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@cest-mallory
three headed dog
@paw-whore : bad jokes and reblogging a lot of furry art and posts we think are funny or good takes
@cest-mallory : slower feed with posts about music we're listening to and personal writing, photography, etc. projects
the nsfw blog that mutuals can ask for : porn reblogs and smut posts, what else do you think it would be
Sick list of symptoms bro. Now try humanizing your behavior instead of pathologizing it.
Pathologizing: Hey sorry I yelled at you. I have this ADHD symptom called RSD that makes me really sensitive.
Humanizing: Hey, I’m sorry that I blew up like that earlier. In the moment I felt really attacked and overwhelmed and I reacted badly, but I know you didn’t mean to offend me with what you said, so that behavior is on me.
people will literally say this and then not actually believe you when you say you're abnormally upset by something unless you disclose your mental disability to clarify it.
yeah i'm sorry i convulsed and snapped when you and your friend spoke to me at the same time, i actually have- wait, mentioning my sensory issues would be pathologizing my behavior, uh yea i just hate the sound of your voice i guess. let me jump in this hole real quick
i was reminded of this anemic post by a reblog, and i wanna emphasize, this is the neurodiversity version of when someone immerses themselves in an online community of outsiders for too long without engaging with normal society until they're saying "but we shouldn't shame women for wanting to be housewives" and thinking its a hot take. if someone "pathologizes their behavior" it is likely the first time they have ever done so in their lives, if a neurodivergent person legitimately tried to use their condition as an "excuse" towards you it is because they trust you more than any other human on earth and the maddening refusal to acknowledge this is nothing short of terminal entitlement.
there are endless reblogs and replies who seem to be trying to convince me this post says something it doesn't. there is nothing compassionate about telling disabled people to forever concede that their behaviors are indistinguishable from a neurotypical person who simply sucks and is wrong all the time.
this isn't analogous to apologizing because you ran someone's foot over with your wheelchair, it's turning to that wheelchair user and telling them to apologize for making their feet so big and heavy
there is nothing compassionate about telling disabled people to forever concede that their behaviors are indistinguishable from a neurotypical person who simply sucks and is wrong all the time
once you realize how much everyone fucking loves age- and incest-play you'll go even more insane when they tell you to join their campaign to run transgender woman #487324 off the internet (where she gets her income) for her incest kink or whatever
it really is Our Righteous "pouting and throwing a cute tantrum at my partner to get what i want", "daddy/mommy", "old man yaoi", and a long etc v. their villainous "calling her partner 'little sis'" to encourage sexual abuse of children or smth
straight people especially LOVE ageplay have you ever seen them interact. it is like their main thing.
and not like it is important but since i sometimes see that thrown around: they love doing it in public too, and i don't mean in an obscure tumblr blog (theyre straight) but at. the store in front of 20 people. again, it is one of their main things.
i'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before but i'm just thinking about how common and rendered-invisible by normalization it is to see a straight couple where the woman playfully acts like a little girl sometimes for whatever reason and it's. fine. and i of course don't mean they should leave it in the bedroom or whatever i'm not christian, i'm saying it's so overt but of course it's fine when non-transmisogynized people do it. they have never harmed children in any way obviously.
i think something a lot of people don't get is that years of mocking your child, even in jest, does in fact tend to get under their skin
a decade or two of even light verbal harassment is very much accentuated when it's an authority figure you are in every meaningful way subservient to
A Rebuttal to Tara Knight
hey go read my epic substack banger
THE. REVIEWS. ARE. IN!!!!
I, and a bunch of my friends who saw it early, thought that this essay was going to get me a bunch of hatemail. But everyone has been so kind and encouraging and has praised my work and aaaaaa thank you all so much. I really couldn't have asked for a better reception, even the few people who disagree with me do so calmly, and respectfully.
Reviews, cont. !!!! Mostly comments this time!!
One thing that really gets lost in the discussion about the term "femboy" is how it pushes the idea that the only way to have your femininity accepted is to provide sexual attention for men. Many young trans girls are exclusively shown the "femboy" charactur as a solution for their dysphoria. That to be accepted they most provide sexual attention for men to even slightly be seen as a girl.
