Call me ma'am again and I'll kill you

I talk about and reblog stuff related to gender and trans issues. he/him/his.

[jadwigaspeaks]

Every so often I still see discourse about which demographics are "really queer" so just to clarify. In our society there is a pervasive expectation that everyone will:

Fall into one of 2 (out of many) sexual variations from birth

Identify as the gender associated with whichever of the 2 variations you're in

Conform with the norms and traditional expressions for that gender

Experience sexual and romantic attraction, exclusively towards the opposite gender

Enter into de jure monogamous relationships with partners you feel sexual and romantic attraction towards

Deviation from this list is frequently punished with social stigma, bigotry, denial of certain legal rights or protections, and often violation of bodily autonomy

If you are someone who deviates from this list in some way, you are one of us and there should be a place for you in the queer community. Up to you if you actually want to take that place, but if you choose to do so, none of us should be making you feel unwelcome for being "not really queer"

[omegasmileyface]

Montana Supreme Court Rules Its Constitution Entirely Protects Trans Citizens In Landmark Ruling

The ruling will have enormous impacts for transgender residents in the state.

HOLY SHIT

[definite-human]

"The Montana court separately declared that transgender people constitute a suspect class under the state's equal protection clause. In legal terms, a suspect class is a group that has historically faced such severe discrimination that any law targeting them must meet the highest level of judicial scrutiny to survive—the same standard applied to laws that discriminate on the basis of race. [...] The practical effect is sweeping: any Montana law that singles out transgender people will now face strict scrutiny, meaning the state must prove the law serves a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve it—a standard that laws almost never survive.

"Because the decision rests entirely on the Montana Constitution, it is insulated from the U.S. Supreme Court. Under the principle of adequate and independent state grounds, the federal Supreme Court cannot review a state court's interpretation of its own constitution, so long as that constitution provides more protection than the federal one. [...] What this means in practice is that Montana's transgender residents now have a constitutional shield completely independent of the Supreme Court of the United State’s decisions."

(emphases mine)

[tobiasbones]

The other day i bought this yarn cause that’s obviously the trans flag, and I just saw that this colour is called ‘life’! I’m gonna cry

[krisatris]

this yarn fucks btw I made my throw pillow case out of it

[assignedmale]

[soballoonist]

I wish medical transition was seen as the miracle of modern medical science that it is and not some freak experiment that misguided young "girls" and perverted fetishistic "men" do as a vanity project.

[soballoonist]

Like, your body can change.

It's always changing.

You can change it how you want.

You can change your body

We know how to change it

It's easy to change it

It changes on its own

You just need to give it instructions

It will do the rest

It's not just possible, it's easy.

Your body can become your own.

It is your own and you can shape it in your own image

Just a bit of patience and a bit of care and it is all yours

Isn't that astounding!

ISN'T THAT ASTOUNDING!

You are a piece of art to shape by your own vison

ISN'T THAT FUCKING ASTOUNDING

[shadow27]

[gwydionmisha]

Judge stops Kansas law restricting transgender youth health care

A judge appointed by Gov. Laura Kelly said Kansas likely violated parental rights by restricting gender-affirming care for trans minors.

[vaspider]

Kansas Judge Eviscerates Anti-Trans "Experts" Jamie Reed, Chloe Cole, James Cantor; Blocks Care Ban

The judge found 349 individual facts supported the continued provision of gender-affirming care.

Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach brought forward a litany of anti-trans witnesses familiar from litigation defending these bans. Among them was James Cantor, a Toronto psychologist who has built a career testifying for states defending care bans despite no clinical experience treating transgender minors—and who was once quietly dropped from a Florida Board of Medicine hearing after it emerged he had served on the advisory council of the Prostasia Foundation, a group that has worked to destigmatize pedophilia. Folsom wrote that Cantor "has not conducted any original scientific research on the efficacy or safety of gender dysphoria treatments," and noted he is not licensed to treat anyone under 16 and has never diagnosed a minor with gender dysphoria. [...] "The Court gives Dr. Cantor's testimony little weight," Folsom concluded. The judge turned next to Farr Curlin, a Duke University doctor and theologian who was an author of the Trump administration's HHS report on pediatric gender dysphoria ... By his own admission, Folsom noted, Curlin's views are "radically counter to current medical orthodoxy." The judge found his opinions "appear motivated by his personal views as opposed to a methodology applicable in the field of medical ethics," and gave his testimony "little-to-no weight." ...

