#or I worked with two trans women at the same time and they could not have been more diametrically opposed

[femmeidiot]

interesting how being lgbt does not make you automatically relate to people like there are so many lgbt people I have nothing in common with.

[therealbeachfox]

Twenty years ago, February 15th, 2004, I got married for the first time.

It was twenty years earlier than I ever expected to.

To celebrate/comemorate the date, I'm sitting down to write out everything I remember as I remember it. No checking all the pictures I took or all the times I've written about this before. I'm not going to turn to my husband (of twenty years, how the f'ing hell) to remember a detail for me.

This is not a 100% accurate recounting of that first wild weekend in San Francisco. But it -is- a 100% accurate recounting of how I remember it today, twenty years after the fact.

Join me below, if you would.

2004 was an election year, and much like conservatives are whipping up anti-trans hysteria and anti-trans bills and propositions to drive out the vote today, in 2004 it was all anti-gay stuff. Specifically, preventing the evil scourge of same-sex marriage from destroying everything good and decent in the world.

Enter Gavin Newstrom. At the time, he was the newly elected mayor of San Francisco. Despite living next door to the city all my life, I hadn’t even heard of the man until Valentines Day 2004 when he announced that gay marriage was legal in San Francisco and started marrying people at city hall.

It was a political stunt. It was very obviously a political stunt. That shit was illegal, after all. But it was a very sweet political stunt. I still remember the front page photo of two ancient women hugging each other forehead to forehead and crying happy tears.

But it was only going to last for as long as it took for the California legal system to come in and make them knock it off.

The next day, we’re on the phone with an acquaintance, and she casually mentions that she’s surprised the two of us aren’t up at San Francisco getting married with everyone else.

“Everyone else?” Goes I, “I thought they would’ve shut that down already?”

“Oh no!” goes she, “The courts aren’t open until Tuesday. Presidents Day on Monday and all. They’re doing them all weekend long!”

We didn’t know because social media wasn’t a thing yet. I only knew as much about it as I’d read on CNN, and most of the blogs I was following were more focused on what bullshit President George W Bush was up to that day.

"Well shit", me and my man go, "do you wanna?" I mean, it’s a political stunt, it wont really mean anything, but we’re not going to get another chance like this for at least 20 years. Why not?

The next day, Sunday, we get up early. We drive north to the southern-most BART station. We load onto Bay Area Rapid Transit, and rattle back and forth all the way to the San Francisco City Hall stop.

We had slightly miscalculated.

Apparently, demand for marriages was far outstripping the staff they had on hand to process them. Who knew. Everyone who’d gotten turned away Saturday had been given tickets with times to show up Sunday to get their marriages done. My babe and I, we could either wait to see if there was a space that opened up, or come back the next day, Monday.

“Isn’t City Hall closed on Monday?” I asked. “It’s a holiday”

“Oh sure,” they reply, “but people are allowed to volunteer their time to come in and work on stuff anyways. And we have a lot of people who want to volunteer their time to have the marriage licensing offices open tomorrow.”

“Oh cool,” we go, “Backup.”

“Make sure you’re here if you do,” they say, “because the California Supreme Court is back in session Tuesday, and will be reviewing the motion that got filed to shut us down.”

And all this shit is super not-legal, so they’ll totally be shutting us down goes unsaid.

00000

We don’t get in Saturday. We wind up hanging out most of the day, though.

It’s… incredible. I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never experienced so much concentrated joy and happiness and celebration of others’ joy and happiness in all my life before or since. My face literally ached from grinning. Every other minute, a new couple was coming out of City Hall, waving their paperwork to the crowd and cheering and leaping and skipping. Two glorious Latina women in full Mariachi band outfits came out, one in the arms of another. A pair of Jewish boys with their families and Rabbi. One couple managed to get a Just Married convertible arranged complete with tin-cans tied to the bumper to drive off in. More than once I was giving some rice to throw at whoever was coming out next.

At some point in the mid-afternoon, there was a sudden wave of extra cheering from the several hundred of us gathered at the steps, even though no one was coming out. There was a group going up the steps to head inside, with some generic black-haired shiny guy at the front. My not-yet-husband nudged me, “That’s Newsom.” He said, because he knew I was hopeless about matching names and people.

Ooooooh, I go. That explains it. Then I joined in the cheers. He waved and ducked inside.

So dusk is starting to fall. It’s February, so it’s only six or so, but it’s getting dark.

“Should we just try getting in line for tomorrow -now-?” we ask.

“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.” One of the volunteers tells us. “We’re not allowed to have people hang out overnight like this unless there are facilities for them and security. We’d need Porta-Poties for a thousand people and police patrols and the whole lot, and no one had time to get all that organized. Your best bet is to get home, sleep, and then catch the first BART train up at 5am and keep your fingers crossed.

Monday is the last day to do this, after all.

00000

So we go home. We crash out early. We wake up at 4:00. We drive an hour to hit the BART station. We get the first train up. We arrive at City Hall at 6:30AM.

The line stretches around the entirety of San Francisco City Hall. You could toss a can of Coke from the end of the line to the people who’re up to be first through the doors and not have to worry about cracking it open after.

“Uh.” We go. “What the fuck is -this-?”

So.

Remember why they weren’t going to be able to have people hang out overnight?

Turns out, enough SF cops were willing to volunteer unpaid time to do patrols to cover security. And some anonymous person delivered over a dozen Porta-Poties that’d gotten dropped off around 8 the night before.

It’s 6:30 am, there are almost a thousand people in front of us in line to get this literal once in a lifetime marriage, the last chance we expect to have for at least 15 more years (it was 2004, gay rights were getting shoved back on every front. It was not looking good. We were just happy we lived in California were we at least weren’t likely to loose job protections any time soon.).

Then it starts to rain.

We had not dressed for rain.

00000

Here is how the next six hours go.

We’re in line. Once the doors open at 7am, it will creep forward at a slow crawl. It’s around 7 when someone shows up with garbage bags for everyone. Cut holes for the head and arms and you’ve got a makeshift raincoat! So you’ve got hundreds of gays and lesbians decked out in the nicest shit they could get on short notice wearing trashbags over it.

Everyone is so happy.

Everyone is so nervous/scared/frantic that we wont be able to get through the doors before they close for the day.

People online start making delivery orders.

Coffee and bagels are ordered in bulk and delivered to City Hall for whoever needs it. We get pizza. We get roses. Random people come by who just want to give hugs to people in line because they’re just so happy for us. The tour busses make detours to go past the lines. Chinese tourists lean out with their cameras and shout GOOD LUCK while car horns honk.

A single sad man holding a Bible tries to talk people out of doing this, tells us all we’re sinning and to please don’t. He gives up after an hour. A nun replaces him with a small sign about how this is against God’s will. She leaves after it disintegrates in the rain.

The day before, when it was sunny, there had been a lot of protestors. Including a large Muslim group with their signs about how “Not even DOGS do such things!” Which… Yes they do.

A lot of snide words are said (by me) about how the fact that we’re willing to come out in the rain to do this while they’re not willing to come out in the rain to protest it proves who actually gives an actual shit about the topic.

Time passes. I measure it based on which side of City Hall we’re on. The doors face East. We start on Northside. Coffee and trashbags are delivered when we’re on the North Side. Pizza first starts showing up when we’re on Westside, which is also where I see Bible Man and Nun. Roses are delivered on Southside. And so forth.

00000

We have Line Neighbors.

Ahead of us are a gay couple a decade or two older than us. They’ve been together for eight years. The older one is a school teacher. He has his coat collar up and turns away from any news cameras that come near while we reposition ourselves between the lenses and him. He’s worried about the parents of one of his students seeing him on the news and getting him fired. The younger one will step away to get interviewed on his own later on. They drove down for the weekend once they heard what was going on. They’d started around the same time we did, coming from the Northeast, and are parked in a nearby garage.

The most perky energetic joyful woman I’ve ever met shows up right after we turned the corner to Southside to tackle the younger of the two into a hug. She’s their local friend who’d just gotten their message about what they’re doing and she will NOT be missing this. She is -so- happy for them. Her friends cry on her shoulders at her unconditional joy.

Behind us are a lesbian couple who’d been up in San Francisco to celebrate their 12th anniversary together. “We met here Valentines Day weekend! We live down in San Diego, now, but we like to come up for the weekend because it’s our first love city.”

“Then they announced -this-,” the other one says, “and we can’t leave until we get married. I called work Sunday and told them I calling in sick until Wednesday.”

“I told them why,” her partner says, “I don’t care if they want to give me trouble for it. This is worth it. Fuck them.”

My husband-to-be and I look at each other. We’ve been together for not even two years at this point. Less than two years. Is it right for us to be here? We’re potentially taking a spot from another couple that’d been together longer, who needed it more, who deserved it more.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Says the 40-something gay couple in front of us.

“This is as much for you as it is for us!” says the lesbian couple who’ve been together for over a decade behind us.

“You kids are too cute together,” says the gay couple’s friend. “you -have- to. Someday -you’re- going to be the old gay couple that’s been together for years and years, and you deserve to have been married by then.”

We stay in line.

It’s while we’re on the Southside of City Hall, just about to turn the corner to Eastside at long last that we pick up our own companions. A white woman who reminds me an awful lot of my aunt with a four year old black boy riding on her shoulders. “Can we say we’re with you? His uncles are already inside and they’re not letting anyone in who isn’t with a couple right there.” “Of course!” we say.

The kid is so very confused about what all the big deal is, but there’s free pizza and the busses keep driving by and honking, so he’s having a great time.

We pass by a statue of Lincoln with ‘Marriage for All!’ and "Gay Rights are Human Rights!" flags tucked in the crooks of his arms and hanging off his hat.

It’s about noon, noon-thirty when we finally make it through the doors and out of the rain.

They’ve promised that anyone who’s inside when the doors shut will get married. We made it. We’re safe.

We still have a -long- way to go.

00000

They’re trying to fit as many people into City Hall as possible. Partially to get people out of the rain, mostly to get as many people indoors as possible. The line now stretches down into the basement and up side stairs and through hallways I’m not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to. We crawl along slowly but surely.

