#yes we should respect peoples genders and their experiences

[gnometa233]

This might be a hot take because I know everyone is the most knowledgeable about themselves but sometimes I think people just have "complex genders" for the sake of having complex genders and making things more complicated for themselves. And half of that complexity comes from the outside pressure of gender roles and misogyny.

[vulpinesaint]

generally i am not a very problematic queer person because i tend to live and let live when it comes to things (being on the receiving end of ace discourse + actually examining respectability politics + realizing that things don't fucking matter in real life really puts things into perspective lmao i'm not worried about kicking people out of the club for not like. idk. following absurd playground rules.) and therefore i do not talk about things much online HOWEVER. i think i could Become a very problematic queer person if i talked more about queer stuff online because letting people go about their lives is a VERY radical stance to take on the internet. wait until you hear how chill i am about gender and word use. i could be the controversy

[power-handmaiden]

Day 64: Pounded In The Butt By My Irrational Bigoted Fear Of Humans Who Were Born As Unicorns Using A Human Restroom

While I had conflicting feelings on "Angry Man Pounded By The Fear Of His Latent Gayness Over A Dinosaur Transitioning Into A Unicorn" in light of how the conversation on trans rights and visibility has evolved, I feel like this tingler, published only 11 months later, holds up incredibly well. It tackles gender in a similar way to robot fiction, in the way that the protagonist feels insecurity over his humanity when someone he would not traditionally recognize as a human is able to inhabit human spaces.

One aspect that I appreciate a lot is that the story makes it very clear that the character that the protagonist initially directs his species transphobia towards does not pass as a human at all; the bigoted protagonist and the waitress who is dismissive of his bigotry both refer to the character as a unicorn based on appearance. A major point in this tingler is that the man deserves dignity whether or not he "looks" like he should be in a human space. A lot of transphobes love to make arguments that operate in this heightened reality. It's not hard to imagine one saying, "what, should we accept it if someone identifies as a unicorn?" I mean, the furry panic is basically that, using some on-its-face absurd otherkin caricature as a proxy for trans people. This tingler meets them in their invented space where they think their argument is the most ironclad and says, yes, that would be fine actually, even if we did all live in your thought experiment and even took it a step further by introducing other sapient species with clear physical differences. People of different species peeing in the same room is not going to break the fabric of society.

(Side note not entirely related, people who care about such things are also just.... really bad at telling who "belongs", which is addressed in the story somewhat but I just like to mention whenever I have the chance that it includes false positives on their Wrong Sex Detector too. I use the bathroom that corresponds to my birth certificate and I've been stared at, yelled at, one time someone just watched me piss?? So much for bathrooms being a harrassment free space.)

I also love that nothing sexual takes place in the bathroom. The protagonist recovering from his bigotry fucks a sentient restroom sign right in the middle of the diner. Absolute madman, I can't help but respect it.

[cremedensada]

I’m gonna need general hcs on interactions with the boy next door… like what if we just moved to town and we first meet him as we’re moving in… Also can they be in like highschool? I don’t know if that’s already the gist but yeah. She’s moving in with her mom and he’s there…

Yandere Boy Next Door

sorry anon i think i went way to far away from what you wanted shdhdh also theyre senior high school students (grade 11 - 12) which is like, two preparatory years for college. so theyre adults bc im much more comfortable with that :33

btw his name is lukas !! he's named now

male yandere + gender neutral darling/reader

lukas is easily approachable - he's got that warmth about him that just draws people in. it's all practiced to maintain his popularity though.

he's also a huge people-pleaser, despite the fact he easily gets burnt out and has his social battery drained.

so when his mom asked him to be a dear and help the new neighbor's kid on their way around the school + neighborhood, he just couldn't say no

sure he's tired, possibly close to having another breakdown just thinking about being pestered by fellow students for answers to homeworks and other menial stuff, but he still manages to say yes and give her another perfectly practiced smile

when he goes over to the house next to theirs - the ones you moved in to, you had no lasting impression on him

now, don't be mistaken, he does think you're good looking but at the end of the day he'd much rather curl up in bed and sleep

so he puts up that perfectly crafted persona and invites you to head to school with him. a new environment is much easier to deal with when you're not dealing with it by yourself! (or something like that)

he tries not to be overbearing, trying to get you to open up while also making sure he's respecting your boundaries and comfort as you made your way inside the school gates

you don't share the same classes, so he asks you for your time table so he knows your schedule

he hopes he's not being creepy or anything, he's just making sure your first day transferring here goes well

sure he's known for being a caring person in general but he does feel like it's his responsibility to make sure you're doing well you know? you're neighbors now, you guys should get along!

it's smooth sailing until it's time you guys finally went home

like that morning, he waits for you and invites you to walk home with him to familiarize with the shortcuts and local lounging spots for students

all the while he tries to get you to talk about your experience today

it must be due to the amount of stress piled up on his plate that lead him to feel... nervous.

his perfect persona cracking as his calm demeanour and collected way of talking slowly devolved into nervous tangents talking about anything at all

were you displeased? his perfection was practiced and polished since he was a kid, was it still not enough for you?

he could handle disappointing people a lot better now but paired with his currently leaning towards unstable, your displeasure is something that's slowly tearing him from the inside

he's jolted out of his thoughts when you suddenly speak up.

"thanks for showing me around. i thought i was going to struggle getting used to things all by myself."

you smiled up at him. "so... yeah. you're... okay."

his heart thumped.

everywhere all around him feels a ton of degrees warmer.

"...okay." lukas was tongue tied.

on the remainder of the journey back home, he walked you to your house, ensuring you got inside safely before making a beeline towards their house and into his room.

normally at this hour he'd be passed out in bed, tired after a whole day of pretending and smiling. today was perhaps the first time he didn't go to bed with his cheeks hurting and aching from smiling so much.

laying in bed, making an excuse as to why he's not going to be joining for dinner, just thinking about you and your words.

lukas grew up living to the standards of being perfect. a perfect son. a perfect student. a perfect friend.

anything less is... unacceptable to say the least. when you do or think of something so often in your day to day life, it becomes a habit. and lukas' habit is perfection.

but you thought he was okay.

okay.

suddenly 'okay' sounds much better than being perfect.

suddenly your opinion towards him becomes much more important than anyone else's.

lukas is a people pleaser, and onwards from that moment, the only 'people' he will ever want to please is you.

i hope this is sufficient? i'm actually v sleepy rn lol but thank you for the idea!

