self-isolating LGBTs of SPRING 2020

This might be my cis gay male showing, but I did take the Alfred-Morbs joke exchange as not the opposite of transphobic, though only in the sense that joking that wanting men and wanting cocks are two separate things could be, well, very tricky to unpack.

i'm not sorry

my misanthropy is partially justified by the utter humorlessness of Poster X

"Humorless" is a charge leveled at trans people by people who greatly overestimate their own sense of humor.

Agreed with Eric, tbh— the charge is mostly leveled at women and trans people by straights and older gay men.

I indict myself in that comment, fwiw.

I admit to having more to learn, always.

I have more to learn but significantly less time than I did to learn it, is how I'd characterize it.

Sometimes hostility is directed at difficult people because they are difficult people, news at 11

Likewise...

I also fully admit to being a little mystified by certain discourses around gender. To me it seems pretty obvious that most people are enby, to one degree or another, as the gender binary is a false construct anyway... which doesn't invalidate the identity formation, fwiw, but just gives me pause as to *who and what the identity formation is for.*

A Black friend of mine shared that they are enby and many of their enby friends are also Black, seeing it as a method of resisting binaristic structures placed on Black bodies since chattel slavery. This makes sense to me.

But many of the people I saw on social media sharing their enby status were masc-presenting cis white dudes who are gay or sexually fluid, and many I've known in the past have been cis white women in heterosexual relationships and also with kids.

These things are complex and messy, at times, and I'm here for learning and thinking about it, and also trying my best to respect people while doing so. I am truly sorry for my shortcomings in this latter regard!

To me it seems pretty obvious that most people are enby, to one degree or another, as the gender binary is a false construct anyway... which doesn't invalidate the identity formation, fwiw, but just gives me pause as to *who and what the identity formation is for.*

As someone who has never considered themself to be enby, I find this point intriguing and worthy of more self-examination.

I would not at all be surprised to discover, thru therapy, that my cis identity is the result of targeted conditioning from male peers during my pre- and pubescent years.

I know that sounds naive and tardy, but I also know I'm basically the cl3m3nz4 of the gay threads.

a cheeky exchange

we do talk about anal as well

ISWYDT

My opinion about the origin of TERFwars is that ciswomen are being forced into accepting that "gender binary is a false construct" when many of them believe that this assertion should be the decision of ciswomen themselves-- historically oppressed for millennia by patriarchal structures; oppression is still ongoing. I'm not a TERF (at all) but I'm somewhat of a TERF-sympathizer-- this is to say, I think that discussion would be better than shouting "TERF!" at anybody with a divergent opinion. (Not so much because I think that people with TERFy views are right, but because responding to them with aggression is just going to further radicalize them.)

Re: "difficult people"-- consistently I see that certain people with a more generous posting style tend to get dissected and debated more readily and that the environment around them sours-- they are "difficult" because people make it impossible for them to be any other way. I don't see anything difficult having been expressed today or yesterday by Branwell, and see any "difficulty" that may have been generated as being the result of responses from other posters.

ok but narcissism does tend to suck the air out of the room

that isn't directed at anyone, just a generalization. i've appreciated following the discussion here and have nothing to add.

sorry (maybe not sorry) to divert from topic but, as mentioned in the "last x movies" thread, I think everyone who hasn't should watch the newly available 1977 doc "Word Is Out." It's remarkable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bXfALa7YlU

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/wordisout

Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives is a 1977 documentary film featuring interviews with 26 gay men and women. It was directed by six people collectively known as the Mariposa Film Group. Peter Adair conceived and produced the film, and was one of the directors. The film premiered in November 1977 at the Castro Theater in San Francisco, and went into limited national release in 1978.

Word Is Out intercuts interviews with 26 people, who speak about their experiences as gay men and lesbians. The interviewees range in age from 18 to 77, in location from San Francisco to New Mexico to Boston, in type from bee-hived housewife to student to conservative businessman to sultry drag queen, and in race from Caucasian to Hispanic, African-American, and Asian. Writer Elsa Gidlow, professor Sally Gearhart, inventor John Burnside, civil rights leader Harry Hay, actress Pat Bond, and avant-garde filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky are among the interviewees. The interviewees describe their experiences of coming out; falling in and out of love; and struggling against prejudice, stereotypes, and discriminatory laws.

Have seen; it's very very good, tho I remember liking Before Stonewall a bit more for covering a wider range of landmark moments.

Thanks ulysses, looks interesting!!

fgti, re: your tactic with TERFs, I think that generally speaking, a more gentle tone would work well in most cases of disagreement and persuasion. But so many of the arguments that TERFs give are given in bad faith, barring those that are associated with radical feminism...that is, truly radical feminism understands that binaristic gender views are an imposition of colonial and religious forces, and not actually reflective of the vast variance of human experience and feeling.

