#to support the idea that trans women don’t just have it bad - they have it THE worst

[glitter-soda]

I’d like to break down my current feelings and gripes about the trans movement, both to inform my followers and maybe start a discussion.

The vast majority of trans people are relatively normal and are just trying to live their lives in peace.

Trans women are trans women. They are male, and by definition it is much more accurate to call them men than women, but I do believe they are something of a separate category. The same goes for trans men, in reverse.

Definitions like “a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman” and “a lesbian is a non-man who’s attracted to non-men” are ridiculous and frankly offensive. The word lesbian is taken. It means “female homosexual”. Literally nobody is stopping you from making your own term, so stop trying to forcibly redefine ours.

Male socialization and female socialization both exist and are important. Trans women were socialized male and trans men were socialized female.

The sheer amount of vitriol towards “terfs” and anyone else who questions anything is just…disgusting. It’s acceptable to send them graphic rape and death threats, doxx them, assault them at protests, and celebrate when they get sick or die. I don’t know how to explain that that’s not normal fucking behavior, especially since “terf” is thrown around very casually these days.

Biological women should be allowed to have spaces that don’t include any males, regardless of the purpose. Lesbian bars, female only gyms, female only domestic violence/rape shelters, and literally anything else are fine and should be allowed to exist without being vandalized or threatened with shutdowns.

The former point includes female only sports teams. Males are biologically very different from females and it should’ve be offensive to anyone to say so. Both sexes have advantages and disadvantages over the other, it just happens that many sports are designed in a way that makes it easier for males to succeed.

Abolishing female only categories in award ceremonies, scholarships, and the like in the name of inclusivity is stupid and completely forgets the reason they were established in the first place. Male bias exists and women will almost never be included because of it.

I’m not against transitioning because I believe in total bodily autonomy and find language like “mutilation” to be incredibly gross and callous. However, I think it’s bad and dangerous to be presented as the literal only treatment for dysphoria.

Children who express any form of questioning or gender nonconformity should not be immediately assumed to be trans. A little girl saying “I want to be a boy” may mean “I want the freedoms that boys have and this is the only way I know how to express it because I’m six”. For actual trans kids, puberty blockers are dangerous and minors should only be allowed to socially transition.

The entire idea of being non-binary is frankly silly to me. I believe it to mostly be a poor coping mechanism for sexist stereotypes. Again, do what you want, but don’t expect me to take you seriously.

The way a lot of information and discussions that don’t support the current trans narrative are censored or lied about online is really bad and honestly borderline cult-like. Very few people actually know what radfems believe because people are discouraged from reading anything straight from the source. The Cass Review was picked apart in bad faith and many of the articles that “sum it up” are just straight up full of false information. Detransitioners are swept under the rug and told to shut up and stop trying to ruin things when they try to talk about their experiences. The trans community needs to do better.

And most importantly:

I do not want trans people dead. I believe in my heart of hearts that the vast majority of actual radfems and gender criticals do not want trans people dead. Neither ideology is hateful or inherently against trans people.

(Y’all just hate being told “no”.)

(Also I probably forgot something, so feel free to ask or discuss idk)

[trans-androgyne]

I feel a lot of belief that “trans women obviously have it worse than trans men” it comes from assuming men & women are opposites & that their experiences must be opposite as well. As in, if trans women experience one thing, trans men must experience the opposite—but that’s not how it works in practice. Trans women are demonized and sexualized doesn’t mean trans men aren’t as well. Trans women feeling less safe after transition doesn’t mean trans men feel more safe. And transmasculinity being considered disgusting mutilation doesn’t translate to the opposite for transfemininity! I just wish we would stop comparing experiences as though they can be quantified & pitted against one another.

[cock-holliday]

TIR/F arguments are often even stupider than TER/F arguments because of how much they want to bend rigid ideas to fit a new narrative but still be rigid in exclusion. The E’s insist biological determinism. You are born a man, you are born a woman. Biology makes us totally separate from each other. You are innately something and cannot change.

The I’s try to bend that idea around progressive language. Womanhood is something to reject or embrace, but then there is still an inherent good/bad dichotomy. To the I’s, your worth is in not being a man. But what is a man, then? The E’s stake their whole politic around a supposedly rigid definition of Woman™️ but then so do the I’s! On the surface it is rejecting maleness but what is male? Is it masculinity? Is it facial hair? Is it he/him pronouns? Is it a penis but we’ll pretend it’s not cause as long as I can pretend you don’t have one then welcome to the sisterhood (you’re on thin ice)

Trans women are good because they do not want to be men, but I get to decide what “man” means and if you fly too close then you’re a predator(y man) trying to trick us into letting you in

Trans men are bad because they reject the gift of womanhood and want to abandon their oppression in favor of supremacy and no matter how cruel my “punching up” at them becomes, if they cry, they are being hysterical (women), but maybe I can save them from themselves if they repent before me forever

Trans women cannot experience antimasculism because they’re NOT men, how dare you? I support trans women so long as they aspire to cisfemininity, and if they don’t, what’s wrong with a little smear campaign? Why don’t you let us police your body you sex freak? Got something to hide?

Trans men cannot experience misogyny, only trans women do, how dare you you transmisogynist? To prove that they don’t, any trans man who doesn’t take it lying down is a whiny (girl) cunt (boycunt?) who revels in victimhood and uses his woman tears to get out of a callout.

The way that trans people are attacked is tied to assigned (or perceived) birth assignment. We are misgendered and assaulted, even by other trans people who align with ra/df/em politics. It is a poisoned well that you cannot unpoison.

It is fine to talk about your own experiences or how they relate to systems of oppression but reinforcing a binary of “therefore the opposite doesn’t experience this” rather than continuing to blur the lines between “man” and “woman” strengthens the arguments of transphobes.

Trans men you can’t woobify also get smeared as predators. Trans women who don’t drive a hard line between themselves and trans men are accused of being ‘AFABs’ and experience a weird form of misogyny that cannot decide if you’re a girl or boy but you’re definitely a whiny bitch. Intersex and nonbinary folks who muddy the waters of distinct sexes and genders are ignored or cast aside or painted as appropriators and ‘transtrenders.’ We cannot even just discuss our experiences because everyone is assigned at birth and by tumblr dot gov to “basically boy” or “basically girl.”

It serves no one to pretend our experiences as trans people are so unique from each other when we are proof of the flexibility of identity and presentation.

We are at any given time one step away from being painted as predators or waifs, whiny bitches or scary men. We are taking up too much space, we challenge too much, and are all a third gender category until transphobes (cis and trans alike) decide how to categorize us.

If we cannot learn to appreciate the spectrum of experiences and struggles and see ourselves in “the other” AGAB and instead continue to reinvent “men vs women but enlightened this time” we are going to lose

[unhinged-transmasc-man]

(This is a very long post, but worth reading)

Being a trans man is bizarre. Because you grow up being treated as a girl and sexualized as one, mocked and diminished and dismissed as one. “Oh you’re just a whiny little hysterical girl, shut up.” You’re constantly gaslit about your interests and experiences and trauma. You know what it looks like when someone sees you as small and insignificant, unworthy of listening to. You have femininity forced onto you and get punished if you disobey. If you’re Asian, you’re even more sexualized and infantilized due to fetishization. And if you’re black or brown, society never considered you innocent to begin with. You’ve been an adult from the moment you were born. Being socialized as having a white girlhood is a very particular experience. But if you’re on the internet and in queer spaces you learn that femininity is always really good, actually, that it never punishes anyone, and that you can be anyone except a man. You can be a lesbian, you can be non-binary, you can be butch, you can be transmasc, as long as you don’t Step Over The Line to being a man. As long as you Stay Good. These ideas slowly creep into your head and stay there, sometimes being what keeps you from realizing you’re a man.

