#rape cw

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA For Not Tagging a Work?

I, 32F, write primarily for my own enjoyment, my main platform being AO3. I currently have a multi-chaoter series that includes several major plot twists, including one that includes non-con. To avoid spoiling it, because I believe my stories deserve to be read with as little background info as possible, I only tag it as "Creator CHOSE not to Include Archive Warnings". Which is, as I hope is obvious, is not synonymous with "There Are No Warnings". The point is, I don't use the Rape/Non-con tag. Recently, I got a very upset reader in my comments complaining about how triggering that chapter of my work is, and that's where I have a problem. I believe the corporate obsession content warnings pervading even fanworks to be a major problem. I don't want to sanitize my work, but I do get that they contain pretty heavy themes. But I feel like I seriously do give my stories a disservice by adding labels on them, and maybe I am the asshole for this, but I value my pride and joy (my work) over strangers online. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[heritageposts]

For context, since this is getting almost no mainstream coverage by Western media:

[cw rape & further warning: there are brief clips in the video below from the leaked Sde Teiman recording, but it doesn't show any of the sexual abuse. The full CCTV video, which I won't be sharing here, contains footage of a Palestinian prisoner being gang raped by Israeli soldiers.]

Testimony from a former prisoner of Sde Teiman:

“Most of the prisoners will come out with rectum injuries [caused by the sexual assault],” Salem, 36, told Middle East Eye.  The prisoners will tell each other it is haemorrhoids, he added, but most are just avoiding admitting they had been raped, sometimes by female soldiers. In the following eyewitness account, Salem recalls his ordeal, starting from his arrest at a hospital in Gaza until his release. 

[trans-androgyne]

discrimination against trans men is literally just misdirected transmisogyny, and i don't see how it could be anything else- when transphobes go after trans men, it's just to further demonize trans women and treat them like predators who are going after young girls; if trans men didn't exist, transmisogyny would still exist, but if trans women didn't exist, there would be no systemic discrimination against trans men

Alright, this is a tad long but it’s for the benefit of anyone who isn’t sure about this position and would like my thoughts on it. (adding a TL;DR in the notes for anyone that doesn’t want a couple paragraphs worth of text)

Sorry, but this is a terrible take and not reflective of reality at all. I understand why you might feel that way considering a lot of transphobia directed at transmasculine people ties into transmisogyny against transfeminine people, like in the example you gave. Additionally, trans men do at times experience transmisogyny. However, that is not the majority of it. Even when it comes to the infantilization and characterization of transmascs as mentally ill, delusional young girls mutilating themselves, the cause is not always attributed to trans women. I encourage you to look into the idea of Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) as it applies to transmascs and the idea of them spreading a “social contagion” within groups of “young girls.” Transmascs’ bodies are treated as ruined and diseased, more and more the further we transition into masculinity. There is a full transphobic book on the subject focusing on transmascs, called Irreversable Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.

It is thoroughly untrue that transphobia against transmascs (transandrophobia) would cease to exist without transmisogyny. This stance leads me to believe you are relatively unfamiliar with some of the unique ways transmasculine people experience transphobia. I can absolutely promise you it is frequently directed at them. Your hypothetical is unrealistic to me, but I want to note: gender non-conformity is still punished outside transmisogyny. Misogyny still occurs outside just transmisogyny.

Fear and disgust at pregnant trans men is not transmisogyny. The idea of “lost lesbians”/“butch flight” is not transmisogyny. The corrective rape of transmascs by cis people as a means of detransition is not transmisogyny. Being called privileged gender traitors trying to climb up a rung in the patriarchy is not transmisogyny. At the least, not nearly as much as it is classic transandrophobia. All transphobia is connected, that much is true. But other types are just as serious and oppressive of systems as transmisogyny. Please seek out a more diverse selection of transmasculine people’s experiences before you try to theorize about their oppression; I think you may find them enlightening.

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for going "too far" in an eRP?

Me (19F) and a friend (almost 16F) have done a sizable amount of erotic roleplays (we mostly do sfw ones don't call me a creep). Around a week ago I asked if I could do a twist on our usual scenarios and she gave me the go-ahead. We started like usual until I brought up that the twist would be that it would be noncon. Suddenly she lashed out at me, asking "what the fuck is wrong with you" and immediately ceasing contact. I've tried messaging her saying what she said really hurt me but she hasn't responded in 4 days. Was I the asshole for not knowing something would upset her THAT bad?

