will you fight? or will you perish like a dog?

side blog of fetus-cakes for all the nasty politics and discourse

[victusinveritas]

There's worse to come, folks. Strap in and stay strapped.

[else-creates]

They want to send a message...

The message I'm hearing is "May as well commit actual terrorism against the government"

Seriously if protesting gets me 50-70 years, why not go and put a new sunroof on a politician's skull?

[rikmach]

See, this is what fascists and authoritarians never understand. Stopping protests doesn’t change peoples minds, it just makes them consider alternatives.

[fuckthisshit-ugh]

please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

reblog. share. don't scroll past.

[milf-king]

Just a reminder that Saudi Arabia is responsible for one of the world's largest and most severe man made humanitarian emergencies. Their blockade of Yemen, which prevents food, water, medicine, and fuel from entering the country has caused a significant death toll. Emphasis here on man made as these were preventable.

Yemen relies on most of its food and medicine via imports and this blockade (land, sea, and air) has created an environment where 80% of Yemen relies on aid for survival. It's lead to so many people, mostly children, dying of starvation.

The rate of child malnutrition in Yemen is among the highest in the world with 2.3 million children under 5 requiring treatment for acute malnutrition. At one point a child died of starvation every 75 seconds.

This blockade is ongoing btw.

[milf-king]

Here's a pretty comprehensive source

[sheila-fernandez]

When asexual individuals engage in physiological intimacy, the motivation differs from that of allosexual (non-asexual) people.

Sensual Touch: Many asexuals enjoy non-sexual, tactile intimacy such as cuddling, holding hands, and kissing.

Responsive Desire: A physical relationship might happen because the asexual partner chooses to engage in sex to fulfill their partner’s needs, out of curiosity, or simply because they enjoy the physical pleasure of the sensations without needing a sexual target.

Masturbation: Many asexuals experience libido (a physical urge for release) and handle it as a purely biological necessity through solitary release, often disassociated from partnering.

Understanding Attraction vs. Drive

Scientific studies highlight that asexual people can physically produce all the typical bodily markers of sexual arousal—such as vaginal pulse amplitude or erections—when shown erotic materials, even though their subjective reports of feeling attracted to the stimuli are significantly lower. This demonstrates that the body's mechanical response can occur independently of sexual attraction.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Most studies on aces are sex-focused, because the majority of the studies are done by Anthony Bogaert or Lori Brotto, both of whom are not ace. And they cannot imagine that anyone would not have primary or secondary sexual attraction, so both of them have issues with focusing on sex too much, the lack of sex, or mixing up terms like sexual attraction with libido, which we know as aces are not the same thing.

I spent a semester reading all of their papers for an asexuality paper I was doing for an Anthropology class (since I am ace spec and queer)... and I've done other uni papers about queerness as well. (A queer marathon, for example).

The conflation with touch stance, sex stance and sexual attraction is problematic with both of these academics.

But my major beef with both of them is saying there has to be biological determinism in order for someone to be ace, which categorically has shown not to be true, even with being lesbian or gay.

Biological determinism is the idea that there is a certain gene or set of genes that makes one queer. This is not the same as saying, "You were socialized to be _fill in sexuality_" to be against the idea. It's more like saying ones sexuality CANNOT EVER CHANGE OVER A LIFETIME. And we all know that's not true. There are aces that genuinely discover later in life that they are ace, even though they felt sexual attraction before. (And no conversion therapy doesn't work).

This can be due to trauma, or it just genuinely happens that their sexual attraction becomes less.

After my paper, I did address this problem to Brotto, and Brotto pushed back and said there HAD TO BE A REASON that the whole ace spectrum was ace and it could not change over a lifetime. But I literally have met aces that genuinely did not have trauma and it did change for them over a lifetime. I should emphasize, disbelieving someone's sexual orientation makes you a shitty person.

In addition, Bogaert hated on trans people openly in several of his papers, and dismissed outright that trans people's sexualities (sexual orientations including asexuality) could change, despite several trans orgs with plenty of data to show this is true.

Bogaert spent an entire chapter, because he could not imagine total lack of sexual attraction, on aces who masturbate. In fact his favorite line to requote and insist that people quote from him is, "Clean the pipes" which really disturbs me that he had to overly focus on sexual activity of aces in all of his studies. This would be like studying gay people and being overly focused on anal sex as a straight person. Exactly WHY do you need to do this?

And then he insisted that people quote him and went on a tirade against Julie Decker, actual ace, for not quoting him.

He also was as bold to say that he, not an ace, invented the term asexuality, when the term existed before he was alive to refer to our sexuality. And unless he has a time machine I don't think so. (KICK HIM OUT)

The other big claim that Bogaert likes to make is that ALL aces (who he claims ALL agree with him. I don't so that's a logical fallacy. To which he can shut the fuck up about me not being really ace because that's what he does to people who claim they are ace and disagrees with him ==;;.) have paraphilias, (i.e. sexual attachment to objects) and that's why they are ace. Or sexual attachment to themselves, if he can't argue that. !@#$ Him. Kick him out. Kick. him. out. I hate his guts so much. Aces should lock him out of researching us.

He focuses, on, for example, how aces don't really get prejudice. And churches don't hate us. (for a mindnumbing long paragraph that could be boiled down into one sentence). But this contradicts what aces report from Julie Decker's book and from me being an ace as well and talking to other aces.

Look, I'm not against allosexual people doing studies on us, but being this hell bent and focused on not the identity but sex is odd to me.

That said, the op knowledge, is kinda true and kinda not true. As Julie Decker argues: It's better to ask the ace in front of you how they feel on sex stance, touch stance, and how their asexuality reacts to primary and secondary sexual attraction than to assume or look at statistics.

I try my best to honor the range of asexuality out there. I love my black stripe aces, the ace fluxes, the gray aces (Both the ones with and without primary sexual attraction and both those with and without secondary sexual attraction).

