Unpacking Conservative Logic

[uhnonymoos]

i grew up around muslims, i am also trans and leftist.

people in every queer and trans community i go to set an expectation: i should ofrever abandon my muslim past, i should explicitly stop associating yourself with it whatsoever, you either get to be queer or you either get to be raised-muslim.

in reality, there's no such expectation for christianity, and none of them are ready to dismantle their "inner christian" in their heads as much as they expect be to dismantle my "inner muslim"

none fo them get to admit how most first world countries are culturally christian, because christianity is "default" to them, as well as first world, as well as white.

me having a complicated relationship with islam doesn't mean i absolutely despise every piece of it. it means i distanced myself from ummah, but won't hear islamic criticism from non ex muslims at all, because you expect us to dismantle "our inner muslims" in ways you aren't ready to dismantle imperialism and racism in you.

your expectation is us "acting white", you don't want us unless we're that, which means you don't want us at all.

a lot of people claiming to want to uplift brown queer voices and such don't procced to do anything meaningful for them, or for brown people at all. it's just virtue signaling, homonationalism. you'd only care of brown people being queer, and you want the "brown" part of it gone as much as possible.

a lot of people say they want the leftist agenda to stop being us centric and imperialist, but then it's just pretending to care about it. you already made is so little and unhearable you'd have to get out of your way to seek for us speaking. then you'd not seek or if you find us, you will just pass by. hoping someone else would amplify the voice you took from us? and that someone else would hope for that too, so what?

you want us only when we agree with everything usa says about us, you want us until our lives don't put you into too much discomfort. when they put you into too much discomfort, you don't ask why, you'll restore the comfort by banishing us again. your tolerability of us is so intricately conditional, to meet those a third worlder has to build themselves into a first worlder mindset. this is your (inter)nationalism hey.

anyway, islamophobia hurt me more than islam did. now what

[translatingpostsinfrench]

rebloging here because its safe to assume i have a solid french and queer following, and that's definitely something yall need to hear too. i live in france, was raised muslim, and pretty quickly understood that being accepted in queer scpaces means severing ties with islam, "acting white" and gobbling the homonationalist bullshit (french flavor rather than USA flavor, which is not much better).

[life-gives-you-lemons]

I think people need to understand that everyone has to unlearn misogynistic behaviors and thinking patterns. Cis women and trans women and cis men and trans men and anyone who doesn’t fall under those categories are all completely capable of being misogynistic and actively hurtful to women. Trans men are included in this, obviously, but when you only call for trans men to unlearn this mindset, you are no longer being progressive and fair. You are singling out a minority.

[chekhovs-raygun]

it pisses me off to see cis women saying 'trans women are misogynistic because they were raised as men' and trans women replying 'no we aren't because no we weren't!' and i'm sitting there staring at the camera like it's the office. because like women are ALL raised to be just as misogynistic as men. it's a notable goddamn feature of the patriarchy.

like if you are marginalized it is in your own self-interest to interrogate and deconstruct the cultural narratives that position you as subnormal. this is what starts a lot of queer people on wanting to reform the world into something more compassionate and egalitarian.

but it's not the marginalization that makes you any more or less ethical than anyone else. it's the work. you gotta do the actual work.

[hareofhrair]

I feel like part of the problem is a really popular misunderstanding of bigotry.

Misogyny is not just prejudice experienced by a woman. It is not simply something that happens TO a woman. It has nothing to do with the woman. It’s about the misogynist.

Bigotry is not determined or defined by the target of that bigotry. The bigotry is stored in the bigot.

Misogynists will be misogynistic towards any person they associate with femininity, including cisgender men.

When a misogynist cis man tears another man down for liking something he thinks is girly, he is still being misogynistic.

A cis male coach telling his cis male student he runs like a girl is being misogynistic.

A cis woman punishing her son for wanting a “girl” toy or policing her boyfriend’s hygiene habits and interests for anything she considers emasculating, is being misogynistic!

When a woman gets in a car accident and is injured more severely because the safety testing on that car was only done using crash test dummies and models based on men, she’s experiencing misogyny.

When the medication she takes for her injuries doesn’t work right or has unexpected side effects because it was only tested on men, she’s experiencing misogyny.

