she/her Support my work: https://taliabhatt.com Co-host of @crackedivorypod.bsky.social with @dolphindiaries.bsky.social, where we talk about feminist discourses! Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/CrackedIvoryPod Co-author of RCBG!
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The Guardian, in their write up of the reshuffle, completely omit mentioning that Tim Allen, new director of comms, was a Trustee for anti-trans hate group Sex Matters. Instead he gets "Allan’s past colleagues describe him as charming and collegiate". Yikes. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
You'd have thought it would be of journalistic interest that this was his page on the Sex Matters website until very recently... and today that same page is a "not found". It might also be interesting to note its the one trustee position missing from his LinkedIn. That sounds like a story.
Its like we’re living through that one black mirror ep where the pm has to fuck the pig on live telly but its this ham shagging the flag for the approval of white supremacists
I've had a recruiter tell me I was passed over because they thought a "woman would not be interested in an 80% technical role" I have 19 years experience doing that
Society absolutely does treat trans women as women, but we're automatically "demoted" to the same rung as sex workers. We can both be seen and shamefully used as sex objects, but neither are seen as "desirable breeding stock" from a patriarchal worldview.
✨degendering✨
Like half of my life has been people saying I'm a man and then doing shit to me and then me later realizing hold on you don't treat me like this what is happening Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Or whine again about how the mean non-Westerner is invalidating you or whatever.
This entire approach to transness is exploitable, subject to the whims of cis gatekeepers and policymakers, and is not a practicaly long-term solution since it doesn't recognize our right to transition as an actual right, and it's going to be rolled back without much fuss. You can recognize that.
You saw someone say that the obsession with retaining transness as a pathology has had tangible downstream impacts on her country's policies (and frankly, mine and also in nations all over the world) and started whining about how it helped out because you got lucky with locally benevolent officials.
Yeah, it doesn't count, fuck your country.
"Vulnerable" and "exploited" does not mean those people are not also themselves abusers and exploiters. These are relationships with interpersonal exchange of social value and harm, not global and absolute identity states.
I do think we need to understand the economics of this kind of scam as a hierarchy of exploitation that is socially negative as a whole, and work on educating and redirecting people who might be vulnerable to being targeted. We need people to understand it as a common form of scam.
Just to emphasise - I don't think the third party victimisation can be ignored and I think the "we should treat these poor people as poor little beans who just need the care of people who find them icky" really is not the answer - that's just more entitlement and exploitation.
In all cases it relies on exploiting frustrated privilege and entitlement. But also leverage the con artist has over the mark (person being conned) in some way.
They hurt trans people most, but the direct victims of the confidence trickery they were doing economically are the parents who hand over thousands of dollars or more to the cranks who promise to "rescue" their kids from "the trans cult".
I started thinking about this several years ago when I observed that the biggest motivation for gender critical psychotherapy was getting money out of desperate parents who could easily be convinced that their trans children could be encouraged to detransition.
But in my opinion, the biggest economy being driven by these particular kinds of online subculture are grift and exploitation of the members as customers of a handful of centralised abusers, and the outward harm is a vehicle for creating isolation & cognitive dissonance that enforces the walls.
Not to say "boo hoo, think about the poor misogynists, the racists, the transphobes" etc in a way that tries to compete with the significance of the extent misogyny, racism and transphobia that incel, yt nationalist and gender critical spaces cultivate.
The outside perception of the group as all being part of the same identity kinda obscures the reality that IMO, what ppl call "radicalisation pipelines" are, much more than a vehicle for driving sporadic terror incidents, a playpen that certain types of systematic abuser construct to recruit victims
Anyway if you find yourself in a gator pit because you have low self esteem and need to prove something to yourself, stop trying to join the gators and get out of the fucking pit. Go find a better more supportive environment. You're never going to be gator but you are going to get more unhappy.
Hey you know when I pointed out that there are a lot of toxic online spaces where vulnerable people mix with evil people and some of those vulnerable people are largely being groomed and exploited by the evil people, but everyone outside those online spaces assumes they're the same group?
