the stars are the same as ever

The state of litigation on anti-drag and anti-trans laws is so weird bc a lot of times the courts will be like "well if we just read the plain text of this law, its fine because it just says you can't take your kids to watch drag queens strip" but the law itself is titled shit like "the FUCK QUEERS Act" and the right sees it and is like cool, time to call in bomb threats to every place i see with a pride flag and the liberal left is like well we must immediately bend over and accommodate the new reality which means cancelling all our gay shit and firing any trannies that work for us

every book marketed as 'adult sapphic romance' has a synopsis that goes like Auber Crombie is a 27 year old divorcee, free of her comphet marriage and ready to start a new life in the big city... until her car breaks down in the middle of a small town and shes forced to stay with an old fling-turned flame until the snowstorm stops blocking her from her dreams. And Delilah Hay had recently proclaimed herself date-free and living the single life, happy with her small-town mechanic job and working on her part-time queer romance novel - that will be finished once she gets over her years-long writer's block.

someone: this beauty standard was constructed with specific political purpose, and effectively dismantling the power structure that justifies itself through it requires us to give up using aspects of the body as a metaphor for morality or social worth

the thing about the concept of gendered socialization is that so many people use it as like another kind of gender essentialism. you know it's not an immutable trait right. you can literally overcome it.

and when ppl see a trans woman being confident and unafraid to take up space and decide it's because of her evil evil male socialization, i'm always like "wait you're saying this woman was raised as a child to be loud and confident and take up space? that's awesome, i thought that's how we WANTED people to raise girls? why exactly is it a problem now? 🤔"

They also treat socialisation as some indelible artefact of the past, not an ongoing process. Women aren't just more shy and cautious on average because they were taught that as small children; they're like that because of the environment they're still in at forty or fifty. It's not some irremovable childhood brainwashing, it's a reasonable reaction to current circumstances. A great many trans women become more shy and quieter after coming out or transitioning because the people around them socially punish them for not doing so, same as previously shy and quiet cis women become more confident and take up more space when put in environments that don't punish them for it. They act like someone's personality and behaviour are branded into them based on whether they have a penis at eight years old, but that is simply not the case.