Watching all the silly children's films over Xmas and I can't help but keep noticing how all the evil characters have hyperpigmented eyes. (Ratigan//Great Mouse Detective, Scar//Lion King, Jafar//Alladdin, Rasputin//Anastasia, then the final two are my eyes- the fucked-up eyebrow and droopy eyelid are from being glassed decades ago, that's another story)
It's a common feature of many many non-European people, but I don't know if I'm being insane or not to say that one component of how it comes into fiction is through the way that Romany Gypsies are often pale, as compared to other Roma, but also very often still have hyperpigmented eyes even if the rest of our skin is parno, and there has LONG been a fear in England of the Gypsy who is passing themselves off as English, or of the diddicoy who might at any time "turn true to their Gypsy blood" despite being raised by an English mother or more often in a collective setting. (Insert essay here about how in Wuthering Heights Heathcliffe's temper and instability is seen as something that will always inevitably come out, as "The son of the fortune teller"...)
Anyway, when you notice it, don't just let it be. Notice what you (and your kids!) Are being told to think of as frightening.
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Seeing a few "All masculinity is toxic and by definition reinforces patriarchy" posts lately and keep having two thoughts:
1) It must be really convenient to have identified that, of the two broad aesthetic modes-of-being that society recognises, the one that you prefer happens to be the one that's inherently harmless and where you don't have to consider its broader implications before you live it.
2) The only way that masculinity can exist is by femininity existing, and vice versa, both of them equally prop up the patriarchy, you can't attack one of them without attacking the other but, again, that makes people nervous.
I am again torn between the two poles of "Children are human beings with the right to exist in public and to be involved fully in our cultures," and "Child-free spaces are increasingly important, as the mix of rising fascism and constant surveillance means that a) Many people are considered to be corrupters-and-seducers-of-children just by existing in public and we deserve to be able to have a nice day out without worrying that someone will see us existing near a child and declare us to be Doing Something At The Child and b) Everyone on earth having a camera means that you can end up having your face and address publicised to every angry mob on the planet in seconds."
Eg, this year the bloc behind us - The leather bloc- at Pride was the NHS bloc, which had a few people marching with their kids. It took two seconds for one of the local rightwing agitators to snap a photo which looked like "Kinky latex puppy and half-naked crossdresser, leading innocent child away from her helpless Mum who watches in terror!!!!" When it was in fact "Child skips up behind pup and transsexual who are deep in conversation and don't even see her, then skips back to her Mum once the parade marshals let the next bloc through the squeeze. Mum later says she felt sure that we would look after Kid if we got separated because we seemed like nice lads and had lent her some wet wipes and a plastic bag before the parade set off".
And having that fear all the time is exhausting, that just sitting in a cafe or whatever, it's too easy for someone who has fixated on you because you're queer, or a religious minority, or some other folk devil - and if they see you in proximity to a child, even if you're completely oblivious to it - it's easy to justify attacking you, removing you from a venue, confronting you or anything else, because "There's kids here, they shouldn't have to see puffs like you..."
The way that terfs collect huge folders of photos of trans people (especially photos of trans people vulnerable after surgery, showing their scars, or even unconscious DURING surgery) and share those folders with each other, really closely parallels how paedophiles collect and share huge collections of CSAM and CSEM.
BEHIND A CUT BECAUSE THIS IS OBVIOUSLY ABOUT SEXUAL EXPLOITATION
Feels important here to note the difference between CSAM and CSEM here too: The A in CSAM stands for "Abuse", and means images which are of children being abused- and where the act of taking the photo itself was abusive. CSEM stands for "Exploitation", which means that the image itself could be innocuous, but that it has been exploited (and by extension, the child has been exploited in the process) - this is stuff like where a parent has taken a totally innocent photo of their kids swimming, but then a paedophile collects up a thousand images of kids swimming, and shares them with other paedophiles. CSEM is why you're advised to not share photos of your kids online, and is the problem with mummyvloggers who share every detail of their child's life.
My point is, that the way that terfs collect photos taken by trans people of themselves, and strip them of their context, and form them up into big folders of what I can only really describe as exploitation material, is really, really familiar. They use these images to find each other, to prove loyalty to their sect, and crucially they get off on them.
