Trish of the Many Ships

And Magneto is like "I see. Whatever will I do."

direct orders of "you really really need to kill this guy" ignored: 1

One of my professors was straight up like "I don't want you reading papers about this book until we finish it!" and we had writing things for the first 20 minutes of every class because he wanted to know what WE thought, not what we had become convinced was THE thing to think.

When I was in my second year of college, I spiraled out into this whole "Jane Eyre is a lesbian!" thing, and my professor (not the same guy as above but delightfully insane in her own right) was like, "Wow, I've never heard this from anyone," and instead of being like, "um this is not what has been agreed upon by everyone else" went "Tell me more." Now, as a forty year old woman who has never stopped engaging with stories on both an enjoyment and academic level, the paper I would write with age and distance would be more "Homosociality, desire, and the domesticated male in Jane Eyre" or something like that, nineteen year old me was a little reductive and simple, but same vibes.

But my professor did not think I was right, she thought I was being INTERESTING, and so she encouraged me and championed me to write that paper and I actually presented it at the student division of a conference! The cool thing about that was, that when I was defending it, I was having to think about it, but it was in the spirit of collaboration, it felt like. No one was trying to 'win' the conversation.

Doc, what the fuck are you--I saw a really interesting thing this morning, someone talking about Shrek, of all things, and how they thought it was about how you cannot turn an ogre into a man, but he can make you become an ogre. And I immediately went, "Wow! Okay, interesting, not how I read that at all, TELL ME MORE." It was really jarring for me, then, to see pretty much every comment be like, 'uh you are wrong and also stupid." Sure, maybe that's not the intention of the work, but I don't for one goddamn motherfucking second think Charlie Bronte was sitting down going "I am going to write a woman so gay..." nor do I think the read of her as same sex-attracted is the end all be all of interpretations. It's mine, for sure! But like...talking about stories is supposed to be fun and it's supposed to be about possibility.

That one post got me thinking about how we are, in fandom often all looking at this same text, and there's immense pressure to have a 'right' interpretation--I was at the nexus of so many Sailor Moon fandom wars, and while I got into a few tussles, I was also stupid to do that. This characters are not real, and I was shutting down POSSIBILITY. And even after I was like, 'Wow, I don't think this is actually a very fun way to do stuff" it turns out you can't magically give everyone the same revelation you have simultaneously. Which is upsetting. And I see these same patterns repeat over and over and over again.

In my old age, I'm less interested in he "He would not say that" and more interested in "Cool, tell me why he would say that?"

Don't misunderstand me, there are points of view and ideas on different texts where I'm like, "Hm. I don't care to engage with that." Remember that the window we're looking out of is as important as what we're looking at, and will DOUBTLESS change the appearance. But the whole reason we have each other is to try and find other windows! It's not actually to find someone who is the next pane of glass in your same window. I miss that environment, where you could trust that everyone coming to the table was engaging with the same ground rules and that there was an expectation of, detachment doesn't quite get to the heart of what I'm talking about, but we were expected not to take the text or the analysis of it personally, even when it was hard. And sometimes it was. But I think it led to me having--for example it's crazy to me to have one 'right read' on any given text. I had a SUPER FUCKING ANIMATED conversation with a fellow lit nerd about whether or not GdT's Frankenstein was emotionally faithful to the text (which is not the same as being literally faithful nor the same as being good)and it was so fun, EVEN THOUGH we were coming at it completely opposed. But it was so fucking fun.

I wish I could do that with anime and cartoons, but you can't. People take Shrek personally. So I'll never have that same fun.

yes! very true!

thats also part of why its important to talk about why this happens and what purpose it serves in feminism. all trans people (& intersex people for that matter) have unique relationships with different gender-spheres and are affected by the social processes of emasculation and dewomaning in different ways. exploring what role these social tools play in patriarchy connects us back to what role transphobia (in all its forms) plays as well, & why these forces exist.

