#maddenposts

[ancientson]

hi I cant find what's wrong with urls like born to baeddel anywhere, would you be okay explaining?

It's the baeddel part.

"Baeddel" is a word that was adopted by an abusive group of trans lesbian separatist radfems a few years ago. They claimed the word "baeddel," which was originally used as a slur against feminine men, intersex people, and trans women, is the linguistic root of the word "bad." While this is one proposed possibility, it's actually not very likely and there are a lot of much more likely roots for "bad;" there are a number of place names that seem to come from the word, and it's from Old English and fell into obscurity long before "bad" became a term people used; for centuries after "baeddel" stopped being used, people said "evil" instead of bad. I'm not a linguist myself, but a linguist has deconstructed this idea and explained in better detail than I can why it's unlikely (his name is Luke, but I can't remember his url off the top of my head).

The reason they started calling themselves baeddels, under the assumption that it was the root of "bad," was because they though that the only real oppression, from which all other oppressions stem, was transmisogyny, and that trans women were the most oppressed people worldwide. It goes without saying that their group was predominantly white and never gained popularity among non-white trans women.

One of their key actions, and the reason people started disliking them (aside from, you know, the gender essentialism and radfem ideas that are only a hair away from TERF beliefs), was that they were especially hostile towards trans men, transmascs, and afab trans people in general. They just decided on their own that we don't face oppression and refused to listen when we tried to explain otherwise. They replaced the "male-bodied people are inherently oppressors and female-bodied people are inherently the victims" ideology that TERFs are famous for with their slightly tweaked "men are inherently oppressors and women, especially us, are inherently victims" ideology, so they struck out particularly aggressively against trans men because they had the power to hurt us in ways they can't hurt cis men. They would do things like intentionally try to trigger our dysphoria and try to push us out of trans spaces; I actually experienced that. After I was sexually assaulted, I went to a trans Facebook group to talk through it since I couldn't talk to my irl friends about it, and because I used the word "misogyny" to describe one of the most dysphoria-inducing parts of what I went through, a baeddel and her following got me banned from every trans Facebook group I was in except an afab-only one over the course of half an hour, because I "didn't experience misogyny since you're not a woman."

Ultimately, people had to stop calling themselves baeddels when it became guache to do so after the accusations started coming in. The core group who'd started it tried to make a "safe house" for other baeddels, and one of the founding members raped someone there. There were also allegations of abuse directed at other prominent members. When the group fell apart, several others who'd been sucked in began to speak out; apparently, there were a lot of cult-like elements and grooming practices in place, and vulnerable, newly-out trans women who didn't get have much connection to the wider trans community were their primary targets. They told these girls that no one else, not even other trans people, could be trusted; only baeddels were safe, and only baeddels didn't want to hurt them. These victims started speaking out a ton about the cult-like elements and grooming experiences once the abuse and rape allegations came out.

But baeddelism didn't go away just because people stopped using that word. They kept the ideology and just divorced it from the word; that's why so many people think trans men just don't face specific oppression. The ideology has been spreading and getting worse lately, and trans men in particular are being targeted to the point where a lot of us don't feel safe in trans spaces and have been driven out of spaces with other trans people in them, even if those spaces aren't specifically trans spaces. It's happened to me. But now that the allegations are in the past, people have started reclaiming the term and ideology again openly.

If someone is calling themself a baeddel, there are a few things that guarantees that they believe, even if they'll deny it if directly confronted (although I've also seen them say all of these things openly at least once):

Trans women are The Most Oppressed People, always, regardless of any other intersecting identities and privileges

Trans men are the worst kind of men because they've actively chosen to identify as The Oppressor (because being trans is a choice but only if you're a trans man/transmasc)

Trans men are therefore not to be trusted, inherently abusive and violent, become monsters when they start T (sound familiar?), etc.

Trans women should have trans women-only spaces, but trans men shouldn't, and trans women's voices should always be prioritized even if the conversation is about another group

If trans men try to talk about their own oppression, they're actively harming trans women and being transmisogynistic by pulling attention away from transmisogyny, which is a real issue

Men are always evil and women are always victims (hence the abusers being drawn to the movement since it absolves them of suspicion)

Trans women who don't agree with baeddelism are brainwashed and must hate themselves

All transphobia is rooted in transmisogyny and trans men who are hurt by it are just collateral damage and can't be targeted by misogyny or transphobia in unique ways

Etc.

