I don’t have much of a stance on baeddels, because i’m not good enough at tumblr archaeology to have one. I have actually done research, because trans women are interesting to me. It seems to have been a small tumblr clique of trans women in the early 2010s? And they had some particular transmisogyny analysis? They imploded around 2014, after only getting started around 2013, as these culty cliques tend to do due to sexual abuse and personal conflicts.
But i can’t get any firm grip on who they were and what they believed. It seems lost to time. There is not much evidence as blogs are deleted and are not archived well. Like this post tries to be a comprehensive explanation of who baeddels were, but if you check the sources it’s mainly links to non-baeddels explaining what baeddels believed. There is like one archive link that doesn’t fully work. The post is essentially third-hand hearsay. Of course I suspect the primary sources are mostly gone at this point. Because the baeddels mainly existed on social media, so much is erased or lost, they are mostly a memory at this point. It does feel like tumblr archaeology, this feels like trying to understand some early christian sect who we only know from accounts of people who opposed them.
Like the baeddels didn’t publish books to my knowledge, or seem to have been in the habit of writing manifestos or explanations of what they believed. Like it’s not with radfems where you can easily read Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex or Ti-Grace Atkinson or Janice Raymond to find out what kind of bullshit they were on.
I’m not convinced the baeddels were like a distinct movement with a well-defined ideology, as that post linked above seems to argue. That they explicitly believed that gender is a choice and choosing to be a man is bad. There is just not enough evidence to do that. Like the primary sources the post have is screenshots of self-described baeddels making mean-spirited posts about transmascs. A lot of it is pretty bad, but doesn’t create a picture of a well-defined ideology. I’m not convinced there was really a “baeddelism”.
Like I haven’t been convinced the baeddels were anything but a specific clique of tumblr trans lesbians who found out about the word baeddel and reclaimed it, believing it to be root of the english word “bad”, had a transmisogyny analysis and had some bad, hateful rhetoric directed towards transmascs. Like none of that makes for a distinct ideology, no matter how incoherent.
Part of it that it seems that the baeddels were a relatively small group, that probably had an outsized impact on tumblr discourse. Like I’ve heard assessments that are like the core baeddel group was like 8-10 people.
The closest thing I found to a baeddel manifesto is this medium post which was published years after the baeddel clique seems to have imploded, and I don’t know the connection the person who wrote it had to the original baeddels. I don’t know if they thought this is a good summary of their thinking or not. Most of the text is defensive and presents what is basic transfeminist analysis as baeddel theory, which I don’t think they can claim? It’s not a reliable guide, especially being from 2017.
If you argue that baeddelism is something like “Transmisogyny exists, it’s a real systematic oppression that transfems face, and yes, even TME trans people can perpetrate it”, I guess I’m a baeddel? This strikes me as basic transfeminist theory, a basic transmisogyny theory as Julia Serano put it. If this is baeddelism, most transfeminists are baeddels.
And here I think the problem lies with “baeddel” as it’s used today. They were probably never a well-defined ideological group, but tied together more by personal relationships (which is why they imploded when those relationships turned abusive) and some shared rhetoric. And a lot of what they actually believed is lost to time, due to them only being online and on tumblr specifically.
So “baeddel” has become such a loose word that it can be removed from the context of the tumblr baeddel clique and applied as an insult to practically anyone. The way I seen it used it often means “transfem who writes mean things about transmascs”. But more worrying is that basic transfeminist analysis/transmisogyny theory or criticism of transmisogyny perpetrated by tme trans people are labeled as “baeddel”.
It seems similar to how people don’t have a good handle on who radfems/terfs actually are and what they are, so they label basic feminist analysis as “terfy” or define terf as “self-proclaimed feminist who hates men”. I have written extensively about radfems here.
