#like I get they’re trying to use inclusive language

[natugood]

In one of my classes today a prof mentioned “male presenting, female presenting, and non-binary presenting folks” and as a non-binary person… what does non-binary presenting even mean? I’m not trying to start discourse lol I’m genuinely curious

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

aita for calling my boyfriend babygirl

let me clarify upfront: my boyfriend has never expressed discomfort with this, and says he likes it, so it’s potentially a non-issue, but it’s still bugging me. this has been ongoing for a little over a month and i feel like i’m going nuts. forgive me if any of the language i use here isn’t correct, i don’t know how else to get the ideas across - feel free to correct me if i could be saying things more inclusively. sorry that this is rambly also. small nsfw warning (nothing too explicit)

i (22m) have been dating my boyfriend (19ftm) for a little over a year. i’m cis and he is trans. admittedly i’m not like… the most well versed in trans issues but i love him more than life itself so i really try to be respectful of him. he was bullied pretty severely in highschool, not just for being trans but his gender identity was no small part of it, and even though he’s not super dysphoric day to day he’s definitely got some boundaries about it. there are certain compliments he likes and some that upset him (he doesn’t enjoy being called pretty or cute, typically) and he’ll snap at people for referring to him with feminine names or titles like “sis” “girl” etc even if it’s done jokingly.

the thing is he’s rarely, if ever, done that with me? i call him pretty and cute all the time (because he is) and he’s always been fine with it. admittedly the first time i did it i didn’t know it was something that usually bugged him, but he’s never said anything to me about it. everytime i have he’s seemed happy. he’s very outspoken, i pretty firmly believe if it was a problem he’d say something about it - again, he has no issues being firm about this boundary with any of his other friends and family. i was doing this before we started dating, so after we started dating it sort of bled into pet names

again, it was never something i asked him about expressly, but at some point i started calling him, like… princess, babygirl, etc. i only ever do this in private, when its just us or when i’m pretty sure only he can hear me, for a few reasons. my boyfriend doesn’t really pass (entirely his choice. he doesn’t bind his chest and he doesn’t want any gender affirming surgeries or hrt - again, he’s not super dysphoric day to day, he only gets upset when it’s commented on and he can bounce back from it pretty quickly) and again, it seems like it’s always made him happy. at the risk of tmi, it especially seems to make him happy in the bedroom, which is another reason i avoid dropping these pet names in front of anyone else. it’s private and i don’t think it’s anyone else’s business.

so. to put this mildly. we went to a house party together recently and i got super smashed. it was a pretty big party so we were sticking by each other, and when you’re drunk and your partner is there… well, yeah. i was admittedly being pretty handsy. he didn’t tell me to knock it off or anything, he was reciprocating. at some point he started talking to his best friend from highschool (19mtf, i’ll call her Z) so i reigned myself in but i was definitely still drunk and horny and being clingy. i don’t know Z all that well - she and my boyfriend are very close but she can be pretty harsh, and i appreciate all she does for him so i like her, but we never talk unless he’s there. i’ve had maybe one one-on-one conversation with this woman ever.

they’re talking. i’m also there. i’m not trying to rush him but i definitely want to get home. the conversation lulls and i take the chance to ask my boyfriend if he wants to leave soon, and because i am aforementionedly drunk and horny i drop one of those earlier pet names. before he can respond to me, Z snaps at me. she says not to call him that and that i was being a creep - this alarms me and was kind of frustrating since i wasn’t even talking to her, and i recognize i’m not in a headspace to argue? with her? so i just tell my boyfriend to come find me when he wants to leave and i wander outside. he finds me about 5-10 minutes later and we head home.

it doesn’t get brought up again that night but a day or so later i text Z to ask her what she meant by me being a creep, because it was bugging me. she says that it’s obvious i’m fetishizing my boyfriend’s gender identity, that the fact i call him those things brings up major red flags, etc. i tell her that my boyfriend doesn’t have an issue with it. she says it doesn’t matter and asks me why i want to call him those names in the first place, and posits that maybe i don’t actually want to be dating a boy - that i just like the idea of dating a boy and actually want to be with a woman. i’m gay, so this is VERY out of pocket to me. i tell her my boyfriend is not a woman and end the conversation there, but it DOES stick with me. so, very belatedly, i ask my boyfriend what he thinks of all this. i adore him so much and i hate hate hate the idea i could’ve been treating him like that, even unintentionally. he says the pet names never bothered him and he’s never felt like that, and that he’s fine with me specifically doing it because he trusts me and knows i don’t see him as a girl.

so, whatever. she has a problem but me and my boyfriend don’t. i try to move on, but the next time i see her she asks if i’ve apologized/reflected at all. i tell her no, because my boyfriend said i have nothing to apologize for and it seems like a non-issue. she is now avoiding me, refuses to be in the same room as me, and will declare to anyone who asks that she doesn’t want to be near someone who fetishizes trans people and she doesn’t feel safe around me. my boyfriend tries to talk to her but she insists i need to apologize at the bare minimum, but to who? even if i did apologize to my boyfriend i wouldn’t mean it and he wouldn’t want it. Z is his long-time best friend, i can’t exactly go the rest of our relationship just avoiding her. so i have no damn idea where to go from here.

on some level, i worry she’s right? i honestly don’t know why i started calling him those things. i think it started as a joke but i just kept doing it when i noticed he seemed to like it. in hindsight that was maybe shitty of me, but i trust him to tell me when something i do is making him uncomfortable. it’s not like i can do that over, but if he ever told me to stop i would. it’s definitely true that if you saw my boyfriend on the street you’d probably assume he’s a woman, but i’ve never been attracted to anyone who actually identifies as a woman before. i’ve only ever liked men, and no matter what he looks like he is a man. this whole situation did make me think about how i think about him, and i’ve realized that, like… i want to have kids with him one day, and ideally i’d like him to carry them. ideally, but id never make him. if he decided tomorrow that he wanted to medically transition and go the whole nine yards i’d support him. he’s my whole world, i just want him to be happy. but does the fact i want him to carry children prove her right?

i’m just. confused. i feel like i’m running myself in circles. Z knew him in highschool so she was there when bullying over his gender was at his worse, so i get why she’s protective. she’s also trans herself so she undoubtedly understands this stuff better than me. but i’ve heard it’s normal for trans people to have complicated relationships with gender, so it’s normal to be okay with gendered language from some people and not others (like only letting close friends use certain pronouns for you). i figure it’s like that, but it’s not my gender so… i don’t know. should i just stop calling him those pet names altogether, even though i know at this point he enjoys them, to be safe? am i an asshole for calling him those things in the first place / would i be an asshole if i kept doing it?

What are these acronyms?

[dapg-otmebytheballs]

hi!!

i don’t feel right putting my opinion here as i am white and from the us so im not even close to the demographic of people you’re talking about, but i just wanted to say i like reading your posts!

now i don’t know everything that dan and/or phil has said, but i do think it’s important to realize the context

i really do wish they were going to other countries, as it does suck that they aren’t able to see everyone, but i’m also sure they have a valid reason for not, whatever that reason may be…i can’t see them deliberately avoiding other countries just cause there’s “better” options (not saying there are better options i just couldn’t think of another word hehe)

i feel very privileged to be in a place financially (barely) and geographically to see it

i don’t think it’s that outlandish to say that they’ll do something to attempt to make up to the people who couldn’t see it, but i know it won’t be as good as it should be, which isn’t fun

also, i will agree that i don’t like the arguments of other countries not accepting of gay rights, as there’s not much weight there. not only do gay people live there too, but they’ve been to japan three different times. they love it there, and while there’s other countries that are definitely worse when it comes to queer rights, gay marriage isn’t legal there and they obviously know that

jesus christ i yap so fucking much i apologize

tl;dr, i completely understand what your saying, and while calling them “racist” is a little harsh, i definitely understand that not going to other places is not ideal and wish they are able to be more inclusive to everyone

i know they’re touring cause they love it, especially dan, and that going everywhere is impossible, but that does not mean that people can’t complain about them not going over to where they live

i’m sorry this is so long, i just can not stop typing ffs

<3

Hey! So yeah again as I've said many times but feel the need to reiterate: what originally started the discussions from poc and particularly non western blogs was that they have made disparaging remarks particularly to do with tours like come to brazil type remarks and then not taken time to add on like, one line or anything somewhere about not touring in entire continents.

Also obviously we don't think they aren't visiting because they think we're lower to them or whatever, and I'd say you'd be hard pressed to find a post on my blog that says that. Seriously, try it, no implications of the sort have been made, we are just saying it's clear that they've never felt the need to makeup for past mistakes either, and then the phandom defends them each time and all of that together feels very alienating, especially when western fans talk down to us constantly and feel the need to tell us to chill out or whatever and make it out to be that the tour is the primary issue

It isn't! This isn't about the tour!!! The tour was the latest thing that sparked the discussions again because some people, especially LATAM fans who have microagressed So Often, were understandably thinking "seriously they aren't gonna say anything about it?"

And again, I will ask that you try because you'll be hard pressed to find a post on my blog where we day dnp "are racists". My previous ask to this also explains this but just because someone "isn't racist" doesn't mean that when they do racist things we don't call those things "racist behaviours". Racist microagressions are still racist even when coming from goody two shoes progressives. Please understand this and don't get defensive over the language, it's a humble request

And if I may for anyone else looking to talk with me about this in any way, please please stop bringing up the tour with me. I don't care about the tour, I promise you I do not care about the tour, you can talk with me about the other stuff but I've just said it in almost every post I've made: I Do Not Care About Them Not Touring Here, it's small fucking potatoes and it's more western fans' defensiveness and racist remarks while trying to defend them for no reason that are Far Far more of a problem racism (and orientalism) wise than DnP not talking about the tour yet, I don't carrrreee About that I care about what you all are directly saying to US which is more hurtful

I hope this clears stuff up for you and others, again, no hard feelings whatsoever, you were genuinely reaching out and I appreciate that ❤️

[radkindoffeminist]

Things I really want TRAs to get through their fucking skulls.

