraine, you should not support what Israel is doing to Palestine. There is never an excuse for massacre at this scale for this long.

I will be adding many resources below while also reblogging many informational posts. I know this is just my art Tumblr but I am incredibly passionate about this situation and it effects my family directly.

Links:

How ‘Israel’ came to be and how it was on the blood of indigenous Palestinians and a white supremicist project funded by the UK and America:

What has been happening in Gaza for almost 80 years:

The sheer amount of carnage that Israeli officials hide from the general public and claim is ‘less’ than Israeli casualties:

How Americans are brainwashed into helping with and advocating apartheid and ethnic cleansing:

How Israelites and zionists hide behind anti-semitism when confronted with the reality of Palestinian genocide and any critique on Israeli apartheid. As well as how utilizing this term as a shield dismisses the actual meaning of anti-semitism and diminishes it’s value during genuine critique:

Human rights resources

There are many more but this is enough to start. Please don’t stay silent and don’t blindly believe the overwhelming (and very calculated and intentional) wave of pro-Israeli sentiment.

[comradekatara]

i think it’s a really good character detail that sokka and toph both love eating meat, because it does serve as a good shorthand to a contemporary audience to signify their relationship to masculinity that also makes sense within the worldbuilding and is consistent with their characters.

like obviously sokka’s diet is meat-based. he lives in a part of a tundra that is (implied to be) frozen over year round. eating meat is a part of his cultural identity. but it’s more than that. katara also grew up eating mostly meat, but it’s not a part of her identity the way it is for sokka. and that’s because being a hunter and providing for his village is crucial to sokka’s conception of who he is. he was “the only man” left, and he felt like it was his sole responsibility to provide ample food for his people, mostly elderly women and young children. throughout the show we see sokka fail to hunt and forage for comedic purposes, whereas we don’t actually see his successes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not implied. he wouldn’t be as effortlessly proficient with a boomerang as he is by the pilot if he hadn’t been practicing on animals over the years. he clearly has a lot of experience hunting, and the pressure he feels as “the sole provider” for his tribe is something that he is also takes great pride in, as if the knowledge that his father had enough faith in him to hunt alone and make sure his people didn’t starve is very precious to him and any challenge to his identity as “the meat guy” is a great blow to his ego.

when he calls himself “the meat and sarcasm guy,” he is being facetious about parts of his identity that are in fact very important to him. meat: he comes from the south pole, so meat is important to his culture; he is a hunter, and it was his role to provide for and protect his people. sarcasm: he’s used to not being taken seriously, as the brother of a waterbender, as the only warrior left behind, as the token nonbender of the gaang, by people throughout the earth kingdom who see a water tribe boy and assume the worst about him before he even opens his mouth; he uses humor as a coping mechanism, for example, in that very moment, when he starts talking to himself while trapped in a hole, genuinely concerned that he might die, but staying glib and flippant nonetheless. it isn’t just eating meat that is part of his identity, but providing it as well. if he isn’t feeding his people, if he isn’t keeping them safe, if he isn’t giving everything he has to protecting them, then is he even a warrior? is he even anything at all?

as for toph, she grew up never having to worry where her next meal was coming from. she probably didn't even think about how food was prepared until she started traveling with the gaang, probably didn't even know the name of her cook(s). but when it came to dining, she was undoubtedly policed by her parents on how to eat. sit like this, hold your chopsticks like this, chew like this, only eat so much at a time, be proper, be discreet, be ladylike. the contrast between how toph eats and how sokka eats in "the blind bandit" is played for laughs, but as we've just established, sokka is someone who knows what it's like to not know where your next meal is coming from, and who also knew that if he wanted to eat, and if everyone else in his village wanted to eat, it was his responsibility to go out and kill an animal, so when someone offers him free food, he will not hesitate to eat as much of it as possible, table manners be damned. toph has never experienced food anxiety, but living in high society under the thumb of her ableist parents who excruciatingly monitored all of her behaviors is why she relishes eating as impolitely and as much as possible. if eating as little and as discreetly is a marker of femininity of a certain class (note how zuko says to jin "you have quite an appetite for a girl" because he's never seen a woman who wasn't from nobility eat before), then toph rejects her oppressive high society upbringing and its forced femininity and embraces masculinity by loudly proclaiming her love of meat.

