Latest Posts by bft-max-the-discourser - Page 4

It's funny to me that the same people who wax poetic about how they'd Never pedojack a transfem, will just read some posts about posts about how transmascs are seeking to destroy the concept of transmisogyny for the sick masculine pleasure of oppressing women, and automatically believe it. Like, clearly you are unable to actually hone the ability not fall for transphobic smear campaigns lol.

The thing about internet discourse intellectuals that will really rub me the wrong way, is they will be like, 'you don't fit my Very intellectual framework, so I think you are a dangerous force and should die screaming,' with no self awareness on how embarrassing their arrogant callousness is, as well as it being, in fact, reactionary and not Very Intellectual.

Gee, I’d like to never have to mention having been AFAB again. If only it weren’t painfully relevant to how laws are applied to me and how the past has shaped me and how transphobes perceive me and

Wait what happened??? Who detected shame in trfs?? What tf is going down on bluesky?

The T/R/F made a post saying straight women should be banned from BDSM because they don't understand it

another trans woman and self-identified baeddel called it weird

The T/R/F went completely fucking ballistic and started harassing her and telling her and her friends to [redacted]

now other examples of The T/R/F saying straight trans women should [redacted] while also calling them "straggots" are being posted

i am a child.

i am forced into a dress. makeup is smeared onto my face. i kick and cry and beg, but they will not stop.

i am forced to pose in front of the camera with my thighs together and hope that the makeup hides my tearstains. i must be the perfect picture of femininity; innocent, untouched.

i already have a thousand hand prints on me.

'all men are evil rapists', i am told.

i think about my friends, who are men. the men who called me every day while i was in a psychiatric hospital. the men who walked me home when i was afraid. the men who protected and cared for me, without ever expecting my body in return.

it can't be the body that makes someone evil. it can't be the presence of a penis that makes someone evil. but it can't be the identity of 'man' that makes you evil, either.

i ponder the difference between the men who raped me and the men who protected me. i decide that it depends on who the person is inside, and not on their identity.

'sit down and shut up,' they spit at me. 'the men are talking. learn your place. don't speak over us.'

'you throw like a girl.'

'you run like a girl.'

'girls can't do this. they're not smart enough.'

'girls aren't strong enough to do this.'

over and over, such sentiments are tossed at me. i bite down my anger, because women aren't supposed to yell or get angry. if i get angry, that makes me a hysterical bitch.

'women are meant to be mothers,' i am told. they beat it into me that my worth lies not in my personhood, but in the womb between my hips. it makes me feel sick and violated, just like every sexual assault has.

i am groped. i am raped. i am assaulted.

it's my fault, i'm told. i'm a temptress. my body is a vile weapon, a weapon created to tempt men into sin, a weapon that makes me a subhuman toy.

i am treated like a toy. as i am molested during my childhood, i learn that i am a toy. the anatomy between my hips has marked me as public property. i am less than human.

they keep forcing me into dresses. they keep forcing me into makeup. no amount of protesting makes it end. i grow to loathe femininity and the violation that always seems to come with it.

i come out as a trans man at fifteen.

'can't you just be nonbinary?'

'can't you just be a tomboy?'

'i don't want you to regret this.'

'i don't want you to ruin your perfect body.'

'men are disgusting. why do you want to be one of them?'

'are you sure you don't just want to be a man because you were sexually assaulted?'

i continue to be a man. my parents intentionally delay my ability to go on testosterone. by the time i am able to go on testosterone, i have already finished puberty. my body is irreversibly feminine.

people throw food at me. they call me a faggot, a tranny, a dyke. they kick me and shove me to the ground. they cyberstalk me. they post pictures of me online so that they can mock me.

a girl says to me, 'you need to learn your place,' as she calls me a faggot over the internet. she kicks me when she sees me the next day.

my boyfriend when i am fifteen is a cis man who says he is pansexual. he dismisses me when i talk about being trans, because he uses he/they pronouns and 'understands it'.

he sexually assaults me repeatedly. i am in constant distress. my distress is used as proof that i am a snowflake hysterical tranny. i am a hysterical woman who only THINKS she's a man, and i need to be put in my place. trans 'men' are all hysterical and overreactive, and my behaviour is used as proof.

my boyfriend exclusively refers to me with they/them pronouns. i tell him to use he/him. he waves his hand, dismissing my words, and says, 'they're basically the same thing'.

he tells me that he wants children. i try to ignore the sick feeling in my gut.

he only uses he/him pronouns for me after we have broken up, when he is trying to paint me as abusive. i lose my entire friend group because of it.

people keep talking down to me. when i go on testosterone, cis men try to explain that it's toxic for me, using cis man bodybuilders as an example. i try to explain how that isn't the case. they insist that 'female bodies aren't built to handle testosterone'. i try to explain to them how hormones work, and they laugh and roll their eyes.

silly girl. stupid girl. she doesn't know what she's talking about.

people continue to make fun of trans men online. our music, our art, our interests, our fashion sense, our names. i cannot help but feel dejected. all i want is to be a man, and to fit in among everyone else, but even in doing so, i stand out as a target for mockery. misogyny is inescapable, even for men.

i am seventeen years old. my worst fear comes true. i am raped and forcibly impregnated, with the intention of forcing me to detransition.

that sense of violation is impossible to truly describe.

my reproductive system was designed to become pregnant. my body will do its best to become pregnant, no matter what i want. pregnancy is an inescapable function of my body, and it makes me feel trapped and sick.

the man who raped me has turned my own body into a weapon against me. even in my body, my own flesh and sinew, i am not safe.

i miscarry. i am in agony. my womb cramps and i try not to pass out.

i enter feminist spaces. i try to talk about my experiences with misogyny.

