Drivebyhaiku @ Drivebyhaiku @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Same!

I think I am hardly a mover and shaker politically aside from showing up to town councils a few times a year and doing some union safety and advocacy stuff and occasionally hyping Raven Trust. It's a weird place to be because with indigenous issues you want to be kind of tasked with something to do or at least have a signoff that what you are doing is helping but if you don't belong to those groups you really don't want to recommend any courses of action? I mostly do a lot more LGBTQIA+ related stuff because that is my wheelhouse. A couple buddies of mine are way more personally impactful in their work regarding Indigenous advocacy because they operate inside more exclusive power strucrures. I think I am kind of the layabout.

I think one of the most nerve wracking things on the indigenous front I ever did was run a D&D one shot for the former National Chief of Canada. Like I have done a lot of thinking on the implicit colonialist history of the game and the implicit bias wherein that reinforce that mindset through mechanics... But it's one thing to know that intellectually and another one entirely to pick through your homebrew materials with a fine tooth comb looking for fault.

I also feel like there is no silly in acedemia. Stories tell us a lot about a culture and picking things apart can tell us a lot about psychology, culture or philosophy. Like RPGs they have mechanics that inform the tale though everyone interprets those mechanics differently and sometimes they aren't really there to "say" anything. Sometimes there is no moral of the story you're just being invited to have fun. Like Star Wars I think is one of those. Like the Jedi give the veneer of mysticism but I don't think their internal logic is meant to be extrapolated out to be the author's world veiw. I think they are basically just a warrior stoic fantasy... But there are thousands of acedemic papers on Star Wars. Every student who goes through the system is there to demonstrate they can think and dissect thought using the current methodology. It creates a body of convention which then they might use to pointed effect in their own work one day. The process refines and changes the process which in turn alters the process and the cycle goes on. It's fascinating.

If you are into podcasts I might recommend "Revisionist History" "Invisabilia" "Radiolab" and the like for wonky dives into minutia and seeing stories from interesting angles. On YouTube I recommend the trans philosophy suite of Philosophy Tube, Shanspere, Kat Blaque and Alexander Aliva, the history and lit stuff with Crash Course, Extra History, Kaz Rowe, J Draper... I wish I had more indigenous forward stuff to offer but I tend to get a lot of that through books or personal connections willing to talk shop. The book "The Red Deal" was pretty evocative but also at odds with a lot of the things that we tend to have going on with local efforts. The books deal with efforts to make society at large run less on a western colonialist mindset but through a more combative nature. Like you can lock horns with the government as the book more suggests ... Or you can just change the dominant culture at ground level to normalize forms of reconciliation and restorative justice and work inside those systems indiginizing and hybridizing the structures. Like there's surprisingly little stopping my union department meetings or say public library management from adopting a restorative justice circle model for arbitration. Anyhow I hope that list of things has some fun stuff on it for you!

I mean I am having a blast writing a novel here. This has been one of the funnest interactions I have had on one of these platforms in years. I came from a family that couldn't afford to put me through a philosophy or literature based degree and had to be more practical about vocational training for the job that would feel more fulfilling because I didn't want a job in acedemia. I have way too much ADHD for that. Still I imbibe to a god awful number of podcasts and books on the subject and pick the brains of my buddies who did go to school mercilessly. My sibling actually wrote their dissertation for their Masters on dystopias in science fiction and became a librarian and got a lot of benefit telling me about the major points as a way to codify their own understanding. It has been requested that if they ever display a desire to go for their PHD that I should smack them... But I secretly hope they do.

I love Dune particularly as an example because it's got a lot all of these weird neat sticky points that intersect with the field of indigenous philosophy and unpacking colonialism which has become a personal interest. I would shake your hand if I could button masher. This has been a good time!

I think there's something of a difference between the nature of being praised for gender conformity and the mechanisms of gender euphoria. The main thing is that euphoria and dysphoria is completely independent of any external reward systems and often contradicts social rewards for conformity. If you are reacting to someone's praise that isn't gender euphoria that's more like social conditioning. Cis people definitely do gender as per the philosophy of Gender performativity and we as social animals react to praise for doing something correctly... but Gender euphoria as trans people experience it is something more like a built in reward system which continually fires off feedback.

