#its not bad enough to get shit from cis ppl for being trans? we have to take it from other trans ppl too???? fuck off

[horce-divorce]

I've never listened to cavetown but everyone fucking hates him so much that I think I like him by default. specifically to piss off the haters a little more

[bioethicists]

Your post about unfollowing people who’re really combative online made me think about someone in particular. Apologies if this is out of nowhere so feel free to ignore.

If somebody (with thousands of followers) who isn’t a part of a specific marginalised group habitually seeks out bad takes regarding them to dunk on, isn’t that a little weird? I’m not talking about defending your friends when they’re facing discrimination or dunking on the main bigot character of the day, but regularly seeking out bad takes from small accounts that’d otherwise never seen the light of day.

It’s nobody on here I’m referencing. I feel a little crazy because this person gets heralded as a huge ally and has a lot of people in this marginalised group who’re really devoted to and defensive of them but it just really rubs me the wrong way because they seem really discourse-brained more than anything else.

yeah haha ironically i think some of the ppl on that post are seriously missing the point (which i probably could have made clearer) in terms of some of them are like. people who clearly think being told they're racist is the same as the type of behavior i'm talking about.

but also yes! this is more what i meant- people who are seeking out fights with those who would otherwise never get any attention! especially when it's takes that are NOT popular or the response is just totally disproportionate. or just building a social media brand off of over-exaggerated hatred/meanness towards people who "deserve it". it reminds me of all the cis people on here who constantly reblog shit about like... putting terfs in meat grinders but then never even lift a finger (or, more likely, are part of the mob) when trans women are sexually harassed or viciously bullied.

i don't think joking about harming bigots is some grand moral wrong, but it's often just gratuitous in a way where... are you actually expressing outrage or are you using the performance of outrage to get followers? what if that outrage is directly putting people in danger (e.g, if you find a terf with 45 followers + start sending her death threats, is that helping anyone or is it potentially provoking more violence, which you know full well you will NOT be the primary target of). i can see how this behavior can result in members of certain groups defending you, because if nobody has shown their willingness to defend you, isn't it refreshing to see someone who will? it's not so simple, either, cuz i do think ppl who do this do CARE, but i'm not sure the way that they care is sustainable or would hold up to a real, complex situation where allyship is needed.

it's so contextual + i'm not arrogant enough to pretend like i'm the one who can see the context right 100% of the time. this is a little sappy but i feel like the difference is whether the root of the anger is love/hope or if its fulfilling your own desire to lash out/release tension/look good. like "i'm pissed because i care about my trans siblings + it hurts me to see them treated this way + nobody else is saying shit for them so i'm stepping up" vs "raging online meets a need in me that i'm not willing to acknowledge + here's the perfect target". not exactly that simple but sometimes u can tell someone would be a kiwifarms bro if they didn't need social capital from a different crowd, ykwim (which btw we regularly learn that certain leftists will comb through + disseminate kiwifarms shit if it fits their vibe, which is an automatic red flag to me that you only care about drama, not morals)

it reminds me of how some "callouts" are clearly written with the intention of preventing harmful people from maintaining the power to do more harm (e.g x popular artist sexts underage fans) while many others are clearly written with glee about someone turning out to be Bad (e.g x popular artist has a private twitter that i, op, SCROUNGED to find, where they say horny things about genshin impact characters)

[strawbs-screaming]

☆ punch out sexuality headcanons ☆

im running out of funny things to say help me, also tw for mentions of homophobia & transphobia

Glass Joe

- aromantic asexual (sex neutral, romance positive) + trans, he/him

- Just because hes ace doesnt mean he doesnt make inappropriate jokes on a daily basis, if there was a ranking of who made the most sexual jokes he'd be at the top

- when he came out as trans to his parents they were suprisingly supportive even though they didnt understand much, it just went like: "mom, dad, im a boy and if you dont like that too bad" "we dont care as long as you dont murder anyone" And they were generally chill with him

- when he first binded he used bandages & cloth instead of a actual binder (before he came out) and due to that he almost wasnt able to get top surgery

- has faked a lot of crushes to fit in during his childhood, ended up dating 3-5 people he didnt even like

- thought his gender envy was attraction until he just asked himself "do i wanna be them or be with them" And boom, gender confusion

- fell down the "im not like other girls!" to "im not a girl." pipeline

Von Kaiser

- demiromantic, demisexual + bi with a preference for men, he/they

- when he didnt know the demi labels he just saw himself as a picky dater, when he saw the demi labels he was like "Wait thats me" And pretty much ascended on the spot

- thought everyone just liked both men & women until he said it out loud and got met with pure shock

- his first crush was a famous model he saw in a fashion magazine, also slipping down the "do i wanna be them or be with them" pipeline

- his dad wasnt really supportive but became a bit more open minded once he realized that his hatred distanced himself from his son even more

Disco Kid

- nonbinary,gay, he/she

- okay with both feminine & masculine terms

- somebody tried to call him "princess" to insult him when he was little, instead he took it as a compliment and saw them as a friend, still in contact with said person & theyre besties now, the princess thing has become a nickname for him

- when he first came out his parents were like "the closet was wide open" and were not suprised at all, they saw it coming 1000 miles away as soon as he started it out with the "i have to say something important"

- started doing make up & playing around with dresses thanks to a close friend of his (the childhood friend) , when he first put on a dress he was like "i think i realized something"

King Hippo

- #1 label hater + all pronouns

- if he were to use labels, he would count as gender apathetic and pan oriented aroace

- labels are for losers to him

- not out but his parents know that he doesnt give a shit about labels, they first found out when he didnt care about being called "queen" and liked it, they have no problem with it

Piston Hondo

- pan, cis (?) + he/him but likes to refer to himself with feminine pronouns in japanese

- not out to his parents but dropping hints, theyre struggling to pick up on it and hes going mad over it

- going through some major gender questioning™

- playing around with dresses & femininity and enjoying it

Great Tiger

- polysexual (prefs are enbies, men & genderqueer ppl), genderqueer + all pronouns

- closeted it but trying to make it clear hes not straight,its just flying over his parents head like "oh me oh my our son is sure close with his friends!! Such close bros"

- likes dresses not only for spinning skirts but also how comfy they are

Bear Hugger

- gay, bear (ITS IN THE NAME. COME ON THE CLOSET IS GLASS), trans + he/him but ok with they/them

- when he first came out there was a lot of crying, not in the "i wont accept this wahh" way but more in the "i cant believe you trusted me enough to tell me this" way

- didnt know he was trans until he said "yeah i like being called son, yeah i like being called manly, im a girl though" out loud and he was like "wait a minute"

- has had 2-3 boyfriends during his teen years and is still in touch with them since the break ups were done without any harsh feelings & grudges, hes the only person that can see his exes all chatting together and not die of a heart attack on the spot

Don Flamenco

- gay, trans + he/they

- got called gay way before he knew it since he kept calling his male friends handsome often, always passed it off like "cant a man call his friend handsome?"

- the only feminine terms he will accept is queen and aunt, refer to him as anything other than that and he will punch you to orbit

- cut off contact with his parents since they didnt accept him & kicked him out, the only person who took him in was his aunt, she helped him get t & bind safely before he got top surgery

Aran Ryan

- genderfluid, pomosexual + all pronouns

- label hater but still uses them because why not

- came out in the most casual way possible, was just chilling on the couch with his dad and he just said "i kinda like being called miss sometimes" from boredom just to see dad go "huh??"

- sometimes does drag when he feels fem

Soda Popinski

- gay, cis + he/him

- Rocky dating history, most break-ups of his were really sad since it was either forced by family members or over arguments

- exes with bald bull but they still get along & dont care about their past, they just had better platonic connection and decided together

- out but not, making it clear hes a bit fruity but not too much for it to snowball into "the rumour come out: does soda popinski is gay?"

Bald Bull

- Boyflux, gay + he/they

- flamboyantly gay and cannot hide it no matter how much he tries, the closet is not even present, show him someone he has a crush on and you'll hear the gayest squeal in your life before he evaporates into thin air and holds you at gunpoint

- has the Don Flamenco issue going for him, compliments his male friends and calls them handsome wayyy too often, this time its 99% more obvious

- either really bitter with his exes or close friends, no inbetween, if you tell him "yeah your exes asked about you, theyre there" theres a 50% chance its gonna have his soul physically exit him and another 50% chance hes gonna walk right over to them and say hi

- not out publicly since it would cause a shitstorm, only out to a few people he trusts, has issues trusting people to not say his secrets since a close friend of his outed him during his teen years

Super Macho Man

- bi (slight pref for women), cis + he/she

- didnt really come out, he just showed up to his parents door with his (now ex) bf and was like "heyy say hi to my boyfriend" and everyone just kinda accepted it

- thought the attraction to men was envy for a long time until he learned the fact that wanting to be lifted into the arms of a man and making out with said man is not really straight

Mr Sandman

- gendervoid, demiromantic, acespec, pan + all pronouns

- feels like he should be more masculine but cant bring himself to it,he cant force his behavior to act in a way that doesnt fit him

- out and about, hes not repressing himself for anyone

[matoitech]

on that note since its been on my mind, getting transition related surgeries as a trans person isnt about ‘not enough self love’ cuz like first of all its none of your business what other ppl do and second. its literally the opposite of Not Loving Yourself Enough. respecting yourself and your needs and what you want enough that you’ll do whatever you need to in order to feel comfortable and at home in your body isnt ‘assimilationist’. trans people arent bad or wrong or not really trans or not really their genders for being comfortable in the bodies as is, but theyre also not bad or wrong or basically cis or bootlickers or whatever for doing medical transition stuff. way to go for always assuming trans people do everything we do bcuz of cis people though. lol. trans people get so much shit from even other trans people for things like bottom surgery and ppl need to realize it is not about them and acting like meanie trans ppl r forcing you to go get a sex change is just transphobia regardless of whether youre trans or not. its fine if you dont want to do something but you have to actually be respectful to other people and not spread misinformation like this is the bare MINIMUM lmao. also btw this pride month my tip to you all is to actually do research w reputable sources for medical transition stuff ESPECIALLY bottom surgeries instead of spreading misinformation and fearmongering and saying rly gross and terrible things about other trans peoples bodies. you need to shut the fuck up now more than ever

[faggotron9000000]

genuinely i think i've spent [~8yrs, the majority of my adult life & the entire time since i've known i was trans] trying to find a justification for how the ideology that i fled to-- queer feminism-- is so consistently hostile to me both online and off, and i just can't. i can't find solutions to the fundamental inconsistencies of the liberal queer feminism zeitgeist i (voluntarily but also necessarily) live in, and also recognize my own humanity.

i dont think you can have a truly trans-inclusive feminism that is also constantly suspicious, derisive, and in-defense-from men or masculinity.

i think the greatest crime & defining feature of White Feminism™ is a lack of self-awareness about the ways womanhood can be weaponized in service of white supremacy-- the ways that white womens' fears and tears are (both intentionally and unintentionally!) used as justification for racist & classist violence. the notion that men are privileged over women is only true in some contexts, and whiteness is (or at least should be, imho) the most glaring one.

imho, self-awareness about the ways that i can be dangerous and hurtful, even unintentionally, is like, my most basic responsibility as someone who thinks racism and sexism are bad. white dude allyship 101 is being self-aware enough to recognize when some interpersonal conflict or rudeness Aren't Really Personal-- recognizing that minority communities and individuals have rational & predictable self-defense mechanisms, and its kind and respectful for me to be understanding and accommodating about that even when it hurts my feelings. that's a piece of the cultural philosophy that i still agree with.

so i think it kind of just pisses me off to see that white feminism still has not grown much self-awareness about the ways that white women (& """"women""") can be dangerous themselves. the responsibility that i feel to forsake my own comfort for the good of others is not shared by white non-men. this suffuses the culture in ways that seem subtle, and are difficult to articulate, but don't feel subtle to me.

when i point out that norms in the culture are actually bad for me, my fellow trans queer feminists get angry and defensive. i cannot get my nonbinary roommate or upstairs neighbor or nonbinary-upstairs-neighbor's-cis-guy-roommate to stop calling me "them" no matter how much i ask them not to. i can't log on to social media without seeing memes about all the ways men suck-- t4t jokes, short king jokes, #notallmen, if men could get pregnant, men will literally X instead of get therapy, Types Of Guy, on and on and on. just constant humiliation and a thousand people rolling their eyes and waxing poetic about how its my duty to just take it.

i personally stopped making "men are trash" jokes in college bc 1) i was taught that public self-flagellation can be self-serving, and bc 2) i realized that every complaint about men as a class included black men, and i didn't feel like white ppl like me could talk that kind of shit and still consider ourselves allies. and like, i don't know, i still fucking feel that way?

