Bug's Bloge

anime trash 4 life. 28, he/they/she.

[bug-the-chicken-nug]

It's All Open Source Now, Babeyyyy,

Probably not very many will see this, but Anyway, In light of shifts in how my views on copyright and intellectual property have changed, here is something I realized I should get around to posting: Anyone at all can consider litcherally anything I write and post online to be completely and utterly open source. https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeetlesMcGee It's not like it's some kind of huge treasure trove, but do whatever the hell you want with it. Literally whatever the hell you want with it. World's your oyster and bob's your uncle, champ. Paste it into any chatbot you want. Put it in some kind of roast or cringe compilation or hatefic. Lift bigass chunks out of it and then find a way to monetize that, even. Literally whatever, not a single scrap of permission or credit necessary. I am completely, absolutely serious. If it's something where I don't want that to happen for some reason, then I just won't post it in the first place, simple as that. While I do still strongly stress that you still should care about other people's boundaries, and that by extension, I also will continue to abide by the automatic assumption that nobody else wants their work treated this way unless they directly say otherwise: In regards to my own work and own ideas, I am done with the whole concept of copyright and intellectual property. Done. Permanently. So, to anyone who's interested, have fun! You can also reblog this with your own links if you feel the same way, but only if you wanna. It's also completely fine to add *some* conditions for yourself, rather than just going completely unrestricted with it like me.

[utopians]

people aren't even exaggerating indeed is literally like that. walmart attendant $13 an hour, target attendant $13 an hour, AI dick sucker $40 an hour, home depot attendant $13 an hour, guy who designs bullets that can only kill children $160k a year plus benefits, gas station manager $18 an hour

[draconym]

[bug-the-chicken-nug]

*has all day to make a low stakes phone call* *doesn't do it*

[funstyle]

[recommending something i sincerely love] ok so the thing about it is it kinda sucks

[bug-the-chicken-nug]

at the risk of sounding elitist, my favorite type/"degree"/"hardness" of sci-fi is "include one to a small handful of things that are either impossible or only vague theories, but take them as seriously as possible". mainly because I feel like trying to go "harder" than that often comes off as kind of annoyingly presumptuous. like. the further you go into the future the more egregious it becomes. nobody a mere ten years ago would've expected machine learning to have made these sudden jumps in progress (I'm specifically calling it machine learning to avoid getting people being critical and pedantic about the term "AI", as that's not the point of this post) so the further you go, the more and more bizarre it feels to keep "playing it safe" and not including anything unexpected or supposedly "too unlikely"/"impossible". so it creates this boring, stuffy, know-it-all assumption of "we already know the theory behind everything more or less, now it's just about putting it into practice and fleshing out the last few grey areas" which to me feels like it's kind of outright missing the "point" of science fiction once you get to that level, or to avoid such authoritative wording, is just no longer what i'm looking for or interested in like at that point you've become more just speculative futurology than science fiction, and even in doing so, imo, are still kind of being overly conservative about it in a way that'll likely get you proven wrong about something sooner or later.

[luckyladylily]

So I have a point to make, but I think it is going to take a bit of a journey to get there. Lets start with a quote from Whipping Girl (Julia Serano).

When the majority of violence and sexual assaults committed against trans people is directed at trans women, that is not transphobia—it is trans-misogyny.

I think it is important to understand that for many trans women, Whipping Girl is formative. It is hard to overstate how important of a work it is to how trans femme people as a whole understand and view the world. With that in mind.

That quote is predicated on a false assumption. The best current data is that violence is directed across trans gender identities fairly equally. That is, trans men and non binary people suffer about as much violence as trans women. However, up until recently almost all studies of violence against trans people have been focused on trans women. Trans men and nonbinary people have been critically under represented and violence against them critically unreported. And yet many trans women continue to assume that trans women are the most targeted gender identity, largely because of an over reliance on a twenty year old manifesto that made a very strong claim based on bad data (which was the best data available at the time).

