Relentlessly Sarcastic

Gay Man, British, 32 Pro-feminism, pro-LGBT Likes reading, writing, video games and dogs

[tongue-twists]

age gaps are actually not a problem in themselves (as long as both participants are adults blah blah you know the drill). the potentially harmful dynamics between two partners with a big age difference arise from other factors that are associated with age. more wealth. more stable life situation. a big gap in relationship/dating experience. this is of course worsened if you add gender and/or racial dynamics to it. age in itself doesn't create this imbalance, we just exist in a system where older people are more likely to have other forms of privilege over their younger partner.

if you're both 30 but one of you has a job and owns the apartment in which you both live, that is a lot riskier than if you're 20 and 40 but both have independent income and housing. ya know?

[bulldogblues]

Case in point, my husband is 29 years older than me, but we didn't meet until my mid 20s, I had income which he didn't (disability related) and I'd already been dating guys for a while and knew more what I did and didn't want.

[bulldogblues]

A little snapshot of the current state of UK politics.

A motion has been submitted for the Green Party autumn conference to debate making it a party policy to allow anyone who menstruates additional leave from work (3 days per month, possibly more if suffering from conditions like endometriosis).

But rather than any productive debate over the actual substance of the policy, there's a bunch of histrionics about the motion using the phrase 'workers who menstruate' and not 'women who menstruate'.

Literally, WTAF.

Trans men and AFAB non binary people are already erased enough in 99.9% of settings, what harm is it causing you if there's an acknowledgment that a small number of people who aren't women also might benefit from these provisions?

You could maybe say 'women and other workers who menstruate' instead but you just KNOW they'd be raising a shitstorm about that too.

[fisewalafel]

“actually transgender people have existed throughout the whole history!” imagine if that was true.

imagine men being like guysss im actually a woman! so stop viewing me as a human. please burn me in a witch hunt. sell me in exchange for cattle. mutilate my genitals and bind my feet and stretch out my neck and put hot iron on my chest. yo come on can’t you see i’m a woman in a man’s body

[bulldogblues]

It literally is true. They wouldn't have been described with the word 'transgender' (the tern didn't exist until circa the mid 20th century), but the concept of dysphoria around one's birth sex and gender identities differing from the ones placed on people based on their sex have documented evidence going back millenia.

This is also in pretty poor taste because, while the struggles trans women faced may not have been the same as women born female, it wouldn't have exactly been a picnic being transgender, as in many cultures any form of gender nonconformity or same-sex relations would have come with severe punishments.

[bulldogblues]

People really need to accept that black and white sexuality labels simply don't work for many trans people.

There are trans men who like women who call themselves lesbian, and others who call themselves straight.

There are trans women who like men who call themselves gay, and others who call themselves straight.

There are straight men in relationships with trans women and straight women in relationships with trans men.

There are straight men in relationships with trans men and straight women in relationships with trans women.

There are lesbians in relationships with trans men and lesbians in relationships with trans women.

There are gay men in relationships with trans men and gay men in relationships with trans women.

It's incredibly reductive to say that all straight/gay people would or wouldn't be open to relationships with trans people of a particular gender.

Life isn't that clear cut.

[godly-girlfailure]

um. what the fuck are you talking about? this post opens with “black and white sexuality labels dont work” and then you proceed to use them repeatedly while offering no alternative? hello??? and the rest of the post. oh my lady the rest of the post.

if you are genuinely straight. and in a relationship with a trans person of your same gender.

you are transphobic. that is transphobia. if you are dating the same sex as a straight person you are either not actually straight or a transphobe. this is not nuanced.

it is exactly the same for gay relationships.(if you are gay and dating the opposite sex you are either not fully homosexual, or you are transphobic)

i mean entirely this is kind of just classic “being into trans people isnt straight or gay but a third new thing!!” transphobe rhetoric. especially since you felt the need to give “straight people can be attracted to the opposite sex even if its a trans person” its own fucking paragraph.

literally what is the point of this entire post besides the first and last sentences other than transphobia

[bulldogblues]

I'm confused how you read my post and took away from that 'dating trans people isn't straight or gay' when it details at length about how many straight and gay people do exactly that?

A question for you - suppose you have a straight woman marry someone she presumed was a straight man, but who later comes out as a trans woman. She decides to stay with her because she still loves her trans wife, but doesn't consider herself lesbian or bisexual. Is that transphobic? Because that's a lived reality for many women in the world. You can switch genders for either or both parties and the same principle applies.