i think that awareness of race has fundamentally informed my philosophy about gender, to the point that i that i think gender theory inevitably drifts into racism (or, more often, takes a sharp fucking turn into it) when it tries to be agnostic of race. to claim that men have an inherent power and privilege over women requires you to ignore the historical precedent where "protecting white women & children" has been the professed justification for racist violence (central park karen being a vivid recent example). and when you realize that this context is so important to this supposedly-universal male/female (or "men/non-men," the difference here is semantic) power dynamic, it starts to reveal the other contexts where men do not actually have the kind of power or clout that pop feminism seems to think we universally possess.

i don't know how to tell other queer people that i take it for granted that i am a man and that when they say "men" they mean me, too. i don't know how to tell people that living among self-avowed queer feminists has not led me to a people who are kind and accepting and treat me like i'm worthy of care in a way that the outside world of cishet people do not-- they all treat me like trash, and in a lot of the same ways. other queer people remind me constantly that they think i am stupid and annoying and they would love to never think of anyone like me ever again. and i don't see other groups of people receiving this standard i'm held to, that i have a moral responsibility to grow a thick skin, that "men who aren't trash know that when i say 'men are trash' i'm not talking about them." and like, i don't know, whether that's fair or not, i can't really deal with it, because i'm a person with my own traumas and my own intersections of oppresssion and whatever. i don't know. it feels [insulting? undignified? wrong?] to me to justify my like, right to dignity and care from my community, by citing that i am part of a minority group, i guess. like i think we all deserve those things bc we're human.

people don't really like it when i say i think that #notallmen hashtags-- implying-if-not-outright-stating that every individual person who IDs as a man is responsible for bearing the guilt for every sexual assault, every rude comment, every stereotypically bratty opinion ever held by another man-- was a perverse and pointed piece of widespread cruelty-- and pointing out that it was also tangentially transphobic doesn't do much to engage their sympathy, either. people think it's normal to treat me like i'm frightening, like i'm an enemy, like i'm dangerous-- trans men, trans women, and gnc butches-of-all-sorts have our emotions and behavior aggressively policed by other queer feminists based on our proximity to Obviously Scary Bad Cis Maleness & Masculinity. people put ads on lex for parties where No Cis Men Are Allowed and nobody has any inkling of why that's fucked up. cis gay men have a reputation for being transphobic, but nobody bats an eye when my lesbian friends think its cute to make gagging noises when i talk about finding men hot and wanting to fuck them. my broke transsexual ass is expected to lend infinite shoulders to cry on to every financially secure, college-educated, white ~non-man~ who wants to complain about the emotion work they do for men while also asking me about my genitals and regarding me with this weird mix of disgust and jealousy. i have to listen to other trans people complain about cis ppls' ignorance and cruelty while being ignorant and cruel towards me, and then when i point out my own burden in this exchange, they claim that i'm only upset because i don't respect their transness.

like, fuck, man, i'm tired, i've been tired for a really long time, everyone is so rude and disingenuous and solipsistic in dealing with actual ethical challenges. i just know that i'm expected to put up with a lot of shit that i wouldn't dare do to other people, either because i know it's uncouth because of the position i inhabit by merit of being a white man, or because i think it's just fucking cruel and disrespectful to say to anybody. i'm annoyed that the burden of trans allyship and antiracist allyship end at the border of white non-mens' comfort zones, that performative displays are vogue but actually leveling up your philosophy to incorporate consideration for new groups of people... isn't. i'm pissed off that a community that credits itself with trans pride and inclusivity seem incapable of taking the exact kind of criticism that they've bludgeoned me with for the last decade.

idk man it seems like every social ill that white feminists complain about suffering at the hands of men, they have also inflicted on me personally, as a trans man with a personal investment in the cause and the philosophy. there doesn't seem to be a social space for me where people genuinely treat me like a human who is worthy of care and community. "trans inclusivity" means not using the phrase "women's issues" to refer to abortion and never, like, actually thinking about how feminist culture is received by trans men. the shallowness makes me grind my teeth into dust, seemingly every time i talk to new people or log onto social media some jackass has to stomp on a nerve and then either get defensive or start crying when they're called out. it seems like taking cis white rich men down a peg by generalizing their sins as the sins of all men is more of a priority for feminism than treating someone like me as if i deserve dignity.

im currently reading queer theory books from the 90s that have better answers to contemporary gender-ethical questions than the fucking, twitter kink-at-pride discourse carousel and whatever. are we ever going to grow up or is feminism just going to end up in the reactionary dustbin of history, bc this new wave of terfdom does not look great for the philosophy's future

[betaoctillery]

i dont follow ppl that dont support mspec lesbians btw. not only is it bullshit gender/sexuality policing but its ahistorical as shit when bisexuals & lesbians were almost indisguishable from one another until a very specific point in the 1970s when terfs and political lesbians began dividing the community by excluding anyone who had ANY association to perceived masculinity, which included trans women (bcus terfs thought of them as men), bi women for sleeping with men, butches for expressing masculinity, and women of color for racist reasons which posited that they arent feminine/women bcus many dont look/act/talk exactly like cis/het white women.

at any rate, the current accepted definition for the term lesbian is inherently bisexual! everyone says it means “attraction to women and nonbinary ppl” (which is nb-phobic outright ANYWAYS by lumping ALL nonbinary ppl with women -- this is what ppl are criticizing when they say we’re treated as “women-lite”) so if youre not being a nb-phobic asshat, you then have to acknowledge that woman and nonbinary are different genders, thereby making lesbianism a fundamentally bisexual identity as it includes to attraction to two or more genders. 

like think critically for a moment. what about a bigender lesbian who feels like they are both a man and a woman? do you personally get to decide, do you personally get to have the authority, to choose which identity of theirs to suppress in order to cram them into one specific neat little box? whichever way you try to pigeonhole them, youre promoting gender binarism, which is nb-phobic. trying to cut up and divide ppl’s identities like nations erecting borders is dehumanizing. 

another aspect of this issue ive noticed is that almost every single person ive met who self-identifies as a bi or mspec lesbian is trans or nonbinary. they often have complicated relationships to gender and sexuality that sweeping statements like “lesbians cant like men!!!” end up erasing their experiences. ive seen ppl claim its a term used by cis women to describe sleeping with trans women and i cant stress enough how in all the reading and research ive done on bi lesbianism that ive never once seen that cited as a definition or something having been done in practice. its literally just ignorant teenagers or young adults in their early 20s who know nothing about their community’s culture or history talking straight out of their asses. and if there are ppl who do this, theyre extreme outliers and its disingenous to act like mspec lesbians would defend such a level of transphobia when, again, most mspec lesbians are transgender themselves and are well aware that this division occured bcus of terfs.

read queer history yall. for the love of whatever you consider sacred and holy in this world pls fucking read queer history. dont get all of your information off of social media, random unsourced carrds made by teenagers who obviously dont make an effort to learn about their own community, and bad faith internet debaters who make conclusions drawn off what amounts to nothing more than “vibes” essentially. these people have really big loud mouths, but theyre simply wrong. material history will never agree with them. 

throughout history, bi and lesbian have more or less meant and were treated as the same thing, including both women who exclusively were attracted to other women AS WELL AS women who were attracted to both women and men.

and until a single exclusionist can provide sources that can prove that 70′s lesbian separatism wasn’t a huge, well documented movement that resulted in much of the exclusionary attitudes and its effects we see even today, im just gonna continue to laugh at how childishly they cover their ears and go “la la la la” when presented with verifiable and cited evidence that this happened.

[misterbitches]

hi! this is long as shit i’m sorry. i hope it makes sense. i ahve adhd and like 5 million learning disorders so this is just word vomit cos there’s so many words in my brain. my b.

i’ve had such a tough day so thank you for replying and sharing! @yeedak​ 

i was thinking about what i wrote and i meant to clarify that as well. some cases are fine for both parties and it’s not like you weren’t consenting and it seems like you were happy! same with my friend who was dating a 20 yr old. if they’re happy you know i’ll clown on ‘em but yea. so for anyone that sees these posts your relationship with your partner who is older or whatever. i’m some dumb girl on the internet okay. ill side eye older ppl tho

i think a lot of people feel the same way you do now (me included.) it feels really good at the time but alter we can see the dynamics playing out. i’m 29 now and i think aging is just such a huge process. it’s wild how you at 31 are a totally different person, right?

and the US racism is probably some of the worst ever in its iteration because of slavery which started from europe etc but USA is so fucking unique bc of columbus bringing slaves here and displacing indigenous peoples or hispanola and because america is so influential the way it views race, particularly with black people as objects, has so deeply permeated into the current historical psyche globally. it’s fascinating to track how necessary anti blackness is to the flourishing of america but also the world at this point. also want to point out how fuckign scary sinophobia is here especially for covid. one is a straight historical line (black ppl + the US) and the other had to be manufactured and to continue to exploit the non-white americans and keep antiblackness in tact.i could go on about this all day. the pain of this place is immense.yet as bad as it is here, this is still the only place i truly feel safe as a black person. because of the unique experience we have in america and through the diaspora especially because we are veyr much ocncentrated here. it would be nice to like move to norway and have some alleviation financially or get free healthcare it’s just not feasible if no one looks like me. it’s fucking tough. 

i hope you don’t hate it here though and people treat you with respect. but as you know being a woman and jewish and an immigrant....shit is tough. the USA is a hellhole. :( america is so deeply tainted and desperately bad because it was founded on strife and blood and there’s no way to reverse that and what this country did in turn when it gained enough power and could capitalize off of the colonial forefathers. this is why we hsould all luv revolution!!!

HOWMEVERRRR 

boy oh boy oh BOY OH BOYYYYYYYY. well wlecome to the world of BL lmao especially as an adult with some obviously deep perspective just given your background. it is a fucking mess and it’s a hard mess to like but it pulls you in. i approach it like i do with soap operas since these are essentially telenovelas, you know? just like the drama at a billion. but the tricky part of that is like....what parts of it do we understand for critiquing? because so many of the shows are so bad at being like good pieces of things to look at just production wise and story wise. but i feel like these shows ask us to take them seriously, so why shouldn’t we take the content seriously? and this is being primarily peddled to young girls. 

i bring this up often but i read this thing about yaoi and the interest younger women/girls have in BL and its fascination with pederasty essentially. this component i think is key when we talk about who gets affected by these things the most. society in general is bad 4 girls bla bla we know lmao but in “more sexually conservative” societies it may be harder for these girls to feel safe even expressing normal emotions romantically and sexually and particularly with guys. some people hypothesized, and i think i agree with this hypothesis, that they can live through the casualness of BL. they don’t feel threatened because they can put themselves into the shoes of the other character. oftentimes, the more feminine or the younger. this was in conjunction with the age gap aspect (they say pederasty as well because there’s unethical age gaps that r gross and that is indeed what we would at least call a touch of sexual abuse if people dont feel like calling it an obsession with youth and power and uhhh young ppl and perhaps kids) where maybe girls could see themselves in these situations as the person being saved, loved, taken care of, and sadly also sexually active and penetrated. 

i think that’s just one aspect of it but i do think there’s validity in who gravitates towards it. i cannot imagine seeing this stuff and not getting enough information as a young kid, i sure as fuck know i didn’t!, and seeing these things and you look at it with 0 critique because you’re young and you may have no interest in it or you simply cannot understand what is wrong. no one is teaching you these things and these shows confirm it. and it is wild how intrinsic patriarchy is to BL although in its existence it also can’t be in line with patriarchy given the nature of two [cis] men!

it begs the question about the replacement aspect. is it just so girls can put themselves in these characters shoes? if so then that means we believe that gender is so interchangeable within our relationships and interactions and that doesn’t seem right. there’s more to lgbtq+ than just existing; it’s finding ways to communicate, finding a family, safety, your people, being a free person. there’s a lot to gain and a lot a lot to lose. and a gay man is also not a woman because those are also two distinct experiences.  especially in societies that have a more hidden aspect to sexuality (idk how to word this bc the BL industry would NEVER survive in america but in a way there’s a more “progressive” look at homosexuality but it’s still fucked up because we live in a Society, you know? at the same time look at what we are doing to trans kids. literally waging war so it’s bonkers how we all collectively have some real progress happening but at the same time not at all. the concept of ‘ladyboys’ and the frequency we see trans people in thai shows is wild and something that we absolutely do not see here in the US. still, none of these groups feel safe or are getting better material conditions in either place. we just show the ways we can try and tolerate oppression witout eliminating it imo)

to me it is clear: it’s money. which most things exist to make money so. but also who is the audience for these shows? and they have to market towards them. all that said all hope is not lost there are some decent shows. it’s just like regular media on TV though where it’s so fucking saturated as an industry that it’s literally sifting through garbage. and there are some days when you can handle the trash and others where it really fucking hurts to watch the violence, the rape, the manipulation, the violations, the stupid messaging. i have never seen more people trying to do mental gymnastics and seeing if things were “technically rape” than in teh BL fandom and that is so fucking sad.

