#transmisogny mention

[jojo-heritage-posts]

i remember that blog anon talked abt. the kinfession blog. i'm pretty sure the reason they can't find it is due to the fact that

1) it was revealed to be a big joke and the people behind it shared their urls & stuff.

2) uhhh. the people behind it later got called out for transmisogyny, so i wouldn't be surprised if whoever owned the blog deactivated and then the blog got deleted with them when they did.

i was jojoing at that time and the event will forever be burned into my memory.

oh my god godspeed soldier. neither of those urls were fruitful on the wayback machine sadly it may be lost to time

[pulpypunk]

TW, trans slurs and transphobia

I usually don't post my takes on here but I keep seeing weird, antagonistic infighting posts.

It's not okay to use someone's anatomy as an insult. ex, "chick with a dick", "cuntboy" or "zippertits" . Saying you'll impregnate trans men and mascs is disgusting. Calling trans women and femmes "futas" or "traps" is disgusting. Reducing someone you don't like to their sex markers is disgusting, regardless of gender identity or biology or chronically online discourse.

Again, any excessive focus on sex markers is a NOT okay, along with deadnaming, misgendering, and calling people abusive names. It's gross to do and you are not an activist if you do this. You are not helping the community. It's baffling that this is something we haven't learned by 2023.

[sword93]

My only say on the stupid “do trans men or trans women have it worse” discourse is simple.

Is it worse to be likely murdered in the street or likely murdered in your home?

Oh, Both are equally bad? And happen for similar and different reasons?

Well, there you go.

[prayerworksfolks]

The only cis woman I ever dated was "on break from women" because her lesbian feelings made her feel predatory. And it's like, I'm woman 💁 But she did defend me when the guy giving her coke tried to convince her that I was predatory.

Small win

[plaidos]

Re: all the transandro shit, from my transmac pov

I feel so crazy at how vile and how blatantly misaligned the transmasc "community" is with all the transandrobro shit?? People are really out here saying with their whole chest that their version of patriarchal bullshit is cool and good and righteous bc they're trans men/ transmasc. Like are we hearing ourselves?? What world are other trans men living in bc EYE am constantly sick to my stomach at the amount of transmisogyny I encounter on a regular basis (which, if I put in any amount of effort into putting a teeny tiny critical thinking cap on, is nowhere near what actual trans women and transfem people experience)

For example - I liked a single post about historical drag kings that I thought was innocuous bc hey cool history, but bc the op is on some shit, I also suddenly got a million recommended posts on transandrophobia that just utterly reeked of transmisogyny. A single post, ONE post, and suddenly its barf central.

But when I meaningfully and regularly and on purpose interact with posts about transmisogyny I'm never recommended anything! Like even while actively trying to go out of my way and be a better transfeminist and engage and there are such! obvious! structural! barriers!!! In a way that actively proves the enormous and awful scale of transmisogny!!!!! It's clear!! Yet transmasc people, instead of, idk, doing anything worthwhile to address these immense structural issues are like. Surely it's the trans women that are the problem. Huh??????

I feel sick and sad and insane bc it's so obvious and so apparent, structurally and casually. I can't understand the transmascs in your mentions denying what is going on right in front of our faces!!! Like if we're crying about terfs and patriarchal violence, homies the call is coming from inside the house what the hell are you yelling at our trans sisters for?! Especiallyyyyy the ones supposedly standing sentry against intersexism constantly talking down to intersex trans women!!!

And!! as a transmasc POC? it's soooooo obvious this is like some joe rogan bullshit but with an alison bechdel pallet swap, which would be funny if it weren't so fucking awful. Like can we please fucking get it together - it might be several hard pills for us to swallow but ultimately it isn't actually that hard to work on if we stop letting our egos get in the way! If you wanna be "men but good" then we actually have to do some fucking good, right??

Anyway. I love you, plaidos. I love you, trans sisters and transfem family.

you're 100% right, Anon.