Back in my university days I knew a trans man who still identified as lesbian and was open to dating women and AFAB trans people - was he being transphobic towards himself?

I left bisexuality/pansexuality/other multi-sexualities to one side as it went without saying that many of them would be opening to dating men and women, trans or otherwise.

[laysplaining]

"transfems turning aggressive and at times sexually violent when i would reject them" fakest shit i've read all day

wanna try my shoes on babygirl...?

i had this shit happen to me irl too.

and i'm one of hundreds of cis women & transmascs & even some transfems - esp ones that are misogyny-affected irl - who have experienced sexual harassment, explosive responses to rejection and even assault attempts/threats from certain transfem predators. my main camgirl clients were transfem and they were creepy as fuck in a really unique amab way. there's literally no way around it dude.

turns out not experiencing misogyny in childhood can affect how you behave around those who did. turns out creeps exist everywhere. turns out feminist analysis doesn't need to tiptoe around real experiences. you don't need to downplay lesbophobia and abuse/harassment in a marginalized community in order to uplift them. that's dumb as hell. i myself want to call out bullshit and predatory behavior in my own afab/female communities - my most visceral irl sexual harassment was by another cis lesbian in highschool, and many of my abusive exes were transmasc & used it against me. you don't need to be so offended lmao.

we need to call out ALL TYPES OF PREDATORS & ABUSERS & TOXIC FUCKERS. including marginalized ones. i will never pull punches.

[bulldogblues]

A golden rule for anyone serious about calling out abuse and harassment - there is NO SUCH THING as a group which is incapable of it.

There is nothing in this world an abuser loves more than a category which absolves them of accountability just for being a part of it.

[capricorn-season]

[benyw]

The UK in a nutshell rn

[chadradfem]

This government is simultaneously fucking pathetic and increasingly authoritarian. UK people, we should be terrified that these people rule over us.

[bulldogblues]

tl;dr of what the guy's saying - "I've been given an official soundbite and strict instructions not to deviate from it"

[kittenscratches]

Are we fucking serious right now lmfao this person has to be a fed

[bulldogblues]

This person clearly missed the part where trans men were ruled as being acceptable to exclude from both men's AND women's restrooms.

It's not like they're even pretending not to target transmascs.

[a-random-fandom-friend]

It's pride month so I'll allow myself to express one opinion on the internet :

There are no "exact color" of pride flags.

I see more and more sites and posts talking about the exact hex codes for the lesbian flag, or the right purple for the ace one, and how it should be more or less saturated and I just want to say: pride flags were meant to be sewn in your kitchen. To be spraypainted and to be recognised.

There are no "exact colors" of pride flags because you should do them with what you have ! Nobody should care if you use a crimson red instead of a cherry red or whatever ! Be free ! wave your colors ! The colors you have !

[bulldogblues]

People really need to accept that black and white sexuality labels simply don't work for many trans people.

There are trans men who like women who call themselves lesbian, and others who call themselves straight.

There are trans women who like men who call themselves gay, and others who call themselves straight.

There are straight men in relationships with trans women and straight women in relationships with trans men.

There are straight men in relationships with trans men and straight women in relationships with trans women.

There are lesbians in relationships with trans men and lesbians in relationships with trans women.

There are gay men in relationships with trans men and gay men in relationships with trans women.

It's incredibly reductive to say that all straight/gay people would or wouldn't be open to relationships with trans people of a particular gender.

Life isn't that clear cut.

[indigosfindings]

how do you pronounce the honourific "Ms." in english

"miss"

"miz"

other

unsure/see results

Voting ended onMay 21

[mortalityplays]

really good "shocking number of people are confidently objectively demonstrably completely wrong" poll

[3liza]

i am losing my fucking mind

[avocado-moon]

#we dont use honorifics in my first language so whenever i have to select options (usually for flights) im always so confused#like what is actually the difference between miss and ms#i like miss bc it sounds more historical and im a historian so

"Miss" means an unmarried woman. "Mrs." means a married woman. (both of these have origins in the word "mistress" as in "mistress of the house".)