The post about baeddels I linked above actually does this kind of thing to the baeddels. It calls them “transinclusive radical feminists” and describe their ideology as radfem. Which I strongly doubt is true. That’s because radfem ideology defines womanhood through biological essentialism and believes cis women’s biology is why misogyny and patriarchy exists. It’s hard to have a strong transmisogyny analysis with that kind of theoretical grounding. Trans women are neither women or targets of misogyny when you define womanhood that way.
This is why “trans-inclusive” radfems are so often not really trans-inclusive. You can’t really take the biological essentialism and transmisogyny out of radfemism, and have it still be radfemism. So accusing the baeddels of doing that doesn’t really hold water. Baeddels seem to have had a lot of man-hating rhetoric and separatist ideology, but that is not what defines radfem ideology.
And I do mean it seems to be applied to trans women doing basic transfeminist analysis or using transmisogyny theory. Turns out I was wrong about baeddels not publishing books, because apparently Julia Serano was basically a proto-baeddel and Whipping Girl is the tap-root of baeddelism.
Like look at these two posts.
Calling Serano a radfem is hilarious. Like she is not even remotely that. But I’m actually worried about how transandrophobia/misandry people have this view that Serano and Whipping Girl are this fountainhead of evil “transandrophobia”, based mostly on some bad quotes. Because if you cancel Serano and Whipping Girl, it’s a way of canceling transmisogyny theory, because Whipping Girl basically created the concept. I’m not saying that criticism and disagreement of Serano and her ideas are bad, but there is this attempt at canceling her. Due to transmisogyny, any mistakes a trans woman make are magnified and used as part as an attempt to destroy her career and isolate her from community. And Serano being such a major transfeminist that it would be a major loss.
And trying to describe her as baeddel-ascent is especially telling. The word is then entirely disconnected from the tumblr clique who claimed the word and whose crimes (which i do not necessarily deny) gave the word its modern power as an insult.
Two more screenshots:
The term is so vaguely defined that this kind of paranoia worries me. Like if you believe that there is this evil cabal of “transmisandrist” trans women still around, and not calling yourself a baeddel is no defense, I don’t see this ending happily due to transmisogyny. The transmisogynistic current of call-out culture will practically get people hurt by this. Especially if it seems that critcizing transmisogyny, especially from transmascs seem to be enough to be labeled a baeddel.
The original baeddel clique might have done some horrible crimes. But I doubt they represented some distinct ideology that we need to root out of trans spaces, especially as no one can define and primary sources on what the baeddels believed is scarce.
And that’s because of how online they were. I do not want to minimize any abusive content they might have sent, but it strikes me how insignificant the baeddels were. LIke they seem to have existed largely online and wielded their influence mainly on tumblr. They never seemed to have wielded any kind of institutional power. And that’s not surprising, if you are a trans lesbian you don’t have much power.
The actions of self-described baeddels might have been a problem, but unlike say radfems they seem to have been a very minor problem Like Janice Raymond was working with the Reagan adminstration to deny trans people healthcare, and in my country radfem groups today provide the Swedish government a feminist alibi for not taking action to improve trans rights. Radfems have had a very demonstrable effect on institutional transphobia.
You can’t say that about the baeddels. And they probably were nasty to transmascs, but i suspect their greatest victim was the poor trans woman who was one of them, but who was raped by a leading member.
It’s kinda insane how they, a small internet sect, have become this boogeywoman to wield against trans woman talking about transmisogyny, including major figures like Julia Serano.
Addendum
I recently checked that definitive looking baeddel history post by nothorses again and oh gods how did i not notice that one of the writer’s second-hand sources is a post on a fucking terf blog. And it’s a transmisogynistic radfem rant (it’s linked for transparency’s case but it’s horrid stuff, don’t read it if you are in a bad place mentally) about some “traumatized” men have developed an “ideology where the reality of their maleness and male socialization can be denied” and how they are “weaponizing… trans men’s supposed male privilege, “transmisogyny,” “sex is a social construct,” etc. in order to silence females, they produce a powerful ideological structure which can render sex-based oppression and power dynamics invisible”. It’s your typical terf rant full of misgendering and transmisogyny. But it’s linked to in nothorses’s post uncritically as a source, despite it even shining bright red if you have the shinigami eyes extension installed. And to be honest, a lot of nothorses’s description of baeddels echo the description in the terf post, including thinking beaddels were bad for believing trans men have male privilege.
