[baradyke]

about me

short intro cus i mostly made this blog to talk about discourse but hello i’m ray! i’m a nb lesbian with a lot of ✨controversial opinions✨ (that should actually be common sense lol but here we are) also i like cats a lot

quick rundown:

- terfs can eat my ass and people who throw around the terf insult as a “gotcha” regarding things that have nothing to do with trans issues are harming trans women

- “proshippers” are actively causing harm to victims and minors in fandom spaces, NO fucking exceptions

- cishet aros/aces exist and are ~valid~ but not lgbt AND THAT’S OK

- if u have AND enjoy sex ur not ace (excludes sex workers) AND THAT’S ALSO OK!!!

- “demisexual” is a preference, NOT a sexuality, nor an oppressed group of people

- lgbt people that are not comfortable reclaiming the q slur should be respected and not have the label forced upon them

- i’m a big advocate for mental health but mental illness is not an excuse to abuse/manipulate people or be an asshole :)

- bi/pan lesbians aren't real and you're just being biphobic and lesbophobic

[baradyke]

it's kind of incredible to somehow see trans men online en masse repeat the same shit that cis men do about not being able to find community or the world not caring about their mental health. countless comments of trans guys saying they feel excluded from queer spaces (not true btw) yet none of them are talking to each other and creating those communities. it's literally the male loneliness epidemic 2.0

[baradyke]

this is the most annoying shit i've seen on my tl in a while and the replies are exactly what you'd think they are. thankfully there are some who are rightfully calling out the fact that all these people are implying "allos" somehow can't see sex in an artistic way or that we just fuck like wild animals, but most are so focused on reminding everyone that "asexuals can still have sex!!!" bro we are so cooked

and then you get replies like this and no one is pointing out how shitty it is to imply "allos" are just horny idiots who don't know how to apply logic and everyone is just correcting it saying asexuals can have kinks. we have so genuinely lost the plot

[neovagina-penisis-evangelion]

To me, the entire argument about pedophiles on tumblr feels like a misguided exercise in applying "unflinching logic" to the ultimate taboo. It's a performance of intellectual superiority, where defending the indefensible is the highest proof of one's rationality. They treat morality like a logic puzzle, divorcing it from human consequence. This is a form of nihilistic navel-gazing that mistakes provocation for profundity.

This also overlaps with some individuals, having correctly fought against the repression of their LGBTQ+ identity, now incorrectly apply that "no repression is ever valid" framework to everything, including predatory desires. They conflate the liberation of marginalized identities with the liberation of any desire, failing to see that true liberation cannot be built on the potential violation of others. It's a tragic overcorrection.

Many advocates are likely acting in good faith but have been strategically love-bombed and manipulated by individuals with the attraction. These individuals present themselves as gentle, misunderstood, and persecuted, framing their acceptance as the "final frontier" of social justice. Well-meaning people, desperate for allies, get tricked into carrying water for a movement whose end goal is the normalization of a deeply harmful attraction.

For a core group, this is not an academic debate. It is personal. They are paraphiles engaged in a lifelong campaign of self-justification. By constructing elaborate philosophical and social justice frameworks, they seek to escape the weight of their own desires and the social condemnation that comes with them. They are not defending an abstract principle, they are defending themselves.

[shockedshocked]

I think this is just as much an escapist academic abstraction though - surely the point of principled academic discourse is to make difficult decisions about how to approach difficult topics with rigor and clarity and purpose, and categorizing a group of people as manipulative and irredeemable without having to reconcile with the actual question of justice is seeking to escape the weight of dealing with complicated people in their own unique circumstances: justice should be able to distinguish between attraction and abuse as an extension of the fundamental distinction between thought and action.

Certainly the arguments alluded to here are unconvincing and unjust - abuse has unjustifiable consequences, predatory relationships have unjustifiable consequences, repression is an important skill for self control, and desire should never be embraced uncritically, especially not at others' expense; we can agree on all of that. We need to be particular about how we address the real conditions of abuse so we don't reproduce the exact harm we're trying to address. And we need to be practical about the limitations of our "justice system" as it exists, which surely includes limits on how we accept desire being expressed just as it includes limits on how we seek "preventative vengeance." How do we actually minimize abuse, especially csa? We cannot excise crime by criminalizing desire itself.

[minisoc]

Yes, we can criminalize desire for abusing children. it's absurd that you think we can't, and the rest of your post is navel gazing nonsense that in summary says to make an exception for "non offending" pedophiles. we will not be doing that. we will be ostracizing the people who suggest it

[neovagina-penisis-evangelion]

A thought is only "harmless" if it exists in a vacuum. With pedophilia, it does not. The harm lies in three areas:

First, internal harm: The "thought" is not a neutral preference like enjoying a color. It is the conscious eroticization of children, individuals defined by their inability to consent. To cultivate that fantasy is to condition one's sexuality around violation. This is a profound psychological corruption that requires management, not acceptance.

