fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4928 ]

[ SECRET POST #4928 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4928 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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04. https://i.imgur.com/D25cLFc.png
[Emma 2020, OP warned for male nudity (from the back)]

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[Star Wars Expanded Universe, resized]

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06. https://i.imgur.com/R7v6vL6.png
[365 Days, OP warned for image of a dub/non-con sexual situation]

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07. [SPOILERS for Far Cry 5 and Far Cry New Dawn]

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08. [SPOILERS for The Magnus Archives]

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09. [WARNING for sexual assault]

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10. [WARNING for discussion of transphobia]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #705.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Worst case scenario: you lose your friends and your reputation gets ruined.

Gee, is there any wonder why they’re posting this on an anonymous secret community.

If their true feelings cost them friendships and internet reputation, that's on them.

Nah, you don’t need to share your beliefs with everyone and there’s plenty of formerly unpopular beliefs that popular opinion has shifted on. Some friendships are worth holding your tongue over and some aren’t. OP can decide if this one is or not, but I’ve seen so much in-fighting in the LBGTQ community that I personally wouldn’t recommend it.

NAYRT--if they feel like their friends are faking or being unreasonable by wanting to exist free of persecution and with the same rights as cis people, they don't deserve to have trans friends, though. Like, "we're friends but secretly I think you're a fake using your fake condition to demand special treatment" is not a mindset I personally want to be friends with.

Is that what OP is saying though? That’s not how I read it.

AYRT--I'm responding to whoever posted "you lose your friends and your reputation gets ruined" up there.

But that wasn’t said there either?

AYRT--okay, let me simplify this then. Anyone who won't tell their "friends" what they really think about them because they'll lose their friends and ruin their reputation if they did?Is not really friends with those people.

OP is just asking innocent questions about whether we've had a sufficiently rigorous discussion about some of the reasons why trans people don't deserve equal rights and treatment

Er...where does the OP say that?

As explained several times elsewhere in these secret comments, they're NOT innocent questions because "sufficiently rigorous discussion" HAS been had, many many times, inside the community and outside of it. If OP doesn't like the answers to those questions because they think trans people are icky, that's on them.

I suppose it's just telling of the parts of the internet I hang out in, but the "discussions" I've seen have been insiders "debunking" the arguments from the other side with the main arguments being that of course they're right because the others are terfs and transphobes.

I honestly DO want to be a good ally to trans people, but there are parts of the ghospel of the trans rights movement that I just can't agree with, no matter how many times the arguments are repeated.

NAYRT--why can't you agree? Do you stand to be hurt in some way by granting trans people the right to exist free of persecution?

I'm not trans, but so long as what trans people need to be safe and healthy isn't hurting me or causing harm in general, I don't see why so many people object to what they're asking for. This is basically my attitude to any marginalized group campaigning for fair and equal treatment.

I see a lot of catastrophizing about potential or rare and/or weird edge scenarios that are already illegal, like people pretending to be trans to spy on women in the bathroom, or ridiculous, like lesbians forced to sleep with trans women with dicks.

(Pro tip: "sorry I'm not into that" = not transphobic. "You're just a man who festishizes lesbians and kept his penis so you could sleep with them while pretending you were one." = transphobia) Actual forced sex = rape.

And people keep bringing up the trans women in sports thing as though men don't make astronomically more playing the same sports as women. No man's gonna transition just because they want to seem like a better athlete, even if transitioning were easy, which it's not.

Puberty blockers just delay puberty so trans kids can figure stuff out and transition more easily as adults if they decide to take that step; they're reversible. Hell, I'm not trans but I wish I could've gone on them; puberty itself wasn't that traumatic for me, but being targeted by creeps attracted to the eleven year old with triple-D boobs was.

I do want for trans people to live without persecution. The issue I have is with what, exactly, constitutes persecution. I think trans women are women, and I'll fight anyone insisting otherwise. I think trans people should have access to whatever health care they need, should get to express their gender whichever way they want without discrimination, should live as free of fear or hatred as everyone else.

But I find the vocabulary of "people who menstruate" and "pregnant people" to be, at best, ridiculous. At worst, it comes across as insidious misogyny. The percentage of non-women people-who-menstruate-and-get-pregnant is disappearingly small, and even for them, their female biology is an inescapable part of their very existence. Womanhood, no matter how much they don't identify with it, IS a part of them, and the things they suffer and win because they menstruate and give birth are deeply and inescapably parts of womanhood. The demands that we remove "woman" from the entire matter of carrying and birthing children, is a demand to erase humanity's collective history of reproduction. And I'm speaking as a childfree woman, whose struggle with this has been the struggle with the expectations that I become a mother. Motherhood isn't sacred to me, but its hypothetical possibility IS a considerable part of marks my existence as a woman.

