Tired of TMEs. Temporary Hiatus.

You know what IS an important issue? Getting called a fucking birthday boy. They get all hands on deck about it. They will write VERY long posts about how important it is you not use it, and that anyone who does must be punished as severely as possible

There's only one explanation. The lives of trans women are so worthless to them, so fucking disposable, that a trans man getting invalidated is actually more important to them. That's how these people, who demand we view them as family and allies, who think we should be ready to die for them, view us.

she did not experience "male socialization." when i look back on our childhood, it is easy to understand that there was no privilege to that concept. she was forced to try and shrink herself into the shape of a man, and was abused when she didn't succeed at playing the part. being "raised as a boy" only highlighted the stark incongruity between what was expected of her and what she was. this repeatedly led to her facing violence.

That's just martyrdom, and it isn't right. Transmasc and nonbinary people are exposed to just as much SA and murder as us, and are just as disrespected by society at large.

But, the fact of the matter is the stats just don't add up. Trans men are not consistently paid significantly more than us, statistically they are just as likely to be attacked, sexually assaulted, murdered, or driven to suicide. I have witnessed the results and aftermath of each, and it's impossible to hold resentment against them once you've seen it, really seen it.

You can react with all the rage you want, a response no doubt driven by fear; but it won't heal you, it just makes the scars cut deeper. You deserve to live a life not ruled by fear and anger.

It does not demean our own experiences to accept that trans men and nonbinary people are as oppressed as we are; it should actually give you hope. Once you accept that we're all in this sinking ship together, that just means more hands are there to fix it.

she did not experience "male socialization." when i look back on our childhood, it is easy to understand that there was no privilege to that concept. she was forced to try and shrink herself into the shape of a man, and was abused when she didn't succeed at playing the part. being "raised as a boy" only highlighted the stark incongruity between what was expected of her and what she was. this repeatedly led to her facing violence.

That's just martyrdom, and it isn't right. Transmasc and nonbinary people are exposed to just as much SA and murder as us, and are just as disrespected by society at large.

You gringos love to make shit up and get angry about it. You love putting yourselves in the middle of EVERY. SINGLE. CONVERSATION.

even if she doesn't "try to pass" she still deserves the same basic respect you give everybody else.

even if she's done something bad that doesn't excuse you misgendering her on purpose.

i'm so sick of people treating trans people's pronouns as some kind of reward you get if you've been a good tranny.

this goes for those who use neopronouns too i dont care how "weird" you think it is especially if you're trans yourself.

this is something that I wish people would take more seriously. I am a woman who loves women and no one else. that's my sexual orientation. I didn't pick it, it's just who I am.

there's currently no single word I can use to communicate that. when I say I'm lesbian, queer people consistently assume that I mean it in the most expansive way possible.

and no one wants to say it, but the reality of what's happening when people make those assumptions is that they hear the word "lesbian" and replace it with the word "bisexual." they think I'm attracted to all genders, even men, as long as they're the good kind (AFAB).

the problem with this, which should be obvious, is the misogyny. people don't want to accept that a woman could ever be satisfied by only loving other women. they have to squeeze other genders in there to make it make sense to them. and they have to push the limits of lesbianism to include people who are more and more in proximity to manhood until it's assumed as a matter of cour that lesbians are all attracted to men.

we're already very far down that road. I can't call myself a lesbian without having people make all kinds of wild and wrong assumptions about who I am and who I'm open to dating (which leads to sexual harassment and feeds into all other kinds of misogyny that women face from the rest of the queer community).

I don't know whether the right way to reduce the harm here is to push back on the idea that men can be lesbians, or to come up with a new word that specifically means women who love women, or both. If there's a new word then it'll be corrupted sooner or later. That's already happened with sapphic, and, incredibly, "WLW".

all the words we have to describe 'sexual orientation' are descended from the diagnostic categories that a heterosexual and cisgender society used to define us as ill. those terms were then changed over time and redefined to become the vague boundaries of rights based social movements as we ourselves, the queer people who were categorized under them, engaged in social struggle. part of this redefinition was the idea that identity labels *do* have strict definitions and categorize people distinctly, but for the purpose of communicating our true and beautiful inner selves (which are of course completely categorizable) and sorting us into groups only with those who completely share the key traits that define our identities: some people were just born this way as women who only love women (itself a socially defined category...) and they must be categorized strictly in order to ensure that nothing and no-one gets mixed in somewhere where its not supposed to be (impositions which words and categories can surely protect us from). this was strategically crucial to the hugely important victories won by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights movements under the traditional social organization we live under, but it is not a truthful or liberating model; it is a model built for compromise with a tyrannical, puritan society which in this case especially operates through the institutions of psychology and state power.

i don't think that model is what anyone needs. the words we use don't just exist as language for communication, they make possible understandings of what is and what can be. a diagnostic category makes a group of people real, and by grouping ourselves in these categories we restrict our agency in order to prioritize the agency of a system of categorization: a system of categorization which, as you've noted, is always malleable to the will of the powerful. in our gendered social hierarchy that means that men have an outsized influence on the definitions of identity categories: again, categories which not only are defined, but also define us in response. categories that we must actually live within.

chuuni negative self talk regarding disability: This body is so frail, so weak. It fails me time and time again.

see? it's different.

pjackk was unbanned because @3liza finally got through to staff about a fucking weird bug with the support form that got the metal bastard banned because it claimed he posted some Bulgarian nationalist shit (this was not a real post that pjackk ever posted). other high-profile bans like @garaks-padded-bra was hit with the same bug and its being investigated

there was a new feature added that lets people see your comments on your blog page in a tab like your likes or followers. everyone was mad that it was not toggle-able. it was actually toggle-able.