Dæmon

speculative design x sci-fi x queer theory

[myth-0s]

Hi, I’m Dæmon.

I’m a professor, designer, and futurist. I work across (and weave together) lot's of different areas: futures studies, science fiction/fantasy, speculative design, systems thinking, science & tech studies, and queer theory, mostly tracing the messy edges of each, seeking to undestand how and why some ideas transform into the rules, tools, designs, and institutions people end up living inside of (whether by choice or not).

The last time I consistently logged my thoughts online was LiveJournal, so if this occasionally reads like diary from someone who grew up on forums, zines, and long comment threads - yes.

But, I’ve had a lot of ideas piling up lately, and this seemed like a great place to start posting some of them. Some will be fragments. Some will be sketches. Some will be longer posts pulled from my teaching or research. I’m sharing them in case they’re useful to someone. If they’re not, that’s fine too. Ranting Thinking out loud has always been part of my process.

You’ll probably see posts about:

🚀 Speculative design and futures studies

👾 Science fiction as a way of understanding and processing the present

🏳️‍⚧️ Queer/trans theory (or is it philosophy?) - musings on how myth, story, language, identity, technology, media, design, and power intertwine

🦄 Bits and pieces of a new project I’m working on and testing out here: the Neo-Trivium

🧑‍🏫 Adapted versions of sci-fi, futurism, and design lectures from my teaching that I don’t want to lose just because a syllabus got tighter

🍕 Random quick pics, reflections, and half-formed ideas from my wanderings

😸 Probably some pics of my cat

My values ❤️ / my boundaries 🏰

I eschew obfuscation, am allergic to moral absolutism and purity culture, and have sworn my life (no exaggeration) to battling essentialism in all its incarnations: identity, relationships, family, religion, education, government, media, arts, technology, and design.

I love philosophy. I love theory. I love fiction. I love gaming. I love music. I love fandom. But most importantly, I believe all of these are equally valid and useful materials for making meaning in the world.

This isn’t a debate blog or a discourse arena. Reblogs with commentary are welcome. Asks are open if you’re curious or trying to understand something better.

I’m not interested in pile-ons, gotchas, or vibe-policing. If you want to tango, I match energy and tone, educate over escalate (though I’m also human), and I do my best to fact-check, list sources, and verify anything not coming straight out of my imagination.

About me ⚔️🛡️

At heart, I’m a charmingly and unabashedly cringe relic of the old web.

I got my start in AOL RPG chatrooms (Vampire Tavern, anyone?), built secret un-indexed GeoCities crush pages with friends, had passionate affairs with members of my Final Fantasy XI linkshell, learned how sex worked from Gundam Wing and DBZ yaoi/slash fic, and used double-colon emotes copiously. ::blushes::

If that isn’t antiquarian enough: I accidentally outed myself to my dad by leaving my LiveJournal open, and to my mom two years later by leaving my MySpace open as a teen.

Somehow I was just the right age to miss Tumblr the first time around, so please bear with me as I find my footing. If you have advice or tips about how things work here, I’m genuinely happy to hear them.

Think of this as a working notebook made public. Take what’s useful. Leave the rest.

“The future is already here. Let’s fucking redistribute it.”

current mood: bemused

currently listening to: my cat loudly filing a complaint about the service at this 'hotel' (★☆☆☆☆).

[squeakitties]

following weird horny furries who are into shit like pooltoys and transformation and stuff is enrichment. the vitamins and minerals of posting

[squeakitties]

[valentinedefectiveagency]

Blessed are the freak for they shall inherit the earth

[fvckw4d]

"Tme" is just "theyfab" with extra steps and I'm tired of pretending it's not.

[myth-0s]

This 👆

Also, I don't love Transandrophobia for the following reasons (among others).

1. It's a mouthful.

2. My neurodivergent brain can't take the term seriously bc it feels like it has the rhyme time signature of a sea shanty.

3. But really my 🧠 glitches each time I see it and immediately cuts to the song from Bedknobs & Broomsticks, and I end up saying it in my head in the same over the top portentous tone as Angela Lansbury's incantation, TREGUNA MEKOIDES TRECORUM SATIS DEE

And in the corner, a Doc Martens boot starts a-tapping. 🥾🎶

And then things like this start to happen...

