#disposability

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

Very often, people I don't know well have said something to me like, "That's what I like about you! Your attitude is amazing, you're never down about anything!"

And I'm like... Okay firstly why would you assume if I've never vented to one specific near-stranger that means I'm never unhappy?

And secondly, okay, message received, if I'm ever really struggling and ask for support there's a pretty significant chance you will drop me immediately!

If what you like about me is that I'm never unhappy, what you like is the distance between us.

It's notable that this comes up most often with people trying to spin me as some kind of inspiration porn due to my disabilities (or more rarely, from ppl who know parts of my history, my unusual & bad past experiences).

It feels like a desperate self-soothing tactic. If I'm some kind of Happiness Saint, you don't have to grapple with the fact that real people are actually impacted by their bad experiences.

It's also notable that, while, yes, I think I'm by default pretty happy, I also have a tendency to automatically minimize my suffering when speaking to ppl in my life so I don't develop a reputation for being "negative" or "a downer" for being impacted by serious health issues.

Being complimented for that survival strategy feels shitty, because I want to feel safe being honest about it when I'm really struggling! I want to be able to vent like the healthy ppl in my life are allowed to! I want to be able to just say I've been having really bad pain days for like a month and have that not Make It Awkward & suddenly the other person starts avoiding me or badmouthing me to deal with their discomfort.

It's really isolating to carry around the constant awareness that if you're honest about what your life is like, most people will react with dehumanizing pity at best and at worst spin you as some kind of malingering malicious Drama Queen.

Please make the effort to be chill about the physically disabled people in your life. A pedestal is an incredibly fragile position to be in, and my balance is poor and I'm dizzy!

Let me just be a person with good days and bad days. I shouldn't have to perform to Disabled Stereotype #6 to gain a tenuous social acceptance that will be yanked away every time I acknowledge the fact that my life is different from yours.

[inside-to-outside-thoughts]

I got all and any notifications muted by now except for alarms. So when I reply to any messages its because I thought of you.

[madame-peach]

As you may have noticed,

I haven’t been as present on here recently, sharing my thoughts and experiences in the world. This is primarily a choice I made out of self-preservation in response to several wickedly transmisogynistic anons that caused me great emotional and mental distress in late June / early July. These anons left me in a particularly fragile state such that I distanced myself from this site in order to avoid shattering what little of my self-esteem remained. One anon was so distinctly vitriolic and malicious in its content that I was genuinely unable to sleep for a week.

I contemplated responding to these anonymous messages in my regular fashion: analyzing their crudely transparent transmisogyny while pointing out the ways in which virulent transmisogyny takes form online as transmisogynists are especially emboldened behind the shield of anonymity. However, I was / am at a vulnerable and relatively early stage in my social transition, where I am experimenting with different aspects of my femininity and womanhood, so this task proved far too dehumanizing an ordeal and too taxing on my mental health for me to complete. Ultimately, I decided to delete the anons and have been attempting to forget what the messages contained ever since.

Earlier in May, I posted about how as a Black TMA, I must be viscerally aware of how my thoughts and ideas are perceived by others online, and how sharing my truths politely (re: respectably) on a public forum does little to protect me from routine transmisogynistic onslaughts. This sentiment resonates true months later. Furthermore, I see now that hateful transmisogynistic anons have little to nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the deep-rooted insecurities and traumas we all carry with us as (un)willing perpetrators / victims of the Patriarchy. It’s simply convenient that I, an outspoken Black transfem, am nearby in hypervisible splendor to project these traumas onto.

The Patriarchy relegates transfems / TMAs to a third social class of failed women, and the margins of this third category is maintained by subjugation, objectification, and immolation of those within its bounds. In other words, transfems function as sacrificial lambs. Feeling aggrieved because of capitalistic domination? Find a transfem to murder. Feeling impotent because of (G)endered expectations thrust on your body? Find a transfem to lambast. Feeling directionless in response to virtually anything spiraling out of your control in your life? Find a transfem to fetishize, ejaculate on, and rape. This heinous behavior is encouraged and enthusiastically endorsed by all patriarchal institutions because transfems exist to be consumed in whatever sick dehumanizing erotic release fantasy white-cisheteropatriarchal society needs of us.

Our fight as transfems, particularly Black / Indigenous / darkskin / impoverished / fat / disabled / neurodivergent transfems, is irrefutably existential. From our births, we are lied to that our experiences aren’t valid, that our truths aren’t true, and we are mocked while being literally and metaphorically brutalized whether we stand in defiance of these injustices or not. When transfems condemn this quotidian violence, this inhumane treatment from our communities, this fraught situation and responsibility we inherited as a perverse birthright, we are silenced. And, when the world is finished with us, we are disposed of.