And then you realize you’re a man. And you still have all those experiences, you’ve still been hurt by misogyny in the same way, you’ve still had violence enacted upon you. But now it’s somehow worse, because the same people who supported you when you were butch, or a lesbian, or transmasc but not a man, suddenly they’re gone. You can see the distaste they have for you. Suddenly those “jokes” about men you and others made out of pressure and internalized self-hate affect you, and it hurts. So you speak up, say that actually, you’re a man and you’re not bad. And they laugh at you. They say that either “oh we didn’t mean YOU,” or “if you’re a man, then you’re included.” And what are you supposed to say to that? Either all men are evil but you’re not evil so you can’t be one, or you become a victim of a kind of violence resulting from 2010s Buzzfeed “progressive” gender essentialist bullshit “feminism”, where you have to tolerate demonization of your identity as a man to be acknowledged as a man. Sometimes you’ll take it, because you want to be seen as a man so bad that even being complicit in your own dehumanization is better than being forced into womanhood. (I’m also talking about you, pick-me trans guys. If you grew out of it, good in you, but this may be a wake up call you need.)

So you go on the internet for a supportive trans community and you find that things have shifted since you thought you were still an identity of Not A Man. You still have the same experiences, but now you can’t complain about them. People call you “a whiny hysterical little girl,” but in different words. Now you’re “an aggressive toxic man.” Keep in mind, you’re still regularly misgendered and treated as a girl offline, but that doesn’t matter to these people. You’ve crossed that line, and now you’re Bad, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t talk about experiences, you can’t talk about prejudice, you can’t talk about issues that uniquely affect trans men. You can’t talk about how cis women throwing a tantrum at inclusive reproductive language is at words meant to include trans men, not trans women. You can’t talk about how afab socialization still effects you, that it keeps you from speaking out at this very moment. You can’t talk about the rate of violence, or of murder, or of sexual assault. Suddenly the people who know full well how inherently violent it is to misgender trans women in death are saying “but terfs like trans men, they just want to save you, you don’t die like we do,” and you don’t know what to say. Because it’s so untrue.

You know exactly how terfs attack trans men, all the fear-mongering about “poor autistic lost lesbians,” and “amputating healthy breasts and fertility,” and “internalized misogyny, they did this to escape the patriarchy.” You know the fear-mongering about it and where it comes from, because you’ve seen it from the day you were born. It’s the language of putting men who they see as deviant women back in their place. And yet no one besides you and other trans men seem to see it. When JK Rowling comes out with her transphobic manifesto, she talks just as much about trans men as she does trans women. And yet the only response you see to her is “trans women are women!!!!”. And generally, that’s the only response you ever see to any type of transphobia. That trans women are women. This gets so ingrained that anyone other than you is completely unprepared for how to defend trans men against transphobia, because they think transphobia only affects trans women and don’t understand the unique language. It also doesn’t help that most of them already believe the same things (mainly, that being a man is Bad and Not Progressive) and they can’t argue against what they believe.

And so here you are, still experiencing misogyny and violence, still being misgendered and threatened, uniquely in danger for being visibly trans, but you can’t talk about it now. Because you use he/him now, and that makes you evil. Other trans people, who are supposed to be your family, think you’re evil. They project their hatred of cis men and masculinity onto you, and you’re bewildered. You realize they can accept you for being trans, but they can’t accept you for being a man.

They’ll try and get you to separate those parts, say nonsense like “all transphobia is only based on trans women,” when you know for a fact it affects people in different ways. If you say telling all men to die is problematic, they’ll call you transmisogynistic and sexist as though you don’t know misogyny like the back of your hand. You try telling people who have been dehumanized for being trans that you don’t want to be dehumanized for what makes you trans, and get demonized even further. You get the worst combination of all. You get diminished and mocked and condescended and dismissed, “Oh you’re just a whiny little hysterical girl, shut up,” turns into “Oh you’re just a whiny little hysterical man. Stop speaking over women.” You’re still constantly gaslit about your interests and experiences and trauma, because liking masculinity is seen as bad now that you’ve realized you’re a man. You know what it looks like when someone sees you as small and insignificant, unworthy of listening to (especially as growing up as a Jewish girl, and now a Jewish man). They see you as not only small and insignificant, unworthy of listening to, but they justify it with your identity. Before, it was that “women” weren’t worthy of being listened to because they were stupid and insignificant, and now it’s that you’re a man, and men shouldn’t talk about their experiences fear because they’re Evil. You had femininity forced onto you and got punished if you disobeyed, and now you get that again! But now you’re a “toxic man” if you hate being misgendered. You get the misogyny of being treated like a woman and the demonization of being a man, and you can’t talk about either. “You can’t complain now,” they say, “you asked for this. You chose this.”

They use the same language of those “he’s only pulling your hair because he likes you” teachers (“terfs want to forcibly detransition you bc they care about you”) or “you were asking for it” adults after being catcalled for the first time at age 12 (“you chose to be a man”) or the same fucking language as terfs, who they claim to hate. They use this same language, except now it’s a chance for them to project their trauma with masculinity onto you. You learn a lot of people only hate terfs because they don’t include trans women, not because they’re fascists who believe in innate gender essentialism and that your genitals determine everything about you. You learn a lot of trans people are terfs. In everything but name, they are. They believe in gender essentialism, in radical feminism, that all men are evil, just including trans women. In their view, they slot trans women into the status of white womanhood as eternal victims, and trans men into the status of white manhood as eternal oppressors. Except that doesn’t work.

(Not to mention that non-binary people can also be men or/and women, and are entirely left out in all of this except to fit into this oppression point calculator developed in a previous un-invented circle of discourse hell)

You find a small circle of trans men and mascs talking about the same stuff you’re talking about. You realize that realizing you’re a trans man means you have to become an activist for trans men. Every word you think of to describe your own experiences is, again, mocked and dismissed. You’re gaslit even more heavily than you were before, by the same people who claim you have power over them. People who have never talked to a trans man in good faith spread misinformation, that testosterone is easy to get (it’s actually harder to get than estrogen because it’s a level three substance that results in a felony if taken without a prescription), that it’s poison (and maybe it was for them, but they say it as a universal statement), that all trans men worry about is misgendering, ignoring the very real violence against us specifically for being TRANS MEN. And you die a little inside and grow very disillusioned and alienated from other trans people. You notice that traits of a testosterone-induced puberty are demonized even when that hurts trans women, and you notice any trans women who try to speak up are silenced, just as you are. And it hurts. Where is the community in this?

But still, you have your own community, slowly raising awareness for these things. You dust off your skills you got from validating yourself from harm from your abusive mother, and put on that same shield you used against abusive cis boys in high school who made period jokes and said cis lesbians just wanted to be men. You use the language to describe your own oppression that you know to be true. You use “transandrophobia” and “anti masculinity” without apology. You’re not going to apologize, flutter your lashes and give a nervous laugh the way you did for cis men when you were in danger, to other trans people about transphobia. Not anymore, not now, and not ever again. You work through your own self-hatred of masculinity that the queer “community” fully endorses and practices daily, and realize that being a man is good, actually. You start defining your own ideal of masculinity, and start being your own role model of what you want to be as a man.

You’re on testosterone and see it demonized daily by other trans people, and see that what gives you happiness is mocked as what makes you unlovable and disgusting. It hurts, but you learn to brush them aside. Solidarity is important, you’ve always known this. Sometimes you can get through to people, who will realize they’re hurting you and stop. But some people won’t, and will victimize themselves eternally. That’s not your fault, and the emotional labor you carried over from being raised as a girl means you especially need to hear this. That’s not your job. Not because women should have that job, but because no one should have to do more work than is equal. You are trans because you are a man, and so your manhood cannot be separated from your transness. Other people practicing transphobia against you is their fault, not yours.