This illustrates the problem of relying on second-hand sources about a group’s beliefs, often these sources are biased and outright bigoted, and not reliable sources whatsoever. And second-hand sources are the sources for Nothorses entire post basically, including an obvious bigoted one.
Nothorses pinned post at present pretty much starts with a denial that he has ever been a terf. And well, maybe that’s true. He just uses them as sources uncritically when they’re talking about trans women.
Also he links to Turn-me-into-a-girl.com as an example of baeddels making “sissification” jokes, which is bizarre. The site is not really a forced fem joke,, and mostly just says “if you want to be a girl, that’s a symptom of being a girl”. It’s actually quite wholesome. Also it’s from 2018 apparently, way after baeddelism collapsed according to nothorses himself. This is a case of his sources having absolutely nothing to do with what he’s talking about.
Addendum II
This wasn’t meant to and didn’t end up as a history of “baeddels” exactly. It’s more of a critique of what you can call"anti-baeddelism".
The problem in short is that they claim baeddelism is a distinct ideology that persists to this day, and it’s bad, but they don’t have any proof of what baeddelism is or if it even exists.
The nothorses post is literally the most credible anti-baeddel text there is. As it tries to appear reliable by providing a definition of baeddelism as an ideology and its history and tries to back it up with sources. But the sources are all second-hand accounts about the baeddels, practically nothing from the baeddels about what they believed. And you kinda need those primary sources to write a credible ideological critique, even if they are hard to find due to being on deleted tumblr blogs. And you can’t replace them like nothorses does with all these second-hand sources, which are practically all hostile and in one case outright bigoted and transmisogynistic. They’re not good sources. I wrote my addendum because i was too nice to nothorses in the original post.
So anti-baeddelism has no coherent definition of what it opposes and in practice thus leads to a paranoid witch hunt that targets transfems. Baeddel thus in practice means “transfem who is mean to transmascs” or “transfem who talks about transmisogyny, especially in the wider trans community”.
I saw a twitter post months ago that said, because of the widespread misue of “terf” to describe basic feminist analysis, we are close to an unironic “talking about transmisogyny is terfy” take (i can’t find that tweet now). And considering baeddels are painted as “TIRFS” by nothorses (despite no signs of actually being RFs) and also talking a lot about transmisogyny, i think with baeddel discourse we already reached that point long ago.
Anyway, if you want more baeddel history, i can recommend this post. by a user literally named “baeddel”, and which seems interesting ( fghfh i’ve been recommended it a few times since this post started getting notes).
lotta people want to be a freak of freaks but in like a totally frictionless way where they receive no pushback, disapproval, or scorn. not sure what the ideal outcome is for these people.
i wonder what the overlap is between people who love self-applying slurs and people who complain about how awkward pronoun circles are. i haven’t specifically been observing for individuals holding both stances but it can’t be zero.
It’s wild to me how much furry art I was marinated in as a child and yet I am still not a furry. “You can be!” No, I can’t. I’ve tried so many times. It’s never taken. I’m like those cis+ people but for furries.
curious about how many people who are like “me too” about this actively disprefer art featuring anthropomorphic animals (even if they think it’s completely fine, are just like “wow this comic is good… wish the characters weren’t anthros so i could enjoy it more”) vs simply getting nothing out of a furry element (“hey, this is artist is good! huh, they mostly do furries. well, it’s good art!”) vs having a mild appreciation for some designs and uses of anthropomorphism but not enough to bother identifying as an enjoyer of it (“i wouldn’t bother looking up a list, but yeah i think cartoons about talking animals are fun”)
any of those are perfectly fine and i don’t think members of the third category should identify as furries if they don’t feel drawn to, i’m just interested in the ambiguity.