i came into these shows at 28 with almost 0 clue of what as media BL was like esp as media that countries can use as soft power with the revenue. but i realize like...i’m 29 now and so many people don’t have a sizeable, though not huge, amount of life experience. and i wonder for people on the internet who are usually searching for something if they spend so much time on it like what a 15 year old girl thinks. what a 20 year old girl thinks. 

it is incredibly problematic and so awful but there’s also some rewards. if you haven’t i would definitely watch i told sunsset about you which i don’t think i’m going to finish and i doubt i’ll watch the second installment (watch this be a lie) but when i say some fucking impeccable storytelling and art? phew. now that is a fucking piece of media that works. it takes from moonlight heavily and you can see like...the artistic dedication is there and the story makes its world and sets up its stakes extremely well. 

i think because this is marketed towards much younger people too they know they dont have to try as hard. but they SHOULD because then you can have a fucking masterpiece like that. i think even this prolific gay thai filmmaker (who is like solidly against the government) who is so respected (and who i like a lot! if u wanna know i can tell u lmao but the films are very uhhhhhhhh “artsy”) would like i told sunset about you. i wish more people had budget like that and also just cared about the stories. it’s the fucking magic of art to figure out what you can do but there is very little incentive honestly. idk i am very pessimistic. there are days when it’s really a great pick me up and distraction but it is never a place i would love for to feel seen or heard but i’m more of the mind of i never trust the mainstream until they prove me wrong ;) 

or i never trust the mainstream and i still buy into it anyway and then cry when i don’t like what i see adn i yell “BOO GET OFF THE STAGE!” when an old man won’t leave a teenager alone

[bladesoflightandshadow]

In RoD that context could have been lost but that pressure isnt always unique to gender. A black male mc with a single father with intense pressure to succeed and to be perfect could also resonate. A number of the people who wanted a non-genderlocked book aren't white,straight or cis and experience that same pressure. Also in books like VOS it accounted for gender and had specific experiences if you played as a female Mc,they could have done that.

right so i lost my progress typing this halfway through so if i end up sounding pissy that’s why

i understand where you’re coming from. i understand how debilitating that pressure to be successful can be when you’re the child of immigrants, when you’re a person of colour, regardless of your gender. i even get how expectations of masculinity can play a role in making that experience even more difficult in some ways for men. i’m not saying it’s impossible to explore those ideas, and there does need to be more media which addresses that.

however, in the context of choices, and the way we’ve seen them handle social issues like that in the past, i really don’t see there being enough room for adding nuance in the way gender affects how an mc’s story plays out. even in the example you gave, veil of secrets, these gender variations were limited to a few interactions that didn’t really affect the overall storyline. and i honestly think vos did the whole gender variation thing the best compared to other books, but ultimately gender had little bearing on the mc’s actual development as a character.

with rod mc, however, her gender has played a huge role in her growth throughout the book, even if it is never explicitly stated. (i am admittedly not caught up, so i’m basing this off of what i have played and other people’s discussions of the book that i’ve seen.) her father’s over-protectiveness, the way he often refers to her as the ‘perfect daughter’, the fact that her entire narrative is based around the theme of freedom from not just her father, but from the world’s expectations of her as a young woman… like, sure, you might’ve experienced some of these things growing up if you’re a guy, but the level of universality that rod mc’s story is able to reach for other women reading the story, because she is a woman raised with expectations coming from a patriarchal society, could not have been achieved if she had been a guy.

and that kind of pressure is specifically tied to one’s identity as a woman, particularly as a woman of colour. even if you are, say, gay or trans, unless you have at some point experienced the world as what other people view as a woman, you will not have experienced the pressures that i was talking about in my original post. (i’m not trans and could only speak from my own experiences about womanhood, so i apologise if any of this comes off as offensive)

as a daughter, especially as an eldest or only daughter, from the moment you are born you are simply held to much higher standards than men are. i’m not saying rod mc is a perfect representation of all the experiences women, esp woc, have had to go through, but as far as choices mcs go she’s pretty fucking close. the fact is, the way her character is written means she represents a lot of these experiences, particularly wrt familial expectations & relationships, for the women reading her story.

and we don’t get to see that very often, so of fucking course we’d get defensive when we play this story, see ourselves in the main character, get emotional over the way her personal growth is written, and then see people telling us our enjoyment of this story is shallow and stupid. even other women who are criticising us–just because you personally don’t relate to the rod mc’s story doesn’t give you the right to tell us we’re dumb for liking it. 

i am NOT saying rod is without its faults, especially wrt how it handles lgbt characters. mona should’ve been a more integral character from the start, and they could’ve easily had another female love interest but they chose not to. this post & its replies explain that really well. 

but a lot of the 'hot’ takes i’ve seen about ride or die have been cold as fuck, because they’re unable to discuss it without making massive blanket statements about its readers (only straight ppl enjoy the book, we’re all homophobes for not wanting a male mc, etc.). plus, if you’re not a woman, your criticisms of this book will often sound disingenuous, because a lot of the time you’ll sound like you’re coming from a place of entitlement, not genuine concern. i’ve seen so many posts by people who aren’t women talking about how rod isn’t beneficial for wlw, how the writers don’t care about gay people, as if we don’t have more than 2 fucking braincells to be able to piece that together on our own. of fucking course that shit is going to sound insincere when you’re not even a wlw, and your main concern is obviously that you can’t play the story as a man. of course, when it comes to books like big sky country or the elementalists or perfect match, etc., they either don’t criticise them or only criticise them when it inconveniences them, and even then are able to look at it through a much fairer lens, because they can actually play as a man in those books. (yes!!!! i’m salty!!!!!)

being not white, not straight, and/or not cis doesn’t give you the right to make blanket statements about people who do enjoy the book, or to act like your opinions are objectively more correct than others’ are. on the other hand, even if you are attracted to men, even if you can relate to the mc’s struggles, you are not obligated to like ride or die. in fact, i personally find those posts talking about how 'ride or die is the best book out right now and you’re all just being salty’ annoying. nobody has to be made to feel bad because they don’t like it! but if people talking about how they like it truly does bother you, the block button is right there. so is the blacklist tool. that’s literally just how fandom works. not everyone is going to have the same opinions as you, and that’s fine.

i don’t have a fancy conclusion to tie all of this together so if any of it doesn’t make sense deal with it i guess lmao

[karak9]

Another stupid long post about how I don't know my own fucking gender

This is honestly just copied and pasted from a yt comment I made on an older vid and I figured I'd share it here bc tumblr loves this shit I guess lol. God damn I've been questioning my gender for so long and ik rn im prob not still in the best position to be thinking about deep life shit like where I am mentally and im dealing with a lot in my life and also very insecure about potentially being trans bc a lot of my friends don't seem like they would be very accepting and my bf is only really into girls. I asked him how he would feel if I was nonbinary or looked like a boy and he just said he wasn't totally sure but he's only attracted to girls :c he's the sweetest bf in existence and im honestly so afraid of losing him, so aside from obviously not wanting to deal with all the other trans shit, I definitely hope im not trans bc I don't wanna lose him. Anyways, ill start with my childhood I guess. I was always super tomboyish. My older sisters (im the youngest sibling btw) were always p tomboyish so maybe I kinda got it from them but I kinda felt like I was more tomboyish than them? I felt like I was the most boyish girl I knew, like even meeting other tomboy girls in elementary school I felt like I couldn't really relate to them or like they couldnt relate to me enough idk. I also remember once making up a song about being like so tomboyish that I was basically a boy or something along those lines and sang it to my best friend at the time who I copied like all the fkin time (it honestly wasnt healthy lmao I didn't have good parents, also I think I started making up songs bc she did that and I wanted to like impress her), but she thought it was stupid and weird so I just forgot about it and moved on. I was embarrassed to even enjoy playing with dolls or play dress up games online and was determined to play masculine games like runescape (even tho I ended up doing girly shit in runescape anyways lmao) and considered myself one of the guys. In 5th grade when I started needing to wear a bra I absolutely didn't want to, tho some girls in my class thought it was weird I didn't wear a bra when they found out and that made me more insecure about it, but since then I've p much only worn sports bras. I have bought some more normal bras bc I wanted to look attractive in them for my SO or whatever but I still highly prefer my sports bras and can't stand wearing the other ones unless I have to bc my sports bras aren't clean lmfao. I always hated talking about genitalia and breasts n shit but that could just be bc of how I was raised and how my family was always so strict and such radical Christians and anything sex related was a sin, idk if its dysphoria or not. I've never rlly liked my chest and hated showing cleavage like so god damn much and still do but maybe that's the same thing or maybe I just want smaller boobs and that's it idk??? Like I'd want to appear to have a completely flat chest at least, idk if I'd want to actually like have a guy chest or not? Also huge issue with ppl seeing me naked or touching my boobs but again idk if that's gender related or just a normal issue I have. Tho I had a friend in high school (a girl, a very weird lewd girl) who would occasionally grope my chest randomly and it wasn't a huge issue but kinda made me uncomfortable and more aware of my chest. I really like when I wear big hoodies or when I lean over so my shirt kinda poofs out and it looks like I have a flat chest underneath. Though im not super uncomfortable with my boobs, like normally ill want nothing to do with them but I don't mind my SO touching them especially if they're really into it. I wouldn't say im rlly dysphoric about between my legs either, like yeah I think its weird and I hate monthlies and stuff but I think that's normal. I think if i woke up one day and had a dick I would be fine with it, I'd prob even enjoy it tbh lmao. I once had a dream that i was, well, a male dog like,,, ya know, with a female dog, and not to sound weird af (hey we were both dogs ok) but I think i kinda enjoyed it? I don't really remember any other dreams where I remember actually having a dick or feeling it but I've had several dreams as a male person, but p much all of them were like, I was seeing through a character's eyes or smth, not really that I was a guy, so idk if that's normal. I have the same dreams about being other girl characters, I'd say its split about 50/50. Because of this game community im in, a lot of ppl assume im a guy, and a lot of people still think im a guy and I haven't really bothered to correct them but idk if I find it more enjoyable bc its funny or if I enjoy not being referred to as female for once. I'll admit I feel most comfortable referred to as they/them, like without a doubt, if I could go by only 1 set of pronouns for the rest of my life it would be they/them. But ik that's not enough to call myself trans. I definitely wouldn't want to be 100% male. Like if I imagine myself as a grown man vs a grown woman id prob choose to be a woman. I don't like my voice but I think that's mostly just bc I sound 10 years younger than I actually am, and wouldn't really want a deep/masculine voice. Like a "tomboy" voice would be fine if that makes sense? I don't want facial hair or want to have a masculine body, I like that I have curves and soft skin and small hands. Personally I like my hair long bc its soft and people love it, but sometimes I kinda wish I had short hair and could pass as a boy. Like I'd wanna be a typical cute kpop boy ngl lmfao. I like the whole cute androgynous/feminine boy look and wish I could pull it off. Tho I also like really girly things sometimes and am okay being seen as a girl, i just want to be cute and attractive. Ik whether im trans or not I like being a mix of feminine and masculine, tho I admit in the past I've been kinda insecure bc I used to be super sure I was nb and thought me liking girly things and wanting to still havd long hair and wear girly clothes made me seem like "not trans enough" or whatever. But i guess here I am questioning myself again anyways. If I am nb, it sucks that ill never really be able to be openly myself and all but I've accepted by now that I kinda have to pick a binary and choose what I want to be seen as for the rest of my life, and im ok with being female. There are some things I dont like about my body whether they're really gender related or not but I can't afford to transition and wouldn't like most of the effects of T and am afraid of surgery and not sure I want top surgery enough to ever get it anyways, but I think if we lived in a perfect world and I could magically change my body at will and I wasnt afraid of judgment or being unattractive or whatever, I'd probably want to look androgynous and itd be cool to be able to change my genitalia at will lmao. If I had to choose 1 genitalia over the over I honestly have no idea what I'd choose but I have no desire to ever get bottom surgery, at the same time tho I honestly wanna someday get surgery or w/e to never be able to get pregnant. I just could not handle pregnancy or giving birth and I don't even like babies and breast feeding sounds awful so if I ever have kids they will be adopted 100% and most likely be older and like not newborn babies lmfao, babies are honestly so weird to me and they stink and cry and they're so fragile and im so afraid of like dropping them when I hold them lmao. But I like my nieces and nephews and I like being the cool aunt (is there a gender neutral version of aunt/uncle?) who lets them use my art supplies and helps them do fun stuff even if I get tired of them sometimes lol. Idk if that's gender related either but yeah I guess. This if kind of a more recent thing but I often say I'd make a great bf kinda as a joke bc of how I am in relationships like being the stereotypical sweet bf type who makes things for their partner a lot and wants to be their knight in shining armor and their protector and all that, but again prob not rlly trans related lmao just thought I'd throw that out there I guess. So when I was 17 was when I really started getting into trans stuff, prior to that I mostly just learned from my parents that trans ppl were "against god" and all that bs, and eventually started realizing lgbt+ isn't as bad as my family said and later realized I was bi. But anyways I met an agender person online when i was 17ish and I'd never heard it before and thought it was really interesting and asked them how you know you're agender bc after hearing their explanation of it i thought it described how I felt, but ofc they weren't transmed and just described it as being like a deep feeling or whatever and since then i started calling myself agender (and switched between a few labels but basically nonbinary) until my transmed friend told me I was ridiculous and that I wasn't trans, and honestly he was a huge dick but im a huge pushover lmao and I thought well he's trans so he must know what he's talking about, and though I felt discouraged about it I stopped calling myself nonbinary. Then I began questioning it again after not too long and basically since then I've been questioning my gender off and on. I'm now 22 and god I fucking hope im cis but also I feel like a part of me doesn't want to be cis if that makes sense?? Idk if that's because I don't like being a girl for some weird deep reason I don't know about despite being pretty sure I've gotten a lot of my feelings and their reasons behind them figured out, or if it's because I am trans and dont want to force myself to pretend im a girl 100% forever. At the very least, whatever the fuck my gender is, I want to continue going by they\them wherever I can and pretending to be a boy to strangers online and I'd love to cosplay male characters and bind and occasionally just dress masculine for the hell of it and probably wear sports bras for the rest of my life. I feel like in a way I cang possibly be trans because I can live with all of those things and be fairly comfortable still being seen as female for the rest of my life. But idk, I have bpd and other mental shit so sometimes im not great with my feelings (tho I do try really hard to identify all of my feelings/emotions and stuff) but at the same time bpd can cause weird identity shit so maybe its just a weird mix of a bunch of crap and im not actually trans but just weird and tomboyish enough to question my gender for 5 years and still be unsure. Also I know a lot of ppl suggest talking to a therapist/psychologist/whatever professional and trust me I would love to but I can't currently and am unsure when ill be able to bc they're expensive and I live in the middle of fucking nowhere so finding a decent therapist around where I live rn is going to be very difficult. Also, I have fucking crippling social anxiety lmao like I'd be so afraid to open up about this stuff even to a professional. So if anyone could suggest anything online that could help that would be amazing