[genderkoolaid]

saw your post from an hour ago (about lowdosing estrogen) and just wanted to say that i have read it several times, including the attached screenshot, and couldn't find where in the og post you saw anything that would imply that the med industry loves transmascs (unless existence of transmisogyny implies it). the og post was pretty focused on transmisogyny as a main issue (with one mention of tme at the end - which i assume you focused on) and I just wanted to clarify what other possible interpretations could have led you to a comment focused on tme? because other than that I think your comment aligns with og post about transmisogyny and misogyny

i just got a bit confused and wanted to clarify your thoughts, thank you

I was being a bit hyperbolic, but it was this paragraph:

Anon starts by bringing up how trans men are correctly dosed in order to compare that trans women being underdosed, and uses the language of "systemically" and "medical establishment" to emphasize that this is part of a wider system of oppression. Which is true! But the fact that they start by bringing up trans men's supposed better treatment, and end with saying that the medical establishment is invested not just in harming trans women but "making TME believe estrogen is weaker" is what ticked me off. I've seen a lot of people emphasize that trans men aren't just treated better by systems, but insisting that any anti-transmasc bias happens on a solely interpersonal level while transmisogny is systemic, which is why it is supposedly worse and more serious.

Trans men & nonbinary people are ALSO systemically harmed by the medical establishment, which has a vested interest in harming us in many ways. There was simply no reason to bring up trans men or TMEs when talking about the actions of cis doctors in a cissexist industry which also harms trans men & "TMEs," and which we do not benefit from on any meaningful level. There is no reason to do this other than a bias against transmascs and the need to use every instance of transmisogyny as a chance to prove that trans men don't have it as bad. It's especially strange since, again, the notion that estrogen is "weak" is something I have seen specifically trans men talk about a lot. What is being described by that anon is, if anything, grounds for solidarity because we are all affected from medical misogyny around estrogen, albeit sometimes in different or opposing ways. Choosing to frame it as as a "TME vs TMA" issue is unnecessary and divisive in my opinion.

[transfemme-shelterdog]

Hi! I was curious about your opinion of this because I'm trying to work out if I have a harmful bias on this.

I recently got explained that TMA refers to people who cannot "escape" transmisogny. As in, someone who is treated transmisogynisticly but is able to point to a binary gender, say "I'm actually that" and possibly be left alone would be TME. I understand what is being said here, that a TMA person who has a transfeminine identity of some sort cannot escape transmisogyny because the act of misgendering yourself to protect yourself from transmisogyny is still an experience of transmisogyny, as you're required to hide your womanhood/femininity.

I'm finding that TMA as a descriptor of this particular experience can possibly have a purpose, but I still don't see the point in labeling people TME because that is something that really cannot be determined on a broad scale. The justification apparently is the perception that a TME person can basically put on the woman suit and weaponize cis womanhood against people who are TMA.

I also think it's heavily weighted in white supremacy, people forget that who they describe as "TME" who are poc are never afforded the same treatment as white people who get shoved into the woman box. White cis (non-masculine) womanhood is seen as delicate and in need of protecting (which is misogynistic), whereas nonwhite cis womanhood is not. Historically, woc (including trans woc) have been on their own and subject to horrible abuse with no protection from the system. Even if someone who is trans puts on the woman suit to weaponize the patriarchy's desire to "protect women from predatory deviants", it really is only afforded to people who can pass as white perisex cis women.

Not to mention that in order for a transmasc person to do this they would have to misgender themself, which can have very traumatizing effects. This downplays the effects of transandrophobia (which, assuming transmascs afab are bound to be detransitioners is a transandrophobic mindset) and poses it in opposition to transmisogyny when they should just both be words used to describe different issues.

I don't want to tell transfems/trans women what language they can use because that would be hypocritical of me, but everytime I give the argument for TME/TMA the benefit of the doubt I see ideas that are not very helpful to the broader community and purposely in direct opposition to much of the community.

The use of TME/TMA language as it stands definitionally includes gnc cis men in TMA which contradicts the "unable to escape transmisogyny" definition I was told. Because a gnc cis man can absolutely go "I'm a man" and be treated differently after that, which usually still will result in queerphobic violence anyway, so even if they are TME, it doesn't protect them. A trans man will not be believed if he goes "I'm a man" in response to transmisogynistic violence and that usually results in sexual assault from transphobes. It seems to definitionally just try to exclude transmasculine experiences from marginalized experiences.

