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

on consideration, "i'm sorry i told you your queer child is going to hell, my wife has cancer" is the single most hoosier statement i have ever heard in my life. the only way it could be more hoosier is if it was immediately followed up with "so, you going to the pitch-in next week?"

Great, if not surprising, insight into the "conversion therapy" experience. The article felt like it ended too abruptly.

Is there a particular reason that "trans folk" is so often used, as opposed to "trans people"? I can see how "folks" is clearly preferable to, say, "ladies and gentlemen" as a term of plural address, but I've never understood if there was a political or other reason for "trans folk" being so prevalent.

tbc, I have no objection to the term*, I'm just curious if I'm missing something!

*well, I do sometimes think the non-use of "people" feels a little othering, but afaict this wasn't imposed on trans people from the outside (I could very well be wrong about that)

no clue, i didn't know it was used that often. i say it myself but i'm scottish so tend to say folk instead of people :)

I guess "persons" has more focus on the individuality, and "people" more on group / majority, and "folks" has a casual vague all-encompassing "whatever you are" about it that makes it trendy in all contexts right now.

also transes sounds like shit

and people has that annoying extra syllable

it's just the somewhat corny language of online queer communities, not sure there's a whole lot more to it than that

lotta folks and yall out there and as a tennessean it makes me feel at home except when they get deployed passive aggressively like "some of yall really don't get (x)" idk i'm kind of like, it's a term of endearment don't fuck it up

Thanks for the responses! I also advocate for wider adoption of “y’all”

"Y'all" is easy. Try advocating for the broader adoption of "youse."

been using "y'all" for a few years, only got a snarky joke from my boss about going southern.

lotta folks and yall out there and as a tennessean it makes me feel at home except when they get deployed passive aggressively like "some of yall really don't get (x)" idk i'm kind of like, it's a term of endearment don't fuck it up

― Tracer Hand

can "all yall" be used to refer to "some of yall"?

i kept y'all after leaving kentucky in '03, i just think it's a good word, i'm delighted to see it gain more popular currency.

Take it one step further and go with "yinz".

West of Scotland has "youse".

... often rendered as "yiz/yeez".

Yiz as a plural pronoun is found most notably in the Philadelphia area and Delaware Valley (including Southern New Jersey), especially among working-class communities.

“yiz/“yous” also work in Ireland (with some regional variation as to what the vowel is). “Folks” is recommended as an inclusive alternative to “guys” in my (large, American) company.

been using "y'all" for a few years, only got a snarky joke from my boss about going southern.

― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 29 August 2023 14:20 (three hours ago) link

how much further south can you go though!

la gente

I've lived in Tennessee long enough that I use y'all unselfconsciously in certain settings. Not any time it would seem fake-folksy tho. I also use "folks" a fair amount, I think it's warmer and friendlier than "people."

Just to clarify, I'm not talking about addressing a group as either "people" or "folks" (or y'all, yinz, youse, or, the most inclusive of them all, tout le monde for that matter).

The usages that made me wonder about this were things like: "The organizers changed their recruitment plan and now the conference is much more diverse. This year there were way more people of color, disabled people, trans folk..."; in that kind of context it struck me as possibly deliberate, but I couldn't guess why, and now that I was overthinking it, I started to wonder if it was not-good. But as ufo said, it does seem like a turn of phrase that arose organically and has stuck without necessarily having any larger import.

for a while i think "folx" got used a lot in queer spaces, i think it's just language being language tbh

So I saw a meme excerpting a FOIA act document about Leslie Feinberg, and it kind of confused me. It said "As of April, 1974, FEINBERG had apparently shaved off her beard and was beginning to dress in a more feminine manner and to assume the appearance of a girl." The meme was about the FBI in 1974 respecting a trans person's pronouns, but I'm reading it going like "Wait, Leslie Feinberg was _MTF_?" I had to look it up to confirm. Applying categories like "MTF" or "FTM" Feinberg is, I think, missing an essential point about hir life and experience, but zie was not, in fact, AMAB.

