#the meaning of lesbian being eroded

[gray-ace-space]

recently encountered a post where someone said "gender is fluid but sexuality isn't". (they were talking about bi lesbians.)

my first thought was: does that person, like. hear what they're saying? how can you explicitly hold two beliefs that are so logically inconsistent and not see it? how can you simultaneously think gender is this fluid and complex thing, but sexuality, much of which is defined around gender, is simple and stationary and its boundaries need policing?

but like, fuck, why even argue against it, right? there is no internal logic because there is no logical thought behind it. these are not genuine beliefs. this person is repeating what is currently acceptable in their (small) specific social circle. this is the same person who, a few years back, would be excluding nonbinary lesbians, but nonbinary lesbians are cool and normal on queer tumblr now, so they'll exclude bi lesbians instead, and not even pause to reflect on the difference.

oh, and if you read this and thought "these people don't even actually accept nb lesbians either", ding ding ding! because it's not a real, deep belief, that acceptance is extremely shallow and conditional. so as soon as someone is an nb lesbian in a way these people find odd (like being both a man and a lesbian) they will exclude them too and find a way to justify it.

why do we have to endlessly go through this cycle with queer identities. can we not? can we just not. i'm tired.

[possamble]

Do you have any headcanons or thoughts about Falin having a crush on Marcille pre-canon? Especially during her later years at the school/the years she was with Laios.

Just full on "awkward and slightly gnc teenage lesbian has a massive crush on the touchy-feely girly girl straight best friend" tropes everywhere. Even better bc it's the "best friend is also the popular girl while lesbian is the slightly ostracized quiet one" dynamic in school. Falin gets so so so good at not having a heart attack every time Marcille gets in her personal space. But she's so resigned to never saying anything bc why would a girl as blinding as Marcille ever like her back. She also doesn't make an effort to get over it either, she's just content to be trapped in that stable dynamic of silently being in love with Marcille while getting to enjoy CLEARLY being Marcille's favourite person. She gets so used to it that it's almost just background noise most of the time-- it would have to be, unless she wanted to be freaking out 24/7 bc Marcille is so goddamn affectionate.

Her feelings also definitely change throughout the time that they're in school together-- at first it was this "whooaaah pretty older girl" puppy crush that you can clearly see developing in the flashbacks we get (I think she doesn't even like... realize her fixation on Marcille is romantic at all until years after it starts, when she's 12-14 ish and all the other girls around her are talking about crushes). But then they get closer, over the years Marcille starts getting really attached and letting down her guard, and Falin gets to see the ridiculous side of her. She gets to calm her down from her tantrums when experiments don't work out, or help her clean up when something explodes in her face. I feel like the progression of her feelings from "schoolgirl infatuation" to "unrequited love" probably almost exactly corresponds to how slowly Marcille goes from trying to keep Falin at a polite but friendly distance (like she does with everyone else) to her facade completely eroding as she becomes her cheerful and ridiculous self again for the first time since her father died.

That's probably the saddest part: Falin knows that she's clearly Marcille's favourite person on the surface level, but she doesn't quite fully grasp the enormity of what that means to Marcille. She doesn't get that she's the person who made the world colorful again for Marcille, that she is the first person outside of Marcille's family to really and truly make her laugh. She just thinks she's the beloved but dinky little short-lived sidekick, one of many that Marcille has had and will have.

Part of it is that, despite Marcille becoming such a clingy and affectionate best friend, I think her initial demeanour already did its damage. You see Falin being super adventurous and weird at first, bringing Marcille berries and other stuff, only to be rebuffed by Marcille exasperatedly saying she's working or looking kind of put off by it. And by the time you see her a little older, shes already quieter and better at masking -- and I'm not saying that that's entirely Marcille's fault (being the weird girl at an all girls academy for almost the entirety of her teenhood must have been brutal, my god) but she definitely learned that she's a potential nuisance to Marcille if she doesn't tone herself down. She learned that Marcille most likely sees her as a weird little kid following her around bc she has no other friends. And for the most part, she was never given any reason to unlearn any of that.

And that all very very smoothly transitions into Marcille being her "first love that was never meant to be anyway" when she leaves the academy. Chapter closed in her mind: she loved and pined from a distance and that was that. Every now and then she'll see another woman with Marcille's build or her shade of hair and be like ":( I miss her..." But then just kinda move on with her day. Same with when she's going through her own spellbook and finds a note that Marcille left her/correction that she made-- she'll smile fondly and reminisce about how much Marcille doted on her, and then move on.

Sometimes she thinks about contacting Marcille but convinces herself that it's too late (she spent too many months focusing on getting Laios healthy again and didn't mean to go no contact, but ah well). It's only when she has a practical reason to be reaching out that would also benefit Marcille ("Marcille is studying dungeons and we need a trustworthy mage to go with us to the dungeons") that she feels like she's allowed/that it wouldn't just be 100% a nuisance.

I almost think she didn't expect Marcille to reply at all, only to get a telegraph (or some in-universe equivalent of express mail, maybe magical pigeon carrier) that's like. EN ROUTE TO ISLAND. LETTER TO FOLLOW. and she freaks out like AAAA LAIOS SHE SAID YES WE HAVE TO CLEAN UP NOW.

I do think getting a response accidentally sparks a little hope in her, judging by the way she acts in the chp 57 flashback-- she's pouty that Marcille sees her as a kid, gets really worked up about being presentable, and then tries to play it cool when she actually meets Marcille (as if she didn't freak out and force Laios to shave while rambling a mile a minute about Marcille). She's an adult now, really and truly, and she's seen and survived things that her 18 yr old self would have never even imagined-- then all of a sudden, the person she was in love with since she was ten years old appears, and she's so desperate to be seen as mature and competent. She's trying soooo hard to impress Marcille with her newfound combat and dungeoneering experience...

Only to fall right back into their old dynamic. RIP. At least she gets the girl eventually, even if it takes dying twice and being the core catalyst behind an almost-apocalypse.

[lesbian-polls]

Wait sorry, what’s wrong with m-spec lesbians? I thought that was what lots of butches were? 😭 sorry I’m from a conservative area + wasn’t allowed internet until I left home so I haven’t had much interaction with the queer community

Since you ask in good faith I'll give you a good faith answer.