It also feels pretty cruel to flippantly act as if all transmascs/men would want to "recede into womanhood" to weaponize patriarchy as if that's not incredibly damaging to us to do if it's even possible to do so, (which it's not for many of us, chiefly transmasc poc and many intersex people).

Sorry this is so long, I just want everyone to have helpful language to describe their experiences and I don't want to talk over anyone who has different experiences from mine.

And I apologize if any of this wording is not inclusive enough.

I don't think you said anything wrong Anon. I completely agree that TMA/E completely ignores the oppression of trans mascs/men, and also ignores the systemic issues that trans POC also face.

I don't see any harmful biases, or issues here. I think you're completely in the right and have approached this topic with a level head and clear focus.

[theabigailthorn]

got very excited at the serano mention :0 any plans to do an ep on transmisogny? inquiring tgirls want to know

I think that's probably been covered by YouTubers more talented than me haha. I generally avoid doing 'trans stuff' episodes - I try to limit myself to doing one big one every couple of years; I don't want to get pigeonholed

[luxiomahariel]

Hey hey! Wanted to share an experience n get it off my chest if that’s okay, you don’t gotta post it if you don’t want to. This experience is what led me to discover transandrophobia and devour as much as I could of it and I’m also reading so much intersectional feminism as a result!

Ages back, a group of former “friends” that were all adult lesbians of varying transfem and nonbinary genders, unironically Exploded at me due to a conversation that I’ve since showed a vast amount of people who have all confirmed that I was being respectful and agreeable throughout. The gist of the convo was that I “wasn’t listening to transfems” because I, as someone who grew up as a brown arab woman, simply MENTIONED that Imane Khelif was being attacked through racism as well as transmisogyny. For context, I agreed multiple times that she was being attacked through both, but the group was immediately vehemently accusing me of denying transmisogny as a “tme”.

They kicked me from the server, and the owner dmed me a link to @/transmisogny-explained so I could “better myself”, which is a blog that has plenty of good posts, but is so deeply transandrophobic that it makes it difficult to even look through. During the aftermath of this whole thing, my partners had dmed some folks from the server to clarify what had happened for them to react so intensely, and I’ll quote some of the things I noticed from them/their responses:

- every single one of them was white.

- ONLY used he/him for me during this despite rarely/never doing so otherwise. I use any pronouns.

- described me reblogging transmasc positivity posts on my personal blog afterwards as “going on a reblogging rampage” and describing my emoji-filled, friendly, worried messages as “aggressive” and “lashing out after being criticized by a trans woman Once”.

- one said that they’ve been wanting to cut me off since they found out I support trans men lesbians. Because I call myself a multigender dyke and am a man as well as a woman.

- same person also spread that I was calling trans women slurs because I had once reblogged a post where someone mentioned “b/aeddels”

- shortly after they all blocked me on all platforms, my partners showed me their reblogs were absolutely full of the most transandrophobic slop I’ve ever seen, mixed in with good posts about supporting transfems. They also masked off about other queer infighting, such as being on the wrong, cruel side of ace discourse and also needlessly hating on mspec lesbians, anyone using Achillean or the “toothpaste flag” or anything that “appropriated lesbian culture”, and stuff like that.

- turned on my partners as well (tho with less vitriol thank god) for being associated with me. Which they didn’t deserve to be cut off for :(

Basically I’m more than glad to be cut off from them cuz I had no clue of the sheer hatred they were holding for queer people that were different from them, but also I can’t ever help but keep in mind that one of the quickest ways I’ve ever gotten to be called a man, or had he/him used on me, was alongside being called “tme” and being painted as an aggressor.