But Brotto and Bogaert both have this itch to boil us down to one person and one type and then plant a discovery flag on us when we were the ones that defined it for them.

Thus after reading ALL of the papers on asexuality at a high university level and doing actual field research, I can categorically say that Brotto and Bogaert are both off their rockers. We are awesome in our diversity.

I've met black stripe aces that did not want to be touched at all with romantic attraction. I've met gray aces with high libidos. I know aces who are in poly relationships. I know aces who are panSEXUAL (yes, sexual, as in they are 100% sure of their secondary sexual orientation once they get past the no primary sexual attraction.)

And it is breathtakingly awesome out there. Something that statistics and biological determinism can't capture is that.

Still, the best study on aceness out there is Julie Decker, who closed her book saying she thought she had not captured all of aceness, but just because it wasn't in her book, to not discount it.

And that's what aces can bring to academia about us: to look at the range of the identity itself.

YES. Some people have a high touch stance and are ace. But some also are less accepting and that's OK.

YES. Some people HAVE NO sexual attraction, but also are higher on sex stance. That's also OK.

Yes. Some people have NO sexual attraction, have a low tolerance to touch and do not want to engage in sex at all. That's also OK.

Some people have low sexual attraction to celebrities. Some have high attraction to celebrities...

How is that person ace, it's best to ask. But I kinda think it's best to ask how people are allo, too, in any relationship and allos could learn from us ace specs on how to negotiate boundaries in a relationship.

It's not all one way, or majority rules in sexuality. The only defining characteristic of asexuality is no, limited or conditional sexual attraction, though finding this out through sex stance is 100% valid. (BTW, I wrote to AVEN and AVEN said this was too hard to explain and refused to change their definition away from only including Black stripe aces. But this is so bad. This would be like saying People of color only come in Black because it's hard to understand that Indigenous, Latine, and Asians exist.)

And then I'd read Brotto and Bogaert and their cohorts with some caution because it seems like they are cutting out the range of their subjects. At least Brotto will stop comparing us to amoeba as a hook after I asked her to stop.

[justalurkr]

Text of tweet under the cut because it is loooong.

But... Stochastic Parrots.

Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 for refusing to retract a research paper, and every single warning that paper made about large language models has now happened at a scale the industry spent 4 years trying to make people forget about.

Her name is Timnit Gebru.

She co-led the Ethical AI team at Google. She co-wrote a paper called "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" with Emily Bender at the University of Washington and two other researchers. The paper was 14 pages long. It was submitted to a top AI ethics conference. And it was the reason Google decided that one of the most senior Black women in AI research could no longer work there.

The story Google told publicly was that she resigned. The story she told, confirmed by 2,695 of her colleagues in an open letter, was that she was fired by email while on vacation because she refused to either retract the paper or remove her name from it.

The paper had not even been published yet.

Here is what she actually wrote, and why every prediction inside it has now come true.

The first warning was about scale itself. Bender and Gebru argued that training ever-larger models on ever-larger scrapes of the internet would produce systems that appeared fluent but had no actual understanding of language. They called these systems stochastic parrots because they would repeat patterns from training data with statistical confidence and zero comprehension. The paper predicted that this apparent intelligence would fool both users and developers into trusting outputs that were structurally incapable of being reliable.

This was 2020. GPT-3 had just come out. The paper predicted the hallucination problem before anyone had a word for it.

The second warning was about bias amplification. The paper documented in detail that internet-scale training data contains systematic overrepresentation of dominant viewpoints and underrepresentation of marginalized ones. The models would not just absorb this bias. They would amplify it, because the optimization process rewards confident outputs, and confidence in language patterns tracks frequency in the training set.

The prediction was that hiring tools built on these models would discriminate against women. That healthcare triage tools would underperform on Black patients. That loan approval systems would entrench inequality while presenting their decisions as neutral algorithmic judgment.

Every one of those things has now been documented in deployment.

Amazon's hiring algorithm penalized resumes that contained the word "women" in any context. Healthcare risk scoring algorithms used by major US hospitals were found to systematically underestimate the medical needs of Black patients. Apple Card's credit algorithm gave wives credit lines 10x lower than their husbands for the same financial profile.

The third warning was about environmental cost. The paper calculated that training a single large language model produced emissions equivalent to the lifetime output of 5 cars. The prediction was that the race to scale would create an environmental footprint that would eventually rival entire industries.

In 2024, Google's emissions were up 48% from 2019, and the company explicitly blamed AI infrastructure. Microsoft's were up 29%, same reason. Both companies have now quietly abandoned the climate commitments they were publicly celebrating the year Gebru was fired.

The fourth warning was about documentation. The paper argued that the training datasets being assembled were too large for anyone to actually audit. Nobody at Google, OpenAI, Meta, or any other lab could tell you with confidence what was in the data their models were trained on. This was not a temporary problem to be solved later. It was a permanent feature of the approach.

In 2023, researchers discovered that the LAION-5B dataset, used to train Stable Diffusion and other major image models, contained thousands of images of child sexual abuse material. The companies that had trained on the dataset had no way of knowing. The paper predicted that category of failure 3 years before it was found.

The fifth warning was the one Google cared about most.

Bender and Gebru argued that the deployment of these systems would centralize linguistic and cultural power in the hands of the small number of companies that could afford to train them. The internet would become a place where the dominant voice was a statistical average of dominant voices, presented as a neutral assistant. Languages underrepresented in the training data would degrade over time as more web content was generated by these systems and fed back into the next training run.

This is now happening in real time. A 2024 study found that 57% of new web content in English is AI-generated or AI-assisted. Researchers studying low-resource languages have documented active degradation in translation quality, because the synthetic content fed back into training is itself worse in those languages.

The paper Google fired her for predicted the model collapse problem before model collapse had a name.

The mechanism behind why this all happened is the part of her work that nobody quotes.

