When A Man Does Something Wrong, Whose Fault Is It?

"is xyz rape, is abc rape" is just the wrong way to approach discussing rape as a feminist. what you're doing when you're concerned about absolute parameters is centering what we should consider allowable by men. why center that. it's not that "everything" is rape, it's that you need to completely shift your paradigm. you need to consider what it means for women to move in a world where their sexual violation is essentially a given and up for negotiation. what does discussing rape actually look like when completely, one hundred percent centering the experiencing and feelings of violated women and completely disregarding what would be helpful for men to think is "only so bad."

That is every single TIM (and lesser amounts of TIFs) that demands access to spaces, all the way down to demanding their choice of pronouns.

It's all very well and good being "kind" or thinking "I'll be respectful if that person's respectful," but at the end of the day, if they're AGPs (or the rarer female equivalent), what they're doing is forcing you to become part of their fetish play. Later, when alone, they'll revisit the sound of your voice, or they'll screenshot the image of your text, and masturbate to the memory of it, because they made you play along.

It's not only the fetish of being seen as a woman for those AGPs - it's also an exhibitionism fetish. Strangers being forced to play along into their fantasies are another layer of this.

There's a reason that it's marketed as "gender euphoria" instead of a cleaner, more sterile idea of "when I'm referred to as the pronouns I feel, I don't hurt the way I normally do." It's a state of pleasure. Whether it's the literal pleasure of playing a part, or the pleasure of having such control over others to the point that they deny science and their own eyes, it doesn't matter.

It's not just misogyny. It's sexual harassment and abuse.

Dear misandrists,

In case you haven't heard it today, you're all hostile, aggressive, psychotic and a threat to men everywhere.

As an indigenous person, every time a white trans person talks about their “genocide” I’m gonna just start posting facts about an actual genocide that happened in America.

Weird question but since you're bi and not dating men, do you still allow yourself to fancy them?

Absolutely! I feel zero guilt for feelings of attraction. I spent way too long feeling awful for being bisexual to play that game. If I see a man I find attractive, I enjoy the sight. I don’t pursue relationships with men because of the risks related to domestic relationships with them, but if a hot guy is in a movie? If I see an attractive man at the park? I don’t try and police the natural attraction I feel. Nor do I feel guilty.

Same with women. I no longer torture myself for seeing a beautiful woman and feeling attracted to her. It’s not automatically predatory or objectifying to just feel my feelings. Nor is it a betrayal of my politics or lifestyle to feel attraction to men.

Like Velvet...

Bristol, Vermont

every woman thinks she's evil and irredeemable for making a few avoidable mistakes while every man goes about his day thinking he's normal after having emotionally tortured at least 5 different women

t4t as in terf4terf