I miss my IRL queer spaces so, so much at the moment. Lockdown has been so hard for that. I miss my queer theory reading group. I miss my various enby groups. I miss queer reading nights at the Feminist Library.

I miss spaces where being COMPLICATED is not automatically equated to being "difficult". Spaces where being "difficult" is celebrated as an inherent part of the complicated panology of queerness, and not pathologised or used as a justification for your abuse.

I miss spaces where "acknowledgement of systemic oppression and power structures" is not dismissed as ~oh noes a conspiracy~ thinking, but considered the structure of fundamental reality.

I miss, most of all, in my queer theory reading group, the respect that we show each other, that we do not automatically reach for the worst, most problematic, negative interpretation of the things we discuss, but that we tease out difficult and thorny and complicated concepts together. That freedom is such a joy, and it's so rare.

But then, on a supposed "LGBT" thread, I'm told that I don't just automatically have a right to be here, becuase I was once an L who moved through into the BT - but that I have to work on acquiring "allies", before I will be allowed to be accepted? Um, oh rlly? And in the course of one L->BT person trying to advise and indirectly console/support another L->BT, that AFAB queerness is valid and fluidity is valid and online experiences are valid, I got screamed at because my advice centred AFAB queer people. (That centring AFAB queer inherently means excluding AMAB queers, but... if a space centres AMAB queer people by default, that's... NOT exclusionary? That's just... what, normal?) That I'm back in a space where I don't get the benefit of the doubt. Where I have to justify my belonging in what is labelled as my community.

One of the weirdest things about transitioning has been seeing the differences in how people treated me at work, when I had a super feminine name (think: Jane) compared to how they treat me now, that I have changed to a more neutral, but slightly male-coded name (think: Jayden). How the same emails with the same words carry more weight from Jayden, how my opinions are now treated authoratively, that I'm treated with the assumption of competence due a programmer turned systems analyst with 25+ years experience in databases, and not second-guessed and talked down to and told my solutions are inherently never going to work. That Jayden gets taken seriously by consultants and suppliers and is able to accomplish projects with minimal friction; in a way that Jane had to wrestle and argue, and get in the male manager to say "we're doing it Jane's way!", and generally be completely *difficult*, to get the most basic stuff done.

But then I come back to ILX, and it's like - all of that basic assumption of competence. All of that presumption that I might have experience, might have accumulated knowledge and learning, might be someone who is speaking-from-the-inside with regards to matters of gender and queerness and LGBT issues? Might have done the work, and the therapy, and the reading, and the support groups, and gone through a transition or three and asked some hard questions and chomped through some difficult answers? Nope, I'm just back to being Jane, the "difficult" man-hating man-hater. It's so exhausting.

The thing that offended me most about Brad's flying off the handle yesterday, was totally misreading what I was saying, and this whole 'that's terfy!!!' and trotting out the old Trans 101 'Trans Women Don't Have Male Privilege' on the intellectual level of a Tumblr teen in a call-out post.

When up until lockdown, I was existing in a space, where we had pushed past Trans 101 and we were into, like:

Trans 201 - Do Trans men have male privilege? What makes the 'male' in privilege? What is privilege anyway, is it something you can have, is it something you can gain or lose? Or is 'having' privilege the wrong way of thinking about it entirely, and maybe 'being the beneficiary of' is a more helpful framing?

Trans 301 - What about nonbinary people? Are nonbinary people ever the beneficiary of male privilege? In what ways, under what conditions, does directionality matter? Like, sure, gender is a power structure, but what if "male" and "female" are not positions, but, like... directions, like there is no such place as "The North" or "The South" but someone who is "moving north" may still be further south than someone who is "moving south"?

Trans 401 - is this whole binary / non-binary binary just another false binary entirely, when thinking about the idea of directionality? What comprises a "transition"? What does "cis" even mean? Statements like "everyone's a little nonbinary" just come across as a little too... pat to me, because some people definitely experience more *friction* than others, due to their movement, and the *direction* of their movement can also affect how much friction they experience?

And in my queer theory reading group, we were getting up to, like post-grad, doctoral level trans studies of like

Trans 501 - wow the issue of trans people and "male" "privilege" is really complicated and not straightforward at all, and there are no black and white yes/no absolutes because Gender and the systems of misogyny that enforce arbitrary binaries onto flux-like gradients are actually super complex systems with multiple power gradients in multiple interlocking directions that also intersect with age and race and culture and all sorts of other power structures, holy hell this is so interesting!!!! I learn so much from these discussions!