'sit down and shut up,' they spit at me. 'the women are talking. learn your place. don't speak over us.'

all trans men have male privilege, you see, without exception. by the mere act of wanting to become a man, i have become a traitor, and i am thrown to the cis men.

the cis men, who see me as a woman that they're finally allowed to abuse. finally, they can hurt and rape and impregnate a woman, because she's one of those snowflake trannies and she needs to be put in her place.

i bite down my anger, because trans men aren't supposed to yell or get angry. if i get angry, it's proof that i'm not a man, that i'm a hysterical bitch, and that i'm a dangerous snowflake tranny seeking to mutilate children.

the sentiment is bitterly familiar.

some people reveal they have never spoken to a transmasc in their entire lives as evidenced by thinking people do not already do this. cisgender gay men are by far more guilty of this than transfems (in the same way cisgender lesbians are far more guilty of the reverse than transmascs) but people who would otherwise have sex with a man who happens to have a vagina do in fact regularly approach vaginas with disgust.

It's kinda hard to not beef with your own community when people from that community are currently mad at you for existing and talking about your problems. Besides that people in the "anti-transmasculinity" crowd do talk about the issues that trans men & mascs face in society as a whole, not just from other trans people

This is the same logic as "takes two to tango". Refusing to mention intracommunity issues doesn't end those issues or unite the community, it just allows them to fester and for your experiences to be erased against. If you don't fight, yoy're sure to be beaten

If you understand as a trans man/transmasc etc. how upsetting it is to claim that trans men/transmascs etc. are especially and uniquely capable of transmisogyny you should then understand how upsetting it is to claim that trans women/transfems etc. are especially and uniquely capable of anti-transmasculinity.

Cis, perisex people are the main perpetrators of transphobia.

People are going to see "anti-transmasculinity" as transmisogynistic if you spend all your energy on your page complaining about the minority of trans women/ transfems who perpetuate it. And lets be honest, it's easier to call out trans women/ transfems because the internet loves to turn it's backs on trans women/ transfems rather than the cis people saying heinous transphobic shit. They are going to get the wrong idea of this term.

Stop engaging and feeding into the lateral violence and division of our communities. It is not helping anyone, and especially not our cause.

evil sneaky lying men want access to your Women's Resources to steal them from Real Women. it's not perpetuating reactionary transmisogyny to say this because the men we're talking about are transgender men 👍 don't worry about it.

Hey let's try this game!

Me when I'm trying to argue in favour of transphobia and deliberately portray myself as a Nazi

When you're talking to a trans masc on tumblr and they say 'Transwoman'

I spend hours scrolling through blogs to establish a link between transandrophobia theory and terfism...and...he just...tweeted it out

I spend hours scrolling through blogs to establish a link between transandrophobia theory and terfism...and...he just...tweeted it out

The collection of based individuals in your doxxing blog grows larger by the day.

I don't think you know what doxxing is.

i’m not even gonna break this one down bc “male privilege isn’t a material benefit it’s just literally not being a woman” i think pretty much speaks for itself.

MASTER POST OF PROSHIP RESOURCES!!! <3<3

this is just for links (bc i just have No Way of formatting this properly), so for more in-depth stuffs and credits, head to the google doc, or the carrd !! :3c

Fiction ≠ Reality

Violent media -

Does Media Violence Predict Societal Violence? It Depends on What You Look at and When

Video Game Violence Use Among “Vulnerable” Populations: The Impact of Violent Games on Delinquency and Bullying Among Children with Clinically Elevated Depression or Attention Deficit Symptoms

Extreme metal music and anger processing

On the Morality of Immoral Fiction: Reading Newgate Novels, 1830–1848

How gamers manage aggression: Situating skills in collaborative computer games

Examining desensitization using facial electromyography:Violent videogames, gender, and affective responding

'Bad' video game behavior increases players' moral sensitivity

Fiction and Morality: Investigating the Associations Between Reading Exposure, Empathy, Morality, and Moral Judgment

Comfortably Numb or Just Yet Another Movie? Media Violence Exposure Does Not Reduce Viewer Empathy for Victims of Real Violence Among Primarily Hispanic Viewers

Fantasy Crime: The Criminalisation of Fantasy Material Under Australia's Child Abuse Material Legislation

Being able to distinguish fiction from reality -

Effects of context on judgments concerning the reality status of novel entities

Children’s Causal Learning from Fiction: Assessing the Proximity Between Real and Fictional Worlds

Reality/Fiction Distinction and Fiction/Fiction Distinction during Sentence Comprehension

Reality = Relevance? Insights from Spontaneous Modulations of the Brain’s Default Network when Telling Apart Reality from Fiction

How does the brain tell the real from imagined?

