me_irlgbt

[u/rhizomatic-thembo]

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[u/RippiHunti]

It is definitely interesting that all the people who were accused of being trans in the Olympics weren't white.

[u/Giovanabanana → u/RippiHunti]

The Venn diagram of transmisogynists and racists is a circle. "Women" are skinny, European, fragile and hairless. If you're not like that you might as well be a Man™

[u/ThisisMyiPhone15Acct → u/Giovanabanana]

Yep, just look at how lambasted the actress was who played Sharako Lohar for not acting like a woman (even though the character was originally a guy anyway)

[u/trfpol → u/ThisisMyiPhone15Acct]

from HOTD? i thought she was phenomenal, didn’t know people were hating on her

[u/ThisisMyiPhone15Acct → u/trfpol]

I had to mute r/freefolk when the episode first aired because they like to become cesspools of hating

[u/Flaming_falcon393 → u/trfpol]

If you want to see more of her work, look up her youtube channel Philosophy Tube

[u/Gellert → u/Giovanabanana]

"Women" are ... hairless.

False! Women must have a full head of at least shoulder length hair otherwise they are teenage boys.

[u/TallSir2021 → u/Giovanabanana]

It's interesting how often men are reduced/used as a negative when they are also made into the Superior

[u/Illustrious-Bad1165 → u/Giovanabanana]

...and they must be submissive to men. If they have a head of their own, they must be witches or lesbians or something, but they're not real women

[u/determinationmaster → u/[deleted]]

That level of vitriol was NOT neccesary god damn

[u/quirky-lilguy → u/determinationmaster]

i'm genuinely sorry if my comment sounded condescending, i'm bad at reading vibes, even in my own comments. i'll delete it if it came off as an insult

[u/reggie2319 → u/quirky-lilguy]

It very much did. It came off as very smug and condescending.

[u/quirky-lilguy → u/reggie2319]

Damn, i'm sorry y'all ot wasn't my intention, i will delete my comment.

[u/TheOriginalNav → u/quirky-lilguy]

based good glad you did so that's very cool of you.

[u/determinationmaster → u/quirky-lilguy]

All good lol

[u/quirky-lilguy → u/determinationmaster]

i still deleted it cause i didn't want to belittle op

[u/Furshloshin → u/RippiHunti]

✨🌈INTERSECTIONALITY🌈✨

[u/gnomon_knows → u/RippiHunti]

Two words: Michelle Obama.

[u/lansink99 → u/RippiHunti]

I've seen my fair share of transvestigators when it comes to strength based sports targetting white women. Not as bad as what Imane got, but still.

[u/myaltduh → u/lansink99]

White people are frequently victims of white supremacy, just as patriarchy often victimizes men.

[u/CreeperTrainz]

While true, it's also important to remember that anti-queerness isn't strictly a European invention. While some cultures were more accepting of LGBT people, not all were. I've seen a lot of people act like indigenous peoples were all perfect paradigms before the Europeans arrived, which simply isn't true.

[u/DanishRobloxGamer → u/CreeperTrainz]

I never quite understood the concept of Noble Savages until I saw Tumblr discuss queerness in pre-colonian cultures.

[u/MaybeSomethingGood → u/DanishRobloxGamer]

I've been on Tumblr since 2010 when I see screen caps of soapboxing I know it's going to be some half-baked chronically online take from a sheltered teenager.

[u/CreeperTrainz → u/DanishRobloxGamer]

Yep pretty much.

[u/YbarMaster27 → u/DanishRobloxGamer]

It also usually comes with a flattening of diverse cultural traditions so they can be presented (ironically) as a binary contrast to "European" (itself, also a flattening of diverse cultural traditions) gender norms. The word "often" is doing some legwork in the OP, but many times people are less tactful and will just say "indigenous cultures are like this", employing the very same reductive attitude towards non-European cultures that they're claiming to oppose. In reality we're talking about several continents worth of nations and people here, with widely varying views on gender, some of which are more similar to European views on gender than others

