#reblog conversation

[theoldaeroplane]

worried that thing you put in your art or writing or game or music is too self-indulgent, too self-referential, too niche for anyone but yourself? fear not! you can do whatever you want forever. and you should.

[waywardstation]

Look for anything (or anyone) that could be familiar

For part two:

❤️ 300 likes

🔁 70 reblogs

Reblog with the hashtag:

🔼 for Ingo to find Emmet

🔽 for Emmet to find Ingo

[edenfenixblogs]

If you’re not Jewish/Muslim/Israeli/Palestinian and you are talking publicly in any way about the i/p conflict you should probably do your research about dog whistles and take that info seriously. It shouldn’t be up to affected groups to educate you while actively being triggered and traumatized.

It’s not fun to constantly worry if your friends secretly hate you or if they are sliding into antisemitic spaces or are ok with genocide as long is against the right group of people.

You aren’t free of antisemitism or Islamophobia just because you don’t sit around thinking, “I hate Jews/Muslims/Arabs.” This shit is structural. I don’t care how many Jews or Muslims or Arabs you know. If you haven’t actively deconstructed your own bias against these groups, you’re probably still hateful whether you realize it or not.

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

My Biggest Frustrations as an Neurodivergent Person

neurodivergent_lou

[ivorysodapop]

(Suibian is also amused)

AU Masterlist

[trans-axolotl]

my gendered experience growing up as an intersex person was overwhelmingly defined by my responses and resistance to everything that got me labeled as a failure: failure to quickly get a gender assigned at birth, failure to go through a normal puberty and grow up into a woman, failure at meeting the standards for "complete womanhood" because of my intersex sex traits, and yet simultaneously failing to ever be acknowledged as a "real man" and being treated as a threat when I expressed I wanted to transition.

before i realized i was a man and came out as trans, the ways that girlhood was denied to me was very often humiliating and painful. locker rooms filled with other girls were a frequent source of shame. there were many big and small ways that i was told that my intersex body made me insufficient, incomplete, broken. i was forced onto estrogen, forced into shaving my body hair, and was constantly being told to change myself to better fit this mystical idea of a "normal woman." and even though I ultimately ended up becoming a man, the denial of girlhood was painful.

but i think that these things would have been even more difficult to navigate as an intersex girl if on top of everything I already said, i was having to cope with the denial of my girlhood while i was forced into boys locker rooms. if my doctors were forcing me onto testosterone hrt and refusing to even discuss estrogen, if all my legal paperwork had "M" on it and was a logistical nightmare to change, if every support group for my intersex variation labeled it as a "men's support group," if the LGBTQ community spaces i tried to join were misogynistic towards me often to the point of exile, if my self determination as an intersex girl was denied in most spaces of my life, and on and on and on. while listing all these things out i also don't want to make it seem like it's all about suffering and pain--so much of transition for me has been about joy in my self determination and how much it feels like a reclamation of autonomy to decide what I want my body and self to be like--i know this is an experience i share with so many of my trans intersex friends.

as an person who was AFAB, although there were many ways that trying to grow up as an intersex girl were a painful, logistical nightmare, many times and places that i was excluded from woman's spaces, etc. however, there was a simultaneous affirmation that i was right to strive for that in the first place. which is logic rooted in some fucked up compulsory dyadism, but also which would have made some things slightly easier or even possible at all if i had wanted to embrace being an intersex girl within this fucked up system.

pretty much every time i've seen people on tumblr talking about "afab transfems" in an intersex context, people seem happy to collapse these experiences and act like there's no meaningful distinction or point in distinguishing between different types of intersex embodiment. it seems incredibly extractive, to be perfectly honest with you--taking terms already used by a community to make meaning of their experiences and to expand and dilute that term enough that it means something pretty different than the original.

it's making me think about the concept of epistemic injustice, which is a term coined by Miranda Fricker to describe oppression related to knowledge, communication, and making meaning of the world. There's two subtypes of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice refers to the dynamic where marginalized people are labeled as not credible, excluded from conversations, and their testimony and knowledge is labeled as unreliable, even when they're the ones who are experts and have first hand experience of what people are talking about. (this is why i probably won't make this post rebloggable--i've noticed this pattern on tumblr many times where trans men speaking about transmisogyny get lots of notes and are given a lot of grace, where trans women are silenced, attacked for not having perfect wording, and otherwise delegitimized.)