You start to learn that damn, the patriarchy really does effect men from how other queer people treat you. Because people, especially women (both cis and trans) start treating you like a non-human robot, an emotional punching bag. That’s if they don’t demonize you entirely. But still, you have your community, you’re transitioning, and you’re happy. You start growing into your manhood and masculinity, really growing into it. And there are times when you’re really, really happy. You decide to make your own representation. Don’t let anyone take that away from you, fellow trans men. You are handsome, you are strong, you are resilient. Your are courageous and lovely and kind. You are worthy of love not despite being a man, but because you are a man. It’s been hard, it’ll be hard. But it’s worth it to be a man.

(This ended up being a long post, a combination of what started out as a rant and turned into more of a personal journey narrative. I want to make people feel heard. You are valid. It’s not just in your head, they are gaslighting you. You aren’t sensitive, you aren’t dramatic, you aren’t toxic, and you aren’t whiny. You’re a trans man who wants to be known as a man without being demonized for it. Never be afraid to speak up against transphobia, especially when it’s from other trans people. They should know better, it is not your fault. I love you. I’ve also learned more about multigender people and intersex people, but I can’t speak to their experience at all and so didn’t want to misrepresent. But I can only imagine it’s even more complicated and hard for you, so you get even more love and support <333)

(If you’re not a trans man or transmasc reading this, and you support it, thank you. This was specifically about trans men because it’s the man part people really demonize, and transmasc as an identity is still seen as “safe” because it’s “not a man”. For supportive trans women and transfems, I love you. Keep speaking up for us. But for anyone who comes at this in bad faith, re-evaluate why you feel attacked. Are you perpetuating harm against trans men? Are you continuing gender essentialism but justify it because you have a marginalized identity? Are you projecting your trauma against cis men, men in general, and masculinity against people who can’t fight back? Reflect and grow the fuck up. Are you a trans man who’s bought into dehumanizing yourself so you can be seen as “one of the good ones”? Are you a white trans woman weaponizing your newfound sense of white womanhood onto trans men, especially non-white trans men? Reflect on how demonizing men and masculinity as inherently predatory and dangerous effects jewish men, black men, brown men, disabled men, and Asian men. And maybe just white cishet men as well!!! They’re also people!!!! Being a man isn’t inherently a bad thing. You should be mad at systems, not people, and individuals when they perpetuate harm. Being marginalized in one area doesn’t mean you can claim to be the voice of the community while hurting members of the community you supposedly consider yourself apart of.)

[daisylark]

My favorite thing with troons is seeing them embarrass themselves by showing the world how ignorant they are. The main thing is that almost all are "anti capitalist, counter culture baddies 💅" and yet.... Gender ideology is the pinnacle of capitalism. You don't even have to be against capitalism to understand that. The basis of "gender affirming care" is LITERALLY TO BUY SOMETHING LOL it's literally about buying products and procedures to be happy and to rely on external validation. A normal actual woman can find actual fulfillment and happiness through rejecting consumerism, she can even save money on hygiene products (a need) by using menstrual cups. A normal actual woman seeking happiness will understand makeup and almost all branded skincare marketed products are scams, they are not necessary to live life. And yet to be trans, you have to buy things to specifically "affirm" a gender you'll never be. It's to willingly be a lifelong Big Pharma patient and to get plastic surgery when you have the option not to- because you can't possibly reject the idea that a product or procedure will not make you happy. They go the extra mile and lie to themselves, saying it's a medical necessity. When in reality, it's gender stereotypes brought on by capitalism causing them to feel like they must conform. All mainstream media, including corps like Disney, support trans nonsense and shill out advertising for it. Yet that never raises any alarm bells in their eyes. They instead eat it up like candy, acting like their lives are being saved. "Here's a problem that you didn't know existed until now and here's a solution on how to fix it".

What may be the saddest part is that all that money is spent and most of them still don’t even get the results they are hoping for. Most of these plastic surgeons are fully taking advantage of these people, just like they take advantage of women, and promising things that are just impossible. But we’re the bad guys for pointing that out.

[jaggedteeth]

as the u.s. tour comes to a close, i want to take a moment to talk about a phenomenon i’ve seen taking place within mcr internet fan spaces these last few months, my thoughts on it, and how i think it relates back to digital media literacy.

(before we start, i want to make it clear that i’m just some guy and i am definitely not the most qualified person to talk about this, but i think some of the things in this post really, really need to be said. my hope is not necessarily to change your mind or to “get you on my side,” but to encourage you to think critically and independently, even during your daily scroll on social media.)

————

so, what is this ominous phenomenon i’m talking about? i’m referring to some of the comments i’ve seen mcr fans make regarding gerard’s gender—specifically the public, speculative, and seemingly unironic ones that attempt to put a label or a semblance of a label on his gender nonconformity.

(i think now’s a good time to mention you should read this entire post before engaging with or commenting on it. stay with me. we’re in this together.)

here is a post that i think does a good job of explaining this a little more in-depth for anyone who’s out of the loop.

regardless of my personal opinions on all of this, i understand why it’s happening. much of mcr’s fanbase is trans and/or non-binary, and seeking out representation from familiar, comforting figures is not out of the ordinary. i don’t think anyone involved means harm, and this isn’t a callout post. i’m just adding to a discussion i think has been largely one-sided up until recently.

————

what is the point of me making this post? to put it bluntly, i disagree with how much of the discussion around gerard’s gender identity and expression is being conducted.

(again, please stay with me.)

what is it, specifically, that i disagree with? is it the celebration of gerard’s gender nonconformity? is it the possibility they might not identify, partially or wholly, with their gender assigned at birth? is it the joy their gender expression has inspired in many mcr fans?

no. it’s none of those things; not even close. i can’t even put into words how i, a gender nonconforming trans man, felt when gerard wore his cheerleader dress in nashville. it was a special moment and i was so happy to see him happy.

but something that bothers me about the “gender wars” narrative is the idea that anyone who’s not all-in is, if not an outright transphobe, someone with deep-rooted biases they need to work through. i haven’t seen this from everyone, but it’s floated around here and there.

nuance in conversations like this is incredibly important. the human experience is rarely black and white. and i believe the notion that it must be, especially when it comes to topics such as queer identity, largely stems from closed-mindedness and fear, conscious or unconscious.

i have certainly witnessed people online assert that gerard must be cis, and there’s no way he can’t be cis, implying if he ever identified as anything other than cis that would be bad and gross and weird. i strongly disagree with that viewpoint because it’s transphobic and gerard is a real person who none of us know personally who can do whatever the fuck he wants. in the same way, i disagree with the viewpoint that gerard must be trans, and there’s no way he can’t be trans, implying anyone who disagrees is a transphobe who refuses to pay attention. because gerard is a real person who none of us know personally who can do whatever the fuck he wants.

i’m aware gerard has also made comments in the past about his journey with gender identity, the connection he feels to women and femininity, and even his experimentation with drag while he was in college. he’s said he should be referred to with either he/him or they/them pronouns, he’s an earnest supporter of the trans community, and he’s historically rejected the sexist shithead rock-dude stereotype.

