more than real

[butch-prongs]

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Who am I:

25 y/o She/Hym Butch

TME Maoist, Transfeminist, Antiracist

Polyamorous Mutual Aid Fanatic

Abolitionist, Disability Rights, Youth Lib

Forager, Fiber Artist, Laborer

Kinky, Sex Positive, Body Nuetral

Why am I here:

To support my trans sisters while they fight for a digital space defined by their contributions and necessary for their survival

To curate an online experience for myself that is joyful, kind, educational and creative.

To learn from people who are marginalized in ways that I am not

To share my lived experiences with those who are curious about them and stand to benefit from them.

What I do not tolerate

The inability to receive feedback on hurtful or bigoted behavior and thinking and an uncurious attitude about the lives of people different from you

The belief that any individual is incapable of harm or incapable of change.

The belief that abuse is always intentional, or is an unmutable trait of an individual and not a symptom of a system materially rewarding abusive behavior.

The belief that carceral punishment is justice, or that the us military and police forces are anything but human traffickers who target marginalized populations on behalf of the state

The belief that transandrophobia and misandry are real things and not specifically designed ideas by transmisogynists and misogynists to justify their violence on women lower in social hierarchy than them.

The belief that systems of oppression are broken and simply need to be reformed instead of replaced.

What brings me joy

Digital Art + Colored Pencil Art

Fibercraft & Upcycling

Cooking & Cleaning

Monster Hunter + RPGS

Electronics Restorations

Physical Media Collection

Nature Photos

Trans Solidarity & Community

Poetry, Webcomics, Media Analysis

Learning & Reading

Finding New Music

Kink, Polyamory & Sex

[inkjie]

soliloquy by an immortal cave painter.

pencil, ink, and ochre on paper

[psilocervidae]

Green + yellow + orange is a highly underrated colour combo

[psilocervidae]

Look at her don't you love her

[dragon-in-a-fez]

[cryptic-forge]

made a little wind-up porcelain dragon.

the patterns are paper napkin decoupage again, and this time i took some progress pictures, so a That is incoming, in response to a bunch of asks i got months ago.

[shithowdy]

5 years ago i was this 🤏 close to ending it because i was trapped in an endless cycle of drifting and failure to launch but in the exact right/wrong state of mind i listened to the Long Lost album by Lord Huron and the song "Twenty Long Years" convinced me to take a huge risk with another move. i left my dogshit job selling things i didn't believe in, finally got my driver's license at 37 years old, picked up all the hobbies i had been previously limited from doing, and now i'm sitting outside on a summer evening listening to Lord Huron play live for free because i live with my beautiful partners in a beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood that happens to be the site of a yearly music festival and when they're done playing i'm going to go home and watch dumb movies on discord with my friends while i finish prepping for my first table at an art market.

i dunno man. never kill yourself or whatever.

[luetta]

hey bro last night was really fun, i felt my inner flower bloom in your presence. sadly the only butterfly species with a long enough proboscis went extinct long ago. but i saw you ate that fruit cup without cutlery so maybe not all hope is lost

[tankie-transfeminist]

what’s your opinion about the “gender socialization” theory?

Gendered socialization is a terrible way to understand how people internalize gendered power dynamics

[materialgirl-structuralworld]

This is so clarifying. Socialization is impotent without power.

Imagine a hypothetical trans woman who is unaware of when she does and does not have power, but was raised to believe she is owed the fruits of systemic misogyny, and carries that through her life forever. Wouldn't she immediately fall upon her face when trying to call on that systemic misogyny? If she wanted to get a promotion over a female coworker, and tried to position herself as the more well-reasoned, she'd immediately fail because society sees her as unreasonable and untethered from reality. If she tried to pressure her girlfriend into becoming her housewife, she would quickly find that all of the language and tools available to her rely on her presenting herself as a well-respected, well-paid male provider.