But I come back to ILX and there's someone just shouting "you can't say that, that's terfy, you terfy terf terf man hating man hater terf" and I'm just like... really?

I really am sorry for being an ass to you, Branwell. I think your points are well-taken, and my posts were coming from a place of misunderstanding and hurt, not openness.

I appreciate your posts.

jfc fuck this

Cheers, Table, I appreciate that.

I had a bit of a conversation with FGTI about this last night, and I know this is going to be controversial but...

I spend a lot of time, talking to cis women, and especially older cis women, who have encountered 'terf discouse', in both senses of the word (both transphobic propaganda that preys on feminist concerns; and the demonisation of any cis woman who deviates more than .01mm from the Acceptable Trans Discourse in public.) Sometimes they seek me out, sometimes I DM them privately to say like "hey, you posted this thing - I'm trans, do you want to talk about it?" And we talk about it, privately, and often really, really productively.

Doing the whole 'scream at terf cis women' thing is one of those things that might feel righteous, but is actually super, super counter-productive, on so many levels. It does not help trans causes at all. It actively radicalises the women who are merely curious, or concerned, and pushes them deeper into believing that trans people are bullies. It is almost universally seen as method of shutting down cis women when they try to talk about misogyny, and shutting them up. When I talk to 'terf-curious' women, I often have to do the double-work of literally undoing the damage of ~terf discourse~, before I can even start to talk ~trans stuff~.

If you actually care about trans people, and make things better for us, please, for the love of all that is holy, screaming 'terf' at women is the LEAST effective thing you can do to fight transphobia.

xps to Eric: Before Stonewall has been on my list for awhile; will bump it up and have a go sooner based on your recommendation, thanks!

Branwell stop dragging truscum talking points to this board from 2008 tumblr

go get J3ss3 Sing@l to interview you if you want attention

Thanks, FGTI and Table for making interesting points, and engaging seriously with the discussion. I really miss discussions on that level, but it's clear there's not much appetite for them among the other regulars. Have a good evening.

Yeah sorry guys, calling an AFAB-transperson (who themselves has not undergone medical transitioning) "truscum" is way outside of my level of comfort and I'm gonna leave this discussion before I start using the word "fuck"

I miss my IRL queer spaces so, so much at the moment. Lockdown has been so hard for that. I miss my queer theory reading group. I miss my various enby groups. I miss queer reading nights at the Feminist Library.

I miss spaces where being COMPLICATED is not automatically equated to being "difficult". Spaces where being "difficult" is celebrated as an inherent part of the complicated panology of queerness, and not pathologised or used as a justification for your abuse.

I miss spaces where "acknowledgement of systemic oppression and power structures" is not dismissed as ~oh noes a conspiracy~ thinking, but considered the structure of fundamental reality.

I miss, most of all, in my queer theory reading group, the respect that we show each other, that we do not automatically reach for the worst, most problematic, negative interpretation of the things we discuss, but that we tease out difficult and thorny and complicated concepts together. That freedom is such a joy, and it's so rare.

The difference, of course, being that it's a lot easier to have a discussion in person than it is among a faceless group of usernames.

a summer thread

boy do we need it now

Start it up yourself and you get to pick which letters from the alphabet soup you want.

Just don’t use “QUILTBAG”

i cant even guess if thats a 'real' acronym

I've seen it in the wild

So ... in this thread?

Morbz, I know life is shit, no one cares about us, and you've been going through a rough time. I wish you the best, but insulting people who might otherwise be your allies just seems counterproductive and at this point, cruel to all parties involved.

oh i havent BEGUN insulting anybody

and i dont need this

i feel the same kinship with LGBHHDGFUUZD people as i do with the right-handed.

xp feel free to FINISH anytime soon

hairpulling.gif

Yeah sorry guys, calling an AFAB-transperson (who themselves has not undergone medical transitioning) "truscum" is way outside of my level of comfort and I'm gonna leave this discussion before I start using the word "fuck"

― flamboyant goon tie included, Wednesday, July 29, 2020 11:12 AM (two hours ago)

oh hey just to circle back to this, fuck this and fuck you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fTXzdHoip8

Thread's not doing much to bolster the case for cis gay men rn tbh.

i'd like a case, a nice lager perhaps

ftr my good faith/bad faith thread was in response to this thread

did i miss something

basically the ILX version of Fox & Friends

now let's do Fox and His Friends

Kinda already did both

AFAB queerness is valid and fluidity is valid and online experiences are valid, I got screamed at because my advice centred AFAB queer people. (That centring AFAB queer inherently means excluding AMAB queers, but... if a space centres AMAB queer people by default, that's... NOT exclusionary? That's just... what, normal?)

If you make a disparity between AFAB spaces and AMAB spaces, you are literally transphobic.