just your local annoying ideologue

Intersectional trAnCom, be gay ACTUALLY do crime. He/Him. Icon is pepperjackets picrew. This blog is for screaming into the void. You should probably just block me

[realsurrealeel]

Basically trans women face unique forms of systematic oppression while trans men face unique forms of shit that is not systematic. We both face transphobia (and maybe queerphobia depending on our sexualities). We need to stop making blanket posts about how much we hate each other. I'm lookin at both of you

[realsurrealeel]

Also nonbinary people face systematic oppression too

[realsurrealeel]

And just because you dont understand an identity ("transmasc lesbians", puppygirls/puppyboys, whatever) doesnt mean you get to shit talk it. We're all in the same boat - some of us are struggling more than others, but we are all in this together.

[velvetvexations]

"Even cis men?" is the obvious response to my stance that practically anyone can be lesbians, and to answer with another question: are any cis men actually doing that to begin with? I mean, unironically, not as a joke? Because I don't think they are. Generally cis men aren't not going to sincerely identify with the term the way cis women and trans people will. Cis men essentially self-regulate themselves out of the definition without anyone needing to make that definition have concrete limits.

Whether it's WLW, transmascs who drove through Dykeville to get where they are now, or anyone else, you should assume someone calling themselves a lesbian has a good reason for doing so.

[cock-holliday]

The only “cis men” i knew to use the label are the ones who lamented “i wish i could be a lesbian but unfortunately im a cis man” approximately a month before Realizing something about themselves and I will always ALWAYS maintain that being gentle about what that could mean for them is the right answer and not “omg you’re trying to prey on lesbians”

The two types of people to “jokingly” identify as a label:

1. Asshole trying to be edgy. If youre mad they double down, if you go ok ill call you that, they freak out and distance themselves from the label

2. Someone trying to figure themselves out

In both scenarios, using what they insist they are brings out the best outcome, and assuming someone is a 1 when they are a 2 and being hostile will only (shockingly) make it harder for them to come to terms with their identity

[sylas-dove]

and of course, i've said this before, but: if a cis man genuinely identifies with the label "lesbian" and is NOT joking about it, who cares? if someone feels like their attraction to women is queer even if they are ostensibly cisgender, that's none of my business and it's weird that people think it's theirs. what happened to the era of not asking people invasive questions about their gender, genitals, and sexuality?

[paniknatari]

Additionally- cis is a spectrum just as much as the rest of it. A cis guy could be like (imagine a pinched fingers emoji here) this close to being nonbinary such that the distinction is meaningless. A cis guy could be bigender about it, or agender about it, and still consider themselves cis enough to count. A cis guy could be a system, with girls in it. A cis guy could have an unusual romantic attraction, or particular sexual preferences or something, that fall more in line with lesbians than anything else. A cis guy can be drag queen for drag queen or something, and tbh that's not *not* lesbian imo.

[queeranarchism]

Signs someone is about to ignore the compassion, queer nuance, complexity and 'language doesn't describe the world it creates the world' linguistic relativity of every part of this post to double down on "Well, I think lesbian SHOULD mean woman and I'm going to pretend that that is a neutral, objective opinion to have."

[anarchistmemedistro]

[athena5898]

I will never trust a space that is inherently antagonistic to eggs by the way they behave. You are going to look me in the face and tell me you love queer people and trans people, yet you would love to take an egg and smash it so it dies? Yeah fuck off.

I don't know how to tell people that spiking an egg isn't queer or women's liberation, it's just cruel and continuing the cycle of abuse.

[vintagewildlife]

"I can't believe humans would hunt the thylacine to extinction, humans are fundamentally evil" Hey, did you know that extinction was long thought to be impossible, and within 50 years of humans realizing that extinction via overhunting was a possibility it practically stopped happening? Did you know that humans are so desperate to prevent more losses that they're funneling millions of collective hours and billions of euros into helping other species? Hours and euros that could be spent on humans, being spent on species on whom humanity's own survival does not depend? Did you know that due to an accidental introduction of rats, the Lord Howe Island stick insect population was brought down to 24 individuals and now there are tens of thousands of them?

This bug. This bug that, to most humans, is utterly useless, relatively gross, and completely foreign. Humans saved it because humans do not want to cause another extinction ever again if they can avoid it.

[lesbian-krampus]

This is what we’re all saying, it’s literally just like eleven heartless psychopathic monsters with too much power making every other species and person miserable. We are extremely capable of cooperation and love, we just give power to the wrong people

[dhddmods]

"They're just doing it for attention."

So, why would that be any less concerning, exactly?

If they are harming themself for attention, the intention doesn't matter, because it's still an act of self harm.

