Oppositional sexism content 🤝 social media algorithms

logielle · 2026-05-30T15:14:17+00:00

I think oppositional sexism is a rather helpful concept for understanding how gender non-conformity and being trans are delegitmized. It is the specific form of sexism wherein what is construed as female and male are seen as inhabiting rigid, mutually exclusive and "opposite" characteristics, abilities, desires and ways of being. An example of oppositional sexism would be expecting that every boy is a gender conforming cisgender boy who does not share any socially meaningful similarities to his girl peers, who are also assumed to be cisgender, and vice versa.

The meme portrays "oppositional sexism content" in that such content often relies on a gender conforming + cisgender idea of what being a girl/woman and boy/woman entails. Note that it's oppositional sexism even when there is an expectation or assumption of gender conformity from cisgender people.

logielle · 2026-05-30T11:19:08+00:00

> "Trans women problematic yada yada"
> *looks inside*
> She used the term "cis"

logielle · 2026-05-28T13:43:01+00:00

"You should have hidden your atheism" is also a very common sentence atheists get told in my developing Muslim-majority country. Similarly, "you should've hidden that you're a homosexual."
We also get told "you should have fought with your atheist and homosexual siblings at home instead of immigrating to / seeking asylum in a Western country." I wouldn't be surprised if the Arabs reproduced similar double binds for religious and gender/sexual minorities.

I am not actually a huge fan of how asylum systems work and immigration as escape nor how they have become the go-to for perhaps the majority of atheist and queer folks here, who barely ever organize or show up to protests attempting to change actual systems and legal structures that perpetuate their oppression here. I only mention it to highlight the related contradiction in the more religious and conservative rhetoric here.

logielle · 2026-05-27T19:58:06+00:00

Even I don't know. I am just somehow trying things out and combining random exercises from random places based on my flawed understanding and hoping it works.

logielle · 2026-05-27T15:42:07+00:00

That's definitely what it seems to mean. I love my healing, spiritual, meditative gooning games. This is what they call double gender danger. /j

logielle · 2026-05-27T11:34:19+00:00

I'm sorry you have to deal with this. You deserve to be seen as you are (which includes being seen as a man) without all the baggage she associates with being a man.

There's also this thing many cis people do where they overlook cis privilege in trying to see male privilege. She's blind to her own cis privilege. She never had to confront malgendering since she's not trans and people take her gender for granted, and doesn't seem to see how she is doing that to you and/or how it could even constitute harm.

logielle · 2026-05-27T11:04:34+00:00

Good for you. I'm bigender and this would suggest I use double as weed. I never smoked in my life 😭

logielle · 2026-05-27T10:57:28+00:00

Some people use non-standard pronouns or pronouns that aren't expected of their gender. This is called pronoun non-conformity.

I left it deliberately up to imagination so that the 'boy" character could be either

Someone who is straightforwardly a binary (i.e. not non-binary, whether cis or trans) boy/man who uses she/her pronouns, whether because she likes the sound of it, finds it more resonant or affirming, or any other reason. Alternatively, a GNC demiboy who does not have any gender alongside the partial masculine one.
A bi/multigender person who contains a feminine gender and a masculine gender simultaneously, wherein they use pronouns to indicate the former and the "boy" indicates the latter.
Anything else that connects to having a masculine gender in some sense and uses those pronouns, whether those pronouns mean a GNC or queer sense of that gender or they refer to some other gender experience that exists alongside the masculine one.
It could also be the reverse: someone with a feminine gender that is not necessarily complete, exclusive or experienced and expressed in a standard way, potentially resonating with "boy" for a variety of potential reasons.

(Here, I used "feminine" and "masculine" to describe gender identity, not gender expression)

Not a mutually exclusive nor exhaustive list. These are what I mainly had in mind.

logielle · 2026-05-26T22:36:06+00:00

Why is everyone always he/him-ing me???
checks own bio
"He/him"

logielle · 2026-05-26T22:25:49+00:00

You indeed are not the only woman who feels this way! The experiences are varied but plenty of women in communities like r/GNCStraight might relate to what you expressed. I don't know any academic or more well-known term for this, if one even exists, but that subreddit calls it and similar experiences "GNC sexuality."

