Facetious is my first language.

From I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out. by Jennifer Coates

I hate that the only effective response I can give to “boys are shit” is “well I’m not a boy.” I feel like I am selling out the boy in baseball pajamas that sat with me on the bed while I tried to figure out which one I was supposed to be, and the boys who I have met and loved from inside my boy suit—who believed they were talking to a boy. I feel like I am burning the history of the naked body that sits on the floor of my shower. The body that went to prom in a boxy tuxedo and coveted the dresses.

Because I am not a boy, but I had a boyhood. I was, and am, made to live as a boy and I cannot suspend the perspective that gave me and join in when it’s time to fluster one of those clueless fuckers into anger by calling him a fuckboi and then tell him his anger proves he’s a fuckboi, or to humiliate one with an OKCupid screenshot because we’ve willfully conflated the clumsy ones with the threatening ones so we can grab those solidarity faves. It’s fucked up. It has metastasized.

More than a few out transwomen have told me, privately, they they are uncomfortable with these things, but are afraid that speaking up about it would cause ciswomen to like and trust them less. “I play along,” one of them told me, “because in the queer community the only people who defend cisboys are cisboys. I don’t want to give up finally being read as a girl.”

Another says “I do the misandry stuff because it’s an easy way to earn queer cred points, but when I think about it it makes me uncomfortable.”

Another: “It’s a coping habit I’m not proud of. If I agree ‘girls rule boys drool’ it makes me feel more like a girl.”

Have you noticed, when a product is marketed in an unnecessarily gendered way, that the blame shifts depending on the gender? That a pink pen made “for women” is (and this is, of course, true) the work of idiotic cynical marketing people trying insultingly to pander to what they imagine women want? But when they make yogurt “for men” it is suddenly about how hilarious and fragile masculinity is — how men can’t eat yogurt unless their poor widdle bwains can be sure it doesn’t make them gay? #MasculinitySoFragile is aimed, with smug malice, at men—not marketers.

This conclusion—widely shared—is a product of insulated discourse. What I am NOT saying is: “open the floodgates, let in the shitty male trolls!” I know the trolls—they have tried to be my friends, they have tried to sneak into feminist spaces with no desire to learn or listen. I understand not trusting men who loudly and constantly hold forth on women’s issues and refuse to accept when they are mistaken. I’m not encouraging anyone to trust blindly. I am pleading to the discoursers: consider that this insulation has effects and try to mitigate them, if your priority really is finding truth amid a muck of concealed patriarchal lies. Check to see if maybe you are saying things and reproducing things mostly because it sounds good and feels good and nobody is challenging them.

These are not discursive problems that only apply to an “undercover” transwoman, these are discursive problems that are seemingly only visible to an “undercover” transwoman forced to carry multiple perspectives like bactrian humps.

If we put aside the questionable humor and you’re still basically saying that masculinity is inherently violent or that patriarchy happens to women and is performed by men - I’m out. Those beliefs are the first step down the road to TERF Town. Fellow cis ladies, we are often bastions of patriarchy the same way we can be hella misogynistic. Being oppressed doesn’t automatically make us the “good guys.” We have to deconstruct patriarchy just like we have to deconstruct white supremacy. And my fellow cis women we cannot forget that just like white women and white supremacy, our gender identity matching our genitalia gives us the closest proximity to power in the patriarchal structure - and thus can and will blind us to the ways in which people of other genders experience the system. Jennifer Coates is absolutely right to call that out specifically.

I'm talkin white people selling rattles and dream catchers, white people banging First Nations style drums, white people teaching talking stick workshops, that kinda shit

So what do you do when you see this crap? How do you show your disapproval in a way that makes them give a shit?

I'll tell you what I do. The point is to show them that appropriating Indigenous cultures will lose them customers.

When I see fakey Native art I say something like "Oh wow, you make dreamcatchers! What nation are you from?" (Use tribe in the states)

I used to ask point blank if they were Native, but I'd nearly always get some Cherokee great grandmother bullshit, or even "I'm not sure, I could have some Native in me!"

Most of the time they don't know what I'm talking about, because they're not Native and don't know that this is a very normal thing to ask when meeting another Native.

When they ask me what I mean I say "I mean your tribe, which First Nation are you from?"

This is the point where they sheepishly mumble that they are not First Nations.

I let my face fall and say something like "Oh. That's disappointing" or "Wow. Unfortunate."

I let it get awkward. And then I leave, shaking my head in disapproval.