If they are faking symptoms for attention*, that's either a result of a behavioral/personality disorder or factitious disorder, which are still mental health disorders that require care.

(*Which, bare in mind, you CANNOT know if someone is faking unless they actively tell someone that they are - atypical variations of conditions exist, misdiagnosis exists, and somatoform disorders which mimic the symptoms of other conditions exist.)

I need people to start taking mental disorders that cause attention-seeking behaviors seriously.

[this-is-ableism]

this is ableism.

[tboy-cock]

as a kid i used to self harm and I would tell ppl online sometimes and so many times i was accused of doing it for attention, EVEN BY PEOPLE WHO SAW THE SCARS/CUTS. and like. i was so young and i didn't have the vocabulary to describe how fucking wild that idea is but im in my 20s now and i do so: yeah if somebody is literally physically harming themselves on purpose FOR LITERALLY ANY REASON AT ALL, THAT MEANS THAT THERE IS SOMETHING VERY WRONG HAPPENING TO THAT PERSON AND THEY NEED HELP IMMEDIATELY. attention seeking behavior is normal to an extent. this is not normal attention seeking behavior. if you believe somebody is physically self harming for attention, i need you to understand that thats not them self harming for no reason, it is a sign that something VERY BAD is going on and that they need immediate help

[thickness-protection-program]

Dang rip America

[karlyboyyy]

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

if i could give one piece of advice to newly transitioning trans men, it's that it's 100% possible to find a community of people (including women!) who don't treat you as a threat, and the people trying to convince you otherwise are not your friends

[ftmtftm]

Also, perhaps, have we considered that it's actually really bad that we treat closeted trans women (and closeted nonbinary people, and frankly cis men too) this way? Like. It's a bad thing that trans women are treated like distrustful monsters for """"being men"""" before coming out by one demographic and then are also treated like distrustful monsters after coming out for being trans by another. That's not a sign of a culture with a healthy relationship with gender in the slightest!!!

Have we considered that treating people as inherently dangerous or distrustful by virtue of their gender alone is in fact, the very gender essentialism that perpetuates radical feminism in our spaces and that is something that we should be working on stamping out?

I am genuinely sorry that people across multiple different identity lines experience this shit because no trans person should be treated like a distrustful monster just by virtue of their gender identity before or after coming out.

*extends my hand* Let's examine the ways we allow gender essentialism to invade our spaces and harm other trans people and put an end to this cycle of gender essentialist abuse together!

[minervose]

Well we wouldent want to be able to analyze or name power would we?

You know, recognizing that men are empowered, socially and politically to act on their worst impulses is a pretty core part of feminism.

Terfs actually suck at it because gender essentialists eschew any analysis of power for a dogmatic belief that men are hardwired for misogyny and violence.

Beliving that men are empowered to harm women is not the same thing but you want to eschew analysis of power and the basic capacity to assess risk because it makes trans men feel bad and you have a vibes based definition of words.

Patriarchy sucks for everyone. I have faith that trans men are able to handle that so lets not indulge them, like their cis counterparts, in this antifeminist nonsense.

[ftmtftm]

"... recognizing that men are empowered socially and politically to act on their worst impulses is a pretty core part of feminism"

okay and how do TRANSGENDER men fit into this equation? None of that theory ever accounted for us or our experiences and you know it's true because when we actually look at the numbers.....

TRANS MEN ARE NOT SOCIOPOLITICALLY EMPOWERED ON A SYSTEMIC LEVEL! NO DEMOGRAPHIC OF TRANS PERSON IS!!!

Most modern research into socioeconomic status, experiences with violence, etc. etc. of trans people shows negligible differences across gender lines for trans people, whether they are a binary man, binary woman, or nonbinary. Generally speaking we're all overwhelmingly socially and economically disadvantaged and exist with typically single digit differences in statistics on poverty and violence. Whereas, especially in the US, it actually seems like the data shows the largest disparities within the trans community are across racial lines - with trans men, women, and nonbinary people of color experiencing significantly worse life conditions than all of their white counterparts, including trans moc and nonbinary poc statistically being more likely to be sociopolitically and socioeconomically disadvantaged than white trans women.

Anyone and everyone is capable of interpersonal misogynist violence. That is not a unique position to manhood and trying to tell trans men to shut up and ~listen to women~ is no more backhanded disingenuous gender ""affirmation"" than saying "welcome to womanhood" to a trans woman when she gets catcalled. It's gross and demeaning and degrading frankly.

There is something disgusting about the way that when a trans man comes out, people who knew him for years suddenly begin to treat him differently, as distrustful, as though he were a completely different person now just because he publicly changed his pronouns and cut his hair. That is what keeps people in the closet and that's an alienating and dangerous thing to do to a vulnerable marginalized person.

