Collective Shout, Itch.io content bans, and radical feminism
Just in case anyone wants to argue that the recent wave of anti-nsfw (and specifically “anti-porn”) campaigning isn’t based in transphobia and specifically transmisogyny, here are some fun facts about Melinda Tankard Reist, the Director of Collective Shout (the organization behind most of these campaigns):
She was also a founding director of Women’s Forum Australia, a conservative think tank that actively campaigned against abortion legislation, spread conspiracy theories about the health dangers of wi-fi, and succsefully got trans-positive sex ed books taken out of stores after abusing and harrassing employees.
She worked as a political advisor to Brian Harradine, a far-right Australian Senator with ties to conservative Christian groups who opposed same-sex marriage, abortion, and pornography.
She publishes her books through Spinifex press, a self-described “radical feminist” publishing house that has worked with other transphobic authors in the past.
And some about Collective Shout’s Campaigns Manager, Caitlin Roper:
Wrote Prositution Narratives, a collection of stories meant to act as evidence for the abolition of sex work (edited by none other than Melinda Tankard Reist, published by Spinifex Press).
Compares queer theorists to “paedophile rights activists”.
Is a vocal advocate and supporter of FiLiA, a radical feminist conference that has repeatedly argued that “trans rights are inherently in conflict with sex based women’s rights”.
And, just for fun, some things you might not have known about Collective Shout:
Campaigned to have the visas of Tyler, the Creator and Snoop Dogg revoked on the basis of rap music “glorifying sexual violence against women”.
Has partnerships with several transphobic “women’s rights” organizations such as Exodus Cry (whose founder compared abortion to the Holocaust) and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (which supported the EARN IT act and lobbied against the legalization of same-sex marriage)
The New Chaser: Objectification of Trans Women in the Age of Performative Allyship
In June of 2024, queer and trans-owned magazine Autostraddle published “A Trans Guy’s Guide to Picking Up a Trans Girl”. Written by Buzzfeed alum Gabe Dunn, the article immediately became the subject of debate with over 200 more comments than any of the author’s other articles. Many took offense, describing the article’s suggestions as “manipulative,” “dehumanizing,” and “transmisogynystic claptrap.” Indeed, the article reads more like a man trying desperately to hide his objectification of trans women behind a veil of queer solidarity and pithy stereotypes than real dating advice. Many claimed Dunn to be a chaser, someone who pursues trans women out of a fetishistic sexual desire rather than actual romantic interest. Though the article itself was not taken down, Autostraddle deleted social media posts about the article after significant public backlash.
Amid these negative comments, there were also several trans women who wrote they wished someone would show them the care and interest the article suggests; how could someone be a chaser, they seem to say, if they take the time to listen to you and engage in your interests? Dunn does not fit with the image of chasers they know: those chasers are often cis men who are not afraid to put their vapid fetishization and dehumanizing beliefs at the forefront. They show no interest outside of physical anatomy, and imply or outright threaten physical violence if the object of their desire shows any agency or self-worth. They make it clear that trans women need to fit into a narrow caricature of objectified submissiveness, and that their personalities and interests don’t matter. Dunn’s article seemingly contains none of these red flags, and even suggests an understanding and connection with trans women. Yet the criticisms are hardly unfounded, and upon closer inspection a different set of more subtle and insidious warning signs emerges.
The truth is that even people with a nominative interest in trans womens’ lives, interests, and personhood can be chasers; in fact, chasers have shifted away from blatant objectification and towards veiled transmisogyny as trans issues and identities have gained stronger footholds in American culture. New chasers know what not to say and how not to act, but they haven’t analyzed any of their biases. They don’t see trans women as people worthy of real respect, but they know that the rulebook for interacting with trans women has changed. Performance of allyship makes it easier for chasers to get close to trans women, to earn enough of their trust to start a relationship. These relationships can look healthy on the surface, but often still involve the chaser hurting their partner emotionally, socially, or even physically when their biases inevitably surface.
