A Blog About Observations

A place where I make an attempt to dissect Social Issues when the thought strikes. Sideblog. Not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you. 

[caffeineandsociety]

Do you notice how being progressive is in vogue these days, but you just don't want to put in the work? Want that feminist cred, but don't want to have to consider you may, potentially, at some point in your life, possibly have had a teeny tiny misconception or two about how gender works? Well, have I got a solution for you! Welcome to:

A Quick And Dirty Guide To Turning Trad Gender Roles Into Feminist Theory!

How does it work? Why, it's mostly just a simple phrasebook! In order to do the bulk of the work, just rephrase your statements like so:

"Men should be the breadwinners; women belong in the home" -> "Ladies, fuck the grind and hold out for a guy who treats you like you deserve, don't settle for some lazy bastard who makes you support him!"

"Women are too weak to hack it in the dog-eat-dog real world, their job is to be wives and mothers, they're not tough or competitive enough to do anything else" -> "Women are socialized to be the caring, kind, Safe gender"

"Men are just stronger than women and that just plain makes them more capable and competent" -> "Men are stronger than women and that makes them SCARY and DANGEROUS"

"Boys will be boys, men are just GOING to be crude especially toward women, get used to it" -> "Men aren't taught self-control or manners and teaching them NOW is not your job at best and a hopeless endeavor at worst, they're too far gone, they're dangerous by nature, and there's nothing to be done about it, so they're not worth your time" (or, "kill all men"/"all men are trash")

"Men just can't help themselves, if you don't want men sexually harassing/abusing/assaulting you then don't tempt them, you're totally asking for it, how do you expect men to control themselves?" -> "We must protect the sanctity of Women's Spaces; any woman who wants to let a man in is a traitor who can't be trusted, doesn't she KNOW what will happen if we let men close? Men can't be trusted to behave ever so the only way to be safe is to keep women away from them" (or, "kill all men"/"all men are trash")

"Men wearing dresses is degrading and a sign of weakness" -> "men wearing dresses is cute and funny for...some reason, but it's totally empowering! If he doesn't find it to be, that's not a matter of personal taste, it's 100% toxic masculinity and THAT'S shameworthy, if we're laughing at him THAT'S why, it's not because WE think it's degrading!"

"Man up, don't be a pussy, men don't cry" + "MOC/disabled men/queer men are a danger to white men and especially Their Women" -> "Talking about how maleness and masculinity intersect with oppressed statuses is taking away from and talking over women, we need to focus on women's needs, stop making things about you, you get enough support already, cry more fragile male tears about it"

"Women are too frivolous and impulsive and prone to mindless bandwagoning to deserve agency, from finances to their own bodies" -> "We have to fight the coercive marketing influences in society looking to prey on vulnerable women" - BONUS: you can even avoid reckoning with certain forms of transphobia with this one, just by railing against the evil plastic surgery industry coercing poor, innocent little girls into irreversible things they're sure to regret - just make sure to say "trans women are women and trans men are men" in your next internet post, so people don't get the "wrong" idea! ;)

Some things might take a little more work than just find-and-replace, but with a little practice, they're super easy too:

"Everything women and especially teenage girls like is stupid and frivolous" -> "Everything white/straight girls like is problematic" - now, you can't just say it outright, you have to put in a little work to make the association from case to case, but with just a little creativity, you too can spin hating on pop music and current popular fashions and pumpkin spice into anti-racist praxis!

"Women shouldn't have sex drives, they should put out for their husbands but otherwise be pure and chaste and DEFINITELY not actually seek sex out themselves" - SAY that women's sexual liberation is important (to an extent), but spin every possible example as being harmful somehow. Here are a few good stock examples:

-> Romance novels and fanfiction are too full of tropes that tell men that sexual abuse is okay and teach women that it's what a good boyfriend SHOULD do (look, you get to undermine women's intelligence by implying that they collectively can't tell fantasy from reality, even!)

-> M/M shipping/BL is just for straight women who fetishize gay men (BONUS: you can call any gay man who likes it a self-hating traitor to the community and deny the identities of trans mlm with this one!)

