Sideblogging Life.

Growing up I was always "too masculine" my parents were trying to force me to be feminine. Schoolmates would ask me about my "secret penis" and be more physically violent with me over other "girls". And cis women would touch me and use me however they felt because they knew I couldn't retaliate.

When I told my friends that my girlfriend was being abusive, they laughed and told me in full confidence that, that couldn't have happened. After all she's just so fem! And Im just so not.

The people that upheld gender rolls around me were not just men or my parents. Everyone is imbued with misogyny. Your parents dont care you dont shave your legs? Well your classmates will. A male teacher is sexist? Dont worry he'll just get a female teacher in to do the misogyny for him and tell all the girls in class how they look like little sluts.

Then I came out as trans and got on hormones and suddenly I'm not man enough. Everyone has to give me advice on how to be a "real man". I need to do the Manly Activities and stop doing the Girly Activities. (Never a woman tho. A dangerous man or a confused girl is all a trans man gets to be)

Is this a typical female socialization? I doubt it. Just like I doubt that trans women have a typical "male socialization"

Everyone grows up with misogyny. Everyone has to unlearn misogyny. Everyone has to unlearn toxic masculinity. Being AFAB does not make someone immune to being misogynistic.

What makes you think growing up as a trans woman excludes them from these kinds of experiences? We know toxic masculinity is toxic but somehow that doesn't apply?

Little girls will be shamed for their appearance no matter what. Little trans girls are shamed for existing. A masculine girl can wear a fully gender neutral outfit and look like a boy. Because boy clothes are default. A trans girl cannot dress in one single item of girls clothes without being mocked. Theres a whole category of bits where a boy accidentally wears something for girls and is humiliated for it. (Because girl clothing has to have different buttons and pockets, lest you mix up the paper thin see through top and shapeless bag with armholes)

Being expected to always perform masculinity drives me crazy and I am a man. How do you think a little girl would feel in that role?

Think of every single "male socialization" thing (backbone, confidence, condescension, misogynistic, over-sexual, lazy, aggressive) that has been tacked onto trans women and ask yourself: "Is there not a million cis women I can think of that do that too?" If the answer you find is no, you are lying to yourself or you have some misogyny to work on. If the answer is yes, stop telling trans women that they are male socialized and stop saying that they are mansplaning or being a manchild. There are words for that, that involve no men (because women do it too)

Ramps should be the standard.

Automatic doors should be the standard.

Elevators in multi-story buildings should be the standard.

ASL interpreters at events should be the standard.

Braille menus at restaurants should be the standard.

Something like Breaking Bad, for example, has low squiggability (that’s what I’m calling this quality). It’s tightly written, the characters are consistent, there’s little left to interpolate or extrapolate. Obviously, people DO write fanfic of Breaking Bad, but it still has a low squiggability score. Whereas something like Supernatural has a high squiggability score. Fantasy and science fiction often have high squiggability scores. This suggests squiggability could also be related to worldbuilding and potential for people to borrow a premise or setting.

-What if they’re alive?

-What if they’re sentient?

-What if they don’t realize they’re hurting us?

-What if what hurts us is what they need to live?

-What if we can communicate with them?

Star Trek takes the situation of, “these computer bugs are eating our ship and in an hour we’ll all be dead and we COULD just wipe them out utterly but…what if they’re like us?” because the ramifications effect what risks we ourselves are willing to take in the name of pacifism and understanding. it says that even the smallest most immenently dangerous creature deserves as much of a chance to live peacefully as we can possibly give it through understanding.

There has been a growing trend in permaculture called "food forests," where you plant a bunch of native edible plants (and plants that shelter essential wildlife to keep the edible plants healthy) in layered ways that increase productivity and protect each other from extremes in weather as climate change ramps up. There was a study in Japan that produced the Miyazaki Method for planning a food forest. It seems now that, while this is extremely effective in the temperate parts of Japan and ecosystems similar to the one the test was done in, this may not be universally true, especially in places that don't naturally sustain forests.

Still, I think the concept can be expanded to produce things like "food scrublands," "food prairies," "food marshes," etc. The biggest hurdle in my opinion is that many colonial settlers are unfamiliar with the native food that grows or once grew in their area, making the idea of a native food ecosystem daunting to those who hold the power to actually implement these ideas.