Thorns

TERFs, Trans Mascs, and Two Steve Feminism

2025-01-05T05:46:51Z

I really liked this article:

TERFs, Trans Mascs, and Two Steve Feminism In which A Man has an Opinion about Feminism, with Mixed Results.

It's about how a lot of "trans inclusive" cis feminists are terrible about trans masc people in ways which ultimately stem from transphobia and hurt all trans people. It's not perfect, but does capture that specific problem well.

I think the tight focus is overall a good thing but there's a few places the argument would have benefited from more mentions of the connection to broader issues with sexism/transphobia etc. Also I disagreed with some parts.

Some further thoughts:
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Your New Favourite Youtubers Part 3

2023-12-14T07:51:33Z

Even more queer youtube essays! I gave up on a lot of these, which is definitely more a function of having seen so many and wanting to be Done than a sign of the quality actually dropping.

BUT NOW I AM DONE. Watching (parts of) all these videos was a worthwhile experience, and I did actually find some new youtubers I like, but I am still glad to be finished.

Part 1

Part 2

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Your New Favourite Youtubers Part 2

2023-12-08T13:49:31Z

More queer youtube essays!

Part 1

Part 3

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Your New Favourite (queer) Youtubers: First ten videos

2023-12-07T01:38:14Z

I've been going through the Your New Favourite Youtubers list by Kat that hbomberguy linked to in a recent video, in an effort to support good queer youtube essayists. It's been interesting enough I thought I'd write some short reviews for anyone who finds the sheer number of videos overwhelming.

I used rich text so I could cut and paste the links, which has made the formatting a MESS, sorry.

Part 2

Part 3

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On the multitides of "asexuality"

2023-11-19T03:32:55Z

I keep writing out responses to posts on tumblr, making them a draft while I think about it, then never posting anything. So I'm going to make more of an effort to post this stuff to dreamwidth instead.

From this tumblr post:

the ideas that “libido and attraction can be separate and for many aces they are”, “aces who have and enjoy sex are still ace” and “aces who do not have sex and don’t want to shouldn’t be pressured” and “you should accept aces regardless of their sexual behavior” can and should coexist

ok this is a bit of a half-formed thought but it just occurred to me to compare this to my experiences when I identified as a wlw, and some general thoughts I've been having about how people treat bisexuality as "gay mixed with straight" rather than it's own experience.
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Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading (Masterlist)

2021-07-02T13:33:57Z

Or: You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Post Is about You

About the original essay, and the point of all this

I came across the idea of reparative reading on Tumblr and was immediately taken with it. As described in this article:

A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader.

Unfortunately all the discussion I could find was either unhelpfully vague, or in the form of (very positive) reactions to the writings of the creator of the term, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Specifically, to her 2003 essay collection Touching Feeling and the essay "Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is about You".

Just as I was deciding if I really wanted to pay $25 US for a book I probably wouldn't be able to understand, I came across the original version of the essay, created in 1997 as the introduction to a book of queer readings, and offered online for free by the publisher: Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is about You.

I found a online version of the 2003 version of the essay, from a brief skim it's basically identical, minus the parts about the book of essays it used to be an introduction to.

Anyway! I started reading and it was interesting but I started getting overwhelmed by all the unfamiliar terms and concepts, and so I'm going to try summarise it as I go like I did with confusing academic papers during my Phd. Which may or may or not end up helpful for anyone else but will hopefully at least help me!

I was going to do this as one post but then looked at how long it had gotten for just the first 7 pages of 35 and went AH. OK THEN. TIME FOR A MASTERLIST.
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Thoughts on men writing f/f, and people writing for their kinks

2021-04-04T02:09:31Z

I've decided to go through my tumblr drafts, which are full of posts I felt too nervous to post publicly in case I got reblogged into Discourse, and see which are worth posting here. In most cases I feel like I didn't quite capture my full thoughts on the matter, but sometimes you gotta let yourself be a bit incoherent to flail towards understanding.

