#dialectics

[animentality]

[themasterpupil]

[agnosticchaos92]

The Parable of The Table and The Chair

By Amy Roberts

Let's say you're in a room with a contractor and an essentialist. The contractor brought you a pile of wood, staples, a staple gun, elbows, wood screws, rotating saw, a square measure, a leveling stick, a hammer, etc. and he's says he's paying you good money to build a long table with this material. He and the essentialist, who otherwise don't know each other, leave. So you get to work and after a while, you finish the table.

The contractor comes by and pinches his nose and then facepalms. He says “oh, did I tell you to build a table? I'm so absent minded. I was actually having someone else build that. I actually wanted you to build a nice sturdy chair to go along with it. I'll throw in an extra $100 for your troubles. Oh, and no need to go buy more materials for the chair. Just break down the table and repurpose the materials to make the chair. I'll be back later to see the finished product.” He then leaves, and you get to work cutting apart the table into pieces of the proper dimensions to make a chair with.

While you're doing so, the essentialist comes by and sees you. “What are you doing to that table!” he yells. “You're mutilating it! The contractor is going to be infuriated!” “Actually, he came by and said he was mistaken and that he actually wanted a chair, so I'm making him a chair”, you inform him. “Impossible!” the essentialist snaps. “Once a table, always a table. No matter how hard you try, you cannot turn a table into a chair! It's a table!” “What table? Where?” you say, the bewilderment in your face all too apparent. He vaguely motions to the pile of scrap wood on the floor. “This table right here. You seem confused, but rest assured we can always tell it's a table” the essentialist remarks. A look of concern for this guy's mental health appears on your face, but you shrug and then attempt to hold back your laughter before shaking your head in disbelief of the absurdity and getting back to work. The essentialist, angered by your reaction, storms off and leaves, spouting something about “repurposed wood insanity” and “sexual degenerates who sit on tables.”

After a while, you finish the chair and the contractor comes by and is quite pleased with his chair and gives you your monetary reward. The essentialist comes back and glances at the chair, noticing only its platform and legs, but seemingly oblivious of the backrest. “Ah!” he said with a delighted smile. “That's a small end table, but it's still a table.” “Actually, it's a chair...”, the contractor says. “...and I'm quite pleased with it.” “It'll never be a real chair!!!” the essentialist mocks the contractor. “It started out as a table, and what it started out as is immutable!” “I have no idea what's going on here”, says the puzzled contractor, who looks as if he's staring down a madman. “but I have my chair and I'm quite pleased, so I'll be on my way.” He grabs the chair and leaves. “It started out as a pile of building materials” you correct the essentialist. “Yes, table building materials, not chair building materials.” the essentialist retorts. “It goes against nature to call it a chair!”

This is what it sounds like to me when I hear the arguments of a bioessentialist, gender critical and transphobe.

[queercodedangel]

"Thus events strikingly analogous but taking place in different historic surroundings led to totally different results. By studying each of these forms of evolution separately and then comparing them one can easily find the clue to this phenomenon, but one will never arrive there by the universal passport of a general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical."

- Letter from Marx to Editor of the Otecestvenniye Zapisky

[cripposting]

Alt ID a white tall trans fem person wearing a white hoodie with the trans flag hangs around a medium skin toned person with a tank top or binder with trans colors, tan pants, a grey beanie, a coffe cup and curly hair. the trans fem says "I'm so glad my egg cracked otherwise I totally would have been a white surpremist by now" the second part of the comic shows the medium skinned tone person leaning away and sweating, witj the transfem person saying "I would have been so racist to you <3" the medium skinned tone person responds with "haha yeah" art peice is called nazi phase by Nash Romi End Alt ID

This is going to be my master post critiquing white tumblr transfeminism as a movement and certin individuals that I will not name because this is meant to be a discussion, not a witch hunt. I have no gripes with actual transfemminism done by Black trans women for example and transmisogny is a very real thing thay the trans community is very gulity for, for example “afab only” spaces, the demonization of “amab” enbies, the pressures against trans femminity being punished more vocally by conservatives, etc. Trans women of color have been the back bone of this community and do not fucking derail that, do not harass anyone, and do not commit transmisogny on this page. This is commentary.

This is based on my real life and online experiences as a “afab/tme” person who is Perisex, mixed race with white privlage on a coin flip, is transmasculine and I’m also disabled, poor, American and literate. When I write this, do not forget these things.