I have met cis people who definitely have described experiencing gender euphoria or dysphoria but they really aren't common. Ask cis folk if you were to wake up tomorrow and you were physically the other gender how would you react to that and more often than not the answer is basically that you think you'd adjust after a period of weirdness to your new role just fine. If you fall into that category I think you are not actually a person who experiences internal gender preference, you just experience gender as a source of praise for participating in culture. It is a much rarer cis person who answers that they would feel a profound sense of loss and horror in that situation. It's lead me to believe that there is a cis equivalent of the trans experience of gender silently living their best lives but are about as rare as trans people are demographically while most cis people are functionally null gender. While null gender people may register that they are part of a group it's a matter of practicality. Whatever box they get sorted into they just want to perform the box well. They do not see their gender as being intrinsic to them at a level of fundamental need.

My controversial opinion is I think some people do soul searching regarding this trait and eventually end up in the non-binary community and come to a sort of agender or gender politic where they simply feel societies gender norms are limiting and bullshit because they recognize it means nothing personally to them. While non-binary is under the trans umbrella and some non-binary people experience euphoria/dysphoria just regarding a mix of phenotype or experience it on an inconsistent basis some people use the term "non trans non-binary or genderqueer" to describe that particular state of feelings that gender isn't something that resonates with them deeply... But that identity may lie on an assumption that cisness is dependent on a internal inante sense of gender and that all cis people basically have an innate gender sense it just is in alignment.

The thing is with the cis experience is that people don't really ask "what makes a person cis?" We as trans people are driven to try and figure out internally and legitimize to cis people why we are the way we are because we present to them as something broken. Cis people are just assumed to be functioning so we don't really dig into their mechanisms to understand the other half of gender from an veiwpoint that treats transness and cisness from a neutral standpoint that values the two states of being as equal. From a trans point of view we can tell that what most cis people describe doesn't at all sound like what we are experiencing. When they try to assert that they do they sub in things that made them feel good that was gender related but the thing that made them feel good about it was feeling confidence knowing that they are being rewarded externally somehow.

But we as trans people also understand being showered with compliments or feeling reaffirmed by milestone social rituals that have a gendered component come from the outside world and sink in. I experienced a lot of compliments and social ritual for my gender performance back when I was performing cis normativity and while I did feel rewarded and flattered for the efforts of essentially performing gender it was like someone was complimenting a costume I was wearing. I did great job on the costume woo! Attention and acolades yay! ! But it felt like doing a drag performance or a wearing a Halloween costume. Most trans people have a period where they try and perform their birth sex's gender norms intensely, better than anyone trying to fill that numbness with a different form of external praise from extreme conformity. It's why so many trans women end up in the military. They are trying to overide the innate internal voice by utilizing the methods of validation. Performing the socially expected archetype does have a reward system that can feel good. But it's like trying to drink water to combat being hungry. It will fix your thirst if you are thirsty but a fundamentally different need is what is demanding satisfaction.

While we haven't typified if there is a specific physical structure of the brain that underlies transness I do think that there is something rather specific. When I speak to other trans people my age even though we all grew up isolated there are parts of our experience that is intimately recognizable to each other. However it's my worry that if we ever figured out a mechanism that underlies transness people would essentially try to fix that structure as being "the problem".

Throughout history trans people have existed on the axis of gender having come to their identities entirely in a vacuum which makes me think that it's got something to do with potential structures of the brain we do not yet fully understand and that identifing cis people who experience actual gender euphoria might be the key to actually pinpointing it. I have definitely had some involved conversations with this variety of cis person and a number of them also recognize that they do not experience gender like other cis people do. That there is a fundamental difference in their experience between brain and body than other cis people and when they talk to us they understand us almost instantly more implicitly.

Trans racial people thus far seem to be a minority amoung minorities. It seems to me the people who describe their experiences point to pop culture depictions or idealized stereotypical notions of their desired cultural experience rather than a lived experience the same way people want to be medieval knights or jedi or fursonas and adopt those aesthetics as being identities but it's entirely possible that I am wrong. I am not their psychologist. I just know that if it's honestly held belief based out of a biological based imperitive it's got about a thousand tons of cultural baggage to wade through and of that's the case I wish them luck.