HUH. fucking yeah
"the idea that the only way to have your femininity accepted is to provide sexual attention for men" is also packaged into 'womanhood', trans or otherwise in cultural, historical, and institutional ways and has been for thousands of years. it has been both historic and modern practice in many medical systems to predicate access to hrt and surgery on the patient's heterosexuality. this is just accusing the tail of pushing the idea that the dog ought to wag
the difference to me is that trans women are often pitched "femboy" as a more palatable and desirable alternative to womanhood--"can't you just be a femboy instead?"
I think a lot about how Finnster said that she still calls herself a "femboy" because it's more marketable and gets her fewer death threats than saying she's trans
imo in this situation it's "you should prioritize providing sexual attention for men instead of being a woman," rather than "you need to provide sexual attention for men in order to be a woman," because trans womanhood is thought of as less desirable and legitimate. so it still revolves around expressions of femininity deriving value from giving men sexual attention, but womanhood in this case is positioned as a barrier to said sexual attention, rather than as a product of it
the problem with trying to condense these observations—about how this or that celebrity navigates the locality of "trans womanhood" vs other terms less explicitly centered around female identity to minimize harassment or maximize online reach—into a theory of the etiology of transmisogyny is that it immediately falls apart if you try to apply it to normal people, i.e. not using a celebrity as an example
are trans women being pitched "femboy" as a more palatable and desirable alternative to womanhood when going to the clinic, when asking a doctor about hormones, this or that gender affirming procedure, trying to access counseling or what few non-transphobic SA shelters exist, or even applying for a position with some degree of prestige, e.g. a manager or professor?
i'd argue the opposite, there's a much larger incentive to explicitly identify with binary trans womanhood in these circumstances, being a trans woman is usually conducive to much more harmonious participation in cisheteronormative institutions and access to stable forms of employment over the hyper-sexualized image of the femboy, which is largely relegated to sex work (and extremely niche industries like streaming, which are still adjacent to it)
the relative prestige and "palatability" in calling yourself a femboy vs a trans woman in Finnster's case should be seen as a result of that. Finnster's income, even when she was exclusively a streamer and didn't do porn, has always been tied to being attractive to the broadest audience possible. you're right that specifying her womanhood is not as marketable than the fact she looks feminine and has a penis, but we can discuss why that is without extrapolating this to mean that "femboy" as a label affords relative prestige over people that exclusively call themselves trans woman—it shouldn't be necessary to point out that the benefits Finnster is describing are not applicable to the overwhelming majority of people that are not in a position of marketing themselves as sex workers, which is not a prestigious position
even legitimately useful sex safety advice is always phrased as an imperative to health, never do this always do that you must not blahblahblah. same with drug use harm reduction stuff, they can never just say yknow this substance is associated with these risks and you will increase them if you xyx and can decrease them if you pqr, it's always written under the presumption that the reader's risk tolerance is exactly the same as the author's and so it would be simply unthinkable to aim advice at anyone who is willing to risk something you're personally not, because of course this is not about providing the information for others to rationally adjudicate their own personal priorities and needs but merely a matter of educating the reckless masses so they too may live according to the objective truth of your own personal risk assessment. they tip their hands because it's not like anyone talks about driving a car or getting exposed to respiratory diseases this way, imagine if mainstream sources were constantly written like you're insane and stupid for deciding you're willing to incur a potential crash because you want to go on a trip or like you obviously would never exist in a room unmasked if only you knew what the flu can do -- these activities are invisible, it's the socially stigmatised nature of sex or drugs or whatever that render them specifically problematised in this way. read some samuel delany about it idfk
a danger of talking about diagnosis as though it legitimises xyz functional struggle is that it always carries the implication that people w/out a medical chart designation are not entitled to experience the same difficulties, or more specifically are not entitled to the accommodations for it. this has obviously shitty consequences for people who cannot afford encounters w/ the medical system, but also for those who simply don't fit or don't use specific professionally legitimated nosological taxonomies. this is why it's interpreted as a threat to recognise & accommodate disability w/out requiring a specific diagnostic term or process as a mediator. diagnosis can only grant access to certain resources for certain people by virtue of its antithetical power to gatekeep them from others; and ofc the access it does grant is always & therefore limited and precarious in nature
us, on purpose
plurality is not always something that happens to you, sometimes it is a thing that you do.