Gebru's argument was not that AI is dangerous in some abstract sci-fi sense. Her argument was that AI is dangerous in a very specific structural sense. The technology was being built by a small group of researchers who shared similar backgrounds, worked at similar companies, and were rewarded for shipping products faster than competitors. The incentive structure made it impossible for safety, ethics, and bias concerns to slow anything down. Anyone inside the system who raised those concerns was either ignored, sidelined, or removed.

She was making that argument from inside Google.

Then Google proved her right by removing her.

The team Google had built to make sure their AI was safe was dismantled in 90 days because they did the job they had been hired to do. Margaret Mitchell, the other co-lead of the Ethical AI team, was fired two months after Gebru for searching through her own emails for evidence of how Gebru had been treated.

Gebru did not stop. She founded DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute, in 2021. The mission is to do AI research outside the control of the companies that have a financial interest in not hearing the answers.

Every prediction in the Stochastic Parrots paper has now been validated by deployment. Hallucinations are an industry-wide problem the largest labs cannot solve. Bias amplification has been documented in hiring, healthcare, lending, and criminal justice. Environmental costs are larger than entire small countries. Training data audits remain impossible. Model collapse is an active research crisis at every major lab.

The question worth sitting with is the one almost no one in the industry will say out loud.

Every researcher with the technical credibility to call out these problems watched what happened to her in December 2020 and made a calculation about their own career. The number of people willing to speak publicly about safety and ethics issues inside the major AI labs collapsed after that firing and has not recovered.

The researcher Google fired for warning about exactly what is now happening was right.

The company that fired her is now the second-largest deployer of the technology she warned about.

And the people inside that company who agree with her are not allowed to say so.

[irispurpurea]

This is the paper. It's excellent, highly recommend reading it.

I remember reading about Gebru's firing but I had no idea this was the paper she was fired over.

[bodyclocked]

intersex people need to unironically take these words back ngl

[bodyclocked]

[Image ID, Tags reading "but why though, why do we have to use terms in a way that outs us a a group or not? and what am i supposed to say instead when i feel this captures my experience as a perisex trans person the best? dont get me wrong i am fully behind advocating for intersex rights and more conversations about intersex struggles, but this feels like bioessentialism again. Like i would'nt bat an eye at an intersex person calling "assigning themselves to any gender identity" transitioning either. End ID]

Just so, SO much to unpack in this, but I will try my best to educate for those that don't understand. "AGAB" means Assigned Gender at Birth, it is not a noun, it is a verb, used to describe the process of being assigned a gender at birth, not the fact that you have one, everyone has one, the process of having a doctor pick it for you. This term was coined by intersex people to describe our experiences of doctors picking and choosing which gender we were assigned as based on often times no evidence, sometimes a baby's genitals match up with what they were assigned as, often times they don't. "AGAB" was intended as a way to describe how intersex people were put into a binary of biological male or biological female despite that not being the case. The usage of "AGAB" by perisex transgender people changes this definition entirely, overwriting the voices of intersex people and our experiences and using our own terms in ways that make no sense given the actual original definitions. To Perisex transgender people, "AGAB" is a noun, you are an "AFAB" or an "AMAB" person, it means you were born a biological female or a biological male and implies you no longer identify with this term. I understand fully that people may feel comfortable using these terms under these definitions, but it doesn't change the fact that these are the incorrect uses of terms made by a different, smaller, community and bastardized of their original intents and meanings.

You are finding comfort in calling the skies green and the grass blue, and to intersex people who named them you look silly.

As to what you are supposed to use, the terms Müllerian and Wolffian have been coined as alternative terms to biological female and biological male, designed to be detached from gender entirely.

If you are "Fully behind advocating for intersex rights and more conversations about intersex struggles", please do not cast aside the intersex people speaking up against intersexism in favor of your own comfort in these misused terms. Being an intersex advocate, and any form of advocate in general, comes with listening to the people you are advocating for, especially when it discomforts you and calls into question your biases.

I am confused as to how this is bioessentialism, "AGAB" were coined specifically *against* bioessentialism, against the idea that intersex people, and people in general, being put into boxes at birth. It is used to describe genders being inflicted upon us without our consent, and is a term describing a harrowing experience. It is not bioessentialism to give bioessentialist tools a name. Especially when that name is used with hate. Intersex people hate "AGAB", we hate being put into boxes and being expected to conform to the idea of biological male and biological female. Calling this post bioessentialist is silly, please learn the meaning of words before you use them.

As for the thing about intersex people describing themselves as transitioning when describing their gender, this, unlike your earlier comments, is blatant intersexism rather than the covert accidental ignorance kind. Intersex trans people can use whatever terms they like to refer to their experiences thank you very much. If an intersex person describing their experience of identifying as the gender they feel comfortable with as transitioning makes you uncomfortable, you are not only intersexist but transphobic too.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt, nobody knows things before they know them, nobody has already learned the things they are actively learning. I hope you can take this post to heart, both you and other readers who were questioning my post.

Have a nice day :)

[bodyclocked]

I'm trying to be patient but the amount of perisex people on this post asking what other terms they can use and insisting AMAB/AFAB works best for them is insane.

I will say this one final time, AGAB does not mean biological sex.

Anyone asking how they can describe their experience without saying their AGAB is missing the point entirely. AFAB does not mean biological female, it does not mean müllerian, it does not mean someone who was born with a fully functioning vagina and a uterus and went through a estrogen puberty. AMAB does not mean biological male, it does not mean wolffian, it does not mean someone who was born with a fully functioning penis and testes and went through a testosterone puberty. Every time you use "AFAB" to refer to your experiences as a perisex müllerian person, you are using it wrong. Every time you use "AMAB" to refer to your experiences as a perisex wolffian person, you are using it wrong. If you are a person who was AFAB there are people who were AMAB or AXAB who went through the same puberty and transition you did. If you are a person who was AMAB there are people who were AFAB or AXAB who went through the same puberty and transition you did. Your experiences are not limited to people who were assigned the same gender at birth as you, so every time you use your AGAB as an example of how being transgender works, you look silly as you are ignoring intersex people's existence in your analogy, and using our words wrong to do so.

