Trans Politics, Trans Activism, also 'rolling is this transphobic?' thread

I think it is time to separate the discussion, and leave the Trans/Genderqueer/Agender/Questioning thread as a space set aside *for* trans/queer/questioning people (cis people are welcome on that thread! It's not a 'no boys' situation, but I think it's better to allow that space to continue be trans-led and focused on trans, nonbinary, questioning and genderfull ILX0rs, rather than trans issues in general, because it's exhausting for trans people to have to be 'all transphobia discourse all the time'.)

So we should create a wider thread for discussion of trans issues, transphobia, politics etc.

This subject is intensely emotional for a lot of people, so please try to be respectful and thoughtful. Genuine questions of 'is this transphobic, can we talk a little deeper about how and why?' are OK. General 'let me play devil's advocate with your life' discourse is really not OK.

A note on language: cis and trans are not slurs, they are descriptors, but we should all be careful of making assumptions. (Yes, I include myself in that.) I'm going to respectfully ask people to think carefully about use of the other common trans activism acronym in terms of accuracy and specificity - if in doubt, spell it out, in fact, spelling it out is good practice in general. If people or groups or ideas are trans-exclusive, then let's talk about and address that trans exclusion. If you mean 'trans exclusive feminism' then say 'trans exclusive feminist' - and if the person or idea is really not someone or something that can be called feminist (I'm referencing your G-L*nners here) think about whether just plain 'transphobe' or 'trans hatred' or 'trans exclusion' is a more accurate term.

Gender GP are experiencing a lot of issues with their website (don't know if this is a DDOS or if they are having too much of a good thing in terms of support) but a description of the issues here:

https://www.gendergp.com/transgender-community-urgently-needs-support-trans-healthcare-petition/

You can skip directly to their petition / open letter here:

https://www.change.org/p/transgender-healthcare-services-in-the-uk-are-broken-urgent-improvements-are-needed

(Just a reminder, do not give change dot org money if you want that money to reach the organisation you care about - if you want to donate, do so directly via trans organisations, change dot org money goes only to change dot org. They WILL try to catch you if you're not paying attention.)

Oh! I think the petition is UK only, so be mindful of that, too.

https://gal-dem.com/transphobia-sexual-violence-sound-like-a-man-hang-up-vawg-investigation/

I want to be careful not to suggest that transphobia is in any way less of a problem in America

and I suspect this may be just my perception based on the fact that Rowling has become the face of this on Twitter and in the media

but I get this sense that anti-trans politics and transphobia is a little more pitched in the UK? Or more of a high profile issue publically?

yes

I think the main problem is that it is much more acceptable within left and liberal/centrist circles. The main public faces of transphobia being ppl like Rowling, Hadley Freeman, etc. adds to that.

xpost

Probably still easier for a trans person to access specific healthcare here than in the US tho (but they're working on making it more difficult).

most distinctive about the UK situation is the extent to which influential liberals and liberal publications have been basically leading the charge and spreading stuff associated elsewhere with the religious or fascist right (and the hard right following suit has made this stuff pretty much hegemonic in UK media). there was a minor outcry recently from prominent UK liberals when biden made some minor gesture towards trans rights ("I can't believe I agree with trump..." etc)

Probably still easier for a trans person to access specific healthcare here than in the US tho (but they're working on making it more difficult).

idk how much it varies between states in the US. it's bad here and probably getting worse

Why does the UK appear more transphobic than the States? Why does that UK transphobia turn up more noticeably on the Left, among progressives and especially people who identify as feminists, in the UK?

Like everything else to do with differences between the UK and the US, it comes down to Class, and attitudes towards Class, what Class is, and how it works.

The foundational myth of the US is the American Dream, the idea that class is something fundamentally malleable, mutable, alterable that individuals can and do change over the course of their lives. That an immigrant can arrive penniless, work hard at a blue collar job, buy a house and send their children to university, at which point the family becomes middle class. Yes, in reality this is completely unattainable to most, but it is still a myth that people *believe* in deeply. In class, birth should not be destiny, to most Americans.

In the UK, class is something far more inborn, inherent, inflexible, and unalterable. The very deep British belief is that if you are born into a class, then you will die as that class, no matter how much money you gain or lose. The circumstances you were raised in, what accent you have, where you went to school, these things *matter*, both conceptually and materially, they will shape your future outcomes in life. A working class person who accumulates a lot of money will be dismissed as “jumped-up” nouveau-riche; a middle class person with a plummy accent who insists they’re working class because their grandad was a milkman will be lampooned as a fake "mockney".

At the core of Feminist thought, is the idea that sex is a Power Relation, like race, like class. Women are disadvantaged, exploited and oppressed As A Class. How you are likely to think about the class of "Women", what it means and who it contains, is likely to be heavily influenced by how you think "Class" works, whether you view it as inherently inalterable or fundamentally mutable. Do you believe that it is possible for an individual to alter their position, within a systemic power structure? If you, like much of the UK, you believe that is inherently impossible, that’s how you end up with supposed progressives who believe that transmasculine people are "jumped-up lesbians" and transfeminine people are "fakes and mockeries".

And that’s the most important thing to grasp about UK transphobia - these appalling ideas don’t just turn up in the ~Gender Crit~ feminists – they turn up among people like the UK Skeptic movement, who played a huge part in the Guardian-New Statesman axis of transphobia, people who are deeply invested in maintaining the class status quo from Helen Lewis to Kier “trans rights are just a culture war” Starmer; and also among traditional ~Working Class~ leftists who refuse to see gender as a class or a class issue, such as the Mark Fisher wing and the SWP during their rapey years. Which brings up another problem, that in the US, trans rights are unequivocally a progressive issue; in the UK left, they are often a stick to beat 'feminists' with.

The state of trans healthcare in the US vs the UK... this is complicated, because quite frankly, US trans healthcare is better because the US healthcare system is so fucked up. It’s so fragmented that it is far more open to individual healthcare providers, whether they are trans affirmative or exclusionary. Trans friends in the US keep and share lists of therapists, surgeons, HMOs, private healthcare providers etc. who *will* offer gender affirming services, and gender confirmation treatments if necessary. If you can find the money, you can find someone who will help you.

The NHS, on the other hand, is a political football. Centralised gender clinics in the UK function as a bottleneck, by design. You have to pass arbitrary tests designed and administered by cis people. In the US, trans friends share lists of doctors who will prescribe hormones; in the UK, trans friends share the exact statements you have to make to pass the gatekeepers, lying if necessary, to access care. (It is the exact situation that Sandy Stone describes 30 years ago in The Empire Strikes Back – that’s how far behind the US the UK is, in terms of trans care.) Trans people being put on waiting lists that are years long, or being told the referral time is literally "infinite" – that is a political decision coming from the current government.

In happier news, that indicates the winds may be shifting on transphobia within traditional bastions of feminism:

https://feministlibrary.co.uk/statement-on-transphobia-and-accountability/

thank you, that explains a lot, appreciate it.