B*tch, c*nt, and wh*re are misogynistic slurs. This isn’t something I am ever going to debate. These are derogatory terms used specifically against women and using them against women doesn’t make them less of a slur. Using them because ‘in some places c*nt isn’t a slur’ doesn’t make them less of a slur. Also, I’m literally fucking British and have lived in Scotland for some years now so before you start with the whole ‘but in some places it’s completely normalised and used commonly’: it’s not. I have heard some men use it to insult their friends, but it’s not thrown around constantly and is still typically used to degrade women.

R*tard is an ableist slur which should also never be used. (And, to be honest, lots of radfems need to learn this one too.)

We don’t want trans people dead. We don’t want them to struggle and be without help. We just disagree on the help that they should get. You think the only way to help them is to validate their gender and help them to change their entire body in the hope that might make them feel better. We think that mental health support designed to help them cope with their body issues is a much more effective form of support. No situation involves killing them or letting them all commit suicide. We want those who are genuinely struggling to get help.

Slight caveat to the point above: the males who fetishise womanhood and being a lesbian and who aren’t struggling with their body and their identity but just get off to being in a dress and want lesbians to fuck them? They don’t deserve help. They’re pornsick men. But the ones who really are struggling and just trying to get by do need help.

Your community is homophobic as shit. Saying that it’s just a ‘small minority’ who support genital preferences and say rejecting trans people is transphobic and call lesbians TERFs for not liking dick does not fix the problem and only serves to diminish what those who have been at the receiving end of this hateful and homophobic rhetoric have been through. You need to start speaking up against this rhetoric and telling people that it’s not fucking okay. You need to start taking a stand anytime someone says lesbians need to learn to like (girl)dick or to have a sexless relationship with a trans woman to be inclusive or uses the term genital preference (certainly if they’re saying it’s wrong/that people can learn to get over a ‘preference’; but even saying that it’s okay is homophobic because an inherent sexuality is not a preference).

Your community is misogynistic. Even ignoring the fact that the idea that trans women are women and that they know exactly what womanhood is like is misogynistic in and of itself, trans ideology is deeply misogynistic. It’s not okay to use misogynistic slurs, even against women you don’t like. It’s not okay to send rape threats to women, even ones you don’t like. It’s deeply misogynistic to blame all transphobia on TERFs when it’s men who are typically in charge of laws being changed and men who are the ones going around assaulting and mustering trans women. And it’s deeply misogynistic to tell women to get the fuck over themselves and learn to deal with having trans women in their spaces. Women built female spaces for a reason and you are completely ignoring our sex-based oppression which is deeply misogynistic.

Oh, and trans inclusive language? That’s misogynistic to. Forcing women to refer to themselves by their organs and functions especially when women have been seen as little more than their organs/reproductive abilities; making this language completely inaccessible to many women, especially those who speak English as a second language; forcing this language almost exclusively on women while men are still called men (or sometimes just cis men to be a little more specific); and telling any woman who has a problem with it, regardless of their reasoning, to get over themselves? That’s all deeply misogynistic.

Self-ID will be dangerous. I don’t care what stupid reasoning you come up with it not being dangerous because it will be. Men have and will continue to pretend to be women to access those spaces and creep on women because self-ID means that all they have to do is claim that they’re a woman and suddenly it’s transphobic for them to not be allowed to enter. There is no ‘you can tell the difference’ because it doesn’t matter what your personal opinion of that person is: if they say that they are a woman, they have to be allowed into women’s spaces and creepy men will abuse that. (And, no, you can’t argue that trans women ‘have always used women’s spaces and it’s been fine’ because we both know that we live in a different time now. It’s no long a very, very small number of trans people who genuinely tried their hardest to pass as the opposite sex. So unless you’re happy to exclude non-transitioning and non-passing trans people from the spaces which match their ‘gender’, these are the only options.)

Keeping spaces sex-segregated is the only viable alternative to self-ID for most public spaces. I’m happy to hear any ideas of how you’re going to make sure that only trans women can access women’s spaces and that cis men will never be able abuse self-ID to get in, but I don’t think such a solution exists. Therefore, I will continue to defend these spaces being sex-segregated because that’s the best way to ensure that the women in these spaces are safe from the abuses of males.

Continuing to scream that we’re so worried about sharing spaces with trans women ignores what you’re actually asking for in regards to self-ID. As above, literally any person will be able to say ‘I’m a woman’ and access these spaces so while you may focus on the ‘genuine’ trans women who just want to use the bathroom and be more comfortable than they would be in the male spaces, we worried about every single male abusing the existence of self-ID in order to abuse women. Remember what self-ID is: anyone can identify as any gender at any time just by claiming that they are that gender.

‘You shouldn’t be scared of public bathrooms because the bathroom in your home is gender neutral’ is the stupidest fucking argument. Like, I’m sorry, but how fucking idiotic do you have to be to think that comparing a private and public space is not only a good idea but will also support your point? You share a bathroom in your house with people you choose to live with and invite over; you share a public bathroom with strangers. Do you not understand that people can be comfortable sharing a space with family and friends, but uncomfortable sharing with literal fucking strangers who don’t always have the best intentions???

Saying women are adult human females or that they have vaginas does not reduce women down to their organs and you are ignorant as shit is you continue to repeat this lie. Reducing someone to their organs (or any other feature) means that you think the only important/significant thing about them, that you view them as being only of value because of this feature. You know like conservatives saying that women are only valuable/useful for sex and giving birth to children? That’s what reducing women to their organs really means. Stating the common characteristic shared by a certain group does not mean you view the whole group as being valued for that one thing. It’s why no one says that lesbians are female homosexuals reduces lesbians to their sexuality: because, in this case, we recognise that we are stating the shared characteristic that lesbians have.

Radfems don’t believe in gender as a concept. If you’re talking about how radfems believe sex = gender then your argument is already flawed. If you’re talking about radfems believing in gender in any way then your argument is already flawed. We believe in the existence of biological sex and recognise its impact on people in current society, fighting for rights of women who are discriminated against on the basis of their sex. We use the words women and girls which describe people of the female sex based upon their age: adults are women and minors are girls. Men and boys work similarly. These terms are therefore sex-based, not gendered/gender-based. We believe that, functionally, gender is a set of misogynistic stereotypes which tells people (though especially women) how they are supposed to act and serves no purpose in society other than to make people continually question themselves and force people into little boxes. We believe that TRAs and conservatives have gone two different ways with gender and both are harmful: conservatives telling people that they must follow gender roles based on their biological sex and TRAs telling people to identify with a gender based upon what gender roles they like/take up.

Define woman. Please. All we want is a coherent definition of woman which doesn’t rely on stereotypes, debunked brain sex, circular reasoning, or calling it ‘a feeling’. No one has ever been able to give us a coherent definition.

Yeah, brain sex has been debunked after some fucking massive studies into it. Turns out, it was always rooted in misogyny and most of the previous studies were basically just confirmation bias to ‘prove’ that men and women are ‘wired differently’ to give a scientific foundation to all the misogynistic stereotypes surrounding women. Once you account for brain size, we’re really not all that different after all. So no, a trans woman cannot just be born with a female brain; a trans man cannot just be born with a male brain. No such thing exists.

Which argument do you want: there is absolutely no difference between cis and trans people and therefore many people have probably had crushes on trans people without knowing it OR trans people are in danger of being abused/raped/murdered specifically because they’re trans? Because the first argument would suggest that trans people could never be targeted for being trans because people will always see them as their chosen gender and the only people who would know that they’re trans is people that they’ve told but the latter point means trans people are targeted because people can see that they’re trans and therefore many/most trans people don’t pass and so it’s unlikely that people have had all these crushes on trans people because it’s fairly obvious that they’re trans? Because I’m willing to admit that some trans people really do pass and I would not know that they’re trans unless directly told, but the percentage who pass that well is minuscule and hardly representative of all trans people.

Your community is racist. Stop leaning on the whole ‘black women had their womanhood denied from them like trans women are’. Black women weren’t seen as women because they were seen as less than human; they were still viewed as female which is why they were raped and forced through pregnancies. Stop saying that attributes we say are more likely to be found in men are more commonly found in black women therefore we see black women as men. That’s an argument used in bad faith and you know it. Like please learn the difference between ‘more commonly found’ and ‘exclusively found’.

Your community is intersexist. Intersex people are not pawns to be used in your argument. Like 0.1% of the population having a condition which genuinely makes their biological sex more complicated than male or female does not disprove the sex binary and, if anything, the fact that these people struggle with many health problems and are typically infertile goes to show that the sex binary does exist. Moreover, if gender is completely different from sex then conditions which make your biological sex complicated/mixed should say nothing about gender. (And yes, I said 0.1% of the population even though intersex conditions occur at a higher rate than that because most intersex conditions don’t make your sex more complicated than male or female so only a small percentage of intersex conditions overall make people’s biological sex complicated.)

Shut the fuck about PCOS. My condition is not to be used in your arguments. Radfems have never used my condition against me or called me less of a woman for it, so you don’t get to say I’m less female for it either or tell me that you somehow know that radfems see PCOS sufferers that way. You’re the one who abused the existence of my condition and implies that I’m not fully female to make some backwards arguments. You’re the ones abusing the existence of my condition.

Going one step further than PCOS, shut up about women without a uterus or ovaries or post-menopausal women. We know they’re fucking women, dipshits. They’re still adult human females, just ones who are older, went through some trauma which resulted in surgical removal of their sex organs, or had a developmental issue in utero which resulted in them not developing certain organs. (See that I said developmental issue? Because you know what we call people who didn’t grow a uterus but that’s not a problem/issue at all? Men.)

