despite everything, it's still you. @heroesneedalancer - Tumblr Blog

the thing is israel basically belongs to the united states. it is funded by our government. they test weapons for us. when the us defends israel it is not defending a sibling nation where there might be room for them to break away or disagree, it is defending its own military interests. i think this is important for understanding why the states are acting this way and to make it clear this is something US citizens are directly involved in, as much as any other cruel, imperialistic war we are told to support, only to be apologized for as wrong decades later. you can apologize for the deaths once you have already benefitted from the deaths. that is how these things go but it is always essential to fight that pattern because we already know how it ends if we were to let it play out. none of this is new, for all the claims of complexity, it is the same old playbook and we must recognize it for what it is and fight it as we would any other demand for crimes against humanity in the name of "peace". learn from the past, learn from each other, learn from those who have been fighting this struggle longer than we have been alive. mass opposition to US imperialism, to settler colonialism, to """justified""" genocide is the only way.

blackpearlblast

to those in the notes asking what can be done, here are some resources to get you started. most of the scripts list is targeted towards a U.S. audience but should be possible to modify for use elsewhere depending on where you live.

call scripts (most can easily be modified into email scripts as well):

contact your city council to put out a statement in support of palestine

contact your senators/representatives to support the ceasefire bill

contact your senator to support something like the ceasefire bill (alternate script for senators who are voting in favor of israel)

contact your representative to support the ceasefire bill (alternate script for senators who are voting in favor of israel)

list of protests (including a link to free transportation to them and a way to donate to support that free transportation)

a post on how to archive the events and information being shared online

BDS has existed for a long time as a way to support palestine and protest israel's violence, i highly recommend spending some time on their website

there are also many donation links going around which are compiled in other posts. i am currently getting a lot of mileage out of sharing the games for gaza bundle on itch, as it is very easy to bring up in conversation. if you are in discord servers with gaming channels, it is a very easy way to bring people's conversation and attention back to palestine by sharing it.

keep sharing!! keep talking! don't look away. give these resources to other people and keep listening to and boosting palestinian voices. that's what has been asked of us. your words ARE important right now. there would not be so much effort to silence and shut down the public's cries for justice and freedom if there were no effect.

no-longer-another-bondi-blonde

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent: “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press Goose Lane Editions Breakwater Books Ltd. The Acorn Press Bouton d'or Acadie Canada Council for the Arts | Conseil des arts du Canada

three--rings

When I was 15 I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.

pilgrimattinkercreek1974

Oh ok so it turns out ive been borrowing grief from the future ! it turns out ive been preparing to lose the things i love rather than basking in the light of them while they last. Maybe i should nt do that

animentality

ichliebemeinkissen

moral of the story: if you have npd, stop doing anything ever 🤞

npdbubblygum

I don't know if you're joking or if you're saying it in a genuinely defeatist way, but no you don't have to stop doing things forever (though it can help to take a break from doing things for a little while)

People with npd can learn skills that help with this

If you have npd, learn more about how your brain works and how to intercept at an early stage in a shame spiral and how to self validate and think about self worth in terms other than accomplishments. Learn about what it is that makes you feel ashamed abd where it came from and why shame feels unsafe, and then make it safe to feel your shame. Meet your shame. It feels a little bit like throwing up and dying but the more you face your shame and come out safe on the other side, the easier it gets

A good therapist who genuinely cares about giving narcissistic clients proper care can help with this, but you need to prioritize learning above feeling like you're good at what you're trying to learn to genuinely take it in, so be mentally prepared for the anguish that comes with genuine struggle and being seen struggling. You will come out more resilient on the other end of it if you open yourself up to it

Learn one small step at a time how to disentangle your self worth from the result. Npd means it's going to be harder and take more work and support to do this, not that we can't ever do it

We are not doomed

happyk44

[ID: 1. Tweet from @/bluewmist: the fastest way to kill motivation is to make your identity depend on the outcome. it's called ego involvement. when failing becomes failing as a person, your brain starts avoiding the whole thing. not because you don't care, but because you care too much.