When the tools she uses at work that are the wrong shape for her hands, and the jumpsuit that’s part of her uniform which she has to take off completely to use the bathroom, and all the spaces she moves through and everything within them are designed with the assumption that an average male body is the only body that matters— she is experiencing misogyny.

Misogyny is the belief that women are inherently inferior, and the systems and institutions built around that belief. It can be experienced by anyone, and anyone is capable of having misogynistic beliefs and doing misogynistic things.

Bigotry is not about the target. It’s about the bigot, and what the bigot believes, and the way those bigoted beliefs have shaped our world.

I don’t care what race gender or sexuality you are, you were raised with racist, sexist, homophobic beliefs. Because it’s literally impossible not to be.

And the harder you try to cling to the idea that misogyny is something that happens TO women, rather than something coming FROM misogynists, the more blind you’ll be to your own misogynistic beliefs, and all the ways everything in our society is a product of or directly reinforces those beliefs.

[anarchistmemedistro]

[beckitty]

I have gotten into the habit of when interacting with a patient, interrogating myself about what traits I am assigning them, and how its affecting my care. It doesn't matter that I'm a woman, the world has taught me to believe a woman is over emotional and exaggerates her pain. On the flip side, a lifetime of jokes about "manflu" make cause me to underestimate a man's experience of illness. Its not about either gender, its about me and my own expectations. I have caught myself on occasions dismissing what my patients are telling me as "not that bad" and it is always linked to some trait they have. Men are whiny about illness, women exaggerate pain (to be believed), old people are confused, people whose first language isn't English are too hard to understand, whatever. I know full well that all of these things are wrong, but kneejerk responses are built from assumptions, and the assumptions we have most commonly been exposed to are the easiest thing to base those responses on.

I dont think I have ever let it affect my care. I hope I never have, and its my responsibility to keep interrogating my judgements and decisions towards my patients to make sure I never do.

I dont think I'm sexist or racist or ageist or homophobic or any other-ist, but the potential to be exists within me, so its my responsibility to keep checking myself, to interrogate my thoughts. The thoughts come from me. Having those thoughts doesn't make me a bigot, not recognising those thoughts as incorrect and working to dismantle them, or acting on them would do.

[genderkoolaid]

Bigotry is not determined or defined by the target of that bigotry. The bigotry is stored in the bigot.

[transgenderballofanxiety]

fucking disgusting that nobody cares about actual children

[transgenderballofanxiety]

they are our most oppressed, and nobody listens to them. i still see parents proudly proclaiming that they hit their children or i watch them air out their children's lives for money on the internet. i watch parents talk about killing pedophiles, meanwhile the kid's uncle is actively assaulting them. i watch kids be shamed into all sorts of wildly uncomfortable scenarios. i see children that have absolutely no control over their own bodies, babies have completely unnecessary medical surgeries for the parents' idiotic beliefs.

children are always offered an illusion of choice. "this food or that food" "this shirt or that shirt" "go to school and be bullied or come to work with me where i'll shame u in front of my coworkers for not going to school" children are never offered actual choices "this shirt, that shirt, no shirt?" this food, that food, no food?" not being allowed to say no is no choice at all

by not giving children rights and the means to protect themselves, they never get to say no. they're always forced into "yes" because they cant back up their "no."

i was seeing a childhood trauma therapist for a year, as a young adult on a referral from my doctor. i was never really able to open up, so we sort of talked about other people? not her clients, but over the course of that year i learned snippets, surface level details on some kids' lives i'll never meet. it's horrific, it really truly is horrific just how much adults will mess with the children under their care, unchecked. we never discussed sexual violence and it was still horrifying.

in high school i learned half my class had at some point been raped by family members. half. do you understand what half means???

and now with more jeffrey epstein stuff made public all anyone can talk about is hunting down every last pedophile and killing them for sport INSTEAD OF HELPING VICTIMS

it is so sad because none of you care about children. none of you want to equip kids with the means and the knowledge they need to see red flags and stop anything before it does happen. none of you want to be responsible and tell other adults no BEFORE they've already done something. you dont want to hold anyone actually accountable you just want people to punish and you barely even want that with the massive volumes of evidence floating around for who tf knows how long

if you really actually cared about children they'd have choices, they'd have rights, they'd be able to protect themselves, they could say no. but nobody cares about children because they cant say no

[helenvaughans]

[helenvaughans]

the thing is that for all its supposed faults, i would take this brand of 90s utopian globalism over whatever the fuck we’ve been doing for the last 10 years in a heartbeat

[tpwrtrmnky]

A lot of the time when I point out that some right-wing policy is proven to not achieve the thing it purports to have as a goal, people rightly point out that the real goal is the negative outcomes that do happen.

