Explain it to me janice

Laurel | Adult human female | 30 

[lavenderfeminist]

i mean it's irrefutable that gender exists. even japan had a third gender, called the "wakashu". it's easier if you just imagine gender as an adjective, but (usually) not determining of your whole identity.

It takes a five second google search to reveal that all members of that third gender were male…it’s almost like your sex trumps gender every time because sex is a material reality and gender is the social roles expected of you based on that reality. Gender is, for example, the expectation that women wear makeup. That’s why women who don’t wear it are participating in one kind of gender nonconformity. That’s also why “third genders” always end up being a social role for people who performed their assigned gender wrong, because they were attracted to the same sex, because they performed social roles that “proper” members of their sex didn’t, whatever. The existence of gender as an oppressive social construct does not change that you cannot identify as a third gender; gender is the expectations that society FORCES on you from birth, and those expectations are sex-based. Disassociating from your sex because you don’t like the gender placed on you only reinforces that those who recognize their sex should be expected to perform gender, and that is regressive.

[jackalopiel]

Hope you don’t mind me adding on. I’ve been reading about this topic. Third genders are nearly always describing male homosexuality or feminine men.

Commonly referenced historical “third” genders

Hawaiian Māhū - male (homosexual)

South Asian Hijra - male (homosexual)

Indian kothi - male (homosexual)

Pacific vakasalewalewa, palopa, akava'ine, fakaleiti, and fakafifine - male (homosexual/feminine)

Samoan Faʻafafine - male (homosexual/feminine)

Arabic Mukhanneth - male (homosexual/feminine)

Japanese Wakashu- male (usually young boys who men have sex with)

Incan shaman - male (homosexual/feminine)

Zapotex (indigenous Mexican groups) muxe - male (feminine)

Filipino bakla - male (homosexual/feminine men) (vs. binalaki, masculine lesbian women)

Polynesian Binabinaaine - male (feminine/homosexual)

Native North American two-spirit - split by sex, often gay or lesbian (not sure if misunderstanding this, someone can correct me if wrong)

Third/fourth genders in 19th/20th century western world - gay men or lesbians

Third genders (incl some of above) were also applied to intersex individuals or castrated men but I can’t be specific right now.

Recognition of a third gender is not a “progressive” act and is associated with the devaluation of women and female gender roles. Nearly all of these classes of men face discrimination.

While I’m happy there’s such wide-spread and historical gender non-conformity and homosexuality, it does just show a global tendency to other gay men, oppress women, enforce feminine and masculine roles, have very restrictive views of what men and women can be, etc.

Third genders strengthen the gender binary, they don’t weaken it.

The few third genders I can think of that don’t conform to the “way to categorise homosexual men”or “see gay men as women” are usually about women trying to escape an extreme patriarchal society (Albanian sworn virgins) or cultures trying to have a “correct” family unit.

So in my view it is deeply inappropriate and culturally offensive to talk about historical third genders as having been non-binary or trans people (though, in a lot of ways, some of the modern reasons people transition aren’t that different from the historical ones).

My list is copied from my notes and I’m on my phone on the train so sorry if anything’s wrong / incomplete / misinformed.

[radgirl-spray]

friendly reminder also: none of these males were considered actual women either.

[podencos]

a woman will be 28 or whatever and all the 24 year olds are in shock like “no fucking way I seriously couldn’t tell. you don’t look near death at all”

[woman-for-women]

Sex Binary and Intersex Master Post

This took me some 30+ hours to write/design/compile but it's finally done! If you're not a biologist, I strongly recommend you give this whole post a read (yes, it's long, but I think it has some very important information). Feel free to reference this post and repost the images anywhere to debunk bad gender science!

Here's the Google Drive link.

[bernard-jackson]

[femaleaphextwin-deactivated2023]

Saw on here someone asserting that transwomen experience the mental and social aspects of being women or something. Moving past the obviously stupid assertion that there is such thing as some womanly mental experience, I’ll just go ahead and say it…

Transwomen are not treated socially like women. Their social status is very rarely if ever seen as woman (and this is only for as long as they pass as female), but as homosexual/gender non-conforming men. The negative treatment of transwomen isn’t because they’re women, it’s because they’re men acting “effeminate” or “gay”. It’s because they’re men “lowering themselves” in order to dress and act like the male idea of a woman. It’s the homosexuality and gender non-conformity that makes them a target by our society.

