antizionist jew 🧿 zionists & apologists fuck off, antisemites also fuck off.
I AM A TRANS WOMAN. BUTCHNESS IS NOT THE EXCLUSIVE TERRITORY OF CAFAB TRANS PEOPLE.
uncensored blog for my uncensored tranny opinions. basically only on here when im bored at work. i talk a lot abt intracommunity shit bc im constantly watching people get hurt by it, clean up yr mess and ill stop calling you messy.
i keep trans kids in my neighborhood fed and housed, what are YOU doing to materially better the lives of trans ppl near you? (and no, posting doesn't count)
by interacting with my posts you accept that i may be blunt or rude in response to you, but if i cross a line into cruelty without realizing it, please call me on it. 99% chance ill just block you if yr saying stupid shit tho.
You rightly pointing out that the current wave of popular (radical)transfeminism is a form of separationism was a massive eye opener. I felt uncomfortable with a lot of the discussion around transfeminism, specifically the emphasis on seeing trans men as oppressors, viewing oppression as a virtue and posititioning themselves as The Most Opposed (and thus the most Virtuous), and insistence on dividing people into People Who Face The Oppression and Oppressors, and insisting that trans women are only safe around other trans women. It took a while to pinpoint it, because it's often kinda subtle, and for a while I thought it might just be me being transmisognyistic without realising, but you calling it a separationist movement made everything click into place because yeah, it really is!
On that note, do you have any good transfeminist resources for beginners? I know people in here uphold Whipping Girl as the ultimate text on transfeminism, but I'm sceptical about it since it's almost 20 years old and also the way mostly radical transfeminists treat it as infallible and above critique, as well as it apparently being very white US centric
Yeah, it's been so damaging that the problem with terfs and radfems not being fully unpacked has lead to utilizing their broken framework. If a terf is just someone who hates trans women then you never really understand why they exist in the first place, and anyone arguing with a trans women can easily be labeled a terf, even if she herself is a trans woman.
Ultimately radfeminism is both more insidious than most people think, and also deeply misunderstood. When we fail to understand them, they are just a nebulous Evil type of woman who hates trans women. When really, they are people who have been victimized by misogyny--to often really horrific extremes--and rather than see their oppression as a systemic problem, it's easier for them to find a specific class as the issue. Namely "men." And for some, "men" is anyone who was assigned male at birth regardless of identity, and for others "men" is a class you can opt into, but implies an evil about you for choosing to "be the oppressor." Both are wrong.
And I have been intentional in framing this type of trans discourse as "trans radfeminism" because that's what it is. It is trying to identify a class as the "real enemy" rather than see many classes of people fighting and being brutalized by a common system. It creates in-group mentality, where only those like you are safe, and anyone different than you is a potential threat.
Reactionary groups correctly recognize problems but wrongly attribute the source. And this can range from groups like radfems, or like zionists, or like straight up nazis, because reactionary separatism relies on upholding fascist systems. The power you are granted to smite your supposed enemies is given to you BY the oppressive system, not in opposition to it.
While I would call it transmisogyny theory, I wouldn't call most of Serano's work "transfeminist", at least certainly not Whipping Girl. Some of her later work is closer, which a lot of trans radfems love to pretend doesn't exist despite only ever invoking Serano's name and not any other theorist.
I've not read the newer editions of Whipping Girl--the latest came out in 2024--but she has some decent commentary on both her Substack and Medium. I think she writes from the perspective of a very specific type of white trans woman, and her work is treated as universal, but it is narrow. That's not necessarily bad, but pretending it isn't narrow is a problem, especially when she does sometimes speak on other trans people with a looooot of incorrect assumptions.
Some work of hers I find helpful are these:
On “Male Socialization” and the “Trans Masc Versus Trans Fem” Discourse™
A “Gender Critical” and “TERF” Primer
Though I will say, what I like about her work is said better by other theorists. She is a decent read for a trans woman experience, but imo not a great read for a transfeminist theory.
I think, whether you like the piece or not, you cannot begin to call yourself a transfeminist without having read
The Transfeminist Manifesto by Emi Koyama. (It's not long)
Trans radfems hate this piece, which is interesting because Emi is the one who popularized the term transfeminist. Emi wrote from the perspective of a trans woman who was also intersex, and binarist (and intersexist and exorsexist) trans people really did not like that she blurred a lot of lines. She got accused of pretending to be a trans woman because of the complicated nature of her intersex experience. She was (and still is) inclusive of trans men in her theory. And she got a lot of shit for being a woman of color who took issue with the racism of trans spaces that were supposedly feminist. Which she wrote about here and here.
My personal favorite trans author dealing with transfeminist concepts and also just gender liberation on both a broader and more personal scale is Kate Bornstein.
