Community MLM on Tumblr - Slash fangirls pretending to be gay boys

[Helvetica Scenario]

You don't even have to be on tumblr to see this shit any more. I hang out in nerd-girl leftie circles, and I seem to be about the only woman in the room who hasn't gone totally batshit over the last eighteen months and started claiming to be non-binary or genderqueer or some other such special snowflake lackwittery.

A friend of mine, who's pushing 30, has recently decided she's non-binary and keeps trying to get me to validate the dysphoria she didn't have until tumblr told her it was totally a thing. She's started wearing a binder and hanging around the fringes of a support group mainly attended by middle-aged non-trender transwomen because she's not like the other girls, which means she totally isn't one. A woman who worked with my husband - a professional in her late twenties, albeit an unconventional one - apparently went completely batshit after she stopped working at his firm. She has since cut her hair, made an entirely half-assed and unconvincing attempt to change her name to something 'more masculine' that sounds like something a fourteen-year-old would name their kawaii yaoi OC, and now makes whiny Facebook posts where she refers to herself as a 'boi' and endlessly bitches about being misgendered. These rants are usually accompanied by pictures of herself with neon dangerhair and far heavier make-up than most natal women her age would go out in. Yes, honey, I wonder why 'cis men' don't take you seriously when you tell them you're totally a transguy now. It's a mystery to me. A third friend makes posts about 'non-binary trans' resources, keeps sharing Assigned Male strips and was super excited to go and hear Labelle speak.

I doubt I'm the only one experiencing this. Quite probably every third group of left-leaning friends has at least one woman in it who's declared herself a snowflake genderspecial, and who nobody feels comfortable calling on her insufferable, attention-seeking bullshit for fear of being labelled a transphobe.

 

[petch]

because she's not like the other girls,

God, I can't tell you how much tumblr (and by extension, I assume left-leaning people because let's be real they can all be traced back to tumblr somehow) forces this idea that if you aren't 100% feminine and born female you're trans or if you're not 100% masculine either you're non-binary. It's ridiculous and also hilarious considering that they're basically countering their own anti-gender argument? Like, if you tell every girl that liked to play with hotwheels as a child that she is actually a boy and hasn't realized it yet, you're enforcing gender rules in the opposite way you're trying to fight.

 

[Dr. Voss]

I vote they'll swing radical the other way when they're all detransitioning and bitter. Maybe they'll all become ultra religious conservatives who use religious scriptures to righteously argue morality.

It has already happened to some extent. Many detransitioned women have become radical feminists (aka evil TERFs according to Tumblr).

 

[TenaflyViper]

It seems that mlm combines two of the most cancerous portions of tumblr: the gay-fetishizing side obsessed with their yaoi slash couples (all in the guise of being progressive and in favor of muh representation) and the genderspecial side (which brings us to the floods of mlm selfies that are obviously young women/girls who do not try to pass for male, but claim themselves to be transgender).

This may sound mean, but does it seem to anyone else like a lot of this is because these girls can't get real boyfriends?

 

[Alberto Balsalm]

This may sound mean, but does it seem to anyone else like a lot of this is because these girls can't get real boyfriends?

This checks out. Remember when there were No Girls on the Internet, and at least 90% of the "girls" were just lonely men in real life? Now there's no guys on Tumblr.

 

[purrings]

Why is she wearing a dress if she wants to be a dude?

I love how all you have to do to stick it to the gender binary is say you're not a cis girl and get a short hair cut. It doesn't even have to be a masculine short haircut. Literally your average normie apolitical American woman is more gender transgressive than this. She's probably wearing jeans and T-Shirt.

I really do foresee truescum getting more popular in trans communities as these kids playing dress up start using up the resources people put out there to help them.

 

[Ceiling Kitten]

That post from smol trans meetup reads so insulating. Like they are speaking to a small child.

I'm sure no actual "same gender attracted" tranny wants to be talked to like that.

But the people from these precious ~pet marginalized groups of the week~ are so frail and delicate! They'll collapse and c-c-cryyyyyy if they aren't treated like stupid children who can't ever take care of themselves!!!!! uwu uwu uwu

Seriously speaking tho, these posts are really infantilizing and irritating. Tumblrinas love treating disadvantaged people like babies to make themselves look good, news at 11.

 

[IdaRita]

OK, this is insane

There are any serious researchers/sociologists writing about that tumblr genderspecial phenomena? Or people trying to help them? Or anybody critical of that?
Not "we are accepting, our society changes! We must be tolerant" people. Or "this next generation is going to change our perception of everything!" articles. Anybody has balls to say that it's insane and help those teens?

 

[Android raptor]

Yaoiboi transtrenders are still a thing? I mean, I knew that transtrending started with misogynistic yaoi fangirls who wanted to be kawaii uke gay animus, but last I knew they'd all moved on to being enby when being a trans dude stopped being cool a couple years back. Weird that it's come back like that (though not surprising it has even more misogyny since that shit was rooted in misogyny from the get go).