A lot of your views of gender are based on stereotypes. A lot more than you’re willing to admit. You can try to pretend that you’re above all the stereotypes and I’m certain that you genuinely believe that you are, but no one has been able to define woman without referring to brain sex (which is normally just down to stereotypes and debunked anyway) or just straight up stereotypes. And so many people list various stereotypes as one of the reasons they knew that they were trans or non-binary. Even when people say that they don’t ‘feel connected to womanhood’ or whatever as a reason why they’re NB, it’s often because they’re androgynous or not completely feminine 100% of the time. They won’t ever admit that as being the reason, but you can see from how they speak about womanhood and their disconnect to it that it’s true.

Not everything is a fucking dog whistle! A dogwhistle is an inconspicuous term/phrase/symbol which a group uses and only those who are within the group recognise. Like how 88 is a white supremacist number because H is the 8th letter of the alphabet so it’s HH which is Heil Hitler or how ‘I just want the trains to run on time’ is a fascist phrase because it refers to people saying that Mussolini was bad but at least he got the trains to run on time. The only thing that might be considered a radfem dog whistle is TIM/TIF, not because it has a secret double meaning that only we recognise, but because it’s a term which radfems typically use and often isn’t understood outside of radfem circles. It stands for Trans Identified Male/Female and we mean exactly that. We don’t have things that secretly mean that trans people should die. We say exactly what we mean but you just choose to believe the secret meaning you made up over what we are directly telling you, probably because ‘I hate all trans people and I want them to all die’ isn’t something we say.

Saying that we only care about what genitals we have is a simplification of our views which is basically incorrect and used to ignore all our actual issues while making us out to look like creeps. Do you also not understand the homophobic history behind it? Being used against gay people to ask why they were so obsessed with what genitals someone had and why they couldn’t be with the opposite sex? (I’ll answer that: of course you don’t give a shit because you don’t care about homophobia or using homophobic rhetoric which supports your ideology.) We don’t actually care about if someone has a dick or vagina. We care about the fact that the dick havers were raised with male socialisation and that means that they experience life differently from us. We care about the fact that the penis owners are much more likely to abuse women and that far too many will do whatever it takes to be around vulnerable women so that they can abuse them. We care about the fact that we have faced specific issues because we have vaginas both directly (eg: menstruation and childbirth) and indirectly (eg: period stigma, medical misogyny, catcalling, and other forms of discrimination) and we want spaces away from the very people who uphold this misogynistic system to be able to discuss our issues openly. But you constantly ignore all of these issues and make it out to be just about genitals because you ignore our arguments and want to make it out like we’re fucking idiots.

‘Here’s six women. One of them is a trans woman. Guess who’ Isn’t the argument that you think it is. Firstly, literally no one is saying that trans people cannot pass at all. No one. Of course we understand that SOME trans people do pass really well and we would never be able to differentiate them from actual women. Secondly, just because they appear like women doesn’t make them women. They are still biologically male and hence a man. It really doesn’t matter how feminine or well passing they are; they’re men. Thirdly, it is not representative of all trans people. Yes, some people pass well but the photos you show are almost exclusively of rich models who are wearing heavy makeup and who’ve had extensive work done which isn’t accessible to most trans people and you’re basically telling them that if they can’t pass so well then they must not be women. Isn’t that wrong by your own ideology? Fourthly, you really going to do that and then accuse us of saying that women must be feminine? Really? And finally, this is almost always used as a trap against us, hence why we often refuse to respond, but you’re not proving anything. You’re not fighting against any of our arguments; you just think you’re fighting against the whole sexual dimorphism and generally being able to tell women and men apart but being able to generally do something doesn’t mean that there aren’t exceptions? Exceptions don’t make the rule.

I’m not here to argue about what I would believe in some theoretical utopia. I’m here to argue about what is happening in reality. I’ve heard the line ‘but would sex be important if we lived in a society which didn’t discriminate against people by their sex/gender aside from when medically necessary?’ way too much. And the answer is no, but we don’t live in that world and that world is not going to exist within my lifetime at the very least, probably not for centuries. We live in a world where women are treated differently because of their sex. We live in a world where period stigma and medical misogyny and catcalling and rape and domestic violence and devaluation of women’s labour all exist, among other deeply misogynistic issues. So me fighting to get people to recognise that sex is an important characteristic and defending it’s legal protections is not because I deeply believe that it should be an important thing, but because the way in which women are treated by society, particularly at the hands of men, shows that we have built a world in which someone’s sex is an important characteristic and which will affect many aspect of our lives and hence we need to recognise the reality of the world in which we live in. If the end goal is to build a world in which sex is irrelevant outside of medicine then we first need to recognise why it’s not a reality now and work to fix that rather than pretending that everyone’s going to go along with us and misogyny will completely disappear overnight or arguing the what-ifs of this purely theoretical world that we will not live to see.

Radical feminism is about freeing women from their sex-based oppression and fighting for sex-based rights. As a result, males of all genders all inherently excluded from our feminism. To say that we exclude trans people completely is ignoring the fact that trans men and AFAB non-binary people are included in our fight for women’s rights because, regardless of how they identify, they have and will continue to be oppressed on the basis of their sex and they deserve rights to protect them from that discrimination. Your unhappiness that we’re only including people on the basis of their sex is not my fucking problem. Your unhappiness over trans women specifically not being included is not my fucking problem. Movements which seek to free people from their oppression don’t owe it to you to include everyone, they only have to include the oppressed people that they are fighting for. Your inability to understand that is not my fucking problem and only goes to show your entitlement.

If you don’t argue with me in good faith, don’t except me to argue in good faith either. If you’re going to twist my words, ignore what I say, tell me my sources are wrong with no evidence (or tell me that it’s not a source you like/trust enough), and refuse to respond to many of my points then don’t expect me to do the same. I have tried way too many times to argue in good faith only to end up having my points ignored, my sources dismissed, my words twisted if not just straight up having words put into my mouth. If you are not going to be open minded when you talk to me, don’t expect me to put the time in to explain things to you. If you are rude or dismissive or ignoring me or not asking questions, I’m not going to put in all the mental and emotional labour to explain concepts to you and you have not ‘won’ the argument if I have enough and stop responding. You are not owed our time and effort and you should never expect it just because you claim that you ‘really want to learn’.

Please learn some critical thinking skills. I know radfems say this all the time, but I really mean it. If not to understand radfems more, but to be critical of literally all the information that you absorb. I am tired of explaining to people that just because you don’t like or trust the source (like the Daily Mail) doesn’t mean that the actual story itself is untrue. Newspapers like this are incredibly bias and will publish stories which feed into their specific narrative, but it doesn’t mean that what they publish is actually false? Unless you can actually find a source which can tell me that whatever story I’m showing you never happened/was objectively false, I’m going to keep using it. A story which goes against your beliefs doesn’t make it a fake. Biases in newspapers come from the stories which they choose to publish (or not publish), the details they focus on, and the wording they use. My favourite example of this is a few years back when every newspaper was publishing articles about how the Labour and Tory proposed budgets were never going to work/actually balance because the assumptions they used weren’t right. The Daily Mail, however, published only that Labour’s proposed budget wasn’t going to work. Was the story correct? Yes. Did they purposefully leave out information which therefore gave a bias perspective of the two budgets? Absolutely. If you throw everything out which has any biases (which was a thing a TRA I argued with claimed you should do and said that was what they were taught to do), you would have to throw out literally everything ever written. Instead, it’s significantly better to be critical of what you read and understand what biases are in place and why.

[bloodyinkandquill]

Katana x audhd reader!

(audhd is autism and adhd)

did my best to be accurate to katana’s character while including many common autistic and adhd traits/problems for reader!

- Katana absolutely does not treat you any different due to your neurodivergence, and does his best to be accommodating and not to baby you for them either

- He’s very blunt and direct with his way of speaking which is a relief for you as most people aren’t as direct and it’s so confusing, however he gives double meanings to words like corruption and evil but he’s completely understanding if he needs to explain what they mean to you multiple times because you don’t understand (honestly i can’t fully tell what half of the symbolic shit he says means)

- Thanks to his mask you don’t need to make eye contact, it’s great, he prefers to wear it wherever he is, he doesn’t enjoy seeing his face as it gives him too many bad memories, but you try and be there and understand it, even if he doesn’t wanna burden you with all he’s gone through

- Since cafe trio (what i call shuriken, vine staff, and slingshot) are close to Katana you become close with them too, however they can be kind of loud and overwhelming so he understands if you get overstimulated and need to take a break form them, he does sometimes too, they apologize afterwards for it and even if they struggle if they’re too overwhelming for you they try and be more calm around you since you’re Katana’s partner and they like him and by extension like you

- He loves listening to you info dump, he’s more quiet but hearing others talk about what they’re passionate about makes him happy, so rant to him all you want, he’ll listen attentively and ask questions

- Likely being taller than you as he’s 6’8 he enjoys holding you, that is if you enjoy physical touch, if not he respects that and doesn’t touch you unless he asks and gets permission, he understands as he also is more reserved about being touched by others

- Katana would probably take you drinking with him and Hyperlaser if you asked, neither would mind if you drank alcohol or not, but depending on where they drank sometimes it’s a lot more stimulating, they’re more calm and quiet opposed to if they go to a proper bar where people are chatting loudly and tv’s are all around, if you do join him and get too socially exhausted and need to leave early he and Hyperlaser understand even if they are a little bummed to have their time cut short

- If someone’s ableist towards you and you can’t/don’t want to handle it he will gladly take over and put that person in their place, he cares about you so much and hates seeing people treating you differently just because of your neurodivergencies

- Plans dates for you two if you hate making choices, just verifies it’s alright with you first, and makes sure your not masking when you say sure to his ideas, if you do enjoy planning stuff he lets you do it as it brings you joy and he just wants you to be happy

- If you sometimes go non-verbal Katana can accommodate you very well, I like to imagine he knows sign language so if you know it you can use that to communicate with him, if not he teaches you enough words to communicate with him effectively while you can’t speak

these are centered around reader being audhd so if someone wants general katana x reader hcs please let me know! (when trying to type the exclamation mark i somehow opened my emojis and put the fucking ape emoji (🦧) and lost my shit) i also did my best to be inclusive to the different kinds of ways that both adhd and autism present and not just the way they present in me (idk if i’m audhd or just autistic) and to not be stereotypically since it’s so ingrained in our society unfortunately, just like the ghostwalker one if i have any other thoughts in the next day ill add them!

