You are aware that a fictional character is just a rhetorical construct designed to fulfill a narrative/thematic purpose right? That their actions are written by an author who wants to use them to explore complex ideas and moral gray areas within the safe confines of fiction right? That they aren't a real person who has killed real people right?
The amount of people calling Scott Weiner an "AIPAC centrist" when he takes literally zero money from them should tell you exactly what people mean when they talk about AIPAC. It should tell you exactly what Mamdani meant.
hi i was just working on my own understanding of trans terms and wanted your input on this, but but do you support the idea of mutable sex/changing sex? like is that what is meant as transsexual and when is it appropriate to use that term? thank you for any feedback
I think that the definition of transsexual and transgender are completely and solely dependent on the person using it to describe themself.
Longer more nuanced answer under cut, featuring a quick history lesson.
In the 90s it was common for queer zines and publications to write TS/TG/TV/CD. Which stood for transsexual/transgender/transvestite/cross-dresser. In the 2000s we started shortening it to "trans umbrella" and then "trans+" or "trans*" and that got vocalized as "trans", which many people then just assumed meant "transgender".
In more recent years, the term "gender diverse" has popped up pretty frequently in academic papers and inclusive community spaces to describe anyone who doesn't fall into cisnormative gender expectations. So, we're all folded together and this is, in my opinion, a good thing. We all share common expericnes and the things that we don't have in common we can share with each other to learn new perspectives and increase community awareness.
Now going back to the 90s, in those publications they frequently defined transsexual as someone who was seeking SRS (sex-reassignment-surgery) or "bottom surgery". Other times, it was defined as someone seeking any type of medical transition. It was typically understood as "I want my medical sex to be transitioned". However, even in the 90s you will see a variety of writings by transsexuals who state very clearly that they do not intend to medically transition.
During this same time period, transgender was frequently defined in publications as someone who was not seeking SRS or someone who was seeking to socially transition permanently but did not experience phycial/body gender dyphoria. But again, this was not a strict definition and you will see plenty of writings by transgender people who state very clear that they do plan to medically transition or that they do experience physical/body gender dyphoria.
These terms have never had a singular definition and I don't think that they should. It creates a false binary within the trans experience and perpetuates a hierarchy of trans-ness that leads to transmedicalism.
I have zero issues with the term transsexual, I consider myself to be a transsexual. What that means for me, might be different then what it means for other transsexual people.
I also of course, have zero issues with the term transgender and also consider myself to be transgender. What that means for me, might be different then what it means for other transgender people.
Choosing which term is most appropriate, will be something you have to decide for yourself based on the context of what you're writing/saying.
My rule of thumb is that if you are writing or talking about someone who referrs to themself as transsexual then that is the language you should be using. And vice versa for transgender.
If you're not talking about a specific person but instead discussing a specific experience then you just have to choose a term, define how you are using that term, and then clarify that the way you are defining it is not all encompassing.
An example from my own writing: "In this text the author is using the term 'transsexual' to refer to people who experience genital based dyphoria and are seeking or have undergone sex-reassignment-surgery. This is being done for improved clarity of empirical data. The author affirms that the term 'transsexual' is not always defined as such and does not seek to enforce this as the sole definition."
Oh - and a quick addition, since it's somewhat related to the topic: I think that people who want to create a strict binary of sex vs gender are doing a disservice to trans and intersex communities. If someone is seeking to define sex as something that is strictally medical and/or "biological" and gender is something that is fluid and socially constructed, then they are at minium complacent in intersexism and transphobia. The concept of "all trans men are medically/biology female and all trans women are medically/biology male" is wildly transphobic and unfortunately a very popular overly-simplified narrative used all too frequently when trying to explain transgender identity to cisgender peers. That being said I don't care if someone is a trans man who also considers himself female and I likewise don't care if someone is a trans woman who considers herself male, both of these cases should be respected and allowed to express their personal understanding of their sex and gender. As long as they are not enforcing that identity onto other transgender people.
TLDR: do whatever the hell you want, just don't erase other people's identities and expericnes, gender/sex diversity is complex and vast, gender and sex are social constructs, gender and sex can mean whatever you want them to mean. Transsexual and transgender can mean whatever you want them to mean. We are all stronger together and we can all learn from each other.
so one of the largest open source data communities on the internet, data.world, got bought out by a company called ServiceNow, who has decided to fucking delete all of it by July 11th. they've given users barely any notice, no emails, just a fucking banner at the top and a blog post from June that gives barely a month to download your data before they fucking delete it all.
a bunch of archives of incredibly important government datasets like maternal mortality statistics are about to be deleted forever. in a regime where they're known to fudge numbers, we can't trust a lot of the data coming from them to not be altered. open source backups like those found on data.world are vital to being able to verify that the data coming from our government is still intact and not altered. and they're about to delete all of it.