In the real world, trans women are aware of when we do and don't have power, and socialization is not forever. Most people have different views and behaviors from when they were 15. But the more important thing is that that "male socialization" wouldn't even manifest in anything real, because trans women do not have access to male privilege in perpetuity, if we ever had it all.

Theoretically, exceptions exist. Sometimes your dad sees your trans sister as a future professional and you as a domestic servant. But I think people treat the transmisogyny as the theoretical imagination-land and the bioessentialism as the material reality that usually supersedes. That is not what usually happens in the real world, where the worldviews and power of employers and cops and media personalities largely dictate.

And what happens when that hypothetical "male socialized" trans woman is interpersonally misogynist to a cis woman? What happens if she interrupts her again and again and shows condescension towards her views? Does her boss invite her to the boys' club bar night? She shouldn't have done that, but how much did she really benefit?

I think this is an obvious reality to anyone who has put down the pitchfork and tried to look at what transfem life is actually like. But people would rather keep their eyes shut to the way the world works, because "male socialization" is a really convenient way to validate the belief that trans women are fundamentally and immutably men

[swagvo1d]

i hope i die warmed by the life i tried to live

[autogynophelia]

On the "AFAB transfem" thing, a while ago I used to have a lot of sympathy for their position because I hadn't quite thought about the subject deeply enough back then. And I think a lot of people still don't really understand why "AFAB transfems" are a problem, so I thought it might be worth going into a bit.

Superficially it seems totally analogous to trans womanhood itself. There is an identity ("woman"/"transfem") whose boundaries are policed on the basis of AGAB, and part of the project of queerness is to break those boundaries. "AFAB transfem" advocates can't understand why a trans woman who has had to fight against transphobic cis women saying "you can't be a woman if you weren't AFAB" would herself turn around and say "you can't be a transfem if you weren't AMAB". It seems totally hypocritical to them.

I think a lot of non-transfems mistakenly believe that transfems are able to exempt ourselves from misogyny by bringing up our AGAB. They imagine that, if some guy assumes I'm a cis woman and sexually harasses me, I can reveal my AGAB and he will say, "Oh, I am terribly sorry sir, I will treat you like a normal man from now on, because I am a transphobe who doesn't believe in gender identity but only the primacy of biol*gical sex," or whatever. They think the reason I don't say that is because I want to be treated like a woman and not like a man. But that is not what would happen: if I revealed my AGAB to this sexual harasser he would step up the sexual harassment, the level of misogyny I face would actually increase, and he would also be much more likely to get physically violent too, he would start to be transmisogynistic as well as regular misogynstic. I cannot exempt myself from misogyny at all, because misogyny is not something that misogynists dole out on the basis of AGAB, misogyny is not "AFAB oppression", it's a denigration of femaleness and femininity in a very broad sense. Even a cis man who wears "women's clothing" will face some amount of misogyny, and he will only be able to exempt himself from that by asserting that he was wearing those clothes insincerely, such as a comedy actor on stage, or a man at a stag/bachelor/bucks party. That is to say, your assigned sex is no defense when the criticism is of your sincere expression of womanhood, because misogyny is not about assigned sex.

Now imagine an alternate scenario where an "AFAB transfem" is presumed to be a trans woman by some guy who then starts chucking transmisogynistic abuse at her. She can reveal her AGAB and his abuse of her will actually reduce. His criticism will likely switch from calling her a T-slur, to saying she's an idiot for presenting in a manner that might be mistaken for a T-slur. Whatever clothes, make-up, hair, etc that made him read her as a T-slur immediately stop being disgusting to him when he discovers her AGAB. This is what it means to be able to exempt yourself from transmisogyny.

My very first post on this blog was a screenshot of a Reddit comment where a transmasc non-binary person said they discovered that the reason no one talked to them at first when they started a new school is because they were mistaken for a trans girl. The comment implied that this misapprehension was cleared up, and subsequently people spoke to them again. That is exemption in action. Unlike misogyny, transmisogyny is specifically about AGAB, because it is entirely about the direction of our transition being a supposedly disgusting and shameful one.