What are these acronyms?

[sandwichsugarbong]

Radical feminists are against rape until it happens to trans people

[kelvintimeline]

good omens fans saying “i can’t abandon this fandom it’s my safe space 🥺”

meanwhile their safe space is full of people calling rape victims liars and invoking rhetoric that has been used to justify abuse (“why didn’t she immediately leave him?” “why didn’t she speak up?” “why did she fawn over him after the abuse?” “why did she backtrack when he told her he wanted to kill himself?” “she must’ve been tricked into thinking it was rape by her friends” and also “actually she must have false memories, neil said she does”)

safe space for who exactly

[youknowihadtodoittothem]

@ihatemenandtherearereasons

@maledepravityarchive

[trans-androgyne]

relating to that last post you reblogged, i fucking hate the infantilization that goes into so much anti-transandrophobia discussion rhetoric. "these POOR TRANS BOYS don't realize that they're being BRAINWASHED" lmaoo go fuck yourself

It’s the kind of thing where we’re both infantilized and demonized at once. “These poor little stupid unsuspecting tboys don’t understand they’re talking about their lives the wrong way. They don’t understand what their experiences actually are. They’re supposed to acknowledge that they’re less important than trans women.” “The evil transmisogynistic toxic MRA transandrobro Aidens are trying to turn them against transfems. They want to rape and detransition all transfem lesbians. It’s okay to say whatever horrible thing you want to these people.” You’ll notice they call us “boys” when they use the former rhetoric and almost exclusively fixate on trans men when they use the latter.

The same removal of autonomy has been applied to transfems trying to speak up for transmascs, being told they’re somehow being brainwashed by us into supporting transandrophobia theory. Including being treated like they’re stupid and don’t understand transmisogyny by self-hating trans guys. It seems to me to be a mix of unaddressed transandrophobia, transmisogyny, and the inability to understand why people might think differently than your staunchly held but shitty beliefs.

[tamamita]

1st rape cases have been debunked to death

2nd I call it 75 years of oppression against the Palestinian people leads to violent resistance against an apartheid state and of which no one is to blame but the terrorist state, which is the Israeli regime, for allowing this to go on and then have the audacity to victimize itself and murder 20.000 Palestinians under the pretense of self-defense.

3rd I hope Israel knows no peace for the amount of blood it spilled to keep the settler state alive.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for joking about someone on the other side of an argument getting r@p3d

I (17F at the time) didn’t really like the proship community that much. After they harassed me for a bit i felt that I should just be one of them. I saw a X post about an antiship person being hateful and joked about that person getting r@p3d. the proship community proceeded to say that “all antis are freaks” including me, who wanted to be on the correct side and not be mean just because people liked r@p3 or ¡n€e$t. so that’s why i did it. my X account is suspended now because they mass reported it when i wanted to improve and become one of them. i no longer like the term or anyone in the community for this reason. but if i see them again i will defend them no matter how much i hate them because i want to be a good hearted person.

AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[toolusingmammalgirl]

Visiting a gallery of Edgy Feminist Student Art has reminded me how much “kill your local rapist” skeeves me the fuck out

Like, my sister in Christ, think for ten seconds about the past and present of vigilante violence against alleged sex criminals

[familyabolisher]

haphazard assortment of thoughts on the unwanted guest:

firstly, it really does have to be said—crazy good, probably my favourite of all the tlt short pieces, and i say that as someone who lost my mind over as yet unsent for like a week. excellent conceit and excellent execution, just a really gorgeous piece of writing. the play format of course reminds me of what abigail says to harrow in htn—that the river bubble is a ‘play [she’s] directing’—the inside of one’s head as a stage in which other actors can intervene & whereby mileage can be gotten out of Symbolism as immediately “real,” tangible presences that the kind of realist baggage that a more quotidian prose form would usher in would probably falter in accomplishing. it’s a lot!! i think even if i wasn’t already a tazmuir writing style defender (contra the insistence that she’s yknow homestuck fanfiction serial numbers filed off hack) then this would have had me floored anyway. 

