Trans Politics, Trans Activism, also 'rolling is this transphobic?' thread

Open letter signed by 16,000 calls for BBC apology over trans article
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-59074096

You’d think they could have at least recapped the reason that the study is said to be flawed.

Nice to know that some “appreciations” were sent in, though, I wasn’t aware of a formal avenue for those. Maybe they should keep a running ticker of how many they get.

Fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck

the implication that “many trans women are lesbians, and many cis lesbians enjoy fucking them” is an equal statement to “all cis lesbians must be willing to fuck any given trans woman” is so deeply absurd, and the fact that so many publications treat it like a reasonable debate that must be had sucks so much.

there are people with certain physical traits who I don’t want to fuck; people have sexual preferences within a given orientation! but if I were to make a big public stink about it and imply or outright state that those traits invalidated their identity and the sexuality of the people who do, I would expect to be called out for it!

my heart aches for trans women in the UK these days, it’s bad enough dealing with this shit when it’s thousands of miles away

yeah, same ... also, what nicole says ... you will inevitably mess it up, but don't get defensive or demeaning

― sarahell, Thursday, October 28, 2021 1:39 AM bookmarkflaglink

it's just weird *how* defensive people get when they make this mistake, like, if you call a friend by the wrong name or say their last name wrong, and they correct you, you don't sit there causing a scene.

i've fucked it up, been corrected just like anybody else, it's....feedback, you apologize, correct, move on. not that I wouldn't understand why someone who has been misgendered a lot might be momentarily frustrated, but usually the correction is just a polite one and people go apeshit over it.

https://archive.md/MwYYz

uk getting very scary, they're planning to lump in trans-affirmative therapy with gay conversion therapy (as transphobes have been pushing for) and totally ban it for under 18s, also likely banning mermaids

feels like it would be a good time to start taking to the streets? the polls always seem to show that the transphobes are a vocal minority, should start taking advantage of that

Trending now in UK:
#CisISASlur

(and not trending in a "everyone is taking the piss out of it" manner)

these fucking babies don’t know what a slur is

who’s the snowflake now??

Fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck

otm and also i think sussex have handled this quite poorly

there are people with certain physical traits who I don’t want to fuck

The problem is that women are being accused of transphobia for saying this exact thing, if one of those physical traits happens to be having a penis. Here's an example from Simon H. in a post on a different thread four years ago:

Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

a couple of trans comrades have outright stated that 1. sexual preference for certain/specific types of genitals are inherently transphobic

Further down in that thread, j. says they see people expressing this position as well and supposes it isn't too uncommon. It's clear that this line of thinking persists to this day -- it's easy to find very recent examples of it on Twitter. Stating the position is in itself an act of pressuring people into having sex with people they don't want to have sex with. Can we all agree that's a bad thing to do?

just to jump slightly backward to nicole and Neanderthal on pronouns upthread: yes it is new and will take practice.

But honestly it is really not that hard for well-meaning people to navigate this in a well-meaning way. As long as they're truly, y'know, well-meaning.

Currently I am navigating this because my eldest (14) is nonbinary they/them. So are many of their friends. I will likely mess up. But the guiding principle is just to... not be a dick, I guess? The people who are having the most trouble with it tend to already not be on board with the whole project. And of course if you're not on board with the whole project, your motivation to practice and be a non-dick is lessened.

For me, if I try to relate an anecdote about what Ash said to Jinx and how Sky reacted, well, I'm going to be using their names a lot more than I otherwise would. A sentence like "Jax said that Sky and Ash are going to Sky's house" both avoids misgendering, and avoids potential confusion between singular and plural.

the "not being on board" is key, if you support your trans or non-binary friends, you're not going to fly off the handle if you get corrected when you screw up. but if your viewpoint is "I'm really, really trying hard to do this bullshit for you, but as much as I love you, I think this is fucking stupid", you get angry when corrected because you think you shouldn't have to do it anyway.

dating while trans can be a gauntlet of managing different kinds of transphobia; i feel grateful to the few ppl who have been attracted to me without making me feel weird about their attraction. that's about as far as i care to have an opinion on the matter which is otherwise really dense and confusing to me

Stating the position is in itself an act of pressuring people into having sex with people they don't want to have sex with.

No. Conflating abstract discussions about ppl's preferences with coercion makes no sense to me - like if we were having a discussion about, for instance, whether it's racist not to be attracted to ppl of certain ethnicities, I think there'd definitely be ppl arguing that. Casting this as "lesbians pressured into having sex with trans women", as the BBC article did, strongly misrepresents the issue at hand - any casual reader browsing the headline will obviously interpret this as women being personally coerced into having sex, not some philosophical disagreement. Which of course is great for the gender critical crowd because their concerns all boil down to thinking trans ppl are sexually predatory anyway.

vtc, did u just not read the next sentence in my post or

cis people have long portrayed trans people as either punchlines or disgusting untouchables, often both. this absolutely informs who and who isn’t considered attractive collectively and individually.