2. Reply tweet from @/bluewmist: you don't need lower standards. you need less self-worth tangled up in your goals. the work gets easier when it's not aboout proving who you are /end ID]

wastraffamser

Saw someone say "fanfic writers/fandom sees a characters aro/ace-ness as an obstacle instead of their sexuality" and yup. that about sums it up

bemusedlybespectacled

I feel like the complaint about Gen Z needing subtitles because “sound mixing in movies today is so bad” is just remembering life without subtitles wrong? or not getting what subtitles might be useful for? maybe my experience is unique to me but there have been multiple times where I’ve rewatched movies I loved as a kid and been shocked to find out what the actual lines or lyrics were because in my head they were just mumbling or gibberish.

like, sometimes the lines were said at a perfectly audible level with no overlap, but were said so quickly the words kind of ran together, especially if you didn’t recognize them (like how some kids think “dawn’s early light” is “donzerly light”).

sometimes lines or lyrics are perfectly audible and clear, but I just straight up didn’t know the words being spoken. there’s a Robin Hood movie that I watched a ton of as a kid with the line “there’s more than one way to bring down a quarry,” but I didn’t know what a quarry was and heard “corry” and thought maybe it was a kind of medieval word for a bird or deer.

sometimes home sound systems just suck. my mom did not want us to turn the TV volume up too high or sit too close to the TV, so a lot of stuff was perfectly audible normally, but not to me as a kid watching at home. not all of us had speakers.

also, sound mixing wasn’t always better! I watched the 1993 Three Musketeers movie so many times that I could quote the whole thing from memory… except for anything with Milady de Winter, because she spoke in a very low and quiet voice and I STILL can’t hear a darn thing she’s saying even as an adult.

it’s like complaining about people needing liner notes with lyrics in an album and being like “back in my day, we could just hear all of the lyrics perfectly!” no, you couldn’t. famously, Bob Dylan listened to the Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and heard “I can’t hide” as “I get high.” people mishear stuff all the time, it’s just that now we have the technology to not bumble through life assuming that The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray has a character named Lady Mondegreen.

t4tvampireisms

FREE MY ETHNIC GIRLIES FROM RHINOPLASTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOUR NOSE BUMP IN FINE LEAVE IT ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

t4tvampireisms

YOUNG BROWN AND BLACK GIRLS: IGNORE THE WHITE INFLUENCER TELLING YOU TO GET BOTOX OR A NOSE JOB!!!!! YOUR FACE IS BEAUTIFUL AND YOU ARE WORTHY OF LOVE JUST AS YOU ARE ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

goldensunset

idk who needs to hear this but if you have been putting something off bc it doesn't need to be done until the end of the month. we are almost done with the teens we are approaching the big numbers (the twenties). that date shall dawn upon you swiftly and without mercy before you know it. psa for everyone except me i got plany off time

woodrider

ma'am, I'm going to place you on a brief hold while I look for a reaction image

batmanego

i do desperately need everyone on this website especially people who arent american but want to rag on america to familiarize themselves with the basic romanized spelling conventions of native american languages because every day i come on here and i see people making fun of massachusetts or connecticut or mississippi or passamaquoddy or mashpee or nipissing and its like PLEASE. PLEASE THEY ARENT ENGLISH WORDS. PLEAAAAASEEEEEUUUHHH. USE YOUR MINDS TO IDENTIFY WHEN A WORD LOOKS LIKE IT MAY NOT BE ENGLISH. I DONT CARE IF YOU MAKE FUN OF AMERICA JUST PLEASE STOP BEING RACIST WHILE YOU DO IT

adhdasfuck

Map I found showing which states got their names from where. Over half of the states come from Indigenous languages.

can-i-make-image-descriptions

Plain text: Please. Please they aren't English words. Pleaseuh. Use your minds to identify when a work looks like it may not be English. I don't care if you make fun of America just please stop being racist while you do it.

[Image ID: Where do most US state names come from?

Graphic from gzero titled: Origins of the names of the 50 US states.