M-spec doesn't mean "masculine presenting" it means your attraction is in the masculine spectrum of the gender spectrum, so men and male aligned-NB people (non-binary is not a third gender, it's a collection of every gender that I'd neither 100% woman or 100% man)

Butches tend to present masculine, this doesn't make them men.

A lesbian is a woman or woman-aligned NB person who is attracted to the same gender. That is, other women and woman aligned NB people.

The problem with m-spec and bi "lesbians" is that they're not lesbians at all, they're bi or pan people most of the time who are attracted to men but try to usurp the lesbian label and turn it into a synonym for sapphic or woman-loving-woman.

Lesbianism is the only sexuality that excludes men, both as targets of attraction and emitters of that attraction. Therefore we are being shamed into being attracted to men by this group of people. Hell, they even try to take the reclaimed d-slur.

It's an act of lesbophobia, homophobia (two different kinds of oppression btw) biphobia (bi and pan people have a history of fighting for their own label and protested against being called gays or lesbians) and transphobia since many of m-spec 'lesbians' and their supporters are trans men who claim they have a connection to womanhood by having the "right parts" which isn't true in the slightest and also hurts trans women, many of whom are lesbians as well.

Even misogyny, since m-spec and bi 'lesbians' can't stand the fact that we don't need men in our lives and that bothers them since in their mind everyone needs to center men in their lives.

Would you see gay men being told to include women in their sexuality? No, right? It's the misogyny as well.

Most bi 'lesbians' and their supporters also happen to be white, shielding themselves with their privilege.

To sum it up: m-spec 'lesbians' aren't butches or lesbians at all, they're bi and pan people who disregard their own history and struggle to try and steal our label from us, inspired by homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia, misogyny and transphobia. They'll call us TERFs (many of us are trans women mind you) while employing TERF points themselves like with the trans man argument.

If you have more questions feel free to DM me. And, if you are not a lesbian please don't vote in the polls since they're for lesbians only. I made this blog as a safe space for lesbians due to our safe spaces on this accursed website being eroded (if you say you're a bi lesbian in a lesbian bar they'll laugh at you since this is online-only problem) and I'd like to keep it that way

EDIT:

This user is right, I got the two mixed up. M-spec is multi-spectrum

[redheadbigshoes]

I'm so done with being calm and respectful about my anger towards those who intrude on sexual boundaries.

Every time a man makes an advance when a woman says no, or that she is a lesbian and not interested, it is an attack on her agency, on the worth of her will, and many people will just say 'its weird' and try and shrug it off, but those were precursors to some of the harassment I experienced, to unwanted physical contact by a coworker in the office I used to work in, trying to erode my boundaries and self-respect.

After I publicly transitioned to a woman when I graduated and moved to a new city for my first job, I was able to come out publicly as a lesbian after having gone through literal comphet forced relationships with men in order to get a letter from my therapist for hormones. I was happy to finally be able to say who I really was, having to just hope that everyone would be nice and accepting of my gender and sexuality since working in an office means you have to be around people you dont choose every day.

I expected my main issue to be transphobia, but I didn't understand how well I passed after just 1.5 years on hrt while closeted, and I doubly didn't expect to get the attention of my male coworkers who kept on making unwanted advances over and over despite me getting upset, disgusted, and angry at them. I told them I was a lesbian and it only increased the degree of my harassment, they wanted to wear down my self-worth and knew noone else in the office felt like standing up for me. It got to the point where I had to file HR cases against two of them. Even when I broke the woman's dress code (yes there was a dress code mandating wearing skirts and dresses, Bank of America's IT department is fucking weird) and just wore concealing jackets and facemasks (this was before the pandemic) and baggy pants they kept pestering me until I got a doctor's note to work from home.

I know some of it was definitely because I'm a trans woman too, a vulnerable target, because few of my coworkers already bothered to talk to me, and when I went to HR and other company assets for help they never took my word above others. Trans Lesbians are more at risk of sexual abuse than most people because most people don't give a fuck about us or our safety.

I just get fucking incredibly upset every time I hear people pushing lesbian's boundaries to include men because that was the precursor to some of my abuse. So anyone who thinks lesbians are 'mean' for being fucking angry and upset when people push men on us can go fuck themselves, I could literally punch every man I see in the face and it wouldn't even be a fraction of recompense for what they did to me.

Just wanted to vent this after reading about a lesbian talking about how a trans man keeps flirting with her despite her saying no and it makes me want to rip something apart

-🌻

I am so sorry about what you had to deal with. I truly hope you’re safer now.

People don’t care about women’s safety in general, so when it comes to a trans lesbian it must be much much worse.

People who try to push cis and trans men in lesbianism are probably the same ones who say transphobic shit and who don’t care about SA.

[woman-for-women]

What are your thoughts on the John Hopkins' definition of a lesbian etc situation? Btw love your content <3

Lesbian means female homosexual (exclusively same-sex attracted females). Words and definitions are exclusionary by nature. The word lesbian excludes anyone who is male and anyone who is attracted to the opposite sex or not attracted to the same sex. The Johns Hopkins' definition is homophobic and lesbophobic (not to mention it defines lesbian sexuality around men, and women aren't "non-men"). Although I'm sure many people using this term believe they are doing good by being more "inclusive", they don't understand that the definition of lesbian doesn't need to include anyone who isn't a female homosexual. Anyone who is female and exclusively same-sex attracted, regardless of if they have a transgender or "non-man" gender identity, is a lesbian.

I've been seeing the non-men who like non-men definition for a few years now (below is a presentation slide from my college from 2021; notice how the definition of gay man remains men who like men)

The LGBTQIA+ wiki claims the change in definition arose in 2020:

It's a coercive attempt to erode female and homosexual boundaries. There's nothing "TERF-y" or bigoted about homosexuality, and homosexual labels like lesbian and gay don't need to be expanded to include anyone else. If people really want a term that encompasses "non-men" attracted to "non-men", they can make a new term. Lesbian is already taken.

[female-malice]

An age gap between two mature adult women who go on nice dates together is not a red flag.

Do you want to know the real red flags in the lesbian world? Should we talk about that?