this doesn’t mean that any given person must correctively fuck trans people, or that every person who doesn’t want to sleep with trans people is a bigot, but it does mean that we should all (trans people included, sometime especially so) examine and correct how those anti-trans biases affect our worldviews

now, if someone comes along and points this out, and someone else responds by loudly and publicly refusing to do so, rallies a bunch of cis people in support of their brave stand against being “pressured” to fuck trans people, and uses that organization to lobby against equal public services for trans people, then yes, they’re doing transphobia!

given that this is one of the main ways that anti-trans organizations have gained power and influence, and that that power and influence has led to very real material restrictions on our individual lives and collective well-being, you can perhaps forgive us for reacting to someone coming along taking the “just asking questions, let’s all be reasonable here” tone about “simply” not wanting to have sex with trans people comes off as in direct service of transphobia.

don’t want to fuck us? don’t fuck us! a billion tweets can’t make you. just keep it to yourself for god’s sake, it’s being used by more hateful people than you to hurt us.

last two posts otm

Neanderthal otm

nicole, I don't know if it helps you to hear this, but current 14-year-olds are apparently woke as fuck. I know I'm in a socially liberal bubble but still. If I were to judge by my child's school and my child's friends, everyone is either queer or queer-positive. And they appear to view trans inclusion (including respecting pronouns) as an integral part of LGBTQ+ acceptance. Their teachers and school administrations have been supportive as well.

I don't think you're in a bubble, it's just how people are as people tend to be supportive to each other. The terfs and other bigots have built bubbles for themselves.

nicole that post of yours is fucking outstanding

i'm also wowed by nicole's posts itt and elsewhere. i don't have anything of import to say about this other than i'm also mystified about 1) the timing of this wave 2) the uk axis and 3) the appeal of transphobia generally. threats to male supremacy in the u.s. i understand, but this seems different.

No. Conflating abstract discussions about ppl's preferences with coercion makes no sense to me - like if we were having a discussion about, for instance, whether it's racist not to be attracted to ppl of certain ethnicities, I think there'd definitely be ppl arguing that. Casting this as "lesbians pressured into having sex with trans women", as the BBC article did, strongly misrepresents the issue at hand - any casual reader browsing the headline will obviously interpret this as women being personally coerced into having sex, not some philosophical disagreement. Which of course is great for the gender critical crowd because their concerns all boil down to thinking trans ppl are sexually predatory anyway.

You don't think hearing people say "women who don't want to have sex with people with penises are transphobic" puts pressure on women who don't want to have sex with people with penises to have sex with people with penises? If we're talking about lesbians specifically, I think it's undeniable that this puts pressure on them; as part of the LGBT community, they would understandably care deeply about what other people in that community think about them and how other people think they feel about other members of that community.

I don't think saying "people who don't want to have sex with people of certain ethnicities are racist" puts the same kind of pressure on those people, because people who don't want to have sex with people of certain ethnicities probably don't care if other people think they're racist. Or, if they do, it's fair to put that pressure on them, because it's likely that they are motivated by racism. Whereas not wanting to have sex with people with penises is likely due to...not being sexually attracted to people with penises. And it's wrong to intentionally make someone feel bad about that.

I think the BBC headline would have been more accurate if it had said that it's not just trans women who are pressuring lesbians into having sex with trans women. Plenty of people who do this aren't trans.

Nicole, I know you don't think every person who doesn’t want to sleep with trans people is a bigot, and I'm sorry if I gave you that impression. I'm talking about people who DO think that: people who think having a "sexual preference for certain/specific types of genitals" is inherently bigoted, such as the people Simon and j. mentioned in the other thread, and many people on Twitter and TikTok. These people definitely exist, and they are in the wrong. These are the people who disagree with you, and I'm saying it would be better if they felt the same way you did on this matter.

people who don't want to have sex with people of certain ethnicities probably don't care if other people think they're racist.

massive stretch here

If I were nicole, I might just repost my last post, because you have paid attention to no part of it whatsoever.

I don't think saying "people who don't want to have sex with people of certain ethnicities are racist" puts the same kind of pressure on those people, because people who don't want to have sex with people of certain ethnicities probably don't care if other people think they're racist. Or, if they do, it's fair to put that pressure on them, because it's likely that they are motivated by racism. Whereas not wanting to have sex with people with penises is likely due to...not being sexually attracted to people with penises. And it's wrong to intentionally make someone feel bad about that.

You're creating an artificial divide here where ethnicity is something you choose to be attracted to or not, while genitalia is just something you either are or are not. In fact both those preferences are molded by societal standards, from a very young age and to an extent that it's quite difficult to grasp for any "pure" attraction that could predate this. Considering how societies sexualize certain ethnicities and make others seem sexually threatening or unattractive, it's pretty safe to say that not every person who has preferences in this department "wouldn't care" what ppl thought of that or is even bigoted.

I think (to echo Nicole here) that it's important for all of us to reflect on how our preferences have been shaped this way. At the end of the day, your preferences are your preferences, and no one has to fuck anyone they don't want to. But ppl who go around making a giant noise out of how they are not attracted to group x or y are being at best insensitive and at worst pretty clearly bigoted, whether that's regarding race or the cis-trans spectrum.

