EPISODE 45 - Helena Part I: Social Justice, Fandoms & FTM Gay Boys
Vložit
- čas přidán 14. 10. 2021
- Quick Notes:
This is part 1 of a 2 part conversation with Helena. She is a 23 year old detransitioned woman, well-known on Twitter and CZcams for her insights into the FtM trans kid mindset. The self-described “gender apostate” shares her thoughts on ROGD’s relationship with critical social justice, fandom culture, “shipping,” and the extraordinary fascination many teenage girls have with young gay men.
Links:
Helena on Twitter: / lacroicsz
Extended Notes:
● Helena is a detransitioned woman. She identified as a transgender man at 15, but by 19, she wanted to become a woman again.
● A little bit about Helena and her detransition journey.
● Before Helena started testosterone, she had this fantasy that not being female would be amazing. Helena was very isolated in her journey. Her ex, also a trans person, was against her detransitioning.
● As she was on this journey as a man, she was so tired of pretending to be masculine and wearing clothes that didn’t fit her body.
● What was it like psychologically to suppress Helena’s feminine side for so long?
● Has social justice affected or played a role in trans identity?
● Helena remembers reading things like, if you feel different than everybody else, it probably means you're trans.
● Teenagers are biologically more sensitive to social rejection from their peers, and they’ll do anything to fit in and belong.
● Whenever Helena was questioned about her new identity, she just thought they were just stuck in old beliefs and just wouldn’t listen.
● Helena explains what a trans medicalist is and shares her thoughts on the difference between non-binary people and trans people.
● What makes someone a cis girl or a cis boy or what really makes someone trans? The reasons are very superficial.
● Cis allies are finding it difficult to be allies to the transgender community because they’re being told their opinions don’t count.
● What is trans fandom all about? And what is “shipping” all about within this fandom culture?
● A lot of these “shipping” content has sexual undertones of gay pairings of common fictional characters.
● Growing up, it can get confusing. Men, that you’re basing your identity off of, are being written by teenage girls.
● Let’s talk about Tumblr and how these trans mood boards all originated.
● Helena remembers this internet time very fondly. She loved being on the “gay” side of the internet where it was all acceptable.
● Helena wishes there was a way people can indulge in their sexuality in a non-threatening way, but she also understands that too much of it can lead down the wrong path where it creates dysphoria.
---
This podcast is partially sponsored by ReIME, Rethink Identity Medicine Ethics:
Rethinkime.org
Learn more about our show: Linktr.ee/WiderLensPod
As a dad struggling through this, I have to say that this is the 1st episode (and I've heard them all) that's left me hopeful. Helena has given me such a unique insight into my kids experience. Thank you.
Agreed as a parent of an ROGD FTM teen. Can't wait for the next Episode they have Helena on!
My 'nonbinary' daughter is obsessed with fan fiction. I was happy to see her reading instead of YouTubing but now wonder what is really going on
The majority of “gay trans men” are teenage girls and early 20s women that are heavily into fandoms. They live on the internet.
10000%
My daughter is Helena’s story - she wants to be a gay boy. I admire Helena and her strength, I’m hoping there is a day my daughter has a new wakening to this ideology
Same here! My daughter has stickers on everything she owns of gay male anime couples. I just hope my daughter wakes up before Helena did and doesn't make it to medical transition. I'm grateful that age 18 is still 5 years away for her.
@@jennadee6761 I am with you but I have one year left - I’m praying for a miracle
I never thought social justice and fandom would have anything to do with trans identification. It's scary to think there are so many ways for children/teenagers to get pulled into this ideology. Wherever they go or do there's something 😔 It's practically impossible as a parent to have control over all of these influences and information available in the internet. It feels hopeless...
Thank you Sasha and Stella for everything you do. Without all the hard work you do and the support you give, I would be completely lost.
I love your channel. The opening music is annoying 🤣but your channel is awesome. This is a great topic to cover. I want detransitioners--especially women, but all of them--to get out there more and more. When I was initially looking into the gender critical perspective, I had no idea detransitioners existed at all. Keeping them in the shadows reinforces the false belief that gender identity is innate and fixed. SEX is innate and fixed! Gender identity is an idea, a way to describe the sex-based stereotypes people feel drawn to. The idea that it is innate and fixed is what's enabling the erosion and destruction of sex-based protections.
I see what Stella is getting at; I could imagine them coming up with gendered 2nd person pronouns and trying to replace “you”, so you’d have to indicate their gender when addressing them directly. Nightmare!!
Gendered 2nd person pronouns exists in some languages, such as hebrew, amharic, tamazight etc.
Its fairly rare to have gendered first and second person pronouns, as the speakers typically knows the genders of them self, and does not need to specify it. In languages with gendered nouns (most languages), you almost always have gendered 3rd person pronouns. Its very common to talk about objects, but you rarely engage them in conversation.
My daughter's fandom journey went from Sherlock through to K-pop.
And to echo what's been said, this podcast gives me hope, thank you all.
