Talk more about how cosmological, metaphysical, spiritual, and otherwise non-psychological forms of plurality are treated as disposable, I am no longer asking.
Talk about how many of us are abandoned not just by broader society, but by our own communities because our experiences are considered "too weird," "too cringe," or too inconvenient for respectability politics.
Talk about how some plurals will happily throw us under the bus in hopes that sacrificing us will make them appear more believable, more legitimate, more acceptable.Talk about how being told "that's impossible" or "that's just psychosis" is often treated as an acceptable response, even by people who know what it feels like to have their own experiences denied.
Talk about how "endogenic" became a catch all category for wildly different experiences and beliefs, flattening an enormous diversity of perspectives into one caricature that people can easily dismiss.
Talk about how countless communities and frameworks that once tried to give language to the breadth of plural experiences were mocked, demonized, or abandoned because they were deemed too strange, too embarrassing, or bad optics.
Talk about the way people treat plurality as though it must have one acceptable explanation and one acceptable narrative, and how anyone who exists outside that narrative is expected to either lie, stay silent, or leave.
Talk about how many cosmological and metaphysical plurals feel forced to choose between authenticity and community, because speaking openly about our experiences means risking ridicule from singlets and exclusion from other plurals alike.
Talk about how treating trauma based plurality as the only legitimate form of plurality reinforces the same rigid ideas about personhood and consciousness that have historically been used to invalidate all plural people.
Talk about how "I don't personally believe that" too often becomes "you are dangerous, delusional, or hurting the community simply by existing."
Talk about how respectability politics have never protected marginalized people. They have only created new outsiders.
Talk about how some of us spent years hiding, not because we were ashamed of who we are, but because we learned that even among people who understood multiplicity, there were experiences they considered unacceptable.
Talk about how disagreement does not justify dehumanization.
Talk about epistemic humility. Talk about the limits of human understanding. Talk about how nobody possesses a complete theory of consciousness.
Talk about how plurality has always been more diverse than any one framework, diagnosis, belief system, or community would like to admit.
Talk about how we deserve the same dignity, autonomy, and right to describe our own experiences that everyone else asks for themselves.
Important note for anybeing who is thinking about potentially using skin lightening products:
WATCH FOR MERCURY!!!!! Be SO VERY careful!!!!!!!
Mercury works to lighten your skin, but it can also kill you. And not just "potential side effects include xyz, abc, and death"; Mercury WILL kill you once you are exposed to enough of it. And before it kills you, it will make you suffer. Your death will not be quick, and it will sure as hell not be painless.
When it doesn't kill you, it will cause you majorโ often permanentโ issues, such as kidney failure and nerve damage.
Read the ingredients thoroughly. When a product contains Mercury, you will often find the following ingredients (according to the world health organization) listed:
You can also check for a warning that tells you to keep the product away from things like silver, gold, rubber, aluminum, and jewelryโ Mercury can damage them. Products that contains a lot of mercury are often gray or cream colored, as well, though it's important to note that a product being grey or cream colored is not always, or even in an overwhelming majority, indicative of mercury.
If there aren't any Mercury containing ingredients listed, or if you're not sure whether or not the product contains Mercury, here is an ongoing database for mercury containing products. You can also find a list of common (and some uncommon) skin lightening products that contain mercury on this page.
Some safe ingredients are:
Vitamin C and it's derivatives
Tranexamic acid
Azelaic acid
Kojic acid and it's derivatives
Resorcinol and it's derivatives
Mandelic acid
Retinoids
Arbutin
Niacinamide
This page gives a list of 6 safe and high performing skin lightening ingredients, what they are, and how they work
This is going to be pretty long. I may in the future take sections from this (+ maybe elaborate) and make them their own posts. Disclaimer that any viewpoints discussed below are not necessarily my own and that I am trying to approach this from a place of pure curiosity and am not including my own moral stances. Thank you everyone for taking the survey. Weโll get started under the read more!
Alright, so immediately weโre working with a large radqueer majority audience, so keep that in mind! There is some diversity overall, but this did end up being a very pro-radqueer heavy population. Fairly normal age distribution compared to the rest of tumblr, Iโd say, though I would take note of the majority 13-18 population and significant under 16 population.