Using intersex terms when you wish to describe a fully perisex bodily development is using them wrong. There will always be an intersex sized hole in every analogy you use for perisex development and transition using intersex-made terms.

[faegget]

Just a few corrections, because unfortunately lots of this post is incorrect. Lots here is correct, but I'll tack onto what isn't, because this is long enough as is. I fully agree with the last two paragraphs and on it's own I think that's an excellent point. OP is also correct in that ASAB terminology doesn't actually describe you. But...

These terms were not coined by us. The erasure going on here is worse than this, by far. These terms were invented by perisex people, a very specific group of transphobic, intersexist, pedophilic child predators, to refer to the process of correcting our sexes. That is not hyperbole, I am speaking about child rapists who were (and often still are) highly respected in their field. Which is why it's so strange & hurtful to see it gain ground as a common parlance for "observed sex at birth." I much prefer OSAB or DSAB. DSAB (designated) is a little older, and both are not as well known (go figure lol)

I'm sorry in advance, but I'm old and I've done a lot of research. This particular tidbit I've known since I was ten, because I was subject to John Money's practices as a medically classified "true hermaphrodite". My familial abusers were also child psychologists with a full on practice (which they used to abuse children) and I'm well read in the department we're all suddenly in.

Please note that my post is written as General You to an assumed general perisex audience. I will come across as aggressive because I am talking about deeply upsetting subject matter. I am not trying to be combative to OP. I am not trying to be rude. I am being as honest as I can, given the circumstances. You're welcome in advance, because this is as polite as this herm gets.

As I said, a sex assignment isn't the same as an observed sex/designated sex. If you think this, then you are wrong, and you need to read up on what I am about to tell you, because it's YOUR history as well as MY HISTORY. All of us are impacted by this.

"The concept of “gender role” was coined in the early 1950s at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. In a set of five publications, co-authored with psychiatrists Joan Hampson and her husband John Hampson and published between 1955 and 1956 in the Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, John Money developed a new theory of human sexual development. Money and the Hampsons compared contradicting biological variables of sex and the sex the child had been assigned at birth with its gender role. [...]

"Based on this hypothesis, the team developed a set of treatment recommendations, which advocated early surgery on genitals to adjust the body to the assigned sex. The Hopkins protocols (as the five publications came to be called) became the dominant guidelines in intersex case management (ICM). Over the past two decades, intersex patient activists and gender scholars have, quite rightly, severely criticized these treatment practices for creating a world of shame, secrecy, and unwanted genital surgeries."

(The Birth of Gender: Medicine and the Transformation of Sex in the 1950s)

The inception point of Assigned Sex came from a group of child abusers. The inception point of Assigned Sex was child abusers discussing how to mutilate, medically and psychologically experiment on intersex children, in order to broaden their understanding of sex vs. gender. Again, I am not being hyperbolic in calling them child abusers, because they did in fact rape and molest children (on top of the psychological torture that intersex specific treatments are!) This is fact. This is immutable. You can go look into that yourself. It's included in one of the links I provide, if you actually read through this. The appearance of Assigned Sex starts in the 1950s, and it starts here.

"Should Sex Ever Be Altered After Early Childhood?

Fortunately the sex which is assigned to hermaphrodites at birth often agrees with the predominant characteristics of the external genitalia. This decision is wise provided the necessary studies are made to exclude female psuedohermaphroditism. However, when the external genitalia are of a doubtful nature, the physician often refuses to make a definite decision [...]"

The Diagnosis and Treatment of Endocrine Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence 1950

So we are categorically talking about a group of people, (of which I am one,) who were subject to infant genital mutilation (IGM), nonconsensual HRT, and routinely taken into psychologists' offices to strip naked and be sexually assaulted repeatedly; in order to ensure we were sexually developing as the correct gender role, with the correct effects of HRT on our bodies. That's what they do. That is what these people do to us. This text saying "Fortunately our assignments line up later on!" is only something this author (Wilkins) knows because he was sexually abusing intersex children/teens/young adults.

You have no idea what a lifetime of being a sexually abused lab rat does to a person.

Previously to this new wave of child sexual abuse wrapped up as medical intervention, many intersex people were quietly assigned a sex by the doctor and there were no standards. There are now, roughly standards, but it's still up to the practitioner's personal beliefs on ICM + their interpretations of the specific intersex body in front of them. Lots of us were born and left alone, lots were cut up, lots of us were Foundlings. (We still are these things, and very often.) Prior to this form of medical abuse, we were defined by a legal system (Rome, Greece, Britain) or in Indigenous communities, by our self chosen paths as an equally valued member of community - but the history is all over the place here and I gotta stick to the topic. Did you know sex markers were introduced to punish intersex "androgynous" people? Look into that. This is a great piece but it's only the start on that rabbit hole.

“Gender” was invented within U.S. medicine in the mid-20th century. It transformed over the span of three decades, going from a pragmatic tool in the sex assignment of children with intersex traits in the 1950s, to an essential category in newly established gender identity clinics for transgender individuals in the 1960s, to a focal point of feminist debates about the sex/gender binary in the 1970s."

How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea, 2022

If you are transgender, your struggles are built on our suffering. That's how intertwined this all is. The modern transphobia movement would not exist without intersexism. This is why it excessively hurts us that you use these words whilst simultaneously denying us a seat at the table. You are erasing us with the same violence that CAME from us and was put unto YOU.

"Observation or recognition of an infant's sex may be complicated in the case of intersex infants and children and in cases of early trauma. In such cases, the infant may be assigned male or female, and may receive intersex surgery to confirm that assignment. These medical interventions have increasingly been seen as a human rights violation due to their unnecessary nature and the potential for lifelong complications."