(in the melody of the song)

TREGUNA MEKOIDES TRANSANDRO PHOBIA.

​Elocutionary castigation.

TME, TMA, ranked trauma masturbation.

It's not queer, to rate fear, so maddening to see.

The need to deed and cede who's fucked worse by misogyny.

​I don't want half-assed castigatory allocution.

Nor to rehash back/slash, whose struggle is lilliputian

For to smash and crash institution is the key.

​So stash your acronyms and pull out your BFG -

The future can't be saved with Column A and Column B.

https://youtu.be/PpmshIjeSv8?si=dADmu_lK-APDoLAX

[myth-0s]

A word came to me today.

A word trying to name the many conflicting emotions I've moved through since my latest software upgrade/evolution turned out to be FTM-v_20.23. Because despite (or maybe because of) how late in life I may be to the T party, this update, and the hardware tinkering that's followed, has unleashed a surge of anti-essentialist theory & praxis that has surfaced in my day to day life, apparently my music choices, and of course in my Speculative Design & Futures teaching since.

And as I kept wondering why this? Why now? This word popped into my head:

p(r)enance

Pre Penance. (n) - A p(r)eaction to knowing I'll be slowly accorded more privilege as I pass as a man, and as a result of that knowing, a proportionally growing animus to dismantle it the closer I get. Like wanting to destroy the destination I've so longed to inhabit now that I've finally got a ticket to ride.

Notes that were originally parentheses above - so as not to confuse the definition

* Somewhat subconscious

* Re: animus, the older definition (energy, breath, anger passion) not that Jungian bs.

I'm strangely reminded of the scene from the end of Return of the King, where Frodo tells Sam he's leaving for the Greyhavens:

“But,” said Sam, and tears started in his eyes, “I thought you were going to enjoy the Shire, too, for years and years, after all you have done.”

“So I thought too, once. But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. But you are my heir: all that I had and might have had I leave to you. Come now, ride with me!”

In some ways, masculinity feels like Frodo's Shire. I fought so fucking hard for it when seen/identifying as a butch dyke. Struggled for every inch of recognition that who I was inside was real, that my masculinity was real, even when dressed in the starting-gear body-class I never had any input on creating;the first time around.

And now, despite the gathering darkness that threatens even that hard-won journey, as the recognition comes easier and easier, I can't unsee the horrors from my time in the field. The ghosts of the battle for that recognition are imprinted like a bloody palimpsest of hypocrisy on every 'Hey Boss' and 'May I help you sir?' that makes me feel finally seen.

And I sit here, enjoying the simple quiet that comes with not having to struggle to be seen in every interaction I have with the public (and from not being seen as available for conversation or critique just because of my gender), but the silence is heavy;and haunted.

And sure, maybe it's just internalized misandry, or transbrophobia - or whatever new word the community has come up with this week to map a particular dimension of our collective PTGD (Post-Traumatic-Gendered-Disorder) so that we can quibble about legibility from some new angle.

Or maybe it's the thrice-exceptional neurotransvergent thirst for justice. The power/curse that manifests as an inability to unsee the leylines underneath each moment of hyperreality until they join and swirl into one rushing chaotic blur of synestheiastic meaning that is the nighttime skyline felt from bike-back-synth-beats shadowfax flying home to BK.

Or maybe it's just basic fucking human decency to resent being accorded tenuous trappings of power for finally taking hold of your own biopolitical agency, while knowing, literally with your whole being that proximity to power being measured in juice-box bodies is ridiculous, and that even that power and privilege will be stripped at the first hint of Trans-gression.

So yeah, now that 'I've arrived' in the collective approximation of man, I can't relax.

There is no way I can just sit here and fucking rest in this haunted verisimilitude of homecoming I so desperately sought, fought for - especially now that I've been granted provisional entrance.

And so, even as I finally move so easily, so naturally through new rooms full of small blissful moments of deferred boyjoy and euphoria, I also find myself casually leaning against the walls, one hand at my back, fingers quietly tracing the wallpaper for irregularities; my nails desperately scraping surface, questing for the smallest seam I can worry and widen, until finally, I have enough grip to rip and tear at the cracks in earnest, watching as the paper-mache facade I mistakenly thought was manhood comes crashing down around me. And maybe then, finally, I can build something better in its ashes, and get the rest I deserve.

