terfs idealize a form of femininity that is a white supremacist’s wet dream. they make fun of “TIMs” as men masquerading as women as evidenced by their broad shoulders, wigs, narrow hips, facial and body hair, musculature and even bone structure (phrenology, anyone?) as if those aren’t the very same characteristics i see on my indigenous and black cis aunties, mothers, and sisters. if you are not white, lithe, and barely hairy you will never fit into their idea of womanhood! the same rhetoric that excludes and polices trans women is a threat to all women of color, cis or trans.
terf ideology is incapable of examining the multitude of relationships we have to girlhood, womanhood, and motherhood because it is an ideology fueled and sharpened by white supremacy. it is an ideology with a terminal and suicidal end if you are not white.
I see this image reposted without credit a lot. This is art by Giraffalope, they rely on their online sales for income. Please support original creators.
i love being dm. it means i can ask the most innocuous questions totally unprompted to my players like “hey what’s your bard’s swimming speed?” and get this reaction every time
“You touch it? Ok cool. Remind me, who is your God?”
Also the form of estrogen they prescribed trans women in the 90s, Premarin, looked like this.
And lest there be any remaining doubt.. remember the blue pill? The pill Neo could have taken to forget the truth, bury his troubles and go back to living a normal life, without fearing a system that wanted to destroy him? The pill that was easy, perhaps cowardly according to some, but comfortable?
Here’s Prozac.
For a trans woman in the 90s, where the choice was be safe, suppress, cope, and pretend everything is still how it was, or embrace the danger, accept the truth, realize your full potential, and transition into a world that still thinks you’re a joke and would rather have you dead…. well. The metaphor is pretty fucking clear.
Y’all
Lana came out as a woman after Speed Racer in 2008, and Lily eight years later after the release of Jupiter Ascending (2016), so if you see original home copies of the Matrix (pre-2008), they are referred to as the WachowskiBrothers on it. It was a branding thing, like the Coen Brothers. That’s how they were called, because they were still presenting as male to the industry and the industry sold them as a creative unit.
I remember after Lana came out, the boxes switched to calling them just The Wachowskis, so I imagine now it’s the Wachowski Sisters.
So, yes, they’ve always been sisters, but if you didn’t know that, it’s not your fault. It’s been a long process and I’m glad they did it on their terms in their time.
Before Lily came out but after Lana did they were often credited as
The Wachowskis siblings. So some places may still refer to them as such.
I was actually unaware that Lily was also trans so thank you for that info!
One of the most healing things I’ve strove (striven?) to do in my life is viewing sex as just another thing people do, among a host of other things like eating and pooping and playing with cats.
Our entire society, feminists and puritans alike, pushes the idea that sex is uniquely powerful and dangerous, capable of inflicting The Worst Trauma or the Highest Fulfillment, and that’s…just flat out untrue. Other experiences can cause similar trauma: violence, disasters, war, instability. Other experiences can result in transcendent pleasure: trance states, live music, non-sexual intimacy, tattoos.
I think this is where the disconnect in perception about sex positivity comes from, because the phrase itself makes people who already view sex as being uniquely powerful think sex positivity means viewing sex as uniquely good, when actually…it’s mostly about taking sex off that pedestal. Normalizing sex. Making it into just another thing people do. Because that’s the first step in making sure people can engage with sex on their own terms in a healthy way.
Taking sex off its cultural pedestal was the thing that allowed me to overcome the deeply-instilled shame I developed from being raised within Christian purity culture, and from being queer, and from existing as a woman. I think a failure to do that, in feminist circles, often leads to an overblowing of the (very real) harm that sex has the potential to do at the exclusion of other problems facing women and other marginalized groups, which often leads to more shaming rhetoric - just rhetoric that shames different people for different reasons.
Sex is not the enemy and it’s not our savior. It’s just one more thing people can do with their bodies.