Women who go to alcohol settings to hook up with women they just met. That's a red flag. It always has been and it always will be. Women who rely on made up "codes" and "symbols" to pick which stranger they're going to fuck. That's a red flag. It always has been and it always will be.

Hook-up culture means taking shortcuts. And taking shortcuts erodes consent. Can you truly communicate and establish consent with someone you don't know very well? Maybe you can 90% of the time. But 90% is not good enough.

There's nothing wrong with being casual and uncommitted. Sometimes that's just where you are in life. But that doesn't mean you need to engage in hook-up culture. Go out and find some other casual uncommitted women and take the time to get to know them well. It's not hard. There's actually other relationship options besides fucking strangers and uhauling.

[pumpumdemsugah]

“eventually people end up identifying more with the dehuminisation than the actual experience of being whatever identity”

godddd YES. i got off twitter for this exact reason because so many black ‘queer’ women on there are obsessed with othering themselves and begging for scraps at the alter of whiteness and it stinks. finding other gay woc was cool at first but only on the surface. lesbianism was cool in theory but people got so insecure if everyone else wasn’t included (even tho this was a group of supposedly lesbians and bi women??) and idek every convo became this black hole of lies and misinformation about gender and stereotypes and like you said it started to erode on our actual existence. but no one wanted to escape it! everyone just reinforced the bullshit and when i spoke out they turned on me for daring to actually see myself as a fully realized human being? had to dip bc the self censoring on my part was insane its like they think it’s empowering to degrade themselves first but all they do is hold up these racist ideals and they either can’t see it or don’t care. nobody reads or tries to engage with actual history it’s all vibes and crystals and baseless validation. i seriously don’t know what they get out of doing this because the yts they associate with don’t even give af about them. pathetic fr.

It's ugly and people are doing it with pictures and gov names attached and worse trying to make a career out of it. Some of these women are straight up coons, homophobes and women haters. There's a point where your internalised self hatred becomes a public biohazard and you're trying to infect others

I have a sense of shame and pride that stops me. When I was being crazy about my boobs one day I felt like I was going too fucking far, I felt a little ashamed and interrogated that instead of making excuses. No one wants to be reflective about their own behaviour. We're never going to have constant positive thoughts but it doesn't mean you should create hell

These women want to be dehuminisation in flesh and they're all miserable and spiralling for what ? Attention? What about actual joy and connection? What are they trying to prove ?

These people want everyone to be as miserable, uncomfortable and pathetic as them and I'm not doing that. It's not even ohh self love but I'm not living like that. I've never hated myself enough to behave like that and if it makes them think I'm better than them because it makes them look pathetic they should stop acting pathetic. Eventually you have to grow

[macrotiis]

YOUR POINT EXACTLY ever since I realised nearly all of the people I’ve seen identify as bi lesbians have been trans women with complex relationships to their gender and sexuality, I stopped giving a shit about the discourse lol

Honestly!!! Like I’m at a point where I just don’t even care anymore if ppl hate me for this, I’ve not seen a single justification for being against “bi lesbians” that hasn’t been shit, most of the excuses for it are (trans)misogynist victim blaming & it’s so wild to me that ppl believed that shit! As if it’s bi women’s fault men are predatory to lesbians, as if it’s transfems fault that TERFs call lesbian women who sleep with them “bisexual”!

Plus like the whole thing of needing rigid set definitions of sexuality that isn’t cis/straight/allo really feels like we are going backwards with LGBTQ+ liberation. It’s 100% a means to make us, at best; more palatable to our oppressors or at worst, easier for them to divide & harm. Literally what’s happened in the US where transphobic fear-mongering has been used as a smokescreen to erode both gay & women’s rights. It’s the same shit.

Ppl rly just care more about the social clout of seeming correct on social issues they forget the actual material real world impact of this shit. They’d rather appear correct rather than actually help each other & I’m sick of that kind of selfish arrogance.

[valeriesrevenge]

Hey, I'm a bit confused about the celebratory nature of the comments on your post about a men's restroom being converted to a disabled restroom (while the women's room remained as is).

I'm female/a trans guy (fairly new to rad-feminisim, so I do apologize if I say anything ignorant here) who has been on HRT for many years, post-several-surgeries, and therefore doesn't look like a woman (save for genitalia) anymore.

I don't enter female nor lesbian spaces because of the way that I look, despite technically belonging in said spaces. [I refuse to make women feel unsafe.]

I understand you do not view me as a man now that you know I'm female—but people/strangers in my day-to-day life do not have that context (& I'd rather not share what genitals I have with people/strangers in the first place). I'm happy as I am now/I'm not interested in detransitioning, and this creates some...difficult...situations.

See, I'd use the women's restroom, but I cannot and do not wish to out myself as female every time I need to use a public restroom (not to mention, who knows if I will even be believed); it could be potentially dangerous.

I don't think women's nor men's restrooms should be converted to "all-gender" restrooms (if you must, build a third restroom instead). Disabled access is a bit different—and I don't have an issue with it—but access to men's restrooms impacts female people like me who are also trans men. I get that it's nice for some to see males get a taste of what it's like to have sex-specific spaces turned into "for all" or removed altogether, but at the same time I don't think those celebrating the change have considered it isn't just males who are impacted.

If you could help me understand the situation better, I'd be very grateful.

Thanks for the ask, anon!

Well all bathrooms should be accessible for physically disabled people (and in most places that’s the law anyways), so I have zero problem with that. Where I take issue is when women’s washrooms are de facto converted into “all gender” washrooms while the men’s are left alone.

In the gender politics movement, erosion of women’s spaces has been a trend. Even language like “female, woman”, the very concept of being female, women’s spaces etc. are being eroded to make trans women (male) fit into a defined physical category they don’t (female).

In an ideal world, there would be a 3rd option bathroom, even just a single stall situation. However, most current buildings can’t just create a bathroom out of thin air without reworking a significant part of the plumbing. So it’s, of course, usually put on women to accept men into our washrooms at our own personal risk.

I think it’s just nice that for once it wasn’t the women’s washroom by default. And honestly it makes way more sense. For trans men, that means it’s definitely for you, you shouldn’t have to think about it. They’re saying that you are welcome there. And for TW, they can use a urinal in the all genders bathrooms.

