That thing transphobes do, where something trips in their brains and they end up doing nothing but obsessing about trans women, while probably in a darkened room with no clean underwear surrounded by empty pot noodles and bags of their own urine.
There is a pop-psychology concept amongst tech geeks of a "basilisk". This is something that, once you become aware of it, it breaks you. You cannot come back once you have experienced the basilisk. It's a one way ticket to, usually, madness, or perhaps total system shutdown. It's generalised from the idea from antiquity of the basilisk as a creature that turns you to stone.
There's a fun story called Blit - linked here, infinityplus.co.uk/stories/bli⦠about a visual basilisk. Another example is something called Roko's Basilisk which is basically Pascal's wager for atheists who spend too long in Silicon Valley (it's stupid, but some of the terrible people with more money than sense, like Musk and Thiel, actually appear to believe it, and are therefore broken by it, and I reiterate, it's really, really stupid).
Anyway, in the latter case, Roko's Basilisk breaks you by becoming aware of it, BUT, here's the thing: it only works on certain people. They have to be susceptible, and in the case of Roko, the susceptibility lies around a particular weak spot in the ability of otherwise intelligent people to think critically and realise, "this is fucking stupid".
But, here's the thing, TO THOSE WHO ARE SUSCEPTIBLE, I've realised that trans women are a basilisk.
Look at people like Graham Lineman, J K Rowling, and a load of less famous people who have ended up in the same state. They all reached a point where SOMETHING relating to the fact that trans women exist tripped them into some downward doom spiral that has basically pushed their brain into a self-reinforcing state of insanity that they can't recover from.
There are probably several psychology PhDs for the taking on the subject of this.
But it seems I, and many women like me, are basilisks. This is a public post. Some of the people hate reading it have already passed the trigger condition. If you're one of them, you should probably empty some of those bags of your own wee and eat a fresh vegetable, if you can. Good luck!
My name is Sarah, and I am a basilisk. Fear me.
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Snow Jo βοΈ π«
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sensitive content
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Unknown parent • •tarot reader lunya :3
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Sarah Brown
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tarot reader lunya :3
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oki :3
also what's my job as a basilisk? do I go around making ppl go β
β ? /j
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Sarah Brown
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tarot reader lunya :3
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Len
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •@sleepybisexual what I've anecdotally noticed about how they see trans men is that trans men get pushed into the "poor confused girl we need to protect" box and trans women get pushed into the villain box. Nonbinary gets pushed into either of those boxes depending on how they get viewed.
There's different kinds of transphobes that do something different with trans men, but the particular kind described in the OG post seem to do it this way.
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tarot reader lunya :3
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Len
in reply to tarot reader lunya :3 • • •@sleepybisexual There's definitely a way that trans men are also a basilisk to a certain kind of person! Just haven't seen the pattern yet. Publicly right now the focus is on trans women so it's also hard to pick out an impersonal pattern. I know nonbinary umbrella is also something like that to a certain kind of person (the "you can do that?" realisation turns into a nasty "how dare you try" reaction). Shaking up of norms in a way that a person can't get out of their head, for good or bad.
I do like the reframing of basilisks. Sometimes it's nice to feel powerful like that instead of threatened or intimidated.
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Riley S. Faelan
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@len "Do you want to end up like Glinner? Easy enough β just bask in my glorious basiliskiness!"
@sleepybisexual @goatsarah
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aismallard
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •@sleepybisexual it has to do with people being invested in gender sex normative roles in a certain way, so that facing the existence of transfemininity makes them conceive of it as such a threat, or absurd illogical concept, or whatever, that has them endlessly die trying to make sense of it.
obviously their cissexism affects all trans people, but trans women in particular are generally focused on due to the intersection of oppositional and traditional sexism in our case
Riley S. Faelan
in reply to tarot reader lunya :3 • • •Sensitive content
@sleepybisexual Much less so. Transmasculinity "makes sense", by and large, to agents of the Patriarchy. Transfemininity does not.
Julia Serano has written extensively bout this curious asymmetry. Whipping Girl is a good starting point.
@goatsarah
Kathryn Karnage
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Kathryn Karnage
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Riley S. Faelan
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@goatsarah
Riley S. Faelan
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Related: youtube.com/watch?v=6q_BE5KPp1β¦
Rural Cosplay is, Unfortunately, A Thing
YouTubecwicseolfor
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... if you are in possession of a Tumblr, this would do numbers, and someone (not me without request to be clear) is gonna end up posting it there anyway eventually, would rather reblog the original source.
