[closet-keys]

I was watching Shrek 2 and my wife and I were reflecting on how much transmisogyny was in it as jokes (e.g. “gender confused wolf” “ugly step sister” “women’s underwear” etc.) and it’s so extremely ridiculous to me the transphobes’ line that having positive representations of trans people (esp trans women) in children’s media would be “too confusing” for kids—because they are literally already making references to trans women in children’s media, they’re just doing it in the most offensive ways possible. Taking away all the empty cis rationalization of it, really they’re not arguing for kids to not see trans characters, they’re arguing that kids should see trans characters as demonized, fetishized, objects of ridicule and disgust. Like that’s literally the subtext in these “how do I explain this to my kids” conversations. They really mean “let me continue to explain this in ways that groom kids into hating trans people and themselves if they are trans”

[the-privateer]

i don't think the wolf was trans, i'm pretty sure the bit is that he just realized how much he liked wearing women's clothing (which never is a but of a joke) and doris (the ugly step sister was just a woman with a lot of masculine traits. sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not everything has to have a deeper meaning to it

[n3konomicon]

you don’t see how mocking “male cross-dressing” and “women with hyper masculine features” can be directly related to transmisogyny (and also to homophobia and anti-effeminacy and classic misogyny as well)? i think it’s very seldom in media that mocking effeminacy for the sake of mocking effeminacy and mocking hyper masculine women for the sake of mocking hyper masculine women are like, completely innocuous things that are devoid of any connection to social bigotry against trans ppl and gender nonconformity and women.

[shardsofglassheart]

One thing around discussions of abuse and misconduct from those with positions of power and authority that often happens is a discussion about the frequency of such misconduct. Whether cops or doctors or landlords or whatever. And for me this really misses the point which is:

We are giving people power over other people's lives. It should not be a roll of the dice as to whether those wielding such power will abuse it even if it is only a "few bad apples". So you have to both justify the power these people (and institutions) are granted and you have to prioritise ways to mitigate avenues for abuse.

Otherwise you're just creating a class of people with unchecked power over others and of course some will abuse it and of course any position of power and shield from accountability will attract those who seek to abuse that power.

Now, there are some situations where someone having the power to make decisions is necessary. A doctor in ER needs a certain amount power to be able to work effectively.

And in my view, there's positions of power that really don't seem to have any justification that outweighs the immense harm, corruption and abuse that comes from it. Like cops.

[perkwunos]

The seeming ease and “common sense” justification of beliefs in transphobic pseudoscience might show, not only of course that claims to “science” can be readily appropriated for “realist” assertions of the necessity of certain social forms regardless of what legitimate experimental verification has to say, but also more specifically that everyday notions of life have not really moved beyond older, Aristotle-style biology to fully embrace the implications of an evolutionary approach. That is to say, people are all too often still attempting to understand life in terms of its classifications into discrete and unchanging species-forms. Since, in reality, any aspect of an organism we can recognize and classify into a specific form is already an expression of a continuum of changes that will continue to diversify rather than be determined into one set course, it’s a mistake from the start to think biology as a science will reveal any “facts” that must be the case, any binaries that will stay binaries.

[streakoflavender]

it was this aristotlean perspective, not what we would now call ‘creationism’ that Darwin had to contend with when he first published on the origin of species, like, he had to devote a significant portion of the book to just establish diversity exists within species without being ‘deformities’

[streakoflavender]

but because western Xianity’s reliance on Aristotleanism has its origins in medieval church doctrine and not the bible, many americans are incapable of seeing it as religious doctrine influencing science

[womenyoushouldknowabout]

Amrita Sher-gil is considered one of the most important women painters of 20th Century India. Known for her paintings of women, as well as her many affairs with both men and women, she is sometimes known as ‘India’s Frida Kahlo.’

 Born to a Punjabi Sikh aristocrat and a Hungarian Jewish opera singer, Sher-gil learned to paint at age eight. She studied in Florence and Paris, and was influenced by European painters of the time, like Cezanne and Gauguin.

After returning to India in 1936, she was inspired by the Bengal School of Art, and toured South India, where she found her calling- to paint the lives of Indian people, particularly villagers and women.

 Just days before the opening of her first major solo show, Sher-gil became suddenly ill and died. She left behind a large body of work, which the Government of India has declared a National Treasure, and her legacy has influenced generations of Indian artists. (The portrait is approx. 9″ x 12″ and is available here). I’ve also included some of her paintings in this post.