Key showing: Dark purple: Native American/Indigenous. Orange: English royalty, aristocracy, or place. Beige: French. Green: Disputed/unclear. Magenta: Spanish. Gray: Other.

There is a stripe of orange (English royalty, aristocracy, or place) along the East Coast, and a large swath of purple (Native American/Indigenous) through the center.

Sources of states' names, listed alphabetically:

Alabama: Native American/Indigenous. From the Choctaw word for "thicket-clearers"

Alaska: Native American/Indigenous. Aleut for "the mainland" or the "great land"

Arizona: Native American/Indigenous.

Arkansas: Native American/Indigenous.

California: Spanish.

Colorado: Spanish.

Connecticut: Native American/Indigenous.

Delaware: English royalty, aristocracy, or place.

Florida: Spanish.

Georgia: English royalty, aristocracy, or place.

Hawaii: Native American/Indigenous.

Idaho: Disputed/unclear

Illinois: Native American/Indigenous.

Indiana: Other. Made-up word meaning "land of Indians"

Iowa: Native American/Indigenous.

Kansas: Native American/Indigenous.

Kentucky: Native American/Indigenous.

Louisiana: French.

Maine: Disputed/unclear.

Maryland: English royalty, aristocracy, or place.

Massachusetts: Native American/Indigenous.

Michigan: Native American/Indigenous.

Minnesota: Native American/Indigenous.

Mississippi: Native American/Indigenous.

Missouri: Native American/Indigenous.

Montana: Spanish.

Nebraska: Native American/Indigenous.

Nevada: Spanish. Spanish for "snow covered"

New Hampshire: English royalty, aristocracy, or place.

New Jersey: English royalty, aristocracy, or place.

New Mexico: Native American/Indigenous.

New York: English royalty, aristocracy, or place.

North Carolina: English royalty, aristocracy, or place.

North Dakota: Native American/Indigenous.

Ohio: Native American/Indigenous.

Oklahoma: Native American/Indigenous.

Oregon: Disputed/unclear

Pennsylvania: English royalty, aristocracy, or place.

Rhode Island: Other.

South Carolina: English royalty, aristocracy, or place.

South Dakota: Native American/Indigenous.

Tennessee: Native American/Indigenous.

Texas: Native American/Indigenous.

Utah: Native American/Indigenous.

Vermont: French. "Green Mountain" in French

Virginia: English royalty, aristocracy, or place. After the "virgin queen" Elizabeth I

Washington: Other

West Virginia: English royalty, aristocracy, or place.

Wisconsin: Native American/Indigenous.

Wyoming: Native American/Indigenous.

Text at bottom of graphic: Subscribe to our global politics newsletter Signal at gzeromedia.com. Sources: Monster Fact, Alaska.gov /End ID]

mari-lair

Killua truly is the character of all time. He spend millions on chocolate. He is immune to poison. The front gate of his house is a tourist spot . He is an overthinker prone to anxiety. He has a kill count high enough to call a mass murder an 'amateur'. He has infinite money. He has no goals. He likes gambling and is a great liar. When he walks, he makes no sound. He cried in secret about the possibility of losing his best friend at least three times. He fights barehands and when he couldn't use his hands he casually revealed he has two 50kg yo-yo in his pockets. His abusive family used life long gaslighting and magical mind manipulation to convince him that he would kill his best friend and he proceeded to fall in love with said friend and break out of his family influence from sheer devotion. He needs to electrocute himself to power up. He loves his op ostricized trans little sister. He changes clothes all the time. He is extremelly powerful and smart and he knows it. He is a sore loser. If he has no use to his loved ones he feels worthless. He is a middle child. He loves so deeply it hurts him. He is soooo rude. He is so sweet. He sees himself as an equal to his bestie while simultaneusly worshiping him. He nearly dies in a dart game. He is 12 years old.