the play format also works in the way that muir’s general dexterity in form and willingness to really make use of craft as a technical space where discourse can be generated always works—i’m talking about the ‘fanfictiony’ voice in gtn which manages to say something both about fanfiction and about the text itself, the use of the dramatis personae as a space where atmosphere can be established and plot points hinted towards (thus blurring the lines between what is and is not diegesis), the drastic shifts in style between different close thirds, the shifting from third- to second- to epistolary first-person, the use of poetry both diegetic and not (the noniad, the epigraph poems…), the mimicry of the ‘voice’ of the king james bible in the nona epilogue—she never stays in one place for too long and she never seems to stick to one central style or form, and it really works in her favour. insofar as tlt as a whole is a very ‘patchwork’ kind of work, building itself up from its big big index of references and intertexts and memes with hugely variant levels of ‘prestige’ or legitimacy attached to them, the ‘patchwork’ use of form really works in muir’s favour. however i am also fuming because i was right in the middle of writing a tlt fic which jumps into a play format two-thirds of the way through and now my idea doesn’t look ORIGINAL but ANYWAY—

& i really do need to flag my good friend vee’s mercy/augustine fic, which makes use of a similar conceit and pulls it off masterfully—i am deeply jealous of vee’s talent and i think the unwanted guest makes this piece (from 2021!) shine even more, if anything.

i am DYING to see where muir is going with the use of hamlet, of all things—dulcie quoting it to palamedes immediately catapulted my mind back to abigail’s reference to ‘that undiscovered country’ in htn. obviously muir likes to drop contemporary (or contemporarily canonical) references and turns of phrase all over the place, but the attention drawn to the quote as diegetically referential (“I like that. Is it from something?” / “Yes. It’s complicated.”) has me wondering about a) the survival of ‘pre-res’ literatures ~over the river and like WHY and b) what a thematic interlocking of tlt and hamlet can do, here…….real aveheads remember cytherea ophelia theory where i tried to use ophelia as a point of reference for teasing out some arguments about cytherea and death and aesthetics and white femininity and whatnot. all of which is to say i need to sit with this hamlet reading a lot more but i love it, i am so here for it.

of course ‘kissing or feeding, we can’t be sure’ calls to mind ‘how meat loves meat,’ alecto biting harrow’s mouth by way of a kiss…and the general thematic throughline of, you know, certain practices of love as practices of consumption, naberius later being figured as the ‘meat’ in question contains echoes of this eroticism which ofc guides the contours of the necromancer/cavalier dynamic, eroticism as a currency of power, we know all of this stuff because it’s all over the text but i am just thumbs-upping it from the sidelines

the coffins had me thinking of utena’s black rose arc, which is a fun link to make considering the equivalent moment in the main body of nona is also referencing utena, ie. with the ‘rules’ of the duel being that cam has to get the handkerchief out of ianthe’s pocket as kind of an equivalent to skewering the rose. i feel like the tlt/utena overlap is pretty self-explanatory but it’s just fun to see the fingerprints all over lol

i think a lot of this was treading old ground thematically (erotics of consumption, dog motifs, we’ve seen it already!) but i will say that i did Yell Out Loud over ‘who's she got dawdling behind her but that creature—tugging visibly at her leash like an overeager dog.’ reminded of the other memorable use of ‘leash’—’even the devil bent for god to put a leash around her neck’—and, of course, the endless parade of commonalities between gideon & alecto. anyway there’s not really anything in this line that we didn’t already know about gid as a character, thematically speaking, but i point it out because it inflicted +100 psychic damage when i read it. gideon as a ‘creature’ is particularly slimy, & sort of puts me in mind of ianthe's tendency to talk about what appears to us as 'butch masculinity' (as opposed to the more effete masculinity of augustine or even babs) with a notably derogatory slant (the 'hurtful threats of sexual violence' line comes to mind); i don't know that i have much to say about it here specifically but it's an interesting one that i think informs the kirianthe dynamic pretty heavily (especially when held up against, like, harrianthe ... ianthe has a kind of respect for whatever harrow's gay and stupid gender is Doing (at least insofar as she can mould it to her own desires; i'm thinking of the dios apate forcefemme scene lol) in ways that i don't think she has for kiriona? but this is v off-topic, lol).