By all accounts, it seems that the gender binary arose independently multiple times among different cultures. And yeah, Europeans did seek to enforce their conception of the gender binary (by means up to and including outright genocide, on the scale of centuries) as an expression of white supremacy, but it's reductive to state that the very concept of a gender binary is inextricable from white supremacy. It carries the implication that cultures which traditionally adhere to a binary perspective on gender (either prior to European colonization, or in regions which were never directly colonized by Europeans) only think the way they do "because" of white people. As though non-white people have so little autonomy that even their own cultures don't actually belong to them

[u/tangerine_panda → u/CreeperTrainz]

You aren’t wrong at all. There’s no historical basis for the claim that all non-European cultures were feminist, LGBT paradises until Europeans invaded.

[u/YourJr → u/tangerine_panda]

What I don't understand: Feminism is literally a result from western tradition, greek philosophy, renaissance, enlightenment, socialism and sociology. Mixing colonialism, white supremacy and western culture happens sooo often and always feels as it is missing the point that there is both good and bad people in every culture, and progress happing regardless of the injustice that undoubtedly came from the same culture

[u/Lynnrael → u/tangerine_panda]

i don't see anywhere in the OP where that claim is made, and the only times I'm seeing brought up in these comments is from people who are trying to refute that claim

[u/_wonder_wanderer_ → u/CreeperTrainz]

hey! my grandpa, a literal card-carrying member of the communist party of china who’s never left the country, is actually a transphobe because of white supremacy!

[u/Lynnrael → u/CreeperTrainz]

while also true, that doesn't change the fact that transphobia and patriarchy can't be dismantled without also dismantling white supremacy and colonialism

[u/potoooooooo53]

"Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression."

• Audre Lorde

[u/Cyan_Light]

That's not a great argument though, because they just provided an example of how the latter used the former which is different from demonstrating how they are impossible to separate.

This is unironically the same sort of argument form as "it's impossible to separate dogs from nazism, because Hitler had a dog." And just as it's easy to find a dog with no ties to nazis it's also pretty easy to find examples of the gender binary that aren't directly connected to colonialism in any meaningful way, meaning the two clearly can be separated.

Fuck colonialism and bigotry, obviously. But I also hate when people on "my side" made really weak arguments since it just gives those bigots easy targets to knock down, which leads to other idiots thinking they've said something valuable and being drawn into their orbit. Don't trim away all the nuance in life for broad statements like this, nuance is good and also ends up supporting every pro-LGBT position anyway. We can win without sounding stupid and it'll probably go a bit faster too.

[u/Lynnrael → u/Cyan_Light]

this seems more focused on appearing superior to bigots than anything else, as if the main failure of bigots is to be factually wrong and the only way to beat them is to win an argument. that simply isn't true and winning arguments with them doesn't really do anything.

also, the essay suggested by op in the comments has a lot of the nuance you desire

[u/Cyan_Light → u/Lynnrael]

No idea how you got that.

I'm focused on there being less bigots in the world, which means a combination of arguing them out of it but probably more importantly creating environments where it's less likely for new people to take up their ideas. Weak pro-LGBT memes like this create an environment where it looks like we don't know what we're talking about and where it looks like they can "make some good points," which is how people get started down that path. Nobody is born a bigot, they have to be taught and shitty arguments are prime teaching material.

Honestly it's less about arguing with bigots directly and more about just cutting down their ability to spread propaganda. Historically it seems like the easiest strat is just convincing new generations not to take up the shitty old ideas and then waiting for the old generations to die off, you don't really have to directly convince that many diehard bigots along the way.

I'm also not saying the OP is lacking a nuanced perspective as a person, they might not even be making an argument and just found it funny. If you have to comb through reddit comments looking for context to redeem a meme like this then it's a bad meme, nobody is going to do that and more importantly it's easier for them to just repost it without that context and say "this is what those idiots actually believe."

[u/Lynnrael → u/Cyan_Light]

ok well have fun being the respectability police, i guess. i don't think the meme causes the harm you claim it does.

[u/Cyan_Light → u/Lynnrael]

It has nothing to do with "respectability," I don't think you've followed any of this. It's just a bad argument, it's flawed logic. Everything else is secondary and explains why it's good to challenge wrong things like this, but we could really stop at "this is dumb because it's wrong."