i’m not here to downplay any of those things, nor am i trying to invalidate anyone who has taken comfort in or identified with those things. just a couple of points i would like you to think about, though:

some cis people also question their gender identity and/or use multiple sets of pronouns for a multitude of reasons (i’m not saying gerard has to be cis, i’m just giving you an extra viewpoint to chew on);

i’ve personally met plenty of men or male-aligned people who strongly identify with women and femininity. i strongly identify with women and femininity and i’m still 100% a trans man and will throw anyone who tries to tell me otherwise directly into the sun (again, i’m not saying gerard must be a man or male-aligned);

gender nonconformity and transness are complex, nuanced topics. labels can be useful, but they are not a be-all-end-all;

and i’m going to be blunt here—assuming and/or declaring someone is transfem when they haven’t publicly referred to themselves as such, just because they are comfortable discussing their own femininity and sometimes have a feminine presentation and feminine mannerisms, is basically an upgraded form of gender essentialism and completely disregards the existence and experiences of amab cis-passing queer people and gender nonconforming people. i understand it’s a tough pill to swallow, but intent doesn’t always equal impact, and just because someone may not see it that way doesn’t mean that’s not what they’re doing.

even if gerard is transfem, he’s still a real person who has a right to privacy and autonomy, and he never has to publicly label himself if he doesn’t want to. no one is entitled to seek out the details of his identity, but least of all us, a bunch of strangers on the internet who will probably never have a full conversation with him.

not one of us is an “authority” or “expert” on gerard way or my chemical romance. we can learn about the band’s history and public personas or laugh at the funny, quirky parts of their lore or cry when we think about how far they’ve come in the public eye, but what gives us the right to dig into every tiny crevice of gerard’s work and interactions and public existence searching for “clues” as to whether or not he’s trans? what gives us the right to label his gender identity for him—a process that is incredibly personal? i know “parasocial” is basically just another hollow internet buzzword at this point, but let’s not forget the very real consequences that parasocial relationships can certainly have.

do i think it would be fucking awesome if gerard came out as trans tomorrow? absolutely. do i also think it’s fucking awesome that they’re an older gnc person? that so many queer people have discovered and accepted themselves in part because of them? that they now exude joy onstage and bravely dress and act the way they do? one million times yes. and we can celebrate those real, concrete, factual things without tinhatting, overstepping boundaries, or jumping to conclusions. if they were to come out as trans tomorrow, that wouldn’t invalidate any of my arguments or make the behavior i’m critiquing acceptable, because the point isn’t about whether or not gerard is trans, the point is about how some of mcr’s fanbase is treating them.

gerard has uplifted and respected us time and time again without even knowing us as individuals. so i want you to take a moment to sincerely reflect and ask yourself this question: where is our respect for him?

————

alright. i’m glad you’re still here. let’s talk about what can actually be done about this.

i think a lot of this problem boils down to a lack of critical thinking. yes, that’s thrown around a lot as a clapback on this website, but i don’t mean it as an insult. we’re all guilty of not thinking critically, myself included. especially in the age of the internet, it’s impossible to be perfect all the time, when we’re bombarded with information from every angle.

this is why learning about and consistently practicing media literacy is so important. it’s something i’m passionate about because i’ve seen firsthand, time and time again, how it can make or break a person and their worldview, to the point that i spent hours writing about it for my upper-level journalism courses (before i dropped out lol) and worked for two semesters as an editor for a college newspaper.

if these conversations about gerard were happening in private group chats between friends who already know one another, my opinions on the topic itself would still stand, but it wouldn’t be any of my business and i obviously wouldn’t think to write an entire post about it. but everything changes when these discussions are had on a public platform with little regard for nuance.

“misinformation,” or the unintentional spread of false information—not to be confused with disinformation, where the person spreading it knows what they’re saying isn’t true—might not be a totally accurate descriptor for some of what’s going on here, honestly. none of us can prove what gerard is thinking or feeling. but based on what we do know, what he’s publicly and concretely shared with us, i think it’s as close as we can get. a lot of the posts i’ve seen don’t read to me as “hehe funny celebrity headcanon that’s obviously just for fun.” or even “i relate to this person’s art and/or publicized experiences, but i understand i don’t know them and at least some of that is just projection.” rather, they seem to make invasive leaps and use inaccurate vocabulary while simultaneously taking themselves very, very seriously, and that concerns me more than if a random tumblr user was just trolling to start fandom drama or something.

to put things into perspective, this is why every single one of my journalism professors drilled it into my head that you have to get your news from multiple sources. those sources must have differing perspectives and you need to look at every single one with a critical eye, no matter how trustworthy they may seem (listen, i get it’s way more complicated than that and i could go off on a whole other tangent about the glaring problems with mainstream news media in the united states and not in a cringefail right-wing way, but this is an mcr blog, so let’s just focus on the basic principle here).

obviously, i don’t think anyone should engage with transphobes unless it’s for the sake of making stronger counter-arguments, because their beliefs are provably harmful and false. but someone making good-faith criticisms of speculating about a stranger who has not publicly come out as trans and/or non-binary is markedly different. i’m not the only person who’s written something like this, and i encourage everyone to seek out similar posts and think about the points they’re making, even if you don’t agree with every single one of them.

this speculative commentary on gerard’s identity has spread like wildfire and created a polarizing echo chamber, from what i’ve seen. i understand why. but it’s still deeply worrying to me. seeing as this is primarily happening on tumblr, i’m concerned less because i think gerard will ever see or care about these posts (that’s obviously still important, though), and more because of what this says about how people in mcr fanspaces view celebrities they feel strongly about and engage with information they see online at large.

please do research on digital media literacy, and please use reputable sources with authority on journalism and communications to do so. don’t take what you see on social media at face value. don’t trust any one social media user to feed you commentary or shape your viewpoints, and that includes me. read with a critical eye. think about the possible implications and intentions behind the words other people use, big or small, and why those might be there. be aware of your own biases and blindspots. remember that you’ll never be perfect, not even close. and while you’re at it, learn more about the experiences of gnc people, and the experiences of queer people of all different ages, backgrounds, cultures, races, identities, perspectives, lived experiences, etcetera. if you can, engage in diverse irl lgbtq+ spaces. they put things into perspective in a way the internet never will.

but i still use tumblr in 2022, so what do i know?

————

if there’s anything you think i overlooked or misconstrued in this post, tell me! i want this to be a living, breathing conversation, not a monologue. these are important issues and they deserve our time and attention. thank you so much for reading.

[enbycrip]

I need people to stop telling trans binary and nonbinary people who vent about their family forgetting or not using their pronouns or chosen names to “just cut them out of their lives if they can’t respect who you are”.

*Lots* of us are disabled. I really depend on help from my folks to manage my life when things are bad.

But, frankly, even if I didn’t - I’m not going to cut my folks, or the rest of my family, out of my life, because things they do hurt me. Because they do, sometimes right to the heart for things I don’t think they realise mean a lot to me, but that *doesn’t* stop me loving them. Nor them loving me. My folks are also right at the limit of their capacity caring for three people to different extents, and that doesn’t give them a lot of capacity to spare for learning or processing stuff they don’t necessarily see as all that important.

Trans folk, and disabled folk, which have a big crossover in the middle of the Venn Diagram there, are socially marginalised and isolated. Lots of trans and disabled people are literally cut out by their families for being who they are, and that is a big, big cause of marginalisation and isolation.

The idea that the rest of us should just do that to ourselves when people we love hurt us by not understanding who we are - and this stuff *isn’t* actually that easy to learn for people outside the queer, disabled or queer disabled communities if they’re not incredibly motivated to do so - is incredibly fucking damaging and, to be absolutely honest, a complete cop-out by people who are not willing to put up with the emotional labour of understanding that most lives are not simple, and marginalised people have to constantly deal with trade-offs in most areas.

I don’t remotely mean that people should put up with abuse if they have the capacity to leave that situation. But people need to expand their understanding to a) behaviour that hurts us is not necessarily the same as abuse, and b) marginalised people *are* frequently stuck in abusive situations, and this sort of absolute “leave or shut up” attitude people are so keen to put out online further traps and isolates marginalised people who are stuck, instead of giving them emotional support and, hopefully, physical and informational support too.