Which is correct!

But this is often framed as me approaching the right wing naively by the respondent.

That's not the case at all. I know they're evil. The goal is to demonstrate that they're lying by exposing the way the rhetoric fails to line up with reality.

This has to be ongoing work because someone new has their political awakening every day. Every day, someone needs to learn that the right wing position is wrong on all levels, not just the obvious ones.

[realflaminglily]

there will be people out there who still think the war on drugs (as the absolute first thing that comes to mind) is a legitimate social cause against an antisocial blight on society. if you come out the gate with (the very true statement) that it's actually been a deliberate campaign to target minorities and other undesirable groups to the ruling class, you're going to sound like a clueless conspiracy nut

whereas if you come with a very defensible, statistically supported point of "it doesn't work and has never worked" you can open the door to the follow up question of "why did the government do it in the first place, and (in many cases) why are they still doing it?"

[tpwrtrmnky]

This, exactly.

The play is to:

Demonstrate that the policy doesn't work

Demonstrate that the people enforcing the policy have everything they need to know it doesn't work

Provide the context of what the policy achieves in the absence of its "intended" outcome.

Remind people that the purpose of a system is what it does.

Then, instead of being a non-sequitur claim you're just pulling out of thin air, the conclusion is the most reasonable way to assemble the provided puzzle pieces.

[st-just]

Reading posts that make me angry for no good reason, and like: I just desperately need people to understand that if they spend their free time on the neurodivergent transgender introvert website, living in an premodern village-style 'thick' unchosen community probably wouldn't work out great for them.

[synjectivism]

okay heres the thing about why being, as a general rule, kind, is politically expedient. people are not primed to be able to

reflect critically on a profound level about themselves and their actions and beliefs and the world they live in

be increasingly open to complexity, nuance, and ambiguity

be open to major change in general

when they feel a sense of hostility. these are things that are most easily and safely done in a supportive and safe environment. & these are also things that are pretty crucial for being able to productively change your worldview.

it suckkkkssss because people are annoying and hateful and hypocritical and infuriating. and yet pressure does not always make diamonds. if you want people to be more leftist than leftist spaces and communities and the relationships people have with these ideas needs to be one which does, foundationally, make people feel seen and heard and encourages them to buy in to the group emotionally and credally.

obligatory disclaimer this is not saying tolerate misogyny racism transphobia genocide denial conspiracy theories etc etc or even to water down leftism to appeal to whoever. its about presenting these ideas in a manner and an environment that is encouraging people to drop their walls and open their mind. you can lead a horse to water and it may choose to drink, but if you try to drag it there or beat it in that direction, it probably won't. or it will take a much longer time and be a lot more stressful for everyone.

so yeah sometimes being nice and compassionate and seeking understanding is in fact the most politically crucial thing to do. and some people are definitely more emotionally / mentally equipped to engage in that work than others! but idk i think if your model of spreading leftism involves a lot of telling people to kill themselves. it may suck ass i fear

[st-dionysus]

What is transandrophobia and why is it called that? By the guy who coined it and is kind of tired of seeing it defined in the opposite of what it's meant to describe.

In it's most simple definition. Transandrophobia is the way that the fear of men impacts the material reality and mental/physical health of transgender men.

Transandrophobia, is the way that the fear of men and/or masculinity effects transgender men’s ability to access queer and transgender spaces, sexual assault survivor resources, and reproductive health care.

Transandrophobia, is the way that the fear of men and/or masculinity holds back transgender men from transitioning or from presenting as masculine.

Transandrophobia, is the way the fear of men and/or masculinity results in the disowning of transgender men from previous found families and the isolation of transgender men in general.