Transgender people, and trans women specifically, are often the target of performative allyship even outside of romance and sex. There is a significant gap between how many people will put rainbow flags in windows or make supportive posts on social media and how many will actually support and defend trans women. For example, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival—an annual women-only music festival started in 1976—adopted a trans-exclusionary “womyn-born-womyn” attendance policy in 1991. A survey of attendees conducted a year later showed that 73% supported trans women attending the festival, and trans women held an annual protest against the festival starting in 1995. Despite this, the festival organizers refused to change the transmisogynstic policy, and the festival saw consistent attendance for another 20 years until it closed its doors in 2015. Similar patterns of virtue signaling and empty support emerge on the personal level: the number of people who listen to and care about trans women is much higher than the number who continue to do so when sex is off the table. The new chaser takes up a significant portion of this gap. They claim to care about trans women and act the part of a respectful ally, but only ever in the context of sex, as Dunn’s “pick-up article” clearly shows.
Pick-up artistry has been dismissed as laughably sexist and ineffective since the late 2000s. Even the man who helped invent it has called its community “hateful” and “wounded”. Yet Gabe Dunn’s article shows how even the most sexist parts of dating culture can be repackaged as cute or endearing by smothering them in a veneer of queerness. By using progressive language, tongue-in-cheek references to common dating qualms, and appealing to a common queer identity, Dunn manages to put a new coat of rainbow paint on a familiar misogynistic practice. Even the title of the article admits the sexist structure that Dunn is drawing from, with nothing more than a transgender modifier slapped on the front. This use of queerness to disguise bigotry shows how, as usual, trans women have to be on guard for people who would use and dispose of us. It shows that there are still plenty of people who only think of us as sexual prospects they can trick into bed, even if those tricks have become a bit more sophisticated.
The negative comments are insightful and call attention to several hypocrisies within Dunn’s writing that reveal his underlying transmisogynistic beliefs. He suggests that his readers should “get to know her interests” and “listen to her,” but then relies on Reddit-born stereotypes to describe those hypothetical interests; niche video games, EDM, avant-garde film, and Dungeons & Dragons, among others. He refers to these hypothetical trans women as “the dolls,” which is at best a misguided use of a term specific to within the transfem community and at worst a dehumanizing diminutive. He congratulates the reader on the possibility of “enlightening and hella hot” sex, and makes the specific note to avoid complimenting her tits right away, “even if they are great tits. (You can compliment those later).” Despite all of his comments on how “stunning” and “unconventional” trans women are, he also bemoans that his readers have the “responsibility” to ask for a follow up date. Every paragraph seems to introduce stranger and more insulting ways to talk about a woman you’ve just met.
If all else fails, he suggests the reader “invite her to a trans thing,” a vague concept he puts little effort into defining even as he repeatedly proposes that the reader appeal to queer identity to pick up trans women. He repeats three times that trans guys have “advantage[s] over basic cis men,” and can use the “societal conditioning” that makes trans women trust trans men over cis men “to their advantage.” He even goes so far as to poke fun at the idea of “choosing the bear,” a commentary on the banality of sexual assault that asserts women would sooner choose to be alone in the woods with a wild animal than a man. It is as though Dunn is flipping a coin with every sentence, with one face saying that his readers need to show respect and interest for trans women and the other saying they are little more than targets to be reached. It’s this juxtaposition of queer solidarity and gross manipulation of trans women's preconceptions—this dichotomy of apparent feminist enlightenment and hidden sexist objectification——that typifies the new chaser.
The new chaser pays lip service to feminist ideas to get close, preying on the insecurity and vulnerability so many trans women experience. They make small talk, pay shallow compliments, giving just enough to establish a facade of allyship and respect. Once they’ve earned their target’s trust, they push the relationship towards sex. Often this is abrupt, and sometimes clumsy: it could be a shy text message asking for sex after months of silence, a sudden invasion of personal space during a lunch-and-bitch, or interrupting a trans woman mid-sentence to suggest they go back to their place to “netflix and chill”. The defining feature of this abrupt sexualization is that it is not a performance of genuine desire, but a bid for social control. Prominent transfeminist author Julia Serano calls this trans-sexualization, where “rather than empowering [trans women],” sexualization and sex itself is used to “leverage power over them.” For the new chaser, sexualization is primarily about keeping a trans woman under their influence rather than appreciating her as a person.