[closet-keys]

I was watching Shrek 2 and my wife and I were reflecting on how much transmisogyny was in it as jokes (e.g. “gender confused wolf” “ugly step sister” “women’s underwear” etc.) and it’s so extremely ridiculous to me the transphobes’ line that having positive representations of trans people (esp trans women) in children’s media would be “too confusing” for kids—because they are literally already making references to trans women in children’s media, they’re just doing it in the most offensive ways possible. Taking away all the empty cis rationalization of it, really they’re not arguing for kids to not see trans characters, they’re arguing that kids should see trans characters as demonized, fetishized, objects of ridicule and disgust. Like that’s literally the subtext in these “how do I explain this to my kids” conversations. They really mean “let me continue to explain this in ways that groom kids into hating trans people and themselves if they are trans”

[effemimaniac]

obviously the entirety of T.ERF ideology is based on lies, falsehoods and (self-)deception but there's this one particular thing T.ERFs spread online that I find like, so laughably false and I think any trans person going through medical transition would too... the conspiratorial idea that pharma companies are like, trying to generate gender dysphoria and make more trans people to sell more hormones, and are "peddling" their drugs to trans people.

like... okay, just imagine you're me. I open my generic brand CPA and look at the insert. All of the information is mostly relevant to its usage in prostate cancer, with a couple of notes about "female hirsutism". There is no mention of its use in trans hrt. I have to cut the pill into quarters and take that only once every few days because the lowest dosage available is 50mg, which is excessively high in most cases for transfeminine hormone therapy.

Then I open my Estradiol Valerate pills. The insert describes extensively the possible risks and effects for postmenopausal cis women. Again, nothing transition related. I take these thrice daily, sublingually. The pills aren't designed to be taken this way and it takes a while for it to be fully dissolved. Despite sublingual/buccal administration being quite common among transfems, often suggested by clinics/doctors, and being the subject of studies testing and confirming the efficacy of this route of administration, there has still never been an estradiol product marketed that was designed to be taken this way.

My "lived reality" contradicts this absurd paranoid theory, to an almost comedic level. Pharma companies really don't care about trans people. We're irrelevant to them, and make up an insignificant proportion of the user-base of any given drug. Practically all drugs used in HRT are beyond patent protection, too, making any efforts by a particular pharma company to promote its use futile and not profitable.

[sapphophallocentrism]

Yeah, to corroborate this from a brazilian perspective, I have used 7 different estradiol products in the roughly three years since starting hrt (because they keep going out of stock) and not a single one of them mentioned anything about gender dysphoria or trans people, or even gave information that might be pertinent to people who are not cafab. The doctors themselves are also dangerously clueless about this stuff, as both the private endocrinologist I consulted and the national healthcare system in my country prescribe Diane 35, a birth control pill, to trans women, despite it being far less effective than e-valerate or bioidentical e. The ONLY way to obtain HRT marketed for trans women is from trans women themselves.

[bubblegum-sullivan-13]

Like literally the first doc I got script from was pretty much like I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing here but we'll figure it out.

[telltaletypist]

telling gay men that they are allowed to love each other freely, openly, and passionately will always be more important than reassuring insecure straight men that they can hug their bestie without being gay

[telltaletypist]

the solution to men withholding love and affection from each other out of fear of being perceived as gay is to remove the stigma around being perceived as gay, not to "no homo" male affection

[gothhabiba]

the concepts of “freedom” and “liberty” were predicated on Enlightenment ideals of political personhood that shaped themselves around whiteness to the exclusion of the black & indigenous. that is, not only were whites the only people who deserved liberty, but they were the only people about whom it even made to sense to talk about “liberty”—the condition of whiteness WAS the condition of personhood, liberty, freedom. there was no contradiction in terms in the 18th century between crowing about freedom and liberty for the white “American” while maintaining an economy and a political system dependent on slavery, because presumably only white people were fully part of human history, & so only white people had the capacity to be free or unfree. the racialisation of Arabs and of Islam post 9/11 borrows heavily from these concepts in terms of who is among the people whom the concept of “religious liberty” applies to (not Muslims) and the idea that the military brutalisation of Africa & West Asia in the service of empire is necessary for the maintenance of liberty and democracy at “home” and the spread of it “abroad” (even as “freedom” at home must be sacrificed by the patriot for “security” from racialised threat). there’s a correlation between the racial body and the body politic here. now if I hear ONE more firework go off when I am trying to sleep.