Two of her books that I adore are
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (original, next-gen re-release -- "Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, also by S. Bear Bergman), and
My (New) Gender Workbook
Other works I recommend:
Most anything by Riki Wilchins, the person who coined "genderqueer", including GenderQueer : Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary edited by Joan Nestle, Clare Howell*, and Riki Wilchins (kind of a bad scan but I'm having trouble finding a good digital link--the physical book was gifted to me)
De-essentializing Anarchist Feminism: Lessons from the Transfeminist Movement by J. Rogue
Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman by Leslie Feinberg
The Transunitist Manifesto by Luke B.
An Orientalist History of Transmisogyny by Julianna Neuhouser, a critique of A Short History of Transmisogyny by Jules Gil-Peterson
Transfeminist International by Marquis Bey (who has particularly good essays), Jules Joanne Gleeson, Elle O’Rourke, Trish Salah, and McKenzie Wark
*Clare had most of my favorite essays in the book and I wish desperately that she wrote more.
For some heftier reading, there is the book Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies but it tells you what all the articles inside are, so if something speaks to you, you can look up particular readings
I think it is important to read narrow things by trans women, narrow things by trans men, narrow things by cis women--even understanding narrow things by cis men, and then look at all of them and see overlap and identify patterns. Some cis men who wrote on the complicated nature of men and masculinity transitioned to women, and some cis women who wrote about being women transitioned to men. I think both their findings and the context of their gender creates plots on the map that reveal a lot about the experiences OF gender. I find most of my best readings from nonbinary people who are by the nature of their own experiences, often very inclusive of "opposite" trans people, and I think a lot more nonbinary and intersex writers have a better grasp of transfeminism because of their blurred experiences.
But a lot of my founding ideas about transfeminism (not necessarily the word but the concept) came from this interview with Leslie Feinberg and Kate Bornstein:
Are u really experiencing pressure to identify with a more "transgressive" gender identity or did u just see nonbinary ppl talking abt our identities and experiences and decide it must be about you
I think where Emi Koyama gets crucified by a lot of trans people for saying that gendered socialization is a real thing is that the way TERFs use "socialized as" doesn't actually mean "encouraged by society to shift to be", they mean it as an inherent thing. Like...the opposite of what socialization is.
Socialization requires coercion. Malicious or not, it is the attempted reinforcement of certain behaviors. Failing to meet these metrics results in punishment, and all of it is possible to unlearn. It's like how someone unconsciously being racist takes the pointing out of such behavior as like a condemnation of their soul--an assumption that racism is an inherent assignment as a Racist Person, and not an unlearnable behavior you've been coerced by your upbringing to normalize.
Neither gender assignment is "bad" but your upbringing based off of your assumed relationship to gender is going to have an effect on you. It may not be comparable to cis people of your assignment who conform to the expectations, but it probably overlaps a lot with others who struggle for one reason or another.
I don't think it's helpful to ignore how being raised with the encouragement to take up space is going to create some hurdles in similar and different ways to how being raised to make yourself meek and small will. In one area, I think being seen as failing to be superior is going to have different effects to being seen as inherently inferior. But in another way, that's also not a universal constant.
There are privileges white cis women hold over Black cis men, so basing the entire premise of privilege on gender alone--assigned let alone identified with--is insufficient.
But all of this can be unlearned! Not everyone has the same localized upbringing despite living in the same society. A cis boy raised by feminists may have a much better outlook on gender than a cis girl raised to view other women as her enemies.
We can conceptualize what it does to a closeted person to hear transphobia all around them, but then try to ignore what an assignment of girlhood does to someone, because then we have to pretend it's all roses for people assigned "male"--which isn't true, but was IS true is there are some things you just do not have to worry about due to one forced categorization or another. That's not a reflection of you morally, but it doesn't mean those struggling must keep quiet.
There are countless areas that white men do not have to worry, but Black men do. Gay men do. Gender alone is not enough to determine everything about what people can and cannot do, but socialization doesn't not have an impact. White boys can wear hoodies while Black boys are pleaded with by their mothers not to keep their hoods up. It's just something one group has to worry about that another doesn't.
And the thing is that you do not overcome perceptions overnight and certainly not through a shift in identity alone. It is deeply ingrained and is a constant process. You do not get blasted with these messages for 20 years and then suddenly reverse your ideas of everything. People would say they aren't homophobic and are allies, then would reflexively cringe seeing queer people kiss. It's that moment that to continue to mean that they are not a homophobic person is to continue to work at dismantling their homophobia.
The fact that someone can type out the words "afab privilege" with any semblance of self-righteousness is such a blatant act of a lack of self-reflection.