Meeting George Bush versus Meeting Cinderella: The Neural Response When Telling Apart What is Real from What is Fictional in the Context of Our Reality

loli/shota/kodocon -

If I like lolicon, does it mean I’m a pedophile? A therapist’s view

Virtual Child Pornography, Human Trafficking and Japanese Law: Pop Culture, Harm and Legal Restrains

Lolicon: The Reality of ‘Virtual Child Pornography’ in Japan

Report: cartoon paedophilia harmless

‘The Lolicon Guy:’ Some Observations on Researching Unpopular Topics in Japan

Robot Ghosts And Wired Dreams Japanese Science Fiction From Origins To Anime [pg 227-228]

Australia's "child abuse material' legislation, internet regulation and the juridification of the imaginationjuridification of the imagination [pg 14-15]

Multiple Orientations as Animating Misdelivery: Theoretical Considerations on Sexuality Attracted to Nijigen (Two-Dimensional) Objects

Positive Impact on Mental Health

Art therapy -

The effectiveness of art therapy for anxiety in adults: A systematic review of randomised and non-randomised controlled trials

Efficacy of Art Therapy in Individuals With Personality Disorders Cluster B/C: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Effectiveness of Art Therapy With Adult Clients in 2018 - What Progress Has Been Made?

Benefits of Art Therapy in People Diagnosed With Personality Disorders: A Quantitative Survey

The Effectiveness of Art Therapy in the Treatment of Traumatized Adults: A Systematic Review on Art Therapy and Trauma

The clinical effectiveness and current practice of art therapy for trauma

Writing therapy -

Optimizing the perceived benefits and health outcomes of writing about traumatic life events

Expressive writing and post-traumatic stress disorder: Effects on trauma symptoms, mood states, and cortisol reactivity

Focused expressive writing as self-help for stress and trauma

Putting Stress into Words: The Impact of Writing on Physiological, Absentee, and Self-Reported Emotional Well-Being Measures

The writing cure: How expressive writing promotes health and emotional well-being

Effects of Writing About Traumatic Experiences: The Necessity for Narrative Structuring

Scriptotherapy: The effects of writing about traumatic events

Emotional and physical benefits of expressive writing

Emotional and Cognitive Processing in Sexual Assault Survivors' Narratives

Finding happiness in negative emotions: An experimental test of a novel expressive writing paradigm

An everyday activity as treatment for depression: The benefits of expressive writing for people diagnosed with major depressive disorder

Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process

Effects of expressive writing on sexual dysfunction, depression, and PTSD in women with a history of childhood sexual abuse: Results from a randomized clinical trial

Written Emotional Disclosure: Testing Whether Social Disclosure Matters

Written emotional disclosure: A controlled study of the benefits of expressive writing homework in outpatient psychotherapy

Misc -

Emotional disclosure about traumas and its relation to health: Effects of previous disclosure and trauma severity

Treating complex trauma in adolescents: A phase-based integrative approach for play therapists

Emotional expression and physical health: Revising traumatic memories or fostering self-regulation?

Disclosure of Sexual Victimization: The Effects of Pennebaker's Emotional Disclosure Paradigm on Physical and Psychological Distress

Kink/Porn/Fantasies

Sexual fantasies -

A Critical Microethnographic Examination of Power Exchange, Role Idenity and Agency with Black BDSM Practitioners

Women's Rape Fantasies: An Empirical Evaluation of the Major Explanations

History, culture and practice of puppy play

What Exactly Is an Unusual Sexual Fantasy?

The Psychology of Kink: a Survey Study into the Relationships of Trauma and Attachment Style with BDSM Interests

Punishing Sexual Fantasy

Women's Erotic Rape Fantasies

Sexual Fantasy and Adult Attunement: Differentiating Preying from Playing

What Is So Appealing About Being Spanked, Flogged, Dominated, or Restrained? Answers from Practitioners of Sexual Masochism/Submission

Dark Fantasies, Part 1 - With Dr. Ian Kerner

Why Do Women Have Rape Fantasies

The 7 Most Common Sexual Fantasies and What to Do About Them

Sexual Fantasies

Pornography -

The Effects of Exposure to Virtual Child Pornography on Viewer Cognitions and Attitudes Toward Deviant Sexual Behavior

American Identities and Consumption of Japanese Homoerotica

The differentiation between consumers of hentai pornography and human pornography

Pornography Use and Holistic Sexual Functioning: A Systematic Review of Recent Research

Claiming Public Health Crisis to Regulate Sexual Outlets: A Critique of the State of Utah's Declaration on Pornography

Pornography and Sexual Dysfunction: Is There Any Relationship?

