Got reminded again of my old coworker who was a massive misogynist but also trans inclusive. Told me he believed trans women are indeed women because "only women would be stupid enough to want to be women"
He also aggressively corrected himself whenever he accidentally misgendered a trans guy we knew because "there's already more women than men in the world, the more numbers we steal from them, the better." Did that even when the trans guy wasn't around.
I need to point out that he was completely serious btw. This man had no sense of humor if he tried.
He was a cook at the restaurant/bar I was a bartender at, and almost punched a costumer once because he overheard him talking about how women belong in the kitchen. Told me he thought women should stay out of kitchens, that cooking is a man's job and when I asked him what he thinks women should be doing, he went quiet for a moment, then proceeded to explain to me the following
"I trust a bitch to run a kitchen as much as she can run a country, they should do shit like plumbing. Or electricity. Something you can just learn to do and don't need to lead, you know?"
Apparently women are good at "fixing shit". He claimed that he doesn't trust male plumbers or electricians except if they're gay because "something most be wrong with you if you want to go fix other people's houses, that's that maternal instinct"
Love that you guys seem to like the stories about my Guy, here's another. (also for context i need to say that english is not the language he spoke, and when i say 'fag', i'm using it for our version of the slur. Our Guy insisted that that's just how you call gay people in our language (it isn't))
We had an openly gay coworker who looked like it (crop tops, dyed hair, make-up) and he was often harassed by the waiters from the football bar next door. The gay dude had the same name as the Guy, who insisted that we would specify the he isn't gay, so they just became "Name" and "Not Gay Name". He was fine with that.
Oh he also once went on a rant about how he respects our gay coworker more than "those other fags" because "at least he has the balls to look like a fag, yknow? None of that sneaky shit where you can't tell if they're trying to fuck you or your girlfriend." When I then told him I was bi, he looked me over and called me some slurs before telling me that I don't need to rub it in that I can get both. Then he asked me if I think he's hot and when I told him no, he informed me I should stick with women because I clearly have shit taste.
He once accidentally bullied one of our younger waitresses out of an early eating disorder she was developing before working there (she told me about it after)
Boss gave us one meal from the menu a day as a job bonus, and we had this very shy seventeen year old working with us who was already nervous around men, but Our Guy was a 6'3 dude who only stopped yelling and cursing when he was not speaking at all. If he was the one cooking that day, he'd peek out of the kitchen an hour before he'd start closing it up, and would shout at you if you haven't ordered your meal yet because he hated cooking once he already cleaned. The waitress was scared shitless of him, and so whenever he would yell at her to "fucking order already", she'd panic and just pick something.
She didn't eat much but the first time she tried to throw out almost the whole plate, he got so personally insulted that he berated her for not picking something she'd like, and demanded to know what he did wrong. He got really upset about apparently not being able to cook something that this kid would like and I'm pretty sure he started putting in extra effort to make sure she would eat it this time? It lead to him quite literally standing over her like a hawk when she ate to "see her reaction" and demand an immediate review to see what he can improve.
She later told me that it she was so scared and awkward around him back then that it kind of overrode her fear of food, and that she still sometimes pretends she's back there, when she feels a bad episode coming on, so. He did do something good for the world i guess
Our Guy met a nonbinary person once when my friend came to visit me at work. He was just on a smoke break so I had to introduce them and when I said "They're visiting" he got confused and asked us how many people are there (and then threatened murder if they dare order something while he's on a break). I had to explain this man what a nonbinary person is, he thought about it for a second, called the whole thing "fucking stupid, there ain't that shit in nature" and then proceeded to very mockingly refer to them as (our language equivalent of) "your majesty" and use the pronouns you use for people you're supposed to respect (which is genderless and very formal)
My friend thought he was really funny before I explained to them that I'm pretty sure he thought he was being mean (but hey he it wasn't misgendering so yay)
Then (after his break) they ordered a vegan sandwich and we heard him cussing them out about how "they should pick a fucking struggle". Later I asked him about it and got told that "how much shit can you deny yourself? Cheese, gender, the fuck's next?"
I like how his issue isn't with the "that shit ain't in nature" thing he mentioned, but the idea that being nonbinary is some form of self-deprivation and that they deserve a gender like everyone else.
