Drivebyhaiku @ Drivebyhaiku @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Part of the reason why the mental disorder thing doesn't stick is that a gender identity is pretty key to our self conceptualization of who we are as people. It's really hard to explain it to cis people in a way that makes sense to them because so many don't have a situation that is comparable. In my talks with cis people while some do have a binary gender identity that matches their physicality and they feel the same dysphoria / euphoria we do... they aren't the norm I've observed. Most cis people seem to be without a strong gender identity. If they suddenly woke up as the opposite sex they might be perfectly chill with it.

But imagine you have a situation where you've always seen the world through the lens of a self where your brain recognizes members of the other sex as being your people. You struggle to empathize with members of your birth sex and you react with horror as your body changing not only triggers a sense of body horror it makes it so other people start treating you in a way where it's like they stop recognizing you. Internally however this is a constant, your personality, veiws and every choice you've made, every social interaction you've ever had has been colored with this subtext.

I suffer from a fair amount of gender dysphoria, but I haven't transitioned due to other factors. But if the option to suddenly just be happy in this body and conceptualize myself fully as the gender that matches this body... I wouldn't take that option, the idea of even doing so is sickening. At some level this IS me. If you changed it you'd violate something deeper than just flesh.

A lot of people look at us first and foremost as a problem. A disorder not in that we are sick but that we do not submit to the order that is easy for other people who don't want to take the energy to empathize or understand. That we fight to engineer our spaces to make living our lives more fulfilling to US is too much for some people who just try and discredit and flatten our expression to a narrow version of what is acceptable because we are expected to endure a permanent level of "tolerable" unhappiness... Largely for the sake of THEIR convenience.

Yes, we fight to change things but so much of this "I would fight for your freedoms... But " rhetoric is ignorant of the rubric we have for what constitutes a life worth living and a life worth actually fighting for. It's hard to fight that tide because we are in the position of having to explain color to the blind when we talk about things like gender identity.

Ultimately I don't care what random people "think" about me. But reflecting my own body back to me in language that refers directly to it means that you are doing something that makes me feel like shit. I accept a certain amount of random interaction as just the cost of doing business of going out in public but there's certain places where I should not need endure that. Like the people who want to be my friend and feel some measure of closeness. Or in places made safe by our engineering where the general rule of the space is that no one should have to deal with the status quo outside where we can't let our walls down. Our homes, queer spaces, or places where we've adequately advocated for our needs and the people in charge of that space have sided with our interpretation of a better status quo - physical and digital tangible territory claimed by us. The majority of spaces in the world value cis people's comfort over ours but they whine over the implications that there is any other way of doing businesses because they are fighting for the social engineering that makes them feel most comfortable- just like we are doing. Some people and places it's fine to have actual standards for behaviour because it allows you to actually relax in a public space without steeling yourself for the next random hit of having to perform for someone who really wants nothing more than you to not be their "problem" .

Peter 2:13-17

Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.

Sooo yeah "God is a higher authority you need not heed" is more like government is the official middle management. Obey the management.

Word. Vancouverite here. Nudity law in Canada is fairly lax. As long as the windows of the bars are tinted and the owners like it, full nudity is a go. We got folk doing fully nude pole dances in the shower over at the Pumpjack.

If folk gunna be a delicate homophobic snowflake... just stay out of the steam.

Yeah... I dunno if the "sane" Conservatives are actual Conservatives. Like, hear me out, I know people who totally understand me as a trans person are perfectly supportive and totally grock leftist talking points and even support fairly socialist economic theory ... But they still carry their identities as "Conservatives" because it's a brilliant bit of branding. For all purposes of actual ideology they are actually progressive, but that word "conservative" strokes the ego in a very particular way.

People think "conservative" as basically just meaning "Not prone to extremes" or "careful and measured" or maybe even "liking change to be slow and incremental" or "fiscally moderate" ... None of this actually describes modern Conservative party ideology but they definitely borrow off the synonyms for votes. Because everyone is primed to think of their veiw as carefully reasoned and non-volitile these "conservative at heart" types really don't realize that they are being tricked they just like the pretty label and are willing to let themselves be hoodwinked.

Someone better find a March Hare to accompany that MAGA hatter.

They don't think about it.

Getting attacked or forcibly ejected from women's bathrooms where they already feel desperately exposed make a lot of trans guys so gun shy from amalgamated bad experiences that they develop bladder and intestinal problems from refusing to go and tend to retreat from public entirely due to general anxiety. Some of pro move one can adopt to combat this is basically never going out without a female chaperone who can vouch for you...

But it's still a severe restriction of your general comfort going out of your house for more than a couple of hours at a time.

End result is you basically rarely see trans men in public bathrooms so the bigots basically never are inconvenienced with considerations that they exist much less need consider the welfare of them.

