Come Along, Friends

(purple=me, red=transmasc friend of mine)

sometimes it is genuinely sobering to be confronted with how little the average transmasc knows or thinks about the transmisogyny present in scociety and especially in systems that have power over us.

I don't say this to dunk on or insult my transmasc friend, he's a genuiniely wonderful person, I'm just baffled by the ignorance at play here.

he describes himself as an actuvist for trans rights. he didn't know about v-coding, or about trans women being denied access to domestic and sexual abuse help services for women, he didn't know how fucking bad the state of femenizing healthcare is because like many others, he heard "testosterone is a controlled substance and estrogen isn't" and concluded from that that getting on E must be easier, no further research needed.

but the most important part? when I pointed this out to him, he admitted his bias and promised to do better. he recognized how he had been ignorant of transfem's specific struggles because of his own marginalized status and reaffirmed his support.

I am so used to being met with hostility when discussing transmisogyny that this(the bare fucking minimum) was a genuine positive surprise to me in the moment.

cost of education acting as class barrier

exploitation of graduate workers

colonialist past and present

ties to military industrial complex

danger of power structure entrenching and justifying orthodox views on social issues

criticisms of academia that get made:

There’s no stated reason. They just pretend to not be alive. We usually can suspend our suspension of disbelief here because when it’s something like a video game or an emoji because any odd occurrences is perceived as a glitch or something similar but the actual reason why they aren’t too hung up on this kinda shitty lot in life isn’t said

They get something out of their current relationship with humans (like in toy story)

They have some specific reason to hide that they’re alive, like they die if they’re seen (like in the christmas toy)

They perceive themselves as sentient, talking creatures, but humans can’t understand them. They just see a squeaking mouse or an inanimate hot dog or whatever. 

and the last one is what most animal movies do, and it’s like, not devoid of weird implications but you can see where it mostly works.

but barnyard is the outlier here: it goes with tier one: the animals can talk and walk on two legs but just pretend that they can’t for unstated reasons. 

in the history of the barnyard world non human animals, at some point, decided to just pretend to be unable to speak. a “cow” or a “coyote” or a “hen” do not exist as we know it in the barnyard universe. the baa of the sheep is false; the ewe doesn’t understand it either. they only made up that noise to hide the fact that they speak human languages. a dog barking and running on all fours is a facade. animals naturally walk on their hind legs and made up whole postures just to appear non sentient.

and for what? what do they gain from this? they have no rights and no voice by their own choice. at one point a donkey claims the farmer is a good person because he’s vegan and a pig mentions bacon - this is not a fantasy universe devoid of death and misery and meat. do animals, in hushed whispers, remind their children not to sob in their real voice as they’re taken away? do the dogs not beg for kindness when they’re tied up and hit? do cows and chickens not cry for their life in the slaughterhouses? does a rat not scream a human scream when the trap misses their neck and only breaks their spine? Why? what is the point? They loose so much and have everything to gain.

anyways does everyone remember this really awful cat. it only appears in one scene but i can just sense the porn of it that would pop up if i googled it’s name