Transandrophobia, is the way the fear of men and/or masculinity has resulted in people using their trauma as an excuse for abusing transgender men, physically, sexually, and emotionally.

Transandrophobia, is the way the fear of men has resulted in people refusing admittance to “male identified people” to certain queer events and safe spaces.

Transandrophobia, is the way that the fear of masculinity has led to people assuming that butches across the gender spectrum are inherently violent and hyper-sexual.

Transandrophobia, is the way that the fear of men and/or masculinity results in the forced feminization of transgender men in queer spaces, with the insistence that those who refuse to feminize themselves to make others more comfortable should not be allowed entrance to certain queer spaces.

Transandrophobia, is the way that the fear of men has led people to assuming that butches who were assigned female at birth, are at risk of becoming the enemy (a man) and should not be given the same amount of trust as a feminine presenting cis woman.

Transandrophobia, is when that the fear of men being in women’s spaces prevents trans men and non-binary people who present as male from accessing gynecological care, abortions, and birth control.

Transandrophobia, is when transgender men must make themselves smaller to be seen as “one of the good ones” and it is when a trans man who is loud or sexual or Black or Brown or too masculine is seen as a threat to the safety of other transgender people.

Transandrophobia, is when transgender men who speak up about how the normalized way of speaking ill about men in feminist and queer spaces has made them activity suicidal, de-transition, or prevented them from transitioning, are told to “shut up and sit down” or “good.”

Transandrophobia, is not when trans men face misogyny – that is just a trans man facing misogyny (which all trans men face, because misogyny and sexism effects everyone, not just women). However, transandrophobia is when someone says that trans men don’t face misogyny because they are men, make claims that trans men benefit from misogyny since they are men, or insist that trans men’s experiences with misogyny aren’t as valid or as bad as when a woman or non-male person faces misogyny.

Transandrophobia, is when trans men’s struggles are dismissed as being less important, because men don’t need help or men already have help or men don't face real struggles.

Transandrophobia, is when people refuse to acknowledge that the patriarchy see’s transgender men as failed women and not men, which is why transgender men do bot benefit from the patriarchy but are instead violently and systematically punished by it.

Transandrophobia is that and a whole lot more, I would need a book to describe the entirety of the issue, I have been writing a book on it for over six years and re-writing it over and over because if I say it wrong, or say it with too much emotion, or not enough emotion, or with too many numbers, or not enough numbers, and publish it without using perfect wording, trans men might not get another chance to speak up for a long ass time and we will once again have to find new words to say "Pretty please treat me like a human being and let me have access to the things I need in order to survive." and "Pretty please consider that if a large group of people from a minority are telling you they are being oppressed by these actions and fears, then maybe you should believe them or at least the material statistical evidence of that oppression, since you probably trust journals more than us describing our reality and lived experiences."

[libraford]

Are YOU gonna let THE GOVERNMENT tell YOU what YOUR GENDER is? That doesn't sound like Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness to me! PROTECT your individual FREEDOMS and call your senator: we want the GOVERNMENT to stay OUT OF OUR PANTS! GENDER FREEDOM NOW!

[libraford]

Two men in your neighborhood are married... to EACH OTHER? Congratulate them for exercising their AMERICAN RIGHT to follow the footsteps of our FOUNDING FATHERS! They've got a fully AMERICAN spirit of FREEDOM and REBELLION! GOD BLESS THE USA.

[libraford]

Your coworker has a different RELIGION from yours? Well, that's just INTERESTING and you should talk about it on your UNION-APPROVED LUNCH BREAK. The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA was FOUNDED on Freedom of Religion and ANYONE should be allowed to seek the AMERICAN DREAM!

[libraford]

You think someone might be in this GREAT country ILLEGALLY? NO YOU DON'T! No one is in this country illegally! The minute anyone steps on our SOVEREIGN SOIL they're your FELLOW AMERICAN and where they come from is NO ONES BUSINESS.

[rosslynpaladin]

it's funny yeah, but guys this is actually how you reach the people who prefer these terms to frame all things Good and Correct.