[jude-harley]

How come you don't understand satire? When Redkatherine drew her OC as a witch boiling trans ppl, her spellbook was a biology textbook. Grow up. You want to be a victim so bad.

actually, i do understand satire. the thing about satire is that, for it to work, you have to be punching upwards, i.e., making fun of someone who is better off than you, not worse off than you, and because she didn’t specify that the people in the pot were trans women, who she views as the patriarchy, you can’t argue that she was punching upwards.

secondly, for satire to work, it was to clearly be satire. in the post about the witch boiling people alive, it’s really not clear that it’s satire. no part of it indicates to me that it’s satire. it’s just her boiling trans people alive using a biology textbook. and one of the hands isn’t even wearing a real flag, so it’s kind of sad that redkatherinee couldn’t even be bothered to look up “gender flag” and just slapped some colors on and called it a day. 

which leads me nicely into my third point: it’s not satire, it’s hyperbole of her viewpoints. satire is meant to be ironic; it’s an exaggeration of someone ELSE’S viewpoints to point out the flaws in them. a fantastic example of satire is the work “a modest proposal,” in which johnathan swift satirically suggests that the irish could solve all their problems if they just ate their own babies. after all, the english thought that the irish needed a can-do spirit and to stop having so many damn babies! swift thought this was stupid, and did not agree with the english, so he made a work in which he took their beliefs and stretched them to the logical extreme to mock how heartless and cruel the english were to the poor irishmen. 

so, lets look at the picture in question.

 if a trans person were to make that same exact picture, but instead caption it, “this is how terfs think of themselves lol,” THAT would be satire. not very good satire, but it would be satire. if redkatherineee were to make an image of, i dunno, trans people handcuffing lesbians to trans women so they’d have sex, that would be satire. again, poor satire, but satire nonetheless, and you would be able to say that it’s satire. 

for example, i’m hoping to god this was meant to be saitre:

http://redkatherinee.tumblr.com/post/168147248964/thank-you-pronounrespecter-3

because it does technically meet the qualifications of satire! redkatherinee believes she’s punching up, and, to her credit, she makes the trans woman white and the woman who i’m guessing is supposed to be the cis lesbian black, giving at least a granule of substance to the notion of the trans woman being the oppressor. she’s also exaggerating the opponent’s points instead of her own, which is what you’re supposed to do in satire. but this one still falls into the trap i mentioned before: it’s not clear whether or not it’s satire. hell, i’m still not entirely sure if it’s meant to be satire or not.

what redkatherinee made with the post you mentioned was not satire. it’s not punching up, it’s not clear that it’s meant to be satire, and it’s exaggerating her own points instead of the points of her opponents. i’m aware that it’s meant to be a joke about how trans rights activists think TERFs are evil witches who want to boil trans people alive, but if you are a terf, making a post where you depict a terf boiling trans people alive is not even REMOTELY close to satire. even if you didn’t mean it, you’re just further proving the point of your opponents! 

finally, i want to discuss another one of redkatherinee’s “satire” pieces, which, in my eyes, solidifies her art as morally repugnant.

this post. 

http://redkatherinee.tumblr.com/post/165547471624/my-new-character-mary-radfem-police-is-always

god, so many things are wrong with this. 

i’ll start simple. again, she’s not punching up. the way she’s framed this, the trans woman isn’t the person in power, it’s the radfem police officer. she’s in a position of authority not only as a police officer, but in the way the art itself is framed. 

again, it’s not fucking clear that it’s satire! i’m not even sure WHAT she’s supposed to be satirizing. i’ll get into more detail about this later, but for now, let’s move on. 

just like with the witch post, redkatherinee isn’t exaggerating things she disagrees with (i think. again, getting into that later.) she appears to be exaggerating her own points in an attempt to pull off the whole “lol this is what the gendershits think we want!!!” thing i talked about earlier, which will always be unsuccessful, but is downright disasterous when you don’t even make it clear that it’s supposed to be satire.

onto the biggest issue with this. god, i really didn’t think i had to say this, but satire has to be hyperbolic to work. i thought we had covered that at the bit about eating babies! this is not hyperbolic in the slightest.

the LGBT community has a long history of substance abuse due to the fact that historically, the only places they could meet up were bars. even today, a large portion of LGBT spots to meet up in person are bars. the LGBT community has a long history of illegal substance abuse due to the fact that a.) the mafia was entangled with gay bars, b.) when being gay is illegal, you can’t effectively keep illegal drugs out of gay meetups since the meetup itself is illegal, and c.) because, in short, LGBT people are more likely to get the shit end of the stick, which in turn makes people more likely to seek drugs out of desperation. so, already, the drug metaphor is really insensitive.

“wait, but she’s just talking about the transes!!!!!111!!!1!”

not really. she might have meant it that way, but that’s not how it comes off. for starters, the drug thing affects the WHOLE LGBT community, not just the T. also, drag queens were also a huge part of the community historically, and thus subject to the same substance abuse issues. drag queens are usually men in dresses, and redkatherinee thinks trans women are just men in dresses. here’s the thing, though. redkatherinee never makes the disclaimer that “oh, drag queens are fine, just don’t try and call yourself a woman :))))).” this image makes no such subtle distinctions. it’s merely the distorted projections of redkatherinee’s views, a man in a dress we’re meant to gawk at and laugh in disgust at. the bulging eyes, the disheveled, dyed hair with horribly glaring roots, the protruding forehead, the faux breasts which clash against the skin, the angled nose and jutted chin dotted with a five o’clock shadow, the fat, lolling, tongue, uncanilly wide smile, the dripping sweat. we aren’t supposed to sympathize with this person. we aren’t supposed to look at them and laugh at how the gendershits think they’re oppressed and overreacting. i daresay we aren’t even supposed to feel pity. we’re supposed to feel disgust. and by trying to evoke that disgust at trans women, at “men in dresses”, redkatherinee alienates drag queens, who were and still are a cornerstone of the LGBT community, and yes, still fall under that category of “more vunderable to substance abuse” which makes this piece oh-so-insensitive, and the drug imagery not hyperbolic enough to fall into the realm of satire. 

so, we’ve established that the drug aspect of this piece cannot be considered satire, whether you view trans women as women or just men in dresses, since both trans women and drag queens, as part of the LGBT community, are at higher risk for drug abuse.

like i said earlier, substance abuse is an issue for all of the lgbt community, so by trying to use drug abuse as a metaphor like this, redkatherinee really just shooting herself in the foot.

“but it’s just the transes!!!!!!!!!!1!!1!!!1!!1″ you cry again, ignoring everything i’ve said about how she’s alienating drag queens who are also a part of the LGBT community. okay then. 

let’s take a closer look at the drugs out caricatured trans woman has stuffed into her bra. 

the drugs in her bra are, from left to right, the pansexual flag, the lesbian flag, the agender flag, and what appears to be the bottom half of the gay flag. 

so, pansexuals, lesbians, and gays. i’m sure even terfs can agree those are all part of the LGBT community. guess what that means! they have to fight off substance abuse too! so, hooray! redkatherinee, a lesbian, has actually shot herself in the foot now!

and, redkatherinee, what did you say your stand on drugs was again?

ah, yes, thank you. redkatherinee has now implied that being pansexual, agender, gay, or a lesbian, is bad. 

“but….. it’s satire… stop……. being so offended………….” you sputter out.

okay, but, on top of everything else i said about how redkatherinee has utterly failed at satire, she depicts the trans flag as a drug too. what message is that supposed to send? like, seriously? what the fuck is she trying to say here? that being trans is bad, like a drug? but she also depicts sexualities as drugs! there’s a lesbian drug! is redkatherinee saying being a lesbian is bad? is she saying drugs turn people gay? is she saying that the LGBT community is but a way for people to cope with the cruel bitterness of the world and that ultimately, the community will self destruct in a chaotic downward spiral and can only avoid its fate by submitting to the hand of radical feminism?

since you clearly don’t know what it is, i’ll give you a helpful tip; that right there was satire. redkatherinee is a lesbian, of course she doesn’t think lesbians are bad. but in a bid to hurt trans women as much as possible, that’s the point that she’s made. 

but oh, redkatherinee couldn’t make her art insensitive enough. no, no, she had to go above and be-fucking-yond. her radfem character arresting her trans caricature is a police officer. 

since being gay was illegal in the US until the 1960s, the relationship between the LGBT community and the police is strained, to say the least.

 so between that and the substance abuse problem, depicting a police officer arresting a trans person for drug usage is, um, how do you say, bad.

hold on. the drug…….. is a metaphor…………… for being trans……………………….. the police officer is radical feminism…………………. holy shit guys it’s so deep

for real though. this is the point where, even if you don’t think trans women are real women, redkatherinee goes from bad, to downright monsterous. 

in the recent past, being trans was, technically, illegal. now, none of these laws said, “transes are to be arrested on the spot!” but “wearing dress of the opposite sex” was illegal. even worse, many of these laws were much more agressive towards “biological males,” as redkatherinee would put it, and these crossdressing laws continued well into the 80′s. hell, the “immoral dress code law” of Oakland, California was only amended in 2010. 

so this? this isn’t satire at all. it isn’t hyperbole at all. there’s no exaggeration here. you can’t claim satire when depicting something that actually happened. and i hope you don’t forget that the trans woman being arrested is also holding gay, lesbian, and pansexual drugs. and you know. “homosexual activites” were also illegal. if you changed the cop to a human, took out the winky face, and removed reference to radical feminism, this would be nigh indistinguishable from propaganda against “degenerate activity.”

look at this piece of anti-gay propaganda. here, drugs are a metaphor for being gay, just like redkatherinees metaphor between drugs and being trans, and, of course, her metaphor between drugs and being gay. remember, that’s not me being hyperbolic! redkatherinee literally drew the trans, lesbian and gay flags as drugs! this fucking regan-era shitstain is more subtle that her work! and this took me two minutes on google search to find!

oh, my friend, but if you thought that was all, you are very, very, wrong. 

see, this is only in the united states. i covered it since that’s a large portion of tumblr’s userbase, and where i’m from. but redkatherinee isn’t from the united states. no, she’s from russia.

you know, where it’s actually, literally illegal to be gay. and actually, literally illegal to be trans. and you can be actually, literally, arrested for those things.

in conclusion. i understand satire. redkatherinee either doesn’t, or is so gung ho to shit on trans women that she forgoes it until she needs a defense to look like a decent human being, and in the process, fucks over the entire LGBT community. if you think redkatherinee’s work is “satire”, then i think i’ll be performing some “brain surgery” on you with a rock.

