I was gunna put this in the tags but it’s a lot. When i first started going through the process of getting a diagnosis, i was labelled with ODD. I immediately took issue with this, it seemed like an unfair diagnosis based entirely on the session the psychiatrist had with my parents (which mostly consisted of “my child is being really difficult on purpose”), and Hoo Boy when i tell you ODD immediately strips you of your ability to call out anyone on anything, that would be an understatement. I couldn’t even disagree or bring up my concerns about the validity of MY OWN DIAGNOSIS without it being labelled as oppositional defiance. Whenever i displayed any negative emotion the “treatments” did so much more harm than good. When you label someone as ‘defiant’ (ugh), when that word is put on their medical record, that person is never allowed to complain about anything again. Knowing that POC are disproportionately affected with this diagnosis makes me feel sick, i can only imagine what’s being swept under the rug as someone just being “defiant to authority”, not even just in the medical field but as justification for police brutality and mass incarceration. When i say medical racism kills people, this is what i mean.
genuinely get so sad when I hear stories from Butch women about how poorly they get treated. I can’t fathom not taking care of a butch. I can’t fathom not helping them when they’re sick, when they’re on their periods, when they’re emotional or feel down. I love butches, I wanna baby a butch so bad. BABY YOUR LOCAL BUTCH NOW.
Some of us butches aren’t women!!! Let’s remember that butches who don’t pass as women are treated poorly not only in public spaces but in their own sapphic/queer spaces too. Butches with facial hair. Butches with too deep a voice. Butches who have lots of hair. Butches on testosterone. Butches who are disabled. Butches who aren’t “girls pop mascs”. Butches who are “too” masculine.
the idea that there is one group of people that you will only ever find sanctity in and every other group of people on the planet is just waiting to betray your trust is just. Fucking!! Sad!!! It leads to so so so much self isolation because the myth of The Only People You can Trust as a TGirl Are Other TGirls gets perpetuated so often by women who have been hurt and see it as an innate truth rather than the product of circumstance
hi its been like a month since this post and i've been meaning to talk about this for a bit, not because its like, anything that needs to be said but definitely something i gotta get off my chest because it's been eating at me for a bit.
some of you are fucking mean. and not like, in a "i disagree with you so you're morally bad" way, i just mean like. straight up schoolyard bully type stuff when that's completely and utterly uncalled for as an adult. and that really fucking sucks. I'm completely guilty of it too, in the past and in the present, and it's something I'm trying to work on and be better about.
but a month ago I made a post expressing my sadness that the group that i'm a part of, one that deserves love and joy and respect and companionship, is pushed to a point where they see only each other as safe. where they have been constantly beaten down to the point where they are convinced that everyone that isn't like them is out to get them. and that made me really sad, and it still does. some of my best friends in the world are people unlike me that still view me as someone worthy of love and respect and compassion and all the wonderful things friends are for.
i made that post and people added some wonderful advice on how they escaped that type of fear, one that isn't unfounded but ultimately one that you will benefit from leaving behind, and i wanted to share that around so that the people who were going through that and didn't want to have that mindset anymore had some direction. i know trans women are lonely, i am a trans woman. i used to be sad and lonely and isolated. i am not now, and i wanted to help other transgender women find their way to what i have because i feel like I'm very lucky and i want them to experience that joy too. i want my sisters to thrive and im glad a lot of the response to that post was people who wanted to seek out a better life for themselves. i wish i had some of the advice that the wonderful additions to the post gave when i was a younger, less experienced tgirl. it was never about saying that trans women are in the wrong for being fearful about their safety, it was never about telling them they just needed to "reach across the aisle" or some shit. it was sadness at a fucking tragic occurrence in a community I'm a part of and advice on how to get out there and make yourself feel better if you were looking for it.
i made that post venting, because this is ultimately just my blog i dump thoughts on to more than anything, and i don't have a PR team or something. I'm a transgender woman with two roommates who barely scrapes by on her own art. i'm not rich, i don't have like, a cabal of people who go over all my posts and help me individually select each word. I'm a woman with a lot of eyes on me and i try to not let that get to me. but a lot of people really went for the throat and assumed a lot of things about me and what i said even though i clarified dozens of times.
people called me a pickme and said horrible, terrible things about me to their friends and to my face. people assumed i wasn't a trans woman because of what i said. i had popular transgender bloggers directly message me in an attempt to dissuade me from an "antifeminist" rabbit hole. i got told that i was uneducated even though i have taken college courses and worked jobs and read several books of theory on the subject. i got told to kill myself a couple times. i had someone write something horrible about my trans man friend sexually assaulting me (which infuriated me on multiple levels, since my friend is a fucking sweetheart and one of the people who's supported me in my transition the most.) i had people harassing friends and mutuals of mine into unfollowing me because i was social poison for that week.
and, like, what the fuck?