(cis-trans spectrum a bad choice of words there; obv loudly proclaiming you're not attracted to cis ppl doesn't carry the same baggage, much as saying the same regarding white ppl doesn't in most parts of the globe)

You're creating an artificial divide here where ethnicity is something you choose to be attracted to or not, while genitalia is just something you either are or are not. In fact both those preferences are molded by societal standards, from a very young age and to an extent that it's quite difficult to grasp for any "pure" attraction that could predate this.

To be honest, I’m not totally sure I grasp what you’re saying here, and I’m not entirely sure if I made myself clear in the post you’re responding to. I’m not saying everyone who isn’t attracted to certain ethnicities has explicitly chosen not to be attracted to those ethnicities. But I am saying that if you realize you are not attracted to certain ethnicities, and you hear people saying people who aren’t attracted to certain ethnicities are bigoted, and this bothers you because you don’t think of yourself as bigoted, you can choose to reflect on how societal standards have shaped your preference (e.g. by making other ethnicities seem threatening), and generally this will result in the preference changing.

I think you would agree with all of that. However, you can’t equate preferences for ethnicities with preferences for genitalia just because both are influenced to some extent by societal standards. There is an actual distinction between the two, because in the case of genital preference we don’t know if the same reflection process generally results in the preference changing. While some people can change their preference, a lot of people feel very strongly that they can’t change their preference, and there’s no reason not to believe them. So putting pressure on them to change has the power to do harm. And saying genital preferences are transphobic does put pressure on lesbians to change.

it's important for all of us to reflect on how our preferences have been shaped this way

I think it's fine to say this, but this isn't what people in the BBC article were reacting to. Again, the problem is that other people are saying something different, which is that genital preferences ARE transphobic. It sounds like you don't agree that genital preferences are transphobic, but when lesbians react negatively to people telling them genital preferences are transphobic, you're saying they should keep it to themselves.

- The survey the BBC article was based on was conducted by a specifically transphobic organisation and answered by a self-selecting sample of transphobes. These are the people you are aligning yourself with.

- Conflating "social pressure to not be a bigot" with "individual pressure to sleep with someone" is textbook moral panic and completely vile.

- Why are you assuming all trans women have penises?? I know transphobes are completely obsessed with genitalia but this is very strange.

Also I feel like I should say that as a moderator I am absolutely going to ban transphobes from the board whether they get 51 FPs or not. I haven't run this by any other mods, but honestly I'd rather get stripped of my privs and yelled at by every single member of the board than let it stand.

not yelling, cheering

It is often tougher than you would think to know where someone is on the spectrum from "just asking questions", through recycling GC talking points, to outright hate. VTC is dancing just on the side where I'm furious but don't feel like action is reasonable. But I'm putting it out there that I'm not going to tolerate a whole lot of bullshit on this matter.

hear, hear

I am not sure why people think they have the right to tell other people what they should or shouldn't be attracted to, and to tell them their natural attraction is immoral (which is what they are doing, since transphobia is immoral) and/or due to a set of social conventions (which seems no different to me than saying being gay is a choice; one can choose different social conventions). I will say, as a gay man who spends a lot of time in an extremely conservative Middle Eastern country, that the arguments I am hearing from certain trans people are not very different from the one's I hear from conservative religious people who also have a problem with my genital preference.

Luckily, the trans people in my life just want to live their lives and aren't interested in telling people what to be attracted to.

no one is saying the preferences have to change upon reflection. it's fine if some cis person is ultimately sexually incompatible with a trans person they had been attracted to, even after reflection. what trans people do object to is how any suggestion that people reflect at all on how societal transphobia has shaped people's preferences, or a trans woman calling herself a lesbian, or even just "trans women are women" is then equated with sexual coercion. no one's position is "cis people have to have sex with trans people they aren't attracted to out of some ridiculous guilt", but transphobes love to twist things to present it that way in order to attack trans people.

there surely are some trans people who do indeed have extreme unnuanced 'if you have any genital preferences you are transphobic' positions but that's very much a minority position, not at all reasonable, and no one here is arguing for it, and even then it isn't the same as the transphobe's straw man of "cis people have to have sex with trans people". the bbc article is extremely bad faith & i do not trust it to be representative of anyone.

ultimately 'genital preference' discourse is just a bad faith cudgel wielded by transphobes & i don't think it's at all a useful lens to approach the issue of sexual biases against trans people.

people raising the issue of 'genital preferences' are largely either transphobes trying to suggest that trans people are coercing cis people into unwanted sex, or trans people very very clumsily attempting to express the 'preferences are shaped by society' thing (and they should be discouraged from doing so for how obviously clumsy it is!), but it's much much more often the former.

I don't disagree with you, but I think the "genital preference is transphobic" argument of the last few posts has been in response to someone upthread mentioning such takes on Twitter and TikTok where of course you do get a lot of un-nuanced takes. (Also the argument that it is transphobic to have a genital preference falls to pieces when one simply inverts the stating of the preference: instead of saying what you do prefer, you say what you don't. I don't like vaginas, whether on a man or a woman.)