I think as plural advocates we're afraid of this idea. it's not convenient, and it's not easy to defend - even our own writing doesn't make much room for it.
despite this, I believe it describes how we interact with our plurality.
"us" is not something that happens on its own. it's not emergent - without our own conviction, we fall apart. conversely, "us" is not something that we made.
the riverbed is carved by its experiences, but does not produce its own water.
I am not me because we understand these experiences as being "me". I am me because I choose to be myself - because we act, every day, to be ourselves. we fill the river, we choose conviction, we choose self-actualisation. we choose to call eachother "me" and "you" and "the others" even though we cannot speak and we cannot see.
and it works. we feel better being ourselves. and we know that's possible not because of interpretation, or because of theory, but because we're digging our heels in. pure, stubborn self-determination.
and there's something freeing about that.
I think if you believe that other transgender women won’t violently fuck you over using lateral transmisogyny just as much as any TME you’ve clearly never been in a social space primarily made up of other transgender women. I’ve had multiple attempted unpersonings leveled against me by random transgender women who had a petty interpersonal beefs with me and had dozens of trans women treat me as an expendable social or sexual resource because they knew they could get away with it. Trans woman separatism isn’t a solution because political consciousness isn’t essential to identity categories, the same as any other oppressed class. The belief that a pure class category of morally “safe” parties or indeed the belief that there exists a pure victim who is fundamentally incapable of exploitation is an idealist error. That’s not what class analysis is for or about. This kind of error is a liberal analysis masquerading as revolutionary politics. Revolutionary classes have revolutionary class interests and so as a whole they are materially motivated to resolve into revolution but that is a historical process that doesn’t function as a hard rule on the individual level. I’m sorry but a basic realist analysis of politics is necessary and it’s critical to understand that individuals are self interested and that not only is this an amoral calculation but it’s a kind of inevitable reality that shouldn’t be ignored in service of vulgar chauvinisms parading as a political analysis. Politics is the science of power, not the science of who is a “good person.”
Politics is a descriptivist analysis of why things happen and how, and a hypothetical study of how changes can be made, proven through practice. all else is commentary.
“Good” and “bad” people don’t exist anyways. This is the moralist analysis of a child. When I was a child I thought like a child and spake like a child. But when I became a woman, I put childish things behind me…
from Never Angeline Nørth's SEA-WITCH
Okay as much as I dunk on academia one thing I really need you all to take from me right now is this: you can read The Problematic Theory Book. you should, fundamentally, always, read the fucking source. You do not have to approach the source context-less, but you should be prepared to read it and make a genuine attempt to comprehend what the argument is without resorting to performatively dunking on it (yes, I get a bit silly with it when I liveblog, but I do actually do my best to understand what's being said. I don't like it when queer theory is bad? I thought it was supposed to help people). If you can't make a genuine effort to comprehend the text, then if the text truly has bad takes, you won't be able to adequately argue against why Thing Bad besides "well thing bad!!" you need to be able to construct a fucking argument. You need to be able to create a framework your worldview is built on. You need clarity of mind. Another thing ALSO alongside this is sometimes you will read The Problematic Theory Book and you will see things that you agree with. You will see analysis in there that has potential. This is actually super normal and something people do in academia is that they identify these nuggets of Actually Good / Potential Filled Takes and they try to expand upon them. Salvaging the potential of Problematic Theory Book does not mean that you implicitly agree with Problematic Theory Book in its original entirety. It means you saw someone going somewhere, saw them swerve into a fucking tree, and went to yourself, "okay, well, they were on the highway before this, so let me try and see if I can steer the car in the right direction. Let me see if I can try and use the work they laid the foundations for and build something actually revolutionary upon it, or otherwise use it for my own, better, more intentionally progressive and inclusive theory." Like, that's actually one thing that academia does that is good. you have to be in conversation with past work and you have to be able to see when an author was saying some shit that had potential, and identify where they fucked up and where they might've had something, and then build on it. you can't reinvent Ur-Theory from base principles in a vacuum and expect it to be good. you can't create theory that is Morally Pure Only Based On Works You've Deemed Morally Pure because that too is a vacuum, and at that point you're treating theory and like, science, as a fucking religion. It's not a religion. You are not going to go to hell if Judith Butler or Andrea Dworkin or bell hooks or Kimberlé Crenshaw, like, breathe on you the wrong way. You can read people who you fully disagree with, understand that at some points they may have been cooking, understand that at other points they were Absolutely Not Fucking Cooking, and try to see what you can take from their work and how you can create something that is NOT a recreation of the original fucking thing but, like, your own new thing that attempts to address real world issues. stop being afraid of The Big Evil Bad Book or suggesting that people shouldn't fucking read books. read the fucking book. engage. be an academic about it, goddamnit.