And then there was Jamie Reed, the self-styled "whistleblower" who built a national profile on lurid, largely unsubstantiated accusations against a St. Louis gender clinic and who has gone on Fox News to describe being transgender as a delusion. Reed also did not testify and could not be cross-examined. Folsom gave her affidavit "little weight,” and had scathing remarks towards her lack of expertise: “The Court gives thus Jamie Reed’s affidavit little weight, given that she is not a medical provider or mental-health professional. In addition, her affidavit primarily addresses her experiences with a clinic operating outside of Kansas—thus, it does not rebut or refute the credible, uncontroverted testimony about clinical practice within the state of Kansas,” read the order.

This decision is 117 pages long, and if you want to actually feel good about something a judge has had to say recently about trans rights, this is legitimately a good read. (I understand that some people do not read legal decisions for fun. You should still try reading this one. It's really good.)

Given how thoroughly and completely he eviscerates the supposed qualifications and relevance of the same tired grievance actors that the right totes from case to case like a basket of moldy oranges, I hope that this decision will not only act as an example for future judges, but save them a bunch of work, because they don't have to then go do all of the writing themselves on how much these people suck, they can just cite this decision.

[guerrillatech]

[fox-faggot]

"JKR wants trans women dead and any support of her IP goes towards that goal!"

"Yes, true! Though the same also counts for trans men and other genderqueer people, all trans people's rights (especially in the UK) are endangered by the political influence she's wielding, that witch hates us all and wants all of our rights gone."

"Omggg can you birthday boys not make everything about MEN for FIVE SECONDS???? Fucking transandrodorks again. Blocked."

→ There is a difference between derailing a post and pointing out that the whole of a community is affected by an issue, not just a sub-section. Refusing to acknowledge that is part of the exact hyperinvisibility we keep trying to explain. Have some solidarity with your brothers and siblings please, they're scared for their rights and lives too. An invisible minority is a dead minority.

[telumendils]

a lot of these people just didn't actually read jkr's terf manifesto and it shows because if they had they would know she hates trans men and other trans people afab just as much as she hates trans women, albeit in a slightly different, more infantilizing and condescending way. there is an entire section in her shitty essay about how we're all just confused little girls mutilating our bodies and how desperate and sad we are and how we need to be guided back to the light. it's literally right there.

there is also the fact that some of her earliest telltale anti-trans tweets were against gender inclusive language for trans people afab in a medical setting. like literally some of her first shares/likes/things that told us something was up were railing against terminology that benefits trans people afab, specifically, and claiming it was erasing women or whatever. this was also literally right there!!!

so yeah, it really upsets me when trans men and nonbinary folks/other gendered folks afab get left out of this conversation, because i know for a fact that jkr has NOT forgotten about us in her mission to destroy the rights of transgender people in the uk (and possibly around the world). we're not trying to diminish the harm she does to trans women, we're just trying to remind everyone we're equal targets of her influence.

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]

[dracofidus-deactivated20200523]

If you EVER think Anthony Head is anything less than an angel then you’d best remember that I have always been a huge fan of his and we’ve always had a little contact over the years and he heard I’d come out as Trans and was having a hard time and that I was kind of sad that the photos I had from conventions with him were of me with long hair and no binder and they were all signed to “Sarah” and so he invited me to spend the day with him at his farm and he picked me up from the station and we just hung out and had lunch and he insisted on paying and took loads of photos and had them printed on photo paper the same day so he could sign them to Jay, along with other photos of him as Giles and Uther and he literally spent five hours chatting with me and got all of the pronoun stuff right every time and then he dropped me off at the station, gave me a final massive hug, waved me through the ticket barrier and insisted I message him when I got home so he knew I got back safe. (More HERE)

[razortouched]

This will probably be my most controversial post by far, but it needs to be said.