Wikipedia's page on this borders on the cusp on understanding here, but what I am saying to you all is: An observed sex is passively observed. An assigned sex is actively assigned. If you were not labeled as a sex and given intervention (HRT, surgery, therapy in the form of sex roleplay / gender dynamics roleplay, enforcement via your caretakers to ensure you're "normal" sex-wise) then you do not have an assigned sex. We came up with CASAB (coercively or correctively assigned sex) and that was taken too, but I'm not a nice herm that acquiesces ASAB in the first place, so my thoughts on that are irrelevant right now.

"More visible adoption of the terminology of sex assignment has led to public debate and criticism.

There is a consensus in the use of the term "sex assignment" for newborns with intersex conditions; observed chromosomal sex and assigned sex may intentionally differ for medical reasons (based upon predictions of psychosocial and psychosexual health in later life)." (Wikipedia)

So like intersex people have been saying, you don't actually have an assigned sex unless you were assigned a sex, and it can vary from your observed/designated sex, and lots of us have both.

"The terminology has evolved across various editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) maintained by the American Psychiatric Association. Initially, the third edition of the DSM referred to "anatomic sex". By the fourth edition in 1994, the term "assigned sex" was introduced, with subsequent editions also using "biological sex" and "natal gender". The latest revision in 2022 streamlined the language to consistently use "sex assignment"." (Wikipedia)

We're being effectively genocidally exterminated, by the way. This predates this statement about the UK by the Lemkin institute. The denial and prevention of identity is the first step in any genocide, and we are decades past that. The tomb felt like it sealed in 2022, Assigned Sex so mainstream that the DSM has added it to their ranks. You're contributing here, not knowing the history, flippantly using terminology intersex people have been fighting against for longer than you've lived.

If you're perisex, do not speak to me on this unless you have at least a basic grasp on John Money. If you know what ASAB is, it's thanks to him. He popularized the term assigned sex via his prolific work. He was doing that work to gain access to intersex children to sexually abuse. The additions to the DSM were due to his work bringing these terms over from the field he was in. He was a massive transphobe and a child rapist.

"In the 1970s, “biological sex” found its way into legal doctrine as a result of an outdated understanding of transgender identity as a mental illness caused by early childhood experiences, along with pol­icy concerns about the need to distinguish the sexes for purposes such as avoiding same-sex marriage."

That was John Money.

"Assigned sex terminology also emerged at midcentury in medical research related to people with intersex variations. “Intersex” is “an umbrella term for differences in sex traits or reproductive anatomy,” such as “differences in genitalia, hormones, internal anatomy, or chromosomes, compared to the usual two ways that human bodies develop.” Transgender theorists borrowed this terminology in the 1990s to describe the process of assigning sexes to all infants, and it began to appear in legal contexts in the early 2000s. It now competes with the term “biological sex” in legal disputes over transgender rights."

John Money ALONE did so much harm to the trans community, and nobody knows who he is, what he did, or how impactful it was - despite living under the current impacts of that transphobia. Because he was first and foremost obsessed with intersex children. And it seems like we really just don't matter. You need to change this. You need to care about this. It impacts you. This is your fight too.

If you are not actively seeking education on this, don't bother engaging with me. I'm well educated enough in this arena to look at someone being argumentative and recognize that they don't even know what they're arguing against or for or about. I can also tell if you pop up to argue and haven't read any of the material provided, because I've read it dozens of times in order to format my arguments over the years. I have to be well educated so that perisex people will listen to me. But this means I expect the same of you: I will not listen to your argument if it's just "But I like these terms and I'm autistic so I hate change so you're being ableist to a neuro-divergent minor!!!" You need an actual argument here, and there really isn't one. So if this pisses you off and you want to tantrum about it, consider doing so in private, because I am a (NOT NICE!) intersex person. I will not hold your hand or cheerfully educate you! Because you cannot imagine the physical torture I've endured, the intersex-specific / intersex-exclusive experience of abuses I have had over my many years! So unfortunately, when it comes to this,

And I'm not gentle about it either.

Read, educate yourself, listen to intersex people. You will never have trans liberation without the liberation of the intersex people. Your fight will always fall flat if you cut us out of it, because we have been fighting this fight just as long, arguably longer; and you are kneecapping yourselves by culling your movement's allies and founders. Thank you for reading.

[mortalityplays]

remember like 15 years ago when black bloggers were talking about this exact shit, 'digital blackface', white internet users appropriating images and clips of black people and using them as cartoonish exaggerated expressions of absurdity or high emotion. straight line from minstrelsy to your reaction gifs and nobody fucking cares any more. white people just decided not to acknowledge it and it went away, just like every other time black users have ever tried to criticise any aspect of online culture.

[phenomenologically]

On the contemporary internet, things have been turned inside out. Exchanges that have historically taken place in the underground of black social spaces are now vulnerable to exposure, if not already exposed. The call-and-response creativity of Black Twitter is overheard and echoed by White Twitter, and viral dance phenomena like the whip are seized on by the likes of Hillary and Ellen. Together these objects — and the countless others in circulation, literally countless — create widespread visibility for blackness online. Blackness once again takes up its longstanding role as the engine of American popular culture, so that we find ourselves where we were in the 1920s with jazz, in the 1950s with rock ‘n’ roll, in the ’80s with both house and hip-hop — in a time loop wherein black people innovate only to see their forms snaked away, value siphoned off by white hands.