Big piece of data here!! Interestingly enough, about 76% of responders identified as plural or part of a system. Based on written responses, it appears like a lot of people cite their plurality as a reason for having certain transIDs. I got a few responders who stated they were answering as multiple alters and therefore there answers may be contradictory. There seem to be a minority of endogenic systems, with most people either answering โtraumagenicโ or that theyโre unsure/nuanced about system origin.
โTransIDs: Racial, Age, Abledโ
I believe the visual charts for these look a bit busy, so I will summarize the main points I got here:
Out of being transabled, transage, and transracialโbeing transage is the most common according to responders. Most transage folks identify as being younger, but age sliding/experiencing several ages depending seems to also be common. Compared to the other types of transIDs listed, more people seemed to identify as transage due to trauma (others seemed more related to atypical dysphoria + wanting the label for fun).
For transabled people, identifying with both physical and mental disabilities is most common. Besides that, mental is more common than physical. More people reported being transabled โfor funโ compared to the others (though again, atypical dysphoria was majority reported). From what Iโve seen, identifying with life-long disorders (developmental, intellectual, chronic, etc) is more common than identifying with temporary conditions.
The majority of transracial people reported being bodily white, though not by a wide margin. Based on general tumblr demographics, Iโd say thereโs not really compelling data there to say whether bodily white people are more likely to identify as transrace within radqueer spaces than others; though, as one might expect, it seems that bodily race/ethnicity can have an influence in the different nuances as to *why* someone might identify as a different race/ethnicity.
I donโt have anything in particular to add to this graph, I just wanted to include it here. Itโs surprisingly pretty evenly split.
โTransIDs: Harmed/Harmfulโ
Responses to these were actually really fascinating and helpful. I could write a whole other post on it, honestly.
Iโll do my best to summarize here.
The majority of people who identify as transharmed/harmful fit both labels. You can see this in the chart. Besides that, transharmed seems more common than harmful.
Based on written responses, it is very clear to me that identification with these labels tends to stem from trauma. Though some also claimed they take them on for fun or for sexual reasons, many *many* people specifically talked about wishing their trauma was worse. Over and over again I saw sentences like, โI feel like my trauma wasnโt validโ, โI feel like it shouldโve been more severeโ, โpeople would believe me if I was more traumatizedโ, โI wish people would take my issues more seriouslyโ.
This is a very common mindset among people struggling with trauma and/or mental illness. Many responders reported having these feelings about past experiences with grooming and childhood abuse. Feeling like something bad shouldโve happened to you when you were younger is also often a sign of CSA or other traumatic memories that one mightโve blocked out; in other situations, it may also come from a lack of support for already existing issues.
In some cases, seemingly more commonly in those who identified with the transharmful label, people might seek out this transID to cope with or mitigate guilt from intrusive thoughts. It can be an outlet for anger, some reporting that they find a type of relief in fantasizing about hurting the people who hurt them, or hurting people in the same way they were once hurt. For many, transharmed/harmful was also related to pluralityโspecifically the existence of fictives/introjects and their own memories of their source material.
Though some expressed distaste for the way the general radqueer community seems to have conflated transharmful/harmed labels for kink and the want to seek out conabusive relationships, there were several people who said that they identified with these terms for specifically erotic reasons.
There was also a common theme of gratefulness for a space to express commonly taboo desire in a way that minimizes potential for harm. Especially for people who were once abused, being able to experience these things in a controlled environment was important; the desire to return to abusers themselves is considered common, so the want to recreate some aspects staying away from actual abusive situations was noted as incredibly helpful.
As some did point out in the survey, the similarities between conabuse and (sexual or nonsexual) BDSM are very apparent. Consent was consistently reiterated as necessary to many of these people, though a few also expressed concern with the way conabusive relationships have played out specifically in online spaces.
The majority of responders were positive or nuanced towards the concept of conabusive relationships. The question of minors engaging in such relationships seemed like it really depended on the individual situation for many. Maturity especially was a big factor.