Look at this groomer in the screencap, trying to persuade a traumatised young woman to "Share her scars with the world" (ie, to provide more exploitation material for their hard drives).
The groomer is using emotional leverage ("You should do this, to Save Other Victims"), and making Barnum statements about her childhood to try to increase the feeling of intimacy and thus trust ("You were forced into procedures you didn't understand"- yes, someone who is regretting a procedure probably will feel like they didn't understand the implications) - the groomer then switches to "Our" rather than "Your" to lean on the false intimacy, ("Our scars remind us of our mistakes" encourages the detrans girl to think of herself as part of a group which includes the groomer - Again, increasing the false sense of intimacy and familiarity.)
Whether or not the original post on r/detrans is real, the method the groomer is using is real - Even if the original poster never sees it, they will make it more likely for a real person who is in the position that the OP was in, will contact them and share photos of their scars, and their stories.
It's a masterclass, in a handful of words. Make the target feel damaged and alone, suggest that you-the-groomer will understand and care about the target and that other people won't, and then persuade the target to do the action that you want from them, by telling them that it's for their own good, or the good of other victims.
The groomer is doing a more sophisticated version of sketchy older men preying on teenagers: "You must feel like your parents are totally suffocating you- you know what would really spit in their eye? If we had sex. You'd be claiming your body as your own, and you'd be showing your friends that they don't have to be prudes either."
But then, the other thing that the groomer is doing is showing other groomers on twitter, how to begin to groom someone - Seek out posts like the one shown - pay attention to those highlighted phrases, which are how you will know who to target - and use the script you're being given.
A normal person would, obviously, not tell her to share pictures- she's 21 at the absolute oldest, and sounds like she's really struggling. Groomer knows their audience- they will be cruel about her body, call her mutilated, ask her invasive questions about her sexual function, and save her photos to re-share over and over for decades (I often see photos lifted from Transbucket in the early 2010s, still being shared as "new" by terfs.)
The responsible thing to say would be something more like: Don't put anything online that you don't want to be shared around forever- People online will be cruel about your body and that can be surprisingly hurtful even if you feel very confident. Seek out people in your life who you already trust, before putting your faith in strangers who had no interest in you before your current problem.
But, these are sophisticated, organised predators.
Any gorjer in a hundred mile radius: UHM UHH UH BUT GYPSYISASLUR AND THAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING HERE THAT THE SLUR THE BAD WORD IT'S A SLUR DON'T YOU KNOW THAT'S THE PROBLEM
Honourable mention for "Don't use the word Gypsy just use [ACTUAL UNAMBIGUOUS SLUR THAT I PREFER NOT TO TYPE]"
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I think that reading the various descriptions of the founding of the Gypsy Vanner studbook counts as self harm.
Ooooooh the mysterious Gypsies who hid their horses in the forest, the breed was NAMELESS and nobody knew it existed unless you count the people who have heard of the ancient horse fairs that operate by royal charter all over the UK and draw crowds the size of Glastonbury and of course the Gypsies and Irish Travellers themselves and the gorjer horse people who buy leksi grais as riding school ponies and... and it took the brilliant human minds of these brave Americans to recognise that these horses that Travellers have bred for generations and are very proud of were actually worth something and should have a studbook opened because the long stories that start with lists of horses' names interleaved with the names of the human families that bred the horses which are the core of how we passed down the knowledge of where our horses came from aren't easy for gorjers to profit from and insert themselves into.
I keep seeing an argument that trans men are MRAs which, regardless of the quality of the trans men involved, sort of misses the point of MRAs. MRAs have one core dogma, which is that being born with a vagina protects someone from the absolute worst kind of oppression, danger and trauma in life, because in their theory, "Manhood" (in their mind, a biological as well as social state, always centred on having a fertile cock) is a responsibility and a burden - So if they 'fail manhood' (ie, by being ugly, unsuccessful, 'effeminate', short, impotent, unpopular... Anything counts) they are immediately at more risk than someone who never had 'manhood' in the first place (ie, anyone who was assigned female at birth):
They couch it in biological terms, that people are programmed to protect the small, soft, non-threatening, valuable Breeding Stock, so (by their reckoning) anyone who was born with a vagina is at less risk of total un-personing, than someone who wasn't. They talk about how "women" (again, people assigned female at birth in their schema - even MRAs understand that a trans woman crying just gets her head kicked in) can always, broadly, cry - And crying in their imagination results in not pity but material help.
