i think a lot of younger teenagers who are against sex-based sports leagues haven't really grasped the strength difference yet. it's not a comfortable thing to understand, and its very tempting to deny it as long as you can.
Also, if they start questioning the difference in strength and bodies regarding sports then they also have to start questioning the difference in strength and bodies when it comes to dating and marriages and they're not ready to question the problems of hetero partnerships.
I always wonder if the people who refuse to acknowledge the strength gap between men and women are also in denial about rates of domestic violence? Do they know that DV is a mostly male-on-female issue? Because I knew that instinctively by the time I was in middle school, if not earlier.
And if they do--do they not wonder why women are so ill equipped to defend themselves when their male partners physically abuse them if male and female bodies are exactly the same?
Same with rape. Do they not wonder why women don't just easily fight off their male rapists, if they're just as strong as men? Do they think rape victims just didn't try hard enough?
In fact, why do they think men were able to oppress women at all? How do they think men established patriarichal rule at all if not with physical force? Do they think men are smarter than women? Or that women just wanted to be subjugated?
Idk I suppose the younger teenagers maybe haven't thought that deeply about this. But I've seen hundreds of adults making the same arguments for why women's sports shouldn't exist too and I always wonder what their explanation for these things are.
they don't consider this a problem because many of them genuinely believe that women and men abuse each other at similar rates. Despite this not being backed up by police, shelter or medical statistics, it has removed the need for critical thought, so they continue to spout it. Any time I put my foot down, I am told that my statistics are inaccurate and based on "a system where men cannot talk openly about the abuse they suffer".
There is no evidence for this, but the imaginary ranks of abused men are apparently a good enough argument.
And the fact that even POLICE statistics admit that men abuse women at high rates really tells you something, because I know damn well the fucking cops aren't exactly feminist allies.
I think we can all agree that male abuse victims exist, as do male victims of child sexual abuse, and of course they deserve help and support! But claiming that their numbers are on par with female victims of male abuse is just wrong, and it's a totally bad reaction to women speaking on women's issues.
The more I study feminist jurisprudence, the less I am willing to entertain ‘Trans Radical Feminism' as the ideological motivation of this reactionary hate movement against transmascs. You can call it whatever you want, but it is simply an ideology of opposing people AFAB achieving full and equal citizenship to cis men. You would not care about them identifying as men and changing their documentation to reflect that, and integrating into fields of public life that had previously excluded them (such as male dominated jobs, political positions, ect) if you did not oppose people AFAB having full and equal citizenship to cis men. You can claim that you don't oppose their equal citizenship, per se, just their identity and how they choose to exercise their bodily autonomy/expression, but there is no reason to oppose this unless you felt like this identity was a necessary boundary in maintaining their “separate but equal” status. There is no reason for them to be separated by birth into a different category of citizenship and identity unless you wish to maintain this inequality through essentialist othering and segregation. No one should be separated into this binaristic taxonomy from birth, but it is transparent what the motivations are for someone to specifically oppose people AFAB rejecting their position in this taxonomy by assuming this identity and personal path to equal citizenship. (although ofc trans people AFAB are not /really/ granted equal recognition to cis men as soon as they transition/change their documentation - but the fact that people reject or chastise even this symbolic measure is very telling.)
Likewise I am also not entertaining this new purely genital-based, ‘medical necessity’ justification ( i.e. ‘i have to discuss my AGAB because I literally have a uterus and I literally require uterine reproductive care!’) that is currently being employed to defend one's right to discuss the systemic sexist oppression experienced by those AFAB. Systemic sexism is no more a matter of ‘mere genitalia’ than racism is a matter of ‘mere melanin’ - both are superficially derived from socially constructed categorizations based on innocuous physical traits, but the historical systems of exploitation attenuating those categorizations immutably effect your citizenship and social existence from the cradle to the grave. Even if a trans man modifies or removes his reproductive organs, even if he were never the victim of medical misogyny, he would still endure the immutable oppression of someone placed into the subordinating category of being assigned female at birth. Everyone who attempts to reduce systemic sexism to a mere medical pathology in order to purchase enough legitimacy to discuss their oppression concedes the ground of systemic sexism’s social immutability. I will not do this. I hope more men and non-binary people will refuse to do this. The gravest betrayal of transfeminist/ queer feminist critical theory since the late 90s has been the reduction of systemic sexism to a simple contingency that can easily be overcome through the meritocracy of formal equality - substantive acknowledgement of oppression and substantive equality measures are the only means that can truly remedy the injustice of systemic sexism. And I will not entertain the ideology of a sexist movement spewing re-heated Gamergate rhetoric when it purports to be informed by ‘feminist’ theory - when someone says that they've ‘read theory’ you don't have to believe them lol. I also won't accept the quietude of those who claim to be more progressive than those bigots but still get mealy-mouthed when discussing systemic sexism either. Acknowledgement of injustice matters more than your discomfort. I hope more men and NBs will reclaim their voices in that acknowledgement. ⚖️
Women in radfem / gc spaces are not immune to the trappings of "if it pisses off my enemy then that must mean it's good" and I'd like to see this called out more.