[magical-agatha]

i think sometimes ppl look too much for depth that isnt necessary. sometimes life is shallow. gender is simple, you are what you feel. and that can flow and fluctuate. i am and always was a woman because that is what i feel. sometimes i feel genderless, or only partially gendered. and when i feel that, thats what i am. i don't feel that i am genderfluid or genderqueer or demigender, those are wonderful labels but not what i feel myself to be. i am a trans lesbian who is sometimes a bit nb and always girl. this does not need to be proven, it only needs to be accepted and respected. i am what i feel. simple.

i think depth is used to prove and justify ones identity, which can be necessary sometimes in the face of ppl denying your identity. this is a great tragedy. no one should have to prove that they are what they feel they are. cis ppl dont have to. but some of them feel they have the right to force us to or to deny our identities.

an even greater tragedy though is trans ppl using depth to try and prove that other trans people are fake or illegitimate or using gender wrong. which is nonsense. and these ppl think that they need to be good enough for bad cis ppl. they think they can prove they deserve to exist to bigots by hurting and abusing their kin. whats wrong with people using gender in creative ways? truly. i think its lovely to be creative with gender. strange and unique things that dont follow the rules. which are treated like jokes or as something cringeworthy. for no good reason. when in fact many of these unique and creative gender ideas are quite lovely and should be appreciated for their creativity and beauty rather than mocked.

i think ppl's identities should be respected and appreciated and i think we could all learn a lot from trans kids making up new gender identities. things like stargender or such, thats rly cool and creative! i love it. i rly wish i knew more examples but they tend to be mocked into oblivion so i dont know many. i was scared to make this post and mention even one example bc i expect what i think is quite strange and radical to most ppl. i just think it would be a better world if ppl werent punished for deviating from the norm and instead these deviations were celebrated.

instead you get ppl in every group hating some other group. you get truscum and terfs and ace exclusionists and even things like white trans ppl being racist or ablebodied queer ppl treating disabled queer ppl like shit. and i dont understand it. why look for someone below you to step on. punch up! why arent we working together to fight for a better world for all of us. why are we fighting over whos fake and real and who deserves to live and who is or isnt marginalised when we could be killing fascists and unionizing and breaking down systems of oppression! punch up for goodness sake. we dont have time to bicker we have to change things before our planet is irreversibly fucked by capitalism and they start killing us off again. but instead of working together we're bickering and infighting which only benefits our oppressors. im so tired of being scared.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I'm curious for your thoughts on this subject. I dislike the way antis use the term "yaoi" and "fujoshi" since I feel like these terms were created to mean specific things (in Japanese culture) and antis often apply it without considering differences between slash and yaoi. Also, I dislike the way they use yaoi to pretty much mean fetishizing mlm/content, and fujoshi as fetishizing women since both terms are from Japan and I feel weird seeing these terms associated with fetishizing.

I also am really bothered by the way English fandom has adopted genre words from Japan to mean ‘the worst version of [x]/fans of [x]’. it feels like a form of looking down anything coming from Japan/Japanese culture and treating Japanese culture as the source of these ‘worst versions’.

(a lot of what follows is from light research I’ve done over the years and personal experience. It’s my opinion and experiences rather than a closely researched and heavily sourced essay.)

I think the reason for this weird English-speaking take is two-fold:

Americans/western culture interprets the Japanese subgenre ‘yaoi’ and its Japanese creators & fans through the lens of American/western culture and finds them wanting

the reinterpretation of the concept of ‘yaoi’ and ‘fujoshi’ in American/western culture and the unfortunate associations created as a result

Without going into historical depth, any western - particularly American - interaction with Japanese culture is an unequal one. Besides the ignominious end of WWII, the American army was the means of forcing Japan to reopen their borders in the 1850′s. And frankly: western culture has been obsessed with Japanese culture (and other East Asian cultures) for literal centuries. and we’ve been taking their cool shit and appropriating and bastardizing it for just as long.[$] 

the way that the words ‘yaoi’ and ‘fujoshi’ are being treated now is, in my opinion, an extension of this.

(this post was heavily updated on August 2-3rd, 2018, to add a lot more about the word ‘fujoshi’: it originally focused more on ‘yaoi’. huge thanks to blogs like @rottenboysclub​, @oh-suketora​, and @satans-tiddies​ for all the information they’ve put out on tumblr about these words.[%] )

American understanding of yaoi in Japan & its Japanese fans

Americans don’t understand yaoi or fujoshi in their original Japanese context, but we belittle and denigrate it as if we do.

BL (Boy’s Love) and its subgenre ‘yaoi’ seem to have a similar relationship to Japanese fans as ‘slashfic’ and mlm fiction does to American fans. But that doesn’t mean we understand yaoi/BL in the context of Japanese culture or that we interact with yaoi/BL the same way Japanese fans do.  Same for the word ‘fujoshi’ - a term that seems to have been coined in a derogatory context but was ‘reclaimed’ by the very female-aligned fans that it was meant to denigrate. (but more on ‘fujoshi’ later.)

In Japan, the word ‘yaoi’ is more equivalent to a Japanese acronym for the English ‘pwp’ (plot? what plot?) than a word referring to mlm. Like ‘pwp’ in its original usage, ‘yaoi’ indicates a fanwork or small-time/one-shot original work (doujinshi) that has little to no plot and/or focuses almost exclusively on the sex part of a fictional ship, though ‘yaoi’ is specifically applied to mlm-focused ‘plotless’ fanworks*.

(*it’s worth noting that - as mentioned in the wiki link above - the word ‘yaoi’ does not, on its own, have a meaning attached to BL. it has more to do with who adopted the acronym for common use: specifically, BL doujin writers.)

‘yaoi’ has fallen out of use in Japanese fan circles. ‘BL’ - ‘boy’s love’ - is the word which is more of an umbrella term for mlm in the way ‘slash’ is in English-speaking fandom, covering everything from explicit sex to soft pre-romance hand-holding. however, ‘yaoi’ was the word that became known as the Japanese-equivalent mlm fan genre to ‘slash’ in English-speaking circles, which had the unfortunate effect of leading English-speaking animanga fans to compare only the most tropey, explicit mlm content from Japanese fandom against all varieties of mlm ‘slash’ content from English-speaking fandom.

This was comparing apples to oranges; a more equivalent Western fandom comparison to Japanese ‘yaoi’ would probably be silly oneshot crackfic and kinkmeme fics. But the misapprehension was already in place and only got worse as some of the tropes of the explicit versions of yaoi genre doujinshi became increasingly known - the ‘seme’ (’top’) and ‘uke’ (’bottom’) and their supposedly male/female-like roles, the ‘rapey’ tendency to show the uke as crying and reluctant under an aggressive seme, etc.

These kinds of tropes don’t sit well with a modern American audience. And Japanese bl fans have had their own conversations about whether bl/yaoi is harmful to or supportive of Japanese gay culture (and long before Western / English-speaking fandom circles were having them, at least in a widespread way.)

But Americans are ill-equipped to judge the situation from the sidelines. To provide a few examples of things we generally don’t have cultural context on to truly understand yaoi (BL, tbh) and its Japanese fans:

LGBTQ+ culture in Japan

the Japanese flavor of gender essentialism

social and societal pressures on Japanese people, particularly women (trans, cis, and intersex) & nb ppl who identify as femme-aligned

what it means to be ‘feminine’ in Japan

strongly gendered roles in the bedroom (sex in Japan)

Without knowing all this, how can we understand why yaoi (or BL) is constructed the way it is? how can we understand what draws people to it, or how it sits with Japanese LGBTQ people?

But because many yaoi tropes don’t sit well with Americans in the context of our own culture and increasing openness to LGBT+/queer people, and because we’ve given yaoi a false equivalence with a western genre of fiction that has a much wider range of subject and form, we’re apt to look down on yaoi as ‘bad mlm’ and on its ‘fujoshi’ fans as genuinely ‘rotten women’.

The international reinterpretation of ‘yaoi’ & international yaoi fans

the other way the word ‘yaoi’ is used by many people in fandom-centric tumblr - anti and non-anti alike - is in reference to how Americans/Western fans ‘initially’ interacted with Japanese-sourced mlm (’initially’ being when yaoi became well-known enough for a noticeable interaction to appear in American/western geek subculture).

Manga and anime had a popularity boom in the US around 2003/2004 thanks to improving internet speeds and the 24-hour cartoon channel Cartoon Network looking for fresh animated content to air. Media companies caught on and a glut of manga and anime were officially licensed, translated, and sold overseas.

As the popularity of Japanese media grew, the word ‘yaoi’ became more popular and widely used in fandom circles, usually as a substitute for ‘slash’ or ‘gay’ (fictional mlm) when the source material for the fannish subject was Japanese in origin. I think this hit its peak around 2006-2007; at that time many teenage and young adult anime fans (primarily female/femme) who enjoyed slashfic/mlm fic called themselves ‘yaoi fans’. 

Why was ‘yaoi’ so popular in America/western culture? and why did its fans get such an awful reputation over time?

as for popularity, here’s a few aspects: 

Just another word for ‘slash’ - it wasn’t so much that yaoi as a publishing genre was popular as that there were a lot anime fans in fandom using the word ‘yaoi’ for their mlm fan content instead of the word ‘slash’. (and it still is used this way in some circles.)

male-attracted teen’s first fanservice - because of the size of the boom and the comparative diffidence of American marketers to young (male-attracted) people, a young anime fan’s first published media experience with the sexual ‘female gaze’ directed towards men was more likely to be sourced in Japanese BL content.

American gaze on Japanese male companionship - manga geared towards young men / perceived men in Japan (such as Shonen Jump titles) features a lot of male companionship and tight bonds of friendship. So does American media, but American male culture rarely allows men to touch one another in friendly ways (any gentle touch from a cis man is treated as expressing sexual interest).  Japanese male friendship culture lacks this physical distance. Guess how it was interpreted, and guess what kind of effect it had on American anime/manga fandom.

relatedly, this LGBT/queer read on Japanese-sourced masc-centric content, plus the willingness of works aimed towards femme audiences to present all-but-canon mlm relationships, probably functioned as a poor man’s substitute for the lack of LGBT representation in American media in some cases.

and some reasons for the terrible reputation ‘yaoi fans’ garnered:

American ‘yaoi fans’ in the mid-2000′s were mostly teenage girls/femme-aligned young people, and it is an American pastime to shit on teenage girls for being teenagers and girls at the same time.

10 years on, those teenage girls are young adults in their 20′s looking back on their younger selves with embarrassed disgust. That is: the word ‘yaoi’ started to garner its sour taste in the 2010′s because that’s when most of the teenagers of the 2000′s outgrew that particular flavor of immaturity.

a lack of LGBT/queer culture awareness and education in America. Yaoi or slash fanworks may have been Baby’s First Gay Content. It also might have been the entire extent of their knowledge about non-straight anything because America had by no means the same level of LGBT/queer visibility that it does now and certainly didn’t (doesn’t) educate about it. people said and did some awful stuff out of sheer ignorance and lack of thought.

fandom got better about it because resources improved and visibility increased, which was itself in some measure because of the popularity of mlm fiction in fandom circles leading to people doing more research and queer fans educating those who knew less. BL wasn’t necessarily intended as queer rep, but it did act as a gateway to queer culture for people who discovered things about themselves through BL.

socially inappropriate behavior of many, many kinds - including those who refused to separate fiction and reality and treated real mlm like live fanservice (‘omg real life yaoi!’). But as an icon of ‘yaoi fan in the 2000′s cringe culture’, perhaps nothing is so prominent and well-known as the ‘yaoi paddle’.

why is the yaoi paddle so illustrative and iconic? Well - the paddles were sold at anime conventions as a silly novelty item. Anime convention attendees tended (and still tend) to skew young, particularly compared to other nerdy social gatherings.  And as you would expect of a bunch of (a) overexcited young people (b) relatively lacking in supervision and (c ) surrounded by things liable to raise their excitement levels even more, they did a lot of foolish things when handed wooden oars that were easy to swing around and hit people with.

At about the same time that anime fandom was truly exploding in size and the yaoi paddle craze was hitting its peak, the internet was juuust about bandwidth friendly enough to allow people to take videos and upload them to this awesome new site ‘youtube’.

I’d say ‘you can imagine what kinds of videos people uploaded’ but you don’t have to imagine. you can see for yourself. The human interest news articles practically wrote themselves. And while yaoi paddles were quickly banned from conventions and their popularity dropped almost as fast, it was an impression to linger. particularly, IMO, combined with other invasive social behaviors that were somewhat more tolerated at anime conventions back then: ‘glomping’, ‘free hugs!’ signs, awkwardly following relative strangers around conventions as nominal ‘friends’, cosplayers publicly ‘making out’ as ‘fanservice’, etc.*

so this is the image of the ‘yaoi fan’ today - a young, white American cis girl at an anime convention in 2007, lacking self-restraint, social grace, and the ability to distinguish fiction from reality. and though this image has little to do with the original Japanese concept, we use the Japanese word to conjure it.

*these behaviors weren’t limited to young female / perceived female ‘yaoi fans’ by any means, but partially because of yaoi paddles, ‘cringe culture’ and ‘yaoi fangirls’ were inexorably linked to one another.

