no boys allowed in the room!!!!

also "is your husband home" is a fucking creepy question!!!!!

Maybe the firewood had a hole to stick a dick in, did you ever think about that? I am so sick of these stupid, stupid men. But then again my spouse is pretty great, and even though I get pretty evil sometimes he always thinks I am great.

If anyone is sad by the weather in the US they can come visit me in Chile right now. It stays bright out until 9pm.

i am unable to control myself and go completely off the rails when i am confronted with men (performing a home-related service) inside my house who won't listen to me
have had a number of bad experiences with that
hence my malfunctioning nervous system obvs :(
god -- CBF and the second front door, i still think about that from time to time

actually the malfunctions are not caused by the incidents -- they are inflamed, which causes days of aggravation and recovery
fuck that shit

la lechera, ,I am firmly against people needing to see excessive pain of women or needing to know the assaultive details to consider it serious enough. No. The entire world needs to be reprogrammed.

indeed :(

i'm single and live alone, and sometimes when I go outside to have a cigarette, some man I don't recognize will walk by, and sometimes I will flinch. Then there are the occasional attempts at flirtation which are usually not too creepy, but there are a handful of guys that every time they walk by when I'm outside they will say something ... and I have this client, who's a guy, who will come over and I will work with, and sometimes I wish the awkward flirters would walk by when I am outside having a cig with the male client so I can give the impression that I have a boyfriend or am married and they might leave me alone ... also feel shitty about having that thought because I feel like I'm finally getting over the "if I'm not in a relationship, I am a failure" thing.

Have you ever tried an aggressive eyeroll when someone tries to awkwardly, repetitively flirt. If it's bothering me, I don't care if they just think I am a bitch. But of course you need to do the calculus. sometimes when my spouse hugs me from behind or grabs me when I am focused on something else, i totally flinch or knock his arm away and i've never had anything traumatic happen to me but of course it's just the history of having hands on you that you don't want and being alert to defend yourself.

Being alone is better than being with someone who sucks. A lot of men are pretty lacking in being adequate partners. Having your time to be alone is freedom (this is totally take from that Jeong Kwan Chef Table episode).

Trayce, it's pretty much always the partner (or ex partner). It happens so much it becomes almost mundane. I expect it's the same if you're a POC and experience varying levels of racism *all the time* - it's there, it's outrageous, everyone's used to it so needs to find something new to make a Twitterstorm about

the levels of entitlement people must just be walking around with.

New people! *waves at gyac* *waves at Eliza D* welcome to us!

On the marriage thing, in orbit, some EU countries are doing the thing of extending Civil Partnership to Teh Straights? That might be something to look into, if your partner's country does this? I am not a fan of Marriage or even Gay Marriage (for many complicated reasons). But the whole idea of Civil Partnership being, "This means what *we* think it should mean, not what 5000 years of Patriarchy says it should mean" - might be a way to just do the thing without, you know, Doing The Thing?

I don't even want to touch on the incel thing, or the rolling maleness / masculinity thread. (Which usually means I'm going to fire off 7000 words, but not today.) But just to say... I admire women and/or non-boys who can continue wading into those threads and having the arguments and saying the things that need to be said. But there *IS* a wall of frustration. And the penalties that one must pay, as a non-boy, for pointing out "ILX males are very quick to performatively point fingers at persons outside ILX; while steadfastly refusing to address their own biases" eventually become too high.

(I have found amazing other places and other people, with whom I can discuss AFAB masculinity, and trans-ness and non-binary-ness... and it's been life-alteringly good.)

But there's a lot of online conversations I have found I have just had to mute or switch off, not to be a screaming mass of anger, all the time - with hugely deleterious effects on both my psychological health and eventually my physical health. (It's not just getting other people to take your pain seriously - sometimes it's getting *yourself* to take your own pain seriously, when others keep telling you it doesn't matter.) It's too high a price to pay, living in that state all the time. Like, there are so many cognitive *taxes* that non-cis-men have to pay, that cis-men are blissfully unaware of. On one level, psychologically, it's like, "you're allowed to mute those conversations if that's what you need to survive" but the end result is, certain voices become louder and louder, and other voices... go on mute.

Just in case people didn't see the story, because I think various other blogs have been writing off of it as well but the Washington Post had a lead on this:

The Washington Post found that nearly half of the women who were murdered during the past decade were, like Parnell and Cisneros, killed by a current or former intimate partner. In a close analysis of five cities, about a third of the male killers were known to be a potential threat ahead of the attack.

