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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   26851 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 25, 2025

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Some what shocked there has not been a top level post about the Annunciation School Shooting yet given the obvious culture war angles and parallels to the Covenant School shooting of a few years back (religious school, trans shooter - though FtM vs MtF).

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/annunciation-catholic-school-minneapolis-shooting-08-27-25

I had missed that the Covenant shooter was determined to have not acted out due to any real culture war stuff, but just due to your generic mass shooter mental illness + desire to be remembered cocktail.

I would guess that throwing in the Culture War angle makes it a lot more likely that the shooter's name and face get passed around, though in this case seems like he was just crazy more so than any particular niche of the political compass.

Presumably gun control will be in the news again a bit.

That both of the recent transgender terrorists targeted their own childhood school could mean something. Does their mental illness spring from a form of arrested development occurring at the puberty age? Could it have to do with a failure on behalf of those around them to reinforcement and affirm the biological changes that happened at this age? Could transgenderism — for the ones not seeking sexual gratification — be caused by the mind being “stuck” in the age where one learns about their body, due to some obscure early life trauma or a lack of social affirmation, and their mind tries to rekindle the feelings of that age through the artificial rediscovery of their body via “coming out” and hormones? This is something to dwell on, because there does seem to be a sub-expression of transgenderism which is obsessed with nostalgic things but which is not sexualized, and this is a distinct from the other subexpression which craves its own sexual humiliation (eg that Canadian teacher with the enormous boobs who sent her one sextape to her HR lady; the Matrix-dominatrix brothers…)

School shooters are narcissistic megalomaniacs who crave, more than anything, personal infamy. They notice that there are few crimes in our society seen as more heinous than murdering children (made particularly evident by the ghoulish amount of attention the most recent school shooting received). They conclude that murdering a bunch of children is the easiest way to achieve personal infamy. They look to places where large numbers of children congregate, and unsurprisingly find that schools meet this description. The nearest school is probably the one they are currently attending, or the one they attended (if they are a recent graduate or still live in the town they grew up). I'm not sure anything more needs to be explained beyond that.

On the TV Tropes page for the movie JFK, it's noted that one reason a lot of people didn't accept the conclusions of the Warren Commission was because they simply couldn't fathom the idea of a frustrated, unemployable, socially awkward loser murdering someone for no better reason than wanting to be famous for something, even something heinous. "Modern audiences, however, more than a generation after the Columbine massacre when such self-aggrandizing slayings have become almost mundane, might be more accepting that Oswald could indeed have acted alone." (Incidentally, there's something uniquely chilling about that phrase "self-aggrandizing slayings".) If Lee Harvey Oswald was around today, he would've been a school shooter: if all you're after is fame for yourself, it's much easier to gun down a bunch of minimally protected developing youths than a politician with a Secret Service detail. It also says something about how heinous a crime murdering children is that, for doing so, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are almost as famous as the man who committed the only one of the two successful assassinations of a POTUS in the twentieth century. Innumerable books analysing their psychology? Check, check. An Oscar-winning movie about their exploits? Check (bonus points for going out of its way to attempt to whitewash and exculpate Oswald), check (and there are several other movies about both which didn't win Oscars). A video game about them? Check, check.

the man who committed the only successful assassination of a POTUS in the twentieth century.

Czolgosz seethes in lack-of-infamy...

Good. Damnatio Memoriae for every assassin and school shooter.

Could've sworn McKinley was a few years earlier, mea culpa.

Eh, the 20th century didn't start until 1914 anyways...

That is a lot of conjecture for N=2.

I am skeptical of your nurture hypothesis. I think people have different sliders in their heads towards which genders they are sexually attracted and as which genders they identify.

Social approval of LGBT will then make it more likely that they will reveal their nonstandard orientation to the world. If your gender identity slider is at 0.7 away from your birth gender, if you see your classmate being called brave for coming out you might decide that you are trans. If your society reacts to LGBT by throwing them from tall buildings, you are much more inclined to play being a cishet.

Here is another explanation: quite a few kids make traumatic memories in school. Often because other kids are jerks, sometimes because teachers are jerks and sometimes without any concrete bully to blame.

I think mass shooters are somewhat likely to pick a place with strong emotional connotations rather than shooting up a random mall they have never set foot in before. Ideally, they would want to travel back to the past and shoot up the place where they feel it all went wrong, but the best they can do is to come back to the same place and murder some kids.

If your society reacts to LGBT by throwing them from tall buildings, you are much more inclined to play being a cishet.

Is it really “playing”? It seems completely obvious to me that even if these sliders exist, most people would be much happier with a wife and children, compared being some old queen alone in your apartment with a terrible body condition due to years of abuse.

You’d have to be pretty far off baseline for that not to apply.

I know a Mormon man, as queer as a three dollar bill.

Probably not applicable to him if he's actually gay, but many of the Mormon men I've interacted with have an odd affect of some kind that trips the ol' gaydar. Of course, any given one is vastly out-reproducing me, so it's obviously not a hindrance for them with Mormon women.