You may feel like you need to educate them on cultural appropriation but here's the thing: it's 2025. They know. Brenda the middle class reiki shaman is FULLY aware that her smudge fans are stolen culture. She doesn't care. The only way to make them care is to hit them where it hurts: the wallet.

Make them think that you would have purchased what they are selling if it was AUTHENTIC.

If you wanna go the extra mile send an email to the organizers, in your best white people voice, and tell them that you are disappointed that they are facilitating culture theft.

*The winner of this matchup will represent their bracket in the inter-group finale poll(s).

PROPAGANDA:

[Stan]

"It would be funny if the twin of the winner won."

"He would be an amazing dad, even though at first he is gruff and a bit reckless, you can see as the series goes on, how deeply he loves and cares for the people closest to him, he would do anything for his family, and he would be the most dedicated dad out there."

"Gotta get both twins knocked up."

"why should Ford have all the fun? also Stan would be a WAY better dad than Ford."

"HED BE SUCH A SINGLE DAD I NEED HIM PREGNANT AND STRUGGLING WITH A BABY AND RAISING HER THE BEST HE CAN AND SOMETIMES FAILING BUT OVER ALL MAKING IT WORK I CAN PICTURE HIM USING HIS PREGNANT BELLY AS AN ICECREAM TABLE WHILE HE WATCHES DUCKTECTIVE AND PERIOD DRAMAS."

"He's the sexier more breedable brother to me but also I just think it'd be funny if he won the second time around since Ford won the first one :)"

Grunkle Stan propaganda from last season

[Starscream]

"He would be STRUTTING with it. He's gonna raise an ARMY of LOYAL UNDERLINGS and they're going to make him RULER OF THE UNIVERSE. also he would be fucking miserable and so so angry and i think that would be fun."

"I need need need my conniving flying bastard man to be pregnant, he'd be so insufferable about it. Can you imagine? TFP Starscream would use his pregnancy as a way to manipulate the autobots and pretend to "care so much about my precious baby" and then he'd stab everyone in the back. G1 Starscream would have a bunch of grand dreams of shaping his baby into the ultimate Megatron-killing weapon and then they rule the galaxy together."

"I need to see him manipulate someone into getting him pregnant only to abort it in an attempt to hurt them only to have no effect at all. I need this."

"He’s funny and endlessly miserable in most continuities and I think being pregnant would make him happy even if he complained about it at the time."

"LISTEN……. It would be funny as shit if all the time he tried to usurp Megatron he succeeded in the one thing he didn’t want and lost so disgracefully. And in some media interpretations having “kids” or pets mellows that fucked up prideful and very much traumatized abused but unwilling to admit it and look for help man."

Anyone with a name that starts with a “Z”, ends with an “i”, and isn’t some kind of Italian pasta, IS SERIOUS

The usual joke is “why are x and y talking about the traffic light system lmao”. but, see, I think that just betrays a lack of understanding of how negotiation works for both sides of the conversation: on one hand, the people who think 1) that you require something like the traffic light system in order to write consensual kinky sex Properly because that’s what they’ve read in other fanfiction that have similar misgivings and they’re afraid that writing kinky sex wrong will get them attacked by their readers and 2) that that is all negotiation is, just the safeword, blandly put out before sex begins to assure everyone that This Is Consensual, only a way to say no and never a way to say yes. and on the other hand, people who see that rote recitation and assume that because they find this misunderstanding of negotiation a turn off, that must mean that all negotiation ruins the thrill of a sex scene.

and so we’re left with this version of Good BDSM Writing where negotiation is a boring requirement instead of an opportunity for character introspection, or hell, for foreplay. Maybe your fav is having under-negotiated kinky, or maybe their form of negotiation is just not going to look like listing out which color means stop. what boundaries are they aware of? how, or how not, do they enforce them? where are they willing to be pushed and how do they let their partner know that? what do they ask for? what would they be too embarrassed to ask for? if you do not hold yourself to a standard that requires you to make the negotiation as unsexual as possible, you can integrate it a lot more naturally into your porn.