And I do think that gays and lesbians are especially sensitive to these un-nuanced takes because we have had our sexualities (sometimes literally) policed our whole lives, and this just seems like another attack and from a corner where one would not expect it.

There is an actual distinction between the two, because in the case of genital preference we don’t know if the same reflection process generally results in the preference changing.

This is true of all other preferences too! Ethnicity, body shape, whatever.

It sounds like you don't agree that genital preferences are transphobic, but when lesbians react negatively to people telling them genital preferences are transphobic, you're saying they should keep it to themselves.

Consider transphobia as a societal force that impacts us all to some degree or other, as opposed to "specific bigotry from bad bad people", and I think you might start to understand what ppl are saying in the examples you cited?

Why are you assuming all trans women have penises?? I know transphobes are completely obsessed with genitalia but this is very strange.

fwiw emily that's OTM and I'm sorry for engaging w/ the debate without pushing back against that notion.

"as a gay man" my eyes nearly fell out of my head at the mention of the phrase 'genital preference' and "as a gay man" I'm familiar with gays posting 'no Asians, sorry just a preference' on their Grindr profiles and "as a gay man" I'm quite familiar that desire is always already complexly political and whenever it's presented otherwise there's always somebody on the receiving end of something and, well, look what's going on...!

Familiar* with what ? The fact? The reality? The concept? The notion? The history? I guess there's a reason my mind passed over it.

nicole at 8:08 27 Oct 21
practice! I’ve had a few people change pronouns in my life and just taking ten minutes a day to repeat to yrself a short script like “Their name is x. Their pronouns are they/them. They like x and it’s fun to hang out with them” or w/e works pretty well ime, and it doesn’t seem to occur to a lot of ppl

This is really sad and enraging.

got told to leave a women’s toilet last night (again) which was personally distressing obviously, but also like. could this country please pull it together ?!

— michael wave: gourd boy edition (@SzMarsupial) October 30, 2021

“as a gay man" my eyes nearly fell out of my head at the mention of the phrase 'genital preference' and "as a gay man" I'm familiar with gays posting 'no Asians, sorry just a preference' on their Grindr profiles and "as a gay man" I'm quite familiar that desire is always already complexly political and whenever it's presented otherwise there's always somebody on the receiving end of something and, well, look what's going on...!

― plax (ico), Sunday, October 31, 2021 9:57 AM

I don’t really understand your post, but the parallel between racial preferences doesn’t make sense. If one writes “no [x race]” that is racist because a person is of a certain race by... being part of that race. But genital preferences don’t work like that, unless you define gender by genitals, in which case you’re the transphobe. So since vaginas belong to no gender specifically, you can’t say preference for or against them is transphobic, since trans, cis, and non-binary people can all have vaginas.

if a hunky trans man were into me i'd definitely do them. that is all.

"genital preferences" are really fucking idiotic the more you think about it. but i don't think this new poster is really interested in doing that (thinking).

The more I thought about it the more I realized saying it is transphobic makes no sense. You however have not made any argument. But again please explain to me how saying "I don't like x" when x can belong to trans, cis, and NB people is transphobic. If you mean saying that "I don't like men who have x" is transphobic, that is not a genital preference. That is a genital preference plus a gender preference. But gender preferences aren't transphobic either since trans people can be any gender.

i really appreciate the posters in this thread who are not showing their ass

oh so now it's ok to have ass preferences

Got it, that is a good thing. i misunderstood you a bit. I was imagining that the nyt was turning them away from being an ally, in which case it might be worth it to (disingenuously) affirm the authority of the times to establish a shared perspective, from which you could then highlight their stance on trans issues as an exception, without having to rock their world by tearing down the mainstream liberal news media as generally not a thing to be trusted.

I definitely see the insidious influence of these narratives all around. One of my closest coworkers is a progressive lesbian whose gender expression is fairly androgynous, but she’s a huge athlete — plays and coaches multiple sports — and she has commented to me on how trans women playing sports creates dissonance with her competitive instincts, something that would likely not be on her radar were people not constantly fearmongering about it. Ugh

I definitely see the insidious influence of these narratives all around. One of my closest coworkers is a progressive lesbian whose gender expression is fairly androgynous, but she’s a huge athlete — plays and coaches multiple sports — and she has commented to me on how trans women playing sports creates dissonance with her competitive instincts, something that would likely not be on her radar were people not constantly fearmongering about it. Ugh

― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Thursday, March 5, 2026 12:34 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago)

so the paradox here is that i think it's important for people to confront our own biases. if someone feels uncomfortable with trans women playing sports, i think it's good for someone to acknowledge that to themselves, at least... it's an opportunity to think about why that is. i was transphobic in a lot of ways when i was younger, and i still struggle with internalized transphobia. this idea that someone's a "bad person" if they have a hard time thinking of a trans woman as a woman - that's not, to me, a helpful way of framing it. that's one of the reasons it's important to me to be out. because a lot of times the only visible trans people are trans people who don't pass. so if someone can look at a trans woman who doesn't have passing much passing privilege and admit that they think of that person as a man, that gives me the opportunity to say hey, ok, do you think of _me_ as a man. which, particularly if they see me in person, they're not going to. and then one becomes, hopefully, open to the question of "ok, why do i think of kate as a woman, but not Sally Brickhon?" that's how prejudices get broken down.