Which can be overcome! Your assignment is not inherent, your beliefs are not inherent. But we must do the work rather than just call ourselves enlightened.
Trans men who think their role is paternalistic protector of meek and helpless trans women from other vile trans men who wish to do them harm is a perverse replication of cisheteropatriarchy's view of Men as the Protector of Women, who are possessions not people.
It is deeply insulting that people do this while calling themselves feminists. It is wonderful that you want to stand in support of your peers, but that is because you are a caring person and not because your newfound Man Powers bestow upon you the responsibility to be the trans version of patriarchy.
A man's highest honor is to die a meat shield to protect his woman from savages is one of the oldest most racist misogynistic power fantasies. You aren't making something new here.
These people still think women are frail things that can be sullied by invading men. These people still think "afabs" are whiny bitches who need to be put back in their place. Who gave you those ideas?
Deciding "I'm the victim now but I was never the oppressor" is also a shallow interpretation at both ends, especially when you think a transition to maleness DOES make one an oppressor. It's why trans radfems must reverse-engineer a reality where being "born a girl" is actually a massive privilege in a misogynistic society. It's reinforcing old misogynistic ideas while creating new variations of others, and it's being presented as feminist while standing as the antithesis to any real transfeminism.
Trans men can be like undercover agents of the deepest forms of societal misogyny and the internet acts like they've never seen anything that might be informative in our shared struggle, sometimes including trans men who have done zero introspection on their experiences.
"Trans men act like they can speak on feminist issues" yes, because transmasc theorists of yore wrote from the perspective of someone who was not allowed to have a bank account, while fighting to have abortions, while surviving corrective rape, while being sold off to men, while being forbidden from voting, while subjected to genital mutilation, while stuck under the abusive thumb of a man who controls the finances. Trans women are not incapable of relating to these scenarios, but a life that takes several conscious steps to get into is the forced reality of others.
You cannot lament having missed out on the chance to be raised as a girl due to your birth assignment and then insist that trans men could not know the negative experiences of assigned girlhood. It's easy to romanticize the life you were robbed of, but those who were trapped in it are not being dramatic.
It is so essential that we all unlearn the binary thinking that was forced upon us instead of just flipping it, recognize where some of us faced struggles that others didn't, recognize that people relating to your struggle is not co-opting, and STOP meaning "inherent, inescapable" when you talk about forced concepts.
It is also vitally important that we recognize where gendered expectations are different in different places AND that feminist moves are different across different groups--both in goals and reception. "Women have to" where? "Men are expected to" is that true in another place? In places like the states, misogyny says that a woman needs to make herself small and unobtrusive, so feminist goals say to take up space and demand a seat at the table. Are fat women feminist when they take up space or does fatphobia outweigh our feminist ideal? Are Black women feminist when they demand respect or does racism make us think she's being too aggressive instead of feminist?
Do you see how socialization differs and how countering that socialization also differs AND intersects with more than just gender?
Trans women are not doomed to be misogynistic beasts from birth and trans men are not doomed to be misogynistic beasts by transitioning, because misogyny is a behavior to unlearn--and trans radfems are doing a piss poor job of it so far.
It's like that post "The gender binary is inherent, that's why it has to be maintained by force"
Our socialization is not condemnation, but it IS something we must break from, and not everyone of an assigned group is at the same level in a given moment.
Dismantling misogynistic systems is the most root basic ethos of feminist movements, we cannot go down a path worse than white cisfeminism.
Sometimes I really want to take everyone under the age of 24 (as of 2026) by the shoulders and say:
"I'm really sorry that lockdown and the ongoing pandemic interrupted pivotal educational and social/emotional development moments for you. You have an uphill battle towards adjusting to a lot of community based efforts because you experienced a mass trauma during an incredibly important time in your life where you should have physically been around your peers learning to engage in shared community. There is no "but" here, I'm genuinely really sorry. Something many of us consider key points in our interpersonal growth as youths was taken from you, not without reason but without care for its impact on you. I hope you know we are eternally allies in our struggles and if that is something you struggle to know I hope you can learn it someday."
Because so many of the angriest, most disenfranchised people I see on this website are under 24 and I often try to put younger people's behavior in the context of where they might have been 2020. I've seen the impact on my siblings and their peers+friends first hand, all ages 18-24. We've talked about how its impacted them, the isolation, the attachment to the internet, the anxieties and phobias and fears it developed in them due to the pandemic, the political unrest, and the responses to both that we've seen since. I know they're not the only ones and I know how much being marginalized also influences that impact too.
It's terrifying. I know it must be terrifying for a lot of the young people on Tumblr too. I hope one day we're able to bridge all of those complex feelings into something collective and positive so we can do our best to prevent similar traumas from happening to future generations.