also conversely stop treating some books like the bible,
when you post about a study that only applies to the us could you include 'in the US' in the post please. thanks
if you're talking about the trans wage gap, there's a study out of Canada that shows similar. Admittedly Canada is pretty similar to the US socioeconomically, and those two obviously aren't representative of the whole planet, so I'd be willing to accept that this pattern doesn't hold true for everywhere on earth.
This Survey out of PKU doesn't give any specific numbers sadly for income, but does state "In terms of ability to find employment, levels of acceptance at the workplace, and freedom for gender expression, analysis of this survey determined that, on average, transgender women face the most challenges at all stages of employment", and does show other indicators of worse treatment across across the board (higher dropout rates, high rates of rejection by loved ones, higher rates of self-harm/suicidality etc.)
(There's a more recent survey from 2021 though, though they don't talk about income at all, only about improving conditions for trans people across the board and the need for further improvement still)
This is a generally understudied topic, and I am limited to English, so if anyone knows of similar studies, please tell me. Given what existing data shows, and what "transmisogyny" as a social theory suggests, we don't have a reason to expect that the pattern of trans women getting paid the least out of any gender demographic would be the case at least most of the time.
You can't assert that something "doesn't apply outside of the US", and immediately discount the data, you'd need a specific why trans women are being treated worse in the US (AND Canada and China) that wouldn't apply elsewhere to dismiss it.
damn that's crazy anon good thing trans women and sociology of the transfeminized only exists in the usa
"Cumbia, copeteo y l?grimas", es uno de los emblem?ticos libros de Lohana Berkins que registra la situaci?n de travestis, transexuales y tra
Anon needs to go fuck themselves lol
This is from Brazil
There's this 2019 study for the EU (Intersections - Diving into the FRA LGBTI II Survey Data), which does not feature wage, but does examine differences in employment discrimination.
Survey respondents were asked about their current employment status; trans and non-binary respondents were less likely to be in paid work (39.11% compared to 49.06% of all LGBTI respondents), more likely to be unemployed (8.34% compared to 4.78% of all LGBTI respondents), and more likely to be unable to work due to long-term health problems (5.88% compared to 2.35% of all LGBTI respondents). These differences were exacerbated to certain groups of trans and non-binary people: trans women were much more likely to be unemployed (11.67%) or unable to work due to long-term health problems (7.32%), and less likely to be students (16.19%, compared to 27.36% of trans and non-binary people and 27.92% of all LGBTI respondents).
The survey asked respondents if they felt discriminated against when looking for work and when at work. The share of trans and non-binary respondents that felt discriminated against when looking for a job is 31.79% (compared to 10.17% of all LGBTI respondents). This share is much higher for trans and non-binary people with disabilities (44.73%) and trans women (43.03%). At work, trans and non-binary people were also more likely to experience discrimination (34.42% compared to 20.83% of all LGBTI respondents), with even higher rates for trans people from an ethnic minority (including migrant background) (41.08%), trans and non-binary people with disabilities (44.95%) and trans women (36.35%).
And another one about trans people and poverty from 2021.
The FRA LGBTI Survey II found that almost half (46%) of trans respondents had difficulty making ends meet. 54% of trans women reported difficulties – the highest rate among all trans subgroups.
Conversational Bottoming And You
or, a transfem guide to conversations for girls who struggle with taking agency
Alright, so there's a post going around about how lots of young transfems have poor conversational skills. It calls specific attention to the tendency to just make animal noises or mindlessly flirt, and how they're an insufficient substitute. This is true, but it's not helpful*, I'd like to try to be actually helpful.