[indigosfindings]

the "chat is a pronoun" discourse is captivating to me because it goes so far beyond ordinary misinformation

like imagine if suddenly there was a wave of posts saying that Dogs Are Birds, like "omg you guys i just realized dogs are actually birds!!!" and any time anybody said "theyre mammals, not birds" dozens of people would get super defensive about it and make snide condescending posts/comments like "KNOWLEDGE is knowing that dogs arent birds, WISDOM is knowing that taxonomy is fake and all organisms are whatever you want them to be forever, peace and love on planet earth," and they would keep posting about how Dogs Are Totally Birds because "well dogs are majestic and have beautiful voices, like birds" and if you pointed out that those qualities are immeasurable (& have nothing to do with being a bird) and that metric could categorize most animals (& several things that arent animals) as 'birds' they would call you a gatekeeping elitist and say "let people enjoy things" or some thesaurused equivalent, and maybe someone would also say "we're just having a Laff, it's just a fun game dont be so Serious" but they (and a non-insignificant number of other people) otherwise speak as if they believe with conviction that Dogs Really Are Birds, and this is Really Big & Exciting News because Dogs Are The First 4-Legged Bird, and then when people who know biology made posts explaining in-depth what taxonomy is & why dogs arent birds theyd start getting asks like "what about cats, are cats birds??" "are hamsters birds?" "what about sharks??" "i think flies are birds because they have wings." and then imagine this all persisted for more than half a year

[myth-0s]

the "punctuation as an afterthought" discourse is captivating because it goes so far beyond ordinary perspectivism

🎤 Claim (The point buried in there): linguistic categories are like biological taxonomy - fixed and legible, Violating them is epistemic collapse into absurdity, not creative use. 🤔

🖼️ Frame (EthOs, ethos + OS): written by and for the Tumblr in-group that already finds internet language play suspect, performing exhausted clarity for an audience that wants to feel vindicated, not persuaded. 🙄

🕹️ Game: essentialism & anti-modernism with plausible deniability - borrow the (laughable) authority of biological science to make any categorical flexibility look like delusion, then coat it in enough self-aware run-on monologuing that the conservatism slides down unexamined.

Assessment: C+ a poorly applied manic-pixie dream-girl glitter coat of breathless earnestness, "I mean c'mon guys, rly? Catdogs? OMG they so cray 🙃", smeared on top of a position does nothing to disguise the prejudiced claptrap underneath - and that's never a discourse worth feeding.

[myth-0s]

You can be a man, but may you?

Being trans today is starting to feel like that infuriating grammar lesson my grandma used to repeat.

Me: "Grandma, can I have a cookie?"

Her: "You can, but may you?"

Me: 🙄

As a kid, I didn't know medical transition existed. Having a future as a man lived, for me, in the realm of the preposterous - magic spells, sci-fi machines, mythic body swaps. But I could imagine it. I'd seen stories where people turned into all sorts of things, including swapping sex. So the can existed, at least in my imagination.

What I couldn't imagine was that it was possible for me.

Puberty narrowed the cone of possibility even further. The androgynous-boy route (aka Haruka, Sailor Moon) disappeared as my body made clear it wasn't becoming that shape, no matter how hard I tried. Clothes and vibes weren't quite enough either, so whatever futures I could imagine stopped feeling inhabitable.

As I got older, I still couldn't imagine reaching a world where the definition of man shifted enough to include me as I was. So when I learned that trans people existed beyond drag queens or moral-panic caricatures - when I learned that transition was real, medical and social and otherwise, and not just imaginary - it completely changed the story I thought I was living within; the future cracked open just a little.

But in some ways, that was harder.

Because once having a future as a man moved from preposterous to possible, it stopped being fantasy. It became a choice. My choice. Albeit one tempered by the consequences and trade-offs I knew I would have to make in order to choose myself. And suddenly I felt the real weight of the second half of that sentence that had been quietly hiding there all along.

"But may you?"

Looking back, I realize my grandma's lesson was never really just about politeness or practicing "good English." It was about the grammar of power.

Can is ability.

May is permission.

When language flattens their difference, power slips in and rewrites the vocabulary of what is possible.