I wonder if it's a closer-to-home example of the old "Saudi men holding hands" paradox. If you're in a culture where homosexuality is nearly unthinkable, you simply don't need to worry about innocuous behavior being misinterpreted as homosexual. If you're a heterosexual in mainstream modern culture, where bisexuality and homosexuality are officially approved of and celebrated but unofficially bisexuality would be brutal on your dating life, then you greatly want to avoid anything that might give misleading signals, and the fact that all the other hetero guys are doing the same just increases how misleading the signal would be if you slip up.

I’m a catholic but I greatly admire the Mormons. What a story.

Married many kids, greatly enjoys child birth.

Excuse me, what?

Missed a comma or with. Married with many kids. Also literally watching his babies come out the shoot. He's loud, boisterous, tells raunchy - by Mormon standards - stories like gay dudes are known to do with all the women he works with.

Maybe he meant 'child rearing' and married with many kids.

Does this theory apply to the VA Tech, Uvalde, Sandy Hook, Parkland, UT clock tower, or Columbine shootings? Because that’s how far down the list I had to go before finding one that wasn’t a current or former student.

That both of the recent transgender terrorists targeted their own childhood school could mean something.

I'm not sure there's much meaning to be ascertained, most school shooters target their own current or former school as a default.

From my perspective, it seems pretty obvious that a lot of FtM types in particular are far less interested in becoming men than they are afraid of becoming women, and so their "dysphoria" is driven more by a desire to prevent adulthood. It's less about what they transition to ("boys"), than what they don't transition to (adults). This makes sense when you assume they've been infected by a highly virulent memeplex that is essentially uses their bodies to reproduce itself and spread laterally (using modern communications technology) rather than generationally. Arresting their development is a good strategy, because it prevents them from wasting time and energy on such irrelevant things as their own reproductive success. I perceive this pattern less among MtF types, but I guess it exists.

Older highly successful memeplexes tended to be much more symbiotic with their hosts, since being pro-natal was a good way of spreading itself. Making children was one of the most effective ways the memeplex's host could make more hosts, but modern communications and transport technology changes everything. This is probably the fundamental reason for collapsing birthrates, and transgenderism is an extreme manifestation of that.

I think that objectively, female puberty can be a rather unwelcome change.

Getting your period (and knowing that this will continue through the next few decades) seems much less desirable than getting the odd nocturnal ejaculation.

If you are a sporty 10yo who was so far playing soccer with 10yo boys, knowing that they will get more muscles while you will grow tits, and that your character sheet has just gotten a new core stat "hotness" which will strongly influence most social interactions in your adult life might very well feel unfair.

And the very idea of pregnancy might thrill some girls but invoke Alien-level body horrors in others.

Of course it's understandable, and also why it's no coincidence that the demographic now most likely to come out as "trans men" is the same demographic which a generation ago would have been most likely to be diagnosed with anorexia. In many regards, the practical end result is identical.

I have seen some reasonably compelling anecdotal evidence that FtM correlates very strongly with eating disorders ("take hormones to avoid getting curves!") and also with childhood sexual abuse ("I don't want to be seen as a woman if this is how they're treated!"). And also that those two are nontrivially correlated with each other.

Not trying to imply that this fits all cases, but it read as quite believable to me.

Also it feels like MtF are more likely to try and achieve some sort of performative attractive sexbomb femininity, whilst FtMs acknowledge they're not going to be Arnold Schwarznegger even with Estrogen blockers so settle for the invisibility of a 5'5 chubby guy.

it seems pretty obvious that a lot of FtM types in particular are far less interested in becoming men than they are afraid of becoming women

Huh...

This makes me think that FtM transsexuality and MtF transsexuality are actually a lot more symmetrical than I previously realized.

Someone here once mentioned that FtM transsexuality was driven by an urge to "self annihilation", which I thought was great and accurate. Although it did make FtMism out to be a rather different phenomenon than MtFism, since MtFism is pretty clearly driven by positive desire.

But if we instead think that the key issue underlying all forms of transsexuality is the individual's relation to femininity. FtMism = rejection of and flight from femininity, MtFism = attraction to and desire to possess femininity. Then we can start to conceive of the two forms as being separate manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon.

I happen to agree with the radfems who claim that men are the "default" gender and women are a deviation from the default. Although I might disagree with them over the specifics. Rather than conceiving of femininity as a "lack" of masculinity, it's relatively clear to me that femininity is something that one possesses in addition to the "default" human state. And this is exactly what we see expressed in the two distinct forms of transsexuality.

FtMism = rejection of and flight from femininity

I'm curious how you'd distinguish this from desire-to-be-masculine. I think both components are present, but to provide a pretty straightforward (hur hur) example, this and this comic (cw: furry, NSFW, FtM/F) says a lot of things about how the ftm character reacts to someone he's penetrating touching there... and also is more gynophilic in his partners than I am, and a longer-running thread revolves around wanting to be a dad, and not just (or even primarily) in the breeding kink sense.

Now, tbf, I haven't stalked the writer's twitter/bluesky enough to be sure they're specifically transmale... but a lot of transmale people in tumblr space found it pretty resonant. And it's not exactly an uncommon framework: most of the other good examples just look like M/M or M/F, are really gay, and/or just a lot kinkier than bedupolker's, but I can provide links if requested. Not always or even often a plausible one in every way -- very few transguys are going to get six-foot-three with a Christian-Bale-as-Batman voice -- but if we're talking about what people want or are attracted toward or fantasize about, it's kinda relevant that you can just look at people's fantasies, these days, and find at least existence proofs.