I thought this was a pretty good article on the phenomenon as well from a couple years ago: https://theoutline.com/post/6536/british-feminists-media-transphobic

this fucking country

as a med student at Brighton and Sussex (i will be having my obs and gynae placements on the mentioned wards) THANK YOU!!! i've heard stuff about ward staff getting phone calls from angry old men about this and it's honestly baffling. like it's not going to affect you???

— ellen (@e_petersxx) February 10, 2021

re: fake story picked up by mutliple outlets about the trans police banning midwives from saying "mother" and "breastfeeding" on wards (non-gendered language has been recommended for people who aren't women, the press presumably thought it didn't sound dangerous enough unless they added the censorship bit)

one recurring theme in this shit is how provisions for trans men, nonbinary people and others keep getting portrayed as being done exclusively for the sake of not hurting trans women's feelings or something (this seemed to be one of JKR's contentions). it's clearly a strategic propaganda choice and related in some way to how trans men keep being identified as trans women, in public and in the press. has there been any writing on this phenomenon?

i literally couldn't sleep last night thinking about this wave of trans hostility currently sweeping across the UK, it's completely fucked up

my employer is now backing away from its relationship with Stonewall

i just literally cannot get my head around 1) why 2) why now

btw anybody who hasn't seen this Contrapoints should do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us

i feel you. between chave dappelle, the sports ban in tx, the bullshit in loudon county, it feels like the reactionaries are organized and amplifying more right now.

it makes me wonder if as a nation we genuinely accept LGB people or if we've just learned that it's not socially acceptable to discriminate against them the way it seems to be fine to do to trans people. The arguments are the same as they were in the 80s: the predatory concerns, the destabilising of family life, it's like we learned nothing.

yeah i suspect thats a major part of it. aside from terfs, its mostly the same interests (ie conservative christians/fascists) pushing these arguments and narratives. i think this is where the whole "you cant say [bigoted thing] about [marginalized group] without [non-material, superficial social repercussions] these days!!!!" complaint comes from, like this stifled antagonism that finally has a target that they can direct their reactionary hostilities towards with some greater degree of social validation.

it is odd though because in Britain a lot of this stuff is coming from a place you wouldn't necessarily expect. The Guardian isn't great but its unique selling point is its alleged left-wing perspective (comparatively, maybe, but generally lol) and to see it take such an editorial line has been confusing because it makes no sense.

it's going to be so obvious in 20 years to everyone what the right side of this argument was, the problem is that it's hurting people right now

^

If only there were actual problems in the world that people could direct their inchoate anger towards, maybe then they'd feel less harmed by the life choices of others that don't impact them in any meaningful way.

Bill 2 is 'the most transphobic bill ever proposed in Quebec,' activist says

Sorry if this isn't the right thread for this, but am I the only one who continually fucks up the right pronouns while speaking? My daughter's 12 year old friend is going by "they/them" and I keep messing up and saying "her/she". Really trying to get it right, but I'm becoming seriously concerned about my 51-year-old brain's ability at defeating my subconscious impulses.

practice! I’ve had a few people change pronouns in my life and just taking ten minutes a day to repeat to yrself a short script like “Their name is x. Their pronouns are they/them. They like x and it’s fun to hang out with them” or w/e works pretty well ime, and it doesn’t seem to occur to a lot of ppl

also gets easier the more they/thems there are in yr life, which will likely happen over time if you have 12-year-olds in yr life

also, it helps not to worry too much about it! not because it isn’t important (it is), but because the more of an anxiety you develop around it the harder it will be (again, ime). when you inevitably mess it up, correct yrself quickly and without any “oh geez it’s just so hard, I don’t know why I can’t get this, I’m so sorry” etc.

Thanks Nicole! Practicing is what I need for sure. Luckily, I’ve haven’t screwed up in front of my daughter’s friend yet and my daughter is more than happy to correct me when I do slip up. I’ll get there eventually.

I’ve had a few people change pronouns in my life and just taking ten minutes a day to repeat to yrself a short script

yeah, same ... also, what nicole says ... you will inevitably mess it up, but don't get defensive or demeaning

Open letter signed by 16,000 calls for BBC apology over trans article
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-59074096

You’d think they could have at least recapped the reason that the study is said to be flawed.

Nice to know that some “appreciations” were sent in, though, I wasn’t aware of a formal avenue for those. Maybe they should keep a running ticker of how many they get.

Fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck

the implication that “many trans women are lesbians, and many cis lesbians enjoy fucking them” is an equal statement to “all cis lesbians must be willing to fuck any given trans woman” is so deeply absurd, and the fact that so many publications treat it like a reasonable debate that must be had sucks so much.

there are people with certain physical traits who I don’t want to fuck; people have sexual preferences within a given orientation! but if I were to make a big public stink about it and imply or outright state that those traits invalidated their identity and the sexuality of the people who do, I would expect to be called out for it!

my heart aches for trans women in the UK these days, it’s bad enough dealing with this shit when it’s thousands of miles away

yeah, same ... also, what nicole says ... you will inevitably mess it up, but don't get defensive or demeaning

― sarahell, Thursday, October 28, 2021 1:39 AM bookmarkflaglink

it's just weird *how* defensive people get when they make this mistake, like, if you call a friend by the wrong name or say their last name wrong, and they correct you, you don't sit there causing a scene.

i've fucked it up, been corrected just like anybody else, it's....feedback, you apologize, correct, move on. not that I wouldn't understand why someone who has been misgendered a lot might be momentarily frustrated, but usually the correction is just a polite one and people go apeshit over it.

https://archive.md/MwYYz

uk getting very scary, they're planning to lump in trans-affirmative therapy with gay conversion therapy (as transphobes have been pushing for) and totally ban it for under 18s, also likely banning mermaids

feels like it would be a good time to start taking to the streets? the polls always seem to show that the transphobes are a vocal minority, should start taking advantage of that

Trending now in UK:
#CisISASlur

(and not trending in a "everyone is taking the piss out of it" manner)

these fucking babies don’t know what a slur is

who’s the snowflake now??

Fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck

otm and also i think sussex have handled this quite poorly

there are people with certain physical traits who I don’t want to fuck

The problem is that women are being accused of transphobia for saying this exact thing, if one of those physical traits happens to be having a penis. Here's an example from Simon H. in a post on a different thread four years ago:

Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

a couple of trans comrades have outright stated that 1. sexual preference for certain/specific types of genitals are inherently transphobic

Further down in that thread, j. says they see people expressing this position as well and supposes it isn't too uncommon. It's clear that this line of thinking persists to this day -- it's easy to find very recent examples of it on Twitter. Stating the position is in itself an act of pressuring people into having sex with people they don't want to have sex with. Can we all agree that's a bad thing to do?

just to jump slightly backward to nicole and Neanderthal on pronouns upthread: yes it is new and will take practice.

But honestly it is really not that hard for well-meaning people to navigate this in a well-meaning way. As long as they're truly, y'know, well-meaning.

Currently I am navigating this because my eldest (14) is nonbinary they/them. So are many of their friends. I will likely mess up. But the guiding principle is just to... not be a dick, I guess? The people who are having the most trouble with it tend to already not be on board with the whole project. And of course if you're not on board with the whole project, your motivation to practice and be a non-dick is lessened.