[rosszulorzott]

[memecucker]

anyway remember when the US government commissioned a study on dangers of pornography and when the commission returned with a report saying it doesn’t pose a danger and recommending removing restrictions the US government denounced its own study

[tuiskuh]

As a woman who is both gender non-conforming and who is planning a pregnancy in the near future AND who works with children, I am very invested in the conversation about the confines of femininity, the complexities of motherhood and the fascistic expectation of women to have children. I also often find it deeply frustrating.

I do not think it should need to be said, but unfortunately it absolutely is, that nobody should ever be forced to become pregnant, be a parent or carry a pregnancy to term. Ever. This requires both complete and total abortion rights & access but also the dismantling of the gendered expectation of women to want and need children. Remaining child free should not only be possible for women, it should also be normal and completely accepted. Anything else is oppressive.

However, I am deeply bothered by how many people who share these views talk about children. I have come across many posts describing children in cruel and dehumanizing ways, emphasizing how gross and terrible children are and how much of a burden they are to their parents. This, I think is also wrong.

Children are a particularly vulnerable population. They often have very little rights and autonomy and are at the whims of adults around them, which makes then particularly vulnerable to abuse. Children are real, fully realized people who have very specific needs and considerations. Constantly discussing how disgusting and terrible children are, means attacking people who have no power and cannot defend themselves, legally or otherwise. These views cannot be separated from calls to remove children from public life, like parks and transportation, the practice of which is both dehumanizing and oppressive. This goes hand in hand with the gendered oppression of women who are unfortunately still often the primary caregivers of children. Forcing children out of the public sphere means forcing mothers out of it too. And the right to not have children needs to go hand in hand with the right to have children. Women need abortion rights and access but they also need the right and access to give birth for free. They need robust childcare and child & family friendly infrastructure. Otherwise the only people who can afford to have children are wealthy elites.

The rights of women to not have children and the rights of children and mothers go hand in hand. They are not contradictory. Being a parent is a complex relationship, one wrought with a long history of violence and oppression of children and women. It is not easy to navigate, and nobody should be expected to do it. Simultaneously, the people who do decide to do it deserve help and support, not scorn or mockery. And most of all, children, all children, even the annoying, dirty and screaming ones deserve a safe loving world that sees their full humanity, respects their perspectives and their bodily autonomy. We are all a part of creating that world for them. Society should be about being good to each other, and that includes children too.

[roycohn]

if you are a left-leaning person in a political debate/argument with someone (a normal person - not an avowed fascist but someone who is being polite and open to hearing you out), there are a few questions you need to get comfortable and reliable about asking yourself:

am i treating the other person like it's their first day in the real world and need to be taught what to think, or am i doing the basic decent thing and assuming they have put some amount of thought into their existing beliefs with which i must contend and out-reason?

am i advocating for something, or am i just trying to make this other person feel small or stupid?

in the process of this discussion, have i actually made the case that what i'm advocating for will improve the other person's life in a material way?

and if the answer to some or all of these is "no," what you are doing is venting, preaching, or otherwise not helping to make a persuasive case for your beliefs. as we get closer to the midterms in november, it's going to be important to convince and persuade people to support various issues, and the first thing to do is not enter into those conversations with the attitude that all americans are temporarily embarrassed socialists who just need to be lectured about their own moral turpitude until they agree with me. contrary to popular belief within a not-insignificant subset of the internet, persuasion is not capitulation, it's just politics. if people don't see you as someone who genuinely has their best interests at heart, they will eye you and everything you're espousing with suspicion at best and outright anger at worst. and hostility and grandstanding doesn't convince anyone who isn't already on your side! so once again, i really gotta urge people to try to be thoughtful about the language and rhetoric they use to communicate their platforms to others. use accessible language to advocate for policies in a way that meets folks where they're at and assumes their best intentions. most importantly, again, don't treat people like they're stupid - treat them like you're trying to help them. because ultimately, you are.

(i've made this point before and gotten called everything but a child of god for it, but all i can say is i helped raise over $30 million last year at work that went to unambiguously good programs and causes, so i do know what i'm talking about in terms of persuasive communication. i would like democrats to win a majority this election season, and i think we can do this if we behave like serious people. and if you're not american, i especially don't want to hear from you in the notes. this is a triage election, not a pie-in-the-sky one.)

