starfall

You can just be a girl. Or a boy, or something else; those aren’t my areas of expertise, though I imagine the process is roughly similar. But you can just be a girl. If you want to. If you’re not already.

You can grow out your hair. You can try on new clothes. You can take that stumbling first step into something new. You can have your awkward teen years in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, and on. You can never arrive late, as long as you still arrive.

You can throw away all the things you were told were gifts but which never brought you any joy. You can finally give yourself what you actually wanted but were told to never ask for.

You can drop the act. You can dismantle the walls you were taught to build. You can pick at the callus you formed around yourself to protect from the friction of the world, peel it away to find yourself soft beneath, and discover the relief of being tender. You can find sisterhood, and feel it fill all the empty promises brotherhood made before. You can have love, and you can finally give it too. You can delight in how the world seems frictionless now that you don’t have to pretend anymore.

You can melt your flesh down and recast your body into a home instead of just a tool. You can listen to every stitch pop as you rip yourself from the social fabric, free to weave yourself anew. You can rend yourself open, reach in, and gently raise the girl you could have been before you were taught to be a man. You can shed the false self you hid inside, claw your way out sticky and bloody and gasping for air, and you can finally start living. With freshly soft hands you can seize the hammer of your will, and with it — day by day, blow by screaming blow — you can beat your fate into a shape of your choosing.

Uber is a fucking shell game of a company designed to leech investor capital and output bootleg cabs.

Nvidia posted a profit in 2023 of $4.37 billion. This is like someone stealing less than a penny from me.

And they lock this kid in a prison hospital for LIFE?

they're talking about how they're no longer interested in dating because their female friends treat them better than boyfriends do. they're realizing that being single is always better than being in a bad relationship. it's becoming a lot more normal and fun and hot for women to be single at any age. the women who have settled down with truly good men in truly happy relationships are encouraging other women to not take any shit because the right man won't need to be "trained". they're talking about how their mothers and grandmothers warned them to get a job and not get married, and they followed the advice.

who screamed who yelled WHO CHEERED!!! So much touhou its insane

Also some doodles of the flowers below i havent really locked in and tried drawing them for real yet

we've had positive interactions before Rina and I saw this from your blog not from any of the people arguing with you, so I hope you're able to take this as well meaning as I intend it.

I can't perfectly describe everything happening here because I only have so much time and confronting transmisogyny directly like this is very discomforting, but I do think this is transmisogynistic and it's sad to see.

it's true that misogyny is rampant and not widely condemned in society, and if that's all you were noting like some of the other tags on this post, I would probably just move on because while I don't think winged-void was claiming that it isn't, it's not wrong to note explicitly.

but what you've done here is a few steps further than that, and you've approached a trans woman very hostily about misogyny and doubled down on it as well. it's true that it didn't originally say "progressive spaces" or something, but this is pretty clearly a vent post speaking about a specific type of experience. the first line can be read grammatically less as a statement of "this is what happens in the general context" and more in the way of "in the context set up by this line; second line". which is to say: in the context that people frown upon misogyny, they often still enjoy transmisogyny.

this is a completely reasonable interpretation of the original post and it seems like you've completely discarded it. you've also stated that no space has managed to create a space outside patriarchy, which is true in the most literal sense, but the implication is that there are no spaces or types of spaces which misogyny receives pushback. this is why you're being called a cryptoterf in the notes, because the universality and primacy of misogyny as fundamentally inescapable is perhaps the most defining trait of terfism and what separates radical feminism more broadly from other feminisms. there's several reasons why this view of misogyny is deeply harmful, it often leads directly to downplaying other forms of discrimination like racism, but it also leads to pretty directly to a sort of female-pessimism of the separatist trend, most visible of these probably being dworkin, who rather infamously advocates for an Israel for women, using much the same rhetoric zionists do, that women will never be safe otherwise because of how inescapable misogyny is, even explicitly so drawing the comparison to Israel/antisemitism repeatedly by name in her book on the subject. another reason is this perspective is harmful is that it totally inverts historical materialism and places gender at the base of class distinctions, which is not remotely backed up by anthropology or any modern science really. it deemphasizes the primacy of class struggle and substitutes sex struggle, a substitution which has been responsible for most of the worst mistakes of radical feminist thought.

the issue is also obviously visible in real life - are there no spaces where misogyny is generally frowned upon? the idea is so laughable that I have trouble thinking this is what you intended to imply, i think more likely you're trying to make a point about how this isnt the general case, and most places are misogynistic*, in which case it loops back to the above paragraphs about interpretation, so I'll move on. *(or saying that in these cases people aren't truly anti-patriarchal, just superficially, which I'll touch on in a moment)

is saying misogyny is a societal wide problem terfism? no, but saying that its fundamentally inescapable, moreover, never even opposed or combatted, while speaking over trans women, you can start to see the lines.

there are obviously spaces where misogyny receives at least superficial pushback, such as overtly feminist spaces and plenty of queer spaces as well, and we also know pretty clearly that these spaces are nevertheless not kind to trans women. does this mean they actually in reality treat cis women super well? no. even if they did would they not be misogynistic? no, because trans women are women and transmisogyny is misogyny.

but regardless, the reality is that many spaces claim to care about misogyny, and then do overtly misogynistic shit to trans women in particular and in ways above and beyond what they do to cis women. if you deny this, you deny transmisogyny. by arguing that there are no spaces where cis womens issues are even superficially recognized, you also deny that anyone can experience further marginalization in this regard. if misogyny is never believed, then being a Black or imperialized or trans woman will never make the misogyny you experience more invisible, because it's already completely and utterly ignored, and all that's left is the distinct fully unrelated experiences of marginalization, in other words, this perspective is fundamental anti-intersectional.

I say "this perspective" in reference to the perspective I outline above, not explicitly your perspective, because I understand the conclusions I've drawn likely aren't ones you share explicitly, but I do think support for them can be found within your words and it seems like some element of them are present due to the way you're doubling down on this. I really think you ought to step back and think through this a little bit more.

this post is an expression of the hyper marginalization that trans women face. it's not saying misogyny isn't real, and you don't need to teach trans women about how big an issue misogyny is, we know. what we're trying to say is that the problem is often worse for us specifically.

whenever any multiply marginalized group speaks about the way they're oppressed within their own communities, they're often made out as downplaying whatever marginalization is shared. in Black groups, Black women speaking up against misogynoir are said to be downplaying racism, in women's spaces trans women speaking against transmisogyny are said to be downplaying misogyny. can you see the pattern here?

yes, if winged void wanted to be extraordinarily precise ae could've specified the exact social context which this happened, but is that really necessary when this is a real phenomena we experience regularly? by downplaying it you either argue that it doesn't happen at all, which hopefully isn't the case, or that it's not an experience worth discussing because it downplays misogyny - the position you're appearing to take. it's not anti feminist to discuss how marginalized women are hurt even within situations that might support cis women. heck, its post didn't even say "everyone unilaterally boos and then donates money to women and says I'm sorry women" just that people booed. people boo misogyny sometimes? that's like a really real thing that happens, and especially in these queer comedy shows, where they then go on to be incredibly transmisogynistic. this is a real experience that we really need to talk about, and it shouldn't just be subordinated to cis womens concerns, because trans women are women and misogyny isn't adequately being combatted until transmisogyny is recognized as well. you're right that misogyny is still rampant in these spaces, but one of the key manifestations of this misogyny is transmisogyny and to be an effective feminist you must recognize this.

So while I'm out you can keep donating. I'll update when I can. I just hope I'll be okay because I don't know how long I can take this. I'll try staying alive.