For me, if I try to relate an anecdote about what Ash said to Jinx and how Sky reacted, well, I'm going to be using their names a lot more than I otherwise would. A sentence like "Jax said that Sky and Ash are going to Sky's house" both avoids misgendering, and avoids potential confusion between singular and plural.

the "not being on board" is key, if you support your trans or non-binary friends, you're not going to fly off the handle if you get corrected when you screw up. but if your viewpoint is "I'm really, really trying hard to do this bullshit for you, but as much as I love you, I think this is fucking stupid", you get angry when corrected because you think you shouldn't have to do it anyway.

dating while trans can be a gauntlet of managing different kinds of transphobia; i feel grateful to the few ppl who have been attracted to me without making me feel weird about their attraction. that's about as far as i care to have an opinion on the matter which is otherwise really dense and confusing to me

Stating the position is in itself an act of pressuring people into having sex with people they don't want to have sex with.

No. Conflating abstract discussions about ppl's preferences with coercion makes no sense to me - like if we were having a discussion about, for instance, whether it's racist not to be attracted to ppl of certain ethnicities, I think there'd definitely be ppl arguing that. Casting this as "lesbians pressured into having sex with trans women", as the BBC article did, strongly misrepresents the issue at hand - any casual reader browsing the headline will obviously interpret this as women being personally coerced into having sex, not some philosophical disagreement. Which of course is great for the gender critical crowd because their concerns all boil down to thinking trans ppl are sexually predatory anyway.

vtc, did u just not read the next sentence in my post or

cis people have long portrayed trans people as either punchlines or disgusting untouchables, often both. this absolutely informs who and who isn’t considered attractive collectively and individually.

this doesn’t mean that any given person must correctively fuck trans people, or that every person who doesn’t want to sleep with trans people is a bigot, but it does mean that we should all (trans people included, sometime especially so) examine and correct how those anti-trans biases affect our worldviews

now, if someone comes along and points this out, and someone else responds by loudly and publicly refusing to do so, rallies a bunch of cis people in support of their brave stand against being “pressured” to fuck trans people, and uses that organization to lobby against equal public services for trans people, then yes, they’re doing transphobia!

given that this is one of the main ways that anti-trans organizations have gained power and influence, and that that power and influence has led to very real material restrictions on our individual lives and collective well-being, you can perhaps forgive us for reacting to someone coming along taking the “just asking questions, let’s all be reasonable here” tone about “simply” not wanting to have sex with trans people comes off as in direct service of transphobia.

don’t want to fuck us? don’t fuck us! a billion tweets can’t make you. just keep it to yourself for god’s sake, it’s being used by more hateful people than you to hurt us.

Philip K Dick "How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later"

― scanner darkly

oh god i love Dick so much

i used to read him so much when i was younger. the themes he talked about really articulated something about how i experienced my own transness. dissociation, depersonalization, that stuff. that's obviously not just a trans thing, but the way my dysphoria manifested was heavy on the dissociation and the depersonalization, feeling like i wasn't a "real person" in some way i couldn't quite articulate. my favorite stuff of his is probably the stuff just before he had his religious epiphanies. flow my tears. scanner darkly. the whole business about having a lesbian twin in another universe, or whatever that was... i still have the books but i haven't read them in a while haha

i don't have the book where i read "how to build a universe" anymore... the thing i remember most about that was him admitting at the front that he preferred universes that did fall apart two days later! i thought that was cool.

that's kind of a tangent but i just wanted to fangirl out a little bit

it's available online: https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to_build.html

i'm rereading it now (it's been a few years) and it's scary how otm he was.

i read "a scanner darkly" when i was 15-16 and for some reason i couldn't explain at the time it had a profound effect on me. and some events in my life ended up mirroring some events in the book (and the book was partially inspired by his time in vancouver which is where i live now)..

A trans communist Catholic lawyer talking about secular types not being able to handle trans issues and more

https://www.voidpod.com/podcasts/2025/1/20/trans-activism-in-secular-spaces-with-kat-grant

is this the thing steve shrives was talking about in this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NinY-m0_jB0

i can't really manage an hour-plus podcast. it's interesting to hear that Grant is a Catholic, since "What is a woman?" does specifically call out that present-day transphobia is in large part attributable to Christian colonialist ideology. Christianity, as I alluded to elsewhere, is a fraught topic for many queer people. I do have multiple trans friends who are Christians, and my own values and ethics are strongly influenced by Christian teachings.

I generally agree with Shrives' argument that transphobia is not science, any more than "scientific" racism is science. I also think Grant's article does really highlight a lot of the implicit issues with the a lot of the older "New Atheist" thinkers like Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins. The transphobia they exhibit is, IMO, entirely congruent with the Islamophobia many of them have previously exhibited.

One of the things that stuck out to me at Pride last year was the number of people, including myself, with Palestinian flags. To me, at least, the reason we do this is obvious. The Israeli government, aided and abetted by the United States government, is perpetrating genocide on the Palestinian people. They are coming for the Palestinian people. As a trans person, I'm extremely aware of who's next on the list. I think I talked upthread about how people being openly bigoted is in some ways a relief to me. I'd count this as one of those circumstances. If someone is a white Islamophobic "New Atheist", I _don't_ count them as a supporter of trans rights, whether they claim to be or not. If atheists are a marginalized group, being Islamophobic in a Christian Dominionist culture is not an effective act of advocacy for that marginalized group, and in fact acts against the larger interests of that marginalized group.

It makes sense to me that a lot of secular spaces, particularly more traditional secular spaces, are often transphobic, just like it makes sense to me that my oldest brother, a fervent atheist, said transphobic things to me while believing that he was being "objective". Transness, when I was younger, was defined strictly in what are now called "transmedical" terms - a framing devised by white cisgender people. I do not believe they were acting maliciously. Indeed, the people doing so genuinely believed themselves to be allies. By privileged their own "medical expertise" over the lived experiences of the people they were pathologizing, though, they replicated imperialist and colonialist norms. This is still a serious issue in trans culture today, as Jules Gill-Peterson shows in her recent book _A Brief History of Trans Misogyny_.

Relatively few trans people are Christians, but a great many of us are radical leftists, frequently openly communist. I don't call myself a communist because I agree with the theories of Marx and Engels - I haven't read Marx and Engels. It's certainly not because I support Soviet-style Communism. Weird as it sounds, I call myself a communist for entirely practical reasons. Liberalism, well, wasn't there for me. It didn't act in my best interest. It promoted bunk pseudoscience that reflected imperialist, colonialist, white supremacist norms and denied the reality of trans people's lived experiences. Liberalism's latter-day change of heart frankly often strikes me as a matter of convenience, bereft of any real understanding of why trans rights are important, of liberalism's own pivotal past role, on a systemic level, in suppressing trans rights.

That said, I don't oppose secularism! The scientific method is about basing one's beliefs on the evidence, and trans healthcare, trans rights, is _evidence-based_. Gender-affirming care succeeds where other interventions, including _far more invasive_ interventions, don't. This isn't just supported by the evidence, but it's something I've experienced firsthand. The secularists I know today, the secularists who are relevant to my life, are anti-colonialist, oppose white supremacy, oppose transphobia. I don't think that Coyne's bigoted and false beliefs about trans people represent secularism any more than, say, Germaine Greer's transphobia represents feminism.

so i have a support group in two hours and it's going to be filled with people who are very worried that they are now, i guess, illegal or something? i have no idea what it means but yeah i'm a little stressed out.