Someone being clumsy or forward with their sexual intent is not in and of itself chaser behavior or trans-sexualization. Unfortunately, the only way to know for certain is to see what happens when a trans woman turns them down, or when they get bored of whatever sex she does agree to. If they respect her boundaries and communicate openly with her, they are trustworthy. For the new chaser, however, any rejection is a sign that the game is over and they are free to show the vitriol, objectification, and villainization they’ve kept below the surface. When they no longer see their victim as a sexual prospect, they reveal how integral that sexualization was to their image of her—to their ability to treat her as human. Serano describes how common it is for chasers to act “dumbfounded and angered by [her] unwillingness to engage them” in a sexual nature, “as if the only reason to be out as transsexual was to[...] solicit sexual attention.” New chasers will accuse their victim of leading them on, playing with their feelings, manipulating or deceiving them. If she expresses her own feelings of hurt or manipulation, the chaser will say it’s unfair of her to attack them or assume their intentions. They’ll spread gossip about her in order to isolate her from the community. To them, the trans woman has stopped being a sexual object and instead become a bogeyman of sexual perversion, sociopathy, and deceit; they switch instantly and irreversibly to rhetoric that sounds much more like a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) than the trans ally they claimed to be.
Any trans woman who has dealt with these new chasers will explain how it feels like a mask is dropped or a cover torn off. It’s a betrayal, and it hurts. It leaves you confused, disoriented, and—since these new chasers commonly first attempt to isolate their prey—often without a strong support network to fall back on. But the bigger issue is that many victims of these new chasers never reject them, never see the mask slip. Many aren’t comfortable or practiced with upholding their own boundaries, so the chaser just uses them and tosses them aside, leaving the woman to think that there’s something wrong with her. This is why this issue is so important: these people traumatize our sisters. Too many have fallen victim to objectification and emotional betrayal, have suffered years of manipulation and abuse because they settled for the bare minimum. Over and over, trans women have said “they don’t misgender me” or “they listen to me sometimes” in defense of their chaser partners. That’s how poorly we are treated. How can we be proactive in preventing this mistreatment; what are the signs we can look for to protect ourselves?
In a perverse sort of luck, chasers can never completely hide the way they think about trans women. There are indicators you can look for, both in how they interact with others and how they interact with you. Look at the other people they hang out with: a room full of queer people lacking in trans women is a red flag. A group with one trans woman can be even worse, because she is almost certainly at the center of a storm of disrespect. Keep track of how people talk about trans women when they aren’t in the room. Is it a lot of gossip and sex jokes and not much else? Do they engage in callout culture? Are they just friends with any of the trans women they may know, or is it always sexual? If you have other transfem friends, don’t be afraid to ask if any have had bad experiences with this person. If they have a dating profile or you know their hookup preferences, do they only sleep with trans women? Do they only talk about trans women as doms and tops?
Pay attention to how they treat you: do they actually give you space to feel vulnerable, or does it feel like you’re inconveniencing them? Do they take an active interest in learning about you, or does it always end up being about them? Do they respect your boundaries, or do they get upset and accuse you of not liking or trusting them? Do they acknowledge the ways they can hurt others, or do they only ever act like they’re the victim? Are they capable of having a tough discussion without turning it into an argument or fight? If there is an argument or a fight, do they resort to personal insults or play the victim card instead of trying to understand your perspective?
Many of these are signs of emotionally unstable and manipulative people in general, rather than chasers specifically, but this is because chasers are manipulative and unstable people at their core. Even if they end up not being a new chaser, someone who fills a lot of these criteria is probably an unhealthy person to be around. It is also important to note that there are also still classic chasers out there, who do nothing to hide the way they objectify trans women. In reality these new chasers have probably been around just as long, but as performative allyship and politically correct language become more prevalent, so too does the type of person who will use those things to their advantage.
The more difficult question to answer is how to deal with the fallout of rejecting a new chaser. It can be incredibly hard to drop someone like this cleanly after they have latched onto you. The fallout may take the form of a loud, emotional confrontation or a quiet campaign of gossip and whispers, but it’s exhausting and awful to experience no matter how it looks. Unfortunately, this seems inevitable. It is the way chasers keep their power after the game is up—if you are the villain, then no one looks too hard at how they acted, and they can repeat the process with the next trans woman. Your best defense is to build a group of people you trust, tell them clearly and honestly what’s been going on, and hope they will have your back. For every chaser like Gabe Dunn who invites you to their place to play Fallout: New Vegas (which, by the way, is single-player) or takes you to so-called “queer events” because the only thing you have in common is queerness, there are a dozen trans women who have dealt with them and know what to look out for. Build your community, and look for the signs. The hope is to starve them out; force them to actually introspect and do the work of reckoning with their own transmisogyny. In the interim, it is enough to simply keep our own safe and secure.