When you spew ableism / racism / fatphobia because it pisses off an imagined blue haired libfem TRA, are you any better than the libfems who defend porn and kink because they believe anything that pisses off conservative christians must be wholesome and feminist?
I see it the most on vexxed (which granted, much like its predecessor, Ovarit, is a cesspool of reactionary trad women who believe hating the gender non-conformity of trans people makes them a radfem) where women will say something rancidly racist / ableist / fatphobic, followed by something like "teehee imagine how upset the wokesters would be at hearing that! :D " like it's all just a game of "piss off blue haired 'wokesters'" and not like, giving a shit about women. All women. Including fat women, women of color, and disabled women (who are disproportionately affected by fatphobia, ableism, and racism compared to their male counterparts btw).
rape culture and the fear of community-based consequences, or: have you considered the feelings of that missing stair you'd like to fix?
in 2012 the concept of the missing stair was, quite fittingly for the subjects I talk about on here, initially coined. Cliff Jerrison shared on his blog in 2012, speaks of a known rapist who, in spite of knowledge of his abuse, is continually welcomed to continue participating in BDSM & kink circles she frequents, and describes the attitude those around the rapist cultivate to "step around" his presence rather than confronting him entirely, resulting in him remaining active for months after his behaviour was known:
People had gotten so used to working around this guy, to accommodating his 'special requirements,' that they didn't feel like there was an urgent problem in their community.
at the beginning of the blog post, Cliff describes community members' reaction to a previous post discussing, but not naming, this individual:
When I posted about a rapist in a community I belonged to, although I gave almost no details about the guy except "he's a rapist," I immediately got several emails from other members of that community saying "oh, you must mean X." Everyone knew who he was! Tons of people, including several in the leadership, instantly knew who I meant. The reaction wasn't "there's a rapist among us!?!" but "oh hey, I bet you're talking about our local rapist."
everyone knew who this man was. everyone knew what he was doing. but there was a tacit agreement that everyone had come to to not disturb the peace regardless. not one openly discussed or planned, but one enabled by the foundation of community's dynamics: priding itself on being tightly-knit and a safe space; seeing itself as safer more In The Know about sexual violence and abuse than outsiders due to the rules they'd made themselves adhere to; seeing itself as a home for the Freaks and Weirdos who would otherwise be uncomfortably tolerated at best in Normie spaces, but who were welcomed with open arms in this kink space.
these dynamics formed the base of a community that prioritised staying silent and not rocking the boat over confronting issues directly, that enabled a man with a history of sexual violence to go on to enact further sexual violence against more women, and then was reluctant to even do something as basic as excluding a known rapist from their group because, well, he's a nice guy really, and he's been kicked out before, people have been really mean to him, he's fine if he just has someone watching him to make sure he's not raping:
Oh, but, like, she only said he raped her and no one was there to see it and it was really confusing and stuff and anyway what do you want us to do, like, treat the guy like a leper? He got kicked out of one scene already and that was like a couple years ago and we're trying to help him change and now he's okay as long as someone keeps an eye on him at parties.
does any of this sound familiar to you?
in 2015, Charity Heartscape/porpentine's Hot Allostatic Load is published online. it is a deeply personal essay chronicling porpentine's experience of abuse in queer/trans/feminist circles and the disposability with which porpentine and other transfems are treated by communities like those she was part of, including by other transfems:
I was threatened into not defending myself, gaslit into silence, told that people knew “things” about me that were never explained. When I asked how I could do accountability, when I said I would do whatever they wanted, they said that I was “incapable” of accountability, that my crime was unknown and my sentence was permanent. That is the point where the body starts to die.
on Tumblr and Bluesky, in 2026, enlightened transfems use "being HALed" to refer to anything from "people kicked me out of the discord server because I wouldn't stop talking about pornography" to "other transfems keep talking about all those women I assaulted and the victims won't shut up and it's an attempt to lynch me" (real thing that happened, anonsee/storyweavingspider strangled multiple women to unconsciousness and joked about it after, including referring to one of her victims as "strangulation girl", do not forget that!) while going "well none of you have considered what if someone wants to forgive a rapist 🥺what if we forgave the rapist 🥺 what about nuance for rapists 🥺"
those more embedded in these communities than I have already talked about this inclination to reference this deeply personal essay as a sort of get-out-of-any-form-of-social-consequences-whatsoever-free card:
including multiple posts of people highlighting that serial sexual abusers cite this essay to frame their exclusion from previously friendly groups for their abusive behaviour as "social murder" in a prime example of DARVO:
almost fourteen beautiful years to the day after Cliff Jerrison's blog post shoved the concept of the missing stair in front of us, Tumblr's transfeminists want you to believe, sincerely, that the act of accusation is equal to or even worse than whatever act that an individual may have committed, that by accusing someone you are trying to kill them, murder them, lynch them, that you are hurting women by accusing them of things, how dare you?