But it doesn't seem like you understand that trans men are vulnerable, marginalized people because you're so focused on the "man" that you're forgetting that in matters of gender identity someone's status as transgender socially outweighs the words they use to describe their gender identity. You're clinging to the master's tools of cis binary patriarchal analysis and trying to beat them over other trans people's heads. Stop that.

Regarding your tags:

If I have one piece of advice to newly out trans men, it's that you are allowed to cut people out of your life that mistreat you, that completely change their act around you, who begin to use their statuses as cis against you, etc. You do not have to be gaslit about your own complex experiences with misogyny and patriarchy, especially by cis women, just because you've changed your pronouns. You are still your same self. Your name and pronouns might change, but nothing about you as a person has actually substantially changed. You are still the sum of your experiences. You are still every complex and wonderful multitude that existed while you were closeted. The good people in your life who care about YOU and who you really are will recognize that. Sometimes you won't have anyone who recognizes that, and that's a terrifying, isolating, and alienating experience. You are allowed to cut out the people who see the gender identity "man" and refuse to understand that you are still yourself and find new people who will actually treat you well as you are.

You are still a vulnerable marginalized person navigating a world that is very explicitly hostile to you too. You do not have to take shit from anyone.

[kirbyofthestars]

WE NEED TO START TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT BIGENDERISM

[kirbyofthestars]

seeing people say “sometimes i wish i was a guy but i still want to be a girl too” or vice versa and it’s like YOU CAN!!! YOU CAN DO THAT!!!! TAKE MY HAND

[genderkoolaid]

saw a radfem post about how there's no female version of emasculation. bestie yes there is

[genderkoolaid]

"masculinity is empowering and dominant and femininity is degrading and restrictive. there's no humiliating way of being stripped of chains" i want you to look women of color & disabled women in the eyes and tell them this. that there is no humiliating way to be stripped of your womanhood.

[genderkoolaid]

people are reblogging this again so I wanna add that on top of women of color and disabled women you can also just talk to trans men&mascs and nonbinary and intersex people raised female about this.

it's very funny to me whenever people who insist they are the final voice for Trve Feminism and have such an accurate understanding of misogyny, also completely ignore how much the cover-up of the violent policing of failed womanhood plays a role in patriarchy. babe stop believing everything the patriarchy says!!!!! IT IS LYING TO US CONSTANTLY!!!!!!!!

[ipostradicalfeminismisntrad]

[realsurrealeel]

[creatingblackcharacters]

I must admit, I do get extremely irritated at how strong people will defend white racists of their actions on here (usually shielding behind other marginalization) and throw out words like "harassment" and "digital lynching" and will try to gaslight users of color into thinking that we just... Didn't see what happened. That we don't understand racism when we experience it.

Especially when I see myself and other more vocal users of color get harassed daily, and have to always be on guard with their social media, and no one cares because everyone prioritizes white voices here and spend no time with the rest of us via an actual, unspoken segregation of this app. But somehow we don't know what racism and harassment looks like.

So when you say "hey, this person's opinion was not an okay thing to say/their actions were not okay due to racism and I am not coddling that", you get hit with a bunch of people who believe that having "More White Voices must mean True and that Your People Did Not Experience what y'all did... Because the white people around me said it went this way! You're just Mean!!!"

Like ofc that's the perspective you heard, those are the only people you're ever around on here, and it doesn't benefit you to understand what racism actually looks like in action. So. Just irritating af.

[genderkoolaid]

Because I was now a man, I could not speak about what it was like to be a woman. Because I had been a woman, I could never really speak about what it was like to be a man. Do the math: I could not speak. It was a double erasure, a double bind, in which every experience I had was false, and so nothing I said was credible. I could no longer derive authority from my experiences before transition, and shouldn’t even cite them — I had never “really” been a woman, so those things hadn’t happened — but those experiences could always be weaponized against me to prove I wasn’t “really” the man I claimed to be. They call it erasure, when this happens. I wasn’t prepared for how literal the term was. Every day, I could feel myself disappear.

— Eraserhead: On writer's block and being a gender traitor by Jude Doyle

[unhinged-transmasc-man]

There are many good paragraphs but this stuck out the most:

"If “man” and “woman” are opposed and mutually exclusive categories, if men can only ever be predators and women can only ever be prey, then trans men can’t exist. We are logically impossible under the terms of the current system. You either “treat us like men” by voiding out half our lives, or you write us back into womanhood by denying our male identities. I knew all that, at least in theory, but when I came out, I actually saw my life story disappearing into other people’s blind spots. I watched myself become unthinkable in real time."