The question was never whether I could imagine myself as a man in some abstract or fantastical way. I always could. The question was whether I could imagine a life where that was actually possible for me.

I can be a man. I am one, in every way that matters to me - both internally and in how the world at large reads me. The real violence was never about whether I could be one. It was that, for years, I wasn't allowed to know it was a real future I might inhabit.

That ignorance wasn't accidental, nor my own naivety. It was by design.

So when people ban queer kids' books, or say trans people existing in public goes against their beliefs, or insist that transition is harmful despite all evidence to the contrary - what they're really reacting to isn't whether transition exists. It does, medical and social and otherwise. The world knows it. That cat is already out of the bag. 😽

What they're trying to do now is prescribe what comes next. To narrow the grammar of the future until trans lives slide back across the line from possible to preposterous, from real to imaginary. To roll back the timeline until our community loses the ability to distinguish what we're able to do from what we're allowed to do.

Until one day, we all forget (or worse, remember) that for us, can and may were never meant to be separate.

[judgingbooksbycovers]

We Will Rise Again: Speculative Stories and Essays on Protest, Resistance, and Hope

By Annalee Newitz, Karen Lord, and Malka Older.

[queerasf4ck]

People will be like, "I’m not transphobic; I just think that the terms for different sexualities should be so heavily policed that they exclude nonbinary and multigender people or force them into a new binary 🙂

[myth-0s]

And this is why I just like to go with post-binary xenosectionalist (my word), gender-hacker. Because it is both 100% true, and 100% pisses off people who use words like "gender-haver" . 🙄

[faggybearswitch]

“testosterone made my trans bf sweaty and horny and hairy and gross!!!!” ok. how committed to you would you say he is. is he busy tonight. what about tomorrow night. where does he live. does he liked to be wined and dined before he’s fucked. what’s his favorite food.

[myth-0s]

Right?

I 'lured' my man in with steak, he stayed for the fuzz.

🐻4🐻

[vintage-bentley]

I find it very upsetting that GNC people, mainly lesbians and gay men, spent so long teaching everyone that women can be “masculine” and men can be “feminine”…only for gender havers to swoop in and undo all that progress with their sexist “actually if a woman isn’t perfectly performing femininity or if a man isn’t perfectly performing masculinity you need to ask THEIR pronouns!! Clothes = gender!!!” Bullshit and throwing fits whenever people recognise their sex instead of stereotyping them based on their clothes. They’ve set us back so far and they’re so giddy about it.

[myth-0s]

Gender-havers? 😳

Sounds kinky.

[cowgirlgirl2002]

You can’t fail at being a woman and you can’t fail at being a man, that just don’t make any sense. You can not fail at being your biological sex, you can fail at being certain aesthetic or fail at trying a new hobby or good person, but a biological sex is not a aesthetic or is it a costume to put on be fr

[myth-0s]

And this is why “radical” is such a bad word for this kind of discourse.

Radical comes from the Latin radix, meaning “root.”

To be radical, you have to go to the foundation of a thing (here: feminism), rip up the old roots that no longer serve, and make space to grow something new.

Treating biological binary sex (Man and Woman) as an immutable category does not shake feminism to the roots, nor does it interrogate some opposite definition of sex that underlies feminist thinking.

It reinforces the same old root system and calls it rebellion.

So, sorry kiddos - you are not radical.

Not compared to feminists who actually did radical work - the ones who challenged patriarchy, marriage law, labor exploitation, sexual violence, and state control of bodies.

Not compared to feminism as a movement - “binary sex is immutable” isn’t a brave new critique, it’s been culture’s default setting for thousands of years.

And certainly not radical in society at large - unless close-mindedness became edgy while I wasn’t looking.

Tbh, all I see here is the same old enemy, essentialism, just wearing a fresh mask.

So I’m coming up with a new word for y'all: femmessentialists.

femmessentialist (noun)

A self-described feminist who treats “woman” as a fixed, innate essence (often rooted in biology or “natural” femininity) and uses that belief to police, gatekeep, or exclude others from womanhood.

By extension, anyone who swaps analysis of power for a sanctified “real womanhood” vibe and calls it politics.

Example sentences:

“Her ‘feminism’ begins and ends at biology - total femmessentialist.”