This feels like it's intended to be a positive message... I think? I have certainly never knocked on anybody's door and asked them to be trans. I think a lot of people assume that we are trying to force people to use our pronouns and be nice to us... But if it's on my own time why would I hang around people that call me things that make me feel like crap?

It's crazy though how upset people will get when you tell them you don't like them very much. Bigots want to be "respected" but most of the time it just seems to mean "above judgement for behaviour."

The instinct is to react to something like this as a potential trolling move but... You could be sincere. I can't say my brushes with Producers has given me much faith in their understanding of interdepartmental property management. Kind of makes sense since the general attitude I've noted regarding most potential Producer caused property damages from people at my level is "if they want to ruin the equipment we've rented they are the ones paying for it in the first place."

I don't tend to think of our industry as being very grounded. I have had production designers, directors and decorators ask for things that are quite frankly impossible by the easily observable laws of physics with no idea about how absurd they sound... But it's something of a career limiting move to frame their request as being astronomically dumb when suggesting the potential complications. The "Emporer has no Clothes" effect is alive in film. But when you look at things from an outside legal perspective you have employers and employees and the chain of responsibilities to maintain a safe work environment. Most of the time the actual nuts and bolts work is the domain of the PM to mitigate potential damage to the overall investment.

I think union film work is in part generally pretty well inoculated against the majority of criminal negligence cases by the culture of highly regimented structure... And endemic jadedness at the bottom. A newbie will light themselves on fire to keep production warm but that isn't good for production or the newbie so it's unofficial job of the seniors in lateral positions and the boss directly above to make sure that doesn't happen.

Most of the time it seems like the creative captains and financiers of the ship keep their eye firmly on what they want to creativity achieve and rhen the bosses below look at their first job as being to impress. We play very risky political game with our own supervisors if we call foul. Put a call into an IATSE steward about a safety concern that makes a boss look bad and they will give you the straight rule as best they can apply it to your complaint but they also give you a caution that just because the rules are there to protect your safety doesn't mean that you as a laborer won't have your career harmed for standing your ground.

We're all just day calls. We don't have to be fired. Our bosses just don't have to hire us back for the next show and the people at the top never need to know.

I am very used to this arguing against Conservatives in Canada. The Canadian government is... Let's just say generally less inflammatory and complicated than the American system because "states rights" are less of a duel between systems and more of a handshake.

All Conservatives have to do is throw wood on the fire of the fairly naturally occuring suspicion that a government isn't following it's own rules. To have those doubts takes no effort. People naturally resent being told what to do by an authority. Understanding how law works, what checks a government has on itself or understanding where an opinion is coming from and it's place in the system is the antidote to understanding that your average Canadian does not live in a tyranny (Indigenous people do. Questions of whether stolen sovereignty and genocide makes power ultimately ethically legitimate is a whole different kettle of fish and we got more than a little reconciliation to do on that front. )

Take the trucker convoy that blockaded Ottawa for infectious disease restrictions. People were up in arms about the tyranny of the Federal government... But check the facts and understand the ecosystem that move is in the whole "we have no rights!" reaction starts sounding like bullshit.

The exercise of one of the harshest anti-sedition emergency protections existing in Canadian law that has never been used got activated for the first time. It required both provincial and federal governments to vote it in. It can remain active for a maximum of 90 days but was only active for less than 2 weeks.

The act required an independent inquiry be launched the moment it was voted in with the result presented before Parliament within a year. The people writing up the report for presentation had concern the French language half of the report (all official documents have to be in French and English in Canada) had concerns it would be up to standard so they put in for a paperwork duedate extension to the federal government that had to vote on whether that was okay before the deadline which ended up not being a problem anyway. The report does seem to show that the council the government recieved from Canadian intelligence and police had fairly high concerns of the level of armed civilians in the convoy, the large amount of money coming in from far right groups in the US and the blockade style seige that would impact the welfare and food security of the average citizenship of the places the blockades were in place.

The second half is that after this report launched a Court Justice raised concerns with the report about whether some of the actions taken were an over reach on Charter protections (Think the Canadian version of the Constitution) so the whole report will be reviewed by the Justices of the Supreme Courts with the Canadian government body as a defendant. If they lose this opens the Government to being sued by citizens for damages and creates needed precedent for the execution of the Emergencies Act.

This isn't a tyranny. It's a beaurcratic system working as intended. This is a government BEING a government. But all the Conservative media needs to do is withhold context. That paperwork extention request is suddenly "the government not playing by it's own rules because it extended the act for more time without a vote". The justice who raised concerns to trigger the full panel review of the report is " definitive proof the government did wrong!"

Conservative politicians here want people to believe they live under a tyranny because they are the opposition and they are gunna be slimy to try and get more seats at the next election... And it's easy because understanding law in context even under easy baby mode here in Canada requires dedication to learn and understand complicated structures and how the law works on both a technical and philosophical level. They aren't interested in educating people why this is normal. It doesn't behoove them to do so.