[seaemberthesecond]

Unfortunately, a lot of people's idea of feminism does not hinge on women are autonomous beings who deserve equal rights and opportunities, but instead on women are beautiful and precious objects that should be treated well which is not actually the same thing. At all.

[afriendofblahaj]

The same thing goes for people's idea of protecting children, where instead of viewing children as autonomous beings who deserve equal rights, respect, and opportunities, they view them as property to protect from outside damage or influence so they will grow up to be the perfect version their parents wants them to be. Which is also very much not the same thing. Every time someone cries protect the children, it's about protecting the parents property from outside harm, not protecting the child's emotions and wellbeing.

[doberbutts]

“trans men don’t experience misogyny because they’re men thus cannot experience women’s oppression”

I hate to tell you this but even cis men experience misogyny if they step a toe over the line of what our incredibly sexist society sees as “proper” for a man. You really don’t think that a man with interests or expression the world sees as “female” aren’t treated with violence?

[doberbutts]

“would you say that of other privileged groups? do you think white people experience racism?”

I mean sometimes they do yeah. I know a white guy with monolid eyes and zero known Asian ancestors and he absolutely experiences anti-Asian racism on a fairly regular basis because people think he’s mixed Asian/white. I know a woman who was told throughout her life that she was Native as an adoptee with no known history or background who experienced incredibly violent amounts of anti-Native racism until she discovered as an adult through DNA test that she is 100% white. I know white people who tan incredibly dark in the summer comparatively that are constantly accused of being mixed race and experiencing racism due to that, usually anti-Mexican racism perpetrated against white people with Greek or Italian ancestors.

Their ability to make it stop by saying “hey, I’m white actually” only goes as far as the person enacting violence on them is willing to believe them. They still have to live with the trauma and physical scars from the altercations. We live in a racist world and thus there will be violent people who force all others to pass a whiteness test and eliminating or harming the rest.

[doberbutts]

Got an ask that I just block/deleted but it was basically “so you think cis people experience transphobia!?!?!?!?” and uh

If you think cis butches don’t experience both transphobia and misogyny and homophobia for daring to be women who break gender roles while still holding onto their womanhood you’ve sorely misunderstood just how bad butches have it in this world sorry. If you don’t think cis queens experience transphobia and homophobia and misogyny for daring to be men who break gender roles while being loud and proud about it and still holding onto their manhood then you’ve sorely mistaken just how bad they have it in this world as well.

Not to mention all of the cis men who wear dresses and skirts and makeup and nail polish and heels simply because they like them who experience all of these things. All of the cis straight women who simply just exist but something about them doesn’t pass society’s “woman enough” test, leading to them being caught in bathroom bills and sporting rules and being attacked by people who mistake them for being transgender or gay.

Just like how straight people experience homophobia to such a degree that they literally beat their children out of any potential deviance from rigidly upheld gender roles and let politicians make jokes on national TV about how they’d drown their pre-teen kids if they came out as LGBT. Do you really think a straight kid still figuring themselves out hears that and doesn’t internalize that homophobia? Doesn’t rigidly hold themselves to some impossible standard so that no one could ever possibly think they’re gay? You don’t think straight teenage boys who maybe don’t pass some bully’s straightness test are getting the shit kicked out of them for “being gay” when, surprise, they aren’t? You don’t think all those kids being attacked by their priests and coaches and teachers are being told “this wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t gay” when they’re literally not gay? Do you know how many straight kids had close calls at my school that famously expels all gay kids, because someone made up a believable enough rumor? Do you know how many of them still got their shit kicked in even though administration ultimately decided to let them stay?

All bigotry is violent and all bigotry catches people it doesn’t “intend” to and hurts them as well. It doesn’t matter what someone’s label is, or if they even have one. It matters if the person enacting the violence is doing it because their victim didn’t pass whatever “acceptable enough” test they didn’t know they were being subjected to.

Everyone is at risk. Oppression doesn’t care what your label is. Some people are more visible targets than others, and as a result those people are the more common targets. That doesn’t mean no one else experiences it.

[doberbutts]

My first post to reach 2k without people clowning in the notes I feel so proud

[sophie-baybey]

[queernobi]

I think a lot of y'all need to learn the difference between structural oppression and simply experiencing certain aspects of that oppression. Like, genuinely.