in the US, eating meat is seen as a sign of masculinity despite the fact that most of the purported "alpha males" who claim that meat consumption is masculine did not actually hunt and cook that meat themselves (you may as well be a drag queen etc). nevertheless, when the audience hears sokka or toph claim they love meat, they do register that it indicates their complicated relationship to masculinity. sokka always felt an immense pressure to be masculine due to the fact that he was the sole warrior left in his tribe and believed that it was his responsibility and his alone to protect, defend, and provide for what was left of his people. meat signifies masculinity to him because he was actually hunting it himself, and being a good hunter is part of what "being a man" (an ideal he feels incredible pressure to live up to) means to him. toph feels a pressure to be masculine due to her rejection of femininity, which she associates with the submissive, meek, shallow ideal her mother performs and expected her to perform as well. she associates masculinity with strength, power, and agency, which she desires even as her humility, cunning, and ability to go underestimated are such a crucial component to her strength in the first place. when she claims that she loves meat, she's celebrating her ability to eat without being policed, she's embracing her gender nonconformity, and she's probably mirroring sokka, since she's still figuring out who she is, and he is her role model.

[edenfenixblogs]

I think that the user who made this post is lacking reading comprehension as to me it looks like Netanyahu is just saying that he wants security controls in place which if we go by the Wikipedia article for security controls, is just tighter security. The article in that post also doesn't include his full statement which adds context.

This article has his whole statement

what are your thoughts on this?

Idk what article or post you’re talking about.

I don’t like or trust Netanyahu. I do not believe anything he says. He’s Israel’s version of Trump. Idk what exactly he wants more control of but based solely on this post it seems like he’s offering to end the war by placing more security and checkpoints around Palestine.

My thoughts on that are that people not dying is better than people dying. But that’s too low a bar. Palestinians deserve better than just “not being under siege.” The steps must be in the direction of increasing freedom, not limiting it further.

This is what I’ve been talking about for months while people have been busy trying to compare me to a Nazi for saying I don’t want Jews to die or be expelled.

The only proper way to behave right now is to actively discuss what a future where both Israelis and Palestinians live together in peace should look like and then taking steps to ensure that future.

If we don’t do that, then Netanyahu will get his wish: tighter controls around Palestine, increased tension between Palestine and Israel, a guarantee that enough discontented Palestinians will look to organizations like Hamas for a solution to their oppression only to end up endangered between a terrorist organization and a hostile Likud-run government that stays in power by casting them as inherently vicious villains.

So, idk man. I can’t know for certain that I have any of this right. I’m just going off context clues cuz I refuse to look it up. Why do I refuse to look it up? Because I’d give myself an 85% chance of being right about what Netanyahu is proposing. Because he’s predictable and a bad person and a bad leader whose only goal is to weaponize both Jewish and Palestinian trauma to retain his own power.

This, even more than the personal attacks from antisemites, is what has bothered me most about western leftist “support” for Palestine during this most recent flair of the conflict. By focusing on attacking Jews around the world and stanning terrorist organizations and ignoring Jewish people and Israelis and even Muslims and Palestinians and Arabs who are and have been actively engaged in working towards peace and against Netanyahu for literal decades they have all but ensured that the most reasonable and informed voices have been effectively silenced. And you know who’s gonna fill that power vacuum? Netanyahu. Cuz it’s what he does.

And then the next time this happens, because it will, we will have to all live through this (or fault to live through it) again.

So, do I get a gold star friends? If I’m wrong I’ll delete this post. But man just the idea of Netanyahu proposing tighter security makes my blood boil. He knows what he’s doing. And it’s bad.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’ve misinterpreted something. And I will look it up further. But before I do, I genuinely want to know: is that asshole really that predictable? Did the entire western left literally just fall for his whole schtick and end up helping him to concentrate even more power? Did it work because it relied upon people hating Jews more than they trust Jews or love Palestinians? Cuz it feels like that’s what’s happening.

In the meantime, A Land for All is a solution worth actually discussing. Let’s all work toward that or another equally mutually beneficial solution to this conflict instead of helping Hamas gain adherents and helping Likud retain power:

https://www.alandforall.org/english/?d=ltr

[gay-jewish-bucky]

"oh you're obviously just uneducated on the social model because you've only heard it explained for abled people, 'in a perfect world no one would be disabled' is only so they can understand!!!!"

i've been disabled since birth. i've been exposed to disability activism my whole life. disabled people in disabled spaces, especially in leftist spaces, solely explain it to other disabled people that way. specifically in leftist spaces the social model is used by vast swaths of low support needs disabled people to allege that disability only exists because of capitalism, and it wouldn't under whatever financial model they're pushing. academic papers targeted at people who are educated in these terms explain it that way.