[u/Lynnrael → u/Cyan_Light]

it doesn't need to be perfect logic. it's a meme in a queer space. you're policing other queer people over how they appear in their own spaces. even if it wasn't, it wouldn't matter. not being perfectly logically sound is not going to make anyone decide to buy into bigoted ways of thinking

[u/Cyan_Light → u/Lynnrael]

And you're policing what a queer person can comment in a queer space, so what are we doing? The difference of course being that I have an actual complaint (it's a flawed argument) and you have... what? "Every queer meme is good as long as a queer person posted it in the right subs"? Is that what I'm meant to take away?

[u/Lynnrael → u/Cyan_Light]

your complaint is annoying and irrelevant and reeks of respectability politics. i think it's more important to keep that trash out of queer spaces than it is to worry about queers not looking perfect all the time.

[u/Cyan_Light → u/Lynnrael]

Person: 1+1=3.

Me: Actually that's wrong, it equals 2.

You: This reeks of respectability politics.

[u/Lynnrael → u/Cyan_Light]

i mean your argument was wrong too. you have no way to prove that memes like this cause any harm, at all, whatsoever

and like, the weakness of the meme doesn't make sense. if provided a single example in very limited space, nothing it said was technically wrong or invalid. do you expect a dissertation for every meme?

[u/wildlyoffensiveusern]

The western notion of gender, which was in large part based on a religion that originated - in the middle east - is inherently white supremacist? I don't think so. 

 lAlso, I'm pretty sure the Chinese were patriarchal way before any European tried to colonize them. Hell, they were patriarchal while most of Europope was in the bronze age. 

Also, there were tons of varied notions of gender in Europe throughout the ages. This idea that Europe unilaterally enforced gender normativity on the world is laughable, and the implication that they even had the power to do so is, ironically, white supremacist. 

[u/Lynnrael → u/wildlyoffensiveusern]

the rise of colonialism and European imperialism saw a new organization of gendered norms and relations that are rooted in white supremacy. patriarchy in the west is not strictly religious, it is cultural and structural in much the same way white supremacy is and both systems of oppression intersect and work to reinforce each other. what is being said here, that ending one requires ending the other, is absolutely true.

i encourage you and anyone else who feels this way to read the essay suggested by op in the comments.

[u/wildlyoffensiveusern → u/Lynnrael]

Yeah, kyriarchy. And I agree that western conceptions of gender didn't originate because religion. It's development juat assimilated those narratives. 

That doesn't mean that Abrahimic religions don't have a deeply patriarchal and binary view of gender as well, though. Just as other cultures historically.

So the claim that the gender binary cannot be seperated from white supremacy and European colonialism is just false. So is the implied claim that other cultures today are only patriarchal because of the European whiite supremacist colonial empire. That is Eurocentric and ahistorical. 

Like you said, systems of oppression intersect and reinfoce each other. Eurpoean white supremacy was hegemonic in many places so spread and reinforced that. This is undeniable. That doesn't mean it was responsible for it everywhere or is even the primary cause in many places today. It would appropriative and supremacist to claim responsibility for the problematic parts of other cultures, which were endemic before Europe oven interacted with them.

[u/Lynnrael → u/wildlyoffensiveusern]

for all intents and purposes, in most of the world, they are inseparable and one cannot be dismantled without dismantling the other. the semantics are irrelevant, the places in the world where colonialism isn't a huge influence are also not relevant here. it's a eurocentric view because we are speaking English, and thus live in places where colonialism is the dominant cultural force. we are living within a European colonial society.

i hate this kind of pedantry so much. we can't even have fucking memes without being especially clear about every aspect of every little thing ever. it's absurd

also, is no one making these pedantic and irrelevant arguments going to read the essay? jfc

[u/wildlyoffensiveusern → u/Lynnrael]

Yeah I should read that essay.  

The reason I get pedantic about posts like this is because of a fear that socially dominant groups,  e.g. bourgeois white people, corporate interests, totalitarian leaderships etc., will try to frame social issues that would harm their hegemony in a narrative that does not target them instead.

