I don't really get the general vitriol for Hussie

I'm not interested in being cast as a fence-sitter for not playing along with the gender binary, so I won't entertain this idea that I have to see everything through that lens. And it doesn't help with the part where people around Hussie are comfortable using he/him pronouns. We both read Miles' post where Miles uses he. I'm not secretly part of Hussie's social circle, so I have no idea if there are people who use she/her, but I think it pays to take Hussie at face value that the clowngender position is to not care. Like, the position is that what you just said is not important to the person. It's Hussie's gender not mine. I have to go by what Hussie says as a person who vocally does not care, not an interpretation from someone who cares and is trying to get others to care. It's paradoxical.

I /identify/ as clowngender. No one is saying you can't use he/him pronouns for Hussie, that has nothing to do with anything here, it's the exclusive use of he/him and they/them for Hussie by actors that know they identify as NB and don't know them personally at all that is the problem. The reason why this is a 'transfem' problem is that due to society the gender binary does actually indeed exist as a concept, you can't just say 'well I'm not transfem because I exist outside of the gender binary' because you aren't, you're just defying the gender binary, you still exist in society and will be judged on the standards of that binary. The simple fact of the matter is that to identify as 'more feminine' while being AMAB is to identify as 'lesser' to the patriarchal society at large whether that is NB or female.

The whole reason I have a pronoun wheel is because I found this exact bias annoying as hell. I identified as 'any' gender for a long time, but because I'm amab people defaulted to he/they constantly. To hear someone call me she was a breath of fresh air, not because I identify more with 'she' as a pronoun but because the patriarchal bias causes people to default to specific pronouns.

Yeah. Is it possible to use he/him for Hussie in good faith? Yes, and some people seemingly do. Are there people who insistently use he/him and describe her as a man as a transphobic jab? Also yes. Is it rhetorically advantageous towards the narrative of Hussie as a purely evil, manipulative, abusive liar to rely on the transmysogyny 101 idea of the scary cis man masquerading as something else to exert his power without repercussions? Absolutely.

You can firmly believe that an AMAB clowngender person does not qualify as transfem. I would agree with Squiddo that that isn't correct, but even if you *do* accept that Hussie isn't transfem, that doesn't change that the tactics of transmysogyny have been and are still used against her.

(and considering this fandom's long history with regards to transfems, it's a bit silly to see that and the attitude towards hussie's gender as two separate issues)

"I think that's a little silly. Hussie hasn't said anything about avoiding he/him pronouns, and clowngender is specifically about "not caring" and it's not a part of the binary so why would it imply transfemninity?"

Transitioning away from male is generally considered under the transfem umbrella, and regardless of whether or not hussie specifically is a woman, she HAS become a transfeminised individual because gender is ultimately a social class and social classes are best analysed through material conditions rather than vibes.

*Materially*, there is a pointed insistence on he/himing hussie primarily by bad actors. And while it's one thing when someone alternates pronouns, as most people on this forum do, it really sticks out when someone reads "any pronouns" and not only defaults consistently to the ones that match the persons AGAB, but is willing to argue against using anything else.

There IS a common transmisogynistic harassment tactic called degendering-- it applies when a she/her is consistently they/themed, and it applies when people pointedly default to masc pronouns when given literally infinite options.

(It's also not exactly uncommon for people doing this to hussie specifically to deny that hussie is trans/nb *at all*, and claim that it's All A Joke, which kind of damages my ability to give benefit of the doubt here)

you may not notice dog whistle behaviours like this, but they ring loud and clear to those of us with enough experience with transmisogynists.

again: no one is saying he/him isn't included under "any", or that andrew hussie is specifically a binary woman. we're saying it's weird when someone stubbornly and consistently ONLY uses he/him, and the way hussie has been treated since coming out mirrors the experiences of many transfems, binary or not.

(and i mean, as an aside: if hussie DID come out specifically as a woman, what then? will you all drop everything and change how you talk about her? does all of this retroactively count as Real transmisogyny to you then? maybe some of you, but i have a distinct feeling the people we're talking about might not.)

Thank you, I think that was a good way to explain that.

I deeply dislike this framing, where Hussie has absolutely no agency. If her only demonstrated attitude is apathy, if her position is to not present, seek or ask others to view them as transfeminine, and instead to use a queer identity to deny a gendered presentation altogether, then I don't see how it's at all viable for me to then go ahead and decide on my own who is right and who is wrong based on their personal view of Hussie as a person.

Am I supposed to see it as "everyone who likes Hussie is allowed to use he/him, but if they dislike Hussie then I have to be suspicious"?. Hussie makes it easiest to use he/him. Hussie calls herself an eboy on Instagram and has only ever broached the subject of gender to say "I don't care". I don't know if Hussie would disagree with either of you, but the position you put them in gives her infinite advantage over anyone who ever used he/him and doesn't like her. It's a convenient position for anyone as an individual, not a position one takes for the collective good, for the good fight or anything like that. It's transparently self-serving. The instructions were "any pronouns are fine". To change the intentions behind that so that anyone who dislikes you is stepping on a landmine for continuing to use the same he/him the people working with Hussie use is just... so wrong. I don't need to explain why that is, it's obvious to anyone that it turns it into a game played at someone else's expense.