the social model can only work in a perfect world that, frankly, will never exist and only for people who are not significantly impaired. the whole thing reeks of "the only disability is a bad attitude" and "maybe if you tried harder, you wouldn't be disabled".

no level of accommodation will change the level of impairment i face, do you know how i know this? because i have lived in this body for a quarter of a century, i know my experiences and i'm tired of people telling me i'm wrong.

disability activists who face impairment beyond what can be accommodated have been pushing back against the social model for decades. the social model centres disabled people with low support needs and low impairment. how dare you invalidate my experience as well as the experiences of countless other disabled people who feel abandoned and ignored by the social model?

a great example of how the social model fails is stephen hawking who, despite being very vocal about being able to afford total accommodation for his disability brought on by his als, was also still deeply impaired by his disability.

the social model also stigmatizes and removes agency from individual disabled people having the ability to make their own choices about their treatment and accommodations, newsflash not everyone wants all of that and they should be able to choose.

there are many far more sufficient models that we can use, i don't think we will find equity and liberation from just one. the models i find the most useful are:

empowering model allows for the person with a disability to decide the course of their treatment and what services they wish to benefit from

diversity model focus[es] attention on how society's systems respond to variation introduced by disability... question[s] the socio-political definition of disability, in which (all) barriers faced by people with disability are imposed and therefore removable... insufficiently recognizes that impairment does have a bearing on accessibility outcomes

affirming model a non-tragic view of disability and impairment which encompasses positive social identities, both individual and collective, for disabled people grounded in the benefits of lifestyle and life experience of being impaired and disabled

human rights model based on basic human rights principles... recognizes that: "disability is a natural part of human diversity that must be respected and supported in all its forms" and "people with disability have the same rights as everyone else in society" and "impairment must not be used as an excuse to deny or restrict people’s rights"

additionally, i find it very telling that supporters of the social model speak over and silence disabled people who point out it's failings. if you refuse to listen to us there is no way i can believe your model will actually be beneficial to me and other disabled people with similar feelings.

here is a paper from kay shrinier and richard scotch on their critisms of this model

Disability and Institutional Change: A Human Variation Perspective on Overcoming Oppression

[ilynpilled]

I think what bugs me the most about the type of analysis that is common in this fandom is that sometimes people are obsessed with not actually looking at choices being made by characters and instead try to project extra-textual symbolism/parallels they pulled out of thin air or use essentialist arguments to predict a certain character’s trajectory. There is already a weird tendency to blame bloodlines instead of institutions, oppressive/destructive social constructs/systems, and abusive cycles. This series repeatedly deconstructs bio essentialist ideas in a multitude of ways. Characters being viewed as monsters for the way they are born is a concept that is repeatedly torn down. There is a combination of nature & nurture at play with these characters, I admit, but it is nuanced. Your environment and your nature are in constant conversation with each other. Certain environmental factors will worsen certain attributes, while repress others etc. Your blood is not evil, nor is it pure, it just is, and your nature will be affected by your rearing, tragedies you face, and the environment you live in. Monsters are created and developed, not born. This whole concept is apparent with all the siblings in the series. Dany & Viserys are drastically different people, and make different choices despite having similar experiences and the same blood. Same can be said for Joff, Myrcella, and Tommen. Another very good example are the Lannister siblings. The twins’ idea of “one soul in two bodies” is deconstructed, and they are faced with how dissimilar they actually are. All three siblings have differences in nature, as revealed by their behavior as young children & their current values and motivations, and they are all shaped very differently by their environment. Cersei is affected by the oppressive system of the patriarchy, Jaime by the trauma due to the violent construct of knighthood, and Tyrion by the rampant ableism of the world around him. Tywin also shapes them by giving each of them their own flavor of parental abuse based on the role he wants them to play in his legacy. It is so apparent just how these characters became what they are, and how they navigate their world as a result of a nuanced combination of nature and nurturer. But in the end, it comes down to choices that they keep making. Characters on the right path can also falter sometimes, weigh their values wrong, and make bad decisions at certain points. Not to mention how thoughts and words do not speak as much as actions and actual choices that are made do. You all take bio essentialist arguments that some characters in the text make at face value, even when it is obviously bullshit. Any analysis that hinges entirely on “this character is the son/daughter of this character”, or “this thing on the surface parallels this other thing from something I read/watched”, “this character is a dragon. Dragons plant no trees”, “this character is a monster”, “this character is from this house”, “this character is related to this character” etc instead of actually looking at what said characters do or try to do is gonna lead to unconvincing arguments that are antithetical to one of the main ideas that this series is built on. To me it feels like these books are communicating that in spite of your birth, your origin, your trauma, your prophecies, etc it is primarily your choices that lead you to where you are and the legacy that you create. Cersei’s prophecy will come true as a result of the choices she makes. Dany’s many prophecies are also as a result of choices she makes, she was not just gifted with everything that she has achieved, she is an active agent who makes choices that push her a certain direction. This is also why it is weird when everybody wants to make characters have a predetermined trajectory solely based on “what” they are, or who they are related to.

