I Need To Finish My Shows

imagine being on your lunch break, and your supervisor comes over to your table, tells you to stand up in front of everyone. they draw everyone's attention to your thighs. they tell you that you have broken the dress code because of the length of your shorts. they tell you to go change (so you do not get the rest of your lunch break). they do this every single day at lunch. every day. so you read the whole dress code front and back, and you choose your clothing carefully to not break it. you bring a cloth tape measure with you to work because they will not believe you. this time when your supervisor tells you that you're breaking dress code, you pull out your tape measure and show that you are within the limit. your supervisor says "I bet you wouldn't want me to bring you to the boss and let him measure it, would you?" it's clearly a threat: if you don't obey then you will be put alone in a room with your boss and he will touch your thighs. you don't know how to respond. you're taken out of lunch again.

Tonight's Movie January 16 2025

This is a really good example of how TERFs disguise their attacks against trans men, and why it’s so harmful to consider TERF attitudes towards trans mascs as infantilizing.

The post is made to appear sympathetic to the man they are mocking. “Look at this poor ‘girl’ and how he’s mutilated himself” sounds sympathetic, especially to trans people who are subjected to aggressive, direct attacks on their identities and humanity.

But this performative sympathy is just a front so that TERFs can enjoy being cruel without appearing as the aggressor. This allows the audience to still enjoy the pleasure of engaging in cruelty while dressing it up as pity.

This plays into the broader tactic TERFs deploy with trans mascs.

Rarely ever do they confront us directly the way they do with trans women.

In fact, because they see us as women, their primary objective is to make sure we are never ever heard at all, so that they can maintain the narrative that none of us would ever transition of our own free will.

Instead, they poison the well. They talk to our “handlers”. Our parents, our doctors and psychiatrists, our husbands, boyfriends, our pastors.

The veneer of sympathy is not to appeal to trans men. It is to appeal to those they see as having ownership over us. When trans men fight back against this, the malice comes out in full force.

The "point" is of course that the target is unable to fight back in any way - it demonstrates the bullies' social power (because the target could only fight back by physically removing themselves from the situation, running, locking a door etc, which would be further proof of the target's outcast status - "I tried to show her how to do her makeup and she RAN OFF like a FREAK, GROSS" or to physically fight back - "She PUSHED ME when I went to put makeup on her, she's violent and dangerous!") And reinforces that the bully is a morally "good person" (because "she just wants to help!! Why are you so ungrateful?!?!") In the case of the adult terfs with a trans man or transmasc target, the only ways that he can fight back will again make him look either "violent" or "hysterical" or both, making him the bad guy.