Reading and Living Yaoi: Male-Male Fantasy Narratives as Women's Sexual Subculture in Japan

Women's Consumption of Pornograpy: Pleasure, Contestation, and Empowerment

Pornography and Sexual Violence

The Sunny Side of Smut

Other -

Fantasy Sexual Material Use by People with Attractions to Children

Fictosexuality, Fictoromance, and Fictophilia: A Qualitative Study of Love and Desire for Fictional Characters

Exploring the Ownership of Child-Like Sex Dolls

Are Sex and Pornograpy Addiction Valid Disorders? Adding a Leisure Science Perspecive to the Sexological Critique

Littles: Affects and Aesthetics in Sexual Age-Play

An Exploratory Study of a New Kink Activity: "Pup Play"

Jaws Effect

The Jaws Effect: How movie narratives are used to influence policy responses to shark bites in Western Australia

The Shark Attacks That Were the Inspiration for Jaws

The Great White Hope (written by Peter Benchley, writer of Jaws)

The Jaws Myth [not a study BUT is an interesting read and provides some links to articles and studies]

Slenderman Stabbings

Out Came the Girls: Adolescent Girlhood, the Occult, and the Slender Man Phenomenon

Jury in Slender Man case finds Anissa Weier was mentally ill, will not go to prison

2nd teen in 'Slender Man' stabbing case to remain in institutional care for 40 years

Negative effects of online harassment

How stressful is online victimization? Effects of victim's personality and properties of the incident

Prevalence, Psychological Impact, and Coping of Cyberbully Victims Among College Students

Offline Consequences of Online Victimization

The Relative Importance of Online Victimization in Understanding Depression, Delinquency, and Substance Use

Internet trolling and everyday sadism: Parallel effects on pain perception and moral judgement

The MAD Model of Moral Contagion: The Role of Motivation, Attention, and Design in the Spread of Moralized Content Online

Morally Motivated Networked Harassment as Normative Reinforcement

When Online Harassment is Perceived as Justified

Violence on Reddit Support Forums Unique to r/NoFap

"It Makes Me, A Minor, Uncomfortable" Media and Morality in Anti-Shippers' Policing of Online Fandom

not to sound blunt but the idea that a trans woman who raises her voice or is rude or speaks over someone else is behaving in a uniquely male manner is just blatantly misogynistic and i don't think you need a gender studies degree to understand that

If you actually take the threat of forced detransition seriously, then you should recognize "Conservative transphobes don't want to kill transmascs, they just want to detransition them" for the callous and out-of-touch statement that it is.

"Ugh, you're actually lucky they don't want to kill you, they just want to permanently cut you off from gender-affirming care, rape you, trap you in marriage and pregnancy, and force you to live the rest of your life as their property."

Wow, I feel so blessed.

I’m not trying to attack you, but do you know that proshipper means someone who supports and romanticizes pedophilia, incest, and abuse? Your reblog on that post seems to read that you think antis just hate on people for having ships they don’t like. But it’s completely different than that. Just looking on the proshipper side of Tumblr and the internet and you can see people happily shipping children and adults and making nsfw content of such things.

i appreciate that you're not being outright hostile, but i have to say, that on its own put you above basically every anti i've interacted with.

i understand where antis are coming from, i really do. there are a lot of things on the internet that make me deeply uncomfortable, including the minor/adult ships that you mention. i don't want to anything to do with those kinds of ships and i would be happiest if i never saw them again. which is why i'm proship.

nine times out of ten, if i see that kind of ship brought up on my dash, it's because i was following an anti without realizing it, and they brought it up unprompted and untagged, to talk about how bad it is that they exist. they are the ones putting that kind of content in front of my face and making it harder to avoid.

the thing about people who ship those ships is that they're generally very aware that not everyone wants to see that kind of content, and so they tag it. they make sideblogs to talk about it. they don't go out of their way to shove it in people's faces. that means i, and everyone else who doesn't like it, can avoid it.

what antis want is for it to not exist at all. they want the tags to be purged and blocked, and for anyone who uses those tags to have their accounts deleted. and sure, that might get rid of some of it, but do you know what would happen to the rest? it would stop being tagged. people who don't want to see it wouldn't have the tools to avoid it. this isn't just a hypothetical, that's what's happened any time a fan space has tried to do that.

that's not even getting into the rabbit hole of what should be banned and what shouldn't. obviously any content that depicts real children or real life abuse shouldn't exist and shouldn't be allowed to be posted, but basically any platform that people use already enforces those policies, and there's not much of a slippery slope to go down there. if it involves real living breathing people being abused, it's bad. end of discussion.

but the same can't be said for fiction. ask ten antis for a specific list of all the content that should be banned, and you'll get ten different answers. what about kink? what about roleplay? what about horror and murder and anything that involves fictional characters being graphically tortured? what about people using art to process terrible things that have happened to them? what about art that uses dark themes as a horror element? if you just want to ban anything questionable to anyone, that's the line of thinking that gets any mention of lgbt existence banned. and again, this isn't just a hypothetical, this has happened before, and that's generally where it leads.

i know, from personal experience, that antis do, in fact, send harassment to people just for shipping things they don't like. i've gotten accused of absolutely vile shit for shipping two fictional characters who were both consenting adults. i've seen ship wars turn into moral battlegrounds, over ships that an average person wouldn't bat an eye at.