Gendered socialization is unequivocally real. Boys and girls are treated and socialized differently before they're even born.

Female babies are disappearing en masse, because male babies are more valued.

From an extremely early age, parents respond to their childrens' emotions differently based on gender. Mothers over-estimate the crawling abilities of their infant sons compared to infant daughters.

Mothers speak to their infant daughters more and talk them more about emotions than they do their sons.

By the age of 2, boys already show an avoidance to the color pink and other items traditionally seen as feminine, laying the ground work for early demonstrations of misogyny in childhood.

When children enter pre-school, there is no difference in math abilities between boys and girls. But such gaps begin to appear as children grow older.

The vast majority of girls report feeling unsafe going outside, and at least 2/3 of girls have reported experiencing sexual harassment at school by the time they 16.

Further on in education, women will understimate their scores, while men will overestimate their scores. Women will perform worse on tests when first told that women, on average, perform worse.

Researchers argue that the prevalence of sexual assault against women is so high specifically because of early gendered socialization. The men who commit sexual violence consistently demonstrate specific ideals about gender and perform hostile masculinity.

The patterns reach well into adulthood, influencing occupational choices.

I could literally go on and on and on. There are countless studies and entire fields of academia dedicated to researching this. The fact that children are socialized differently paced on assigned or percieved gender is really not debatable.

I am sympathetic to the fact that transphobes have warped the concept of socialization to insinuate that trans women are destined to be violent or predatory, or that trans men are destined to be submissive and helpless. However, people weaponizing these frameworks does not mean that the phenomenon does not exist.

Furthermore, individual people's nuanced experiences with gendered socialization does not mean that these patterns don't exist on a large scale. Any interaction with society will confer the influence of gender biases, especially upon children to are extremely vulnerable to both subtle and overt social cues.

Again - gendered socialization is real. This is a core aspect of feminist analysis. I am not going to pretend otherwise.

[disco-pony]

I'm sure I remember a time when it was a big part of trans theory that missing out on typical gendered socialisation was a big part of the abuse of trans people by a cisnormative society.

Thinking of it as like a language, where so much stuff is taught by exposure, all the "gendered manners" that are taught in single-sex situations (the proverbial thing of "girls act differently when there are no boys present/boys act differently when there are no girls present") which are the situations where a kid is taught how to perform "their" gender in the most nuanced and complicated ways that signal to other people of the same-gender that "we are the same type of person" - and, trans people are often cut off from that until they come out, meaning that they have to learn the "basics" as adults.

Likewise I see so many trans people say "Bold of you to assume I was socialised! I was treated as a weird thing." And I don't know how to point out that the things that get a child treated as a "weird thing" and put outside of the bounds of propriety are themselves different for children being raised-to-boyhood or raised-to-girlhood. Thinking about England because I don't want to extrapolate outside of where I personally know, a "girl" might get treated as a tomboy-outsider-weirdo for wanting to play toy soldiers or play in the woods, but a "boy" would probably be seen as normal for that. Likewise, a "boy" might be punished really badly for liking makeup and dresses, but a "girl" wouldn't be. Seeing "You can't say I was socialised as a boy, I was constantly getting in trouble for putting on my sister's clothes, and treated like I was disgusting for crying and being emotional!" And just... Yes! Because people that the patriarchy wants to turn into "boys" will be punished for showing femininity, that is how male socialisation works! Likewise "I was treated as a tomboy and put in a third gender category because I was sporty and outdoorsy, and punished and called monstrous and sent to see a psychiatrist for not playing with dollies" - That's female socialisation, because a "boy" who was sporty wouldn't be put into into third gender category for it, and wouldn't be called monstrous for having no interest in dolls.

