please stop these games

On what the male loneliness epidemic is really about. Given actual alternatives, women are opting tf OUT of "traditional roles".

I have found that many people who have not had a trans female or trans feminine experience often have trouble wrapping their brains around the concept of trans-misogyny, so I will offer the following two anecdotes to help illustrate what I mean by the term. Once, about two years ago, I was walking down the street in San Francisco, and a trans woman happened to be walking just ahead of me. She was dressed femininely, but not any more feminine than a typical cis woman. Two people, a man and a woman, were sitting on a doorstep, and as the trans woman walked by, the man turned to the woman he was sitting next to and said, “Look at all the shit he’s wearing,” and the woman he was with nodded in agreement. Now presumably the word “shit” was a reference to femininity — specifically, the feminine clothing and cosmetics the trans woman wore. I found this particular comment to be quite telling. After all, while cis women often receive harassing comments from strange men on the street, it is rather rare for those men to address those remarks to a female acquaintance and for her to apparently approve of his remarks. Furthermore, if this same man were to have harassed a cis woman, it is unlikely that he would do so by referring to her feminine clothing and makeup as “shit.” Similarly, someone who is on the trans masculine spectrum could potentially be harassed, but it is unlikely that his masculine clothing would be referred to as “shit.” Thus, trans-misogyny is both informed by, yet distinct from, transphobia and misogyny, in that it specifically targets transgender expressions of femaleness and femininity.

The second example of trans-misogyny that I’d like to share occurred at an Association for Women in Psychology conference I attended in 2007 (for those unfamiliar with that organization, it is essentially a feminist psychology conference). One psychologist gave a presentation on the ways in which feminism has informed her approach to therapy. During the course of her talk, she discussed two transgender clients of hers, one on the trans male/masculine spectrum, the other on the trans female/feminine spectrum. Their stories were very similar in that both had begun the process of physically transitioning but were having second thoughts about it. First, the therapist discussed the trans masculine spectrum person, whose gender presentation she described simply as being “very butch.” She discussed this individual’s transgender expressions and issues in a respectful and serious manner, and the audience listened attentively. However, when she turned her attention to the trans feminine client, she went into a very graphic and animated description of the trans person’s appearance, detailing how the trans woman’s hair was styled, the type of outfit and shoes she was wearing, the way her makeup was done, and so on. This description elicited a significant amount of giggling from the audience, which I found to be particularly disturbing given the fact that this was an explicitly feminist conference. Clearly, if a male psychologist gave a talk at this meeting in which he went into such explicit detail regarding what one of his cis female clients was wearing, most of these same audience members, as well as the presenter, would surely (and rightfully) be appalled and would view such remarks to be blatantly objectifying. In fact, in both of these incidents I have described, comments that would typically be considered extraordinarily misogynistic if they were directed at cis women are not considered beyond the pale when directed at trans women.

- marsha p. johnson repeatedly identified as a gay man and drag queen and survived into an era where the language did already exist if he chose to identify as transsexual. he explicitly stated that he was not transsexual and claimed that all transsexual people were also homosexual.

- sylvia rivera did identify as a transsexual woman (and made disparaging speeches about lesbians). she was not an ally to lesbians. lesbians and transwomen have not always been allies.

- neither of them were there when the stonewall riots began, according to marsha’s own testimony. sylvia was sleeping off a drug trip on a park bench, and by the time marsha arrived at stonewall, the riots were already in full swing.

- storme delarverie, a mixed black gender-nonconforming lesbian and drag king, may have been the one who incited the stonewall riots. she never identified as a transman despite surviving into an an era where the language was made accessible to do so. accounts differ as to who started the riots.

- stonewall was not a special haven for trans people and drag artists, it was just some bar where gay people met up. by all accounts, it wasn’t even a good bar.

- pride as a festival and parade was invented by gay men, lesbians, and bisexual people. fred sergeant is one of those gay men, and he has been beaten (in recent years, as an elderly man) by trans people and their allies due to his views on medical transition. non-homosexual trans people were unheard of in this era.

