UPDATE TO TRANSGENDER STYLE GUIDE: AVOIDING INVALIDATING LANGUAGE TRAPS
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Title: The Radical Copyeditor’s Style Guide for Writing About Transgender People: 2.8-2.11: Avoiding Invalidating Language Traps
Speech bubbles contrast the following phrases under the headings “Invalidating language” versus “Validating language”: “Women and trans women” versus “Cis and trans women”; “Students who consider themselves ‘non-binary'” versus “Non-binary students”; “Zed, who identifies as agender” versus “Zed is agender”; “her secret was exposed” versus “her history was publicized”; “closeted,” “stealth,” and “passes” versus “private” and “nondisclosure”; and “an out trans man” versus “openly trans” and “public.”
OK BUT THE THREAD??? Tumblr this is what kills me, you screenshot an amazing Tweet but don’t link to the source or UNROLL THE THREAD! So then I have to go read Twitter myself and lose my entire goddamn mind. Anyway!
here’s the OP and here’s the followup:
There was another amazing thread on how fucked the Domino’s pothole-filling squad was, but this was from the same poster so it was easy to find. The other thread was about the concept of “prevailing wage” and how Domino’s was surely paying their workers minimum, meaning the job wasn’t going to skilled tradesmen and is further aiding the slippage of the former middle classes into poverty, but now I can’t find it. Anyway! There’s some underpinnings for that punchline.
"I didn't want to come to Mexico; I wanted to stay in Honduras but I couldn't."
Immigration issues are trans issues, trans issues are immigration issues.
Roxsana Hernandez a transwoman from Honduras died in ICE custody over the weekend. Activists are blaming ICE while the agency is claiming it provided appropriate care.
As Buzzfeed notes, Hernandez was awaiting deportation without having seen an immigration judge through what’s called “expedited removal.” Based on the ICE statement (which deadnames Hernandez) it seems likely that her deportation order was based on a set of convictions in the US: “In May 2009, she was convicted of lewd, immoral, indecent conduct and prostitution. Both convictions were in Dallas. On Jan. 27, 2014, Hernandez was convicted of illegal entry.” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that many of those may be the product of the challenges faced by an undocumented transwoman trying to support herself in this country - 20% of trans folks have reported participating in the underground economy (including sex work) in this country, and those numbers rise to nearly double for undocumented individuals.
Not surprisingly, given the wide variance in legal and social acceptance of LGBTQ+ folks, some seek asylum elsewhere. And despite the many challenges involved, and our current Administration and its policies, the US is still a destination for LGBTQ+ individuals looking to escape persecution. That was certainly the case for Hernandez who shared previously: “Trans people in my neighborhood are killed and chopped into pieces, then dumped inside potato bags…I’m scared of that. “
Hernandez didn’t find shelter here, and while ICE may position this as an isolated unfortunate event, these detention centers don’t have a stellar reputation: the US Trans Survey notes that 45% of trans folks in “immigration detention experienced some form of mistreatment, such as being physically or sexually assaulted or being denied access to hormones.” And there are other reports running back to the Obama Administration of serious concerns around the treatment of LGBTQ+ immigrants and refugees.
And for those of my readers abroad, these aren’t just US issues, as these articles poignantly illustrate.
I made a big post about recent immigration news yesterday, but this story is yet another reminder that this is a critical issue that needs more attention. Please, take action.
While the study is premature, it certainly resonates the state of our political climate. While I believe that it is a bit of a stretch to say that centrists are the most supportive of authoritarian leadership, what I observed with centrists is there support of the status quo, by posting FB feeds that sate that the rise of Alt-Right is a response to SJW activism and their seemingly tone-deaf political views that don't reflect the realities of the struggling working class citizens.
I have a different theory, while there are a handful of SJW's who fight within a culturally bubble of privilege, there are indeed more so called "SJW's" who come from low income backgrounds who actually fight for income equality, especially for the most vulnerable and FORGOTTEN members of society (queer and/or p.o.c. with disabilities, including physical and mental illnesses).
I believe that it is the political inactivity and passivity of centrists that has driven people further right, rather than "liberal snowflakes" as we've seen more liberals go further left no thanks to centrists who while admit that this political environment is "not normal", their solutions to our chaotic politics offers no real solution in fixing what has caused this in the first place, income inequality, sub-standard healthcare, and lecherous real-estate business that has led to more homelessness.