There are three basic prongs to this attack, and all revolve around the rhetorical trick of making an extremely small and marginalized group of people seem like a threat. There are of course lots of interesting things to talk and think about with respect to trans identity, but whatever cultural conversations may have been have has been hijacked and narrowed down to really just three things: girls/women's sports, girls/women's bathrooms, and whether people under 18 should have access to gender-affirming care. Because those are the three points where trans people — trans women, because as noted elsewhere in conversations trans men and trans boys never appear in these arguments — can be painted as threats. The "threat" in all cases is fictitious and at odds with experienced reality, but since most people don't know or interact with any trans people, those are areas where lurid imaginations can be stoked.

I think about this when I see the growing number of gender-noncomforming young people working service jobs around town — both of the Kroger stores I go to regularly have trans/nonconforming cashiers, as does my local Taco Bell and probably half the coffee shops in town. When people are getting their groceries or tacos or coffee, I wonder how they square whatever Fox News trans panic they feel with the friendly (sometimes very attractive!) people filling their orders. My guess is they somehow compartmentalize it or maybe a lot of people just don't pay any attention at all to whoever's serving them.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, January 15, 2025 3:39 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

My sister said to me, "I don't have a problem with trans women, but..." (pausing to sigh at that formulation) "...I don't know why they would want to change the term "breastfeeding" to "chestfeeding", when they mostly can't produce milk anyway?"

I said, "I think it can mean a couple of things, but IME the term is mostly used by trans men who have had top surgery but still lactate."

And my sister almost seemed to glitch, like she could not process that anything to do with trans people could be about a category or categories of people other than trans women.

you know what, that answer is the right one to give your sister who is Trying Really Hard, and also i know way more than i would like to about the circumstances under which trans women are capable of lactating. i've never actually heard the word "chestfeeding" before, though, i think it's a cool one!

btw the support group went fine, we pretty much just nerded out about anime for a couple hours

i mean what the fuck is there to even _say_?

btw the support group went fine, we pretty much just nerded out about anime for a couple hours

ive been the sponsor the lgbtq+ club at the high school where i teach for the last 10 years, and this describes how about 80% of the meetings have ever gone

ngl most of the reason i started watching anime was so i'd have something to discuss with other trans people

unfortunately i seem to have greatly underestimated the popularity of kabaddi-based sports anime among the larger weeb population

"no, no, wandering sun with a u, the early 1970s shoujo anime about a girl who wants to become a pop singer, what did you think i was talking about?"

While ‘chestfeeding’ doesn’t really bug me, because trans men should be able to name their own anatomies, I note that all human beings have breasts, regardless of gender. Men (AMAB) can also get breast cancer - 2800 diagnoses per year in the US, 400 annually in the UK. Helpful explainer: https://amp.cancer.org/cancer/types/breast-cancer-in-men/about/key-statistics.html

Also, obviously, it’s important to me to post in this thread to offer all trans ilxors solidarity at this and all other times - I will always speak up for you in any space I happen to occupy. Fuck this entire administration for opening a giant can of FUD under your lives.

cosign with Suzy. i am furious right now.

thanks y’all i’m not really paying attention. did someone in power say i’m not real? just another week on earth tbh

not talking about anyone here but the lip service i’m receiving from cis ppl on social media (thanks for sharing that infographic!! i feel so supported!!!) is very alienating

I've been thinking about whether or not to post this... I've been going through a lot of emotions the last couple of days. I think I will say, though, in spoilers, what my perception is on Trump's and the Republican's ultimate plan, re: trans people, how they aim to accomplish it, what tools he has available, and what I feel like would be necessary to not just slow down that plan - which is _very_ possible, _very_ doable, and being done now - but to... get things to a place where trans people are not under serious existential threat.

First off it is important for me to note that this trans people being under existential threat is not new, nor is it unique. It's not, in my mind, separable from the existential threat faced by queer people in general, cis, trans, whatever. The whole "LGB drop he T" thing is a pretty brazen attempt at "divide and conquer". Most of the people pushing that line aren't actually queer. The ones who are queer, well, it's disappointing that they're acting in a way that can only really hurt queer people.

This is a challenge because most people, myself included, have been kind of primed and raised in a heavily transphobic environment. To me, it's important to recognize that, to recognize that we - including myself - aren't looking at things impartially, that we have certain biases ingrained in us.

That's important because, in a functional sense, Trumpists have _very strong_ control over American media at this point. Places like Youtube have been biased against trans people for quite a while, and that trend is going to continue. People, well, have a tendency to believe what they're told. These stories about people valuing Fox News over their own kids - that's not new nor is it unique. It's also not just Fox News. It's Google, it's Facebook, it's all of these corporate social media companies - they've gone all-in on Trump, which means promoting transphobic narratives. It is going to get a lot harder to hear trans voices. We're going to be a lot less visible.

I can say this because, again, this is not a novel situation, and it's not a situation I was (or am) unaffected by. All of this stuff I grew up hearing in the media - The Silence of the Lambs, The Crying Game, both of these excellent movies by excellent directors, films that were _not intentionally transphobic_. It's just going to inevitably happen when you tell stories about a marginalized group that don't center the voices of that marginalized group. It's certainly not a phenomenon that's unique to trans people. So you may see, for instance, stories that seem like they're supportive of trans people, and trans people are upset about it, and it may not be clear why. It's important in these cases to listen to the trans people, even though that's going to be _a lot more difficult_ than listening to the things that are more commonly said about trans people. Having people in your life who belong to marginalized groups can help. That's one of the reasons I'm on ILX. It doesn't benefit me if all of the voices I hear are white transgender women, not just because other people need to hear what I have to say, but because I need to hear what other people have to say about their own experiences. Just like with the "drop the T" thing, it benefits people in power to encourage _me_ as a white trans woman to buy into and/or promote bigotry against other marginalized people.

Trump's program is not _subtle_ exactly but at the same time I wouldn't say he's saying exactly what he means. The ultimate goal is to make trans people disappear. The thing that stands out to me is that this is already a goal that had _largely been accomplished_ when I was young. I was transphobic. Most of the people I knew were transphobic. It was totally invisible. I didn't see it or acknowledge it. I didn't recognize that trans people had a greater ability to define themselves than cis "experts" had to define them. I didn't _trust_ them, because they - possibly "we", I don't know if I can count myself in that group or not - were utterly marginalized. A lot of trans people were sex workers because bigotry meant that out trans people didn't have access to so-called "legitimate" jobs. Trans people who wanted legitimate jobs were strongly encouraged to make _themselves_ invisible, to "stealth". Not every trans person has the privilege of doing this. I should note here that this model of transness very much privileges whiteness, and that the people who suffer from transphobia most, then and now, are _not_ white trans people like me. As a white trans woman, I am taught and encouraged to erase and devalue the experiences and of people who aren't like me.