WORKS CITED
Dunn, Gabe. “A Trans Guy’s Guide to Picking up a Trans Girl.” Autostraddle, 18 June 2024, www.autostraddle.com/a-trans-guys-guide-to-picking-up-a-trans-girl/. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
Nancy J. Burkholder (28 April 1993). "MWMF Anti-TS Awareness: 1992 Gender Survey Results (forwarded email message)". Google Groups. Archived from the original on 22 January 2011. Retrieved 18 June 2019.
Notopoulos, Katie. “The Man Who Helped Invent Pickup Artist Culture Now Sees It as “Hateful.”” BuzzFeed News, 23 Oct. 2015, www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/neil-strauss-is-worried-about-pickup-artists. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
Serano, Julia. Whipping Girl. Seal Press, 14 May 2007.
"InYourFace News Interview with Riki Anne Wilchins". Camp Trans. 25 August 1999. Archived from the original on August 17, 2000. Retrieved 17 October 2024.
Macdonald, Jocelyn (October 24, 2018). "Setting the Record Straight About MichFest". AfterEllen. Archived from the original on December 19, 2018. Retrieved 10 September 2019
Wikipedia contributors. "TERF (acronym)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 16 Oct. 2024. Web. 17 Oct. 2024.
'Trans' Before 'Girl': The Third-Gendering of Trans Women
I have found myself considering often recently the stark difference in comfort I feel when hanging out with a group of trans women as opposed to any other mix of people. The way I unfold and stretch into a warm familiarity in the presence of my sisters in ways I didn’t even know were possible; the years I spent hunched in on myself, slouched and cramped into something smaller than I am. I’ve wondered about why this is, why I feel this pressure even amongst lifelong friends who have never once been anything but supportive of me and my identity. Friends who stand up for me to others and go out of their way to be affirming. Even in a room full of gender-freaks and capital-Q Queers, I am still shrink-wrapped in tight discomfort, like fitting into clothes that aren’t too big or too small, but cut in just the right way that you know they look wrong on you. I have realized it is because in all of these spaces, the queerness of my identity is more important than my identity itself. I am never just a woman, I am always a transgender woman. I am always ‘trans’ before I am ‘girl’.
I think this phenomenon is clearly related to the fetishization of trans women, but not because it is fetishizing in itself. I don’t hang out with the kind of people who would read the Trans Girl Pick-Up Guide, and yet I still encounter this feeling of separation, of reduction and simplification and otherness, on a near-daily basis. I think this and the fetishization of trans women have the same root cause, which is the third-gendering of trans identities. The reduction of trans women to genitalia is certainly one part of this, but there are non-sexual aspects as well that are based in the way we define transgenderism itself. As long as transgenderism is marked as the switch from one gender to another, often but not always from the “assigned” gender to the “chosen” gender, it implicitly distances those people from the very gender identities they are trying to claim. My womanhood is always predicated on the context of my previous “manhood”. My transition, be it social or physical, is always the foundation upon which my womanhood is built; I am always ‘trans’ before I am ‘girl’. In this why I am consistently third-gendered by those around me, made to exist outside of the binary (this is not to say that I believe or support the gender binary; I think we should do away with it entirely. The problem lies from the binary being enforced and stapled over, of creating categories that are made other because of their movement).
There are, of course, spaces and times where I do claim and celebrate this foundation, this otherness. I am proud of my journey into self-realization, and my queerness is an important aspect of my personality that I don’t try to play down or hide. My experiences, my beliefs, my actions and my desires, all are influenced by this part of my identity in ways I may not even fully realize. I am trans, and I am proud of that. But when I claim myself as a trans woman, those two words are given equal weight; they share the podium. I am trans. I am woman. I am me. In the presence of others, though, I can feel the latter being pushed to the back, like a celebrity being pushed behind their representative. A child being pushed behind their parent. My womanhood is to be seen, but my transness is to be heard. I think that the emphasis on queer identity can sometimes be a tool of ostracization from the self, rather than simply ostracization from others. Especially in the current social climate of precise identification and ‘queer solidarity’, people become focused on the queer identity, and not enough on the identity itself. It is only when I am surrounded by other trans women that I feel like I exist without caveat or precursor; when I am truly, uncompromisingly ‘girl’. I know more trans women than I can count, and yet I can count on one hand the number of times I have heard any of them refer to themselves simply as ‘a woman’ around others. Only when we are alone can it become implicit, an understanding rather than a explanation, and we can simply exist in our womanhood together. When we can just be a couple of girls, hanging out.
