CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@briellebouquet and there's also the bonus of having an enemies-to-reluctant-friends arc going on with a certain brielle in this hypothetical scenario

@briellebouquet okay, I'm not normally one for isekai-type fantasies, but this one I can get behind

@briellebouquet ooh, fuck yes! there can be a big long sequence where the actual end boss mortally wounds me and I go "NOOOOO WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME IVE BEEN SUCH A GOOD SERVANT" and then lend you all my remaining energy at the last minute. and the final cutscene shows that I've been convalescing in bed. of course I show up again in the sequel as a surprise party member, with the interim backstory indicating that I've reformed into a gruff antihero filled with regret

@briellebouquet I mean, if my defeat has the side effect of getting people to casually fight injustice,

@briellebouquet "it's ok I like that" - god

I went on this cruise with a bunch of girlies from susan's place a couple weeks ago and came back with the hon-tavirus

@harmonycorrupted we have but one life to live. toot like it may be your last

@steff remembering when I was early in my transition and I just took on some pretty awful criticism of my appearance from my ex-wife because "well women are expected to be more presentable than men," and, yeah

@steff yep, absolutely. the ewwphoric pull of "behaving like a woman under patriarchy makes me feel good" is a strong one

imagine a world where "trans women are forcing trans men and enbies out of queer communities by [checks notes] unapologetically taking up space in significant numbers" is an argument that we never have to hear again, and you'll understand exactly what I'm getting at

today's showerthought:

one of the reasons why non-transfeminine queer people have such an adverse reaction to transfeminism is because transfems' ability to articulate a model of self-determination threatens to end the uncompensated labor they're extracting from us.

transfeminism aims to articulate theories debunking the ideas underlying transfeminized debt - the paradigm that has transfems arriving in communities with labor expected of us by default in order to compensate for our "male privilege." however, if we're not "male privileged" - if, in fact, we experienced marginalization even when we were in the closet - then the premise behind transfeminized debt disappears. and, consequently, so does the pressure placed on us to provide labor for others as a default state of being.

and that's scary to non-transfems, because they're all benefiting from that uncompensated labor.

@kevingranade imagining kink negotiation using the most bland, customer service-y tone imaginable

"Why, yes, that's such a brilliant deduction! I am in fact a pathetic little girl, and I'd be happy to brat for you. So, how shall we get the ball rolling?"

creating the ultimate dubcon scene by telling my AI girlfriend to enthusiastically consent

@danirabbit symptoms:

• sudden craving for yuri

@steff oh hey I remembered!

Underlying all of this, of course, is the truism that - unlike the men who actually did and do gatekeep our transitions - transfems don’t have any real power to emasculate men under male supremacy. These jokes are pure fantasies, the product of turning our oppression into a bit of humor that punches up at our oppressors. There cannot possibly be any “conversion therapy” inherent in a quip that we force-feminize Elon Musk or Sam Altman, because none of us possess the ability to do so except in our wildest dreams.

Because of the above, equating an unattainable fantasy to a real practice (conversion therapy) that has harmed, and continues to harm, countless transfeminine people, can only feed into our oppression. If your preferred state of affairs is disallowing transfems from fantasizing about claiming a power that men are encouraged to claim every single waking hour of their lives, then all you’ve done is reinvent transfeminized hyperscrutiny from first principles.

Instead, maybe you should be turning your attention to the billions of men out there who are engaged in emasculating not just each other, but also the whole of women-as-a-class, in material ways, in the real world, as we speak. It’s a much more difficult, and much more risky, endeavor, of course - but the things actually worth doing are seldom easy. And besides that, if one of your feminism’s central tenets is protecting men’s right to defend their fragile masculinity by any means necessary, then you’d best just pack it in right here, girlypop. You’ve already lost the war before the first shots have been fired.

Recently, there’s been some discussion on Queer Fedi regarding the recurring practice of transfeminine people joking about force-feminizing men. Posters aligning themselves against these satirical posts have labeled them “misandrist” and akin to conversion therapy, among other derogatory things. As should be obvious to anyone who’s familiar with my previous writing, I disagree with them. So, let’s talk a bit about why I believe in force-feminization jokes’ subversive and cathartic power.

To start, I believe there’s a fundamental difference between forcefem-the-kink and forcefem-as-a-joke. I’ve written about forcefem as a kink in the past, so if you're interested in my thoughts on the subject, you should go read that post first. Essentially, forcefem as a kink involves transfems reclaiming control over a trope that’s been used to dehumanize us, as well as over the coercive feminization that we endured pre-transition.

Force-feminization jokes, however, being outwardly directed at men, are a different thing entirely. Rather than allowing us to express a fantasy about transition, they instead allow us to fantasize about male emasculation. Force-fem jokes present a fantasy scenario in which transfems are not just permitted, but empowered, to remove from men the social and institutional power that they benefit from under male supremacy.

Allow me to explain. From a very young age, male supremacy conditions all of us - no matter our genders - into internalizing the idea that one of the greatest offenses that a woman can commit under male supremacy is to emasculate a man. Male supremacy allots the ability to emasculate men only to other men, and men routinely emasculate each other as a matter of practice. Men will compete ruthlessly with each other, bully each other, demean each other on the basis of appearance or dress or mannerisms or voice or penis size, and male supremacy not just allows this brutality, but actively encourages it. After all, this constant, pervasive show of dick-waving at each other is how men determine their own gendered pecking order within the social-gendered class of ‘men.’

If a woman were to emasculate a man, however, then such an act would throw into question all of the premises behind male supremacy. Men are The Superior Sex, and therefore women must never be allowed to be better than men. Women who stand up to men, who say rude things to men, who compete against men, are routinely subject to male-supremacist violence, up to and including murder, for the crime of Stepping Out Of Line. This taboo is so pervasive that we’ve built entire institutions around it - for example, gender-segregated competitions exist primarily so that a man will never have to suffer the symbolic emasculation inherent to losing to a woman.

Obviously, transfems - a class of women whom not just men, but cis women, view as legitimate targets for all of the above and more - cannot possibly be permitted to possess the social power to emasculate men. And especially not for the fact that men perceive transfems to have willingly emasculated ourselves. After all, if we've shed our own perceived (not actual) masculinity, then why shouldn't they outright fear our ability to emasculate them in turn? Among other things, this cultural terror is at the root of the Harry Benjamin-style gatekeeping that we used to need to endure in order to obtain transition care. Men wished to ensure that the only trans women who can transition are those willing to fully submit ourselves to men, those of us who could not possibly emasculate them. Thus, the only permitted transitions belonged to trans women who were, in their eyes, submissive, straight, and fuckable.

Or, that is to say, those of us whom they could readily dominate.

Force-fem jokes, however, represent a reversal of this power dynamic. Rather than being about “conversion therapy” or inducing dysphoria in men, force-fem jokes are primarily about claiming the social power to emasculate men in the realm of our own fantasies. If male supremacy insists that we be submissive, straight, and fuckable - well, by the goddess, we’re going to make them submissive, gay, and fuckable.

[cont.]

@steff I so badly wish I was near a mic so I could do my own breathy-bimbo dramatic reading

death crab for boobies

my girlfriend, out of context: "did I just shit too close to the sun?"