-> Free The Nipple will traumatize children and possibly even normalize child abuse

-> Attraction to anime men is pedophilic because even the ones who are nominally over 18 look too young to actually be (BONUS: you get to imply that Japan is an evil den of pedophiles and/or avoid confronting any biases about POC and apparent age! Racism? Of course not, this is feminism!)

-> Attraction to celebrities is for creepy people with no sense of boundaries, ESPECIALLY if you talk about it

-> And, of course, you can pathologize most cases of sexual forwardness in women, no matter how slight or how willing to accept no for an answer, as a maladaptive trauma response, if you just give it a little thought!

Congratulations! By following this guide, you too are now A Feminist, without ever having to do any of that pesky introspection that might make you feel bad!

[relientk]

Sometimes when I talk about how "all men are ___" and similar ideas are dangerous, it gets misconstrued as this desire to coddle men or deny misogyny, etc.

I am all for holding men accountable. I do think we should call out petty, controlling, abusive behavior, and I do think men should face consequences for these behaviors.

Because it is important that these men face consequences, it is important to teach people — men who have gotten away without so much as a slap on the wrist, women who enable these behaviors, girls who are told that it is okay to be treated this way, impressionable boys developing their sense of morals — that it is not okay to behave this way.

But the second we start insinuating that these traits are inherently masculine, innate male behaviors, we throw that progress away.

It's true that these behaviors are more common in men, but not for biological reasons. It's because these behaviors have been labeled as acceptable, these behaviors have been encouraged. Which is why it is crucial to say "no, this is not okay, this is unacceptable, and there are consequences to doing this."

When you reduce it biological explanations, you give these behaviors a pass. You're saying, whether you mean to or not, that men are behaving as men do, because they're men, and this is how they operate. Which means that these behaviors are acceptable by virtue of being uncontrollable. That's just how men are. They can't help themselves. It's up to everyone around them to protect themselves, because men are just giving in to their nature.

Which is dangerous reasoning! Yes, absolutely hold men accountable, but remember that they are making the decision to act this way, and that society supports this decision and encourages it. If you want change, you have to present change as an option.

[caffeineandsociety]

The frustrating thing about gender politics is, sometimes you HAVE to frame things in very binary terms when you're trying to dissect OTHER PEOPLE'S sexism and exorsexism, and sometimes you HAVE to frame things in terms of AMAB vs. AFAB when you're to account for OTHER PEOPLE'S bioessentialism, but every single fucking time you do you have to really work to avoid accepting the ideas you're fighting as having some kind of merit in their framework, and even if YOU manage to avoid it in your head, it's extremely difficult to phrase it in a way where that will come across to other people

Like, "the binary is bullshit, humans are not as sexually dimorphic as mainstream society wants us to think, nonbinary and intersex people are real, and while there are broad patterns in various demographics due to external social factors you can't tell shit about shit about someone on an individual level based solely on their gender even if you take transness into account" and "people talk a big game about ~not being sexist or transphobic I'm a Good Person uwu~ but still hold a lot of double-standards about how they treat people based on gender, transness, and known or perceived birth designation" are both statements that can coexist, but HOLY DAMN is it hard to talk about the latter without SOUNDING like a denial of the former

[caffeineandsociety]

For a more concrete example, let's talk about double standards with how children are raised. On average, people overestimate their young sons'* physical ability, and underestimate their daughters'*. This starts extremely young, in fact. The gap between how much physical activity is encouraged between the sexes has been identified as a significant factor in why women are more likely to experience age-related mobility loss than men.

Does this make the gender binary real? No.

Does this make it a hard and fast rule that girls will be weaker than boys? No.

Does it make it a hard and fast rule that people AFAB will be weaker than people AMAB? No.

Does it guarantee that girls, or people AFAB, or "she/hers", or anyone else you might want to argue this about are doomed to a life of being sedentary and facing the consequences? No.