I'm glad the tone i struck was accessible to you. I'm going to continue to be very generous right now: this response is transmisogyny. one of the kinds of privilege that TME people experience is getting to be judged as individuals whereas TMA people are always judged collectively. TMA people should not have to be as precise, nonjudgmental, and even in tone as i was in this thread. i chose to put in the effort to explain things in these terms, but i did so because when TMA people like me aren't, we get taken with the worst possible faith.

if a cis woman wrote a post like mine about the ways in which men leverage misogyny against her, it would be obviously misogynistic for someone to reply "oh thank goodness. i never really got feminism because they're always just so bitchy about men". this would be the case regardless of who said it or what their proximity to misogyny is. the same is true here: i made a long post with very precisely chosen language, and this reply contrasts me against all those other, apparently uncouth trans women who don't haven't decency to be nice about our oppression. (if you know trans women like that, please send them my way. they sound based.).

TMA people do not owe any deference to TME people's feelings when talking about our oppression. y'all can get away with shit on the regular, usually against us, that is far crueler than incivility. TMA people shouldn't have to make posts that are hundreds of carefully chosen words long with step-by-step logical constructions from first principles and real-world illustrations whose relevance is spelled out on exacting detail. this was a high effort post and WE DON'T OWE THAT TO ANYONE. we shouldn't have to do that every time we want to talk about the fucked up things that happen to and around us, especially not to TME people who benefit from doing those fucked up things to us.

a common (and exhausting) misconception seems to happen around the word "exempt". let's be clear: transmisogyny isn't just "misogyny that happens to trans women". transmisogyny is a social force which influences *all* people which posits that differently gendered people are intrinsically different in some meaningful way and that one gender is in some way socially superior to another. the ways that we construct, define, inscribe, navigate, and relate to gender are all influenced by transmisogyny. if getting to wield misogyny without consequence is the carrot of patriarchy, then the threat of faggotization for being too great a failure to one's assigned boyhood is the stick. I've seen transmisogyny described as the psychological lynchpin that holds patriarchy together. some people can leverage their gender in some way to mitigate the impact of this force, but it is a fundamental part very sea that we all must swim in.

the same can be said for other marginalizing forces. temporarily nondisabled people can experience negative consequences of ableism, but feeling burnt out from an excessive workload is a fundamentally different experience when not fully exposed to ableism. for instance, you might have your exhaustion taken more seriously by your doctor if you are not yet disabled and consequently receive better medical care. a straight man might be mistreated if others believe him to be gay, but he's dealing with one moment of interpersonal bigotry rather than an entire lifetime of being under threat (for example, his right to the social and financial benefits of marriage are far more guaranteed than they might be if he was gay). and so on.

TME people experience transmisogyny but they are not its primary targets and can exempt themselves from scrutiny and mistreatment by leveraging their gender in some way that TMA people cannot. one pernicious way that this happens is through a kind of affected incompetence, positioning themselves to always be seeking education from TMA people about transmisogyny and offering shallow rebuttals and critiques such as the images attached (which they may not even consciously recognize as such). this positions TMA people as bearing the expectation of answering and clarifying on demand and being held to account for all the other TMA people who have come before her.

Like, even if we, for a moment, gave him the benefit of the doubt, and use

When has the Joker ever sent Harley Quinn his used condoms? Or sex toys (apparently he did that at the wrap party). Like the only one I can see maybe happening is sending Harley a rat, but Joker, as far as I’m aware, has never really been a sexual villain like that.

Honestly he just brags about what he does in the name of 'method acting' and pushes it to see how far he can go without getting into trouble.

And hopefully now he's been involved in two movies that bombed horribly (if we count Morbius getting released again as a seperate occasion, three) film makers will just… stop. They’ll realise that putting him in movies isn’t getting them anythung and just stop casting him.

What's so fucking funny to me is he saw how much people hated his "method" acting after he faked a need for a wheelchair, and he just stopped talking about it. Suddenly, this thing he was SOOO into (only when acting in large-scale movies, for the record) just disappeared.

Like it was never about method and always about no one ever smacking him on his face so hard his face fell off.

And those things included used condoms.

Also, as part of his "method" acting, he demanded use of a wheelchair on set of Morbius and spent long periods of time in the bathroom.