I’m sure a lot of terrorists recently have also had a history of domestic violence, iirc.

👋🏻 at everyone - i will definitely post more here :)

Re: going to the dr, I understand the hesitancy because doctors are documenting as dismissing female problems which then turn out to be actual issues and this has happened to very dear friends of mine. I remember having a weird random ache years ago and being told by a doctor it was “nothing” - it was my lower abdomen on my right hand side. Obviously this was true because I’m still alive but I always thought about how quickly it was dismissed.

I'm always glad to see the "no boys" thread resurface and I'm always glad to see a gyac post, so hi! welcome! welcome to Eliza D. too and welcome back Branwell. Actually I am always glad to see a post by any ILX ladies. <3 to you all and apologies if anyone didn't want to be <3ed by an idiot like myself.

I do share most of yr feelings about the incel conversations here and elsewhere, but I had some p. incel-like trains of thought in my early 20s (so probably diarised on ILX somewhere, sigh), feeling like an outsider on the edge of male-dominated scenes and blaming my looks instead of examining my own failings wrt social interaction (or what I could do about my looks, which tbh I still resent the obligation to do), and I got into a spiral of semi-enjoying feeling bad and hated for things I thought were out of my control and blaming everyone else and taking any hints to change as confirmation that everyone was out to get me. anyway, there were a couple of good posts about that kind of thinking which I look forward to unpacking and rearranging into my worldview at my leisure

as an only child of relatively openminded-ish parents who found it far more important that I could fake "I am clever and like science" chat than performative femininity I was prob just socialised in a male privilege kinda way without even being male. unfortunately the clever/science part was also v fake and performative, and now I am secretly also dumb as rocks, having been brought up to believe that being smart is the most important thing without ever needing to learn how. but oh well.

uhh nobody wanted to read that much about me, sorry, and I'm sure you don't want to rehash any of that conversation here, so please do carry on

aps I was wondering where you were! I like reading your posts. now where's emil.y?

I think I understand you in some ways, a passing spacecadet. I always had sort of “male interests” as a child and to varying degrees am not really into performative femininity for the most part! This used to be a pain when I was younger because I felt I was different from my peers. Sad to say I did have a brief not like the other girls phase, but quickly got the fuck over myself. Most of my friends are female now and most of my closest friends have been too.

Also, you’re not dumb at all, I’ve read your posts and you always come across as very on it!

btw justin3 that situation with your friends and potentially babby is a total recipe for disaster imo!!

Replying to three different things at once time!

1. Sad to say I did have a brief not like the other girls phase, but quickly got the fuck over myself.

oh, I totally had an "I don't like/am not like ~girly girls~" phase, which, what did I even mean by that? There wasn't anyone in my class at school or among my acquaintances at any other point in my life who remotely fitted the description, even among the people I didn't particularly get along with, but I still felt the need to go "that straw woman there, I am not one, please!"

2. kinder otm, that situation sounds like it has many possibilities for becoming super awkward for anyone who isn't 100% immune to emotions/attachment/sleeplessness/hormones/suddenly having a whole lot of baby stuff going on all over the house. for the record, my personal opinion is that no humans ever have been immune to that combo. but, good luck to them

3. my mother has chronic health problems which were not properly diagnosed until her 40s because up until that point doctors liked to say things like "so your stomach hurts a lot, well, that's what you should expect when you're a woman". I'd hoped we'd got past that now but a friend of a friend nearly died this summer because of a giant ovarian cyst, the symptoms of which had been totally dismissed, so I guess there is still some way to go, alas.

though, one of the GPs at my surgery has told both me and the bf that (separate) things are "just one of those things" in a very "can't be bothered to look" kind of way, so some people are just like that to both sexes, and they shouldn't become GPs imo, but they do

...some of them do. Some (most?) GPs are good obv.

But it can be a bit random and there's the maddening feeling you might need to keep an .xls of what GPs are available at your surgery and what subjects they have seemed particularly receptive or unreceptive to enquiries about, so you don't ask the perma-bored dude GP about your ovary pains, and you don't ask the slightly sniffy about mental health GP about brainfeelings, and you don't ask the GP who is mostly v nice and good but a bit hippyish about any skin conditions you don't want to be told a natural home remedy for, etc.

I just looked up on the internet why men become gynos thinking it would soothe my fears and nope. I've had a 2 male gynos for maybe 10 years combined and now I am like "what was I thinking?" They were totally fine but eh, that choice is really suspect.