Transphobes: I CAN ALWAYS TELL! FBI in 1974: Apparently have no idea what Leslie Feinberg's AGAB was. Although to be fair, this is the same FBI that spent three years trying to find offensive language in "Louie Louie" and completely failed to notice that the drummer yells "Fuck!" at one point during the song.

Here's a piece about it from Dr. Amanda Weimer at the National Archives:

https://text-message.blogs.archives.gov/2023/06/20/leslie-feinberg-the-fbi-and-gender-pronouns/

youtube just showed me a trailer for "G3nd3r Tr4nsf0rm4tion: The Unt0ld R34lities" ...WTF???

The MSN homepage on my new laptop kept showing me transphobic content aggregated from various sites. Titles like "school board member shuts down trans "woman" who was protesting recent decision" or some similar shit.

whatever the documentary about I guarantee that "untold" is false advertising

xxp I'm just seeing this but it's really telling and I think every trans man online today has frequently had the queasily validating experience of being told by terrible people that they will always be men. it reminds me of people spreading rumours about Wendy Carlos being (in cis logic) "secretly a woman pretending to be a man" which was more right than they knew

if there's an option not to see headlines I'll take it but some apps/sites/devices don't give you that

it's hard to say anything new about the media at this point

The documentary is anti-trans specifically talking about the indoctrination of kids, it's got a really long trailer. I was very surprised to see it (unrelated to themes in an innocent comedy video it followed when in incognito mode)

always best to browse youtube with an adblocker on, that way you never see any trailers or shit

well yeah, I was more surprised to learn about the existence of the thing overall vs. being upset about the ad. Mentioned the context of the encounter cause it implies it's being advertised same as any netflix doc or movie trailer?

yeah I have no idea how youtube decides what ads to show and what not, but the few times I've had to use it without a blocker I've been horrified at some of the shit I've seen. It's clearly not based on any affinity scores I've built up for certain kinds of content. LIke nothing about any profile that's been created by any data mining companies would lead anyone to believe I'd be a prime candidate for right-wing nonsense and yet I will see it if I don't block it.

well yeah, I was more surprised to learn about the existence of the thing overall vs. being upset about the ad. Mentioned the context of the encounter cause it implies it's being advertised same as any netflix doc or movie trailer?

― Evan

i've talked about this in the past, but yes, my experience has led me to conclude that youtube _does_ systemically promote transphobia. transphobic media, such as matt walsh, is what comes up when you search for trans content, and content supporting trans rights doesn't. this has been going on for years and years now. and what can any of us actually do about it? i watch shit on youtube. it's the hegemon. i have all kinds of add-ons installed to that it doesn't recommend me videos at all. this minimizes the personal harm browsing youtube causes me, but it does nothing to address the systemic issue, which is that youtube is one of the major media outlets spreading anti-trans bigotry. they _could_ keep this from happening, but they aren't. instead, they profit from transphobia.

just in case any of y'all are wondering why i'm anti-capitalist.

the few times I've had to use it without a blocker I've been horrified at some of the shit I've seen

I keep youtube history turned off so my browsing doesn't affect what gets listed and there is always shit like "jordan peterson destroys a feminist" or whatever showing there.

Yup - watch any feminist content and you'll be served ebdless clips of dudes DESTROYING feminism, doubt it works the other way around.

I know someone who works at YouTube, I should ask her what the thinking is internally there, because I imagine there are people who are exasperated with how this algorithm works (or doesn't work).

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/sep/25/eternal-90s-stars-cancel-full-band-reunion-over-reported-trans-rights-clash

Yup - watch any feminist content and you'll be served ebdless clips of dudes DESTROYING feminism, doubt it works the other way around.

― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, September 16, 2023 3:10 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sounds a lot like it just feeds you things with the same keywords tbh, aside from other variables it uses to brainlessly lump content together with the same subjects.

Well that's the thing, is the dude watching his Rogan DESTROYS feminism videos getting pro feminist videos served to him by the algorithm? It seems not.