the thing about "romanticization" is a whole other can of worms. the anti logic goes like this: if someone sees something (even if it's very obviously fictional) in a positive light enough times, they will start thinking it's okay in real life, and go on to hurt real people. the problem with that is that it's just. blatantly untrue.

if it were true every horror movie fan would be a serial killer, every person that studies dark media would be an unhinged psychopath, and everyone who is into ddlg would be a pedophile. but they're not. they just aren't. people have directed movies just as fucked up as the darkest shit on ao3, and are still capable of being normal human beings who know right from wrong in real life.

even if someone is that impressionable, scrubbing away the existence of every piece of questionable content isn't going to solve their problem, because they're still going to be vulnerable to con men, scams, and cultists. the only thing that would actually materially help someone like that is developing their own morals and critical thinking.

children are also more impressionable, and there's a lot of content that's not suitable for them, but that doesn't mean that content shouldn't exist. it just means that they should stick to spaces designed for them (which most social media sites, tumblr included, are not) or, if they're old enough to be responsible for their experience online, they, or a trusted adult in their lives, should block and filter out things that they aren't comfortable with.

which is what everyone on the internet should be doing. it's what i do, and it's made the internet a much more pleasant place to be. and it's why i sometimes worry for antis mental health, especially teenagers, because they're being told it's right and moral to seek out content that makes them uncomfortable and to engage with the people making it. and that's just. really bad. it's not good for the creators that they're harassing obviously, but it's also really bad for them! it's not healthy to seek out things that make you feel bad, and it's a terrible internet safety lesson to teach minors that it's okay for them to seek out and engage with people making adult content.

individual harassment and crusading is never going to succeed at removing dark content from the internet. it just isn't. at best you might get a small percentage of people who create that content to stop sharing it, at worst you're just going to make people stop tagging it, and either way, you're exposing yourself to things that make you feel bad, when you don't have to.

if you want to materially change the type of content you see, you can. the block button is your friend, use it liberally. same with content filtering and tag blocking.

"We don't want no Zionists here" is not a righteous political slogan. 

Every single country that has ever outlawed Zionism went on to persecute, abuse, and even expel its Jewish population…whether said Jews identified as Zionists or not. 

This is one of the many reasons Jewish historical literacy is so important.

IRAQ

When Israel declared its independence in 1948, Zionism became a capital crime in Iraq. However, Iraq’s persecution of “Zionists” dated back to the 1930s; for example, in 1935, all Palestinian Jewish* Hebrew teachers were deported and the head of the Iraqi Zionist organization was put on trial.

For a Jew to be convicted of the crime of “Zionism,” they only had to be denounced by two Muslims, and there was no system of appeal. Under the guise of anti-Zionism, Jews in Iraq were systematically charged with treason, dismissed from their jobs, arrested on trumped up charges, tortured, and even executed. Oftentimes, their assets were seized, totaling around $80 million. 

The “proof” that a Jew was a “Zionist” was often tenuous at best. For example, in one case, a Jewish man was sentenced to five years of forced labor because he owned a Biblical Hebrew inscription, which his accusers falsely claimed was a “coded Zionist message.”

While the Iraqi government claimed to go after “Zionists,”anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews were not spared.The most prominent case was that of Shafiq Ades, who had long been openly anti-Zionist. Ades was arrested on charges that he had sold arms to Israel. He was not allowed the right to a defense and was tried and convicted in a show trial. He was publicly executed on September 23, 1948, to a crowd of 12,000 onlookers.

By the early 1950s, 120,000-130,000 out of 150,000 Iraqi Jews had fled Iraq. By 1967, only 3,000 Jews remained in Iraq. Nevertheless, following the Arab countries’ defeat in the 1967 Six Day War, the Iraqi government amped up its crackdown on “Zionism.”

As part of this crackdown, Jews were dismissed from their jobs, their bank accounts were frozen, and they were confined to house arrest. 

In 1968, the new socialist Ba’athist regime announced that they were “hunting down an American-Israeli spy ring” that was supposedly trying to destabilize Iraq. Twelve people -- nine of them Jews -- were arrested. The Jews were hung publicly in January 1969 without trial to a dancing crowd of 500,000 people. Another 40 Jews were “disappeared” by the secret police; in total, some 100 Jews out of the community of 3,000 were imprisoned and tortured in 1969 alone. 

These Jews were accused and convicted of Zionism, treason, and spying not based on legitimate evidence, but rather, entirely arbitrarily. For example, Daoud Ghali Yadgar was one of the nine Jews who were hanged in 1969. In 2019, his cousin, Nitzan Hadad, explained: “Soldiers had entered their home looking for the eldest son, who was in London studying. When they asked who was at home, my aunt replied that her other son, Daoud, was home. So they took Daoud instead and accused him of spying for Israel.”

*At the time, any citizen of the British Mandate of Palestine was known as a “Palestinian,” regardless of their ethnic or religious background.

EGYPT

Egypt, too, claimed to crack down on “Zionists,” but in reality made virtually no effort to distinguish between Zionists and Jews. In 1947, the Egyptian prime minister told the British ambassador, “All Jews are potential Zionists [and] ...anyhow all Zionists are Communists.”