“The moment the argument becomes ‘real women would never…,’ you’re in femmessentialist territory.”

“They talk liberation but spend all day policing pronouns, bodies, and belonging - femmessentialism with a side of moral panic.”

Related: gender essentialist, TERF-adjacent (often), bio-determinist, gatekeeper

[river-grunfeld]

This reads like the most insufferable garbage. To even make a post argueing against it would imply it has any value as an argument 😂🤣

[femanthropy]

Dw I gotchu I love this bullshit hahaha

Radical comes from the Latin radix, meaning “root” & that’s the only part you got right here.

Because the “root” in radical feminist does not refer to the whatever tf you’re trying to say it does. I’ve read that paragraph a few times & I don’t know what you are saying what you think the “root” here is. You say “go to the foundation of a thing, in this case, feminism”. So I will assume you mean that root feminism is…. Yeah I have no clue but it certainly isn’t liberation for FEMALE people from a MALE supremacist society.

Anyway I’m assuming you don’t know the definition of radical feminism is because who needs to when you’re attempting to argue against radical feminists. God I wish I had a smidgen of your overinflated confidence going into a fight not knowing what you’re fighting xD.

So I’ll ignore whatever point you’re trying to say “root” means in radfeminism. & tell you what the definition of radical feminism is. For next time. Save you the trouble of a google search.

“Root” means to address the root cause of our oppression, which is sex based. (plus misogyny being in a patriarchy ofc is like the result & tool of males oppressing female people). Radfeminism acknowledges that being female is the basis that males have been oppressing us since the beginning of time. Thus, addressing the root reason we NEED feminism, is to eradicate societal misogyny. Which misogyny is so deeply embedded in every aspect of society this would likely mean full societal overhaul.

So yeah. Root means a female liberation movement is for females! Because society was built by males who forbade women to participate, & exists today with males being societies default.

Happy I could put in the very hard yards to define what you are arguing against seeing as you couldn’t apparently. Amazing.

“Sorry kiddos you are not radical”. Well you literally just tried to explain to us that radical in radical feminism means root & now you’re using it as an adjective. Okay.

“Not compared to feminists who actually did radical work” what. I mean of course you don’t know what radical feminists believe or do. So I didn’t expect anything less. But if you spent one second outside of your bubble to learn what radfems believe in you’d know that.

“Binary sex is immutable” correct 👍 hence why radical feminism is a female liberation movement.

“close mindedness” oh yeah. Radfems, close minded for (checks notes) um wanting female liberation from male supremacy.

“The same old enemy essentialism” oooh boy I love this talking point gender ideologues think they have. Gender ideology relies on bioessentialism to even exist. Bioessentialism means that there are biologically predetermined personality or traits. Such as “presenting masculine & having these stereotypical masculine traits means you are a male” that is what OOP is saying- there is no way to be male or female outside of biology. So unfortunately for transactivists, that is what gender is. Bioessentialism.

Because being female is a neutral state- everything OUTSIDE of being female such as hobbies, interests, personality- doesn’t make someone a woman. If you think it does- you are a bioessentialist, congratulations. 🥳

1. I just addressed

2. No such thing as womanhood. Shared experiences & being able to relate to one another due to shared experiences from say, being female? Sure. But womanhood is a social construct & to suggest it’s a tangible thing is stupid because it isn’t.

I’ll also throw in the fact that”divine feminine” stuff is not a radfem belief. In case you somehow meant that

“Real women would never” unless it’s “real women would never have or have had a penis” or “real women are female” then we don’t say that. We can point to male vs female socialisation to explain some disparities outside of that (such as sexist stereotypes, & being shoehorned into one or the other). But I’m being gracious because you 🫵 are the bioessentialist remember.

& again, biology thing, see above in my paragraph abt being female is a neutral state.

& last but CERTAINLY not least: “talk liberation but spend all day policing pronouns bodies & belonging”. I refer to males with male pronouns & female people with female pronouns. It’s called the English language & being able to describe something accurately. I would not point at a cat & say look at that dog. Acknowledging sex using correct pronouns is not “policing”. AND maybe if males were not shoving themselves into a female liberation movement & actively reverting sex based rights then maybe we wouldn’t have to talk about yall meddling entitled asses. If you don’t want the female liberation movement to discuss the males trying to say they are women & should be included in the female liberation movement- then stop fkn doing that.