Not only does George say this in interviews, it is an explicit thesis statement in the text itself:

This is the concluding statement of Jaime’s ASoS arc. Like “The things I do for love”, “So many vows...”, and “The heroes […] the best and the worst, and those who were a bit of both”, as extremely relevant it is to him in specific, it is a major thesis statement for the series as whole, and overlaps with many characters, just like how other characters also have a bunch of these overlapping arc theses. So can we please primarily look at the choices characters make and what ultimately motivated them to make these choices rather than thinking their ending and what they “are” as characters is set in stone because of the reasons mentioned. I feel like how you all engage with some of these characters contradicts the deconstruction of this kind of essentialism that is so apparent in these books.

[kiefbowl]

https://www.tumblr.com/familyabolisher/729804795639152640/do-you-not-believe-in-gendered-socialization-not?source=share

what do you think of this post?

Insane how this person writes. Boggles the mind.

"in discourse terms, it gets pulled out to denote an ineluctable state of "womanhood"-subjectivity in those coercively assigned femaleness and ineluctable "manhood"-subjectivity to those coercively assigned maleness; in other words, it gets used as a cudgel for gender essentialism coming from "progressive" types by which the claim that trans women/otherwise TMA people have "male privilege" ("male socialisation") can be smuggled into the discourse; the experiences of cis women and trans men/otherwise transmasc people are privileged as a standardised form of 'female socialisation' that pits them not as agentive within social forms of gender (and as beneficiaries of transmisogyny) but as unilaterally 'oppressed' to the unilaterally 'oppressive' male-socialised."

That's one sentence. Good lord.

You only write like this if you want to obscure your own bullshit, hoping it'll be too exhausting for someone to pick apart and thereby goes unattested. Because...what other explanation could there be.

But by god, this is so fascinating so I will try, for you anon.

>no. "gendered socialisation" is about a stone's throw away from "sex-based oppression" if we're being real about it.

So the assumption here for the author is that oooobviously the idea of "sex-based oppression" is ludicrous. This does not bode well for those of us who understand that "sex-based oppression" is not secret code language but is exactly what is described by the words being used. But let's discover what this person thinks.

>in discourse terms, it gets pulled out to denote an ineluctable [ie: can't be avoided] state of "womanhood"-subjectivity in those [people] coercively assigned femaleness and ineluctable "manhood"-subjectivity to those [people] coercively assigned maleness;

I added some editor's notes to make it more readable, hopefully. Essentially, op is positing that people only use the phrase "gendered socialization" to suggest there is an unavoidable (and, I assume, innate) womanhood and manhood based on sex. This is not true, socialization is a topic of great interest to many disciplines, and although it's never referring solely to sex/gender socialization, gender socialization is not just made up tumblr language. It's academic. If op believes that gender is a social construct, then I don't see how they can't believe in gender socialization. But op is clearly someone who believes that observing sex is coercive assignment.

>in other words, it gets used as a cudgel for gender essentialism coming from "progressive" types by which the claim that trans women/otherwise TMA people have "male privilege" ("male socialisation") can be smuggled into the discourse;

Observing gender socialization is neither progressive or conservative, depends on the context. The feminist context is progressive. The view from a feminist is that gender is entirely socialized, and is not innate to the sex, which is the opposite of "essentialism". To understand this you have to actually understand what socialization is, and I have a feeling that op does not. More on that in a second.

Obviously op isn't interested in discussing whether male privilege exists, they've already decided there is no sex hierarchy, that sex is not an axis of oppression, as they disregarded that idea in the first sentence. If I was to bet, it's because they already decided or believe that this idea belongs to "bad people" thatare in opposition to them, so they can't try to understand it.

>the experiences of cis women and trans men/otherwise transmasc people are privileged [???] as a standardised form of 'female socialisation' that pits them not as agentive [ie. taking an active role] within social forms of gender (and as beneficiaries of transmisogyny) but as unilaterally 'oppressed' to the unilaterally 'oppressive' male-socialised.