Second, social harm: No thought is truly private when advocated for. Arguing for the normalization of pedophilic attraction actively works to reshape social norms. It seeks to lower the cultural barrier that declares this attraction unequivocally monstrous. That lowered barrier doesn't prevent abuse; it makes abuse more conceivable and marginally more acceptable for those at risk of offending.

Third, collateral harm: It forces this "debate" upon society, particularly upon survivors of childhood sexual abuse and the LGBTQ+ community, who are falsely conflated with it causing distress, retraumatization, and real-world political backlash. The very act of advocating for its normalization is a harmful action.

Therefore, condemning the thought is not a "thoughtcrime." It is a necessary social and ethical judgment. We condemn the racist fantasy, the violent rape fantasy, and the pedophilic fantasy not because we punish private thinking, but because we recognize that some fantasies are corrosive to the individual and to the fabric of a safe society. We draw a moral line long before the physical act to protect the vulnerable. The thought is the seed; society has every right to reject the planting.

[baradyke]

i know it's good to normalize everyone using the word "partner" or whatever but it's really starting to annoy me when every time someone uses it i instinctively think they're gay only to find out that they're not. every time.

[baradyke]

i think a good rule of thumb is that if someone is complaining about "oppression olympics" or that "we all have it bad!" they are always part of the group in said conversation that is suffering less 😶

[sexhaver]

r/trans is having a meltdown related to trans men somehow and it's been making the rest of the site nigh unusable due to tMRA talking points

[sexhaver]

i have yet to see the actual post that got removed and started all of this but based on the official mod post about it i can visualize about 80% of it in my head

[sexhaver]

in the interest of full transparency, here's a repost of the original post that started this shitshow from the original OP. to summarize:

he opens by explicitly saying that he wants to discuss the "unique issues" trans men face, and that he isn't trying to have this "be some oppression olympics thing". "It's not that trans men face less oppression than trans women; it's that trans men are talked about and cared about so little that many people don't actually know the shit we go through."

his next point immediately claims that trans men are raped more than trans women based on three studies. one of these studies bases its results on responses from a grand total of 87 binary trans people, and the other two studies are different analyses of the EXACT SAME SURVEYMONKEY POLL (which also happens to have 4x as many trans men respondents as trans women, hm)

his next point is just him getting angry that all the discourse on bathroom bills is centered around the trans women they explicitly target, instead of men like himself. he manages to find two (2) articles supporting his claim that trans men are primarily affected by these bills before giving up and opining that "I'm sure there are more but unfortunately any discrimination trans men face is largely not reported in the media as the news likes to pretend trans women are the only type of trans people there are." mhmm.

his next point finally actually addresses an experience unique to trans men, like he claimed he was going to do at the beginning, instead of just rehashing MRA talking points about how men statistically have it worse than women, like he was doing up until this point! he mentions that testoterone is a controlled substance in the US and that he refuses to DIY it for unspecified reasons. this concludes the only section of the post where he actually does what he promised in the intro.

also OP's only post on r/trans before this post was complaining about the "nobody talks about how the bathroom bills affect US" thing, it's extremely obvious what angle he was shooting here.

in summary: this is bog-standard bad faith tMRA shit and the only argument against the mods removing it is that doing so drew more attention to it and made this dumbass antifeminist a martyr figure

[baradyke]

like i literally got in an argument with someone who was saying that only queer women were spreading anti-masculinity rhetoric and i came in defending trans women (who are facing the brunt of it rn) and they were like "umm if you as a lesbian feel attacked by this then you have some unpacking to do" and i was like "i'm not actually i'm actually coming here in defense of trans women like i said earlier and it's weird no one is calling out cis men" and then they called me triggered and then blocked me

[fite-club]

"masculinity is demonized/rejected in queer spaces" people have just never spent any time around cis gay men then huh

[baradyke]

i feel like i am going crazy all over again with this new wave (yet AGAIN) of people claiming that "transandrophobia" is happening on such a huge scale and that they're being SILENCED!! (even though they are so fucking loud you can't go anywhere without seeing posts about it, not to mention the comments are always full of unwavering support) and of course now it's "queer women" who are the perpetrators of such widespread antimasculinity. apparently.

like it is so obvious that it's a case of "finally! a woman i can be misogynistic towards!" situation because WHY are you incapable of discussing your oppression ONLY in relation to how women are treated! why do you need to make up statistics and source the most biased small studies ever in order to discuss your oppression! like i have never seen transandrophobia posts discuss their oppression in relation to cis men, which would make more sense!

they claim trans men are getting massively excluded from queer spaces. okay? what does that mean? sapphic spaces? trans women's spaces? no, actually! they claim it happens in general queer spaces which is such a fucking hilarious joke because every queer space i've ever been in both online and irl has either been majority transmascs/trans men or heavily centered men. it has literally been an ongoing joke the past 15 years or so that queer spaces will always center white afabs over anyone else and it's STILL true!! we are seeing it happen in real time!!