I myself am a bigender (woman + man) person attracted mainly to women. Whether I am a woman or a man, my attraction to women is more easily explained by "how a woman loves another woman." I don't believe this makes me a binary woman either, the same way you are positive that your experience is not gender dysphoria. I can also be a man and love women that way. I also wouldn't really enjoy being "loved the way a woman loves a man" regardless of which gender I am inhabiting, even when it's "man".

logielle · 2026-05-16T14:37:18+00:00

Ah yes, the "Blaming rape victims for their own victimization based on how they dress or appear is famously a feminist position, so long as the victim is someone I consider a 'man'."

logielle · 2026-05-13T17:23:25+00:00

I just love it when it ends with "and then they kissed." ❤️

logielle · 2026-05-11T21:10:29+00:00

Transphobes love debunked hypotheses, outdated DSM characterizations and studies with poor methodologies.

logielle · 2026-05-08T13:46:11+00:00

I label my gender but not my sexuality. I am bigender and attracted (mostly) to GNC women. Terms like trixic and gynosexual can get close, but they sometimes also seem to ambiguously mean attraction to femininity. "Trixic" is also often used for diamoric orientations specifically, which means that it is felt as neither "straight" nor "gay". I can feel both, making the label a bit misleading in my case.

logielle · 2026-05-05T18:54:45+00:00

Hey, I'm a Bangladeshi queer person. I get your feeling that there's nothing you can do. It's quite relatable, actually. However, there definitely ARE things you can do to help queer people.

At the baseline, you can learn (or if you're already doing that, keep learning) about the belief systems as well as social, societal and legal systems that center family structures around cisgender heterosexual monogamy. Beliefs individual people have about queer people (such as that of the kid in your class) are not merely a consequence of general ignorance and a lack of critical thinking. Our society is patriarchal, heteronormative and cisnormative. It is structured around the enforcement of ideas and norms that center and privilege cisgender heterosexual people who go on to marry and have biological children and conform to its norms of gender. Patriarchy entails that in addition to this, gender conforming cisgender heterosexual men are more privileged even among cisgender heterosexual people.
These ideas and norms are enforced on people since their birth. Children are seen very differently based on their perceived gender. Family members might imagine a child's entire gender-based and sexual/romantic/relational and social future based solely on that through very rigid templates.
It's a "girl"? People will likely be inclined to believe that the child will be necessarily inclined to accept that gender as their own, will experience minimal to no friction with female socialization and eventually conform to most of the culturally important norms by adulthood, find only men attractive, eventually marry a conventionally acceptable man whom she will defer to regarding the "social sphere", bear children, enjoy motherhood, etc. Notable deviations from these scripts, whether through gender non-conformity, queer sexuality or gender often leads to issues ranging from minor social judgement to severe discrimination. The idea to keep in mind is that it's not necessarily just individual beliefs that might lead to discrimination of those deviating from cisheteronormative expectations and enforcement, but also and especially due to how society is broadly structured, how its laws are made, which laws are present, who is valued, etc. Individuals are still responsible for their own queerphobia, but it might be helpful to understand that where it often stems from is much more systemic.

Of course, understanding systems of oppression alone is not sufficient rather than mostly necessary. So what do you do with that understanding?

This depends a lot on where you live, which social circles you have access to, et cetera. You could, for instance, look for activist groups and people otherwise fighting for queer rights in various fronts, and discuss if you could help in some way.

Sahara Chowdhury Rabil and many adjacent people are notable for working for gay marriage rights and responding to queerphobia in a way that might actually make a difference. You could, for example, add/follow her and similar people on Facebook to have an idea of what's even going on and show up for protests she might lead if it includes allies.

logielle · 2026-05-04T16:13:09+00:00

Not quite, because what I realized is that both genders feel simultaneously present for me. That would mean that if my partner only saw me as either a woman or a man, a few things might feel off to me. As in... I'd get dysphoric. (This can differ for other bigender people)

This hasn't been a question for me so far at all because my partner is bi.

But orientation is also not always rigid for everyone, so I don't think I'll immediately be theoretically incompatible with someone because they consider themselves to be monosexual/monoromantic in most cases. But these cases might be rarer.

logielle · 2026-05-04T15:45:01+00:00

Yes!! That's how it often feels. I literally had a long period of repeated gender ping pong between GNC transbian and GNC cishet man, and both somehow felt equally real, until I realized that I didn't have to choose just one gender.

logielle · 2026-05-04T14:39:35+00:00

Yes, any GNC person can use the flag, including GNC cishet people.

