kittydollgirl

she/her/it, 23, 80% bi, 100% trans, poly, adhd haver

[mousidy]

any tips for dealing with the exhaustion? the cynicism?

it's just this endless battle against misinformed and malicious beliefs. it never lets up, there's no "at least we can have [x]" bc *everything* we do is considered suspicious by tme peoples. hell, even a lot of tma people are happily using each other as stepping stones if it means being 1cm higher in the hierarchy. sorry, im tired.

the best ways I've found are:

- find transfems who you can trust. it's true that many of us are aspiring bus-throwers. a lot of us aren't. it's orders of magnitude harder to find trustable TMEs, but it can help to have some tether to the non-transfeminized world. good barometer for trustworthiness is whether someone can take you self-advocating or offering fair criticism. if they feel they're above you, then that truth is likely to come out in these moments

- find some ways, big or small, to advance transfeminism in your life and combat transmisogyny. you don't need to spend all your time doing this, but a little bit of a sense that you're making a dent to help you and your sisters, even a miniscule, barely perceptible one, can ward off the hopelessness. sometimes if I let my space get too messy, a sense of uselessness creeps in, but if I just do one tiny thing to tidy up, it does a lot to reaffirm my sense of agency

- projects and hobbies! this is the inverse of above. you gotta spend some time looking away, too, and immersing yourself in the joy of other aspects of life. game design is my biggest and longest passion, and I spend a lot of time devoted to it when I'm not more laser-focused on my transfeminism, as I have been lately. (not every hobby needs an end product tho! passive enjoyment can be healing too)

- if you can, WALKS. if you can't, some other way to give your brain time to chew over things while you do a menial physical task that doesn't pull your focus at all. I find that one of the single greatest predictors of my mental health at any given time in my life is whether I'm in the habit of taking daily walks where I listen to music and let my mind freely wander, get inspired, think about the future, chew over problems, reflect on where I'm at in life, etc. it sounds kind of nonsense, and for that reason I regularly forget it too, at my own peril! some of the more common pieces of good advice out there can be hard to believe until you give them an honest test and see the results

[victusinveritas]

[naughtypiggy]

Scientists uncovered the nutrients bees were missing — Colonies surged 15-fold

Scientists have developed a breakthrough “superfood” for honeybees by engineering yeast to produce the essential nutrients normally found in

TLDR- Modern agriculture pollen is low in nutrients, and there aren’t enough wildflowers. Science has to develop vitamins to supplement the diets of agricultural bees. So plant some wildflowers for the wild bees near you.

[heydocverdant]

you’ve heard of vitamin B, now get ready for bee vitamins

[mousidy]

It's insane that we have arrived at "porn is inherently exploitation and should be banned" as if an entire category of vice can be successfully completely banned from the top-down. Banning porn will only increase the prevalence of exploitative sex tapes. under our current system the global leading porn platform forces you to have the ID of all performers on film, a regulatory incentive that would go away if it was outright banned. Go ahead and ask the bootleggers and the weed growers if criminalizing their industries killed them

just outlaw it no like just outlaw it it will stop people from doing it it will fix all the corruption like literally just outlaw it it's so simple. no like it will work this time just outlaw it

[mousidy]

I swear 10 years ago people had far better takes about porn and feminism and were all about listening to sex workers and there was genuine progress and understanding about state violence what the hell happened the past couple years, why are we not listening to sex workers anymore why is the church and conservatives The Voice Of Women now apparently we have regressed feminism like 60 years entirely for the sake of marginalizing trans women, sacrificing them in the altar of face-eating leopards where the fuck is free the nipple, gender desegregation, anything???

.

[mousidy]

trans women are so often stereotyped to be hookers because theyre pushed into sex work due to discrimination but sure trans women dont know shit about being exploited by the industry huh

🎯

[biblicallyaccuratemoth]

“I turned out fine,” she says, staring so far off into space that you can see andromeda reflected in her eyes

[biblicallyaccuratemoth]

A trans woman will say “I’ve made peace with it” while clutching a stuffed animal so tightly that it begins to come apart at the seams

[transastralog]

@trans-truthwatcher you good?

[trans-truthwatcher]

oh i'm fine :3

[gimmick-blog-detector]

reblog to make prev grow a cup size

[perception-filter]

staring at the dessert menu and twirling my hair and going "should I be baaaaddd" until the autistic girl I'm eating with says "there is nothing bad about eating dessert. it is a morally neutral action"

[this-is-a-love-story-isnt-it]

This insane update from Neocities

[mousidy]

Saw some reposted nonconsent art of a transfemme character and thought I'd go and see if I could find the artist on r34 through tags because it was kinda hot and I wanted to compliment them, and I've had luck finding porn artists that way in the past. (the classic green r34, I think it's .xxx now?)

