#dread.txt

[dreadfulman]

Placing misogyny as an inherent trait of men/masculinity is just another form of "boys will be boys" btw. You cannot ever meaningfully hold misogynists accountable if you treat it as an inherent trait of their identify and not bigotry they are willfully perpetuating.

[dread-red-queen]

Struggle to keep motivated when writing fan ficiton?

try this game on steam, its a little cat on your task bar that drums the task bar when you type, the more you type the more pats he does and you can unlock cute hats for it. its like a little reward for every letter you type or every click of your mouse as you edit XD

Bongo Cat on Steam

Bongo cat needs your help. Bongo cat needz more hatz!!! Every time you press a key, Bongo cat will punch your taskbar. Type, click, play, wo

its so damn cute XD, it just runs in the background while you work lol

[dreadfulman]

It is genuinely fascinating how many feminist cis women, including those who are on paper openly supportive of trans people, struggle to actually think about trans men as a concept.

A few months ago I ended up having a very long talk with a friend of a friend. She told me that she'd never really spoken to a trans man before, the only trans people she knew were trans women. There was a point, after the third time I reminded her that I was a man, that she just sorta of slotted me into her mental box of "man", and I could tell that happened because after that point she started trying to explain things to me as if I was a cis man.

I categorically do not "pass" and likely never will. I'm very short, my hips are prominent because I'm fat, I keep my hair long, charitably I could be said to have a baby face, I have D-cups and cannot bind due to spinal problems. To the majority of cis people I do not "look like a man".

But for the rest of the conversation I had with this friend of a friend I had to keep reminding her of how other people are going to view me, because there was no room in her mental idea of "man" for a man who is not treated as one. This was not malicious on her part, she was very nice to me, and I believe her when she says she wants to support trans people. I do not think she was lying when she told me how horrified she was to learn about how her trans woman friends were treated.

She said she was envious of me going out alone and how I need to understand that's a facet of male privilege and I asked her to look at me and explain why I'd be any safer. She was shocked to learn that I've been catcalled, been assaulted, that I regularly get spoken down to by cis men, shocked to learn I don't have a single transmasc friend who hasn't. She couldn't understand that I'm going to be treated the same by misogynists as any fat cis woman who doesn't wear makeup. There was no room in her feminism for trans men, because there was no room in her understanding of gender for men who are not cis.

We ended up talking about politics. She told me she was terrified of abortion being banned, and that this would never be a threat if men could get pregnant.

[dreadfulman]

Everyone who got annoyed at me over the cis woman who couldn't understand a man knowing what experiencing misogyny is like post is proving my point btw.

Everyone who had something to say about "do you want to be seen as a man or not" is proving my exact point that people cannot fully accept the notion of men who are not welcomed into the boys club of cis manhood. The notion of "Man" is entwined inextricably with Power, Control, if I am a man that must mean I wear The Boot because Man means Wearing The Boot. You want me to chose between my sense of self and my lived experiences because to you, a "real man" would not have had my experiences.

You people are incapable of understanding gender as an internal sense of self and not as a magic spell. You fail to progress your feminism past a no boys allowed sign hung on the door of a playhouse. You are deeply fucking unserious and it's frankly embarrassing.

There's a serious problem in progressive spaces wrt seeing people as entire people with flexible experiences and not just identities listed like Pokémon types. Be better.

[dreadfulman]

It is very funny that I have never met a trans woman irl who has been disbelieving or surprised that I, a non-passing FtM, do not feel safe in female only spaces. Maybe confused or curious but if I explain "well a lot of people will read me as a butch lesbian" not a single one has ever gone on to try and explain that actually I am still perfectly safe, because they understand that the "wrong" kind of woman is also deemed as dangerous. And when you are seen as dangerous you are yourself in danger.

I have faced violence specifically *for* being the "incorrect" type of "female" in a female only space, I have faced this before I even came out, before I realised I was not a girl. I know plenty of other trans men have, it's not splash damage, it's all punishment for existing outside of "safe" normality. A punch does not hurt less because the person who threw it thought I was something I'm not.

A lot of trans people on Tumblr talk about it like it's just, utterly impossible for trans men to also be unsafe in both single sex areas similarly to how trans women are, and while I'm glad that some of us *are* safe it is not a universal guarantee. The issue is that as long as we exist in a society where certain presentations and appearances are read by the majority as sexually threatening, then none of us are truly safe from the danger that represents.

[dreadfulman]

I do find it funny how every now and then some trans man on the other side of the discourse will log on, brag for 2-6 paragraphs about how his life is going great and finish that up by going "yeah so as you can see transandrophobia doesn't exist" before calling it a day. Like okay good for you man what does this have to do with like, other people though?

[dreadfulman]

Love that there's a contingency of people reacting to the UK ruling as if it's crazy and laughable that it could effect anyone other than trans woman. And by love I mean "grimly amused by people's aversion to think beyond a surface level even when it's against their best interests." Because I've been seeing other trans people talk about how it only affects trans women and I want to put my head through a wall because no dipshit this has your ass in the line of fire too.

It does not take a huge amount of brain power to ask "would it possibly be terrible for some trans people to be forcibly legally trapped in womanhood? The same way it is terrible for others to be forcibly legally denied it?" And the answer is yes it is violently stripping people's self determination from them in order to force them into humiliating, unsafe, and outright dangerous situations. This is very bad. This goes double for intersex people who are already constantly under threat from a rigid sex binary being violently enforced on them, and drawing sharp lines in the sand around a specific gender does not bode anything well for folks with atypical or varied chromosomes/sex characteristics.

It is darkly funny that some people are incapable of seeing this as anything other than a dangerous blow against trans women specifically, because while I'm sure a lot of people just refuse to think about it for longer than ten seconds, I can't help but wonder how many of them see it this way because they've internalised the fight for trans rights as being inextricably linked with the right to be a woman. I do not think some people can entirely process that many people don't want to be women.

[dreadfulman]

Happy Pride, please remember

- Gender is an internal sense of self, not a magic spell, and does not guarantee anything. Listen to your trans siblings and give space for eachother's experiences.

- Intersex people are not a prop to explain the existence of transness. They are in the fight with you. Have their back or keep your mouth shut. We do not need to step on them to justify why we are here.

- Silence the devil on your shoulder calling other queer identities cringe. He's a fed.

- Yes this means softboi ukulele music transmascs/MTG doggirl transbians/Bungenders/Arsongenders(I've never seen someone call themselves this but I think it sounds sick as hell)/starplatonic aceflux demiro polyams/whoever the fuck you think it's ok to make fun of because you cannot kill the beast within that cringes at labels you don't use.

- Free yourself from the shackles of bio and gender essentialism.