 

[bishie-gender]

OK, this is insane

There are any serious researchers/sociologists writing about that tumblr genderspecial phenomena? Or people trying to help them? Or anybody critical of that?
Not "we are accepting, our society changes! We must be tolerant" people. Or "this next generation is going to change our perception of everything!" articles. Anybody has balls to say that it's insane and help those teens?

Here's the thing. As someone who :powerlevel: had to study some adolescent psychology and works with teenagers :powerlevel: I've got a bit of insight into the mental state of many tumblrinas. Psychosocial development has been divided into eight distinct stages (Erikson's stages of [psychosocial] development), and the bulk of tumblr users fall neatly into the "identity versus role confusion" stage. This means they're trying to figure out where they belong in society, developing their own distinct identities, and also wrestling with the concepts of personal morality.

Really, the tumblr kids are just the latest version of edgy, scene kids who call themselves bisexual. However, that doesn't mean we can't all chuckle and cringe a bit.

 

[kawaiiburgers]

Why is she wearing a dress if she wants to be a dude?

It mostly has to do with tumblr's belief of 'articles of clothing have no gender attached to them', e.g. men can wear dresses and still be considered masculine, and that articles of clothing are inherently 'genderless'.

 

[AzureGaru]

This may sound mean, but does it seem to anyone else like a lot of this is because these girls can't get real boyfriends?

Plenty of those girls actually have boyfriends. They just don't want to see as boring het girls and since calling yourself bisexual isn't enough they just claim to be trans and "gay" while their boyfriends don't give a fuck because they still get to fuck their pussies.

 

[patchwork]

Yaoiboi transtrenders are still a thing? I mean, I knew that transtrending started with misogynistic yaoi fangirls who wanted to be kawaii uke gay animus, but last I knew they'd all moved on to being enby when being a trans dude stopped being cool a couple years back. Weird that it's come back like that (though not surprising it has even more misogyny since that shit was rooted in misogyny from the get go).

Oh no, it's definitely still around - you know the fanart trend of changing characters completely from their canon sex and looks and all that? A LOT of the targets are male characters, who are still being shipped with other male characters. But they can't frame it like that or else some other tumblrina will come raging into their inbox, going "why aren't you shipping lesbians instead?? smh gay men get representation yet again........."

 

[The Lizard Queen]

Ugh... the female Yaoi fandom is pretty much the worst. Half of them stumble across some random image of two unrealistically beautiful boys making out, get turned on by it, and immediately decide, "I like this, therefore I must be a gay boy trapped in a girl's body!"
By that logic, every guy who likes lesbian porn must be a lesbian trapped in a man's body.

Some of them even go so far as to start testosterone treatment, or at least take those fake over the counter supplements sold to body builders. Most of the girls I've known gave up after a few months because the T sent their sex drive into overdrive, reminding them that they're actually straight but kinky, and they moved on to whatever the new craze was.

 

[breadandcircuses]

Why is she wearing a dress if she wants to be a dude?

Because he's obviously a crossdresser! Why ya gotta be such a bigot?

But in all seriousness, I know exactly what this is. These are girls that are all: I'm only of average attraction. But if I dress as a boy, suddenly I'm pretty boy.

 

[CharlesBarkley]

Frankly, I'm interested to find out what will emerge next when even these trans "achillean"/mlm kids are no longer progressive and oppressed enough.

Cowboys and county music. One day a tumblr faggot will read The Milagro Beanfield War and pretend to be a mystical 1/10th Navajo country kid while claiming ultimate victim status.

 

[Pigeon On A Stick]

Cowboys and county music. One day a tumblr faggot will read The Milagro Beanfield War and pretend to be a mystical 1/10th Navajo country kid while claiming ultimate victim status.

You already have these "fictionkin" people who believe they're the physical manifestation of fictional characters. It's just as cringy as you expect, especially when they list their "triggers" as things the character doesn't like.

 

[John Furrman]

I was really disappointed to see that this tread isn't about Multi-Level Marketing Schemes on tumblr.

 

[Android raptor]

Yeah, the yaoi fandom is a massive dumpster fire. As I mentioned they're also nasty misogynistic, like I've seen shit so bad it'd make a loveshy tell them to tone it down out of yaoi fangirls. Of course on tumblr they can't be as overt about it as back in the dA and LJ, but it's still there.

I guess this means tumblr is lessening their hateboner for transdudes, or at least "transdudes" who make no effort to pass and show no signs of experiencing any dysphoria. That said exchanging it for a hateboner for cis women isn't any better, but still.

 

[The Crab]

This movement in a nutshell. It's not enough to show positivity to actual gay men, but have to include those poor oppressed transtrender "gay men" too.