But I’m gonna throw this out here about us also being careful what we’re saying in fandom communities:

Art is a reflection of reality. It, in itself, is not real, but it can be a vehicle for reinforcing certain attitudes. No, reading/writing that under-negotiated kink fic isn’t going to make you think not communicating is okay irl, but if a group of people is out here saying it, (with bonus points going to a situation where no one else in your life is talking about it) that’s where things can get hairy. “Ur fav should always be having under-negotiated kinky sex” can very easily morph into a completely different statement and sentiment once it has been released into the wild amongst a community of people. And this isn’t to assign maliciousness to anyone, but just an acknowledgment that even without being on the “piss on the poor reading comprehension” web site, playing Telephone always ends with a muddled message.

to explain what i mean by "coerced":

i think doing things that are morally bad is also bad for the individual. people shouldn't be forced to do things in general, but its especially bad to force someone to do something morally bad. its also bad to coerce them into doing that. and its quite horrific for a system to embed within someone a worldview which habitually leads them to do bad things, and a social system which incentivizes people to do bad things.

this post is in part inspired by reading the book Dirty Work which talks about moral injury & people (largely marginalized people) who do work that is seen as morally "dirty" in society. and specifically the chapter on people who work with drones for the US military (in a variety of ways). one of the major figures was a woman who grew up in poverty and was terrified of dying that way, went to join the military to get to see the world, and ended up working a job requiring her to watch hours and hours of drone footage, including hours of people living their lives, their gruesome deaths, and their families trying to collect their body parts in the aftermath. she recounts how much this weighed on her psychologically and morally, but not only her fear of poverty but also being court-martialed or otherwise subject to punishment if she spoke out or did anything, and her anger at protestors who seemed to be largely middle-class women who directed their protests at individual workers like her. she eventually did become a whistle-blower and says she experienced backlash from the left as well as the right because of her job.

now, this was a difficult read for me. it can be frustrating to read a whole chapter on the suffering of drone operators when so many people in the US don't give the beginning of a fuck about the people who have been getting bombed for years. the trauma of entire countries doesn't outweigh the trauma of a single US soldier. how can we talk about her anger at women protesting drone warfare because it hurts her feelings when we are still having to protest drone warfare that destroys entire families?

and yet. i think that reaction is partially an attempt to avoid the discomfort of how fucked the situation is holistically. the woman clearly had internalized plenty of dehumanizing, imperialistic, racist, and likely Orientalist beliefs and values. but this was hardly something she consciously chose. its easy to say "never join the US military" when you are someone who 1. already had the time and chance to develop a sense of how evil the US military is (not everyone necessarily does) 2. was not and is not in the position of being 17 and worried you'll die of a fentanyl overdose in the next five years like multiple of your classmates and desperate for any opportunity out.

does it make her decision better morally? i don't think so. but why was it a decision she had to make? why did she have so few options? why did things feel so desperate? why did a certain decision seem better and more accessible than others? if we are going up the line of responsibility here, the reason this harmful, morally bad action took place at all is because of the system of US imperialism and capitalism.

the problem is, that answer does not give us A Person To Punish. which we, as people socialized into a worldview of punitive justice, have been taught to want. transformative justice isn't just switching to A Person To Fix, its directing our energy towards social change and collective thinking and acting. that doesn't ignore the individual, but it always sees the individual through a social lens. the ultimate goal is a system which incentivizes the morals we want to see just as much as the current one incentives individualism and authoritarianism and puritanism and imperialism.

i think the perspective that we are coerced, by social systems like imperialism, patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, etc. into acting immorally and harming others and ourselves, more naturally invites people to see their own racism, sexism, orientalism, classism, etc. as both morally bad and yet not a sign they are bad. it directly counters the idea that saying "the thing you did is racist" means "YOU are racist and EVIL and CONSCIOUSLY DESPISE PEOPLE OF COLOR"*; the point is that the thing you did is racist, and if you don't want to do racist things, then you have to unlearn the shit you were socialized into believing. "coerced" keeps in mind that there are people who benefit from keeping this status quo. if racism is evil, and white supremacist culture means everyone has internalized racist beliefs, that doesn't mean everyone is evil. it means we have all been coerced into participating in evil, and we are demanding an end to that coercion; that is (one form of) accountability.

this perspective can't exist alone, either. it must be paired with a devotion to the victims of these systems. this is why it is a process. the back-and-forth has to be put into action to get a balanced solution. what is best is what practically creates system change, and having process for (again, social) forgiveness is a practical necessity.

99 fanfic ideas~

Take one down, pass it around

Or, if I could propose an alternate scenario:

Blitzwing: Your beauty is so enchanting I forgot my pickup line~

Optimus: *with much exasperation but one side of his lips quirked up* Blitzchen, we’re married.

Blitzwing: Ja, but zat doesn’t change vhat I said~!