[sophie-frm-mars]

Transmisogyny discourse on here has such an annoying shape to it.

Like I know that a bunch of it is just because it's from people who are / have always been very online / don't have much life experience as with all discourses that take on annoying shapes so I've been trying to not get too fixated on it but like,

Okay TMA (Transmisogyny Affected) and TME (Transmisogyny Exempt) are absolutely useful and valuable terms in the discussion of transmisogyny and how it works, because you need to be able to talk about who transmisogyny directly affects in order to talk about it. The much larger group of the total population is TME people, because that's (broadly) all cis people, and transmasculine people. So the majority of transmisogyny is necessarily directed from TME people to TMA people, but it's important to understand that as a social force it is actually directed from everyone towards TMA people. Trans women also engage in and perpetuate transmisogyny, sometimes incredibly vicious and harmful transmisogyny - the point of these terms is to identify the groups relevant to the discussion, not to identify an innocent oppressed class and an oppressor class who does entirely 100% of the social dynamic.

The next annoying part of the discourse is that in talking as if TME people = the transmisogyny doers, we keep winding up at a transfems vs transmascs discourse. This part of the discourse is like 1 part transfems misidentifying where the fight worth fighting is to 5 parts transmascs wanting to talk about ways they're also oppressed to like 20 parts raw transmisogyny. Yes, people who perform masculinity under patriarchy are more respected by partriarchy and get some benefits from that, and this is reflected in the differences between experiences of transmascs and transfems. This will be true everywhere that there is the basic patriarchal binary gender division between masculine (possessing agency, meaningful subjectivity, power) and feminine (being a type of property that belongs to others). Incidentally this is why the dyke butch/femme dichotomy is just there to sell more gender.

Everyone should get to perform their gender in a way that makes them happiest, and the problem is that we live under a patriarchy, which disempowers some people for the ways they perform their gender. I'm getting really basic here because some people on here talk like they need reminding.

The real reason the discourse is annoying though, just like all online discourses are, is because none of it is about how to organise to actually fight transmisogyny - that is, to make things meaningfully better for transmisogyny affected people.

2 years ago in the UK a teenage trans girl, Brianna Ghey, was stabbed to death after a prolonged campaign of transmisogynistic bullying by her classmates that the adults in her school life were absolutely aware of and did nothing about. Her death was the most important thing to every trans person in the UK for a moment, and then the political energy just dissipated without gaining any momentum. This is because organised structures of trans community, protest, politicisation and direct action just weren't there.

3 years ago in the UK a cis woman, Sarah Everard, was murdered by a police officer. There was an organised vigil which was politicised by Sisters Uncut, a feminist direct action group with chapters across london and the UK which had evolved to embrace police abolition over the course of its existence. The police escalated against the vigil and the spectacle of the police crackdown on women mourning the death of a woman murdered by police became a crucial moment in police abolition discourse in the UK. Because Sisters had already been laying down the organisational infrastructure for years, because it had been holding discussions among members and because it had responded to its members needs, it was in a strong enough position to act quickly and make change in the public consciousness. (You can read more about this in Abolition Revolution by Aviah Sarah Day and Shanice Octavia McBean.) If there was an organisation half as well put together as Sisters Uncut present in the trans community in the UK when Brianna Ghey was murdered, the organised response could have done something similar and meaningful.

I wrote a bit here about how trans people could use an assembly-organisation model to achieve meaningful change, but that's just my personal proposal for what would make a difference. The larger point is that discoursing over transmisogyny online, just like all discoursing online, is just shadows on the wall of the cave.

[goingmerryfics]

Hello!! I recently found your blog and I love it!! ❤️

I was wondering if I could request something!

Kid, Mihawk and Law with a partner who’s into gothic clothing. uwu

Gothic style S/O w/ Kid, Mihawk & Law

Content: Gender Neutral reader, SFW!

Notes* Glad to have you! Thanks for the request :) Out of anyone, I think these three would be the most accepting/understanding of someone with this style and even indulge in it a bit themselves so I tried to make this a little more personal to each character. That being said, I feel like they turned out a little shorter than normal, but I hope you still enjoy it!

Kid

He wouldn’t even bat an eye if this was a regular thing to be dressed in gothic style. It’s pretty common around the crew, and even if it wasn’t, Kid appreciates the aesthetic of the style

He also just doesn’t give a shit what you wear as long as you can do your job

Looking good while doing it is also a plus

For that reason, he would help you out with your makeup for sure. Not that he has much experience with it in the first place, but he just likes any excuse to look at your lips

On the other hand, if your weren’t introduced to him in black and chains, he wouldn’t recognize you if you just up and changed your wardrobe

You walk out of your room in your new style, the one you’ve been wanting to try for years and never had the bravery to out of fear of judgement

But after joining the Kid Pirates, it didn’t feel so scary to go outside of the world’s expectations

“Who the fuck are you!? How’d you get on my ship!?”

After managing to convince him not to just throw you overboard, he does the unthinkable

“Oh. You look good. Better than that boring shit you used to wear.”

He compliments you

Kid will pick at your outfits and give unsolicited advice on how to coordinate or style your clothing

He isn’t one for making jewelry, but he might try if you can’t find anything that would match your clothes

Mihawk

No comment from him. You’d have to outright ask him what he thought, and even then it would be a short answer

“Yes, it’s a good look on you.”

He isn’t actually looking at you when he answers, but it’s genuine

You’d find him staring at you quite often, though

He enjoys the style on you, especially since his style is very close/similar to gothic

He respects your backbone for sticking to what makes you happy, and he’ll encourage you to stick up for yourself if anyone has anything to say about your look

Honestly, he’s seen people look and dress a lot worse, so he doesn’t see why anyone should be making unnecessary comments

Despite being a man of few words, he would still compliment your outfits every time

He, having a eye for the fashion, would also help you coordinate and mix up your clothing items and accessories to freshen up the looks

“That won’t do. We need to get you some earrings that will match this.”

It’s such a sweet way to spend the time that you two have together

Law

Law gets whiplash at first

His emo phase is coming back to him all at once and he’s cringing internally

But despite his own emotional setbacks, he is happy if you feel comfortable dressing this way

He’s very level-headed, so there’s not going to be a very big reaction out of him right away

His perception of you hasn’t changed, and it won’t anytime soon

“Express yourself however you like, just make sure you don’t alter the uniform too much.”