The problem with those comics is that they left me wondering "but can rats and mice be interfertile?" which is probably not what the creator was getting at.

(Also, it had me going "wait, a rat and a mouse? why is this transspecies? ah yeah, FtM, being a rat means they can be sure of being bigger - i.e. more masculine - than their partner if the partner is a mouse" and also "hang on, the mouse already has kids? how many kids? how many does she want? does she have kids with each new partner? how many kids can they support, we're talking mice and rats here who have litters: average for mice is 6-8 pups, average for rats is 8-9" but since this is anthropomorphic rodents, probably it'd be twins or triplets and only one litter per year, not their animal counterparts multiple pups per litter and multiple litters per year).

(Also also, who the hell wants to be a rat? But I guess these are lab rats, not ordinary dump, harbour, and other wild spaces, rats).

The problem with those comics is that they left me wondering "but can rats and mice be interfertile?" which is probably not what the creator was getting at.

Part of the second comic has the two treating a squirrel as if he'd 'perfect' donor, until the problem comes up that he's survived testicular cancer, not that he's from a different suborder. There's furry conventions where interspecies relationships are treated as their own type of birth control, but they don't really mesh with the 'return to small town' vibe here, so you're just not supposed to think about it much.

how many kids? how many does she want? does she have kids with each new partner? how many kids can they support, we're talking mice and rats here who have litters...

It's kinda cute. I think the theme is supposed to be more 'crushed on a girl, her baby-daddy/boyfriend is a jerk, and woo she's into me', which... uh, is not an unusual fantasy, nor is its distaff counterpart.

(Also also, who the hell wants to be a rat? But I guess these are lab rats, not ordinary dump, harbour, and other wild spaces, rats).

Rodents in general are a surprisingly common furry species, if not up there with the stereotypical dogs, cats, and dragons. FFIX's Freya (tbf, a white rat species) had a big impact on people. I'd say anthrofying them gets away from some of the real-world equivalent's grosser behaviors, but there's also a Skaven-specific fandom, so maybe it just doesn't matter.

Are those six kids from the past partner? Or from several past partners?

Anyway, I hope Ratty is a big earner because if they're going to have their own litter, there's going to be a lot of little paws pattering around the house.

To be fair, I do not get furrydom at all. And it doesn't help that a lot of the most visible stuff is yiff, and things like "snake women with breasts" which just makes me go "no!" If you're going to be an animal, why be unrealistic? Though yeah, I'm arguing about pretend human animals which is totally unrealistic in the first place. But, for instance, in what I suppose we can call classic 'anthropomorphised animal literature', there is no sense that Mole and Mrs. Otter can get together and have cute hybrid babies, because species are not cross-fertile like that.

(Also, I am now wincing at the idea of a mouse pregnant by a squirrel. More likely to explode while pregnant with the growing baby/babies, than to be able to successfully give birth to a hybrid squouse).

Are those six kids from the past partner? Or from several past partners?

The backstory is one past partner, but I think it's intentionally a little ambiguous about whether the set that show up are from that litter or from a timeskip after a second more-intentionally-'donated' litter.

To be fair, I do not get furrydom at all.

That's fair.

And it doesn't help that a lot of the most visible stuff is yiff, and things like "snake women with breasts" which just makes me go "no!" If you're going to be an animal, why be unrealistic?

Uh, a lot of it's just 'if you're giving them hands...', but if you want a serious answer for that very specific example: generally straight guys with either emphasis on sensation play like coiling as an extreme version of cuddling or snakeskin clothing, and/or who have a really strong hypnosis kink. It probably doesn't hurt that a pretty well-known implementation did, too (cw: sfw, video game minmaxing), but 'straight guys still like boobs' is kinda just a convention you get used to in the fandom.

But, for instance, in what I suppose we can call classic 'anthropomorphised animal literature', there is no sense that Mole and Mrs. Otter can get together and have cute hybrid babies, because species are not cross-fertile like that.

Yeah. I think a lot of it's come from comedy works, with The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) as one of the better-known examples, but it's definitely a newer convention where present. Barring really old mythology-style stuff where mainstream belief supported a lot of bizarre cross-fertility, I don't think there are many examples pre-1900s. There are a pretty sizable number of modern furry settings that go with the more convention, either to explain all of the consequence-free sex, or for other kinks (eg 'full-service sperm donor' as a kink can range from threesome to mild mdom to extremely cuckoldy).

squouse

New furry name for intimate partner just dropped

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Rodents in general are a surprisingly common furry species, if not up there with the stereotypical dogs, cats, and dragons. FFIX's Freya (tbf, a white rat species) had a big impact on people. I'd say anthrofying them gets away from some of the real-world equivalent's grosser behaviors

There's also been a trend on the internet for a while (thanks to people with pet rats) that obviously everyone knows that rats are lovely and clean and smart creatures, and only the ignorant associate rats with those old stereotypes these days".

I feel like there has to be a word or phrase for that sort of "this common knowledge thing was wrong/inaccurate, but there's been a bit of an overcorrection in the opposite direction".