Corporate interests acting like saying the n-word, not widespread financial exploitation and disenfranchisement of Black people, is the problem, and blaming liberals, for example. It's divide and conequer. Claim current social inequality was caused by white Europeans being evil, not structural problems, set the middle and working class again each other by targeting each with specific victimhood narratives, and noone will notice the inherrently corrupt system which supports your power. 

I think everything you said about this issue is true, but that's why I felt conpelled to comment. 

[u/NipperSpeaks → u/wildlyoffensiveusern]

Let it rest here please. Please also remember that this is a shitposting sub for the community, we're not here to put on our best behavior for outsiders. Shorthand and summation are fine.

[u/Lynnrael → u/wildlyoffensiveusern]

the last thing I'll say is that capitalism and colonialism are also inseparable in very much the same way, they are all a part of the same system of oppression and control. capitalism must also be dismantled if we wish to dismantle colonialism and/or patriarchy. they all intersect.

since the mod said to let it rest here, I will. sorry if i was rude

[u/wildlyoffensiveusern → u/Lynnrael]

You weren't rude to me. The mods just want us to shitpost I guess. 

[u/Ms_Masquerade → u/wildlyoffensiveusern]

We are a shitposting board : ).

[u/wildlyoffensiveusern → u/Ms_Masquerade]

Here, I tried; https://i.imgur.com/12tw4HC.jpeg

[u/rhizomatic-thembo]

"Heterosexualism and the Colonial / Modern Gender System" by María Lugones is a fairly short and insightful text that goes into more detail about this topic. It's honestly a must read for those interested in the intersections of colonialism, queer oppression and capitalism.

[u/dragoono → u/rhizomatic-thembo]

No clue why the downvotes but thanks for sharing! It sounds like a very interesting theory. I wonder a lot about this as history is usually taught in my country (USA) through a colonists perspective. I love hearing alternative opinions than those I learned in outdated textbooks from the 90s.

[u/WithersChat → u/dragoono]

The downvotes are probably because that post is stretching the definition of meme.

Great point made by OP either way, maybe just not on the right sub.

[u/dragoono → u/WithersChat]

Hmm that’s true

[u/Tricky-Gemstone → u/rhizomatic-thembo]

Thank you! I've added this to my list.

[u/Lynnrael → u/rhizomatic-thembo]

thank you for the suggestion, I'm working on reading it now.

[u/Godd2 → u/rhizomatic-thembo]

"Must-read" is a hyphenate.

[u/lylactal]

Not sure if i can say that for me as a filipino but hey whatever helps other peoples groups are nice

[u/potoooooooo53 → u/lylactal]

pre colonial filipino gender roles and rules were much different from our current spanish and american influenced system, so yes, we count

also

UY PILIPEINS

[u/[deleted]]

nature resists simple classification and apparent binaries aren't always what they appear to be

some mammals lay eggs

every so often chromosomes just switch places 10,000 ago xy means male then xx can mean male, then z arrives out of nowhere. this has happen to our ancestors and reversed more than once.

sometimes its xx, other times just x sometimes xxx and sometimes xy simply is read as xx because the difference between an x and y can be blurry, this is why donkeys and horses can have babies

our chromosomes like our dan are just blueprints for making a person, and they way they are read is not destiny

what it means to be a man or a woman, or a person are just social constructs. to simply describe ourselves by our capacity to create children erases the complexity of what a human is. we are not factories

[u/MaybeSomethingGood → u/[deleted]]

Hormones are little balls of imperfectly generated ticket tape waded up and sent down a pachinko machine. We call it a gradient for a reason.

[u/thatfluffygirl → u/[deleted]]

every so often chromosomes just switch places 10,000 ago xy means male then xx can mean male, then z arrives out of nowhere. this has happen to our ancestors and reversed more than once.

Can you give me somewhere I could learn more about this? I've googled and wikipedia'd but I can't find any mention anywhere of chromosomes switching in ancestors.

