Whose Baby is That?

If you want to try be your own island sure you can try operate as 'I dont owe anyone anything' but then the reverse is also true, nobody owes you.

You want friends, then you have to give and recieve. Gotta open up some reciprocity. Gotta give a little, risk a little, create some responsibility, some owing, not manipulative but from choice. Do a favour so they feel inclined to do a favour back. Its more tit-for-tat in the beginning and it should be largely reciprocal/even but not, whats the word, contractual? Youre not counting who owes who three dollars, yknow.

But if you prefer not to owe anything youre setting yourself apart. Not truly independent bc thats impossible as a human. But apart.

they had a post dated from very early on during this whole charade where they laid out their motivations, monologued about how much they hated me, talked about knowing how to push all of transfems' buttons because they used to dom us, said it's misogynistic for us to transition, talked about how gratifying it was to see us hurting the way they had, talked about being no longer trans but not detrans either(?), and said they were more or less close to peaking and siding with radfems

so that's that, lol. many of the posts from the secret sideblog were archived on @tmvparchive if you'd like to check them out

for example, if you identify yourself of someone else as An Abuser, you have preemptively eliminated the possibility of a future that involves healing or change. the Abuser doesn’t need to try to be better, because by conceiving of An Abuser as an ontological and intrinsic role (rather than a situational one), you have relieved them of any onus for their behavior. “they can’t help it; it’s in their nature.” it is all An Abuser ever can be, so it is all An Abuser ever is. they must be socially punished, ostracized, shunned, and eternally repent for the harm they caused. the Abuser is irrevocably marked a pariah and recovery is impossible.

the coin’s other face, of course, is identifying A Victim. in doing so, a possible future or opportunity for growth is also eliminated but for the inverse reason: as A Victim, they are infantilized. of course they are not responsible for any of the ways they have been treated—however, they also are never forced to question any subsequent behavior. A Victim is always innocent, and therefore does not need to analyze their actions. if A Victim acts in the same way as An Abuser, all the teeth are removed from these actions by the Victim’s ontological innocence. “of course they acted that way; they’re traumatized.” A Victim is never fully able to grow out of their fear response or conceive of a situation where they will not be hurt, and their infantilization is perpetuated ad infinitum, simultaneously relieving them of any responsibility to process/grow through their trauma or consider ways they may go on to hurt others in the future. frozen in Victimhood, they are only ever allowed to be helplessly acted upon and fall into the clutches of another Abuser, never able to themselves do harm to another or heal.

But in all my activity along this line, I never even noticed that not a single transmasc lesbian (nor cis lesbian) had ever reached out to me to say "you are welcome in our community". I was putting in all this work to advocate for a group of people who didn't even want me around, and there is no way in hell they'd put in the same effort for me. I was doing the intellectual work of justifying the inclusion of a group that benefitted from my exclusion.

I think that when I realised that this was happening was when materialism really clicked for me. Who actually is excluded from lesbian spaces? Who actually needs help being included? Who doesn't need that help because they are already included? For all I heard online about the demonisation of transmasculinity, you can't move for transmascs of all stripes in my local lesbian scene, while there are maybe one or two transfems willing to put up with the indignity of how they are treated there.

And this was not unusual for feminist groups at that time. There was a sense that we were close to the end of a century-long struggle to desegregate society: Universities and most schools were now mixed (my own former school had just become co-ed at this point), youth groups like the Scout Association had recently made it mandatory for all groups to admit girls, there was growing public pressure on men-only spaces like The Garrick Club to admit women, most modern swimming pools had co-ed changing facilities, and gender-neutral bathrooms were starting to become more common.

One of our campaigns was to make all bathrooms in the Students' Union building gender neutral. In the end this failed because of pressure from a group of (white, wealthy, English) men in the Conservative society who insisted that sharing bathrooms with women violated their devout Christian beliefs - they weren't even Christian actually but they managed to spook the lawyers enough in light of the recent Equality Act.

We also frequently discussed desegregating sports - it was widely understood by our (pretty much entirely cis women) members that sex-segregation was a misogynist project that resulted principally in women being paid less. The long mission to get equal prize money at Wimbledon had been won only a few years earlier, and there was pressure on other sports to follow suit. Now we were discussing introducing mixed-gender University sports teams to play competitively.

Bear in mind that the issue of trans women basically never came up in these discussions (mainly due to ignorance: the only reference to trans women I had ever encountered at this point was Ace Ventura). It was principally a matter of desegregation as a moral position that positioned the logic of segregation as part of the systemic oppression of women. The fact that it was right-wing men who were the ones objecting to desegregated toilets (something that has been true throughout the history of toilet segregation) just solidified this point.

Anyway, I gave all this as context to my trans guy friend to explain why I felt frustrated at recent attempts to paint bathroom bans as a win for feminism. That it's depressing to see the feminist activism of 15 years ago sacrificed on the altar of transmisogyny.

This guy has been medically transitioning for a little over a year, and has been discovering feminism in that time too. He recently learned about things like the gender pay gap, and will try to explain it to me like he thinks it's news to me. The gendered nature of domestic abuse is also a favourite topic of his. Before he transitioned, back when he referred to himself as a woman, he tended to take a more liberal normie "men and women are equally oppressed by gender expectations, just let everyone do what they want" line, but tbf we didn't talk about feminism much back then anyway.