It’s after we’ve gone through the low-ceiling basement hallways past offices and storage and back up another set of staircases and are going through a back hallway of low-ranked functionary offices that someone comes along handing out the paperwork. “It’s an hour or so until you hit the office, but take the time to fill these out so you don’t have to do it there!”

We spend our time filling out the paperwork against walls, against backs, on stone floors, on books.

We enter one of the public areas, filled with displays and photos of City Hall Demonstrations of years past.

I take pictures of the big black and white photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue holding banners and signs against segregation and for civil rights.

The four year old boy we helped get inside runs past us around this time, chased by a blond haired girl about his own age, both perused by an exhausted looking teenager helplessly begging them to stop running.

Everyone is wet and exhausted and vibrating with anticipation and the building-wide aura of happiness that infuses everything.

The line goes into the marriage office. A dozen people are at the desk, shoulder to shoulder, far more than it was built to have working it at once.

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence is directing people to city officials the moment they open up. She’s done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point. “Oh, I was here yesterday getting married myself, but today I’m acting as your guide. Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-“

The guy behind the counter has been there since six. It’s now 1:30. He’s still giddy with joy. He counts our money. He takes our paperwork, reviews it, stamps it, sends off the parts he needs to, and hands the rest back to us. “Alright, go to the Rotunda, they’ll direct you to someone who’ll do the ceremony. Then, if you want the certificate, they’ll direct you to -that- line.” “Can’t you just mail it to us?” “Normally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, we’re not going to be allowed to.”

We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.

If you’ve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill, you’ve seen the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda. There are literally a dozen spots set up along the balconies that overlook the open area where marriage officials and witnesses are gathered and are just processing people through as fast as they can.

That’s for the people who didn’t bring their own wedding officials.

There’s a Catholic-adjacent couple there who seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. They’re doing the whole damn thing. There’s at least one more Rabbi at work, I can’t remember what else. Just that there was a -lot-.

We get directed to the second story, northside. The San Francisco City Treasurer is one of our two witnesses. Our marriage officient is some other elected official I cannot remember for the life of me (and I'm only writing down what I can actively remember, so I can't turn to my husband next to me and ask, but he'll have remembered because that's what he does.)

I have a wilting lily flower tucked into my shirt pocket. My pants have water stains up to the knees. My hair is still wet from the rain, I am blubbering, and I can’t get the ring on my husband’s finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.

There really isn’t a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time. Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening. Relief that we’d made it. Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way and the hundreds to thousands who’d cheered for us generally.

Then we're married.

Then we get in line to get our license.

It’s another hour. This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and goes past the doorway to the mayor’s office.

Mayor Newsom is not in today. And will be having trouble getting into his office on Tuesday because of the absolute barricade of letters and flowers and folded up notes and stuffed animals and City Hall maps with black marked “THANK YOU!”s that have been piled up against it.

We make it to the marriage records office.

I take a picture of my now husband standing in front of a case of the marriage records for 1902-1912. Numerous kids are curled up in corners sleeping. My own memory is spotty. I just know we got the papers, and then we’re done with lines. We get out, we head to the front entrance, and we walk out onto the City Hall steps.

It's almost 3PM.

00000

There are cheers, there’s rice thrown at us, there are hundreds of people celebrating us with unconditional love and joy and I had never before felt the goodness that exists in humanity to such an extent. It’s no longer raining, just a light sprinkle, but there are still no protestors. There’s barely even any news vans.

We make our way through the gauntlet, we get hands shaked, people with signs reading ”Congratulations!” jump up and down for us. We hit the sidewalks, and we begin to limp our way back to the BART station.

I’m at the BART station, we’re waiting for our train back south, and I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a pillar and in danger of falling asleep when a nondescript young man stops in front of me and shuffles his feet nervously. “Hey. I just- I saw you guys, down at City Hall, and I just… I’m so happy for you. I’m so proud of what you could do. I’m- I’m just really glad, glad you could get to do this.”

He shakes my hand, clasps it with both of his and shakes it. I thank him and he smiles and then hurries away as fast as he can without running.

Our train arrives and the trip south passes in a semilucid blur.

We get back to our car and climb in.

It’s 4:30 and we are starving.

There’s a Carls Jr near the station that we stop off at and have our first official meal as a married couple. We sit by the window and watch people walking past and pick out others who are returning from San Francisco. We're all easy to pick out, what with the combination of giddiness and water damage.

We get home about 6-7. We take the dog out for a good long walk after being left alone for two days in a row. We shower. We bundle ourselves up. We bury ourselves in blankets and curl up and just sort of sit adrift in the surrealness of what we’d just done.

We wake up the next day, Tuesday, to read that the California State Supreme Court has rejected the petition to shut down the San Francisco weddings because the paperwork had a misplaced comma that made the meaning of one phrase unclear.

The State Supreme Court would proceed to play similar bureaucratic tricks to drag the process out for nearly a full month before they have nothing left and finally shut down Mayor Newsom’s marriages.

My parents had been out of state at the time at a convention. They were flying into SFO about the same moment we were walking out of City Hall. I apologized to them later for not waiting and my mom all but shook me by the shoulders. “No! No one knew that they’d go on for so long! You did what you needed to do! I’ll just be there for the next one!”

00000

It was just a piece of paper. Legally, it didn’t even hold any weight thirty days later. My philosophy at the time was “marriage really isn’t that important, aside from the legal benefits. It’s just confirming what you already have.”

But maybe it’s just societal weight, or ingrained culture, or something, but it was different after. The way I described it at the time, and I’ve never really come up with a better metaphor is, “It’s like we were both holding onto each other in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm. We were keeping each other above water, we were each other’s support. But then we got this piece of paper. And it was like the ground rose up to meet our feet. We were still in an ocean, still in the middle of a storm, but there was a solid foundation beneath our feet. We still supported each other, but there was this other thing that was also keeping our heads above the water.

It was different. It was better. It made things more solid and real.

I am forever grateful for all the forces and all the people who came together to make it possible. It’s been twenty years and we’re still together and still married.

We did a domestic partnership a year later to get the legal paperwork. We’d done a private ceremony with proper rings (not just ones grabbed out of the husband’s collection hours before) before then. And in 2008, we did a legal marriage again.

Rushed. In a hurry. Because there was Proposition 13 to be voted on which would make them all illegal again if it passed.

It did, but we were already married at that point, and they couldn’t negate it that time.

Another few years after that, the Supreme Court finally threw up their hands and said "Fine! It's been legal in places and nothing's caught on fire or been devoured by locusts. It's legal everywhere. Shut up about it!"

And that was that.

00000

When I was in highschool, in the late 90s, I didn’t expect to see legal gay marriage until I was in my 50s. I just couldn’t see how the American public as it was would ever be okay with it.

I never expected to be getting married within five years. I never expected it to be legal nationwide before I’d barely started by 30s. I never thought I’d be in my 40s and it’d be such a non-issue that the conservative rabble rousers would’ve had to move onto other wedge issues altogether.

I never thought that I could introduce another man as my husband and absolutely no one involved would so much as blink.

I never thought I’d live in this world.

And it’s twenty years later today. I wonder how our line buddies are doing. Those babies who were running around the wide open rooms playing tag will have graduated college by now. The kids whose parents the one line-buddy was worried would see him are probably married too now. Some of them to others of the same gender.

I don’t have some greater message to make with all this. Other then, culture can shift suddenly in ways you can’t predict. For good or ill. Mainly this is just me remembering the craziest fucking 36 hours of my life twenty years after the fact and sharing them with all of you.

The future we’re resigned to doesn’t have to be the one we live in. Society can shift faster than you think. The unimaginable of twenty years ago is the baseline reality of today.

And always remember that the people who want to get married will show up by the thousands in rain that none of those who’re against it will brave.

[thehmn]

I’m intersex and I’m very hesitant to make this post because it could very quickly turn into a shitshow if I don’t word my thoughts correctly, but I’ve noticed a small, slowly growing trend and I think it’s important to talk about this before it gets out of hand.

I’ve seen a couple of posts with a lot of likes and reblogs where trans people accuse intersex people of being transphobic when they want hormonal treatment or surgery for themselves to look more female or male. It’s never about forced surgery on intersex children, but specifically about adult intersex people who want treatment for themselves. In these posts people see it as subconscious transphobia because they think this mindset is supporting the gender binary and harms trans and nonbinary people who technically get intersex bodies once they start to transition with hormones and surgeries. In their eyes not only are intersex people who use hormones/surgery to visually get out of the intersex sphere abandoning trans people, they’re also working agains nonbinary people who use intersex people as proof that there are more than two sexes which justify the existence of more than two genders.

The fact that there are a lot of similarities between trans and intersex people should be obvious. Both groups are saddled with bodies that doesn’t necessarily represent their gender and both can experience severe body dysmorphia, but at the end of the day the biggest difference is that the bodies of intersex people change on their own.

If you’re trans, imagine if you were assigned your preferred gender at birth and was perfectly content and happy in your gender experience when you suddenly hit puberty and start developing sex characteristics that goes against your gender and suddenly people around you start telling you you’re not actually the gender you think you are. Basically, imagine the way you felt before you came out/transitioned, except reversed.

I can for the life of me not understand why a trans person who thinks hormones and surgeries are acceptable for trans people can’t extend that mindset to intersex people.

It’s an ongoing debate among intersex people wether we belong in queer spaces and I can see both sides. A lot of intersex people consider themselves cishet people with a birth deformity who aren’t any more queer than people with dwarfism. Other intersex people feel more at home in queer spaces because there’s generally more acceptance of people who fall outside the norm.

But at the same time, in my experience, you get a lot of the same questions in both spaces. Both queer and cishet people often assume intersex means nonbinary, and I’ve been asked more than once how intersex people can call themselves cis or trans when their bodies fall outside the two majority sexes, forgetting that it’s all about what gender you were assigned at birth.

This leads to situations where you’ll meet trans men with functioning penises and trans women with natural breasts. A child might be born with something that looks like a vagina with a big clitoris and be assigned female but once they hit puberty the big clitoris becomes a small penis.

