PSA: Bullying someone to the point of suicide is morally no different to murder. No art could ever be as “problematic” as the actions of that community against this young woman. If you participated in this, and her suicide attempt had been successful, then her blood would have been on your hands. Shame on you.
I usually stay out of this sort of thing, but I felt compelled to comment on this because it hit close to home. See, I’ve made my fair share of sick, gross art that some people hated. But I love it, my friends love it, and I made it for us, so I’m fine with other people not liking it. Same goes for Rebecca Sugar’s pervy Ed, Edd and Eddy fanart she did when she was 16. It’s for her, not you. Really, there are two ways to respond to a piece of art you don’t like:
1.) Stop looking at it
2.) Make a better piece of art.
That’s it. Those are the ONLY TWO responses. It’s not your job to police other artists. Let other people do their thing. Think more, make more, react less.
In comics and animation, I’ve noticed something I call the “Dolores Umbridge Paradox”. That is, the people who’re obsessed with sick, gross, dark humour tend to be the biggest sweethearts in real life. The people who only want to see cute, innocent characters getting up to cute, innocent stuff usually turn out to be the nastiest, most vindictive shitheads. Maybe your experience has been different, but it’s something I’ve found to be generally true.
Having been both the caller-outer and the called-out in situations like this, I think I can reflect on this with some experience. If you are truly an ethical person, and you believe yourself to be on the right side of history, think about what you’re doing before you start a campaign of harassment against an artist like Zamii. I’d like the people involved in this recent shitshow (and any future shitshow) to ask themselves the following questions:
-Do you believe yourself to be affecting positive change, or are you just getting caught up in the thrill of taking someone down?
-Is this Steven Universe fan artist (or whoever) really the worst person you could be going after right now, or just the easiest?
-And what’s worse- their art, or being complicit in the act of ruining another person’s life?
Again: No art could ever be as problematic as a thousand people bullying someone to the point of suicide.
I know there’s a few people out there trying to dismiss this because of the validity of the girl attempting suicide.
It doesn’t matter.
Harassment, doxxing and bullying is still a rampant problem. I don’t know Zamii, nor do I plan to read up on what suddenly got her center stage. I follow other artists that nearly get hate mail every single time they upload anything.
Things as harmless as a usual ship, to new head cannons, to yes, character designs.
So even if Zamii ‘isn’t’ valid, there is no doubt in my mind that there’s another artist out there that is going through that. And if it is, I wish her a healthy recovery and good health.
Enough is enough.
There’s also people trying to dismiss it because apparently it’s normal for a fandom but that doens’t make it okay either. The people who pretend that nothing is happening are just as to blame as the people actually doing it.
okay, most of what i do re: harry potter is criticism, and hp is flawed in such a number of ways, but sometimes i just sit here and
i mean, you all have a comprehension of just how drastically harry potter changed literature, yeah? like. it revitalized it. it blew the literary scene apart. the new york times had to create a separate bestseller’s list for children’s lit just because harry potter existed. harry potter changed reading.
so many people on tumblr were born in the ‘90s. when the first book came out, most of us couldn’t read. but we grew up in a world where everyone, everyone, everyone was reading harry potter, no matter how old they were; we grew up in a world where the most popular story in the entire world was a fantasy children’s book.
it’s sort of difficult to grasp, sometimes, the extent to which harry potter is not just a book. the extent to which what is basically a series of fun, interesting, and fairly good novels is such an enormous, enormous part of our lives, a cultural touchstone, a truly universal reference point, something so many people have shaped their lives around, a foundation for all of the stories we would read and watch for the rest of our lives– for so many of us, the first books we ever loved
the extent to which so many of us can’t call ourselves “fans” of harry potter, because it would like being a “fan” of, like, having lungs.
it’s not even about liking it or disliking it. it’s just a part of us.
Harry potter is the default fandom that everyone is in.
this is something I genuinely want a TWERF to answer:
because I’ve never gotten an answer for it, and it has never made sense to me:
if oppression is merely sex based rather than gender based, why are trans women/trans feminine people oppressed and attacked far more than trans men/trans masculine people? why is transphobia directed at trans women far more heinous than transphobia directed at trans men?