โContact Stances for โBig Threeโ + Incestโ
(TW forโฆ all the stuff thatโs involved in discussing that)
Just to preface, the reason I including the โregardless of consentโ answer was mostly for the section on beastiality, necrophilia and pedophiliaโonline, I have rarely seen the opinion that engaging sexually with beings that do not understand or relate to our societal concepts of sex (or areโฆ corpses) cannot be harmed by it. I am also aware that some people simply donโt care about committing harm. I included it here for consistency.
Consensual incest was definitely one of the more accepted โtabooโ acts in this survey, with a majority of ~59%. Although, itโs important to note that for many people the pre-existing relationship of those involved would make a difference in their opinion.
Necrophilia was overall the most supported (adding up both the red and blue sections of the pie chart there). In written responses, I also saw people claiming that conditions such as relationship to the deceased and likelihood of contracting illnesses would also be relevant to their opinions. Interestingly, there seemed to be a higher percentage of anti-contact here than for incest; some who chose such an option mostly highlighted the issue of dead bodies not being able to revoke consent during the act, and therefore not having the ability to be fully consenting at all.
Zoophilia was not supported by the majority (71%). ~25% of responders believed consensual contact with animals was possible; out of those who did, the belief that animals can consent if they initiate contact was most popular (followed by perceived enjoyment and intelligence level). Interestingly, I got several responses from people who labelled themselves as either pro or anti contact zoophilia who claimed that they believed sexual contact with animals *could* hypothetically be done ethically, but that the vast majority of people do not have the knowledge of animal behavior and biology to do so.
Pedophilia/Hebephilia was considerably more divisive. Comparing the pie chart here with the data below, I believe it would be accurate to say that we have a majority (~59%) of people who believe youth cannot consent to adult advances, and others whose opinions seem to be more situationally-defined. Keep in mind that not everyone who answered the first part answered the second.
According to written responses, those that were pro or nuanced on the issue tended to prioritize maturity level and sexual education for minors. Some people claimed that kids of almost any age should be able to express consent to (a few specified: non-penetrative) sex in a society that better educated children on their bodies and relationships. There seemed to be a group of people who agreed that, philosophically, children have the capacity to say yes or no to sex in the same way they would for anything elseโmost of these people, though, agreed that this would not work in our society due to the prevalence of CSA and lack of protections for children.
I found it interesting that more people identified as anti-contact for zoophilia than pedo/hebephilia. I saw two or three responses that claimed it was mostly an empathy issue (more for animals, less for children); but a more common outlook seemed to be thatโwhile some minors have the ability to communicate what they want and understand the culture we have around sexโanimals cannot meaningfully consent within the framework of our society.
As we can see here, the majority (62%) of people would feel comfortable interacting with people who had one or more of the โbig threeโ paraphilias, but have not engaged in them. For many people (~35%) there is the additional caveat of being anti-contact.
For those who *have* engaged in any of those paraphilias, comfortability interacting falls significantly. Thereโs still a majority of people willing to interact (adding the yellow and red sections together), but most of the people in that category (~41%) would only be comfortable if they considered the other personsโ contact consensual. ~43% of people would not feel comfortable interacting at all.
I donโt have a ton to say on this chart, but I thought Iโd include it here.
โCENSORSHIPโ
I have less to say in this section, but I find it notable that (admittedly, by a small margin) people found the ethics of AI child pornography featuring real childrenโs faces (but not bodies) more disagreeable than fully real images of children. Also notably, ~27% of responders believe children can consent to keeping sexually explicit images/videos of themselves available. Based on written responses, I believe some or most of this percentage comes from people wanting it to be acceptable for youth to keep/potentially distribute nudes of themselves without fear of legal repercussion.
Here we have a majorities for not banning sexually explicit writing or animation portraying children. As I expected, writing has a little more support than visual depiction.
โCONCLUSION, NOTESโ
Again, I want to thank everyone who participated. The survey will continue to stay open if you havenโt taken it and want to add your own perspective.
I still have some questions, particularly regarding the diversity in definitions of consent I saw, as well as some of the moreโฆ โcosmeticโ (?) based TransIDs that Iโd be interested in understanding the thought behind.