Op is just reiterating again they don't subscribe to the idea that sex-based oppression exists. Sex-oppression doesn't exist, therefore female people can't be unilaterally oppressed by men, etc. This person also posits that "cis women and trans men" are the beneficiaries of transmisogyny...unclear if cis men are the beneficiaries as well?? Firefox doesn't recognize transmisogyny as a word btw lol.

By the way, in case this isn't clear, op has used essentially 4 sentences just to say over and over again "I don't believe in sex-base oppression" and has not furthered a point beyond that. So....so so so boring.

>there is no one coherent form of "gendered socialisation";

This isn't seriously argued in feminist theory or scholarly. I'm not talking about random women on tumblr. When someone alludes to gender or sex socialization, they aren't saying that all women or all men are equally socialized the same and all women are the same and all men are the same. They are saying women are socialized as women and men are socialized as men. This is more clear when we actually understand socialization.

Okay, so what is socialization? Socialization is a complex topic, but divorce it from scholarly mumbo-jumbo what we're ultimately talking about is how the human brain absorbs information. How does the human brain absorb information? Socializing. Yeah, like the thing you do at parties. Yeah, like when you call you friend up. Yep, like when you chat up the cashier at the gas station. You know that meme, we live in a society? Okay that but for real. You live in a society, you can't say society doesn't affect you.

So what do we mean by "society"? Well, that's a prety complex topic, but! if you want to divorce it from scholarly mumbo-jumbo we're ultimately talking about how humans live with humans. Oh, you live alone? Yeah sure, but who designed your bed? Who manufactured your door? Who wrote your tv shows? Who decided that green means go, red means stop? Who made my bagel sandwhich $7? Wait wait wait, why does "manufacturer your door" matter? Well imagine if we lived in a world where "normal" doors were assumed to be ten feet tall and 8 feet wide, that would change a lot of things, right? Okay, expand that thought into the infinitesimal: think about how every dimension of every single manufactured physical thing you interact with had to be decided by at least one other human, if not thousands of humans.

You literally cannot avoid socialization. You are socialized by walking outside your house. You are socialized by never leaving your house. If you don't want to be socialized you have to be abandoned in the woods as an infant. People who survive that don't turn out so good. They weren't ever socialized into even understanding what a "door" is. Yep, the fact that I can type d-o-o-r and you know what I'm talking about is proof that you are socialized. Doors don't have to exist. We made those up.

So, when we talk about "female socialization" we aren't arguing there is a finite and concrete list of traits all women have, we're talking about how society has ideas, roles, myths, images, stories, explanations, expectations, etc. about and for women, and you just can't avoid them and they will affect you. That PLUS even if you buck every trend imaginable, people around you will still act according to those ideas they've been socialized into. If you're a woman who gets interrupted a lot at work, that doesn't go away just because you shave your head.

>how gender is coercively socially imposed varies along countless axes that cannot be accounted for under one sole framework.

much like doors

>if you want to say that experiences and subjectivities are shaped by misogyny or patriarchy then simply name misogyny and patriarchy as deciding factors.

annoying false equivalency. people can use as much clarifying language as they need to make their point. This is a person who believes in hidden evil secret subtext in words women use.

>it suffers from the same fundamental issue as many contemporary feminisms ie. that even in its most charitable form, it attempts to present a complete account of "womanhood" and account for transfemininity only after the fact via hamfisted exceptionalism, rather than beginning with transmisogyny as the lynchpin of gendering and developing itself from there.

wrong

>+ in general i try not to overrely on the language of "socialisation" and "conditioning" to describe behaviours and relationships

can't imagine what blowhard reason that would be because frankly I don't think this person really understands socialization

>unlike "coercion," which i think identifies the discourses of power + antagonism present in these modes of subject-creation, the language of socialisation and conditioning conjures up this idea of a non-agentive, immutable relationship to gender

Why? They don't explain why socialization (and conditioning?) is "non-agentive"...and then they don't explain why that matters. I mean, I agree, you don't have a lot of agency in socialization, but you also get to decide how you live your life. Plus why does gender have to be agentive? We're entering into ideas of transness that the audience is assumed to know and agree with that I would be called a feminazi for asking for clarity on so w/e

>(one in which gender is not something we do but something that is done to us) which stands fundamentally at odds with what transness should articulate. i guess another way of putting it is that i don't really believe in appeals to what people do or do not "experience" [x does or does not "experience" misogyny etc] as a cogent way of developing an actual theory of oppression + liberation.

idk what they're saying here sorry

[kaftan]

Forever obsessed with how the baru books completely decimated bioessentialism solely through their effortlessly seamless worldbuilding… the way the colonial empire’s patriarchy uses the same justifications as our patriarchies to uphold completely different norms (women as predisposed to math and abstract reasoning, men prettying themselves to attract women, etc) is so clever and hammers in how arbitrary these systems of oppression really are.