Lack of access to "legitimate" jobs is _very much_ a challenge for trans people today. We have a much harder time finding and holding down work than cis people, and the reasons for this are largely invisible _to_ cis people. One of the things that paradoxically has helped trans rights most is that for many of us, the jobs we can get are precariat service positions. These aren't great jobs, they don't pay enough to get by on, and the working conditions are terrible. We're visible, though. Visibly trans. This is why existing is the most important thing we can do, this is why I, as a trans woman with passing privilege, go out of my way to draw attention to my own transness when I feel safe doing so (that last part being the essence of why it is a "privilege"). Because anti-trans bigotry requires the restoration of the status quo that existed in my youth in the 80s and 90s - a state of total abjection. It requires that trans narratives, trans voices, be _completely unheard_ - either silenced, or overwritten with other narratives - narratives that call us pathological liars, perverts, sick and deranged. Narratives that justify denying our right to speak for ourselves.

This is also why I do feel like I'm a lot safer here in Portland than I would be in Texas. The pressure on trans people to get the hell out of Texas serves as a reinforcement for progressively more severe actions taken against trans people. The ones who are affected most are the ones who can't get out. By which I mean children. Transphobia couches itself in terms of "protecting children", but it is, fundamentally, child abuse.

I fucking hate this. I hate this so much. I hate being called a predator, a "groomer", but even more than that I hate that the people calling me that _are hurting children_ and they are _getting away with it_. The whole idea of "save the children", "protect the children", it gets used as a pretext for every kind of atrocity, every kind of cruelty. So much that I hate doing it, hate saying that.

And I just keep thinking of my queer friend Ian, who died in 2016, after a long struggle against a world that would very much prefer that he not exist. He was a big fan of the Manic Street Preachers, a band I've never heard. All I know is the title of one of their albums, an album he loved: _If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next_.

There is no "next". They are coming _now_ for your children, your friends' children, the children of some of us here. They are coming, in fact, _for their own children_.

That's what what transphobia is. That's what transphobia wants.

Trans people are going through it. We are really going through it. And anything we do, anything that is done _to_ any one of us, will be blamed on all of us. Trans people are not only not _better_ than cis people, we don't handle stress any more than cis people do. I've seen trans people do terrible things. I don't talk about it, because if I do, people will say it's because they're trans. When one of us commits suicide, we're blamed for that as well. The people who have created such an extreme environment pressuring us to _not exist_, the systemic forces leading to that outcome - they tend to not be considered. Trans suicide is _very much_ a goal of anti-trans policies. If it was acceptable for transphobes to admit that, they would - not just admit it, but boast about it. When it is acceptable, that's exactly how they behave. That's worth understanding as well.

The incitement to violence isn't just an incitement for trans people to commit suicide, of course. The Trump administration's actions are unquestionably aimed at inciting violence against members of marginalized groups. In this sense I _am_ at significant risk. Portland has dealt with armed white supremacists in the past. These sorts of people are being encouraged and emboldened. Any act of violence against trans people _will be blamed on trans people_. That's important for me to repeat. Frankly I think that's kind of a hard sell, but I'm sure they'll try, and I'm sure it will, to some extent, be effective.

That said, it's also important to understand that _most people are not transphobic_. Genuinely, most people do not give a shit about what's in my pants, one way or another. They have no reason to. Hatred against us is weaponized just the same way hatred against any other marginalized group is weaponized. Transphobia is, and always has been, an artificial norm, created and maintained at great expense on the part of the norms entrepeneurs. Great pressure was placed on me to accept transphobia as normal, and great pressure is once more being placed on all of us, cis, trans. All of us. It is _not_ normal and even if we do not have the power to _change_ those norms, their power to limit those norms is _limited_.

That power is chiefly economic in nature. Opposing transphobia may cost you friends, may cost you loved ones, but at some point it is very likely to cost you money. I don't mean that in a "trans people are broke" sense, though collectively, we are absolutely fucking broke. I mean that in the sense that opposing transphobia _will_ have consequences for anybody who does it, and the most important of those consequences will be _economic_. That fucking terrifies me. We're all barely getting by as it is, and to say that, God, it feels like I'm fucking pushing _austerity_. I'm not. That just happens to be the primary power the Trump administration has, the primary way they're trying to compel compliance.

I hate to say it, but situationally, complying in a given situation may be the better option. Sometimes it's in my best interests to make myself invisible. I can't imagine holding other people to a higher standard. I'm worth more alive than dead. I kinda feel the same way about everyone else here. Anything anybody does to help trans people will never feel like it's good enough. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing or that it doesn't help. The hardest thing for me to do is to try to help people I care about and fail. I've had that happen. Most of us, I think, are going to see that happen, in some form or another. Failure doesn't mean any of us are powerless. Failure doesn't mean that what we do doesn't matter.

What trans people can do for ourselves, well, it's limited. We don't have a lot of power ourselves. We don't have a lot of resources. If people who aren't like us choose to not comply with the demands of those in power, if people who aren't like us are willing, to any degree they can, suffer negative consequences for the sake of people who aren't like us - well. That's the extent of the hope I have. That's why I try my best to do that for people who aren't like me.

Anyway that's a long-ass speech, and I hate making speeches, but I guess some people sometimes say they're glad I can do it, that it's a skill or a gift I have, and I guess I might as well do it here and now. I hope it helps somebody else to read it. I guess it helped me to write it and it'll probably help me to post it.

A great speech, kate.

The reason I relayed the anecdote about my sister was not to talk about chestfeeding per se, but rather because it underscores something that seems to me (caveat: as a person who is not trans) so central to all the political and social debates around trans people, which is the way the policing of the border between genders is not conducted coherently, let alone equally - the western world seems hyper-obsessed with monitoring what are perceived to be transgressions by AMAB people into "female space" (which can mean both literal spaces, but also certain modes of behaviour, characteristics, perspectives etc.) while not merely ignoring the opposite phenomenon but functionally pretending that it doesn't even exist.

All of which to my mind, ultimately, reflects that the social fear of basically any type of queer person in large part boils down to a convoluted, multifaceted defence of attempts to uphold a certain circumscribed notion of the role of women in society.

The panic about trans women and public bathrooms (and prisons, and so on) presupposes that women generally should just accept that they are under constant threat of violence and assault from anyone deemed by society to "male", and the obligation to protect them from that threat is limited to selectively placing a few sandbags; but the idea that AFAB people can be men contradicts that presupposition in a way that cannot easily be resolved, so is easier to ignore.

This is effectively a repetition of how previous waves of gay panic focused hysterically on gay men and effectively denied or ignored the existence of lesbian women.

I've heard this analogy before: right before a star dies, it balloons into this giant, wild, really bright supernova, ready to explode.. the last, final fling

that's what I hope we're experiencing here with the hateful right-wingers... realize this might be incredibly naïve but it's all I have right now

Tim F, I think you're very on point. The one thing I do want to mention is that the cost of erasure is very high indeed. It's easy to draw the conclusion that trans women have it worse because we're in the spotlight, but as someone who performed self-erasure for a very long time, being erased and made invisible is _very, very hard_. This is particularly important for me to say because there is a lot of pressure for transmascs and transfemmes to fight with each other about who has it worse. I consciously want to resist that tendency. I see a lot of trans women talking about "femmephobia" and talking about "privilege" and "misogyny" and all of those things are _real_ and to me, they distract from the larger issue, which is patriarchy, which affects everyone in different ways (and which intersects with different marginalizing ideologies, like white supremacy).

