GENDER IS DEAD

Right?? And calling people BPD just because they don’t like them

fragile sense of identity: radfems on tumblr are constantly fighting each other over who’s a real feminist and who isn’t based on individual choices, typically related to how much you conform to gender. young women attach themselves to the radfem label without doing any actual IRL activism, just to feel as if they belong somewhere.

an exaggerated sense of victimhood: many tumblr radfems feel personally attacked by trans women considering or calling themselves women even if these trans women give valid arguments as to why they use certain terminology, even if they are otherwise radical feminist allies or gender critical. some people on radblr even feel as if trans women just existing is an attack on all women.

inability to stand criticism and opposition: radical feminist tumblr is known for being extremely vicious towards people they argue with, even people in their own community. if a radfem has a more nuanced take on an issue than the general, most popular approach amongst radical feminists, she’s harassed.

but regardless, applying a psychopathology term to a movement or community is moronic armchair diagnosis nonsense. you are not a medical professional and this isn’t how diagnoses work either way.

i love the perspective i’ve gained from gender critical feminists and radical feminists–in fact, i owe a great deal to it and to this group of women. but it is often difficult to engage in the discussions around trans people, especially when the topic of ‘trans regret’ comes up, or detransition in general.

‘trans regret’ is a real thing, but for many of us, transitioning was the best we could do at the time with the options we were presented. i don’t regret transition, because in many ways, it led me here. i’m still me, i’m happy, i’m healthy. i even like the way my body looks–the masculine parts, the feminine parts. i touch my body and it responds in kind–that feels beautiful. i make love with this body, lesbian love, and that feels beautiful.

i think that’s why it’s so difficult to read pretty judgemental things about detransitioned women’s bodies. words like “maimed” or “deformed” or “ruined” or “wrecked” are so hurtful. i can respect that some detransitioned women may feel this way about their bodies, but i don’t think it’s okay to use such loaded, emotionally heavy words about detransitioned women’s bodies if you’re not one yourself.

i know i don’t personally feel ruined; my body isn’t deformed or maimed. it is strong and lovely. it is healthy. it moves me about this world. it loves and receives love. it can be difficult to love my body 100% all the time, but for whom is that not the case? maybe a lucky few–and i mean among all women, not just detransitioned women.

It’s saying “girls who are seen as social outcasts or antisocial are that way because they don’t bother talking to girls and girls are actually perfect angels who will accept you into their circle 100% of the time”

Even the most assholeish guys who made cruel jokes and comments talked to everyone at the end of the day. They didn’t really ignore anyone, unless they had some huge drama over girls or whatever with each other. I could get teased all day for being an emo satan worshipper by a guy and he’d still talk to me like a normal person on the bus when we went home together.

Girls didn’t do that. Girls maybe pulled less shitty pranks and made less jokes in front of the whole class, but they made damn sure you knew you’re Not Like Them and they don’t want you around. They would glare, snark, giggle and whisper everytime you walk past, do everything in their power to avoid even standing next to you and generally act like you carry a deadly disease.

The girl in the post is not being bullied. She’s being standoffish (note the snooty nose in the air pose in the third panel) because she has a fucked up idea on what “other girls,” are like because of negative views on femininity (“other girls wear high heels and short skirts”) due to internalized misogyny (there’s nothing wrong with high heels and short skirts).

The “other girls,” she’s looking down on turn out to be kind, beautiful, smart, thoughtful, etc. They are not bullies. I’m sorry if you were bullied and that’s why you didn’t have a lot or any female friends but most girls aren’t like that. And the reason this post is important is because a lot of girls held onto to this very way of thinking (Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” comes to mind) they were better than “other girls” who like the color pink and dresses and makeup and just generally being feminine because that made them stupid or vain or whatever and it’s toxic as fuck.

You really do not give a fuck about victims do you? Unless they fit your black and white world view I suppose. Perhaps victims are “spilling their own trauma” on this post because the message is kinda super shitty ?

🗣THAT’S YOU!