the second type is called hermeneutical injustice. it describes how marginalized people are denied the right to make sense of the experiences in their own lives. this can look like preventing people from building community, terminology, a political understanding of themselves, and the interpretive resources needed to process how you live in the world.

this is a form of injustice that I think almost all intersex people are very familiar with--we are denied community and interpretive resources to the point that we're told we don't even exist, that intersex isn't a real word, and so many more examples that leave us isolated and with very few options for understanding what we're collectively experiencing. as an intersex person i really intimately understand how frustrating, confusing, and painful it is to not have words for your experiences, your identity, your life.

so it makes me really sad and pissed off when it seems like intersex people seem to be replicating this exact same type of epistemic injustice towards transfems and specifically towards intersex transfems. pretty much every time recently i see people talking about "afab transfems" they're doing so in a way that seems to deny that trans women even have the right to make sense of their own experiences in the world. there seems to be this mindset that these political frameworks, these interpretive resources that transfems have built up are just up for grabs for anyone. and then on top of that has come with it a lot of cruel, hateful language and direct attacks towards many intersex transfems who are facing so much harassment right now.

an important value to me is this idea of reciprocity as a foundation for solidarity. to me reciprocity means that we're prioritizing the ways we care for each other, we're thinking about how we can uplift each other, and we're watching out for extractive or exploitative patterns where one group is constantly expected to be in "solidarity" with another group without getting the same respect and care back toward them. i think that there could be so many ways that intersex people of all genders could share our overlapping experiences and actually be in true, meaningful solidarity with each other, but i barely ever actually see that happen on tumblr. and that pisses me off, because i do think that there's so much we have in common that we could celebrate and support each other with. i feel so much kinship with so, so many of my trans intersex friends, and ways where i see our lives converge. but i don't think that can happen in an environment where there's no acknowledgment of the ways that our experiences will sometimes (often) differ from each other, and the ways that we have unique needs.

another frustration i've had based on this most recent couple months of transmisogynistic intersex posting on tumblr is how intersex people have been mostly ignoring intersex community resources and devaluing the existing intersex terminology that people created to try to meet our needs. so much of what i've seen people describing on tumblr seems to really line up with the term ipsogender. Ipsogender is a term coined by an intersex sociologist Cary Gabriel Costello, and is used to describe intersex people whose gender matches the gender they were medically assigned at birth, but who might not feel like cis or trans fits them, might experience dysphoria, and who might feel like they've ended up transitioning medically or socially in some ways. this is a word that exists that an intersex person put time into coining because they wanted other intersex people to feel seen, embraced, and have ways of understanding themselves and communicating to others, and that's something that's super meaningful to me! and yet, i've rarely seen anyone reference it, and also seen multiple people making fun of it in other spaces online.

there's also intergender, which is another intersex specific gender term used to describe when your gender is inseparable from your intersex traits, and that your intersex identity is intertwined with your gender identity in some way. some people just identify as intergender, others use it as an adjective and exist as an intergender man or woman. intersex terminology like this is really important to me, especially because we're so often denied the right to make sense of our own experiences.

i think ultimately what i wanted to say with this post is just that when i think about intersex community, some of the most important values of intersex community for me are solidarity, care for each other, and affirming our right to define our own existence. and i don't think that can happen in a community where people are acting in extractive ways, harassing and attacking their fellow community members, and being dismissive of the realities of other intersex people's lives.

[goddess-of-frot]

In the midst of all this I cant help but wish there was some dedicated online community space for transfems (Please do not invite me to discord servers)

[usertoxicyaoi]

"I'll make a ton of cash, and leave this place."

TAIKAN YOHOU (2023). EPISODE TWO.

[the-magpie-archives]

I gotta be honest if some random guy approached me in the street and asked me to tell him my paranormal trauma I'd literally just tell him? Like he wouldn't have to compel me I'd like to share. Free therapy for me, free story for him! Not my problem if it feeds an otherworldly overlord.