So, let's begin with a post about men writing f/f! *starts out intending some mild edits for clarity, ends up doubling the length*

The original post:

People comparing men’s fetishization of lesbians to slash fandom is always so funny like imagine a world where large amounts of men did get extremely emotionally invested in potential romantic relationships between fictional women

I keep seeing posts like this and...that is a thing that exists? As a group they tend to have the same male gazey sexism issues as male het shippers, but they still very much care about the romances.
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Miscellaneous links

2020-09-24T06:40:22Z

Dream Boy And The Poison Fans (Transcript) The connection between Xiao Zhan, the actor who played the lead in The Untamed, the AO3 getting banned in China, and the related back-and-forth of fan-groups attacking each other. ffa has some folk who blame him/his management a lot more for what happened (and some who fiercely disagree), I am way too ignorant about China to weigh in but it's all very interesting.

Beyond Authenticity: the Spectre of Han Hegemony On the simplistic discussions around Mulan.

China bars media coverage of Disney's 'Mulan' after Xinjiang backlash.

To me it feels like a lot of Western companies have this overly simplistic, and often racist, idea of what it means to Appeal to Chinese Sensibilities, and end up alienating everyone. I've been getting into Chinese web-novels lately (specifically The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, the m/m fantasy novel that was adapted into the Untamed) and even just from that can tell the situation over there with censorship and social attitudes is really complex.

I know I’m late The author of 'Love, Simon' talks about how being put in the 'problematic straight person profiting from queer experiences' box made it incredibly difficult and painful to navigate figuring out and being open about her bisexuality. 'Own Voices' is all well and good but people apply it in overly rigid ways that end up hurting marginalised writers who don't fit the narrow expectations on Diverse Writing.

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How we talk about the intersection of Corporate Art and Queerness

2020-01-26T14:10:28Z

This is inspired by two flawed essays I read recently:

BaitWorks – How DreamWorks Engaged in Predatory Marketing Towards LGBT Fans

I Don't Wanna Grow Up (And Neither Can You)

Both make some good points about how media corporations manipulate fans with half-assed tokenistic gestures towards inclusivity. The second focusses more on how fans are complicit in this: the way bland, heteronormative blockbusters like the MCU get a free pass while messy indie queer women are attacked for actually trying to express themselves.

But they both also act like queer creators working within the corporate system to make moderately queer, if somewhat corporate art like Steven Universe or She-ra is exactly equivalent to entirely bland, heteronormative corporate works which only make tokenistic gestures towards queerness. Also they both erase the specific issues around non-binary representation and creators.

And I feel like this is part of a broader problem in how we discuss the intersection of Corporate Art and Queerness.
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Links Post May 2019

2019-05-04T10:40:00Z

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Links: Queer issues

2019-02-28T02:29:19Z

We are not the same – on Raphael, Jughead and Aro/Ace representation

stop pitting detransitoners against happily transitioned people

Physician, know thy own queer history
"A reflection on current sex-negative and exclusionary trends in LGBTQ+ discourse as the unfortunate consequence of 20 years of campaigning for same-sex marriage and legal gender transition, and therefore a focus on respectability politics and neglect of sex positivity and sex education" I think I linked to the dreamwidth post because of the comments.

Issues with "women and nonbinary" submission calls

The History of Homosexuality in Japan: Part 1

Non binary characters in Japanese media

When making inclusion resources for women and nonbinary folk, please consider including trans men Note that not all trans men feel this way! But it's a point of view worth noting.

(yes I did come across some of these researching Hakuoki fic, shh)

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Links: Representation and Media

2019-02-26T00:23:52Z

The Story is a Spell. The Story is a Curse.
It matters who writes us.

Shock and Care: an essay about art, politics and responsibility

Otaku Blog And Proud
A Japanese woman's complex feelings on Japanese media.

Slash and sex scenes

MM Romance Readership Survey: Results

(Really wishing dreamwidth had a queue/delayed posting right now)

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