it’s really something how whatever valences people attach to fandom and fanfiction cause them to treat the ao3 and fanfiction hosting generally as something it’s either wholly pointless or just kind of cringe to care about, as though “millions and millions of hours of human effort and care at creative work” and “millions of pieces of art that people have various emotional attachments to” aren’t obviously worth preserving and obviously very sad to contemplate the destruction or long term inaccessibility of. it would be sad if a large percentage of the graffiti in the world suddenly flaked off every surface it’s on. it would be sad if a large percentage of the children’s finger paintings tacked to fridges and tucked away in boxes suddenly crumbled. it’s sad when a collection of pulp novels hosting the last copies of some hastily written and hastily enjoyed books is lost to fire or flood, it’s sad when the film a bunch of old porn was recorded on degrades past the point of total irretrievability. sure, each medium contains works that could be judged to have broader cultural relevance, ~true artistic and/or historical value, but that’s not really the point. even if they’re only valuable to the people who made them and the people who love them it would be sad for them to be lost.
I’m sorry, but someone reacting that way to their partner coming out to them is always an asshole. If your reaction is “you’ve been leading me on all this time and should feel horrible for discovering your orientation” then you’re an asshole, plain and simple.
“He didn’t take it well, obviously. But he made it clear that he wasn’t mad because I was aro, but because he felt I lead him on the entire time.”
“he made it clear that he wasn’t mad because I was aro”
What do you think “that way” was? And what do you think it was in response to? Nowhere does original anon say that his ex made any negative comments about his romantic orientation or self-discovery, and in fact he notes that his ex specifically told him that was not what he was responding negatively to. What’s the minimum positive, affirming response you think people are obligated to give to ‘I’m breaking up with you because I’ve realized I never actually wanted to date you. For orientation reasons.’?
One is entitled to not receive discrimination or cruelty during a breakup. One is not entitled to the person one is breaking up with swallowing all feelings of disappointment or frustration about the situation. Even if it’s because one is having important life revelations. It’s *nice* for someone to put aside their own feelings of having been lead on to congratulate a now-ex for figuring out their orientation, but it’s not obligatory.
If original anon had been dating a woman and figured out that he was gay, “I’m not mad that you’re gay, I’m just mad you didn’t tell me sooner that you didn’t actually enjoy our relationship.” followed by “I processed my feelings and I want to still be friends.” would be a non-homophobic, fairly positive way to handle the breakup.
love this piece by Javier Pérez titled ‘Carroña’. Ten stuffed crows carefully placed on a shattered red chandelier to look as if they were feasting on a dead animal.
But yeah guys keep fucking talking about how “queer is a slur” or whatever ship you don’t like should be censored
You’re literally a Christian fundamentalist and you’re killing actual queers
[ID: chart showing Americans’ Views of the Morality of Same-Sex Relations, by Political Party. It shows a bumpy rise from ~20% among Republicans in 2001 to almost 60% in 2022, with a sharp drop back down to 41% for 2023. For Democrats, a rise from 40 to 80something, then a drop down to 79. Independents track similarly to Democrats at first, then split distinctly lower after 2010, but show no 2023 decline. /end ID]
right wingers: conduct a massive moral panic reactionary backlash against gay and trans liberation, resulting in a drop in support for gay rights to approximately legalization-of-gay-marriage levels, mostly among their base extremely serious political thinker: it is LGBT 15-25 year olds having wrong opinions about minecraft RPF who have done this
[images: a hamster nestled in a bamboo leaf, which is being folded to make a zongzi (or similar steamed food) with the hamster as filling. the banana leaf is folded up into a triangle shape around the hamster, leaving only its head peeking out. end alt text]
[images: a hamster nestled in a banana leaf, which is being folded to make a zongzi (or similar steamed food) with the hamster as filling. the banana leaf is folded up into a triangle shape around the hamster, leaving only its head peeking out. end alt text]
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