we can recognise this as what it is: dissonant wailing and flailing of "cancel culture bad!", rape culture manifest, but Woke. that's all it is. attempting to say that it is anything more is an indication that you have been blinded by the language being used to dress the Rape Culture up all nice for your consumption. you need to stop that and see it for what it is.
things do not have to be this way. this applies to your friend groups online and IRL, to your blood family, to your chosen family, to your hobby group, whatever. you do not have to tolerate those who have harmed people around you, and those who have been harmed - be it you or someone else - should not fear that "rocking the boat" will simply cause trouble and Be Mean. cause the trouble. be mean. speak loudly.
there is no individual or group of people that is entitled to your companionship. there is no individual or group of people that you have to be nice to or be friends with or tolerate. there is no individual or group of people that should make you fear telling the truth of any events that have happened or fear telling the truth of what someone has done to you.
and on a whole, not exclusively applicable to cases of sexual violence: you do not have to keep being anyone's friend for any reason. you do not need to make someone Feel Included for any reason. if they're making you uncomfortable, if they're violating boundaries, if they're acting entitled, if the friendship sucks: it's good of you to try to reason things out and explain things to someone first. but you don't have to. and if you try to and things still aren't good, you're still uncomfortable:
I'll end this on the same note that Cliff ended his blog post on:
This isn't just about individuals, either. Everyone who says "I don't want to be a victim-blamer, but girls should know frat parties aren't safe places" is treating rape culture like a missing stair. Everyone who says "it's an ugly fact, but only women who don't make trouble make it in this business" is treating sexual harassment like a missing stair. Everyone who says "I don't like it either, but that's the way things are," and makes no move to question the way things are, is jumping over a missing stair somewhere.
Fixing staircases is a long and difficult and uncertain process. But let's at least stop blaming each other for not jumping well enough.
as an aside look whose white ass I found while digging for a few bsky screenshots for this post LMAO
anonsee also wrote her own version of Hot Allostatic Load called Black Hot Allostatic Load after being accused by multiple different transfems of sexual assault. lol.
Thank you for taking my ask in good faith despite our different views. When I disagree with someone I do want to at least attempt to understand their ideology and you seem more open to discussion then most.
I want to try to understand your pov. We have similar experiences in some ways with our issues with the direction transfeminism has taken. I am curious as to what drove you away from the idea of gender transition being possible as a whole? I just fail to see how a trans woman who has lived the majority of her life as a woman and viewed as a woman in her community is not at least socially a woman.
I'll say I am a black lesbian. So that experience colors my view and gives me a selection bias for the trans women I interact with. Most of them are black, which does tend to give them a better sense of awareness due the over-scrutiny they experienced living as a black person. Compared to white transfems who may be experiencing that high level of scrutiny for the first time after transition, so that paints their views. I'm sure anyone in that position would feel as it is a unique harsher form of discrimination and act on that feeling. Regardless of its reality as a normal mix of queerphobia and misogyny.
Well, the best way I can put it is that this whole situation disillusioned me from the whole idea that you must restructure your vision of a person based on what their self-identity is. Since "man" and "woman" are oppression categories this is particularly important for those concepts. To say that some vague internal sense of identity rather than your material reality defines the kind of oppression you face and what behaviors you pick up leads to incoherent analysis like transfeminism.
To acknowledge your successful social transition example, yes, I do believe an MtF can become some idea of a woman, and can approximate femaleness with estrogen and surgery. If they're lucky they may become accepted as women in their communities, making them "socially" women. But as a rule I don't think this is how we can define "woman" as a concept or positionality, for a few reasons.
For a start, this risks stalling gender progress. For example, trans women often get uncomfortable when women drop shaving and makeup and adopt more obviously GNC appearances and mannerisms, because if this becomes the new norm for women, trans women can't use performances of femininity to "pass" and readily communicate "woman" to others anymore.
If there is no longer a social difference between men and women, there are no enforced dress styles or social rituals- AKA, the goal of feminism- there is no way a trans woman can "socially" become a woman, all that's present would be sex. In fact, the whole reason why MTFs are shunned is due to the cross-sex role-taking, or what I call "GNC-phobia". Therefore, from an oppression framework it makes more sense to say he is a man taking on the expected role or trope of a woman, not that he is a woman in every way. (The thing that sets MTFs apart from typical GNC males is the woman identity, which makes them perceived as crazy and delusional. I believe this stems from ableism and not misogyny, hence why I believe transphobia is the intersection of GNC-phobia and ableism).