Does it mean boys, or people AMAB, or "he/hims", or whatever, are all born athletes who are immune to age-related mobility loss or other potential adverse effects of not moving for fun? DEFINITELY not!

But does it have knock-on effects that make one group more likely - not guaranteed, but more likely - to suffer certain adverse events than others? Yes!! Yes it does!!

But thats just it. All this external stereotyping and gender essentialism really does is contribute to risk factors. Those risk factors are important!! But they're not laws of nature and we cannot treat them as such if we want to see any kind of positive change.

Would you tell a nonsmoker with lung cancer that they don't deserve treatment because it was so unlikely that it would happen to them, or try to force a smoker without cancer into a lobectomy because statistically theyre the most likely to need it? I would hope not...although I'm well aware there are people out there who would, I would hope they're not in my target audience. We need to be able to apply the same logic to the impacts of the gender essentialism in the world.

[mousidy]

the state does not need to assign you a sex, nor does it need to keep inalterable record of it btw

[mousidy]

a very interesting terf objection to this one boils down to "but how would the state know who to protect?" because it speaks to the incredible privilege of being in a class the state actually ever remotely wants to protect. most oppressed groups do not want the state to have a registry of them, lol

[mousidy]

the patriarchy has done a great job convincing white cisgender women that it's in their best interests to maintain it

[vacuously-true]

Researchers can do studies that track disparate impacts across genders just fine without the government storing your assigned sex as part of your legal identity. They do this with race and orientation and disability and so on just fine.

A census can understand population level trends just fine without storing your assigned sex as part of your legal identity. They can ask for this information in the census. The census tracking population level data is not the same as your assigned sex being permanently part of your legal identity. (At least, the way my country does a census.)

Your doctor can know your anatomy by you communicating it to them if/when it is relevant. There is never a time when they might need to know something that could only be conveyed by your assigned sex being officially relayed to them via government documentation. You can just use your words. The same way you tell your doctor any other part of your medical history.

People respond to "the government doesn't need to store your assigned sex as part of your legal identity" as if they are hearing "no one should ever acknowledge gender or sex at all" but that's not what's being said.

Your birth certificate conveys important legal information about you. Your name, as a designation. Your parents, as they have a legal obligation to you. Your place of birth, as that place has a legal obligation to you. Date and time of birth, since age is important for application of some laws.

And sex. That's on there too. But what is the legal relevance? What laws is the government going to apply to you differently based on what sex is on your birth certificate? I can only think of one thing my government really uses that for, and that is to determine who has to sign up for the draft. And guess what, fuck that shit anyway. The government also used to use this to decide who is allowed to marry who. They don't do that anymore. For now.

There is literally no reason my assigned sex needs to be part of my legal identity. My government is not using that for anything (important). It doesn't matter. If the gender markers on everyone's IDs vanished tomorrow nothing (except maybe the draft) would be significantly negatively affected. Data collection for research could continue as usual since researchers usually have people self report these characteristics rather than checking their government IDs. My doctors would still know which organs I have and if they forgot, I could tell them. I don't want anything to be part of my legal identity that doesn't have to be.

[caffeineandsociety]

The only reason the state has to store information on you is if that information influences how the law affects you.

Your name and SSN or equivalent? Important for identity verification. It influences how the law affects you by making sure they get the right person for matters of taxes, benefits, and everything else the law touches, really.

Location of birth? Address? Also important for all of that stuff, as well as determining what local jurisdiction you fall under, things like whose responsibility it is to keep records and what district you vote in. Basically, disambiguation and bureaucracy. Useful.

Your sex/gender?

It was important when the only people allowed to open bank accounts, or credit lines, or vote, were people marked with an M. Which, I hope we can all recognize, was bad. It was important when gender was a determining factor in who you were allowed to marry, which is now only the case in an ever-dwindling number of countries. In the US, the only thing it's used for these days is to discriminate against trans people and determine who has to sign up for the draft (which is its own whole can of worms).

Its literal only purpose is gender and sex discrimination and it always has been.