I'm curious how you'd distinguish this from desire-to-be-masculine.

I'm with Iconochasm here: I've triangulated that I'm at the far high end of male tenderness and romantic shyness, and those examples strike me as painfully unmasculine. The rat character just feels hunched over, passive, depressed. Maybe a desire is there, but if this resonates with the trans masc community than I don't know if they really get what men aim to be like. Although I love my tenderness, I also don't want to be the guy who apologizes for kissing a woman who really wanted me to kiss her. Ask me how I know.

and also is more gynophilic in his partners than I am

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean -- I'm really not trying to be a jerk here. But, I mean, you are bisexual, and obviously you have a deep connection to gay culture. I'm not sure that being more gynophilic than you means a whole lot, particularly when we're talking about people who are exclusively attracted to women. Do you have a preference for women?

I admit, I didn't even realize you had any interest in the fairer sex until you explicitly said you were bisexual -- my ingrained mental image, which is hard to shake, is that you're twink who likes wearing programmer socks. I guess I've known too many geeky MSM or furries that fit that frame that I slotted you into it. And I genuinely want to know how wrong I am.

are really gay

The "trans men are really gay" thing actually contributes to the point you're refuting: if you're flying from femininity, what is less feminine than being gay? As you've said before, femininity isn't really all that prized in gay culture, stereotypes aside.

a longer-running thread revolves around wanting to be a dad

Well, a parent, at least. There are obviously differences between moms and dads, but I don't know how to meaningfully distinguish "I want to be a parent, but I don't want to get pregnant" (which would actually contribute to the point you're trying to refute!) from "I want to be a dad."

It is also slightly humorous that the rat character throws a party to interview candidates for impregnating his girlfriend, which seems, well, like something a lot of men would find somewhere between uncomfortable and enraging.

EDIT: A few more reflections after downloading the comic PDF. I braved the rat pornography so everyone else wouldn't have to.

But most of the sex doesn't come off to me as gay, or male -- they come off to me as lesbian wish fantasies about doing masculinity better than men. In particular, the initial sex scene in the comic features the rat character pulling a strapon out of his everyday carry bag (as one does) and then insisting on putting a condom on it, because ????. This is a contradiction to the stereotype that men won't wear a rubber.

Then, during the sex scene, he asks the female character, "how do you like to do it?" and she responds by saying, "Nobody's ever asked me that before!" Again, this is a contradiction to the view that men don't give a damn about women's sexual enjoyment, which is puzzlingly common among women. The point is that the trans masc rat is a Better Man (TM) than those dirty cis rat boys who didn't treat her right.

Maybe that is how a lot of men are, I don't know. But the idea that I'd have a sexual encounter and not aim to make it a good one for my partner is like suggesting that I set my pizza sauce-side down. What's the point of getting my rocks off without having a memorable experience that ends in mutual satisfaction?

(Of course, she doesn't know what she likes, and the trans man rat character just substitutes his own judgment for her inability to state her sexual preferences, and those happen to be absolutely exactly what she likes. Another trope in sexual fiction written by women.)

The "single pregnant woman meets Good Man (TM) with dad vibes" is also a common female fantasy -- obviously it's quite adaptive. But it's not necessarily something that I'd say reflects an internalization of maleness so much as a desire to perform proper maleness for women, or in other words to be the butchest lesbian who ever strapped on a dildo.

I did definitely enjoy the transition from "we literally just reunited on the street randomly" to "we are having sex, we can separate physicality from emotions, right?" to "we are now madly in love," which took all of one evening. Can I make a u-haul joke?

Also... it really does seem like the "main character" in the sex scene I read was the female character. It was all about her. I'm not getting "I AM A MAN FANTASIZING ABOUT BEING MASCULINE" vibes, but very much a projection of women's sexual desires onto the trans male character. Particularly in the "you're my princess but you're also my slut" thing, that's textbook girl next door with a naughty side energy. Of course, I think many men would be happy to do that for a woman if she asked (but in the comic she doesn't ask -- he intuits).

The comic's depictions of sex read more to me like something written by a woman than by a man -- might as well have been written by women I've dated, it's so painfully familiar. (ngl, didn't hate it.) He's a woman's ideal man, not a man's ideal man. That's not an insult, but it is important. I don't think this proves what you think it does.

I've triangulated that I'm at the far high end of male tenderness and romantic shyness, and those examples strike me as painfully unmasculine. The rat character just feels hunched over, passive, depressed. Maybe a desire is there, but if this resonates with the trans masc community than I don't know if they really get what men aim to be like.

Fair. I think some of that's because (especially younger and coastal) people have a more limited framework of what's 'acceptable' masculinity rather than douche masculinity, and I think an unfortunate number of cis men have reframed or had reframed for them 'being a foundation' into this sort of more passive literal man-of-stone thing. But it is a far way from the patriarch or trailblazer mold.

I'm not sure that being more gynophilic than you means a whole lot, particularly when we're talking about people who are exclusively attracted to women. Do you have a preference for women?

I'm a bit male-leaning in my interests, fair. But I've been in a real-world relationship with women, I'm not exactly bisexual-in-theory, either.