No babe it’s so cool and hot that you always insist that fantasy books written to meet a 4th graders’ comprehension skills have more complex themes and a greater sense of praxis than anything written for adults
Look. I love the Lion King. I think it's one of the best movies ever made. And I love reading fanfic. But I’m a grown adult and that can't be all there is. It’s concerning to me that adults don't even lie anymore about their favorite book because they don't, at minimum, feel shame for either connecting with something for 10 year olds more than something written for and about adults or just not reading anything written for and about adults. It’s concerning to me how many people cling to the literary equivalent of chicken nuggets when there's a whole world out there to explore. It’s concerning to me that people think the extent of adult literature is what is currently being pushed by booktok and the NYT bestseller list. It’s concerning to me that people who can legally rent a car are still pissed that they had to read and discuss The Scarlet Letter in the 10th grade.
You read full texts in school, not just because they're culturally significant books that have shaped how we tell stories but, because reading an analyzing text teaches you how to analyze in your every day life, to look at the world in shades of grey instead of just black and white, and everything that falls under that umbrella. No wonder people are addicted to cinemasins and tv tropes and 'finding' plot holes. If you can't fully analyze a text then of course you're going to look for the simplest bite-sized dismissals so you can move on to the next nothingburger you’re consuming. And it also does a disservice to children’s stories to act like they set out to achieve the same goals as works for adults. Much of children’s media is about Morals and Lessons because kids are learning how the world works and how they need to act to be kind humans. But if you’re grown and you still need your books and movies to look you in the eye and tell you that sharing is caring and if it doesn’t you assume that it must be endorsing thievery and hoarding then you need to grow up. And it’s not my fault that you refuse to.
tiktok is such an awful app, it's almost designed to feed you misinformation and expose you to insane discourse. unlike beloved tumblr, the app that feeds me misinformation and exposes me to insane discourse
No, no, no, you see on tiktok an algorithm feeds you misinformation. On Tumblr I feed myself misinformation from my charcuterie board of hand-selected unhinged mutuals.
Now, children will be seen not just by experts in gender dysphoria, but also “experts in pediatric medicine, autism, neurodisability and mental health” because “there is a higher prevalence of other complex presentations in children and young people who have gender dysphoria.”
By: Lisa Selin Davis
Published: Oct 31, 2022
Last week, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) delivered long-awaited suggestions for the kind of treatment children with gender dysphoria should receive. They’ve moved from a model in which children’s transgender identities are automatically affirmed to a cautious, multidisciplinary, evaluation-heavy approach to assisting kids navigating gender issues—a model similar to those of countries like Sweden and Finland.
The shift comes after pediatrician Hilary Cass released an Interim Report earlier this year on the UK’s only state-funded pediatric gender clinic, the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) for children and adolescents at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London. It had a waitlist 5,000 kids deep and a pile of whistleblowing complaints against it. The report noted multiple problems, from children’s complicated mental health issues being overlooked in the wake of gender issues—known as diagnostic overshadowing—to clinicians feeling pressured to affirm and send the child down a medical path, rather than investigate the source of gender dysphoria. The report specifically called out the “affirmative model” of gender healthcare “that originated in the USA.”
Like several other countries, including the U.S. and Canada, the U.K. has seen a sharp spike in teen girls with no history of gender issues suddenly seeking medical interventions—a cohort never studied, to whom past research doesn’t apply. They’ve also seen the emergence of detransitioners—individuals who went through medical gender transitions but now regret doing so, and returned to living as their natal sex. Meanwhile, Cass chaired a group that commissioned systematic evidence reviews of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, which found the evidence of their safety and efficacy to be of very low quality.
After the Cass report, the National Health Service announced that GIDS would be shut down and replaced with a new model of care: regional centers “with strong links to mental health services.” Proponents of the gender-affirming model in America insisted this was not a condemnation of their approach but an expansion of it, to address the long waitlist, but this week’s revelation put that false assertion to rest.
Now, children will be seen not just by experts in gender dysphoria, but also “experts in pediatric medicine, autism, neurodisability and mental health” because “there is a higher prevalence of other complex presentations in children and young people who have gender dysphoria.” That is, the NHS will be directly addressing the diagnostic overshadowing issue. There will be “a more structured approach for collaboration with local services”—meaning, kids will be properly evaluated before being referred to this new service, which should reduce the waitlist.
Instead of referrals made by schools, colleges, and “voluntary organizations,” the new service “proposes that referrals may be made by GPs and NHS professionals.” In other words, schools, as well as nonprofits like Mermaids, a charity that supports trans kids and has garnered outsized political and educational influence—and is now under investigation for supplying breast binders to girls—can no longer be so directly involved.