Everyone involved is safely out irl, and knows fully that I am deeply closeted for safety irl. They spoke plenty of my “tme privilege” while knowing I was at home closeted against my will for my safety and suffering from it on the daily. They labeled me as a rampaging, lashing out tme man, despite rarely using anything but she/they for me beforehand. They cut me off from a huge portion of online community, knowing full well how unsafe my position was and how much I needed the support. I’ll never forget that they saw a closeted brown trans man mention racism alongside transmisogny and immediately jumped him and slandered his name with accusations and aggressive behavior.

jesus christ thats awful

bigotry always seems to come in bunches huh? transandrophobia, aphobia, homophobia, and exorsexism/enbyphobia.... yeesh.

im glad you got away from that server and hopefully my blog can be a safe space for you 🫂

[velvetvexations]

On multiple occasions I've seen people say that charities can never be trusted and it's better to just donate to online fundraisers, as if there aren't any ways to vet a charity(there are) and it's simply impossible for someone posting about needing money online to be a scammer lying out of their ass(has been happening since the creation of the internet) and on top of that if you prefer to donate to vetted charities rather than impossible to truly vet fundraiser posts so you can be certain your money is going to someone who needs it and protect yourself from having your info stollen you're a horrible bigot who hates minorities.

It's awful, but I'm genuinely not even a little surprised that someone would tell others that all the trans charities in the UK are worthless including, I assume, Mermaids which helps trans children, because they haven't reached their arbitrary transfem quota. Fucking ridiculous fawning behavior, play-acting at being a good ally by being a shithead, especially since again, OP of that post did not offer any sources or names for which charities are the bad ones when there are fairly easy ways to vet them online. Which charities are the ones shafting transfems? Which only offer job help?? Do you have any links to testimonials from transfems who have dealt with these charities you won't name talking about being mistreated or refused help??? You can't be out here telling everyone that all trans charities are worthless specifically because they don't help enough transfems with so little proof you don't even include the names of the charities you're talking about. It's sickeningly irresponsible to tell people to blindly distrust every single trans charity because helping trans people apparently doesn't count if you aren't primarily helping transfems.

Like fuck if I were transfem and saw someone saying that giving me, a whole entire adult, money was more important than helping trans children I'd lose it. Trans kids are one of the most vulnerable minorities on the planet regardless of sex or gender and the idea that we should take money out of their hands and throw it at random fundraisers that have a 50/50 chance of being a scam because the money only helps if it goes to transfem adults is such a horrid suggestion. Real "fuck you I got mine" energy. Leaving all other trans people, including kids, without help for the sake of transfems just makes me think we really have reached a point where some people believe transfems are the only trans people that have problems and not prioritizing them over everyone else is the same thing as being a nazi.

(Also losing it at "if you find one that actually helps transfems you can donate ig" without providing any suggestions of charities or ways to vet them??? OP surely could have spent a bit of time on finding a charity that primarily helps transfems, vetting it themselves, and including the link in the post, but nah we have to constantly scaremonger about queer and trans chariries without proof until we just hand our money to the nearest transfem. Spending time vetting charities and fact-checking statements is silly because you should just be donating your money to transfems, please do not mention how this makes it sound like you have less of a problem with tfems not getting the help they need and more with making sure no aid or support goes to any trans person who isn't tfem until idk they give up on being trans or die. Makes me think these folks would legit suggest that if there was a trans-friendly shelter that only had one bed left but two people who needed help, a transmasc person and a transfem person, and the bed didn't go to a transfem it would count as transmisogny because no one but transfems really needs those resources.)

To Long, Didn't Read: People really will just go around discrediting trans charities and not for a single second think about how conservatives and transphobes do the EXACT SAME THING and maybe you shouldn't HELP them in their mission because you think if the fucking miniscule amount of aid offered to trans people from charities that are one bad week away from being shut down while their tiny staff continues to face threats of doxxint and horrific violence every hour isn't going directly to transfems then it shouldn't go to anyone at all.

Very well said anon!

