Sir, doesn’t this make you rather rude altogether?
I’m sure you have the cognitive ability to recognise the obvious truth that there’s a real person on the other side of the screen, and one who can be genuinely hurt. Very obvious, again, as we surely both know.
And I assume that in your disdain of the internet's inhabitants, you don't mind us agreeing that they're all just confirmation-biased yes-sayers. But then whatever bullshit you fling at them, girlboss, must cut even more, especially due to those stupid dumbfucks being vulnerable on the internet.
Folks would rather kill passively than directly. And you’re unbothered by doing it where you can’t witness the fallout or face any consequence. Nope, you just hide in anonymity. But that's a different story altogether. Yet, apparently, you're so proud of it to say all this hashtag girlblogging ‘look at me’. Tell me, doesn’t that make you a coward?
I’d much prefer private people to be blunt in person and decent online, than the other way round.
Something has been weighing heavily on my mind for a while now as a member of a prominent PNW trans oriented leftist community organizing space- namely the idea that the trans community, and dare I say it, the entire LGBT community, has the same amount of problems with predators as straight communities do.
I feel (and I know the other girlies are going to jump down my throat for this) that there has been such a resistance to discussing intimate partner violence and predatory behaviors in queer communities right now because Trump is in office and there has been a huge legal and societal backlash against LGBT people. This backlash of course rides on the idea that conservatives peddle that LGBT people and especially trans folks are violent predators. There is also of course, the transmisogynistic focus on transwomen as being perpetrators of this violence. Broadly, we are a community that is on the defense and hurting right now. Bringing up issues of predatory LGBT people thus gets the queer community all defensive and worked up. But it shouldn’t. In reality, predators are everywhere, and by volume, the largest demographic of predators on the planet are cishet men.
The presence of LGBT predators is to be expected in a society built on rape culture, a society that treats sexuality in an incredibly unhealthy way, and a society that is patriarchal. LGBT predators existing and being able to gain social capital in queer spaces is a byproduct of a broken system. Below are just some anecdotal observations from my own personal spaces of the unique nature of LGBT predators in LGBT spaces, and my own two cents on why some of the ways I’ve seen predatory behavior be dealt by other queers continues to be milquetoast and ineffectual. I do want to say that these are just my own two cents, but I am thinking aloud and leaving this conversation open as I think it’s something that needs to be discussed in a more nuanced way and not boiled down to a transfemme vs transfemme issue or oppression Olympics debate. I have seen predators and exploiters of all ages, orientations, genders, and races and truly anybody has a capacity to be cruel. Which brings me to my first observation:
1) Predators in Queer Spaces Often Use Identity as a Shield
This is the first major issue I have seen. In every instance where my org had to deal with a consent violation, the person immediately doubled down on their identity, with something along the lines of “I am a trans woman / trans man, these accusations against me are just TERFS / transphobes smearing me.” The predators would use their LGBT identities as a shield to argue that they couldn’t possibly have been creeps, and that even their intimate partners and BFs/GFs accusing them of the crimes with evidence were just somehow infected with the current right wing fervor against trans people.
The predators, if they were not cis would also frequently invoke the tired transmasc vs transfemme rivalry issue and utilize it to form ranks amongst themselves and target the victims. The scariest thing was, no matter how much evidence the victims had, and no matter non-carceral and unbiased the mediation between parties was, the predators always acted in a very defensive way and immediately were able to garner support from others to cover up their crimes because they weaponized queer discourses.
Utilizing identity discourses is intentional for predators and it allows them to thrive, especially in today’s current shithole anti-trans climate. The issue of trans people being predators has already been spread far and wide by our enemies and predators know they can easily whip people into a fervor if they group their victims with TERFS and Christian nationalists. Predators in fact love and thrive in the current anti-trans climate because the crisis and chaos and insecurity faced by so many of us allows them to more easily control narratives in a community of stressed out, targeted people. Which brings me to my next point.
2) LGBT predators are deeply aware that most of the community has suffered psychological trauma from the stress of being LGBT in a hostile society.