Think about when someone says “of course men are meant to provide and ‘hunt’ for their families while women stay home and rear children, just look at all the wild animals that do it!” They will call this logic. They will also never care when you bring up the countless counterexamples of animals that don’t operate that way. In The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, the eponymous Baru (an indigenous woman who received colonial schooling) has a conversation with Iscend (an ostensible mouthpiece of the colonial empire) about gender, and Iscend says: “the difference between men and women […] is as apparent in birds as in human beings. Males make displays to illustrate their value, and females choose the males whose value they like best.”

What do you think of this argument as someone who lives under a completely different kind of patriarchy? Is your first instinct laughter (or bewilderment)? Why? As any science textbook will tell you, Iscend isn’t wrong about birds. Most other animal species, in fact, operate similarly. The logic holds up. (And it has the same endgame in this fictional society, just to be clear: this argument is used to control women. Iscend goes on to say that so-called “seductresses” are vilified in society because they go against a woman’s nature.) So how come the “logic” of our patriarchy is based on totally contradictory examples of what’s natural? Might it be that neither of these arguments for bioessentialism are actually logically sound, they just have the advantage of years and years and years of association with dominant power structures? Hmm…

Follow that train of thought to its conclusion, and you’ve successfully picked up the message these books are putting down. It’s reinforced even more in the glimpses we get of a truly matriarchal society (one in which women oppress men), but that’s a discussion for another post…. see you then! Thanks for reading!

[genderkoolaid]

i have a lot of serious issues with the way you frame the kinds of transphobia one experiences as based on how theyre perceived. that to me is very much only part of it. a trans woman whos in the closet is still a woman living in a misogynistic society and bombarded with what it entails. the oppression doesnt hinge solely on personally directed acts. this also is a big issue i take with the transunity manifesto, the way it frames experiences too strictly around being perceived externally by others. there is a very dismissive eagerness there to describe trans womens experiences, unless they "pass", as those consistent with maleness. i think the above does a huge disservice to the whole idea and highlights the lack of transfem voices in this movement. you have the right to describe your own experiences with the language you find helpful, but you need to extend that courtesy to others as well.

I think there is a problem with this phrasing. Whenever I say that transphobia is based on perception, I don't mean to say that people are not affected by transphobia even when they are not out. I think the creators of the manifesto would likely agree with me that trans people can very much be deeply affected by transphobia even if they are not perceived as trans, because they consciously or subconsciously know themselves to be trans.

But because there's been a lot of claims that you can only count as "affected" by a transphobia if you are part of that group. Specifically in the context of interpersonal transphobia, like a hate crime done against you. So emphasis is put on perception to make it clear that people who aren't actually trans[fem/masc/other] can still be victims of all types of transphobia, and that all those victims should be in solidarity together.

But you are right that this is very focused on interpersonal violence and doesn't take into account the internal impact of transphobia. In the future I will try to take that into consideration when talking about how transphobia works.

However, I do want to push back a little against this ask. You frame this phrasing as something harmful to trans women specifically, and a sign of the lack of trans women's voices in transunity, but this is very much not something exclusive to trans women. Closeted transmascs and closeted genderqueers can also be deeply affected by transphobia while in the closet. And, in fact, part of the discussion of anti-transmasculinity involves pointing out how people often discuss trans men's experiences with transphobia assuming all trans men pass as (straight, white, gender conforming) men, which ignores the experiences of closeted & nonpassing trans men. So while your criticism of the focus on perception is good, I am uncomfortable with the way you assume this is something which uniquely harms trans women and not any other trans* people.

[cock-holliday]

the tumblr aita page keeps getting asks mentioning transandrophobia and while the vote tends to swing in a direction implying most people think transandrophobia is real the notes are... really, really hateful. it's stressful. until now i could mostly keep away from the Discourse if i wanted, retreat into a bubble of people who don't post politics. now things are bleeding out. ik this is a step towards awareness but it's made me feel really unsafe.

I’m really sorry you’re experiencing this. I, unfortunately am not really a source of escaping politics. I think you’re right that more conversation is reflective of greater awareness, but that yes, it comes at the toll of backlash. I suppose I would recommend not looking in the notes and seeking out likeminded folks to insulate better against flak.