what's even funnier is when you bring up that lesbians and trans women (especially poc) DO actually get excluded from these spaces more than anyone else you just get blocked. they claim you won't listen to them but they obviously won't listen to you first so why would we? "you're a lesbian what would you know about exclusion" HAHA. HAHAHA

[baradyke]

transmascs and trans men will verbatim repeat "we need to care more about men's mental health" talking posts en masse and then claim to be silenced

[baradyke]

i feel like i am going crazy all over again with this new wave (yet AGAIN) of people claiming that "transandrophobia" is happening on such a huge scale and that they're being SILENCED!! (even though they are so fucking loud you can't go anywhere without seeing posts about it, not to mention the comments are always full of unwavering support) and of course now it's "queer women" who are the perpetrators of such widespread antimasculinity. apparently.

like it is so obvious that it's a case of "finally! a woman i can be misogynistic towards!" situation because WHY are you incapable of discussing your oppression ONLY in relation to how women are treated! why do you need to make up statistics and source the most biased small studies ever in order to discuss your oppression! like i have never seen transandrophobia posts discuss their oppression in relation to cis men, which would make more sense!

they claim trans men are getting massively excluded from queer spaces. okay? what does that mean? sapphic spaces? trans women's spaces? no, actually! they claim it happens in general queer spaces which is such a fucking hilarious joke because every queer space i've ever been in both online and irl has either been majority transmascs/trans men or heavily centered men. it has literally been an ongoing joke the past 15 years or so that queer spaces will always center white afabs over anyone else and it's STILL true!! we are seeing it happen in real time!!

what's even funnier is when you bring up that lesbians and trans women (especially poc) DO actually get excluded from these spaces more than anyone else you just get blocked. they claim you won't listen to them but they obviously won't listen to you first so why would we? "you're a lesbian what would you know about exclusion" HAHA. HAHAHA

[baradyke]

i genuinely think as a lesbian who has completely decentered men from my life, it's always so odd seeing the way nonlesbians speak about women. and it really does suck because you look at how normalized misogyny is around you and it just goes completely unchecked allllll the time. the way people make excuses to not care about women, calling them scary or intimidating or straight up bitches for things they've just considered as the status quo for men's behavior? like saying you hate men isn't enough for legitimate feminism these days when you still clearly hold a higher standard for women 🙄

[baradyke]

also the funny thing is is that i never had to try to decenter men i just literally never cared about them. and some people think it's hard??

[baradyke]

i genuinely think as a lesbian who has completely decentered men from my life, it's always so odd seeing the way nonlesbians speak about women. and it really does suck because you look at how normalized misogyny is around you and it just goes completely unchecked allllll the time. the way people make excuses to not care about women, calling them scary or intimidating or straight up bitches for things they've just considered as the status quo for men's behavior? like saying you hate men isn't enough for legitimate feminism these days when you still clearly hold a higher standard for women 🙄

[milf--adjacent]

Kind of frustrating growing up and feeling alien and unrepresented by a lesbian culture dominated by very vocal "trans women are men invading lesbian spaces" rhetoric only to watch as literal trans men become a rampant feature of artistic representations of lesbianism. Especially after trans women attempting to clarify the definition of transmisogyny is called bioessentalism. Whatever is valid and all that, just feels like another sign of just how little value is placed on lesbians like me in the broader community: saying "people who aren't transfem don't experience or get to define transmisogyny" is bioessentialist, but the hordes of people drawing dudes with pussies being the backbone of lesbian relationships is completely disconnected from even a hint of bioessentalism. Just sayin' get your shit straight at least if you don't want people to point out how incongruent and bigoted it is.

[milf--adjacent]

I feel compelled to explain that I know he/him and transmasc lesbians exist, the problem is transfem lesbians are more common yet shockingly absent from art and artistic expression made by the majority of tme people. Why are you excluding us?

[milf--adjacent]

It's not too much to ask that for every lesbian with top scars we also see a lesbian with broad shoulders or bulge, but y'all act like we're asking you to climb Everest and K2 back to back and/or disgusting fetishists.

[milf--adjacent]

Some great tags that cut to the quick of the issue: Trans men are not inherently "one of the girls" and trans women are women, but a lot of y'all refuse to put your money where your mouths are and treat us like what we are.

[girlbortion]

[baradyke]

love when people are like "i use this purposely contradictory label/niche microlabel because it makes people confused and exclusionists angry >:)))" and i'm just like ok that's cool i use my label because i'm a dyke who has sex with women

[innerchildabortionclinic]

people who use mental health terminology to defend their shitty behavior actually drive me insane--sorry neurodivergent. you don't want to see what reddit has turned adhd into

[innerchildabortionclinic]

who will be the first incel to stab someone and use rejection sensitivity as a defense in court

[innerchildabortionclinic]

also pretty sure one of my mutuals talked about this before but the concept of rsd is literally just an observation that a lot of people who struggle with social skills got bullied and are insecure in relationships as a result. which like, no shit, but it's not some sort of innate part of you, it's just what happens if you're mistreated a lot. i've been able to have more successful relationships now that I accept my mindset is skewed from past experiences and can navigate things better