It's so fkn annoying that literally everyyyyyy post that so much as casually mentions smoking has 9 william smug dipshits in the notes like "you idiot didn't you know smoking KILLS" like I assure you every smoker knows. However. There's this thing called addiction,
a month later and I'm still reeling from somebody mentioning in the tags of a post of mine that they refused to read Fanon because he's misogynist but folks on this site will happily proclaim themselves Marxist-Leninists despite the frankly incredible displays of eurocentrism in Marx/Lenin. I am begging you to read more revolutionary theory even if it's flawed because then you may also start to actually notice the flaws in the shit you have uncritically accepted as true and idk maybe even reach some kind of dialectical synthesis between differing frameworks perhaps
if u don't know Fanon the tl;dr is Wretched of the Earth (his most famous work, what I am currently reading and why I've mentioned Fanon a bunch lately) is he is breaking down how a decolonization movement happens step by step in terms of the colonized people's reaction to colonizer aggression and the psychological reactions of both parties, and how this translates to organizing tactics and principles. In particular he goes into depth on the concept of violence and how it applies to national liberation movements, how violence is an unavoidable part of colonialism and thus an unavoidable part of revolution. He is not hypothetical about this like Marx (i.e., he goes into detailed specifics of how it all takes place, citing examples in then-contemporary history), and he does not ascribe the use of violence to merely a tactical necessity like Lenin - he frames it as part of the essential character of such a movement, and most of the book is about the consequences of that idea. Most sharply, he frames the prioritization of revolution in the imperial core (per Lenin/Marx) as an insufficient and bourgeois colonizer mindset, due to the unavoidable fact that the global system of capital operates based on third-world extractionism, and therefore decolonization is the only way to enable a global move away from capitalism.
imo if you describe yourself as any kind of revolutionary it is essential reading. you don't have to agree with him on everything or even on the majority of things but the perspective is illuminating.
This kind of response to things I say about sex work, which isn't always phrased like this but almost always focuses on me being male or a man or my pronouns, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of why mansplaining is bad.
I am a sex worker. I have been for a decade. The majority of people I know are sex workers and I'm embedded in sex worker community. I started before 18 and have done it in brothels, cars, my own home, clients' homes, saunas, and hotels.
It's absolutely reasonable to criticize men who speak on issues they don't experience like an authority, especially when they speak over women to do it. It is not reasonable to raise someone's gender (or in this case, pronouns) as a reason their thoughts aren't worth hearing when the issue is one they do face.
I see people bringing up that I'm trans in response to things like this, as a way to legitimize my speech. The reason I refuse to do so, despite many of my experiences selling sex being pre-transition, is that I equally do not want cis men who have done sex work to be silenced on the topic.
We need more active and former sex workers to speak out. That won't happen if we're dismissing those who do.
Okay let me be less glib here. It's blinkered and ahistorical to say this. Radical feminism, at its anglophone roots, was formed largely in a hostile reaction to trans women's presence in feminist and lesbian organizing. A lot of people cite mitchfest, but Prof. Susan Stryker's Transgender History makes it clear that Beth Elliott's attempted expulsion and self-exile from West Coast Lesbian Conference was the moment of inception for TERFism in the anglophone feminist organizing, and those that stood against Elliott and their allies are some of the most foundational radical feminists that embraced TERFism with open arms at the moment of its evolution from radical feminism. The entire ideology is, from its origin, against the existence of trans women in public spaces, especially in places where trans women could assert themselves epistemologically.
I have noticed that when she talked about sex and sexuality (the most notable in her article on polycules), Knight leaned into uncritically citing TERFs. I keep seeing the defense that she's doing a lot for transfeminism or whatever, but this half-baked attempt at rehabbing radical feminism is neither new nor necessary. We can and should have left this behind, and anyone that uncritically cites TERFs are no ideological allies of mine, no matter how much credulous wierdos that's not done their readings like to say otherwise.
By Peggy Munson, from The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Partner Abuse in Activist Communities. Emphasis mine.
Outside the cyclone of abuse, there is a social structure steeling the actions of abusers, and this is abundantly clear in the ways ableism informs abuse. Say you have a life-threatening heart condition that worsens if your heart rate goes too high, and your rage-a-holic partner can inflict severe physical harm through prolonged yelling. Over two years, you go from being semi-bedbound to totally bedbound from her verbal abuse, yet you cannot get a restraining order because she never slapped or punched you. You tell an advocate that your partner did inflict bodily harm, in ways you might never recover from, but the advocate fixates on the heroic ways your partner helped you out after your last hospital stay. You talk about Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy and how your partner loved the attention, and ask if any courts in this state allow phone access, but you may as well be explaining shortness of breath to an unmindful marathoner. The advocate finally concedes “emotional abuse” is “very real.” The battered women’s shelter is “working on” making one room disability accessible, but it’s “not a funding priority.” Your phone therapist says, “Well, you do have a degenerative condition—are you sure she made you sicker?” Meanwhile, you can’t get up for a glass of water, and a simple phone call leaves you exhausted. You finally contact your abuser because you need someone to pick up a prescription. She stops at the drugstore and rekindles the abuse cycle. It’s not about flowers and chocolate: it’s about meds that keep you alive.