So, while baeddels are very much a minority (and I want to make it clear that they DO NOT speak for all trans women, and most trans women disagree with their beliefs; it's individual people who are the issue here and trans women as a whole are not to blame, nor do they deserve to be lumped in with baeddels just because they speak about transmisogyny or call out trans men who are saying harmful things; trans women are victims of baeddels, too), they're still dangerous. They've hurt a lot of people, both trans men/transmascs they targeted and trans women who were manipulated into being a part of their club and then abused there. Their ideology is very similar to terf ideology in a lot of ways, and while the original intention was positive (it was supposed to be about addressing transmisogyny), it became something else very quickly. Anyone who's reclaiming the label now likely knows by now how bad they were (because both trans men and former baeddels who were harmed as a part of their group have been speaking out about them a ton lately), and should therefore be regarded with suspicion because by claiming that term, they're openly saying that the abuse directed at trans people of all genders isn't a dealbreaker for them; in fact, it's something to be defended. Baeddelism is no better than transmedicalism or the transmisogyny that trans men like Buck Angel spout. Their victims deserve to be respected, and a part of that means not proudly adopting their moniker.

[ancientson]

Being a man ❤️

Loving men ❤️

Being a man who loves men ❤️

Men ❤️

[ancientson]

A few thoughts on marginalized masculinities:

Trans men are a punching bag who become targets of all the vitriol women feel towards cis men for the harm they do, with few or none of the privileges. Cis men have too much power for people who are angry at the patriarchy to destroy them, and actually trying to dismantle the patriarchy that creates the problems that are hurting everyone takes more work than a lot of people, even victims of it, are willing to put in. It's much easier to just punch down or laterally at us; we're men, so we're fair targets, and because we're trans and don't have the same power that cis men have, we can't do much to stop them from utterly destroying us. Which is why they actively silence us when we try to talk about the forms of oppression unique to us; if we experience unique oppressions, many of them as direct results of the patriarchy, and don't magically gain male privilege the moment we realize we're men, then they're being kind of shitty when they hurt us, and it's not the blow to the patriarchy they want it to be because we're just another group of the patriarchy's victims.

The same is true for other marginalized men - white women can do this to BIMOC because they have white privilege and can use that as a weapon against men who aren't white in ways they can't hurt white men. Abled women do it to disabled men, too; for example, they use the stereotype of autistic men being creeps as an excuse to hurt them, even when they haven't done anything. Often, women who do this will pay lip service to support for things like racial equality, but in their minds, they've firmly divorced racial issues from gender issues. They ignore the overlap. This way, they can feel progressive with only a base, surface-level understanding of the ways race overlaps with other forms of privilege and oppression, and thus avoid having to do any serious thinking about the ways they perpetuate racism through means other than directly and visibly acting racist the way white people in viral videos do. This is also why they routinely ignore women of color who try to talk about things like misogynoir and the ways race and gender intersect in their feminism and in their lives.

I don't think anyone here is denying that the patriarchy exists or that it's a problem. No one is denying that men have privileges in some ways. But those privileges are only there when men are seen as men, or as the right type of men; a man with a disability is a failed man. A man of color is a threat. A trans man isn't a man at all; he's a delusional woman. So maybe in some contexts, yes, all of those men have privileges and do benefit from the patriarchy, but in other contexts, their masculinity is just the opposite of a privilege; a Black man existing is a threat of violence, so it becomes acceptable to shoot him. A male victim of sexual violence doesn't need to be taken seriously or given access to resources to heal because men always want sex. A trans man is actively choosing to identify as the oppressor and therefore deserves no support from or access to trans spaces. All of these sentiments are incorrect and bigoted, but we've all seen them weaponized.