This is not a Julia Serano hit piece. I think Whipping Girl is fine. But I also think that Whipping Girl is not perfect. There are ideas and statements I personally disagree with. There are ideas and statements in there that are objectively wrong, like the above quote. And there is a least one statement I simply find indefensible.

While trans people on the female-to-male (FTM) spectrum face discrimination for breaking gender norms (i.e., oppositional sexism), their expressions of maleness or masculinity themselves are not targeted for ridicule—to do so would require one to question masculinity itself.

This statement does not line up with what I have observed. I have observed trans men's masculinity being ridiculed, though not in the same way as trans women's femininity is ridiculed. She is wrong. I think this is an ignorant statement made by a trans woman motivated to overlook discrimination because she was pushing a particular narrative and therefore failed to recognize discrimination as it is experienced by another group, assuming that because it is not like the discrimination she experiences it does not exist. I believe this statement is indefensible. It was ignorant then, it is ignorant now.

Again, this is not a hit piece. I don't think she is a bad person, I don't think we need to throw out all of Whipping Girl. Lots of people make mistakes like this, it is an occupational hazard of making these kind of strong theories and statements.

But how many trans women take this statement as gospel and build their understanding of trans masculinity around Julia Serano's dismissive, factually incorrect, and at times even ignorant statements?

And this is Julia Serano's Whipping Girl. One of the most respected trans feminine texts there is. If we should be able to trust any text, it is Whipping Girl.

And that's the point. It is dangerous to view these sorts of texts as objective sources of information. And it's not just trans women and whipping girl, I am just most familiar with texts relating to trans women because I am one.

The queer community has a problem where we view authority figures in the movement as sources of objectively correct information. And when you do this eventually some authority figure you respect is going to say something that's ignorant and wrong and you will adopt that incorrect idea.

You have to be critical of your sources. Especially sources that speak to you on an emotional level.

[yearst]

Do you know where someone could find the best current data about violence against trans people? Because every time I try to look, I find data that says trans women are significantly more at risk of violence than trans men.

I am not trying to kick the hornets nest here, but if you’re telling people to question their sources and then making a big claim without any links to data… people are going to question where you got that.

[luckyladylily]

So let's start with a critically flawed, if well meaning, source, to demonstrate why you have to be careful and the type of misinformation that is extremely easy to happen. The human rights campaign is one of the first sources people are going to come up against here. They also horribly mangle the data in ways that are, frankly, shocking. I'm pretty sure that they didn't have anyone qualified to do statistical analysis look over their claims. Maybe not even anyone with basic training.

So the hrc bases a lot of their claims on identified homicide numbers. Which, of course, introduces massive selective bias. Using a pool of 372 identified trans victims of homicide, the hrc claims that 83% of trans victims of homicide were women.

The problem being that identified victims are not the same as all victims. Especially when you are comparing a known highly visible demographic to demographics known for low visibility.

The discrepancy in those claims is subtle to those who are not trained in data analysis, but it is such a basic and major error as to call into question the ability of the HRC to do effective data analysis at all. It's classic survivorship bias, I'm sure you've seen the story of the WW2 planes with bullet holes, it's that sort of thing.

And it is true that all sources agree that trans women (especially black trans women) are far more often identified. We have more names of murdered trans women than other demographics. You might be forgiven thinking this means trans women suffer the most violence.

But competent data analysis paints a different picture.

Lets look at "Global Burden of Violence Against Transgender and Gender-Diverse Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis".