It is obvious that predators acutely know that traumatized people are easy to manipulate. It is also true that most LGBT predators come from traumatized backgrounds themselves, and haven’t yet learned healthy ways of managing their traumas and not hurting others. Anecdotally most of the predators I’ve seen in org spaces LOVE to utilize the Instagram therapy speak in order to mischaracterize and isolate victims. They are masters of terms like “emotional abuse” “lateral violence” and “gaslighting” and they will frequently construe their victims as abusers in order to dodge allegations of rape and assault.
It’s almost scary how having a very white, very elevated lingo around trauma and psychology allows people to gain social capital in the queer community. If you position yourself as this sort of calm, grounded, wellness-minded queer mentor you can get away with literally anything. And you have the tools at your disposal to convince a bunch of other people that everyone you’ve victimized is simply “unhealed” or being unreasonable for not wanting to be around you.
the LGBT community really needs to deconstruct its relationship with pop psychology, “attachment styles” and the overbearing focus on wellness and trauma healing lingo. Now I’m not saying that these topics aren’t important! They are, and it’s important to discuss them. However, it’s also good to be wary of someone who from day one always is a fan of using therapy speak psychobabble to label other individuals as “difficult” “immature” or “unhealed.” These psychological cops, by presenting themselves as authorities on other’s trauma and personal histories, are setting the stage for a social dynamic by which they can dictate who is to be believed and trusted, and who is a disreputable problematic liar who deserves no community care. And you know who frequently benefits from setting up social scenarios in which they get to deem certain people as undesirable and untrustworthy? PREDATORS! RAPISTS! DOMESTIC ABUSERS!
3) Predators thrive within the queer rumor mills with a breadcrumb trail of small complaints
Now I know that’s a helluva sentence, let me complain. LGBT people love gossip and chatting like anybody else. In all of the numerous scenarios I’ve seen in which a queer person got exposed for being predatory, a pattern emerged long before across months of even years of how they conducted themselves in the community.
The sexual predators I’ve met have also incidentally been the biggest complainers. They arrive to a space keen to criticism everyone else for not being woke enough, they have a million smaller disputes with people, and they often get people to hang on their every word by being like “teehee I know all this about X Person but I don’t know what I am allowed to say-“ they have a overwhelmingly sickening aura of bashfulness around their criticism that makes my skin crawl and immediately tips me off that something is wrong with them.
Predatory people tend to have issues with everyone they encounter or act like cops in spaces because they desire power and control. In spaces where they feel that people aren’t kissing their ass enough or where they can’t control the narrative, they clash violently with people, and because they seek to alienate people from their enemies or victims the FIRST thing they do when entering a new space to drop breadcrumbs of a dispute that they’re able to mischaracterize to triangulate people against each other.
For example, a person entered a space and for years dropped hints about a “problematic” ex of theirs in order to keep the relationship dispute vague, and when the ex was contacted by this person’s other victims, they revealed that they had a restraining order against the ex for IPV and also theft of personal finances. Never ever fucking trust a person who can’t articulate why someone did something wrong, or why they have a dispute with someone. If they’re constantly dropping stories about encountering problematic people but can’t articulate precisely what was problematic or act too bashful to share, chances are they’re lying about something to pre-emptively smear a person who may come forwards about their weird behavior later.
3) LGBT predators will misrepresent the legal consequences of their abusive behavior as state targeting to garner sympathy
This was a big one ooooh boy. Almost all of the predators who were eventually asked to leave org spaces had legal records of abuse: small claims court filings, title IX reports from a university, domestic violence charges, in one case an arrest record. Because of the stigma against queer people, when we would confront the perps about these legal battles and WHY they had documented case files of evidence of rape and abuse against them, they would always spew some nonsense about being targeted by the state for being queer blah blah blah. They would utilize this (which is true, queer people get targeted by the state) to try to smear their victims as conservative terfs and liars.