This comic is where I find most of the issues to be very honest. I see a lot of particularly gen-z and sometimes millennial trans white women who also tend to be non disabled or at least capable of lateral abelism to extreme degrees, in relatively privlaged areas of life (I.e. western countries, relatively ok class wise etc) that spent their formative years before or during their egg cracking on white surpremist spaces. I have met a decent amount of trans women who are my best friends, who I have learned the most from, who have taught me so much and I owe my life to, who have spent their time in gamer gate. Who were part of a radical tranfemminist group who called themselves an intersexist slur. Who drop the r slur. Who I’ve definitely been the victim of. Who have changed. Who agree with the sentiments that I have spoken and have been horrified to see repeated, especially in queer focused spaces (though still white)

This doesn’t mean you’re a man- obviously not. I don’t belive in the whole male socialization thing. BUT YOU STILL LIVE IN A SOCIETY. If you spend all of your time in white surpremist spaces, that are incredibly misognistic and abelist, that does affect your brain. I have similar issues due to trying to do the whole “not like other girls” phase when I was a cis woman. You are not exempt from your environment and those impacts just because you realized you’re a woman. Everyone is capable of spreading and doing bigoted things. You are not immune to that because you are a woman now. When you call trans people who are not trans fems zippertits, birthdayboys, tdickmasticized, theyfabs, cuntboys and other degrading terms you are still dehumanizing someone to their sex, a sex that is punished upon birth usually against those who are Perisex and percived as woman by society and intersex people.

Saying “afab privlage” is not all that disimilar to saying “uterus/womb privlage”. Sex assigned at birth isnt a get out of jail free card. For example, if someone who is a Perisex transmasculine person is accused of being trans fem, they can try to use their AGAB (just like you can lie about yours, which you have a right to do so) if it’s still labeled as “F” it can be taken as youve had your sex legally changed and your still a trans woman. If it is labeled as “M” then they (transmisiaists/transmisognyists) can use that to say they’re secretly a man in a dress (transmisognistic rhetoric). If it’s “other/x” or whatever equivalent, then you can still be percived as an other, a trans woman who didn’t get the correct marker on there. Is that correct? No. But do you see how AGAB doesn’t work as a defense even if “can” weaponize it? A post op trans woman can get away with lying and saying she was born AFAB then say a transmasculine person of any sort of genital surgery or lack thereof because of those accusations regarding AGAB. Cis people see a woman, preforming femminity “correctly”, with no abnormal genitals and will belive her to be a cis woman before someone who is visibly trans. Now most of the trans fem community can’t do that. This is theoretical dialectics to work with the theroetical dialectics constantly thrown at everyone else within the trans community so that’s why I bring it up.

This also gets quite muddled with intersex people- sure an intersex person may be “AFAB” but that doesn’t mean they grew up that way, nor their body did. The TME/TMA system is another binary that doesnt work because transmisia and opression in general is what is assumed- not what you are. It doesn’t work and excludes intersex people and forces them into a binary conversation that erases them while allowing them to still be harmed.

It’s also appalling to have TME/TMA applied to cis women and the rest of the trans community as if they’re equals. Everyone is capable of transmisogny, everyone is able to be affected by it, but the systemic power to do so IS NOT THE SAME. Trans masculinity and other trans people do not have the power in society that cis women have to opress trans women. Go look at trans discussions in sports. The people making false accusations and claims against trans women and intersex women? They’re cis Perisex women. Not trans masculinity. Trans masculinity just straight up isnt in the conversation. If that were to happen, that transmasculine person wouldn’t be heard (and it would still be horrible and transmisognistic as shit) but it would not play out at all the way cis Perisex women are able to do so.

It’s also horrendous considering some of our most horrific murders done to transmasculine folks has been done by cis women- particularly cis white women including cis lesbians. I have been called a theyfab for discussing this before in a previous post, complellty ignoring Sam Norquist’s GoFundMe. People would rather attack me and dehumanize me based on pronouns I don’t use, and genitals assumed and gender assumed upon birth then talk about his brutual murder and GoFundMe just because I pointed out the connection between a hyper specific niche of trans women who are bigoted from their 4chan days in the same post. Where I did not adequately explain myself like I did in this post.

I also have straight up gotten into discussions with trans femmine people who are white and active in literal right wing trans subreddits like 4tran arguing with me about this.

I’ve been a victim of transmisogny myself. I was 11, dressed up as 11 from stranger things- pink dress, jean jacket, blond wig etc. I was on a school bus. I was accused of being a boy in a dress. I said I wasn’t. I had already have my period for two years, had boobs etc. I pulled off my wig to show my hair, I had shown my school ID with my sex on it. And my dress was still pulled up, my underwear pulled down while kicking these boys and still checked to be seen whether I was a boy or not. They didn’t belive me. They fucking laughed and laughed and laughed. Because transphobes don’t care what you actually are. You are simply other and theirs to control. My sex did not protect me, and did not work. I tried to use it and it failed. I’ve gotten the response to literal sexual assault that I was privlaged to be able to use my AGAB. That’s the thing though. AGAB is something you can lie about. Anyone can lie about their AGAB to save their asses. That’s what Perisex trans people have done when claiming to be intersex back in the day to get the HRT and protection against the law for “cross dressing”. It doesn’t work because I was not woman enough for them. I did not preform woman good enough and that was enough to enact transmisognistic violence and my “privlage” failed.