I'm more trying to motion around how the mouse character is pointedly and almost stereotypically feminine -- not just the pregnancy, but the homeraising and the dress and the shoes and how she moves around. At the risk of improperly channeling erwgv3g34, it's not even the doth-refuse-too-much of tomboy breaking or similar genres. And she's clearly attractive to the artist, and to no small number of transmen.

That's not really compatible with a general retreat from femininity. Even if they were just cripplingly attracted to women sexually, there's ways to do that without this level of feminine stuff showing up.

my ingrained mental image, which is hard to shake, is that you're twink who likes wearing programmer socks. I guess I've known too many geeky MSM or furries that fit that frame that I slotted you into it. And I genuinely want to know how wrong I am.

Ah... off by a good bit. Even when I was younger I wasn't able to pull off twink, and while I try to keep myself to some exercise regimen, the years have taken their toll in a good few ways.

((I do own a pair of programmer socks, but I haven't worn them and don't even spend that much time programming in Rust; I'm afraid I'm a basic bitch C++/C#/Java/Python/Shell Script guy when it comes to my workday operations.))

The "trans men are really gay" thing actually contributes to the point you're refuting: if you're flying from femininity, what is less feminine than being gay?

My apologies, I mean that more in a) the sense that regardless of what framework you treat trans men as 'really' being, there's going to be some FtM/F or FtM/M that's either so stereotypically 'gay' or 'lesbian' that it's going to overwhelm any other useful understanding available from the media for people not used to the conventions of those genres, and b) the sense that most of the examples are likely to be unsettling or unappealing to straight men (which I expect most people in this discusison thread here are), regardless of how prurient they might be.

For an example, I would expect few straight men that think FtM/M is just "straight with extra steps" would find Pantheggon's Vermuda character being in the middle of what's pretty intentionally drawn to parallel a conventional gay orgy as interesting, and that's still pretty far on the feminine side ('misgendering' kink, breeding kink) of things as it goes that direction. There's what I think is information here, but it's not really going to be accessible because everything else layered on top of it being either very loud or very offputting or both.

You're right to say that many of these cases are often feminine, especially by male standards and sometimes even by female standards. But I'm not arguing that these people are flying from femininity in general; I'm disagreeing with primaprimaprima's framework where that's the "key issue".

It is also slightly humorous that the rat character throws a party to interview candidates for impregnating his girlfriend, which seems, well, like something a lot of men would find somewhere between uncomfortable and enraging.

Yeah, that's true. It's still portrayed as uncomfortable (cfe the 'voicemail'), and I don't have a good understanding for how much so it'd be for typical straight men, but I can give a rough guess about it.

In particular, the initial sex scene in the comic features the rat character pulling a strapon out of his everyday carry bag (as one does) and then insisting on putting a condom on it, because ????. This is a contradiction to the stereotype that men won't wear a rubber.

The strap-on probably makes a bit more sense in context; the rat's moving back in town after a trying to move to the city didn't work out. The condom, fair. It's probably meant more to be joking, but I've seen a few transguys who treat it like a 'guys ritual', and there's definitely a 'glass trying harder to shine than real gems would' issue.

Then, during the sex scene, he asks the female character, "how do you like to do it?" and she responds by saying, "Nobody's ever asked me that before!" Again, this is a contradiction to the view that men don't give a damn about women's sexual enjoyment, which is puzzlingly common among women. The point is that the trans masc rat is a Better Man (TM) than those dirty cis rat boys who didn't treat her right.

Maybe that is how a lot of men are, I don't know. But the idea that I'd have a sexual encounter and not aim to make it a good one for my partner is like suggesting that I set my pizza sauce-side down.

Eh... this might be a cultural thing, rather than just a gender one, but I've seen a number of guys who think women's sexual enjoyment is important, but that it's Wrong to not take the lead and pick up what your partner wants or enjoys from body language. At the risk of TMI, it's something I struggled with a decent amount at first (uh, with both genders).

But it's not necessarily something that I'd say reflects an internalization of maleness so much as a desire to perform proper maleness for women, or in other words to be the butchest lesbian who ever strapped on a dildo... I did definitely enjoy the transition from "we literally just reunited on the street randomly" to "we are having sex, we can separate physicality from emotions, right?" to "we are now madly in love," which took all of one evening. Can I make a u-haul joke?

Fair and fair. I'll admit I've seen that sorta thing in a lot of porn written or drawn by (cis) men for men, but there's definitely some humor to it. I still think "perform proper maleness for women" is probably a better description, if still incomplete, of what's going on with trans men who like FtM/F than "rejection of and flight from femininity", but it's reasonable to say that it's not achieving the same thing.

Also... it really does seem like the "main character" in the sex scene I read was the female character. It was all about her.

Hm. It's possible I'm reading it in a pretty different perspective than you are, but I'm pretty used to porn where the person who's in focus for the camera is the one viewers are supposed to be attracted to, where the person who's reacting to them is the person the viewer (or creator) wants to be. In 'conventional' porn this goes to the extreme of PoV or gonzo works, or in hentai the mysterious floating dicks syndrome, where only the characters the viewers are presumed to be attracted to appear in the camera's lens.