Hopefully you’ve noticed that throughout this I have separated the word trans from the word woman. This is on purpose: I think that the increasing commonality of “transwoman” or “transfem” as a single word is a large part of this issue, because it intrinsically links our identity to a modified womanhood, a modified femininity. We can never take off the context of our separation; of our previous identity. And of course there are trans women who do identify with that label, who want to claim that context and wear it proud, always. I fully support any transfem who does so, as her self-realization is the most important thing. This, just like everything else, is just my observations from the lens of my own experience.
I don’t know that I have a call to action here besides asking people to be cognizant of what they prioritize when talking with trans women. Separate the words. Remember that her identity is not just her transition. Remember that she is a girl, too.
Whether it be increasingly ubiquitous memes like “girl dinner” or influencers pushing for tradcath housewife aesthetics in front of their $20,000 stoves, it seems like feminism has taken a backseat position in the cultural milieu of the past several years. Alongside direct legal retaliation against gender equality, such the damning overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 which has allowed for the banning of all abortions in 14 states so far, there is a more subtle war against feminism going on. Alongside this war is an intrinisically linked battle against queerness and, more specifically, transgender identity. It is no coincidence that 510 anti-LGBT+ laws were introduced in the US legal system in 2023 alone, only one year after the repeal of Roe v. Wade. This backlash has been happening as long as the equal rights movement itself, and knowing the history of that retaliation—and how different aspects of hate overlap—is vital for knowing how to stand effectively against it.
In the early 1990’s, alongside other prominent feminist titles like The Beauty Myth (1990) and Revolution From Within (1992), Susan Faludi wrote Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991). In this 550-page analysis, she presents an evidence-based case detailing the media-driven backlash against feminist surges of the 70's and 80’s, and how this backlash is part of a repetitive cycle of meager feminist victory and harsh cultural punishment. Faludi explains that this backlash comes in disguised forms, with many of its supporters even "consider[ing] themselves feminists". While she assures the reader that there are more direct forms of retaliation against feminism, Faludi holds that "[f]or the most part, its workings are encoded and internalized, diffuse and chameleonic” as the media tries to convince women that "you may be free and equal now[...] but you have never been more miserable". Important to this tactic is that the messages nominally come from feminist women; statistically unsupported thinkpieces of women choosing to leave higher education or the workforce, or the sudden rise in infertility treatments as women realize the need for motherhood. The call, Faludi tells us, is coming from inside the house.
This lens shines an important light on several cultural trends in the modern day, such as the rise of “tradwife” influencers and subtly misogynistic memes about feminine ineptitude: these are not actually a portrayal of womens choice, but a concerted effort to reaffirm the gendered status quo. They push a message that decries feminism as the cause of depression, anxiety, and loneliness in women—as Faludi puts it, they say that “it must be all that equality that’s causing all that pain”. It should be common knowledge at this point that influencers and social media personalities are often pushing different, hidden agendas—be that commercial sponsors or subtle political messaging—and anti-feminist rhetoric is no different. Mareike Fenja Bauer, a PhD candidate focusing on anti-feminist influencers, explains in her article “Beauty, baby and backlash? Anti-feminist influencers on TikTok” how these types of social media presences engage in different forms of metapolitics, using the portrayal of their supposed private lives to “[introduce] their audience to anti-feminist ideas and other anti-feminist actors[…] and commodify their anti-feminist worldview”. Similarly, MediaMatters columnists Jacina Hollins-Borges and Sophie Lawton point out that while “much of the tradwife content online appears innocuous[...] tradwife influencers will often use hashtags that are adjacent to alt-right and white supremacist movements and promote a far-right understanding of gender and culture”. Even some right-wing figures like Alex Clark have made moves to distance themselves from the “fetishization” and “regressive gender politics” of these types of influencers, which serves as a fairly damning indication of the supposedly innocent mothers and wives of the movement.