I first saw this comparison made by Florence Ashley (arguing that transition should be available on demand, just like abortion should be), and it has stuck with me ever since. Both transition and abortion realise patient's autonomy over their own body, and both are being restricted because of this.
buck angel distributed AI deep fake revenge porn of a trans woman youtuber he was having an online fight with. fuck this dickhead youtu.be/mBjlPIwflug?...
Im sorry to ask, but I’m a disabled chronically ill trans woman with no income in Trump’s America and I’m trying very hard to survive and recover. Could you see your way to helping me with a donation? #transcrowdfund #disability #crowdfunding #gofundme 💸💕💕💸
I will reach out in good faith to the right what if we fed pundits like this to *pulled off stage by a comically large shepard's crook* Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Like oh NOW you want to advocate for a particular message irrespective of the supposed optics? :D FASH-cinating.
lmao Hey why don't you try 'compromising' with the reactionary consensus on your rights and "bridging the divide" on this issue that only affects a minority of the population, you bloviating centrist joke? Ab aa gaya line mein? hahahaha
While anti-effeminacy and conventional misogyny aren’t identical, they’re definitely homoousian and largely have the same effects, including sexual exploitation, degradation, and higher standards of behavior applied to the target
I also feel people get really tripped up on gender metaphysics here—that there must be a firm ontological line between misogyny, which happens to women, and “homophobia” (usually the closest word for anti-effeminacy), which happens to men
Anti-effeminacy is so neglected as a phenomenon that transmisogyny is the only frame of reference some have for it.
IMO almost every popular view of gender massively downplays the intensity and virulence of anti-effeminacy as a form of gender violence and prejudice.
I want to stress this—the research I’m talking about didn’t just show that the feminine boys were reacted to more negatively than masculine boys, but more than girls, too. Feminine and masculine girls.
Of course they mean cis girls, but this tracks pretty easily. Research has also shown that feminine and GNC AMAB trans people are the most vulnerable group of queer kids to polyvictimization in child and teen years.
Trans girls are the most likely gender minority group to drop out or be expelled from grade school, to be harassed at school, to be disowned by family, the list goes on.
explains a lot with their disconnect from party bases though tbh. never mind that the party base wants republican and reform heads on stakes, they're too busy getting algorithmic cybersickness and developing the technoplaques that make you think immigrants & trans people are the biggest thrests
Trans women are seen as a class of women that it’s not only socially acceptable but in some cases a civic duty to be misogynistic towards If that isn’t being a woman then I honestly don’t know what else is under patriarchy
People are confused when you tell them how often transphobes are attracted to trans women. Because too few of them realize how many straight men sleep with women *because* they despise them and see them as lesser.
This. Theories that attempt to define trans women as a kind of men are also telling in how structurally misogynistic they are. They apply misogynistic standards while insisting that those standards are being applied to men.
*groundhog day theme music starts playing*
The debate is really over two visions of law enforcement: one is based on "race-neutral," technocratic policing that relies on "hot spots" and surveillance data. The other is brute force, street-smarts, never filling out paperwork. The problem is neither one works. www.vice.com/en/article/u...
Sucks that feminism became politically verboten at exactly the moment when the right calcified into a masculinity death cult
Sometimes being an American is so embarrassing and the issue is always other Americans
truthout.org/articles/in-...
I'm seen as a woman and dehumanized as the most degraded, devalued, and fetishized kind of woman pretty regularly. Cis society wants to use us like women unworthy of even the 'protection' of the family, while calling us something else. Something lesser.
The contradiction at the heart of transmisogyny has always been that people will insist they don't see us as women while treating us exactly like women, and specifically as women they are entitled to sexually exploit or brutalize.
it's not like I felt any kind of gender euphoria form that situation, it fucking sucks. but it is funny to live the life of a woman and then being told that no one sees me that way. okay tell that to the incels constantly trying to hurt me to deal with their own loneliness and insecurity!