Like if I as a white person got really tan, to the point that people thought I might actually have brown skin, and then had a bunch of other white people call me the n word repeatedly based on that…that would still be fundamentally different than calling a Black person the same thing. Like, not even a little bit close. Even if by some freak accident some chemical in the tanning solution made me permanently dark-skinned and forced me to experience even a good chunk of the sort of structural pressures Black people experience everyday, I would still be able to point to ancestry and accumulated white social and actual capital to protect myself from the worst of it. “Whiteness” and race as concepts may not be tangibly real, but structures have been built and maintained to ensure that everyone is forced to accept them as if they are real. Currency may not really be “real,” but that doesn’t suddenly mean I can go to the bar with Monopoly money and buy the whole place out.

A white person experiencing certain aspects/consequences of structural racism does not suddenly mean you can be racist against white people*. A cis woman being stopped outside the bathroom because someone thought she was a trans/nonbinary woman is not the same as a trans/nonbinary woman experiencing the same. And while I think the question of whether or not transmasculine people experience misogyny is extremely myopic (as are most answers to that question), I wish more transmascs like me would start to consider the idea that a lot of the issues (though not all of them) we experience that we may be tempted to call misogyny might actually just be transphobia and anti-transmasculinity. Moreover, I wish generally people had an understanding of patriarchy where it was less “man vs. woman” and more “man vs. non-man,” where trans men–yes, even the most manly, straight, passing trans men you might know–will never fully be accepted as men broadly, simply because they are trans.

*There is a larger discussion to be had about how whiteness is defined differently outside of the U.S., and so a person who might be seen as “white” here may not be seen as such elsewhere, but considering most of the people reblogging this aren’t even able understand structural oppression broadly, I really don’t think y'all are ready for THAT conversation.

[doberbutts]

White guy tries to tell black guy how oppression works, more news at 10.

[queernobi]

Yeah, I guess that has to be the case, when you think that a white person having monolids experiencing anti-Asian sentiment is the same as actual anti-Asian racism. 🤷🏻

[doberbutts]

So when my ex gets beaten up and called racial slurs for Chinese people, he is not experiencing sinophobia. Gotcha. Thank you, white guy, for telling me how racism works 👍

I think you may need to tell that to the Sikhs killed due to Islamophobia, since white Americans can’t tell the difference.

This is a conversation about intersectionality.

[queernobi]

I’ve gotten my ass kicked because someone thought I was disabled. That doesn’t suddenly make me disabled.

And it should be telling to you that anti-Sikhism has its own section and is, notably, not under Islamophobia, despite them being related and generally based on anti-Middle Eastern/Arabic sentiment. The comparison is also not 1:1 given we are talking about groups that are made to directly benefit these oppressive forces being compared to ones that are directly harmed by them vs. two religious groups that have been marginalized and racialized in the U.S. based on misunderstandings of both.

[doberbutts]

It’s funny you say that, because it doesn’t make you disabled, but it does make you affected by ableism. Don’t believe me? Ask the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

My ex being injured by racists who thought he was mixed Chinese does not make him Chinese. That’s not at all within the text of this post so it’s a weird thing to argue. But it does make him affected by sinophobia, because it was the hatred of China and Chinese people that caused this problem. Bigotry comes from the bigot, not from the identity. Again, don’t believe me? Ask the US DOJ.

Read that again. Actual- or perceived- protected demographic. By definition, my ex experienced several anti-Asian hate crimes. So did my friend who turned out to not be Native. So did I when people more commonly mistook me for latina. That is the actual federal wording.

I’m not hiding behind my race or the argument of intersectionality. I am saying that you, a white person, are attempting to incorrectly explain how oppression works to me, a black person, who is using the actual definitions of what these words mean and how they are treated within political theory off of social media, because you are using a dramatically incorrect and incomplete view of the theory you’re trying to explain.

This is like. Really basic black theory knowledge. Really basic sociology theory. Even really basic feminist theory. If you are in the US, this is very literally how it works and how it’s defined. This is an intersectional conversation where thinga don’t quite fit into neatly sorted boxes.

Sikhs have long held an acknowledgement that some of the shit they go through is not even “supposed” to be directed at them. And a lot of Muslims have acknowledged the same, whether it’s in a wiki article or not.