All the creative labor of the black collective being aside, there is a palpable blackness to much of this viral content — especially memes — that circulates independently from actual black people. This depersonalized blackness is shifty and hard to pin down — as is the blackness of any object or subject, really. It makes itself known through language, through an aggressive use of maneuvers associated with black vernacular speech, explicated in Manuel Arturo Abreu’s “Online Imagined Black English.” One finds captions littered with “bruh,” “fam,” “lit,” and, of course, “nigga.” This blackness is also signaled vaguely through the presence of black subjects. Athletes like Michael Jordan, rappers like Lil Mama and Birdman, and actresses like Skai Jackson have become vessels for affects extending beyond their own individual capabilities.

[...]

Memes move like blackness itself, and the meme’s tactical similarity to historical black cultural forms makes them — predictably — vulnerable to appropriation and capture. The meme is a form that allows for a sense of collective ownership among those who come into contact with it — black or nonblack. The meme seems open to appropriation and interpretation by whoever possesses it for a moment, echoing Fred Moten’s description of blackness as being only what we hold in our outstretched hands.

When we say that the internet extends and exacerbates the same old offline relations, we mean it. In keeping with historical precedent, the cultural and affective labor of black individuals online largely goes unrecognized and un(der)compensated. Compare the nonexistent returns seen by black teens for introducing the whip to the lifetime supply of Vans shoes gifted to the Damn Daniel kid or the nearly half–million dollars worth of swag that Chewbacca Mom received for her most abject display of consumerist bliss.

[...]

“Rather than capital ‘incorporating’ from the outside the authentic fruits of the collective imagination,” Tiziana Terranova argues in “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy,” “it seems more reasonable to think of cultural flows as originating within a field that is always and already capitalism.” Likewise, memes — even when produced by black users — cannot be viewed as objects that once authentically circulated in black circles for the enjoyment of the black collective but instead are always already compromised by the looming presence of the corporate, the capitalist. As such, the meme will probably never manifest blackness in a traceable form such that it might be fully claimed by the black cultural body. The internet, which was advertised as a way to free us from our bodies, has merely confused our limits and identifications, providing just enough flexibility to, in artist Keith Townsend Obadike’s words, “make the same old burnt cork blackface routine easier.”

Aria Dean, "Poor Meme, Rich Meme"

[inksplit]

[genderoutlaws]

2 Black Women Refused C-Sections. Judges Decided For Them. | BIN: Black Information Network

At least two Black women in Florida were forced into courtroom-style hearings while in labor after refusing cesarean sections, with judges b

this is fucking insane. two different cases in Florida where pregnant Black women were forced into video call court proceedings, in the middle of labor, laying in their hospital beds, because their doctors chose to go after them for refusing cesarean sections.

the first woman was able to convince them to let her continue laboring unless it became medically necessary, and ultimately chose to go through with the C-section of her own accord later.

the second woman was completely denied autonomy and the C-section was performed against her will.

the white man who prosecuted them defends the decision, stating on the record "I'm real comfortable with what we did here. I hate that she's upset about it."

edit: the two women mentioned here, Cherise and Brianna, are calling on supporters to sign their petition to the hospitals they were forced into C-sections at.

Cherise Doyley was 12 hours into labor at University of Florida Health (UF Health) Jacksonville when a nurse walked in with a bedsheet and t

[the-bramble--patch]

“A loose analogy with an ecosystem in nature might help clarify this idea. Think of a lake. A lake consists of water in a landscape, with particular kinds of soil, terrain, water sources, and climate. An array of fish and other creatures live in its water and various kinds of plants grow in and around it. Collectively, all of these elements constitute the natural ecosystem of the lake. This is a “system” in that everything affects everything else within it, but it is not like the system of a single organism in which all the parts are functionally connected in a coherent, tightly integrated whole. Social systems, in general, are better thought of as ecosystems of loosely connected interacting parts rather than as organisms in which all of the parts serve a function. In such an ecosystem, it is possible to introduce an alien species of fish not “naturally” found in the lake. Some alien species will instantly get gobbled up. Others may survive in some small niche in the lake, but not change much about daily life in the ecosystem. But occasionally an alien species may thrive and eventually displace the dominant species. The strategic vision of eroding capitalism imagines introducing the most vigorous varieties of emancipatory species of noncapitalist economic activity into the ecosystem of capitalism, nurturing their development by protecting their niches and figuring out ways of expanding their habitats. The ultimate hope is that eventually these alien species can spill out of their narrow niches and transform the character of the ecosystem as a whole.”

-Erik Olin Wright, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century, pgs. 60-61

[dagwolf]

Wearing All Black at Protests Makes You Guilty of Terrorism, Prosecutors Tell Jury

The case is a major test of the Trump administration's push to label "antifa" protesters as terrorists.

Federal agents raiding the home of two alleged antifa “operatives” seized a telling piece of evidence, a defense attorney said during closing arguments in a landmark trial Wednesday.

A printing press.

That printing press was never presented to jurors. Still, the government has kept it locked away because it hated the pamphlets and zines it published, lawyer Blake Burns said.

Burns represents Elizabeth Soto, one of nine defendants whose fates were in the hands of jurors as deliberations began Thursday. All are accused of roles during or after a late-night noise demonstration outside Prairieland Detention Center, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Dallas that ended with a local police officer wounded by gunfire.

The case has become a bellwether for the Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent from the left. The government charged people involved with the anti-ICE protest with a slew of charges, including attempted murder and terrorism counts that defense attorneys said are being used to criminalize protest.

“They’re here asking you guys to put protesters in prison as terrorists.”

“They’re here asking you guys to put protesters in prison as terrorists,” Burns, the defense lawyer, told jurors. “That’s not happened before. And you are literally the only people in the world who can stop it.”

During 10 days of testimony in a packed Fort Worth, Texas, courtroom, prosecutors bombarded jurors with images of radical zines printed on the press, anti-government internet memes, drawings of burning cop cars, and a video of an unidentified street brawl between far-left and far-right protesters.

Prosecutors acknowledged those materials were protected by the First Amendment but said they showed the roughly dozen people who assembled outside the ICE facility were steeped in antifa tactics.