I think it’s just a little pushback that’s refreshing also.

[savrenim]

SO it is the last week of January but you know what it's Been A Fucking Hell Month In This House so we are getting to our new year's goals post today and that's fine it's still January so it still counts

2023 was a wild year for me just in terms of oh gods I have never played with such high stakes before in my life in so many things and for so long and with such eroded or in some cases totally nonexistent safety nets, I got to the end of it arguably much better off than the beginning, just for the latter half almost totally at the expense of Doing Anything My Writing For Me. so in light of that, I've got some tentative 2024 goals, namely:

get a final draft of Opus into copyediting stage (stretch goal: actually publish it!)

write at least 20k words of another original project 

finish and publish at least one existing fanfic

publish all the mostly written but unpolished and unedited things I have sitting around in my writing folder 

I have no idea how I am going to make this happen, given that my household is still attempting to make up moving costs from last summer and rip we have just been hit with massive vet bills for the most beloved member of the household which means that I need to hustle the fuck out of working all of the hours that I can what is free time and sleep. it also means that I literally can't afford to put my patreon on hiatus, so at the very least there will be regular updates and drafts posted there. said patreon in 2023 is responsible for a solid half of the next chapter of ifmlam already written and the rest on the way, the final chapter of ttbotr in its 'being polished' stage, and the wind, the wind, the wind (lesbian Hadestown in space one-shot) being a scene and a bit of editing away from being ready to go. 

the absolute DREAM for this next year would be to able to rely on writing as a legitimate source of supplemental income instead of something that I need to carve out of free time that I may or may not have, and, you know, actually write A Whole Bunch More. given that I'm devoting 2024 to trying to get some of my original writing off the ground, I wanted to actually showcase some of my original writing too! My three biggest projects are:

1. Opus I: feral seer assassin pretending to be a bodyguard came out here to fight things and is honestly having such a good time right now; extremely tired diplomat saddled with her did not want to come out here in the first place and is having about the time you'd imagine with that. read the first scene here.

2. The Heart and The Heartless: shonen anime of a to-be-posted-as-a-web-serial about a bunch of gay teenagers going to sorcery school and learning how to fight Revenants, and their even more gay even more tired teachers dealing with trying to ensure that their childhoods aren't as bad as said teachers' were. read the first scene here.

3. The Numanok Files: series of novellas that follow a bounty hunter taking cases as she helps colonies and space stations deal with ghosts; half the time home inspection style it's a carbon monoxide leak or faulty wiring reacting to solar flares or alien fungi but half the time it Is In Fact Ghosts. read the first scene here.

Links lead to free posts of the first chapters/ scenes of them on my patreon. I appreciate any support in trying to, you know, actually keep writing this year. and expect to see this post reblogged with updates every month or so so that I can motivate myself via bragging about progress!

[ahb-writes]

Book Review: 'Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix'

Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix by C.B. Lee

adventure

Asian fantasy

LGBTQIA

lesbian characters

mythology

pirates

queer books

romance

swashbuckling

ya fiction

My Review: 5 of 5 stars

At the farthest edge of what the westerners have historically branded "the opening of China," two young women discover the unmapped intersection of youth's uncultivated curiosity and the desperate proclivities of a dawdling adulthood. A CLASH OF STEEL begins painfully slow, but once all of the rightful pieces are in place, the novel's momentum churns forward with such unrelenting power that no amount of dramatic irony can outrun the book's satisfying conclusion.

Xiang's wistful gaze, from the rough mountains beyond her tiny river village, spy a curtain of distant ports and a mixed and matched fleet of merchant vessels. She lives in modest comfort, yes; and she has wont of little beyond the approval of her regularly absent mother, certainly; but what Xiang desires most is more. That is to say, the girl desires to stride the deck of a sea-worthy vessel, to taste and smell the vastness of a mercantile city a thousand times the size of her home tea shop, hear the myriad languages spoken by the myriad folks who sail the world's distant oceans. Xiang is an avid reader, but she wants to do more than read about adventure, she wants to experience it for herself (Xiang: "[W]ould I be satisfied merely listening to travelers' stories now that I've had a taste of the world?" page 273).

A chance trip to Canton, to visit her mother's center of business, enlightens Xiang to the possibility that she was born for more than being scolded by her tutor on lazy afternoons. Bandits running through alleys. Pirates and smugglers skulking the bay. Corrupt government officials absorbing bribes day-in and day-out. Trade for salt, fish, and more, are heavily tracked and regulated, but between the seams, the people of Canton, ephemeral, drift from one glimmering opportunity to the next, danger be damned.

The novel's opening act pivots grudgingly around the main character's misgivings for her simple, rural life, whereas the quickened pace of the book's later events makes for an effective contrast: life around narrow rivers and rice terraces versus life in the smoke-filled streets of a loud port city; life at a rural tea house with few visitors versus life among the raucous fools scratching for coin aboard patchwork ships. One has sympathy for readers who never made it past the first 80 pages.

A CLASH OF STEEL doesn't hit its pace until Xiang wields such opportunity by tagging along with her first new friend in ages, a pirate girl named Anh. Warm, brown skin. Wild hair. Talkative. Fearless.

Xiang's connection with Anh flares bright and hot, almost immediately, and the young woman is both enthralled and fearful of what that means. A CLASH OF STEEL nurtures and frames and scolds and builds back up Xiang and Anh's fledgling relationship, revealing, to those not previously aware, the author's skill in crafting queer characters worth believing in is nothing to worry about.

The lure of riches notwithstanding, boarding the Huyền Vũ and making for an island chain and a hidden hoard are the least of Xiang's troubles. After all, seeking to mend a fractured mother-daughter relationship by running away from home and pursuing a decades-old folktale thanks to an ancient, family relic? If that's not adventure, then what is?