The simultaneous mass praise and worship by liberals is equally a male phenomenon. They are being treated poorly or worshipped like an idol for their presentation for the very fact that they are men. It’s for this same reason why transmen are pushed aside, often barely brought up, and when they are, never taken seriously. Why? Because the idea of men stooping so low as to degrade themselves in womens’ dress and stereotype is more socially catalyzing than women pretending they could ever be so perfect as to be a man. The social perception is such that men can do it, and it’s pathetic and degrading, but that women could never and it’s childish to try (unless they move far enough in presentation to be likened to a butch female, where the laughter is replaced with equal disgust). All this to say that the treatment of transgender people is informed entirely by their natal sex and the lack of gender-conformity to that natal sex, not the magical thinking that as soon as they ID as a given sex they are treated in a way that could at all resemble the treatment of the opposite sex.

Never take the assertion that transwomen have any idea what it’s like to move through the world socially as a woman as truth. Even after transition, their social experience is and will always be male. Their treatment, bad and good, is and will always be rooted in the fact that they are male. They do not move through the world as women, they never have, and they will never know our existence, no matter how much they try to lay claim to it.

Anyways, I love women.

Signing off, Anaïs

[kronkk]

radfems communicating via internet call that adult human emails

.

[insaniquariumfish]

Transwomen cannot be true feminist allies because they do not believe that femininity itself is inherently patriarchal, degrading, and unnecessary. IF they are in any way critical of femininity (which is rare), their only issue with it is that it is too strongly expected of women; they frame femininity as "something women should be allowed to choose if they want to," and not as something that is harmful to women in nature by default, whether they choose it or not.

They do not acknowledge the fact that a woman can only "choose" to be feminine in the same sense that someone raised in an extremely religious area can "choose" to be religious. Women are conditioned from birth to be feminine, told that their value as human beings is dependent on their ability to embody femininity, and if they are not feminine then they are punished for it and suffer for it. To frame this as a free and neutral choice is to deny the nature of what femininity is: something that is forced upon women, a tool invented and wielded by patriarchy to aid in the oppression of women and the empowering of men. And even if there were no longer any pressure from men for women to be feminine, the history of femininity, the centuries of suffering that women have been forced to endure in the name of femininity, why it was created, what purpose it is meant to serve, who it is meant to harm and who it is meant to benefit, none of those realities would be changed.

To trans women, femininity is essential to womanhood, and to be critical of femininity is to be critical of the very means through which their identity as a trans woman manifests. The idea of doing away with the association between womanhood and femininity poses an existential threat to them, especially to those who struggle to "pass," because how else can they signal their womanhood to the world, or affirm their womanhood to themselves, if they do not physically look like women and do not have female bodies?

They claim that they simply must be hyperfeminine, that they have no other choice, because for them to be gender nonconforming would result in them being mistreated and taken less seriously and struggling more in life. Well guess what, cis women face the exact same consequences for refusing to perform femininity. And masculine cis women do not have a panic attack every time they are misgendered, because they are secure in the knowledge that no amount of people not perceiving them as women can change the fact that they are women. Trans women claim to believe this themselves, that their womanhood exists independently of what they look like or how they dress or how they are perceived by others, but they do not act like this is the case. They act like validation that they are "feminine enough" matters more to them than the actual state of existing as a woman. They revel in femininity, find ecstasy in femininity. They cling to it with a vise like grip, embody the hyperfemme in as many ways as possible, and in doing so they only reinforce and perpetuate the idea that to be a woman is to be pretty, that to be a woman is to be dainty, adorned, coquette, frivilous, petty, bubbly, emotional, demure, submissive, stupid, sexy, slutty, an open mouth, an expectant asshole.

[degenerategrrl]

radfems yet again deciding that women cant have personal choices but we're the misogynistic ones sure 🤔

[butch-reidentified]

yall are so fucking stupid it's genuinely bordering on impressive lmao

women on the internet criticizing femininity as a tool of patriarchal oppression is not taking away anyone's choices

like... how exactly do you get from "womanhood isn't defined by femininity & femininity isn't inherent to women" to "I wish I was dictator of earth so I could make femininity illegal" lmfao

[cordycepsfem]

I think you have worse issues than what women say about their own experiences, Hot Mess of a Username up there. Yikes.