And my ISSUE, if anything, is that the above paragraph is enough to make me a transphobe. I'm not a transphobe becaues I hate trans people, I'm a transphobe becaues I disagree with THEIR semantics of gender. I have absolutely no problem with trans people, but with the insistence that people who question some of the purely theoretical parts of the trans rights movement MUST be doing it out of hatred.

Like - I don't think mentally healthy cis men would change their gender to easier assault women or compete in women's sports. I think kids should be free to explore gender. But I wasn't at all surprised to hear about the ROGD thing, because I'd SEEN it happen in fandom spaces I was in - almost all of which were high school aged kids in slash-centred communities. I DO mentally eye-roll at a lot of "they/them/theirs" profiles on tumblr, because I'd have been one of them when I was seventeen and deeply uncomfortable with every ridiculous act that the definition of "girl" demanded that I performed and shaped my life by. But sure enough, thinking that teenagers in 2020 have the exact same unfinished brains as teenagers in 2000 had is transphobic. Do I believe that nonbinary people exist? Oh absolutely, 100%. But I think that a considerable amount of the ones on tumblr are too young to have realised that there is a difference between "gender" and "gender roles", and being a straight white woman means that you're not allowed to have opinions on anything more controversial than the bgm in the newest trailer. Saying this means that I hate enby people - not becaues I hate enby people, but becaues someone decided that it is an act of hatred to question the reasons why some of them claim the label.

Am I personally hurt by how people talk about themselves? Well, no. But I find it deeply problematic that by the mere act of disagreeing with some of the semantics of the trans movement - not with the practical goals of equality, but with what words we're using - is grouped together with people who carry out violent attacks trans people.

The demands that we remove "woman" from the entire matter of carrying and birthing children, is a demand to erase humanity's collective history of reproduction.

This is a straw man argument. Nobody is saying we completely divorce these two concepts from each other or that we 'erase humanity's collective history of reproduction,' whatever the hell that means. This is fighting over ONE ARTICLE out of THOUSANDS OF OTHERS that decided to include language that was more accurate in describing people who menstruate as just that - people who menstruate. Rowling takes issue with the inclusion, not the semantics. Don't get it twisted.

I DO mentally eye-roll at a lot of "they/them/theirs" profiles on tumblr, because I'd have been one of them when I was seventeen and deeply uncomfortable with every ridiculous act that the definition of "girl" demanded that I performed and shaped my life by

You projecting your insecurities on strangers whose lives you know nothing about doesn't mean they're wrong and even if they are, OK, imagine you're that young again. Why do you think that challenging these young people is more productive than encouraging them to explore who they are? If they're gonna "grow out of it" then fine, they grow out of it. You realize how gross this sounds and how similar it sounds to parents saying their kids are going through a "phase" of being gay or bi?

Saying this means that I hate enby people - not becaues I hate enby people, but becaues someone decided that it is an act of hatred to question the reasons why some of them claim the label.

Right, because this is not your community to police. If you believe non-binary people exist then these conversations are for them to have, not for you to have. People get frustrated when you say these things because trans people have had these conversations a thousand times over out in public. We have literally already done all the work for you but you wanna whine about nobody explaining it to you. Like, enough. I am tired.

How is it a strawman when people are LITERALLY asking others to "stop saying pregnant women, that is excluding enbies and trans men"? I'm not talking about Rowling, btw, but about myself. But in this, as in the rest of this reply, you assume to know why I think the way I do. And since I am talking about semantics, how can you know that Rowling is not? How can you know that I was insecure about my gender? (I never was, ftr, even if I would have been enby by the definitions I've found)

See, this is the issue: you tell me to stop whining about people not explaining, after I literally said that I have heard all the explanations and still can't agree. You, and others in this thread, are repeating the same five talking points to shut down a different conversation than the one I and OP are trying to have.

Oh my fucking God, okay.

Saying "pregnant women" is not the issue here. "Pregnant women" are pregnant women. I am not saying you have to stop talking about women that are pregnant, but acknowledging that trans people exist and can be pregnant and ALSO not women is literally the bare fucking minimum you can do to be an ally. Including us in your language is the bare minimum but you wanna fight tooth and nail over it as if this is somehow a huge burden to you.

What JKR, a literal billionaire, was offended by was one article that read "people who menstruate." She came back and said "UhHhHH don't they mean WoMeN???" when she knows damn well they wrote what they wrote for a reason.