International (mis)use of ‘Fujoshi’: a Brief History

In contrast with ‘yaoi’, the word ‘fujoshi’ has a comparatively short history in American culture. It had a brief rise to popularity in the early- to mid- 2010′s, but for the past year or two it has been heavily invoked by the (so to speak) ‘fandom police’ as an invective against (perceived) women who ship fictional mlm and/or create explicit fictional mlm fanworks.

‘fujoshi’ (  腐女子 ) is a compound word composed of the kanji/hanzi for ‘rotten’/’fermented’ (腐) and ‘woman’ (女子 ) and is a homonym with an old Japanese word for ‘respectable woman’ (婦女子 ).  It was coined on 2ch (a Japanese text board popular with men) to insult (perceived) female fans who ‘queered’ media content written for & centered around men: re-imagining (canon straight) male characters as queer/gay/bi, shipping them with one another, and discussing/creating explicit, sexual work around those ships. (sound familiar?)

In its original insulting context, a ‘fujoshi’ was woman who was no longer a desirable marriage partner because of her interest in BL. She had ruined herself by marinating in sexual fantasies - and not even normal sexual fantasies about having sex with a man herself. Instead, she had fantasies about men having sex with men! Not only had a fujoshi woman lost her cute naivete and innocence: she’d also turned into a sexual deviant. She was fermented, overripe, disgusting, undesirable.

I don’t know how long this meaning had any clout, because Japanese BL fans - BL fans from all over Asia, in fact - embraced the ‘fujoshi’ label. to me, the implication of the ‘fujoshi’ reclamation reads like a giant, queer ‘fuck you’ to the kind of dudebros who hated them: ‘you find me undesirable because i like gay/queer content? That’s hilarious, because I never wanted you in the first place.’ 

And to this day (mid-2018), 'fu’/ 腐, ’fujo’/ 腐女, and its varieties (腐男子, 腐人, etc) have positive connotations in kanji/hanzi-using fandom circles.

The word ‘fujoshi’ reached English-speaking Western fandom eventually (I want to say in the late 2000′s/early 2010′s). It came to us already reclaimed and was picked up as a positive self-label. In those earlier days, Western fandom called themselves ‘fujoshi’ in a way much more similar to how Eastern fandom still uses it: 

It’s not my job to please you.

I’m allowed to enjoy taboo things like queer fanworks, headcanoning canon straight male characters as gay, and sexually explicit content.

If you think that makes me gross, then fine: i’m gross. your opinion doesn’t hurt me. in fact, I embrace it.

(now go away and let me ship.)

this connotation of ‘fujoshi’ enjoyed a brief period of popularity. There was a fandom ‘sweet spot’ for slash in 2011-2012: shifts in public opinion meant shipping gay ships wasn’t utterly taboo anymore and AO3 was a safe space for sharing slashfic. ‘Fujoshi’ came to semi-replace ‘yaoi fan’ in the English lexicon, at this time, becoming synonymous with ‘ships gay ships in animanga fandoms’, with the added bonus of partially shedding the connotation of loving old yaoi doujin tropes in one’s slashfic.

But in the last few years - starting in around 2014/2015, I want to say - there was a shift in the attitude towards shipping mlm here on tumblr. 

mlm fans who are seen as women - whether they are or not - are increasingly told that shipping fictional slash ships or creating fictional content about men in love with/having sex with men is terrible. mlm shippers/fanwork creators who aren’t mlm themselves - especially perceived-female mlm shippers/fanwork creators - are apparent no different from the ‘yaoi fangirl’ stereotype above: the 2007 cis white socially awkward fangirl, holding a yaoi paddle and screaming with excitement about real life yaoi!!! whenever two real gay men kiss.

the word ‘fujoshi’ - still tied to the English-speaking concept of ‘yaoi’ by both words being Japanese in origin and related to mlm fan content - was about to get unreclaimed with a vengeance … by American/Western fans with hardly a drop of knowledge about Japanese culture, fandom, or language.

And it’s been every bit as ugly as you can imagine.

‘yaoi’ and ‘fujoshi’ on tumblr today (mid-2018)

fandom on tumblr, deeply into policing everyone’s fannish interests in the name of social awareness, invokes ‘yaoi’ in a two-fold way:

‘yaoi’ as a doujinshi subgenre in Japan: featuring fictional mlm in sexual situations for titillation written by Japanese women (& femme-identifying nb people) for Japanese women (& femme-identifying nb people), and the distasteful feelings American/western culture bears towards its tropes as being unacceptably unrealistic and ‘backwards’ by modern progressive American standards.

‘yaoi’ as ‘cringe culture’: an imperialistic American/western read on Japanese media content + exposure to Japanese BL, blending unfavorably with a lack of education on real LGBT/queer culture, a lack of alternative LGBT/queer media representation, and teenagers being teenagers

Tumblr fandom police, feeling that ‘fujoshi’ was equally bad as ‘yaoi’ by dint of being adopted as a label by animanga slashfic fans & as another Japanese word relating to mlm shipping, proceeded to co-opt, redefine, and ‘un-claim’ the word ‘fujoshi’:

‘fujoshi’, but literally. having gotten wind of the literal meaning of the word ‘fujoshi’, but completely lacking the context under which the word was created, invoked, and reclaimed, fandom policers designated their own negative meaning for ‘rotten girl’. ‘fujoshi’ means ‘straight girl that’s rotten because she fetishizes gay men!’ fandom policers say - even though that has literally nothing to do with ‘fujoshi’ in its proper context.

telling East Asian fujoshi they can’t call themselves fujoshi. having decided the word ‘fujoshi’ is tied to being homophobic (by ‘fetishizing’ gay romance), and that its derogatory of women because they rely on their own re-take on the literal, negative meaning, American fandom policers start attacking East Asian fans that proudly call themselves fujoshi. (I wish I was joking.)

In summary, English-speaking fans are using their own twisted, ill-informed, and imperialistic treatment and understanding of Japanese concepts to turn those words into pejoratives for use in petty ship wars.

(And when you put it like that it kind of starts to look a little … well … racist.)

[%] This post was never intended as an exhaustive resource - as noted at the beginning of the post, it was based on my absorbed knowledge from being in animanga fandom as an American for many years - but thanks to the blogs I listed, who have a much more thorough knowledge of kanji / hanzi-using fan spaces such as Japan/China/Taiwan, Korea (in part), etc, I learned a lot about the current usage of ‘yaoi’ (or lack thereof) in Japan & how fujoshi was adopted as a popular label over the last 9 months.

If you’re ever looking for more information on these topics, I would especially point you to @rottenboysclub, as their blog is focused on educating English-speaking fandom on Japanese queer/LGBT+ and fandom terminology.

[$] regarding western tendency to appropriate Japanese culture - Japan is eager to export the unique aspects of their culture. but how many times have you seen an English article with titles like ‘10 Reasons Why Japan is So Weird’ or ‘25 Weird Things About Japan that will make you say ‘buy why?’’ (the literacy rate in Japan being nearly 100% is #3 on this list). and okay - Japanese culture is remarkably different from American culture. But this ‘Japan is so weird’ talk is often accompanied by a tone of mild superiority.

consider how we treat Japanese cultural products such as movies. The recent Death Note debacle is only the latest in a long string of this kind of nonsense (though thank goodness it’s getting the reputation it deserves.) Remember The Ring? American remake of Ringu. And of course there’s dozens of other examples of Americans buying or taking things from its original Japanese context and trying to make it ‘better’ for a mainstream American audience, even though the American audience liked the original Japanese product just fine. (Dragonball Z comes to mind.)

(On the flip side you have ‘weaboos/weebs’, the contemporary word for ‘Japanophiles’, putting Japanese culture on a pedestal, which is not any better, and disgust with ‘weebs’ tends to be extended to the aspects of Japanese culture they worship.)

[thedeadflag]

Hi I just want to thank you for being there yesterday I was having a bad time coping. Reading so many dismissive attitudes about things like the g!p issue knowing it boils down to most people as don't like it don't read it. Just bc its tagged doesn't mean it isn't doing harm. So many are supporting writers who know better but blatantly use it in a public forum makes me feel like i can't even be here sometimes. 1/2

2/2 I was thinking what if there was a popular genre that involved depicting/fetishizing black women with large breasts and small brains? What if that was a thing? Would ppl stay quiet bc its tagged? Wld ppl speak out? Thinking of all the things that ppl never speak up over but pretend to be allies? This performative allyship? It makes me sick. THIS is the toxic side of Tumblr. Thank you for being here.

It really is an issue of performative allyship vs actual allyship. Lots of people with “No TERFs” on their blog headers, folks asserting up and down that trans women are women and are “obviously” included in women’s spaces.

But then they fill those spaces with cissexism and transmisogyny and trans fetishization, and all sort of attitudes and behaviours and words that make it clear to us that we’re not truly accepted and seen as women, that we’re only welcome on their terms and that our voices don’t mean anything. So who are they supportive of? Who are they welcoming of within the spaces/communities we’re supposed to be able to safely exist in? It becomes intensely conditional. We’re accepted and welcomed so long as they get to demean us, misrepresent us, expose us to (and sometimes encourage) harm and sexual violence and social hostility, see and treat us like cis men in dresses they can put on a pedestal every once in a while for ally points. 

If trans women are only conditionally accepted in women’s spaces, then our womanhood is being treated as conditional. It’s that simple. And it’s really clear that’s the case among those reading and writing those trans fetishistic works. 

As for your example, I don’t need to use anyone else as a barometer for what’s acceptable in fandom, or how folks would react. Racial fetishization is distinct from trans fetishization. 

But I do have a strong feeling that if Amber Riley had been thinner, if she’d fit the fetishized “thick girl” figure…I guarantee that we would have seen that sort of thing blow up in the Glee fandom. She was already treated as shrill, loud, and brainless/small-minded (misogynoir at play). Being fat disqualified her from being treated as a viable character for most sexual works (classic fatphobia), but yeah…if she’d been a “thick” girl with large breasts, yeah, absolutely people would have treated her character as a mindless sex receptacle. I’m not even sure anyone would be so kind as to tag their works with anything specific, outside of maybe the shudder-inducing “eb*ny”, since that seems to be the norm of how black women are treated in sexual media. 

I doubt much of anyone aside from black women would speak out, or do anything about it. Hell, you’d probably get a bunch of folks who’d think it was positive rep. You’d get her paired up with all the white male leads in pursuit of pregnancy fics with mixed baby fetishization. And you’d get a slew of g!p fics in femslash portions of the fandom, with her as the ‘voluptuous’, ‘primal’, ‘aggressive’ partner with the BBC to ravage and fill up all the nubile, innocent white female leads. The fandom mostly shoehorned in Santana to fit that role, as the predatory mindless sex pot, but I don’t doubt that they’d have jumped on the possibility of using Mercedes if they’d seen her as viable. And fandom would have done nothing about it, because they didn’t do anything about it with Santana, dismissing criticisms left and right, and even trying to use canon material to justify twisting her character that way. Latinx fans were vocal as hell, and were roundly ignored and dismissed.

So yeah, in your given example, that’s exactly what would happen. Had racial fetishization been done in canon material, fandom would have maybe rallied a bit against that harmful rep (they did a few times in Glee to events.portrayals in canon, certainly), but when the finger’s pointed at them? Nope. Fandom, by and large, would not give even half of a shit. But they would be vocal here and there about being against racism, of how there needs to be more support for woc, especially in wlw fandom. Calling out #BlackLivesMatter while gleefully fetishizing black women is something I absolutely suspect would be common.

There’s a lot of issues in fandom. Trans fetishization is just one issue among a great many others. It’s the one I focus on, because it affects me directly, and I can speak on it and educate on it, but there’s absolutely racial fetishization in fandom. It’s rampant. And fandom spaces for LGBT+ fandom really do tend to mirror real life spaces. They’re white-centric and cis-centric for sure, to name a few pertinent issues. 

And they don’t think they’re transmisogynistic. They don’t think they’re racist. Many of them can’t even get a sniff that there’s anything wrong with the works they love that fetishize and dehumanize real marginalized groups of people. And there’s all that toxicity right under the surface, and too many aren’t willing to do anything about it.

“It’d cause too much drama for my liking”

“I don’t want to rustle feathers”

“I don’t want to get anon hate”

“I don’t want to upset anyone.”

“I don’t want to lose any friends”

“I come to fandom to escape and have fun, not to argue”

Except for those of us being dehumanized and fetishized and excluded, we don’t have the luxury of dipping into fandom all peacefully and comfortably. We don’t have the ability to just ignore the harm being done to us and move on, nor should we have to. 

Like, in real life, when folks see transphobia, or racism, and they do nothing? That can at times be understandable, if unfortunate. But online? There’s zero real risk/danger. There’s always, always ways to help. But people still shy away. When there’s practically an epidemic of people not commenting on fanworks, who’s going to put in the effort to fight these fights that isn’t already directly affected? Hardly anyone.