[butch-reidentified]

bruh I got one of those folding phones (galaxy Z fold or w/e) and I had to open it up to tablet mode just to see that whole username 😂 💀

[radgirl-spray]

The first label you see tells you the rest of your 2023, mine is "chronosian"

[radgirl-spray]

Today I saw the tag "asexual poly" and I think some mysteries are better left alone.

[hormoaning2-deactivated20170617]

i hate how it’s always “listen to the people who are actually affected by this issue” in social justice communities unless it’s lesbians. then no one listens to actual lesbians. ever. besides fellow lesbians and a few outliers. 

[radfemlands]

It’s funny how transwomen always say that they are “more woman” than woman-born-women whenever their “identity” is questioned. Never in my life has an actual woman claimed to be “more woman” than me, and yet you see it all the time from the mouths of transwomen. And it’s interesting because while “more woman” is not a thing that real women say, “more man” IS something that men say. Phrases like “I’m twice the man you are” are used frequently by men to degrade and insult each other, so it makes sense that that sort of mentality would carry over and be used by transwomen against real women, because they don’t know that women do not say those sorts of things to each other. Being “more woman” is not something that exists. It’s not a thing. And it’s certainly not something real women say or even care about.

[laurierrose]

Exactly. Related: swerfs and terfs are equally hated, right? So why do we only see content advocating violence against terfs? I’ve seen countless arguments between sex workers (the majority of whom are female) and radical feminists, but I’ve never ever ever seen a female sex worker threaten a radfem, much less create dozens of blogs advocating violent action against them.

Male socialization renders males incapable of having a disagreement without escalating it to violence.

[radgirl-spray]

I'd also like to point out how MtF transgenderism is inherenty classist by the way, because it hold girlhood/womanhood to capitalistic standards of what is to be a girl/woman based not only in insulting stereotypes of character, but also of consumerism.

When i see TiM's performing "femininity" is always from a product stand point. Dylan Mulvaney, for example, talks about girlhood from his pink apartment, in his expensive clothing, with what he thinks girls get during their childhood because that's what media told them girlhood/womanhood is. And this applies for almost every single famous TiM out there right now.

But what about the other girlhood? What about the poor woman's womanhood?

What about the girlhood of the girl who never had a doll because her parents cannot afford it? what about the woman who doesn't wear make up or nice clothes because she's mother of five and she has no time nor money for it? What about the girls who are busy cooking for their younger siblings, cleaning the house, because they have only one parent and that parent is working their ass off? What about the girl who wear whatever her slightly older male brother/cousin passes down, because the clothing in her family is inherited. What about the girl who never had a pink room because she slept in an orphanage with another 20 children?

What about the women who don't perform femininity because they can't afford it? By these people's standards that's not womanhood apparently. TiFs in general will point out how they are not women because they don't perform the pink cutie stuff nor feel "identified" with the femenine stereotype, without realizing poor women never did it in the first place; because they where busy trying not to starve, too busy trying to be strong to care about not being women just because they wore clothes from the male aisle. More so when even despite not performing the pink cutie stuff, the world will never ever allow them to forget they are not only poor but poor women in the first place.

[vvitchscvm-deactivated20231014]

Hey! Working class rad woman here. I disagree with this post.

For context: i'm a butch lesbian from an immigrant family, no college, lifetime of physical labor jobs. got into radical feminism from the Goddess movement. Most working class people would consider me trans(ppl out here think trans is when you're Really, Really Gay/gender-non-conforming, which is a fair representation of most working class trans ppl being GNC homosexuals) and I'm in an area where he/him lesbians have been a Thing since way before the gender movement took off.

Being MtF is NOT an inherently classist condition, good lord. There are many, many working class trans people, none of which are anything like the deranged college kid archetype, and I think it's really disingenuous to erase them from this conversation.