"Ms." - prounounced MIZ, btw - is a third option popularized by gloria steinem in the 70s - mainly through her feminist magazine Ms. - which is meant to be a neutral term, usable for any and all women regardless of marital status (hence the soul destroying irony of the tags above). it gained wider general acceptance when geraldine ferraro, the first woman to be nominated as VP on a national major party ticket, started using it widely to avoid confusion, since she was married but used her maiden name professionally. eventually over the years it came into common use though i do think the brits are a little more critical of it than americans (as far as i'm aware lol)

[avocado-moon]

"obscure facts only a tumblr user would know" and it's one of the most influential institutions of second wave american feminism. PLEASE open the schools

[onbearfeet]

Hi. I'm an unmarried woman in her forties. I use Ms. and pronounce it "miz", though I don't correct people who accidentally use a soft S. I use Ms. because it's no one's business but my own whether I'm married, to a man or anyone else, and that's what Ms. means. It means fuck off, my marital status is irrelevant, just as it is for every man who uses Mr.

I've had people (usually children) ask me at work if I'm a missus or a miss. I have replied that I am a miz, full stop. And when they pressed for which one I was REALLY, I have replied, "Why? Are you going to treat me differently depending on whether there's a ring somewhere?"

That's what Ms. is for. That is its linguistic function. It says, "This is an adult woman," and nothing else. Nothing else is necessary, and in my case, nothing else is desired.

I also use miz for other women unless and until they express a preference for something else because I don't magically know everyone else's marital status when I meet them. That's a courtesy—I'm declining to assume marital status and allowing them to decide whether they wish to declare it.

Also, I've taught English and worked as an editor for twenty years. I am quite literally the grammar police. This use of Ms. is a standard construction. If you didn't learn it in school, someone failed you.

[trans-masked]

Very typical response to telling someone “hey you don’t actually exist in a vacuum and have no way to tell what pornhub videos are consensual and which are drugged human trafficking victims”.

You have the heavy hitters in the response here like “you’re just a puritan” “you hate sexuality” “shut up because this makes me uncomfortable” etc etc but what I’m most fascinated by is the “what human trafficking” comment. What the fuck does that even mean? Do you think sex trafficking is a myth made up by uppity puriteens?

[trans-masked]

I’m sorry this is so funny they then tell me to “grow up” when they can’t read 4 sentences…..

[bulldogblues]

For the avoidance of any doubt, there are MULTIPLE recorded cases of PornHub profiting from sex trafficking.

So apparently anyone who doesn't ignore reality is a prude...

[prodigalwitch]

this should be common sense, but the whole "well, I never had a bad experience with them" thing does not fucking matter when it comes to sexual assault

[antiporn-activist]

Rapists don’t rape everyone they meet.

[princessterf]

My surrogate auntie turned her back on her sister when she told her their dad had been molesting her for years. My auntie said she was making it all up. Their baby brother killed himself years later. He had severe depression and alcoholism starting when he was 11. My auntie said her sister thinks he was abused too but she doesn't believe it because "Why would he only touch them and not me? If he was a bad guy like that he would do it to all of us. He didn't hurt me so she's clearly lying."

Just because you weren't victimized by someone doesn't mean they aren't capable of it.

[bulldogblues]

This is one of the most common tactics abusers, including sexual abusers, use.

Make everyone else think they're sweetness and light so that if the person abused ever speaks out they won't be believed. Or weaponise it to prevent them from speaking out at all because 'no one will believe them' (may or may not be true if they ever did).

[transmasc-theory]

I think the situation where trans men are now banned from all public bathrooms in the UK is a perfect summation of transandrophobia.

It happened in broad daylight. It was telegraphed ahead of time; TERFs were very clear they wanted trans men removed from public life entirely. Yet during the entire lead-up, and even since then, people have erased transmascs completely from the conversation, saying they weren't in danger like transfemmes are, and in fact alleging that transmascs enjoyed a measure of protection from TERFs, who allegedly just see them as confused little girls they want to protect.

And while people were busy being useful idiots and spreading TERF propaganda for them, while people were busy actively denying the threat to transmascs, TERFs made it so transmascs can be excluded from any public bathroom in the UK.

That's transandrophobia in a nutshell. Trans men don't die in the spotlight, they die in the shadows, and are told they're privileged for their quiet, out-of-sight deaths.

[bulldogblues]

I'm willing to bet most people, even most in the LGBT community, don't even know that trans men can now be effectively barred from any gendered space now. Barred from men's for being born female, and barred from women's if it's considered likely that their presence would make women uncomfortable.

Key takeaway here is that invisibility is absolutely not, nor has ever been, a privilege.

[gnomebutch]

“If you’re gay…become bisexual and sleep with people you’re not attracted to! It makes you better!” DO YOU HEAR YOURSELFFFFFF !!!!!!