the important thing, for me, is the ability to ask oneself uncomfortable questions _without immediately needing to answer them_.

this week i've decided to be pretentious and start referring to my 2 am rambles as "matinposting". makes it seem normal that i can't sleep through the night because of the nightmares. it's not, but it's not something i can do much about right now, so i'll take _feeling_ normal (individually, as opposed to "normalisation") as a consolation prize

the following (hopefully behind the cut) is a lengthy and very skippable preamble to the thing i want to actually talk about. slurs, but then there are slurs after the cut as well, so be advised.

this and bsky are about the only places where i will refer to myself as a "faggot". it's Old Internet, it's edgelord (call me no edgelord, for i am an edgelady) culture, it's stuff that Just Isn't Done these days, which is why i really only do it here. it's my inner holden caulfield. i'm sick of the hypocritical bullshit. i'm sick of "phonies". i don't like it when people treat me like a faggot but won't call me a "faggot". if people are gonna treat me that way, i'll call myself a "faggot", because it makes them uncomfortable.

nobody on ilx treats me that way, of course. it is, in some sense, rather rude of me to refer to myself as such in the company of people who very decidedly do _not_ treat me that way. it's important, though. it's important that cis people understand that all of this transphobic rhetoric is just so much smoke and mirrors. transphobes aren't offended that i'm a woman. they're offended that i'm a _faggot_.

i call myself a faggot: first, because i believe that i can, i believe that i do have the right to that word. if anybody else calls me a faggot without my permission i will use my words and i will cut them. i am not going to call anybody else, personally, a faggot. i am not going to call myself a faggot in trans spaces, because other trans people don't need to hear that word. they know how we're treated, whether i use the word or not.

second, because i don't think there's anything _wrong_ with being a faggot. the idea of "faggot" as a slur is just kind of ridiculous to me. yeah, it's offensive to _call_ somebody else a faggot, but it's not offensive to actually _be_ a faggot. genuinely, there's nothing wrong with that. it's just a derogatory word for "gay". i'd no more be offended by it that i would be if someone called me a "mick" or a "papist". they're clearly meant as slurs, but there's, like, nothing wrong with being either of the things those slurs refer to.

"mick" and "papist" are also like "faggot" in that none of these terms are really _accurate_ ways to describe me. i'm a white american. my great-great grandfather came over from county clare with a chip on his shoulder because he didn't want to be a fucking priest and died in an asylum. he didn't think of himself as "irish" and didn't like being called "irish", he was a fucking american. he was, of course, also irish, just as much as i'm an american.

technically i'm catholic. i'm catholic the way people who get copies of rolling stone that they haven't asked for or paid for are "subscribers". it's not about _me_, it's about boosting the circ numbers to look good to the advertisers. just cuz i've joined a couple of different religions since then, just because i don't do any catholic shit, doesn't make me not catholic, in their eyes. i'm just not catholic in anyone _else's_ eyes. (to be fair, i'm much more marked by having raised catholic than i am by having been a rolling stone subscriber.)

and yeah, i'm not actually a gay man. it's always been kind of a difficult thing for trans women. of course we don't want to be treated like men, but a lot of us do _want_ men. straight men just... they just feel like a lost cause. i tell a straight man i'm trans and he either stops being interested or starts being _very_ interested and neither response is really a good one. i don't tell a straight man i'm trans and i run the risk of him killing me when he finds out. gay men... look, and effeminate man _isn't_ the same thing as a woman with a penis, and a lot of gay men are only interested in the former, not the latter. i respect that, and i also, as a queer person, understand that being queer is _complicated_. as a queer person, i try (with limited success) to not get hung up on labels, and i know a lot of other queer people are that way too.

---

it's the fucking bryon noem thing. it's weird, is what it is. nobody's gonna report in the press "oh hey bryon noem is a faggot", but people are happy to say that he's been outed as a "sissy". whether or not he refers to himself as a "sissy" isn't of any particular account. that republican congressman from montana or whatever who was "cottaging", having anonymous sex with men in public restrooms - when that was reported in the press nobody said "oh larry whatshisface is a faggot". some people did say he was "gay", which i'm not sure is technically true, i think he was more of an "MSM" - man who has sex with men, and the more accurate reporting did focus on what he did rather than talk about his identity. some people of course will have suspicions about a straight man who has sex with men in public toilets, and i'll cop to being one of those people, and my judgements say more about me than they do about him.

there's always been this sort of tension, when it comes to AMAB gender nonconformity, between "sissies" and "faggots", this idea that you have to be one or the other. the alleged line is that sissies like themselves and faggots like men. i wanted to say "sissies like women and faggots like men", but no, that's not the pseudoscientific norm. the norm was codified by an amateur performer of medieval music named ray blanchard, and is still in fact taken very very seriously by some cis people but is taken most seriously, in my experience, by self-loathing Very Online queers who may or may not have spent time on 4chan. my understanding is that under blanchard, "sissies" are known as "AGP", which i thought stood for "advanced gaming port" in 2019, and "faggots" are "HST", which i thought was a US Robotics "high speed" (in 1990s terms) modem protocol in 2019. pseudoscience. balderdash. sissies and faggots. that's what we are, and there's nothing actually wrong with either of these things. they're not truly distinct, but yeah, they're not quite the same thing.