He’ll warn you that the crew might ask some dumbass questions or make rude comments

He also will ask you some questions, very carefully, not wanting to sound ignorant

He would come to your aid if you needed support, especially within his own crew

If you’re the type to wear a lot of make-up, he’ll be on your ass about cleaning your face every night 

He’d even help you do a skin care routine to make sure you were taking care of yourself!

If you bother him enough, he’ll start to do it with you, too

Gets you stuff that remind him of you, things he believes may align with your style

All in all, he’s pretty indifferent to the style, and may even be open to dipping back into it a little bit

He looks great in eyeliner, but damn it he keeps smudging it

[spacelazarwolf]

so i said this in response to an ask, but i wanna make an actual post abt it bc this is something that has been really frustrating me for a while. there is understandable backlash to transmedicalism. it’s a bullshit ideology and all it does is further police the bodies of trans people in an effort to become more palatable to cis people.

that being said, some of that backlash has become so viciously transphobic that it’s becoming completely indistinguishable from te/rf rhetoric, and i've noticed that te/rfs have been starting to use some of the rhetoric in order to get people to sympathize with them. so i really really think we need to be mindful of how we speak about medical transition, especially during a time where there are countries that are essentially trying to make it illegal and/or impossible to medically transition when for a lot of trans people that is a matter of life and death. no, you don't need to medically transition to be trans. you don't need to change the way you dress or your pronouns or your name, being trans is different for everyone. and at the same time, for a lot of trans people that is a huge part of their transition, and it is so concerning to see other trans people speaking so negatively about aspects of transness that are not optional for a huge portion of the trans community.

so what does this mean? it means we stop demonizing or making fun of the changes that happen on hrt (especially testosterone), it means we stop talking about bottom surgery like it's "mutilation" (yes, i have literally heard trans ppl call bottom surgery mutilation HELLO?????), it means we celebrate every choice trans people make about their trans body even if it's not a choice we would make for ourself. it means we reject bioessentialism and gender essentialism, it means we reject the idea that there is a firm line between man and woman and between binary and nonbinary. it means accepting people who don't medically transition, who medically transition in nontraditional ways, it means accepting intersex people who do decide to go on hrt and intersex people who don't, it means accepting detransitioners who go back to identifying as cis and detransitioners who feel they aren't cis or trans. it means we respect and listen to people with experiences different than our own, and it means being extremely critical of anyone who tries to convince you that certain parts of the trans community are somehow out to get you. we cannot fall for that, especially not right now. now, more than ever, we should be celebrating the diversity of our community, not condemning anyone whose experience doesn't line up with our own.

[dyketubbo]

lesbian related discourse tires me out sm. first it was aro/ace lesbians then it was nonbinary lesbians then it was he/him lesbians and it/its lesbians and now its bi/pan/mspec lesbians like when are all of you going to realize that the lesbian experience is extremely diverse and has never been as strict as "women who only identify as women who love exclusively women who only identify as women". like this goes for many identities but lesbians end up at the forefront a lot and it makes me wonder if any of you actually give a shit about queer history because istg lesbian separatism has been reinvented like 50 times in the past decade.

stop convincing each other that the queer experience is nothing but strictly defined boxes and labels that can always be condensed into one sentence. lesbians can experience a lack of sexual attraction and a lack of romantic attraction and lesbians can be nonbinary and lesbians can be gnc and when you actually go into what those last two mean you should realize that yes this means sometimes lesbians are men because genderfluid and bigender and trigender and transmasc and whatever gender lesbians exist and when you actually goes into what THAT means you should realize yes actually people combining labels like mspec and lesbian makes perfect sense because of fucking course orientation and gender and whatever else you consider to be apart of your queer experience is all fluid its all up to personal interpretation

its not shit like bi lesbians or mogai or aroace people or gnc people or "trenders" or it/its users or whatever fucking bonafide weirdos that are ruining the community its the people who want to sort everyone into neat little boxes because they cant handle that sometimes you arent going to understand other peoples experiences. its fine if mspec lesbians dont make sense to you. its fine if it doesnt make sense to you how someone could use it/its, if it doesnt make sense how a lesbian could consider himself transmasc, if it doesnt make sense how someone could seriously mean "my gender feels like a star", if whatever queer experience you run into doesnt make sense.

someone's identity does not have to make sense for you to respect them as a person and realize that exclusionary behavior is nothing but a crabs in a bucket type mentality. not only have "weird" queer people existed since fucking forever, but even if they didnt the human experience is diverse and we still dont know everything about the world and why the fuck would you decide that no actually if it cant be understood it must be bad and you need to find out reasons for it to be bad. focus on the people who are actively hurting others, taking advantage of vulnerable people, dont become one of them. dont become one of the people who scorns anything they dont understand and hurts innocent people in the quest of getting rid of anyone who they deem is abnormal. its fucked up and being any type of exclusionist is fucked up.

bi lesbians, as an overall community, is just a bunch of people who decided that a complicated label fits their complicated attraction and thats Fine. it is literally fine. being a lesbian was never about being strictly a woman who strictly loves other women who are strictly women. its about loving women in a gay/queer way, whatever that means for the individual. if an individual person is using it in a transphobic way, then thats a fault of the person, not the label. but at its core, all the identity is about is about recognizing that attraction is complicated and identity is complicated and not everyone is comfortable putting themself in neat boxes for other people to scrutinize until they Get It.

to any mspec lesbians (and hell, any mspec gays) who are reading this: im proud of you and theres nothing wrong with recognizing that your identity is complicated and maybe even contradictory. its Your experiences and no one has the right to say that youre inherently a bad person simply because they heard some strawman arguments and decided to believe in fallacy over reality. and because its probably obvious why im making this yeah maia arson crimew is literally fine its an absolute legend actually and i hope that its okay. fuck anyone who was a piece of shit to it because they cant handle someone being openly complicated and contradictory and unabashedly "Weird"

[genderkoolaid]

I remember at one point seeing a cis woman on here talking about how she dodnt like being called Mx (as opposed to Miss or Ms) because as a kid she had bullies degender her for being fat and queer.