Obviously you can jump down the throat of anyone who types Hussie's pronouns in italics, or bold or with quotation marks or whatever makes it obvious that they're making a point of expressing bigotry, but there has to be something to point at other than "you used the pronoun everyone says Hussie says is okay to use".

I'm not clowngender, because I reserve the right to care about my gender. I want to be able to talk about how the gender binary is harmful, and how the various positions I've been forced into or chosen to take in it throughout my life have been problematic for me, when I think that subject is worth discussing with somebody. I don't want any of my identity to be wrapped up in apathy, and I don't tell people to use any pronouns so I can catch them in a bind for using the wrong one. I tell them because I've reached a place where I feel comfortable with any and want to give them the freedom to choose the one they want. If I hadn't, if I had a favorite, I would be asking for the one I preferred like most people.

"Am I supposed to see it as "everyone who likes Hussie is allowed to use he/him, but if they dislike Hussie then I have to be suspicious"?."

that's a brand new sentence. no one said that shit.

This feels straight up disingenuous lmfao we explained pretty clearly the problem and you ignored it to speculate a bunch about something none of us said.

im trying not to get like re-involved in all the huss arguments for my own health and sanity but i do feel the need to point out the last time hussie called xyrself eboy was in november 2020. Every post after (so Jan 2021 onwards) is either tagged with "dclussie" or simply left blank. Sure, much of this this was all in the lead-up to Psycholonials's release but given the contents of the game and how the instagram is still using dclussie... i do no think eboy is Accurate anymore and hasnt been for like 4 years :X

When I read Homestuck initially in 2023, I read it entirely separate from the fandom (and the better for it!) before immediately reading the Epilogues. I remember really liking Act 6, being blown away by the Epilogues, but hearing vague stuff about misbehaviour by Hussie. Nothing serious, but enough to burn some bridges. I then read Psycholonials in that context and like, it clicked, it was sincere and beautiful and really endeared Hussie as an artist to me.

I then joined the fandom and. Uh, wow, not impressed in the slightest. The vitriol for Hussie and indeed for Homestuck itself by its ostensible fans is unprecedented based on any other fandom I'm in. You don't get people like this about Gundam, even the bits they hate. And it made me realise something was rotten in the Homestuck fandom.

Even the conversations about Hussie's gender are really weird, like "Hussie goes by any pronouns" ok I'll use any pronouns seems reasonable but there's this interrogation of even that which is in ways that make me incredibly uncomfortable. I do think that FRAF, breaking free from the noxious reddit and discord is a breath of fresh air. I can only really describe it as a parasocial hatedom where you'd expect Hussie to have personally eaten a baby in front of people instead of "mismanage a property and generally be a PR disaster".

And that's before finding out about the fandoms penchant for harassment and generally just being Really Weird about the creators of Homestuck, including some drama I unfortunately was able to personally verify, which has endeared me even less to the hatedom. Which is a pity cos I love Homestuck, all of it! And there is this foul undercurrent that just poisons a lot of fan spaces.

Nice to get a perspective from someone more insulated from this stuff!

Honestly, I personally appreciate the fact that more than one person here was willing to directly talk about the misgendering and how people are way too willing to still see Hussie as a cis man (even if I must confess, I didn't really see it until a friend in this fandom talked to me about that and after that... yeah, I actually truly saw it).

To talk about the issue more broadly, my personal point of view on Hussie is that she's a person that I doubt I will understand. Mostly because of their past trolling and their habit of using sophisticated language, y'know what I'm talking about. And yeah, it can be annoying and it gives me the idea, sometimes, that he uses multiple levels of irony to hide how he truly feels about things... but ultimately, I can't say it's true because I don't know them. Maybe it's true, maybe it's false. After all, they're not much of a public person.

What I do know is that they made mistakes, PR-wise, and didn't really manage HS well all the time. A part of me wonders if having been more present to adress things would have led to a better situation but, honestly, I doubt it, people will still try to make up dramas even when nothing happens.

And actually, that part is why, despite having said it was better to not take sides in the recent drama... I actually was more lenient towards Hussie. Because yeah, she's flawed and did things wrong and no one will contest that... but she also never tried to act like she was a good person or an innocent victim or something like that. Unlike Gio, who was very eager to do that and act like he represented all of us despite enough proof that he is NOT as pure or as righteous as he claimed.

If you combine that with the debunking and some of the lies some of the anti-Hussie tried to tell those last weeks... yeah, really makes you think about things. If you are angry towards someone, it's better to be angry for legit reasons. And if you just think a person is annoying... well, that's all! You have to think a person is annoying, just don't make up shit to act like there's an objective reason to hate [INSERT SOMEONE HERE] when there's not!

Unfortunately, I have realized that a lot of people in the HS fandom are willing to do that instead of just sticking to the mistakes Hussie actually did and it's even more annoying. Hopefully, from what I've seen in this thread, some people are actually willing to sit down and talk calmly about things.