Makes No Difference Who You Are...

a commission i did for @the-blue-fairie of Cassandra and Zhan Tiri from Tangled the series!

It’s pretty perfect that the chapter of @lesmisletters where Boulatruelle sees “the devil” came on April Fool’s day this year. Tricking him into thinking he saw that devil is a classic April Fool’s prank

So I finally watched Wicked last night < 33

The Sorceress, Gunārs Binde, 1973

You know the autistic / transfem / traumatised (not sure which exactly) thing where someone confronts you about how you've caused harm and you just instantly believe them and apologise and apologise and apologise.

Then afterwards when you regain rationality you realise that it wasn't your fault, or it wasn't a big deal. But you've already Pled Guilty and you can't take that back. You've already permanently lost social status. You can't relitigate closed matters.

Is there a word for that?

With help from people on Mastodon, I am coining the phrase "guilt fawning" to refer to this.

It works quite well as a term through the lens of transmisogyny a lot of the times you're needing to guilt fawn it's in a scenario where any other form of defence is denied you.

You can't flee because you're dodging responsibility, you can't fight because you're just digging yourself a hole or showing some 'male' behaviour and freezing just keeps the 'critique' going.

I think this highlights a disturbing dynamic whenever tme people have any kind of interpersonal conflict with trans fems:

Trans fems can never be in the right. Or even have a valid perspective in a disagreement. They are always in the wrong. Always assumed to be acting in bad faith no matter the evidence for that. Their perspectives never worth considering. Therefore the resolution to the conflict will ALWAYS be harmful (and frequently exclusionary) to trans women because no matter what they do, their needs and perspectives are never even remotely considered something worth factoring in to the discussion.

And let me be clear, there is absolutely no scenario or situation where that is NOT fundamentally transmisogynistic.

You know the autistic / transfem / traumatised (not sure which exactly) thing where someone confronts you about how you've caused harm and you just instantly believe them and apologise and apologise and apologise.

Then afterwards when you regain rationality you realise that it wasn't your fault, or it wasn't a big deal. But you've already Pled Guilty and you can't take that back. You've already permanently lost social status. You can't relitigate closed matters.

Is there a word for that?

I can co firm it's an autistic thing but it may of course also be more intense for transfems, traumatised people and more

Yeah I don't think it's exclusive to any of the three groups I mentioned. I have seen this in allistic transfems and I've seen it in traumatised transmasc people. I've yet to discuss it with a non-traumatised person, I will when/if I find one.

From that it might sound like trauma is the common link, but I think that being autistic, trans, and transfem are all important compounding factors.

I mean, those groups are consistently affected by trauma right? Like, the rates of PTSD and cptsd amongst people with ASD and trans people are through the fucking roof.

Yes, and that's why I originally was thinking maybe trauma is the only significant factor here. And I do think that's the root cause.

But I actually think that the presumption of guilt that society has for trans women makes a difference to how this feels, I think it amplifies the social pressure on us to admit fault. I think that the way autistic people are often reliant on others to explain social situations makes us particularly susceptible to this too.

And I think the way these factors interact is more complicated than just that they cause trauma and this phenomenon is a trauma response.

And we mortals have heard of the tale of the crab who became a legend! And I just had to know how you became so… crabulous?

Jasmine + Apples

Some of Disney’s Older Ladies of Colour ♥

“don’t die wondering.”

"The ending resists closure in yet another way. It extends beyond the text, beyond the frame of the screen within the consciousness of the spectator and beyond that, within the cultural consciousness of the nation, so that it enjoys a mythic life of its own.

Audience reaction to the ending embedded the image of a flying car forever suspended in the popular imagination. The filmic apparatus participates in the creation of this myth through its freeze frame and fade to white; it eschews the fade to black signifying death and closure."

"Gender, Genre, and Myth in 'Thelma and Louise'" by Glenn Man

Film Criticism, Fall 1993, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Fall 1993), pp. 36-53

(Film Analysis Hours)

(x)

transfeminism is the answer

You know the autistic / transfem / traumatised (not sure which exactly) thing where someone confronts you about how you've caused harm and you just instantly believe them and apologise and apologise and apologise.

Then afterwards when you regain rationality you realise that it wasn't your fault, or it wasn't a big deal. But you've already Pled Guilty and you can't take that back. You've already permanently lost social status. You can't relitigate closed matters.

Is there a word for that?

With help from people on Mastodon, I am coining the phrase "guilt fawning" to refer to this.

It works quite well as a term through the lens of transmisogyny a lot of the times you're needing to guilt fawn it's in a scenario where any other form of defence is denied you.

You can't flee because you're dodging responsibility, you can't fight because you're just digging yourself a hole or showing some 'male' behaviour and freezing just keeps the 'critique' going.