I feel like I have a much better understanding of some of the psychology behind a lot of this, at least. I wonโt go into any ultimatums here, because I believe they might be influenced by my own ethics, but Iโll just say that much of this community is very understandable if you take an empathetic approach. Itโs interesting that an online culture so focused on being able to identify as โotherโ in a very individualistic way seems to have also brought many people into community that they were seeking. Thereโs quite an emphasis on the shared solidarity between different โdevianciesโ (as societally-defined), and for better or for worse this has led to the public broadcast of the many diversities of opinion these people have on some of the most taboo subjects one can think of.
Hello, we've decided to conduct a study on different the different kinds of plural experiences. Part of our data collection is a series of surveys that we're currently creating. Does anypony have suggestions for things that they think would be important to include?
The reason we're asking this question is because listening to folks is one of the best ways to learn about them; therefore a crucial aspect of conducting a study with the purpose of education, awareness, and the breaking down of misinformation.
i just saw trans cotton candy description as "a transid where someone identifies as cotton candy in a trans way" THATS NOT WHAT TRANS ID IS
TransID is a term referring to being whose identity does not entirely, always, or at all correspond with what society assigns to them. This includes, but is not limited to, their body, abilities, age, race, gender, and species.
like its not that hard! like you wont say transgender man is identifying as a man in a trans way like thats not how it works!
Youโre still radqueer if youโre uncomfortable with an identity
Youโre still radqueer if you prefer not to interact with beings with certain identities
Youโre NOT radqueer if you think such beings should be harassed (and actually proceed to harass them yourself) because of what they identify as
Being radqueer just means accepting all identities, no matter what they may be, but that doesnโt mean you canโt dislike/be uncomfortable with any of them
about your "this is how all antis view radqueers blah blah"
yeah, it's entirely based on age, as far as i've seen. if you're a minor and a radqueer, they see you as an innocent soul that was groomed into the community and you're just so! traumatized!!! and so oblivious!!!!!!
then the second you turn 18, it's the complete opposite. suddenly they start seeing you as the groomer who's targetting kids and stealing candy from babies and smashing christmas decor or whatever. ts pmo.
For real. And Jessicur's newest video is NAWT helping
Epstein files discourse has me more convinced than ever that we need to be talking a lot less about "pedophiles" and talking a lot more about child sexual abuse.
I talked about how conservative authoritarians define "pedophilia" as "youth autonomy," but even among less overtly authoritarian communities, the spectre of The Pedophile is, at best, a distraction from the reality of CSA.
"Pedophiles" are a distinct, discrete type of person. They're Not Like Us, but also, they Could Be Anywhere. They're hiding in plain sight among us, lurking and sabotaging. Anyone could secretly one of them. They're queer, they're Jewish, they're vaguely foreign. They conspire. They're a cabal. They have secret signals. They're rich and powerful and secretly control governments, but they're also poor and dirty and hide in alleyways. They're sexually deviant. They're everywhere and nowhere, and you should constantly be on guard against anyone who might be one.
Child sexual abuse, on the other hand, is abuse. It's an action, not a type of person. Anyone can commit it, because it's an abuse of power, and all adults and many other children have power over all children. Any adult has the ability to sexually abuse a child, because every adult has the ability to wield power over any child. Child sexual abuse is part of the continuum of child abuse, which in turn is part of the continuum of abuse, which can be committed by anyone who has the power to commit it.
The Epstein clients are the most prosaic phenomenon in the world. Rich, powerful people trafficked powerless people to force the powerless people to serve them. Rich, powerful people got away with breaking laws. Rich, powerful people uses people as objects -- in this case, as sex objects, but by the same structural mechanisms by which they use people to clean their houses, pick their crops, and assemble widgets in their factories.
