This is Good Bi Gender. A comic I made to express some feelings I have about my gender. I don’t really have that much else to say about it. Here it is.
honestly still not over the absurdity of “one time as a teenager I realized I had unintentionally followed a TERF, immediately felt terrified, and blocked them” being turned into “ummm nothorses is LITERALLY an ex-TERF”
like these very same people aren’t weeping tears of personal victimhood every time another popular white cis guy they like turns out to be a sexual predator.
not to mention TERFs often very intentionally groom their social media to make it easy for this kind of thing to happen. TERF “psy-op” accounts are pretty common, and lots of folks who consider themselves trans allies follow them, because that’s the point!
you have to learn to see the TERF rhetoric when it’s not explicitly about hating trans women, or you will end up following TERFs.
Also, even if you were actually an ex TERF, that’s still no reason to harass and denounce you. If (in this hypothetical scenario) you are no longer a TERF and are actively speaking out against them, then defaming you for having been a TERF is both a tactical error (having been one would give unique insight into their politics) and an ethical failure (marking you as forever stained by past misdeeds, regardless of what you have done to rectify the harm caused by them, is straight up reactionary rhetoric).
yeah. this is absolutely not an attempt to put myself above people who are actually ex-TERFs; there is so much to admire in the stories, insights, and strength of those who have managed to escape and recover from that, and it’s incredibly important to listen to those folks when they offer those insights.
but there is definitely a problem when you categorize any trans person you disagree with as an “ex-TERF” because they publicly acknowledge a phenomena that nearly every single person involved in feminism has been subject to in some way.
you probably follow TERFs, and you have definitely liked it reblogged TERF posts.
you don’t know about it, but some of those accounts you think are taking about men are actually talking about trans women. they intentionally obfuscate that fact because they know that spreading their rhetoric, even if it’s framed as an attack on men instead of trans women, is advantageous to their cause. they want you to adopt as many of their positions as possible in order to make it easier for them to convert you and/or those who follow you.
if your response to someone speaking on this is to deny that this happens and accuse them of already being a TERF, you are doing their work for them. you’re encouraging people to ignore the signs and, subsequently, to spread the rhetoric and buy into the ideas that lead to conversion.
My cat loves to groom me and my two theories are a) I have a good Flavor or b) she looks at my ungainly human proportions and thinks “My god… how does this creature clean herself… she needs some shmapoo and condishioner….”
people keep trying to make “ladies and gentlemen” more inclusive.
I think we should go the other way around.
make more and more weird false dichotomies in greetings. “gamers and pianists”. “oil painters and swordsmen”. “vexillologists and entomologists”. “chess masters and diamond artificers”. “accountants and gendered individuals”.
we need to be dropping shit into formal meetings to make people say “wait what? which one am I?”
I have started referring to my students as “critters and creatures.” I then offer them the option to decide where on the critter–creature spectrum they think they belong. They enjoy this immensely. I teach some critters, some creatures, some 50/50s, some critters with creature tendencies, some creatures with critter inclinations.
all i have to say is ‘hello cowards’ and it shuts gendering up
“Listen up, fives, a ten is speaking,” has always been gender-inclusive.
ALT
ALT