[caffeineandsociety]

The reason to point out and mock the right's hypocrisy isn't to convince the pundit you're dragging, or their hardcore fans, or anyone else who's in really deep. The pundit likely knows they're full of it and just saying whatever will rile up their base, and the die-hard fan probably needs a harder-hitting wake-up call to start the deradicalization process - the odds that having some hypocrisy pointed out in a judgmental, mocking context will convince them of anything are extremely slim.

The reason to point out and mock the right's hypocrisy is to PREVENT people from getting radicalized.

It's for the fence-sitters, people who don't know about a controversial subject and are poisoned by American false neutrality into thinking "getting all the facts" means lending equal weight to the official positions of multiple coalitions of doctors and nurses, and the claims of some snake oil salesman on Facebook. The ones who were taught by shitty conservative public school teachers that "fairness" means that if one person reports that they're in the middle of a thunderstorm, and the other reports that it's sunny, you should report both their sides as equally plausible rather than look out the window. The "centrists", the people who aren't willful bigots but fall for bigoted bullshit once it's hidden under a single level of obfuscating the target, like a dog gleefully eating a pill wrapped in cheese. Mocking a right-wing pundit is essentially a performance for them.

The purpose isn't just to get the logic through to them, either, but it DOES involve a bit of appealing to emotion as well - just because that's a foul in a formal debate doesn't mean it's not absolutely necessary for outreach, because EVERY grifter, from the most benign greedy scammer to the most vile fascist profiteer on the planet, is not above using emotion to manipulate their would-be buyers. You want to use true logic - after all, the right openly admits that one of their biggest problems is that the left tells the fucking truth - but the point is that you're pointing to these grifters and saying "look at this fucking clown. Don't be that guy, he has rocks for brains! Do you really want to follow this guy, do you really want to join the army of pathetic assclowns screaming crying pissing their pants about seeing glitter and rainbows from time to time?? Are you really that much of a coward?"

You're not gonna deradicalize Jordan Peterson or one of those dudes who jacks off to him every night (but tooootally not in a gay way of course) by mocking his hypocrisy and telling him to go glue himself in his office and blame it on The Woke Mob again, but you might just stop your wishy-washy centrist cousin from thinking he has anything valuable to say.

[caffeineandsociety]

The thing is that when it comes to things as big and messy as the politics of human rights, you NEED to employ multiple strategies, AND know why you're using them.

There's a time and place for...any strategy you can think of short of throwing your fellow marginalized people under the bus. Playing up your own respectability (and not in a One Of The Good Ones way) limits bigots' ability to control the narrative for the average uninformed rando; playing up the ways in which you are NOT "respectable" but you ARE harmless unless someone harms you first is a necessary call for people to get the fuck over themselves and stop assuming the worst of everything unfamiliar to them. There's a time for trying to do whatever harm reduction you can within the existing system, and there's a time for trying to build something better outside of it. When it comes to the full-tilt dyed-in-the-wool bigots, there's a time for deradicalization outreach, and there's a time for punching.

Not everyone needs to use all of these strategies - some people are a lot better at one than others, some people don't have the ability to use one or more of the gentler strategies, etc. - but what I hope everyone can recognize is that they don't necessarily contradict each other and not only can but MUST coexist.

Part of that is knowing who you should be aiming to affect with any given strategy.

[caffeineandsociety]

The frustrating thing about gender politics is, sometimes you HAVE to frame things in very binary terms when you're trying to dissect OTHER PEOPLE'S sexism and exorsexism, and sometimes you HAVE to frame things in terms of AMAB vs. AFAB when you're to account for OTHER PEOPLE'S bioessentialism, but every single fucking time you do you have to really work to avoid accepting the ideas you're fighting as having some kind of merit in their framework, and even if YOU manage to avoid it in your head, it's extremely difficult to phrase it in a way where that will come across to other people