Maybe! Why not? They also probably love to hate-watch that stuff so maybe they're even clicking on it.

In fact, the more they see that stuff in their feed, the more they believe it's "invading" the lives of normal people and kids so I'm sure that feeds their narrative too. "It's everywhere, we can't escape this stuff! We gotta do something!"

Well all I can say is this a phenomenon I've seen a lot amongst ppl who watch yt and are into progressive causes but I've never ever heard of alt right dudes noting the same, which is strange because much of the internet seems dedicated to chronicling everything these ppl say, doubly so if there's schadenfreude to be had. I know this is hardly scientific evidence.

I think there are probably a lot of reasons why, for one: I'd bet pro-feminism videos are much less likely to put the word "FEMINISM" in their thumbnails and descriptions etc, than a video that is all about "ANTI FEMINISM". Also takedown video essays are a pretty popular youtube format, and the people that like that sort of content are looking for people to put things like FEMINISM and twitter discourse in its place. So the demographic for a popular video type is disproportionately on THAT side of the debate. It's just not an equal landscape for both sides.

I think there are probably a lot of reasons why, for one: I'd bet pro-feminism videos are much less likely to put the word "FEMINISM" in their thumbnails and descriptions etc, than a video that is all about "ANTI FEMINISM". Also takedown video essays are a pretty popular youtube format, and the people that like that sort of content are looking for people to put things like FEMINISM and twitter discourse in its place. So the demographic for a popular video type is disproportionately on THAT side of the debate. It's just not an equal landscape for both sides.

― Evan

i mean these are all interesting ideas and if the data to back them up were available i'd definitely consider them

i have an interesting idea! maybe youtube, being a capitalist/corporatist entity, has decided that joe rogan and matt walsh synergize with their business model more readily than feminist, queer, and trans voices do, and therefore they tend to promote rogan and walsh more than they do queer and trans voices.

you know who synergizes really well with youtube's business model, on the left? vaush. that's who.

I was reading one of my favorite blogs today, one I read pretty regularly. I won't say which one it is, only that the person who updates the blog is someone I like and respect a lot, someone I've personally learned a lot about music from. What I'm saying here isn't any sort of a judgement on them or their blog. I only mention because somebody might recognize the source and take it as some sort of judgement. It isn't.

Anyway, I ran across this quote from Will Hermes' 2011 book _Love Goes to Buildings on Fire_:

The Waldorf-Astoria was the epitome of uptown, up-tight, upper-crust New York; whoever agreed to give the ballroom over to the Dolls and their wasted fans was either clueless or wickedly subversive. By midnight, a thousand-some freaks of various stripes were packed into the ballroom entryway, pressing against doors that were supposed to have opened at 11:00. Tempers flared, doors were smashed, and someone lit a stink bomb in the hotel lobby in protest. Security guards admitted a portion of the mob but hundreds were turned away. Arthur Bell described the scene as “Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange and Joel Grey in Cabaret by the dozens, chains and hoods, silver buttocks, scarlet breasts, dildoed noses,” with old-school trannies washing down demerol capsules with swigs of whiskey.

I'm not actually interested in the question of whether or not this is transphobic. Some trans people might say it is, some people might vehemently insist it isn't. I genuinely don't care whether or not making a reference to "old-school trannies" in a book published back in 2011 is transphobic or not. What I care about is this:

Speaking as a future old-school tranny, please don't romanticize me like this when I'm gone. I'm incredibly happy with who I am and what I've accomplished. My life is amazing. I've seen and experienced all sorts of strange and wonderful things. That said, it's really stressful, the way a lot of people treat us. It's hard, and some of the things I've seen people do that might seem glamorous from the outside... a lot of it is just how some of us cope with all of the shit we go through. For me personally, that kind of thing isn't something glamorous, isn't something to aspire to. I personally have coped with trauma in my life in some pretty unhealthy ways. By all means, celebrate me. Please, celebrate me, I'm fairly awesome. However, when I deal with all of the shit I've been through by doing shit that's, well, kind of fucked up? Please don't celebrate that. I don't think it's worth celebrating.