I. Why does the problem exist?
On the one paw, basically all widely shared advice assumes a lot of things that simply are not true for us. "Ask them about their job, their future, their finances, their social lives." Well. Generally, many of us are chronically underemployed, vaguely suicidal, surviving off of scraps, and extremely isolated. These aren't first date questions. A lot of transfems try to bridge the gap by jumping to third date questions like "how's your sex life, what kinks are you into, can I touch your tits, do you want to touch my tits." This has other problems that I will not get into in this post.
On the other paw, a lot of good conversationalism involves taking agency and putting yourself out there. The thing about childhood trauma is you're usually repeatedly punished for taking agency until you stop trying. Plus, agency, if it is a thing you can do, isn't likely to be something you do with strangers. You've been taught that your purpose is to be a punching bag. It's comfortable for you, even, in a weird fucked up way. But, this pushes all the agency onto your partner, which kinda sucks for her. Especially if she has the same background as you.
[ *sidebar 1: "the problem with transfems" and other things not to say.
Unfortunately, we live in transmisogynistic hell world. Unfortunately, you are a part of transmisogynistic hell world. Unfortunately, anything talking about "the problem with transfems" will see increased legibility and get shared more because of transmisogynistic hell world. Unfortunately, this cannot be escaped. Broadly, I highly recommend keeping such discussions to transfem only spaces not visible to the public. Or at least don't write vent posts about transfems. Please. ]
II. Then, what can I do differently?
In this post, I'm going to talk about the strategy that carried me through the first two or three years of my transfem social life, until I had accrued enough experience and confidence to try other strategies.
And, I want to say explicitly: maybe you can't think about it now, but you will get there. It's like immersion, your brain is picking up details from around you and shaping them into your own behaviors. As long as you are around conversations and let yourself pay attention to them, you'll get better at all of this.
I just want to help provide a shortcut.
For me, this was a method to be around people and talk to them when I really needed it. When I wasn't yet a person and didn't know how to talk or make friends or have friends or hang out or any of the shit no one writes guides for because they figured it out in middle school when I was busy discovering suicidal ideation. And it worked for me, so I hope it'll work for you.
III. What is infodumping?
I think most of you are probably already familiar with infodumping. Broadly, I'd define infodumping as a communication pattern associated with autism characterized by one-sidedly sharing a large amount of information with the other party.
There's a lot of memes about it that go something like girl 1: [infodumping about bionicles], girl 2: [not paying any attention, in her head: I'm gonna rail her later]. I don't like these memes.
In an autismphobic society, infodumping is a genuine and vulnerable activity. It's relaxing and fulfilling and kinda embarrassing. It's putting yourself out there. It's taking control of the conversation and not letting go until you're satisfied. In that light, it's kinda like topping†.
But, perhaps in defiance of your expectations, I'm not going to tell you how to infodump. I'm going to tell you how to be infodumped to.
[ †sidebar 2: topping and bottoming.
It's pretty popular in transfem spaces to be critical of the phrase "top and bottom" and prefer "dom and sub", because "top and bottom are more heteronormative". If you think about this for any amount of time, you'll realize that this isn't really true (changing language alone does not feminism make).
While you'll commonly hear top and bottom described as 'the penetrative role and the penetrated role'. This isn't the commonly used definition in bdsm spaces, of which I am from. In those spaces, we use 'top' to mean 'one who does the thing' and 'bottom' to mean 'one who the thing is done to'. In this way, we can generalize dynamics between bondage, discipline, d/s, and s/m.
Of course, these definitions are kinda just a trick of the light, and can go in any which direction if you look at things differently. As long as you can agree that obviously the one giving head is the top. ]
IV. What does the infodumpee even do?
The reason I don't like those memes is pretty simple, they present the receptive role as a non-entity. It kinda sucks to infodump to a non-entity. You're putting yourself out there and being vulnerable and she's just thinking about sex of all things. Bionicles is objectively better than sex.
As I see it, infodumping is a lot like music. And if you're the infodumpee, you're playing a rhythm game.
Just like with normal bottoming, your goal is to take this deeply vulnerable activity and provide consistent support throughout. To be a good recipient and accept what is given to you with an open mind. To illustrate to your partner that you are engaged with the ideas being shared, that you are listening, that you are enjoying the process, and that you're present and there.