Intimate Partner Violence organizations have begun to address these realities of disability, but they rarely do more than cite statistical horrors (people with disabilities are at least twice as likely to be abused) and impose a template that doesn’t fit. Disability is treated as a sidebar, not something with dramatically different risks and needs. Many IPV organizations are in fact performing acts of neglect and exclusion that mimic those of abusers, by denying access (not providing materials in Braille, not installing wheelchair ramps or enforcing strict fragrance free policies) that effectively shut disabled victims out and keep them locked in violence. Afraid to confront their own ableism, these organizations rationalize the ways that disabled people are denied help, using a tired social argument that it’s “too hard” to treat people with disabilities as equals.
In a culture that denigrates human vulnerability and provides nothing but a shoddy caregiving net, people with disabilities often rely on their abusers for food, bathing, toileting, transportation, and other survival needs. Leaving can be imminently life-threatening because victims might lose sustaining care, and replacing this can be next to impossible unless there are non-abusive family members willing to provide it. Many caregivers—not just partners—have intimate access to the lives of people with disabilities. If IPV organizations don’t understand the pressing need for transitional hands-on care, a disabled person will not be able to leave. Most IPV literature attributes this literal dependency to an erroneous psychological belief system instead of addressing cruel social projections that people with disabilities are needy for having fluid physical realities. If the only alternative to an abusive caregiver is an institution or a life where she is peeing into a bedpan with nobody to empty it, a disabled victim may be weighing one bad option against another. Are four sterile walls better than an abuser who offers affection, money, or other perks? Not necessarily.
For every Stockholm Syndrome, there are highly detailed acts of physical deprivation and torture that hold a person captive. When someone has a disability, these acts are easy to inflict: they may just be a matter of hiding someone’s painkillers, or sabotaging his TTY phone, or—more insidiously—becoming an indispensable aid so that he can’t function without the provided care. Disabled victims can’t always just get up and go—an idea rooted in the assumption that all people are unencumbered by physical restrictions. Whereas a safety plan for an able-bodied person may involve words like run, walk, call, or drive, these action verbs may not be possible for a quadriplegic, a heart failure patient, someone with a brainstem injury, or someone with cognitive impairment.
IPV crimes against people with disabilities are typically handled administratively through social service organizations, not the criminal justice system. This belies a disturbing social philosophy: our society does not really view abuse of the disabled as a crime. Although many states have mandatory reporting laws for abuse against people with disabilities, and social service personnel are legally mandated to report such abuse, few IPV organizations are familiar with these laws. Plus the court system is ridiculously inaccessible. Several years ago, a woman contacted me about the fact that she was being dragged down hallways by her hair and thrown against walls by a partner. I tried to convince her to get a restraining order, but this was immeasurably hard for her due to her anxiety disorder and extreme agoraphobia. She was quite disabled, but it didn’t matter as far as the courts were concerned. They would not do anything to accommodate her disability. I asked an attorney friend of mine what it would take for the courts to accommodate a homebound person. My friend laughed and said, “Oh, they won’t come to you unless you get a doctor’s letter saying you’re going to die within weeks.”
Later, I tried to get my own restraining order against a partner who was terrorizing me. Bedridden and homebound, I could not even make the calls to advocates, who kept refusing to talk to my Personal Care Attendant on my behalf—probably because they assumed she was my abuser, and they couldn’t imagine a disability hindering someone’s ability to make phone calls. They told my PCA there was no way I could get a restraining order without going to the courthouse unless an attorney filed a special motion on my behalf (not only can I not travel, but I can’t go into facilities that aren’t fragrance and chemical free). It took my PCA about fifty calls (she estimates) to find an attorney who would do this. The attorney said time was of the essence as weeks had passed since my last contact with the abuser, and then she stopped returning our calls. I gave up in a state of complete despondency. I was hovering on the edge of death and couldn’t even fight for appropriate medical care, let alone coordinate the changing of my locks or action against my partner. My helplessness wasn’t learned: it was literal. Even lifting a phone receiver or talking into it required more strength than I generally had.