As usual, I'm just speaking for me. Other people are going to have their own takes on this issue. :)

maybe not quite the same thing but I feel like a certain type of cis person can fetishise us, not in a chasery type way but in an 'oh you trans people are so cool and so brave and so interesting!' type way, like we're some kind of fascinating alien species who are also super inspirational. it's rather patronising

I really don't like it when people tell me I'm brave for transitioning. I know they mean well and I appreciate that, it's good they realise that this is not easy. but also the use of the word 'brave' implies that it's something that I chose to do, that I had the option not to transition but that I went ahead with it anyway because I'm so fucking brave. I didn't choose this, when I realised I was trans I tried to suppress it for a bit but you can only do that for so long. I don't want to sound overdramatic here but when someone realises they're trans it's often a case of transition or die

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADGr6swyCto

here is a song i like by a trans woman who lives in my town

yeah i've long hated being called brave... i talk about it a fair bit. like, yeah, transition has been hard, a lot of what i've been through is hard, watching what happens to a lot of my friends is hard. all of the stuff i was afraid of... most of it has happened, but it wasn't like how i thought it would be. it wasn't like that at all.

sometimes i think "i wish someone had told me", but i'm not always sure what i mean by that. if someone had told me i was a girl in 1996, what would that have meant to me? i have friends who've known, who've known all their lives, and they envy me for not knowing, and i envy them for knowing, and we're both, probably, being very silly.

no, today, what i wish someone had told me is how _easy_ it would be. i think i've mentioned this before as well... one time, i was talking to an Old-School Trans Woman (because I _respect_ her as a _person_ I will not use the word Will Hermes uses about her) and said to her, God, that's amazing, how did you manage to do that?" And she said "How did you manage to _not_ do it?"

and for me it was just that i really didn't have a choice, didn't really have the opportunity. and maybe when it comes to being told how easy it is... i don't know. maybe that would have been enough to give me the opportunity earlier than i had it.

well, it doesn't matter. if people want to call me "brave", they don't really know how it is for me, but i guess that's ok too. i wish people understood better, i'll always wish people understood better, but the truth is i'm getting my wish.

-

i'm gonna segue, actually, into what i came here to post. i've decided i'm gonna start staying logged in when i search for things on youtube. i do a lot of searching in private windows because i don't trust google, i want them to know as little about me as possible. i have a couple plugins installed that keep youtube from recommending me videos, but i don't have them installed on every device i browse the web from. last night i was browsing my subs... my subscriptions, my youtube subscriptions... and it starts recommending me videos that actually sound interesting. one called "the incel to trans pipeline". oh god i can tell from the thumbnail, it's about that manga. i've read that manga. look. i'll get back to that video.

the point is i can tell from the cultural signifiers whether a video is going to be hostile to me. this video is posted by someone whose avatar is a cartoon of a girl with cat ears and a choker. i'm not expecting this person to go all matt walsh on me.

so anyway, after that i'm rabbitholing, i'm looking to see if anybody has uploaded a video of that time fred rogers appeared on a soviet children's show in the perestroika era. so i search something like "fred rogers soviet children's show" in a fresh private window and what i get is... well, i get his 1969 speech before congress, you search fred rogers _anything_ and that's what you're gonna get. after that, though, there are a bunch of clips saying "here's what mr. rogers thought about transgenderism!"

and again, cultural signifiers. terms like "transgenderism" and "gender ideology" aren't terms that people who _aren't_ anti-trans bigots tend to use when talking about us. that's not a video i'm going to click on.

it gets back to... i was talking elsewhere, i think it was a politics thread that i happened to click on, about how i work hard to avoid "digital self-harm". it's not something i can entirely avoid - risk mitigation. that's why i block youtube recommendations. because there's a high likelihood that it will at some point recommend videos that, just by looking at their thumbnails, kind of make my day worse. not in an extreme way or anything like that, just in terms of, you know _allostatic load_.