Between Faludi, Bauer, and Hollins-Borges & Lawton, we can see how the cycles of feminist backlash operate and how they have continued to operate for over 30 years. Reading a little bit between the lines, however, we also notice a common factor that these authors only glance: a revival of deep-seated Puritan reasoning and belief system that seems to drive this backlash along. Indeed, in his article “The Puritans Are Back: Did They Ever Really Leave?” PhD psychologist Dennis Clausen says that it is not so much of a revival but a consistent reflection of Puritan values in American society. He links regressive gender politics, anti-homeless initiatives, book bannings and the pushback against art and literature, as well as several other prominent cultural movements to core tenants of Puritan philosophy. The term “Purity Culture” has been coined to describe the way that puritanical tenets, specifically those that decry sex and intimacy, are peddled by right-wing influencers and have even invaded more left-leaning spaces. Moreso than just villainizing sex, purity culture pushes the idea that there is only one morally correct form of relationship; the heterosexual “relationship escalator”, as therapist and fromer youth pastor Jay Callahan describes: a man and a woman “meet, court, marry, have kids, stay together (exclusively) forever”. Anyone that falls outside of this escalator, meaning any queer person, is thus a sinner.
Here we find the key connection between anti-feminist backlash and queerphobic sentiment; here we see the doors that allow TERF rhetoric to be born. Falling prey to the subtle messages of “divine femininity” and anti-feminist backlash as well the anti-sex and anti-queer messaging of purity culture, TERFs form a belief that womanhood is something sacred, something ancestral, something inherent and divine. All of this is couched, however, in progressive-seeming language about identity and choice and agency. Trans Women become a boogey man, the ultimate perversion of both gender and sexual normalcy, as well as an infiltrator of the “truly feminine”. Transphobia is a key component of anti-feminist backlash because feminism—the emancipation from gender roles and hierarchy, the rethinking of what it “means” to be a woman—is what allows (in the TERF’s worldview) trans women to exist. To be a TERF is to be a contradiction; to claim a support of feminism while pushing the exact beliefs peddled by alt-right supporting social media influencers and anti-queer cultural Puritans. Understanding this contradiction is the first step to defending oneself.
U.S. v. Skrmetti: a Turning Point in Trans Healthcare Legislation
Over the past several years there have been scores of laws and cases brought to courts around the United States regarding the rights of transgender youth; whether they can play sports with their peers, access certain kinds of healthcare, or even use the correct bathroom. Today, however, marks the first of these cases to reach the highest level of our legal system: the Supreme Court. U.S. v Skrmetti will allow Supreme Court Justices to decide whether gender-affirming care bans for minors are unconstitutional on the basis of sex discrimination.
The case comes in the wake of Tennesse's law Senate Bill 1 (SB1), which prohibits doctors from prescribing surgical and pharmaceutical care to transgender minors looking to transition. plaintiffs in the case argue that this law is based purely on sex discrimination, and raises questions about "not just the legitimacy of trans healthcare, but about, in some sense, the legitimacy of trans people as members of civic life and public life".
The outcome of this case could heavily influence the types of legislation brought to the courts in other states, as well as challenging the swaths of anti-trans bills already in effect or on the table across the country. It could provide a jumping off point for legal challenges against this transphobic wave in government, though the demographics of the Supreme Court make such a momentous outcome unlikely. It may also spurn a movement to try and further restrict healthcare for trans adults, no matter the decision reached by the Court.
Updates will be forthcoming as the hearing begins and continues throughout the day.
What I need liberals and performative leftists to understand is that, beyond the reality that there is never going to be any "pulling left" of the democratic establishment because it's already an ingrained supporter of the current political and cultural structure in America, there's not going to be any anything from the democratic establishment because they have presented absolutely no game plan for another presidential term. They are relying entirely on anti-Trump fearmongering and empty virtue-signalling without laying forward a single prospective policy decision. Here is the "issues" page of the Biden campaign website:
These are not policy guidelines, they are a system of vague democratic values. What parts of our democracy will be protected and strengthened, and how? What will a more accessible and affordable health care system look like? Expanding these value-bubbles, we see that these are questions without answers:
This is two paragraphs of virtue-signalling and fearmongering without a single mention of concrete policy initiative or legislative planning. It doesn't even tell us what parts of our "democracy" are at stake; they simply tell us that there is danger! Trump is coming! We are the solution! how? don't worry about it.
The other bubbles are the same, the better ones going so far as to throw out some statistics about how bad things got under Trump. but they give no goal numbers, no idea of what or how much work is needed to "restore reproductive freedom".
The campaign is as hollow and dysfunctional as the representative they have pinned to its front. The entirety of their campaign website's promises take up 12 paragraphs.