The idea that we can simply and easily withdraw from parts of our social network without it costing us something vital is incredibly privileged, and incredibly dangerous.

We talk so much in environmental and social movements about building community. We always talk about it in this purely positive light. I need people to start engaging with the fact that real, as opposed to idealised, community, is a multifaceted thing, and all the more so for people who are intersectionally marginalised - anywhere at the crossover point of queer, disabled, BIPOC, trans, neurodivergent, migrant, and other things. We are communal creatures by nature, but, frankly, capitalism has done a *lot* to break that up, and to prevent us from learning the skills of negotiation and existing in community as equitably as possible. And that includes in small communities like families.

Part of that, frankly, *is* letting people have vent spaces. Without necessarily jumping in to problem solve unless people *ask* for that. Venting is literally one of the ways that people move towards problem solving themselves - it not only lets them express emotion they may not have the space to express properly in the situation that’s causing it, but it starts letting them lay a situation out and put it in perspective. And online venting is great, tbh. It stops individual people from becoming sole venting spaces, the emotional labour of which falls disproportionately on women and femme-read people. And it means that, if you don’t have the spoons to hold that space for people, you can scroll by.

I absolutely do *not* find this stuff easy. At all. I am *way* too autistic for that. That’s why I work *hard* at this stuff.

We *need* communities. We are communal primates. It’s what we are and what we do. And, frankly, we need to get better at being in community with each other to build the future we need to survive. Capitalism and oligarchy has been far too fucking effective at pushing a narrative of individualism which ignores our responsibilities as humans - to each other and to the planet we live on. We need to learn to see the costs of isolation and being isolated, and learn the skills of supporting each other and negotiating with each other.

And, absolutely honestly, if someone *is* in a situation where they do need to walk away from a relationship (of any kind), they will be *so* much better able to do so if they have a community of genuine support from others around them.

[pansy-picnics]

Helloooo I just wanted to say that your trans Varian art is very special and comforting to me <3 it gives me warm soft feelings and it always makes my day thank you very much. The little details you include like what he uses to bind and his family supporting him and also him feeling comfortable enough to take his binder off at the end of the day or around certain people just makes me feel so seen and happy <3 I hope you have a lovely day

AUGHHGJGG THANK YOUUUU you have no IDEA how happy these kinds of comments make me,,,, 🥹🥹🥹🥹 i don’t even really identify my gender myself and im definitely not transmasc but varian is just So violently transgender to me and it doesn’t feel right to not portray him that way. i put a lot of effort into my portrayal of it so when ppl say my art makes them feel seen i literally. scream and cry and throw up /pos

and YES you get it omfg…..the little freak plagues my mind constantly he is SO loved and supported by his family. he’s a very practical guy to me so unless he’s going out for work or has visitors or something he can’t really be bothered to get dressed up or bind. he used to when he first started working in the castle,, but now he feels a lot more comfortable there and if he’s just gonna be hanging around at home he’s not gonna go through all the extra effort. and him feeling safe enough to do that is SO important to me!!!!! it makes me so unbelievably happy that people are able to notice all those details and i’m just so,,, oughggghh

ALSO!! the detail of the binder in particular is actually one of my favorite things i haven’t really gotten a chance to talk about it here…..i’m kind of a history nerd also and although tts doesn’t really have a set time period (and i honestly don’t want it to), i enjoy adding in some historical references here in there cuz i just think it makes the world feel a lot more immersive. but heres a fun fact for you if you want to read:

most modern binders are made up of some kind of nylon or spandex, both of which weren’t invented until around the 1930s or 50s. most people use bandages to portray trans characters in fantasy settings, but bandages by themselves wouldn’t really do much unless they were compressive, and compressive bandages as we know them today also weren’t invented until around WW2. THIS is where corsets come in.

corsets get a rlly bad rep most of the time honestly, because for some reason most people are still convinced they were like. medieval torture devices. and they were used to promote a slim silhouette a lot of the time but so were a LOT of other garments!! corsets alone were undergarments worn on a day to day basis, both by rich and working class women and even by some men in the victorian era. they were just used the same way we wear bras today!! it wasn’t any different!!!

but boned garments like this also had the ability to shape and form the body, and though obviously i can’t confirm anyone was making corset binders in the 1800s people have been able to make modern replicas with similar materials that have almost the exact same effect as a modern chest binder, which tells us that it would’ve been completely possible for someone to hide their chest with a corset like garment AND!! it was quite literally PROVEN to us during the 1920s flapper era!!!

i could go on and on about the flapper era and it’s influence on the general social culture but basically, a LOT of inherent gender roles were being challenged, so women were wearing shorter skirts and haircuts, and women’s fashion trends in general started to take on a much more androgynous silhouette to reflect that. a boxy, more boyish shape was actually strived for and a lot of women with larger chests would wear bodices advertised as “bust reducers” to create this appearance, a lot of which were made with similar materials to corsets of the time!!!

they obviously aren’t exactly the same as a binder we would have today but its shockingly similar i think, and it’s just neat to know that people really have been doing this stuff for centuries :’3

[genderkoolaid]

I wasn’t asking you to give anyone a chance, I was moreso asking if you noticed that your discomfort immediately lead to being fine with ostricization/blacklisting of certain people based either because they follow someone problematic or solely on ~vibes~

Accuse me of being sus. I don’t… really care? I support trans rights. I support gender abolition. We all should have the right to unbiased medical information & the ability to medically transition if we choose. I don’t really need to justify myself or for you to believe me, but your FAQ literally talks about the association fallacy so your prev reply kinda surprised me.

I've been dealing with a lot of TERF harassment lately, which is why I reacted how I did.

The thing that makes me uncomfortable with this is the idea that people are being ostracized because they follow someone "problematic" or on "vibes" which is massively downplaying the harm of TERFs & the way that cryptoterfs exist specifically to radicalize people, and do so using these exact talking points.

At best, the way you talk about this issue makes me feel that you don't understand the extent of the harm TERF transphobia does to trans people. At worst, this is bait. And that's not an insane thing to think, because I personally have gotten bait asks from TERFs a lot. Asking "don't you think that ostracizing people for just posting some quotes with outdated language & having bad vibes is bad, especially when they talk about real issues facing women?" does not give me very much faith in you. "I support trans people & gender abolition" is also stuff I've heard from "nice" radfems who are "just asking questions" (also, for the record, I am not pro-gender abolition).

If this ask is genuine, then all I have to say is: maybe consider why you're genuine question is indistinguishable from TERF talking points. I have too few spoons atm to, like, give a detailed and careful explanation of why I disagree with you.

[cyberatioum]

TW: abuse, lovebombing, intoxication, rape

A couple months ago I was a “baeddel” in the sense that I believed in the idea that trans men are inherently less trustworthy due to their “male privilege” while trans women were inherently more trustworthy due to experiencing misogyny. I believed that I, as a trans man, feeling afraid of the “strength” of my ex’s feelings for me was due to my “inherent transmisogyny,” and of her manipulating me while drunk and high was simply a mistake that she may have made due to her personal issues. I believed that I shouldn’t “jump the gun” because she’s trans and my actions may be fueled by transmisogyny versus legitimate concern for my safety.

That led to me being raped. I ignored the signs because I believed that my concern would only be fueled by my “inherent transmisogyny” because of being a trans man and that because she was a trans woman, she was inherently more safe. Whenever someone belittles the importance of you spreading awareness, use me as an example of it all going wrong.

Of course being a trans woman doesn’t make someone “more likely to be a rapist” and that’s true for trans men. Just pay attention to red flags and don’t trust people who say any stranger can be inherently more trustworthy because of the type of person they are, it’s just as discriminatory as saying the reverse, that people are inherently unsafe.

