Sentient Moss

Ehehe

[jaepidgey]

Fanfic writing advice??

Okay guys so. I restarted this Tumblr account bc I’m writing a fanfic (Surprise!!!) and need some advice since I’m only ever used to writing oneshots and need this to be big. Like BIG big. I have the plot and all thought out mostly I just don’t… know how to write??? The inspiration struck but the muses hath abandoned my mortal vessel. Anyways. Literally any writing advice would be appreciated, I wanna get the first 5 or so chapters out this summer before I head back to college. It’s basically a uh. Trauma healing fic featuring Sethoscara and I struggle to write in character POV because I’m more used to third person limited or third person omniscient but I wanna do POV/third person protagonist because I need to get into the character’s head, y’know?? So uh yeah any help would be GREATLY appreciated haha

[mousidy]

like a scab being torn off, the wage gap discourse has reopened and I'm being asked to explain how money could possibly hold power

[mousidy]

what do you MEAN a demographic who makes thousands of dollars more per year than you has more power?

[mousidy]

like!!!! I know people are being willfully ignorant, but in case you're not: if you're a trans man, imagine losing 15% of every one of your paychecks. even at minimum wage, you'd be losing thousands of dollars a year. this is not a negligible wage gap

[cannibal-flowerbomb]

The thing that I honestly think turns so many transmascs away from transfeminism is that it's genuinely just easier to be a reactionary about it.

When I first started learning about transfeminist theory, it demanded a lot of genuine effort to confront a lot of socially imposed biases that I'd absorbed without noticing them. It was a lot of reading, a lot of listening, a lot of learning new definitions. New names new theories. And through that process I effectively chose to be dead silent about learning because I didn't want to speak on a subject I wasn't well enough informed about yet. It was months before I started actually talking about what I'd learned.

And the fact of the matter is that it's hard. And being a whiny snotty little thin skinned bastard who doesn't listen to women is the easy way out.

You know who you are.

[mousidy]

even as a trans woman I was very resistant to transfeminist theory for a while. I'd internalized a lot of transmisogyny and I was really invested in the idea that any and all "infighting" was antithetical to the unity we needed in order to do any organizing

it wasn't until I really started to examine the power dynamics at play between myself/other transfems and TME trans people that it became clear the "unity" I thought I was protecting never meaningfully existed, and that I was just being conflict avoidant and people pleasing

it started to make sense why conflicts and disagreements with other transfems had always felt fair, while there was a larger danger to disagreeing with a TME that went beyond mere interpersonal conflict, leading to me being much more of a doormat with them. getting acquainted with transfeminism helped me put a name to this difference: transmisogyny. suddenly I realized I wasn't just being a nice and gracious person, I was just letting myself and my sisters get stepped over

[mousidy]

since the wage gap discourse has reopened again, I'd like to point out that there would be no discourse if so many trans men didn't feel threatened by finding out trans women had lower wages than them on average

I pointed out a statistic and called for solidarity and a recognition of privilege. how anyone else reacts to that is their choice

and, for the record! a lot of people have actually reacted by going "damn, trans women really are in an especially vulnerable position huh? I'm gonna make sure to keep that in mind when interacting with the trans women in my community"

it's not hard!

[mousidy]

[mousidy]

you know I wonder if the recent uptick in transfeminism has been facilitated by the "transandrophobia" discourse

like, I think it's easy not to realize transmisogyny is a unique force, because our most obvious oppressors are privileged by being cisgender, and so most of us likely come to conceive of our oppression as just transphobia. I know I did for a very long time

but once you take notice of the differences in privilege between us and our brothers, at how effectively they are able to throw us under the bus when it suits them, it becomes obvious that there is more at play. if it were just transphobia then we would be on equal footing with them

this is a great entry point to transfeminism, because it explains this discrepancy

[jaepidgey]

I definitely first noticed this discourse because of the whole debate. I think that “transandrophobia” is more a mix of misogyny directed at trans men in terms of being infantilized, and transphobia via characterizing us with traditionally feminine traits, plus a hint of misplaced bioessentialism on the part of people who popularize feminism with the sort of “girls rule boys drool” “men are gross” “ew why would you want that” idea. It’s nowhere near the amount of violence and hatred directed at trans women. And I wish more trans men and transmascs realized that being trans does not negate them from participating in other forms of discrimination. People who experience misogyny can still be misogynistic towards others. Trans men are frustrated at not being included. Trans women are worried about being killed. Big difference.

[mousidy]

I know I'm doing my feminism correctly when I get multiparagraph essays lecturing me about my tone

[mousidy]

so like what are men for

[jaepidgey]

I am one and still have no clue

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]

[vexwerewolf]

TERFs have no right to speak. Ever. On any topic.