I’m genuinely curious to know the TWERF position on this
I don’t think any radfem would deny that trans women are also oppressed. We would classify that as an offshoot of homophobia and misogyny.
However radical feminism is there for the specific fight for female bodied people under patriarchy. Trans men are female so they have a place. Gender doesn’t come into it.
I’ve spent a lot of time looking at this before coming to have a firm stance. I couldn’t find anything that showed trans women are more oppressed and attacked than trans men. In fact quite the opposite. I can go and find the receipts but I have a feeling you will dismiss them. That’s what usually happens. Sorry to be jaded at this point.
Does that position make sense? I’m happy to expound. Thanks for asking the question!
The disproportionate number of attacks on transwomen by men is a result of the disproportionate number of transwomen in prostitution. Oppression in every society is based on sex, class, and race. How can you not be aware of this? Gender is simply one of the ways the oppression is enforced.
ah, bullshit answers and transmisogynistic stereotypes, exactly what I expected, okay. so no real answers, then.
@tehbewilderness, quick question, what then about all the murdered trans women and trans girls who weren’t into sex work? Just flukes or…?
Oh, and @badkittyradkitty what about the trans women who aren’t experiencing homophobia because they’re straight? Straight people can’t experience homophobia, almost like trans women are experience their own brand of hate crimes. What ever could we call that, though? /sarcasm
I was being genuine. I don’t know what stereotypes I used. I think it’s good to talk this out and listen to each other, if you want me to rephrase I will. I don’t know what I said wrong.
@masked-fox-creations hmm I’m heterosexual so I look forward to being corrected if I got that wrong.
I thought that the oppression and attacks on gender non confirming men comes from a society that cannot tolerate homosexuality and strictly enforces gender roles. So if a non passing trans woman is perceived as a man they are punished.
But I won’t argue on that point. I’m saying that they are oppressed too.
The point is that trans women face transmisogyny, not homophobia unless they also happen to not be heterosexual.
Also, don’t say female bodied people because that is transphobic language. You would including someone like me in that, even though I’m not a woman. Trans men are not female. Trans women are not male. Nonbinary people are not either one.
There’s plenty of statistics out there for the violence faced against trans women–the rates of rape, murder, and suicide are high. Now, that’s not saying it’s low for trans men, but there’s a large stigma against trans women. And you don’t need to pull out receipts because I know what I faced when I identified as a trans guy, before I realized I was genderfluid. I faced misplaced misogyny, I faced first hand hate crimes, I faced sexual assault, I faced so called friends outing me against my will and trying to tell me I wasn’t trans.
And I know as bad as everything I’ve faced, I’m still statistically safer than if I was a trans woman.
But what really matters here, whether trans women or trans men face more overall violence–terfs do not care about trans people. They hide behind words like ‘female-bodied’ and ‘biological facts’ without truly understand biology and society.
Well we are at an impasse.
Radfems do NOT want to hurt trans people. We are against all forms of oppression. We think they should be protected in law.
But yes we believe in biological sex and the fact that female bodied people are specifically oppressed due to their ability (or perceived ability) to birth babies.
There is a difference between females and males.
Why is THIS what trans activists are pushing against and so angry about? Why aren’t you using this energy to go up against the people actually causing harm to trans people? Males. Men. The patriarchy.
Why are you trying to control our beliefs instead?
Do you honestly think women have never harmed a trans person?
I have been harmed by cis women constantly. I came out to what I thought were friends. They constantly invalidated my existence, they constantly mocked me. They blasted down any language I tried to use to describe myself. They outed me without permission which could have gotten me seriously harmed.
As someone who is ‘female-bodied’ fuck you. You’re really not helping anyone but yourselves. You’re not helping trans men, you’re not helping afab nonbinaries, and you aren’t helping trans women.
Yes, we could talk about how afab individuals, regardless of gender, face certain types of oppression. But when we have this discussion we cannot ignore trans women or throw them under the bus, which is what terfs do.