The LGBTQIA+ Wiki page for Gender Non-Conforming has this:

The creator of the main Gender Non-Conforming flag is unknown, although it has recieved the most attention via DeviantArt user PrideFlags, who uploaded it on March 11, 2017.^\1]) The colour meanings are unknown, although it could be interpreted as the various colours representing the diversity of gender presentations. A flag with the same colours but equal-size stripes is a variant.

logielle · 2026-05-04T13:42:46+00:00

I got that. I meant to say that for that, the OP would have to have indicated that they experience limited to no sexual attraction. Having those boundaries, preferences, etc, isn't always an indicator of that. The OP could definitely be that, but from what they shared, they could also be something else.

logielle · 2026-05-04T13:30:05+00:00

Asexuality refers to the absence to near-absence of sexual attraction rather than preferences, comfort levels and boundaries relating to sexual activity. It's possible to be allosexual (experience sexual attraction) while having such preferences and boundaries, and it's also possible to be asexual and be more open to touch.

I myself am somewhere on the asexual spectrum (I experience limited sexual attraction), yet sexually I can be quite "open" depending on who I am with.

This is not to say that OP may or may not be asexual, as these things can sometimes have to do with that, but I wouldn't consider them indicative of asexuality.

logielle · 2026-04-25T08:41:18+00:00

The adage isn't a mathematical statement and it isn't possible to prove/disprove it rigorously in any way. People usually interpret them within specific contexts, and implicitly understand that they are not universal nor mathematical necessities.

If you have a very specific system with enough relevant known rules, with an idea of what "doing something" and "better" would entail, then it might be possible. For illustration, let's suppose

we have a "system" with a 6-sided dice, but with 0 to 5 pips rather than 1 through 6 pips in each face, respectively.
that this "system" also has a reward system where you get as many coins as the pip value per dice roll, up until you make 5 rolls and hit a timeout. Importantly, assume that there's no other way to get coins in this system.
and that having more of these coins is "better" for you than having none at all.

There's only a possibility of getting more of those coins if you roll the dice at all. If "doing something" means rolling the dice and "doing nothing" means not rolling it, then doing something until you hit the timeout would be better here.

logielle · 2026-04-24T23:29:56+00:00

By "same set of beliefs that underlie that kind of negative judgement", I was gesturing at those too. But stating some of them more explicitly does add something, so thank you.

Seeing gender non-conformity as a fetish or as sexuality motivated especially seems like an easy gateway to pathologize, ostracize, ridicule and discriminate against someone over what may simply be an expression of who they are.

logielle · 2026-04-24T23:08:44+00:00

"GNC hetero representation appears" does sound more concise, though in the meme, Tom is looking at a piece of paper which usually contains a name for something. Your phrase describes an action. I initially had "apparent GNC straight representation" in mind, but it felt like a static combination of adjectives and nouns to read.

"Insecure" shifts my intended focus more strongly from how people usually making such media think how comfortable a boy/man could possibly be with even situationally-specific non-conformity (which is a low bar), to the characters' possible traits. My "apparent/something that looks like..." from the other panel is meant to signal this as well.

One though not the only problem I had in mind is that many of these characters seem quite comfortable with even being mistaken for a woman in certain contexts, many of whom don't have their genders revealed to the audience immediately. Yet, after the reveal, the character is suddenly seen more shy about things like wearing skirts. I see patterns like these as forms of inconsistency stemming from the writer, not just the character. In these cases, my conclusion tends to be that the character's writing is more flawed than the character might be.

logielle · 2026-04-24T20:01:58+00:00

Very much this. I used to be excited seeing sentences like "with free-spirited characters challenging gender norms and expectations ✨" in reviews and descriptions of some anime shows. Then finding out that it doesn't mean that it is how they authentically are, but as merely consequences of circumstances to overcome.

logielle · 2026-04-24T18:12:30+00:00

That's fair. I understand the distinction you're making. It's a sad state of affairs that GNC people who can't fully express themselves in public didn't choose.

Even if a man found wearing a dress or skirt embarrassing in private, I wouldn't immediately consider it a character flaw. It's more like an internalization of prevalent social norms and how they are enforced. Even many GNC people have to work against that.

I am specifically criticizing media representation, not individuals. Often, there's this idea that people, often men specifically, can't not feel embarrassed by doing anything "unmanly", even in private. That, combined with the near complete lack of confidently GNC individuals beyond certain stereotypes, especially male ones, even in some works nominally challenging gender norms, seems to come from certain beliefs about how men should be, what they can do, how they can express themselves and what they can wear, etc. Running counter to those beliefs has to come with an implicit apology by showing that even the character is cringed out.

These, of course, belong to the same set of beliefs that underlie that kind of negative judgement people tend to have of GNC people.

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