Trans women are women no matter what. That does not absolve white trans women from their whiteness, and the fact that some do have some fucking shitty ass nazi pasts that are clearly evident. Also at the end of the day- a white trans woman who is in the closet will be mostly percived (wrongly) as a white man. No gender or sex opression will occur outwardly to that person without correctly assuming they’re a woman unprompted. That cannot apply to white transmasculinity. Regardless of what one does, closet or out transmasculinity will always face sex and gender opression. It’s fucked uo but I’m speaking to what transmisiaists see- how opression works. Not how identity works. Obviously it doesn’t mean you’re a man. Your still a woman. I’m just speaking to what opression would look like.

At the end of the day, in countries where women still cannot vote not allowed to read, transmasculine people will be punished by sex and by gender. In those countries, transfems who boymode will still have those privlages. Transfems transition from privlaged to opressed, while transmasculine folks transition from opression to more opression then before transition.

Trans masculinity also has issues with misogny- seeing binary trans men on r/FTM have gender euphoria about women being scared of them on the street disgusts and horrifies me beyond belief. That for example is the fact that misogny is baked into society and that everyone has to deconstruct it.

Also, I hate the term transmisandry for similar reasons. The hate that transmasculinity recived is not the same at all to hatred and fear of cis men in the same way. Which btw isnt good particularly towards men of color, intersex men and disabled men but it is still not carrying the same weight as misogny.

Also! Hot take transandromisia can also be experienced by trans fems. And misapplied to cis people just like transmisogny does. Both are nuanced words that are important and discuss nuances rhat transphobia as a word doesn’t fully encapsulate. Just different ways. Transfemminism is a good thing. One should read actual tranfemminist works and watch video essays from Black trans women about what actual transfemminism is! What is going on in tumblr is just 4chan with white women coating.

Also everyone is being wildly intersexist by erasing intersex voices and position in this conversation that is something I am trying to work on and that we all need to work on.

Again, this is my thoughts and this is a discussion not a witch hunt. Regardless of who you are, please drink water. Please take your meds as needed. Please eat food. I want this community to be stronger and hold fast together. I wish for us to better ourselves continually. I hope this helps at least one person. Again transmisogny will not be tolerated, nor any sort of bigotry. People can also change. If someone is in this sort of mindset, especially if they’re calling themselves a hun and you can do so, please reach out. If you find yourself doing misognistic behavior please reach out. You are not a horrible person, you just have to work on yourself and I’m genuinely more than happy to work with people who want that. You do not have to be perfect to recive help. You are more than worth care. This is a safe space for anyone who is trying to genuinely engage with this and is not harassing or dismissing anyone’s livd exeperiences. If there’s anything I can do to improve my post with transmisogny, intersex advocacy, accesibility or anything else please let me know.

I hope y’all have a lovely rest of yalls day.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Notes: The ‘right to the city’ is an idea and a slogan that was first proposed by Henri Lefebvre in his 1968 book Le Droit à la ville and that has been reclaimed more recently by social movements, thinkers and several progressive local authorities alike as a call to action to reclaim the city as a to-created space — a place for life detached from the growing effects that commodification and capitalism have had over social interaction and the rise of spatial inequalities in worldwide cities throughout the last two centuries. While Lefebvre never identified with libertarian Marxism, his conceptual framework of Right to the City is of use to a libertarian Marxist reading.

Preface

Great things must be silenced or talked about with grandeur, that is, with cynicism and innocence... I would claim as property and product of man all the beauty, nobility, which we have given to real or imaginary things... — Frederic Nietzsche

This work will take an offensive form (that some will perhaps find offending). Why?

Because conceivably each reader will already have in mind a set of ideas systematized or in the process of being systematized. Conceivably, each reader is looking for a ‘system’ or has found his ‘system’. The System is fashionable, as much in thought as in terminologies and language.

Now all systems tend to close off reflection, to block off horizon. This work wants to break up systems, not to substitute another system, bur to open up through thought and action towards possibilities by showing the horizon and the road. Against a form of reflection which tends towards formalism, a thought which tends towards an opening leads the struggle.

Urbanism, almost as much as the system, is fashionable. Urbanistic questions and reflections are coming out of circles of technicians, specialists, intellectuals who see themselves as at the ‘avant-garde’. They enter the public domain through newspaper articles and writings of diverse import and ambitions. At one and the same time urbanism becomes ideology and practice. Meanwhile, questions relative to the city and to urban reality are not fully known and recognized, they have not yet acquired politically the importance and the meaning that they have in thought (in ideology) and in practice (we shall show an urban strategy already at work and in action). This little book does not only propose to critically analyse thoughts and activities related to urbanism. It’s aim is to allow its problems to enter into consciousness and political policies.

From the theoretical and practical situation of problems (from the problematic) concerning the city, reality and possibilities of urban life, let us begin by taking what used to the called a ‘cavalier attitude’.

[serenityquest]