It's not A Secret Cabal Of Pedophiles Conspiratorially Running The Government. It's just kyriarchy working as intended. Absolutely, keep up the pressure to release the Epstein files and prove what we already know, but if you're using "pedophiles" in a sentence where "illuminati" would make sense, put down the conspiracy juice and pick up the youthlib juice instead.
this is somewhat tangential but from what i've read on reddit, sleepovers are becoming an activity of a bygone era as parents more and more are not allowing their daughters to attend sleepovers for fear of sexual assault
what's interesting in all those conversations is that the parents are trying to protect their daughters by limiting the activities that they can do. What is not brought up in those conversations is anything about teaching their children the proper words for their body parts or making them feel empowered to call out situations where they feel uncomfortable. there's data to back this up, children who know the proper words for their body parts are less likely to be targeted and more likely to report mistreatment
if your protection of children is fully focused on attacking adults and doesn't include educating children, then you're more interested in attacking adults
I think that's also an example of a common phenomenon where a restriction on children is justified because of fear of a truly terrible outcome, and then over time the restriction tends to be used more against normal childhood behaviors or individuation.
Like --
"We need cops in schools to prevent school shootings!"
"Well, cops in schools sounds kind of extreme, but school shootings are also really bad, so I guess that's necessary"
***Cops stop zero school shootings, arrest and brutalize students for minor infractions***
***A few years later***
"What do you mean, we shouldn't have cops in schools? Who's going to enforce discipline when a kid disobeys a teacher?"
Or
"We shouldn't allow sleepovers, because children might be sexually assaulted!"
"Well, that sounds kind of extreme, but sexual assault is really bad, so I guess that's necessary"
***A few years later***
"What do you mean, let children stay at a friend's house overnight? What if they watch too much TV?"
Or
"We shouldn't let children go outside unsupervised, because they might be kidnapped and murdered!"
"Well, that sounds kind of extreme, but kidnapping and murder are really bad, so I guess that's necessary"
***A few years later***
"What do you mean, let children go outside unsupervised? They might have an uncomfortable conversation with someone!"
hallo! do you think you could do a BIID specific transPeriodicParalysis flag? /nf
if you do could you please ping @cryptidscrematorium ?
. Haaaii!! Yess!! here ya goo!!! ^^ a transPeriodicParalysis flag!
definition: a flag for those who identify with having Hypokalemic Periodic Paralysis in a trans way.
What's Periodic paralysis? : a group of rare, usually genetic, disorders that cause sudden, temporary episodes of extreme muscle weakness or paralysis.
thanks to @cryptidscrematorium for requesting this!
crazy how anti's view all radqueers as a 12-14 year old white cishetallo able bodied able minded perfect upper middle class childhood with no trauma or stress caricature and even crazier how pissed they get when you're not and you tell them that
either that, or you're a 20-40 year old child predator who is out to hunt and harm children
there is no in between or nuisance, you're either one or the other to antis, and that's a big sign of people being wrong about something: if they have a black and white view, and refuse to understand and apply nuisance to a topic, they are not there to understand it at all, just to oppose it for existing, its the same with transgender and homosexuality
"trans women are rapists dressing as women to get in the bathroom! trans men are confused poor women! there is no in between or nuisance to that! its either one or the other!"
"gay men are child molesters who want to groom and rape little boys! gay women are men hating because society convinced them men are bad and thus can only date other women! bi people are greedy and cheat! there is no inbetween or nuisance to that! its either one or the other!"
and then transphobes (aka, anti-RQs) wonder why they're called transphobic, beats me, maybe cuz you hold the same mentality homophobes and transphobes hold, where they assume that people based on their attraction alone are doing harmful actions
say it with me chat
attraction =/= action
gay =/= man who will molest every boy and man they see
lesbian =/= man hating woman who hates themself and the world
trans/nonbinary/etc =/= predatory man in disguise/confused woman
paraphile =/= child/animal/corpse molester, freak, etc
trace =/= racist white person/confused POC
transspecies =/= confused human
transharmed =/= insensitive
transharmful =/= abuser
I could go on all day, there is so many stereotypes for so many ways to live as there is humans along the history of the entire earth
but there is only one way to stop the mistreatment of minorities:
radical acceptance
i saw the light and it was actually an eldritch horror within my cognitions dangling knowledge over my head that i couldn't actually comprehend and the brain consequently revolted please help me
crazy how anti's view all radqueers as a 12-14 year old white cishetallo able bodied able minded perfect upper middle class childhood with no trauma or stress caricature and even crazier how pissed they get when you're not and you tell them that