Obviously the exact things that are gendered change from culture to culture, but that applies to everything, everything is culturally bound and affects different people in different ways and to different degrees, but we still try to talk about the broad trends which carry through cross-culturally (which has been a big part of feminist consciousness- Recognising that although the ways that women are treated worldwide aren't the same, that there are repeating themes...)

I don't know, it feels like we shouldn't have to ignore that gendered socialisation exists and is often a horrible locus of abuse (for both cis and trans kids, even before getting into how it's often SO MUCH WORSE for intersex kids regardless of whether they're cis or trans!) just because terfs also want to use it.

[doomhamster]

Yeah. I think it's important to keep in mind that not everyone who believes in (the observable and measurable phenomenon of) gendered socialization believes that socialization is somehow an INDELIBLE MARK ON YOUR SOUL, or that being PERCEIVED as a given gender by your parents/society when you were younger means you ever WERE that gender.

The whole point of modern feminism is that gendered socialization CAN and in many ways SHOULD be unlearned.

[myfootyrthroat]

I think people also gotta keep in mind that everything with gender is going to be a bimodal distribution. It's not "boy result" and "girl result", it's "range of boy results" and "range of girl results". And they almost always overlap.

[grison-in-space]

The other thing I think is useful to keep in mind is that socialization is different for children perceived as intersex or insufficiently gender conforming: adults will treat children intermediately if they are labeled with an intermediate level, and gender policing also begins very early and can shape a child's relationship with the whole schema of gender itself. I think this is often missed for people who were identified as gender non conforming at an early age hitting the concept of gender socialization: when one's nascent gender has been identified as a potential problem by the people around you in a way that is different from the gender conforming children, socialization studies that largely focus on gender conforming case examples land in a way that doesn't always align with one's lived experience.

This is one reason that paying attention to intersex theory and experiences is really important for trans liberation and gender liberation both: I don't think you can really understand gender socialization without paying attention to case studies of children whose gender has been problematized at an early age as well as those who are perceived and socialized as "normally" gendered children. Obviously trans adults can come from children from both normatized and problematized childhood gender experiences, and individual caretakers of a gender or sex divergent child may respond to that child in a range of ways. But it's really worth noting that socialization theory does have room for socialization experiences that differ from the presumed-cis, presumed-perisex norm, and I think that talking about those examples can resolve some of the rejection of gendered socialization among trans communities.

(I'm on my phone at the moment, but if people want I can get into the literature and source some additional examples for folks who are interested.)

[andreii-tarkovsky]

Gaycation - “USA”

[ashes2caches]

please make sure your transfem friends don’t get excluded. please listen to their needs.

[transsexual-feminism]

You should do more than just listen, actually. You need to ask her. You need to go up to her and ask her about things you can do to include her. We are taught to take up as little space as possible, you need to go out of your way to account for that.

[birdbombs714]

You should also do more research and listen to and talk to more trans women, so that trans women no longer have to provide the labour of even having to express what they need to be treated like literal people.

[autogynophelia]

Before coming out I used to work at a mental health crisis line. There were so many problems with this place, that I will probably talk about some other time, but generally stemming from issues relating to social class and demographics more broadly.

90% of the volunteers were wealthy retired neurotypical cishet white women. That meant that for basically every call these people received there was a pre-existing power dynamic where the caller was well below the call-handler, and the call was consequently handled totally paternalistically, never with any sense that the volunteer might actually have something to learn from the caller. The similarity to the typical patient-GP/PCP dynamic was really striking.

Most of the callers were prisoners, homeless, or people who had recently stopped taking anti-psychotic meds. I think many of the volunteers enjoyed the feeling of the power dynamic that was obvious in these calls. If you spend most of your social time with people of the same high social class as you, I guess you might find it refreshing to encounter people who remind you that you've actually done well out of life, only from a safe distance and through a phone ofc.