[multiplicity-positivity]

Living with the Haters

Hey folks - we had made a post not long after the influx of TikTokers came over with our thoughts on the situation and some advice and encouragement. In that post, we mentioned that they would probably get bored and leave. We still think this could happen, but as time goes on and they dig their claws in, it seems more and more likely that they might be here to stay. So here’s our thoughts on things as they are now and how we can work together to keep our community safe.

1. Do Not engage with them!

We’ve seen that a lot of these users are gaining traction and having a hearty laugh due to others sending them asks inciting violence, calling them out, or begging them to change.

Let us say right now that sending someone threats or suicide bait is NEVER okay, no matter how bad of a person you think they are. No exceptions. It’s not good to try and build ourselves up by tearing others down. Not only will this tactic just not work, it will only inspire these folks to be bolder, brasher, and more unkind. Hate from others does not inspire change - it only strengthens resolve.

So please, refrain from sending hate to any anti-endo posting in the #pluralgang tag! Give these people the attention they deserve - absolutely none at all!

2. Keep yourself safe and BLOCK!

Someone posting in the tags wishing violence on endos? Block!

Someone making cutesy “endos you’re not real and will never be valid uwu” posts? Block!

Someone posting in our tags “Why I think endos aren’t real/Why endos are harmful”? Block!

Someone making fun of endos, plurals, our community, and the labels we’ve coined to describe our experiences? Block!

Someone angrily slinging slurs in our tags? Block!

Someone crossposting their posts with plural inclusive tags (#pluralgang, #actually plural, etc) and also endo hate tags (#endos fuck off, #anti endo, #kys endos, etc)? Block!

Block anyone who makes you uncomfortable! Block anyone who denies you the right to define your own experiences in language that works best for you and your system! Block anyone who uses our inclusive tags to spread hateful ideas! Block liberally, block without remorse!

If you have any sideblogs, make sure to block these users from those blogs so that they cannot access any of your posts! Blocking a user from your main will not keep that user from viewing your other blogs. You can block on a sideblog through your Account Settings on Tumblr desktop version - reach out if you need any help with this!

3. Stay positive and active in our tags!

Don’t stop using #pluralgang and other inclusive tags because they’re getting overrun with TikTokers. Keep using them! In fact, use them even more! Post positivity, gush about your system, have discussions and conversations about plurality, post art, post poetry and personal experiences, just keep posting! We can reclaim our tags if we work together to fill them with posts that spread warmth, kindness, and earnest experiences. Make plural prompts! Ask questions! Post doodles! Take part in ask games! Make shoutouts for your headmates! Be your most authentic self, and don’t be ashamed for loudly and boldly being who you are!

In conclusion:

As more and more users block those who are spreading hate, they’ll find they have less and less content to hate on and interact with. They’ll be posting only for each other, and it won’t be as fun for them because there won’t be anyone to offend and trigger. This is what we’re aiming for!

And in the mean time, we can celebrate plurality how we choose! We can boost each other and lift each other up while simultaneously ignoring and avoiding those who seek to drag us down. Let’s work together to keep the plural community on Tumblr a beautiful, vibrant, and uplifting space!

Thank you so much for reading this! Stay safe out there, and take care!

[feminist-furby-freak]

Well can you explain Gender Ideology with who uses it and where? Can you show where I can find it? Can you describe it without conspiracy theory or recycled homophobia? You are welcome to try.

So I think some of the confusion might come from the language. I know you’re being facetious with this comment but anyway. I am literally a gender studies major so this will probably be more in depth than what you’re asking but maybe someone can benefit.

Gender Ideology™️ isn’t some sort of official concept and doesn’t have an agreed upon definition or foundational text like other social theories. It’s a way of conceptualizing sex and gender. Other analogous frameworks would be biblical gender roles, the Christian fundamentalist ideas of men and women, or postmodernist queer theory, something like Butler’s Gender Performativity.

You’re right that gender ideology is vague and non-specific and I think this is because of the interaction between academia, politics, medicine, and popular culture. Sure, academics and theorists influence society, but rarely in such a direct way (please feel free to correct me). For example, the American civil rights movement and women’s liberation movement had academic elements, but were not governed by how academics theorized race and sex, they were based on people’s lived experiences. Transgenderism, I think, is the opposite and somewhat of an escaped lab experiment. Towards the end of the 20th century, academics began to write about gender in more provocative and philosophical ways. Obviously, this was not the first time anyone had done this, but there was a huge shift in the way academic spaces thought about gender in the US after women achieved full legal rights (which didn’t happen until the 1970s btw). I’m sure the fact that women and gays/lesbians could finally be scholars and professors was important as well. Anyway, I might disagree with Butler, but her theory work is at least intellectually robust. And if you read Butler, it’s very obvious that she is first and foremost a philosopher, not a sociologist or an anthropologist, and this is clear when you hear her speak (which I’ve done btw). Contemporary transgenderism, as a social category, is a direct result of these theorists. There is a lot of misrepresenting or even rewriting history but “transgender” as we understand it today did not exist 20 years ago. We like to call people like Marsha P Johnson transgender, but he didn’t identify that way. He called himself a gay man, a cross dresser, a drag queen, a transvestite etc etc. TRAs often say “trans people have always existed” and homosexual behavior and gender nonconformity (and maybe even sex dysphoria) have always existed but trans as a concept undeniably has not. I could talk a lot more about historical falsehoods and Transgenderism but for the sake of getting to the point I’ll move on for now.

Gender ideology, is how groups like radfems refer to the Frankenstein monstrosity that is the framework Western left/progressives use today to think about gender and sex in order to be inclusive to transgender identifying people. The main ideas are that biological sex is not real and neither is sex-based oppression. It maintains that social and medical transition is necessary for transgender people to live, and that medicine is able to change someone’s biological sex (it can’t). Being transgender is not just dysphoria but some innate sense that someone’s soul is differently gendered than their biological sex (except biological sex is also somehow not real, one of many paradoxes). A woman is “someone who identifies a woman,” even though this phrase is completely meaningless. Because gender is not tied to biology sex, it relies on social ideas. As a result, gender ideology reinforces regressive gender roles and stereotypes, without which it cannot exist. 20 years ago we said boys can play with dolls and it doesn’t mean they’re gay because gender stereotypes aren’t innate and are very harmful, today “we” say that boys who play with dolls are actually girls and need to be given a pink makeover and put on medication. While society was beginning to move away from gender, gender ideology has brought it back to the center and gender is once again considered to be central to one’s identity (and personality) and maybe even the most important fact about them. For this reason “misgendering” and similar actions are considered violent attacks on personhood. Crucially, gender ideology converges with conservative gender ideals through its obsession with gender and performing femininity and masculinity.

[demonqueenart]

Hey, thanks for bringing this stuff about DnP to light! Obviously, as a someone who’s been a fan of theirs (and still is) for about ten years now, it’s a hard pill to swallow, but even when I was younger I could tell that some of the jokes/statements they made were definitely in poor taste. I never acknowledged the wider hurt it may have caused, though, and I’m definitely learning to be better than that and listen to when poc are talking about these issues.

I guess there’s definitely an element of defence, particularly in this day and age, where people immediately assume that their faves are being cancelled and they’ll rush to defend them to avoid that from happening. To be fair, I’ve been that person before in the past, but I’ve learnt to internalise that “no, people aren’t trying to cancel DnP or ruin people’s fun, and believing that is simply immature; we are simply holding them accountable so that they can make amends and make the space more inclusive to everyone.”

I know there isn’t anyone that you can fully trust, but DnP have always shown capacity for kindness, acceptance and inclusion (as a trans person, I noticed over the years how they became more and more trans inclusive with their language, which was nice to see), especially with their recent support for Palestine which so many other creators have not bothered to even talk about, so I want to hold out hope that they would genuinely want to make up for what they’ve done, and I really hope they do. We all hope that. In the meantime, it’s up to us a phandom to make the space more inclusive to poc fans and to allow this conversation to happen without getting scared or angry or defensive.

I’d also like to point out, even though I know that this isn’t in any way related to the conversation at hand, that I was personally disappointed by a tour announcement because I knew I wouldn’t be able to go. Even though the most basic tickets are technically cheap, they’re still not accessible to a lot of poor people, and considering the UK is going through a cost of living crisis right now, it was certainly a bit of a slap in the face. I will admit, I was incredibly surprised that Dan put WAD on YouTube for free, so there is obviously a growing understanding on their part that their tours aren’t accessible to everyone, so I’m hoping they’ll find a way to make this new tour accessible, but I still think this tour has a problem with exclusivity in a LOT of different areas, as you’ve pointed out. I have friends from different continents who have complained about the exclusivity of the tour, even from friends who are in Europe (but aren’t in the more Western parts of Europe; there are no shows in Greece for example, despite the fact that there’s a large number of English-speaking phans in Greece).