It’s also weird that you’re so resistant to acknowledging that we have so much more in common than we don’t, and that things aren’t always so clear cut and easy to label. Someone experiencing oppression that’s not “for them” does not make them incapable of enacting that same oppression onto someone else, someone whose identity more fits the concept, or even someone just like them as a precautionary. Hell, someone experiencing oppression that DOES fit the label doesn’t even mean they can’t enact it on others- or did you miss that there are cis women on the Supreme Court that gleefully voted away reproductive rights? Did you miss the black politicians who happily buddy up to racists if that means they’ll get elected again? Did you forget that people like Kanye West and Caitlyn Jenner exist?

Learn to share. Learn to see yourself in your fellow human being. You might be surprised what you find there.

[cock-holliday]

reinstalled shinigami eyes to take a look at the damage and it's so much worse than a year or so ago when i deleted it. virtually every intersex blog i know of regardless of how they feel about tme/tma is marked red unless they are especially vocal about liking it, countless trans men are marked red regardless of whether they are vocally inclusive, most who are marked green are either famous guys or are (somewhat) infamous for their transphobia and exorsexism if not also racism.

Plenty of transphobic cis folks are green. Virtually every trans-positivity account is red except for the ones who are unapologetically transphobic to at least part of the community. Countless trans women who vocally uses the term transandrophobia are marked red. Several trans women who dont even use the term but have at least on one occasion defended or sympathized with trans men are red. Several trans women who are bigender/NB/Etc with inclusion of any "male" or masc terms are red regardless of whether they seem to have anything to say about trans men.

It is BLEAK. I've been trying to remove reds and greens as I assess, but it is really really gross that it was a pretty well-known soft rule a decade plus ago that you didn't mark trans people red at all even if they were shitheads, unless they were actual proud terfs, because the flagging was guaranteed to isolate them from community.

Inability to assess risk and a total aversion to narratives that contradict what you assume to be the case for others is getting people into a lot of trouble.

Shinigami eyes is completely dead and less than useless, but since so many people still seem to trust it, I do not want people to keep getting flagged as violent evil transphobes cause they started identifying as genderqueer.

[genderkoolaid]

When you said in your Katherine Hepburn post that you wonder how many transmasculine people kept their identities close to their chest to be the wife or mother that they were supposed to be, I always think of my neighbor.

I live in an extremely Mormon community in rural Northern Utah. I came out as a trans man as a teenager, about 10 years ago. My neighbor— someone who I had always known as a traditional Mormon woman in her early 40s, a devout housewife, a mother of several children, a valued community member from a very important family in our area (her brother is literally the mayor of our town), and at most SLIGHTLY more reclusive and quiet than most of the bigshots in our community— quietly told me on their front porch one evening that they have always seen themself as a man.

They wistfully told me about their college years, where they were involved in the lesbian community, before in their early 20s realizing that it was “more” than that. About how they only moved back home and got married after their college degree because the thought of being a disappointment to their family, and being disowned, felt impossible to cope with. So they got married to a man that they admit they don’t feel any ounce of attraction towards, and had several kids, and they’re not quite the pride to their parents as their siblings (due to being slightly more reclusive, not really having friends to speak of that aren’t just church ladies that they work with, and, admittedly, always seeming a bit depressed to me). They said that they were proud of me for doing what I needed to do, though, and they were happy that my family at least wasn’t disowning me.

Nobody else in our community knows. Not their family, not their husband, not their kids, not the people they do church outreach with.

And whenever I read stories of forgotten trans men, I always think of them. They’re still alive! They’re still here! And nobody but me will probably ever know! And if I hadn’t come out in this tiny little community, I’d never know either!

Idk. Sorry for the vent/rant. Thank you for listening. It crushes me to be the only one who knows them as a man, sometimes.

Thank you for sharing. These are the transmasculine stories we need to be telling more and louder.

[anothergayghoul]

"People are not property!" - *loud cheering*

"This includes prisoners! They are not suddenly property of the state when they're convicted!" - *a little less cheering*

"And that includes children who are not their parents' property!" - *almost no cheering*

"What? I thought we said people aren't property?"