And let's talk about my quotes around "method" because I'm no great fan, but also, that's not what Leto has ever done. He SAYS he's method because he wants the cred, but he's just a fucking asshole. Daniel Day Lewis is method. He has definitely caused occasional issues on set because of it. BUT. And this is important. He has done it by wearing period-specific clothes and making himself sick (pneumonia on Gangs of New York) or having to reassure fellow actors he knows he's not Lincoln (hilarious, honestly). Also, Daniel Day Lewis does not try to enhance his own talent by talking about how he's method. He doesn't actually like it that much. You can find interviews where he talks about how he did movies at the pace he did because he feels a need to go as hard as he does and how it'd be easier to be an actor if he wasn't like that.

See also, Callum Turner, who talks about how he will live in the neighborhoods his characters are from or make his choices about what he eats and drinks based on how the character eats and drinks. These are less intense than what DDL did, but they're from the same vein.

DDL and Callum Turner both speak of it as a tool of their craft that helps them do a better job acting. Jared Leto has only ever talked about it like he's bragging about what he got away with on set by claiming his behavior was "method."

Like, if you aren't gonna have Idris do that, fine. He's great in everything. But it's a dude covered in CGI. It could be anyone. Get a character actor known for awesome monologues. There were so many options that weren't him.

Also, imagine you're working with Viola Fucking Davis and think, "Yeah, I can send her used condoms." The fucking gall to treat a highly respected and beloved co-worker like that. She should have gotten one free dick kick for each condom in the box.

Not to downplay the seriousness of the injury incurred by an exploratory bite, it was a BIG shark (possibly a great white, unknown), It left the woman in shock, in and out of consciousness. She would have drowned if not for the off duty life guard who held her head above water until the on duty rescue team arrived.

I do think calling every injury caused by a shark an "attack" and every listless approach a "close call", is alarmist in an extremely unhelpful way.

-

As a side note. If you stay calm and keep your head, you do have a superpower in most curious shark encounters (when the shark is smaller than a great white). As a creature with hands you have the ability to redirect an approaching shark with a solid sideways guiding shove to the snoot.

You just might have to be brave enough to open your eyes underwater in the ocean to perform the move if you're not wearing a mask or goggles. The water should be pretty shallow where people are swimming casually, so you would only need to dabble like a duck, like "*ducks below the water* no, fuck off *push*"

[Non-Jews are invited and encouraged to reblog this post]

It's absolutely true that non-Jews are being manipulated by weaponized antisemitism.

Antisemitism isn’t just an old hatred. it’s a reliable tool used to manipulate people, to keep them angry at the wrong things, to ensure they are distracted from real threats, to consolidate power or unite the gullible against a common enemy.

The following are just a handful of the many examples in which those in power used Jews and/or antisemitism to manipulate non-Jews and protect their own power.

If you want to understand how deceptive political narratives are crafted today, you need to recognize the old tricks.

Ancient Rome (1st Century CE): Make an Example of the Weirdos

After the Jewish revolt against Roman rule, the empire crushed the rebellion and destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, but the Roman victory wasn’t complete until they won the PR battle. Jews were painted as strange, subversive, and dangerously stubborn. Not eating pork? Not bowing to the emperor? What a bunch of freaks!

The messaging wasn’t really about Jews. It was aimed at everyone else in the empire.

The Jews became the ultimate Roman imperial cautionary tale: defy the system, and this will happen to you. Romans turned Jewish resistance into a morality play that taught the masses the one thing which could save them from Roman might: obedience.

The Arch of Titus still stands as a monument to this strategy - not just celebrating a military win, but showcasing the cost of rebellion. Antisemitism here wasn’t religious - it was strategic.

History’s First Viral Misinformation Campaign?

When Europe got hit by the Black Death, people were terrified and clueless because like RFK Jr, they didn't believe in germ theory. (Unlike RFK Jr., they had the excuse of being born centuries before it was discovered.)

Instead of asking awkward questions about hygiene or rats, leaders found a simpler solution: Accusations that Jews had poisoned wells or killed Christian children took off like wildfire.

Why spread these lies? Because fear is easier to manage when it’s directed. If the peasants were upset about death and disease, channeling that rage toward a convenient minority was both effective and politically safe for those in power.