#hunter x hunter

hewoweens

u can be boiling alive in your mind for months and then on a random tuesday ur head gets so clear and life is worth living again and you're like damn what was all that about then

mari-lair

Leorio is the character of all time. He is a teenager that looks like a middle aged guy. He threw hands with an overpowered murder clown when he really didn't have to do that, the clown was chill with letting him run away. He haggled for a cellphone so hard that the crowd cheered when he finally brought the phone. He nearly beat up an old lady because he didn't like her trick question. He has a very soothing and kind heartbeat. He entered a death exam to gain the money needed to study medicine and become a doctor that can heal people free of charge. He nearly made everyone fail this important exam cause a woman promised that if he chose the wrong option he could grope her. He punched his friend's deadbeat father in live television and people hated the father so much that they voted for Leorio to become president. He is the only one in the main cast that haven't killed someone. He went from fearing an assassin child to defending said child very loudly in a heartbeat. He come up with a rigged arm westling competition in an attempt to help his little friend make money. He is considered the normal one in the series.

#hunter x hunter

definedvines

killugon is so good because what do you mean there are these two 12 year olds who are both extremely talented/specialized/strong in unique ways in comparison to any normal person-- and suddenly they find that kind of equal ground with each other. and instead of seeing each other as rivals they actually immediately become best friends. in their strangeness and isolation from other normal people their age, they are only able to seek normalcy in each other. the one whos a cold murder assassin ultrakiller is somehow less morally questionable in his true nature at heart than the happy-go-lucky kid who was just pretty much raised by animals in the forest. the sweet-at-heart murderboy kind of idolizes him actually. it gets really codependent and gay. they try to die for each other multiple times

somehow most of the time they still act like stupid 12 year old boys who hit each other with rocks

and this is probably only the tip of the iceberg of what i can even tell you about them

#hunter x hunter

eisenkrahe

Her name was Judy-Lynn del Rey. And she became the most powerful editor in science fiction history.

Born in 1943 with achondroplastic dwarfism, Judy-Lynn grew up devouring science fiction in New York City's public libraries. At a time when the genre was dismissed as pulp fiction for teenage boys, she saw something else entirely: the future of storytelling.

She started at the bottom—an office assistant at Galaxy, the most prestigious science fiction magazine of the 1960s. Within four years, she was managing editor.

Then Ballantine Books came calling.

When she arrived at Ballantine in 1973, science fiction and fantasy were afterthoughts in publishing. Fantasy in particular was considered unsellable—unless you were Tolkien. Judy-Lynn thought that was nonsense.

Her first major move was audacious: she cut ties with one of Ballantine's bestselling authors, John Norman, whose "Gor" novels were popular but notoriously misogynistic. It was a risk. She didn't care.

Then came the gamble that changed everything.

In 1976, someone brought her an opportunity: the novelization rights to an upcoming space movie by a young director named George Lucas. Hollywood thought the film would bomb. Studio executives were skeptical. Most publishers passed.

Judy-Lynn said yes.

The Star Wars novelization sold 4.5 million copies before the movie even premiered.

She would later call herself the "Mama of Star Wars."

In 1977, she launched Del Rey Books—her own imprint, with her husband Lester editing fantasy while she oversaw everything else. Their first original novel was Terry Brooks's The Sword of Shannara. It became a phenomenon.

She didn't stop there.

Remember The Princess Bride? The original 1973 novel had flopped. It was headed for obscurity. Judy-Lynn rescued it, reissuing it in 1977 with a striking gate-fold cover and an aggressive marketing campaign. Without her intervention, there might never have been a movie.

She published the Star Trek Log series. She championed Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant trilogy—convincing Ballantine to release all three books on the same day from a completely unknown author. Unprecedented.

She published Anne McCaffrey's The White Dragon—the first science fiction novel ever to hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

And she did all of this while competitors called her imprint "Death-Rey Books"—because she was utterly dominant.

Between 1977 and 1990, Del Rey Books had 65 titles reach bestseller lists. That was more than every other science fiction and fantasy publisher combined.

Arthur C. Clarke called her "the most brilliant editor I ever encountered."

Philip K. Dick went further: "The greatest editor since Maxwell Perkins"—the legendary editor of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

But here's what burns: the science fiction community never nominated her for a Hugo Award while she was alive. Not once. The men who ran the industry praised her in private and overlooked her in public.