And even if they’re trans and start developing sex characteristics more in line with their true gender they might not be ready for it yet. As a teenager you become a target if you stand out so if you’re a trans girl living as a boy and you suddenly develop breasts that can be horrifying.

I personally experienced a much milder version of this. As a child I was perfectly content with people calling me a girl but I also felt like a different kind of girl. Not in a “not like the other girls” or tomboy way. More like a girl with something else in the mix. It was a very physical feeling because I was naturally stronger and more boyish looking than other girls and I didn’t really feel like I fit in with either boys or girls but at the same time it didn’t bother me when I was grouped in with the girls during school activities. I’d play around with makeup in my room, giving myself a beard and chest hair without wanting to be a man. It just felt like the right mix. Then I hit puberty for real and developed breasts and hips but also a full beard and chest hair. Despite all the times I had done it to myself I was mortified. This wasn’t something I could take off. I stood out wether I wanted to or not. Shaving left me with stubble. People looked. People commented on it. And my breasts didn’t grow super big and a lot of my body fat sat on my stomach like on a man, which meant if I didn’t wear a very flattering bra and feminine clothes I was sometimes mistaken for a chubby guy with manboobs. I was NOT ready for that. I was already struggling to fit in at a new school so this was like a social death sentence, not to mention I wasn’t sure about my own gender yet. It was something I should be allowed to work out on my own in peace when I was ready for it without people constantly asking what I, a child, had in my pants.

So hormones was a gift that allowed me to “transition” when I was ready for it at a later age. I’m off those hormones now and live as a “woman with something extra” like I always knew I was, but the things I had to go through as a child makes me very sympathetic to intersex people who does not feel that way and just want to be a man or woman with nothing extra because that’s their gender and like everyone else they want their gender and gender expression to align.

I don’t think it’s fair to expect people to be a martyr for other people. Most intersex people think trans rights are important but that doesn’t necessarily mean they belong in that debate. I know a lot of trans people who think women’s rights are important but feel no obligation to help the cause by sharing their experience of what it was like living as one gender and then another and how much respect and dignity they gained or lost after they transitioned.

So while I understand the natural instinct of wanting intersex people be part of a lager cause I also think it’s unfair to call intersex people who want to look like their preferred gender transphobic.

I really hope I made myself understood and that this isn’t an angry post. I just saw this “intersex people are transphobic for taking hormones” opinion with little to no understanding of the intersex experience and I’m hoping to shed a bit of light on that ❤️

[sev-wildfang]

2015 - 2024

it has been a while since ive felt the courage or need to post something like this. i worked very hard to scrub all pre-2016 photographs of me off the internet in fact, something i realize was not in the spirit of the person who inspired me at all.

for the sake of brevity im not going to post the entirety of my transition. some two or odd years into it i was fully immersed in the feminine persona i was trying to become but still filled with a yearning that seemed to be incurable.

it was a chance encounter on this website that changed my course forever. i saw a transition timeline by a user who has since deleted their blog, detailing year by year their journey to become a kind of trans woman i didnt even know could exist at that point: a trans-feminine butch.

the clarity of their vision intrigued me. it opened a door where previously i only saw an insurmountable wall. this was something one could want to become. this was not a failure state. this was a lighthouse.

"you measure yourself by stricter standards than you do cis women", my then therapist said, "you allow yourself to play with masculinity in your art. in your art you seem to be able to separate it from male-ness. do you think you might want that in real life?"

immediately after that conversation, i looked at the timeline post again. i decided to get a haircut - a variation of the same short undercut that has become my go-to since. i slowly phased out the dresses that had carried my thru the hardest times of my budding transition. most of them i gifted to other trans women who had more of a need for them.

i set to work on my self once more with new purpose and i found first joy, then peace in the never-ending process of becoming. like every terminally online dyke in 2020 i read Stone Butch Blues, read The Locked Tomb, read Hot Allostatic Load, buzzed my hair off twice, got way too many tattoos to count, found community and friendship in my local queer scene as well as among butches online, and learned that i have the capability to love more than one person. and i love all of the people i used to be and no longer am; the problem child, the teenage romantic, the spiteful young man, the girl wrestling with herself, the baby butch still worried about keeping her tokens of femininity about her, the idiot who tought working night shifts was a good idea, and the clown who said this would be short post just some paragraphs ago.

the user who made that post was a lighthouse that went out as soon as i made it to shore, if you forgive the sentimentality. i am not half the butch they were (and maybe still are?) but maybe that's enough to be worth something to someone. it is something to me.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/746553097204203521/the-fandom-hates-women-response-to-lack-of-ff

The "fandom hates women" part of it comes from the fact that fandom as an entity just doesn't watch the kind of media that draws femslash, even if it ticks all of the boxes of things those very same people say they like. There are so many times I've watched a show that I've seen mega-popular Tumblr posts wishing existed, and then the fandom is so, so small comparatively and often in general. There have been superheroes, vampire/supernatural shows, fantasy shows, movies, books, the list goes on, that feel like they were generated out of Tumblr's desires for ideal fandom media, and everyone knows they're never going to attract anywhere near the same attention for fandom and fanworks because the common denominator just tends to be that if there isn't a full ensemble of attractive men to ship either with each other or with the women, fandom's not interested.

So it's not about prioritizing women in that sense, it's about people witnessing hypocrisy over and over again the second a show doesn't have a mostly-male ensemble. The people who are in these fandoms are frustrated that good faith attempts to get people interested are met with every excuse in the book that all eventually boils down to "I don't like watching stuff with women in it as much as I like watching stuff with men in it." And if that's how people feel about it... sometimes the conclusions are going to turn into the more uncharitable take of "fandom hates women."

--

Maybe, but whenever I see a "fandom hates women" reblog of my stuff, one or two reblogs further down the chain I get an overt TERF. I just had to go block several people today, in fact.

The first person to reblog with a comment like that is usually subtle, but their friends and friends of friends are not. The rhetoric that very quickly starts is the fandom equivalent of that "All the butches are becoming trans men! We're losing lesbians!" stuff.

Here's the thing: I've been in ten billion fandoms that were so awesome and fit fandom's supposed tastes to a T and yet no amount of promoting them could get anyone to try the canon. This goes for canons that are all men or all white men or all majority ethnicity men or whatever else.

The default state of media is to not engender a big fic fandom.

I agree that the rare outliers mostly follow certain patterns, but we extrapolate too far when we say that a lack of those patterns is why a fandom is small.

A fandom is small because that's the near-universal default.

--

Yes, a small slice of fandom consists of guilt-ridden queer fujoshi who say they want more f/f but don't make much of a move to make that happen. I tend to run into that a lot because of my own tastes and having friends who share those tastes.

Far more of fandom is people talking generally about how representation matters without saying they would personally join these fandoms if they existed.

Neither group is large enough to be the real reason some woman-heavy canon fails to take off to HP levels.

The real reason is not hypocrisy but the fact that most things don't take off like that. Most things without massive, massive audiences especially don't take off like that. And the very few things that do are flukes and don't actually predict that another similar thing will take off in the future.

--

Go to AO3's tag search. Search for all canonical fandom tags. Sort by uses and descending order.

Right now, I get 64,390 tags.

The first page, 50 tags, goes from HP with 497,845 works to the Thor movies with 59,266 works. By page 6, we're below 10 thousand works.

By the end of page 10, we're down to Labyrinth with 3,906.

Somewhere in the top 500 AO3 fandom tags (many of which are just franchise metatags for each other), we go all the way from megafandoms to medium size and down to relatively modest ones.

That's not a lot of room for a big f/f-heavy fandom given the trends in mainstream media and that mainstream media is where most really big fandoms come from.

--

I also notice that you're conflating a lack of desire to watch something that's primarily about women with a lack of desire to watch something that includes women.

There are tons of fans who want something more like The Mummy with a leading man and leading woman they love.

Granted, that's not me and that's not a lot of my fujoshi/slasher audience, but it's extraordinarily common. I know plenty of people who don't like canons that are only dudes, but since they also don't like canons that are only ladies and they don't ship f/f, this gets spun into "fandom hates women".

--

Let me be clear:

Conflating "lesbians" and "women" is a radfem position.

[ftmtftm]

on the subject of trans men being treated differently by their peers after coming out: when i transitioned i worked in a profession that was mostly dominated by women, and all of my coworkers at my workplace were women. most of them were my friends, and we had a great time working together.

i came out as trans and they were all gracious and cool with it, and a few months later after being on T for a little while, i started living as a man at work. within a month three of my coworkers whom i had considered work friends came together and accused me of sexual harassment for bumping into them (i should clarify this was a job where you work in close physical proximity on the regular)

all of my coworkers also stopped including me in teamwork immediately after transition as well and left me on my own, i had to do a lot of lifting by myself to the point where i injured myself repeatedly at work and my back is now permanently damaged, and my workplace became overall extremely hostile to me.

all this while all of them constantly joked about wanting more male coworkers (there were a few cis men as well) who could do heavy lifting and saying that i "didn't count" as a man in their eyes

none of the cis men we worked with dealt with any of this and were welcomed with open arms by everyone else

Commiserating very strongly with the way cis women will joke about needing men to do heavy lifting right in front of you because you "don't count" - that's happened to me so many times as well as someone who has also predominantly worked jobs/in fields where cis women are the majority.

At one of my old jobs the only men were myself, the marketing guy, and the maintenance guy. The two of them, the cool butch woman, and the two women who'd known me since I was a kid were the only people who didn't treat me weirdly for being trans. Everyone else in that workplace was an older than middle aged cis woman who was extremely uncomfortable with my existence because it was a very Liberal™️ workplace and I directly upset their second wave "women can be masculine without being men" sensibilities.

All of that's to say, the maintenance guy and I actually commiserated a lot because he was getting older and more disabled and there were a lot of commonalities between the way he and I were both being treated by that group of older Liberal cis women. Our manhood was often contingent on our usefulness and the more elderly and disabled he became and the more outspokenly trans I was the less useful we became and the less Man™️ we became as well.