#ooh im thinking about that last part and how it relates to transmisogyny#like most patriarchal oppression its always an endless feedback loop of imposed gender and being stripped of gender#obv so much of transmisogyny is about how 'men' need to fight for their manhood#and because transfems refuse to participate in that they are the shining example of a 'failed man'#but when they assert their womanhood... because it's transgressive there's no way for it to be natural and effortless!#trans women are unwomaned! obviously!#just like how trans men are emasculated! our manhood is transgressive and no amount of fighting for it will make it not be transgressive by @tr1ppykay

so to start, i want to clarify something: emasculating is not just "when a person who is a man, is not treated as a man" nor is dewomaning "when a person who is a woman, is not treated as a woman." it is a social tool for punishing someone who is seen as a man/seen as a woman who is not successfully upholding patriarchal / socially acceptable masculinity / femininity.

this absolute affects trans women. emasculation absolutely affects trans men. but saying that "trans men are only incidentally affected" is fucking ridiculous. if i said emasculation was primarily wielded against trans men & only incidentally affected trans women, that would also being fucking ridiculous. and none of this is ever "incidental."

also. trans women were never "excluded" from this post. just because the og post never explicitly named trans women does not mean they were "excluded." you can just. add to the post yknow. i am not stopping you from talking about how trans women are dewomaned.

just because i mentioned trans men does not mean that i was saying "this is only about people born with a pussy!!!!!!!!" that was not an implication i was intending at all. the reason i highlighted transmascs is because fucking constantly in feminism, people are fully incapable of discussing people classed as women without conflating that class with people who are women. and this happens constantly within transfeminism as well. and if i do not EXPLICITLY talk about how a misogynistic forces affect trans men on purpose, i know NONE of y'all are ever gonna bring it up or talk about it.

and this is not meant to deny or erase or downplay the erasure trans women also experience.

but i cannot express how frustrating it is that in nearly every. single. space. that is not explicitly about transmascs talking about transmasc issue. when misogyny gets brought up. everyone talks about "women and girls" and never stops for a single solitary second to consider how people who are treated as women & girls but aren't are affected. even when those people are inclusive of trans women & talk about how trans women are affected.

so i wanted to make crystal fucking clear to everyone reblogging this post that this is something which affects trans men, which trans men&mascs often experience as a constant presence in their life from childhood, something which has quite literally been used as justification to rape and kill trans men. and i, not exaggerating in the slightest, never hear anyone ever talk about this who is not already invested in discussing anti-transmasculinity & transfeminism from a transmasc perspective. which is mostly other transmascs.

and then ofc i have to explain all of this, every single time, because no one ever thinks about anti-transmasculinity, so when transmascs act in response to it, y'all act like it came out of nowhere.

^^ the reason why this is important is because it doesn't assume that those who are affected by emasculation are men and those affected by dewomaning are women.

again, the reason i specifically talked about transmascs on this is because there is an automatic assumption that dewomaning is just about being denied a womanhood you identify with, and that is where the harm comes from.

when in reality, the harm of dewomaning & emasculation comes from how it causes people to treat you. it doesn't matter that that trans man doesn't want to be seen as a woman anyways; being labeled a failed woman is the reason why he was socially isolated and vulnerable enough to be targeted for sexual assault, and why afterwards nobody believed him because "who would want to fuck you anyways?"

see this is the perfect example of what i'm talking about above ("how can people - and not just any people, but feminists - claim it doesn't?") because the title of the speech is literally fucking the whole point of this post. i was required to read it for multiple different classes. and yet, even in feminist spaces, even amongst people who should be the most motivated to point out misogyny, people continue to repeat stock phrases like "there's no equivalent of emasculation for women" or "women aren't punished for masculinity like men are punished for femininity" and its never interrogated!

(also, if you haven't read this speech, you should! its not long and its a pretty vital piece of USian Black Feminist canon!

i particularly appreciate this page from the Sojourner Truth Project which shows you two verisons of the speech, the earliest version and a later & inaccurate version rewritten by a white feminists to give Sojourner a stereotypical southern accent, rather than the Dutch accent she was known to have actually spoken with.)