The International Association of Genocide Scholars has made a decision according to which Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip meet the legal criteria for genocide. 86% of the body voted for it
I'm very sorry but the "no one is saying trans people change sex!" and "chairhorse" folks simply found us a convenient rhetorical tool to prove moral and intellectual superiority via mastery of category errors, and the actual cissexist disgust responses are coming out now that there are stakes.
So, for anyone saying the Newsom mania is astroturfed: whether or not that's true, it's still reaching actual non-bot people who are only too happy to reveal how shallow their investment in and understanding of trans issues has been thus far, and who will in fact take the excuse to be transphobic.
This whole thing is wild, but it's crazy to see how quickly "non-transphobic" people will go right to deadnaming someone.
this is a good summary of fascist sexual politics propagandized to men. i'd add that the enforcement of 'starting a family' through the sex mommy (mother = produce children) is also how this is tied to fascist ultra-nationalism + violence against trans women via ''all sex, broken mommy"
[showing you a space marine I painted with brown skin] actually the Imperium of Man is quite progressive
“racism for trans people” that’s just racism girl, some of us aren’t white 🥴
i do not accept brits arguing for anything other than their native grey slop as "british food" and neither should anyone else until they stop foaming at the mouth about the people who invented the food they claim "invading"
I would prefer the fascists lose, but I'm not going to pretend Western societies have ever seen more than economic worth in non-Western people or cultures.
It's propaganda papering over the role migrants have always played in Western societies, whether we mean the hyper-precarious undocumented or even the skilled labor pools brain drained away to the metropole from nations that have been turned into sweatshop labor for the West. It's all bullshit.
This is an argument between neoliberal multiculturalism declaring how much value there is in exploitable labor pools and commodifiable cultures v/s fascist nativists who want purity, exterminationism, and expulsion. The fascists are worse, unambiguously. But "multiculturalism" is a lie.
Yes, the fascists are worse, but "multicultural Britain" or "multicultural X Western society" papers over the neoliberal status quo that most citizens have been (happily, frankly) unware of in favor of tokenistic sloganeering, without addressing the (neo)colonial relations at the root.
However, just because the intensifying reactionary mood is leading to outright fascist sentiment and fascist policy endorsements across all parties, even Labour, that doesn't mean that people understand or are aware of how shit things were before it got this bad. The "boats" stuff has been ongoing.
Okay, I'm going to take a deep breath and give you a far more detailed reply than you probably asked for. I am heartened by the fact that more-privileged citizens are standing up for migrants, and that people turned out in droves for trans people, too. My in-laws have always accepted me, too.
I'm bothering because you quoted me and called me a yank
The secret tribe of rural Peruvian bears who speak Bear Growls get more characterization than human Peruvian society
So anyway Paddington in Peru is a movie about how tolerant and accepting the British are, where a white family and their immigrant housemate, a talking bear, travel to Peru and interact with precisely two locals, one of whom is the villain and the other is his daughter
People love coming at you with what Talia is talking about, but the actual question being asked when people say “food adapted for hostile colonial cultures isn’t local” - the one you should cut them back down with if they say the below - is “are they fucking ALLOWED to be British?”
Like that’s what this is about, ultimately. You can have British citizenship and the works and so on, but Britain as a mechanism, as a lurching zombie nightmare machine, will not Allow You to Be One Of Us. You will be reminded of it every goddamn day, too.
I’m sorry but there’s something inherently hilarious about citing ethnic food as British food because they have it now lol.
Who cares if it’s Gen X coded? That’s supposed to be scary? You gonna type people into submission? Over British cuisine? Please be serious.
Tacos are not British food. I can get oxtail on Tulane. It’s still Jamaican food. The British will be fine.
Like I just chipped in - you’re allowed to be a citizen, but you’re not allowed to Be One Of Us, and they’ll remind you of it every goddamn day.
I talk abt this a lot but there is a reason I don't identify as Brazilian-American. I'm Brazilian, I'm Black, I'm an immigrant to the US. Racialized ppl in the first world are excluded from our natal and adopted homelands but both are quick to claim us for some nonsense rhetorical victory.