[nuditorium]

the ease and the rate at which we dispose people is seriously fucked. when we have known people for so long or so little. when they haven’t done nothing wrong, said anything wrong but will still remain disposable by the population is not understood by me. we are so quick to cut people off for no reason or without an attempt to retry or give them an understanding. to cut strangers off and see them as numbers. to see them as less than. the vast majority see themselves as better than. we all have our own individualized hierarchies and many put their own selves at the top of the pyramid in their heads. This results in the disposing and dislike of those who haven’t reached our egotistical views of ourselves. We put others on a higher area too where we see them as “better than us” which inevitably causes fear, intimidation, and compliance to that person because you want to be like them. it all and will always boil down to class structure, racial structures, fatphobia, sexism, white supremacy, beauty standards (eurocentrisms too), etc.

A few problems that we face in our time is 1. being fast paced all the time which results in thinking with your hand rather than your brain and heart 2. we see ourselves as better than which creates a hireracy and structures of oppressions 3. we become desensitized with peoples own experiences, emotions, and life. 4. a lot of the times thinking with your heart is demonized which helps make people feel comfortable that they can act rudely as it’s justified in the western and european world.

[crystallineprincess]

Gillian from Jessica Jones S3x05, Make a Wish. There was obviously a lot of purpose and power in having a trans character deliver this line, and something about this and many of the themes of S3 resonated with me in general as someone who’s been part of queer and activist families/communities who treat each other as disposable. I’ve lost too many people close to me, sometimes over petty bullshit, sometimes over incredibly difficult situations that we still shouldn’t let get in the way of Us. I’m sure most of us have. Love each other.

[protoslacker]

Perhaps more than any other economic system or mode of production, capitalism seems to make people as well as natural resources disposable. This happens both globally and within each country. Such disposability has often been seen with regard to race, ethnicity, gender, and for immigrants. We can also observe this disposability by looking at what happened to previous capitalist centers like Potosi or Caribbean sugar plantations. But today, we can also see this happening in the capitalist heartland of the United States. People who were once the engine and backbone of industrial capitalism seem to be no longer needed. As anthropologist Marc Edelman writes: “Sacrifice zones–abandoned, economically shattered places, with growing social and health problems–are spreading in historically white rural areas and small towns across the United States. Rural decline, rooted in economic restructuring and financialization, exacerbates racial resentment and fosters regressive authoritarian politics” (February 2018).

Jason Antrosio at Living Anthropologically. Anthropology on Economics

Is Capitalism the Best Economic System?

[to-be-seen-as-human]

She Can’t Speak or Think, She’s the Perfect Woman!

Growing up in a society that, like most, belittled femininity whilst also demonizing women who didn’t fit into the expectations of women, I learned a lot.

You must fit the role of a woman to be treated with respect and dignity.

Even if you do fit into those traditional roles, you also must deal with not being seen as fully human.

The perfect woman is one that does not voice her opinion, attends to the men in her life, and looks pretty.

If I’m being honest, I resent this aspect of society. The part that isolates women and treats us as objects.

How is that any way to live?

Answer?

It’s not.

And women, for centuries, have asserted this protest. We have made it known that we are people. In a perfect world, this demand would be heeded, and we would be treated as such in all walks of life. But in a perfect would, misogyny wouldn’t exist. So…here we are.

To jump over centuries of oppression and resistance…the 21st century has opened up the seemingly endless possibilities that misogyny can take the form of. One of which being a replacement of a woman.

You might ask yourself: How?

Answer?

A.I.

I saw a video recently from the BBC World Service that filled me with so much dread and disgust I just knew I had to talk about it. This isn’t a surprising emergence at all. Something about A.I. appeals to people. Something about these A.I. models or programs like ChatGPT or Claude scratch that connectivity itch that people have. Does it matter that they’re not real? Absolutely not. What matters is that they are tailored for you. They are meant to be agreeable. They are not meant to be human.

So even though this isn’t a new occurrence, this video still left a bad taste in my mouth.

Why is that?

The popularity of this A.I. model and others like it is what drew my eye. The consumer base is mainly composed of men. The fact that these models are made to draw in the eye and change at a whim is particularly disturbing.

Whether you like the typical IG influencer or not, the fact that something like this exists in an already over saturated field is quite alarming. It raises the question as to what makes an A.I. model so appealing.

A.I. models are something women can never be, malleable and thoughtless. The sheer fact that they are no more than inanimate entities and yet attract the same attention as human models asserts an unavoidable truth in this society.

Women are seems as objects.

Replaceable.

To see that this model is receiving advertising opportunities treats our contributions as disposable. The consumers love the look of a woman, but they detest the fact that she may have a brain and full autonomy.

I look to this video (and troubling trend) as a reminder. In a world that is not made to protect or value you, you must find that within yourself. Misogyny is embedded into the very fabric of society. We will likely never escape this. The inevitable truth is that we must take this truth and combat it.

So to thrive in this world, I have learned three things:

You must make yourself known in this world, lest you’ll be forgotten.

You have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Doing things that bring you anxiety, yet present a net good for all.

This harkens back to #2, be a feminist. That means analyzing your feeling about women and womanhood and asking yourself “Is this truly what I believe?”