i don't know if we need to start a petition or what. nobody seems to fucking care. there are millions of users on data.world and yet nobody is raising the alarm bells and it makes me feel like I'm going insane. somebody needs to do something. i don't know what to do. it feels like more and more of this world is being destroyed and dismantled. it's not only US centric data, either! it's all sorts of countries from around the world! and they're about to fucking delete everything.
the only things that won't be deleted are private companies who happen to use the paid version of their platform (which isn't accessible data to the open source community; some people have just been using their service to host their own data on privately)
and the kicker? this announcement was made... via an AI generated blog post. so not even any sort of human touch. just a generic, soulless announcement made by a soulless human about to take a wrecking ball to one of the more important websites that exists on the internet.
an example of some of the things that will be deleted on July 11th:
if you build “community” around hating other people, just know that the second you step out of line—regardless of your moral uprightness or the hypocrisy on their part—you’re the next person they’re going to tear to pieces.
And by the way it doesn’t matter if you claim your community is “pro” something if the main actual behavior of the group is hating the thing labeled as the enemy of the thing you are “in support” of.
As an example, a lot of groups claim to be “pro-women”, when in reality they are actually anti-trans. Their goal is not to uplift women, it’s to harass and criminalize trans people.
So inspect the groups you’re in. Ignore the name of the movement. What are the people in your group actually DOING?
there are places where honor killings are legal and queer people get the death penalty and you can’t sell property to people of a certain ethnicity and virtually everyone is part of a singular religion. the supreme court just upheld birthright citizenship, something most countries don’t even have.
please understand that the rightward trend in US politics is alarming but mischaracterizing the US as the Worst Place On Earth is just fucking dumb as shit!
That “cringe” nonbinary xenogender genderfuck therian who uses neopronouns and may or may not go on HRT while being loudly, proudly themselves will always be more revolutionary and subversive than a binary trans person who aggressively reproduces the cis status quo and shames anyone who doesn’t do the same.
By the way, I threw “therian” in here as a bit of a litmus test for those responding to it as something widely regarded as “cringe” but ultimately completely harmless and benign that’s often maligned by people with conservative beliefs. And well. It did its job quite amazingly given how many of the negative responses I’ve seen have focused on that rather than the overall message of shaming people for their identities is bad and counterproductive. It’s almost like these people view all of those stated identities this way but used the silly furry one as a “weak point” they’d get minimal pushback on to dismiss the very clear point of the post. Literally hilarious honestly
Y'all for real please do these. Even if you're certain your posture doesn't suck. One day you will wake up with impinged shoulder pain like I did and let me tell you it fucking HURTS. Do these exercises even just once a week and it will make such a difference. Especially my fellow creatives out there, stop shrimping over your work and go do these right now. RIGHT NOW.
no but literally tho its like the one constant also idk if this happens to trans men/trans mascs a whole lot but if youre a trans woman on the apps you get a LOT of cis dudes trying to explore crossdressing/gender with/through you every single time
also from talking with a black gay cis man friend of mine it seems like he also gets some pretty insane messages on the apps which is not surprising tbh
In reply to first reblog: in my experience cis dudes in trans men's DMs are either trying to convince us to bottom for them (even if we have stated super explicitly that we only top) OR it's a "heterflexible" cis dude who wants to take the strap (and will almost always use the term pegging) and ~explore~ his sexuality with someone he can aknowledge as a dude when being fucked but then refer to as a woman after sex to re-affirm his heterosexuality.
In reply to second reblog: That doesn't surprise me at all. I've had multiple friends who are cis Black men and bottom exclusively (and will state this their bio) and they tell me that they get endless DMs from people who want them to top becouse the person in their DMs has some sort of BBC fetish. I imagine for Black tops those sort of dehumanizing DMs are even more common. (And my own experience as being a top who is Latino on the apps has been...interesting. A fascinating number of DMs will start off with calling me "papi" and it's like...I didn't say you could call me that white baby.)
if I had even slightly less self control I would reblog the "tumblr is a nightmare for people with ocd" post 500 times a day but I think we all know this already. hoooooooooooooooooly shit
A goyish friend of mine (who is not bigoted, just ignorant and watches too many youtube videos) was asking me about if the Rothschilds had anything to do with the founding of the State of Israel, but he had no idea who Theodore Hertzl was.
I then spent the next hour explaining to him why when you hear people go on about the Rothschilds it's a nazi dogwhistle and you should not take anything they have to say seriously.
before we start posting that july is gay wrath month let’s consider that july is disability pride month first and foremost. the “be gay do crimes” memes can wait
before this post breaches containment and people start going “why not both hehehe” i want you to seriously consider the very long history of disabled people’s existence being pushed aside and/or seen as secondary. i promise you it’s not going to hurt to hold onto the memes and give disabled people space for visibility and celebration.
i say this as a disabled trans person whose trans identity is made front-and-center to the (mainly cis) people who know i’m trans but my identity as a disabled person is brushed off by the very same people.
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