As I get older I am more assertive about requesting things from doctors. I know when I go that I need something serious and even if they dismiss me that they can't hear anything in my lungs (even though I know I have asthma) or that I don't seem that sick (because I walk in with makeup and dressed?) I ask that they run blood tests or take xrays of wherever. And there is always something they find after. Like bitch, I am paying for this so just do the test.

Literally the last three times I had some kind of bronchial infection (from traveling too much), I finally had to give in and go to the doctor and each time I was dismissed as seeming fine. I had to actively request a blood test so that they could confirm I had an infection and I could get drugs.

Hi spacecadet! <3 back to you.

I keep typing stuff out and deleting it, but yes.

Nevermind the rampant domestic violence issues within police officer, border patrol and ICE ranks.

I keep thinking about one of your previous posts about how your background checks found domestic violence incidents for every person applying to ICE? DHS?

Hi Bran and aps!! Missed your faces!

it's like the no boys thread holiday gathering, where everyone comes together to celebrate!

xpost, the background checks you also always had to speak to the ex spouse (if there was one). Those positions (border patrol ICE) I remember dreading if there was an ex-spouse or partner where they had a child together. They never wanted to talk to me or they didn't want to meet in person, and they tried to keep everything as short as possible. This was not the case in any other single type of position.

as an only child of relatively openminded-ish parents who found it far more important that I could fake "I am clever and like science" chat than performative femininity I was prob just socialised in a male privilege kinda way without even being male.

I am also an only child, and yeah, was definitely socialized as "not strictly feminine" -- because I served as both daughter and son to my parents. I was talking to a friend who also had this experience, and her family was fairly traditional in terms of gender stuff, but because she was the only child, she got more of the "male training" than if she'd had a brother. For me, also my dad did way more of the babysitting/was around more when I was growing up, so I definitely assimilated more male traits and interests as a kid than if my mom was home more and my dad was a workaholic (i.e. typical gender roles). Actually I was kinda thinking about this in terms of voice - like speaking voice - and whether the parent you spend the most time with affects how you speak, in terms of tonal range?

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2015/10/26/police-wife-the-secret-epidemic-of-police-domestic-violence/

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/

I have said this before about gun control, but even though domestic violence is a greater predictor of future escalated violence than any other sign, we are unlikely to get gun control focused around domestic violence because of high rates in police and military families.

— Kristen Hanley Cardozo (@KHandozo) December 9, 2018

Hey APS, that’s what bugs me about incel talk - as if women don’t experience the same kinds of alienation and isolation. But as yerac mentioned earlier, we’re conditioned to act as if we couldn’t possibly feel that way, and to put others’ emotional welfare before our own.

Also: I feel like this often deemed a controversial opinion but I think male gynos are all creeps.

*shrugs* I don't see any reason not to run with that as a basic concept tbh.

I’ve had both male and female gynos and prefer women but don’t really mind the men. My mom, on the other hand, thought the idea of having a female gyno was really strange but I think that must have been because she was older and for much of her life most doctors were male full stop.

But I remember telling her my first gyno was a woman and she was horrified:

I feel like I was told that female gynocologists were less gentle. Which is making me laugh right now.

I went to a gynaecologist and I was really nervous about it til she told me to “open my flaps” which made me laugh. I think I’d take that a bit differently from a man though.

On the gyno topic, I went off my implanon the other week after the 3 year mark. Ughhhh first period in 3 years and I already hate it and had a HUGE fight with my patner this morning and i feel like shit.

Seeing as people are doing medical talk itt, I just started my second heavy period in a month and I KNOW it is a thyroid thing but none of my doctors have ever taken me seriously about this stuff. I also have severely debilitating anxiety around doctors and making GP appointments is so hard these days, so I think I'm probably going to deteriorate slowly and painfully until I finally get round to dying. Oh well.

With you on GPs, I'm hard pressed to find any who give a shit anymore. :(

I think you have to persevere and maybe it's not the right thing to do, but google and google until you think you have done enough research to be knowledgeable and make doctors take you seriously. You are ultimately paying their salary.

I know enough smart nurses who hate doctors because of their self serving egos that I don't feel bad anymore about demanding care when I know I need it.

Again and again, it has to be repeated: the term "incel" was literally invented by a woman.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/25/woman-who-invented-incel-movement-interview-toronto-attack

It was a term meant to describe the experiences of women who didn't or couldn't meet gendered expectations, Teh Fats, and the "only gay / lesbian in the village" experience. The fact that this term has been co-opted as a byword for male sexual entitlement tells you everything you need to know about whose problems are considered *real*, or not.