I'm not ever going to say that I didn't word things poorly or explain myself badly or blow up at some folks for what i did. I'm always going to fuck up eventually, and for that I'm sorry. but i'm also one person and people on this site constantly post about how you should treat transgender women better and how they're subjected to endless scrutiny that other groups don't have to, and that you should offer them grace. and i was not offered grace by a lot of the people who reblog those kinds of posts. i'm not saying i was never wrong, but i don't think im wrong in saying I did not fucking deserve all that.
this happens to me way too often. i say something that maybe did not have the most thought put into it but was coming from a place of compassion, and it gets twisted into the most vile, evil version of what i could have possibly said. this happens nearly every month at this rate. and people label me as this horrible shit because they believe that i'm some unquestionably evil piece of shit that's going to ruin everything.
what i am is annoying. i am annoying to a lot of people because of a multitude of reasons, but i'm gonna put my foot down and say that i'm really not anything more than that. i can say some annoying, uninformed shit, but i try to do my best and i want good things for everyone, including the people who sling shit at me because i dont think anyone deserves to live in misery, and my ultimate goal is to leave the world a better place in at least some small way. and it's gonna lead to me annoying some people, and thats fine.
i acknowledge that i can be brash and idiotic and rude, but i never ever want to ruin anyone's life and i think people just need to learn to block me and know that expressing a deep hatred towards a transgender woman you've never even talked to who is just trying to post her thoughts and make life a little easier for people is fucking weird, and you would do better to just be annoyed by me and leave me alone rather than telling me to kill myself, or spread rumors about me, or try to get me deplatformed, especially when my career is literally centered around having an audience for my work. i am self employed; if i get chased out of the public eye, that is my entire income.
I don't really have a point to this. i think i just needed to admit publicly that it fucking hurt to hear some of the things people had to say. im fine with disagreements towards what i say, and i like learning even when im wrong so i can be better, but the amount of vitriol and hate directed towards me was wrong and as a tgirl i fucking deserve better than that.
this happens to me way too often. i say something that maybe did not have the most thought put into it but was coming from a place of compassion, and it gets twisted into the most vile, evil version of what i could have possibly said. this happens nearly every month at this rate. and people label me as this horrible shit because they believe that i'm some unquestionably evil piece of shit that's going to ruin everything.
goddddddd I feel this in my BONES as somebody who was trans twitter's Main Character/Lolcow To Hate On Of The Day for about a year
like... when I was being harassed on the daily by talia bhatt & benjanun & faerynn & all of their followers for various posts i had made with good intentions and compassionate intentions, only to be told that I was "an aspiring mass shooter who wanted to shoot up trans women" (among other utterly bizarre claims levied against me)...
I was in a very dark place, especially since I was being actively abused IRL by my partner at the time in a relationship that was both physically and psychologically abusive. I still, to this day, have relationships that were destroyed by these people's lies that I know will never have any hope of repair bc people believed them. there was zero consideration for what I was going through or seemingly treating me like a human being at all.
I’ve also experienced trans misogyny from transfem butches ! downgrading and demeaning what I say bc I am a trans masculine butch ! I agree with this post ! Misogyny is still well and alive in some people that were born with male privilege and still experience it ! Transmisogyny is still a thing and needs to be recognized !
It was a Tuesday in 1981 when the San Francisco police kicked in the door.
Inside the small apartment, they expected to find a hardened criminal. They expected a drug kingpin. They expected resistance.
Instead, they found a 57-year-old waitress in an apron.
The air in the apartment smelled sweet, thick with chocolate and something earthier. On the kitchen counter, cooling on wire racks, were 54 dozen brownies.
The police officers began bagging the evidence. They confiscated nearly 18 pounds of marijuana. They handcuffed the woman, whose name was Mary Jane Rathbun.
She didn't look scared. She didn't look guilty.
She looked at the officers, smoothed her apron, and reportedly said, "I thought you guys were coming."
She was booked into the county jail. The headlines wrote themselves. A grandmother running a pot bakery. It seemed like a joke to the legal system, a quirky local news story about an older woman behaving badly.
But Mary wasn't baking for fun. And she certainly wasn't baking for profit.
To understand why Mary risked her freedom, you have to understand the silence of the early 1980s.
San Francisco was gripping the edge of a cliff. A mysterious illness was sweeping through the city, specifically targeting young men. Later, the world would know it as AIDS. But in those early days, it was just a death sentence that no one wanted to talk about.