And like that's a perfectly reasonable request, and as far as I saw people were very respectful of it (though there might have been backlash i missed) but i think a lot of the same people who see "denying a girl access to womanhood because of her weight can be traumatizing" don't extend the same compassion to men being denied access to manhood

(re: men not wanting to be called princess being labeled toxic masculinity, also that one TikTok about using they for trans men who specifically use he)

"but i think a lot of the same people who see "denying a girl access to womanhood because of her weight can be traumatizing" don't extend the same compassion to men being denied access to manhood"

Yes!!! Yes!!!!!!!

I've been thinking a lot about "gender wounds" which is just what I've been calling trauma that comes from gender-based cruelty, whether its degrading you for your gender or forcibly alienating you from it. Gender is an important part of a lot of people's identity and having that attacked can be really traumatizing. So many men experience this but its also so normalized. Like you said, a lot of people can understand how being denied access to your womanhood is traumatizing, even when you are cis, but don't see it the same with men. "Fragile masculinity" is so often said with such lack of compassion, but being terrified of having your gender revoked for the slightest misstep is traumatizing.

The appropriate response is not "don't be a baby, just embrace being feminine!" because honestly, that's not much better than "don't be a baby, just be more masculine!", and doesn't do much to actually help (esp cis) men understand how they are being negatively impacted by the patriarchy.

To quote Jennifer Coates:

"Have you noticed, when a product is marketed in an unnecessarily gendered way, that the blame shifts depending on the gender? That a pink pen made “for women” is (and this is, of course, true) the work of idiotic cynical marketing people trying insultingly to pander to what they imagine women want? But when they make yogurt “for men” it is suddenly about how hilarious and fragile masculinity is — how men can’t eat yogurt unless their poor widdle bwains can be sure it doesn’t make them gay? #MasculinitySoFragile is aimed, with smug malice, at men—not marketers."

When we see things like Yogurt For Men, we should respond with "isn't it fucked up that the patriarchy makes men feel like every single aspect of their lives needs to be appropriately manly or else they are failures?" because that's actually pointing to the systematic source of the problem.

[olderthannetfic]

So anyone else agree that constantly harping on that "fandom is misogynistic for not writing more F/F" is real fucking ironic when the part of fandom in question being accused is clearly is dominated by women? Like… calling an entire swath of female dominated fandom misogynistic for not writing F/F just seems incredibly belittling and like the interests and experiences of real women should be considered lesser in favor of writing fictional F/F.

Like just say it out loud, you don't respect real women and want them to fulfil you fantasies of F/F because you think that fiction is more important than real women's autonomy and preferences.

The reason women are giving so many "excuses" is because we, as women, are constantly put in the position that we need to explain ourselves even when the "why" shouldn't be anyone's business. It's constantly demanded that we do the labour of pacifying people who think their wants and needs are more important than our own autonomy. Yes this even comes from other women, some times especially from other women because they were raised with that mindset in a way that they know about it, so they know it can be abused.

Why are women constantly giving so many reasons why they prefer M/M or don't write much F/F? Because we're constantly put on trial having to justify any interest we have as women, when it doesn't fit someone else's preference. It's not even like we can win by staying in "female gender roles" because regardless of what women do, someone is going to question us and belittle us based on that. Once again, this can especially include other women.

It's just another type of anti behavior as well. Antis do this constantly, they demand real people justify their actions in favor of fictional characters. Especially when it comes to people writing about their own trauma, experiences, and upbringing. Just that here it's not about shipping "problematique" ships, here it's about people (one person in this case) constantly demanding that you, as the real life human being, should put yourself second to fictional characters, or put yourself third in favor of what some other person wants you to do.

--

[menagerie-politics]

"kill all men" is a disgusting message that doesn't actually contribute to feminism. Yes, all men benefit from the patriarchy, but NO, not all men should be killed or jailed just because most rapists and criminals are men. You cannot say "But if it's not all men then it's their friends" as if all men intentionally work together to hurt women. That's just not true. And you don't know everything your friends do, so don't expect the same from men (although yes, men should be taught to shut down sexist jokes and behaviors when they see it in their friend groups). Stop trying to justify it, even if it's a joke, it reduces men to their gender and supports violence on that basis. Any message that generalizes people for things they cannot control, and uses that generalization to justify violence will NEVER actually promote equality. I want to end the system; not the people. Free the oppressed; not eliminate the privileged.

It's not "kill all whites" it's black lives matter.

It's not "straights are sinful" it's love is love.

"Kill all men" doesn't focus on women, so why is it so prevalent in feminist spaces. Is kill all men the world you want to move towards? I cannot speak for all feminists, but I want a world where women get treated with respect they deserve as humans, simply because as humans, that is the default. I want a world where equality knows no gender. I want a world where empowered women get to empower the world. I want KAM as an idea to die out and I want "my body is my choice" to become as obvious a statement as "the sky is blue". I want "my place is wherever I go" to be so normal that it's redundant to say it. I want a world where "no" has no rebuttals, and that is simply a fact of life. I want a world where safe spaces are unnecessary because everywhere is safe. But until we get there, I want my message to tell the world exactly what I want. "Kill all men" isn't doing anything helpful, it's just helping feed the demonization of feminist movements. We should be focusing our energy on uplifting women and making sure abusive men are held accountable for their abusive actions.

And side-note in case terfs find this: I've lived most of my life with society assuming I'm a woman and treating me accordingly. I've been affected by misogyny (and misogynoir) for most of my life, and I've read books and taken classes on the oppression of women both in the past and present. I have researched the history of feminist movements in multiple parts of the world. I lived it, I've learned it, and I will not let anyone invalidate my knowledge or experiences.

[dayangaytransman]

Warnings: Transphobia, sexism, misandry, bad therapist and Bear dudes ( jokingly)

In my country, there are no gender therapists, and the psychologists not only refuse to help with transitioning, but also, due to the laws and other issues, often persuade individuals against transitioning.

It was two years ago, and my mother was worried about me. She thought I was mentally ill because I wanted to be a boy. So, she decided to take me to a therapist/psychologist. I’m not sure which one that person was. Anyway.

It was my first time visiting any kind of therapist. I was very nervous. However, because my mom had told me that the therapist, an old cis woman, had experience working with transgender individuals, I wasn’t worried about it. I was mistaken.

So we went to her office and sat down. She asked my mother to leave, and then we were alone.