Kings and clergy didn't let pogroms rage because they believed the rumors, but because it kept the mob from turning on them. When people are burning down Jewish homes, they’re not storming the castle or asking about tax hikes.

Jews were cast as a threat to public health, morality, and safety in an early version of crisis exploitation.

Convert, Confess, or Be Conveniently Condemned

After Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, many converted to Christianity under pressure, but the paranoia didn’t end - it escalated.

What if these "New Christians" were secretly Jewish? Enter the Inquisition, where you could be tortured and executed on vibes alone.

The real goal, though, wasn’t purity of faith. It was purity of power.

Spain was trying to build a unified national identity, and nothing creates unity like a common enemy. Accusing someone of "Judaizing" became a political weapon. It didn’t matter if they were actually secretly Jewish.

The message to the masses? Trust no one, conform completely, and prove your loyalty constantly. Bonus points if you denounce a neighbor.

Antisemitism here wasn’t a social panic. It was an engine of authoritarianism with Jews as the fuel - a way for the powerful to keep the rabble in line.

Russia Invents the Modern Antisemite

Late imperial Russia was a hot mess with poverty, revolution, and a wildly unpopular monarchy. Instead of reforming, the Tsars served up a distraction. The infamous pogroms (organized massacres) weren't just random, grass-roots explosions of violence. They were tolerated and even encouraged in order to keep the mob occupied.

To pour gas on that fire, they produced The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a completely fake document "leaked" by Russian secret police that claimed Jews were plotting world domination. Perfect for stoking paranoia and deflecting blame.

While peasants were burning Jewish shtetls, the aristocracy kept their heads on their shoulders and their power intact. Jews weren’t a threat to Russians, they were a diversion.

As a result, Russia became less stable, more paranoid, and even more antisemitic. But hey, at least the regime bought itself a few more years of survival with all those Jewish deaths, right?

The Ultimate Political Unifier

After World War I, Germany was humiliated, bankrupt, and bitter. Hitler needed a villain to unite the fractured nation, and Jews fit the bill. Not because they were powerful, but because they could be painted as too powerful. Banking? Media? Culture? Filled with those sneaky Jews...!

Nazism weaponized antisemitism like a Swiss Army knife. It justified economic collapse, explained national humiliation, and required embracing political repression. Jews became the root cause of every problem, which made the solution feel heroic: mass-murdering the foreign infiltrators would solve the problems.

Average Germans didn’t have to face hard truths. They just had to believe. If your life sucked, it wasn’t your fault - it was a cabal of scheming outsiders.

This wasn’t about theology. It was about crafting a false but emotionally satisfying worldview to manipulate Germans, one that replaced accountability with hate.

And it worked amazingly well.

When it was a Bad Thing to be a Jewish Doctor

Stalin's Soviet Union was built on fear and suspicion. After World War II, that paranoia found a familiar outlet. In 1952, Stalin accused a group of Jewish doctors of plotting to kill Soviet leaders. The whole thing was a lie, but that didn't matter.

Why Jewish doctors? Because they were educated, urban, and often treated high-level officials. Accusing them served a double purpose: it terrified the elite and signaled to the public that no one was safe.

This wasn’t antisemitism out of ideology. It was cold-blooded political strategy. By turning Jews into symbols of treachery, Stalin reinforced the culture of fear that kept him in power.

Once again, Jews weren’t the problem, but they were a perfect target.

The Soviets also invented "antizionist, not antisemitic," but that's a topic for another time.

In every one of these examples, antisemitism served someone’s agenda for manipulating non-Jews.

It united mobs. It protected tyrants. It distracted from failure. It created identity through opposition. It played on fears and worries to convince people to commit atrocities.

It wasn’t about theology, culture, or actual grievances. It was about power.

If you want to understand how people in charge manipulate the public, learn how they talk about Jews. Not because Jews run the world - but because lies about Jews have been the tools of those who do.

Okay, so by now you can see the pattern in history. Can you recognize it today?