i have never been especially taken by dulcie as a character but i think this may finally have forced me to fold and admit that she’s great. her haters!!! her agonies!!! camilla would have to cook!! the balance between levity and sincerity was really well-managed. & i love the double meaning of “unwanted guest” as both palamedes intruding on ianthe’s mind palace and naberius setting up shop inside of her.

i need a week to sit with where this idea of the consumed soul as being literally ‘digested’ such that it can begin to ‘inhabit,’ however immaterially, the host body, or like to alter the characteristics of the host body such that to carry out such a consumption is to kind of kill yourself as well, slots in with lolita theory. or like, i need alecto right now. i am however reminded of chew, a short story that muir wrote in 2013, which also plays with these ideas of sexual assault as a forcing of a part of yourself meaningfully ‘into’ another person, and cannibalism as the reenactment of such a process, figured in the story as kind of a reclamation or at least an assertion of permanence—“I was always going to be in the ground with him in me,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure, that’s all. I just wanted to make sure.”—which the unwanted guest seems to kind of, play with in reverse? i don’t know, but i’m interested—as ever—in where muir wants to take these ideas of rape and consumption and absorption that she’s got in her hands.

i keep returning to…i hesitate to say ‘parallels’ because i think that imposes a narrative onus that i’m not actually that convinced by, but these, like, commonalities between babs and gideon. gideon is played off against so many people (cristabel, loveday, alecto being the big ones) that it feels kind of inane to add another person to the pile, but like…they’re the two who get got in canaan house, they’re both ironically ‘false’ cavaliers and expressions of the ‘truest’ or most paradigmatic form that cavalierhood ‘can’/’should’ take, they both have unconventionally gendered names (‘babs’ is a shortened form of ‘barbara,’ it is a typically feminine name imo) and (by our standards) somewhat unconventional genders (gideon is butch, babs effete)—and of course the unwanted guest places a lot of emphasis on the coercive ‘making’ of cavalierhood (the reference to babs being ‘fixed’ were he to have a disability! ianthe’s glib ‘society really is to blame’ comment—ironic, obviously, but not wholly untrue) not dissimilar to the emphasis that gtn puts on cytherea moulding gideon into the state she comes to be in at the end. babs and gideon as the two possessed corpses in nona, obviously. two wildly diverse but ultimately converging trajectories! a dialectical tension between their fundamental ‘opposition’ (as by-the-book cavalier vs whatever gideon is doing) and their fundamental ‘sameness’ whereby the dialectic is resolved in their mutual deaths. also just, of course, continuing the throughline that muir has had going for a while now, of gender/gendering as a set of coercive enforcements loyal to a hegemonic structuring of the world.

that’s all i’ve got, i think. just. really good everyone say thank you tazmuir

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not inviting my transfem friend to my all girls skinny dipping/camping weekend with my cisfem friends? TW for talking about rape

Okay, so the title leaves out a lot of info, so please read through this before making a judgement. There are four friends in total including me and said tranfem friend who I will call Lilly. I will refer to the other two friends as Nicole and June. This all took place not too long ago.

Also, if you are going to judge me in the comments please call me Nick because I keep getting OP confused with the mod whenever I read through other AITA posts and it hurts my brain [e.g. "Nick you're an AH/NTA/etc" vs "OP you're and AH/NTA/etc"]

Now, onto the story.

The thing about this skinny dipping/camping weekend is that it isn't really a vacation trip but an exercise that Nicole, June, and I have planned as a way to help us get over the hatred and toxic self sexualization of our own bodies that we all develop as a result of rape.

The skinny dipping part is meant to give us a safe space to see other ciswomen with similar bodies in a nonsexualized space, and and to simply have fun while embrace our bodies as something to used to have fun with, not just a disgusting useless object for sex to be acted upon on. The camping part would be for us to regoup, share how we are feeling, if this exercise is working, etc, and to cry together if need be over some smores and hot chocolate.