What this means in practice is a mix of two things: mhms and questions.
VI. What is 'backchanneling'?
There's actually a lot of skill to mhming. Of course I don't merely mean 'saying mhm'. Backchanneling is the linguistic term for this and it's an essential conversational skill.
This includes phrases such as 'yeah', 'uh huh', 'right', 'I see', and so on. The purpose is to let your partner know that you're listening. This is, most directly, the rhythm game element.
There will reach moments where your partner looks to you to see if you're listening. At this point, you need to indicate that you are listening by giving such a cue. Make the noise, nod your head, send a thumbs up emoji. Sometimes animal noises work here, but generally I think they fulfill a different purpose‡.
If you're too late, she'll feel she caught you looking away. She'll think you were distracted and not paying attention, and begin to be distracted from her thoughts by checking up on you more and more.
If you are listening very closely, you'll give the cue before your partner even consciously thinks to check. She'll never even realize she worried if you were paying attention in the first place, the flow will never be broken up.
But if you give it too early, she'll think you're just saying the words without paying attention. You'll disrupt her thoughts with it, and she'll become confused and thrown off.
With each partner, the correct timing is slightly different. Personally, I try to give my 'mhms' when my partner has completed a thought and is reaching for the next one, or when she's asked a rhetorical question or completed a point. But, it takes trial and error. The only way to improve is by practicing.
[ ‡sidebar 3: what is echolalia?
Echolalia is a certain behavior associated with autism generally described as repetitive words and noises. Generally, I tend to understand most "animal noises" as a kind of echolalia (though this isn't always accurate)
Echolalia was first explained to me as a kind of stimming. More formally called 'self stimulating behavior', stimming is another category of autistic behaviors generally understood to aid in sensory maintenance. Flap your hands, tap your feet, bounce in your seat and it'll give you something to focus on to weather the storm.
But, conversationally, echolalia can play other roles. You might use it to hold your place in a conversation. As opposed to where backchanneling says 'pass', echolalia says 'one sec, I'm thinking'.
Further, echolalia can also act as a way of asserting your presence. Meow as you enter a voice call to indicate that it's you and that you're here.
These are useful conversational tools to have. ]
V. How do you ask a good question?
You ask questions to continue the conversation. They indicate not just "I'm listening" but "I want to hear more". They encourage your partner to let loose and just keep talking to you. Turning what could be a simple exchange into a more in depth engagement.
So, ask questions that indicate this. Ask open ended questions that require her to reword things and look from weird angles. Ask analytical questions that reflect your own lack of understanding. Ask silly questions that let her continue her jokes. Ask surface level questions so she just knows you want to hear her speak. Cheat and use google to find more questions to ask but make sure to reword them so she can't tell.
If your partner says "I don't want to get into this, so I'll just say this abbreviated other thing" you better ask about that. But that's when it's really obvious, and only following obvious cues can make her feel like you're just humoring her.
Look at the holes, the thing your partner is skimming over 'to save time' and ask about them. Look at what she's excited about, ask questions about the details that don't add up or that feel weird. Look at what she's interested in, make connections between the different sections and how they relate.
Here, you don't want to just let her go with the same thing as usual. You want to explore new territory. Give her new ideas to interrogate. Plug her back into herself in new ways. Get excited and make her excited about your excitement.
VI. But how do you get someone to start talking to you?
So, we know what to do once we're there, but how do we even get there? This is both the most and the least ritualized element of this.
One way is to simply start asking questions. Most of us wear our interests on our sleeves. On tumblr‖ you'll see us talk about things we like, so you can figure out pretty quickly what to ask about. Generally, someone does not write long posts about things that she does not find interesting to talk about.
But, going in can be hard. If you just say "tell me about X", your partner might think you're only doing this because you want something from her. Or she might care so little about you that she sees no reason to talk to you about it. Being truly purely passive does not work. You need to give your partner something to work with.
One strategy I've seen is the kind of 'instantlossbait' type, where the bottom feigns cluelessness and attempts to trick the top into using them. Here you might ask believably naive questions, present yourself as the 'ideal infodump victim' in a tongue in cheek way.