Putin used Antisemitism to Justify his Invasion of Ukraine

When Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he didn’t just roll in tanks, he also rolled out a twisted narrative. His main claim was that Russia had to "denazify" Ukraine...a country led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Jewish man whose family members were murdered in the Holocaust. Putin insisted that Russia was the heroic figure, here to save the day from those terrible Ukrainian antisemites.

This wasn’t about fighting actual antisemitism; it was about weaponizing the word. Accusing your enemies of being Nazis has long been a go-to move in Russian propaganda.

Meanwhile, Putin's pals were cozying up to actual far-right, antisemitic groups in Europe, and while he called Ukrainians fascists, his government was busy banning books, jailing historians, and polishing the turd of Stalin's legacy.

Putin's "denazification" claim was a case of geopolitical gaslighting.

Donald Trump Uses "Antisemitism" to Justify Authoritarianism

Donald Trump said if he lost the election, it would be the fault of the Jews - and that was chilling enough.

What's far worse is how Trump uses the excuse of "fighting antisemitism" to attack institutions which he sees as potential obstacles to his authoritarian consolidation of power.

Harvard, Columbia, and others do have an antisemitism problem, but that's not what is motivating Trump - and the vast majority of US Jews oppose his assault on higher education which is supposedly for their benefit.

Regardless what I think of Mahmoud Khalil, he deserves due process and Trump has sought not just to circumvent due process, but make it look like US Jews approve while most of us would prefer he keep our language out of his mouth:

Trump absolutely knows this puts Jews in even more danger from left-wing extremists while he promotes fascism in the name of a Jewish American community which overwhelmingly disbelieves his intentions and vehemently opposes his methods.

____________

The antisemitism isn’t always obvious. Sometimes it’s dressed up as anti-Zionism. Sometimes it hides in jokes, memes, or coded language on right wing social media. Sometimes a president will use it as an excuse to attack democracy itself - but the function is always the same: mobilize emotion and manipulate the masses by pointing at the Jews.

The target audience of antisemitism isn’t ever the Jewish community, non-Jewish friends.

It’s you. Your attention. Your anger. Your loyalty.

Next time someone says, "Well, the Jews..." please ask yourself: who benefits if I believe them?

____________

Receipts and further reading:

Ancient Rome: Jews as a Political Warning

Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War. Loeb Classical Library

https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL203/1927/volume.xml

Sanders, E. P., Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE

https://archive.org/details/judaismpracticeb0000sand_i5n5

Gruen, E. S., Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks and Romans, Harvard University Press, 2002.

https://archive.org/details/diasporajewsamid0000grue/page/n5/mode/2up

Medieval Europe and the Black Death Scapegoating

Tuchman, Barbara, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

https://griersplagueyear.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/a-distant-mirror-the-calamitous-14th-century-barbara-w-tuchman-1.pdf

Cohn, Samuel K. Jr., “The Black Death and the Burning of Jews,” Past & Present (1980).

https://www.academia.dk/MedHist/Sygdomme/PDF/Past-and-Present-2007-Cohn-3-36.pdf

The Dehumanization and Demonization of the Medieval Jews

Amsterdam University Press (2019)

https://annas-archive.org/scidb/10.1017/9781641890083.004/

Spanish Inquisition and Conversos

Bethencourt, Francisco, The Inquisition: A Global History, 1478–1834, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Kamen, Henry, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision, Yale University Press, 1997.

https://archive.org/details/spanishinquisiti00henr

Netanyahu, B, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain

https://annas-archive.org/md5/d91e2ea112c03ff863fb6ac94eacdfe1

Tsarist Russia Pogroms and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Klier, John D., Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

https://archive.org/details/pogromsantijewis00john/page/n423/mode/2up

Cohn, Norman, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

https://archive.org/details/warrantforgenoci0000cohn

Nazi Germany and Antisemitism as Political Unifier

Kershaw, Ian, Hitler: A Biography, W.W. Norton & Company, 2008.

Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Harcourt, 1951.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Propaganda

Soviet Union and the "Doctors' Plot"

Gellately, Robert, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe, Knopf, 2007.

https://annas-archive.org/md5/f0ec3897e774bd59abc5265c957c67d9

Montefiore, Simon Sebag, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

If you could support this assertion with evidence, you would.

You can't, so you won't.