She was trying to be kind at first. This is a little bit of our conversation:

- Hi, what should I call you? What gender are you?

Me, living in a binary society, dressing as a boy, acting like a boy, and my mother just told her that I want to be a boy : Just call me Dayan, and I am a boy.

Then she asked questions because she was not sure what that meant.

I told her: But they said you have worked with trans people before

She said: No, not really. It was just one person and not even like you. (That was a trans woman.)

Yeah, she told people she is trans-friendly to make money. Anyway, we talked more, and then, suddenly, she got angry.

She said: Why do you want to be a man?! Men are ugly! They are as hairy as gorillas! They smell bad! They are always horny! They are rapists! They are garbage!

I was in shock. I had never heard that shit before, and she was a fucking therapist! I thought therapists were smart! What the hell was that?! She hates all men?!

I am gay, and at the time, I had a crush on a bear dude (he is my BF now), and the things she said made me so angry and upset.

Also, don’t worry, ma’am, I am not going to transition into your husband!

Do you think she was a queen herself? No! She was an ugly old lady who doesn’t know how to dress!

After she said that, I became the therapist! That woman certainly needs one. I told her not to hate all men and that hairy, horny dudes are okay. But if they smell bad and rape people, that’s not okay. I taught her to be respectful and also educated her about trans and non-binary individuals. I was talking for about 3 hours!

Seriously, I was the therapist. Then the lady told my mother that I am okay and not mentally ill. Yes, that’s obvious, bitch. And she took an amount of money equivalent to three days of my mother’s work from us for just three hours. Sure, she did help a little, but it was me acting as a therapist for her the entire time!

I am worried about her male clients and the men in her life. Also, what are you going to tell your transfeminine clients? To not be like you,bitch?

[loveless-arobee]

I am extremely sick of trans allies and other trans people alike just repeating terf rhetoric when it comes to trans men and transmascs.

Like. Good, you learnt how to recognise terf dogwhistles when it comes to transfems. Cool. Why are you still repeating the lie that there somehow is an epidemic of women transitioning into trans men because of "internalised misogyny"? Why are you repeating the lie that all women want to be men because of patriarchy and misogyny, therefore trans men can’t know for sure they’re trans men, ever, actually? Why the fuck are you repeating the lie that there is somehow suddenly a massive influx of detransitioners because of that? (There isn’t. There’s a few right wing grifters that got made into cash-cows. But those exist within every single group ever. Detransitioning women aren’t a special case, and most of them aren’t even fucking transphobic. You just only see the ones that are.)

And why do you think the conclusion that we we should therefore make transition for transmasculine people even harder so those poor little women (trans men) don’t mistake their internalised misogyny for gender dysphoria :( those stupid little girls (again, trans men!) don’t know what they’re doing, we’re just trying to protect them! They’re to stupid to differentiate between their misogynistic selfhate and gender dysphoria. We must make sure they don’t make a massive mistake by ~destroying their beautiful feminine bodies~ with transitioning, so we must make sure only real trans men get access to trans health care. And of course it’s up to us, women, to decide who is a real man and who is a dumb little "woman" who needs to be protected from herself.

???

The fuck.

Why did I just hear a TRANS WOMAN of all people say this? I knew cis women fall for terf rhetoric all the time (especially this kind, because somehow people understand that when terfs say men they actually mean trans women, but don’t get that sometimes, when they say girls or women, they mean trans men…) and I stopped being surprised or pissed at that a long time ago. I’m just tired of these supposedly well meaning cis women by now. But other trans people? I expect better of my own community.

Like, yes. Most cis women will have the experience of wishing they'd be treated with the same respect as cis men. But if that wish is not "I want to be treated with respect" but "I wish I was a man" that probably isn't a cis woman talking! And you shouldn't tell that to them. "Oh, that's normal - every cis woman feels they'd be much happier as a man and hates their bodies! That's just misogyny!" Not they do not. Please allow trans men and transmascs to exist. These "women" could be much happier if you allowed them to question their gender and to life as the gender they actually are, not tell them they're just depressed cis women and there's nothing they can do about it.

Every cis woman in my life knows very surely they are women and don't want to be men. They just do not like how they're treated because of it. But they want to be treated better *as women*.

(Also: all of this rhetoric is just completely ignoring the fact that trans men suffer from so much more misogyny than cis women, plus transphobia on top of it. Which is. Not good. And part of the reason why transmasculine people have the highest rate of sexual and domestic abuse rates among every gender group and no one does anything about it because they just assume that we're men so therefore nothing bad will ever happen do usand just forget that we're specifically trans men. But they make this assumption and therefore do not listen to us. Trans "allies" and other trans people would really rather listen to cis women (who are totally not transphobic /s) about OUR experiences or make completely baseless assumption than listen to trans men. Really fucked up.)

[faggy--butch]

"I'll also say that this is sometimes supported by the trans man creators, like Jammidoger. It's not just the trans women, it's not just the essayists […]" & "you should feel gender affirmed from the violence done to you because that's just how men are actually".

Thing is, until I found trans men/masc people talking about transmisandry/transandrophobia online, every time I tried interacting with my local trans community, especially with other trans men/masc people, has included them all parroting or agreeing with the above sentiments, and it's why I stopped going to my local support group or interacting with them at all. Hearing those things from some well-known and respected trans women and men in our local community and getting pushback when I wanted to talk about trans masc issues, was just so disappointing.

Which is why I'm happy Jessie made that video and came to the conclusion she did. I left a comment just about my opinion on the matter, that while yes I've felt left out on her videos and wish she included our perspective more often, I also remind myself that she and her co-writer are both trans femme. So I don't take it as intentionally or even unintentionally leaving us out, it's a side effect of people writing what they know, however, that's exactly why I watch her, to get a better perspective for myself of trans women/femme issues.

But there were also lots of trans men and masc people in the comments who said a lot more about what our issues are and the harm it does to exclude us, how we do face similar or even the same kind of violence for the same reasons as trans women and femme people, and that often, her exclusion of us in her videos (especially the Barbie one) is adding onto the already exhaustive history of transandrophobia from within the trans community. While I've not changed or added to my comment, in the face of those others, it felt lacking, but I'm also really kinda exhausted at this point, since I've been fighting against biphobia from both cishet and other queer people most of my life now, so in the face of transandrophobia, I just have no more fight in me and have resorted to elevating the voices of others who do.