i think pretty well of mr. rogers. i watched his show as a kid, and i liked it a lot. i feel like he taught me some pretty good values. he was a kind, caring man who cared about children. and apparently in 1980 or whenever he thought trans women were men.

does that ruin my childhood? does that ruin my opinion of mr. rogers? no, not really. i mean, look, the bar for 1980s children television, i set it real, real low. if mr. rogers thought trans women were men, fine. did he regularly have young boys appear on the show, make them wear dresses, and mock and humiliate them for it? no? well, he _sails_ above that bar, then. the show i watched most when i was 8 _doesn't_ clear that bar.

in the abstract, damn near everyone in 1980 thought trans women were men. it's certainly possible that fred rogers would have been an exception, since he was an exceptional man, but it's not something i'd assume about him. i didn't, though, i didn't want to be confronted with someone telling me "hey, mr. rogers in 1980 thought you were a man." it makes my day worse.

it's not even an actual argument, is it? like, even if you're going to make a poor logical argument based on "hey here's this celebrity who agrees with me", the man has been dead since 2003. is anybody really going to change their mind based on this fact? what with all of the other arguments for and against my existence out there, i can't really consider that this information would make any sort of difference.

it's true that when i'm wrong, i do tend to seek out, even need, constant validation to reinforce my false belief, and i guess that same principle would apply to trans people. you know, it's probably not about me, their constantly sharing and perpetuating every even slightly transphobic thing they can find on youtube.

i don't actually care about them, though, i'm not interested in looking at things from the bigot's perspective. from my perspective, youtube is constantly promoting transphobia to people who use the site, and i use the site, and my goal is therefore to mitigate my exposure to transphobic propaganda. i just have to not think about the probability that lots of other people, trans and cis alike, are regularly exposed to transphobic propaganda. radical acceptance. that's what i need to employ here, radical acceptance.

so i stay logged in, and even here, you know, i still have to work to not engage in digital self-harm. mia mulder uploaded a three hour video about how capitalism is bad, and i'm sure it's a fantastic video, mia mulder makes fantastic videos, but i already know capitalism is bad, and spending three hours confronting that fact has a high likelihood of constituting digital self-harm.

that video about the "incel to trans pipeline" by a creator i don't know? i recognize that thumbnail. it's that One Manga. see that's the other thing about mitigating self-harm is that sometimes shit just WHAM hits you where you don't expect and you don't realize it for three days later. and that was how it was with that manga. this sort of stuff is why content warnings are a thing... it's about being _informed_. that's the big issue with social media, is that shit comes up and hits you and you're not expecting it, and it just hits way the fuck harder.

anyway if you're watching that video, and i've started, and it's great, it talks about the people who TOTALLY AREN'T TRANS but just transition because being a guy sucks and if the only way not to be a shitty guy is to be a girl than they'll take hormones and pretend to be trans, which is stupid but actually being a girl is awesome and come to think of it they've always wanted to be a girl but they're NOT TRANS OR ANYTHING they're just doing this because they're tired of how bad their life as a guy sucks. BUT watch out about that manga, if it's the one i'm thinking about, it fucking HITS.

anyway i guess i'm doing a lot of writing this week

I thought "transmaxxing" was about incels transitioning because they think women have it easier and they could be available to other incels for sex because they would still think like incels and not like "femoids." Bleh. I know way too much about this kind of thing.

I thought "transmaxxing" was about incels transitioning because they think women have it easier and they could be available to other incels for sex because they would still think like incels and not like "femoids." Bleh. I know way too much about this kind of thing.

― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo

yeah maybe that's it, i didn't see the whole video. i'm with ceicocat (who posted the video i'm referring to), i do think the whole phenomenon is pretty funny. taking estrogen, transitioning to own the libs, i mean, it's not the worst thing one can possibly do. especially given how many of them wind up experiencing profound gender euphoria and joy while living as a girl even though they're totally _really_ incels disguising themselves as trans women. if that's what they say, sure, i'll accept that, even if it does sound suspiciously similar to imposter syndrome.

i've heard people say enough things about gender by this point that whatever people say about themselves, i accept it. self-determination is important to me. whatever it is people say they are, i generally don't see any reason to not believe them and respect them for who they say they are. i figure they know themselves better than i can know them. (so much for the intolerant left!)

is "transmaxxing" transphobic? i don't know, maybe. just like that will hermes quote, i don't particularly care. i got more important stuff to worry about, personally. a lot of the most transphobic people are trans themselves. trans people get internalized transphobia and sometimes they externalize it. if anybody at all took "incel transmaxxers" seriously i'd probably be more concerned.

if i was going to start looking for flaws in their "logic" i guess i could start with the fact that the term "incel" was coined by someone who was, as far as i know, a cis woman, but basically that's trivia. i'm not a prescriptivist, i'm a descriptivist; what language means depends on how it's used. if most of these incels think only _men_ can be incels, well, i guess they're right. it's not an identity i'm interested in claiming, partly because i'm asexual, i don't have sex because i don't want to have sex, and partly because... incel? eww, gross, who would want to be one of _those_? if identifying as an incel is more important to someone than identifying as a trans woman, i'm not gonna argue with them.

and that's the thing i see a lot... a lot of people won't identify as trans because they have another identity that's more important to them. a lot of people, it's really important to them that they characterize their relationship to gender as a "sexual fetish". i had a lot of trouble with this for a long time, but mostly it was because that was the normative narrative. the idea was that if an AMAB experienced sexual arousal while wearing women's clothing, they were a man with a sexual fetish and categorically not a trans woman. this was a frankly pseudoscientific idea called "autogynephilia" promoted by a guy named ray blanchard. the major problem with this framing is that it turns out that cis women sometimes experience sexual arousal while wearing women's clothing, particularly clothing designed to enhance the sexual attractiveness of the person wearing it. in fact, as far as i can tell, this sort of thing is apparently _normal_. I guess you could classify it as a fetish. i remember when i was young, oral sex was classified as a fetish. maybe it still is in some corners - i don't know.

-

i still remember this conversation i had once with someone who had some questions about their gender identity and wanted to talk to me about it. he said i'm not trans, i'm an autogynephiliac, i just have a fetish. after some thought, i told them, look, my understanding is that autogynephilia isn't an actual thing. if you think it is and you have it, ok, fine, as long as you don't treat any of the rest of us like that's something we have, as long as you recognize that a lot of trans women find that term offensive and that by no means should you ever tell a trans woman that you think they're an autogynephiliac. he was fine with that! he was fine with me saying "you can be an autogynephiliac as long as you're the only one in the whole wide world". people who are questioning their gender so often have these ideas where they feel like they get to be the lone exception, everybody _else_ is really trans, it's just _them personally_ who is a fake and a fraud.

sometimes people want a real trans person to tell them they're really trans, and i will not do that. ever. it's not up to me. the only person who can determine that is them. what i will do is say look, if you say you are, you are. i'm not going to question that. all of those things that you were told kept you from being Really Trans, none of them actually do. you have full permission at any time to be trans, but you don't have to be. that's what a trans person told me, when i was questioning, and i was like "oh ok cool, i'm trans then, thanks", but it's not that easy for some people, it's not enough for them to hear "be trans if you want to be, don't be trans if you want to be, it's not up to me."

with this person, i figured we had an understanding - i'm trans, he's an autogynephiliac who doesn't want to be trans, we're good. except three days later he came back to me and kept questioning:

"ok i want to be a woman but i like being ripped, that means i can't really be a woman, right?"
"i mean lots of women are ripped, you're not going to have as much muscle strength if you take estrogen but it doesn't mean you can't be ripped"

"ok but i dressed as a woman for weeks on end and i really liked it and it didn't feel sexual at all, does that mean i have to be a trans woman?"
"no, you don't have to be unless you want to be"

just for weeks on end he was trying to argue with me, and it must have been super frustrating for him because i wouldn't argue with him. i just kept repeating the same thing - he could be trans if he wanted to be, but he didn't have to be. i don't understand why he kept talking to me about it. he said he wasn't trans, he didn't want to be trans, and that was fine by me. i finally had to say to him look, i got nothing more to tell you. as far as i know he's still out there, doing his autogynephilia thing.