maybe there are still people like, i don't know, larry whathisface from montana, MSMs, but they don't get the press these days. the ones who get the press are sissies. contemporary liberal-minded people aren't going to allow ourselves to get upset by a man having sex with another man, but we - i very definitely don't exclude myself - aren't held to the same social standard when it comes to sissies. the truth is that i don't respect them enough to be disgusted by them. because that is what they want, a lot of them, to be treated as if they're sick and shameful and wrong, and really they just aren't. i don't think it makes any more sense to call someone else a "sissy" than it does to call them a "faggot", no matter what they call themselves.

of course, the big difference is that sissies, these days, do often act more entitled, do more often behave in socially inappropriate ways. sucking cock in a public men's room is socially inappropriate. that's the real issue. if i'm going into the restroom to take a leak, i don't want to walk in on a blowjob in progress. that's simple common courtesy. yes i _know_ it's hot, and i know nothing i say is gonna stop people of whatever gender from doing it. what i'm saying is that it's socially inappropriate, and if you get caught, you gotta take your lumps for it.

the larger issue is that it's the only way republican congressmen are _allowed_ to do MSM. they gotta be secretive and hypocritical and make a big show of hating the queers. people who are queer and promiscuous, i mean, we fucking know how they are. we know what happens on grindr every time the republicans are in town. i don't care what they do on their own time but they have nothing i want, and mostly they just get in the way.

yeah nobody hates us more than the fucking sissies. for real. because we ruin it for them. we ruin their orgasms. they think about us and it's not what they want to fantasize about, not what they want to be. they don't want to be normal, healthy queers. they want to have shameful toilet sex. and the only way they can do that is by making a world where that's all that's _possible_. a world where that's all queer people _can_ do. these people insist on defining what they do for _everybody_ in _their_ terms alone, not gay but "MSM", not trans but "sissies".

and of course i'm like them. i'm as much a sissy as i am a faggot. sure, i'm a "normal, healthy queer", and i am, in fact, a weirdo pervert freak, in ways that are, in fact, _not_ socially offensive, that do _not_ rely on me nonconsensually involving other people in my sexual behavior. i'm tired of having my sexual desires judged by the standards of their bullshit. there are lots of queer men and most of them don't routinely whip out their cock on set like john barrowman did. there are lots of trans women and most of us don't go around flashing our undies at people. i'm tired of having my sexuality being seen as a subset of their behavior. i'm tired of people acting like there's something wrong with looking at ourselves in a mirror and saying "would you fuck me? i'd fuck me." that's normal, actually, whoever you are, whatever anatomy one has, no matter how badly people like bryon noem want it to _not_ be normal.

tl;dr - if you wouldn't call someone a "faggot", don't call someone else a "sissy". no matter what they call themselves. no matter what fucked up shit they do. even if it's _not_ "queer", it has the same sort of relationship with queerness as the behavior of "MSMs" has with male homosexuality.

There’s quite a vast space between “shameful toilet sex” and the reasons behind why many gay men find it hot, fwiw.

Like it isn’t about shame— it’s about exposure and being caught breaking social norms in such a way. It’s related to exhibitionism.

George Michael was quite eloquent about saying so.

There’s quite a vast space between “shameful toilet sex” and the reasons behind why many gay men find it hot, fwiw.

― a tv star not a dirty computer man (the table is the table), Sunday, April 5, 2026 4:41 AM (one hour ago)

thank you for confirming that, it's something i believe but didn't have the ability to articulate. that's why when i talked about shame it was specifically in the context of MSMs. i don't think toilet sex is something to be ashamed of and i don't shame people for doing it! honestly i'd really like to hear gay men talk about what that difference is like for _them_. because i _know_ there is a difference, it maps pretty well onto certain experience i've had as a trans woman, but i can't speak to those differences because i just don't have that lived experience. hell if someone can just link to what george michael said, i think that'd be cool as well. as a queer person, a lot of how i experience myself is stuff that i learned from cis gay men, who _are_ positive role models, in general, or me.

to me this is sort of related to the ongoing "kink at pride" Discourse, whether or not kink _should_ or _should not_ be at pride, and it's not even a question for me. of course kink fucking belongs at pride. why would anybody even say it doesn't? it's part of who we are. it's more a matter of decorum. like... i had a friend who worked at the humane society, and one of the things that happened was that a furry group asked if they could come visit, to which the answer was god, yes, we'd love it if you visited, just please don't wear your fursuits, because it freaks out the animals. there _is_ nuance here. there _are_ questions of social decorum.