But that's admittedly not universal, and something hard to discuss in detail further without linking a ton of porn (tbf, mostly straight: ruaidri and dont_jinxit have some pretty good examples of the differences between 'standard' male and female frameworks), so dunno.

Also... it really does seem like the "main character" in the sex scene I read was the female character. It was all about her.

You forgot the mouse insisting she wants babies by rat becasue she wants CUTE BABIES who will have his POINTY NOSE and BARE TAIL which are so HAWT and SEXXXXXY.

This is wish-fulfilment over "these are the parts of myself I hate and think ugly and think everyone else thinks are ugly, hang on, now I am being affirmed in my okayness by someone accepting me for who I am and moreover finding these things attractive?"

Imagine a guy writing a comic about a woman dying to have his babies because they'd have his cute lil' pot belly and bald spot (well, I guess some women might like a cute lil' pot belly on a guy, no accounting for tastes! dad bod is a thing, I have heard). He'd be slagged all over the place about it.

While writing wish fulfillment stories about it is a little silly, I do think it's a real phenomenon that women in love start having a halo effect feeling towards their partner's appearance. "I want to have a baby with your deep blue eyes and your cute nose and your bright smile" is a completely realistic thing you might hear from your girlfriend or your wife. Maybe not for a pot belly -- but obviously that's not exactly a genetic trait. It's not so much a statement of "they're so HAWT and SEXXXXXY" as it is a statement of "I want to have children by you in particular," which is just something that women say when they really love you.

I can say that pair-bonding with a woman also gives a halo effect about her appearance, where individual features that might not be the most attractive thing in the world dissolve into the gestalt of someone you love. You start finding her distinguishing features attractive because they're hers. I'd assert this is a symmetrical feature of human pair-bonding.

The unrealistic thing about the comic's depiction of this is that it happens so quickly, which is partly a joke I think.

I agree with your points, but since this is (we are assuming) a trans person writing their self-insert furry character, then "I am a rat and you are a mouse" take on extra meanings. And the characteristics described are ones where rats are different to mice: mice have cute little short noses and hairy tales, rats have big pointy noses and long, hairless, tails. Picking those characteristics instead of "I want babies with your white fur" or "as tall as you are" reads, to me, like a trans person picking the traits where they don't pass as the gender they present as/the traits that made them not fit in to their assigned gender at birth, traits they find ugly or dysphoric, and then this is the fix-it by cute feminine (very femme) mousie loving the ugly bits and finding them in fact attractive.

insisting on putting a condom on it, because ????.

From the long-ago lectures about safe(r) sex in the days of AIDS, because fluid transfer via sharing sex toys. If Ratty has used this strap-on with other partners, then no matter how much they've cleaned it, there's always the tiny risk. Plus good practice to get into the habit of using protection with new partners until you both agree to be exclusive and have the results of your STI tests.

(Also, Ms Mousie in the linked comics seems to be rather promiscuous, or at least baby-crazy, so it's safer to assume she's been around the block and to protect yourself as well by using condoms).

The rat character just feels hunched over, passive, depressed. Maybe a desire is there, but if this resonates with the trans masc community than I don't know if they really get what men aim to be like.

Yeah. This is the whole thing about socialisation, and how defensive MtF get about "male socialisation prior to transition" and the same for FtM about not having male socialisation prior to transition. I do think it's a female thing; if you read slash, there have been plenty of times I've gone "no, this is not how two guys interact or talk to each other or talk about things, writing like this is how I know you're a teenage/early twenties girl".

I'm curious how you'd distinguish this from desire-to-be-masculine.

I'm just going off of my general impressions from hearing FTMs talk over the years. There seems to be a much bigger focus on escaping the responsibilities and restrictions of femininity, and the actual positive desire for masculinity is secondary (but it certainly still does exist in at least some individuals, as your examples show).

It's noticeably different with MTFs because there's such an obvious strong fetishistic sexual component. Of course there's a confounding factor here that explains why we might not see that as much with FTMs, because women have fewer paraphilias overall than men, and the paraphilias they do have aren't felt as intensely. But FTMs could still desire masculine traits in a non-fetishistic way. My impression is that that part of it just isn't quite as important for them on average, but I freely admit I could be wrong on that point.

Of course, if it were the case that FTMs simply straightforwardly desired to be masculine in the way that MTFs desire to be feminine, then that would be fine, because it would still support my original claim that there's a symmetry between MTFism and FTMism. But enough people have pointed out that FTMism seems different on the surface that there should be some sort of explanation for this apparent difference.

I'm curious how you'd distinguish this from desire-to-be-masculine.

Presumably the presence of a real effort at actual masculinity. Isn't it kind of a trope that many FtM want to be soft, emo, cuddle-and-cry boys? It seems that many transmen don't really have any idea what being a man means, aside from yaoi porn.

I guess I'm curious what you'd say "being a man" means, then. I know transguys who fantasize about having a harem of their preferred gender, or for not-bedroom examples who spend massive levels of focus on code (though I guess they do mostly like Rust...) or woodworking or car stuff or small aircraft. But if literally wanting to become a father doesn't at least give something to update around, I'm not sure there's any information that could serve as information to the gender-critical side.