Sorry for the rant, you don't have to respond, I guess I just wanted to say thank you for getting a ball rolling and here's hoping it goes farther than other attempts before this.

Hey! I think I actually saw your comment, I thought about it a lot too which is is cool that it's bringing me full circle here but I do also agree in part that because they are trans femmes their thoughts and opinions are bound to be almost exclusively from their perspective. I do also watch for that perspective in part as well, but I feel that bigger trans creators who talk about trans topics, need to remember that there isn't just that one kind.

They have the opportunity to make a difference, to give others a voice, a voice which severely lacking in these spaces. I'm not going to wholesale blame them for perpetuating transandrophobia or anything, but if you're making a video on trans experiences and then leave out a crucial part of that experience, or at worse, uncritically repeat those same ideas as a bigger creator with lots of followers, it can have a serious negative impact on members of that groups and reinforces it, transandrophobia. This reminds me of the video that Abigail Thorne did called Beauty, Food, Mind. A lot of that video is her talking about how fatphobia affects HER, a thin beautiful actress, and doesn't really even mention much of fat struggles, or get fat perspectives, and she gained a lot of criticism within the fat youtube community for it because she had an opportunity and the didn't take it, making fatphobia only about thin people instead. I will be honest, I haven't had much of an irl queer community, I have my friends and I have gone out and interacted, but I'm disabled, and poor. I don't have the chance to go to any sort of community events or anything other than maybe a drag show every now and again especially here were I live now, I moved and am back in my home state, so it does make me nervous to even seek out and find a local community. online it's easier to brush off that kind of thing, not being considered or being talked down to or ignored, and tbh gaslit, but in real life? In my own home area, in my real domain?

I'm not sure I'd know how to cope with that rn, especially because I too have had some, let's just say not great experiences with in few irl trans people semi community type groups.

Lots of people are hurting and they take it out on each other, so I feel like I have to put on a persona, or be more femme to even be taken seriously and that sucks. So yeah, it's a breath of fresh air to be able to talk about transandrophobia online with other men and I'm happy happy happy we have this, but It is disappointing and I think it shows historically why trans men have tended to keep to ourselves.

[julienbakerstreet]

Gender, Marriage, and Queer Subtext in My Dearly Beloved Detective

Me? Sapphic-truthing a Soviet Sherlock Holmes adaptation? Yes obviously and you will be too at the end of this.

First of all, I love this movie. It's absurd and silly but I love the way it deals with gender politics. The premise (that the literary character Sherlock Holmes became so popular that an unspecified group decided to form a detective agency at 221B to help everyone who came asking for Sherlock Holmes, and then hired two women to fill the roles because their last names were already Holmes and Watson) requires you to suspend your disbelief (did Shirley Holmes take up violin to be more like her literary counterpart? Why did they insist upon hiring people with the correct last names but not the correct genders? Why do they turn 221B's sitting room into a museum that implies Sherlock Holmes is a real man before introducing clients to Shirley?) but it's so worth watching.

The plot of the movie revolves around sexism. From the opening scene, we see a client doubt Holmes’s skills. "Do you really think I will entrust my case to you? Sorry, Miss, this is not as easy as cooking porridge," he says. To him, a woman's domain is restricted to domestic tasks. In response, Holmes lets loose a string of deductions, including one that a male detective could not have made. "Only a woman can sense a light scent of French perfume in burned coal," she says. One of the reasons I'm very passionate about adapting/reading Holmes as a member of marginalized groups is because people in marginalized communities have knowledge that outsiders aren't necessarily aware of that would be a boon to Holmes's detective work. Elementary had episodes where Sherlock's past as an addict or Joan's experiences as a Chinese woman were crucial to solving the case. Queer interpretations of Holmes often give him insight into a criminalized queer Victorian underworld that aids his work. MDBD shows how Holmes's gender (or, more accurately, the way she is treated because of her gender) hinders her, but it also demonstrates how it can be an advantage in her work. ACD Holmes says that his irregulars are valuable because they can go places and hear things that he never could, and the same is true of women, who were/are often overlooked.

But the main plot of the movie isn't about men underestimating Holmes and Watson. It's about men being intimidated, emasculated, and jealous of them. Scotland Yard is humiliated that a woman is showing them up at every turn and getting the credit in the papers. Early in canon, the police are frequently dismissive and envious of Holmes, and I love how MDBD imagines how the tone of these interactions would change if Holmes was a woman. The police view Holmes's success as a slippery slope to female equality: "If a woman detective can make a joke out of Scotland Yard, anything can happen in England." "This will end with a minister in a skirt," one says- a meta-reference to Margaret Thatcher being England's PM when MDBD came out.

Scotland Yard officials dig into Shirley's past to try and get dirt on her. Before she was a detective, she worked in a law office and had once been a brilliant student. The only black mark on her record that they can find is that she's never been married. "As a professional she's perfect, but as a woman..." a Yarder says, making it clear that to be a professional and a woman are two separate things. This is echoed in the line "She's not a woman, she's a rival." It's clear that the professional respect they have for her can only exist if they desexualize her. "A woman, charming, beautiful, powerful, wealthy. And despite all that, she's unmarried... it's extremely suspicious." Both of the men in this scene are also unmarried, but they only find it inherently suspicious for Shirley.

Later on in the film, the chief inspector tells his assistant that they should comfort Shirley and Jane after they shut down their agency. “Perhaps I should marry her… And you can marry Watson,” he says. He’s envisioning a future in which he publicly humiliates Shirley and then marries her to comfort her. In his mind, marriage- even to the man who schemed to embarrass her in front of the press and end her detective career- is automatically something Shirley would want and be comforted by. It’s beyond the realm of imagination to him that she’s unmarried by choice.

It's unclear how old Shirley is supposed to be, but the actress who played Holmes, Yekaterina Sergeyevna Vasilyeva, was 40 when the movie was released. The characters don't view her as too old to be desirable, they only comment on the fact that she's so incredible and has gone this long without getting married. In fact, a subplot of the movie involves a former client of Shirley's traveling to England from Spain because he's in love with her. Shirley doesn't reciprocate, going so far as to learn Spanish to tell him to leave her alone more effectively. "If there is one man who truly thrills me, it's Sherlock Holmes and no one else," Shirley says. Because Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character in this universe, she's saying that her career as a detective is what drives her. It's refreshing to see a middle-aged woman who the narrative treats as desirable without making it central to her plot or personality. I appreciate how the movie doesn’t soften Shirley’s personality from ACD Holmes’s- she can be just as abrasive, impatient, and cold while maintaining ACD Holmes’s capacity for emotion.