And I’ll admit there are times I could have done better, done more. I need to do better, there’s always room for improvement. 

I just need to hope there’s enough out there trying to make things better for some sort of positive change to happen. It’s just hard sometimes, as you know.

I’m here if you need me.

[shinmegamitensei2]

i was gonna sleep cus i’m tired as shit but then my brain started blaring some thoughts in my head so now i can’t sleep, so now you guys get to hear me ramble angrily about privilege and intersections of it on my blog instead

warning: this is extremely long and at points starts to sound like “pwease weave the poow twans men awone we did nofing wrong uwu” but i promise there’s a point somewhere in here about how we gotta start thinking about what we say has consequences

just... i get so angry when privilege is conflated to “if you have it, you have every single facet of it and you always benefit from it” when that’s really not the case at all, and to treat privilege as a single card that is separate from, and consequently unaffected by personal experience, other VISIBLE aspects of identity and individuality, and so forth is a really flawed way of thinking

the way i see most people explain or treat privilege is whether you have, say, a “privilege card” and the more you accumulate, the more privileged you are and thus the more benefits society offers you as a result of your status over another person (say, a white cis straight man is far more privileged than a black trans gay woman)

this is it, a simplification of privilege, easily digestible and easy enough to regurgitate to other people to get them to understand on an elementary level what it means to have privilege - when you have it, you have benefits over another person because society deems you better than another person

but then the conversation stops there. it stops, and this simplification becomes a hard and fast rule rather than the beginning of an educational moment, and suddenly we have concepts such as self-determination of your identity means you can gain and drop privileges as you change and determine WITHIN YOURSELF who you are, rather than what society deems you as

and therein lies the problem: how do you gain or lose privilege? how does the concept of passing privilege factor into all this? what does it mean to pass, or to not pass, and can privilege be bargained, can it only be half-gained or half-lost, can it change on a whim?

the only times i ever see this brought up, it’s by some asshat who’s got some shitty opinions or is trying to defend the privileged group wherein exchanges of power usually do not happen on the level i’m trying to discuss (re: race and a white person whose family is predominantly european-white, although there is a lot to be said about someone who is white but also comes from a mixed family and the way that privilege can also be bartered based on perceived appearance versus the reality) but what i really want to look into, specifically, is the bartering of privilege gained and lost through identification as trans, nonbinary, or another gender unrecognized by mainstream society

because, like... it’s here, i feel like, where passing privilege becomes its most prominent (as well as sexuality and the culture surrounding it that has crafted a persona, either influenced by or influencing [or both!!] by homophobic caricatures of the past and present) and where we need to start having discussions, serious discussions, about how one passes not only affects their privilege, but also that we cannot and should not treat people specifically based on what privileges or disprivileges we believe they should be experiencing in their day-to-day lives, because... it doesn’t work that way

there’s such a monumental difference between people at different stages of passing, and what information they have about them that is on the internet, or among their friends and family, or to their bosses and coworkers or if it gets leaked in ways they didn’t intend or want people to see or know

i AM going to use trans men in this example, being one myself, because i don’t intend to try and explain anything using experiences that don’t belong to myself so as to not misrepresent anyone, so i apologize that this comes off as being really whiny and “wahhh stop treating transmasc ppl badly” because a whole lot of trans masc and trans men adopt misogyny and absorb toxic masculinity in an attempt to become masculine, in a world where manliness is often defined by how much you can reject femininity and the constant attempts to redefine masculinity in a way that doesn’t allow male predators to adopt it solely to hurt women I’M GOING ON A TANGENT ANYWAY

there was a point i wanted to make here, and it was specifically on the idea that, like... you cannot ever, possibly, expect a trans man who is completely untransitioned and is seen, societally, as a woman, to own any amount of male privilege that makes any real difference where it matters aside from an online community wherein anonymity is valued, but also in said community where that information (that they are trans, whether or not they mention they are untransitioned) may be open and ENCOURAGED to be posted online for the sake of engaging in these conversations in the first place

as opposed to a trans man who is fully transitioned, has spent several years being accepted as a man, having absorbed ideas about masculinity that may make him indistinguishable from other men and nobody questions his status as a man, and all of this is STILL contingent on the fact that nobody knows or SHOULD know that he is trans, as once that information comes out on a platform where people feel empowered to challenge him (not only including the internet, but in real life, where it is common and encouraged for men to engage in violence, especially where bigotry is concerned)

as opposed to any trans men who may be in between, too! a man who is taking T, whose voice is changing over time and where his neighbors may catch onto what’s going on and grow suspicious; a man who takes strides to act masculine where he can, but who is stifled in an environment where he could be abused or killed purely on account of transphobia; a man who does not WANT to take the steps required for society to fully “recognize” him as a man, and so may never be able to fully participate in presenting the way he wants

this is all transphobia, full stop. not transmisandry or whatever weirdo terms ppl are coming up with these days, but there is a lot to be said in how transness AFFECTS male privilege, and how that male privilege may be adopted, absorbed, and enacted depending on the way that society recognizes men, maleness and masculinity

trans masculinity, and the state of being a trans man, is not an experience shared by every trans man. trans men are not all the same - some are trans nonbinary men, some transition, some do not, some adopt abusive techniques and toxicity that comes built into the system that tells us what being a man is and what being a woman is (although i could also argue that in a lot of ways, to be recognized as a man without having homophobia and transphobia and misogyny thrown at you constantly is to HAVE to participate in these systems, but alas)

there is a wide variety of difference in all of these people, and how they are recognized on a widescale manner that makes any shred of difference outside of this website - which begs another question! where does privilege travel? can it disappear or appear depending on where you are? where you go? can you have privilege on tumblr, but then have it vanish when you leave this website?

there’s a distortion, a way we talk about privilege and the privileged folk, that makes it so damn difficult to discuss the finer and more important details about privilege, intersection, and how privilege is not the same for everyone. it CANNOT be the same for everyone, because passing privilege is not yet another token given to people just to show that they have it! and privilege is not a set of cards and coins that come separately and totally irrelevant of each other!

a trans man is pelted by misogyny, homophobia, as well as transphobia when he does not pass. just as cis men are pelted with these ideas, so too are trans men. and yes, they are misguided. they hurt women and gay people more than they hurt men and straight people, this much should be obvious to anyone. but these things - they are STILL internalized, and how they are internalized changes depending on who is on the receiving end, and in many ways these things are markers and indicators of how to and how not to act for men

i wanted to keep going on about this point and i think i have more to say but my end point with all this is just that privilege changes power depending on where you are, who you are, and on a moment’s notice depending on what information people have a hold of, and i know i did a not-great job of explaining this but also i’m just venting so whatever

another thought occurred to me, about something i was thinking about earlier today, and it’s about how we talk about this concept, and how we approach privilege and privileged people and people whose privilege may variably change

obviously tumblr’s a bad place to be. it’s polarizing, because a lot of people use it as a place to vent, and there’s a lot of gross and nasty people here (including highly-privileged folk and fucking neo-nazis for fuck’s sake) and having long and meaningful conversations here is pointless because it’s drowned out by the obsession and need for having notes yet lacking a cohesive way to spread posts and all proper additions to that post without someone losing some form of context along the way

(that fucking, pewdiepiekin post goin around is one such example, since it’s apparently a joke that OP has but everyone’s treating it as fact, and like obviously it’s hard to tell sarcasm on this website given how much weird shit we’ve seen, but also that it’s FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to correct such a misunderstanding BECAUSE of the very nature of tumblr itself, go figure)

but that’s also why i think we gotta have this conversation, this like... talk that we can’t keep talking about shit the way we have been, especially in regards to social justice and conceptualizing it for the younger kids who USE this website, and like... we just gotta have a different way of approaching things now, because the more i watch idle chats where people gleefully and openly post screenshots of others making fun of them for minor shit or momentary fuck-ups that could be easily ignored because the person is still learning (ESPECIALLY IF THEY’RE LIKE 14) and otherwise give themselves a free pass to become openly vicious and in the name of coping or to share amongst their friends how pathetic they view some people

like ok not to be a liberal and i’d rather not be classified as such because i don’t lick the boots of the privileged or pull any of that devil’s advocate shit but this extremely hostile environment we’ve cultivated and continually defend because we think this website creates ANY sort of meaningful difference in the world and anything we do on this website has any sort of meaningful impact that is beneficial to us while also openly encouraging behaviors that mitigate and deny growth and learning from mistakes is honestly kind of fucking scary

this is in no way saying giving a pass or go on behavior that directly spreads violence like saying slurs and whatnot, but we’re also so, so very fucking vicious, and at some point, no matter what reason you have for saying what you do, the consequence is that your words and intents get hijacked and used out of context in a manner that forms high hostility in the first place

and it’s so, so hard to talk about here too, without going “well if you hate men hurr durr it’s ur fault everything on this site sucks don’t openly say you hate your oppressors hurr durr!” like that’s such an easy trap to fall into but i don’t believe that either, even if i’ve grown distasteful of openly expressing “i hate cis men” (because they terrify me and could murder me at a moment’s notice, both for thinking i’m a woman and for finding out i am trans) or “i hate straight people” (because they fetishize my gayness and shit!) and etc

i’ve got so many reasons why i could express those thoughts, but should i do it, and on a regular basis, consequences follow. consequences that destroy my cultivated and intended reputation as someone who is open and friendly and kind, because it is difficult to really PROVE that to someone who may be on the fence from allowing themself to be deprogrammed from societal teachings and ingrained and taught transphobia and homophobia and misogyny and racism and so on so forth

and i know not everyone is like that. not everyone WANTS to teach and to provide the resources for that and to help deprogram people. most people just want to vent, most people want to escape from the daily abuse and fear and vent their frustrations. i get that. but then where do we go from there, when we have such an absolute volume of people doing and saying this exact thing, in such a degree that such a climate becomes normal to be reactionary and to react to any level of ignorance with anger, no matter who it comes from?

i’m being so, so vague here, and i really do not want it to come off as protection of the poor soft privileged or what the fuck ever, i genuinely do not. i guess i’m just describing a time in my life where i was like that, where i openly enjoyed mocking people that i thought were beyond reprieve and “saving” and getting into fights and it was such a nasty attitude to be in because it led to me throwing people out of my life, throwing caution to the wind, destroying my reputation online and getting put on places like r/tumblrinaction and potentially k.i/.w/i./f./a/./r./.m//s for my actions

living that way endangered me, and not just because of who i am. living that way destroyed me, and it destroyed my way of thinking, too. it destroyed my moral system, it encouraged me to dehumanize others. it encouraged me to find new ways to rationalize violence as a way of “vengeance” and “retribution” for the damages society dealt me, as if that was any rational and correct way of approaching this situation

anger has its place. anger has its place in destroying the system we have now and rebuilding a new one. but we need to understand that our actions, no matter how justified, still have consequences, sometimes extremely unintended, and even unwarranted that we didn’t deserve, and just... i dunno

there is no easy solution to this. i don’t believe we’ll get anywhere by being nice to everyone all the time, just as much as i don’t believe we’ll get anywhere by developing such a community-wide but aimless anger that we develop as hostile an environment as we have on this website

i don’t know what we need, but it can’t be this

[bitter-bitchbites]

Genuine question, if being trans isn't seen as a medical condition isn't that a bad thing? Insurance wouldn't cover life saving surgeries/hormones, so isn't that detrimental and against the trans communities interests?

