Hello Yes This Is Dog

If this little book should see the light after its 100 years of entombment, I would like its readers to know that the author was a lover of her own sex and devoted the best years of her life in striving for the political equality and social and moral elevation of women.

There's some people in the comments saying "fandoms have always been like this" and others saying "No, it's worse than it was." And both are to some extent right. Fans (or at least a small percentage of fans, and the larger a fanbase gets the larger a group this will describe) have always been Like That; but they did not always have the level of access to creators and actors that they have now.

The notion that a performer needs to be constantly available to public scrutiny, that their personal information should by default be available to any rando with google, is pretty new. It used to be that actors would only be expected to engage with the public on limited, specific, and controlled occasions, usually with security provided. Now they're being asked to rawdog exposure to the mob 24/7 on their own.

(Also, production companies have always always always been exploitative cowards, just to get that straight; reading the biographies of literally any actress from golden Hollywood years makes that clear. It's just, again, more public now.)

here are some fun desktop themes i put on my virtual machines. 

unfortunately anon so, so many people have not actually agreed that. a lot of people have never heard the term oppositional sexism & i've even see some people on tumblr throwing it around & saying "transandrobros don't understand oppositional sexism" while engaging in oppositional sexism.

its also crazy because The Transfeminist Manifesto is pretty anti-oppositional sexism as Emi Koyama was capable of appreciating nuance. frankly i knowwww none of these fucking people have read the Manifesto, because Emi wrote an entire section on Male Privilege where she makes the explicit argument that trans women are capable of experiencing male privilege because anyone can, including a cis woman with a traditionally masculine name, and that trans women shouldn't downplay this since it isn't helpful to building solidarity and it allows cis women to argue they don't have cis privilege just because they are women and so the cisness cancels out.

and i fucking KNOW if someone posted that exact argument on here, plenty of the people who consider themselves the defenders of trve transfeminism on here would call it transmisogynistic and tear it apart. like.

idk man. isn't it kind of telling that so many people on here seem to think Julia Serano, a white American woman who while having her own nuanced and important contributions to transfeminism and feminism in general, also has a history of contributing to anti-transmasculine and exorsexist myths, is the founder of transfeminism.

meanwhile, the term transfeminism was first put in print by Patrick Califia, a trans man who wrote prominently as a pro-BDSM lesbian in 1997, and then in 2001 Emi Koyama, an intersex Japanese trans woman who also didn't consider herself to have a gender, critiqued white feminism for tokenizing women of color and ignoring racial analysis, critiqued perisex trans people for viewing gender as a construct but still believing the sex binary, critiqued "reverse essentialism" where trans people "adopt the essentialist notion of gender identity" because "essentializing our gender identity can be just as dangerous as resorting to biological essentialism," who i cannot stress this enough literally wrote this in the section on violence against women:

Trans men also live in the constant fear of discovery as they navigate in a society that persecutes men who step outside of their socially established roles. Crimes against trans men are committed by strangers as well as by close “friends,” and are undoubtedly motivated by a combination of transphobia and misogyny, performed as a punishment for violating gender norms in order to put them back in a "woman's place."

and STILL wrote a postscript saying a fundamental problem she saw with her manifesto was

"Overemphasis on male-to-female trans people at the expense of female-to-male trans people and others who identify as transgender or genderqueer. I take full blame for the fact that this manifesto is heavily focused on issues male-to-female transsexual people face, while neglecting unique struggles that female-to-male trans people and other transgender and genderqueer people face. At the time I wrote this piece, I felt the need to restrict the focus of feminism to “women” because I feared that expanding the focus would permit non-trans men to exploit feminism for their interest, as some so-called men’s rights groups do. While I still feel that this fear is justified, I now realize that privileging transsexual women’s issues at the expense of other trans and genderqueer people was a mistake. [...] I have thought about writing a new manifesto to address these and other insights I gained since 2000, with the confidence and clarity I have now, but for now I am leaving the task to others. If you write one, please send it to me.