I cross posted a post about this whole situation I’ve experienced, and of course…what I said was demeaned and belittled because I used the term “baeddel.” Using that term was more important to people on twitter than me being raped, and saying that the ideology they support, gender essentialism, led me to ignoring the red flags and being raped.

Sorry for the not so happy message, but I want more people to hear my story so some people may come across this and learn from my mistakes instead of being forced to learn the lesson themselves.

Thank you for this testimonial ⁠♡. I'm sorry for everything that happened to you, I hope you feel better..

This shows once again that the essentialization of manhood/maleness as bad, dangerous, and womanhood/femaleness as good, safe, is a dangerous practice with oppressive effects that should no longer be tolerated, especially in anti-oppression spaces. It's still shocking to see some transfems practicing their own version of terfism but against transmascs. Terfs and some queer transmisogynists do exactly the same thing against them, but instead of essentializing male gender identity as bad and dangerous, they essentialize "amabness" as such. It's not hard to understand, baeddels could develop some empathy for transmascs given that they experience a similar situation with terfs, but their gender essentialism blinds them...

For some reason, they want to fight gender essentialism with more gender essentialism..

[beanghostprincess]

Dipping in and saying transfem Sanusop is great but also just that transmasc Sanji has just a real special place in my heart. He’d probably join the crew already transitioned, just because I can easily see Zeff just being immediately supportive of his boy, and nobody ever questions Sanjis gender ever. He’s „blackleg“, „pervert“, „lovecook“ Sanji and nothing is ever gonna change that. Enter Sanuso tough and things get more complicated because Sanjis ideas of what makes a man are weird and nonsensical at times and him being a „ladies man“ is something he prided himself in and now he has to come to terms with the fact that: No, most straight men don’t regularly think about what it would be like to be in a fulfilling relationship with another man, no not even to „just see what it’s like“, most straight men don’t get those types of butterfly’s around their best friend. And poor Sanji is having an internal struggle because a weird part inside him feels like this somehow invalidates his gender. Bad times and dysphoria all around. Usopp may actually even already know that Sanji likes him back but doesn’t know how to proceed past this issue. He wants to tell Sanji that he loves him, that he would love for him to be his boyfriend, but nothings worth putting Sanji trough a mental breakdown and the thought that them being together would somehow make Sanji feel like a „false man“ is just horrific to him. In my mind they navigate trough it eventually just because I love fluff, but they have a slow burn type of relationship with lots of two steps forwards one step backwards types of progress.

Oh, I absolutely love this.

I've said it already a couple of times, but even if I'm very fond of transfem Sanji, I think transmasc Sanji works just as well with his character and story. He's so trans that no matter what you like, you're probably going to be right. Unless you think he's cis. Then you're definitely wrong. He's trans in every way possible.

His whole view on women and the fact that he worships them so much would have played, in my opinion, a big role in his gender discovery. He would feel so guilty and just... Wrong rejecting womanhood. Like- If he thinks women are the best thing the world has ever created, then why is it so hard to be one? He would have it rough, honestly, accepting himself. Especially after escaping the Vinsmokes and trying to forget all the things they said about him (and how many of them are related to femininity). But I think everything would get easier with time after getting adopted by Zeff. He transitions and he's finally happy with himself (almost, because he still has to fight every day against his own thoughts and past. But at least he's more comfortable in his own skin, now).

And everything goes well from there. Except when he meets Usopp.

It's not that Sanji thinks being gay means being less of a man or anything. He keeps saying he has nothing against gay people and he's being completely genuine there. But his own view on masculinity and what it means to be a man for him includes being a ladies' man. Liking women. Only women. That, and the fact that men and manhood have brought so much pain to his life, make it really hard for him to accept that he's in love with Usopp. With a man. Besides, he has created this persona- This different personality (slightly different from his own. Just a bit more confident and a bit happier and stronger and everything he thinks he's supposed to be considered a man, including liking girls) to feel like a real man. And he is a real man. He knows this. He just feels like if he doesn't follow the right norms he has established for himself and his own masculinity, everything will fall apart.

So, yeah, he kind of has a whole crisis when he realizes he's in love with Usopp. I love talking about Sanji's internalized homophobia/biphobia because I honestly think it's such an interesting topic... But I don't want to make this too long, so I'll just say that he would have a really hard time trying to accept this. The situation would make him angry at himself and even angrier at his surroundings. It would also make him isolate himself because, of course, he won't ask for help. And if Usopp (his best friend) enters a room, Sanji will get out of there just as quickly. His brain is a mess. My poor boy.

Usopp knows, of course, because it's not hard to tell when Sanji is in love with someone. But of course, he won't say anything until Sanji is ready to say something first, because it's pretty much obvious that he's having a hard time, and it's even more noticeable because he becomes more and more and more annoying when it comes to women now. He tries to overcompensate and reaffirm his gender by acting like the ladies' man he tries to be (it doesn't work). And Usopp doesn't mind waiting for Sanji, even if it takes him years, but he can't bear to see Sanji doing this to himself without doing anything to help him.

Not gonna turn this into a whole fanfic because if you're asking me this you probably know my posts and how long they end up being because I turn them into whole one-shots at this point- I swear I won't this time!! But!!

Just saying that Usopp trying to talk things out with Sanji and Sanji having a whole breakdown + Usopp comforting him and saying that they don't have to rush anything if he doesn't want to, that they can go as slow as Sanji wants. That he would wait forever for Sanji. And Sanji accepting to date him and getting used to being loved and loving in that way... I don't know. It feels like a good way to reach the fluff you were looking for with a bit of angst and slow burn first!!!

[tanadrin]

Hello! Bisexual cis man with BDSM/noncon fantasies. Two things that I think might be kind of interesting about my sexual situation:

First, although I recognize that "autogynephilia" is an awful, transphobic concept used to delegitimize trans women, it does kind of accurately describe me. In most of my life, I'm pretty much comfortable being, presenting as, and being perceived as a man. Sexually, however, I have a lot of fantasies in which I am a woman, and sometimes get kind of sad that I don't have breasts or a vagina specifically in sexual contexts, though on the whole I quite like my body and current genitalia situation and wouldn't actually want to make any changes.

Second, my kink fantasies tend to be about certain power dynamics or situations, and I nearly always enjoy imagining myself as either party. If I watch/read noncon porn, or just imagine such a scenario, I might picture myself as victim or perpetrator, depending on my mood. Likewise, in an IRL kink scene, if I'm interested at all, I'm pretty much always happy playing either role, though again I do sometimes have a preference for one or the other in the moment.

One unusual way these interact is that the "girl version" of me is exclusively submissive. In a dominant role, I'm pretty much always envisioning myself as myself, a man with a penis. When I'm being submissive is when I'm much more likely to envision myself as a woman with a vagina. The closest thing I've experienced to dysphoria was when I was I was subbing during cowgirl-style PIV and my partner made reference to my cock, when I had been imagining myself as having a vagina that she was penetrating with a strap-on, and it fairly violently broke me out of the fantasy. I've considered the possibility that this is just some sort of internalized misogyny (submissive=female/receptive) but it's not like I really have any control over it so I mostly just enjoy it for what it is.

I think autogynephilia is a bad concept etiologically bc I don’t think there’s much evidence to support the “erotic target location error” Blanchard hypothesizes is even a coherent idea. Aside from AGP as described not encompassing a huge swathe of the transfem experience—almost certainly the vast majority. There is another equally compelling model to me that nonetheless accounts even for the experience of self-identified AGPs, which is that sex is necessarily an extremely gendered activity. Most people, including most *cis* people, have a strongly gendered sense of themselves in an erotic context.