Policing bodies? Women & girls are female that’s it. Radfems advocate for abolishing gender & advocating for gender nonconformity AGAINST sexist stereotypes. Which remember you 🫵 the bioessentialist (& previously the DSM 5) regard as what a woman or what a man is. & no, calling a male a woman because they present feminine is not “gender nonconformity”. That is doubling down on sexist stereotypes.

But then again, I see @myth-0s “learned how sex worked from Gundam Wing and DBZ yaoi/slash fic, and used double-colon emotes copiously. ::blushes::” which is information you could not waterboard out of me. So I suppose bad takes comes fairly easily.

Sooooo there you are welcome my vyvanse is wearing off bye.

[myth-0s]

Vyvanse solidarity. ✊

Also, respectfully - since you took the time & stimulant energy to engage with a detailed rebuttal - I want to make sure the quoted text from my post is actually readable for everyone.

Tbh, I’m not sure if the wavy background/low contrast is something you chose or how Tumblr rendered it, but a solid color background behind the text and stronger contrast would fix it.

My partner has low vision and had trouble reading parts of it. If it’s on my end, tell me and I’ll try to adjust it. 🙏

(Ironically, for someone who designs apps and teaches science fiction, I’m still figuring out how Tumblr works. 😅)

[e4rthlyd3light]

christmas list

beautiful transsexual man

beautiful older transsexual man

beautiful older transsexual man dandyish in nature

beautiful older transsexual man pathetic and dandyish in nature

beautiful older transsexual man pathetic and dandyish in nature who insists on fixing my hair and my wardrobe addn tghen. insists ojn doing my t shots and makes me do.pushjups while he sits on my back bbecause "well someone has to be the 'man' of the relationship!"

[myth-0s]

You'll find him.

I finally got one for Xmas 2 years ago and he keeps getting better with age.

That's why I put a collar ring on it (but in the 'we need the tax benefits' vs 'marriage is a valid institution' way)

[transfaguette]

genuinely so many problems with how people talk about trans people and gender on this website comes down to not acknowledging that gender, as a power structure, is inherently cisgender. its not sufficient to just overlay the experiences of cis men and women on their trans counterparts. like we really, do have to reconstruct what gender means from first principles when talking about trans people and gendered oppression. especially in order to include nonbinary and agendered people, who are forcefully binarized or left out entirely under this way of thinking. it literally is not sufficient to treat it as an extension of cis feminism.

[myth-0s]

I'm working on a new way to talk about gender and dysphoria to try to speak to this exact issue. Not quite polished yet, but will release it soon. Still playing with my graphs.

[cowgirlgirl2002]

You can’t fail at being a woman and you can’t fail at being a man, that just don’t make any sense. You can not fail at being your biological sex, you can fail at being certain aesthetic or fail at trying a new hobby or good person, but a biological sex is not a aesthetic or is it a costume to put on be fr

[myth-0s]

And this is why “radical” is such a bad word for this kind of discourse.

Radical comes from the Latin radix, meaning “root.”

To be radical, you have to go to the foundation of a thing (here: feminism), rip up the old roots that no longer serve, and make space to grow something new.

Treating biological binary sex (Man and Woman) as an immutable category does not shake feminism to the roots, nor does it interrogate some opposite definition of sex that underlies feminist thinking.

It reinforces the same old root system and calls it rebellion.

So, sorry kiddos - you are not radical.

Not compared to feminists who actually did radical work - the ones who challenged patriarchy, marriage law, labor exploitation, sexual violence, and state control of bodies.

Not compared to feminism as a movement - “binary sex is immutable” isn’t a brave new critique, it’s been culture’s default setting for thousands of years.

And certainly not radical in society at large - unless close-mindedness became edgy while I wasn’t looking.

Tbh, all I see here is the same old enemy, essentialism, just wearing a fresh mask.

So I’m coming up with a new word for y'all: femmessentialists.

femmessentialist (noun)

A self-described feminist who treats “woman” as a fixed, innate essence (often rooted in biology or “natural” femininity) and uses that belief to police, gatekeep, or exclude others from womanhood.

