Yay Yippee🏳️‍⚧️

This is a pretty direct conversation about the role of men in pushing (trans)feminism forward. If you like what I wrote you can give me a follow over there!

We shared a lot of ideas while working on our writings and if you are looking to go deeper on transmisogyny and transfeminism this zine is an excellent place to start.

-not a real threat

-not something that can be done

-not targeting a vulnerable minority specifically

cis women's fight is part of our larger fight, but too many do not want to make these connections. a cis woman will fight for the right to abortion, hormonal birth control, labor protections against discrimination for pregnancy, etc. as an entirely disconnected struggles from access to other gendered surgeries, hormonal treatments, and labor protections against gendered discrimination. but they are not disconnected.

this perceived separation between these struggles is only in one direction. for example, the disparity between the percent of trans people who openly defend the right of cis girls accessing abortion at any age without needing parental consent (almost all of us) and the percent of cis women who defend the right of trans kids accessing transition care at any age without needing parental consent is stark. and that is very depressing to me.

whenever I draw obvious parallels, I get notes from cis women telling me how disgusting it is to compare our healthcare to theirs. they tell me in a variety of ways that their politically controversial gendered healthcare needs are obviously legitimate, unlike ours.

but all of our healthcare is getting criminalized and dismantled. you talk to a reactionary and they do not believe your healthcare is a legitimate need either. they also say cis women who get abortions are selfish, sex-obsessed, and a danger to children. this is the same fight and too many cis women refuse to acknowledge it.

whenever I see posts talking about defending pregnant women (not people, but women) the notes are full of transphobic cis women. I saw one the other day where a USian in the notes was saying "this is why women become republicans, because at least the right respects pregnant women." do they? how is that alliance going?

I want cis women to understand that the struggle for bodily autonomy over sexed characteristics is one struggle. insisting on this rhetorical distinction between us is a reactionary move. it calls people with regressive gender politics to your side even if you do not intend for that to happen. it reproduces the conditions that are currently stripping you of your rights, too.

It is inspired by Bakemonogatari.

What inspired those choices in Bakemonogatari?

Most people say French New Wave.

Some of that comes from Shaft as a studio; the directors' tastes and the animators' backgrounds. But Bakemonogatari as an adaptation probably lends itself to it especially. The series was originally light novels- very dialogue heavy. So how do you, as an animator or director, translate that to your medium? How do you add visual variety to a scene that's just two characters talking?

French New Wave was, generally speaking, about breaking the rules of cinema, flirting with convention. Keeping the audience aware of the fact that they're watching a movie and not experiencing reality.

Part of that arose from the fact that the filmmakers didn't have the budgets to do things "the right way," building massive sets in studio back lots and filling them with dozens of extras. They had to try to "convey" a crowd rather than show it, or use editing to "suggest" an action that they couldn't show because they never had time to film it.

It's interesting thinking about how this relates to visual novels and videogames in general.

Why /do/ we hide a scene transition by making the player squeeze through a gap in some rocks?

Is it embarrassing to put up a loading screen because it's "not cinematic"? Is yellow paint more dignified than a controller icon? Why is a jump-cut immersion breaking but a palette-swapped enemy isn't?

And every time a visual novel cuts to a shot of a sunny blue sky in lieu of showing a specific, probably-hard-to-draw action, and instead just has the characters narrate what's happening-

Is that actually just a tasteful tip of the hat to French New Wave cinema's tradition of utilizing non-standard editing to exaggerate the audience's sense of hyperreality?

Well, probably not.

But maybe sometimes!