But, personally, I tend to favor "let's continue this in private". For this strategy, you take a public discussion that someone initiated or led about a topic, you closely read it and synthesize a question about the content, then you ask that question in private or in near-private. Then, from there, you continue to ask more questions. Voila, conversation is happening.
[ ‖sidebar 4: finding a partner on tumblr
There's also a good bit here I could say about choosing your partner. Frankly, I think social media is a bad space for this. If you're going after someone you follow, you're likely going on with some "expectation to perform", and you can't get rid of that no matter how hard you try.
As a rule, if you are meeting someone in a space, you want to meet someone who has the same relationship to the space as you do. Or, at the very least that you both perceive as such.
If this post takes off, I might write one on "finding a discord community", "founding a discord community", or "tumblr dming etiquette", though I'm not really an expert on the last one. We'll see. ]
VII. And then what?
So, you're being talked to, you're talking to people, you're participating in a conversation, albeit a relatively one sided one.
From here, you have a few options.
For one, you could just genuinely enjoy it as it is. I did, for a couple years. I think that true excellency in conversational bottoming can only be achieved through practicing intrinsic enjoyment of it.
You could also try taking turns. Maybe you do in fact have your own needs, and you want to talk and share too. A well rounded partner will have some skill both bottoming and topping. Though, I think only performing one role because you expect an opportunity to perform the other is bad practice, as common as it is.
Alternatively, you could gradually take more and more agency with your questions. As you gain comfort talking to someone, as you see her personality in how she speaks and learn who she is, you could put more of yourself into it. Bring in your own knowledge and your own ideas. And, slowly, reveal more of yourself as a person, and in the process of doing so you'll become more of a person.
To the closeted transfem audience member, the Tranny stock character exists primarily to remind you of how you will be treated if you are ever to act on your desires, to teach you that you are right to be ashamed and to hide these feelings, and that if you ever were to act on them you would become an object of justified ridicule and the acceptable target of unlimited patriarchal violence. The idea that such characters constitute "representation" or that the widespread presence of the tranny caricature as a target of mockery and bile fascination in media constitutes evidence of some sort of privilege is a bizarrely cruel position that a lot of people who claim to care about trans women nevertheless seem to take.
The "supportive" parents of trans kids looooove having "reasonable concerns" (small scale localised conversion therapy efforts) that they eventually give up on and rebrand themselves as always having been accepting
a lot of people who are genuinely bothered by the political oppression of children are nonetheless unwilling to grapple with their own social/legal/class position wrt this issue because it's a lot more comfortable to make vague gestures at the construct of the 'safe adult' and empty pledges to become one than it is to view yourself as empowered to harm someone vulnerable -- &structurally incapable of abdicating that power
why do you think there is such a desire by some transfeminists to rehabilitate radical feminism? and what do you think is the biggest issue with doing so? i also disagree with rad fem but was curious about your thoughts on the matter
its just one manifestation of the v. classic impulse to grasp at markers of legitimacy, esp. when one is trying to make a living selling books or substack or patreon subscriptions. same thing is common among tons of different ideological tendencies, invoking Established Figures and claiming to be their intellectual heirs to lay claim to a commonly accepted font of legitimacy. if there's a reason why radfems and dworkin in particular i think it's partially because--again, if you are trying to make a living off being a professional Theorist and you depend on social media reach to make rent--you want to do something Forbidden and Controversial to help distinguish your brand. i mean if you call your ideological project the heir to judith butler uyouer halfway to just dong queer theory whos gonna click on that u might as well publish at verso
as to the problem with radical feminism it comes down to the fact that even the "trans-inclusive" non-biologically determinist branches view gender and sex as fixed, ironclad, and transhistorical--the ground floor of the theory rejects any historicization or cultural, historical, material contignencies on the invention and imposition of womanhood. ie their understanding of gender is metaphysical rather than dialectical. furthemore the radical feminist doctrine that "the personal is political" is essentially an entire political dead end, the pallette-swap of the 'choice feminism' they often decry. this outlook, from the object they identify as 'womanhood' arising ex nihilo outwards, leads to tail-wagging-the-dog positions on e.g. pornography and sex work, as misogyny is comprehended primarily as an all-powerful Idea rather than analyzed as a series of contingent processes with a path of historical development