The West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that disabled victims are more likely to be blamed for their abuse, because they are perceived as difficult to be around or care for, and “caregiver stress” is considered a legitimate excuse for bad behavior. These social myths are no different from abuser jargon that habitually accuses the victim of provoking the abuse. Because of the subtleties involved in abusing a disabled partner, people with disabilities might not identify themselves as abused, and rarely get support from a society that already perceives abusers as self-sacrificing for dating crips. It is common for batterers to “target punch” their victims to avoid getting caught. With an able-bodied victim, this might mean hitting her torso where bruises will not show. With a blind partner, this could mean putting obstacles in her path so she will trip and fall. With a frail partner who is too neurologically impaired to express consent, this could mean using body weight to hold her down during sex even while she tries to resist by stiffening her body and pushing weakly with her forearms, then forcing the sex in a way that physically harms her.
Advocates working with disabled victims of IPV must redefine the list of what constitutes IPV, tailoring it to an individual’s disabilities just as the abuser has probably done. Abusers will sometimes use the minimum amount of force to maintain power and control, and this minimum amount of force used on a disabled victim—though it may cause substantial injury—might not fit neatly into legal definitions of abuse. Coercion and threats to a disabled partner could involve threatening to withdraw basic support, an act that can be more dangerous to a person with a disability than a violent beating. Intimidation tactics might include harming or mistreating a service animal. Economic abuse might include embezzling funds from a disabled partner who can’t fill out a deposit slip, or giving her lavish gifts of adaptive equipment the state won’t pay for to encourage her dependence. Physical abuse might consist of rough handling when transferring someone out of a wheelchair, or over-medicating. Sexual abuse might include forced abortion, inappropriate touching during bathing or dressing, or put downs about a disabled person’s sexuality. Neglect can include withholding care, medication, or life-sustaining attention. Denying the person’s feelings might include attributing injuries to the disability itself (“You’re just touch-sensitive! That didn’t hurt”). Many forms of abuse against people with disabilities—particularly those against some of the most vulnerable groups, such as the developmentally disabled—involve discrediting a person’s own voice when she tries to convey her experience.
Activists have to think about the creative ways that abusers are maniacal and get away with it. Abusers sail through life, therapy, and the court systems with a “not as bad as that guy” philosophy. Their rationalizations are endless, and they can often pass off controlling behaviors toward a disabled partner as “concern.” If they can convince themselves or others that looking through a partner’s garbage, monitoring his phone calls and mileage, and insisting to know what he does every waking hour is not abuse, they will. For a disabled person confined mostly to a home or bed, such acts of control can be a replication of the inherent suffering the disability might already create. Most people will believe the abuser’s pleas that she was simply trying to protect the (ungrateful) disabled victim.
At every juncture, society is complicit in the abuse of disabled victims. For example, an abuser will isolate a victim of IPV. If that victim is wheelchair-bound, and very few venues in town are wheelchair-accessible, the abuser is not the only one isolating her: society has shut her out by relinquishing responsibility for accommodation. When she comes forward with her abuse, her peers might side with the abuser because they are, through inaction, supporting a similar agenda. When the abuser talks about all he has done for his victim—as abusers are prone to do—and the list includes bathing her, driving her to medical appointments, and hand-dispensing medication, people might view him as a hero. This reflects the deep threads of ableism in our culture, which believes that basic, hands-on care for most disabled people is exceptional, and should not be socially mandated.
People often believe that disability empowerment means taking a “just like me” attitude that presumes a disabled person wouldn’t want exceptional treatment—even if that treatment is fragrance free accommodation or a sign language interpreter or, more subtly, acknowledgement of someone’s physical vulnerability. The differences in human vulnerability can be huge, especially when talking about IPV dynamics that involve power and control. To sidestep this fact pretty much denies the entire reality of people with disabilities and reinforces a mentality that only wheelchair athletes and feel-good- super-crips should be recognized. Understanding the intricate differences in power and ability enables activists to calibrate their definitions of abuse. While the abuser of an able-bodied person might dramatically bar her exit by pushing furniture in front of escape routes and pulling phone cords out of the walls, the abuser of a bedridden individual can inflict the same level of terrorism by simply charging into a bedroom and screaming when she can’t get up and leave. These acts are equivalent and should be treated as such. It can be incredibly invalidating for a disabled abuse victim to hear, “I would just leave if someone treated me that way!” Or even, “I would just ask the abuser to leave.” Asking an abuser to leave is often not an option for someone with a disability: she might need him to take care of her after he battered her. And who is going to explain to the hospital staff the medical needs relating to her rare congenital condition?