“fair” point in theory, but you’re not seeing the matter from the right angle, because you got a transantagonistic and cissexist bias.

being trans isn’t a medical condition and it does not inherently implies medical care. 

transitioning does. like, yeah, hrt, surgeries, stuff that some trans people need so their dysphoria stop beating them in a metaphorical bloody pulp, because they need their body changed so they stop feeling so suicidal. insurance should cover that, because yeah, their mental health and life depend on it.

and no, the “trans” isn’t short for “transitionning”. it’s short for “transgender”, that was thought to contrast with “cisgender”, and “trans” has the sense of “crossing to the other/another side here, while “cis” means staying on the same side one starts on, more or less. that’s ancient greek, i think. so being trans isn’t defined by transitionning. transitionning is a choice, and sometimes it’s not, because sometimes it’s the only solution to not break because of dysphoria.

because of course, dysphoria is also its own medical thing, it’s a mental disorder, that can cause depression, self harm, self hatred, and suicidal urges.

but not every trans person has deadass terrible dysphoria that we can’t deal with without changing our bodies at a high price. some have mild dysphoria, that they can deal with haircuts, different clothes, and shaping their bodies in one they like themselves as and all. sometimes it’s bargaining because they can’t afford surgery, but sometimes, they just don’t feel like they need surgery. and yeah im mainly talking about nb trans ppl, altho there gotta be binary trans ppl who are like that too. i just know that it’s smtg we nb ppl often feel like. 

nonbinary ppl show that (hence why transmedicalists aka truscums hate us, tho idk why they care so much about pathologizing us and themselves). we don’t always hate our body. there are trans ppl, nb or not, that don’t suffer dysphoria, because dysphoria isn’t smtg you’re born with, it’s a disorder that’s caused by a bad environment that triggers it. 

extreme example, imagine a trans boy who’s forced at age 0 into pink dresses, pink shoes, pink hats, drinks from pink cups, in a pink chair, sleeps in a pink bed, in a pink room. and he’s said “you’re a girl girly girl” all the time, goes to dancing class because “that’s what girls do”, is put on make up cuz “that’s what girls like” and can’t put on pants cuz “that’s not a girl thing”. forced in a cissexist bs mold. a nightmare. it’s not that that makes him a boy, he was a boy at age 0, regardless or circumstances; but he grew in an environment he could not be comfortable exploring his identity and questioning his assigned gender. and that’s going to worsen his already possible dysphoria. 

but being trans isn’t what’s going to make him break down and slap his abusive mother with that fucking pink violin, and run away to live with his bf in the next state raising cats, no, that’s his anger caused by the hurt of his many mental illnesses, dysphoria being one of them.

being trans doesn’t cause pain. it’s dysphoria’s fault. and not every trans person has dysphoria, and sometimes nb ppl have dysphoria, and sometimes not and they’re still trans, and some trans ppl’s dysphoria goes away at some point. but being trans doesn’t.

and take me for example. i have dysphoria. had it since i was 10. im a demigirl. that’s a nb(trans) woman identity. but i don’t wanna change my body with surgery. i don’t want to take away parts of myself, because i got enough of that, and i want to love my body. so instead i wanna add stuff, like letting my body hair do its thing, and not wearing bras and getting muscles, and asking ppl to use they/them for me, and not try and push me into being whatever tf they think a cis girl does. and that, plus mental work on my image, helped me tone down my dysphoria. maybe i’ll see if i can get hormones, if it doesn’t turn out i already have pocs. i was sick because of my dysphoria. not because im trans.

there’s a lot of cases like this that are weird and hard to understand, maybe, but they all point to one thing: the problem is dysphoria and other mental illnesses caused by being misgendered and abused.

i wanna be trans. i like that. it’s good, it’s me, it helps me, the community is mostly nice, im at peace with that label, and i don’t want to have it taken off. because that’s what it’d mean, to see transidentity as a medical condition. it’s be an illness. something to correct, to fight, to destroy. i don’t want to fight myself. neither does the majority of trans ppl.

so no, not pathologizing transidentity isn’t anywhere near detrimental to the trans community. because we still have valid problems that deserve specific attention, we still have dysphoria, we still want to transition, and we deserve the health care that we need to cope with cissexist abuse. the problem isn’t being trans. it’s the environment, the ppl, the society we live in. and doctors already know that. they don’t allow you to get hrt on insurance because you’re trans. they do because they dx you have dysphoria. that’s literally how they decide if we deserve to get the treatment we know we need. sometimes they won’t even dx ppl with dysphoria that they have dysphoria, because they’re “too mentally ill for that”, or “too sane to be trans”. and hormones don’t even cost as much as we gotta pay them. the prices are artificially inflated, like most medicines, because a compagny own them.

trans ppl don’t need to be pathologized to get the issues linked to our marginalized identity acknowledged. insurance would/should cover surgery and hrt regardless of what ppl think being trans is. because when we say we got a fucking problem or need things, we should be listened.

we would be, if our society cared. we wouldn’t be pathologized if our governments weren’t cissexist trans-hating little shits.

another example, a comparison this time. being afab isn’t an illness. but we still need medical attention, like detecting breast and uterus cancers, or other gyneacological treatment that can be a matter of life and death. and to that, you add the mental baggage caused by being in a mysoginistic cissexist patriarchy. sounds like worth being covered by insurance, uh? well not to many pseudo-civilized countries, but to the happiest on earth, it does, and it works. and yet being afab, especially a cis woman, isn’t an illness, or a curse.

because yeah, we also used to think that women were inherently sick and taht they needed men’s guidance and validation to be allowed to live, it’s just the same fucking mentality, but applied to trans ppl, with cis ppl. 

we’re not the correct gender, we don’t even perform it correctly, so we’re not worth being cared and listened to.

that’s victim blaming. that’s putting ppl under oppression, making them grow in a toxic environment they can’t escape from because it’s their very identity that’s thought to be inherently hostile, and we tell them it’s their fault. that they’re sick and that’s it.

considering being trans a medical condition is fucking murder. you’re placing the power in cis ppl’s hands doing that, because that means we’re to be corrected, and only them can do that. it also gatekeeps from getting treatment. it also misplaces the blame on our identity when it should be on our oppression.

being transmedicalist is allyship to the cistem. that’s believing the lie they made up to say we only deserve care if we accept that we’re sick, and to be ashamed.

im repeating myself, but insurance should cover our treatments for our dysphoria, and let us do what we wish of our bodies and identity as we endanger no one. nobody is allowed to call us ill for what we are while ignoring what we suffer of. we should get at least partially insurance covered surgery and hrt and completely insurance covered when we have dysphoria. it’s possible. spain does it, in good enough conditions. yeah, spain, the catholic country that was still a royalist dictatorship fourty years ago. and france too, can do the insurance coverage, even if it’s harder because you need psychiatric approval first, which is bs and intrusive. 

we aren’t sick for being trans, we deserve to be listened on our terms, that’s not a fleeting dream, and that’s not up to debate. 

and we’re going to change shit so we can get that.

[wdfa]

coming back from winter break like HELLO NAUGHTY CHILDREN ITS RELAPSE TIME

warning for... um. lots of stuff. a loooot of self hate/negative self talk. internalized transphobia/cissexism. discussions of sexual experiences (not in detail). menstruation mention. depression and symptoms.

im struggling so hard rn ugh so many Symptoms.. especially with feelings of worthlessness!!!!!!! like i just feel like im annoying ppl with just my existence!!!! UGH like i know it’s irrational bc so many ppl love and care about me and they have voiced these facts as well as affirmed them through actions! and they continue to do so! it kinda has a lot to do with my dysphoria? im not sure how to like. explain it??? because there is Context.

last saturday my frat had a brothers-only party and it was fun and cute and i had Such a Good Time because i love my brothers! some alumni came too like i got to see my grandbig again and my 2 adopted grandbigs LMAO... one is dating my gbig so she’s step-gbig i guess not adopted? but the other one is in my family line, and he has 2 “real” grandlittles but he adopted me and one of my fifth (?) cousins. ANYWAYS it was really tender because that literally happened that night, he said “as far as im concerned, i have 4 grandlittles... plates, kali, billy, and u” and im not kidding i almost cried it touched my salty ass heart. and that was pretty much the theme of the night, just me loving on everyone and everyone loving on me! 

i was kind of worried about that tbh because i was wearing one of those douchey ridiculously large arm-hole tshirts and my scars were pretty visible,,,, but like everyone was really cool about them like i got some compliments actually haha mostly they were just like “aw im so happy for u/proud of u” but one of my older bros (who happens to also be a bass!!) said smth like “yo those are really cool thats so hardcore!” which pleasantly surprised me because he’s a very aloof and sarcastic kind of person, so getting something genuine was really neat. and so much good happened that night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it was great!!!!!!!!!! but also like. ugh. i guess more context needed. 

in my pledge class of 7 only 2 of us were virgins and im one of them. like ive literally never had any Sexual experience, and it was always because i was never comfortable enough with my own body due to dysphoria. even when u get past that my high school was fucking tiny so who was going to love my fat trans ass 8^) and my pbro’s situation was a little different, but he’s gay and his high school was similar so he never had the option to explore anything either. and we were like. together on that u know? i had kind of accepted that it wasnt realistic for me to want things like that, and while that realization hurt, i knew that i had someone in the same boat. but then he goes and loses his virginity!!!!! and this is where i get MESSY LMAO IM NOT READY FOR THIS BUT HERE GOES

first of all i want to say that i am 100% happy for him because he’s my friend i will support him until the end of time and he told us it was important for him finally being able to celebrate himself and grow up and operate with sexual/personal autonomy and live his own DAMN LIFE and im so so SO proud of him for that!! and i HATE myself so FUCKING MUCH for being selfish and feeling this way and taking something so important to someone i love and making it about myself, but. now its like im left behind. i hate this feeling so fucking much i hate being left behind/forgotten about/ignored/excluded from anything and everything. and now this is something that everyone has gone through but me. and it fucking sucks even more because i know the main reason that i havent done this is because im trans!!!! like i didnt ask to be this way!!!!!!!! trust me! its so fucking difficult!!!!!!!! i hate being different sometimes, i literally just want to be like everyone else, i want to be fucking normal for once. like i know that ‘normal’ doesn’t actually exist but im tired of having to struggle through things that other people dont. and ive really just been dwelling on this and extrapolating like “welp no one will ever wanna hook up with me or date me or love me and im gonna die alone like the piece of shit i am” and it’s just opened up soooooo many Bad Feels that i either havent thought about before or did a really good job at repressing! literally just shitty Dysphoria garbage!!! 

and now its like. “ok well u dont want to be a virgin anymore then go out and have sex” WELP it doesnt really work that way!!! i’m very masculine in appearance (or at least i try to be) and the people who are attracted to me expect me to be a Cis Male, because unfortunately we assume everyone is cis until proven otherwise. bottom line is theyre gonna expect me to have a dick! but i dont! what happens when im into someone and theyre not aware of this fact? what if we Get Going and start Doing the Do but theyre like EW GROSS DIE??????? i just keep thinking about this!!!!!!!!! its in my head and i cant get it out!!!!!!!!!! like i Did Not go to bed on sunday night because i just keep dwelling!!!! i went to therapy on tuesday and told all this to my psychologist and usually that gets it out of my system but no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! she’s usually really helpful because she approaches things logically rather than emotionally but that didnt work in this case i guess!!

i told my pbros about some of these feelings and they said the shit your friends are supposed to say to make u feel better and it was reassuring that they loved me at the time but like. i guess it didnt stick lol because im still convinced that im unlovable even though mccoy sat on my lap half the night and david let me casually touch him (he does not like physicality so that was kind of a Bigger deal) and ben laid on top of us and we were all so tender but i literally cant translate that into permanence i guess!!!!! but also bad things happened at meeting that kind of validated my fears bc me n a few bros were talking, i think it was me and a gay guy and a girl who thought she was straight but shes questioning if shes bi and i cant remember who else because i was Turnt but these two were like the main source of conversation. the guy was like “im definitely gay like i know i dont like girls because vaginas are just gross” and the girl was like “yeah i dont know, im attracted to hot girls but idk if i could ever fuck w/ a girl because ew vagina” LIKE im.... ... standing............ right .... here...................... and i said something! like “thats transphobic not everyone w a vagina is a girl” and i cant remember exactly but they totally like. brushed me off. i initially have all of these doubts, then my bros are like “yooo that’s irrational, everyone loves u” which makes me feel better and kind of makes the doubts get less awful BUT THEN this happens and we’re back to square one SO.

it doesnt help that i fucking started my period on monday. i havent had it in over a year. but i had to skip a dose of T before my surgery and my ADHD ass forgets everything so i ended up skipping like 3 so apparently this is what happens when you stop taking it :) im really hoping that this is the reason im so emo about everything right now UGH.

all of these feelings are just taking such a toll on me its like im weighed down,,, i was supposed to do some studying today and take some notes but instead i stayed in bed and played games on my phone lol!!!!!! i didnt even do anything fun!!!!!!!!!! and now im alone on a friday night doing NOTHING just like i did fucking NOTHING all day today!!

what sucks about this is that im alone because i feel sad.... but being alone makes me feel even MORE sad........... like im happy when im with my friends, im happy when im with my brothers, im happy when im at the house! but for some reason i cant just text a bro at random whenever im feeling down. like if i did, i know that no matter who it was theyd give me the support i need/the support id get at the house with everyone there. but i cant make that move, i cant take that risk, because i must Avoid.... like i know talking to ppl and being around them makes me happier, and i know if i did gather the ‘courage’ or w/e to do that then the odds of getting a positive response would be 99% but i just. Cannot initiate. because that 1% chance of rejection is just too much. im terrified of it. even if i did take that chance i dont even know what i’d say??? “hey lol im kinda craving death because im a worthless abomination haha wyd” ????? im still not comfortable w talking about being trans. like i am a bit but only with certain people. definitely not with the brotherhood. maybe my big? but she just got a new girlfriend so i dont want to bother her. honestly i dont want to bother anybody!!!!!!!!!! which is Wrong because i tell ppl all the time that their emotions are valid and theyre not bothering people who care but HERE WE FUCKING ARE KIDS!

ok i think im done now i just. really had to get that out. replies and likes and asks are welcome but the other thing is not allowed. the thing with two arrows that kind of go in a circle. none of that.