As much as you seem to want trans racial stuff to be a thing at present it's a pretty frowned on practice. Most of the trans community look at broaching the discussions about it to be straight up transphobic because there is at present one guy out there named Oli London who currently has used his desire to look like a Korean popstar and other antics more or less as stunts for attention and has become the sort of thing transphobes point to to regularly use to discredit both trans narratives and questions around disrespectful cultural appropriatation as being crazy or to derail and discredit people of color who have been very clear that they are not a costume or an identity group that accepts new members that way. If you want to try cosmetically race swapping that's basically up to you but at present you'd likely be pretty isolated and potentially make a lot of enemies because you'd be seen as trying to pit trans people against people of color. Beyond what is ethical or not the subject makes me personally uncomfortable not the least because it's a narrative that often seeks to try and pin trans people into some kind of double standard. We are a group of people who feel the way we do about sex and gender. We have zero insights into people who want to change racial characteristics. If they exist at all and not just for attention seeking troublemaking then what they are doing is a conversation to have with them and whatever racial group they seek to emulate.

Something I also notice is that you keep saying being trans is dependant on beauty standards... Which is misguided. While there are trans people who seek to be beautiful a lot of that os more from a hunger for validation. Cis people desire beauty just as offen. But most of the trans people in my immediate circle are more... How do I say this... Aiming for personal comfort rather than beauty? Like don't get me wrong I would like just once in my life to dress up for a wedding and not feel like a dysphoric wreck for trying to find clothing that doesn't bring attention to the issues of being the opposite proportion from what I wish I was...but I don't feel the need to be a handsome bloke. I just want to wear clothes to a special event that don't need to be tailored all to fucking hell, clean up a little nicer than usual and not feel like a complete steaming pile of shit... But if my partner was properly bi and someone was like "Okay you will be instantly fully transformed into a man but you will look like you hit every branch on the ugly tree." yeah. I wouldn't mind that.

I use being ugly as a parable to cis people because generally from what I have gatherered its not like the vast majority have an intrinsic internal gender preference at all. Most of you have, as far as I can tell, never experienced anything like actual gender euphoria so I can't use the experience of what gender incongruity feels like directly. Because of that I have to use things as analogs though they are always imperfect. Description of some of the paradoxes of gender dysphoria and euphoria are really difficult to conjure properly because it properly has to do with a sense of recognition...

You know that reaction you have when you see another human and you instantly recognize whether they are of a masculine or feminine body type and if you encounter someone who could be either it inspires that curiosity and attention while you try and figure it out because there's a chunk of your brain that treats that information as vitally important? Gender Dysphoria and Euphoria works through that mechanism. Your internal sense of yourself is one thing but your external peices register to yourself as not matching so it causes this strict mental disconnect. The result is you feel very empty. Your name never feels like it belongs to you. It's something you respond to as a function but it feels like it belongs to someone else. Your existence feels like you are performing a part in a play. Your friendships exist behind this barrier where you want desperately to feel connected but they never quite understand you or it feels like they are somehow keeping you at arms length. Nothing feels authentic to you, you might as well not even really be there because it's all functionality happening to someone else. Then enevitably you play around with gender performance somehow. Doesn’t matter what, a short haircut, you wear a dress, someone says "oh sorry sir!" when they bump into you and you get a sudden flash of existing. For that little moment you suddenly feel real. It's a thrilling feeling like you have been invisible all your life but suddenly someone saw you! Desire flares up to connect and ne present and exist in your own skin because for a second it feels like you are actually THERE for once. Dysphoria can feel like intense jealousy for the things that make you feel more alive but more often than not it's this sort of numbness.

Cis people often don't nessisarily understand it until they actually experience a trans person they know transition and then there's a moment somewhere along the line where that recognition mechanism kicks in and they actually start experiencing that person as their gender... or they see the difference in how someone who used to struggle and seem sort of listless, anxious and absent suddenly is very vibrantly living in the moment and is sharp and attentive. Unless you've properly transgressed that boundary yourself it's difficult to properly explain the phenomenon.