After approximately ten minutes of trying to find a tag that fits, I find out that there's no tag to look up transfeminine victims but *4* separate tags for transmasculine victims. I've always been aware that tme people don't think we're capable of being victims but it's never felt so blatant...

Sorry if this is outside the scope of what you intended for the transfemme voices project, I understand if it doesn't end up getting posted

yes!!!! the idea that we are perpetrators and never victims/survivors is heavily reflected in the ways we are sexualized and fetishized. they are frankly two sides of the same coin, and I think we shy away from discussing that because we rightly tend to be very sex positive. but the ways we are sexualized by transmisogynistic stereotypes are inextricable from the ways they oppress us. the stereotypes are designed to be psychosexually powerful, and we see that reflected in the sexual roles both real and fictional trans women are pigeonholed into filling

porn is art, and thus I don't think it's beyond being examined through the lenses and standards of art. the transmisogynistic stereotypes that pervade the collective consciousness and the way trans women are depicted in porn are not two separate phenomena in isolated cultural silos. they are in conversation with one another! and I think it's worth considering (at the risk of sounding silly) that the way we make porn could add a transfeminist voice to this conversation

[theren5534]

To the anon:

Part of the problem is sites like that actively removed any trans woman tags and lumped everything into “futa” because people were “abusing the tag”

It’s intentional. Blatantly so.

[mousidy]

look i understand your frustration with "cis women boundaries". but we can't just say "other people don't get to have boundaries if it makes it harder for me to be safe" because that is a one-way ticket to authoritarianism. What we can do is make safe spaces for trans women, and choose on a case-by-case basis if they include cis women or not. Keep in mind too, not every trans woman feels safe sharing a space with cis women... and they deserve safe spaces too.

I daresay most of us don't feel safe sharing spaces with cis women, lol. systemic discrimination against marginalized women is not "boundaries" it's discrimination. if you're uncomfortable with a group of marginalized women, that's called bigotry, and it's never at any time in history been a good justification for discrimination. and no we are not going to do "separate but equal" get serious

[mousidy]

I really think the only reason any version of separate but equal actually works for cis women is because white, cisgender women are like the only marginalized group that the white supremacist patriarchy actually considers a core part of its fabric

the rest of us are treated as disposable trash, and I greatly doubt that any facilities the patriarchy could be strong-armed into creating just for us would be meaningfully "equal" in any way. and all this just cause you don't wanna pee within 20 feet of us at walmart

[plainsbison]

Consent is SPECIFIC - we use the language of consent for interactions between individual people at a specific time and place. It is monstrous and unfair to use it at a preemptive social level, because doing so is manipulative - and therefore nonconsentual. This language PRESUMES THE GUILT of trans women (for existing while scary) and forces us to defend our right to exist and share space with cis women against a PRESUMED violation of their "boundaries". We're guilty until proven innocent! And even then, we're still guilty. Cis women and their fears kill us, regularly. That should make you uncomfortable if you are cis. It should make you more uncomfortable than seeing us exist next to you. If you have a conscience.

[mousidy]

“Cis women’s boundaries” is one of the most ridiculous concepts I’ve seen.

It’s blatantly a deliberate way of reinforcing the hateful and incorrect idea that trans women are a separate gender from cis women that are only able to be granted conditional and easily revocable womanhood by cisgender society.

The word “boundary” is being used entirely in place of “bigotry”. Like, listen I know integration is cool and all but what about white women’s boundaries???? Sure I’m pro lgbt+ but what about straight women’s boundaries???? I’m afraid of those??? So we cater to me, yes? We exclude and discriminate and harass and attack, yes?

Fucking embarrassing.

.

[mousidy]

What is your opinion on Misandry? I have been told frequently that it doesn't exist, but I think it is the foundation on which a lot of TERFs hate us. The concept of a rape organ, or that trans women are men invading women's spaces seem rooted in this idea that men are evil. I value your take

the logic of the patriarchy is that men are strong and capable, while women are weak and helpless damsels, justifying men's control over them. but because women are cast as ineffectual, a class of women the patriarchy wants to violently suppress must be rhetorically masculinized, or else they could pose no convincing violent threat worthy of said violent suppression

if terfs thought men were evil, they wouldn't collaborate so happily with the very structures of patriarchy that oppress them just so they could stick it to a marginalized group. the masculinizing rhetoric doesn't serve on its own to paint us as evil--only strong enough to be capable of enacting evil. it's the transfemininity that actually provides the "evil" part of the equation

[mousidy]

to build on this further, terfs never seem to take any issue with men having close proximity with and/or power over cis women

I don't see terfs protesting male doctors treating cis women, I don't see terfs protesting the catholic church, which frequently gives men close access to and power over cisgender women, and I don't see terfs protesting the unit of the family itself, in which fathers have extremely high levels of access to and power over their children, including cisgender girls

no, terfs have no issue with men having close proximity to and power over women. they have an issue with trans women