What should be understood is that while misapplied domestic violence charges and title IX reports do exist, society at large has a very very bad record at accurately documenting rape and sexual violence. If someone was CHARGED for IPV there is a very significant chance that the evidence against them was so great even our bullshit legal system couldn’t say that they didn’t do it. Rapists and abusers walk free every day because there wasn’t enough “evidence.” If someone is copping charges for IPV and assault you best believe there is good chance they did all that shit they were charged with.
I have seen people’s dealings with the legal system used to protect so many predators. In one case, an abuser who was arrested for protesting a decade ago had the protest brought up by other community members to urge us to practice “compassion” for them since she was a target of state violence, in spite of the fact that she had DV charges and had abused a string of girlfriends. Being targeted and arrested once for protesting cannot justify THEN going on to catch DV charges for beating your partners. That’s not how it works. The queer community (and especially white queers!) have a weird martyrdom fixation on people who run afoul of the law. If someone runs afoul of the law it is assumed that they are some courageous angel baby who could do no wrong, and if they were arrested ONCE for a queer cause it means that any subsequent arrest of them for raping and assaulting people has to be fake and made up by the evil state. I won’t even begin to dig into how stupid and dangerous this mindset is, it’s obvious
4) Expect Predator Apologia from Everyone
This is my pettiest observation, but truly, some of you queer folks are truly the dumbest most gullible motherfuckers alive. I’m squarely in my mid twenties before the younger Internet discourse obsessed queers and the older millenial nerdy queers, and let me tell you, I have heard predator apologia from folks aged 18 to 45. Being older or wiser or not a baby trans or baby gay person does not make you immune to falling for rape apologia and predator apologia.
Do not assume that ANYONE because of their age or experience is going to side with you or help you untangle the social mess a belligerent predator has made in an organizing space. I have seen many people left frustrated and in tears by the lack of advice and support they got when trying to get community leaders to help them hold people accountable and make spaces safer. In reality, many queer people, because of the trauma they face and the adversity they experience from society, are far too gullible and trusting.
Because of many of our traumatic backgrounds and personal histories of being ostracized because we’re queer, too many of us think to give bitches second chances, or assume the best of people when they promise accountability. The truth is, practicing accountability and anti-carceral mediation methods only works with someone who is not inherently deceitful and manipulative, which most predators are. I am continuously fed up and frustrated with the way queer leaders try to apply soft life-laugh-love approaches to handling predators, assuming that with enough firmness and love and good intentions, that people will change. NEWSFLASH, they fucking won’t! And having softer and non judgemental approaches to people with a history of committing sexual assault often does nothing but allow the predator to keep harming people and continue to face no consequences for their actions.
In spite of my best efforts, there were scenarios in which community leaders chose to not formally kick someone out of an org or go through with mandated reporter protocols because they wanted to be “non carceral” and “non-traumatizing.” I have also seen people try to control the rumor mill and keep information about known predators close to the chest because it’s “private knowledge.”
well guess what you dumb bitches, you know what this culture of silence creates? A space where predators feel safe! I can guarantee you right now some of the worst LGBT people preying on LGBT communities are laughing their asses off at how dumb you guys are. These rapists and domestic batterers are thanking their lucky stars that your cowardly asses are re-framing silence as “maturity” and “accountability” and “healing” so they won’t be known by the wider community as someone with a history of rape problems and can thus select more vicitims! Ugh. This shit frustrates me so much. Silence helps nobody, silence is not victim silence, and cultures of silence produce spaces where rapists feel cozy. You can’t be wandering around all surprised pikachu face when rapists keep showing up in your queer org when FOR THE PAST FUCKING DECADE YOU HAVE DEVELOPED A DISPUTE AND MEDIATION PROTOCOL THAT DOES NOTHING BUT PROTECT AND CATER TO THEM!!!!
I absolutely hate how appealing to the western market has ruined Ateez. They lost me with this most recent release. Newsflash kpop companies, nobody and I mean fucking NOBODY, not even your western fans, want to have a group sacrifice their lore, their musical identity, and the core of what makes them unique as a group to push out some generic ass BAD English pop music. We suffer enough with Justin Bieber at home.