Thus I would expect it is pretty usual for someone who is mostly cis by default, or who is not dysphoric in most of their life (or is disconnected from that dysphoria) and therefore not often preoccupied with the issue of their gender presentation, to twig on that issue most strongly when it comes to their erotic life, if they are in fact in some capacity trans, because it is really really hard to disconnect from issues of gender even in our comparatively egalitarian society inside the bedroom.

I was mostly cis-by-default as a kid (though there were Signs in retrospect), and it wasn’t until adolescence, when I began to notice “hey, that’s weird, I like imagining myself as a girl a *lot* more when it comes to thinking about sex” that I began to consider these questions more deeply. And even then it took a while—not only because I grew up in a time and place where awareness of trans stuff was pretty bad, but because I was so meh about gender in other areas of my life (and un-confident about myself in general) that the idea of staking an actual positive claim in contravention of societal expectation of my identity was kinda scary. Terrifying, really. And that’s something I still have issues with as an adult, and not just around gender identity.

I think this experience is not all that unusual among folks who don’t realize they’re trans until adolescence or adulthood. Couldn’t say how common it is in the general population of such folks though.

I’m not saying you’re really trans or would be happier identifying that way—I mostly just wanted to pontificate on my alternative hypothesis of AGP. People should use the label that feels most useful to them (if they want), and if you identify as a man but like imagining you’re getting fucked like a woman, AGP is useful for that purpose. I hope you find someone to peg you and call you a pretty girl!

[demisexual-eddie-diaz]

i respect trans people of the opposite gender and support the community, but i can't imagine having a romantic attraction to them.

i tell myself, and I'm 99.9% sure I believe, that those individuals are truly [that gender]. But somewhere in my brain just goes "nope. no attraction today" .

assuming that i actually am attracted to [aforementioned gender],

is that transphobic?

Hi, friend

So I will be honest with you and give two sides of this perspective

Personal feelings:

As a gay, trans man this is something that I’ve struggled with in the past. The idea that gay men won’t see me as a ‘real man’ and that bi men will see me as a ‘two for one deal’(or something like that). It’s something that I’ve internalized that I’m working on. It’s not helped by the fact that I’ve never dated anyone. This makes me feel othered. “Not man enough for the gay men, but a dream for the bi men”.

Outside perspective:

It is one hundred percent, perfectly, *perfectly* fine to not find a trans person attractive. People have the right to have genital preferences. People have the right to date who they want to date. Especially if the person is queer. I’m sure there are lesbians that would only date cis women and ,like I said, there are gay men that would only date cis men. And straight people, as long as they’re allies, deserve this same respect. Or bi people. Or pan people. Or however else someone were to identify. I don’t think this makes someone a bad person, truly. There’s almost a pushback, or rather there is, of people who say they wouldn’t date a trans person. But that doesn’t inherently make that person transphobic.

Third thing, as for what you’ve said here:

You said that you’re an ally. That you respect the trans community. That you see us as the gender we identify with. How could that be transphobic? Your support is what we need. If you feel like you couldn’t be attracted to a trans person, you wouldn’t want to date a trans person, or you wouldn’t want to sleep with a trans person that’s one hundred percent okay. Like I said, this doesn’t make you transphobic. There’s actually people who are t4t, trans people who would only date trans people. And if cis people can’t have this same right it’s honestly hypocritical. So no, this doesn’t make you transphobic, in my opinion.

-Matthew(he/him)

[cock-holliday]

Hey wrt the post about “men never have to experience x” I do just want to point out that radfem =! TERF. I don’t think that’s what you’re claiming but I am seeing a lot of unnecessary hostility towards radical feminists in the reblogs. Radical feminists would actually be less likely to say such a thing, because radical feminism is all about recognising women’s oppression as structural rather than individualist. I personally would call myself “radfem adjacent”, but the most strident radical feminist I know is non-binary and medically transitioning to female. Their radical feminism critically informs their understanding of gender. I know radfem tumblr is in fact full of TERFs, but that’s not so in the real world and it’s a little grating to be so harshly judged by people who don’t understand what radical feminism actually is. You don’t have to agree! Just don’t claim things about it that are factually incorrect, like that radfems support regressive gender roles when literally the opposite is true.

Oy vey, where to begin?

Let's elongate that acronym, shall we? TERF means trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Radical feminist. As in, you would not get this brand of transphobe without the regressive feminist lens. Now, there are folks who insist that they are TIRFs: trans-inclusionary radical feminists. There is functionally no such thing! Here's why!

good nothorses post

One of the biggest issues for (and main staples of) radfeminism is the idea of essentialism. TERFs believe in bioessentialism, that someone's gender is tied to their sex and therefore unchangeable. Men have the bad gender and women have the good gender. "Man" of course meaning anyone with a penis, which includes a lot of not-men--which includes your "strident" friend. So radfems developed half a braincell, and realized that model doesn't work and instead swapped it for gender essentialism. Your gender is how you define it, but uh oh! There is still a good gender and bad gender and identifying with the bad gender makes you bad! If your radfeminism accepts transfemmes but marks transmascs as The Bad Gender...congrats on being a trans-exclusive radical feminist. There is no trans-friendly way to do essentialism.

And when there is a bad gender or bad sex, then everything warps around it. Your concepts of queerness gets tainted. Of sex. Of attraction or lack therof. Of expression and appearance and lived realities.

Anyone who filters their understanding of gender through a lens that allows them to mark someone as inherent oppressors is a reductive-ass ideology. I'm sure you hoped your transfemme friend would have shocked me into realizing the progressive nature of radfeminism but oh buddy is it not surprising at all.

"""TIRFs"""" will accept transfemmes into their analysis at the cost of transmascs. I bet your nb friend IS medically transitioning to female because fuck knows that is their entire ticket to acceptance. The ideology is unwelcoming to transmascs and then only conditionally accepting of transfemmes! The condition of course is continued and intense proof that you are "no longer" the bad gender!

No thanks!

Radfems demand reductive performance of gender to prove you are one of the good ones. How is that less restrictive than a conservative man policing your gender?

Radfems ARE gender cops!

Here's some more of what's wrong with radfeminism:

another good nothorses post

"I would call myself radfem-adjacent" I would not! You've got a plethora of styles of feminism to choose from that don't have these shitty roots and even shittier spinoffs:

Intersectional Feminism, queer theory! And for your unfortunate trans friend, perhaps Transfeminism as well!

We are not judging radfeminism for whatever you think it is, we are judging it for what it is. What we know from our lived history in the real world in real life organizing it is: A poisoned ideology that can only get more destructive, not less.

You say you recognize women's oppression as structural issues and not individual. So patriarchy the system and not "men" the class? Sounds like baby steps for intersectionality?

Jump ship to something actually progressive if your definition doesn't align with all I said in the above, or recognize the horrific flaws in your conclusions about feminism and then, you know, jump ship to something actually progressive.

Like good lord, at least read some Judith Butler

[political-confetti]

obligatory warning that terfs/”gender critical” folks and other transphobes are not allowed to debate me on this post. go watch fox news or something.

hi i’m going to be loudly and annoyingly transgender for a second about the whole “alternate treatments for gender dysphoria” thing.*

*a quick note: although this post describes gender dysphoria in relation to transness, i am not a transmedicalist and do not think that gender dysphoria is required to be trans. i support people’s right to self-identify how they see fit as long as it’s in good faith.

i’m a trans guy, pre-t and pre-op. i’ve identified as trans for about 3-4 years now and, although i still have questions about my identity, i’m very sure that being a guy is right for me, and makes me overwhelmingly happy. 

a little while ago, a consistent and scary experience with some transphobes caused me to wonder whether being trans was right for me - not because i didn’t like being trans, but that these bad experiences couldn’t possibly be worth it, even to garner small joy from positive trans experiences.

so i started looking into TERF and “gender critical” stuff.

now, i won’t get into all of it, but those short experiences made me feel intense anxiety about my identity as a trans guy. i thought, for a bit, that i was “betraying womanhood,” or that i was just a “confused girl being tricked by the patriarchy,” or the rest of all those bullshit arguments.  i tried detransition for a bit, personal and online detransition.

it made me fucking miserable.

every day was plagued by constant anxiety, fear, anger, depression, and overall mental anguish. every single time i looked in the mirror, i was wracked with dysphoria. i tried being a butch woman, because masculine clothes made me feel better, but being a butch woman didn’t feel right to me either. i was confused, scared, depressed, and anxious. even after a while, when i started becoming numb to the dysphoria - i was miserable. i stayed in bed for hours at a time. i wouldn’t shower for days because the stress and intense wrongness of seeing my body and calling it a woman’s body hurt so badly.