YOU have a fear of your bullies and abusers.

Not the girl in this comic, and not every other girl on the fucking planet who thinks shit like “I’m not like other girls.”

Again, stop pushing your own trauma on OP’s post, treating it as if it’s the only valid interpretation of this work when you damn well know that wasn’t OP’s intention. You have another perspective on why girls might be reluctant to befriend other girls?

👏🏽Make 👏🏽your 👏🏽own 👏🏽god👏🏽damn 👏🏽post.

And every gay guy who came out and said “no, that’s not how it works, I got beat the fuck up” would be listened to.

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We’re not told that there are treatment options other than surgery and (what is by all means still experimental) hormone therapy. I had no idea when I first started transitioning that some people found relief by unpacking internalized misogyny, lesbophobia and ableism. I didn’t know that some people found exercise and mindfulness immensely helpful or that dysphoria could be caused or exacerbated by trauma. HRT ended up not being what I needed but even if it had been I still would have deserved to know. I still would have deserved informed consent.

And they’re not researching us or the effects of the treatments they give us. We don’t know what dysphoria is or what causes it. We don’t know what percentage of people desist from transition. We don’t even really know what hormone replacement therapy does to trans people’s bodies. You’ll hear all the time that doctors are divided on when or even if trans men need hysterectomies after being on testosterone. That’s because they don’t know. The medical world doesn’t even care enough about us enough to have spent the money and energy into figuring out if a drug they’re prescribing and selling to us will make a hysterectomy a medical necessity or not.

We’re not told that there are treatment options other than surgery and (what is by all means still experimental) hormone therapy. I had no idea when I first started transitioning that some people found relief by unpacking internalized misogyny, lesbophobia and ableism. I didn’t know that some people found exercise and mindfulness immensely helpful or that dysphoria could be caused or exacerbated by trauma. HRT ended up not being what I needed but even if it had been I still would have deserved to know. I still would have deserved informed consent.

And they’re not researching us or the effects of the treatments they give us. We don’t know what dysphoria is or what causes it. We don’t know what percentage of people desist from transition. We don’t even really know what hormone replacement therapy does to trans people’s bodies. You’ll hear all the time that doctors are divided on when or even if trans men need hysterectomies after being on testosterone. That’s because they don’t know. The medical world doesn’t even care enough about us enough to have spent the money and energy into figuring out if a drug they’re prescribing and selling to us will make a hysterectomy a medical necessity or not.

”Be certain that they [the effects] are what you want” is not a good advice since most detransitioners ARE usually certain it’s what they want. The popular notion that detransitioners are just cis girls (or rarely guys) who transition for fun is untrue and harmful. There is no such thing as ”real” trans people and ”fake” trans people. You never know who is truly trans or not. Detransitioners are often severely and diagnosibly dysphoric people, sometimes book examples of dysphoria too. The thing is, medical and social transition is for them just a coping mechanism to deal with that said dysphoria. For some people this coping mechanism will work and for some it won’t, or it will only work for a period of time.

You never know if the dysphoric person that you know, who is SO certain of their medical transition, will have the same level of certainty in a few years. It might be that years down the line, they will realise medical transition didn’t actually alleviate their dysphoria. As we know, medical transition can’t cure all dysphoria and very often it just shifts to somewhere else (for example a lot of people reported that after getting top surgery their chest dysphoria was gone, so they started focusing on other parts of their body- the dysphoria shifted). These people may realise that transition isn’t worth all the health risks that come with it, if it hardly helps them anyway. Putting cross-sex hormones in your body is potentially dangerous and there isn’t a whole lot of scientific knowledge on this. Sometimes, it might even heighten people’s dysphoria as they realise they will never look or sound like natal males (kinda like being on a plane but never arriving to any destination, just floating in space forever). Other times people realise that there were some deep issues in their psyche which led them to develop feelings of dysphoria and they might develop a more psychoanalytic approach to understand the roots of their dysphoria better. It’s what doctors usually overlook.