there’s this bizarre and specific way radfems manage to talk about even stuff that really is genuine sexist bullshit that still sends up red flags. it’s hard to directly pinpoint but a lot of it seems to center around
a super-severe tone that’s heavy on very formal-sounding adjectives for emphasis (”utterly failed” instead of just failed, for example)
referring to women as women but men as “males” (hint: given how many radfems are specifically terfs, this is a dogwhistle for their considering trans women “males” too)
really bizarre leaps to the worst possible conclusions rather than addressing smaller microaggressions (like jumping from “isn’t it shitty that body types go in and out of fashion and literally nobody can keep up with that?” to “WHY ARE WOMEN SUPPOSED TO JUST MUTILATE OURSELVES EVERY FIVE YEARS WITH PLASTIC SURGERY????”)
framing fucking everything about standard feminine presentation as hindering, expensive and borderline bodily harm/mutilation (all the way up to things like flat sandals, loose dresses and long hair) rather than just unfair things to expect everybody to want
generally framing womanhood as a miserable horror of an existence with no upsides except being smug about not being a man (distinct from “I hate being treated like this just because I’m a woman” type stuff)
they’re not the only ones who ever use these methods (though I think there’s a kind of trickle-down dissemination of it originating there) but if I see a post that includes basically any of these I end up checking the writer’s blog and I think I’ve only ever been wrong like once or twice out of probably dozens of times.
Others I’ve noticed that tend to work in tandem with the above points
Consensus on there being one Universal Experience Of Womanhood Which Is Traumatic In One Specific Way (ie, suggesting all women face the exact same appearance-based pressures, sexual based pressures, are viewed and treated the same way by men) that utterly discounts factors like race, class, and culture et cetera because, I dunno, useless Margaret Atwood “male fantasies” quote
Kind of goes with the extreme language/catastrophizing above but failing to properly use the word ‘violence’ - referring to things that are literally Not Violence as violence, the phrase ‘male violence’ which at once plays into Men As Inherently Pathologically Bad, erasing victims of women, and being a TERF dogwhistle to demonize trans women
Dismissing genuine mental illness symptoms as Just What Being A Girl Is Like (kind of goes with the womanhood is inherently traumatic bit) - this is like the faux-progressive cousin to dismissing young people with symptoms as Just Teenage Angst, with a lot of it even going so far as to describe things like dissociation/depersonalization or full-on agoraphobia as a natural result of existing as a woman in a sexist society and a universal experience
There’s also the whole thing with exaggerating genuine results of being exposed to sexist social programming into inherent trauma rather than a higher risk of it, which is part of the whole assumed universal experience thing.
For example, I’ve personally never felt like I have to, as a woman, be small and soft and quiet. I’ve always been aware that there are loads of people who think women need to be small and soft and quiet, but I’ve never actually felt like I need to fulfill that to have value. Calling the awareness of that shitty expectation without actual compulsions to meet it “trauma” seems, if anything, extraordinarily dismissive of the genuine trauma of women who have been abused into basing their selfhood around that.
(Ironically, terfs are also real fond of usernames that evoke being small, soft and quiet as a transphobic dogwhistle for “true womanhood”. We’ve reached a phase where they basically seem to come in two primary username flavors- BigBadRadAndMad or SoftPeachyDarling or whatever.)
Non-transfeminine people: please read this, and then read it again, so you know how to avoid terfy posts.
If I could add - referring to any AFAB person who disagrees with them as “brainwashed”, because god forbid AFAB people be complete people with autonomy and the capability to think for themselves, cause then you might have to consider that your beliefs might not automatically be right. This comes into the obvious TERF shit with the whole “trans men are just brainwashed into thinking they can escape womanhood” concept, but it’s important to recognise it as shitty when it isn’t explicitly transphobic as well.
LIghthouse keepers will never be memorialized like soldiers or cops because they didn’t kill anyone (as part of their job) but they’re like, heroes who saved untold lives through discipline and self-sacrifice doing an impossible lonely job and I’m worked up about it
Clinging to a swaying tower in freezing, driving rain, risking death by everything from pneumonia to a fall to a fucking lightning strike to keep the lantern going when you don’t even KNOW if someone is out on the water!! Working! Class! Heroes!
Love very much the sentiment of this post and also love the specific wording of “didn’t kill anyone (as part of their job)” because what lighthouse keepers did off hours is their own business
Genuinely I enjoy criticisms of America as a nation for Obvious Reasons of Color but so many of y’all are just like “I hate Americans because they [something only white people do] [something only white people do] [something we’re forced to deal with due to our government] [something that even white Americans will mock you for doing] [something only rich people can afford to do] [movie trope] [something you would only bring up if you’re fatphobic] [something that Canada also does but hides behind the “we’re just super nice teehee” stereotype] [something that your country does but you recognize is not inherently the fault of all citizens] [literally just capitalism] [something you’ll only see in like, Maine] [something Americans complain about constantly] [movie trope] [something only white people do]”
copied from my twitter but there’s something really bitterly funny about spn literally killing and damning its canonically queer character within the same scene but it’s considered to be really funny because of how futile it would be to dispute it now, whereas rq is picked apart for every little thing, including the things they get right
i don’t think it’s hypocrisy, i think it’s a matter of people having little to no expectations for mainstream media like spn (and spn itself decaying into a joke over the years) so they exercise more leniency whereas conscientious companies like rq are expected to “do better”, which ironically creates this vicious circle on both sides where the mainstream companies get away with it bc fandoms scrutinize them with the media equivalent of “boys will be boys!”, but smaller companies are slandered or just discouraged from creating further content
I’ve been screaming this for days (for years, frankly). Small companies, queer media are scrutinized to hell and back, but people keep patting marvel shit on the back. I am not telling to stop enjoying mainstream things (though it would be cool), but may be at least stop mobbing on small companies? This is disgusting
Celebrating the end of 2020 by remembering that ae/aer pronouns were published in a book for the first (known) time exactly 100 years ago in 1920.
Love to everyone who uses ae/aer, and all other neopronouns. Remember we have always existed, and we cannot be erased entirely.
The book is “A Voyage to Arcturus” by David Lindsay! He uses ae/aer pronouns for a nonbinary alien creature introduced in Chapter 16. You can read it online here, though be warned, it’s written by a white man who is also cishet so far as I know, and can be pretty gender essentialist.
One memorable passage, though:
“Leehallfae looked at him in silence. The smile faded from aer face, and its place was taken by such a look of unearthly pain and sorrow that Maskull had no need to press his question. Ae was consumed by the grief and yearning of a lover eternally separated from the loved one, the scents and traces of whose person were always present. This passion stamped aer features at that moment with a wild, stern, spiritual beauty, far transcending any beauty of woman or man.”
It was a favorite book of C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien, and inspired a trilogy by C.S. Lewis, so it’s easy to see how ae/aer became one of the most common non-traditional pronouns used today.
Wait, if they’re that old, why are they called neopronouns?
Probably because it’s just what we call non-traditional pronouns. Neo is also the prefix for ‘revived’ and ‘modified’ so that still works for neopronouns from 100 years ago