Many such schools and nonprofits support social transition, in which a child is facilitated to identify as the opposite sex (or nonbinary) and assume the stereotypes associated with that sex, in names, haircuts, or clothing. But the NHS now acknowledges that “social transition in prepubertal children is a controversial issue, that divergent views are held by health professionals, and that the current evidence base is insufficient to predict the long term outcomes of complete gender-role transition during early childhood.” Rather than being an anodyne or psychologically necessary intervention, as it’s often thought of here in the States, social transition “should not be viewed as a neutral act” but rather “an active intervention,” NHS notes. Recent research shows social transition seems to increase the likelihood of medicalization later, but, as the NHS now asserts, “in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence.” Thus, “social transition should only be considered where the approach is necessary for the alleviation of, or prevention of, clinically significant distress or significant impairment in social functioning and the young person is able to fully comprehend the implications of affirming a social transition.”
As for medical interventions, puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will only be administered “in the context of a formal research protocol,” and families are discouraged from seeking these drugs “from unregulated sources or from on-line providers that are not regulated by UK regulatory bodies.”
These changes are quite different from the blunt force instrument of bans, or defunding the entire medical practice, as red states have aimed for in the United States. Nor are they as radical as the gender medicine sanctuary state laws of New York and California, which remove roadblocks to medical transition. Both methods of addressing this ballooning population are extreme and punitive, even if employing opposite tacks.
The NHS suggestions, on the other hand, note that clinical leads will be doctors, overseeing “a broader range of medical conditions in addition to gender dysphoria” because “the service may provide medical interventions to some children and young people.” Instead of legislatures imposing their will onto doctors and patients, in the UK, both psychological and medical treatment is carefully controlled by the medical and mental health establishments, with multi-tiered treatment options and multidisciplinary teams to evaluate children, and medical interventions only in the context of studies, which will lead to long-term follow up.
What will it take for the U.S. to follow the U.K.’s lead? Our healthcare system is so different that it’s a difficult question to answer. Countries with socialized medicine have no financial incentive to continue this kind of care, while in the U.S., the gender surgery market is “expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.23% from 2022 to 2030,” per one market research company. More than twenty-five American medical associations (which are not nonpartisan) have endorsed the affirmative approach the U.K. has now rejected. Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which creates standards of care for “gender diverse” people, have refused to do the kinds of systematic evidence reviews that the U.K., Sweden, Finland and the state of Florida have all done, which led to policy changes. Each came to the same conclusion: the quality of evidence was so low that these medical interventions couldn’t be deemed medically necessary. Here, we tout the same evidence as showing life-saving benefits, not uncertainty.
The U.K.’s new guidelines aren’t set in stone. They’re open to public comment until December 4th. But it’s clear that they’ve weighed the evidence and listened to the whistleblowers. In America, we’re still waiting for that to happen.
==
The whistleblowers have come forward, but been ignored, or worse, vilified.
In the US, nothing less than punitive lawsuits will make a dent in the alliance between postmodern revolutionaries and the medical industry. Appealing to conscience won’t work when the former self-declares itself to be “on the right side of history,” and the latter doesn’t have the financial incentive to discourage lifelong, dependent paying customers.
As someone who took etiquette lessons, politeness is an incredibly effective tool for disarming bigots. You can either force them to reconsider their words/actions by directly and calmly confronting their behavior (by using the rules of society in your favor), or you can dip entirely while they appear to be in the wrong.
Both options are great.
Because the thing is, when bigots pick fights, they are 100% counting on you to get louder than them. Or meaner. They want you to react emotionally and provide fodder for their 'You're Too Emotionally Immature To Understand' cannon.
What they aren't expecting you to do is say one of the following phrases in a polite, concerned tone:
Are you okay?
That's not the kind of language I was raised to use with others.
Do you need a moment to think on why that wasn't acceptable?
This is no way to engage in intelligent conversation. Please try that again in a kinder tone if you'd like this to continue. (I really like this one because it lets you turn their public-shame rhetoric around)
For those of you who'd are spiteful and/or dealing with Fundamentalists/Evangelicals/generally shitty Christians:
What's happening in your life to cause you this much anger? I can't imagine hurting so badly that I need to hurt other people.
Who taught you it was acceptable to treat other people this way? Certainly not the Jesus I remember.
Whatever happened to 'judge not lest ye be judged'?
If I talked like that in front of my parents or grandparents I would be ashamed.
I think there's something you need to pray on before we try and have this conversation.
And my all time favorite:
"It sounds to me like there are some seriously dark and angry forces at work in your heart."
(Nothing stops a Christian bigot in their tracks faster than implying the Devil is causing their bigotry. But you MUST be calm, polite, and gentle with your tone and wording. It is absolutely fair to twist the rules and play them at their own game, but you gotta play hard.)
TLDR: It's much faster to use etiquette, politeness, and rhetoric reversal when eviscerating idiots online and in person, because they aren't expecting you to weaponize their behaviors back in their direction. Don't get angry, get spitefully polite! :)
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