Also these:

"This wasn’t about accountability. This was people tactically forgetting my entire life,including incidents from my life they had personally witnessed or been involved in, so that they could shame me for transitioning. It was bad for me to be a man; if I was a man, I was a bad man, I was all the worst things men are. I was hulking, I was threatening, I was predatory, I was violent."

"I was treated as both genders, but only the most monstrous stereotype of each one."

Because that is exactly it. Anti-transmasculinity is being both erased and vilified, and then gaslit out of speaking about those experiences by the people who are erasing and vilifying you.

[sparrowhawkandco]

This resonated:

"The idea that I had always occupied a privileged position within patriarchy was, frankly, untrue; nor did it seem to me that a trans person was any less gender-marginalized than your average cis woman. What privilege I had was conditional, and these books were no guide. Men who wanted to “forge a positive masculinity” (and everyone was very clear that I needed one of those) were encouraged to get in touch with their “feminine sides.” Maybe that was healthy for cis guys, but I had been forced to do feminine things, and present in feminine ways, for the entirety of my young life. Whatever liberation I had achieved came from giving myself permission to stop."

As did the ending:

"When I write these days, I try to remind myself that whatever I’m afraid of saying is already true, and denial will not change it. I remind myself that the wrong people benefit from my silence, and will use it to write a version of my life I can’t recognize, or just write me out of the world. There is no established story or role for me; I belong to a category the world is still learning to imagine. I cannot account for the world as other people imagine it. I cannot give you every man’s story, every trans man’s story, every trans person’s story; I don't know them. What I do know is that every new story helps map the territory. All I can do for you, from where I'm standing, is tell you how things are." 

[jedthewolfdog]

lots of great quotes pulled here, i liked this one a lot as well (and def encourage anyone interested to take 10 minutes to read the whole thing)

That’s what unconditional privilege in patriarchy looks like. It is the freedom to define someone else’s reality on your own terms. 

[ipostradicalfeminismisntrad]

[realsurrealeel]

Anyone who uses "theyfab" should be banned from communicating with another human being for at least five years

[chilewithcarnage]

sorry gotta get my ‘friend that’s too woke’ on but I don’t think the solution to misogyny is more misogyny. like by all means rip into republican/right wing women but your critiques should be about how they’re evil soulless people not ‘haha they’re ugly/visibly aged. they don’t know how to put on make up!’ like i don’t fucking know man I don’t think any woman at all should be required to wear makeup or be made fun of for not wearing it ‘properly’ also let’s stop doing the ‘not conventionally attractive = morally bad’ thing. that last part especially be kicking y’all asses.

[malewifesband]

its always helpful imo to remember theres a cis person with whatever problem you have as a trans person 9/10 times. theres a cis man as short as you, a cis woman as tall as you, with hands and feet as big or small as yours. theres a cis woman scared to go out without shaving twice a day, theres a cis man whos upset bc he will never grow a beard. theres a cis woman who worries her infertility makes her less of a woman, and theres a cis man feeling similarly about his lack of potency. theres cis women who dilate and cis men with phalloplasty. theres a cis man scared that painting his nails will make people think hes not really a man and a cis woman whos exhausted with spending hours grooming just so people treat her like she wants to be treated as a woman. they dont put it in the terms we do but theyre worried that these problems make them inadequate at the gender they want people to see them as. our patriarchal system has made the boxes were supposed to fit into so small and you arent alone in not fitting it--nobody really fits

[ipostradicalfeminismisntrad]

[luckyladylily]

Sometimes someone says something on here about like the patriarchy and like.

Tumblr's understanding of feminism

It's one of those things where you don't even know how to begin correcting the problem because the idiots involved are just so damn sure they know it all.

[luckyladylily]

Anyway did you know queer feminists typically expand the definition of the patriarchy to include cisgender and heteronormative on top of maleness? I would argue perisex, alloromantic, and allosexual belong on that list as well (and frankly more), but the point I am making in this case is according to both common sense and queer feminist theory trans men are not a group that primarily benefits from the patriarchy in the same way cis men do. This is absurdly over simplified, but saying trans men benefit from the patriarchy is similar conceptually to saying cis women benefit from the patriarchy. Both groups are part of an oppressed identity.

And it certainly isn't degendering trans men to say they don't benefit from the patriarchy in the same way cis men do, which might be the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

[ipostradicalfeminismisntrad]

[professional-egg-layer]

They should make it easier for trans women

[project-catgirlpiller]

[tiny-space-whale]

Reblog if you are a human rights extremist who believes that all humans are equal and has no sense of loyalty to nation states.