After Israel's independence, scores of Jews were arrested and imprisoned in Abu Qir detention camp. Professor Chacham Choureka, who was later arrested in the 1950s, described the situation, noting, “The authorities didn't differentiate between teaching Judaism and Zionist activity. In reality though, part of teaching Torah is about Israel.”

As in Iraq, the anti-Zionist incitement in Egypt led to a number of repressive policies, arrests, and more. The 1956 Suez Crisis between Israel, Egypt, France, and Great Britain further exacerbated the already precarious situation. Once again, the Egyptian government made its position clear, declaring that “all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state.” Thousands of Jews were then imprisoned on “Zionism” charges or removed from their jobs. Ironically, prominent anti-Zionist Jews also suffered the same consequences.

THE SOVIET UNION

The Soviets considered all forms of non-Russian nationalism — including Zionism — a threat to their budding communist empire. In 1918, the midst of the Russian Civil War, the Soviet Communist Party established a “Jewish branch,” with the consent of Vladimir Lenin. It was named “Yevsetskiya,” meaning “Jewish Sections of the Communist Party.”

The mission of the Yevsetskiya was, quite literally, the “destruction of traditional Jewish life, the Zionist movement, and Hebrew culture.” In other words, this Jewish branch of the Soviet government was dedicated solely to the destruction of fellow Soviet Jewry. Until their dissolution in 1929, they imprisoned, tortured, and murdered thousands of Jews. According to historian of Soviet history Richard Pipes, “In time, every Jewish cultural and social organization came under assault.”

As early as 1934, the Soviets presented the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, a region in the Russian Far East, as an “alternative” to Zionism. Despite rosy Soviet government propaganda, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, located along the Russia-China border, was nearly impossible to cultivate for non-natives to the region and practically inhospitable. Though the government never outrightly admitted it, the Jewish population transfers to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast were a form of forced deportation, similar to other population transfers of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union.

Post-World War II, Jews in the far-flung republics Azeri and Uzbek republics of the Soviet Union were forced to attend anti-Zionist demonstrations, where they were made to publicly disavow Israel and Zionism under threat of arrest, deportation to gulags, or worse.

The Soviets’ “anti-Zionist” campaign culminated in the Doctors’ Plot, when “Zionist” Jewish doctors were arrested, tortured, and executed on entirely fake charges that they had plotted to assassinate Stalin. Some historians believe that this was only part of a wider plan for the ethnic cleansing of the Soviet Jewish population…all under the guise of anti-Zionism. However, due to Stalin’s sudden death, the plan was ultimately never carried out.

The Soviets were interestingly never covert about the fact that their “anti-Zionist” campaigns were actually just antisemitic. In the 1960s, Soviet propaganda made blatantly antisemitic claims, including: “The character of the Jewish religion serves the political aims of the Zionists,” “Zionism is inextricable from Judaism, rooted in the idea of the exclusiveness of the Jewish People,” comparisons of Judaism to the Italian mafia, and claims that Israel was merely a means to an end of Jewish imperialism and world domination.

The repression of Soviet Jewry under the guise of “Zionism” only intensified after the 1967 Six Day War. Jewish cultural and religious life was highly restricted. Virtually every institution in Soviet society heavily discriminated against the Jewish population; for example, Jews were subject to highly restrictive university quotas. This placed Jews in a catch-22: on the one hand, they were not free to live as Jews; on the other, they were also barred from integrating as Soviet citizens. 

For this reason, hundreds of thousands of Jews were desperate to flee the Soviet Union. Requesting exit visas was considered an act of treason. In order to apply for exit visas, Jews first had to quit their jobs; however, this put them at risk of being accused of “social parasitism,” which was considered a crime. After having their visas refused, Jews were also then prevented from obtaining new work. Then, this joblessness was criminalized. Soviet Jews were stuck in an impossible living situation.

POLAND

n 1968, a series of student-led protests broke out against the Communist government of Poland. The Polish government responded to the instability by scapegoating their now tiny post-Holocaust Jewish community, enacting a a massive “anti-Zionist” propaganda campaign, spreading conspiracies that Zionist were plotting to take over Poland. 

The Polish public was then forced to renounce Zionism, and Jews, whether they identified as Zionists or not, were purged from their positions in the government and other sectors, accused of holding dual loyalties to Israel. Many were arrested, beaten, and tortured. In its efforts, the Polish government created lists of Jews, eerily echoing the policies in Poland under Nazi occupation just several decades prior.

As a result of these campaigns, 15,000 out of 25,000-30,000 Jews in Poland were stripped of their Polish citizenship. The 1968 Polish political crisis is sometimes called a “symbolic pogrom” because Jews experienced such severe disenfranchisement that many took their lives in a string of suicides.

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

According to Iranian-American policy analyst Karim Sadjapour, the three ideological pillars of the Iranian regime are “compulsory hijab, death to America, and death to Israel.” 