This all goes for intersex individuals, too.
Do you think this is all trans activists rally against? This is all we’re fighting? There are a lot of battles, trust me–and we will fight each and every one.
We are angry because you use language that is transphobic, ignore our concerns, speak over us, and try to act like it’s only men who ever harm us.
Why aren’t you using your energy to fight the patriarchy instead of talking over trans people and ignoring our concerns? Why do you think your ‘beliefs’ are more important than trans lives? Why do you think your ‘beliefs’ are the only right ones? Why do you think it’s okay to use outdated and incorrect language to describe people that actively tell you to stop?
“Why are you trying to control our beliefs instead?” this line is really gross, and I am supremely tired of TERFs acting like people calling out their transphobia is thought policing of some kind.
Excuse me while I come in and paste my argument that the issue is an issue of shaming femininity itself, not just women.
Ahem:
We as a society have been deeming ‘feminine’ as weak, silly, and laughable, while anything masculine is praised. We try to encourage women to be stronger and more bold, but we don’t encourage men to be more sensitive and vulnerable.
This is where we have extremist feminists screaming that men shouldn’t touch anything that is meant to be ‘for women’. They don’t realize they are villainizing femininity and embracing masculinity. These women are doing as our society taught them: They are acting in a way they were taught was strong. To act more masculine, essentially. We shouldn’t be talking about man and woman as two binary defined things. We need to start looking at things as masculine and feminine, and praise both as strengths but also be willing to look at the flaws of both as well.
This whole thing about men in dresses being ‘offensive’. It has nothing to do with transphobia. This is gender misogyny. It wouldn’t be offensive if we just stopped and said ‘there is nothing wrong with a man in a dress’ as a society. And it’s weird because a long time ago, it was wrong for a woman to dress as a man, but men dressing as women was standard in theater which was considered a sophisticated thing.
Somewhere along the line, that changed. Somewhere along the line, women learned that in order to be strong, they needed to be considered able to do all the things men can do. They are now equals in that they can wear pants, and they can act masculine, they can hold that difficult job and support a family on their own, they can be heroes.
But because they used masculinity to create ‘equality’, femininity was sacrificed. Men could not be equals to women because masculinity for both genders has become so highly praised that they FEAR being anything but masculine. We want men to understand women more, and we want to all be equals, but how can we be when we won’t allow people to embrace feminine things no matter their gender?
Why can’t we try to encourage everyone to have a good balance of both sides and that either side is just as admirable and just as strong as the other?
Instead of screeching about a man wearing a dress being offensive to transpeople, maybe you should be screeching about how colors, outfits, and choices on appearance need to stop being so heavily gendered. And fight for the fact that there is nothing wrong in the masculine embracing the feminine.
Also clearing things up, this was originally a post about crossdressing in the media and not transwomen, but the same thing applies.
Men feel threatened by what they think is a man giving up his masculinity. They were taught that masculinity is the most important thing a man should hold on to.
It is meanwhile considered strong and admirable for a female bodied person to become masculine. But we still have oppression. We still get shamed for originally being female sexed. We still go through being treated like shit for not being the women that men want us to be.
Assault on transwomen and transmen is most commonly committed by men.
Men who A: Feel that men should never be feminine
B: Feel that a woman’s body should be his to access even if they identify as a man. (Rape is often included with assault of transmen, followed by murder) [I’m not TERF however so of course I’m more logical about this]
Not only that, but there are radical feminists who refuse to acknowledge that trans women are women and condemn trans men for “giving up their femininity”. Those kind of feminists inadvertently dumb down women to being nothing but a vagina and ovaries.
Send me to Mars with party supplies before next august 5th
No guys you don’t understand.
The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.
So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.
This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.
That’s not sad, that’s awesome.
*this is different from the first song ever played on mars (Reach For The Stars by Will.I.Am) which happened the year before, singing is different from playing
I am Silver Tongue, I am an artist. I have many characters and you can check out my art in the art tag. I occasionally practice witchcraft though I don't do anything too complicated. I am girl 2 and don't know what else to put here.