One last thing I want to mention, though, I saw an anon talk about the subtitles on their videos. I have sensory processing issues, and I’ve always found that their videos have proper subtitles on them. I’m not sure whether I’ve missed some videos, but I’ve watched a substantial amount of their content and I haven’t found the subtitles to be a problem, so I’m wondering if perhaps the subtitle issue might be an individual issue instead? Again, I really don’t want to assume if I’ve got something wrong, but for me personally, DnP are one of the only YouTubers I’ve been able to trust to have proper subtitles on the majority of their videos, so that ask confused me. If anyone’s able to clear up that confusion, I’d appreciate it, because I don’t want to misrepresent someone else’s experiences just bc they don’t match mine.

Anyway, I’m really sorry for the long ask. Again, thank you for bringing this all to light, and I really hope things improve. I will always love Dan and Phil, and I trust that their hearts are in the right place the majority of the time, so I really do hope they grow from this. I’ve seen genuine growth from them over the years already, but there’s still a way to go, and none of us can shy away from it no matter how much we want to.

Stay safe, and have a nice day!

I'm glad I can be the one to shed light on racism and normalize talking about it in this community. Back when we weren't able to have this discussion properly, I would have never expected people to ever understand or accept me in this community again. I was told by many of my well-intended friends who've been here longer than me that the only way to move forward was to make peace with the racism that was happening here. (And don't get me wrong, they meant well and they’re a very good friend of mine for that. They didn't have to support me when I was at my lowest, when I was so damaged from it I could hurt them so easily. But they did it anyway because they cared. Some of them may not even share the same worldview as me, but that has never been a barrier for them to reach out and say they support me.) What I'm trying to say is, that the phandom was that bad before: The only way to survive as a poc who's being oppressed by this community in the past was to shut up about our experiences, or leave.

So when I saw your ask, able to articulate a full understanding of the situation of what's going on here, it feels like I had served my purpose. For the past fifteen years of this fandom's existence, we have never been able to talk about this until now. And yet, me and other blogs talking about this have managed to make an impact, enough to make us finally open up about it. A lot of you feel safe enough that you no longer chose to go anon by it now. That is fucking amazing. I hope that it has been healing and educating for all of you, and that we as a community will be able to move forward in the right direction this time :)

As for the subject of subtitle issues, I would admit I don't know a lot about it too much, since I never have to use it. From what others have said in the tags, it seems older videos had proper subtitles, thanks to the free community captioning. But ever since the hiatus, everything has been all over the place and they might not have that proper system to rely on anymore?? I don't know much, so if anyone is interested in expanding more on the subject, or more to where the op of this ask can be coming from, I would love to hear more. We should know what exactly happened so we can bring this to dnp to see where we can improve. (Also, I’m glad that ask opens more discussion about this now. And I didn’t realize it’s disability pride month, yay!)

[ID/ a banner with light blue sparkly background; the disability pride flag slides in from the left and darker blue text pops in reading "Make some noise for Disability Pride Month!!" /end ID]

Banner by dapg-otmebytheballs

Auto-message: This ask’s purpose is to acknowledge dnp’s past/present exclusivity, not to cancel them! But to embrace mistakes that they’ve made so that 1. we won’t exclude people in need in this community, and 2. we can normalize bringing up exclusivity so that improvement can happen. Hopefully this will one day help dnp realize that this is a safe space for them to talk about their mistakes, so that this space can become safe for people of all kinds too <3

*If you don’t understand what is happening, scroll through my blog for context. And I’ll be taking time to answer my asks, so don’t think I’m ignoring youuu*

[blue-bujo]

Bowled Over (Roy Kent x Reader): Chapter Three

You work at a bowling alley and a young girl named Phoebe has a birthday party there. You catch her uncle's eye.

Roy Kent x female reader

Will try to update roughly every two weeks

Chapter Three: Dual-Purpose Distraction

(3.1k words)

Summary: After a loss, Roy takes the team on a night out to distract them from said loss. He may or may not have ulterior motives.

Warnings: Roy Kent-level language (you know what you're in for), discussion of mental health

Brighton had not gone well. Roy had watched in disbelief as Montlaur and then Zoreaux had both been injured and subbed out, and the team had lost the match. His boys were dejected as they piled onto the coach for the drive home.

Jamie had tried to cheer everybody up by turning on the music loaded to his phone and bravely shuffling it, and Beard broke out his David Bowie impression, which got a few laughs. However, most of the men sat quiet and discouraged in their seats. Roy was fuming, although the casual observer would note that his lips were moving without him realizing when he recognized a song. He could feel the low morale laying heavy over the bus and its passengers.

Bravely, Higgins got up to sit next to him when they were about halfway back to Richmond. Roy growled at him, but the older man ignored it. They sat in silence until Roy couldn’t take it anymore.

“The fuck do you want?”

“You looked like you used to when Ted was around and you were too stubborn to ask him about something that was bothering you,” said Higgins. “I’m a sorry substitute for Ted, but I’ll listen if you like. Our own little meeting of the Diamond Dogs.”

“Did I really have all that shit written on my face?” He wouldn’t admit it, but Roy was a little impressed with Higgins. The man was deceptively wise.

“Not all of it, but I know what it is to miss a close friend.”

“I do miss him,” Roy conceded. “He always knew how to make them see a little hope. He was better at this manager shit.”

“If you want to have the Lasso effect, you just need to try thinking like Ted. He would want to do something to distract them from the loss today and get them out of their heads. A movie night or a meal out. Anything, really.”

“Hmm… They’re good ideas, to be fair, but they feel too normal. We always do that,” pondered Roy. He furrowed his eyebrows and tilted his head, thinking, wracking his brain for something. His normal activities were reading, and cooking, and other introverted things. What he did with Phoebe and his sister Sofia were more inclusive.

Roy stood, squeezed past Higgins, and made his way up to the front of the bus. Jamie and Beard sat down, pausing their musical act, and watched him apprehensively. He walked slowly up the aisle – having had a serious knee injury made a person keen to avoid another one, which would be inflicted by walking on a moving bus. When he got to the front row, he leaned over the driver’s shoulder.

“I’m going to reroute us,” he said bluntly. “How do I change the satnav?”

The driver tapped a screen and a keyboard popped up. After a quick google, the manager tapped in an address, and the new route started. Straightening, Roy turned around and looked around the bus. As all eyes were already on him, he didn’t shout.

“All right, listen up. We’re all in a shitty mood because of the loss. Ted would’ve had something inspirational to say, but we all know I’m not Ted. All I know how to do is distract us until we forget about it.” He nodded at Higgins in silent acknowledgement of their conversation before continuing. “So that’s what we’re going to do, going to get ourselves fucking distracted for the night. I hope you don’t have any other plans.”

“Where are we going, Coach?” asked Bumbercatch.

“Wouldn’t you like to fucking know.” Roy sat down next to Jamie in the second row and crossed his arms. He was pleased with his choice; he didn’t think his team would guess where they were headed or what they were going to do. He was surprised he’d picked it, himself. It wasn’t what he expected from himself; he wasn’t typically that forward.

He massaged one hand with the other, passing the pads of his fingers over his knuckles, where just so recently... No. That wasn’t why he’d fucking made this choice!

Beside Roy, Jamie observed the anxious, wistful hand movements, and the address in the satnav, which he recognized. He fixed his mentor in his most suggestive side-eye, head tilted down and eyebrows quirked, until Roy noticed.

Just Roy’s heart nearly stopped. The prick had figured him out. Fuck.

You were at the counter, trying to read an online article. You’d consistently gotten through the first paragraph about six times today, before an interruption had presented itself. It had been an oddly busy day, which you attributed to your own terrible luck, as there was absolutely no reason for half of the house to be full on a weekday afternoon. You saw movement in the parking lot from the corner of your eye, but chose to ignore it and hope it went somewhere else. You really wanted to finish the article sometime this millennium, and tried to power your way into the second paragraph.

You weren’t that lucky. The movement in the parking lot was that of a bus unloading an army of footballers. They were milling around tie dye guy, who you now knew was Roy Kent, manager of AFC Richmond.

With a frustrated sigh, you closed the tab with the online article; there was no way you were reading it with all these athletes coming inside. Because these guys were proper athletes, and in your experience, those were the types that got the loudest when they realized their sporting skills didn’t translate to bowling. Your hair went up, and you braced once again for the difficulty of a large group. At least they all had socks, since they had their uniforms on; you didn’t think there’d be enough money in the register to make change for twenty-something uses of the supply vending machine.

A bespectacled man and a young man carrying a bunch of water bottles came up to your counter ahead of the herd.

“I’m so sorry, but do you have enough lanes to accommodate a football club?” Glasses guy was familiar; he bowled a weeknight league with his wife, and you were pretty sure he had a locker here.

Checking your computer, you answered, “I can give you lanes 17 through 24. Will that be enough? Each lane can fit eight to ten people.”

“That’ll be plenty, thank you. I’ve seen you around, right?”

His question confirmed your theory that he was a regular. “Yeah, I’ve traded shifts for a few weeknights before. I thought I recognized you.”

“You may not want to, after this,” he apologized. “Sorry in advance.”

The first of the footballers came bounding in, either voicing their disdain or their enthusiasm for the evening’s activity. Jamie Tartt swaggered straight up to you, put his arms on the counter, and grinned.

“Heya, Splits! Do you remember meh?”

Rolling your eyes, you quipped back, “How could I forget? Was this your idea, coming back to see if I was fit enough to risk Roy Kent’s wrath?”

To his credit, Jamie had the decency to look embarrassed. “I were being a proper twat, and I apologize. I’m trying to be better. But no, it weren’t my idea. It was all Coach.”