Immediately after the Iranian Revolution and the rise of the Islamic Republic to power, the Israeli embassy in Tehran was attacked and turned into the Palestinian embassy. To this day, the Islamic Republic has erected an “Israel annihilation clock” in Tehran, counting down the days to Israel’s supposed destruction. Incitement against “Zionists” and the “Zionist entity” is commonplace in Islamic Republic political discourse; for example, in 2006, then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, “The Zionist regime will be wiped out, and humanity will be liberated.” 

About a month after the Islamic Republic came into power, the Ayatollah Khomeini made an example of a prominent Jewish community leader, Habib Elghanian, by accusing him of “Zionist espionage.”He was arrested, tried in a sham trial that lasted less than 20 minutes, and executed by firing squad.

Incidents such as this one prompted 80% of Iran’s ancient Jewish population to flee the country. Today, the 8,500 Jews still living in Iran are subject to second-class citizenship and are constantly under the suspicion of the regime, for which they must tread carefully, never openly criticizing the regime’s implementation of Sharia Law or revealing any ties -- however tenuous -- to Zionism or the State of Israel.

ETHIOPIA

In the late 1970s, a new Marxist government rose to power in Ethiopia. An antisemitic, anti-government right-wing group began a killing spree in 1978, cutting children’s feet off, bludgeoning babies, castrating men, raping women, torturing elders, and selling women and children into slavery.

Instead of condemning the attacks, the Ethiopian government decided to crack down on its Jewish community. They claimed to do so in the name of combatting “Zionist propaganda.”

Because of the worsening conditions, Ethiopian Jews tried to flee to Israel. As a punishment for “Zionism,” Jews were collectively arrested, tortured, and hung.

LIBYA

After the establishment of the State of Israel, Libya criminalized individuals who communicated with anyone in Israel, creating a difficult situation for Libyan Jews, most of whom have family in the Jewish state. By 1961, all but six members of the ancient Libyan Jewish community were denied Libyan citizenship.

OTHER

A number of other countries, such as Pakistan and Algeria, have passed laws criminalizing Zionism after the entire Jewish community was already expelled or fled from the country. In Pakistan, the criminalization of “Zionism” means that carrying a Jewish symbol like the Star of David can land you in prison.

SOME TAKEAWAYS

(1) Zionism is a political movement…a political movement, which, whether you like it or not, is objectively rooted in 3000 years of Jewish history, culture, and tradition. Anti-Zionists overwhelmingly reject not only Zionism as a political movement, but the 3000 years of Jewish history, culture, and tradition that precede it, because such history, culture, and tradition may provide an “explanation” or “justification” for Zionism. Therefore, it’s no surprise that, for example, a Jewish man in Iraq was charged with the crime of Zionism for owning a Biblical Hebrew inscription or that the Egyptian authorities did not differentiate between Zionist activism and teaching about Judaism. History shows us that crackdowns on “Zionism” always, without fail, turn into crackdowns of any and all expression of Jewish identity (which is precisely why anti-Israel protestors were shouting “we don’t want no Zionists here” in front of a Jewish hospital, which has no specific ties to Israel or Zionism). 

(2) Polls consistently show that between 80-97% of Jews identify as Zionists and/or believe in the State of Israel’s right to exist. There isn’t much difference between marginalizing 80-97% of Jews and marginalizing allJews. 

Perhaps it’s time to consider that the overwhelming majority of Jews identify as Zionists not because we are collectively evil, but rather, based on our own experiences and understanding of our history, identity, and tradition. Perhaps it’s time to consider that you don’t understand how Zionists define their Zionism.

(3) When you don’t want “Zionists” in Israel and you don’t want “Zionists” wherever else it is you live, perhaps the problem is not where we live, but that we live.

Anti-Zionists claim anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and yet, every single "anti-Zionist" campaign in history has resulted in antisemitism.

After everything our own parents and grandparents went through, why should we trust that your anti-Zionist campaign is any different?

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rootsmetals

Jewish historical literacy is knowing that once they start going after “Zionists,” anti-Zionist Jews won’t be spared, either.  So have some self-respect and stop groveling to people who hate everything about your Jewish identity.

If you're going to claim that a country is evil but also threaten to harm people who have left that country, then like... what do you want?

What fucking centrists are you guys meeting? Did you just invent a guy in your head to be mad at?

can we please stop using certain names to mock trans men, nonbinary people and trans women yet. Like putting aside the fact that the names emily, aiden, kai and sock don't make good insults at all, you're shitting on a pretty big portion of the trans community by making these names seem like a bad thing, sorry that not everybody chose a ""special and unique"" name buddy.

can we please talk about how baed-youknowwhats co-opted an intersexist slur yet. i feel like that's something we should be talking about.

perisex people hate us so much they'll co-opt our slurs as names for their hate groups.

I can’t help but think detransitioning is a form of self-harm for some of these “detrans females” swept up in the TERF movement. Some of them were never transgender at all, just exploring their gender and finding they didn’t like it. But some are genuinely miserable identifying as women and are continuing to harm themselves by forcing themselves into being something they can never truly be. I’ve never been detrans or bought into that ideology but I have denied myself gender affirming care as a form of self-harm. As in, I am still a man but I don’t think I deserve to receive the help I need to affirm that.

An incredibly pernicious anti-transmasc argument that keeps making the rounds is that everything we do was plagiarized from trans women.