[withmytailtotheworld]

the fan-arts in question;

[kayvsdoodles]

⭐🖤⭐💗⭐

[royalarchivist]

[A sad violin song plays over an image of a sad hamster]

Pac: This doesn't have anything to do with me – I wear a blue sweatshirt, you're crazy, this mouse doesn't even have a sweatshirt, this hamster! [Reading chat] Am I a depressed hamster?

[ Transcript continued ↓ ]*

–

Pac: Actually– that's fine! I embrace that idea – of course I'm going to be depressed, are you crazy? [He hits his desk, then starts counting off people on his fingers] Fit is gone, Richarlyson is gone, Ramon is gone, Bagi and Empanada who were always there when we were there are also gone, I haven't seen them! It's just me and Tubbo, and sometimes Philza shows up.

Pac: I lost Chume Labs, I lost the Favela, I lost Murder Mystery, I lost Ilha Chume Labs, it's crazy! Look at how much I've lost, and I've gained nothing! Of course I'm going to be depressed, are you crazy?! How am I supposed to be happy?!

Pac: [Reading chat] "You have us Pac," that's true, thank you. No, that's true, sorry.

* NOTE: Please note that this is an incomplete transcript, as I was primarily relying on Aypierre's translation mod at the time and if I am not confident of the translation, I do not include it. As always, please feel free to add on translations or message me corrections.

[poorlydrawnslenderman]

who are all you people.

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

In Conversation, What Can Trip Up an Autistic Person?

Pete Wharmby, Autistic Author

[jewishbarbies]

[hillbillyoracle]

So I saw this screencap earlier

And I thought it was a great chance to talk about something.

A lot of progressive folks are familiar with the fact that right wing circles use feminine as a derogatory term and that there's a real cost to that for women.

What people are less familiar with is how it hurts men - queer and straight, cis and trans.

And I'm not shocked given how common it is in left leaning spaces to be reactionary (read: dismissive or outright harass) when men try to talk about these what these issues look like for them.

When men talk about how they've experienced toxic masculinity and anti-feminine bias, in addition to the usual right wing responses, I'm starting to see a bunch of supposed feminists and trans/queer allies harass them as well - saying they're hurting women/feminine presenting folks by "centering men", dismissing their concerns as made up (even when there's research to back it up), "why aren't you talking about what this is like for cis and trans women instead??".

I've seen trans men accused of being TERFs or being liars (by other trans people even - wtf) when they talk about their experiences of allies actively excluding them from trans spaces or harassing them for using T4T tags. I've seen men be accused of lying about publicly accessible clinical research that shows men make up 75%-77% of suicide cases - or worse suggest they deserve it. I see posts about how men's complaints "aren't unique to them" and dismiss them because women also suffer things those authors assume are the same (even when the research contradicts this).

And here's the thing:

When you assume feminine=good/safe/gentle and masculine=bad/unsafe/enemy - you're parroting a conservative talking point.

There is no way around this fact.

A big part of what underpins child rearing being "the woman's domain" in conservatism, is the idea that men are inherently dangerous and therefore shouldn't really be around children without women present.

The reason why they blame women for abuse and rape - because they believe men are inherently dangerous and if a woman trusted them then it's her fault.

Part of why women have been effectively banned from many trades and careers for so long is the assumption that being around that many men presents an inherent danger to a woman.

"But!" you might be saying, "This person is clearly talking about men engaging in open conflict as good here!"

Yeah because conservatives see politics as an inherently male/dangerous/toxic sphere and uphold it as such.

I could go on and on really.

All of this is to say - please be more thoughtful in what you consume, comment, and reblog.

There are experiences specific to being masculine. Erasing that is one, a dick move, but two, particularly violent toward those talking about trans masculine, minority masculine, disabled masculine, and queer masculine experiences.

All privilege comes at a cost. Listening when people talk about that cost is key building a new more fair reality. Seeing the privilege is not worth the cost makes fervent allies. Want more allies? Don't be a dick to people having that realization.

Push back against the assumption of woman=good and man=bad when you see it - especially in community spaces. The amount of times I've seen domestic violence services only available to women is insane...

Do not let identarian politics blind you to the fact we're all human and working toward our own liberation should not come at the oppression of another. Believe me, those with real power would much rather you stay raging out at men in a similar class with you than directing your efforts at them.

The right wing wants you to believe it's either/or. Fuck that - it's both/and.