WWW Weds: Let Me Just Rant about Cis Writers writing Trans Pain (or Stop Being Intersectional and Start Being Decent)

Hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words

I have so many books to cover this Weds. I’ve been doing a TON of reading. I’ve also been doing a ton of other stuff. Like planning a collection of classes that will be taught in my discord (taught by myself and several other writers), collaborating on a furry smut with a friend, and planning a collab youtube video on character archetypes with another friend.

I absolutely love how much I have going on right now. Being busy is awesome. Being busy with collaborations is even more awesome. When creative people get together and blend ideas, the resulting project ends up being so much different than what you could produce individually.

But let me take a breath to get everybody caught up on the three Ws.

What Did You Recently Finish Reading?[image error]

Quintessential postcolonial essay. Some portions of it were interesting-like the parts about the ceremonial funeral pyre suicide of Indian widows. Mostly though, it was a lot of obfuscating academic nonsense.

So much of this intersectional noise places the ‘privileged’ class into the role of savior. In fact, the essay ends by concluding that No, the subaltern can not speak. Therefore it is up to the academics to make an effort to understand the subaltern and help facilitate a discussion around subaltern needs.

What condescending paternalistic bullshit.

But that’s what intersectionalism always is.

Honestly, let me go off on a tangent for a second here….

The reason I identify as conservative is because I do not trust the motives of progressives. I don’t trust the motives of a group of people constantly harping on about intrinsic characteristics.

Let me give you an example:

In a writer discord server several days ago, I was involved in a discussion about writing trans characters. A cis writer was talking about writing a trans character suffering from dysphoria. I told them I thought it would be a better idea to just write a trans character without focusing heavily on dysphoria. And then I didn’t say this part, but here it is: I think people who are not trans write the experience of dysphoria so that they can get a pat on the back for being so woke. Using someone else’s pain to lift yourself up is incredibly fucked up. And why do I keep seeing progressive writers hyper-fixate on the struggle when writing marginalized characters? If you truly view trans people as human (and not as woke props to prove what a good person YOU are) then why aren’t you just writing them as people? As regular characters? Why are you fetishizing and commodifying their struggle?

And then in this same discord, related to the trans discussion, prompted by absolutely nothing, a cis female writer popped off, talking about a trans woman she knows, applauding how feminine this trans woman is and saying “Of course, she’s a real woman!”

Leaving me like….duh. It’s obvious a trans woman is a real woman. So what the fuck did you say it for? What in the hell was that whole strange measuring femininity shit? And then giving your approval of her womanhood as a cis woman? Just….

It was so odd.

Like someone announcing out of nowhere, “Hey! People with blue eyes are humans! Of course, they are! They are just as human as the rest of us!”

We’d all be left staring in amazement like….why the fuck did you say that? What weird ass ideas do you have about people with blue eyes? Who just pops off and says something like that with no prompting?

Listen, progressives….y’all keep saying conservatives are the bigoted ones.

But then shit like this has me giving y’all some real side-eye.

There just is no way to hyper-fixate on intrinsic traits without getting pretty weird and bigoted.

So stop hyper-fixating on intrinsic traits. Stop with the intersectionalism.

It’s causing you all to use other human beings as props to prove your own goodness.

It’s causing you to dehumanize others; it’s the ‘noble savage’ at a whole other level.

And lately it’s causing a lot of you to fetishize trans pain.

Leave the writing about dysphoria to trans people.

Stop thinking so hard every day about proving you’re not a bigot. Just treat others with common sense and decency.

And please….with the trans stuff. You gotta stop making trans issues YOUR issue to try and get an attaboy.

Write trans characters, but don’t position the character development around dysphoria.

At least while trans issues are still so trendy.

It’s just….icky. It’s gross. It’s gross to use the real lived pain of other people to try and make yourself look good.

Write characters who happen to be trans. Do your research and get sensitivity readers. Perhaps mention dysphoria here and there. But don’t make it the pivotal issue of their character arc. It’s wrong.

Okay, moving on to less heavy issues…

I read book three of Lucy Luscious’s ‘Discovering Desires’ series. All the books in the series are short, steamy light BDSM reads. Light bondage. Some hot fingering and oral scenes. This series is a good choice for a quick read with light steam.

What Are You Currently Reading?[image error]

This is such a terrifying read. My gosh, the main character is a moron though! I guess that’s part of the fun of horror stories. Readers get this like masochistic thrill out of stressing, watching the MC make stupid decisions and put themselves in danger.

This MC deadass realizes there is something trapped in the tomb outside the house. She runs back inside and then like a totally reasonable human being she takes a shower and goes to bed. WHAT?! There is something inside of a SEALED TOMB. A tomb that is barely a few paces away from the front door and she is in an empty house in the middle of nowhere and she goes ‘Whelp, better take a shower and go to sleep.’

Also, how many times is she gonna derp around this haunted house in the middle of the night? Where I just left off, she got her dumb ass trapped in a secret passage at 2 in the morning. God help me….I can’t with this character. It’s a really entertaining book though.

I decided to read this book after meeting the author in a Kindle Vella discord and chatting with her for a bit. I don’t usually read in the demon romance subgenre (the male lead being a demon just doesn’t do it for me-feels a tad blasphemous), but I’m keeping an open mind as I read.

I do love the focus on clear consent! So it already has something going for it that we don’t see enough in romance.

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Okay, this one….how do I explain how I feel about this book.

On the one hand, I’m like…

And on the other, I’m like…

So, the sex scenes are pretty hot.

Like, massive thumbs up. I like them.

But then….ick….the male protagonist is incredibly unlikeable. He has no respect for women. Complete misogynist. But it isn’t just the character-the narrative itself is misogynistic, in how all the women are described, in how they react so unrealistically (really? Taylor ‘shrieked in fury’ when Aiden decided not to go home with her?)

So how does the MC go from player, chauvinist, salesman bro to worshipping “his goddess.”

Easy! With some good old not-like-the-other-girls, with a dash of blaming women for male behavior.

Zoey is just soooo much better than every other woman Aiden has ever met. It’s not his fault he treated women like trash, it’s their fault, because none of them were dominant in the bedroom. Yep, they weren’t custom made for him, like a build-a-bitch, so they deserved to be treated poorly.

Right now, it’s gearing up to be a 3 star read. But looking at the goodreads reviews, it sounds like there is some cuckolding in my future, so…if that’s the case, this is gonna be a 2 or 1 star, depending on how graphic the humiliation is. That’s just not my thing and there’s nothing in the blurb indicating this is a cucking book.

I’m also still working my way through…

What Do You Plan To Read Next?[image error]

I love Candace Owens. She’s so smart. She advocates so much for the black community, and because she doesn’t do it the “right way” because she’s a conservative, she’s attacked constantly for all the good that she does.

I’ve been meaning to read this book for a while. I’ve been watching Candace as a pundit for ages, and this will be the first time I’m reading something of hers.

Okay, that’s it for me! What are you reading this Weds?