[evenlesssentimentaltranslator]

”I bring a sort of homophobia that gay people don’t really like” I wonder why they don’t like that

[gender-machine-broke]

“I bring a sort of conversion therapy rhetoric to the gay people in my life” you do not deserve gay friends

[bushpropaganda]

woah who woulda thunk it. OP deleted the original tag then backtracked in the comments!!!

OP u know exactly what u meant because u reblogged ur own post with this:

u just switched up when people rightfully called u out for promoting conversion therapy.

[gnomebutch]

or misogyny lol???? If a straight woman or a gay man doesn’t want to date women are they misogynistic?????????? As opposed to telling women they should be entirely sexually available and have no boundaries which is totallyyy feminist. Okay then.

[bulldogblues]

I suspect they might have been thinking about situations like gay men who shit on feminine or otherwise GNC gay men, which tend to go beyond 'I'm not interested' to being really brusque and rude about it.

But that's giving too much benefit of the doubt because half the time even saying 'I'm not interested in X' is seen as prejudiced by them no matter what.

[jackabbot]

Do you ever think it's coming back? All that shit from the '90s? We were despised, but you read the stuff online now, it sounds just the same. Do I think it's coming back? Yeah. It's back, you fucking idiot. Right now, it's here.

TIP TOE • 1.01

[iwanttolisten]

Correct, male socialization is something that happens *to* you, you don't get to choose it. Just like no one chose to be born in the United States, or be born straight or white or rich. You were born into a system that wants you to act in ways that affirm the system, and you must understand it lest you perpetuate it.

[iwanttolisten]

If you made this post about any other oppression system on Tumblr it would be shot dead by leftists on sight.

"White privilege is such an evil rhetoric. Yeah I guess being born white and being taught I'm better than Black people at the age of 5 is my fault and I'm evil for it. Yeah I guess having a white childhood I never asked for means I'm a danger and I should perpetually apologize for it." -> immediately recognizable as bullshit racists say

"Straight privilege is such an evil rhetoric. Yeah I guess being straight is my fault and I'm evil for it. Yeah I guess having a straight childhood I never asked for means I'm a danger and I should perpetually apologize for it." -> immediately recognizable as bullshit homophobes say

But stuff like this gets posted and acquires 2k likes.

Male socialization is not even specifically attacking MTFs but they have successfully guilted everyone into being scared to believe in it.

[bulldogblues]

Sorry for adding the obvious, but evidently it isn't as obvious as I thought - male socialisation DOES NOT MEAN that anyone born male is evil, and it's in no way implying it's a choice, quite the opposite.

And hell, there's a good argument that if you're trans a lot of the male/female socialisation messages might land different than if you're cis - that's a conversation worth having.

But fundamentally it is about the messages society directs at you from all directions based on sex. And you can't receive those messages from birth and have it have no impact on you as a person without consciously unlearning them over a lifetime.

And not all aspects of male socialisation comes down to entitlement or violence - another example is stuff like if you're male (or perceived as male) in formative years, you're going to be much more likely to be encouraged to learn in fields like computer science. That's part of why you have a lot of trans women as computer programmers but not so many trans men.

None of that is saying 'you are a bad person who shouldn't exist'.

[teaboot]

Can I be honest with yall I don't want to hear SHIT against cishets at pride this year

[teaboot]

"But it's not FOR them!!!" The biggest military power in the world belongs to a christofascist nation overseen by a felon found guilty of 34 federal crimes and has greenlit a gestapo with more direct funding than the entire military of Canada for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. Let Hetero Jessica throw some biodegradable glitter at a municipal parade

[teaboot]

At this point if anyone is trying to exclude anyone benignly pro-queer from a pro-queer space I'm just going to assume you're a fed or something idk like something something destabilize the movement from within or whatever

[dykepuffs]

I'm going to be annoying and say that in the political climate we have in the UK right now, we need more straitened people at pride. More cishet friends and families of queer people, turning up because they want to support their queer friends, or to see what a gay bar looks like on the day of the year where it's most likely to be open to "tourists", etc.

We need the bigots to see that their strait neighbours go to Pride, that their strait boss will high five the rubbermen, that their strait sister poses for a photo with a drag queen and is proud to share it on social etc, so that they know that their own views will be met with hostility.

[bulldogblues]

I have heterosexual work colleagues, guys in their 40s, who go with their partners and children to pride effectively as a rainbow themed family fun day.

And you know what?

I appreciate the FUCK out of that. Because it's a small act that completely normalises and depoliticises being LGBT in am increasingly divided landscape.

So to any straight people reading (assuming you aren't homophobes, of course), please go to Pride, it makes a difference.