Project 2025's "Mandate of Leadership" is 922 pages long. It's table of contents looks like this:
It is a thorough, step-by-step guide on legislative actions, policy implementations, political appointments, and judicial restructurings for an 180-day "playbook" for a Trump-led administration. The company that runs this project, The Heritage Foundation, gave a similar manifesto to Ronald Reagan when he began his presidency, and Reagan only implemented 60% of their recommendations.
This is what I tell people when they ask me why I "don't trust Biden". This is what I mean when I say that no, it's not "vote blue no matter who". Biden is a talking head with the mask of a political movement stapled on. Trump is a political movement with the mask of a talking head stapled on.
The Invisible Other: Dichotomous Language and Intersex Trans Realities
I'm sure there are intersex people who have put this more informed and eloquently than I but I do really think we need to realize how exclusionary both the "afab/amab" and "tme/tma" dichotomies are to intersex people in our communities. I find myself considering it the most with the "afab trans woman" arguments that have been circulating; while I agree that cis women really have no place claiming the label of trans women and that it at best speaks to a "third-gendering" view of trans women as a whole and at worst represents a diminishing of the very real experiences of isolation, discovery, transition, and self-actualization that trans women use to define themselves; I also think that the way people have gone about having these discussions often ignores or passively erases the existence of intersex people and their histories within the trans and queer communities.
Historically and still strongly in contemporary thought trans identities are linked to the relationship someone has with the gender they were assigned at birth, which is assumed to have been based on the makeup of their reproductive organs and chromosomes at that time. But we know, as it has come up increasingly as a "gotcha" argument against transphobes and misogynists, that sex is not a 50/50 split and that there are in fact numerous variations that can occur with out chromosomal construction and the physical appearance of reproductive organs. Why, then, are we still hinging the prospect of transgender identity on this outdated dichotomy? Why does the language we as a community have decided is the "correct" guideline still exclude the variety of gendered experience?
I am going to use a broad hypothetical example here, and before I am accused of "making up a girl for the sake of argument" I want to clarify that this broad hypothetical is indicative of several people I know and talk to on- and offline. I don't want to center or spotlight them for the sake of my argument, so I am instead informing a broader hypothetical off of my knowledge of their lived experience. So, for the sake of argument, consider the reality of someone with an intersex condition who was "assigned" (aka given corrective surgery / therapy to enforce an identity of) male at birth, but whose reproductive organs would not otherwise match what "amab" is accepted to represent. Is this person not able to identify as a trans woman because they don't have a "dick"? Do they count as "amab" because they were forced to present as male in childhood, or "afab" because they have genitals that somewhat match that description?
The point is that our construction of language and the way we use it to define identity simply isn't equipped to handle the realities of intersex lives. We run into a similar problem with the "tme/tma" dichotomy, which also implicitly pushes a one-or-the-other construction of identity and physicality.
I don't have a solution, and I would never consider myself knowledgeable enough to even come close to being qualified to offer one. This whole thing is simply to say that we need to come together as a queer community and focus, center, and uplift intersex voices. We need to really dissect the ways we use language and how language can become a tool of exclusion and erasure as we work to define the boundaries or flagships of our community and identity. We can't just sweep this under the rug, because intersex people deserve a spot at the table just as much as the rest of us.
Hi! My name is Woodstock, or "Woods" for short. I'm a white trans woman who wanted a separate place to talk about politics, theory, transfeminism, etc., so I made this little "newsletter". Everything I write is first and foremost personal opinion, though I take pride in having my opinions be informed my material analysis and actual interaction with the history and theory of whatever I am opining on. While I hesitate to ascribe myself any political label (as theory changes and labels are often meaningless virtue-signalling, especially on this website), I am confident in describing myself as a queer liberationist, prison abolitionist, and staunch transwomanist.
Feel free to ask me questions about what I have (or have not) written. I will answer whatever I choose to be submitted in good faith and in actual conversation with my work. My ask tag is "#dear woodstock". Other tags include:
#tfrn - my (rare) fully edited pieces of work
#letter from the editor - my (much more common) unedited and short-form thoughts on things
#reference room - mostly for my own sake, posts that I think are particularly poignant, useful, or well-written
#reading room - my suggested reading material
If you'd like to read my earliest and longest piece of work, here's a link:
The New Chaser: Objectification of Trans Women in the Age of Performative Allyship