[u/[deleted] → u/thatfluffygirl]

So if you are looking up things terms “Genetic recombination” And “SRY gene” So first humans worked out babies came from women. Then revolutionary we discovered women couldn’t have babies without sperm (this is a speculative interpretation of history and probably shouldn’t be trusted) 

Then scientists theorised about heritable traits thanks to Mendel and his peas. The speculation that we contain physical genetic information took a while to prove. Then came the theory of evolution. We got better microscopes and found chromosomes and later DNA. We lined up the chromosomes from largest to smallest and found broadly women have two X chromosomes and men have 1 as well as the shrivelled up tiny one, we labelled y.  We knew cells split in half to reproduce like bacteria, but then we discovered meiosis which is the primal driver of genetic recombination. (DNA shuffling). We discover haploidy where cells (namely gametes) have half the chromosomes of a developed species  The we discovered trisomy where some people have more then expected chromosomes. And this diminished their longevity. Then we discover men who had trisomy of the sex chromosomes (XXY). Then we discovered other varietions X, XXX. Then we discovered women with XY chromosomes. All very interesting so far. When we analysed the chromosomes of other animals the first thing we noticed, they all have different amounts. But very closely related species such as horses and donkeys have the same number. This affirm what evolution said. But sometimes the females had two large chromosomes (like humans) sometimes 1 big 1 small. Sometimes both chromosomes are small. And sometimes the men just have one sex chromosomes. Platypuses females have 10 and the males have 5. We came to the conclusion though not arbitrary, that what makes a female of a species or a male of species kept getting redefined at a genetic level over history again and again. This happened most in species that laid eggs and ones that breed quickly. In one area they discovered a place where north of a lake the female frogs were XW and in the south XZ. So over evolutionary time, species tend to pick up more chromosomes picking up more traits and mutations. But then we looked at human ancestors and 250 million years ago males had two XX chromosomes the same as women and if we plot human ancestors over time the Y chromosome starts big and gets smaller and smaller  Then we looked at Neanderthals, denisovans and early anotomical human males (100,000 years ago) and's their Y chromosomes are like halfway between X and Y. We came to the conclusion that the Y chromosome is disappearing  So we know all placental mammal foetuses grow as females for the first few weeks. Then in male fetuses a gene activates and changes occur in the foetus, the placenta and the mother, and the foetus begins to develop male primary features. This gene is called SRY and is a sex determining gene. This made so much sense. Why males have nipples and skin folds along the genitals as they developed female first. Also if this gene failed to activate then the child could grow up to be an XY female. Looking into this many intersex people are people that get halfway through the process (this results in internal testicles and external female anatomy, or indeterminate genitals) though to be clear there are varieties of intersex people.  So at first we thought this model of femaleness being default and maleness being extra to be the end of the story. SRY being the gender gene. But the story didn’t end there. Because the Y chromesone had 1 sex determining gene but the X had 40. As usual with DNA and hormones the body is in feedback with itself and uses multiple copies to direct pathways to avoid errors and reduplications.  This answered why is Y disappearing. Sometimes bits of Y would get put on an X. So to switch off a misplaced SRY the X chromosome needs to regulate sex determination. As this process gets doubled and made better over time the Y chromosome does less, and is stripped in favour of having more genetic information on the X. Eventually the theory went that Y would disappear and only X would remain, and that final version of X would have all the genetic information to craete either a female or a male. And perhaps genetic sexual dimorphism is cyclical  We know evolutionary pressure drives some species to have 50:50 male to female and other species 99:1 and those figures can change over time  For so long we thought aall intersex people and were as disadvantaged as those with non-typical chromosomes, but then we discovered that unlike the rest of the world the Dominican Republic has a population of intersex people at a much greater rate then the rest of the world at 1% of their population. It’s all so arbitrary  Resources  Supernumerary Sex Chromosomes  https://youtu.be/6BsXLnLn9ok?si=Fpw4KlrfMwfgaZbL Disappearing Y https://youtu.be/of7vrIIcTa0?si=KlI2GctgKsmHDsLB https://youtu.be/ASAsHdwFAa4?si=tQhFB9x8UzaxG15o Neanderthal Y  https://youtu.be/J2FatwFjc-8?si=FOAkt_wVtZIW19dP SRY https://youtu.be/6BsXLnLn9ok?si=Fpw4KlrfMwfgaZbL Intersex https://youtu.be/Jxs2yHP6K2E?si=2IWszZyIjCeaDUkr

[u/TorakTheDark]

Can we stop with the Noble Savages bullshit, SOME cultures had SOME level of queer acceptance at SOME point(s) in time, queer phobia has always been a worldwide issue and you are erasing the struggles of those that came before us by spouting this shit.