A CLASH OF STEEL is a fun read for several reasons. Some such reasons pair well with the novel's reflection upon a long-eroded Age of Exploration. Others more to do with the book's structural arrangement and clever narrative positioning. What is the relationship between humanity and nature? What is humanity's relationship to itself when assimilation is believed inevitable? Why is the bond between government and the individual so heavily strained (stained) by greed? Relatedly, if there is no room for good people to conduct legitimate business, then does that mean freedom is only guaranteed through means of illegitimate business? (Xiang: "Who is more the thief: the government that preys on its people, or those who must become thieves in order to survive?" page 241)

Xiang stumbles into these questions and more while slowly transitioning from pampered countryside waif into a scraggly but sprightly shipmate with salt in her hair and a few splinters in her heels. The girl soon learns that an adventurous life is equally sought and earned.

Xiang's greatest education comes not from her trusted tutor, Master Feng Zhanli, who loves her like a daughter and protects her from the wrath of the girl's absent mother. Instead, Xiang learns kindness from the garrulous Captain Hoa Ngọc Hạnh; she learns steadfastness from shipmate Maheer, gentle and devout but indiscriminating; and she learns feminine ferocity from Ling Shan, a former courtier in the Forbidden City, who is now a skilled swordfighter whose tongue is a pit of vipers.

The book builds its tale of the modern imaginary on this foundation of furtive exploration. Readers of fairytales and folklore will recognize the author's exquisite use of a call to purpose, a lure from the quotidian, the foreshadowing of disappointment, the shifting standard for filial piety, and the introduction and subsequent destruction of a source of intrepid enlightenment. Tales of legendary pirate commanders? Stories about playful and distant relatives who only tease their benevolence? A CLASH OF STEEL is about leaving home on a treasure hunt, but it is also about unburying friendship and camaraderie from the embers of a discomfited life nobody truly asked for (Xiang: "I'm tired of others deciding my story for me," page 352).

❯ ❯ Book Reviews || ahb writes on Good Reads

[the-dear-skull]

I think we are using different definitions. The issue is that the sex in sexuality refers to biological sex. There’s much more to biological sex and attraction than secondary sex characteristics that can be emulated via surgery. If we go with the idea that sex and gender are different (meaning one refers to the physical body of someone, their anatomy, and the other refers to a feminine or masculine gender presentation), what you are saying is that lesbians can be attracted to any gender presentation, masculine or feminine. This I agree with. However, you’re also saying lesbians can be attracted to both male and female people, and this I disagree with because that would be bisexual, not lesbian. I respect trans women’s identity as trans women and they should get to live their lives however is dignified for them, but the reason they are trans to begin with is because they were born male, and lesbians are not attracted to male people regardless of cosmetic surgeries or degree of femininity, and lesbians can be attracted to masculine cis women because those are female, hence calling them cis which I believe is supposed to be the opposite of trans. There’s a differences in perceiving someone or something as being attractive (for example an attractive painting) and being attracted to them. Before you said that since you were stone you were down for anyone who identifies as a woman regardless of biological sex, I thought maybe I’m misunderstanding you when you say attractive and you mean simply in the sense of perceiving someone as good looking for example through a feminine gender presentation, but it seems like you’re saying lesbians, at least in your definition, can be attracted to male people so long as these male people identify as women and attempt to emulate a feminine gender performance. I would not consider attraction to just femininity to fall under the definition of lesbians. Lesbians are also attracted exclusively to the same sex, meaning the female sex, at least in the common definition. If you would have sex with a trans woman with a strap because you’re attracted to that trans woman in such a way that you desire to act on it regardless of if you do and in what way, then we are not using the same definition, because then your definition is that lesbians can be attracted to both male and female people as long as those male people have a feminine gender presentation and/or had cosmetic procedures to look more female. Still, they don’t literally become female, and as a result I would say your definition falls under a bisexual with a preference for males that have very feminine presentation and cosmetic surgeries and that’s fine. I am not trying to provoke you or anything. I am just genuinely explaining my perspective and I believe the perspective of some of those who messaged you without any hostility so you can see where we come from, and if you answer back without hostility as you did, then I can see where you come from as well, and this is why I think it is a matter of different definitions, which I believe erodes the meaning of what a lesbian is and makes it more fluid so as to include both sexes because both sexes can identify as having a woman gender identity, whereas lesbian is commonly understood as being exclusive attraction to the female sex

"HAVE YOU CONSIDERED YOU PEGGING TRANNIES HURT MY FEELINGS?"

[genderisareligion]

Happy New Year 🖤 Anons I got y’all soon. January is a nostalgic month for this blog cause it’s the two year anniversary of me being (formerly) shadowbanned also January 6th 2021 was what I like to call a Peak Everything moment for me. Peak Christianity, peak crackerdom, peak toxic masculinity, peak gender, peak humanity lol shit. Spent a year and some change invisible (but not termed 🙏🏽) for the crime of making too many trans racial jokes I guess and the blog I tried to make a replacement for this @genderisareligion immediately received the same fate. I suspect what actually caused it was my constant participation in my pinned post back then and the lack of answers anyone had for me but who knows. And I don’t know why because I didn’t request it but my blog’s visibility came back suddenly this April I wanna say. Here’s hoping it sticks🤞🏽

Anyway in 2023 along with finally publishing WOCTBI (Women of Color Taking Back Intersectionality, a little chapbook/magazine I wanna put together documenting nonwhite radblr’s posts and conversations, will likely be an ebook now instead of print) I do kinda wanna go in a different direction here. It’s not that I don’t think the trans conversation still needs to be happening, it does, homosexuals and women’s boundaries are still being eroded at an alarmingly rapid rate, I’ve just always been critical of all gender, “cis,” trans, up, down, no matter who’s participating. I’m not a “TERF blog” it’s in my url as a joke lol I’m just a black woman who got fed up with being polite on main being told to kill myself for reminding people humans are sexually dimorphic. Never even been a “TERF” cause I fully admit I’m a hypocrite and will in real life fully respect the pronouns/experiences of transmed normies who mind their own business, especially lesbian TIFs, but crackers like Dana Rivers and Dylan Mulvaney and all these “suck my girldick” transbians get he/him idgaf. So many of these males are so comfortable in their privilege they won’t combust if one less black women gasses them up

Wild how hypocritical and unable to admit it the “tolerant progressive left” is claiming that actually trans liberation is the key to ending black women’s oppression despite it being a recent invention and inherently having nothing to do with us and causing these crackers to run around telling me I look more like a male than other females. Like until this backwards shit ends I guess my opinions will continue to be “TERFy” cause I will never think this is okay, black women always come last and are always expected to be an expendible emotional and rhetorical resource to activist groups. This is why I’ve been politically homeless for so many years, doesn’t seem to matter where I go the message is the same: you exist to prop someone else up and you’re not allowed to complain about anything or it means all the help I’ve been giving you is bunk. BLM is something a shit ton of people just say and don’t do anything about because it’s too difficult. #SayHerName couldn’t keep the masses attention long enough and black women are still being killed with seemingly no end in sight. Will never not be crazy to me that in a decade “lesbians don’t like dick” did a complete 180 and became sacreligious to liberals.

