#fluidphobia

the "actually im definitely transmasc/agender/pangender. idk why i felt _____ before/thought i was _____" is literally what makes you genderfluid.

you were _____, and now you aren't. genderFLUID.

Genderfluid culture is sometimes feeling guilty for identifying as a ”monosexual” label due to your fluctuating gender. People kinda forget we exist and always exclude us from the greater ”common definitions” of things

16 minutes in. “Have any of you ever met a woman variant of us?” “No, never.” “Sounds terrifying.” I don’t even have words for how much that made me want to cry. That’s so unbelievably stupidly fluidphobic. Loki is also a woman, Loki is genderfluid, it’s likely all Loki variants are. So by saying that Loki has never seen himself as a woman is incorrect, it sounding ‘terrifying’ is beyond upsetting, and all of it is fluidphobic. (And also one of the variants with President Loki is played by a female actor anyway so??)

This is disgusting. It’s pure fludphobia. And if this was homophobia or transphobia you all would be talking way more about it. Posts talking against it would be getting more notice. The media would be talking about it. The Marvel team would have to address it. But no one cares enough about genderfluid voices.

And they had the audacity to say this:

It would have been better if they’d just not made MCU Loki genderfluid. I can’t believe I’m saying that. But the fact that they had the audacity to boast about how great they were for doing it, and then gave us fluidphobic representation. Not no representation, bad representation. I’d rather no representation that bad representation. At least no representation can’t create new slurs used against genderfluid people. No representation can’t create misunderstandings about how genderfluid have to shape-shift to be a different gender, how they’re a different person when they’re a different gender. No representation wouldn’t have caused the surge in fluidphobia in the fandom. Just yesterday a tweet was going around and getting popular saying Sylvie can’t be genderfluid because her name is ‘Laufeydottir’... Even though Loki’s is ‘Laufeyson’ and he’s genderfluid you know almost like someone can change what their assgined-at-birth gender is. 

And it goes beyond fluidphobia into pure transphobia when you see “sex: fluid”. Parts of the fandom are now saying “sexfluid” to refer to genderfluid people. It’s not only now basically become a slur, but think about the implications. ‘Sexfluid’ means someone must change their genitalia when they’re identifying as another gender. That’s fluidphobic because of course real genderfluid people can’t shapeshift. However, it’s also transphobic because it implies that in order to be a woman Loki must have a vulva, meaning that one needs a vulva in order to be a woman, meaning that they’re implying trans women without vulva’s aren’t really women. That’s a transmed belief, a transphobic belief. You could look at that and say I’m reaching, or that I’m reading too much into it. But sex and gender don’t mean the same thing and this is how fans are using the word, this is what viewers of the show think the words means. 

I’m not talking about the fans on here, or even the fans on Twitter, I’m talking about the majority of Marvel viewers. Because the majority aren’t part of fandom communities, aren’t part of LGBT+ communities, they don’t go on social media to look at what people are saying about the show, and all they know about genderfluidity is what they see in this show.  And even then, just search “Loki female self” on Twitter and there are hundreds of people calling Sylvie that. The main stream media keep calling Sylvie “Lady Loki’”in their articles. ScreenRant keeps doing it, official Loki merch on Gamestop is doing it.

I’m not sorry if me talking about this and complaining is ruining your experience of watching the show, that just means before you were ignorant to the fluidphobia in the series. I’m not saying the show should be cancelled, I’m not saying you can’t watch it or you can’t enjoy watching it because I’m still watching it, I’m still finding moments I enjoy in it. You can be critical of something and still watch and enjoy it.

In 2003, Micheal Bailey, an American psychologist at Northwestern University published a book named “The man who would be queen”. In this book, he attacks the traditional hypothesis that trans men would be women trapped inside male bodies. Instead, he claims trans women had only desired a transition because of two possible reasons:

1. Because they were extremely homosexual (and possibly didn’t want to be limited to gay men as partners).

2. Because they were aroused by the idea of possessing a female body themselves (autogynephilia) [1].

Both motivations are sexual in nature, so Bailey claims transsexuality was only a display of unusual sexual tastes (paraphilia). Other commonly known paraphilias are pedophilia or bestiality. But at least Bailey states that autogynephilia, unlike pedophilia, was not considered harmful [2]. But this is only the first of the two major points that make the show transphobic.

Bailey’s claims led to a public outrage directed at him, including ad hominem attacks against him, but also his family. This can’t be excused, but it also shows how deeply and personally hurt the community was by his book.

Enter a colleague of Bailey, Anna Lawrence. She defended his theories and even took one step further. She attributed the attacks on Bailey to narcissistic personality disorder in the offended transsexuals and argued his book was an injury to their grandiose, unrealistic sense of selves [3].

Now, does that sound familiar? The pairing of autogynephilia with narcissism? Of course, I can’t exclude the possibility the creators just weren’t familiar with trans-history. But the portrayal in the show fits the worst kind of stereotype you possibly could create without including pedophilia or bestiality*. But even as an unfortunate accident the show’s portrayal of the first major MCU character confirmed genderfluid can do massive harm to real people.

[1] Moser, C., A Different Perspective. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2008. 37(3): p. 472-475.

[2] Bailey, J. and K. Triea, What Many Transgender Activists Don't Want You to Know: and why you should know it anyway. Perspectives in biology and medicine, 2007. 50: p. 521-34.

[3] Lawrence, A.A., Shame and Narcissistic Rage in Autogynephilic Transsexualism. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2008. 37(3): p. 457-461.

I didn't know what autogynephilia meant and I searched it and I'm still fuming because I can't believe how transphobic it is.

"Autogynephilia” is a sex-fueled mental illness created by Ray Blanchard in 1989. Blanchard defines it as “a man’s paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman."

"One of the key concepts in this model is the premise that everyone who is gender variant can be categorized based on one of two “male” sexual interests: homosexuality or paraphilia." [X]

In contradiction to the commonly accepted model (both then and now) that transgender people have a gender identity that is incongruent with their birth-assigned sex, and distinct from their sexual orientation, Blanchard proposed that there were two fundamentally distinct types of trans women, each with a different sexual-orientation-related cause. Blanchard presumed that heterosexual trans women (i.e., those who are exclusively attracted to men) were driven to transition because of “homosexuality.” And he claimed that all other trans women (i.e., those who are lesbian, bisexual, or asexual) suffered from a “misdirected heterosexual sex drive” that led them to become attracted to the idea of becoming women themselves. Blanchard called this supposed misdirected-heterosexual-sex-drive “autogynephilia,” and he believed that it was simultaneously 1) a paraphilia (i.e., a pathological sexual desire), 2) a sexual orientation unto itself, and 3) the cause of any gender dysphoria and desire to transition exhibited by this population. [X]

This theory has been refuted many times in research literature.

I am so horrified and furious that a series which was about a genderfluid character, instead of raising awareness and helping trans and genderfluid people to be seen and accepted, managed to bring back so many transphobic notions and harm trans people and their progress.

The series made people relate sex to gender identity. While sex(genitals) does not determine your gender identity. People are not sexfluid. They are genderfluid. On top of all that now it caused people to relate sexual orientation to being trans and using a transphobic term that claims many trans people have paraphilias and that's why they transition. It's gross.

Did no one do their research? Couldn't they ask for advice from experts? They could at least read comics.