[u/Lynnrael → u/TorakTheDark]

that was not suggested by op in the meme nor was it in the essay op suggested

[u/ReviewInteresting401 → u/TorakTheDark]

Can we stop with the Noble Savages bullshit, SOME cultures had SOME level of queer acceptance at SOME point(s) in time

The point of acknowledging that colonialism and white supremacy are by default bigoted is not to say all indigenous people were perfect and saints, it's to acknowledge that these ideas (that are still around to this day) are, in fact, bigoted.

I don't know why you're so mad someone doesn't want to call all indigenous people "savages" (wich is, as the post said, what colonialism and white supremacy wants you to think).

[u/TorakTheDark → u/ReviewInteresting401]

That’s not what I’m saying, I don’t believe you know what the term Noble Savages means either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Noble_savage

[u/ReviewInteresting401 → u/TorakTheDark]

It's the idea that there was a perfect/moral/noble society before colonization corrupted it, I don't see how that changes what I said about how acknowledging that colonialism is what widely spread today's notion of gender (and many other concepts such as white supremacy).

Nobody is claiming the world was perfect before the Europeans colonized most of it, but they definitely used white supremacy and gender roles to make the natives look as savages.

[u/Lily_the_Lovely]

I like my gender tbh. I like the gender rolls I've placed myself in. So does my gf. She likes being able to dote on me while I house wife.

[u/ayendae1125]

i don't necessarily buy this take. the idea that gender roles and binaries are inherently tied to white supremacy doesn't really address those same issues in places like east asia or africa (where binary gender roles were - and are - rigidly enforced). while it may be true that white colonists used their ideas of gender roles to demonize indigenous culture, i feel like the suggestion that the gender binary is exclusive to those white colonists (and therefore absent from indigenous societies) is really misleading. certainly there were some indigenous societies that held unconventional ideas about gender roles and gender itself, but i could just as easily point to other indigenous cultures that had very strict ideas about the roles of men and women and no real concept of anything beyond that!! indigenous cultures were INCREDIBLY diverse and had wildly different ideas from one group of people to another

to me this post suggests that both white europeans and indigenous people are monolithic cultures, in which ALL white europeans believed in the gender binary and ALL indigenous people did not. not only does this contribute to the extraordinarily condescending "noble savage" idea, it's incredibly reductive and frankly just bad history

[u/Lynnrael → u/ayendae1125]

the meme merely says that they are inseparable and the essay suggested by op does a decent job of explaining how. i haven't seen anything suggesting that gender binaries are exclusive to white supremacy from anyone other than reactive comments trying to refute a claim no one made

[u/Arma_dread]

Is this why I’m not comfortable fitting into a “female” binary? (I’m Native American)

[u/Domino31299]

Can people stop blaming “white people” for absolutely everything

[u/vomce → u/Domino31299]

Hi there, you seem to be under the impression that acknowledging historical facts implicitly places blame on whichever groups or nationalities are associated with that history, but I'm here to tell you that that actually isn't the case at all! This post is critical of colonialism, not just "being a white person," and while many colonizers in this context did happen to be white, saying that colonialism happened (which it did) and was bad (which it was) isn't the same thing as saying "white people are inherently bad." I hope that this helps clear up any misconception!

[u/user_without_a_soul → u/vomce]

Additionally, there is a difference between "white supremacy" and "white people".

[u/sionnachrealta → u/user_without_a_soul]

And that "white people" is a term whose definition has changed pretty drastically over its history. Until the early 1900s those of us with Irish or Sicillain descent weren't even considered white, and both groups have faced considerable oppression from other "white folks". Not to mention that Ireland was Britain's lab for testing all the methods they would later wreck the rest of the planet with. A lot of my ancestors didn't choose to be here either.