Lilly, who we didn't know at the time if she is or isn't also a survivor [she isn't], did not know that this is an exercise rather then a get-away. Since telling her was an exercise would out all of us as survivors to her, we elected to just not tell her about the trip all together since we didn't want to hurt her feelings and think she was being excluded from one our girl weekends. However, the day before we left for the trip she found out from Lilly's brother gossiping with her. She texted me asking to be invited, which left me in an very awkward spot.

Not only did I not budget food for a fourth person, but well, even though we could make it work, I know if I invited her we'd have to cancel the exercise aspect and turn an outing that was ment to be healing into just another weekend because while she is a women, she does have penis, which is a body part that is extremely triggering for myself and likely Nicole and June to see. I know that I alone, even in an innocent, fun, platonic environment, seeing a penis no matter who's it on would just cause me flashbacks and a panic attack. Who knows what kind of reactions it would cause Nicole and June.

I felt bad, but not wanting to cancel the exercise and not wanting to tell her it was an exercise because I don't want her to know that I'm, or to out Nicole and June without their permission, as survivors, I just gave her the excuse that I didn't have the money to feed four people and that I will save up a lot this month so next month all four of us can go camping together. She was understandablely hurt since she just thought she was being excluded, and I tried to reassure her, but it didn't really work. I contemplated a way to vaguely tell her it wasn't a typical girl's night, but it all sounded like toxic backtracking and so I just left it as it was.

I told Nicole and June about this and though they felt bad too, none of us saw how else to handle this because none of us want Lilly to know we're survivors. We agreed to take Lilly out to dinner and a spa when got back, and told her these plans, then went on our trip.

It was a very healing exercise for me and Nicole and June, and though all of us felt guilty for lying and excluding her, we all agreed afterwards we needed the trip.

However when I found the time to meet up with Lilly alone for lunch a day after we got back, she understandablely called me out for what see saw as being unreasonablely excluded. She yelled at me, called me toxic, a bad friend, etc, which I don't blame her for because if i was in her shoes, I would have felt just as betrayed and hurt.

I tried to calm her down though and use the budgeting excuse, but she just wouldn't stop yelling which is huge trigger for me. After two hours; being kicked out of the restaurant, driving her home, and brought inside her home, all of which I continually being yelled at, I just couldn't cope any more and broke down into tears while in a half panic and told her that it was a trip for me to heal as a rape victim and Nicole and June we're just there as support to help me since they were the only ones who knew [I didn't want to out them] even though I didn't want her to know because I was so desperate just to not be yelled at and berated anymore.

Lilly calmed down after that then told be she understands but that I'm the asshole for not telling her sooner because while she isn't a survivor herself she would have loved to be there to support me. I tried to tell her I wasn't ready for her to know but she said that was just an excuse to go behind her back and excluded her, and that sometimes I need to suck it up and let people know what's going on. I tried to being up that I really, really wasn't ready, but she just kept calling it an excuse and told me to leave once I apologized a few times. I went home, cried for a while and once I was through having panic attacks I called Nicole and June and told them what had happen.

We talked for a while, and Nicole agreed with Lilly that I should have sucked it up and gave her the story that the trip was for me and they were there for support from the start, and June agrued that Lilly shouldn't have yelled and pushed and accepted that budgeting excuse because sometimes it is that way in real life, where a friend gets excluded in one thing, and that we already told her before we went on the trip that we'd make it up to her.

I feel like an asshole though even now, but with Lilly not responding to any texts or calls for a few days now, and Nicole and June still arguing about who was in the right, and me still feeling extremely emotional and raw from being screamed at, I don't know who to trust to be the judge of if I'm in the wrong or not.

Also while Lilly's yelling does sound kind of bad after writing it down, she does have abandonment issues and us seemingly excluding her likely triggered them. Please don't judge her on that, it wouldn't be fair since I broke down crying and made a baby of myself due to my own triggers and I have learned a lot more coping skills then she has. I promise she is a very sweet and kind person, she just hasn't learn ways to cope with her triggers yet.

I'm not asking if she was the asshole because I know I earn that yellling for triggering her even if it ended up trigginger me, I'm just asking if I'm the asshole for not telling her the trip was for me to heal rather then making an excuse about budgeting being why she couldn't come. Please only judge me, my friends are all great and it's only me who possibly messed up since I'm the one who lied!

What are these acronyms?