You looked up, past Jamie, to where the last few men were getting off of the Richmond bus, Roy among them. It had been his idea? Maybe Phoebe’s comment had had some truth to it. He was glancing inside hesitantly, and although you knew that he couldn’t see you through the tinted windows, you felt your ears warm ever so slightly. The thought that anybody could find you fit in any way felt foreign.

The clearing of a throat brought you back to reality. The young man with the water bottles had a sheet of paper in his hand that he was extending towards you.

“This is everybody’s boot sizes,” he was saying. “Hopefully that makes it easier.”

“It will, thank you so much.” You turned to the team now standing in front of you and raised your voice a bit to address them all. “You guys will be on lanes 17 through 24. Give me a minute to get all of these shoes ready and go find yourselves some balls.” There were more than a few snickers at the balls comment, which you fully knew you’d walked into, but you charged bravely on. “Once you’ve done that, come back here.”

All but Jamie dispersed to find a ball that fit; he waited at the counter. You couldn’t figure out why, until you saw Roy Kent finally enter your bowling alley. He didn’t seem pleased to find him standing there expectantly.

“What the fuck do you want now? Go and look around like everybody else! Quit waiting for me!”

He was in a mood. They must have lost the game they were obviously returning from. Either bravely or stupidly, Jamie ignored his coach’s orders and adopted an innocent expression.

“Splits is here.”

“I can see that. Now piss off.”

As he had at Phoebe’s party, Jamie gave you a wink before sauntering away. Which left you and Roy Kent staring at each other. You couldn’t tell what the coach was thinking – he kept his face impressively blank – but your mind shot back to your previous encounter, where you’d startled him, then maybe insulted him by not recognizing him, then accidentally touched his hand. You didn’t know how to react.

He made the choice easy for you and nodded curtly. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

You noticed that he had stuffed his hands into his pockets.

“I have your shoes.”

“How the fuck do you remember my shoe size?”

You waved the sheet of paper. “The younger guy gave me a list. I’m guessing he’s the kit man?”

A grunt. It could be interpreted as a yes. Nothing else from Coach Kent. You grabbed a pair of rental shoes and held it out to him. “Here.”

As Roy Kent came forward and you reached out, your hands touched – again – and this was more contact than the mere finger brush last time. He froze, then quickly took the shoes and scurried off.

Talk about awkward! You banged your head softly against the counter and groaned. What were the odds of that happening twice?

Roy groaned as he retreated from the front desk. What were the odds that the woman would think that could happen twice? And what had possessed him to surge forward to grab the shoes? Was he that fucking touch-starved, that he needed to manufacture physical contact with fucking strangers? He flung himself onto a couch with Higgins, Beard, and Nate and set about angrily removing his trainers and putting on the bowling shoes. The other three men looked at each other behind his back and shrugged their shoulders. Nobody could decide whether it was better to engage, or just to let him stew until he was ready to come out with it.

Roy was done tying the laces and stood up to stare at them all. Only Nate was brave enough to break the silence.

“All right there, Roy?” he asked.

“Great,” Roy retorted. “Never been better.”

“You ready to tell us what’s going on with you?” questioned Beard. He leaned back, anticipating his fellow coach to blow. The old Roy would have, but Just Roy flared his nostrils, took a deep breath, and then looked at Beard, Nate, and Higgins.

“Like I told the team,” he ground out, “it’s my shit. None of your fucking business.”

“All right. But when you’re actually ready to talk, let us know.”

Rather than stay and face them, Roy left. He told himself it was so he could find a bowling ball, but he knew that he was running away. He didn’t know how he felt yet about being interested in someone again. It always made him feel incredibly vulnerable. The world expected moody, mysterious Roy Kent. The real Roy was lonely and just wanted connection with another human being who wasn’t interested in him being a footballer – no, a manager. Not a footballer anymore.

He surveyed the bowling alley. Everyone was having a decent time. It seemed a happy enough place, with its garish red walls and photos of local celebrities hung in frames across the soffits. Roy’s head was on a swivel looking at them all, then at his greyhounds. They were good boys, already losing the melancholy from the match. Higgins had his phone out, taking a picture of them, and they all exuded an easy comfort at spending time with each other. He kept looking around, settling his gaze just a moment too long on the girl at the counter.

Fuck, he was interested in her. She was just as awkward as he was, and she hadn’t recognized him at Phoebe’s party.

Plus, she was fit. So fucking fit.

Roy forced himself to look away. Staring creepily at a random woman was more than inappropriate; it was dangerous. If the paparazzi found out, it could cloud the whole team’s reputation. Plus, now Jamie knew. The manager couldn’t let on just how interested he was in Splits.

Hell, he didn’t even know her real name.

His team was starting to bowl. Roy could overhear snippets of their conversations as he walked by each lane. Jamie, Isaac, Dani, and Colin were horsing around, teasing Jamie about something.

“I’m just saying, a guy could do a lot worse!” Tartt was laughing. “She is fit!”

“She does have a very happy smile,” agreed Dani.

“I dunno, she’s not really my type,” Colin said, drawing a few laughs.

“That’s because nobody like her is!”

“Shut up, Isaac!”

“You walked into it!”

Suddenly, they all noticed Roy and shut their mouths. Roy glared at them.

“You talking about me?”

All four lads remained silent, although Jamie seemed to be struggling not to smile or laugh. The only response they gave was a communal shake of their heads. Roy stared them down until they started to squirm.

“We were talking about the pretty lady at the counter,” Dani eventually volunteered. “Jamie brought her up.”

Jamie snorted, like he was fighting for his life against laughter. Roy squinted at him and grunted.

“Doesn’t she look nice, Coach?”

Ooh, this was fucking evil shit. By asking, Jamie was forcing him to look over at her, knowing full well how expressive his eyebrows were. Jamie was getting annoyingly smart.

Roy turned to look at Splits, then quickly back to the boys. “She’s fine, like most people. Now get started with your game, before I decide to cancel team bonding time and make you fucking run home!”

Exchanging looks, Dani, Colin, and Isaac started bowling. Jamie grinned at his mentor one last time before joining in. They were all unfortunately on the lane next to Roy’s, so he would have to deal with them for the rest of the time they would be there.

Bowling did prove to be a good distraction. Everyone was equally terrible – except Higgins, of course – so the competition was fierce, and spares and strikes were celebrated loudly. Even Roy found himself relax slightly, and he was one of the worst bowlers of the lot. He had to put up with Jamie’s suggestive glances, and all of the Diamond Dogs on his lane, but he had people, and it was nice to feel surrounded rather than alone.

Higgins obviously won the day. With O’Brian winning among the non-bowlers after two games, AFC Richmond were ready to go home. Will began gathering everybody’s shoes. As Roy untied his, he had a stupid idea and started helping. The younger man seemed surprised, but happy for the help. Pretty soon, he and Roy both had armfuls of shoes.

“You go on ahead, Will. I’ll make sure none of these idiots have left anything behind,” Roy offered. He wanted Will done and gone from the counter when he went up. The team were already loading onto the bus, so he wouldn’t have to worry about any nosy players or obnoxious Tartts. Will was thanking Splits before he left, and a line of people was waiting between him and Roy. The manager shifted his weight to better balance the mountain of bowling shoes in his arms.

“I’m so sorry for the wait!” called Splits in the midst of charging a credit card. “You can dump those on the counter and I’ll deal with them later. You don’t have to wait.”

“I’m fine waiting. No rush.”

Truthfully, the shoes were becoming harder to balance by the second, but Roy Kent was determined. He would talk to Splits.

Finally, he was next in line. He did his best to set down the pile gracefully, but there were just too many shoes. He got them all on the counter without any falling, and that would have to do. Splits smiled, and Roy’s wait was made worth it.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll just count them real quick and make sure I have them all.”

“Take your time. I wouldn’t put it past one of these clowns to wear a pair home without fucking realizing it.”

“It happens more often than you’d think.”

There were a few beats of silence while she counted. Roy didn’t want to distract her, but he also didn’t want to lose the chance to speak with her. If only he hadn’t ignored small talk all these years!

“Your accent is different. Not in a bad way, I just can’t place it. Have you been in England long?”

“A few years,” she replied. “My dad was Army, so I grew up moving almost every year. I guess I picked up bits and pieces of whatever the local accents were.”

“That’s cool.” Roy had the distinct feeling that he was dangerously close to seeming extremely lame. “But you’ve stayed?”

“Obviously,” laughed Splits. “I like it here. I’ve never really had a group of my own, but here, it feels like I’m the closest to having it. I have all the shoes, by the way, so you’re good to go, Coach Kent.”

“Hmm. Cheers.”

Roy made no move to leave. He knew he should, but he hadn’t made any real progress here. He cleared his throat.

“Right. Well… Hope to see you around.”

“You, too!”

She seemed to react positively. Proud of himself, Roy turned and left. If he seemed less Roy-ish to anybody on the coach, none of them commented on it. Roy was in good spirits until he replayed the interaction in his mind.

He still hadn’t asked for her name.

He was a fucking idiot.

Tag list: @preciousbabypeter @harry-bowie-mercury @amieinghigh

[kentosdoll]

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 𝑁𝑎𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑛 headcanons .ᐟ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ kento x swana gn!reader

content: fluff, non-specific relationship (it can be platonic or romantic) wc: 421

a/n: this is very self-indulgent, though, i tried my best to make it inclusive of all swana folk; hence it's rather general. for those who aren’t aware, swana stands for south west asia and north africa. it’s a more progressive term compared to “middle east”, the latter being rooted in orientalism.

banner credits:⠀@/dollienini + @/chilumitos

Fights over which type of rice is better — jasmine or basmati. He insists it's jasmine as it’s easier to cook and softer. You retort, claiming it's basmati as it tastes better with curry and stews than jasmine rice.