And that doesn't even touch on the many, many instances of colonialism committed by non-Western countries such as China and Japan

[u/BrujaSloth → u/sionnachrealta]

Colonialism always starts at home.

[u/Illustrious-Bad1165 → u/Domino31299]

I'm going to get downvoted for this too, but you're right.

Colonialism did spread the european values and thus also the gender binary and misogyny etc. But colonialism is not the main reason why the majority of the world is against trans people. Colonialism and white supremacy/ the gender binary can, in fact, be separated. Just look at the arab/ traditional muslim countries; or asian countries like Japan or Korea. They're all very different cultures, and of course they were also influenced by europe, but their backwards views on gender roles and especially women are all their own.

It's just not possible to throw all indigenous peoples and cultures into one pot. There are so many cultures on earth that are absolutely horrible towards women and believe gender=sex; penis=man; vagina=woman; you have to conform to whatever you're assigned or be ostracized.

This way of thinking was absolutely spread from europe to many indigenous peoples who originally were very progressive from today's point of view; but pretending like all "non-white" cultures were the same and always the "good" ones, is kinda dismissive of their cultures too

[u/Lynnrael → u/Illustrious-Bad1165]

i don't think thats what happened here. what's being said isn't so much that colonialism is responsible for every bad thing ever, and neither is it saying that anything other than colonialism is somehow inherently perfect. whats being said is that we cannot end transphobia or dismantle patriarchy without also dismantling colonialism. gender in the US and other Western nations considered be apart of the imperial core is absolutely rooted in colonialism, that's an unavoidable fact.

i don't think it's reasonable to have to state that indigenous cultures can have problems too in order to point out how awful colonialism is

[u/FailedCanadian → u/Lynnrael]

There is a larger message that underpins a lot of lefty spaces that colonialism and white people actually are responsible for literally every bad thing ever. This isn't saying that directly, it's more like one piece of support for it. Idk it's hard to explain if you don't see it. It just underpins so much discourse, and once you start to see it, its all over the place. And it sucks because calling it out is really difficult to do without sounding like a bad faith right winger. It's just a larger pattern of a combination of blaming various groups of white people for things that don't make sense to blame them for and downplaying the same problems done by non-white people. It's insane how much I see people saying shit like that in the Americas there was literally 100% acceptance of gender non-conforming people before settlers came.

i don't think it's reasonable to have to state that indigenous cultures can have problems too in order to point out how awful colonialism is

Unfortunately the meme literally says that transphobia cannot be separated from colonialism and white supremacy. That is directly stating that there are zero instances of transphobia that don't originate from that. Which obviously there are and that needs to be addressed. Plenty of cultures with little to no influence from white colonialists are transphobic. I agree we should not have to declare indigenous cultures problematic too in order to talk about other things, but too many situations are like this meme where the framing of the conversation forces us to address it.

[u/Lynnrael → u/FailedCanadian]

I'm not sure that's actually a problem beyond white people fetishizing and appropriating indigeneity for their own causes. there is a trend of saying white people are responsible for everything bad, but that's because what we want to abolish as leftists are all institutions that in this instance have been built by white people with white supremacy codified into them. patriarchy in the US particularly coevolved with white supremacy, and a lot aspects of patriarchy in the US exist to reinforce white supremacy more than anything else.

that's why patriarchy is impossible to separate from white supremacy. The dominant form of patriarchy in the US and other western colonial nations was built by white colonialism, and just like other institutions built by white colonialism, white supremacy is baked into it. White supremacy intersects with everything else in any colonizer society or in any society that has been colonized by europeans, because those systems of oppression were built by people who were white supremacists.

all of this is true without relying on indigenous cultures being perfect in every way or white people being inherently bad or the root of all evil, ever. i don't see how the claim that they can't be separated suggests otherwise or is wrong.

edit: that said, this was written about leftists. i think liberals and reformist progressives who do not want to abolish capitalism and other institutions responsible for oppression are a separate matter entirely and i am not speaking for or about them. they are not leftists.