If you don't care about being a trans ally just say that & stop trying to justify your transphobic arguments as anything but. Stop telling me I am the ignorant one because I can't do a trans 101 in a way that is palatable to you.

And since I am talking about semantics, how can you know that Rowling is not?

I made the distinction between semantics and inclusion purposefully. PURPOSEFULLY. To illustrate that it is semantics to you and to her but not to trans people.

As numerous people have pointed out in threads on this exact secret, she has demonstrated time and time again that she does not give a fuck about trans women. She follows accounts that are trans-exclusionary, likes tweets from other TERFs, deleted her nice tweet about Stephen King once he released one that said "trans women are women" and has shown her ass all over the internet by releasing a 3000 word essay on trans people which no cis person has any business doing, PERIOD.

I'm gonna say that again: NO CIS PERSON has ANY BUSINESS releasing a 3000 WORD ESSAY questioning the validity of trans people, or how we talk about ourselves, PERIOD. I know y'all don't like to hear this but this is not your community. This is not about you. You are not the expert.

How can you know that I was insecure about my gender? (I never was, ftr, even if I would have been enby by the definitions I've found)

Ffs, because YOU TOLD ME THAT. I was responding to the part of your comment where YOU SAID you may have thought you were non-binary as a child if you had been exposed to the non-binary community and telling you that this would not have been a terrible thing. Guess what? If you actually weren't non-binary, which you aren't by your own admission, you would have arrived at that conclusion yourself anyway. I mean, you've seen those definitions now and they didn't turn you non-binary now, did they?? Jesus Christ I need a nap.

acknowledging that trans people exist and can be pregnant and ALSO not women is literally the bare fucking minimum you can do to be an ally.

Yes, and here's my problem with this discourse: it's not enough to acknowledge that trans men/enbies can have female bodies. We're asked to change the way we speak about a uniquely female (bodied) experience ("people who menstruate") so as not to "alienate" the small percentage who identify otherwise, and whose identity as trans/enby is DEFINED by the fact that their identities defy their biologies. I have no problems with acknowledging that some girls don't menstruate or that some boys DO, or that some men can, in fact, get pregnant. My problem is that I'm a 'phobe because I think this particular brand of inclusive language is a ridiculous hill to die on compared to the actual violence perpetrated against trans people.

I'm not saying that you're ignorant, but that you don't seem to understand what I'm trying to talk about. I've stated TWICE that I've followed these debates and that I still haven't been convinced by the arguments I'm presented - you don't have to do the trans 101, I've heard it already. My issue isn't with trans people, as I hope I've made clear. It's with the way any voice questioning ANY claim made by the louder side of the trans community is automatically shut down as a transphobe.

To illustrate that it is semantics to you and to her but not to trans people.
Not to nitpick, but your words were that "Rowling takes issue with the inclusion, not the semantics."

NO CIS PERSON has ANY BUSINESS releasing a 3000 WORD ESSAY questioning the validity of trans people, or how we talk about ourselves, PERIOD.

I agree. So when trans activists wants to dictate how we talk about an experience that is uniquely female ("people who menstruate"), I hope you see why a good amount of cis women take issue with this.

YOU SAID you may have thought you were non-binary as a child if you had been exposed to the non-binary community

Fair enough, my bad. The thing I failed to communicate was that my issue never was with my gender, but with gender roles that I despised and to this day find highly problematic. But by god, there was at least one high-profile article explaining what makes a person enby, and she/they described an discomfort with gender roles and relative comfort with femininty that followed my own almost to the letter. By her/their definition, I absolutely WOULD have been enby back then, even if I never once felt discomfort as a girl, only with society's idea of what a girl was supposed to be. I find that definition to be HIGHLY questionable - not just for enby people whose issues run rather deeper than "ooooh but I don't like girly things", but for a number of girls whose ideas of womanhood grow only narrower for it.

it's not enough to acknowledge that trans men/enbies can have female bodies. We're asked to change the way we speak about a uniquely female (bodied) experience

YES, EXACTLY. Exactly this. Yes. You are asked this.

So when trans activists wants to dictate how we talk about an experience that is uniquely female ("people who menstruate"), I hope you see why a good amount of cis women take issue with this.

Lol, no. This experience is "uniquely female" but it is not uniquely an experience of cis women. Because there are trans people with, to use your words, female bodies. So no, we're not coming in to a community to which we don't belong and telling them how to refer to themselves, we're correcting the language of a community to which we do belong, and how others are referring to us.