The Scotland Yard officials decide to set up a fake crime, get Shirley to investigate, let her believe that she's solved it, and publically humiliate her by revealing the hoax and saying "That's what happens when women become detectives." This scheme is an admission that they know that Holmes is more skilled than they are and they know they can't beat her fairly. The way they attempt to humiliate her indicates that they do respect her, even as they resent her for it. I've always loved that ACD Holmes critiques how self-interested the police and the justice system can be, and MDBD picks up on that theme. The men at Scotland Yard resent Shirley so much that they're willing to compromise their ability to solve crime and help people just so a woman isn't seen as more competent than they are.

Another detail I love is that throughout the movie, Jane is shown as a full partner to Shirley. Shirley trusts her to make deductions and investigate crime scenes. When Shirley is practicing her marksmanship or her martial arts, so is Jane. Jane is a little younger and implied to be less experienced, but she's not a Watson who's just along for the ride. Their partnership is very important to both of them, and Shirley reacts with distress when her Watson announces her engagement, similar to how Holmes reacts to Watson's engagement in The Sign of the Four. Unlike ACD Holmes, she criticizes Jane's choice, convincing her to call it off.

Shirley and Jane spend a full 10 minutes of the movie in drag. They wear men's evening wear and mustaches, disguising themselves to go undercover in a gentleman's club. While in drag, Shirley flirts with a flower seller outside of the club. Jane, following her lead, quickly flirts with another flower seller. They aren't being observed, and this has no relation to the investigation. Shirley expresses no interest in men throughout the movie, but she uses male dress to flirt with women.

Inside the club, the men sing a song about how "there's no one more stupid than a married man," "no one is smarter than an old bachelor," and "our hearts are closed to girls." These men get to be proud to be bachelors, a stark contrast to how view Shirley's lack of a husband is viewed as a suspicious defect. The men even bemoan how "for years the world was groaning and suffering under women's oppression." Shirley and Jane have been facing sexist treatment the entire movie, yet these men are so convinced that women are the ones oppressing them.

After Holmes and Watson leave the club, Watson cries because she was scared of being found out, and Holmes coldly tells her that she needs to practice acting as a man "so the lowest sailor would take us for his mates." Evidently, they frequently need to present as male for their investigations, because men aren't always willing to be open with two ladies. She tells Watson (the more feminine of the pair) that her skin and hands are too soft and they need to stop using cosmetics. She even encourages Jane to use sandpaper to make her hands rougher. Jane balks at this and Shirley asks if she wants to be a good detective. "Let me be a bad one, but I will remain a woman," Jane says, still wearing a mustache and suit. "I'm a woman and I will stay one!" She chastises Holmes for attempting to control her personal life and derogatorily calls her "Mister Holmes." Shirley's gender non-conformity is part of her, and she can't fathom why Jane doesn't want to live like she does. Jane is comfortable defying gender norms by working as a detective, but Shirley's devotion to her work at the expense of her femininity is too much for Jane to accept. Despite being Holmes's partner, Jane projects the same gendered disapproval that Scotland Yard does. Whatever else Shirley is, she's a failed woman first in their eyes. In anger, Jane calls up her ex-fiance and declares that she will marry him to spite Shirley, even as Shirley tells her to stop. Marriage is, for Jane, a repudiation of her partnership with Shirley and the noncomformist lifestyle they lived together.

Towards the end, Shirley and Jane talk to a woman (going by the alias "Rosita") who is part of the plot by Scotland Yard to embarrass Shirley. The Yard used her incarcerated husband to coerce her. Shirley sees through this and appeals to her "woman to woman.” "Love to your husband is a great feeling, but love to the truth is greater," she says. Rosita asks if Holmes and Watson have ever been married, implying that they cannot understand her reasoning because they're single. It’s that understanding and alteration of priorities that is assumed to come with marriage for a woman that Jane is leaving Shirley for.

The plot's resolution was a little disappointing. Shirley's Spanish suitor holds the chief inspector hostage until he agrees to... have all of Scotland Yard perform an elaborate and choreographed apology song to Shirley? It's weird. She's unimpressed and looks uncomfortable with the whole display. For all the ways this movie highlights Holmes's intelligence and capability, it's odd that the resolution to the police wanting to embarrass Holmes for being a competent woman is the man who harassed Holmes the entire movie and ignored her when she told him to leave her alone forcing the men of Scotland Yard to play nice with Shirley and Jane. I would have preferred to watch Holmes and Watson teach them a lesson on their own terms, which would have thematically been more in line with the rest of the movie.

Later, the chief tells Shirley he's ashamed of how he behaved and wants to end the rivalry and be friends, but even this apology is halfhearted. There never was a rivalry between them- he was just resentful of her success, even though it helped him.

The movie ends with Jane, freshly married, running into Shirley. She kisses Shirley on the cheek and gives her half of her wedding bouquet before Shirley kisses her (rather deeply and for longer than I'd consider strictly friendly) on the mouth. Shirley twirls in delight before walking off, but Jane runs after her and they say goodbye one more time. Jane goes back to her husband and embraces him before looking back at Shirley. Shirley walks away, caressing the cheek Jane kissed and wiping away her tears, still holding half of her partner's wedding bouquet.

To me, this movie ultimately reads like a bittersweet love story between Shirley and Jane. Jane is a good detective, but she can't bring herself to betray social convention to the degree required to be great. Holmes doesn’t understand why Watson’s femininity and social position as a lady is important to her. ACD Holmes being upset at losing his partner when Watson gets married has been explored so many times through both queer and straight lenses, but marriage for a man and a woman in Victorian England was very different. A married man had much more agency and separate identity than a married woman, and Shirley is very aware of how marriage would affect Jane's freedom to do their work. I like to think that they continue their partnership and eventually get together (possibly when Jane realizes that Shirley was right to advise her against marrying a gambler) because they have a very sweet and domestic relationship.

As always, all my love to @spiritcc for making this and other Russian adaptations accessible to English speakers!