Glorious, btw.
Sarah Brown
in reply to cwicseolfor • •Ellie (batteries not included)
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feld
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •eemmaa (fully medicated arc)
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Sarah Brown
in reply to feld • •David Mitchell
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Hi Sarah! Nice to meet you!
Itβs good for allies (those who arenβt susceptible) to normalize saying things like:
I met a lovely person today; her name is Sarah, and she seems thoughtful, insightful, and pretty happy, and but since youβre being weird about it: her body is none of my business because no one elseβs body is my business except my own.
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Fi π³οΈββ§οΈ
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yeah, long history of being othered and monstered by these folks.
Have you read "the seam of skin and scales"? You may appreciate it. takingsteps.blogspot.com/2007/β¦
the seam of skin and scales
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Sarah Brown
in reply to Fi π³οΈββ§οΈ • •Sarah Brown
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Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •βWhen you say walking out into the road without looking may result in critical injury, you are being a Nazi ableist. I am a very good activist!β
Somebody appears to have mistaken this for Bluesky.
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CharLES β H
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in reply to CharLES β H • •Tattie
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •welp, I was meaning to post this at some point anyway:
eldritch.cafe/@Tattie/11283837β¦
Tattie
2024-07-23 23:22:38
Sarah Brown
in reply to Tattie • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Tattie • •@Tattie OK, so this is interesting. I went and looked at this post as federated to mastodon.social and, it seems, most of the "you said bags of piss, you're a nazi!" responses aren't actually there.
Isn't that curious?
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Tattie
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •some victims lose 25 billion dollars buying a previously well regarded social media website and turning it into a shithole, just because trans women exist.
Fear us.
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Sarah Brown
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Sarah Brown
in reply to Marcus • •Medea Vanamondeπ³οΈββ§οΈ β
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Medusa in mirror shades
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Riley S. Faelan
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TinyGamerTris
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We should make this the trans motto.
My name is Tristram, and I am a basilisk. Fear me.
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geekylou
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Tattie
in reply to geekylou • • •@geekylou ok so this is interesting, if it isn't a coincidence: JKR and Glinner both have history of first being criticised from the right. JKR for "promoting witchcraft", Glinner for "mocking the church".
It's almost as if they fell into a trap of thinking "well, at least the left will support me no matter what I do", and then when they actually get (correctly) criticised from the left, they feel betrayed. And not coincidentally, a lot of their cope seems to be strawmanning their critics to make it sound like right wing rather than left wing criticism.
@goatsarah
geekylou
in reply to Tattie • • •Sirana
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Void Turtle
in reply to Tattie • • •Terrible people have a weird sort of solidarity. They recognize that growing social awareness threatens to destroy power structures they thrive in, so they can work together to some extent against the Woke Mob. This is the source of virtually all the "why I left the left" stuff. The right is full of terrible people who will extend their twisted version of solidarity to the former "leftist" so they can preserve the power structures they all depend on.
name machine broken
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sensitive content
transphobia rots the brain in a seemingly unique way. I've also been thinking for a while that there's a dearth of research on it.
One name that wasn't mentioned here: Notch. He was actually cool about trans people once upon a time, and then he became a billionaire and basically melted his mind on twitter becoming a transphobe. Bizarre how people will commit to being unlikable.
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Red Lucy π³οΈββ§οΈ
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Audun
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •This is an interesting take, the basilisk framing makes sense! But I still don't get what the trigger is. What is the SOMETHING you refer to? Do you know?
I'd like to understand it, because I like to understand why people think the way they do, especially when I disagree with them. I can't fathom TERFs. It doesn't make sense, it is so irrational. With ordinary bigotry is possible to understand where it's coming from. Racism kind of makes sense, conservative transphobia and homophobia kind of makes sense, etc.
The position that trans women is a threat to cis women is a complete mystery to me. It is, as you say, fucking stupid.
Sarah Brown
in reply to Audun • •π¨π π³οΈββ§οΈ Jade the Terrible π΅πΈ
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@magicalgrrrl πmy pet theory is that some of these people are self-hating trans people.
The other is that these people have some other serious issue they canβt deal with so they target trans people as a cope.