I think you would probably see a massive upset in the binary trans community if there was a push to a fully "gender free" world. Consider that a lot of binary trans people don't like the custom of introducing themselves with their pronouns. They want to allow the cultural signifiers to do the talking for them and some feel like having to constantly say their pronouns is essentially people not reading and validating their physicality. Pronoun introductions are an accommodation specifically for non-binary trans people who don't have cultural visual signifers that allow that read. Gender presentation is a form of language. Like if you like to dress and culturally act like a woman that doesn't nessisarily mean you are trans. Femboys might strike some as being trans people but they aren't. Being trans ultimately comes down to a combo of how you feel about your physical body

Also just because two things are social constructs doesn't mean they operate on the same rules. Fat is a social construct that we are actively working as a society to deconstruct. It's basically on a culture by culture basis but because all human populations have differently sized people that's a universal fight. Race however isn't like that. It is tied into long histories with complex power dynamics. People around the world do have medical procedures to lighten their skim because of beauty standards caused by occupation by European powers that treated being the lightest beige as a moral issue. We are in the midst of trying to deconstruct that narrative and divorce it from the legacy of supremacy. Maybe in the far future when we've put those supremacist narratives to bed and not treated different peoples like the things that they hold as culturally sacred is something we can play dress up in for giggles then we could talk about cross racial stuff... But ultimately respect comes from honoring boundaries.

As for the question about black people in the states. I am not black. I can't speak for that community with authority but I understand that a lot of the people I personally know would rather widen the constructs that exist around beauty to recognize what they have is also beautiful and wonderful. Like the people you love are beautiful to you. If the faces of the people who raised and loved you are a color that society values less it doesn't mean you value it less you want other people to see them the way you naturally do.

Your last question is difficult because it's not the gender construct but the construct of sex... Which I know is really weird but sex is also a construct. The preservation of the idea of what is phenotypically male or female has it's own history as being constantly proven to not be a binary. "Gender" had the original origins of existing to try and preserve the idea of a sexual binary by applying a sort of sex supremacist narrative. There is a LOT of pressure trans people face to adhere to a cultural idea of sex and a lot of gatekeeping that happen regarding treating someone's gender as valid only if they look the part... But that's only half the story. I know trans women who would sell their souls to have periods and get pregnant and breastfeed and experience all the messy aspects of physical femaleness that women routinely complain about. That's not a cultural desire. Personally I don't care so much about ever having kids. I am functionally a gay man. Do I wish I could properly be a top and have boners and ejaculate and all that stuff. Yeah sure. It's really hard to get aroused when you are limited by hardware you don't like interfacing with but because I care more about other functionalities of day to day of getting by in society. Even if everyone called me by the correct pronouns without fail and didn't treat me like I was at best a preteen boy and invited me to the cookouts it wouldn't stop me from falling into a week long depression every time I had to buy a new pair of pants. I can never look good to myself this way. People who know what I need still fuck up from time to time and I can tell their brain codes me based on my physical characteristics. As much as they try to stop it that reflex is baked in and me asking them to help me is introducing a cognitive load that they don't have with people who have physically transitioned to the point where the switch in the veiwer's brain actually flips. So the answer to your final question is both yes and no. Some people would be fine with using non-binary coping strategies which would cause some people to be more content without resorting to surgery but ultimately others would not because the root isn't always strictly cultural.

It's a little different with gender. Like consider if I was ugly and I hate the experience of living in my body despite It's generally considered pretty impolite to comment on that sort of thing. A barista saying "Good day ugly person, how would you like your coffee?" would probably elicit frowns and gasps from onlookers. Like it's generally possible to go around knowing you're not great looking because you are no surprise to yourself but it's possible to exist in a state where you are not always conscious of the perceptions and thoughts of how other people code you because your attention can be allowed to drift. But the constant feedback snaps you back into place.

Gender comes with a whole bunch of assumptions, way people unconsciously react, restrictions on places and events where you are considered an oddity and commentary. How often does a person refer to you in the third person where you can hear? How often are you called "sir" or "ma'am". Every instance of that happening in society is lke that person being called ugly by the barista above. You are suddenly aware of the way your body is preceieved and all the social baggage in your life that you have to deal with. For the rest of the world being called mister, sir, miss or ma'am doesn't strike the same cord as "ugly" does in everyone. The people who feel nothing from those gendered words don't even notice them. But when you are trans you are reminded the same way you are if you stand naked before a mirror.