Introducing Kento to classic artists like Fairuz, Samira Tawfik, Sabah, and Warda (Al-Jazairia). Sometimes you catch him listening to these artists in his spare time whilst sitting at his home desk. Fingers tapping at the wooden table rhythmically whilst trying to mouth the lyrics.

Kento questions why you get onto your hands and knees, Cinderella-style, with an old t-shirt to mop the tiles. After seeing you do this once, he buys you an actual mop so you never have to bend over (or cause injury to your back).

Slowly building up his tolerance to the sweetness of SWANA desserts. He’s not used to it due to Japanese desserts being subtly sweet. Zalabia is the ultimate final dessert boss. However, his friend Satoru happily gobbles those up whenever he pops by your place for afternoon tea.

Teaching him words, phrases, and idioms in your native tongue or second language. Whilst he had trouble with certain letters or digraphs, you bet he randomly uses certain words around you, even occasionally saying them around his friends and colleagues who have no idea what he’s talking about.

One day, you give him a rundown of your family tree before taking him to his first family gathering. It’s all a bit confusing with everyone being your “cousin”, “aunt”, or “uncle”. Some of these people aren’t even related to you; they’re either your grandparents’ cousins or friends of the family from the homeland.

There’s a social gathering (or wedding) coming up soon, and he's your plus one, so you have to teach him how to dance. The poor man is stiff as a wooden board with two left feet. It takes a while for him to learn [insert dance name], let alone loosen his shoulders, but once he's on the dancefloor, he won't leave.

You best believe this man doesn't understand superstitions and why people still follow them. One day you chastise him for dropping silverware, explaining that now there would be a guest at the door of your apartment. There, in fact, was a guest; it was Satoru.

As Kento learns more from you, he soon understands there is more to the SWANA region, unlike what the world and media have taught him. It gives him a deeper appreciation of your culture and helps him rethink unintentional biases.

© 𝑘𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑜𝑠𝑑𝑜𝑙𝑙⠀ ─⠀ all rights reserved. seek inspiration, do not copy, translate, or redistribute my writing/content.⠀₊˚ෆ

[chamiryokuroi]

There’s so much drama happening in my country right now because the Public Education Office published the new books for the following school year, and between the new updates it includes inclusive language (equivalent of using they/them here) diversity, gender and sexuality studies, as well as LGBTQA+ content

And well all the old fashioned, sexist, racist, classists, homophobic etc people are absolutely losing their minds.

They’re pulling all the classics

“This is grooming!” “They want to sexualize our kids!” “This is disgusting!” “They want our kids to masturbate in class!” (Last one is because one of the activities proposed for teachers is to make kids build different organs including reproductive ones with like tubes, idk how that turned into masturbation but oh well)

I am personally enjoying listening to their cries, while trying to figure out how to get my hands on the books myself so I can read them.

[mr-kench]

Minority Ambassadorship

I need to get something off my chest and it’s been bothering me for a while but I could never figure out the right words. So I’m just going to shoot my shot and clarify if need be. I’m all for representation and all that but the way it’s been handled in recent years.

The thing that helped me finally click all the pieces together was the recent Spider-Man game. While Peter has a proper adventure Miles is not. He’s doing side jobs and while obviously showing he’s part of the community, his story also falls into a dangerous trap I keep seeing. They (the writers) make him the ambassador of his culture no one is the entirety of their culture but writers keep doing this stuff.

White folks in stories have the freedom to be anything, like anything and feel anything. They’re organically made all the time. But the moment a different race takes the stage they’re chained to the cultural stereotypes. Even Wakanda has just become “Africa the Country” theirs no uniqueness to it, it’s populated by every conceivable African Stereotype. Heck I remember a few years back a marvel comic was made with Miles being made the new Thor and IMMEDIATELY Asgard turned into a Ghetto and it was the most racist joke I’ve seen in a while.

This isn’t new by any means. More often than not when an American enters an anime they’re stereotypically American. Wearing the American flag, usually blond for some reason, constantly swearing and won’t shut up and if we’re feeling REALLY spicy we can make them big and scary.

That habit of writers though can create a feeling of “otherness” to anyone that isn’t you and can actually reinforce stereotypes. You’re not your culture and you shouldn’t be pressured into that mindset. You can absolutely be influenced by it but people aren’t just ambassadors to their culture. That’s ignorant to the highest degree.

Considering many games that do this are affiliated with Sweet Baby Inc. I’m not surprised but it just means we should fight harder against it.

Sweet Baby Inc. is one of those companies that’s basically “sensitivity writers” they show up to punch up stories to make them more “inclusive” but what this usually means is make them subtly racist, homophobic and authoritarian and barring that making a story less interesting. They’re involved with almost every failure within recent types in the gaming market including Suicide Squad and Last of Us 2. They even worked on Spider-Man 2 and the Miles Morales Game. Both of which you can see what I’m talking about by making Miles the Ambassador of Black People and Harlem. They were even involved with the Spanish Translation of Spider-Man 2 which upset that entire part of the world because they used words like Latinx which is considered a slur and an act of colonialism as white people try to force them to change their own language.

Sweet Baby Inc. and its employees are a bunch of racists, homophobes and Authoritarians pulling the greatest grift of all time by pretending to not hate those people and acting like they don’t want to control how people think. The mask has come off frequently and only recently has it come off in such spectacular fashion that a lot of the internet is starting to notice myself included.

In conclusion though, don’t be a racist and let characters of other races and sexual orientation be actual people instead of being the ambassadors of their people. Don’t support bigots that pretend to be on your side and be mindful of people like that. Also don’t buy anything Sweet Baby Inc touched because they’re all of those things.

[thebeardedsir]

WRT the pronoun question post, (also I’m not getting mad at you or trying to say you’re a bad person, I’m just trying to explain it bc you asked) :

Firstly not all trans people feel the same about being asked their pronouns. For most of us it’s okay/something we’re used to, but we aren’t a monolith; we each feel differently about issues facing our community.

The situation this post is describing is this: a cis person sees you, and thinks you look like you might be transgender but they’re not sure. They are very interested in finding out if your AGAB is what they think it is, but want to maintain a veneer of liberal/lefty politics. They ask you for your pronouns, and they will derive background information from your answer. If you are petite and don’t have a beard but say he/him they’re going to assume you’re assigned female at birth. If your very tall and and have a strong jawline they’ll assume you’re assigned male at birth. They’re not asking because the care about gendering you correctly, they’re asking for the same reason people ask what’s in your pants when your trans; and what’s worse is they know they shouldn’t do that so they’re trying to dress it up in inclusive language.

Asking people for their pronouns is not inherently good or bad. It depends on the context. If I meet someone and am unsure of their pronouns, I can ask them in private. If I meet them in the context of an inclusive social group or LGBT space I can ask them fairly openly. If I’m say, at my job or school, it’s best not to ask because it puts them in the awkward position of potentially having to put themselves, or lie and make you misgender them. Having been in that position before, it’s fucking awful.

Most of the time when I meet other trans people I don’t have to ask; in a social context I usually hear someone else use their pronouns first, or they’ll gender themselves in other ways to signal what their pronouns are. If I’m unsure but can’t ask for whatever reason, I’ll just avoid gendering them, or depending on context (ie. is it safe to be trans where we are) gender them in a way that reflects their presentation rather than whatever I may assume their AGAB is.

There’s a lot of subtlety at play here that’s probably difficult to grasp as a cis person. This post was kind of meant to be an intra-community thing. We’re not saying no one should ever ask pronouns, we’re discussing a specific micro aggression that a lot of us have experienced.

As a cis person, the just try your best to be kind, be mindful of peoples safety/comfort when asking for pronouns, and apologise briefly (don’t make a big deal out of it) if you make a mistake. You don’t need to understand the nuances of the trans experience, you just need to listen and be respectful. I can just about promise you that no trans person is going to throw it back in your face if you ask them their pronouns irl.

I don’t think I should have to explain why lying about “asking everyone” their pronouns to cover the fact that you’re socially inept around trans people is kind of a dick move.

The answer is sometimes people step on each other’s toes and feelings get hurt. All we can do is try our best to treat each other with respect.

I'd definitely prefer people come off anon to have this kind of discussion, but you're taking me in good faith and you've said a lot to help me understand the context which I appreciate.

"This post was kind of meant to be an intra-community thing."

I think that is where I made my biggest mistake. When I see something on social media I don't always take into account what the intended context is, because so much of the time these things will inevitably break containment and be misconstrued in the worst possible ways (perhaps present example included).

As a cis person I got to thinking about the kind of interactions I've had where asking for pronouns felt like the best possible way to start a social interaction. With my own anxieties, having that starting point can definitely feel like some solid ground to getting to know people in a way that I've been told is good and relatively safe. Living in a pretty lefty area, I hadn't thought about the more volatile repercussions of having these kinds of conversations in a public setting.

And yeah, obviously lying about the way you're choosing to interact with someone is fucked. I never meant to assert otherwise.

[dextivestudios]

Gender neutral in Italian: It’s messy.

Introduction

Since I was given the “keep it basic” answer when I said I don’t know how to refer to someone in a gender-neutral way in Italian, I decided to do a little digging, mainly on Reddit as forums are extremely useful and a good resource when you have a question about someone else’s culture, since you’re likely to get answers from people who live there

But before we go into how Italians are shaking up the language to make it more inclusive, let’s talk about the femminielli

The Femminielli

From Naples, the femminielli are historically males who present themselves in a feminine way since first recorded in the 16th century book de humane phsyiognomonia. Although, today they include gay men, transwomen, and nonbinary people. The historical famminielli were considered channels of God, due to not being seen as male or female. As a result, they were also considered good luck and took gambling by Neopolitans. The femminielli came from poor communities, especially The Spanish Quarter, so health conditions such as an enlarged goitre.