To be very blunt, I have a uterus too and you don't fucking speak for me. Just how I am not saying you can't call yourself a pregnant woman or even refer to problems unique to pregnant women. That is fine. You can do that. But when you say "women" and really mean "people who menstruate" you are not being an ally to us because you are discounting us. That's why I say, including us with your language in this way (something you view merely as 'semantics') actually has much more far-reaching implications towards how other cis people like you view us.

Yes, we are a relatively "small percentage" who identify as otherwise. But making this slight change in your language literally hurts you none, whereas refusing to do so contributes to the myth that trans people are defined by our biology, that anyone AFAB will forevermore be a woman and people who are women and people who menstruate are synonymous, which they are not, even for cis women.

there was at least one high-profile article explaining what makes a person enby, and she/they described an discomfort with gender roles and relative comfort with femininty that followed my own almost to the letter. By her/their definition, I absolutely WOULD have been enby back then

It... doesn't work that way. The only reason this person is non-binary is by their own definition. So no, you would not be non-binary "by their own definition." You get to define your gender, that's kind of the whole point. Only you know what's right for you just how they only know what's right for them. For fuck's sake it's not a one-size-fits-all diagnostic test.

Also, this? a ridiculous hill to die on compared to the actual violence perpetrated against trans people. Fuck off with this. Talk to me about violence against trans people when you've seen a trans woman beaten within an inch of her life by a gang with a bike lock in a women's bathroom. 4 trans women have been killed in the last couple months. You don't get to talk to me about violence against trans people and you sure as hell don't get to imply that this is the only trans issue I care about.

NAYRT, but I am the one you originally replied to who asked if what trans people were asking for would hurt you in some way. And "maybe kids who think they're trans or non binary actually aren't" is, well, it's concern trolling.

Especially because there are people elsewhere in this thread arguing that puberty blockers, which give kids time to think over (and be counseled! By professionals who do this for a living!) whether they want to medically transition or not, and how much medical stuff they want to do when they're old enough, are dangerous. But without blockers, medically transitioning is more work, and maybe more dangerous, than with them, so maybe they should rethink this transitioning stuff.

Which ends up sounding like all the "it's a phase" stuff that gets thrown around about sexuality and is controlling bullshit.

Also, I honestly don't understand the furor over "people who menstruate" as a descriptor. It's accurate, doesn't leave anyone out or include anyone who doesn't need that info, and is exactly the kind of language that professional organizations doing work in reproductive healthcare should be using.

It's not some kind of dig at cis women aimed at making us less special, it really isn't. It's just a succinct, accurate way of referring to a group with the same medical concerns.

Also, I am in my 30s and I'm pretty sure there will be pregnant trans women, via uterine implants, within my lifetime. Maybe trans women who menstruate, too. I can't imagine why anyone would chose to menstruate if they had the option not to, but I don't have to understand since it doesn't effect me at all.

I don't have to understand since it doesn't effect me at all.

T H A N K Y O U.

Yeah, as I hope I've made clear, it's not that I don't want trans people to get whatever treatment they want and need, and the entire puberty blocker thing is one which I'm absolutely ignorant about. Questioning kids should be allowed to question and try out different gender presentations! But based on both my own discomfort with gender roles in a way that falls under the definition of enby these days, and on the particular breed of afab teens who seem to most frequently declare themselves trans or enby, I have the impression that a good number of them are, well, probably not. I'm loathe to use the word "transtrender", but I very much suspect that there is a good number of teenage girls who seem to think that the solution to whatever problems they have will be to start over as a boy, particularly if they're part of cliques where being lgbt+ is a status symbol.

I DO understand why a lot of trans people react to that with spikes out, since - yeah, concern trolling and all the bad arguments used against any out-group by their parents. But, well - as someone who thinks gender roles are bull, I definitely don't think we're moving in the right direction when the definition of nonbinary is "someone who finds gender roles oppressive".

It's not that I argue about the "people who menstruate" thing IRL, but I find it to be fundamentally uncessary all the time every person over the age of ten knows that menstruation is function of the female body. Trans men and afab enbies will KNOW if is information that applies to them, and they'll KNOW that their bodies are women's bodies. It's not that I see it as an attack at (cis) women, but it comes across as some weird kind of erasure. Particularly, I think, when it gets to the topic of pregnancy and childbirth, which ultimately are the source of the majority of traditions and cultural expectations defining womanhood.

No, their reputation gets corrected.

Have you ever considered that this is just, like, a really bad take?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #4928 ]

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nayrt

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