Families were disowning their sons. Landlords were evicting tenants. Even doctors and nurses, paralyzed by the fear of the unknown, would sometimes leave food trays outside hospital doors, afraid to breathe the same air as their patients.
Men in their twenties were wasting away in sterile rooms, dying alone.
Mary knew what it felt like to lose a child.
Years earlier, in 1974, her daughter Peggy had been killed in a car accident. Peggy was only 22. The loss had hollowed Mary out, leaving a space in her heart that nothing seemed to fill.
When the judge sentenced Mary for that first arrest, he ordered her to perform 500 hours of community service. He likely thought the manual labor would teach her a lesson.
He sent her to the Shanti Project and San Francisco General Hospital.
It was a mistake that would change American history.
Mary walked into the AIDS wards when others were walking out. She didn't wear a hazmat suit. She didn't hold her breath. She saw rows of young men who looked like ghosts—skeletal, in pain, and terrified.
She saw "her kids."
She began mopping floors and changing sheets. But soon, she noticed something the doctors were missing. The harsh medications the men were taking caused violent nausea. They couldn't eat. They were starving to death as much as they were dying of the virus.
Mary knew a secret about the brownies she had been arrested for.
She knew they settled the stomach. She knew they brought back the appetite. She knew they could help a dying man sleep for a few hours without pain.
So, she made a choice.
She went back to her kitchen. She fired up the oven. She started mixing batter, not to sell, but to save.
Every morning, Mary would bake. She lived on a fixed income, surviving on Social Security checks that barely covered her rent. Yet, she spent nearly every dime on flour, sugar, and butter.
The most expensive ingredient—the cannabis—was donated. Local growers heard what she was doing. They began dropping off pounds of product at her door, free of charge.
She packed the brownies into a basket and took the bus to the hospital.
She walked room to room. She sat by the bedsides of men who hadn't seen their own mothers in years. She held their hands. She told them jokes. And she gave them brownies.
"Here, baby," she would say. "Eat this. It'll help."
And it did.
Nurses watched in amazement as patients who hadn't eaten in days began to ask for food. The constant retching stopped. The mood on the ward shifted from despair to a quiet sort of comfort.
Mary Jane Rathbun became "Brownie Mary."
For over a decade, this was her life. She baked roughly 600 brownies a day. She went through 50 pounds of flour a week. She became the mother to a generation of lost boys.
She washed their pajamas. She attended their funerals. She held them while they took their last breaths.
She did this while the government declared a "War on Drugs."
By the early 1990s, the political climate was hostile. Politicians were competing to see who could be "tougher" on crime. Mandatory minimum sentences were locking people away for decades.
In 1992, at the age of 70, Mary was arrested again.
This time, the stakes were lethal. She was charged with felonies. The district attorney looked at her rap sheet and saw a repeat offender. He threatened to send her to prison.
One prosecutor famously whispered to a colleague that he was going to "kick this old lady's ass."
They underestimated who they were dealing with.
They thought they were prosecuting a drug dealer. In reality, they were attacking the most beloved woman in San Francisco.
When the news broke that Brownie Mary was facing prison, the city erupted.
It wasn't just the activists who were angry. It was the doctors. It was the nurses. It was the parents who had watched Mary care for their dying sons when the government did nothing.
Mary turned her trial into a pulpit.
She arrived at court not as a defendant, but as a grandmother standing her ground. The media swarmed her. Reporters asked if she was afraid of prison. They asked if she would stop baking if they let her go.
Mary looked into the cameras, her voice gravelly and firm.
"If the narcs think I'm gonna stop baking brownies for my kids with AIDS," she said, "they can go fuck themselves in Macy's window."
The quote ran in newspapers across the country.
The court didn't stand a chance.
Testimony poured in. Doctors from San Francisco General Hospital wrote letters explaining that Mary’s brownies were medically necessary. Patients testified that she was an angel of mercy.
The charges were dropped.
Mary walked out of the courthouse a free woman. But she didn't go home to rest. She realized that her personal victory wasn't enough. As long as the law was broken, her "kids" were still in danger.
She needed to change the law.
August 25 was declared "Brownie Mary Day" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It was a nice gesture, but Mary wanted policy, not plaques.
She teamed up with fellow activist Dennis Peron. Together, they opened the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club—the first public dispensary in the United States. It was a safe haven where patients could get their medicine without fear of arrest.
But Mary wanted more. She wanted the state of California to acknowledge the truth.
She campaigned for Proposition 215. She traveled the state, despite her failing health. She spoke in her simple, direct way. She didn't talk about liberties or economics. She talked about compassion. She talked about pain.
She forced voters to look at the issue through the eyes of a grandmother.
In 1996, Proposition 215 passed. California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana.