[gothhabiba]

the central argument here is that it’s not enough to talk about “freedom” as if it is an ideologically neutral state—rather, the concept of “freedom” itself ought to be historicised. also that people should not be allowed to set off fireworks.

[robotslenderman]

tbh I will never roll my eyes at corporate queer stuff because I remember when there was a huge spate of suicides of queer children because they thought they’d never be accepted, and that it’d never get better.

[robotslenderman]

like, as I said in the tags

yeah. corporations just want our money.

but here’s the thing: once upon a time, they didn’t. they didn’t sell to us. they were just as greedy but we were so beneath them they didn’t want money if it came from us. they asked us to leave the store. they refused to bake cakes for us. they refused to rent or sell us housing. a lot of queer kids were made homeless or DIED because they thought it’d always be that way, that the world would always hate us.

corporations being sluts for our money, and openly showing the homophobes that they prefer our money over theirs, is a GOOD THING and a sign of progress and I will die on that hill.

absolutely support small businesses and indies. but Jesus don’t flat out refuse to give money to a corporation for celebrating pride, because that’s what the homophobes literally want people to do and in this dystopic society you (and I’m dying inside as I say this) NEED corporations on your side because of the sheer scale of their influence. WE NEED THAT INFLUENCE.

use corporations as mercilessly as they use us. none of this purity bullshit. I’ll be the first in line to help strip them of their power, but they’re letting the homophobes know that that age is dying, and that has power.

[hiqueenmabs-deactivated20220819]

All this was less than 15 years ago. Please keep that in mind.

[robotslenderman]

Exactly!

Some of it is even more recent. The epidemic of queer children suicides hitting the news? That was last decade. It’d been going on for much longer than that but at one point our fight had progressed enough the media started reporting on it and the suicides even went up for a while, and I was on tumblr when that happened, that’s how recent it is.

So how can I sneer at corporations showing support widely when kids dying used to be normal?

I can’t even fully attribute the motivations corporations rainbowing up their logo as completely for money. There’s probably queer people who put their jobs on the line and fought for the company to DO that.

So whenever I see someone going “UGH the corporations are pandering to us again”?

that’s

that’s a good thing!!!! how is that NOT a good thing???

learn your history, talk to your queer elders – some of us have been fighting twenty years or longer and for many of us this is a sign that we are winning, and that a decades-long fight is paying off!

[robotslenderman]

Reblogging to add an addendum to clarify, since related stuff has been cropping up on my dash and I feel this post isn’t complete without addressing it:

If a company is rainbowing their logo up but doing homophobic shit behind closed doors, the answer is not for them to stop rainbowing up their logo, but to stop doing the homophobic shit.

If they’re doing homophobic shit absolutely call that crap out.

[87-pounds-deactivated20160310]

my sense of humor: getting birthday cards with the wildly incorrect age on it for people

[magicoftelevision]

[thebagelhut]

I see this and raise you: getting cards for a wildly different occasion and customizing them to fit the holiday you need

[motherhenna]

[discount-butlins]

[oakh4rt]

throwback to the time my partner put in his 2 week notice with a birthday card for a 2 year old

[silly-slacker-person]

King

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

if I wrote a dystopian novel where the corrupt evil megacorporation that controls society has a fucking smirk for a logo, my editor would tell me to use a less heavy-handed metaphor

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

and yet

[twinkiefairy]

I love this because if I were to write a literary novel in the Western cannon that described the image of an apple with a chunk bitten off, any high school English student would tell you it is a Bible reference meant to represent the source of all evil and downfall of humanity and YET 

[4x01]

just had to take a fucking second and close my eyes because i remembered that on the night of november 5th tumblr had convinced me, an outsider, that this was an actual gif of Castiel Supernatural being sent to mega fruit hell

[oobsie-daisy]

We all learnin’ today ig…

[the-sapphic-raven]

Its from the 1997 movie ‘Spawn’ if anyone was curious

[scallioncreamcheesebagel]

btw this is the actual footage of castiel getting dragged to super hell

[maple-cloak]