I've heard this analogy before: right before a star dies, it balloons into this giant, wild, really bright supernova, ready to explode.. the last, final fling

that's what I hope we're experiencing here with the hateful right-wingers... realize this might be incredibly naïve but it's all I have right now

― Andy the Grasshopper

Extinction Burst. That's what my therapist said, when my ex started... behaving a certain way, after I broke up with her. All of the viciousness and the hatred burns itself out and then people are fine. It's a reasonable thing to believe! I believed it, about my ex.

It just didn't happen that way. Is all.

-

The thing I keep going back to is that old union speech. The guy said something like this: First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they try to kill you, then they build monuments to you.

That might be true. Having my name on a monument is of no value to me. Dead is dead. If anybody ever gets the idea to build a monument to me (unlikely), that's the quote I'd like on it.

That analogy, Andy, I believed it, deeply and fervently, three years ago. Now... I'd like to believe it. Maybe it doesn't happen like that. Maybe history doesn't vindicate us. Maybe I go down in history as a freak, as a pervert, as someone who disfigured the face of man and woman. That's the way it's always been. I believed that things could change, that things _would_ change, that we'd reached some kind of, I don't know, transgender tipping point...

Well. Maybe I was wrong. I genuinely didn't expect that people would hate us as much as they do, that people would go as far as they have to make us go away, that so _many_ people, ordinary, decent people, people I trusted, people I loved, would go along with them. If you're being incredibly naïve, well, I was incredibly naïve in the same way. There are worse things to be. I think it's OK to hope for a better world, even if I'm not personally quite up to it right now.

I saw multiple nb or possibly trans people in service jobs during my holiday travels, at rest stop food courts and as concierges/desk people at the hotel. They are simultaneously crappy jobs and also really visible ones.

I have a very close trans friend who is now officially concerned about traveling and leaving the country. She is worried her passport could be confiscated upon re-entering the country and is additionally worried about crossing state borders as well. She was hoping to go to Japan for work but now is going to avoid it. Ugh. The fact that this is now a thing is just fucked. Her verbalizing these realities to me really hit home how much has changed.

I have a very close trans friend who is now officially concerned about traveling and leaving the country. She is worried her passport could be confiscated upon re-entering the country and is additionally worried about crossing state borders as well. She was hoping to go to Japan for work but now is going to avoid it. Ugh. The fact that this is now a thing is just fucked. Her verbalizing these realities to me really hit home how much has changed.

― octobeard

yeah it's scary. i have read about some of the things that happened in 1933, how hard it was for people to get out of the country, let alone get back in. i mean in the case of trans people, there's not anywhere i'd want to go, there's not...

well i mean leah tigers' essay where she talks about "queer zion" says it better than i could

https://trickymothernature.com/thegenderrefugee.html

one of the reasons i came to oregon in 2017 was because i didn't know how long interstate travel would be possible... that was in one sense paranoid but in another sense not. because travel isn't just about travel itself. interstate (as in us states) border control is... i mean to me that seems a little impractical. i did find though very quickly on moving here that america isn't one nation, isn't under one law, and it's _very hard_ to... it's more expensive to live in portland than it is to live in "the middle of nowhere" in indiana or someplace. "the gender refugee", but we _have_ gender refugees. people come here from texas every week. i keep _telling_ trans people in texas to come here, that it's not safe to be in texas. one does get acclimated. people there don't necessarily understand how much danger they're in, what sort of danger they're in.

here in pdx, the danger is... it's no more than anything else. slow death by attrition. the thing that's hard for us as a marginalized group is that we _don't have a history of marginalization_. when someone's marginalized from birth and knows it, one learns certain things to... i don't know, coexist with other marginalized people. trans community, we don't fucking have that. white transfemmes, we have the sort of skillset that allows one to survive as a white cis guy in america, which... god if there's one thing folks in that situation are good at, it's denial and repression, and that's _not_ a useful skill once one is no longer denying and repressing.

for trans people, community is the difference between life and death. and we're a community made up in large part of refugees, of people going through puberty. my skill set is that i know a lot about prog rock. i haven't played "this war of mine", but one of the things it points out is that philosophers, professors, they don't do great in siege situations, and emotionally, at least, we're pretty besieged right now. my experience with community... you call the trans lifeline and nobody answers and then you realize that all of the stuff that was supposedly there for you, a lot of it just _isn't_.

i'm lucky. i do have people. i talked to a friend who's just getting over a bad flu. she never gets the flu, she says, and the last two weeks... anyway she says you want to go out to dinner, and we do, and i have to leave early because this abdominal pain i've been having... when this particular pain hits, it's at a level of 7, which is the point where i start involuntarily moaning in pain. i can't be out in public if i'm doing that. so she's really good and gives me a ride home even though i'd really wanted to be around her more.

i beat myself up for spending so much time in front of a screen, "touch grass", except of course there isn't grass to touch, it's winter, except... the attrition is i keep doing everything you can, and it keeps getting harder and harder, and i wind up falling despite doing everything i can to stay on my feet. when i can't talk, i stream.

i run a support group because it's the only way i can get myself to show up, and people _want_ to come and they don't. because it's just too hard to get out. i understand.

my efforts to change my name/gender marker on my documents have been effectively halted by trump's executive order and the resulting state department chaos. at first i took this in stride, like thank god i did not have my shit together to send out my passport this month, because it would be stuck at the non-functional state department that isn't processing gender marker changes (and, as of now, isn't sending passports back). but i spent the weekend crying about how much i was looking forward to not being called "sir" or "mr." at the airport. gonna be a long four years

btw never in my life have i been so directly effected by evil policy like this and it's really doing a number on me :)

<3

we are going through the same thing with our son's passport. we got all of his other documents (birth cert, ss card) updated in the past year but didn't get our shit together on his passport in time. we were going to go submit the paperwork on saturday in hopes of getting it in in a window before the state department could implement the EO but the post office didn't have a passport clerk available that day, and it sounds like maybe that was for the best bc the docs aren't going anywhere. now we're waiting to see what happens with legal challenges/injunctions but i suspect we'll eventually have to apply for a passport with the wrong gender on it so we at least have the option of traveling if we need to.

we also saw his gender care doc last week, it sounds like the EO over gender-affirming care doesn't directly touch us yet since it mostly impacts federal programs like medicaid, but they said that it could empower private insurers to stop covering gender-affirming care as well. fortunately testosterone is a relatively affordable medication, we could keep paying for it out of pocket, but obviously it would still be bad.

my biggest anxiety leading up to the election was that a trump administration would try to ban gender-affirming care for minors (or anyone) in general, and this is still my biggest concern in terms of things that could directly impact my family. i think this would have to be a law which means it would take a while and face lots of challenges, and it could start as or end up with a state-by-state decision possibly (fortunately we live in illinois). but i spent so long worrying about this before the election and now that he has been elected all i can do is wait and see what happens before doing anything.