I’ll just be here with my popcorn waiting for when inevitably sometime within the next decade or two a lot of these begendered crackers and their allies wake up and look back at the catastrophic mess they caused for some people and scramble to wipe their hands of it and act like it was all a conservative psyop they played no part in or whatever. Fact of the matter is that not everyone on HRT or going under the knife for SRS are doing so for good reasons and fact of the matter is transtrenders are making a mockery of those with actual sex dysphoria. Acting like any criticism of that at all is “transphobic and genocidal” is batshit insane. Like my intention with this blog at first was to try and help if anyone out there is saved by understanding that gender is fake at the end of the day, like I was.

So anyway I’ll be posting more on just feminism in general and gender criticism in general because imo radical feminism is just feminism or at least it used to be. This “TERF” shit gotta go can’t believe such a boogeyman nondescript term got so popular

[37q]

On Wednesday, barrister Allison Bailey lost a tribunal claim she brought against Stonewall, the biggest LGBTQ+ advocacy organisation in Europe. Bailey – a prominent figure in the ‘gender critical’ movement – had raised over £550,000 to pursue a joint employment tribunal against her employer, Garden Court Chambers, and Stonewall. The criminal defence specialist claimed she experienced discrimination at work because of her beliefs about transgender people, and that Stonewall had unlawfully induced Garden Court to penalise her because of those beliefs.

Bailey claimed a tepid victory in one aspect; Garden Court was judged to have discriminated against her on two occasions because of her trans-hostile views (including her conviction that Stonewall’s trans inclusivity is eroding women’s rights), which have been ruled a ‘protected belief’ under the Equality Act, thanks to the fervour with which she holds them. This doesn’t mean the beliefs are “right”, emphasised the judge – merely that they exist as strongly as one would subscribe to a religious doctrine. Bailey was awarded £22,000 for “injury to feelings”.

But Bailey – co-founder of trans-exclusionary group, the LGB Alliance (supposedly representing lesbians, gays and bisexuals, despite the recent revelation that only 7% of its membership are lesbians) – had promoted the case up as a legal blockbuster. She was the lesbian woman “suing Stonewall”. It was the tagline on crowdfunders, her Twitter profile (quietly removed after the case’s conclusion) and sympathetic news coverage. She did sue Stonewall. And she lost. All her claims regarding Stonewall’s supposed “malign influence” – including that the charity had directed Garden Court’s complaints process and induced the chambers to discriminate against Bailey – were rejected.

Nevertheless, Bailey and her allies are celebrating a triumph against Stonewall. This is due in part to the tenuous grip on reality that being embedded at the heart of the trans-hostile movement necessitates. But it’s also thanks to the wider war that the movement is waging on the charity.

Reputational damage.

Losing the specifics of a tribunal against Stonewall doesn’t matter. The goal instead is to delegitimise the organisation in the eyes of the mainstream by enveloping it in the stench of controversy.

No matter that it’s anti-trans activists manufacturing the stink; Stonewall derives its ability to advocate for LGBTQ+ people in the mainstream from its positioning as a ‘respectable’, rather than a radical body. It seeks reform, via the courts and House of Commons, in lieu of revolution. In supporting trans people, Stonewall threatens to give the fight for trans rights the same patina of mainstream credibility. So its reputation must be destroyed altogether.

“To most radical activists, Stonewall is anything but [radical]. It was founded to campaign for equality, within the present system, using conservative – small c – tactics,” says Shon Faye, author of bestseller The Transgender Issue.

“The anti-trans fixation comes because Stonewall is the largest, most authoritative and legitimate actor in the wider fight for equality and liberation for LGBTQ+ people. It lends trans campaigning points a lot of legitimacy within the corporate sphere, with people in parliament, with certain parts of the media and so on”.

Anti-trans campaigners are now dedicating themselves to dismantling the sense of legacy and mainstream trust built up in Stonewall as an authority on achieving LGBTQ+ equality.

A key focus for the trans-hostile movement is Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme, which sees UK employers pay a fee in order to receive support to create an inclusive workplace for LGBTQ+ staff.

According to the charity, over 900 organisations across the UK are currently fee-paying members of the scheme, which sees employers use Stonewall’s legitimacy to present their workplaces as progressive welcoming spaces. It’s just one income stream for Stonewall, which is funded via a mix of corporate and charitable donations, grants, and initiatives like the Diversity Champions programme.

Similarly, Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index (WEI) encourages employers to submit evidence of their work in “eight areas of employment policy and practice”. In return, Stonewall provides them with an assessment of their equality efforts. The 100 best-performing organisations then have the option of being celebrated publicly in Stonewall’s annual ‘Top 100 Employers’ round up (with the added bonus of taking home a shiny piece of silverware for office display).

Trans-hostile campaigners have developed a strategy to try and deter organisations from working with Stonewall via these projects: by making it too much of a hassle.

A war of attrition.

“One of the explicit goals [of the anti-trans movement] is to stop employers and organisations from working with Stonewall,” says a former Stonewall staffer who wishes to remain anonymous.“One of the ways they’ve been doing that is intimidating and scaring employers around working with Stonewall through [the likes of] court cases”.

Anti-trans campaigners have a number of tactics when it comes to discouraging people from working with Stonewall. One is costly legal cases like Bailey’s, which pulled Stonewall into an employment dispute it was judged to have no hand in but still saw itself reputationally tainted by – at least according to a hostile and misinformed press.