Because when I was figuring myself out there wasn't much information about the existence of trans people I didn't really know surgery was an option I could pursue. There were issues with my body that puberty had already made irreversible and there's a moment you realize no fairy godmother is going to come out of the woodwork to make things right. So I sobbed long and hard in the shower just in complete dispair that this was it. No one would ever see the real me, I would be invisible trapped my life would never be better. That this was it.

I ended up not transitioning for reasons of love. My partner whom I love more than life has a phenotype preference. Normally I have a lot of tricks to get through my day. I distract myself, I try never to linger in front of mirrors and when I do I try to focus on the clothes I am wearing or my hair or the scraps of my physical appearance I like. I ask my friends to use names, pronouns and social aspects of gender to help me continue on crutches through my social interactions... But whenever I am misgendered in public or on the phone a part of me goes right back to that moment in the shower every single time. It can happen multiple times a day because I don't pass. People freely remark on my biggest hatred of my physical experience on this earth directly to my face and there is not a damn thing I can do about it but take the hit most days because out there what's happening is normal. I live in that world because the sacrifice I made ultimately brings me joy regularly...but my relationship isn't typical. It's not everyone who finds someone they feel is worth making daily sacrifices to be with and it requires a lot of things to be going right in my life to be okay. But I still have bad days... If I remained stuck in that moment in the shower over and over again with nothing to show for my trouble and no way out that feels like relief I would be tempted to do a lot worse than just slice off a couple of chunks of flesh.

Being fat holds social stigma sure... But how strong could you be in the face of that if people, not just cruel ones, everyone, made oinking noises in your wake everywhere you go?

It's not exactly a suicidal urge. Growing up trans before it was very commonly discussed I very nearly did this myself but ended up going the route of extreme binding, over exercising and eating disorder to avoid putting on weight that would go to places in the wrong distribution. I was in constant physical discomfort for years.

It's more an extreme anxiety. You don't necessarily want to die but management of that anxiety to self soothe means physical pain is less of a problem than the anxiety. A lot of people trivialize that with trans people. They think "oh it is just looks, it is surely not that important." but how your gender is outwardly read colors every interaction you have with strangers. Not passing means you want to go out and participate in life less. The questions they ask suicidal people won't nessisarily catch that because you are dealing with someone who is waiting to finally break out of that place to actually live... not wanting to die. The problem with framing surgeries as self harm is not realizing that the alternative is self harm. This guy just got pushed past the breaking point waiting for someone else's permission to live.

That's the real issue isn't it. In an informed consent system if your GP is a transphobe or clueless or ill trained then they can deny you care based on moon logic. Theres similar issues with sterilization on all fronts. It's rarer for vasectomies but still happens depending on where you are for the most part. You have to beg for sterilization because anything under the age of 40 is like " you're too young - you might regret it. So I, a person who doesn't even know you personally will tell you what is best for your situation and you're going to have to live with it because I hold the power over your bodily autonomy in my hands."

Like dude, I'll sign a waiver. It's not your lookout whether I'll regret it or whatever - just stay in your lane and do your bloody job. Made me angry enough I could have bent rebar between my teeth with how hard my jaw was clenched.

I sort of understand it though just on a passing level. I have a friend whose background is in bio engineering (though he discovered he hated the jobs associated with his degree and actually became management) but also am also friendly with people who are big into gormand style heritage strain conservation and attended a few lectures held by our local University because I was interested in all the hubbub around "Frankenfoods" back in the early 2000's. My understanding of the biological aspects are shakier and generally just passing interest level because the rabbit hole is deeper and more technical... But I love studying the history of farming and crop cultivation which also has an understanding of prevention or propagation of weird hybrids through gene flow.

Some of the comments I read above is examples of very practical fears. People want to know that they are safe and that the things they like aren't endangered. Since media tends to just yell "LOOK AT THIS WEIRD SPOOKY THING! IT'S SPOOKY!" all the time because that sells best it's sometimes good to just rip the mask off a problem and go "It was old man Norman Normal the whole time!"

And I am saying that in our current cultivation structure gene flow is something we are already used to accounting for. They are talking about the actual bio engineering process that makes that unlikely. I am talking about normal everyday gene flow.