Only in a world that is on fire caused by fascism, it is usually (but NOT all) centrists that will allow the world to continue to burn and not take a stand because joining the efforts of leftists and those who believe in a true democracy will make them look like "extremists." It's time for centrists to wake up and actually make a stand for something that goes against the status quo because guess what, the convenient ways of the status quo has failed most Americans, including and especially the most vulnerable.
i lost a follower for that last reblog, so im just gonna say it loud and clear
trans women are women and deserve to be treated as such. they are not lesser women because they are trans, they are not your fetish, they are not the butt of your jokes, they are real women with real souls and deserve some fucking rights and respect
Honestly, shit like this really infuriates the fuck out of me, and excuse my language but people, including and especially white people need to stop being so quick to call the police. Just because you see someone whom you perceive to be a stranger, resist you're alarmism and go back to bed.
Leila has two identities, but Facebook is only supposed to know about one of them....
This story was produced by Gizmodo Media Group’s Special Projects Desk.
Leila is a sex worker. She goes to great lengths to keep separate identities for ordinary life and for sex work, to avoid stigma, arrest, professional blowback, or clients who might be stalkers (or worse).
Her “real identity” — the public one, who lives in California, uses an academic email address, and posts about radical politics — joined Facebook in 2011. Her sex-work identity is not on the social network at all; for it, she uses a different email address, a different phone number, and a different name. Yet earlier this year, looking at Facebook’s “People You May Know” recommendations, Leila (a name I’m using using in place of either of the names she uses) was shocked to see some of her regular sex-work clients.
Despite the fact that she’d only given Facebook information from her vanilla identity, the company had somehow discerned her real-world connection to these people — and, even more horrifyingly, her account was potentially being presented to them as a friend suggestion too, outing her regular identity to them.
Because Facebook insists on concealing the methods and data it uses to link one user to another, Leila is not able to find out how the network exposed her or take steps to prevent it from happening again.
“It’s not just sex workers who are careful to shield their identities,” she said to me via Skype. “The people who hire sex workers are also very concerned with anonymity so they’re using alternative emails and alternative names. And sometimes they have phones that they only use for this, for hiring women. You have two ends of people using heightened security, because neither end wants their identity being revealed. And they’re having their real names connected on Facebook.”
When Leila queried secret support groups for sex workers on Facebook, others said it had happened to them too.
"With all the precautions we take and the different phone numbers we use, why the fuck are they showing up? How is this happening?“
“The worst nightmare of sex workers is to have your real name out there, and Facebook connecting people like this is the harbinger of that nightmare,” she said. “With all the precautions we take and the different phone numbers we use, why the fuck are they showing up? How is this happening?”
It’s not a question that Facebook is willing to answer. The company is not forthcoming about how “People You May Know,” known internally as PYMK, makes its recommendations. Most of what Facebook does reveal about the feature is on a help page, which says that the suggestions “come from things like” mutual friends, shared networks or groups, or “contacts you’ve uploaded.”
When the suggestions turn out to be unnerving, that explanation is both vague and woefully incomplete. A Facebook spokesman told me this summer that there are more than 100 signals that go into PYMK. All someone like Leila — who was not connected to her clients by anything like mutual friends, networks, groups, or contacts — can know is that the data that exposed her must be something else, in that large undefined set of factors.
Leila suspects either that Facebook collected contact information from other apps on her phone or that it used location information, noticing that her and her clients’ smartphones were in the same place at the same time.
“We do not use information from third party apps to show friend suggestions in People You May Know,” said a Facebook spokesperson by email. Facebook has said before that it doesn’t use location information for People You May Know, and the spokesperson confirmed that “People You May Know suggestions are not informed by your smartphone’s Location Services.”
So the linkage between Leila and her clients remains a mystery. While the algorithmic black box that is PYMK is simply creepy to most of us, the intrusive network analysis can have serious consequences for people in the sex work and porn industry. One sex toy reviewer devoted a section of her digital security advice to the feature, her cleverest suggestion being to choose a profile photo that doesn’t show your face.
“People think because you have sex on camera, privacy isn’t a big deal for you,” said Mike Stabile, spokesperson for the Free Speech Coalition, a California-based advocacy group for adult performers. “But in this industry, privacy is so important. Performers worry about stalkers on a daily basis.”
Stabile says concerns about People You May Know also go the other way, when people’s accounts for their sex work persona are recommended to people they know in their real, vanilla lives like relatives and friends.
That’s what Ela Darling worries about. Darling, who manages virtual reality adult broadcasting at CAM4, has been working in pornography for eight years, but her family members don’t know that.
"I don’t want my 15-year-old cousin to discover I’m a porn star because my account gets recommended to them on Facebook.“
“I don’t want my 15-year-old cousin to discover I’m a porn star because my account gets recommended to them on Facebook,” Darling told me by phone.
To combat this, she searches Facebook every few weeks for the last names of her family and extended family to see if any of her relatives have joined the network or created a new account. If they have, she blocks them.
Darling used to have a second, private account under her legal name for connecting with people she knew in her normal, vanilla life, but it was getting recommended to her fans, revealing her “real” identity to them. Some of them began harassing her and trying to track down her family.