It pisses me off so much because it’s so clear they’re chasing the western market. They haven’t made a good title track since In Your Fantasy (and even that song was cringe, capitalistic western fanservice pandering.) Adrenaline was a step in the right direction but it was so sonically cheap and lazy compared to songs like Crazy Form, Bouncy, and even their oldest content like Treasure and Pirate King.
The thing is, and I wish kpop companies understood this, not every boy group on the face of the earth has to pander to a western market and abandon their musical identity. Likewise, not every boy group needs to adopt a “suave” hot guy persona. They’re trying to make Ateez into Walmart BTS and it’s not working. Ateez has never been about being swaggy or suave or fuckboy generic the core of their identity is dark lore and outlaw / pirate themed world building. Seeing their lore get discarded and their styling turn into this generic ass, bright palette of nonsense is so displeasing.
I feel like kpop groups who hit it big in the west (BTS, Blackpink, Katseye, now Ateez) suffer so much creatively when their companies realize they can capitalize off parasociality and the dumbassery of the average westerner to make SHIT music. Newsflash kpop companies, western music and cameos from talented western actors and artists doesn’t mean shit if the music is bad. It’s better to stick to the original concept and not sell out like a bunch of lames.
On a more ateez related side note the Golden Hour arc has gone on wayyyyyy too long. When have we had an arc lasting for over 2 fucking years? Work came out in summer 2024. This is absolute bullshit. Lighter ateez doesn’t hit the same and instead of capitalizing on how the dark aesthetics and rebel vibes of movement were received so positively by the fanbase and other casual listeners, they turn around and give us generic western slop pop. Newsflash KQ: nobody wants that lame shit. When you make an edgy pirate group, people are going to stay for the edgy pirate vibes. If you drop the gimmick that brought in fans, and what made the he group artistically complex, you’re going to lose people. ACT RIGHT BECAUSE MY BOYS DESERVE FUCKING BETTER
UNPOPULAR OPINION: A lot of "mental health issues" disappear when bills are paid, rent is secure, and the fridge is full. Peace is expensive. And pretending money doesn't affect mental health is privilege.
This is the realest shit ever posted…I have clinical OCD and need to take SSRIs daily to be in sound mind but when I have cash and my life is secure my depression is basically in remission whereas when I’m stressed and facing a loss of income I become the most mentally ill MF imaginable
There are very few male leftist academics I can take seriously because whenever they start talking about revolution or their favorite theorist they’re worshipping my first thought becomes…but can they do the dishes? Would they know how to plant a tomato seed and make it grow? Do they build anything or contribute anything to their community other than bitching, whining, bottom-lining a bunch of fangless open letters loudly condemning a list of evils and organizing a few book clubs where they aggressively talk down to everyone? Whining, writing substack essays, and organizing rallies that don’t actively challenge the state or destroy carceral apparatuses through rioting are not praxis. That’s performance
A lot of you loved my euphoria post so friendly reminder, all of my posts are very wise and smart and kewl so you should def follow me for other things, like my kpop and book opinions
Last season of Euphoria really is so ugly and reflective of American society and rising conservatism rn. Nothing but shitty Bible propaganda, rampant anti-blackness, exploitation and humiliation of women and the abuse of sex workers shown to the audience for lurid thrills, one of the lesbian leads dead and another (the trans one) trapped in an outlandish D/s sugar baby relationship tormented and making art and chasing male approval….we live in HELL. It’s so obvious how much this season was injected with stupid ass misogynistic ass homophobic/transphobic ass fantasies and I HATE it.
Agreed. The last season was shockingly bad and felt like a completely different show.
Don’t get me wrong, Euphoria has always had questionable moral themes and scenes purely for shock value. I can get behind a show with dark themes, but they have to make sense.
This is what I would have done that I feel is more true to the characters in the first two seasons but sticks with the darkness of the show:
Jules: no weird sugar daddy shit. She is in art school and making questionable decisions, sure, but she’s not a plastic surgeons plaything. She is just as sweet and kind as she is in the first two seasons.