We also got a lot of trans callers. Hearing how the volunteers talked to these callers was a really radicalising experience. "Why do you think you're a woman?" "Why do you think you enjoy wearing women's clothing?" "Is there a sexual component to it? Maybe something that happened in your childhood?" "What do the other girls at school think about you calling yourself a boy?", plus the obvious constant misgendering and pronoun "mix-ups", saying, "Oh sorry, miss, your voice sounds like a man's so it's confusing."

People would say this stuff during training too, and the people training us would say it was correct. It's not like they were letting their bigotry cause them to deviate from policy, bigotry was the policy. I remember there was one senior volunteer who was a retired cis lesbian police officer, and I asked her about handling trans callers and she just repeated back all the same bigoted nonsense everyone else thought (at the time I put that down to her being a cop, not being aware back then that being a cis lesbian is no guarantee at all of an absence of transphobic views.)

It didn't take long for me to start getting reprimanded for having too much empathy for the callers. I was an unusual volunteer in that I had actually been in the same position as a lot of the callers. I was trans (albeit not out yet), I was frequently suicidal, I had been on anti-depressants (incredibly I was the only volunteer out of around 150 with that experience), I had experienced CSA and domestic abuse, I had lived through times when I had a zero bank balance, I had eaten food out of a bin because I had no money, I had been heavily addicted to alcohol and nicotine.

It meant I normally had some commonality with all the callers that I could use to make sure I was talking to them in the way I would've wanted to be talked to, i.e. as an equal. I would actually let the caller direct the conversation rather than directing it myself (which was the policy), I would show genuine interest in their story, I wouldn't tell them to hurry up because there were other callers with "real problems". After a while, I couldn't handle it and I just left, not because of the stress of dealing with the callers, but the stress of dealing with the other volunteers.

And now many years later I often see queer groups near me directing people to this crisis hotline in case of emergency, and I always have to make a fuss to get them to remove it as a categorically non-safe institution. But it's so well-known and respected where I live (by people who have never used it, but they are typically the ones in positions of power ofc) that it can be really hard to get people to believe it is actually that bad.

[st-dionysus]

Bitch we're ALL the problematic transsexual you were warned about via call out posts and news articles. Do not betray your siblings in the struggle, we are all next.

[st-dionysus]

"But what if they did x, y, and/or z! They need to be held accountable!"

I means it's honestly unlikely they did x, y, and/or z. Most call out posts are just bullshit lies or so taken out of context that they're just as fraudulent as a bullshit lie.

However, if they did? A callout post is useless. It's utterly pointless.

A callout post does nothing but:

Isolate the supposed perpetrator, making it impossible for them to stay in a community that would otherwise be able to go "Hey bro/sis/sib, that was fucked, let's talk about it and fix it".

Puts a spotlight on the possible victim that prevents them from recovery or healing.

Creates drama that creates damage for all parties.

And that's if their was any truth in the post.

A callout post that's just a bunch of garbage though? That:

Isolates the victim of the slander, leaving them volunrable to attacks and harassment

Feeds into transphobia both generalized and specific to the victim of slander

Creates infighting, gatekeeping, and policement of the community

Often forces people who had nothing to do with the initial drama to take part in a now ever delevoping drama, which creates more callout posts, more slander, more harrasment, and more attacks on community members. Most often effecting the most marginalized members of out community.

Forces people to view content that is often triggering and demands that they make a moral statement about it, while trying to process or cope with the content.

Creates room for Terfs, tehms, radfems, and transphobes of all brands, to stick their ugly heads in and go "see, I was right about the trans cult, do you see what monsters they are".

There is never a valid reason for a callout post. There is no callout post that has ever successfully "held someone accountable for their actions" and there is no callout post that has not done damage to our community.

[dark-spirit-tamamoland]

they're still terming random transfems as i type this i see which does make quite a statement doing this today specifically

[puppetstuffing]

watched three girls who reblogged its new blog mutual aidpost (made literally 15 minutes ago) already disappear from its notifs. transfems are not included in their pride :/

[puppetedlove]

:)

[puppetvictim]

:)

[tamamowand]

QUITE the statement to be nuking transfems at the current accelerated pace right at the start of pride month like this, isn't it