TERF and gender critical circles told me all women and girls felt this way.  i talked to one of my friends about it. she’s a cis girl, a devout feminist and a loud and proud hater of the patriarchy, one of my coolest friends. she’s experienced misogyny in her life, as almost every woman and afab person has. i asked her whether she hated being a girl and if so, why. her response?

“i don’t hate being a girl - i like it, i like what it means for me. gender’s different for everyone and random for everyone, and what being a girl means to me is comfortable. i hate the way some people demean, infantilize, dislike or are just violent against me for being a girl, but i don’t hate being a girl. if we eradicated the patriarchy - which will take a long fucking time, but if i was alive when we did - i’d choose to be a girl over and over and over again.”

i understood, and i didn’t understand. i understood because that’s how i felt being a boy, being a man, and i didn’t understand because how could one love being a girl? i hated it, for reasons i couldn’t discern.

i thought about it again. i thought - i don’t think women feel like this. i looked at all my friends and family who are women, and i watched and experienced their ease with their gender, and i thought…why am i forcing myself into this? when i know, over and over and over again, that it doesn’t work for me? that i get angry and stressed and numb and depressed and feel so so bad?

the thing about gender dysphoria is that we don’t really have a concrete idea for  why it happens. there’s theories, some more solid than others. it’s likely a mixture of a bunch of factors, from genetics to socialization to environment to a shit ton of other things. and the “gender critical”/TERF groups i looked at would cite that as a reason why we shouldn’t treat it or alleviate it.

as you can tell, from countless fucking studies and anecdotal evidence and experiences and medical professionals and the trans community advocating for it over and over and over again, it’s bullshit. it’s fucking bullshit. not knowing the concrete reason for why something happens is not a reason to ignore it, dismiss it, or make it worse.

there are plenty of complicated or difficult-to-explain things in the world. gender dysphoria is one of them. that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be alleviated. i fully support people with gender dysphoria who identify as cisgender and/or want to  treat their own dysphoria with ways other than medical transition, provided they’re not being pressured into it. but forcing detransition and “alternate treatments” onto other people does not work. insisting that it’s something everyone needs to try or do does not work. discrediting the many studies that have been done and the medical professionals vouching for it as well as the experiences of people who have gone through it does not work.

but, obviously, these people don’t actually care about making people’s lives better, or healthier, or happier, or more comfortable. they just don’t like trans people and what we do with our bodies, no matter how small. from a 7 year old trans girl growing out her hair to a 35 year old trans man getting phalloplasty and testosterone, all of it is scary and predatory and strange and destructive and disgusting and wrong.

in my opinion? there is nothing more wrong than denying yourself comfort because other people find it bad.

and yes, being trans still hurts me sometimes. it hurts a lot for some people and doesn’t for others, but for me it can. i still get insecure and dysphoric about my voice, or my height, or my face shape. i still get emotionally drained and exhausted from meeting transphobic relatives. i still feel uncomfortable and frustrated when i get gendered incorrectly by strangers. i feel sad and numb when i see another dead trans person in the news, when i see people calling me and my community disgusting.

but all of that is outweighed by the joy. the joy of having friends like me, friends who understand my identity and are there for me. the joy of going to a pride parade or a queer cafe and meeting people like me. the joy of wearing clothes that i like and cutting my hair how i want and doing my makeup in a way that makes me feel good. the joy of looking in the mirror and knowing that, while some things still aren’t where they’re supposed to be, i still have my short messy hair and my hairy legs and my trans-taped chest. and i can love myself, in a way that makes me feel good. the joy of thinking about my future and seeing transformation instead of torture.

it still hurts sometimes, but it hurt so much more when i was trying to force myself to live in a body that wasn’t right for me, and doing nothing to alleviate it. 

so i hope this post reaches someone out there, someone who’s going through the same thing i went through back then. you do not have to deny yourself comfort and happiness for other people. there is nothing wrong with who you are or how you’re living. you are allowed to exist in a way that makes you comfortable in your identity. and you are not responsible for molding yourself to fit other people’s expectations. you aren’t hurting anyone - you’re just trying to exist. trying to live. 

and there is nothing wrong with that.

[blackwoolncrown]

I don’t know if this is going to spill over anywhere else but it has the possibility to do so which would be super bad

So I remember a few months ago this one check on TikTok was saying that she just had this feeling that there was gonna be like a female Kevin Samuels

And that has totally happened. There’s a lady name Princella and she is in the like black woman’s space but she just speaks for women in general and in general her message is decent it’s just about how men are not reliable partners they struggle to actually be loving empathetic partners, and that the way that relationships are set up is really just exploitative to women so women would be better off decentering men completely and not prioritizing dating men or marrying them

And on its face it’s like yeah that’s true but the problem is she also works in a lot of like stats to her stuff and has this evasive super pseudo-intellectual angle that is all about how men are biologically incapable of being decent people which is a red flag and then it kind of … Recently someone asked her basically like OK but where do trans an intersex people like fit into Your philosophies like are they good or the bad like how does that work?

And anyone who’s been around the block dealing with TERFS and stuff knows that that is what I like to call a bell ringing you ring that person’s bell on a particular subject because their response will tell you what you need to know. and this lady Did a very typical super evasive word salad about an answer that could’ve been as simple as I support trans women or I support trans people’s rights. instead it was just like ”let’s look at the scientific definition of cis and trans” And this whole posturing about how she doesn’t care about what’s good or bad she only cares about was intellectually ride or what’s intellectually wrong, and she doesn’t bother with feelings because that’s inaccurate (which I think is a really interesting thing that she repeatedly says because she also says that one of the problems with man is that they are emotionally stunted and emotionally unintelligent but she will repeatedly say that appeals to feelings or considerations of feelings are just like intellectually unsound)

Another black woman creator that I have seen speak on her who actually found her work more recently and has been reading her books and watching her podcast and talking positively about her work, responded to a couple of more recent videos that she did and I can see the problem forming Because she’s taking this ladies responses at face value- “oh well she didn’t say she was a transphobe she’s just getting into the intellectual nuance”

For a lot of these cis women who dates cis men The entire intellectual map around these kind of gender discussions is so new to them and the idea that their difficulties in relationships are actually being validated on an intellectual ground are also really exciting and new.

Unfortunately in this new territory they are not aware of pitfalls or pipelines

I’m writing about this the same way that I mentioned the same woman like two months ago because I could see the problem coming the way a queer person can see transphobia coming from a mile away after dealing w it so long

Tumblr and definitely the spaces that I’ve cultivated on it and this time are probably pretty insusceptible to being penetrated by this woman in particular but what I’m just trying to say is this if you start to see an uptick in what is already a heavy population and black trans phobic women in the coming weeks in months, it’s because there’s a female Kevin Samuels on TikTok now. Selling a book. Doing podcasts. Strangely referencing Jordan Peterson without much critique.

I guess be warned y’all. Sincerely, a canary.