By extension, anyone who swaps analysis of power for a sanctified “real womanhood” vibe and calls it politics.

Example sentences:

“Her ‘feminism’ begins and ends at biology - total femmessentialist.”

“The moment the argument becomes ‘real women would never…,’ you’re in femmessentialist territory.”

“They talk liberation but spend all day policing pronouns, bodies, and belonging - femmessentialism with a side of moral panic.”

Related: gender essentialist, TERF-adjacent (often), bio-determinist, gatekeeper

[dps-aventurine-deactivated20251]

[theatricgratuitousness]

and also

[mx-macintosh]

[myth-0s]

I can't stand AGAB.

Aside from all the bs politics, the words themselves are already slap in the face 👋 because you can't assign gender, you can only (arguably) assign sex.

And sidebar wtf does assigning sex really even mean?

It mean's some random doctor looked at your genitals when you were born and played cosmic sorting hat based on what they saw in that moment. They do NOT check your chromosomes, they do NOT check your hormones (testosterone vs. estrogen) unless they think something else is wrong.

So really, we should be calling it:

"SRDGMSAB" --> "Some Random Doc Guessed My Sex At Birth." 🤨

Or, to make it a bit easier to actually say...

"GSAB" --> "Guessed Sex at Birth" 🤔

When it comes to gender, no one, not a doctor, therapist. parent, teacher, priest, or sky daddy can assign you your gender.

Gender is phenomenological.

You experience gender.

You construct it, adjust it, and continually update it in small (or sometimes big) ways as your understanding of your own identity evolves - in and of itself, in relation to other people, in relation to big cultural categories.

Think of it like being on Zoom.

You see yourself in the zoom window (self-perception), and you see all of the other people in the room seeing you at the same time (social legibility - how you presentation fits into the established categories that society uses to organize itself.)

Together, these two forces create an unending feedback loop where you constantly re-imagine, re-interpret and re-adjust your internal self-image based on:

A: How you see yourself, individually and in relation to other people and/or social categories.

B: How you believe other people read you, categorize you, and treat you from their end.

When these things don’t match, you get dissonance.

And people do what people have always done to balance dissonance under pressure: they adjust as much as they can with what they have available.

Clothes. Voice. Posture. Behavior. Binding. Packing. Hormones. Surgery, whatever.

But none of that has anything to do with “AFAB” or “AMAB” anything. It's survival math.

Because no matter how much people want it to, 'birth guessing' (gendar 'assignment') doesn’t actually mean jack sh*t.

[cinnabaexoxo]

If anyone is wondering where we are on a scale of 1 to fucked, Weird Al Yankovic just did a full cover of Rage Against the Machine - Killing In the Name

In this man's 46 year long career, through everything, he has NEVER spoken about politics. He has NEVER spoken harshly to anyone. He has NEVER performed songs with heavy swearing or forceful lyrics. This man guest starred on My Little Pony as "Cheese Sandwich," the only other party pony as fun as Pinkie Pie!

When THIS man stops laughing, we are in trouble.

[aleprouswitch]

Seeing Weird Al screaming "FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME" with his whole chest, zero comedy, really is like seeing the nicest person you know finally snap because everything around him is so fucked up and horrible. I've always respected Weird Al as an artist and as a person, and this has only upped my respect for him.

[mombinaryjew]

^This exactly!^

[myth-0s]

Now you may find it inconceivable or at the very least a bit unlikely that the relative position of the fascists and the czars could have a special deep significance or meaning that exclusively applies to only you.

But, let me give you my assurance that these forecasts and predictions are all based on solid, scientific, documented evidence. 🧪👨‍🔬

So you would have to be some kind of moron not to realize that every single one of them is absolutely true. ✨

Where was I?

♈♉♊♋♌♍♎♏♐♑♒♓

[someone should def finish the rest of the song for Al's new era] 👹

[mx-macintosh]

swear to god i'm gonna start saying "nonbinary and anonbinary people" to refer to the entire trans umbrella the same way people say "transmascs and transfems"

[myth-0s]

I spent too much time (::coughs:: ADHD) trying to say 'anonbinary' as if I had never heard non-binary before. 😅

But in all honesty, I just use post-binary bc I'm over it.