Trans Megathread for the Week of 10/21 to 10/27
Trans Megathread for the Week of 10/21 to 10/27
Final Fantasy XI
Final Fantasy XI is the eleventh numbered installment in the… Okay, you know what it is, I’m just going to tell you about one of the storylines!
During the Wings of the Goddess expansion, adventurers will be sent back in time to experience the events of the Crystal War, a cataclysmic event that is the foundation for conflicts of the modern-day timeline. Should an adventurer choose to serve the Kingdom of San d’Oria, they will be immersed in the story of the Young Griffons—a group of children who would see themselves knights, many of whom grow into prominent characters later in life.
Among the Young Griffons, the player will find Bistillot, a shy boy who doesn’t like to be seen. With his penchant for engineering, shy demeanor, and lack of combat potential, Bistillot prefers to spend his time inside of an orcish war machine that he was able to repair to working condition.
He is often seen before he is heard, with his signature phrase, “HAAAALLOOOOOOOOO” being used to hail the adventurer. Through the course of the story, Bistillot finds his way, even contributing to the war effort with his engineering skills.
However, when another member of the Young Griffons is kidnapped and taken to the present day, the adventurer must return to the present day and reunite with the Young Griffons’ present selves! The adventurer’s first contact in the present day is Bistillot. When the adventurer hears the signature “HAAAALLOOOOOOO,” Bistillot approaches the player, but what the player sees is… a woman?? She introduces herself as Bostilette, a “friend of Bistillot.”
After the rescue mission, Bostilette comes clean. She is, of course, the very same Bistillot who was a little boy twenty years earlier. She explains that she was very sick as a baby, so her parents gave her a boy’s name so that she would be stronger and survive the illness. Once she overcame the illness, she was comfortable to reclaim her name and gender. Well, that closes the book on that story, except… I’ve decided that’s bullshit!
I have unilaterally decided that Bostilette is trans, the sickness she had was dysphoria, she stayed in the orcish war machine because she was an egg, and I hope you all agree!
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i guess i just have a bad brain or something
bad vibes
do I even know anything? how the fuck am i supposed to trust myself. apparently i have a problematic take but i can't tell how? i genuinely can't understand the counterargument people are giving to it. i don't want someone here to give one because obvs if it's problematic it's on me to educate myself and not force people who are being hurt to hold my hand through things. but now i feel like i don't know anything anymore
nvm i figured it out
it's about the julia serano struggle session, this is for anyone else confused like me
Serano posted cringe by implicitly referring to genderqueer/gendernonconforming/"gender-fucking" people as the cause of a specific form of TERF rhetoric ("trans women are reinforcing patriarchal femininity and norms and the gender binary"). she may have experienced someone genderqueer friend repeating that weird take to her, and even experienced discrimination due to that take (but almost definitely not from fellow genderqueer people or the same person who would have repeated it to her) but that doesn't excuse saying it as if they were the originator of the take. What she's insinuating is not something that's part of any non-binary or genderqueer theory I know of, and after having researched her sources for examples of people having this take and seeing exclusively TERF books and outdated colonialist texts, I can only assume she failed to due her intellectual due diligence by attempting to drill to the root perpetrators of the issue, and blamed it on individual members of a marginalized group instead. (Despite even mentioning this root perpetrators AS perpetrators multiple times!)
That is absurdly gross of her and I apologize for my staunch defense.
tangentially related vent (CW insane levels of TERFism)
i saw the absurdly terminally online "baedal" movement post and while I do think it's a significant issue and everyone involved in that "movement" should probably be forced to touch grass for a period of at least three months, the post itself isn't really innocent either. There's a really weird use of a super weird transphobic source and I have no idea why they chose this source in particular or just didn't mention it.
Direct quote from the source:
and then you have the earliest mtf theorists on tumblr like radtransfem and ciscritical-not-cisphobic – drawn to radical/lesbian feminism – around whom the baeddel group coalesced and their ideology developed, i.e. “radical transfeminism.” in a sense this is also “don’t identify as a man,” but implicit, and not just minor male guilt. it’s hatred of men, alienation from men, tons of trauma/bullying from men, hating oneself for being a man, thinking all men are evil and should die in combination with severe psychological problems etc etc. and at this point just attracting highly traumatized individuals rather than opportunistic abusers who see a system ripe for abuse.
of course, by investing their emotional energies and trauma into developing an ideology where the reality of their maleness and male socialization can be denied (thus preventing real healing) by weaponizing “cis/dfab privilege,” trans men’s supposed male privilege, “transmisogyny,” “sex is a social construct,” etc. in order to silence females, they produce a powerful ideological structure which can render sex-based oppression and power dynamics invisible, drawing in shrewd opportunistic abusers (exactly what myc invited, basically).
as you can see this is absolutely foul, horrific shit. I have no idea how they got away with having this as a source for their blogpost. And it's unfortunate because all of the actual blog post is pretty reasonable, and I think it's important to point weird reactionary movements like this out and show why they're wrong. But the presence of this source concerns me a lot.
I suppose you could read this as a criticism of the "transitioning even if you're not trans is worth it to not be a man" weird fucking take. But, uh, I don't think so
Another quote from the same blog that made that "source":
Hi! Here’s how I answered this ask a year and a half ago. I mostly agree with what I wrote there, except that I have become a lot more dubious about the existence of “resocialization” in the interim. I used to think it was really uncommon, but possible. Now, I don’t think it’s possible. I think some trans people (certainly not the majority, but a minority who are able to pass over extended periods) are able to publicly appear to have been resocialized as the opposite sex, in some contexts. But I think when I initially wrote about this, I underestimated the extent to which our formative years literally form us.
A simpler way to put it is, we as trans women may think that living “as women” for a certain amount of time will make us “effectively women”. That’s what I thought when I started my blog. However, I don’t think that way anymore. Not only am I male (always have been, always will be), I am an adult male, hence a man. (Though, a weird kind of man who most people perceive to be a woman.) It’s complicated but I’m ok with that!
idk why they seem to be a trans women that literally thinks it's impossible to be one but whatever the fuck
Proof it's used in the comprehensive post thing:
RE: transphobic sources in the comprehensive Baeddel post —
I did some digging, and the baeddel post that was posted in the other thread is an updated version that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t link to the transphobic source you mentioned. The version that has the transphobic source is from March 2022:
While the version posted by comrade grym in the other thread is from February of this year:
oh pog