Sending love and solidarity to yall

everybody i know is shaking, crying, terrified. the people i know are doing better today but this weekend... was really rough for a lot of us.

thinking about everyone in this thread right now, sending love and solidarity to all, like table said. shit is fucked

sending love and solidarity as well

Apparently Laverne Cox has a new sitcom on Amazon Prime, and this review suggests that it's not good because her character isn't miserable, surrounded by bigots, and constantly on the defensive.

not the takeaway I'm getting from that review

Clean Slate has gone all in on feel-good, and the effect on the series as a whole is that it’s both happier and emptier as a result. The effect of that choice for Desiree, though, is that she’s living in an America that does not look much like the America of 2025, where a slew of anti-trans rhetoric over the last several years has culminated in state-sanctioned erasure of trans people from governmental research and records and a list of executive orders demanding, among other things, that hospitals stop providing necessary care to trans youth. Desiree has no conversations about access to hormones. Her relationship with her father is so strong that at the end of the season, Harry offers her a beautiful assurance that he does love her and does want her … and the scene falls a little flat, because the show has been so clear all along that Harry’s thrilled to have Desiree back in his life. She lives in a country that does not currently exist.

Honestly, good for her.

...With more time, Clean Slate could become a richer and more confident comedy. But it may not get that time; Prime’s Freevee shows like Primo and High School certainly didn’t, and now Freevee no longer exists. So why shouldn’t Clean Slate use whatever runway it has to be an improbable love fest? Why not veer toward aspirational depictions of a close-knit community with stories about a woman who discovers her dad loves her and has always loved her? Why not turn Harry’s Car Wash into a place of secular spiritual rebirth, and let Desiree kiss hot people, and have a sweet show set in a town where things are generally great? It’s good to feel good for a little while, and Clean Slate can at least do that.

i have been thinking about these sorts of issues a lot because of the queer YA spree i have been on.

where do we draw the line on depicting reality vs showing the reality we wish to exist? does focusing on the latter mean yielding to escapism, or is it calling to a new world in the hopes of creating it? does being ‘real’ mean having to show ugliness all the time?

i mean, i am not trans, but in writing my own YA book, i have had to think about how real i should be about the homophobia and bigotry that existed in the time period of the book… on the one hand it feels irresponsible not to, and on the other hand, i don’t want some gay 13 year old to read my book and hate his life even more.

where do we draw the line on depicting reality vs showing the reality we wish to exist? does focusing on the latter mean yielding to escapism, or is it calling to a new world in the hopes of creating it? does being ‘real’ mean having to show ugliness all the time?

Exactly. Aspirational fiction is necessary.

where do we draw the line on depicting reality vs showing the reality we wish to exist? does focusing on the latter mean yielding to escapism, or is it calling to a new world in the hopes of creating it? does being ‘real’ mean having to show ugliness all the time?

i mean, i am not trans, but in writing my own YA book, i have had to think about how real i should be about the homophobia and bigotry that existed in the time period of the book… on the one hand it feels irresponsible not to, and on the other hand, i don’t want some gay 13 year old to read my book and hate his life even more.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table),

Among the reasons I've enjoyed Openly Straight is its depiction of a gay boy from Boulder with two of the most liberal, loving parents other kids -- even straight ones -- could have asked for yet they can't understand how out of place he still feels.

Yes! One of the many things I love about the novel (and its sequel) is its affectionately parodic take on a certain straight of liberal "allyship."

Should read "certain strain," but an appropriate typo?

To reorient the discussion towards the topic somewhat, I think one of the great things about the current "queer YA boom" is the space that it allows for a variety of stories: queer joy (as the kids are calling it these days) and queer trauma can and do exist side by side on the same bookshelf, and often within the same book!

my gf's friend is trying to write some sort of fantasy novel scenario that resembles our current reality but it's fantasy. both my gf and i find this a little hard to get into, beyond our total antipathy toward fantasy as a genre, and the way i put it was that if you're going to relay a dystopian vision of the world when the world is currently in one, it has to have enough imagination to contain something else, another world that's possible. so imo it's not really an either/or, more of a balancing act

my favorite depiction of well-meaning liberal parents who just *love* (in a weird self-satisfied narcissistic way) that their kids are gay is in zazen by vanessa veselka

Love among the ruins.

Should read "certain strain," but an appropriate typo?

― cryptosicko, Thursday, February 6, 2025 7:30 AM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

To reorient the discussion towards the topic somewhat, I think one of the great things about the current "queer YA boom" is the space that it allows for a variety of stories: queer joy (as the kids are calling it these days) and queer trauma can and do exist side by side on the same bookshelf, and often within the same book!

― cryptosicko, Thursday, February 6, 2025 7:32 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

firstly, lol.

and secondly, yeah, i agree that this is a really positive part of the current "queer YA boom." even in a duology of books that is essentially about gay friendship like Stamper's "Golden Boys" and "Afterglow," there are accepting parents and lovely friends...with homophobic school officials, fellow teens, and other assorted bigots.

i think that one of the things that is really striking to me about these books, though, is that so few of them include homophobic parents...and speaking from my own experience, that was the biggest horror of growing up.

i haven't read as much trans YA lit, but i wonder whether this is the same in that sub-sub-genre.

i mean, i am not trans, but in writing my own YA book, i have had to think about how real i should be about the homophobia and bigotry that existed in the time period of the book… on the one hand it feels irresponsible not to, and on the other hand, i don’t want some gay 13 year old to read my book and hate his life even more.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table)

the phrase i see used about a lot of trans stories is "trauma porn". and i mean yes queer joy and all that, and also, i mean... "write what you know" is a thing too, right? idk. i remember that early on when i was questioning, i'd look for trans stories, and i'd come across this one board and it was full of just... the saddest people in the world. and i would look at that place and run away in fear, terrified that i'd become _like that_ if i ever tried to transition. i tried so hard to not be like _those people_, and... now i guess i'm enough like them that i've learned to not judge them for not being good role models for me. i guess with YA fiction the pressure is even more intense to be a "good role model". i've never liked the idea of being judged by my work, and that's probably one of the main reasons i avoid creating work.

it’s strange because looking back on my teenage years, most people my own age assumed i was gay, and didn’t really give a shit.

it was my family i was terrified of.

Yup.

In the too-little/too-late category, the NYT Editorial Board finally decides demonizing trans people is bad (gift link)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/opinion/transgender-trump-orders.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vk4.k0Rc.QUdoeZBKp_R3&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

I guess their surely good faith questions have been answered to their satisfaction?

tl;dr: we still kinda hate trans people but we love the military

commanding the Federal Bureau of Prisons to force the estimated 1,500 transgender women in custody to be housed with men.

if i were the nyt editorial board, i would've structured the essay around this executive order, which i did not know about before reading this article, and which is pretty explicitly "trans people must die" on the face of it

I guess their surely good faith questions have been answered to their satisfaction?

