i do not understand straight girls at allllll
on the one hand it's because i'm a lesbian and it's funny how different our view of men is (they are soooo unattractive to me!) but on the other it's not funny at all because of the shit straight girls just accept because they were told they should put up with it.
on a political and emotional level dating men makes no sense to me. even if i was bi i'd never consider it! even if i wasn't trans and hadn't grown up seeing how men and boys act and talk about girls and women when they think there are no women around, even i didn't see straight through all their lies and bullshit they try to camouflage with to trick you, i'd still want nothing to do with them as a group!
to be a genuinely good person, to be a good partner to a woman, a man must go against his own social and political and personal interests. he has to give equally instead of taking unilaterally. he has to care honestly instead of using callously. he has to live genuinely instead of performing dispassionately. he has to prioritise the liberation of everyone like you (not just you as an exception!) over other men's opinion of him.
yes, yes, "not all men are bad", i know, i have in fact met a small number of men who treat women like people and two who actually fulfil the list of requirements i state in the previous paragraph! but as a *class* it is in their interests to exploit and abuse women, as a *class* that is how they are; saying there are good men is like saying 'not all cops are bastards', it's politically counterproductive. because to be a good person requires betraying the entire institution of patriarchy.
in the same way that Monique Wittig argued that lesbians are not quite women because the construction and imposition of heterosexuality upon our bodies is so core to the social concept of a 'woman' that we become displaced from it, i feel that a man betraying patriarchy and living against it means he's not quite a 'man' in the socially established sense. people will tell him he's not a 'real man' and if you prioritise stopping them from saying that over political progress then you'll have to do so through misogyny. every "good masculinity is..." list or argument relies on categorising positive traits as masculine ones, which is misogynistic, rather than rejecting the construction of sexgender and cisness in their entirety.
men must become just as willing to be traitors to manhood, to patriarchy, to cisness, as a lesbian is a traitor to the expectations placed on her. they have to be willing to accept being socially punished for their betrayal of a system that is wrong and must end, because the system and the punishment are unjust. they must have the integrity to do that. i'm not saying they have to be gay, i'm saying that politically they must betray masculinity on a foundational level.
they just fucking doooon't though!
instead, men will just use you for emotional support, domestic and sexual labour, and personal validation the way a leech drains blood. that's why there's a backlash to metoo, a surge back towards fascist politics, the heart of it is about maintaining the illusion of control that can only be reified through the abuse of power over women and minorities. misogyny is core to nationalism. it's an effort to trap women back in the box the world has been trying to crush us into for millenia.
reject the script the patriarchy gave you! i'm not saying stop being attracted to men, i'm saying i do not understand how you can accept the social contract in this way, how you can compromise on your own interests for men instead of demanding they meet you as an equal first. you must know you deserve better, you must know that betraying patriarchy is better than accepting it. i don't understand how you can shy away from doing that, do you think it's harder or scarier than coming out and transitioning was for me? put on your big girl boots and do it.
stop compromising away your own future for someone who doesn't see you as an equal.
this post is off track for this blog so uh
kiss your mother with that mouth instead <3