Cassie, Maddie & Nate: No Only Fans shit. This storyline should have been about domestic violence. We all know Nate is abusive and Maddie knows this, so Cassie should have gone to Maddie for help and they end up killing Nate. Makes way more sense.
Rue: I actually think her dying is fine, it’s heartbreaking but it makes sense. I just think it got glazed over. We never saw her mom or Gia or anything. It felt empty. Alamo and the strip club didn’t need to exist, the last season could have just been the fallout with Laurie and her crew. Alamo brought a lot of toxic masculinity into the show which was just not needed. The turning to god actually makes sense, lots of addicted people do. But it was very clearly pushed to the point of being Christian propaganda. Not needed.
Overall it just felt like he forgot who his characters were and decided to just write up some toxic women hating garbage bullshit.
Last season of Euphoria really is so ugly and reflective of American society and rising conservatism rn. Nothing but shitty Bible propaganda, rampant anti-blackness, exploitation and humiliation of women and the abuse of sex workers shown to the audience for lurid thrills, one of the lesbian leads dead and another (the trans one) trapped in an outlandish D/s sugar baby relationship tormented and making art and chasing male approval….we live in HELL. It’s so obvious how much this season was injected with stupid ass misogynistic ass homophobic/transphobic ass fantasies and I HATE it.
I also need to add that the ending of Jules has set back transbian representation 10 years…it’s positively wild that you portray the last conversation between Jules and Rue with a violent slap (given the rhetoric about trans women and male violence) and THEN end the character’s arc with her being tormented by her lost lesbian love and STILL somehow chasing male validation, in a man’s house fucking a man for money??? When you know damn well the historic stereotypes and associations of trans women with prostitution….Sam levinson you are the DEVIL!!! Jules’s entire storyline is like a terrible stew of the worst lesbian and trans stereotypes EVER omfg I hate you
Last season of Euphoria really is so ugly and reflective of American society and rising conservatism rn. Nothing but shitty Bible propaganda, rampant anti-blackness, exploitation and humiliation of women and the abuse of sex workers shown to the audience for lurid thrills, one of the lesbian leads dead and another (the trans one) trapped in an outlandish D/s sugar baby relationship tormented and making art and chasing male approval….we live in HELL. It’s so obvious how much this season was injected with stupid ass misogynistic ass homophobic/transphobic ass fantasies and I HATE it.
I used to watch euphoria when I was younger for the trashy soap factor but lowkey I can’t stand it now. There is something so sinister about this show turning into a graphic torture fest of a black woman, a trans woman, and countless other women and sex workers. There doesn’t seem to be a point to the story anymore and even framing it as an addiction melodrama just feels so disingenuous and exploitative. It’s hard to articulate but something about the entire concept of the show feels so ill intentioned and ugly, especially in this current political climate.
I am 100% sure that Covid damaged a lot of people’s brains simply because of the steep decline in the quality of art people consume. All the books are forth wing and haunting Adeline and rape porn slop written at a 4th grade level. All the songs that people gag over are basic and mid. Eurovision winner is adult cocomelon BANGARANGARA bullshit…like are you all fucking idiots?
There is something so deeply insidious about these consumerist psyop pop musicians pushing misogynistic imagery included drag queens and queer people in their music videos as if to say “SEEE!!! We support the LGBT community! We are woke and based!!!” It reeks of tolenization and using visibly trans and queer bodies as props and I don’t like it. FOH
Exactly. It is so fucking weird to see Sabrina Carpenter get backlash after filming herself crawling around on the floor like a dog and singing all these songs about how she hates men but will still date and fuck men and then immediately switching up to bringing in a bunch of drag queens and trans dancers to act as the backdrop in her heterosexist 1950s fantasy realm…it’s like she’s hiding behind a shield of queer people to hide her weird regressive aesthetics and messaging. I’m sorry but anyone in this fucking era of American fascism where “back to the 1950s” has been a dogwhistle of neonazis to return to some supposed idyllic white past using those aesthetics to sell records is going to be getting a massive side eye with me. I don’t think her use of queer dancers and artists is sincere at all, I think she’s using them to virtue signal and attract queer fans in order to deflect criticism or a closer look at her weird career trajectory and CIA plant ass rise to chart popularity. INSIDIOUS ASS SHIT AT WORK!