-

compared to that, i mean, the transmaxxers are pretty straightforward. see, one of the core tenets they have - that they can take hormones and transition socially and _not change_, stay the "incels" they are - my experience is that it doesn't work out that way. i understand being afraid of change. i was afraid of change when i transitioned, i was afraid of losing my essential self. i told people when i came out, look, just because i'm dressing differently and taking hormones, i'm not going to be like a totally different person or anything, i'm still going to be me, i'm just going to look different.

in retrospect that was... an oversimplification. the truth is that we change all the time, and a lot of how we change is based on how we behave. you can act your way into a new way of thinking, as they put it in AA - not only can you, but you _will_ wind up doing so, in my experience, whether you want to or not. kurt vonnegut in mother night keeps saying "we are who we pretend to be", and he's _almost_ right. we change all the time, and we change based on what we do and say. maybe ironic nazis start out being ironic and just become real because they spend all of their time acting like nazis. i don't think they were necessarily "real nazis all along".

i mean i haven't _stopped_ being the person i was. i've just gone through experiences that have changed me a lot. some of it's the hormones, but probably most of it isn't. people treat me differently, for good and for ill. enough people call me "brave" and i just quit arguing. ok, you say i'm brave, fine, i'm brave. i don't think i'm brave, but i don't think i'm a weak coward like i used to believe, either.

i didn't transition to become a better person. i didn't _want_ to become a better person. it's just that i put myself in a situation where i kind of _had_ to work to become a better person. i think these "transmaxxers" are putting themselves in the same situation. i mean, the thing about an incel identity is... you don't just have to not _have sex_, you have to continually work to make yourself into a person who is not safe to love. you can _do_ that while taking drugs that make you feel euphoric, happy, and fulfilled, but it's really fucking hard. i wasn't able to manage it, even though i tried super hard to, i tried really hard to reconcile my essential self-image as someone who was bad and dangerous with the love and respect other people showed towards me, with the love and respect i increasingly felt for myself. ceicocat observes the same phenomenon, the same sort of dialectic process, in the writings of self-identified "transmaxxers". i'm here for that!

it's not unprecedented! if you look at how contrapoints started, she started trying to, basically, convert incels, and in the process... in the process she changed. she's still changing, as far as i know. we all are. i think she's given up on trying to change incels by this point, which i think is wise. the incels will change if and when they're ready.

transmaxxing is a new one to me

I know in chan culture there is the phenomenon of male incels "practicing" their romantic and sexual moves on femme-presenting but I'm-not-trans-because-trans-people-don't-exist incels. the guys see it as easier than interacting with "women" because they're actually just interacting with "men". it is a space for gender deviance within a deeply reactionary (trans)misogynist patriarchal culture but I can't imagine it's a great space to inhabit - I'd feel much worse for them if they didn't pretty much all subscribe to and enforce the ambient fascism of chan culture.

the lack of cis women during the white settlement of the american west created opportunities (economic and otherwise) for trans-like expressions of gender among people who sold sex. there was a whole other level going on with the feminisation of chinese men and the number of non-cis-female sex workers from chinese backgrounds in that time and place but I'm even less qualified to unpack all that - it's worth noting for intersectional reasons as a reminder of how racialisation and gendering and economics are basically inseparable a lot of the time.

the white femme "men" of 4chan tend to express their gender through imitating racist orientalist stereotypes of japanese "girls" although they're as dedicated to white supremacy as the men who fetishize them.

in both of these cases I have no idea how appropriate the word trans is to describe these phenomena - I tend to think it's not quite right in most cases but it's not totally unrelated to transness either