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]

The US tortured a chinese scientist to death and the media calls it "hostile questioning"

[mousidy]

trans men - and trans tmes more broadly - often fully understand that women can perpetuate misogyny. but for some reason, they struggle to comprehend that tme trans people can perpetuate transphobia and transmisogyny, and often stand to gain something from doing so. it's always left this sour taste in my mouth. it feels as though they like blaming women for their own oppression more than they actually understand how one perpetuating bigotry for their own benefit actually works

.

[byjove]

“the law is sham-” yes exactly. you are so close to getting it on my ‘require presidents to have smoked weed out of a soda can in high school’ post

[jaepidgey]

but… but what if I can’t weed… medically…. :(

[byjove]

*confused guy right after they invented the days of the week* I know who Thor from Thursday is but who the fuck is Tue for Tuesday

[jaepidgey]

Fun fact!! That’s actually Tyr, the guy who put his hand inside Fenrir’s mouth

[byjove]

everybody: you’ve got to advocate for yourself in medical settings!

medical professionals when a patient advocates for themselves in a medical setting (x100 if that patient is a part of any minority): damn. you’re a hypochondriac crazy bitch who has every mental illness and is seeking every narcotic in existence. that’s the only reason you’d be disappointed in the care you’re receiving here. in retaliation, we will be even less helpful and less sympathetic. our jobs are hard. people are dying. we don’t have time to deal with anyone who is slightly inconvenient for us.

[boybeetles]

The main reason I’m pushing for people to stop using the term ‘pedophile’ and instead use the term ‘child sexual abusers’, is because since all discussions of child sexual abuse focus on this idea of an evil person who is just out to get kids because they are sexual attracted to them, it makes it hard for kids who where sexually assaulted by people who don’t fit that description to realize they were sexually assaulted.

It didn’t register for me until recently that my experiences of being forced to strip naked multiple times at the mental hospital to be ‘checked’ when I was 14 was sexual assault, because the people who did it were nurses/doctors who clearly didn’t find me sexually attractive but instead used it as a form of humiliation and control towards children they deemed as ‘unruly’ and ‘uncooperative’ (ie. children who asked to be treated like people). I thought only people who fit into this idea of a child attracted pedo could be child sexual abusers, so I thought my experience didn’t count.

Stepping away from the idea that there is a pedophile boggieman and instead highlighting that anyone can be a child sexual abuser will help more people realize that their experiences are sexual assault.

[mousidy]

my stepfather would openly sexually harass me and my siblings at dinner while also loving the fantasy of killing pedophiles. whether he personally found our abuse sexually gratifying was frankly irrelevant to whether it traumatized us. whether he would be considered a pedophile or not doesn't change that he committed sexual abuse of children

I think in his mind there was a type of horrible person out there who does horrible things, and because he didn't think of himself as fitting that category, his actions could not be judged

[jaepidgey]

When I was sexually harassed, it wasn’t even by an adult. It was by someone my own age, whom I trusted, whom I thought was a friend. I thought that it couldn’t possibly have been sexual assault, though, because we were the same age, because she didn’t like me “like that”, because we were just “playing pretend” when she did it. It was a dynamic of control for her, not even anything remotely related to attraction. And just because she was young, too, does not mean that she didn’t hurt someone (me).

So, yeah. It’s not always pedophiles. Sometimes it’s just plain old abusers.

[catboybiologist]

More petty venting

The "accidentally ally teehee" thing of trans men being mistaken for trans women by transphobes does not, and will never, register to me as "the cis can't tell". It's honestly pretty blatantly a moment of "transphobes see or are explicitly tipped off to a Person Of Gender and immediately default to transmisogyny". And tbh it pisses me off how much transmascs don't see it.

Over and over again, I see bait posts from passing trans men with some approximation of "I'm a trans woman haha" to bait transphobes into tirades about how they'll never be a woman. Followed usually by little teehees about how affirming it was.

It never works in reverse. Not because it's easier to "pass" (a concept that already has little legitimacy) as a man if you're transmasc. The most "passing" trans woman alive could make this post, and they have. It doesn't work because the moment you indicate to someone that you're trans, with no further information, the default is transmisogyny.

It's not "they can't tell". It's not "transmasc invisibility". It's trans women becoming such a prevalent target in the minds of the public that people are clamoring at the opportunity to cut them down.

[catboybiologist]

May 25th: Unidentified transgender woman found dead in Brays Bayou, Texas. Suspected murder.

May 24th: Murray Foust found dead in Kentucky, missing since April 27th.

May 18th: Eryka Caldwell murdered in Brooklyn.

May 10th: Juniper Blessing murdered at University of Washington.

May 6th: White House releases "counterterrorism strategy", including "transgender ideology" as a domestic threat.

Trump's words are not empty rambles. Transgender issues are not a "distraction". Violence is being incited against us and protected en masse.