Practically, as well, the case has left Garden Court Chambers financially liable. Prominent anti-trans figures are already trumpeting this outcome as a warning for organisations adhering to the mythical concept of “Stonewall Law” (read: the 2010 Equality Act), despite the judgement concluding that in the relationship between Garden Court and the charity, it was Stonewall who benefitted from voluntary legal advice from the chambers.

In social media posts following the Bailey verdict, trans-hostile campaign aims were spelled out. “NO-ONE will touch your so-called ‘Diversity’ champions scheme now. Dead in the water. Close the door on the way out,” sneered lesbian writer and anti-trans activist Julie Bindel, attaching Stonewall’s official response to the judgement.

Additionally, trans-hostile campaigns like #StonewallOut and ‘Don’t Submit To Stonewall’ – which dissuades organisations from engaging with the Workplace Equality Index – operate via bombarding targets until they are too fatigued to keep up their association with the charity.

One favoured action within this tactic is the strategic use of Freedom of Information requests (FOIs). Employers and organisations required to answer FOIs find themselves on the receiving end of an onslaught of requests from anti-trans campaigners, wanting to know every facet of communication they’ve had with Stonewall, from advice received to evidence submitted to the WEI. In the first quarter of 2021, Stonewall estimated that around 900 FOI requests were sent to organisations it worked with, coordinated by blogs and forums on Mumsnet, the parenting website and “hotbed for transphobia”.

“If you’re a small public body, it can be quite scary to get an FOI,” notes the former Stonewall staffer. “But it’s also placing an extra burden of work on these employers to get across the idea that working with Stonewall isn’t worth the hassle”.

Similarly, larger more ‘traditional’ organisations begin re-evaluating the positive PR a relationship with Stonewall has historically garnered.

“By repeatedly tagging [Stonewall] as controversial – with very little substance, actually – more conservative fairweather friends within the corporate diversity inclusion sector, government and so on, will start to retreat from it because they wanted to use Stonewall to make them look good,” says Faye.

In recent months, Stonewall has seen high profile departures from the Diversity Champions programme, including University College London, Ofsted, Channel 4, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the BBC. While this hasn’t yet dampened enthusiasm for the scheme – the former Stonewall staffer says it has actually seen an increase in members – it has dealt a cultural blow to Stonewall’s legitimacy and reach.

“In effect, [trans-hostile campaigners] are trying to get employers to go back into the closet about working with LGBTQ+ people,” says the former Stonewall staffer. “They’re making it controversial to support the LGBTQ+ staff”.

In the courts, the wider trans-hostile campaign is losing the legal battle. In addition to Bailey’s case, an attempted judicial review of the EHRC’s guidance on single-sex space exemptions, brought by fellow LGB Alliance co-founder Ann Sinnott, was refused permission in May 2021. Earlier this month, a Christian doctor, who insisted on his right to misgender patients, lost his discrimination tribunal against the Department of Work and Pensions – as a belief, ‘gender criticism’ may be protected, but if it infringes upon the rights of others, there are consequences.

But the anti-trans movement is banking on winning in the court of public opinion, with the assistance of an eager media. The siege of Stonewall looks set to continue.

[nitewrighter]

Hi! Weird Dune question. Are there any specific mythos to the worms? Like, are they lovecraftian with some agenda or just animals?

I mean I could just say "In highly reductive terms, and if we're talking in terms of just the first and second books, yeah, they're just animals and the worm's only agenda is tunneling through sand and attacking the shit out of anything that makes vibrations, but also that just kind of ignores the part where they are a major cultural focus of the Fremen and one of the coolest fucking things in Dune" but where's the fun and infodumping in that?

Major spoilers for the Dune Universe up ahead!

So, here's the thing about the worms: They're not actually a native species of Arrakis. Their larval form, the Sandtrout, was introduced to Arrakis sometime before the Butlerian Jihad when the universe was being colonized. Sandtrout look like this:

And Fremen children play with them like these!

More on that later!

But the thing about Sandtrout is, they absorb water in their environment. They're what terraformed Arrakis into a desert planet by shlorping up all the moisture! Liet Kynes talks about finding fossils of sea creatures on Arrakis!! There was a sea!! But it all got sucked up by sandtrout!! And then once Sandtrout get bigger, they link up together and eventually develop a hard carapace that allows them to tunnel through the sand and grind up the sand for sand plankton! And then they vent all this superheated oxygen out between the plates of their carapace so there's like this FWOOOM smoke rushing out from between their plates when they burst out of the sand!

"But Nite," you're saying, "I was asking if the worms have an agenda. Why are you going into the weird life stages of the worms?"

So here's where we get really spoilery.

So Paul and Chani have babies (yaaaay!!! I'm not gonna talk about the sad parts!!) but due to a whole shit-ton of circumstances that we're just gonna skip over, Paul's son Leto II fakes his death and goes out into the desert and--remember the water wiggler toys? You know how you can kind of... slide them around your hand? He does that with the sand trout. They swarm around him and he does that with his whole body. And they become an exoskeleton. And this exoskeleton gives him crazy super-strength even though it's slowly eroding his human body underneath. And he can tunnel through sand and even communicate to the worms--I mean to a limited extent, he can get one to stop in its tracks. This is his metamorphosis into the God Emperor. A horrible worm-human hybrid who rules for 3500 years. So, Arrakis is already a holy site thanks to the religion established by Paul, but with more and more pilgrims coming, and with Leto taking on this fucked up God Emperor form, Arrakis gets terraformed into this oasis world, which actually kills off pretty much all of the sand worms because, fun fact, water is deadly poisonous to a fully-grown sandworm (Which I know is weird considering their larval form are all about shlorping up water). So Leto II, who is a huge giant fucked up worm-human hybrid--see figure 3--