Nothing will convince me that Sabrina Carpenters switch up from confessional soft pop to in your face 1950s larp and Tradwife misogynist aesthetics with a parade of commodified dancing queer and trans people behind her isn’t the biggest CIA psyop ever, some of you people are so fucking dumb to not realize how insidious this all is.
Sir, doesn’t this make you rather rude altogether?
I’m sure you have the cognitive ability to recognise the obvious truth that there’s a real person on the other side of the screen, and one who can be genuinely hurt. Very obvious, again, as we surely both know.
And I assume that in your disdain of the internet's inhabitants, you don't mind us agreeing that they're all just confirmation-biased yes-sayers. But then whatever bullshit you fling at them, girlboss, must cut even more, especially due to those stupid dumbfucks being vulnerable on the internet.
Folks would rather kill passively than directly. And you’re unbothered by doing it where you can’t witness the fallout or face any consequence. Nope, you just hide in anonymity. But that's a different story altogether. Yet, apparently, you're so proud of it to say all this hashtag girlblogging ‘look at me’. Tell me, doesn’t that make you a coward?
I’d much prefer private people to be blunt in person and decent online, than the other way round.
There is something so deeply insidious about these consumerist psyop pop musicians pushing misogynistic imagery included drag queens and queer people in their music videos as if to say “SEEE!!! We support the LGBT community! We are woke and based!!!” It reeks of tolenization and using visibly trans and queer bodies as props and I don’t like it. FOH
The Katsye situation has been so disgustingly exploitative and anti-black from the start. This multimillion dollar company was out there making documentaries pitting young girls against each other and stoking huge parasocial fanbases, using fan beef and speculation about the girls fighting to generate outrage marketing.
Those bitches literally sought out a black model and influencer (Manon) flew her out for auditions probably thinking she would be easy to boss around and control because of her lack of experience in the music industry, and when she wouldn’t bend easily or had issues adapting to the work schedule they presented her as indolent and lazy for cheap clicks. They also DELIBERATELY chose to include personal vents from Lara, Adela, and Sophia when those three were likely sleep deprived, overworked and STARVING to stir up outrage for their shit ass reality TV storyline. They knew all the girls and Manon would get endless hate trains for this and they still chose to sacrifice them all on the altar of outrage marketing to generate clicks.
After successfully recruiting Manon to be the black face of the group they immediately pivoted to Gang Gang baddie buss down beat down minstrel show music, they’re out here coaching American girls to use AAVE and adopt this gross insta baddie caricature to sell records, and because they’re shielded by having a black member they get away with all of this corny and racist hoochie mama bullshit. I know people are hating on Danielle and her race-shifting Ariana grande blackfisher look but guys, it was never Daniella’s fucking fault that she is being pushed as manon’s visual replacement. It was always on HYBE, who conveniently forced Daniella into a Latin mami stereotype for the purpose of some throwaway Spanish lyrics in Gabriela and had her shake her ass in some carribean dance hall / flamenco / vague aura of bastardized mexicaness ass music video they made to entice horny dudes.
This entire situation is living proof that the music industry operates on racism and misogyny. It frustrates me that instead of being able to develop a structural analysis of the insidious shit the company is striving for: pushing wasteful consumerism with product placement, stereotyping black woman and exoticizing and sexualizing WOC, and normalizing the production of incredible mediocre and derivative art because it’s “savage” or “baddie buss down” or whatever fans instead resort to blaming individual exploited teenagers with rich and insane parents instead of the fucking company. Open your fucking eyes, use your brain, and boycott this group. And Manon fans who are still idiotically campaigning for her to return and trending hashtags and trying to identity politics your way out of this, ask yourself: why in the fuck would you ever want to subject an exploited black woman to increased exploitation under this abusive ass company AGAIN. At this point it’s best she leaves the group for her own career and mental wellbeing.