Transmisogyny as a term has only entered discourse since 2007 so it’s a fairly new term in the scheme of things. Transandrophobia as a term was coined only in 2015(?) I believe, which is extremely recent. Transandrophobia also has the disadvantage of not yet being in a book/wider publication, although the term coiner is working on one and I am excited to read it. Said coiner also had the disadvantage of a smear campaign, making even those who identified with the word unsure if they can use it due to the association.

Whatever term you use, transandrophobia, transmisandry, anti-transmasculinity, the concept exists.

I think one of the worst pieces of dialogue to enter the transphobia conversation is the TMA/TME dichotomy. I’ve never seen any oppressed group come up with a term to say that other oppressed people are by extension incapable of experiencing this type of oppression. The use of the terms automatically makes me take you less seriously, and is frankly a laughable concept.

There are countless examples across identity groups that suggest that even privileged groups can be the target of ‘misdirected’ bigotry if something about their identity diverts from expectations. Feminine straight boys attacked for being ‘gay.’ Indian men attacked for being ‘muslims.’ Latinos of any kind attacked for being ‘Mexican.’ Rejection of othered identities, political vengeance, blind bigotry—there are so many ways people from the out group can be attacked even though they do not hold the attacked identity. Hell, even cis women can experience transmisogyny—especially GNC women—because bigotry does not ever solely rely on your actual identity, it relies primarily in how you are perceived.

I used to have really stunted ideas about transphobia. Only cis-passing trans people were in public discussion. Trans men were transitioning INTO male privilege and trans women were transitioning AWAY from it. So if your gender politics stop at Baby’s First Gender Analysis then sure, that’s the end of the conversation. But it isn’t.

Trans people don’t have gendered privilege across the board over one another. Because they are all trans. They can absolutely wield other intersections over one another. But the “most” we can do is lateral aggression to each other. Even splitting the divide along misogyny is unhelpful for the myriad of ways trans men also experience misogyny. As I’ve said before, either transmisogyny is the intersection of transphobia+misogyny in which case it is possibly applicable to all trans folks, or it is specific to trans women’s experience and it is identity-based, in which case transmasculine identity needs a word for the attacks on them. For what it’s worth, trans women also experience anti-masculinity like trans men experience misogyny, and this word, if NOT identity-based, wouldn’t be an exclusive term othering trans women either, so there shouldn’t be offense taken either way.

I think there are a couple key things at play here. One of the first is a surface level understanding of privilege. There is absolutely no question that cis-passing trans men who are treated like men have in that moment male privilege. But it’s not wholly cis privilege. Cis men have male privilege because they were assigned male, that term fits, and they are seen as men. Even that is not always a given, and straying in your performance of maleness can get you backlash. But no matter how well a trans man passes he isn’t cis. If it comes up over his records, if it comes up over genitalia during sex, if it comes up over reproductive healthcare, even the most cis-passing trans man’s identity is still in question. The assumption that a trans man IS cis can even be unsafe in medical emergencies. Many trans men don’t know how to find contraceptive for their bodies or know how to recognize pregnancy or health emergencies due to their variance from cis women. The privilege is limited, it is conditional, and the condition isn’t about correctly viewing them as men, it is in incorrectly viewing them as cis.

Likewise, I know it is such a dirty topic because people’s grasp of privilege means “your life is roses and this identity is what you want” but it’s even possible and in fact likely for a trans women to have experienced male privilege too. Especially for folks who come out later in life, it is likely that despite your wishes, you were viewed and treated as a man. Maybe your opinions were listened to more, maybe an M on your license let you have a bank account when your cis female friends couldn’t, maybe your name was read on a job application and you got picked before someone with a girl name. All of these things are privileges but they are also extremely conditional. Not only does it make an incorrect assumption about you, but it misgenders you. Any closeted trans woman could tell you how painful it is to be forced to remain hidden. For many, the deep fear of losing things you’ve accumulated keeps people closeted longer. These circumstances are not at all your fault—these perceptions are wrong whether they give you some benefit or not. But it is part of the equation, and understanding privilege as the correct or incorrect assumption and special treatment in a specific instance is crucial for understanding how it is relevant to trans men.

Because if you are not cis-passing, you do not have male privilege. If you are not seen in a space as a man, and specifically a cis man, you are not gaining privilege. Out trans men can still achieve levels of privilege, but will not be viewed as cis. They are automatically in some other gender category—and in a society that loves its binaries, they are going to find their ‘other’ gender as shoved into the cis man or cis woman box—both incorrect for various reasons and both causing some level of harm.