“We’re living in an age where you can weaponize personal information against people,” Darling said. She’s not sure how Facebook linked her porn identity to her legal identity, but it meant one had to go. She deleted her private account a few years ago, leaving only her public, porn one.
“Facebook isn’t a luxury,” Darling said. “It’s a utility in our lives. For something that big to be so secretive and powerful in how it accumulates your information is unnerving.”
The outing problem is, like Facebook’s ongoing fake-news scandals, a result of the company’s growth-above-all strategy: First round up as many users as possible, then start cleaning up (or not) the side effects of operating at that scale. People You May Know may be incidental to an individual user’s experience, but it extends the reach and density of the network.
“For sex workers, this is a huge threat. This is life or death for us,” Leila said.
An obvious solution, from a user’s point of view, would be for Facebook to fully explain what data it uses to make friend suggestions, and to allow users to filter it or opt out of the People You May Know feature entirely. That way, someone concerned about having their identity exposed — whether a sex worker, a domestic violence victim, or a political activist — wouldn’t have to worry about having their account shown to someone who shouldn’t see it.
“An opt out is not something we think people would find useful.”
“An opt out is not something we think people would find useful,” said the spokesperson. “For example, even for people who have been on Facebook for a long time and already have lots of friends, most of us like to know when someone we know has joined Facebook for the first time.”
According to the Facebook spokesperson, while there is no way to clearly and directly opt out of the People You May Know feature, there’s an undocumented trick that does enable users to stop appearing in it. It just requires them to shut off their ability to receive any friend requests at all.
“People can always control who can send them friend requests by visiting their account settings,” said the spokesperson. “If they select ‘no one,’ they won’t appear in others’ People You May Know.”
This solution, which is not explained in any of Facebook’s many help pages, would allow Leila to protect herself from exposure, although at the expense of one of Facebook’s basic functions. And it wouldn’t work for Darling as her account exists for fans to find and follow. So the need for a PYMK opt-out remains.
“We take privacy seriously and of course want to make sure people have a safe and positive experience on Facebook,” said the Facebook spokesperson. “For people who choose to maintain a separate identity, we’ve put safeguards in place to help them understand their privacy choices, moderate comments, block people, control location sharing, and report abusive content.”
Facebook also says you can just “x” out anyone who appears in “People You May Know” that you don’t want to know, but sometimes just appearing there means the damage is already done.
If your favorite stripper/escort/cam person etc. personal account is recommended to you over facebook, the best thing you can do is NOT add them, and instead just let them know the next time that you interact with them during an appointment/at the club etc. Please don’t add them so you can try to tell them through their personal account-it’s dangerous, and scary. Block us, don’t look at said accounts, and notify us as soon as you can. Most check for that kinda shit regularly, but a heads up is always nice.
On the reverse, if one of your loved ones sex worker accounts is suggested to you over social media, do not follow it without their permission. Let them know that their account was recommended to you, block them if they ask you too (and/or don’t get offended if they block you), and most importantly do not tell anyone else you/they know. Outting them to other relatives/friends is really dangerous, so please don’t do that.
this is so SO fucking similar to neo-nazi conspiracy theories about how trans people are caused by fluoride and/or xenoestrogens in municipal water supplies, or chemtrails, or social conditioning and “feminization caused by Cultural Marxism, aka caused by “The Jews.” I mean, if you substitute in Russia as your “Eastern boogeyman” rather than Jewish people, it follows the exact same logic. Though, significantly, Jewish people have been associated with Eastern Europe in the eyes of fascist conspiracy theorists throughout the 20th century. Communism was viewed by fascists as a russian-jewish ideology that would result in the destruction of western culture and cause the virile western aryan men to become feminized and turned into homosexuals. Not to mention the fact that during the cold war there were shitloads of specifically American cryptofascist conspiracy theories about the USSR and it’s “subversive effects” on the West…
anyway yeah, terfs provide yet another infowars-esque hot take and prove that they are in fact a cadre of political and social reactionary goons.
What's really interesting though is that when the Roman Empire started to collapse as soon as Christianity was becoming more popular. Not to mention the endless wars caused by the Empire's imperialist ambitions. Yet, "feminists" like Camila Paglia want to attribute the fall of societies to androgyny.
BREAKING: The FCC just voted to repeal net neutrality, meaning we’re all screwed. TV news shows were essentially silent about this for the three weeks leading up to the vote.
When I saw this post on my dash, it kept disappearing every time the site finished loading. It had nothing to do with my blacklist extension, all evidence of this post on my dash vanished. I had to go to the blog of the person I’m reblogging it from DIRECTLY.
If you can see this post at all, even if it’s for a split second, try and like it and reblog it! Don’t let this post be hidden!