[n3konomicon]

it’s weird how that insufferable part of Twitter that’s really obsessed with canceling genshin impact of all things always like, either removes the things they’re criticizing from their context entirely & makes them seem significantly more ‘problematic’ than they actually are or just straight up creates completely false claims abt the game to accuse it of racism (like the whole “genshin is totally racist because they said ppl hate xinyan for her dark skin” allegation, which was just.. completely untrue), and it’s so stupid & frustrating because there are very valid things to criticize abt genshin on the racism front, namely the fact some of its primary ‘grunt’ antagonists — the hilichurls — are humanoids with very dark/black skin that live in tribes which seem to borrow elements from indigenous cultures/ways of living (they have ‘shamans’ for example) & they are literally characterized in-game as ‘low intelligence’, ‘barbaric’, and ‘uncivilized’ monsters and a big component of gameplay is that you’re supposed to literally exterminate their communities upon npc’s requests or just while adventuring bc they’re exp fodder. like.. you don’t have to make shit up, that’s something right there you can critique, why are people so dumb.

[murolo-moved]

the secret boots are the best item in any castlevania game like come on

if you can’t kill your dad in 6 inch heels what’s the point

[murolo-moved]

dracula: well met, my son. it has been a long time

alucard: not long enough. i can’t allow you to leave here

dracula: do you still side with humani—

alucard:

dracula: are you wearing the...

alucard: the secret boots? yeah. i am.

[aliiiiiiice]

[cutthroatchorus]

There is exactly one spot in the castle (well two, because reverse castle) where if you stand there and equip the secret boots, Alucard will say "WHAT???" and get stuck because he's now too tall to move through it.

[utopians]

"sex scenes have no narrative purpose" is such a funny take on so many levels. people will really believe that the whole human experience is valuable to portray artistically except sex, which of course has never held emotional weight or significance for anybody

[utopians]

"what's the purpose of sex scenes in media??" well you see sometimes people have sex. sometimes it can be important even

[robogirldick]

yeah ok but i dont wanna watch straight sex scene number 1231234837582 in the middle of some movie thats clearly not fucking high art or anything, like please, tell me how the sex scene made jason X a deeper movie ill wait

[utopians]

you genuinely think that "the sex scene in Jason X, the movie about jason from Friday the 13th killing people in space, is bad" is a rebuttal to this point? like genuinely? genuinely? like you think that's the kind of sex scene I was talking about in the original post? you think when I'm talking about the artistic merit of sex scenes in movies you think I'm talking about the bit with the dominatrix in Jason X (2001) dir. James Isaac, the movie where Jason from Friday the 13th gets put in cryosleep and wakes up in the future on a spaceship where he starts killing people in outer space? you genuinely think this is the kind of movie and scene I'm referring to when I'm arguing for the potential artistic value of a type of scene? Jason X? Jason X? the one with Jason on a spaceship? you think that "well Jason X, the movie about Jason on a spaceship killing people in space, is bad" is a rebuttal to my point? Jason X? Jason X? J

[birlinterrupted]

there’s currently like 19-early 20′s year olds arguing that the age of consent should be raised to like 21 (some arguing up until 25) and its like. just dont have sex then weirdo please do not involve other people in yr juridical age play scene

[n3konomicon]

it’s weird how woke people on this site oscillate wildly btwn like, a leftist-deconstructionist personality thats actually willing to take apart the arbitrarity (or harmfulness) of certain social norms & have like intelligent commentary abt those things but then can also go into this mode where they have the worst and most irrational, clearly disgust-driven takes about sex & sexuality where like none of the things they’re saying feels grounded in reality or whatever.

like they treat the construction of age of sexual consent & what that entails as an absolute unnuanced law of the universe or whatever— I’ve seen takes on this fucking site declaring relationships between like, 16/17 yo’s and 19 yo’s as “pedophilic” & how fictional ships like that are pedophilic— and like I don’t know if it’s personal trauma or emotional triggers or something else that’s clouding their judgement, but like come the fuck on. come back to reality.

[dingdongyouarewrong]

this was in someone's dni 😬

i love the idea of someone's first instinct when they're thinking about 'irredeemable media' to be not like, birth of a nation or cannibal holocaust, but an animated cartoon for children, a niche online webcomic, and a shitty anime

[strangehorse]

this is my ‘the 120 days of sodom’ fanblog. voltron fans do not interact

[n3konomicon]

I’ve seen so many of these with these exact same media as examples but also usually alongside like, hazbin hotel too, which is so funny to me