(fig. 3)

rules for 3500 years. So as far as "Worm Agenda" goes, there is one Worm-human-hybrid, controlling the whole goddamn universe for 3500 years. And it's fucked up. His hyper-prophetic vision has totally stagnated human civilization. How can you advance, how can you catalyze change, when the person in charge sees everything coming? I mean it's kind of cool because his army of fanatical fish-speakers is all women and there's a lot of lesbian-ing, but Frank Herbert is a homophobe so he's an asshole about this. But anyway, since most of the worms have died off, Spice becomes super rare so basically we can't really explore space anymore. We become stagnated. We become fanatical. We're all fucking obsessed with Worm God Leto. But thanks to Siona Atreides, who is genetically invisible to prescience, along with a Duncan Idaho Zombie Clone and the reluctant Fish-speaker Nayla, God-Emperor Leto II falls into a river, he fucking dies, and his body dissolves into thousands of--you guessed it--sandtrout!! And over hundreds of years they re-terraform Arrakis back into hell-fuck desert!! Spice is back!! The emperor is gone!! We can explore again!!! HOWEVER!! All of these sand trout possess a small itty bitty nugget of Leto II's consciousness! They are technically his fucked up corpse babies! SO you fast forward another 1500 years, and you have one of my favorite characters in Dune, Sheeana, this kid, a descendent of fremen and probably more than a few Duncan Idaho zombie clones (you can blame Leto II for that), has just had her village destroyed by sandworms, but--this is how Sheeana learns she can control the worms.

So basically... the thing to understand here, is that worms in Dune represent a link between humans and the environment, and like, human structures of power are ultimately dependent on that link. So do not fuck with the worms! They will fuck your shit up! And if you hybridize with the worms, you will fuck the universe up for literal millennia! There are certain degrees to which the environment will react to human interference! We are a part of this environment! We are at the mercy of this environment! Don't be a dumbass!

This has been my lecture on worms.

[mollrat101]

I’ve been doing a season 2 re-watch and...I’m just going to say it. 

Deborah’s characterization gets better in the last half of the season, but I’m sorry but I literally don’t understand the character of Deborah I’m watching to be the same one I got to know in season 1. 

Things have just been adding up to the point that I just don’t get it. 

This was one of the most critical reviews of season 2 I remember seeing and this one paragraph about Deborah resonated with me.

“Smart is as sharp and bracingly funny as she was in the first season, but the progression of her personal growth backslides once she discovers Ava’s betrayal in an early episode. Despite a few moments of tenderness, she’s not only the same callous person she was before her relationship with Ava began, but she’s actively more abusive. It’s hard to believe that Ava would continue working for her given Deborah’s continual abuse regardless of their connection as artists. It also robs the show of the pleasure season one gave us by slowly peeling the layers away from this terrible person to reveal how she got the way she is. Instead, she’s just relentlessly cruel and by the time there is a glimmer of growth, the cruelty has gone on so long it’s eroded a lot of the goodwill the character had built up.”

2.04 made Deborah look snobbish and unprofessional when season 1 took pains to explain that she didn’t get that far in her career with that kind of attitude. “A gig’s a gig” after all. And yet she freaks out because she has to perform on a lesbian cruise? Are you not a professional comedian who’s worked for 40 years? But then if you try to excuse it by saying it’s because of her prejudice well that’s still bad because then that means she’s a bigot. And the show never really challenges her for this, so I guess that’s the message we’re left with? I could deal with Deborah’s prejudices if a) the show didn’t seem to try, in theory, to be “progressive” and b) if I thought they were ultimately going to be challenged or explored. 

But 2.04 also made her seem so insecure about her attractiveness and desirability which is something that’s very human and I can understand but seems over the top in the way it’s shown. There could’ve been subtler ways to portray that Deborah worries about her sexual desirability than the lesbian cruise. She just comes off as very openly desperate which...I could work with but the way I see Deborah she tries desperately to hide any feelings of vulnerability like that. @circling-back-to-it-all made a good point that this season is very loud and that includes Deborah’s character and it rings off as discordant with season 1. 

She says that Ted Kennedy is innocent? Yeah it’s a joke, but what are we supposed to learn about Deborah that she’s excusing a rich, privileged man who’s actions got a woman killed? 

It just feels like this season is like “calm down, it’s just a joke” except season 1 also recognized that jokes had meaning. That jokes sometimes revealed truths about the way people think. Take the therapist joke where Deborah tells DJ that “all therapists are pedophiles”. It seems like an outrageous joke until you see where it’s coming from in Deb’s brain. It’s Deb’s way of coping with being raped by her therapist. People have outrageous or seemingly paranoid views (especially Deborah) are explained as being how she’s coped with what she’s endured. 

But the Ted Kennedy joke doesn’t tell us anything deeper about Deb and what it does is very ugly. That apparently she will side with a rich, privileged men who committed wrong because...I don’t know because Deb just excuses people like that? Which wasn’t really a thing in season 1. Deborah usually either tried to go along with the awful biases of her industry in order to fit in and she’s internalized it or she reluctantly tried to keep her mouth shut in order to not create waves. 

Or is the joke trying to help us see that she agrees with the worldview that privileged people like her should be excused from their actions because of outside forces? That’s the feeling that I’m getting from this season. Deborah isn’t an underdog (which to be fair, she was never completely), she is a rich, privileged asshole and she’s damn proud of it. In a season where she also sues her less wealthier employee and threatens her with financial ruin, it’s not very charming, it just makes her look like a jerk. 

Deborah being a jerk wouldn’t be a problem if it was consistent. If I was always supposed to think that and never read anything deeper about her actions, then I could handle it. But that’s not the expectations they set up for me in season 1. They seemed like they wanted me to understand why this woman is the way she is. This is a woman who’s lashing out is based on self-protection and trauma. Her privilege is both a way to try to shield herself from harm and yet has also made her feel empty and not made her feel healed. This is a woman who came from nothing so, while I’m not trying to say she doesn’t have rich person’s entitlement, she also knows very well what it’s like to be at the bottom and sympathizes with those who society tends to shove to the side. 

But season 2 hasn’t focused on Deborah’s internal world very much and so now I’m shut off of understanding a lot of her actions. It just makes hard for me to sustain my sympathy for her. 

I feel like the show wants me to like this person and, in season 1, I very much did. But season 2...it’s a mixed bag. There are parts I like and feel like the character I thought I knew and then it feels like someone else. A different character who belongs in a different show and a lot of people have pointed out how season 2 kind flipped genres on us. 

It’s not that there’s nothing to like about season 2, but it doesn’t live up to the idea if you were going into this season hoping to see more of what you loved in season 1. And I fully admit, I was.