Like, "the binary is bullshit, humans are not as sexually dimorphic as mainstream society wants us to think, nonbinary and intersex people are real, and while there are broad patterns in various demographics due to external social factors you can't tell shit about shit about someone on an individual level based solely on their gender even if you take transness into account" and "people talk a big game about ~not being sexist or transphobic I'm a Good Person uwu~ but still hold a lot of double-standards about how they treat people based on gender, transness, and known or perceived birth designation" are both statements that can coexist, but HOLY DAMN is it hard to talk about the latter without SOUNDING like a denial of the former

[caffeineandsociety]

The gender binary doesn't real but that doesn't mean you can say the same about Society(TM)'s deeply held belief in it and the impact that has, and it's very very difficult to address both those things at the same time but absolutely crucial to try

[caffeineandsociety]

The thing I need binary trans people to understand is that when someone says, in the context of the queer community, how diverse identities work, and how mainstream cishet society reacts to us, that "there is overlap between butches and trans men and femboys and trans women and more"

THAT IS NOT THE SAME AS SAYING THAT YOU, PERSONALLY, INDIVIDUALLY, ARE ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT YOU SAY YOU ARE.

It is acknowledging people who are on the cusp. It's acknowledging the self-identified cis queer men who didn't feel comfortable identifying as men until they started taking estrogen, and the self-identified cis butch women who didn't feel comfortable identifying as women until they started taking testosterone. They exist! It's acknowledging the people who don't know whether they consider themselves trans, gnc cis, or a secret third thing, and people who just don't CARE enough to nail it down any further than "well, I'm not a man/woman the way society wants me to be, at least." It is acknowledging that there is a SPECTRUM, with gnc but distinctly cis people on one end and YOU on the other - but regardless of the existence of the spectrum, cishet society thinks of us pretty much the same.

If you can think of a way to phrase this that may be harder to misinterpret as saying "binary trans people are still intrinsically their AGAB deep down", I'm all ears-

But if your problem is with people acknowledging the spectrum in the first place and realizing that you do share some experiences with some people who identify with your AGAB, that is what we call a You Problem that you need to work out on your own.

[caffeineandsociety]

It's wild and eternally frustrating to me how much defense of exclusionists - full on people who outwardly and fully identify with exclusionist movements - is based on the fact that the people doing the defense don't realize the exclusionism part is HAPPENING, despite following the people doing the mildest part of the exclusionism, because the exclusionism on the surface level is "well sure this group is Really Queer and we should respect that.......BUUUUUUUTTTT they ARE uniquely likely to start drama and aren't REALLY that OPPRESSED and anyone who tells us to listen to them about their own experience is just trying to shut us up about our own, they DO belong here I GUESS just don't let them convince you they're ACTUALLY oppressed or ACTUALLY have unique experiences because they DON'T!"

What I'm saying is that if your circle engages in the Oppression Olympics - if your circle is trying to make a competition of Who Is The Most Oppressed - congratulations on making it near inevitable that you WILL harbor exclusionists and you WILL end up hurting vulnerable members of your community.

You are just as capable of being laterally aggressive toward others as others are capable of being laterally aggressive toward you, and justifying it with "but, they're LESS oppressed, so what they're doing to me is WORSE" is bullshit and just making the problem even worse.

[caffeineandsociety]

The thing I think a lot of people don't get about why trying to determine which of the different gendered forms of transphobia is Universally Worse is a futile endeavor at best is this:

The framework we're trying to fit it all into is that, typically, when all things are equal, society privileges men over women, correct?

Well, guess what: ALL transphobia is because Society(TM) can't fucking decide which of us are the men and which of us are the women. Sure, WE know the answer to that, but the nature of transphobia is about other people's perceptions!

Who are the scary roid raging perverts who can't be trusted with Manliness because we don't have the ~refinement~ of the ~superior~ cishet white dude? Who are the frivolous airheaded bimbos who can't be trusted to make any decisions on our own? Well, that just depends on what's convenient for the transphobe in any given moment. That's it. It comes in different flavors because of how gender essentialism works, but they all share the same central theme - and that central theme is, "I don't know what gender you are, let alone how to fit you into my binary framework, so I'm just going to call you whatever makes me sound justified in being a giant cockhole."