10:20 I really liked Sasha's point about the assumption that come with girls that fit the ROGD trajectory of transition. There are many people who describe adopting a trans man identity and then adopting masculine bhx and dispositions as opposed to being masculine and adopting a trans man identity. The label of trans can be very powerful and meaningful, I've heard more than one person talk about how passing was upsetting, they don't want to be seen as a guy, they want to be noticeably trans. It's "trans" that's more important than "guy", and plus some are upset by the idea that people around them see them as a man (especially straight White male) instead of seeing a trans man
“I feel like I’m a Trans-lator” that was genuinely hilarious. I found this channel a week ago and have been binging everything. The more recent videos are fantastic but the info in this is the kind of stuff that’s gold. I’m in my mid thirties and would have had a vague notion of what all the fandom stuff was..but having it explained is so valuable. I think this is a very big piece of the puzzle in this phenomenon/ movement but when I read or hear about the online problem from more mainstream sources it’s usually analysis at the level of girls posting instagram selfies and comparing themselves to all the other pretty girls…which is it’s own problems but only the tip of the iceberg. Great show, great guest ✌🏼
OMG Sasha's ACLthou comment did not get the kudos it deserved!! That was so quick and witty! 😍😂
I'm having tumblr flashbacks haha. fascinating interview.
I'm late to the party, but regarding shipping, my first exposure to this phenomenon was 'slash fiction' about Star Trek characters, namely Kirk/Spock. I don't know if it's in the documentary Trekkies, but I do recall seeing some brief documentary footage of a woman who wrote some slash fiction of this sort. FWIW 'Kirk/Spock' has its own entry on Wikipedia. This stuff has been around forever.
When it comes the ancients, uh...yeah, check out the Sacred Band of Thebes, for a start!
ditto
didn't Andy Dick mainstream the concept of Kirk/Spock mpreg on SNL?
-«I'm the lovechild of Kirk and Spock … -ock!» (paraphrastic)
Anybody 'member what I'm 'membering?
In the Doctor Who fandom the majority adhere to gender ideology, dismissing dissidents as bigots. One of the franchise's actors and one of its writers, both gay, 100% cancelled. Shouty groupthink & social pressure. A minority strongly opposes the ideology. Ironically the show was originally intended to be educational about science (+ history) as well as to entertain.
RTD has been called back by the BBC to save the franchise. That's going to be interesting!
@@markkavanagh7377 His speech the other day suggests he wants to be a rat rejoining the Stonewall sinking ship! "Time will tell; it always does"!
@@gladiator652004 Its all Timey-whimey now though, where everything is all mixed up!😃
Wait who's been cancelled by the DW fandom? I thought everything was all gendery-wendery now with that show? It was a lot of fun until it decided to put SJW divise politics over actual storytelling.
@@hwren9845 Its the heavy handed politics that ruined it for me. Captain Jack's one of my favorite characters and hell, I remember the gay characters that would should up in the New Adventure novels in the 90's.
Zine ("zeen" as in magazine).
The critical theories taught in our schools has proven to be a harmful solution to our problems. Yet when parents and states push back they are called racists, bigots, or accused of having a white supremacy agenda. Benjamin Boyce, who has done so much to illuminate this issue with his Evergreen series, recently had a guest on his podcast who offers a very positive solution.
Please see, Countering Critical Theory’s Nihilism with Jason Littlefield. It’s an episode which leaves one with a feeling of hope.
Thank you, Helena for sharing your personal insights into these important issues. I heard you speak several times before and appreciate your clear minded exploration and articulate presentation. Well done all!
The book Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose is another great resource for this
Thank you! I loved this episode. Just like the other ones 😊
Thanks for this podcast. Looking forward to hearing more of Helena's translations in part 2
We're screwed.
I think guy on guy action has always been fairly appealing to women. I can only speak for myself, but in the past, when I would watch porn or read erotica, it was almost exclusively gay male stuff. I also gravitated towards guys by themselves in porn(I don’t watch any porn now). Straight stuff was never hot to me, and I think it has something to do with the predatory nature of it, the abuse, humiliation, etc., that is much easier to avoid in gay porn. However, and I don’t know if this is unusual for women, I never imagined myself being in whatever I was watching or reading. It was always kind of a “God’s eye” situation. Even in fantasies I have now, I am not involved at all. And when I watched gay porn, the guys had to be masculine, and there couldn’t be any obvious power differential, so no very young guys and no feminine guys, even with each other. Something has changed where girls and women watch and read from a POV perspective, rather than a fly on the wall scenario.
The simple explanation is, that as a heterosexual woman you like fantasies with naked hunks in them. You dont need to include a woman, because you are not into women.
Some straight men are also turned on by girl on girl action, simply because naked women turns them on. Regards
Yeh there are a lot of young girls now who project onto the gay characters in erotica or onto the gay actors in porn - borders on fetishisation. I don’t think they intend or realise this though.
I’m bi and I’ve found gay often better than straight because so much mainstream straight p*rn has a focus on a gendered degradation dynamic that is really off putting, plus a lot of fake breasts which are a turn off to me. I think part of why a lot of teen girls are into gay anime stuff is because it feels safer, softer. If you don’t feel you fit in with the norms of how hetero relationships and sex are portrayed in media then you might turn to this kinda thing.