Ironically, what endears a batterer to a disabled victim is often his investment in her vulnerability, which most of society insults, ignores, and doesn’t respond to in an empowering way. All abusers are dependent on keeping their victims vulnerable—a fact that transcends disability. This attunement to the power imbalance can give abusers a sixth sense about what a disabled person needs, and how to give or withdraw it for the purpose of control. This is no small thing when other able-bodied people just stand by and don’t offer help. Few people know the intricate ergonomics of a disabled person’s life, even though her ability to function or very survival depends upon these things. What puts the “I” in Intimate Partner Violence is often this: abusers may see intimately into a complex reality that most people do not notice or care about. For example, I tried to explain to my family for years why I needed someone to be on call 24 hours a day due to my erratic medical emergencies, my need for someone to bring me food and water while I was lying down unable to move, and my need for someone to nurse me during my many unpredictable crashes after having a chemical exposure or exerting myself. They offered inconsistent bursts of help and care—a week here and a few days there. They assumed that someone out there would fill in the gaps between these weeks and days. But I had nobody to do it, nobody but an abuser carefully tuned in to my vulnerabilities. While others in my life would try to create a cheerful mood and bring me take-out food, my abuser would dig in to the gritty realities of my disability, draping a blanket over my legs before I even said I was cold and bringing me a glass with a straw so I could drink lying down. These were the acts of kindness woven into the abuse, but without them I wouldn’t have survived. This isn’t to excuse the abuser’s heinous behavior, but to point out that until people are given the resources to live healthy, functional lives, they will be easy prey no matter how many Model Mugging techniques they know.
The details, in other words, cannot be afterthoughts. Wheelchair ramps, phone access, and other accommodations are essential for disabled victims to make the first move toward escape. Abusers tend to look for social cues to tell them whom they can effectively victimize. Fully educating IPV organizations about disability—and including the voices of people with disabilities in that education process—is a critical step in stopping abuse. Extensive planning must go into making sure services are accessible before a person with a disability calls, because time is of the essence when stopping abuse and people should not have to beg for access. Meanwhile, as time passes, more victims of IPV will become disabled. It is not uncommon for initially able-bodied victims of IPV to become temporarily or permanently disabled by physical injuries inflicted by abusers, or to develop ongoing psychiatric disabilities caused by the abuse. These survivors are at high risk for re-traumatization that might incorporate the disability. The underpinnings of abuse have to do with distorted notions of strength and weakness, with the essence of bullying. IPV activists must ferret out inequities in their own organizations, to take a concrete stance against the exploitation of privilege. Disability is a central issue in IPV. The ability to convey the gestalt of a traumatic experience to a receptive witness, and validation that truly comprehends the difference in vulnerability, helps disabled victims of IPV to step out of the fury and into a safe future.
it's interesting to me that, tara knight in a classic sort of radfem behaviour, the sort of thing someone jerking off about butchfemme might be expected to say hammers on how the housewife, the domestic worker, the woman who is expected to provide "self care" sex and housework to seemingly several different homes worth of people, is acting like a self entitled moid, however knight here the breadwinner who feels like she is owed sex when she wants it and not when she wants it, and clean dishes and cooking because she pays the rent.
Now, i think this is a leading question but well, come on be lead along think about what actual feminized labor is going on here
tara knight herself admits that to her accounting the polycule required 14 hours a week of sexual labor from this young woman, even before accounting for dishes and cooking, and managing personal hygeine and relaxation and all of that, i think its clear to say this young woman playing the role of the housewife was forced into even more labor than your average housewife, no wonder she couldnt maintain a job!
It's clear, and i will be honest no small endibtment of polyamory how well knight and friends clearly abused this woman! each of them paying 1/4th what a husband might since they shared the cost, and recieving, or at least expecting to recieve a full wife in return! and with no guarantee they wouldnt toss her to the streets your avergae housewife might have!
Think about it, a household of 5 adults, 4 of whom work and the fifth does a clear substantial amount of domestic labor and yet is still browbeaten over the cost of keeping her alive, just to what keep her obedient? i would say so, after all despite all the constant needling tara gives over rent, it's not what gets her tossed to the curb, what gets her tossed to the curb is sneaking away to be with someone else! to escape that all, of course 4 working adults with a woman to do all the womans work could put together 700 dollars a month, are you insane this is hardly a question, the 700 dollars does not exist as a real cost but instead a tally of the weights holding her down
Of course the young woman, the heroic puppygirl fucking knows this tara for all her cleverness seems not to notice that she describes it but, the woman is clearly socially aware, when she senses punishment is near she sells her body for a stay of execution, when she wants to leave the house she knows to lie and say she is with one of the 4 housemembers,
I commend her for surviving and hope she survives further, and i would like to take her as something of a representation as to how women's place in this world is invisibilized such that you get self proclaimed 'femininist scholars' declaring the abused housewife is a mannish whore for disobeying the family!