This is the core of the "Life On Easy Mode" canard - That people assigned F at birth can't understand how dangerous, hostile and lonely the lives of people assigned M at birth are, because as Breeding Stock they'll always have some kind of value, or at least won't be seen as dangerous, as compared to a Failed Man who has no value and is a potential threat. It comes up over and over again, when they talk about everything from intrapersonal stuff to the attitudes of the State - it even comes up in MRA discussions of trans men, where they theorise that trans men would be crushed by experiencing "average men's lives" and will detransition (or die) because of it.
So, of course MRAs won't ally with trans men, because they see trans men as fundamentally unable to understand or be a victim of the core "point" of their movement - In their schema, a trans man is either hoarding sex (in the sense of denying them sexual access to a theoretical vagina), or using their "Life On Easy Mode"-privilege to do things that Real Men would be punished for (ie, things men assigned M at birth would be punished for - Including "acting like a girl").
I'm not saying that you CAN'T critique antifeminist and regressive tendencies in trans men's organising (and, if anything it's important to critique it accurately because as trans people we're more likely to be trying to socialise and find friends in places with other trans people than with MRAs, so it's urgent), just that it seems like it's only muddying the waters to claim a material alliance between the organised MRA movement, and antifeminist trans men, because they fundamentally can't see eye to eye so the tactics to deal with one won't work on the other.
I have a proposal about celebrations that will solve the problem of birthdays once and for all.
Celebrating a birthday as an adult often feels awkward- Every year you demand all your friends stop what they're doing and throw a party for you and buy you gifts, and even if you don't demand that they throw a party, you at least expect that they will acknowledge the day.
If your birthday is near Christmas (or your own local cultural Big Holiday), so everyone already has a million things booked and no money, you never get a good celebration. (One of my nieces has a birthday on Boxing Day, and she hates it.) If your birthday is in a school holiday, as an adult you can't afford to travel around it because everything is ten times as expensive as in term-time, and as a kid nobody celebrates it because you weren't at school (My best friend's birthday is in August, right in the middle of our school summer holidays, so as well as being the youngest in his year group, he never got a party). If your birthday is at a time of year with shit weather, you probably don't want to go out for it anyway. (I haven't celebrated my birthday since I was a teenager, because the days getting shorter and the rain getting heavier makes it just deeply unappealing).
So, my solution: The thousand day party. I celebrated mine a long time ago, and my son actually got a tattoo for his (Ten interlinked "M"s in a circle, for the roman numeral for 1000 repeated ten times, which looks great)
You turn 10,000 days old when you're partway through being 27, which is proverbially an unlucky time of life, so you deserve to have a massive blowout party for it, celebrating leaving the tumultuous "young" part of your life and moving into maturity. And from then on, you celebrate every 1000 days instead of every year - So you can have a bigger party without feeling silly (It's like the Olympics or the Euros! This doesn't happen every day!), it moves around the year so it doesn't always coincide with the same holidays (though if your birthday is in the same week as your sibling, you will have your 1000-days in the same week forever too), it will be in a different season every time so you can try out how it feels having a party dedicated to you in spring, summer, autumn and winter, and if you live in a culture which places a premium on youth, it doesn't reveal your age casually to most people. "Hi, I'd like to invite you to my 14000th day!" doesn't invite people to comment on whether you look old or young for your age like "Hi, I'm turning 38" does. And, crucially, you have to TELL PEOPLE about it, you can't just expect them to remember when it is or to anticipate that you want a party, because it moves around, so it forces people to communicate their expectations and needs.
And if you want a more regular party, you can celebrate your 500s!
Your 15,000 Days is about four weeks after your 41st birthday and 20,000 days is shortly before you turn 65, which is traditionally retirement age in the UK, both of which seem like good places to have a big party too.