In October 1985, Judy-Lynn suffered a brain hemorrhage. She died four months later, at 42.

Only then did the Hugo committee vote to give her the Best Professional Editor award.

Her husband Lester refused to accept it.

He said Judy-Lynn would have objected—that it was given only because she had just died. That it came too late.

He was right.

Judy-Lynn del Rey transformed science fiction from a niche hobby into a cultural force. She made fantasy into a mainstream publishing category. She bet on Star Wars when no one else would. She saved The Princess Bride from oblivion. She published the first #1 New York Times science fiction bestseller.

She did all of this standing 4'1" tall in an industry run by men who underestimated her at every turn.

The next time you pick up a fantasy novel, or watch a Star Wars movie, or quote The Princess Bride—

Now you know who made it possible.

ladytharen

Thank you for sharing her story - I grew up reading so many books published by Del Rey! I'm adding two article sources as I wanted to learn more after reading the original post:

1) The woman who revolutionized the fantasy genre is finally getting her due (The Conversation, Dennis Wilson Wise, 10/9/2024)

She got her start, though, working as an editorial assistant – in truth, a “gofer” – for the most lauded science fiction magazine of the 1960s, Galaxy. There she learned the basics of publishing and rose rapidly through the editorial ranks until Ballantine Books lured her away in 1973. Soon thereafter, Ballantine was acquired by publishing giant Random House, which then named del Rey senior editor. Yet her first big move was a risky one – cutting ties with Ballantine author John Norman, whose highly popular “Gor” novels were widely panned for their misogyny. Nonetheless, del Rey’s mission was to develop a strong backlist of science fiction novels that could hook new generations of younger readers, not to mention adults. One early success was her “Star Trek Log” series, a sequence of 10 novels based on episodes of “Star Trek: The Animated Series.”

2) Judy-Lynn del Rey: The Galaxy Gal (PBS American Masters episode, 10/1/2024)

The story of a woman with dwarfism who revolutionized the world of science fiction by editing and publishing books from sci-fi writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and George Lucas’ “Star Wars” in novel form. See how science fiction narratives, through their speculative and imaginative nature, offer a more inclusive and equitable lens through which to redefine disability.

halorvic

Knowing how a virus spreads is essential to public health, but people keep getting it wrong.

A man goes to a birthday party, sits next to someone with hantavirus, catches it, gives it to his wife, and dies. His wife then infects 10 more people at his wake. Another guest at that same birthday party has no interaction with the index patient except to say “hello” as they cross paths, but that person gets sick too. One index patient, 33 subsequent infections, 11 deaths, four waves of transmission. This is from a meticulously documented hantavirus outbreak in Argentina in late 2018 and early 2019, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Nearly the exact same Andes strain of hantavirus caused the recent outbreak on the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius. Yet from the moment this latest outbreak hit the news last month, public-health officials have been claiming that this virus is spread through “prolonged close contact.” The evidence is not nearly so reassuring.

[...]

As an expert in what we call “exposure science,” I have spent a career conducting forensic investigations to understand how diseases spread and what we should do about it. As a member of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission, I chaired the Safe Work, Safe School, and Safe Travel task force, and was an early proponent of the theory that COVID spreads through the air. There was evidence early on of airborne transmission, which my colleagues and I tried to draw attention to. We modeled the early-2020 outbreak of the disease on the Diamond Princess cruise ship and found that 90 percent of the spread was through aerosols, not contaminated surfaces, but the CDC didn’t update its guidance until late 2020. I am alarmed to see the same pattern playing out now. Hantaviruses usually originate in rodent feces. Someone cleans a dusty area that has rodent droppings, inhales the particles, and gets sick. Only the Andes strain of hantavirus is known to be transmitted from human to human. In the outbreak documented in NEJM, the virus spreads without physical contact or prolonged exposure. One patient gets sick after simply crossing paths with someone who was ill. Two others are infected while seated at tables meters away. One person infected five others within 90 minutes at one party. The NEJM authors suggested that the virus spreads through the air. Although the NEJM evidence is clear, officials have kept repeating “prolonged, close contact,” so I wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing anything. Last week I spoke with a physician who was on the MV Hondiusas a passenger but who jumped in to help treat infected passengers after the ship’s official doctor got sick and was evacuated. He told me that the original treating doctor and staff were definitely in close contact with the first patient. But the others who got sick? They had merely shared space in the dining room and the lecture hall, and had not had close contact. We’re now at 10 confirmed cases from the ship, which aligns with the prior outbreak dynamics: one person infecting many, no close contact required.