EDIT: and, conversely, I'm not sure it makes sense to say someone's rejecting femininity while literally screwing as feminine MILF-to-be as possible.

"Being a man" in the "toxic" sense. Being a protector and provider, a rock and the firmament. Do transmen dream of defeating villains and being dashingly wounded in an act of heroism?

EDIT: and, conversely, I'm not sure it makes sense to say someone's rejecting femininity while literally screwing as feminine MILF-to-be as possible.

I'm going to level with you: I gave at least a token effort to reading the trans-mouse erotica comics and I could not figure out what the hell was going on. Consider my comment to be a fully general take that does not relate to those specific pieces of media at all.

Being a protector and provider, a rock and the firmament. Do transmen dream of defeating villains and being dashingly wounded in an act of heroism?

Yes? Specifically for mouseworld the nearest example doesn't involve being dashingly wounded, but even ignoring outright hurt/comfort, it's a pretty common thing in RP and fanwriting circles (to the point where no few FFXIV groups have jokes about it). I don't think it's going to be a good argument against the 'was driven by an urge to "self annihilation"', but it's present.

Whether many trans guys actually do it, to the extent achieving anything so much more a process than a single event, is a more complicated question.

I gave at least a token effort to reading the trans-mouse erotica comics and I could not figure out what the hell was going on. Consider my comment to be a fully general take that does not relate to those specific pieces of media at all.

Fair, and my apologies.

To give the more general argument: if you believe "FtMism = rejection of and flight from femininity", how does this explain the presence of transman who present (perhaps depressed) masculinity, but like femininity in others around them, such as by having (cis, femme) female romantic and/or sexual partners, close female platonic friends, or (if sexually attracted to men) liking feminine men? Is there an explanation that can separate itself from the trans-internal claim of just not liking being/being seen as feminine?

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Isn't it kind of a trope that many FtM want to be soft, emo, cuddle-and-cry boys?

Many of them do; I suspect a dynamic (broadly) symmetrical with AGP-vs-HSTS.

See I tend to see it in the opposite way. Men are not the default, as men have to earn the right to be seen as men. Women have to basically grow boobs and they’re women. Children are children by default as they are born as children and remain so until they become something else. If I have to achieve something to be considered a real man, then being a man is not the default.

I think in both cases you see the person not really wanting to grow up. They want to be the opposite gender in ways that don’t force them into adulthood.

I think there are women saying something exactly symmetrical. What, men only have to get tall and hairy?

I think you’re both wrong; the struggles that are easily visible to you are not obvious to outsiders, and vice versa.

So are women issued a woman card? Does such a concept even exist? Men are constantly worried about being “man enough,” yet again women don’t have to sweat it. If they have boobs, they are a woman, whether or not they accomplish anything, whether or not they have kids, whether or not they dress like women, etc. There is no woman card to issue, because unlike manhood, it’s not something you have to achieve.

because unlike manhood, it’s not something you have to achieve.

Sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive, lactation more expensive, and placental pregnancy yet more expensive still. Women are precious to the tribe, automatically, by nature; while men are the expendable sex, and have to earn their "value." Such has it always been, such will it always be.

Are men issued such a card? I appear to have missed mine.

That’s my whole point. You can’t see their card, and they can’t see yours. It doesn’t mean the card doesn’t exist.

It’s used quite often in conversation and even in marketing. It’s obviously a metaphor, but there’s really no equivalent for women. There’s no thought that being too into masculine things (like sports) makes you less of a woman, but there are numerous activities that men avoid for being too “feminine” and thus emasculating to consider. Art is a big one, and it’s almost assumed that any male who is into art is basically a sissy and probably gay on top of that. A woman never really has the same consideration. She can hunt deer, field dress it and drag it to camp secure in her womanhood. She can box and beat the crap out of people and still be seen as a woman. On the accomplishment side, a male would not be considered a man unless he had a reasonably high status job, his own place, and a non-junker car. He’s less than for that. A woman can have no job, no car, and live with mom and dad and still be seen as a woman. And on it goes. Men have to work to be man enough to be considered a man by other men and by women. If you fail, you’re stuck until you manage to leave and go accomplish masculinity.

From my perspective, it seems pretty obvious that a lot of FtM types in particular are far less interested in becoming men than they are afraid of becoming women, and so their "dysphoria" is driven more by a desire to prevent adulthood. It's less about what they transition to ("boys"), than what they don't transition to (adults).

Given the memes separating "women and children" from "men," there's something deeply ironic and perverse and even darkly hilarious about this. Of course, an FTM doesn't transition to becoming a man, but rather a transman, and I have to wonder, once we remove all the ideologically-based praise and support from being trans, if a typical FTM's experience as an adult in society is closer to that of a masculine/low status woman or that of a median man.

I think it's closer to that of being a short, chubby, not very athletic, not very up-and-coming in the '6 foot, 6 figures, 6 inches' notion of dating man.

In other words, a low-status guy with low sexual market value. If they identify as gay, they're not gay enough for cis gay men. If they identify as straight, same for cis straight women. And then the experience of male social structures and how men are treated/how men treat each other is another whammy: they want to be guys but then complain about being treated exactly how a guy is treated.