For me that manifested in literally being named (with my actual, masculine name thank god no one had access to my deadname there) and being misgendered in the same sentence by my boss to patrons regularly - putting me in direct jeopardy with those patrons because it effectively constantly outed me. For him it manifested in the ways he was treated, slowly more and more degradingly by that group. It was awful.

It just goes to show gender as a whole is conditional.

[archangeldyke-all]

Are your Sevika requests still open? 🥺👉🏽👈🏽

I have this idea in my head that I can't get out. I'm not a huge fan of the concept of having kids (not for me!) but I can't help but think of Sevika very slowly changing her attitude and priorities around fighting for the cause because she just found out she's gonna be a dad in the future. Her hesitating around something Silco asks or mentions and her being like "I..I got a kid on the way." Cis or trans Sevika, doesn't matter either way

sevika requests are always open :) and this is the cutest thing i've ever heard.

i don't want kids either, but for sevika?? i'd have so many of her kids that the doctors would have to tell me to stop before my body gives out.

men and minors dni

you and sevika don't want kids. it's not in your plan.

sevika's got a dangerous job. it took years of convincing, years of proving to her that you'd be okay without her, that you want her just as she is now, for her to finally give in and make you hers.

and you're perfectly content.

she works horrible hours and comes home beat up more often than not, but you take the time to patch her up each night, and the two of you spend every free second you have together.

she moved you into her place on your fourth date, and you've been happily living together ever since.

and two years ago, when she shyly shoved a tiny box in your hands and nervously looked away as you opened it, mumbling under her breath a question you could barely make out ('i was wonderin' if you'd like to maybe spend forever with me?') you said yes, with no hesitation.

you guys didn't get married. weddings in zaun are incredibly rare, saved only for the wealthiest, and getting a marriage certificate from piltover for two zaunite women is nearly impossible. but, you had a little ceremony in the last drop (which was really just an excuse to throw a rager) to commemorate your eternal love for one another.

and since then, you've been perfectly happy with your little life.

but, accidents happen.

accidents like sevika swearing she'll pull out, begging to feel you without the condom, then cumming the second she pushes inside of you, whimpering and apologizing and cursing your hot, wet cunt.

accidents like you sleeping through the alarm for your pill.

accidents like sevika forgetting to grab a plan b on the way home, too busy fiddling with the tooth some goon knocked loose in her jaw to remember.

and, usually, these accidents lead to nothing happening. so you and sevika assume it's safe to keep letting them happen.

but then, your period's a week late.

and then two.

and then you take a pregnancy test, and it comes out positive.

and then you take three more, and they're all positive too.

you're paralyzed with shock and fear. you spend the entire day sitting in the bathroom, staring at the positive tests on the counter, crying and laughing, then crying again.

the thing is, you're not opposed to having kids. and now that you know you'll have one in nine months or so, you're fucking elated. but you know sevika doesn't feel the same. and the thought of losing her because of the cells growing inside of you, the thought of having to choose between sevika and the tiny little fucker you're already in love with-- it kills you.

sevika comes home to find you having a panic on the bathroom floor.

"babe, you'll never guess what silco did toda-- what the fuck!?" she exclaims, immediately dropping to her knees and gathering you up in her arms. "baby-- what's wrong? are you hurt?" she asks, grabbing your face in her hands and forcing you to look at her, her eyes flying over your body, checking for injuries. you just cry more, already mourning the loss of her touch that you've grown so used to.

"i-i-i'm sorry." you cry out. sevika blinks at you.

"for what?!" she asks. "baby, you're freaking me out, what's going on?" she asks, panic in her eyes.

you take a shaky breath then reach up to grab one of the tests on the counter behind you, sobbing as you bring it down to hold against your chest.

"i'm sorry, sev, i c-can't-- i don't think i can--"

"what's that?" she asks, gently reaching for your wrist to pull your hand away from your chest.

you gulp and bite your lip as you open your hand, letting her get a good look at the test.

the confusion on her face melts. a stoic look takes its place as she blinks down at the little plus sign on the little plastic test.

you look away from her face, too heartbroken to watch her process the news. tears stream down your face as sevika's hold on your wrist goes shaky, and you prepare yourself for her to pull away.

only, she doesn't.

if you had looked, you'd see the hesitant little smile pulling at the corner of her lips. if you had looked, you'd see the way she gulps like she always does when she's surprised, the tears welling up in her eyes, the way she took a silent gasp as she blinks down at the test in your hands.

you're shocked when she pulls you toward her chest, hugging you tight against her body.

"sev-- don't." you whimper. she blinks down at you.

"what-- whaddya mean 'don't'?" she asks. you take a shaky breath.

"if you're gonna leave just leave-- i can't-- you can't be nice to me, it'll kill me." you say.

sevika's heart breaks.

she's never wanted kids. and you're fine with that.

but the second she saw the test, something happened inside of her, something swirling and giddy and nervous. something kinda like how she feels for you, but a little different. a little deeper, a little less hot and a little more familiar.

everything else in her world fades away. the stories she's been dying to tell you all day, the fire in her heart for zaun, the sounds of drunkards stumbling by your apartment, it all goes silent. it's just you and her, and in that moment, sevika realizes that maybe a kid wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. especially not with you.

sevika kisses your forehead, tears welling up in her eyes at the sound of your muffled sobs.

"i'm not leaving you baby, don't be ridiclious." she says. you cry aloud at her words, wrapping your arms around her back and clawing at her shoulders, trying to pull her impossibly closer to you.

"don't say that." you whisper, shakily.

"i'm not just sayin' it. i mean it. we promised each other through thick and thin, right?" she asks. you nod against her.

"but you don't--"

"i don't care." she says. "i'm a fucking idiot, you know that." she says. you let out a shaky laugh. "i'm not leaving." she says again.

in your first trimester, sevika's still a little hesitant-- still a little distant.

she's not sure how to handle all the emotions in her body, all the love and anxiety swirling up at all times. she puts her energy into making you comfortable, holding you when morning sickness takes hold, stocking up on prenatal vitamins and your favorite snacks, pampering you even more than usual.

this, she can handle. she loves taking care of you, she loves babying you, and with all the anxiety in her mind surrounding the baby, caring for you helps her quell it.

she doesn't talk about the baby much. she's still too nervous to talk about it.

but in your second trimester, you start showing. no longer just a little extra fat on your stomach, your baby's actually visible now. your shirts start riding up your abdomen, a little swell peaking out every time you stretch or move, and she can no longer ignore it-- there's a baby in your belly. and it's hers. and it'll be here soon.

you wake up many nights with gas or aches, and find sevika already awake, a furrow in her brow and her lip between her teeth as she gnaws on it. you ask her what she's thinking about, and she just curls around your body and kisses you back to sleep.

sometimes, you wake up to her hand hesitantly rubbing your belly, like she's scared to touch you. you just rest your hand on top of hers, interlacing your fingers and keeping her hand on your stomach while you both fall back asleep.

if she was better with words, if she had the words to express herself, sevika would tell you that she's scared. she hasn't even met the little fucker yet, and she already loves it more than anything else in her life. it terrifies her, for all the same reasons you do. she has a dangerous job, and second in command to a revolution isn't a suitable job title for a new mom.

sevika knows what it's like to grow up without a parent.

sevika knows what it's like to grow up with a jaded parent, too, someone who's closed their heart off to the world to avoid being hurt, and in turn can no longer love. and she doesn't want to do that to your baby. she doesn't want to do that to you either.

and at work, when she gets in scuffles, or gets a knife drawn on her, or gets shot at, it takes her twice as long to catch her breath.

since meeting you, she's always seen your face flash before her eyes when she dodges a fatal hit. and now, it's ten times worse.

sevika was never scared to die before she met you. and then, seemingly overnight, she became horrified of dying-- scared of what her dying would do to you. she can barely stand seeing you suffer from a headache, the thought of leaving you behind, the thought of breaking your heart like that-- it nearly kills her.

and now she's got a kid to think of too.

so, one late night, sevika approaches silco with a grimace on her face and a case of fancy imported cigars in her hands.

he knows something's up. he's known for months. but he lets her stutter out an explanation as she pushes the case across his desk.

"i-- i think you need to find a new number two." she mumbles. he raises an eyebrow at her.

"second thoughts about the cause?" he asks, flipping open the lid of the case and grinning at the quality.

"no, never." she spits out. silco chuckles and holds a hand up, reassuring her that he was only teasing.

"it's your wife?" he asks. sevika blushes at the word 'wife' like she always does, then looks away.

"no. she's tough, she'd be fine without me." she says fondly. "i..." she gulps then takes a deep breath. "we've got a kid on the way, silco." she whispers.

he freezes, his jaw dropping in shock. sevika never calls him silco, no matter how many times he insists she does. she's serious.

"i didn't take you for the mothering type." he says. she chuckles.

"no, neither did i." she says with a shrug. "but... i'm not mad about it." she says. "i'm... actually really excited." she whispers.

silco laughs, then rises from his seat, rounding his desk to shake sevika's hand. it's the closest to a hug the two of them will ever get.

"you'll be an amazing mother." he says sincerely. she has to blink back tears at his words. "come, let's smoke to celebrate." he says, waving her over to his desk.

the two of them spend the night negotiating a new position in silco's crew for her. she'll stay on as his consultant and strategist, and take on more responsibilities at the legally run bar and club downstairs, but he'll be finding somebody else to take on the more dangerous and criminal aspects of her job.

sevika doesn't tell you for a few weeks, until the change is complete.

she stops coming home with bruises and scrapes. she starts being lot more openly lovey dovey, no longer waiting for the dark of night to place a hand on your stomach, praising you at any chance she can get, even buying parenting books and beginning the 'babyproofing' process.

you don't ask her what's up, knowing she'll tell you in time.

and one day, you get home from work to a home cooked meal and candles on the dinner table.

sevika grins at the sight of you. you fawn at the way she walks you to the table, pulling the chair out for you, pressing kisses to your head and shoulders.

"what's going on?" you ask, giggling as she sits beside you. (she never sits across from you, she can't touch you from the opposite end of the table.)

"i'm in love with you." she says. you laugh.

"we've been married for two years sev, you better be." you say. she laughs, and kisses you again.