One of the other biggest pitfalls of trans discourse is accepting ra/d/fe/m views on masculinity. I’ve written about it before but larger society views femaleness and female femininity as inferior (with the caveat that if you perform it well you may be mildly rewarded for conformity), but it also doesn’t wholly view masculinity as good. In white cishet male masculinity sure! In Black men, their masculinity is a threat. Does that mean Black men are rewarded for femininity? Absolutely not. There’s no winning. Either you fail to be what’s expected, or you are demonized, or the secret third thing where you abandon one piece of identity in favor of the identity that can bring you closer to privilege. There’s no question that Black men can wield misogyny, turning on Black women, and gain favor in white male spaces. But no matter how much they lean into that, it doesn’t make them white. Trans men can lean into misogyny and turn on trans women and cis women and gain a level of privilege, but they will never be cis.

There is often debate about who has privilege over whom when comparing cis women and trans men. The answer is assumed to be trans men on top always, because they are men. The reality is that they only generally hold a higher level of privilege when they are assumed to be cis men. As soon as their trans status is known, cis women can and do weaponize their cis status to oppress trans men. By viewing “male/female” as the ultimate axis of identity power, we completely ignore they way that other factors hold much more weight in a given conversation and how female identity can weaponize victim status for control. This scenario plays out a lot with the concept of “white woman tears” or the ability for (cis, white) women to wield victimhood as a shield from culpability, encouraging those with power to “save” you from a purported threat. This phenomenon has killed and endangered countless Black men. All this debate about whether cis women can hold power over trans men when white women unquestioningly can hold power over cis men of color. The context of privilege is immensely important.

Both trans men and Black men (and others) are not the intended recipients of male privilege.

Intersectionality was coined as an attempt to understand how various identities one holds intersect with each other and create something new that cannot be separated out. We mostly understand it in intersections of oppressed identities, but cis+white+man is a set of intersections too! A gay man would understandably have his gayness weigh “against” him socially. Now, suppose he is masculine—people don’t tend to view him societally as gay. In this instance his masculinity may protect him. But in queer spaces he is then seen as a threat, an invader. Is it still privilege? I think a lot about how in Paris is Burning, one of the interviewees talked about societal points against you, and he said “Black, gay, and a man.” In his experience, his maleness as a modifier to his other experiences was a strike against him! Not in the implication that women didn’t suffer for their own femininity, but understandably, much of his expression of femininity wouldn’t give him the same sort of flak it did if he was a cis woman. Him being a man was part of his experience of oppression, not the canceling out of it.

Masculinity is treated as the opposite of femininity and implied to always be rewarded. Any cis butch will tell you that’s a lie. As will a trans butch. Butchphobia is an oft-neglected topic in gender discussions. The overlap in experience between cis women butches and trans men is often ignored—either by the need for trans men to understandably try to distance themselves from assumptions of femaleness, or by queer community’s constant forgetting of butches’ existence. The overlap in experience between transfemme butches and transmasc butches is ignored entirely for its implication that “opposite genders” could be the same. A transfemme butch is shoved into one of two categories: either basically a trans woman, or a cis man faking it. Suddenly a category of transfemme is turned on by the larger community, including trans women, for straying outside expected conformity. We turn ourselves into gender cops the way OUR genders were policed.

The trouble for many is, the idea that a transfemme and a transmasc could have the same gender shits on the idea of treating these two categories as diametric opposites. There’s boy trans and girl trans. And because societally it’s good to be a boy and bad to be a girl, and we’re pushing back on that, transfemmes are casting off this yuckiness and choosing purity, and transmascs are joining the dark side. It’s childish analysis, and creates this division where anyone who exists in the grey is a faker or a traitor.

And ultimately what does this help? Transfemmes folding themselves into pretzels to prove they are nothing like men is so damaging, and creates the conditions to cast out transfemmes who don’t fit—after fighting to find acceptance after being cast out for not being cis! And transmascs? They were treated like shit for being women and now either are treated like shit in trans spaces for passing, or treated like shit for not passing—what are THEY supposed to do? Who does this help?

Gender essentialism is a brain rot, gender policing is a disgusting practice, exorsexism is going to destroy the grey area trans folks certainly—but it’s gonna come for the rest of you too.

The inability for people, very much including trans folks, to grapple with the complexities of gender and how it intersects with other identities is not based in logic and does not make you the ultimate victim, it makes you a stunted asshole.

The only way we can move forward is by letting people with direct experience speak to their experience, come up with words to explain that experience, and deconstruct our ideas of gender from binarist, cissexist, intersexist and limited understandings.