While some transwomen and nonbinary individuals identify this way, it is incorrect to call the femminielli identity transgender. It is its own category, considered a third gender and is one of many examples around the world that such a concept is not a modern day American invention. (As many Italians believe it is.)

Gender Neutral Italian

Now with a small bit of history out of the way, we can get into the mess that is trying to shift the Italian language. It is difficult to find any answers, due to Italy being a more conservative country, leading to the idea of adding inclusivity to the language being “extremist” in the eyes of many. That, or people just have a “that’s just the way the language rigidly works” attitude, despite the observable fact that languages change and evolve. Just look at the constant adoption and dropping of slang terms, or even do a small bit of research in etymology.

So, what are the proposed solutions?

There are a few proposed solutions to this concern, albeit most of them have not gone anywhere. There is the singular “loro,” but it just doesn’t work. There is -u, but it’s a masculine suffix in certain dialects. There is dropping the suffix and replacing it with an asterisk, although it’s only online and currently unpronounceable. Shwa is another internet-born solution, an upside-down lower-case e (or a 3 symbol for plural). While shwa is technically pronounceable, it’s considered awkward as it’s a new letter, and it sounds like you have a certain accent and can reach communication issues there. They’re all controversial for their own reasons.

A final solution, which appears to be the best one currently, is referring to someone as “questa persona” or “quella persona.” While it means the rest of the sentence will be feminine, you’re not calling someone a man or a woman. You could back it up by simply not using pronouns, as pronouns are often dropped anyways in Italian.

Conclusion

The technically correct way to go about it is to just use the masculine form, as it’s the default way to refer to people and is used in mixed-gendered groups. I don’t know if it will still be in like ten years, and I don’t have any say on if it changes at all as an English-speaking American. I simply wanted to find an answer that fits in the rules of the language and respects the culture I wish to someday visit.

It turns out that it’s a complicated mess with no perfect proposals that not even the people from the concerned culture know for sure what’s best. I’m not going to make any suggestions on what anyone else should do, as it’s not in my place to do so.

Sources

Italy and Non-binary : r/NonBinaryTalk

Unknown Gender : r/italianlearning

Any Italians using they/them in the native language? How do you translate it? : r/NonBinary

Italian equivalent of singular “they.” : r/italianlearning

A Simple Guide To The Complex Topic Of Gender-Neutral Pronouns

How to be gender inclusive in Italian ? : r/italianlearning

how to refer to non-binary people in Italian ? : r/italianlearning

Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender - Wikipedia

The Femminielli of Naples - Are We Europe

This 18th-Century Italian Painting Proves Gender Nonconformity Is Far From a Modern Invention

New evidence of ‘third gender’ people in art | by Marina Viatkina | Hidden Gem: Art Treasures through the lens of History | Aug, 2023 | Medium

[keylimeimagines]

ɢᴏʀᴏᴜ x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ ᴄʀᴜsʜ ʜᴇᴀᴅᴄᴀɴᴏɴs

Reader (or Y|N) is NOT the Traveler! They can be A traveler, but they are not THE traveler we play as in the game! 2nd-person pronouns will mainly be used unless otherwise, where I will use they/them pronouns in order to have it remain gender-inclusive (as per usual)

If you want to request something, you can check my pinned post for rules, characters, and fandoms that I write for at the moment! I do change some of the characters and fandoms that I will write for at times, so I suggest you check it often! I hope you all enjoy my comeback post <3

I am so in love with this doggy general <33 He is LITERALLY the cutest ever

Yae Miko has definitely called him out on his crush on you, along with other things Gorou does NOT want to admit-

“I’d say that you’d like to imagine Y|N brushing your tail gently while you have the softest smile on your face, don’t you? You can deny it all you want, but your tail says otherwise.” and then cut to a Gorou who’s barely retaining his composure.

In fact, he tries his best to not only avoid her himself, but also to get you to avoid her as much as possible. He does NOT want Miko to call him out in front of you.

No matter how much he tries to hide his feelings for you, his tail always gives it away. Whenever he hears your voice or smells your scent (in a non-creepy way), his tail just gains a mind of its own as it wags furiously.

He goes to Kokomi for help, as well as the other soldiers (claiming that he’s asking for a friend), but they all know what’s up.

His main love languages are quality time (despite how busy he normally is), words of affirmation, and physical touch. He really likes receiving gifts and words of affirmation too! Considering that you two aren't dating (yet), he’ll show his affections subtly, as in congratulating you for your accomplishments, giving you cake so that you two can eat together, holding your hand to lead you somewhere, etc.

Speaking of holding your hand, he actually gets very, VERY flustered when you initiate any kind of physical touch, whether it be a long-lasting hug or simply your hands brushing each other.

He appreciates any and every gift you give him, no matter the actual, objective value of it. You could literally give him a rock and he’d still think it’s the best thing in the world

He often rants about you (in a good way) to the Traveler and Paimon, and he could literally go on and on about you for hours if he could because he is literally so head over heels for you <33

“I know this is probably weird to say about a friend, but I just love everything about them! From their hair to their eyes and their voice? Oh, don’t even get me started! They’re always so kind to me, and their laugh is so sweet, and they look so adorable when they're happy and-” literally just say that you’re in love with them it’s literally so obvious

You’re one of the only people who gets to pet his ears, although not in public! As much as he loves you, he still has his “tough general” reputation to keep up (also he would probably die if Miko ever saw him being vulnerable)

GOD FORBID IF YOU’RE THE FLIRTY TYPE- he would quite literally (not literally but you get my point) pass away if you flirted with him! He already loves you so much, but this is going to break him.

He offers to train you if you’d like! Specifically with a bow, not only because it’s what he’s specialized in, but he also wants to be closer to you (figuratively and literally)! He thinks it’s pretty romantic <33

The Traveler and Paimon desperately try to get you two together, much to Gorou’s dismay (it’s not like he doesn’t want to be with you! He’s just really nervous tbh)

This is actually how he confesses in the first place! One of the Traveler and Paimon’s attempts to matchmake you two didn’t go so well, so while Gorou was trying to explain what’s going on, he ended up confessing on the fly, as only a few moments after, he realized what he just said and metaphorically crumbles inside. Thankfully, you feel the same way (I mean, you ARE reading these headcanons for a reason)! Think of the scene where Lumity finally becomes canon in “Knock, Knock, Knocking on Hooty’s Door” from The Owl House!!

Also, after you and Gorou confess your feelings to each other, the Traveler and Paimon definitely high-fived each other behind a tree or a bush for another mission done successfully!

Overall, Gorou’s a sweet and caring individual, and now, you have a doggy general all to yourself <33 treat him well or else /lh

[piqued-curiosity]

I’m in awe at how eloquently and succinctly you answered all those asks that eagleflightdraw clown kept sending you! It’s crazy how tif’s fight so hard to convince themselves that they’re men to the point where they end up bootlicking their own oppressors. I feel bad for her at a certain extent, but it seems that she’s so caught up in wanting to be a man that she’s completely lost sight of what the goal of feminism is. I think the saddest part of all is that this girl is sending you ask after ask defending men, but those same men wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire. You NEVER see men defend women the way women (libfems mainly) defend men and it’s actually baffling that they don’t see that. Anyway, I loved all of your responses! Keep it up! 🩷

Thank you, that means a lot! 💕

I’m glad she was respectful, but she displayed such a typical misunderstanding of feminism and how sex-based oppression works. I say typical, because I see the same attitude in many TIFs. From what I’ve seen, it looks like what’s happening is a disconnect between their ideology and reality that they have to desperately explain away. They know feminism benefits them, because they know they’re affected by things like abortion and contraception restriction (I’m using that example a lot because this same conversation came up a lot last year when the US overruled Roe V Wade, so it’s an easy example). But they also want to believe they’re men, so they have to make the claim that “feminism is for everyone, including men” to make themselves feel like the reason they are benefited by feminism isn’t because they’re female, but because they’re men and feminism is for men too.

The easier solution would be for them to go back to how the trans movement started, which was acknowledging the difference between sex and identity. That way, they could put aside their personal identity for the sake of feminist action and understand that in this fight, they’re in it as female people, not as “men”. But modern trans people are incredibly selfish and entitled, which is why we see the conversation shifting to “here’s how we accommodate trans identities!” Anytime we try to speak on an important feminist subject. Again with the Roe V Wade situation, the trans community was more concerned with how to use gender inclusive language than how to actually solve the problem.

In short, it’s a result of members of the trans community being so wrapped up in their personal identity that they expect everyone else to revolve everything around said identity. And that they try to bend everything around them to fit their identity (“feminism is for men too, because I’m a man who’s pregnant and needs proper care!”), instead of understanding that their gender identity is not the most important thing at all times.

It reminds me a lot of how it feels to speak to religious people, who have a very hard time seeing outside their worldview. The way that TRAs are so quick to scoff at the mere idea of saying “trans women are men, trans men are women”, reminds me of how quick religious people are to scoff at somebody saying “I don’t believe in god”. And the follow-up is always an astonished “so what do you believe, if not my belief?”, as if they can’t even comprehend the idea of somebody not operating within their own ideology.

And like you said, it’s sad to see women go out of their way to defend men when we all know that men would never think to do the same for them. I was thinking that the whole time I was reading her asks…seeing her bring up problems men face (that were off-topic and not related to misogynistic sex-based oppression and feminism, as well as often being problems caused by men themselves), and thinking to myself “wow, men are never so quick to talk about problems women face, and when they are, other men assume they’re just doing it to get feminists to date and/or sleep with them”.

I don’t really blame her though, because like I said, thinking like this about feminism is really the only way to logically uphold her false identity. If she accepts that feminism is for/about women and that women experience sex-based oppression, she’d be forced to see that she herself falls under the category of woman. And that would just be the worst thing in the world.