And that's the difference between "woman" and "transfem" as labels. People of any AGAB can be a woman, and will face misogyny even if their AGAB is known. Being known to be a trans woman grants you no privileges, no exemptions from that, on the contrary it only makes things worse. We could theoretically also allow people of any AGAB to call themselves "transfem", but if we did, we'd end up with a situation where "AFAB transfems" would be heavily privileged within the transfem community because of their ability to exempt themselves from the form of oppression that currently unites us. We would need to invent a new identity label for "transfems who cannot exempt themselves from transmisogyny", say "transfem²", but even if we did that we would quickly find a small but determined movement of "AFAB transfem²s". It is risky for a marginalised group to expand the definition of that group to include those who can exempt themselves from the oppression that unites that group. Oppressed groups deserve to have the language to refer to just themselves and not anyone else.

[cock-holliday]

It's very interesting the gendered double-edged sword of being believed about pain. People assumed to be cis men are supposed to tough out pain, repress it, tamp it down. You're not allowed to react to pain because it's a weakness. You're not that hurt, and even if you are, you cannot show it. But then people assumed to be cis women are supposedly weaker, so if you react to pain it's a sign that you're reacting to a lower threshold of pain. You're not that hurt, you're just a woman.

And it's wild because men and women both, cis and trans alike, are so convinced that they are the only ones not believed about pain, not allowed to express certain emotions.

When disability is a connected factor, then there is even greater disbelief, backlash, lack of patience. When mental health is a factor, there is an even greater assumption of low tolerance or delusion. When race is a connected factor, then suddenly Black people are meant to have a higher pain tolerance, so they are allowed to suffer more. Self-medication is expected in some areas, and forbidden in others. Access through financial means is a barrier to care.

There's so many layers to the concept of "I'm not allowed to react to my suffering" that are all true, but every time there is someone making gendered arguments of "UNLIKE MY OPPOSITE" I have to call bullshit. Cis men and women do it to each other, they do it to trans people, trans people do it to each other, and to cis people.

Everyone's pain is being ignored, no one's needs are being met, because we are participating in a hierarchical system that tries to imply inherent superiority, and if anything dampens your assumed superiority then you're weak, and if you can do anything to challenge your assumed weakness then you're a threat.

[zaccrimart]

picklejho

[existennialmemes]

Your cats are not "manipulating" you they are communicating with you. They do not understand why you're limiting their food supply or keeping them indoors or preventing them from ruining your furniture or whatever.

When they meyowl pathetically for more food, it's not because they're trying to "trick" you into feeding them again. They just want to be fed, and they're smart enough to notice the correlation between certain sounds they make and the responses they get from you.

They've figured out that if they want to communicate to you that they want more food, if they make those pathetic sounds, you're more likely to behave as if you've understood what they're trying to communicate.

When your cat waits for you to look away then yoinks food off of your plate, it's not because they love crime. It's because they're social colony creatures who instinctively share food with each other and they don't understand why you're not sharing the best foods with them.

Your cats are very intelligent, social creatures who see you as their Very Strange sibling.

They've learned how to make intricate sounds just to communicate with their humans. When the sounds they make elicit the responses they want, they learn that those sounds are the most effective way to communicate their desires.

Not because they're scheming about how to control you, but because they don't know how to communicate with you any other way.

[nochd]

My cat has a bad habit of headbutting your hand just as you're shaking food into his bowl, with the result that you spill more than you meant to and he gets more to eat.

Which sounds like the act of a scheming manipulator, but of course to cats a headbutt is a gesture of affection, and there's no proof that his mental process isn't "when I show [nochd] I love him, he feeds me more! win-win!"

In fact I think that is the more likely explanation, since if you happen to be feeding him wet food out of a tin with a spoon, he headbutts the hand with the tin, not the hand with the spoon.