Branwell's gonna be threadkiller here, but I guess that's my job.

I knew I shouldn't have looked in the masculinity thread given the things being said here, but I did, and...

It's so frustrating, seeing dudes saying things like, "oh, if only we had some trans-masc voices in here", given the violent history of ILX's treatment of the few trans-masc ppl that have been out, here. And yet, a cis dude, who is all "Well, I've been hanging out with a lot of 'F to M's and this is what they've said..." is viewed as an authoritative expert voice on transmasculinity.

The irony of this position, when I was literally banned from the trans thread. (It's astonishing, how, when one dude-with-a-history was using the place to carry on; and multiple people asked him to stop - mods were all 'we don't want to be hasty' and 'free speech' and he was never banned from it, and I literally had to leave a space I asked to be created - but the moment I, an NB Trans, steps 3mm from the Acceptable Public Discourse About The Trans, the banhammer came down so fast my head was spinning.)

So ILX only ever gets to see the AFAB trans experience, as filtered through the eyes of cis dudes. And it's very notable that the cis dudes love to share the 'M to F' voices that are all "masculinity is more complicated than we had expected" and "here are some awful ways that being a racialised man is different from being a racialised woman" and "male privilege is... kinda weird and not always cut and dried." Cis dudes *love* sharing those pieces, in a way they do not ever seem to share the multiple transmasc voices saying things like, "holy shit, here are all the ways in which my life got magically easier and less of a hassle, in areas which I didn't even know *existed* when I was still being treated as a woman, the minute I started to really pass." Cis men only ever seem interested in trans issues when trans issues can be used as a tool to contradict male privilege in some way.

But I also know that if I go on that thread, there are a number of men who will start this high-pitched shrieking like...

https://cdn2-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/2017/07/remakes-watching-slide-890Z-videoSixteenByNineJumbo1600.jpg

...at me, in a way that they do not do it at cis dudes who are sharing their cis-filtered view of The Transmasc Narrative. And if I react in any way, it will be because "Branwell is just an angry person". Not because of their misogyny, not because of their transphobia.

Been thinking about this thing discussed above, about "being good at male-coded interests" as a way of almost-accessing male privilege. As someone living in the boundary land, it just doesn't work that way. "Being good at male-coded interests" is still something which leaves you eternally dependent on male approval, and you will only ever be "pretty good... for a girl." The actual test of male privilege, when you're trying to pass as male - is how much male-coded *behaviour* will be tolerated. How much bluntness, how much directness, how much taking-up-space, how much "not having to check in with and be aware of and waltz around the feelings of everyone else in the room". How much of (any kind of) privilege is not the stuff you do have to take into account - but the stuff you *don't*, and the stuff that it's never occurred to you before, that you should even *need* to.

Like, trans men suddenly start to *notice* the day that women start shying away from them on dark streets (in a way that cis men do not - unless they've been educated by a feminist that this is A Thing) because it's taken for granted, that when you're not viewed-as-male, you *have* be aware of people around you.

On that note, I know Kinder has seen this on twitter, but it's pretty relevant to this discussion of the utter bedrock assumptions about violence towards women and masculinity...

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/dec/13/what-would-a-city-that-is-safe-for-women-look-like

It's easier for the woman who wrote this, to imagine RAZING ENTIRE CITIES AND REBUILDING THEM FROM SCRATCH in order to protect women - and then dismissing the idea as infeasible - than it is to imagine a world where male violence isn't considered as totally normal as the weather, or a world where cis men could be educated not to attack or harass people who aren't men.

I mean, this is the absolute failure of vision that I was railing about - when I got banned from the Trans thread.

Someone was saying to me, that fighting "T3r£s" and combating transphobia in Feminism was The Single Most Important Issue in the struggle, because 'some feminists do not allow trans women in women's shelters or rape crisis centres.' Like, the backwards way this is framed, and whose transphobia it ignores and treats as normal... HELLO! why do women even *need* separate shelters or rape crisis centres? The transphobia of women who say 'we really need to screen who uses these spaces...' is named and addressed and problematised - but the transphobia and transmisogyny and common-or-garden misogyny of the men who PUT WOMEN - BOTH CIS AND TRANS AND EVERYONE INBETWEEN - in *need* of these services? That doesn't even require a *mention*. Transphobia has become defined, a priori, as a Women's Problem, in the same way that Rape is classed as a Women's Problem, and that Domestic Violence is classed as a Women's Problem.