The first thing you will notice is that this source spends a huge amount of time going into exact methodology, what data was used, the source, what data was not used and why, and how and why it was analyzed in the way it was. This is what competent data analysis looks like. Lets pull some critical quotes from the source:

"Disproportionate violence burdens are experienced by transgender and gender-diverse people who are multiply marginalized.13 For example, transphobia, racism, and classism intersect to compound violence exposure for transgender women of color.14,15 According to the Trans Murder Monitoring project, 94% of the 321 identified transgender and gender-diverse people who were murdered in 2023 were transgender women or transgender feminine people, and the majority were Black, women of color, and engaged in sex work.16 Such disparities suggest the importance of considering intersecting identities in violence research and intervention strategies.13"

You will notice they acknowledge the data on identified victims is almost entirely trans women. What they do not do is suggest that this means trans women are the primary victims of anti trans violence, instead drawing the conclusion that intersecting identities are a key factor. This is important because of the results of the actual data of properly conducted data gathering. Here is their conclusion about violence across trans gender identities: "Our meta-analyses did not show significantly different levels of violence globally among transgender women, transgender men, and nonbinary adults."

"While we would have included homicide, we identified no studies that reported its prevalence." The first part is pretty plain. There is not a statistically significant difference in violence levels between trans identities, according to the data that was collected in a scientific manner.

However, homicide data has been completely neglected to be collected in a scientific manner (likely due to the difficulty of doing so). Instead reports are anecdotal - that is, we identify trans homicide victims after the fact, which means it is entirely based on demographic visibility. The source does suggest that it seems likely that black trans women in particular are disproportional victims of homicide, but no real conclusion can be drawn without further studies.

Given that general violence against trans people seems fairly flat across identity, and that intersectional factors seem to play a critical part in violence against trans people, I would suggest that anecdotally gathered evidence is the source of the discrepancy. Between a demographic known for hyper visibility (trans women), and demographics known for being practically invisible (other trans identities), it draws a very obvious picture of why the anecdotal evidence looks the way it does.

As a side note and purely my own opinion, I think there is a tendency for white trans women to claim the violence experienced by trans women of color, especially black trans women, and report it as general violence against trans women. But the data suggests that race (and class, which are often intertwined) play such a massive role in violence against trans women that I feel it is honestly kind of racist how the trans women community so often glosses over it, if it is even discussed at all. The simple fact is that a white trans woman like myself is much, much less likely to experience violence than a black trans woman, and that is a key part of the discussion.

Getting back to data, there is one more important piece I want to highlight. Specifically, how data has been gathered, and on who.

"Of the 94 studies, nearly all (90 studies [96%]) included transgender women, whereas 49% (46 studies) included transgender men, and 37% (35 studies) included nonbinary adults"

This is a massive discrepancy in visibility. It seems almost laughable that a study would include trans women specifically but not bother with trans men, a staggering display of systematic bias against trans men, and yet it appears that half of available studies that passed the minimum bar of quality to be included in the meta analysis did just that. And nonbinary people have it even worse. It is no wonder that violence against trans demographics other than trans women is less well understood and under reported in anecdotal analysis. Even the people actively looking for violence against trans people are heavily biasing their studies towards discovering violence against trans women.

I could go on for a long, long time breaking down this one meta analysis, but I think you get the point, and in particular how important proper data analysis is. The simple fact of the matter is many "reputable" sources are clearly not conducting proper data analysis when breaking down anti trans violence by demographic and making wildly incorrect claims because of it.

I have one more source I will be brief with. "Gender Identity Disparities in Criminal Victimization: National Crime Victimization Survey, 2017–2018". The critical quote for our purpose:

"Transgender women and men had higher rates of violent victimization (86.1 and 107.5 per 1000 persons, respectively) than did cisgender women (23.7 per 1000 persons; OR = 3.88; 90% CI = 0, 8.55) and cisgender men (19.8 per 1000 persons; OR = 5.98, 90% CI = 2.09, 9.87), but there were no differences between transgender men and women (Δ = 21.4; SE = 68.7; P = .76)."

You will note that the raw data shows higher violence against trans men, but with proper data analysis it is revealed to not be statistically significant. This is something you have to be careful of, there are tools experts use for data analysis that reveal that obvious conclusions from raw numbers are not always correct.