Using what privileges you do have to attack the most vulnerable men you can find because they can't necessarily do anything about it isn't the blow to the patriarchy you think it is. Actually dismantling the patriarchy and gendered systems of oppression requires dismantling other forms of oppression, too, because they're intimately connected. Misogyny will always be a problem as long as racism, ableism, transphobia, etc. are problems. The solution isn't lateral aggression or punching down, it's solidarity.

[ancientson]

So, we need to address the system that's been adopted online of quantifying oppression based on identity. We've decided that certain identities must always be prioritized over others, even over other marginalized identities. This is incredibly harmful and contributes to more oppression because it allows one identity to be used as leverage to oppress another, or allows certain marginalized groups' needs to simply be ignored.

Who is more oppressed? An upper-middle-class Black trans woman with an accepting family, or a homeless white trans man whose family has cut him off?

Who is more oppressed? A wheelchair-bound, Muslim, white cis man, or a lesbian, Latina, able-bodied cis woman with a facial deformity?

A white sex worker with PTSD related to sexual assault, or a mechanic with an opioid addiction from pain pills only ever taken as directed to treat a bad back? Both are straight cis women.

A bisexual Indigenous man or a heterosexual Muslim immigrant with an accent?

A straight, cis South Asian man with a minor learning disability or a white-passing nonbinary person with a Romani father and severe tourettes?

Which of all of these people is the most oppressed?

The answers to these questions should give you pause. Do any seem really obvious? Or do you feel like you'd need more information to make a call? There's not a right answer here to who is more oppressed because that's not the point; every single one of these people is marginalized and experiences oppression. Whose voice is more important in any given scenario depends on context, if there even is one voice that's more important. Some of the people in the scenarios might have shared or even competing needs - the first two are both trans and both need access to trans resources, the sex worker and the mechanic both suffer from job-related mental health problems that severely impact their lives, and the last two are both disabled and are going have different needs and be treated differently because of it.

The point is, while these examples are hypothetical, different people with different identities and backgrounds face different types of oppression, and it doesn't help any of them to try to quantify that oppression to determine who is more in need of/deserving of having their voices listened to, having access to care, or the help and sympathy of allies and others.

[ancientson]

Just read a journal article on the rise of TERFs in Korea and holy shit, I understand terf-ism and identity politics so much better now.

[ancientson]

Things that are not intrusive thoughts:

Lmao crunchy leaf... I should bite it XD

Thoughts, opinions, jokes, etc. you get a sudden urge to post on social media

Thoughts you need to express after something bad happens

Having a song stuck in your head

Things that are intrusive thoughts:

Thoughts about committing violent acts that you don't actually want to commit (e.g. "What if I just hurt or killed that person or animal right now?")

Thoughts about self-harm you don't actually want to act on (e.g. graphic images of yourself sticking a pin through your cheek)

Slurs or cruel things when you look at people that don't reflect your actual opinions or beliefs

Other violent or disturbing thoughts that aren't reflective of who you are, but which cause distress because they intrude and force you to think them anyway

Stop calling things intrusive thoughts when they aren't. All that does is make it harder for people who actually suffer from them to get help. It diminishes the distressing nature of real intrusive thoughts and makes it so people who have them feel like they're the only ones with those thoughts. People who do experience intrusive thoughts find them distressing because they can have disturbing content or make them anxious because they worry that the thoughts reflect something in them contrary to who they thought they were (which they don't; intrusive thoughts aren't reflective of your nature, but the worry that they are is common - that's why they're disturbing).

No, not everyone experiences regular intrusive thoughts. No, it's not harmless to take a term like this and use it as you please if it means changing the definition. Don't let this become like "triggered."

[ancientson]

Trans women have a transandrophobia problem, trans men have a transmisogyny problem, nonbinary people have both transmisogyny and transandrophobia problems, and binary trans people have a ceterophobia problem. It's on all of us to fix it. Being trans does not make you immune to bigotry against other trans people, and it doesn't excuse it, either.

[ancientson]

URGENT! If you're in Colorado, please, please be careful! If you know any trans men or transmasc people who might be in Colorado soon, please let them know about this. If you know any trans or LGBTQ+ groups, community centers, etc. in Colorado, make sure they're aware!

If you're cis, it's encouraged that you reblog this. Just spreading the word is a great opportunity to be an ally.