Coining a term to describe our unique and gendered experiences of oppression? We're just copying trans women.

Complain that we're often rejected from queer circles for our perceived violent maleness? We're just parroting what's happened to trans women.

Forcemasc fetish blogs? We're just copying One Specific Trans Woman-Run Blog that got popular.

These claims are annoying on their own, but together they paint a clear picture of what transandrophobes want you to believe: that trans men and transmascs are incapable of creating anything ourselves, or if we did, it would have nothing in common with what trans women and fems are doing. The function of these claims is to convince you that trans people of seemingly opposite identities are equally opposite in experiences, and any evidence to the contrary is actually cultural appropriation fueled by jealousy.

This is gender essentialism. It's fueled by the radical feminist belief that "woman" and "man" are not so much terms that get abused to justify people's oppression as they are positions in a class conflict, one where All Men seek and/or directly benefit from the oppression of All Women, and that indeed, manhood and womanhood themselves are defined by this relationship to one another. To be a man is to be an entitled parasite; to be a woman is to be an overworked victim.

That notion is racist and transphobic on the face of it, and that is equally obvious in these arguments about trans men - all of which are predicated on the idea that the average trans man is white, well-off, and able to go stealth whenever necessary, and therefore benefits from the maximum amount of male privilege a trans man can be afforded. Following from that logic, any trans man or that you encounter online can be reasonably assumed to share that experience, and any mention he might make of trans men who fail to meet those qualifications is nothing more than a rhetorical cudgel that we use to deny our own privilege.

I'm sure you can see the problem there.

It's not surprising that I typically see these claims made by white women, frequently about Black and Indigenous men. Speaking from the perspective of a white person, it can be very easy to fall into a trap of thinking that our specific experiences with oppression makes us general experts, and grow defensive when someone provides knowledge that shows we were wrong. It can like we're being victimized on the basis of the oppression we do have, and it can be incredibly hard to stop, listen, and admit that we fucked up. This is doubly difficult when the person criticizing us is a member of a demographic that seemingly contributes to the oppression we face.

But just because we think it's happening doesn't always make it so. Yes, there are times when people are acting in bad faith, or overlooking their own areas of ignorance - to err, as they say, is human. But often, we're the ones in the wrong, and need to recognize that fact before acting. So where do we draw the line?

The thing that I've always found crucial is to stop, breathe, and think. We have to honestly ask ourselves whether the other party is saying "your experiences are not real", or just "your understanding of these issues isn't as all-encompassing as you assumed". Simply asking yourself "am I really being harmed, or do I just feel like I'm being harmed?" can often save you from a massive foot-in-mouth situation.

It's necessary to remember that people whose identities are different from our own have their own experience and knowledge. Unless they are coming out and telling us what problems we do or don't have, we need to trust that they're coming from a place of good faith and genuine knowledge, and be willing to listen and change our minds if necessary.

We have to make ourselves comfortable with the fact that we are not always the most, or only, important voice in the room.

That's something that a lot of anti-transmasc women love to remind us, and I wouldn't say they're always wrong. Simply being a man can and often does incentivize people to engage in misogyny, to talk over women and disregard their experiences, when we find them uncomfortable or irrelevant. Again - everybody fucks up sometimes. But it crosses a line when you start demanding that courtesy from others while refusing to extend it back to them; when you treat any information they offer as automatically inferior or entirely invalid, based solely on their perceived relationship to privilege.

In fact, doing so is literally an ad hominem argument.

Aside from that, I must point out that these arguments are being employed specifically to silence trans men's and mascs' voices. This is not an honest misunderstanding; it's an act of profound self-centeredness at best and outright malice at worst. How do I know this? Well, stop me if you've ever heard one of these before:

"Women don't have real interests; they just like silly frivolous things. Men's hobbies are real and meaningful."

"Women are inherently wired to be emotional. Men are logical and level-headed. I'm not sexist, it's just science."

"If you hear a woman say anything smart, you can bet she learned it from a man."

These, too, are silencing tactics, historically (and currently!) used to devalue and silence the voices of women. In fact, they're things that I have personally heard and been affected by, as a trans man who has spent the vast majority of my life being seen and treated as a woman.

I didn't fall for it then, and I sure ain't falling for it now.

Ask your local transandrophobic dirtbag where they were during the ace discourse years ago.

jesus christ

in the wake of genderqueerdykes transmisognistic post shall you not use it as an excuse to be anti good faith identities, or spreading the “transandrophobia truther” theory. Just because someone is a shit person doesn’t mean you get to be horrible back. and if you try arguing with me on this fuck off because i will block u.

It doesn't mean anything btw if you say "terfs dni" but still say all of the same things they do. Just so you know.

Calling me a transandrobro who believes in some kind of ideology is like calling the kid who pointed at the emperor and said "he's not wearing any clothes" a "clothes truther" who "clings to his dogmatic ideology." I do not care about ideology. I am just pointing out that you're fucking lying.

a lot of you take terf arguments but then just replace the identity with transmasc/lesboy/theyfab/etc. and you're not fucking slick about it.