I was going to say, this is the Mirror. But, if there’s one thing pretty much the whole spectrum of newspapers here can agree on, it’s trying to whip readers up with unfounded transphobic bullshit.
the thing about being someone who’s never catcalled is that you start to wonder why like is it because im ugly???
and then you realize that youre judging your worth by whether or not you are objectifiable to a man and thats so fucked up like honestly its so fucked up
but the worst part about the patriarchy is that it still sits at the back of your mind regardless like “nobody thinks youre pretty because they dont see you as a sex object” like somehow thats a desirable thing and it fucks me up
You’re either public property or completely invisible.
It sucks I related to this and it was finally put into words
Also I feel like it should be pointed out, it’s often not *just* the lack of sexual harassment. It often is combined with women gossiping about how they think you are ugly too. This is important because it’s not just about men, it’s about not being acceptable to women or being the designated “ugly friend”.
If you are a woman or dumped in that label as “close enough” your human worth is directly tied to your appearance. It’s not just men enforcing that. It’s not something you can avoid by sticking to women’s spaces and only being around girls.
Idk I have just had too many woman act like it’s disgusting I have self esteem problems from this but like, it’s not just guys lack of attention, it’s the fact women find me a fun target to beat up on to raise their own self esteem. But people will brush this stuff off as internalized sexism.
We have a major problem in general I think with this expectation this shit shouldn’t bother you because it is stupid. Like you shouldn’t worry about aging, you shouldn’t worry about fitting molds, you shouldn’t worry about how conventionally attractive you are… but rejecting that shit doesn’t make it go away. Society will still enforce it on you and if your self esteem isn’t good enough it will rip you apart. People shouldn’t have to feel guilty for caring about this shit when it has a DIRECT RELATION to how much of a person most people see you as.
One other thing I want to point out: how commonly sexual harassment is treated as only consisting of the “what, you can’t take a compliment?” catcalling variety.
And not so much the “you are such a disgusting freak, and we must loudly go into great detail about this at every opportunity” variations which tend to get thrown at marginalized people more. (Disability, sexuality, gender, you name it.) Which often seems to be far more gender neutral in terms of both targets and who is doing the harassing/assaulting.
Some pretty good discussion of a couple of people’s experiences with this, specifically influenced by disability:
Instead, I got a series of messages that I was in fact a sexual being, but anything to do with my sexuality was gross and an object of mockery, or, to be used only for really fucked up fetishes for which I could become a fantasy object (but that was much later).
That type of sustained harassment can be brutal, and mess up your head longer term in some slightly different ways. Especially when it is coming from such a variety of your “peers”.
and this wasn’t publicized. to the degree that i, a human who tries to stay abreast of at least local news, knew nothing about it until my father mentioned it over dinner today.
so like. it would be cool if we spread that information around too maybe.
Rightwing pressure group the TaxPayers’ Alliance has admitted it illegally fired and vilified whistleblower Shahmir Sanni.
Sanni became the target of vitriol after he revealed the massive overspending by Vote Leave during the 2016 Brexit campaign. At the time, he was described as a ‘Walter Mitty fantasist’ by Matthew Elliot, head of Vote Leave, to the BBC. He was also targeted by Downing Street, who released a statement outing Sanni as gay. The whistleblower was then fired from running TaxPayers’ Alliance’s social media.
However, according to The Guardian, the alliance have now conceded they acted illegally. This makes them liable to pay substantial damages.
Me, to a cis person: “have you….have you had…the surgery?”
Cis person: “what surgery?”
Me: “the one that removes your head from your ass”
Care for an anecdote? I call this one Cis People Are Crazy, and it’s a lil sumthin sumthin that will come as no surprise whatsoever to any trans person.
So, due to All Of The Most Recent Bullshit, I was at a trans support rally in my city yesterday with my family. Some nice person was handing out these big pretty heart stickers with the trans pride flag colors on them, like this:
We all got one. I put mine on the hoodie I was wearing, which I wear a version of basically every day, right? It’s the Cringeandwince uniform.
So, without giving it much thought, I put that hoodie on again today and go food shopping, and – this is dense as fuck, but it took me a few minutes to figure out why so many people were acting weirder than usual towards me.
I got a lot of looks.
I got mainly curiosity from people who noticed at all. But I also received open hostility from two separate White dudes about my age, over-the-top/smile-too-big kindness from a White woman a little older than me, and total, disaggregating confusion from my White 30s male cashier after he asked me what the sticker meant and I told him. As in, my presence coupled with the very concept of trans people seemed to have this guy on the verge of simply falling apart, joint by joint, atomically, behind his register. It was like he blew a fuckin gasket, ok.
For people who don’t know me well enough to know who I am – I’m a straight, mixed Native cis woman in her 40s. While I don’t think I’ve ever been misgendered, I am about 5′10″ and built like a brick shithouse, and I wear mainly “men’s” clothing (black hoodie, blue jeans, hiking boots); the word “butch” has been thrown my way in the past. I also however have very long hair and wear long earrings.
The gamut of reactions today was pretty interesting because I’m a middle-aged woman – I’m almost roundly ignored in public these days, utterly invisible. But the presence of that trans pride sticker changed that on a dime. I left the store thinking to myself, Jesus Christ, this is the most interested people have been about what’s in between my legs since I was about 25.
So, hey, other cis people? Just a suggestion that a lot of us may be looking like total gormless morons – possibly abject fuckwits, maybe even vacuous clowns??? – when we interact with trans people a lot of the time. Try to be aware of this if you ain’t already because: it’s fucking annoying as hell, kinda scary, really really boring, and weird.