Eight of nine defendants on trial this month face material support for terrorism charges for wearing “black bloc” clothes at the protest. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have hailed the first-ever use of terrorism charges against alleged antifa members.

Defense attorneys argued Wednesday that prosecutors had wildly overcharged a case that should have centered on the alleged shooter, Benjamin Song, instead of the larger group.

Guilt by Zine

Prosecutors presented much of the evidence that might be expected at an attempted murder trial: ballistics and fingerprint experts, eyewitness police officers, and cooperating witnesses.

They also presented lengthy testimony about radical pamphlets and artwork collected from the defendants arrested that night or in raids during the following days.

Despite labeling the defendants “a North Texas antifa cell” in their indictment, prosecutors have acknowledged that they were at most a loose-knit collection of people from the Dallas–Fort Worth’s small leftist scene of anarchists and socialists.

Two of the scene’s fixtures were Elizabeth and Ines Soto, a married couple who operated the printing press and helped run a local reading group called the Emma Goldman Book Club, named for the early 20th-century anarchist revolutionary.

At one point during testimony Tuesday, a prosecutor spent more than half an hour scrolling through a Twitter account allegedly operated by the Sotos. The Twitter feed included a retweet of a December 2016 post with the words “How to handle fash in your hood” that included a shaky video of a street fight between protesters accompanied by the Flatbush Zombies song “Death 2.”

“I crack your fucking skull and use that as a bowl for cereal. I’m so serial. Ted Bundy, give me money, Son of Sam, gun in hand. Jeffrey Dahmer, with two llamas,” the jury heard in the song’s lyrics.

Defense attorneys objected to the introduction of the video as evidence.

“Yes, it is prejudicial,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Shawn Smith told the judge in defense of using the video. “The whole reason we’re putting it into evidence is because it’s prejudicial.”

Though U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, a Donald Trump appointee, allowed the Twitter feed to be presented in court, prosecutors could not definitively establish whether the Sotos had posted the video or what incident it depicted.

The Sotos, however, have not disputed that they were key members of the reading group. In his closing argument, Smith said the group was a front to recruit new antifa members.

“Emma Goldman Book Club,” Smith said. “It sounds very innocuous. It’s camouflage for what it is.”

“Your Body as Camouflage”

To help jurors interpret the book club’s readings and other materials, prosecutors presented a researcher at a far-right think tank as an expert.

Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy once focused his research on the Muslim Brotherhood. After the 2020 George Floyd protests raged, he wrote a book about “black identity extremists.” In recent years he has focused on another right-wing boogeyman: antifa.

Shideler said Monday that he helped write the definition of “antifa” included in the government’s indictment. He walked that testimony back Tuesday, saying that he only conferred on a draft.

Prosecutors also had Shideler read Trump’s September 22 executive order purporting to designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, in an apparent attempt to suggest that the language was borrowed from the order.

Shideler described what he said were common tactics of antifa, including using the messaging app Signal — which Shideler said he also used — and wearing “black bloc” clothes to obscure identities. The phrase refers to instances where groups of left-wing demonstrators dress in all black to make them less individually identifiable.

The point of that testimony came into focus during the prosecution’s closing arguments. Using Signal and wearing black-bloc clothing were “tactics that assisted in the ambush of a cop,” said Smith.

“Material support. It sounds — I don’t know — nefarious. Complicated. It’s actually very simple,” Smith said.

He said that wearing black clothes at the noise demonstration would be enough to convict the eight defendants accused of material support.

“Providing your body as camouflage for others to do the enumerated acts is providing support,” he said. “It’s impossible to tell who is doing what. That’s the point.”

The government used Shideler and the antifa talk to try to distract jurors from the defendants’ actual actions on the night of July 4, said MarQuetta Clayton, an attorney for defendant Maricela Rueda. She also warned that the trial served as a larger proving ground for the government’s attempts to criminalize antifa.

“The government’s expert on antifa said his career may be boosted by the outcome of this case,” she said. “This is an experiment for them. But this courtroom is not a laboratory, and Maricela is not a lab rat.”

Charged for Carrying a Box

Rueda’s husband, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, is the only defendant on trial who is not accused of participating in the July 4 protest. Instead, prosecutors have charged him and his wife with conspiring to obstruct justice by moving a box of zines out of Rueda’s house after her arrest.

Free speech advocates say that Estrada’s arrest sets a dangerous precedent that criminalizes the mere possession of anti-government material.

“He is on trial for two things: Carrying a box, and conspiracy to carry a box.”

“He is on trial for two things,” said Sanchez’s public defender, Christopher Weinbel. “Carrying a box, and conspiracy to carry a box, of which they try to call evidence.”

Weinbel said the box contained Sanchez’s own possessions, the timeline of his movements disproved the theory that he was acting at the direction of his wife, and that a government agent had also testified that none of the materials were used in the investigation.

Smith, the prosecutor, argued that moving the boxes was part of a larger cover-up in the hours and days after the demonstration.

“What is important to the group is hiding their material,” he said. “This anarchist, insurrectionist, hating-the-government material.”

Song and the Rest

Defense attorneys chose their words carefully when it came to Song, the person accused of shooting an AR-15 rifle at two detention center guards and the Alvarado, Texas, police officer who was hit.

None of the defense lawyers overtly blamed Song for the bloodshed, but several suggested that the government should have distinguished between Song and the rest of the protesters.

“This should have been a three-day attempted murder trial of one person,” Weinbel said.

Prosecutors painted Song as the ringleader that night. Still, they argued that four defendants who are also on trial for attempted murder — Song, Rueda, Autumn Hill, and Megan Morris — could have reasonably foreseen that Song would use violence based on conversations before the demonstration.

The eight defendants who face material support charges gave aid to the attack by wearing black clothes, prosecutors allege. They include the defendants accused of attempted murder along with the Sotos, Savanna Batten, and Zachary Evetts.