[...]

This matters because medical teams treating patients need to know how they might be exposed. When infected passengers go home to quarantine, their households need to understand the risk. As passengers fly back to their home countries, contact tracers need to know which exposures matter. The doctor who treated patients on the cruise said on CNN that he relied on goggles, a gown, and hand-washing to protect himself. But given that this virus spreads through the air, an N95 mask and a strong ventilation and filtration system would have served him better.

[...]

This outbreak is not likely to spark a pandemic, mostly because the hantavirus is less contagious than influenza, measles, and SARS-CoV-2. But given just how little experience we have with this virus, any certainty is hubris.

May 12, 2026

autogynophelia

A lot of transphobia has this underlying assumption that people who transition are a random sample from their AGAB. Like, if you imagine a world where you took all the 10-year-old "boys" in your country and randomly selected 1% of them to go on to transition later in life, then that world would be essentially the same as this one.

And that assumption is useful to transphobes because it means they can uncritically extend properties of the AGAB group to the subset who transitions. E.g. they will say AMAB kids are likely to have behaved like X or experienced Y in their youth, therefore trans women are likely to have behaved like X or experienced Y in their youth. And they can say this without ever checking if it's true about trans women, because if everyone knows it's true of cis boys, they will assume that extension to trans women.

But like, if you took down the details of every 30-year-old trans woman right now, then went back in time 20 years, and studied that group of 10-year-olds, you would find they already had properties that differed from the 10-year-old-AMAB average in 2006. Perhaps they would be a little quieter, perhaps they would have a couple more female friends, perhaps they'd have fewer friends in general, perhaps they would have more anxiety, perhaps they would have more depression. Perhaps none of these and something else, idk.

But, the point is, people don't just decide to transition *at random*, there is a whole history of life experience in each trans girl leading up to that realisation "I am trans" and that decision "I should do something about it", and that common history of all these kids would be reflected in some group average differences from the AGAB cohort even long before that realisation took place.

And this is what makes "male socialisation" rhetoric so frustrating. Because the very fact of having all the life history that led up to your realisation that you were trans, the life history that *caused* that realisation, that very history marks you as someone with an atypical social experience compared to your AGAB average.

Literally if you had to select the 1% of AMAB people *least* likely to have had a typical "male socialisation", it would be the ones who come out of that experience thinking "you know what, I'm actually a different gender to all these men". And yet it's trans women who are tarred with the brush of "male socialisation" more than any other group.

maid-of-timey-wimey

[image ID: comment from user revolution-girlstylenow: “the biggest problem with terf-style socialization theory is that if it were true, trans people, gay people, and all forms of gender nonconformity would not exist. none of us were socialized to be queer, right? if socialization worked the same way on everyone, everyone would perfectly live up to the expectations set for their gender within their society. feminism wouldn't even exist because everyone would accept their place in the patriarchy like they were socialized to. of course, the reality is that who you are and who you want to be is going to have a huge impact on how your social experience affects you” End ID.]

lmdhawk

Also: socialization is not some kind of one and done thing that only happens in childhood. Getting to live as your true gender and be around people who interact with you as your true gender and get used to being in gendered spaces are experiences that shape you as well, even if you start as an adult. Socialization is ongoing, and extending a little grace to newly transitioned trans women goes a long way. (Over and above just extending grace to everyone because there are a lot of reasons why people don't pick up on expected gendered social cues, including disability and differing cultural backgrounds and really, having different socialization doesn't make a person dangerous.)

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