At least, that's my impression from the complaints online. I guess a tall, tomboyish/masculine woman with 'male' interests who transitioned close to puberty would have an advantage when trying to pass, but the ones I see online (again, probably not the majority) clearly were short, fat, plain women and are now short, fat, plain men (but with scrubby beards).

if a typical FTM's experience as an adult in society is closer to that of a masculine/low status woman or that of a median man.

Depends on the type of FTM. One type specifically tries to look like Danny Devito because it will make them invisible. Their dysphoria seems to be related to discomfort with getting attention from men, and becoming invisible is the way to avoid that attention.

Another group transitions, and either the desire to reify their masculinity by becoming culturally gay or perhaps the influence of testosterone, leads them to become hypersexual. 2rafa's description from a few years ago of someone she "knew as a girl and she was a blue hair, tumblr type, I suspect into Yaoi. Now he’s a twinkish bottom with a thin beard addicted to Grindr hookups" rings very true to me. I know people like this. There's always the beard.

Sometimes this seems to happen to people who identified themselves as lesbians before transitioning, which means that they jumped the shark from not wanting male attention to really wanting male attention. I once met an FTM transitioner in a marriage with a woman who was looking for men to sleep with. "I like women and she's nice, but I need to be fucked, what she doesn't know won't hurt her" was a real quote. First time I ever encountered the concept of a lesbian sham marriage. I guess in this case the beard was more of a person.

There's always the beard.

Well, yeah. How else to show you're a guy/on T without growing a beard? Women don't gots beards!

(Honestly, the number one thing that drives me up the wall about the trans activism online is the retreat to rigid, and rigidly enforced, gender roles of the "pink is for girls, blue is for boys" type. Sure, someone once in a while will 'challenge the gender binary' by referencing cis women who are mannish in appearance or, say, have PCOS - one symptom of which may be hirsutism - or women post-menopause who, again, may become more hirsute so that breaks the rules around body hair and body type and so on hence gender is a social construct, but then they go right back to "hey, if you are AFAB and have this interest/look this way, consider you may be a trans man!")

the number one thing that drives me up the wall about the trans activism online is the retreat to rigid, and rigidly enforced, gender roles

Because it serves their ends. They deny a binary exists as a means to exit, and then depend on the same binary as a means to gain entry. The fact it's inconsistent is by necessity entirely uninteresting to them.

"Heads I'm X, tails I'm not Y" is all that matters. Engaging in a spirit of anything less than full credulity (or flat denial) is like getting lured into a three card monte game and getting vexed that the money card isn't where they showed you it was.

I’m pretty sure “they” are inconsistent because “they” consist of a bunch of vaguely-aligned interest groups.

Those darn Christians, denying allegiance to the Pope one minute and then affirming it when it suits them.

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That is certainly one dimension along which that particular type of person will benefit according to her own desires, as intended. I suspect that this, even moreso than other typical decisions which are already filled with them, is the kind of decision that has a lot of unintended consequences with significant impact in one's quality of life.

Could transgenderism — for the ones not seeking sexual gratification — be caused by the mind being “stuck” in the age where one learns about their body, due to some obscure early life trauma or a lack of social affirmation, and their mind tries to rekindle the feelings of that age through the artificial rediscovery of their body via “coming out” and hormones? This is something to dwell on, because there does seem to be a sub-expression of transgenderism which is obsessed with nostalgic things but which is not sexualized, and this is a distinct from the other subexpression which craves its own sexual humiliation (eg that Canadian teacher with the enormous boobs who sent her one sextape to her HR lady; the Matrix-dominatrix brothers…)

I see a lot of potential insight in this. One pattern I noticed is that the way that some transgender people's understanding of being the opposite sex appear almost nostalgic, certainly childish, and naive. Namely, MTF appear to see being a woman as akin to being a nubile, young, attractive woman, while FTM appear to see being a man as akin to being a high status man. Which are pretty likely and reasonable misconceptions for someone to form at adolescence.

Now, these are common enough misconceptions among non-trans people that it's possible that there's nothing particularly going on there. It's also possible that these misconceptions being so powerful play into making identifying as trans appear much more attractive. It's unfortunate that we lack a credible social science institution with resources to research something like this, since it's had such huge, transformative effects in our society just in the past decade.

I know the idea has been discussed here before that when women compare themselves to men they're only looking at the most successful/attractive x% with the rest basically invisible. I could see that skewed comparison making transition look more appealing, for sure.

For what it's worth I do remember back in the day in MtF trans spaces there used to be pushback like "You're not gonna be a young attractive woman; you should decide about transition based on your feelings about being a wrinkled old woman vs a wrinkled old man." No idea if that still goes on. I rather suspect not.

This seems obviously correct to me, and has a ton of explanatory power when considering the motivations of advocates for childhood puberty blockers. There is a subset of the larger trans activist sphere who clearly see puberty as (at least in some cases, for some children) a profoundly traumatic and unwelcome experience. They want to introduce methods by which kids can have more control and more agency around their pubertal experiences, because they assume most kids (and even most adults) are dealing with the same level of angst about it that they are. These people are obviously typical-minding to an extreme degree — the vast majority of people navigate puberty without too much trauma and get over the awkwardness pretty smoothly — but it’s useful to understand their perspectives.

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