"i've never been more excited for my future in my entire life." she says quietly against your lips. tears well up in your eyes as you grab her hand. "we're having a baby." she says reverently, like it's the first time she's finally processing it. you don't tease her for it, you just squeeze her hand in yours and kiss up the tears that race down her cheeks.

"we are."

"and it's gonna be here in three months." she says, a beaming smile on her lips. you smile right back and nod.

"it is."

"i... i want to be the best mother i can be for the little fucker." she whispers, staring down at your stomach. "i want to be the best wife i can be for you." she adds on, her eyes flicking back up to you.

you nod at her, still unsure of where she's going with her conversation.

"and i can't do that if i'm dead." she says. you blink and nod and she sighs. "i talked with silco. we got a new arrangement for me at work." she explains. "just paperwork from here on out." she says. "i'm gonna get all lazy and weak sittin' behind a desk but..." she shrugs. "it's worth it for you two." she says.

you abandon dinner to fuck sevika on the dining room table.

(it's not a big deal though, sevika's never been a good cook, and she tried her best, but the food that grows cold on the table was already burnt and unevenly cooked and so over-seasoned it was basically just a pan of garlic powder.)

silco, surprisingly, is incredibly invested in the little fucker. sevika comes home once or twice a week with a new onsie or toy for the baby, gifted to her by your kid's self-appointed god-father.

by your third trimester, sevika's more excited than you are for the baby to come into the world, which is a hard feat, because you're constantly achy and sore and peeing and bloated and uncomfortable and cursing sev for ever putting her hands on you in the first place. she takes all your complaints in stride, endlessly spoiling you, constantly massaging your feet and tits and shoulders, pressing kisses against all your hormonal acne and strange patches of hair, accompanying you to the bathroom the fifty times you have to go a day.

and when your daughter finally arrives, sevika cries like a baby the first time she holds her.

taglist!

@lesbeaniegreenie @fyeahnix @sapphicsgirl @half-of-a-gay @ellabslut @thesevi0lentdelights @sexysapphicshopowner @shimtarofstupidity @love-sugarr @chuucanchuucan @222danielaa @badbye666 @femme-historian @lia-winther @gr0ssz0mbi3 @ellsss @sevikaspillowprincess @leomatsuzaki

[decolonize-the-left]

You are literally going to get people killed by pushing them to vote third party. People voting third party is why Trump won in 2016, which allowed him to stack the Supreme Court with conservative garbage which is going to negatively affect us for DECADES to come (already has, since it led to the repeal of Roe v. Wade which has LITERALLY killed people). I'm baffled, because you've done so much good work on this website (like I still go back and regularly reread your posts on whiteness etc because they're so informative), but advocating for voting third party going into one of the most important elections in recent memory is actively harmful.

Like have you heard of Project 2025? In case you haven't it's literally like a 1000 page manifesto for the Republican party to reshape the federal government to essentially let the President become a dictator. It also expressly mentions plans to roll back rights for women, the LGBT community, and pretty much any other minority you can think of. I know things are bad now - not arguing that at all - but if Republicans win next year, things will get EXPONENTIALLY WORSE.

You can sit there and yell about Democrats being "just as bad" until you're blue in the face, but it's literally not true. The Democratic Party itself is obviously just another problematic institution and there are definitely Dems who showed their entire asses with supporting Israel, but like... Progressive Democrats do exist and while they're obviously not perfect, it's absolutely a step in the right direction. Not to mention Republicans literally need to cheat by gerrymandering and attacking voting rights for minorities in order to even get elected in a lot of places, whereas Democrats tend to win when more people are registered and actually show up to vote. They are not the same, and the harm they do is not the same.

Again, I have a lot of respect for the work you do, especially with your recent posts on the Palestinian genocide. But I vehemently disagree with your stance on voting third party in this upcoming election. Ideally I would love if we could vote third party and actually have multiple options that more accurately represent us as a population, but our current system is a two party one and unfortunately we literally do have to vote for the lesser of two evils, because one option sucks but preserves what little democracy we have (and gives us a chance of making it better) and one will literally bring genocide against trans people. I would personally rather not see that happen.

How can you say this and mention the Palestinian genocide in the same ask.

Democrats are getting people killed. In fact they're committing one of The worst crime against humanity possible and then only thing you're worried about is that things might get worse for gay people if a Republicans wins.

I'm the biggest queer I know. I'm native. I'm brown. I'm almost definitely on a watch list. And listen to me and understand the depth of my words when I say: my people have been oppressed the way Project2025 outlines.

And maybe you personally cared or helped us protest that. But most people didn't. In fact I can't remember the last time the US supported native rights at all.

But now that YOURE under threat I'm supposed to risk my life because the queer community can't be bothered to stop discoursing about neopronouns long enough to actual give an shit about saving the community?

Y'all got a lot of damn nerve, let me tell you.

Go bark up some other tree cuz this is not the one.

Also I'm not pushing anyone to vote 3rd party. I'm laying out facts. Facts are a Gallup poll says 63% of people would vote 3rd party. Facts are my Tumblr poll says that number is STILL at least 45% on the hellsite.

And since people are interested in voting 3rd party they should know their options. The people who say "I would vote 3rd party but they don't have support" also deserve to see the articles that said 63% of people would join them.

They deserve to know that 3rd parties currently hold a not insignificant amount percentage of support from the two main parties. 20% of votes. When 33% is an even split are good odds. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sorry, blue Fascists, but this country is in fact still a democracy and just because you Want people to vote blue doesn't mean they have to and you feeling they're the best doesn't make you right!

Other people aren't "wrong" for not wanting your conservative Jurassic party in power anymore.

They can vote how they want.

And if you see a poll that says 63% of people would rather NOT vote for either major party and your first thought is not: wow 63% is enough to elect someone we want, I'll support that.

And instead you go: how can I force them to vote for my party instead.

Then please understand it is not THEM splitting the vote. Biden will get MAYBE 40% votes. You gonna force 63% of the country to vote for someone they don't even want?

There's a name for that yeah?

How'd it work out in 2016 when y'all "forced" us to vote for Hillary by putting her on the ballot? She lost and she wasn't even actively commiting a genocide.

But you think Biden will not only earn votes from that 63% but he'll also win the election. Against trump. Which less blatantly shitty democrats have struggled to contend with?

Democrats are legitimately delusional.

Your problem is you see Democrats as being better than Republicans. While the rest of us see less and less of a difference every year. And you can only say you're "better" if you're different enough.

See this is what happens when you vote for the "lesser evil." Eventually that evil balances back out and you're left with the truth that your two main options are just evil.

Now the only people actually different enough to make that argument are third parties.

Coincidentally, that's what people are drawn to right now.

I know, go figure. It's almost like it makes sense to lose support when you consistently prop up shitty candidates nobody asked for every 4 years.

We do not have a two party system and you know that, that's why you sent this ask.

Cuz you're stressed dems might lose. Cuz you KNOW people have other options.

Good. Cuz they will lose if Biden is the democrat's nominee and Claudia de la Cruz stays in the race, which she will since she's running with PSL not democrats. So there's no competition. Her party is organized and chosen her and a VP already, she's guaranteed every one of their votes because her party works like a union does.

It's a wrap.

Biden can't use his "lesser evil" script with Claudia De La Cruz on the ballot actively challenging his genocide and imperialism.

Vote Claudia De La Cruz cuz you are a scooping water out of the Titanic trying to get 63% of Americans to think voting for a Genocidal warmonger is what's best for any of us, let alone the planet. And we didn't want him BEFORE he did any of this.

[rodolfoparras]

OK imma be honest and little personal, before I knew a little bit more about the LGBT, I just didn't care I just knew they existed, now that im older and apart of it nothing changed ngl...just maybe a little rude with it. I'm like "Oh you're gay? Cool want a cookie?" Or "Oh, you think being gay is the devils or whoever you claim doing? Want a medal?". I don't mind having people like having something for them but a month? Sounds like robbery 2 me like, What about soldiers like I mean the good soldiers who actually fight for their people? I'm sorry, but if I could, I would make certain... things like these two have at least a week, but like I said, I don't mind it... I just find it... wrong in a way...like think about it...when something big happens in your life (if yall do it like me) we just celebrate it in like that first week, like what I mean is for the first few days it's all "WOOHOO THIS HAPPEND TOO YOU" then the rest of the week it's just "congrats". Like I remember a few years back, I'm not sure if it's still the same now. But soldiers die every day and stuff, and all they get is a day, and everyone like "poor soliders rest in peace" and then go on about their lives after a few bours or something . But the moment a Trans person got killed, suddenly everyone dropped everything and talked about it for weeks....trying not to sound harsh, but come on....

Sugar I think you have a lot of inner work to do

Pride month cannot be boiled down to a celebratory party of sexualities and genders

While yes a major part of pride month is to celebrate lgbtq people it’s also about remembering the journey as to how we got here, plenty of people literally laid their lives down so there could be a celebration in the first place sugar I don’t know if you know this but trans people would literally use bricks and drop it onto their genitals or their chest to get rid of those parts, a lot of trans people died of cancer and other terminal illnesses because it was considered shameful to treat an openly trans person no matter what severe condition they had it’s also to raise awareness of how lgbtq people of color made a lot of things possible for us, did you know that before colonization native people had woman man and then a third gender that didn’t fall in either category white, Christian cis people wiped that out because it was considered abnormal and now today we have a whole chunk of people who are seen as abnormal because that whole gender identity has been wiped out pride month is to also raise awareness to everyone who can’t live their lives like they want to. It’s like international women’s day just because women in Europe have it good doesn’t mean that it’s fine and dandy all around the world

The reason as to why people don’t care much for soldiers is that the only ones discussed are American ones- soldiers belonging to armys who have more or less started the war in different places. Never have I seen people discuss the 10.000 soldiers that died in the srebrenica genocide - soldiers- boys 18 year old boys 10.000 of them- that had to forcefully enlist in the army because their country was going through a genocide

And the reason as to why trans people get so much coverage once they get killed is the same reason as to why women get so much coverage when they get horrifically murdered by a man they’re oppressed, soldiers are not oppressed soldier more often than not are the oppressors.