Late reply, but the vast majority of these girls immersing themselves in gay fan fiction/erotica are obviously straight (even the ones that claim they're not one of the Evil Straights TM). It would stand to reason that if you're a straight woman, more likely than not you're probably not into watching or reading about a woman engaging in sexual acts. Why would another female body be a turn-on? I think this gets glossed over a lot.
That was completely absorbing.
"Apostate": Great word!!!! I'm going to borrow it, for different reasons. I am resolutely a woman, born, not "assigned."
This is so fascinating! I have been in and out of gay fanfiction fandoms almost all my life. I am 36 now and I don't remember transgenderism being involved much, if at all, until much more recently. I definitely had my fantasies of being a cute gay boy, and had my entire character formed up in my head and expressed online. I had online friends and we would roleplay as our characters, essentially we did a round robin type of storytelling. I definitely understand the escapist element to it, I was pretty depressed and just a ball of self-esteem issues. Personally, I never wanted to transition but I do remember thinking about it. The type of man I wanted to be was a tall, tanned, hairy man with a full beard, whereas I am short and girly with a female voice (I didn't know that testosterone made your voice drop at the time). I knew if I transitioned, I would never look anything like that. I am also 1000% sure I would have grown out of that phase and detransitioned. So it's just interesting to hear Helena's experience with transitioning and detransitioning, having been involved in fandom like myself. I would love to chat with Helena one day if I can!
wow, that was fantastic! Been following this stuff since 2020 and am only now really starting to understand the impact of tumblr. unbelievable
What a fascinating episode!
Every time I hear "shipping" I think of containerization, supply chains, Maersk, and the Ever Given. If only that was what teen girls were into.
This is the first time I've heard of the term "shipping," but I've heard of Kirk/ (slash) Spock. Delightfully hilarious!
This boy on boy fantasy isn’t new. Mick and Keith have been shipped by girls in the 70s. I’m pretty sure it must always have been around. Straight girls with no desire to transition but for whom it feels safe to focus on boys so they can avoid the first hand imagining of man/female . I think it’s a normal part of teen growth for girls that might be pathological but not usually.
Idk about "safe". But it's normal for a straight female to not want to look at other females, therefore the guy on guy stuff is more appealing.
The talk about women's erotica reminded me of the sex magazines for lesbians like On Our Backs and the multisexual (for lack of a better term, they were actually called "queer")ones like Frighten the Horses and Blue Blood. They were highly controversial among feminists, but a lot of women who defended "pron" were defending these, as opposed to the mainstream video industry.
What do you suppose is as repulsive and widely appreciated as prawn? Same question with the homophone you wrote, in your intended sense.
Who's here from the farms?
things I did not expect to come across in a podcast about gender issues: McLennon
Don't look at Alpha / Omega
Bit like women becoming political lesbians in the 80s
28:36 Thou havest reason, Stella.
¿Did'st thou know: the pronoun set «they» came into Anglo-Saxon during and in the Danelaw as a direct loan from Old Norse? It displaced indigenous equivalents which started with a «h». True alleged historical facts. Bonus: old English man referred to humans of both sexes, and men and women were "wiren" and "wiven" (effectively -Simon Roper will tell you better).
Bring back authentic English from þe past before you contrive a singular þey, ¡accursèd gender-borgen!
I am active in several fandoms (Star Trek, Stargate, Honor Harrington, Battletech) and I hate to burst the bubble, but 90% of people in fandoms are not shippers. And good portion of them have active disdain for shippers, considering them polluting fandom with their NSFW fantasies. Just because you can find loads of explicit slash fan fics on the internet does not mean everyone in fandoms is into that sort of thing.
No one is saying that everyone in fandom is into shipping, but the fact remains that ALOT of teenage girls in fandom are into shipping and fanfiction, often as a creative outlet for fantasy/ developing romantic feelings. I don't see the point in "disdain" for this as just because teenage girls are into something doesn't mean other people cannot enjoy the aspects of fandom that they are into.
And I think the statistic that you've made up (90%) is off. I'm sure there are some fandoms where most people aren't into shipping, but vice versa there are definitely certain fandoms where the vast majority of people in the fandom are girls/woman into shipping culture. Maybe not the specific shows you've listed, but I've definitely been in fandoms where most people are in it for the shipping. Just because you haven't witnessed something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
@@lilavalentino8167 exactly. And dynamics can change. The Star Wars fandom has gotten inundated in recent years with this garbage. Shipping is everything, smut everywhere, all the characters are suddenly gay. It's weird. I don't object to romance, gay characters, etc...but the shippers make it all so icky.
@@lilavalentino8167 At 40:30 the guest specifically said "Shipping is the biggest part of fandom culture.", then reiterated "Almost everyone in fandom culture has ships that they ship." a moment later and brought up NSFW slash fan fiction on Tumbler to support that claim - that is what I was reacting to.
What part of fandom are you in, the curative or the transformative side? Do you gravitate more towards reddit or tumblr? Are you male or female? If you are female/on the transformative side/spend your fandom time on tumblr, then yes, shipping is a good chunk of fandom. Close to 90%. If you're not any of those, then it stands to reason you don't notice the shipping as much.