[mousidy]

surely any day now terfs will start protesting male gynecologists

[mousidy]

if terf rhetoric were ever actually meaningfully "misandrist" there would be a massive male counter-movement working against it. but there isn't, because terf rhetoric doesn't bind men, it empowers them

it serves the interests of the patriarchy very comfortably, reifying the myths of male superiority and the fragility of women while pinning all of women's oppression not on men, but on an extraordinarily marginalized class of women. it's a great way to obscure the reality of the patriarchy while upholding the logic that it's built on

[mousidy]

reifying the fragility of women makes the patriarchy appear natural. it tees the patriarchy up to go:

"of course women aren't holding positions of actual power. it's not because men oppress women, it's because women are too weak to do the important work. therefore, women need men to do all the heavy lifting for them, so the best thing they can do for themselves is become appealing and valuable to men. systemic oppression? what are you talking about? it's just biology"

[shinosarna]

I literally plainly asked a terf once that if she doesn't want trans women in women's prisons, why is she okay with male guards in said prisons. She said she doesn't care because they 'belong' there.

[mousidy]

The thing I don’t understand about the transandrophobia stuff is how it leads into the transmisogyny. Like, trans guys do experience oppression, and they should be allowed to talk about it, but every guy I’ve seen who’s talked about it using the term “transandrophobia” has also been extremely transmisogynistic. Not always at first or intentionally, but it’s like a pipeline I think? So like, I understand that there is a correlation here. I have observed it myself. But I don’t get it? What is it about using that word to describe their experiences that leads them to consistently become so transmisogynistic? And they talk a lot about wanting trans solidarity, but their actions don’t really reflect that? But I don’t understand how it happens. It’s like [a trans guy experiences oppression] -> [he wants to talk about it] -> [he starts talking about transandrophobia] -> [SOMETHING?????] -> [he becomes violently transmisogynistic]. And it’s like ok, the oppression IS real, talking about it IS good, but then we get to that word, and that’s where things start to go bad, but I don’t know how or why. I don’t know what happens in the “SOMETHING?????” step.

my guess is that part of it is they resent us for "appropriating" the experience of misogyny that they believe is inherent to agab. they want to be the ultimate authorities on misogyny, and they hate the idea that we have authority on discussing our own experiences of misogyny, and I think they especially resent the idea that it affects us more than it does them in many areas of life. I cannot forget how mad they got that I pointed out the wage gap between them and us

people in general are very condescending about trans women's experiences with misogyny, acting like we're appropriating what ~real~ women go through. and frankly, a lot of transandrobros seem to think of themselves as more of women than trans women in everything but name. they just say "afab" instead of "woman"

[prollyrpolly]

There's a reason why I prefer to call it transemasculation. Transandrophobia as a term doesn't even cover the 'why' behind the oppression of transmascs, which leads transmascs who start using the term to end up thinking that their oppression is due to some bullshit about misogyny being inherent to agab, like you said. In reality, it's due to transphobes trying to trying to remove their maleness and return them to being "vulnerable women" in some way. Transandrobros are literally perpetuating their own oppression by believing what they believe.

[thestarsaretrans]

Okay, fuck, that's actually a really good term for the phenomena. Because that's exactly what patriarchy wants out of transmascs: to forcibly and coercively re-gender them. Because so much of patriarchy is aimed at sidelining everyone with a uterus into a reproductive resource, an aim thinly legitimized by ideas about the feminine, female, woman, girl, et cetera. That's not a program that transmasculinity fits into, resulting in violence of all kinds against transmascs to buy conformity.

Contrast this with the de-gendering that patriarchy inflicts on transfems, who are denied any legitimacy or humanity as punishment for, A, actively identifying with womanhood, a category that must always remain undesirable, and B, "betraying" manhood, a category that must always remain unbreakable and misogynistic. A failure to be a misogynist man makes us traitors. Our uselessness to the reproductive regime denies us even the faint protections of womanhood. And because we are denied a category, a humanity, we are denied language and knowledge and frameworks with which to speak of and understand our own oppression; epistimicide.

And these are two very different phenomena, so for a long time it's made very little sense to me to use blanket "transphobia" as a term; it feels like it ultimately plays into that force of epistimicide, generalizing and vaguely deferring any specific discussion of what transfemininity means and how it's oppressed, and at the same time not adequately attacking the roots of oppression against trans men. I'll be borrowing "transemasculation" as a way to talk about these things. Thank you for the addition to my lexicon.

[mousidy]

I think it’s nuts that people will call trans women terfs and paint them as nasty aggressors towards the eternally victimized trans men when the entire TERF worldview is literally thinking trans women are nasty aggressors and trans men are victims. Do they like really not see the irony there

🎯

[colonthreedotexe]

[filmphotofranz]