There are more sources out there, but I am not going to bother tracking them down. It was not hard to find these sources, these two major sources I found through simple internet searches on the first page (duck duck go, in my case). I don't know why you had problems, for me it was as simple as searching for something like "trans violence by gender identity" and looking for actual studies that talk about methodology.

This is a skill people really need to develop, but its not something I know how to teach. I personally think the queer community on tumblr is very over reliant on being spoon fed sources, and on top of that is really terrible at evaluating sources. I think it is genuinely quite likely that most trans people go straight to the HRC page, see their big bold graphics proclaiming that 83% of trans homicide victims are trans women, and don't even consider that it could be bad information.

[frogeyedape]

how many murder victims were identified post-mortem incorrectly? they weren't out, or their family didn't care to acknowledge them being trans, or the ID was based solely on visible sex characteristics. this is the question sitting behind the data: the % of any particular demographic of identified trans murder victims necessarily leaves out (discounts) unidentified trans murder victims. it's as much a problem of collecting bad data (mis-identifying people) as it is of bad data analysis

[frogeyedape]

tags by @stabbyflower

#transphobia # I've seen so many news reports of "murdered women" who i know for a fact were trans men or nonbinary #and a lot of them are not getting counted in these numbers

[bug-the-chicken-nug]

a lot of anti-ai stuff claims to not be ableist, and like. i can agree that that's often too strong and accusatory of a word, especially if the goal is to actually get someone to listen to you, but it does often feel like... negligent of, or naive about disability. like it kills me every time someone shoots down AI as totally unnecessary and pointless and deserving of a complete ban, but then practically never says anything about how else they expect to create a society where disabled people can do the things it could've potentially helped them with, if further improved towards such ends. or if they do (and this is often something carried out by disabled people themselves), they'll do it in a way that comes off like disability porn mixed with hustle culture, where it essentially becomes a chance to boost your ego by proclaiming your willingness to Struggle and a general No Excuses mindset, mixed with resentment towards anyone who wants to get there with less Struggle, because you've come to view it as Noble or Necessary as part of how you cope with it. and like. at the root of this mindset is a defensiveness of your ego and status that is fundamentally incompatible with long-term progress and equity. because it is basically saying "things should never change in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable", ignoring that people's needs conflict all the time, and that this desire is therefore fundamentally unrealistic. there's also the other option peddled, the vague appeal to "community", in the sense that once we just build a "better community", it will emergently fix everything, and we'll all be strumming banjos in a big meadow full of native wildflowers. and it's like. idk man i LIKE the idea that I could someday delegate certain things to an unfeeling, impersonal machine that can never judge me or start to covertly desire/expect things i'm not able to give in return. like. nobody said it HAS to be controlled by some scary corporation that's spying on you and constantly charging ever-increasing subscription fees. those are not inherent features of AI. maybe i don't always WANT all my business handled by a "community" who I am then implicitly at the total mercy of, and who can then begin setting various demands and restrictions based on whatever's convenient for them, because they know there's nothing I can really do about it, and because it likely doesn't even register as "cruel" or "unfair" in their minds. so, they'll use their leverage to keep arguing for why my desires and boundaries are dramatic and unrealistic, and why I should just grin and bear it.

[itsactuallynothingatall]

something that is left out a lot in discussion of the themes and such of deltarune is tobys real life disability. consider why a disabled person may be telling a story about a complex relationship and desire for freedom

[itsactuallynothingatall]

most of the discussion i see about what freedom means in deltarune relates it back to gender and gender expression, which is obviously a very important part of dr, but i think there are other layers to it that aren't really being explored because it's less relatable to much of the audience.

just thinking about kris, i think there's a lot of ways their struggles can be interpreted as relating to disability. one example that seems particularly intentional is kris not being able to play the piano while under the soul's control and toby commenting about not being able to play the piano (among other things) due to pain.

we see in chapter 5 that kris can barely survive without the soul, but they also can't freely live their life how they want with it. they get to a point where they can barely move without it. they push themself beyond their limits to achieve what they can't when they're tied down by the soul. idk i kinda lost track of what i was saying here

[couldtheycatchkira]

((It seems that those that are Deltarune fans are beginning to refer to themselves as "Deltagoons". Is this true?))