the complicating factor, i think, is that there's often a disproportionate response to people being caught doing that, as well as the fact that bigoted cops _do_ things like stake out toilet stalls trying to bust people having sex in public toilets in ways that really, genuinely, aren't doing any social harm. it's kinda the same way with paul reubens getting busted for masturbating in a porno theater. who the fuck is prioritizing arresting people for masturbating in porno theaters? it's funny, i don't remember anybody ever saying what _kind_ of porn was being shown at that theater. we all know who gets disproportionately targeted, though, when they go after stuff like that. nobody was outing reubens, but they _were_ arresting him and, well, literally cancelling him for jacking off to gay porn in a porno theater.

it's a fucking con. that's the thing of it. it's a big fucking con. these assholes are out there doing queer shit in grossly unsafe and nonconsensual ways while insisting that they're not queer - which frankly is fine by me because i don't think people who routinely behave in grossly unsafe and nonconsensual ways _should_ be welcome in queer community, no matter who they are - and then using _their own_ bullshit behavior as a pretext for regulating behavior that isn't actually a problem. what i've learned is that if everything is a problem, nothing is a problem, and the people who are causing the very, very serious problems know that, relish that, and exploit that.

kink belongs at pride. cops shouldn't fucking be staking out bathrooms to try and bust people having sex in the toilets. we as queer people should be empowered to be able to call out problem behavior when we see it without making sweeping judgements on the _character_ of the people involved. we know who the people causing problems in the queer community are. i don't have a problem with queer self-loathing. well, i have a personal problem with queer self-loathing, in that i'm queer and self-loathing, but i don't have a problem with other people doing queer shit and choosing to hate themselves for it. it's when they try to create a world where queer self-loathing is _mandatory_...

like, these people, self-loathing is a fetish they have, shame is a fetish they have, and they're trying to inflict that fetish on the rest of us. the way "sissy" discourse is used is part and parcel of that process. do i hold them responsible for my queer self-loathing? nah, that's my shit now, i own that. my problem is that their sissy fetish is getting in the way of my sex life. it has done for all of my life, but the problem has become _much more acute_ in these past couple of years.

whether or not the people creating this dystopia are, individual, sissies, that's not relevant, any more than it matters whether any individual pushing homophobic legislation is MSM. what is increasingly clear to me, though, is that transphobic legislation is part of a larger political program, and part of that program is, well, forced sissification. they don't have the fucking _right_. we should be the ones in control of that. not them.

tl;dr the "top shortage" in transfem communities is an insidious tool of patriarchal white supremacist capitalist oppression

god these people are really interested in other people's business... fucking hell

Bans on medical transition comprise just one part of the larger, unprecedented assault on transgender rights mounted by a coordinated campaign of mostly conservative activists and policymakers in the US in recent years. So far, these restrictions have primarily affected minors. But leaders in the emboldened movement have begun to more openly admit their desire to attempt to end gender-affirming care for adults, too.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/17/children-gender-affirming-trans-care-trump

i'm not saying this to be snarky, i know it might come off that way - i genuinely am relieved that more people are starting to catch on. back in '23 i was worried that people would just, i don't know, let us all die. i don't see that happening now. it's awkward because probably a lot of people are going to be coming to the realization in the coming years of what was happening under their noses and that they didn't, like, notice, and i'm just not remotely interested in blaming or shaming people or saying what they _should_ have done. because there's gonna be a whole huge number of people who are going to be reckoning with the absolute horror of it and i don't really want to wag my finger at anyone while they're doing that, you know? there are all kinds of horrifying realizations to be had and i don't think that trans people necessarily need to get priority over any other marginalized group - there's plenty of horror to go around.

again, not being snarky at all, not trying to be lighthearted or dismissive at all. just real shit.

Ugh our state Legislature wrapped up a session full of trans-bashing bills with a law that makes it illegal for any local government to recognize or provide anti-discrimination protections based on gender identity. All of the five largest cities in the state currently include "gender identity" in their anti-discrimination ordinances for city employees. This new law will force them to delete that language or face civil lawsuits. I'd like to think one or more of them might fight it in court, but they're all so battered by the state over a zillion other things that I don't know if they will.

Just insane, the level of hatred.

ok trying to repost, cloudflare blocked this earlier

Just insane, the level of hatred.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, April 22, 2026 1:24 PM (three days ago)

that really is it, the hatred is insane. not just the intensity of it... america at least has always had this level of fervent hatred... but the way it's being implemented.

i was watching this video but atun-shei films, and one of the things he talks about and is pretty insightful about is how this situation is different from the situation in america in 1860. in 1860 white america was pretty strongly divided on a geographic basis - white people in the south had one set of beliefs about slavery, and white people in the north...

well, that's an interesting thing now that i type it, there were plenty of pro-slavery white people in the north, but if there was an anti-slavery contingent of white people in the south, they didn't have a voice. it's not enough to write bigotry into law - that bigotry has to be universally accepted. i relate a lot to dr. king's frustration with white liberals, because for liberals choosing to _not fight_ for someone else is always an option. i don't even necessarily blame liberals for that or think that they're, individually, necessarily _wrong_ per se. it's just frustrating.