― Dialysis Den (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, February 9, 2025 1:14 PM (one hour ago)

well, they still think the autonomy and agency of trans athletes and trans minors should be subject to public debate among cis people who have been brain-poisoned by the nyt's luridly bigoted coverage

What is so noxious about that line is its implicit assumption that those kinds of conversations haven’t been had and weren’t being had before the big trans panic kicked in. But they WERE being had, by the people with actual knowledge of them — athletic associations in the case of sports, medical associations in the case of medical care, they were all devising and setting guidelines, and while there wasn’t universal accord on everything, for a while at least it was being treated as a matter for thoughtful discussion.

The trans panic is what ended those discussions and subsumed them in a wave of totally bigoted bad-faith fearmongering. In which the NYT played a role, obviously, which they still can’t admit.

There is a terrible news story from near Rochester, New York, that I am not going to link here and advise caution in reading. But it involves the death of a trans man. Police have arrested five people, have not decided yet whether to charge it as a hate crime.

Made the mistake of looking the story up and...yeah. Trump's America.

heya folks, still here, haven't had much to say but i'm trying to not isolate too much

the NYT have never been more than fair-weather allies at best and i don't think they're better than fair-weather allies now... if there's anything encouraging it's that the weather is apparently still decently fair. the scary thing to me is that the techbros have basically declared open season on trans people, and i mean, people learn what they're taught. no, there's not really any reason at all to hate trans people, and at the same time i'm shocked to see how many people value the stuff they see on the Internet or TV over their own family, their own kids.

this stuff about trans people in the military is funny because of how little they understand. like there weren't trans people in the military before. i knew a lady who fought in nam. she said gender dysphoria was worse. i wasn't in nam, but it tracks with my experience. they don't get it. we're still transitioning, no matter what they do to us, how they demonize us - not all of us, some of us are continuing to repress, but a lot of us aren't. even if transition literally gets me killed, i don't regret doing what i did. that's the thing they miss. no ragrets.

the other thing is that this stuff doesn't exist in isolation. the thing that's most fucked up about the military is... i don't know if it's still this way, but used to be they'd kick you out if you were on antidepressants for more than six months. six months! do they really think that doing that will keep mentally ill people out of the military? no, all it means is that military personnel are going to have untreated mental illness. but that's the way they think, and being trans isn't a mental illness but fuck yes it intersects with my lifelong serious mental illness.

i know _plenty_ of ex-military folks. and i mean a lot of the brass or, you know, civilians, they don't understand how it really is... i'm not a soldier, i just listen to vets, listen to what they say about their service. every day veteran's day comes along and i try to honor my dad, who's a veteran, and i try to honor him by telling his story. by telling people how _ashamed_ he was of his service. because his story is a veteran's story too.

those of us who are armed, those of us who are working on self-defense, a lot of us are vets. and i mean, i can see that as a fear, that if you let trans people in the military, if you give us the knowledge and means to defend ourselves by force, that's not in the best interest of people who want to make trans people go away. me personally, i don't think our power comes out of the barrel of a gun. i respect and love my friends who have guns and know how to use them. i think there's value in that. that's not for me. i look at us, i look at who we are, and we're more likely to die from suicide than from murder. i'm more worried about killing myself than i am about being killed. that's always been the pressure.

because the other thing they don't understand is that for a lot of us, myself included, i did have a choice, and the other choice was suicide. there are a very few people who actively want us to kill ourselves rather than transition, a very few very loud people, and most people, i think, most people don't have any idea that that's the choice so many of us make, and that a lot of us do actually choose suicide. not as many of us as the people who want us to kill ourselves would have you believe. most of us are just quietly miserable. most of us are silent, carry their hatred of us deep inside. there's a whole sea of people my generation who will never come out. i _know_ this. i know some of the people, they're out to me. i find if you listen to people with an open mind, they'll say things they wouldn't say otherwise.

the whole thing about masculinity is so fucked up, "gays in the military". i was terrified of, like, everyone. people tended to assume i was gay and i kept saying "no, no, i like girls"... i couldn't make my queerness intelligible to myself or to anyone else. being a man is so hard. i really have a lot of empathy for guys. over the course of my life i've seen the definition of "real men" become more and more rigid and inflexible. the frustrating thing is that i wanted to be a "real man", but it felt like if i did fucking anything at all people would call me "gay". a lot of being trans is me finding a way to be gay and still like girls. if people think i'm not a real woman, you know, whatever. what's interesting is that they don't think i'm a real man either... they claim to talk about binary gender but really they think of me as a sort of, you know, _third sex_. which isn't new. it's how people used to think of us back in the '60s. the seventh season premiere of _medical center_ was a two-part very special episode starring robert reed as a doctor who was also a trans woman. it was called "the fourth sex". the stuff these transphobes say just doesn't make any sense. i can't engage with it because it's so far removed from reality.

anyway "trans people must die" is now considered a socially acceptable opinion by a lot of people so, i mean, i value anybody who doesn't view that as a socially acceptable opinion.

Montana court strikes down a law seeking to define sex and gender under state law in a manner inconsistent with Montana's constitution.

On Feb. 18, a Montana judge struck down, for the second time, a bill seeking to unconstitutionally define sex and gender under state law.

“Substituting the opinions of licensed medical professionals and individuals with that of the legislators’ own beliefs and values impermissibly requires Montanans to identify themselves based on the political ideology of legislators,” the court ruling states.

First introduced almost two years ago, Senate Bill 458 sought to define “male” and “female” sexes as exclusive, immutable categories based on the perceived chromosomal make-up of a child at birth. A group of trans, intersex and Two Spirit Montanans sued to overturn the law on the grounds that it stripped them of civil rights in “all aspects of public life” — housing, employment, healthcare and more.

The Montana Attorney General’s office, under Republican Governor Greg Gianforte, functionally argued that, because non-cisgender people are a minority of the population, the law was inconsequential. The courts denounced this assertion. “It has never been the law in this state that a rare few, even if they are ‘despised,’ should lack protection under the law,” the ruling reads.

The genetic testing required to verify the SB 458 standards of sex are a rarity. In practice, a child’s sex is decided by whoever fills out their birth certificate, and what the filer believes a child’s external sex organs indicate about their gender, chromosomes, internal sex organs and future potential for sex hormone production.

SB 458 does not seem to require the person making a gender designation for an infant to be a medical professional. Meanwhile, external sex organs do not inherently predict any of the aforementioned traits.

The ruling goes on to call SB 458 “intellectually and morally indefensible,” a nod to a 1999 case protecting abortion rights in the state.

...

SB 458 was first overruled in 2024 due to a procedural flaw. This time around was more decisive. The courts unequivocally declared that the spirit and letter of the law violates the state consitution’s guarantees of a right to privacy and its equal protections clauses.

“Here in Montana, we have seen a deluge of anti-trans legislation that seeks to remove trans people from every aspect of daily life, time and time again,” said Representative Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat in the state legislature. “Those bills have been deemed unconstitutional. Likewise, we've seen bills brought by the Republican majority trying to limit access to abortion, or trying to ignore our constitutional duty to maintain and enhance a clean and healthful environment that is written verbatim in the constitution. Again and again, the courts have come in and said these bills are unconstitutional.”