[couldtheycatchkira]

Debate: Are Deltagoons real?

Yes, they are real

No, they are not real

Voting ended onJul 5

[meltedbluecaterpillar]

And now for our next one! This is “Didi” Cedric Bird! (🪽) I’m assuming Didi is a nickname and what the others call him. I was also prepared to meet a tsundere but it turns out he’s an open book! A friend mentioned he seems like a Bakadere which is also very cute.

His outfit is also very different in comparison to Neo and Hugh’s despite them all sharing a unit. Hmm… Maybe these aren’t idol uniforms but just casual style clothes?

His voice actor is Hirose Yuya which I personally recognize from Tokyo Revengers but he has also done an idol music project! I’m assuming that that the entire cast will only have seasoned idols now. Unlike Twst where many of the VAs had no experience singing and likely didn’t plan to. I’ll post again tomorrow to share who’s up next!

[pansexualkiba]

they put my boy double-d on mood stabilizers 😔💔🪽

[crent-trimm]

You personally enjoying a side character more than the main character doesn’t automatically turn the main character into the real villain of the story.

[bug-the-chicken-nug]

You talk too much and it’s annoying

tbh i'm actually glad to hear this after spending most of my life being criticized for exactly the opposite thing

[librarycards]

please i need him to die on 4th of july gaudy as fuck 'america 250' celebration that would be the funniest thing ever i wouldn't even bitch about the fireworks. i wouldn't even do that.

[bug-the-chicken-nug]

this is definitely like. a niche problem that a lot of people probably haven't even been exposed to but like. the frustration of seeing people consistently "not understand" why some people say chainsmoker cat makes them want to smoke. like. i've never even smoked, and i still think people are confused because they're coming at it way too "logically". simply showing or explaining to people that it's bad doesn't stop them. and this isn't because they're dumb, either. it's because stress and a shitty life with limited practical/accessible coping mechanisms is a huge driver of drug usage. so it's not surprising that the desire for even temporary relief overrides logic, if the mental calculation is often like "i can make things suck less now in exchange for getting worse in the long run. and if i don't, not only will it still suck, it'll still have no actual guarantee it gets better anyway," which from that perspective, starts to seem significantly less illogical anyway. being able to resist drugs also requires faith that things can get better, and it doesn't take rocket science to see that we're in a time where for a lot of people, it's really goddamn hard to actually have that.

[setulose]

Whatttt is with the tendency of Tumblr users to seek absolution from every single person who offhandedly posts about disagreeing with something they do

[setulose]

I say this not unkindly, but firmly: to function as a member of a social species, you have to get comfortable with the idea that not everyone will like you

[bovid-beauty]

"Fascism"—New Federal Rule Would Require Federal Funding Recipients To Deny Trans People Exist

The rule could have heavy impacts towards trans people across society.

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

Importantly, the gender ideology prohibition has no age limitation—hospitals could be targeted not just for providing care to minors but for providing gender-affirming care to adults, because prescribing hormone therapy to a transgender patient of any age could be deemed promoting the belief that "sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic."

[junequeer]

THIS IS OPEN TO COMMENT UNTIL JULY 13, 2026

[featherandstorm]

This is all very bad and horrible, but I want to be clear that it’s worse and more sweeping than just eliminating trans research.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Please, if you only ever write one public comment, this is the one to do.

[genderkoolaid]

Bringing back this guide to writing an effective public comment. This gives you the basics you need to know, what you need to include, a basic outline you can follow, etc.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

But also, if possible, don't stop at writing a comment. Don't stop at calling your representatives. You should ideally be talking to people in your community about this and organizing resistance on-the-ground; there is a good chance people are already doing that even if you aren't hearing about it.