The process of farming has accounted for regular gene flow for a very long time. What you choose to reseed is a pretty easy variable to control. Cross pollenated strains might occur in new fruit or seed but what in totality you harvest and what you choose to replant is fundamentally different. Unlike your average amateur cottage gardener farming done by experts is often incredibly specific as to what gets kept. An expert can tell a lot of things based on the shape of the entire plant not just it's fruiting body before even relying on gene testing. If it's something you work with everyday minute differences become very noticeable.

Also, there may be other people reading this that are actually worried about losing a strain of rice something they value. A lot of alarm happens because people simply don't understand what systems already exist and their concern is essentially already a non-issue for other reasons.

Unlikely. Each strain of culinary rice, particularly in Japan is incredibly specific. Sushi rice is often packaged with single strains and new cross bred strains are tracked and only a handful are legitimized for more widespread commercial cultivation. Crops are managed by experts who know exactly what to look for. Deviations in the crop selection for next crop's seed is carefully scrutinized for potential hybridization.

I find it easier to think in terms of apples. Like you know how you go to the supermarket and there are 8 types of apple? There's like hundreds of distinct cultivars of apple some that are hold overs from middle ages. Humans are very good at keeping their fav flavours from getting fucked up. Shout out to the Cox's Orange Pippin or really any Victorian era dessert apple. If you haven't tried one figure out how to get your hands on one. It's worth it

But that is just describing the current government format of your office. That is not a static thing, it's subject to change for any internal reason for any time. It's a specific policy not applicable outside of your specific government and essentially your workplace.

Even inside your government office if you have groups which are routinely not served by that model then essentially you create additional emotional or mental work burdens for some of your employees but not others. You being fine with that is simply your opinion. Your position in believing that these things are irrelevant are because to you that policy holds no barriers. But imagine if multiple people in your department brought forward that they were legitimately struggling with that policy and it was impacting how much mental fortitude it took to get through their work day. Would you join them in changing the policy? It's a similar question to if your co-worker in a wheel chair needed to take an additional 8 minutes partially outdoors to travel to the bathroom in your building because a set of tiny stairs. To you those stairs do not impact your work experience at all but to the person in the chair they might need to grab weather appropriate clothing for outside and regularly be in uncomfortable temperatures, or get wet in the rain or if they need to rush be forced to painfully hold their innards for the additional time simply because of a set of four stairs. Their experience of life at work requires additional personal fortitude because it's impacted in an outsized fashion because a ramp most people wouldn't even notice isn't there is not seen as needed. How much of your assertion of not requiring a ramp simply because you don't personally need one?

Critically Universities are not your government body and a level of personal comfort in their communications has been largely normalized. Pronouns in emails was common in a number of Acedemic circles and governing bodies long before they were known elsewhere. Universities are where the practice originates from and it's became increasingly normal. Why is it being cracked down on now?

Universities tend to be very much forward in general regarding accommodation policies because they tend to be where the discussions of ethical practice and theory are debated and new culture emerges. Consider that disability advocacy is a legacy of University based protests. Also that pronouns in emails have been a thing in some university campuses emails for almost a decade now. Whenever Universities communicate with each other the practice spread.

There's also a gap in the understanding you put forward about tribal affiliations. In the case of tribal affiliates a lot of them veiw themselves as essentially occupied nations under a foreign government. They aren't simply telling you their race or bloodline they are telling you what nation they actually belong to because the assumption of them as "Americans" (or innour case "Canadians") is incorrect. That visibility is vitality important to the cause of the people's of those nations who literally have faced erassure for centuries.

That would turn those effectively into pronouns. I guess you are supposed to just hum through the pronouns or leave a marked silence?

More like Man, Woman and 60 plus different other categories even good sports in the first two categories don't tend to be bothered to learn about.

It's not that it's secret it's that if you don't ask for specifics we assume you don't care, don't know there are specifics or you really just don't want to know.

Us Enbyfolk respecting that you probably don't need to be burdened with actual specifics or interpreting that knowledge as being additional social pressure is us being polite.

