Canoptic Kitty

Sorry if it’s a little cramped- had to make this all fit in ten photos. Hope you guys like it….. and again…. sorry Andrew

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It wasn't close I beat the pants off that man, and others like him. I did it more than once. Some guys got humble and stayed. One guy got angry and stormed out.

And I think about that every fuck damn time I hear that bullshit, which seems to be all the fuck over the place these days. Oh, women are just fragile little soft delicate flower creatures who can't do ANYTHING and could NEVER compete with big strong manly muscular strong MEN.

I think about driving that dude into the mats and seeing the brutal reality of this big dude's misogany meet the realization that a woman was beating his ass literally that second, that none of his strength could stop the fact that I'd just hip thrown him facefirst into the mats and that had I actually connected with the axe kick to his neck I would have crushed a bunch of important shit and he could not stop me, and his whole psyche collapsing like a dying star in that moment.

Yes. This. Correct.

The reason you hear so much about how women COULD NOT POSSIBLY EVER DEFEND THEMSELVES OR GO AGAINST MEN IN SPORT is twofold.

Socializes women to THINK that this is impossible and to keep them from developing self-assurance in their own physical abilities.

To make shitty dudes feel better about themselves.

"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."

apparently he (who through my drunken memory I remember only as Earl) liked some woman, and she told him that he wasn't cultured enough and needed to attend his first drag show (she also flaked on him)

Now I'm reasonably androgynous and was wearing makeup, a short leather skirt, and black heeled boots, but still when this guy came up to me when I was standing off alone and asked "So. Do you come here often?" with a very earnest expression, I thought. Surely not. This guy doesn't think I'm a straight woman does he????

Anyway I start talking with this guy and he has no idea what the fuck is going on but he is just a very kind and earnest dude and asked a lot of questions (while asking if it was alright if he asked those questions). I track down my husband and friends and I'm like y'all. We need to make sure that Earl has a Good Fucking Time tonight.

Man was completely out of his depth. At one point they put on a puppy auction to raise money for Pride, that started with a 6 ft drag queen in all her glory leading a leather pup out on a leash to the tune of that damned RSPCA "in the arms of the angels" song

We look at Earl. Nervous. He squints, laughs, and then goes "I was wondering why people were dressed like that!" He turned to me and asked "So they're like dogs?" And I said yeah pretty much. And he just chuckled and went "Yeah I thought so with the tails! Never seen this before!"

When the first drag king came out, Earl looked at me wide eyed and went "There's a dude version too?!" And I said yeah they're called drag kings. And he said, low, "Drag kings."

During one of the queens performances, he frowned, shook his head and told me, "Your legs are better than hers." in a tone that implied he thought there was some travesty taking place and I should also be getting paid

When he found out I was there with my husband (and that I am not a woman) he profusely apologized and said "I'm so sorry, it's dark in here and I thought you were a hot chick! I wouldn't have said nothing if I knew you had a husband, I'm so sorry about that."

When beemovie invited me to the dance floor with him later and I still had a drink in my hand, Earl said "Oh don't worry about that I can hold your drink, you get on out there and shake your ass with your husband!" Then before we left, Earl bought me drinks for "Putting up with me all night and answering everything. Y'all helped me have a great time tonight."

like. You gotta recognize there's going to people who have never had interacted outside of their of their own community. This includes you. And just because your community is familiar with all the right vocabulary and how to correctly say something, it doesn't mean they're actually going to support you. If someone like Earl shows up, confused and out of their depth but kind and curious and earnest, you gotta have patience and truck through the small things, so when he goes back to his friends and his coworkers and they snicker asking how the drag show was, he can genuinely talk about how included we tried to make him feel and that he had a great time

However, the idea of what a man can be has not expanded in the same way. Every man has to be stoic, loud, take up space, and never show weakness. Allowing men to be sensitive, emotional, soft, pretty, and feminine used to be one of the goals of feminism. After all, how are we supposed to see ourselves as truly equal if we still have such strict rules guiding gendered behavior?

Recently, I have seen feminism (trans exclusionary and trans inclusive) solidifying those strict rules of manhood instead of breaking them down. The idea that all men are agressive, stubborn, and will physically overpower you has been parroted so many times, it almost feels like fact. It is forcing —not the men themselves— but the idea of men into the role of the evil wrongdoer. The ways in which terfs have used this image to harm trans women are myriad and obvious.

It used to be common knowledge that feminism also ought to benefit men in this way. If the sexes were truly equal, then men could act feminine, and women could act masculine without social repercussions. This breakdown of gender roles is a good thing! It is freeing for all of us to remove the arbitrary rules guiding gendered behavior.

First: the idea of what a man can be has definitely been much expanded in the last 100 years. If you look at popular culture, compare today to the 1950s and you'll notice that the behavior deemed acceptable for a male hero to display on screen has included a lot more crying, breaking down, talking about their feelings, etc. More recently, the phenomenon of telling your male friends that you love them without an awkward 'no homo' become more common. We've seen the number of stay-at-home dads and fathers who take part-time work to do child-raising days increase steadily over the years and more countries have introduced parental leave for fathers. Public diaper changing stations have been moved from the women's bathroom to a gender neutral space in many places. The number of men in care professions has increased, as has the number of men who seek mental health care.

These changes have been very slow and incomplete, and there has been a very noticeable backlash, a group of men who have clung to their gender role at all cost and have retreated from every space that started to include women, etc. But these men are a minority. If you look at the statistics, there is no doubt that the progress is real. We've seen very few men embrace flower crowns and glitter beards and dresses, but I would argue that focusing on such aesthetics factors obscures the bigger picture.

The TERFs have been their shitty self, I 100% agree with you on that. But I think many mainsteam and progressive trans inclusive feminists have gone above and beyond to constantly emphasize that male violence against women is a huge issue but not inherent in men being men. Over the past decades movements like no-means-no-only-yes-means-yes, MeToo, the anti-femicide movement, movements that emphasize women's safety, have all constantly been pointing out that men can do better and that many men are doing better, but that it isn't enough because too many men are still willing to protect their dangerous male friends. 'Boys will not be boys' is a slogan, and 'not all men, but any man' has been a catchphrase to emphasize that men can do better but as long as the men who do violence aren't held accountable there is no safety for women.