Song’s attorney, Phillip Hayes, said during his closing argument that Song was only trying to shoot “suppressive” fire at the ground after police arrived on the scene. Hayes suggested that a ricocheting bullet wounded the officer."

[queermarzipan]

Genuine question that I'm sure you get a lot but how can someone be both pro Zionism and pro Palestine? Everything I have read and consumed would make it seem as if they are the antithesis of each other.

This is in fact the first time someone has asked me this!! I'm so happy to be answering this tbh it's gonna be a nice note to end on (i'm going to sleep after this).

(I fell asleep before I finished lol, good morning)

So when people call themselves "Pro-Palestine", they overwhelmingly consider themselves to be acting on behalf of the civilians of Palestine, rather than in support of any particular military efforts (though pro-Palestine protests have horrendous track records concerning pro-Hamas demonstrations/speakers). When I call myself "Pro-Palestine", I am aligning myself with the civilians of Palestine and wishing for their suffering to end.

When people (generally Zionists) align themselves in opposition to self-described "pro-Palestine" people, they overwhelmingly consider themselves to be acting in opposition to a pro-Hamas group. This is because, as mentioned previously, the pro-Palestine movement has a horrendous problem with keeping pro-Hamas sentiments seperate from it.

When self-described "pro-Palestinian" people align themselves in oppsition to Zionism, they overwhelmingly consider themselves to be acting in opposition to an expansionist force that seeks to subjugate the Palestinian people; Revisionist Zionism and Kahanism, two offshoots of Zionism, are both anti-Palestinian in this sense, but the reduction of Zionism to these frankly fringe (though regrettably prominent in the current Israeli government) beliefs is incorrect and, in a lot of cases, disingenuous and/or actively malicious.

The generally accepted definitions of Zionism among Zionists are "the right of the Jewish people to return to, and form communities in, their ancestral homeland" and "the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancestral homeland". When I call myself "pro-Zionism", I am aligning myself with the belief that these rights are as inalienable from Jews as they are from any other indigenous group the world over; I do not believe they can expire, or be rescinded, or otherwise become invalid, for any reason.

As you can see, my beliefs that:

Palestinian civilians are experiencing a hardship that should by all rights stop immediately

Jewish people have the right to home, community, and self-determination in their ancestral homeland

are not at all in conflict with each other!

NB: This analysis applies only to people who are acting in good faith. There are self-described Zionists who subscribe to Kahanism/Revisionist Zionism, and many ostensibly "pro-Palestine" people who support Hamas. The world at large is very susceptible to propaganda spread by Hamas, because the world is antisemitic.

The two most common dogwhistles to watch out for are pro-Hamas dogwhistles:

Positive reference to "resistance" or "the resistance" — these are euphemisms for "terrorism" and "Hamas" or, more recently, "Hezbollah".

Negative reference to "the occupation", "the Zionist occupation", or "Zionist settlers" — there are illegal settlers in the West Bank, and I'd bet my life they overwhelmingly identify as Zionists, but these dogwhistles are code for Israel as a whole and the desire for it to cease to exist. When the illegal West Bank settlers are being discussed, specifying "the West Bank settlers" and/or "the West Bank occupation" is best practice.

I hope this helped!! I didn't want to just give you my definitions of the terms in question because that wouldn't really address why the stances of "Zionist" and "pro-Palestine" have become essentially diametrically opposed in popular discourse. As I said, this is not in fact a question I've recieved before & I really appreciate being asked <3

ALSO PPS: The reason I don't call myself a "Zionist" is because I am not a Jew. The conversation of Zionism was always meant to be an internal discussion between Jews, and I'm only aligning myself with it in order to show solidarity with a movement that is having its name forcefully and effectively blackened.

(Yes, this does in fact mean that non-Jews who call themselves "anti-Zionist" are essentially co-opting a Jewish word. Idk how to fix this either.)

Thank you so much for asking, have a great day!!

[womenintheirwebss]

At least 85 girls killed in strike on school in southern Iran

Eyewitness tells MEE girls aged between seven and 12 seen lying dead across their school

[striders]

why is it called ocean spray when it’s cranberries. last i checked those do not come from the ocean

[striders]

they should call it bog spider

[covid-safer-hotties]

^PDF link for those interested (Also includes sources)

[xochihuacoyotl]

so. not to doxx myself (i've talked about this here before though) but i live in Kansas. and my license was just revoked very suddenly and immediately because i'm trans and had changed my gender marker.

so now i cannot legally drive or vote until/unless i let them force me to carry around a card that misgenders me and outs me as trans, because i certainly don't look female anymore.

[xochihuacoyotl]

so hey if you have the means and want to help with any of this, please consider donating to the ACLU of Kansas because they are at least going to try to do something to push back against this, and i'm such a panicky wreck that the only thing i can do to get through my immediate gut reaction to having my license revoked tonight (i cannot stress enough that i received the letter today saying that my license is no longer valid tomorrow) is focus on the fact that there's at least one entity trying to protect me and my fellow trans kansans.

Support the ACLU of Kansas Foundation

[faggotfungus]

More info on what's been happening in Kansas:

Kansas Sends Letters To Trans People Demanding The Immediate Surrender Of Drivers Licenses

"The legislature did not include a grace period."

[ladystoneshart]

thinking about when a guy that worked at the "let's end world hunger" part of the UN gave a talk at my school and he straight up said it was literally impossible to end world hunger while the US retained total control over the UN and the general international order and that our top priority in fighting hunger should be re-centering the global economy away from the dolar

[ladystoneshart]

it was really disheartening and eye opening at the same time. seeing someone who works at the united nations outright saying "the un is virtually useless even if we're doing the best we can. our only hope is the colapse of the united states and the order it upholds"

mind you this was a white man in his 70s giving a talk at a private university. a guy with an economics degree and a government job. he opened his talk saying he wasn't a communist. this is the moderate position.