With that being said I do hope you take time to actually do research on your history because the reason as to why you can be like “woo I’m gay ok let’s move on with my day” is because of thousands upon thousands upon thousands lgbtq ppl that made sacrifices for you those sacrifices didn’t happen that long ago

[ofoceansandtombsanew]

this might be weird to ask on a writing blog but do you have any manga recs?

yeah i got some recs! i'm gonna assume you mean less talked about titles rather than more well-known but quickfire popular recs i have are: chainsaw man, fullmetal alchemist, jjba, fruits basket, jjk and hell's paradise. but onto my other recs:

seinen

children of the sea**: a troubled teen named ruka embarks on the summer adventure of a lifetime after meeting two boys raised by dugongs at her dad's aquarium in the middle of a mysterious event taking place in the ocean.

the summer hikaru died: it's been months since yoshiki's childhood friend and secret crush, hikaru, went missing in the mountains for a week. hikaru's the same as usual, with his jokes and silly rambles and yet, yoshiki can't shake the feeling that whoever came back from that mountain, it wasn't hikaru. much to his horror, it wasn't. but rather than face reality and grief, yoshiki decides to play along with "hikaru's" act (body horror)

dorohedoro**: in a world where there are humans and magic users, humans have it rough being virtually treated as second class citizens. day after day, year after year, magic users come to the human realm to experiment on them with their magic. and after having his head turn into a caiman, kaiman, wants to get it back in blood and have his true form restored (body horror)

witch hat atelier*: in a world full of magic and witches, it's always been normal human girl coco's dream to be one. but after accidentally discovering a truth of this world and her mom getting caught up in the spell, coco becomes an apprentice of witch qifrey. (it was recently announced there's an anime in the works!)

skip & loafer**: desiring to become a government official to revitalize her hometown in the japanese countryside, iwakura mitsumi's first step to accomplish this goal is by going to a uni prep high school in tokyo. she's got a foolproof 10-step plan to boot! but of course, life hardly ever goes as plan, not even for a prodigy (mc's aunt has great trans rep)

jousei

sign of affection*: as someone deaf all her life, yuki has dealt with discrimination in both small and broad strokes. nor has she ever experienced romance. this all changes when she meets backpacker itsumi, a guy who goes to the same uni. just as he opens her world, she opens his

debu to love to ayamachi to***: after waking up in a hospital with no memories to her name, plus sized yumeko is told she is there after surviving a suicide attempt. the thing is, yumeko isn't sure why when she's just so beautiful! with a strong desire to live life to the fullest, yumeko decides to do everything the past her was to afraid to do. all the while it is revealed that her suicide attempt was more of an attempted murder... but who could have wanted to kill her?

my love story with yamada-kun at lv999**: nothing is worse than getting cheated on especially after akane invested a lot of time and energy into her shitty ex's gaming hobbies. but through gaming, not only does akane find herself healing, she managed to get herself a pretty cool boyfriend too

NANA**: 2 women, 2 different lives, 1 name shared. komatsu nana is quick to fall in love and after a series of less-than-lucky relationships, she finally has someone she thinks is the one. abandoned by her mother and her ex leaving her band, osaki nana hasn't had the easiest life. but on the same night, on the same train, these two women meet and their lives become deeply intertwined

shoujo

a condition called love*: when it comes to romance, hotaru's never experienced it besides stories of her friends relationships. but she soon finds herself about to experience the whirlwind of a lifetime when hananoi, the most popular boy in school, asks her to be his girlfriend

a bouquet for an ugly girl***: as her class' resident big girl, hana isn't expecting a blossoming spring in her high school career. and she's okay with that. she has everything she needsー otome games and gardening. but after her class' pretty boy catches her in the midst of changing the class flowers, their lives become a bit more intertwined

uruwashi no yoi no tsuki: yoi is quite popular at her school because of her neat short hair, beautiful face and overall princely appearance. in fact, it's gotten her dubbed 'prince' many times. but when the other prince of the school finally meets her, cupid's arrow quickly knocks him on his ass

shounen

frieren**: a manga that picks up after the journey has ended. the demon king has been defeated and the heroes have saved the day after 10 years of traveling together. 10 years? that's not even a 10th of elf mage frieren's life. but as her companions begin dying one by one of old age, she finds herself desiring to learn more about humans and the short yet impactful lives they still manage to have

dungeon meshi*: when a dungeon raid goes terribly wrong and laios' sister gets swallowed by a dragon, those that remain in his party decide to get it back in blood by saving laios' sister before she gets digested. in the mean time, there's nothing wrong with gordon ramsay-ing miscellaneous ingredients found in the dungeon along the way, right?

and if you like manhwa or would be down for some manhwa recs these are titles i don't see getting recommended enough

concubine walkthrough: a scifi & philosophical spin on the otome isekai genre that asks 'what is reality truly?', 'is your life any less real if you found out all your experiences were a simulation?' and 'what is reality to you?' where protagonist lee yona finds herself stuck in a VR edition of a game she only played once

a wicked tale of cinderella's stepmother: usually when someone wakes up in the body of a villainess, she's the same age as the protagonists. mildred, on the other hand, is stuck in the body of this story's cinderella's stepmother. with no husband and three daughters to take care of, there's only one thing she can really doー build up her daughters' sisterly bonds with one another and make sure they marry into good families (or that they can at least live lives they're happy with)

tricked into becoming the heroine's stepmother: at least mildred got the body of an important character, daisy on the other hand? she's in the body of an NPC you never even see in the story. bright side? this is a story she helped write and after meeting the presently six year old protagonist's father, she and father of the year decide to team up for the ultimate mission: making sure his daughter never meets any of the love interests

inso's law: ham dan-i is in a bit of a pickle when she wakes up and her new school uniform is completely different than the one her mom bought weeks ago. there's a drop dead gorgeous girl next door who claims to be her childhood best friend. even worse, like something straight out of a drama, there are four heavenly kings that rule her school. by the end of the day, dan-i has no other choice but to accept the fact........ her real life has somehow turned into a web novel. even worse, she's a side characterー the main character's best friend

webtoons

plum: in a world where fruit stacking is a major sport, little plum decides to be the very best like no one ever was and moves to the big city to compete in the fruit stacking games along with making some friends and rivals along the way

webtoons that are probably popular enough if they have hardcover copies at my local bookstore but i wanna talk about it anyway

cursed princess club: as the youngest princess of the pastel kingdom, gwendolyn loves her family. her protective papa, her oldest sister maria who often awakes to woodland creatures doing her hair. her older sister lorena who makes flowers bloom with her every step. and her younger brother jamie who's so pretty, he sparkles. and they adore her just as much. but things come to a very reality shattering halt when their father introduces maria, lorena and gwen to blaine, lance and frederick, the princes of the plaid kingdom and gwen overhears frederick call her ugly, something she's never heard in her entire life. somehow, gwen finds comfort in a club full of cursed princesses (and one prince) who teach her how to start loving herself again

key

*) receiving an anime adaptation

**) has an an anime series or movie

***) receiving an anime adaptation & contains a story with a plus-sized protagonist that doesn't involve weight loss

[objection-u-a-bitch]

I seen you post about me hating.

I just like to say that I agree with it partialy.

Trans men are men, and disabeld men are men just like ableld bodied men (this includs trans men). But unlike cis, and ablebodid men, trans men and disabeld men are much more safer for women to be around. Trans men were treated like girls growing up, so they know what it's like, and we don't need to explain how we are viewed socialy. And we don't have to be sceard of disabeld men become they can't really hurt us the same way as able bodied men can. Like a man in a wheelcheir can't kill us with his own hands dou to phisical restriction he has.

And I still be sceard of Jewish, black, asian, ect, men because they are men. Like if I'm alone at night going home from work then I will be sceard of any men regardless of his religion, ethnicity (exept Russian, if you see a Russian no metter the genders they are defenetly up to no good), or race I will be sceard the same way.

And fat men are a mix bag. They are eather sweat guys who strougles with self esteem issues and deservs support, or a raging misogenist who hates on fat women.

I don't know what post I made that you think is about you. The post about needing to unlearn misandry to be an ally that is pinned to my account is directed at everyone in leftist circles, and not because of a singular post I saw anywhere. I made it over two months ago with regards to general frustrations I have with anti-masculinity in the queer community in particular, but also in other leftist circles. It's funny though that you saw that post and thought it was about you. I don't even know who you are. And you clearly aren't telling me, because you're on anon. I'm not going to spend the time telling you why all of your ask is horseshit. It just is. You treat minority groups like a monolith and use it to justify being scared and bigoted towards men of all kinds. You treat all trans and disabled men as nonthreatening, which is infantilising, while saying all Russians are dangerous, which is some McCarthyist Cold War red scare bullshit. You talk about fat men as if only the "good ones" deserve support. Men constitute approximately 50 percent of the world population. To hate, fear, dismiss, avoid, ignore, and insult them is incongruent with leftist ideas of making the world a better place for everyone. Men are as varied and complex as women. They can be as gentle or as aggressive as women can be. They can be as harmless or as dangerous as women can be. They can be as forward-thinking or as close-minded as women can be.

You can't treat men as a monolith, and you also can't divide men into neat little groups that you sort into "good" and "bad". Every person is an individual who can choose to do good or do bad. Some of the white able-bodied cishet men in my life are the most supportive and kind people I know, and I know some fucking vile disabled trans men who need to shut the fuck up.

Taking precautions for your safety at night is reasonable, just like putting your seatbelt on in the car is reasonable, just like putting a smoke and carbon monoxide detector on every floor of your house is reasonable. Treating all men like shit because a few of them could be bad is not.