one of the things that's hardest for me to talk about is the way all of this extreme bigoted stuff that's happening now, that was just, like, _reality_ for all of us 30 years ago. by "us" i don't mean trans people, i mean _people_. nobody, myself included, listened to trans people, took trans people seriously, and now these bigots in state government are trying to, like, mandate hatred, and it just... it doesn't _work_. you can't force someone to hate trans people, it doesn't matter _what_ you put into law. they can make it illegal for local governments to protect us against discrimination and of _course_ that matters.

it's not just a matter of laws, though. i've been around long enough to know that there's such a thing as, you know, malicious compliance. people acting like they're complying with the regulations, but doing it in a way that doesn't actually support the people being protected by them. if a law protects me but the people who are in charge of enforcing that law don't want to protect me, well, the extent to which that law protects me is pretty limited.

well of course it works the other way around too. these brainrotted bigots are really upset that people aren't on-board with their bigotry and think if they make a law to mandate it everybody will fall in line, and what i've found is that no, actually, the more blatantly bigoted they get the more people support us and the more _passionately_ people support us. a certain subset of kids are internalizing this extreme form of bigotry that isn't ever going to fucking work, and i feel bad for those kids, but so many people are just... fucking horrified, rightly, at the insane bullshit these governments are trying to mandate.

i guess all the red states have now made it a felony for me to take a piss, or something. what do they expect us to do? stop pissing?

Once more, my friends, join me in a chorus of Fuck Kathleen Stock. Sussex Uni has won on appeal a judgment that they were stifling her ability to be a bigot.

great news indeed!

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2026-USCT-Strategy-1.pdf

Our nation has not been well served by its Intelligence Community (IC), which has been mired in old ways of looking at threats, or has been actively weaponized by its leadership as a political tool. Whether plotting against conservative Catholics attending traditional mass in Virginia, parents standing up for their children at schoolboard meetings, Members of Congress, or President Trump and his associates, this Administration will continue to prohibit the IC from being used politically against innocent Americans. As real threats were ignored or underplayed, Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.
In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent. We will do the same with the state sponsors of such groups and those governments undertaking lethal plots on U.S. soil or against Americans anywhere.

of course i'm _angry_

i mean am i upset that president Certified Loverboy is classifying _me_ as a threat to America? well, yeah. i also don't have the privilege to _do_ anything about it. hell, i gotta be careful about what i _say_, particularly here on the internet. and i'm choosing, perhaps unwisely, to speak up anyway, because a culture of silence benefits none of us. i'm not advocating for anything. i refuse to advocate for anything. i limit myself to observing, because i think it is important to say, as clearly as possible, what is happening here.

if the president and his administration have decided that Charlie Kirk is their choice for Ernst vom Rath, well, so be it. the thing people forget about Schicksalstag is that it _changed_ how people thought about that government. their leader was derided as, i don't know, an "Austrian paperhanger" or a "short-fingered vulgarian" or something. after Schicksalstag people started to realize "oh. oh wait, this is a Problem." wikipedia:

The Times of London observed on 11 November 1938: "No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenceless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday."[12]

and, i mean, history doesn't repeat, it iterates. an event like that of the night of November 9th is... sure, the authorities would stand by, but would _ordinary people_? based on what i'm seeing, i genuinely don't believe so. three years ago i was on here throwing around words like "genocide", which i've stopped doing because i don't think it's effective, nor do i think it's _necessary_. rafael lemkin, who coined the term, considered it an act of _norms entrepeneurship_. which is to say, here was something that people did not _want_ to accept, that was too enormously evil for people to even understand. at some point things are past denial for the majority of us, though of course there are always those who will deny every genocide to ever exist.

the acts of the current american administration are, i observe, past the point of denial for an increasing number of allies. i know how i came across three years ago. as a doomer, as someone paranoid and perhaps even hysterical. i don't blame anyone for not believing me then. i'm just tremendously relieved that people are starting to recognize the enormity of the horror being perpetrated by the american government.

i do, i think, believe in america, and it's because of the people who stand with us, those who are proud americans. the america they believe in is being systemically structurally dismantled by the current administration. the biggest problem, i think, with this is not their potential to destroy. it's the destruction that happens through _neglect_. though america has always systemically oppressed and disenfranchised groups of people, primarily Black Americans, america exists do to things _other_ than oppress and exterminate people. its capability to do this is increasingly radically constrained by its ruler. i look forward to an america that can govern for the people, by the people, and of the people, an america that can promote the general welfare. there are no shortage of americans willing to do that work, craving that work, should we be permitted.

I didn’t know that you were state-sponsored and a part of International Antifa, Inc. congrats, Kate!

I didn’t know that you were state-sponsored and a part of International Antifa, Inc. congrats, Kate!

― Brenton Wood Conference (Boring, Maryland), Friday, May 8, 2026 1:52 PM (one hour ago)

pffft don't front like you're not following the Antifa Meeting Thread :)

anyway fwiw since y'all here support trans rights, you're _also_ Antifa.

and once more i am reminded of that Twilight Zone episode about Castro. or, you know... many, many examples of imperialist foreign policy. "we don't understand, we're killing way more of them than they are of us... no matter how many (slurs) we kill, there just seem to be more. What? What do you mean those weren't (slurs)? They were our allies? And now they hate us? Well, god-damn, that's what we get for trying to defend those (slurs)."