[butch-prongs]

When my partner and I are being silly, sometimes we make extra pathetic noises at each other, and if our cat is around, she will come to get petted and when she does, she breaks out the additionally pathetic whispers whiny meows to participate in the conversation with us.

[pluraltitty]

"oppression olympics" has to be one of the most telling phrases someone can use to dismiss a marginalized person's point of view. why do you view oppression as a game or aesthetic, and not societal forces responsible for the abuse of human beings?

[ilynpilled]

being forgiven by your victims and absolved from the harm you cause others is not a requirement for change of conduct and attempts at material restitution. i find it fruitless and frankly infuriating that “redemption” is fixated on as the former

[traniform]

it pisses me off that everyone proved women like miss forcefem and sam candles completely right

[traniform]

like these women among many others talked about how the specter of the pedophile is almost never used to protect actual children and csa victims. they talked about how the word "pedophile" is used as a trojan horse for harassment against vulnerable groups. they talked about how no one group is intrinsically evil, no one group is solely responsible for csa, and in the former case, that the sexual abuse of children instead stems from a larger problem within society where children do not have the autonomy to remove themselves from dangerous situations without putting themselves in an even more dangerous situation.

and you proved them right! you used them speaking up about this subject as an excuse to harass them. you made a spectacle of their every move, you branded them with words like "pedophile" and "predator" so that you had a justification to stalk them, to keep tabs on their every move. you saw that finally you had a woman you were ALLOWED to stalk without being called a fucking creep. you finally had another woman to put into your modern day freak show. and even so-called "feminists" took that opportunity with glee.

honestly there are no words in the english lexicon that could fully describe how fucking vile you people are. you act so high and mighty and throw tantrums when you get told that your virtue signaling helps nobody and makes it harder for actual victims to speak up. you stalk and pile up as many accusations as you can against the victims that call you out on your bullshit. you're so miserable that you need your fucking punching bag or you'll die. and god i wish you would die

[kayla-denker]

This isn't just about racism, it's also about transmisogyny and the terms tme/tma

'Race' is a social construct. It has no real biological basis.

White supremacy is, largely, a binary system. It separates everyone into two broad categories: white people and racialized people.

There are sub categories within both of those, especially in countries other than the US like the UK where some white people are discriminated against, like Polish people. However, at the end of the day, even those white people are hated by racists far less than they hate any racialized person. This is attested by the racist's reaction to the killing of Henry Nowak, a polish man who was killed by a racialized man in December. Suddenly the entire country's racist population rallied to the defence of Nowak, a man they would have otherwise hated. But because he was white he was still held above all racialized people. This is why racialized people coined the term "anti-black racism." Because clearly racialized people are treated far worse than even white people who are subject to racism.

Given the artificial and arbitrary nature of this entire system it would be reasonable for someone to identify as being outside of it, to identify as having no race. But I feel confident in saying that you all would agree that racists wouldn't care about how that person identified, they'd still treat the person as whatever they saw the person to be: either white or racialized. The person identifying outside of the racial binary would still either be affected by anti-black racism or not.

Transmisogyny is no different. Because all forms of bigotry follow this rule. We can identify as whatever we want, the transmisogynists are still going to discriminate against us based on what they view us to be, not on what we identify as. You can be outside the gender binary, transmisogynists aren't going to care. They're only going to care about whether or not you're transitioning away from being compulsively assigned 'male' or 'female.' And they will treat you differently depending on which. Even though many of them do discriminate against trans tme people, they will still always discriminate against tma people far worse. Just like how British racists do hate Polish people, but they hate racialized people far more.

This is why the statement "everyone is affected by transmisogyny" is not true. It is an anti-transfeminist lie that is no different than claiming "everyone is affected by anti-black racism." This is why using the terms tme/tma isn't "forcing people into a gender binary." It is describing how transmisogynists are forcing us all into a discrimination binary that works in exactly the same way that the discrimination binary of white/racialized does.