I see what you're trying to say about rich trans women Being Weird about capitalism and femininity, but you gotta realize autogynephilia is a You Guys issue. I have never met a working class autogynephile. We frankly do not have the time and energy to develop extremely niche fetishes and act them out in public. "Lesbian trans women" isn't a thing here. That would be social suicide. It is not a legible identity. I have personally witnessed other working class people discuss the "trans gay" (heterosexuals who transition)thing to a resounding chorus of groans and "I've met a lady like that, thought she was a gay man. Christ how annoying."

Working class men have a standard wank to semiviolent porn and go to bed :| different type of misogyny.

And like yeah Dylan Mulvaney is capital A annoying and sexist, but at least he's essentially a GNC gay man. He's just doing what's normal to GNC men within his economic bracket. I dislike how much shit he gets on Radblr tbh. We should be dogpiling Contrapoints, not Dylan. Dylan is a literal terf-creating machine, he doesn't need our help making himself look terrible.

You seem to have noticed this but I want to make clear: gender roles are ALWAYS more strict the higher up the economic ladder you go.

This is essentially why most women who ID as nonbinary are upper middle class and why blatant fetishism on men's behalf is being pushed to be socially normalized: upper middle class femininity is STRICT and upper middle class men are bored and depraved. These women have probably never met someone like mine or my friend's mothers, tough, brawny women working in factories or bars or restaurants who wear dresses twice a year and could throw a half-grown child over their shoulder like it was nothing.

The only gender-non-conformity consistently recognized by the working class is being gay.

ESPECIALLY gay and gender-non-conforming, and you gotta be pretty markedly gender-non-conforming as a woman to be noticeable enough to ostracize here. Every "non binary" girly I've ever met is way more feminine than the average heterosexual woman in my economic bracket, even tho by upper middle class ideals the former is still GNC.

But it's exactly the opposite for men. Femininity in males is punished at all costs. My femme gay male detrans friend almost got hate crime'd like two weeks ago just for having the nerve to exist in public. Almost all the queens I know have been on HRT at some point. Mind you he's not femme the way Dylan Mulvaney is; he's got long hair and dresses vaguely gothy, but it's his lisp--something totally unchangeable about him and recognizable by homophobes--that got him targeted.

The poorer/more marginalized on other axis you are as a male, the more likely being GNC will make your life profoundly worse. Many, many poor+working class feminine males try to escape this thru transition.

This is the demographic known for engaging in prostitution, having extreme complex PTSD, being 99% homosexual, being target of brutal hate crimes and especially dying of AIDs.

Your analysis literally skips, hops and jumps over them, even tho this demographic of trans women worldwide is infinitely larger than the average AGP rich kid who's pretty much exclusively a Western white ppl thing.

For someone who wanted to analyze transition and poverty, your take wildly missed the mark.

[radgirl-spray]

Oh, I totally see you point, and yet I don't think we are saying something very different. Because this post is now about the why someone transitions, but how and the truth is that people transition based in a standard of femininity that's simply not available for working women either be because it's expensive or because it's not suitable for the style of life. "These women have probably never met someone like mine or my friend's mothers, tough, brawny women working in factories or bars or restaurants who wear dresses twice a year and could throw a half-grown child over their shoulder like it was nothing." and this is exactly why I made this post. For context: I wrote this based on my own childhood/teenhood in extreme poverty in latam during the 90's and 2000's. To this day I live in a heavily industrialized zone where there is no middle class because middle class people simply doesn't live here. The women you describe are the women in my family, neighbours and friends and that's the point. I have yet to see a MtF trying to imitate the women they surround themselves in life, instead of the hyperfemininity that's very far away from the women in the poorest areas. Even the poorest of them cater to what they know is not true and that's exactly my problem. They know women, real women, hardened by hardship, loneliness and poverty, and they are not the ones they aim too, again. It's not about being a woman, it's about femininity. Either be by the choosings of sheltered people like Mulvaney, or a TiM in the poorest area who does it to escape homophobia, is still about a classist standar of how women should be, even when the women they themselves know are not like that. Is still what they associate with womanhood.