[lurkingshan]

Only Friends and Engaging with Queer Male Media as a Cishet Woman

I’ve had some good conversations this week with friends as we’ve been unpacking our early reactions to Only Friends, which has only just begun getting into the messy dynamics we know the show is going to explore. One of the things that has come up in conversation is our different reactions to the scene between Boston and Top in the shower stall, and how we each read that in terms of consent, sexual coercion, and what it says about each of the characters. Some of us were relatively unfazed by the scene, finding it to be a fairly realistic depiction of a pushy aggressor and his conquest who is not that into him, but also not really opposed to getting sex anywhere and any way he can. Some were more uncomfortable, recognizing behaviors we might call assault in other contexts and wondering whether we should be condemning the character or the scene for the behavior depicted.

For me, this discussion brought up a lot of my previous fandom experiences, taking me all the way back to ye olden days when Queer as Folk (US) was airing and the majority cishet woman fandom spaces were scandalized, scandalized I tell you, by some of the aspects of gay male culture it depicted. It was not the first or the last show to do so, but it stands out in my mind as an important cultural moment at the turn of century as I was coming of age, when the internet was booming and the proliferation of online fandom spaces was rapidly accelerating. Because QaF did it all—casual sex, cruising, group sex, very public acts of indecency, aggressive boundary pushing and peacocking, open and polyamorous relationships, cheating and betrayal, age gaps—and it depicted it all quite explicitly, which made a lot of people uncomfortable. Especially women who were used to thinking about sex and relationships through two primary, and heavily socialized, lenses:

heteronormative romance, and

heterosexual rape culture.

Let’s take a moment to unpack those terms. Heteronormative romance is a big, broad term that I’m using as a kind of container for a lot of things, including patriarchal structures, misogyny, rigid gender roles, purity myths and fetishization of virginity, courtship rituals, promiscuity and respectability politics, the madonna/whore complex, sex as an act primarily for breeding and procreation, expectations of sublimating sexual desire in service of caretaking for others, and so on. Basically, all the bullshit cis women get jammed into our heads from birth that gives us so many hang ups about sex and love. With heterosexual rape culture, I am referring to the undeniable culture of sexual violence women also endure in a majority heterosexual society, in which we are in constant danger of having our boundaries transgressed, being physically and psychologically hurt, and then being told it doesn’t matter because our personhood has always been in question and never mattered as much as any one man’s power or pleasure. I’m not going to drop a bunch of citations for the above because this is tumblr and I have escaped the icy grip of graduate school, but if any of these ideas are unfamiliar to you, google is your pal (and please read about intersectionality as it relates to these concepts while you’re at it, because there are layers of identity that make these dangers worse for some, like our trans and BIPOC sisters, and all of this is undergirded, as ever, by white supremacy).

So, yes, engaging with media about sex is fraught for women, especially when that media does not conform to our heteronormative ideas of morality that have been shaped by all of the above, and particularly when we as individuals have not done the work to unpack and interrogate our socialized beliefs, which is often the case for cishet women especially. Many of us instinctively cringe away from unromantic depictions of sex. Many of us can’t stand cheating and betrayal in our love stories. Many of us shy away from media that depicts the unfortunate reality of grey and dubious consent. All of that is valid, to an extent, and rooted in the way we have been taught to think about this stuff from birth, and the ways we’ve had to adapt to survive. 

But, here’s the thing, girlies: most of those socialized hang ups I just talked about? Do not apply to a story by, for, and about queer men. 

Before you start yelling, here is your disclaimer: of course patriarchy and misogyny also hurt men. Of course rape culture also exists in queer communities, and of course some queer people engage in heterosexual sex, so these are not mutually exclusive categories of people. And, importantly, cishet women are not the only ones who struggle with these tensions—just the ones who are most relevant to this particular post. 

So, after that long and winding road, back to the point: this debate about the bathroom scene in Only Friends is the same shit that’s been debated in majority female fandoms around depictions of queer male sex since time immemorial. And whatever your personal feelings are on that scene, or the no doubt numerous other depictions of questionable romantic and sexual etiquette and dubious consent coming our way in this show, what it boils down to is this: can a majority cis woman fandom step outside of our own conception of sexual morality to engage with this show not with judgment, but with curiosity about what sex and relationships look like for queer men? This show has an entirely queer male writing and directing team. It is made with love by people of the community, for the community. They know what they’re about, they have resumes demonstrating they are damn good storytellers who understand safe sex, consent, sexual health, and sex work, and they are here to tell us a story grounded in their reality. BL has been moving in fits and starts toward depictions of sex that are more honest about queer male experiences, and Only Friends, spearheaded by the Jojo Tichakorn Phukhaotong (who demonstrated quite ably that he has a firm grasp on consent, sexual assault, and the damage that dubious consent can cause in The Warp Effect), is the next step in that evolution. The key point is that sexual activity simply does not mean the same thing or carry the same associations and hang ups for queer men as it does for cis women. With that in mind, can we try our best to process and critique this story on their terms, instead of our own?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Only Friends is not going to be a good time for people who are looking for romantic depictions of relationships and sex or invested in identifying heroes and villains amongst this cast of characters. This show is about deeply flawed people hurting each other, rooted in the lived experience of the Thai queer male community—and those of us who do not share all of those lived experiences may not understand the nuances of every single thing that is happening. We can be sure that the characters will all be wrong sometimes and they will all do things we think are stupid or reckless or unkind. Does that mean we can’t have empathy for them? Do they have to act in a way we think is morally “correct” in order to love them? You don’t have to be comfortable with the things these characters do, and it’s certainly valid to point out when you think lines have been crossed. But attempting to sort them into “good” and “bad” camps is pointless, and moralistic judgment of their behavior is out of place, particularly when it comes from a place of trying to force them into our own irrelevant frameworks for sexual politics. 

And with all that said, I am passing the baton over to my dear friend @waitmyturtles, because there’s an entire aspect of the intersectional cultures at play here that I have barely touched on—Only Friends as an Asian queer story that is building from a specific lineage of Thai queer media. I’m gonna let her take the mic for that part, and say thanks to her, @bengiyo, @neuroticbookworm and @wen-kexing-apologist for reading this over and helping me think through what I wanted to say here, and shoutout to @williamrikers whose post I also linked to above.