#akfb

[errorryx]

female mcyters rarely play the same roles that their male counterparts do in terms of antagonism/conflict in mcrp, because those that do end up buried in a shitstorm of comment section misogyny, which reinforces that rule by discouraging them from doing so again. the range of acceptable female character dynamics that won't get you dogpiled is so pitifully narrow that you can't even, like, kill a fucking pig. let alone another person. and god forbid you make an intentionally evil character choice on Evil Character Choices SMP, it's completely fucking over for you. meanwhile the men get to do whatever they want to eachother and to you, but if you fight back, everyone in the audience from the redditors to the genderfluid tumblrinas decide that you're the crazy one. like i'd love to analyze and write stories about women in minecraft world where the core issue is something besides misogyny, but you people literally won't give me anything else to work with besides toothless yuri shipbait that still won't pull 80% of the fandom out of the yaoi mines. i'll keep painstakingly extracting compelling narratives out of unintentional implications because it is my passion and my life's work, but i really wish my range of options wasn't so limited.

[errorryx]

there's something truly insidious in the way so many people express discomfort with transfem headcanons of cis male characters in the mcyt space. people feel completely comfortable talking about transfem hcs like they're something gross or wrong or inappropriate, while transmasc hcs are generally uncontroversial. i'd highly recommend anyone who doesn't like transfem hcs to interrogate that discomfort, beyond whatever justifications you already have for this mindset, and maybe get a little less comfortable with announcing how much you hate seeing depictions of trans women in your fandom spaces.

[errorryx]

you point out a fandom blogger's misogyny and they'll tell you they're neurodivergent and hyperfixated on men or they're a gay man and it's homophobic to ask them to acknowledge a woman's existence or they never learned how to care about female characters in their underfunded american school or that every single female character in existence was written by a misogynist so it's morally justified to ignore her or everyone who does care about female characters is clearly just doing it performatively or

[errorryx]

ren: i like how pearl pretends to be all like, innocent and stuff, and meanwhile—literally torturing people. pearl: i didn't—i just want— scar: i didn't know i broke up a deal over here, now i feel bad. pearl: i just want a dog.

scott: this is a crazy ex-girlfriend situation. cleo: this is—[laughs] scott: this is why i'm gay. pearl: excuse you! scott: this is—this is why i'm gay. pearl: i would never, in that situation! thank you very much. scott: you were trying to be my soulbound, that's the equivalent of this.

pearl: i got you. ren: pearl, you are an evil demoness. pearl: i just saved your stuff! i didn't mean for you to die! ren: yes. you came here with evil in your heart— pearl: no i didn't! ren: ...and so, we were slain. pearl: i didn't!

scott: i didn't say i had something of yours, ren said he had something of yours. pearl: oh. oh, he did! scott: you're so—you're so me-centric that you're just like, everything is from scott. maybe you have gone a little bit loopy IRL, like— pearl: [shrieks] scott: do you want me to call someone in person?

ren: you came here, and you caused death. pearl: i didn't— ren: whether you tried to or not, there is something wicked within you.

[errorryx]

i really am moving further and further away from the "she would not become a mother" mindset. it's not that i disagree; the sentiment is a rejection of fanwork/canon where depictions of motherhood tend to be in line with the heteronormative patriarchy status quo and bring nothing new to the table. i hate those too! but statistically speaking, most women become mothers. historically speaking, there were very few options for women besides motherhood. a mother is a very, very common thing for a woman to be.

frequently, the reaction to bad or unremarkable depictions of motherhood is outright rejection—this is unrealistic, this woman is a three-dimensional character with hopes and aspirations, and thus cannot ever become a mother. i think this aversion is at least partially the result of widespread mommy issues. there's no shame in that (in fact i suffer from a similar affliction), but avoiding the topic of motherhood altogether is a pretty major oversight.

sometimes she would become a mother, and it wouldn't be the perfect healthy family that canon or fanon might want it to be, but it could be worth exploring anyway. there's so much potential in the exploration of motherhood from angles that intentionally dissect or reject the heteropatriarchal standard, and especially those that depict it in an ugly and brutally honest light.

[errorryx]

i think more people need to sit down and unpack their understanding of how the world mistreats transfeminized people. most people simply do not understand the full extent of it and don't care to step outside their comfort zones and learn. because of that, when they see something that makes them uncomfortable, they try to come up with reasons why it's wrong, rather than having to confront their current assumptions. i hope you can set that aside for a moment and really consider what i'm about to say.

the world is not kind to transfems, and the systems of oppression in place do not want people to become transfem. so transfemininity is discouraged from all angles. if you can keep a trans woman from realizing who she is, she'll never have the tools or understanding to speak up against the transmisogyny she experiences. it's extremely difficult for transfems to get to a point where they can realize who they are, because everyone and everything around them encourages them to stay a man.

contributing to this environment is not a neutral action. it is just as much of an influencing force as truthing* is. if you talk about how nice it is to see cis men feeling comfortable in their masculinity to occasionally express femininity, or complain when people say that a certain person could be transfem because it's pressuring them, you are also putting pressure on that person. you're pressuring them in the same way as the rest of the world: to stay in the closet, to stay a man, to not consider transfemininity as an option.

you don't know for certain whether someone is a closeted transfem. if you're proudly proclaiming that you like them just the way they are, that it's okay to never cross the line from ally to he/they nonbinary to explicitly transfeminine, you can't be sure whether you're contributing to keeping a trans woman in the closet or not.

that's not to say there's a right answer all the time. it's an extremely complicated issue, and in certain cases truthing* has obviously done more harm than good. but there are also instances where it has helped. it depends on who's doing it and what agendas they might have. my point here is that it's nuanced, and pressure goes both directions, and one of those directions is also enforced by our transphobic society.

—

*i use the word truthing in this post because it's an easy shorthand, but i don't consider everything it describes here to actually apply to the term. sometimes "truthing" is simply letting someone know they can be trans if they want.

[errorryx]

the thing is, scott making a "this is why i'm gay" joke at a woman's expense is misogynistic. i'm done being coy about it. his sexuality doesn't make it better. the joke is that...women are horrible to date? women are crazy and unstable and men are just easier to deal with? there really is no non-misogynistic explanation. you can say scott's not a misogynist overall, that he just makes bad jokes sometimes, but you can't pretend the misogyny isn't there at all. those kinds of jokes come from a place of misogyny.

[errorryx]

you can do a transmisogyny without meaning to btw. you can be super niceys (in your view) and be friends with trans girls and nod along when they say transmisogyny is bad, and still end up creating an environment where they don't feel comfortable around you. the only way around this is to listen to trans women without deflecting or getting defensive. there is not a shortcut that absolves your hurt feelings on the matter, you just have to get over yourself.