The combination of being an early-transition trans guy who is also learning baby's first feminism can be a really dangerous one. He is only now discovering how much he has suffered at the hands of this form of oppression called "misogyny", but at the same time he is a man. He is reading all this literature that positions "men" as the oppressor but also positions people like himself as the oppressed. The easiest way for him to resolve this conflict is to mentally transpose "men" with "AMABs" and "women" with "AFABs", even if he's not aware that's what's happening in his brain.

So in response to my frustration with bathroom bans he starts saying all this stuff about women's reasonable concerns about male violence, how it's difficult to balance the various needs of different groups, how trans men are "obviously" not a threat to women so they should clearly be allowed to use women's toilets. He views the existence of trans women as a spanner in the works of an otherwise rational system with cis men on one side and AFABs on the other.

I try to point out that toilet segregation is actually a real concrete problem for me, the flesh-and-blood person in front of him who he has been friends with for years. That I am risking violence no matter which toilet I use, no matter what clothes I'm in, no matter whether I'm wearing make-up or not. If I use the women's I will get harassed for sure. If I use the men's I have a high chance of being assaulted. His only response is that he also is nervous about using the women's because after a year on T he already passes for cis in nearly all situations. The idea that he should just use the men's since he's a man who looks like a man gets a blank look from him: why should he not be able to use the women's, he's experienced "AFAB oppression" too, hasn't he?

By this point I'm getting quite frustrated. We're talking about feminism as a leftwing movement and I bring up the kind of socialist guy we all know well who says stuff like "misogyny isn't really a priority for me". He hasn't really been listening but he hears me quote this hypothetical man and assumes I'm saying it in earnest. "Did you say misogyny isnt a priority for you?"

Suddenly I, the woman who has been involved in feminist activism for 15 years, am having to defend myself against accusations of misogynist bigotry from a man who discovered feminism a year ago because he decided to not bother listening to what a woman was saying until it was something that sounded incriminating as a soundbite.

oh, and, do u have any songs u think are very very franziska?

my interpretation is admittedly reserved for the english localization but given that she was prosecuting in germany i don't actually feel that she is particularly ashamed of it. the death penalty is illegal & prison is very different with many programs that focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment. prisoners can literally escape in germany & the law says they cannot have time added onto their sentences because it is human nature to want to escape confinement.

on that note prosecutors do a great deal of negotiating when it comes to sentencing and i believe, wholeheartedly, that franziska would never argue for a sentence that she felt was too harsh. her introductory case shows her trying to egg phoenix into a justified self defense plea for maya, something i personally believe she did because she did not think maya deserved murder in the first. i've talked extensively about that & it's primarily something @pictureswithboxes put me onto, but i do believe franziska thinks very deeply about the guilty verdicts she pursues & always tries to find a way to ensure they match the crime. there was NO reason for the writers to include that justified self defense plea other than to inform us that franziska's ruthlessness in maintaining her record comes with a much softer edge than her family's.

i am also a very big proponent of the idea that franziska does not have a single regret about anything in her life. she views mistakes as both motivation & necessary work in her goals of perfection. the correct response to a mistake is to study it and ensure that she never, EVER makes it again, and when possible, remedy it with something of equal value. this is why i think she was so insistent on undoing the trick locks herself in bridge, for instance--pearl rightfully reminded her that she ruthlessly fought to have maya declared guilty. franziska was wrong, she was soft but she should have been softer. in front of her was an opportunity to save maya's life. naturally, then, she took it.

In early 2025, Atlanta resident Samuel Tunick was on his way home following a trip abroad. After landing in the US, customs agents demanded access to his Pixel phone, which was running an alternative version of Android called GrapheneOS. Rather than hand over his data, Tunick used a clever feature of the software to delete everything. Now, he’s facing federal charges.

The first hearing in this case happened last week, according to The Guardian, during which government attorneys and agents claimed that Tunick was subjected to a standard secondary interrogation at an international airport. During that encounter, agents were “looking for anything that’s prohibited.” However, Tunick’s legal team alleges he was targeted for his activism.

a custom DNS resolver that blocks access to Fox News and other right-wing propaganda outlets

a keylogger to capture the admin password for your router so you can disable parental controls

a VPN or a virtual machine running the Tor browser to bypass access restrictions and age verification checks

your own "parental controls" browser extension, set up to send you notifications if your parents visit websites that indicate they might be spying on you (e.g. Life360)

a userscript that adds a fake virus warning popup to the donation pages of fascist political parties

have fun! make sure to do loads of reading and learn how things work so you can break them safely and effectively!

Obviously still fucking vile and my opinions on her remain firmly in the "I hope she dies" camp but I think that's where the weird language in the snopes article comes from. Upskirting is usually when you personally go out and take upskirt photos, whereas this is just Jo being a creep in a different way.

Snopes has never been afraid to go after powerful people in the past. But they are very particular about the language they use because the Internet is so quick to hyperbolize and play telephone. Personally I think this rating is fair, but they maybe should have focused less on the language and focused more on the fact where Jo was a wretched enough worm to frame by frame this and share it with her army of transphobes.