There's a lot you can say about caregiver fatigue, the ways society expects abled partners to unsustainably care for disabled partners, and the intensely vulnerable situation disabled partners are in, but "Dump Your Puppygirl" does absolutely none of that. The text itself does not engage with disability scholarship and to read disability scholarship into it is doing analysis that Knight didn't do. The tone, framing, and title lead the reader to a very specific conclusion about the "puppygirl." It's a pure motte-and-bailey to then claim it was written with care for the puppygirl. The defenses rely on analysis that the text doesn't support. (The revised version pulls back from a few of the facially worst aspects but doesn't address the fundamentals of the piece.)
"Your Polycule is Not a Revolution" actually describes this relationship fairly accurately. The puppygirl is indeed offering feminized labor. She offers affection and companionship and yes, sex, in exchange for the rent. She too is oppressed by her inability to exchange reproductive labor for living, and more so due to her disabilities. This is why the puppygirl is constantly worried about those around her. The puppygirl can become a dogwoman, but that takes a change in material conditions. Is the puppygirl on the lease? Can the household kick her out with no repercussions? Can the puppygirl leave as easily? Clearly the answers are no, yes, and no respectively! (The piece in general seems remarkably incurious about the position of the puppygirl.)
For a material analysis, "what rent is and always has been" seems a bit idealist, no? The dishes still don't get done and rent is still split between the same people, but it's all fine now because we at least dumped the woman we had a care relationship with? Get real.
I furthermore do not think you can publish an article to your Substack where you do serious analysis, formatted exactly like your usual analysis, labeled as an essay, and making direct reference to your work and then later claim it was a vent post that went too far. The author continuing to post about it as serious analysis that meaningfully addresses a harmful dynamic fully transforms it into another motte-and-bailey.
I feel so so so fucking bad for the poor girl who that disgustingly transmisogynist & downright dangerously ableist "dump your puppy girl" screed was written about. It is so obviously a rant about one specific woman, presumably one who is now homeless and without support, having to watch people "discourse" about her as a hypothetical while she faces the reality of ableist transmisogynist violence from within her own community. Again: this is why I'm always harping on trans women not being exempt from doing serious harm to each other. I have seen so many situations like this where refusal to communicate and be firm about boundaries is framed as innate victimhood and used to justify cruel and straight up life-threatening behavior towards someone who is profoundly disabled and in need of care.
Is it uncomfortable when someone has a strong emotional reaction to attempts to set boundaries? Yes, absolutely. It can even be abusive, IF that person is in a position of sufficient power over you. Do we think a profoundly disabled trans woman who is unable to support herself is in a position of power such that nobody can withstand saying no to her? If you answered yes, you are abdicating your own power and putting the blame on one of the most powerless groups within our society.
Which do we think is the more appropriate response when someone makes inappropriate demands of our labor and has obvious trauma responses to being told no?
A) learn to tolerate those emotional responses and continue to assert & maintain your boundaries around labor and care
B) fucking make her homeless and publish "theory" about how actually she deserved it for being such a degenerate fake woman.
survivors are allowed to feel infinite rage and grief and sorrow and express it in ways that seem aggressive and bizarre and unhinged and these feelings and expressions do not have to be productive. stop demanding productivity from disabled people, especially the legions of us who have undergone unspeakable violence. we owe you nothing.
Ohhhhhhh I just realized the reason i keep having white knight transmascs assume im also transmasc while mansplaining transmisogyny to me is bc i have butch in my bio. Because as we all know the only way someone can be a trans butch lesbian is by being cafab. You are all so fucking transmisogynist jesus christ
On this day, 13 May 1985, Philadelphia police & the anti-Black police state attacked the home of Black liberation and environmentalist group MOVE with automatic weapons, then dropped a bomb on it, killing five adults and six children, destroying 61 homes in the predominantly Black neighbourhood, and making 250 people homeless.
Almost 500 police officers fired over 10,000 rounds of ammunition into the house, which was filled with women and children, while other officers blew holes in the walls with explosives. The police commissioner then ordered the house to be bombed, which they did using an improvised device made from C4 given to them by the FBI.
Only two people survived the blast and ensuing fire: Ramona Africa, and Michael Ward, aged 13. While no officials were prosecuted, Ramona Africa was subsequently jailed for seven years on riot and conspiracy charges. The incident occurred during the tenure of Philadelphia's first Black mayor, a Democrat named Wilson Goode.
The children killed were named Katricia Dotson (Tree), Netta, Delitia, Phil, and Tomasa Africa and the adults were Rhonda, Teresa, Frank, CP, Conrad, and John Africa.
In April 2021, it was revealed that non-Black anthropologists at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania had the bones of one of the children, unbeknownst to the families.
know what ruins a party? bees @bumblebitch69 - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