Not sure I’ve ever read a more comprehensive summary of How People Stare at Me ™ before now.
I saw something about the benefits of growing up QUILTBAG in a more liberal and not so religious family. I didn’t want to hijack that discussion, but it did get me thinking again when I should have been getting to sleep. 🙂
My mother was, unfortunately, one who managed some pretty raging mental health concern trolling styley bi- and transphobia without any kind of religious framework to try to hang that on. She also relied on some transphobic Second Wave thinking there. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some of this before.
It was better not to be lesbian or gay because life is inevitably harder, but they couldn’t help it so they were basically OK. She also believed that many lesbians’ orientation is a result of abuse, but they still couldn’t help that. (Somehow bi people who had also mostly been twisted by abuse could help their orientation, however. I’m still not sure how that works.) Still a very condescending kind of homophobia, but she really did have lesbian and gay friends who presumably didn’t know about her attitudes there. A couple of my friends who were acceptably queer and having problems with their (mostly ostentatiously liberal professor) families also lived with us for a while. That was fine, and their families should be ashamed of treating them so badly.
Anybody she *did* perceive as being able to help it was seriously mentally ill by definition. She actually warned me to stay away from several “crazy” out bi/pan acquaintances in high school like it was catching (she may have had suspicions about me then). And I got threatened with being committed and she *did* force me into more therapy and meds when a friend outed me as bi my first year of college. Because I only thought that because of my terrible mental health. It might be fixable craziness from horrible abuse (that never even happened).
That is a major reason I am not fond of heavy reliance on the “Born That Way, so please don’t hurt me!” arguments. Because that can also be used to abuse people, over things that are nobody else’s business in the first place. I can see where some people are coming from with that feeling comforting, but yeah. It does not always help people.
My longterm best friend at that time (a lesbian) also had two ostentatiously liberal atheist parents, and her mother acted awful and withheld funding until she changed universities to get her away from Teh Gay. That was quite a feat, considering my friend had an educational trust set up by her paternal grandparents, and it wasn’t even Mom’s money and she wasn’t involved in admistering it–but, she somehow made good on the threats and held up those funds anyway.
That’s when my friend ended up back in town, enrolled at the university where both her parents taught and where Mom could keep an eye on her. In the abstract, at least LG people were cool. When it was her kid, however… 😐 I could also tell that her mom assumed we were involved before that, though apparently I was less of a threat than her known girlfriend at First University. Even with some added classist horror there. Known GF was very threatening.
My friend also ended up getting forced/coerced into psych treatment. And they found a totally secular shrink who was willing to diagnose her with Dependant Personality Disorder. Which indicated cutting off all contact with her girlfriend, for therapeutic reasons, and basically letting her parents tell her every move to make For Her Own Good. Because unhealthy dependence on the GF. Yep. I only wish I were kidding. She was suddenly suicidal a lot, caught in that kind of situation, which obviously justified that treatment. Her dad didn’t agree, but did nothing to intervene, probably because he was also afraid of her mother’s abusive behavior.
I haven’t talked to her in years, after she tried to make a new start in a different state. And I hope that helped her get the space to recover some.
So, yeah. Certain strains of religious involvement really encourage treating people like shit, but atheism is definitely no guarantee against finding other excuses for not so great attitudes and behavior. Some people just want to act judgmental and abusive, though it may still be good that they aren’t being directly fed as many excuses and encouragement. A lot of them will still come up with their own excuses, though, even if they have to rely on the DSM instead of often odd interpretations of religious texts.
A post old enough that I was at least still hoping (the pronounceable) QUILTBAG would catch on, which just got a note.
Only part of what I was talking about recently with having very little patience anymore for Zombie Bad ‘70s Politics, from too much exposure. But definitely part of it.
Now they’re boasting on fb about encouraging random men and “gangs of lads” to commit violence against trans women.
TERFs will claim in one breath to be against male violence, while with the other they incite this very same violence against the women they hate.
handing out propaganda to men and encouraging them to enact violence upon already oppressed people in order to supposedly “protect their wives and children”… not like that’s such a common and exclusive tactic of reactionary hate groups that it’s a hallmark of fascist organising or anything 😬
TERFs aren’t just silly internet weirdos with regressive beliefs; they’re a hate group with a very clear mission statement in removing trans people totally from the public sphere if not eradicating them entirely. Their politics are inherently violent and they will seek to enact that violence whenever they get the chance.
It’s not just internet discourse. This shit has a bodycount and they’re looking to increase it.
Now they’re boasting on fb about encouraging random men and “gangs of lads” to commit violence against trans women.
TERFs will claim in one breath to be against male violence, while with the other they incite this very same violence against the women they hate.
handing out propaganda to men and encouraging them to enact violence upon already oppressed people in order to supposedly “protect their wives and children”… not like that’s such a common and exclusive tactic of reactionary hate groups that it’s a hallmark of fascist organising or anything 😬
TERFs aren’t just silly internet weirdos with regressive beliefs; they’re a hate group with a very clear mission statement in removing trans people totally from the public sphere if not eradicating them entirely. Their politics are inherently violent and they will seek to enact that violence whenever they get the chance.
It’s not just internet discourse. This shit has a bodycount and they’re looking to increase it.
“protect our children” Hey assholes, the people you are encouraging violence against ARE your children. Attacking your children and claiming you are doing it in order to protect them is really fucked up.
I only wish I were kidding. She was suddenly suicidal a lot, caught in that kind of situation, which obviously justified that treatment. Her dad didn’t agree, but did nothing to intervene, probably because he was also afraid of her mother’s abusive behavior.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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