MtF transsexuals could still go on hormones and get surgery of course, that's the biological grouping of male and female this whole thing is based around, but this can only be an approximation of femaleness. Their bodies will always have been born male, and thus either retain aspects of maleness or not be able to perfectly mimic femaleness. And in this case I have come to the conclusion that it is just not safe to redefine "woman" in a way that would include this group based on MTFs retaining male-patterned behaviors.
I was actually a gender abolitionist a long time before I became... "gender critical" if that's what you call this. I didn't think gender was real or any of that. I believed that since "woman" and "man" were forced identities, the progressive step was for anyone to be able to choose to become anything if they wanted, with the end goal being abolition. But I see now the issue with allowing men to move into the "woman" social box up to the point of sharing female spaces based on self-identity is that it ignores how thoroughly socialization is hammered into us.
When MTFs gather in communities with each other this becomes obvious. They just start acting like males, being bitter and angry about female people existing. This is the entire "deal" with transfeminism, when males do not have to unpack their behavior beyond this almost religious pivot into becoming "the most oppressed", beyond the superficial they become painful levels of male, they are allowed to define "woman" in any misogynistic way they please and enforce it on female people.
Men are conditioned to act in ways that step on women totally subconsciously. Once this socialization is given in childhood I believe there is no reliable way to say how or when an MTF has sufficiently "unlearned" all of this. Yes I do acknowledge there are MTFs who are totally cool out there, but they seem to require listening to and allying with women every step of the way to get to this point, just like any man would.
So you see I feel like I just can't comfortably put down specific criteria as to what makes a "good MTF", and I don't think any of this can go into legislation about women's rights or female-only spaces. It's one of those things that I may accept on an individual level but cannot accept as a rule. Just like how I accept there may be good men out there but cannot go in expecting it.
They never do specify why it’s so bad to spew “radfem shit.” As if radical feminism is inherently bad in and of itself for no particular reason, just because men say so. The stupidity of it astounds me.
“I wasn’t gender socialized because I was bullied for being gnc as a child” it’s almost as if that’s one of the most direct examples of gendered socialization
“When I was young, women were raped on the campus of a great university and the authorities responded by telling all the women students not to go out alone after dark or not to be out at all. Get in the house. (For women, confinement is always waiting to envelope you.) Some pranksters put up a poster announcing another remedy, that all men be excluded from campus after dark. It was an equally logical solution, but men were shocked at being asked to disappear, to lose their freedom to move and participate, all because of the violence of one man.”
— Rebecca Solnit, Grandmother Spider in Men Explain Things To Me and Other Essays
I feel like we need to start really pushing for hate crimes against women to actually be treated as such. It's fucking insane that a man can beat/rape/murder a woman, call her sexist slurs during the attack, and then tell the police and press that he did it because he hates women, but somehow this isn't considered a hate crime. The only reason places don't want to do it is because there's so many that it would mean like 90% of hate crime victims would be women (literally the reason the uk gave for not doing it a few years back)
It's extra crazy because wasn't it something like 80% of mass murderers have a history of harrasment and violence against women and girls? You would think it would be a no brainer to treat these crimes seriously to prevent these men from getting out and committing even more violent and horrific crimes, but that would mean treating women as people and not shock absorbers for society I guess.
women who among us just posted an article about how concept sex offender registry being full of innocent men who just wanted to pee is fake. can't find it
"Also, I have scoured the internet and legal research databases and haven’t found a single case of anyone in America ever being forced to register for public urination."
i'm saving this article for whenever reddit freak males bring this fallacy up
I'm grug, a transsexual from the 90,000s BC. 10 years eating bull testicles, 8 years practicing big game hunting, 1 year engaging in male-only religious rites (stage one)
cave art / handprint
the female shaman princesses in this cave are obsessed with my huge club and continuously ban me out of shame for their obsession but you'll never get rid of me.
I'm here to find people to join my cult. And also my husbands and wives. throw a rock my way if you're interested.
If our hand stencils were next to each other before feel free to talk to me and reming me who you were because I can't remember everyone's hand print.
If you're a matriarch shaman reading this, it is because you are obsessed with with my huge wooden club. You know it's what you want, so don't deny it. Blow a horn to tell me your location so that I can come and protect you with my club which is the only thing that can save you from your shaman ways. You are drawn to me because you know this to be true.
c0ckslinger could be such a force for good if she just sent her bots to reblog pedophile posts with the one that says "pedophile." Like it wouldn't even be a lie so how could they possibly complain...