[zoe248]

It me

[crazymuff1n]

precamrian got the lesbian colors I guess you could call that era a stone butch

[hyperdemona]

That was the Opabinia era

[mnchrmrainbow]

Kasparov had once described Polgár as a "circus puppet" and asserted that women chess players should stick to having children. Polgár called the game, "One of the most remarkable moments of my career. Polgár thus became one of the players who have beaten Kasparov. The game was historic as it was the first time in chess history that a female player beat the world's No. 1 player in competitive play.

[civilization-illstayrighthere]

this is the funniest thing I’ve read in my LIFE

[civilization-illstayrighthere]

HIM????

[theepicyus]

it's real btw

[cuddlefl00fs]

Op here, we're going strong!! Here's a picture of our Goob shrine

[poeticfeminism]

As someone with BPD who has a female psychiatrist: always ask for a female psychiatrist.

Male psychiatrists are happy to overdiagnose BPD in female patients, stick them on some medication, and tell them there is nothing more that can be done.

Female psychiatrists mostly look into more likely options (BPD is not as common as people think) and will be more willing to provide longer term, more extensive treatment options. Mine even informed me that the majority of BPD symptoms will be lessened when not in a relationship, something a male would never have done, as they have the belief that a woman’s goal in life should be relationship.

Men will not care about how this disorder affects you. All they care about is making you more palatable to other men: take medication so they don’t have to deal with your emotions, don’t externalise any fear of abandonment because that will make you seem jealous and crazy. They do not want to make you better, they want to make you marketable.

Tw for mentions of eating disorders below the cut.

The same applies for every mental health condition, but also something I have specifically noticed is how male mental health professionals react to eating disorders. They will often either dismiss it as diet culture, or blame the women as if it is their fault. Not only this, but they will focus on how starving will make you ‘unattractive’ and that ‘men prefer women with curves’, ultimately dismissing it as a mental illness and instead presenting it like a fashion trend.

Men do not care about women’s mental health. They care about how it affects their agreeableness, their relationships and also how sexually appealing they are. As we all know many of them fetishise mentally ill girls - this is due to them believing that women struggling with their mental health have less control and therefore they would have more control in the relationship dynamic.

So do yourself a favour, and get a female psychiatrist.

[raptorific]

Wonder Woman would probably be so heartbroken if she heard there were people who thought her feminism was trans-exclusionary

[raptorific]

I told you so.

[nentindo-deactivated20210501]

whenever i try to open this image google chrome just crashes, can someone just take a screenshot of the image

[a0n2-fb93p4zmv365zagdj641]

[lesbiain-deactivated20170309]

the above comic is fake like its so obviously photoshopped how tf did y'all not notice lmaooooo if anyone’s a “”“”“terf”“”“ it’s fucking Wonder Woman like she is literally from an all female island oh my goddd

[heirloomparasite]

shut up lmao wonder woman is a terfy terf from terf island

[opisaterf]

this is almost as bad as the Greek statues of women w dicks photoshopped on…for people with such innate identities they sure need a Lot of validation

[cuddly-trash]

this is so embarrassing LMFAO

[thatraginglesbian-deactivated20]

I really need to know what the original comic strip said

[aftonfamilyvalues]

found the real panel

[mala-santa-radfem]

tras are such fucking losers lmfaooooooo

[namelessdaughter-deactivated202]

You know, I don’t know if I noticed it before but seeing it again after years, I can’t help noticing how different the conversations Diana are having are between the trans edit and the original.

In the original, Diana is seeking comfort from her mother after an experience that seems to have been very traumatic.

In the trans edit, Diana - now cast as a male - is ordering “her” mother around, making demands and treating her like a servant or slave (”have my sword sharpened”) and implying that “she” intends to go murder a bunch of women for thinking something the author doesn’t agree with.

It’s just so… male. This guy seriously couldn’t even write a comics page edit without revealing how he feels about women - namely that the “good women” are servants who do whatever men tell them to, and the “bad women” should be brutally murdered. The author literally can’t even “pass” as a woman in the text of a fake comics page. Jesus.

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

Honestly, yeah. And it doesn’t fit with her character either: “Don’t kill if you can wound, don’t wound if you can subdue, don’t subdue if you can pacify, and don’t raise your hand at all until you’ve first extended it”. TRAs are all kill, wound, and most importantly rape all women guilty of wrongthink. It’s not compatible at all.

[bellaoftheleaf-deactivated20231]

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