#slurs-

[somasis-moved]

uh, same i guess. whatever i can’t even make a funy post from this

the song doesn’t even have lyrics. what does the title mean here

[90stvqueen]

i’ve always felt a bit like i couldn’t reclaim the word dyke bc i wasn’t butch... is this a common thing or have i put something on the word that isn’t there?

[caldroid]

i don’t care if you’re lgbt and refer to yourself as queer, that’s fine, whatever, but it is absolutely not your fucking right to refer to the ENTIRE lgbt community using a slur, and i don’t understand how people don’t get this

would you refer to women as the “bitch community” ??? it’s the same thing. stop grouping us under a slur not everyone wants to reclaim

[somasis-moved]

@adrianianam replied to your photo “uh, same i guess. whatever i can’t even make a funy post from this ...”

depending on how old this record is, "fagged out" might be old slang for "exhausted" and might not have had any homophobic connotations at the time

oh wow. it’s probably like late late 60s if i had to guess, looking it up on discogs the date is unknown but that’s what it sounds like to me

learned something new today

[somasis-moved]

Mass media images of “biological males” dressing and acting in a feminine manner could potentially challenge mainstream notions of gender, but the way they are generally presented in these feminization scenes ensures that this never happens. The media neutralizes the potential threat that trans femininities pose to the category of “woman” by playing to the audience’s subconscious belief that femininity itself is artificial. After all, while most people assume that women are naturally feminine, they also (rather hypocritically) require them to spend an hour or two each day putting on their faces and getting all dressed up in order to meet societal standards for femininity (unlike men, whose masculinity is presumed to come directly from who he is and what he does). In fact, it’s the assumption that femininity is inherently “contrived,” “frivolous,” and “manipulative” that allows masculinity to always come off as “natural,” “practical,” and “sincere” by comparison. Thus, the media is able to depict trans women donning feminine attire and accessories without ever giving the impression that they achieve “true” femaleness in the process. Further, by focusing on the most feminine of artifices, the media evokes the idea that trans women are living out some sort of sexual fetish. This sexualization of trans women’s motives for transitioning not only belittles trans women’s female identities, but encourages the objectification of women as a whole.

Of course, what always goes unseen are the great lengths to which producers will go to depict lurid and superficial scenes in which trans women get all dolled up in pretty clothes and cosmetics. Shawna Virago, a San Francisco trans activist, musician, and director of the Tranny Fest film festival, has experienced several such incidents with local news producers. For instance, when Virago was organizing a forum to facilitate communication between police and the trans community, a newspaper reporter approached her and other transgender activists to write an article about them. However, the paper was interested not in their politics but in their transitions. “They wanted each of us to include ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures,” Shawna said. “This pissed me off, and I tried to explain to the writer that the before-and-after stuff had nothing to do with police abuse and other issues, like trans women and HIV, but he didn’t get it. So I was cut from the piece.”

A few years later, someone from another paper contacted Virago and asked to photograph her “getting ready” to go out: “I told him I didn’t think having a picture of me rolling out of bed and hustling to catch [the bus] would make for a compelling photo. He said, ‘You know, getting pretty, putting on makeup.’ I refused, but they did get a trans woman who complied, and there she was, putting on mascara and lipstick and a pretty dress, none of which had anything to do with the article, which was purportedly about political and social challenges the trans community faced.”

Trans woman Nancy Nangeroni and her partner Gordene O. MacKenzie, who together host the radio program GenderTalk, described two similar incidents on one of their programs. In both cases, while they were being filmed, the media producers wanted to get footage of the two of them putting on makeup together (requests that Nangeroni and MacKenzie denied). I myself had a similar experience back in 2001, just before I began taking hormones. A friend arranged for me to meet with someone who was doing a film about the transgender movement. The filmmaker was noticeably disappointed when I showed up looking like a somewhat normal guy, wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. She eventually asked me if I would mind putting on lipstick while she filmed me. I told her that wearing lipstick had nothing to do with the fact that I was transgender or that I identified as female. She shot a small amount of footage anyway (sans lipstick) and said she would get in touch with me if she decided to use any of it. I never heard back from her.

When audiences watch scenes of trans women putting on skirts and makeup, they are not necessarily seeing a reflection of the values of those trans women; they are witnessing TV, film, and news producers’ obsessions with all objects commonly associated with female sexuality. In other words, the media’s and audience’s fascination with the feminization of trans women is a by-product of their sexualization of all women.

[somasis-moved]

By embracing our own femaleness and femininity, we, in a sense, cast a shadow of doubt over the supposed supremacy of maleness and masculinity. In order to lessen the threat we pose to the male-centered gender hierarchy, our culture (primarily via the media) uses every tactic in its arsenal of traditional sexism to dismiss us:

The media hyperfeminizes us by accompanying stories about trans women with pictures of us putting on makeup, dresses, and high-heeled shoes in an attempt to highlight the supposed “frivolous” nature of our femaleness, or by portraying trans women as having derogatory feminineassociated character traits such as being weak, confused, passive, or mousy.

The media hypersexualizes us by creating the impression that most trans women are sex workers or sexual deceivers, and by asserting that we transition for primarily sexual reasons (e.g., to prey on innocent straight men or to fulfill some kind of bizarre sex fantasy). Such depictions not only belittle trans women’s motives for transitioning, but implicitly suggest that women as a whole have no worth beyond their ability to be sexualized.

The media objectifies our bodies by sensationalizing sex reassignment surgery and openly discussing our “man-made vaginas” without any of the discretion that normally accompanies discussions about genitals. Further, those of us who have not had surgery are constantly being reduced to our body parts, whether by the creators of tranny porn who overemphasize and exaggerate our penises (thus distorting trans women into “she-males” and “chicks with dicks”) or by other people who have been so brainwashed by phallocentricism that they believe that the mere presence of a penis can trump the femaleness of our identities, our personalities, and the rest of our bodies.

...she phrased this really good but this explains a lot as to why it’s always bothered me seeing other trans women in media always immediately put next to very stereotypically feminine stuff.

[somasis-moved]

hey just wondering but what exactly makes it okay for some random cis girl in my class to say “hey i like your panties they have birds on them” because she could see the band of my underwear is she trying to be funny because I’m a girl but I don’t look like one funny queer wannabe tranny lol haha