We just need one more vote to overrule the repeal of Net Neutrality
Please contact your Senators and Representatives urging them to vote for the CRA (Congressional Review Act)
List of Senators onboard for protecting Net Neutrality:
The Senators in red are the ones who are currently not voting so convince them to vote for the CRA: https://www.battleforthenet.com/scoreboard/
Text “RESIST” to 50409 to send an email to your Senators/Representatives! Tell them to vote for the CRA and give them details to persuade them on why Net Neutrality is so important and why it should be preserved. You can also call at 202-224-3121.
Script for phone calls:
Now get to it!! We only have until April 23rd to keep our Internet freedom otherwise.
Hello, my name is ___. I am contacting you from ______ to let you know that I want you to vote in favor of Senator Markey’s resolution to repeal the FCC’s decision to unwind Net Neutrality, via the Congressional Review Act. Polling suggests that 60%-80% of Americans do not support the rollback of net neutrality, and voting in support of this bipartisan resolution is will help ensure this issue isn’t singlehandedly decided by five people.
Hello, my name is ___. I am contacting you from ______ to let you know that I want you to vote in favor of Senator Markey’s resolution to repeal the FCC’s decision to unwind Net Neutrality, via the Congressional Review Act. Polling suggests that 60%-80% of Americans do not support the rollback of net neutrality, and voting in support of this bipartisan resolution is will help ensure this issue isn’t singlehandedly decided by five people.
I saw this tagged as transphobia and while the laws and atmosphere that surrounds this is very much grounded in transphobia, I think it’s worth mentioning that that’s a cis woman.
So you know.
Fucking thanks, TERFs. Aren’t you glad bathroom laws trying to prevent “men” from entering the ladies room has caused two male police officers to eject cis women from the bathroom already? Since that’s the only women you care about maybe you might actually spend longer than .5 seconds thinking about possible fucking reprocussions of this shit now.
Oh my goooooddddd this shit is ridiculous. Like, this law has always been complete and utter transphobic bullshit, but here’s the god damn proof it will never work the way these idiots want it to. You cannot determine someone’s gender by the clothes they wear. Fuck, I get misgendered and called a man all the time. Do I need to bring my I.D. next time I take a shit? I am so tired of this garbage. Let people use the damn bathroom they want to.
But this is exactly the outcome of laws like this: policing and punishing people who deviate from the gender norm. The direct target is of course trans people (with the brunt of the focus on trans women), but anyone who doesn’t fit with the norms will also be impacted by the law because now there’s a witch hunt against anyone who doesn’t seamlessly blend in.
Isn’t it terribly ironic that this law was intended to prevent men from entering a woman’s bathroom and harassing women (which wasn’t actually happening) and it has directly resulted in male police officers entering the women’s bathroom and harassing a woman?
There have been at least 3 other incidents of cis men entering women’s bathrooms under the guise of “protecting” them from trans women. These bills literally gave cis men a better excuse for invading the women’s restroom.
I mean, cis people can also experience transphobia. Transphobia hurts (can hurt) everyone. It’s just trans people (and friends) get the most of it because it’s aimed at the first.
And i seriously doubt people who want the literal gender police to come and police bathrooms (”papers, please”) for trans people are gonna be sad if some androgynously dressed cis woman gets it. She’s probably just as much a target, but it’s not like that’s something you can say in polite company. Do you think that cop actually cared whether she was cis or trans? She was “inappropriate” and was therefore ejected. That’s what this is about.
A 16-year-old transgender girl in Connecticut has been incarcerated in an adult men’s prison for nearly a month — and she still hasn’t been charged or convicted of a single crime.
“Jane Doe"was living in a home for traumatized youth when authorities claim she attacked a staffer. But no criminal charges are even pending against her.
Instead, the teen has suffered in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT for weeks without treatment or educational training — and instead of letting her go, the Department of Correction wants to send her to a men’s prison where she’ll be at high risk of abuse and sexual assault!
Please, join us in calling on Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy to release “Jane Doe” from prison and return her to state custody, placing her in a juvenile facility with kids of her gender if the state still plans to press charges!
PETITION TO GOV. MALLOY: Release “Jane Doe” from prison and return her to state custody, placing her in a juvenile facility with kids of her gender if the state still plans to press charges
Just so everyone remembers, this girl is a multiple rape victim who has been physically and sexually abused not only by her own family, but also by staff in DCF group homes. She “assaulted” a male staffer who GRABBED HER FROM BEHIND, a male staffer who has since been fired.
DCF lied to the court to get authorization to put this girl in prison, claiming that the staff she assaulted were “seriously injured” when the police report in fact says there were only minor injuries. And now DCF – not Corrections, but DCF – is petitioning to put her in a men’s prison.
turnnoffyourmind
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