[triptychgardener]

what are your thoughts on the idea of transmasc roxy in general

I have to say I've grown much less fond of the concept as time progresses. I think transmasc Roxy as it appears in postcanon feels like one of many moves made in the epilogues to specifically jab at certain parts of fandom, but in such an odd way that feels kind of hostile. Roxy being headcanoned as a trans girl goes so far back that it was a common heacanon in 2012! It's mentioned in a premier Homestuck history and backreading podcast (Homestuck Made This World). The XY in Roxy's name is literally referred to as CHROMOSOMAL in her intro! She refers to herself as a girl more than any other character in the comic! Hussie's earlier notes say that same-letter chumhandles (GG, TT) are girls, where the hetero-lettered chumhandles are boys (EB, TG). And then along come Roxy and Dirk, who have TT and TG as their own chumhandles! They're even noted as having their personalities be so much more like their opposite-gendered ancestors! So it feels like a. VERY distinctly odd choice to make Roxy in particular, of all characters, transmasculine. I don't want to say it's intentional, but it's odd. It also speaks to two trends I dislike about fandom trans headcanons specifically when it comes to Homestuck, but also elsewhere. 1. The idea that all characters are cis by default, and none of them could have been trans before the game. Saying that when Vriska Serket and Kanaya Maryam exist is essentially factually incorrect. It's disappointing ESPECIALLY because some of the best Homestuck fanon (and canon!) thrives on the voids between what is said, the implications that get turned on their head. and 2. The denial of the fact that trans women can, in fact, have complicated relationships with femininity and womanhood! This is far too much for me to go into on a work night on my Homestuck blog, but especially with the Lalondes, who have Things about femininity (Roxy being the "cool girl" ultra-accomodating, never making a fuss out of her problems, and Rose's Whole Deal with her mother and her mind games) that ring Very True to me as a trans woman. Obviously, headcanon is not erasure, but at this point I can't say I care too much for transmasc Roxy. Also, essentially making Roxy into another Strider just sucks as a character arc. Dave should be more of a Lalonde not the other way around.

[phoenixyfriend]

Was watching a ContraPoints video (popular trans lady YouTuber) on some gender philosophy and got to thinking about trans girl Ani nuances.

OKAY SO: Contrapoints makes a comment in the video (transcript here) that she views herself as a boy who became a woman, not a girl who didn't realize it yet, which is a relatively uncommon approach among trans people, and that's in the middle of a longer discussion on the flaws in radfem theology (which I watched right after this PhilosophyTube video, and accidentally conflated the two since the former talked a lot about systems/structures of gender).

Anyway, I'm rotating that in my mind with regards to Anakin, who grew up in a setting that could easily be interpreted as having a much foggier distinction between Man and Woman than between Slave and Maste,r or human and twilek, etc.

It's entirely feasible that, on Tatooine in particular, the social elements of gender came down to very practical concerns (reproduction) and very superficial signs (e.g. hairstyle could maybe broadcast intended gender, and who wears skirts) outside of the specific situation of highly gendered and sexual forms of slavery (Jabba's dancing girls), which was relatively rare compared to more standard forms, like shop work or janitorial or what have you.

So you have an Anakin who grew up in a setting where "am I a girl?" isn't necessarily a question that would have the same answer as in another setting with more defined gender distinctions, in terms of both expression and role, and of the matter of identity at that confluence.

Then he--still he, at that time--meets Padmé and the handmaidens (very feminine, very girl, but not in a way that's at all like the way women on Tatooine willingly engage with), and encounters Coruscant culture (lots of gender dynamics due to the culture mash, but a low-key Western Misogyny vibe in the Senate and other non-Jedi settings Anakin's liable to encounter), as well as the Jedi classes on gender and sexuality and respecting/navigating those parts of culture on other planets.

As a result, Anakin starts developing a new, more nuanced and expansive understanding of gender, where it's more than just a few small differences, and the people around are mostly Jedi, who are also pretty dang open to nontraditional gender approaches etc And Anakin sort of… grows into wanting to be woman? In a way that isn't the usual "I always knew I was a girl" and more of an "I've learned what people consider a girl, and I'd like to be one."

And like. Ani COULD go back to thinking of gender in Tatooine terms, but why bother? Being a girl makes her happy. She wasn't unhappy as a boy in that gender framework, but she's happy as a girl now.

But because she didn't mind being raised a boy, she might say things a "when I was a boy" or "back when I was still living as a boy"

Me every time I hear a new, interesting take on gender: How can I apply this to a fictional character?

Also tbf this settles pretty well with my general thoughts on nb Anakin as well, where gender is like… It Sure Is A Thing That Exists. Anyway, Where's The Blasterfire?

[doberbutts]

I think the terms TMA/TME work best when they're used as rules of thumb, rather than expected to function as strict categories. They're often helpful, but occasionally they can become obfuscatory, and there are edge cases where they can't be neatly applied. In those cases, they should be set aside, but with an understanding that they will be brought back into conversations when helpful.

To give a personal perspective - I'm a trans masc individual who has, upon occasion, experienced misdirected transmisogyny. I was on T for 5 years, then came off it (partly due to health problems, partly due to starting to identify as nonbinary rather than as a man) and began presenting in a more feminine manner, and people would regularly mistake me for a trans woman.

When people thought I was a trans woman, I did notice an increase in hostility, harassment and unwelcome advances from strangers. Groups of men would shout at me in the street, mothers would glare at me and physically pull their children further away from me if I came near. I also started getting catcalled and couldn't enjoy a night out in a club without being groped. I'd experienced some of these things as a trans man and as a girl, but probably never at such a high frequency or so intensely.

I definitely think I got a taste of transmisogyny and people do still assume I'm trans fem from time to time. But I still wouldn't describe myself as TMA. I don't shout it from the rooftops, but if it feels relevant in the context of a conversation, I will say I'm TME. Because I think the terms are about overarching dynamics, rather than whether or not an individual has ever faced a single instance of transmisogyny.

For me, there was always a sense of distance between myself and any negative experience, that came from knowing they'd misread my AGAB - "that lad just called me a chick with a dick! How funny! I'd be so lucky!" / "You're harassing me for using the female showers at the gym when I am literally menstruating. Are you going to stop being a creep, or do I have to show you my bloody tampon?" There's a degree to which I can sidestep or disavow their idea of me in a manner trans women can't.

I also don't know what it's like to deal with many other elements of transmisogyny, or deal with it as an overarching narrative in one's life rather than a freak episode.

I think it's fair to say I have at times been a grey area and I could use my experiences to argue against the validity of TME/TMA, but I don't want to do that. I don't like it when the terms are just used as a way to say AFAB/AMAB while being perceived as less problematic. But I think it is helpful to have little shorthand reminders about specific power dynamics that do have an impact in our communities. I have absolutely seen transmisogyny play out in queer spaces, both online and IRL, and I think it's worth having vocabulary that emphatically reminds people to check themselves and to not assume they don't have internalised bias against trans women just because they're trans masc.

Trans women are a boogeyman in popular culture and the collective unconscious in a way trans men never have been (at least, not to anything like the same extent). Trans women face an intensity of monstering that I think most people won't understand unless they spend a lot of time sharing space with and listening to trans women. The rapid adoption of TMA/TME feels like an attempt to fast-track that understanding en masse. Maybe it's a bit clumsy, but I do think it's having an impact and important conversations are happening. I don't know if the terms will stick or fall out of use. Having been in the trans community for over a decade and seeing how our vocabularies evolve, I'm inclined to think they'll stick around for a few years and then largely disappear. But I feel that while trans women are finding them useful, we need to be respectful of that fact.

Idk sorry to rant in your askbox, I wanted to give my two cents. Feel free to ignore lol

I'm going to be a bit blunt here: in the span of time I've been off tumblr to, you know, sleep... I've gotten 20 different asks trying to convince me to like the usage of tma/tme and also several transphobic asks about my top surgery. The transphobic ones I blocked and deleted because I'm literally 3 weeks out and will not be dissuaded. But I'm simply not willing to continue arguing a point I've made very clear that I don't love the usage of this particular theory the way it's currently being used.

You can like it for yourself. I have said this over and over again. I do not like it for me, and do not think it is accurate for my life or my experiences or the reality that is what I have to go through on a regular basis. True to everything else that I've posted, I don't really care what you call yourself. If you want to call yourself TME and you believe that framework works for your experience, more power to you. Just don't label me that, because I don't think it works for mine.

Trans women are absolutely a boogeyman in a way that trans men often aren't. That is, unfortunately, one of the ways that hypervisibility is such a curse. Everyone knows what a trans woman is, and a good majority of those people also think the only good one's a dead one. That's bad. That's transmisogyny, and we should ally with trans women to help fix this problem.

Also unfortunately, as trans men become more and more visible to the world, instead of facing mass erasure and dying in silence or escaping to live in stealth, trans men are also beginning to become a boogeyman as well. Now we are a social contagion, a craze, with rapid onset gender dysphoria, mutilating ourselves and ruining our precious bodies, carving out our wombs, simultaneously debasing ourselves and also becoming predators lurking to snatch daughters up and forcefeed them our ideology, betraying women by becoming a mockery of men. What's worse, we tend to politically close ranks with trans women and cis women alike so it's harder for transphobic lawmakers to divide and conquer as they're used to with cis men, so instead they have to demonize us to prevent any further allyship.

That's the conversation trans mascs are trying to have.

Genuinely, I do agree that trans women face an othering that most people do not grasp without understanding transmisogyny theory, which is why I think everyone should have at least a basic understanding of it. But I also think that's true of many other demographics, and that if we want to get out of the pit that bigoted society put us in, we've got to work together to do so. It was, after all, the combined efforts of Marsha P Johnson AND Storme de Laverie that brought us out in the open. And among me friend group, we have people from all different races and backgrounds and genders and more locking arms to ensure the safety of each other, wanting to understand and know each other, lifting each other up.