If you don't claim us when it's inconvenient to your own identities, if we aren't allowed to be unhyphenated, then don't claim us when you want to win a fucking argument online. Especially in this context! British people fucking stole entire continents and peoples! Curry Is Not British.
I feel like there's some political stuff here I'm not getting, but "Chicken tikka masala is British cuisine" makes me angry the same way "Poke is American cuisine" would and I don't know why anyone would defend it.
Don't ever give credit to an empire like this.
Your existence says "humans migrate" and has absolutely no relevance to Britain's relationship to the people it has always commodified, tokenized, exploited, and now is eager to round up. Grow up, dude.
The simple existence of other cultures under hegemonic regimes means nothing though. "multicultural" says nothing about the relationship between the hegemonic culture and other cultures under it, which is usually exploitative. That is, in fact, how settler-colonies like the US are "multicultural".
Quoting Talia’s point here as I think we need to listen to all South Asian perspectives here on tikka masala discourse. I’m seeing people dismissing her and we shouldn’t be doing this. South Asians will feel differently about their own cuisine and how it should be defined.
Not British South Asian, wasn't wanted :D
but your level of awareness of what perspectives could inform a worldview such as mine is summed up neatly by your immediate assumption that I must be a fucking yank :D Nautanki bandh kar bas ho gaya.
Say what you fucking like but I'm an Indian trans woman who fled a Labor government as they made the possibility of me staying there increasingly dangerous, impossible, and risky, despite the support of my wife and in-laws. "multicultural Britain" is propaganda not backed up by action, sorry.
EVERY FUCKING TIME
exactly
Reifying Western claims of ownership over immigrant culture doesn't actually help as much as people think it does.
Yeah, like the commodification of immigrant culture means Western societies will proudly claim (and commercialize) many things, like our dress, cuisines, etc., while continuing to treat us as the Other.
But on a very basic level if you tell me to my face that any derivatives of South Asian food should classed together with beans on fucking toast I WILL just slap you. That's actually more offensive.
"Are you saying racialized people can't be considered British?" is also a stupid counter-argument, sorry. You're erasing every scrap of nuance on immigrant cultures, on the economic and political pressures they experienced, and on the level of acceptance British society actually affords them.
British folks only like being a 'multicultural society' when it's time to win stupid online arguments about how shit their food is, sorry. Like it's wild to see "chicken tikka masala is British cuisine!" at a time when Reform is leading in the polls, they certainly don't fucking claim us usually!
This is becoming more and more urgent 💔 I still have about 260 left for the next few weeks. I should be good for now, but not for long. I'd appreciate if anyone can share this.
Indeed, you might say that *only* those aspects of a person's physiology which are the result of intentional modification can be truly said to have been "designed" for a particular purpose.
The transphobes will of course inevitably claim that, even if it's possible, they weren't "designed" to produce eggs. But this is just Creationist "Intelligent Design" junk, let's be blunt about it. Humans aren't naturally "designed" to be a particular way, they just are.
Leaving it there.
Both are important because I can't choose between being trans or being brown.
More to the point---do you think I lack the ability to write a second fucking tweet?
So the racism and whitewashing of the UK's current nativist, nationalist climate in which migrants and racialized people are treated as less legitimate, from a prominent trans woman who has a platform on which she boosts this kind of messaging regularly, is less important?
Over a quarter towards the goal now, thank you all so much! 695 still needed, please help if you can. 💕💸🏳️⚧️
Corbyn: This is Your Party. Me, getting excited: Really? *My* party? This guy after checking my birth certificate: No.
On what basis are you making the judgment that Adnan's transphobia is a more important matter for me to address than India's racism?
The thing is when people say "biologically male/female" in contexts like this, they don't really mean in the sense of observable, empirical biological features (b/c that would inevitably produce some results they don't want), they mean what you "should" be, what you're divinely "designed" to be.
"They wouldn't treat any other minority this way" says the single issue tran as the government gives tacit approval to racists storming the hotels where refugees are being held and battering Black and brown people in the street.
It's not like Reform is leading in the polls or anything!