[caffeineandsociety]

The thing is, it's fine - probably inevitable even - to have cultural norms that presume certain boundaries and preferences as default. Most people in America won't want to go to a nude bathhouse with their coworkers. In other places, that's a pretty normal bonding activity. Some cultures will expect kids to be willing to take the initiative to run up and give Grandma a hug and a kiss when prompted, others will put the onus on Grandma to initiate if she wants to. Under healthy circumstances, people will be able to talk and negotiate it out if someone needs to set a boundary or express a need that deviates from the cultural "default", but that "default" will still exist. This is normal and fine.

But.

You will never be able to Be Normal about people from other cultures, or even just neurodivergent people, if you react with righteous anger when someone deviates from the expectation for EVERYONE to be aware of and familiar with your culture's "defaults" - yes, even if they've lived in the same culture as you their entire lives.

Surprise? Confusion? Fine. Accusations of heinous acts when you didn't fucking clarify that you weren't okay with something? Not fine. Yes, even if their assumption that it was okay was Weird.

Are there people who may abuse this to make excuses for constantly violating boundaries? Yeah - you can tell who they are after you have said, in no uncertain terms, that you're not cool with xyz thing and they just keep doing it and blaming it on whatever outside factor. You don't know who they are from ONE interaction, and if you think you do, well, congrats on throwing very vulnerable people under the bus.

[caffeineandsociety]

What I'm begging people to recognize is that exclusionism doesn't begin and end at "this group isn't REALLY queer and making me share a space with them at all is an ATTACK on REAL vulnerable people's safety!"

Sometimes it's "this group has an easier time hiding than me, so they can make do with this small metaphorical corner we don't have to think about."

Sometimes it's "this group hasn't done enough Big Activism to earn their status as people we really prioritize" - usually by erasing activism they have, in fact, done.

Sometimes it's telling a group to make their own space if they want to be acknowledged let alone prioritized, only to call them divisive and bigoted shit-stirrers when they do.

Sometimes it's objecting to every word that a group comes up with to describe their own oppression experience, and putting words into their mouths about what those words mean in direct contradiction to anything they say.

Sometimes it's calling erasure a "privilege" - because most exclusionist targets do suffer a good amount of erasure - except when it happens to you.

Sometimes it's micromanaging a group's identity and presentation because almost everything they can possibly be, for some reason or another, is considered a mockery of people who "have it worse".

Sometimes it's insistence that your theory about what oppression is "supposed" to look like proves that the abuse someone suffered isn't THAT bad, really - or worse, they must be LYING, because EVERY interpersonal interaction between humans is supposed to follow the theory, right?

Sometimes it's only being willing to see the members of that group who engage in overt lateral aggression, and highlighting them to insinuate the whole group is uniquely inclined toward it.

Sometimes it's naming your exclusionist movement with a reclaimed slur, or declaring whatever matter of fact term it's called to be a slur, so that anyone who calls out the exclusionism looks like the bigger bigot (and most likely adding it to the above cherry-picked evidence pile)...

...sometimes, while inventing new slurs for the group you want to exclude, but Only For The Bad Ones, You Swear.

Sometimes it's twisting a group's words about the lateral aggression they face to claim that THEY'RE the REAL exclusionists - that is, the whole identity group, of course.

Sometimes it's saying a group is totally, definitely, really queer, and have the right to be in queer spaces, only to contradict those words at every fucking turn with your actions.

[kragehund-est]

it actually is insane to me that it's a cultural norm for men to suck ass at getting their wives/gfs gifts. especially when they whine about how they have no idea what women like.

man, you're not getting a gift for Female Domestic Partner. you're getting a gift for Natalie, a person whom you have been married to for 7 years, whom has lived in the same home with you for a decade, whom speaks to you every day about her thoughts and interests, whom you presumably love, and whom you can directly or indirectly ask what she wants. it's not that you don't know what half the human population wants, that's irrelevant. you don't know what Natalie wants and that is inexcusable.