[borschtwife]

"Russian transsexuals received support and publicity from some sections of the nation’s gay rights movement. In 1992, the Moscow Union of Lesbian and Gay Men submitted the identity documents of transsexuals to the Ministry of Justice for consideration of changing their names and legal gender markers. In the same year, the queer journal 1/10 published two articles detailing the stories of two transfeminine individuals. One issue featured a cover proclaiming 'We have lesbians in the USSR and transes too!' Inside, 23-year-old bookkeeper Margarita Mankevich told her story. Rita identified as a true transsexual, stating 'I’ve been a woman for as long as I can remember.' She realized how abnormal this was at 16 years old and faced such tremendous bullying that she attempted suicide. She listed the Communists and the Orthodox Church as the two groups that were the most hateful to her. To earn enough hard currency to pay for a sex reassignment surgery, she moved to Moscow and began working as a prostitute for foreign clients despite finding sex 'in a man’s body' humiliating. People around Rita falsely assumed that she was a homosexual man. She quickly earned enough money to buy a fake passport with the correct name and gender listed and began modeling and acting for pornographic productions in Austria and Finland. Surgery, however, was much more expensive than a passport, especially because she intended to undergo surgery in Western Europe since she knew half a dozen individuals who received sexual reassignment in Moscow, and none were satisfied with the results. She concluded by listing her mailing address for other transsexuals who might want information on their own condition to contact her and tells those reading to not feel ashamed for being transsexual. An article by Tomas Radek in a separate issue told another side of the trans story. Radek began by explaining that trans is an umbrella term that can be applied to both transsexuals and transvestites. Radek’s friend Nikolas started wearing women’s underwear as a child and eventually began to dress in women’s clothing. Nikolas lived a complicated life; he kept his hair short despite his clothing, used male pronouns but referred to his sex life as lesbian, and explained that when he had sex with women, he 'played the role of a woman.' He sought the advice of a sexologist on his condition, who reacted with confusion but told him he could continue living in this manner. Nikolas had a wife and was not seeking to change his legal identity, so he appeared as a normal, heterosexual male, despite how he might happen to have sex or dress himself. Nikolas remained feeling isolated, and the article concluded with his mailing address and a plea for readers who are like him to write to him.

Opposition to the identities and desires of trans people also existed within the gay movement, primarily due to the hostility of the Russian feminist movement toward them. Olga Liposkaia, chairwoman of the Saint Petersburg Center for Gender Issues, dismissed female to male transsexuals since 'they have women��s bodies, so how can they be men? Of course they are women.' Zhuk’s short-lived queer journal Gei slaviane published an article about a young lesbian whose family sent her to a sexologist to see if she could qualify for a sex change, reasoning that if she could transition to male then she could live a normal heterosexual life, regardless of her protests. This article was held up as proof of the intent of medical authorities to cure lesbians through transsexual surgery, despite representing only a single case. The anti-AIDS publication SPID info also joined the criticism of transsexualism. In 1993, they featured an article by Aron Belkin decrying the entire enterprise of sexual reassignment as pointless. Belkin was a pioneer in the field of trans healthcare in the USSR, and for a long time only he was the only specialist who issued permits to transsexuals for surgical correction of gender. Despite this, he had little regard for his patients whom he viewed as psychologically diseased. By this time he had grown tired of treating such individuals, and in this article he relayed the story of a male ballet dancer who got a sex reassignment and then, despite becoming a prima ballerina in a music hall and getting married, she remained miserable. Her husband did not know that she was transsexual. She could not have children and because she could not tell her husband why this was so, she felt like a liar and began contemplating suicide. Belkin argued that doctors should not help patients change their sex because all such changes were merely superficial. He added that the increasing number of mentions of transsexuality in Russian media were making more men wish to become transsexual, especially since these articles declined to report the tragic outcomes of transsexualism. He concluded with a mention of what he understood as the extreme tragedy of a patient who became a woman and then fell in love with another woman, now forced to live the life of a queer. In Belkin’s view, the purpose of transsexualism was to help make the queer straight, so a patient who ended up as a queer woman was unacceptable."

A section from my dissertation on Russian queers in the 1990s

[genericpuff]

(disclaimer, this is coming from a heartstopper fan! i love heartstopper this is not hate!!)

i think at least part of the annoyance with heartstopper isn't just that isn't a light fluffy ya series, it's also that its another example of how the queer media that gets the most mainstream attention tends to be this kind of light fluffy ya stuff that focuses on two conventially attractive queer boys or men and it also tends to be written by people who aren't queer men on top of that, so not only can it feel very samey but it can feel like other queer people are relegated to side characters in the stories of cis gay men. and as someone who loves heartstopper i get that on some level.

btw by "written by people who aren't queer men" NOT saying that isn't not written by queer people. alice oseman is genderfluid and aroace, becky albertalli is bisexual, etc. and while i think the point is still valid there is a misogyny element in that a lot of the focus is put on things that are written by women or people they perceive as women while tumblr darlings like good omens and ofmd (written by presumably straight men) don't get the same treatment.

nah y'know what, that's fair, I can get how frustrating it can be for a lot of popular queer stories to feel samey, I've definitely gotten BL-fatigue in the past on platforms like WT and Tapas because many of them ARE the same and feel like they're just piggybacking off trends for the sake of clout (and this is a problem in the heterocis romance stories too, don't get me fucking started on how dark romance has turned into torture porn where vulnerable women are constantly being victimized by rich powerful men and we're just supposed to root for that ??), but it's one of those things where like, what might be seen as just more corny shit could very well be the revelation another person needs that they're gay / trans / etc. that the story helped them realize. there's just a point where i see these arguments against cheesy popular queer stories that teeter dangerously close to being queerphobic and, as you said, misogynist, simply because "it was written by someone who i perceive as a woman so that makes it BAD!"

and I didn't mention it in the original post because I didn't want to @ OP in any way but in the comment section they literally said "i dont think heartstopper itself is all that bad but it has pretty much aimed the direction of all mainstream gay comics towards wholesomeness instead of anything more interesting so i want to destroy heartstopper to destroy heartstopper clones" and that gives me massive ick because it implies their sole reasoning for including it was "chill and happy queer stories bad, if a character doesn't suffer enough then they're not interesting"?? why can't LGBTQ+ audiences have more 'vanilla' stories that aren't all sad and angsty all the time? are we not entitled to the same corny romcom vanilla shit that the heterocis are entitled to? why do LGBTQ+ characters - and by extension, people - have to suffer to qualify as being 'interesting'? You're already interesting, you're you! like i'm sorry, are we trying to scare people straight??? 😭 shit, that's even a plot point that's touched on in Heartstopper itself where Nick is questioning his sexuality and he starts googling shit and it's just ALL the terrifying news stories of queer kids being ostracized / bullied / murdered / etc. and as much as it's important to be aware of the ongoing issues so we can keep fighting for our rights, we ALSO need to find balance and remember to celebrate the stories that AREN'T that because we need something to be hopeful for, something we can find peace in. I don't think Heartstopper is some deeply profound piece of work, but it also doesn't seem like it's trying to be? It's a low stakes celebration of the LGBTQ+ experience that's very warm and comforting, especially for those who are the same ages as the main characters who are often being persuaded by the grown-ups around them that it's a death sentence to be gay / trans / etc.

and it's not like we HAVEN'T had popular pieces of queer representative media that explored things outside of cheesy BL, like are we forgetting about Nimona which explored both the gay and genderfluid experience in a very accessible and fun way while still being mature and not pandering to its audience over how society has made monsters out of queer people?

(and even then I'm sure there are folks who would argue "actually, here are the issues with Nimona" , and that's fine tbh, we can like media and appreciate what it brings to the table while also discussing what it lacks in, such as what we're doing now with Heartstopper! progress is a never-ending journey!!)

and also okay, not me trying to be argumentative in the slightest BUT I don't really get the argument that 'other queer people' are being sidelined for the main characters? unless there's something I'm missing here lol (I will apologize for that because it's admittedly been a while since I've re-read Heartstopper so I should probably go do that to refresh myself on it). like i say that in the sense that Heartstopper is clearly meant to be about two gay male teenagers. just like how Nimona is about a shapeshifter who is not a girl or a boy (they're Nimona!) and a gay man who are both trying to change the system that's other'd them for years for the better. that is the story Heartstopper is trying to tell and it achieves that. it also has a trans character plotline that I could see people arguing feels sidelined but I think there's a massive difference between 'sidelining' and just having a B plot ? my honest take with that is not every piece of representative media is going to be able to cover every single topic, it's just not doable for one piece of media to be a monolith for everything, the same as how one person can't be a monolith for an entire community of people. BUT that doesn't mean works like Heartstopper and Nimona can't inspire others to also lend their voices into the medium and create that representation that's needed. That's why we need ✨variety✨ and Heartstopper is part of that variety by offering a more vanilla cutesy story full of good vibes for people who want that sort of thing.

IDK, I think there's just a lot of nuance that's being missed in that poll, and in the difference between Heartstopper inspiring more people to write happy cozy BL stories vs. implying that it's had an actual negative influence on modern art and media in the same way that series like Homestuck and LO have to the point that people think it needs to be destroyed, like wtf LOL Like they're not even comparable IMO and a lot of the arguments I see people making about why it is just feel a little backwards, and those arguments obfuscate the real issue which is just "popular thing is popular and people like to piggyback off popular shit". That's a fact for basically any niche and genre, these trends come and go. Even if the whole cutesy BL trend passes one day (which it will) it'll be replaced by something else that people will also inevitably find samey and boring after a while. This is not a concept that's unique to LGBTQ+ media, it's universal.

Balance is important and I think finding that balance is as much a responsibility on the shoulders of the consumer as it is on the creator. And I don't think Heartstopper deserves to be put into the same camp as stories like LO which literally straightwashes its canonically queer characters and gives those queer identities to nothingburger characters who are easy to shoo out of the plot to make way for the heterocis ones (while still parading itself around like it's actually 'queer rep' which... it really isn't.) Like all three of the comics in that poll are vastly different, serving different audiences, with different goals and intentions. It's comparing apples to oranges to pineapples.

The worst Heartstopper has to offer is just a low stakes plot that might not appeal to everyone or feel 'samey' which yeah, valid, but in the grander sense of whether or not it's had a negative effect on queer media just for being... cheesy? And inspiring other people to write stories like it? I don't get the argument, it feels like it's severely missing the point of what we're fighting for here - to live happy little unbothered lives - but that's just me ╮(￣ω￣;)╭ I'm definitely not trying to be a dick about it in any way and I don't want anyone to think I'm not open to the opposing points here, I do agree with you on the oversaturation of samey BL stories, but it just rose some massive red flags to see Heartstopper next to frigging Homestuck and Lore Olympus LOL