(And of course, the best way for cis men to combat transphobia is... to shout at AFABs that they're not being feminist enough. The idea of actually talking to other cis men about male violence, including transphobia...? Scary. Complicated. Can't we get some AFABs in to manage our feelings about that.)

Sorry, I'm probably still too affronted and just genuinely offended by that incident to be posting on ILX. The best person on this is Sara Ahmed, and she talks about those *SNAP* moments. Where people hear and see the snap and act like the snap itself is the problem, but pretend as if the stress and the pressure that leads to the *SNAP* has nothing to do with the snap.

Anyway, apologies for the thread-killing. Blowing off steam, no response required. I'm leaving for Berlin tomorrow, so I won't be around, so I'll just say happy holidays to everyone now. Tschüss!

I mean, being lectured on the best ways to address transphobia, by people who literally started multiple threads, board-lawyering for their RIGHT to deadname me, is... well, it's something, innit.

ty for the welcomes, for anyone not aware already I used to be ILXor Phil D. before I began transitioning. I probably will be doing a lot of lurking rather than posting because I'm still kind of . . . *learning* womanhood? I am a very femme-presenting trans woman, and it's an entirely different way of getting along in the world than the previous 48 years have been. So I'm just kind of going day to day. But I learn from reading this threads and all of your experiences.

welcome eliza!! i don't know enough about the specific situations mentioned in branwell's post above to even fully understand what is going on but i wish everyone the best.

as for learning femininity, i wouldn't try too hard to learn. i sure didn't :) most of the stuff i was supposed to do was way out of character. i remember one time a friend told me that if i wanted boys to like me, i had to be more coy (her word) and even thought i was 16 at the time i was like naaaaaah.

well i don't wish EVERYONE the best, but hopefully you know what i mean.

Hi Bran, rest assured I see your post and I hear you. I'm still taking it in, a bit, and also I don't know about most of that history. But thanks for

Like, the backwards way this is framed, and whose transphobia it ignores and treats as normal... HELLO! why do women even *need* separate shelters or rape crisis centres? The transphobia of women who say 'we really need to screen who uses these spaces...' is named and addressed and problematised - but the transphobia and transmisogyny and common-or-garden misogyny of the men who PUT WOMEN - BOTH CIS AND TRANS AND EVERYONE INBETWEEN - in *need* of these services? That doesn't even require a *mention*. Transphobia has become defined, a priori, as a Women's Problem, in the same way that Rape is classed as a Women's Problem, and that Domestic Violence is classed as a Women's Problem.

xp I wish a lot of people the wurst tbrr but no one on this thread. :D

I definitely get a lot of what Branwell's discussing above -- since I changed my Twitter account and started following different people, I've had a lot of new exposure to LGBTQIA+ and trans politics, and there's a LOT going on there. And their (apologies, Branwell, I can't remember your pronouns) experience in the UK is a lot different than what's going on here, too -- I follow and chat with a lot of UK trans activists (a term I hate) and I don't envy them what's going on these days. And an awful lot of them *do* center fighting TERFs as battle #1 rather than violent, misogynist men. (Although seeing feminists align with evangelicals to scapegoat trans people makes me want to turn into the She-Hulk.)

As far as learning womanhood goes, the good thing (?maybe) is that I've always exhibited behaviors socially that coded as a little more "feminine." Anything "masculine" was very, very performative, an attempt to butch it up and keep myself in the closet. Heck, I denied myself the fun of Halloween for like two and a half decades for fear of accidentally outing myself! I've certainly already been made to feel uncomfortable by men invading my personal space; I've never liked people walking too closely, etc., but it takes on a whole different character now. And I experienced incredible discomfort when I had to go to a music store recently to buy guitar strings. For the first time ever it felt like a male space that I was invading rather than somewhere I belonged, even though I've been shopping there for 8 years. (Getting deadnamed didn't help, either.)

Heck, I denied myself the fun of Halloween for like two and a half decades for fear of accidentally outing myself!
:( that's a tragedy. 25 years is a very long time to long for something.

i also recognize this Transphobia has become defined, a priori, as a Women's Problem, in the same way that Rape is classed as a Women's Problem, and that Domestic Violence is classed as a Women's Problem. as a major problem. infighting among women has always made me really sad because like eliza said, violent misogyny is everywhere and is killing us. idk i am almost never on the frontlines of anything involving fighting words because of my intense fear of being attacked. i think this makes me shrink when i probably shouldn't but hey i am getting help and learning.