[americascomic]

Hello. I sat here for a good 30 minutes trying to think of best how to ask this question without giving the online version of an annoying exposition dump, so I hope this somewhat makes sense: I’ve found myself, increasingly, having conversations with the more tenderqueer-esque queers in my life surrounding slurs- specifically slurs like faggot and tranny. I’m a trans guy, and I was told by another trans guy of the genre of person i just mentioned that only gay men can reclaim the word faggot, and trans women can reclaim the word tranny. I thought this was a stupid and gatekeep-y idea, and told him so, but i have been genuinely wondering if this is just a manifestation of terminally online induced queer infighting or a form of ignorant transmisogyny on my part. Is tranny a slur directed at and only to be reclaimed by trans women? Or is it just another tick in the barrel of a long line of slur speciation discourse?

I think the short answer of who can say what slur is "this is terminally online bullshit"

And my second answer is "this is a conversation that mostly people under the age of 30 have, and people mostly online have." I think the age is important - it's feels like it's a developmental phase a lot of queers go through, where they negotiate their identity." So, like I'm patient (if a little irked) when I see it on my feed. Or hear some dipshit socially awkward t-femme at Bluestockings rudely chime in to a conversation I'm having with a friend.

and I sometimes put it as a hypothetical;

I'm telling you right now, as a trans woman, in my lived experience, people of your exact intersecting identities are only allowed to say the word "tranny" on a Tuesday and "faggot" on a Friday. If you forget, remember 'tranny' and 'Tuesday' starts with 'T' and 'faggot' and 'Friday' starts with 'F'

Like, that's absurd for me to ask. And so I think that kind of forces the thought that at the end of the day I'm the one asking it. There'll be no consensus on this issue.; you have to decide for yourself whatever or not to respect one point of view over the other.

We say "listen to black people" but I had this moment in my life where IRL I did a call-out of Nazis in my community and a Black friend told me that I was talking over people of color and another thanked me for speaking up in a way that they wouldn't be listened to. Who is right? Neither. Both. You have to decide for yourself and have a strong sense of race. Same with interacting with our own queer community.

Who can say what queer slur where and when is a thing that can never be litigated online. It's such an interpersonal person-to-person thing. There's no pundit square that can fit all slurs and all identities and all experiences.

in the case of the teen in the previous story who told me not to use the word "tranny," I immediately retorted that people say that word to me on the street and spit at me, which means they recognize it as a thing of power and so I will use that power. And I don't think she'd ever had copped to it, but I think changed her mind because she was saying "tranny" over the next months.

I think for some of this shit, us trans women policing who can say "tranny" is us just doing a proxy war for transmisogny. Like, we get transmisogny in our community, an AFAB person queer person of some type who could probably leverage their privilege against us says "tranny," I can see it irking some. But, have you met a trans woman? Everything irks us. We're reprehensible.

And, I think in terms of your conversation and your friend. I dunno, I think of who-gets-to-be-lesbian discourse. I see so many people online twist in the wind trying to justify to others that they're a trans masc lesbian, or a non-binary lesbian or a bisexual lesbian and I'm kinda sitting there on my ass wondering why they're trying so hard to get probably the dumbest people online to justify our identity. Like, we're hear, we're queer, get used to it. I sometimes feel of the matter that we're all a mass medium as one and just going about shit without apology as a way to force people to confront our humanity.

Iffen you want my personal feelings on the matter, you're just as impacted by the codified violence of the state that's imposed on us and so we're all faggots at the end of the day. But the t-girl sitting next to me might feel differently, and you have to negotiate with that. Sometimes times calls for moments of respect and sometimes it's a matter of saying "fuck it" and doing the thing you know how it is.

If you would like, I can draw you a card that says "Amber, a hot trans woman, says I can say 'faggot'"

Finally, I'll say I wrote a couple paragraphs for you so I'm going to force you to return the favor and just challenge you to sit on your ass and ask yourself in honest ways what the word means and what it means to you and what's beautiful and what's ugly about the word. That - an internal process - a lot more valuable thing worth to litigate then everybody in-community being cops to each other.

And then after that, I always like to challenge people to look beyond the debate. This post I made on the matter is about a dead trans teen. It's nice to debate words, but it's also nice to look out at our wonderful, annoying community, name problems we see that creates material struggle, and then imagine solutions.