& in 2008:

I wanted to write a feminist theory that counter the argument that transsexual women were so different from all other women that there is no place for transsexual women within feminism (or that feminism has no use for transsexual women). I wanted to provide easy-to-repeat arguments that pro-trans feminists can use to confront blatant bigotry and falsehoods against transsexual women. And to these ends, I think “Manifesto” was successful. But there was something unsettling about the “Manifesto.” In an effort to forge an alliance between transsexual and non-transsexual women, the piece neglected the struggles of transsexual men and other transgender or genderqueer people who do not identify as “women” unless it was convenient to include them. The piece was also weak on intersectional analysis–that is, how anti-trans sentiments and oppressions compound and complicate oppressions other than sexism, including and especially racism and classism. It borrowed from the work of women of color when it was useful–for example, to point out that transsexual women’s unique experiences should not be the basis for their exclusion because to do so would presuppose a singular universal female experience, which is obviously false–without contributing any insights as to how the inclusion of trans sensibility helps to fight racism and other oppressions. The fact is, I had only been living in my new home town for three months or so when I wrote this piece, and I was not fully in touch with my own discomfort with the white feminism that filled nine out of ten weeks of the Introduction to Women’s Studies, nor did I feel confident enough to challenge the view that feminism is simply about advocating for women and fighting sexism–and nothing more. In short, what I had written was a version of white feminism that was modified just enough to include transsexual women. At the time, I felt that it was the only safe way to write a feminist theory that advanced transsexual women’s place within feminism. I spent next couple of years meeting more people with a common commitment for justice for all, slowly building the self-confidence it takes to “transform silence into language and action,” as Audre famously stated.

(& i think there are good criticisms that can be made of the Manifesto, but that does not change my respect for it because she engaged in self-critique and wanted the work to be open to criticism, to be a beginning and not limit to active transfeminism theory and practice).

like. interesting how a lot of self-proclaimed transfeminists on here are outspokenly explicitly against the beliefs of both of the trans people who helped popularize the term. people have been pointing the problems with this shit out for 2 decades at this point & y'all think its just tumblr discourse.

Unfortunately she is dead, although it hasn't been reported on widely (not surprising as she wasn't a super well-known public figure). A friend on LinkedIn wrote a post commemorating her life, and InterACT has also posted about her passing. She was apparently undergoing treatment for cancer and had been for a while:

in May she posted this to her Facebook, and it seems the GoFundMe for Aileen's also confirms she is deceased:

Emi was the driving force that holds together Aileen’s–a peer-led community organizing and hospitality space by and for women living and working along Pac Highway. And, if you knew Emi, you would not be surprised to hear that her work at Aileen’s is a massive undertaking, because her dedication to serving the community meant she did more than humanly possible in a 24 hour day. It is crucial that Aileen’s continues to serve women who are experiencing homelessness, criminalization, and violence. Since 2019, Aileen’s has provided hospitality space, non-judgemental and accepting community, peer support, resources, harm reduction advocacy, and outreach services. Led by 6 part-time peer staff, Aileen’s aids community dealing with issues of poverty, criminal legal, CPS, substance use, domestic violence, police harassment and brutality, sexual assault and harassment, racism, transphobia, and more. Countless people rely on Aileen’s for necessities like food, supplies, showers, clothing, and a safe place to rest. Emi has been essential in Aileen’s ability to serve the community, and Aileen's was Emi's most cherished project. Without her or other support, the organization is at risk of shutting down. Weeks ago, when asked what all Emi does for Aileen’s, co-director Leslie said “Oh, she does everything.” It is hard to describe “everything”, but Emi handled: all grant writing and reporting, administration responsibilities, fiscal sponsor management, coalition building, court and political advocacy, resource accrual for survivor support, safety planning, and training/education for staff and community. Aileen's, and all of Emi's past work, is about liberation and survival under a system that has left so many without. With your donation, Aileen’s can increase pay and hire more peer staff, transfer daily operations, buy essential supplies like food, clothes, harm reduction items, and take care of basic costs not covered by grants.

you can read an interview with Emi where she talks about Aileen's here. something i really appreciate is that when asked why its important for Aileen's to be a "women-only space", Emi clarified that it isn't as trans and nonbinary people can also come, and that they also wouldn't turn away cis male sex workers in need either.