I always think there is a we vs them vibe in the non-binary thing which is kind of toxic

I dunno if there is much "we" inside the non-binary community. Like Non-binary is an umbrella term that encapsulates everything from a both/neither/almost but not quite binary/gender fluid betwixt multiple states/people who identify as trans non-binary, people who identify as non-trans non-binary/ cultural third genders/ political gender activists /DID people with alters that swap... There's a lot of different concepts and sometimes contradictory needs there.

Like people tend to just group non-binary people into a third category and don't really ask questions of individuals what their actual deal is. I blew a friend's mind recently when he introduced his enbyfriend to me and while we were out on a walk I asked "Apart from the umbrella non-binary term how do you conceptualize yourself?" because he had never thought to ask that question of either of us.

Probably because "hermaphrodite" is considered a slur to intersex people.

Also intersex and non-binary are not remotely the same thing. Some Intersex people are non-binary but a lot of them have binary identities. It's a different axis.

Autism and ADHD definitely fits that bill. A lot of my friends are on the spectrum. I am a Non-binary trans person so a lot of the people I know IRL who also identify as Non-binary trans are autistic but I ended up with just ADHD. Still it makes me angry to hear my friends talked about as though they are a problem that was caused by somebody's lack of oversight. They are incredible, funny, loving, worthwhile people to know. They struggle and it's not always okay but that doesn't make them a "problem".

I get a dose of the same nonsense when I tell people that I am non-binary on here. People's immediate assumption is I am very young. That I will "change my mind". That all non-binary people are flighty star chidren who want to live in a land of make believe, feel special or be lavished with attention and it's so frustrating. I am 38. I knew I was trans since I was 21...I think barring an extreme brain injury I'm pretty set in my ways. I am told that I am at times infuriatingly practical. I worked in crews with fairly conservative people for three and a half years straight being rehired for the gig when they had plenty of opportunities to ditch me. None of whom have any idea I'm enby. If they suspect anything with the name change they never said. I think being non-binary is functionally one of the least interesting things about me. It says very little about my personality and interests. When conservative people do talk to me on platforms a lot of them cannot reconcile me with their assumptions of trans people. They might label me "one of the good ones" ... which believe me really doesn't feel great to hear them say... but that's how they rationalize the disconnect. Their pride demands not that that they review whether their skeptism is misplaced but instead I must be the exception that proves the rule. Ignoring that I know a fair number of other trans people my age and I am more similar to them than not.

You know... For a second when he was talking about Brown V Board of Education I wondered if he maybe he was actually going to refer to some of the major desegregation issues. Like how a lot of quality education was actually negatively impacted because the way it was handled. Desegregation caused a massive firing of black teachers because parents of white kids coming into previously black only schools pulled all manner of nonsense like "Well what if my sparkling white menstruating girl child has to share a room with a male black teacher.. That's just wrong! " (yup... That was a 'legit' concern from white parents of the time) or how sudden staff redundancies would two teachers one from the black school and the other from the white to be considered and the one chosen to stay was damn near always from the white school despite the teachers being both very qualified. The narrative of "well the black schools were impoverished with budget staff and students had sub par outcomes so we should choose the 'most qualified' candidate " was a lot of the justification used at the time and a lot of it was blatantly untrue... The black schools may have seen less infrastructure funding but the teachers were just as good. That lack of black teachers also spiraled into a lot of biases on behalf of the sudden white dominant teacher population that turned black students into "problem children" amd second class citizens in schools where they had once been absolutely comfortable causing a lot of issues to domino out from that move.

I doubt that's his reasons because it seems like Clarence Thomas is well bought and paid for....But... Maybe it's coming from a genuine place? He's old enough to have seen that change happen first hand and be very negatively effected... If so maybe he does fondly remember an all black school? His takeway may be influenced by that kind of rosy nostalgic lens.

Oh man fuck florine fires... It's a devil in liquid form.

That's something I wish more people would actually give some thought to. As someone from a group who gets discussed ad nauseum in the media it really is the case that a lot of the skeptical people that become our problem really don't have a personal data point for us. So many assumptions are made with things we theorize about but do not personally know. For us it can become plain very quickly when someone has never really interacted directly with us and are just operating on assumptions. I think the world is generally a better place when one is willing to be humble about what they choose to be skeptical about. Admitting to yourself and others that something is at present and maybe forever beyond your ken isn't a weakness. It's a strength.