[d-parade]

please don’t be like this

useless warning mentions of violence

my original post for context (not at all vicious or rude, just me reacting mildly to a violent comment and explaining):

here are some comments she made. she blocked me, of course, not even giving me the time to respond before blocking to make it look like she has the upper hand. but luckily i have another tumblr account.

she’s not even a trans woman… if you were a trans man before that means you were female. how is it in any way transmisogyny if you’re not a trans woman?

and… we skipped right past transphobia and straight to transmisogyny? whew what a leap.

oh and there’s other comments too. she combed through my account. lucky.

ohhhh so we misgendering now? kinda hypocritical and ironic how you believe in a mindset of respecting everyone’s “identities” until it’s someone who you don’t agree with.

at least transmedicalists misgender because of how they define dysphoria. it’s not like they purposefully want to misgender (when they don’t even see them as trans in the first place) (like if it’s a binary tucute with dysphoria they use proper pronouns). not the same for tucutes apparently. they just do it because they believe they’re the good guys and misgendering is an act of justice against evil…

and funny enough this was my post directly below the one she commented on… which sums up my experience with her nicely. i’m sure she read it too.

i’m not saying this person represents all tucutes and inclusionists of course. like i said in the above pic, there’s genuinely nice people who come from a place of love. i just don’t agree with how their ideas work.

all in all, no matter who you are, what you are, do not respond with violence. and it’s not because i’m triggered or disturbed by it or anything. it’s just straight up immature. you’re also not at all open to discussion or even try to counter argue my points, just straight up “TERF RHETORIC” “TRANSMISOGNY” “KILL YOURSELF”

do you not find it embarrassing?

this is a reminder that your actions determine how someone else perceives the communities you’re in. while it’s impossible to control other’s perception of an entire community, change starts with you. just be a respectful person. no matter how much you hate the other party, maintain dignity. by doing that, you already won the war.

it’s not so much about “being a person you want others to respect”, but more of self respect. don’t ever reduce yourself to plain, mindless hate.

it’s not that hard. so just please don’t do this. you’re only hurting yourself, and the ideologies you represent.

[velvetvexations]

That sounds a lot like my interpretation of Boys Will Be Bugs~!

I bent over backwards and crafted an elaborate theory as to why Eminem's Abracadabra isn't too terribly transphobic, I can't judge anyone for making excuses for the media that's important to them.

I don't think characters just being heroic and sympathetic necessarily covers getting something like this badly wrong, but a lot of other Velveteers also chimed in, including this anon:

(Just realized this is pretty silly, feel free to ignore me/not answer this, I just saw One Piece mentioned and the hyperfixation jumped out.) But just to go to bat for One Piece a smidge as someone who is trans and read all of it, while yeah Okama(Queen Ivan) leaned very transmisognistc(which was made worse in the anime for some reason??) the intention for him, his subjects, and the other gender fluid character, Bon Clay, was meant to be good. It fell HELLA short, but there was an attempt at least. However!! I did want to add, the comic has been going on for a long time, and by one of the more recent arcs with two new, very clearly openly trans characters, things are MUCH better! The transfem one, Kiku, says outright when asked that she's a woman at heart which is accepted by everyone, and her story was really sweet and made me tear up(her anger is never treated as predatory or masculine, she's allowed to just be a woman who is also a samurai), and the other transmasc one, Yamato, is referred to as a boy by everyone despite him not changing his presentation at all, which is pretty rad imo given how hostile people can be to transmasc people with breasts, and both characters are allowed to bathe in the baths that match their genders at the end of the arc. They were still a little messy in the "yeah this wasn't written by a trans person" way, and certain misogynistic/transphobic parts of of the fandom on reddit get a little weird about Yamato, but I didn't see anything glaringly wrong with the way either of them was written like with Okama or Bon Clay. The vibe I got from the comic was that early on Oda meant well and included some characters who were intended to be positive rep but were messy and fell very short, but as time passed he figured it out and the more recent ones are genuinely phenomenal rep. Ofc that doesn't mean you need to read/watch OP(especially since again the transmisogny is worse in the anime?? still don't understand what happened there but Oda had no control over it) like god I would never tell anyone to do that lol, but I did want to just chime in and offer a perspective from someone who read it and felt like the more recent rep was really good and worth mentioning. Oda has his issues for sure, and has a lot to make up for, but based on what I've read he IS making up for it.