It was a domino effect. Because one woman refused to let her "kids" suffer, the public perception of cannabis shifted. The Economist later noted that Mary was single-handedly responsible for changing the national conversation.
She never got rich.
She had always joked that if legalization ever happened, she would sell her recipe to Betty Crocker and buy a Victorian house for her patients to live in.
She never sold the recipe. She never bought the house.
Mary Jane Rathbun died in 1999, at the age of 77. She passed away in a nursing home, poor in money but rich in legacy.
Today, over 30 states have legalized medical marijuana. Millions of people use it to manage pain, seizures, and nausea.
Most of them have never heard of Mary.
They don't know that their legal prescription exists because a waitress in San Francisco decided that the law was wrong and her heart was right.
They don't know about the 600 brownies a day.
They don't know about the thousands of hospital visits.
Mary didn't set out to be a hero. She told the Chicago Tribune years before she died, "I didn't go into this thinking I would be a hero."
She was just a mother who had lost her daughter, trying to help boys who had lost their way.
She proved that authority doesn't always equal morality.
She proved that sometimes, the most patriotic thing a citizen can do is break a bad law.
Every August, a few people in San Francisco still celebrate Brownie Mary Day. But her true memorial isn't a date on a calendar.
It is found in every oncology ward where a patient finds relief. It is found in every dispensary door that opens without fear.
It is found in the simple, quiet courage of anyone who sees suffering and refuses to look away.
Mary taught us that you don't need a law degree to change the world. You don't need millions of dollars. You don't need political office.
Sometimes, all you need is a mixing bowl, an oven, and enough love to tell the world to get out of your way.
Sources: New York Times Obituary (1999), "Brownie Mary" Rathbun. San Francisco Chronicle Archives (1992, 1996). History.com, "The History of Medical Marijuana." Weird Everything, FB december 12, 2025
I'd be only too happy to do that. I was suspicious to start, too. It seemed a bit on the nose to have the weed brownie grandma named "Mary Jane," but also, that's a very common combination in a certain place and time, so I thought it was worth the extra effort.
What I did was find sources that made the claim (in this case, that a woman named Mary Jane was a medicinal marijuana activist in California, USA in the 1980s and 90s.) I checked the dates to get some certainty those sources aren't AI slop, then checked that the sources are generally reliable.
Then I followed useful details about the place and time, and other people involved, to explore it more fully.
The first thing I did was search for "Brownie Mary" and see if that turned anything up at all. It turned up a LOT of results. Predictably, some of them were recipes, but not all of them.
Next up, I checked sources and dates. Wikipedia can be dodgy for academic use, but their policy on LLM-generated input is very clear: they don't want slop. I started by reading that page and then went on to read others.
The Atlas Obscura article is from 2018. I found another one from SFWeekly from 2017.
Both of those are decent sources - Atlas Obscura gets a High factual reporting rate from MediaBiasFactCheck, and while MBFC doesn't have a rating for SFWeekly, the verbiage in that article is very close to what GastroObscura has. (Also to what the post itself has, right down to the choice of pull quote.)
Now, we can stop there and feel pretty confident that articles published before the wide availability of LLMs are not, in fact, LLM generated.
...or we can go deeper, and run this all the way back to source.
I spotted references to a Chicago Tribune imterview of Mary Jane Rathbun, published in 1993.
My search string of "Chicago Tribune 1993 Mary Jane Rathbun" hit it in the top 3 results. That article includes some fun new details: she wore a cannabis leaf shaped pendant to her trial!
She also objected to being portrayed as a cuddly grandma up against The Man, so I must retract my flippant tags, above.
The evidence now strongly points to Brownie Mary being a real woman who really went to court for giving AIDS patients weed brownies. But can we get closer? I've now seen several mentions of a 1980 attempt at convicting her too.
The articles have mentioned Sonoma County and a nonprofit called the Shanti Project, so let's hook onto that and see what we get.
Searching for "Mary Jane Rathbun Sonoma County 1980" gets me an article from a law firm; that mentions the prosecuting attorney by name, and points to a book: Lust for Justice: The Radical Life & Law of J. Tony Serra, by Paulette Frankl. It even has an excerpt!
We can run the book down too, just for fun (now we have a primary source.) My favorite used book site has a copy for $1. Amazon gives a view of the back cover, too:
...wow. I should see if my library has that!
The excerpt on the site has a mention of a candelight vigil held for her death in 1999. It took some hunting past things I'd already read and a bunch of shops giving written tributes, but I found a news report about that, too.
There's a lot of information out there, and it's worth digging into. Otherwise it's altogether too easy to think something real and worth knowing is just another bit of slop.
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