[caffeineandsociety]

Funny thing is this is something I've been turning over in my head a lot lately. It's not even just that it's normalized for men to suck at giving women gifts (though that's definitely one of the spots where it's worst), it's practically anywhere that you're trying to buy someone a gift across broad demographic lines - it's also found in the idea that Dads Are Just So Hard To Shop For (oh yes, we can talk about how men are asked to just hide the fact that they have interests outside of a select "acceptable" few in favor of presenting the ideal of A Man, but...most of us grew up with our dads? Most of us could get at least SOME idea of what they like if we just thought of them as individual people and not the platonic ideal of A Dad), and I do not know a single POC who hasn't received a microaggression as a gift from a white friend because as soon as a birthday rolled around they thought of them as The Black Girl Friend rather than as Valerie, the girl whose Tabaxi saved everyone's asses with a strategy that will be talked about for years to come during last week's session, or as The Asian Guy rather than Jun, their best work buddy for the past 5 years whose favorite topic of non-work discussion is his aquarium hobby.

It really goes to show how much work there is to do when it comes to breaking out of the desire to stereotype, and how much stealth work marketing by demographics does toward keeping people divided and stereotyping each other...

But honestly. On an individual level. If you're finding something for YOUR OWN mother or girlfriend or wife or daughter off one of those generic Gifts For Her lists...unless she really is just the most stereotypical For Her to ever Be Her and thus that really is the most efficient way to find something she'd like, personally I'd find that kinda embarrassing.

[sickened-things]

you know i don’t think we often talk about how difficult it actually is to suddenly realize that a belief you thought was good and moral and correct was actually really fucking toxic. how you have to look at something and go ‘oh shit, oh i fucked up. oh this is going to take probably years at minimum to deprogram from my brain because of all the little ways this shit pervaded the rest of my beliefs’

so. to all the people picking up all the pieces of a recently shattered world-view and trying to figure out what is safe to keep and what has to be thrown away and started over

to all the people having to relearn how to even listen to other people

to all the people putting in the work to do better while struggling with the guilt that comes from finding out you were the asshole

i’m proud of y’all.

it’s hard to admit being wrong and even harder to change in the aftermath. just keep doing the best you can and just know that the effort is appreciated. everyone can change. everyone can do better. keep fighting.

[balaclava-trismegistus]

Americans really really need to be less paranoid and more capable of tolerating minor discomfort in public. Not everyone is a pervert/rapist/strangler/fiend. In fact, very few people are. Treating every violation of normal order as though it is a threat is why people are getting shot for turning around in a stranger's driveway. This happens within the frameworks of basically every ideology present in American culture. It is an American illness. If your vision of the world doesn't have room for saying "I'm sure it's nothing" then you really gotta work some shit out.

[balaclava-trismegistus]

Hey honestly this is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say it happens within the frameworks of basically every ideology present in American culture. This is a talking point I have heard used by feminists many times over the years. I tried to find a source on this. I googled "1 in 6 men sexual assault" and found mostly articles about how 1 in 6 men are victims of sexual assault. Including an organization dedicated to the cause of helping male victims of sexual assault, called 1 in 6. I tried looking for studies on this subject and found three American surveys ranging from 6-14%, with the largest survey having the lowest figure.

Eventually, this poster replied, linking an Australian news article citing a survey of 5000 people between the ages of 18 and 45 which concluded 26.4% of men have committed an act of sexual violence, compared to 17.7% of women doing the same things. The article briefly mentions some of the criteria for sexual violence, some quotes from those conducting the survey, and then links to the article on the Australian Institute of Criminology website. The link goes nowhere. Searching the site for this survey, I can't actually access it. The website doesn't seem to work very well as most links I click have connection issues. I can find an article on the AIC website, seemingly about this survey judging by the date and the content, and it mentions a breakdown of figures as such:

"The study, which is based on a survey of more than 5,000 Australians aged 18 to 45, found that almost a quarter of respondents (22.1%) had perpetrated sexual violence since turning 18, while one in 14 had perpetrated sexual violence in the past 12 months."