And, honestly, that makes me really happy! Oda always seemed like a cool guy and it's great to know he is in fact a real cool guy. According to @changelingfangs in the replies, he's friends with people in the subculture he based a lot of those characters on.

They're now just openly accusing me of not being a trans woman because trans women don't identify as AMAB and I'm apparently hostile to every trans woman that talks about transmisogyny.

...no?

It's a good theory and I think that plays a part in it for sure, but I think mostly it's just thinking it's the worse thing because it's their group's oppression. It again kinna goes back to that Lennon/Ono song with the n-word in the title, that's just how radical feminism works, trans/misogyny is the only thing that really matters.

Still, interesting thread to have spotted here and I think it's in that soup somewhere.

imagine thinking using a meme format is asserting a cultural claim to it

like seriously, has any Black person ever said that there was something wrong with "deracializing" either or even both characters in the Dis _ Look So Mad meme by substituting them with white characters?

[importantangeldefendor]

Hello TME blogger. In a post featuring both discussion of racism and discussion of transmisogny, mention Trans WOC.

[americascomic]

I thought I'd talk about my tiktok channel (Amber Flannery Field, the trans "only good tour guide in New York") since a few of you all know me through tiktok and I wanna get my thoughts out.

For videos, I think to help root and organize my thoughts I kinda think myself as doing an HBO-style prestige TV show and letting my emotional and intellectual growth over a course of a year being my "story arc." And I kinda especially like the idea of collecting all my videos at the end of a year and posting on YouTube it as a compliation of a "season," and that kinda structure I think helps motivate me and think of ideas and where to take the next video.

And TV structure is this kinda thing that's shared with TikTok, where I'll always have a large audience of people watching me for the first time but then loyal viewers following me every episode. So, as a TV show, I'll have "filler episodes" where I'll either do a silly shitpost or just a general fun "fast fact" video, but then I have "continuity episodes" where I do video essays, some of which actually have an internal stand-alone story structure to it and slowly little by little reveal my weird backstory (I haven't even begun on the reveals) that also advances the "plot" or shows my growth and reveals information about myself to the point where you can see a lot of growth between my first couple of videos and my most recent ones.

I have like three more videos I want to do and then I'd hit a year on TikTok and I kinda want my final video to be a "season finale" of sorts. The video I'm probably most known for is on White People Jazz, and the season finale will be a sequel to that one (and a less popular one, on Game of Thrones/transmisogny) - specifically again revisiting the subject of appropriation through the word "Slay," and it'll have it end with what I think would be a very dramatic mic drop to leave viewers hanging on.

And then coming back, kinda thinking of prestige television, the first episodes of a new season sets up new problems and new motivations for a character based on what happened in the previous year, and I think a fun semi-fictional motivation to come back to is "my New Years resolution is to get more enemies."

I think it's especially a fun contrast to the previous "season" where a lot of it was about my survival and search for community, and then I sorta cleave into tiktok etiquette and start trying to (lightly) start shit with random tiktokers.

And after a couple of "filler" episodes (it takes the algorithm to catch back up after hiatuses) I wanna do this series of three video essays - effectively a story arc - on "transtagonism" and basically my relationship with negative feelings towards people; competitiveness, pettiness, envy, jealousy and so on.

And I don't know where to go from there. I mentioned HBO Prestige shows as being the sorta structure of my videos, but another structure I borrow from is professional wrestling. There, they do long-term storytelling but they can't really plot everything out because wrestling is so unpredictable that they basically make it up on the fly; you can't plan a long-term storyline if a wrestler gets injured.

So you kinda have to rely on strong motivations and improvise, which I think is one of the things I do with my videos. A lot of them are like 40% improvised, where I'll go in with an essay already written but then completely throw it out and arrive to a different conclusion or location on the day of shooting.

Anyways, this is all pretentious nonsense, but it's fun.

Thanks for following me and thanks to the two or three people who read this.