"The most common forms of sexual violence perpetrated in the previous 12 months were: pressuring someone for dates or sexual activity (3.8%); emotionally or psychologically manipulating someone to participate in sexual activity (2.7%); non-consensual kissing (2.6%); non-consensual touching (2.4%); pressuring someone to participate in unprotected sexual activity (2.4%); engaging in image-based sexual abuse (2.1%); and non-consensual sexual intercourse (1.8%)."

So. This is mostly interpersonal social pressure to extract sexual contact. We already know the vast majority of sexual violence is conducted by those who already know the victim. It comes in avenues of coercion, drugging, blackmail, that kind of thing. This data includes such things as filming sex without consent. These are all bad things, these are all acts of violence which nobody should experience. These are the kinds of things I personally experienced. They can fuck you up bad.

But here is the problem. This does not say "1 in 6 men admit to committing sexual violence." This does not say "26.4% of men admit to committing sexual violence." This says "Of over 5000 surveyed Australian men and women between the ages of 18 and 45, 26.4% of these men admit to acts which meet our definitions of sexual violence." Those statements are very, very different. The way this information is being interpreted, or, rather, misinterpreted, is being wildly simplified and, frankly, sensationalized to serve paranoid thinking about how one in six random-ass men are sexual predators who will pounce as soon as they get the opportunity. The reality of sexual violence is very, very different. This is a great example of something that sounds convincingly true which doesn't reflect reality. A frightened fantasy where somebody will hear "26.4%" and project that number onto literally every single person they see. Carry it with them on the bus, down the street, into the convenience store. Constantly scanning for large predators. This tints everything.

This is precisely what the fucking problem is. Everyone does this. Conservatives. Liberals. Communists. Feminists. Nazis. Fucking everybody in America yields to these paranoid urges where they and their small group are the only morally upright individuals in a sea of muck and filth. And fucking everyone has stories and half-remembered statistics to back it up.

Fucking cut it out!

[balaclava-trismegistus]

I've gotten the radfems angry with me again 😔

[caffeineandsociety]

Another thing is, at best - AT ABSOLUTE BEST - studies like this aren't about Spot The Monster, but about working out what's culturally normalized to make things like familial abuse and IPV so common.

Not random attacks on random people. Not strange men sitting in bushes with zip ties and a white van in the alley. Culturally condoned attitudes about what a relationship is "supposed" to look like and on what timeline.

[myceliyolk]

reminder that "allies welcome" was once secret code for "those not out yet can still participate without putting themselves at risk", and for those who aren't out yet to comfortably exist in these spaces you have to let allies exist in those spaces too.

[meeks-peaks]

this is also important for queer people who don't know anyone else there. let them bring their friend, even if the friend is cishet. many would rather not go at all, rather than go somewhere alone.

[thesealfriend]

It is always better to let respectful cishets into our spaces than to try and police who is queer enough to be allowed.

[caffeineandsociety]

And the thing is, the coded use has to be honest, or else anyone who shows up as an "ally" might as well just be outing themself. Like, please consider the OBVIOUS flaw of "okay we said 'allies' but we MEANT 'closeted people', so which one is it?"

Even if you can't wrap your head around the idea that allies can be genuine (and they can), you kinda have to acknowledge that bait-and-switching plausible deniability is a really bad idea.

[busket]

I see a lot of posts telling trans men to leave their cishet boyfriend if he doesn't want you to take testosterone or transition. and yes, do it. leave him. staying with him will only fuck you up.

but we cant forget that if your lesbian/sapphic girlfriend doesn't want you taking testosterone or transitioning, you gotta leave her too. it doesnt matter that she's queer as well, she will be just as harmful to you in your journey as a trans man. women, even queer women, arent immune to being transphobic or anti-transmasculine

[caffeineandsociety]

Saying it this way not to derail but rather to drive the point home as thoroughly as possible:

There is no identity so precious or frivolous as to let someone else override your rights to bodily autonomy and self-determination, no matter how much pink or rainbow paint someone puts on it.

No matter who you are, nor who your partner is, no, your case is NOT an exception.

[technofeudalism]