Lol, devastating! I like the cut of your jib!

That's a rounding up by a pretty big margin. I am in one of the most trans friendly cities on the planet and we're sitting at 0.4% of our population being trans.

A lot of the rhetoric tends to fall on the "we shouldn't have to change our behaviour because it's such a small number!" but then we are also supposed to be this society wide menace that is "socially contagious"...

We are prime scapegoats because you require extra empathy to understand the basics of what being trans is actually like compared to being cis and conservatives generally rate pretty low on empathy. They don't care that they are condemning us to permanent misery, they can't conceptualize that misery anyway.

It was all the unsolicited dick pics that did it wasn't it? If randos kept sending me their junk mail I could see wanting to curse them to a terrible fate and never touching one again as the natural response.

I know it's a minor point and food security is an actual very practical concern and valid reason to protest, but I feel like one of the tenants of a successful protest is very much like advertising : make the target directly relevant to the message. "Art and historical conservation efforts aren't worth your concern as much as (blank)" feels like it's a muddy message when the whole point of art culture is that it is kind of frivolous. Quite frankly you could throw anything at a beloved historical conservation peice and make the news even if your reason was "I felt like it". People are probably gunna treat it as a bare faced stunt for attention because it's already been done and the response is predictable. Our society wide fascination with historical preservation is immediately hostile to anything that seems to be spontaneous. It's the opposite of exploiting a weak spot in people's thinking.

I understand and am sympathetic to their cause but I am pretty sure there's some property damage or mischief stunt that could have been immediately more effective by being somehow tied more directly to food, convenience culture or contemporary targets.

Fair point

Honestly, the answer is don't go the road of those apps. Putting yourself in that setting where romance is an advertising market creates an atmosphere of fungibility. Half the reason the dating market is so fucked up is because people have been trained to not value their individual liaisons in favour of convenience. If you find yourself needing to compress your entire deal into a single sentence maybe you are participating in an implicitly harmful system?

The best thing you can do, provided you are open, is to try your best to not make snap judgements. Frame things in a way that focus on your actual needs or even just talk to people one on one if they show an interest. Just getting to the talking phase is a win. Trans people are very aware of the realities of genital preference and the desire to have natural born kids. If they are not complete assholes by their own community metric they aren't gunna fault you for having romance and life goals and they don't want to waste their time with someone uninterested.

It's unsavoury, not exactly romantic but overwhelmingly practical that we as trans people front what our entire deal is to perspective partners early. It's actually kind of a safety thing for us. Best practice is for us to be up front at the messaging phase because some potential dates will become volitile or violent if our transness is disclosed in person. Trans women don't want to leave themselves open to being stalked and assaulted because a trans/homophobe can't handle that they felt romantic inclinations towards someone whom threatens their self conception as super straight.

Just imagine from our perspective looking at a bunch of dating profiles that look indistinguishable from transphobes being transphobes. There is often a sense of growing danger and threat to life and liberty when you start noticing openly hostile language or exclusion in a space that seemed safe before. We are as a group being actively surpressed and rejected from public spaces and we know we are asking people to take on a little personal inconvenience on our behalf. If trans matters matter to you then shouldering a slight potential inconvenience is how we ask you to help. That aside something like "cis only" might be a turn off to allies who might not be willing to give you a chance either.

The American system of elected judges is bonkers to me. Here in Canada even your basic judge has to be a lawyer in good standing for a decade before being reviewed by a panel of seniors judges and recommended to the position. Their job isn't to play "tough on crime" to the crowd and do everything possible to obtain convictions so that people will like them. Until they retire up here their whole job is to uphold and defend the presumption of innocence so a defendant gets the full benefit of the law and an innocent person is not unjustly punished. Their job is to put into practice the ethics and design of the law as written to afford the humane treatment to other humans by the state and defer the ultimate judgement of guilt or innocence to a jury of peers.

Elections in a system like law create natural conflicts of interest and once someone is convicted once on shitty practice by a judge with no prior qualifications getting that person out of the system is like trying to swim against a riptide. The American system seems primed to create victims of the state, not to uphold justice.

I assume this is in reaponse to the weight of 90 kilograms? 90 kilograms is about 200lbs rounded up so probably more than just meth heads and Olympic gymnasts.

Ah, a spelling error was enough to dislodge you. Fuck you very much then.

You are very much misunderstanding my point.

Let me give you an example of what this shorthand is like. Say you are a person who lives for going out mountain climbing and any partner you have is one you want to be able to join you out in that sphere. So you write on your dating profile "NO Disability" or "Only fully abled people" - The field of disability is very wide encompassing both physical and mental disability. Someone who is missing a finger or has autism for instance is still gunna be able to keep up so it is kind of ableist to just assume every disability under the sun isn't going to be able to keep up with you on a mountain but the people who read "no disability" are going to be reminded that there are people out there who are ablist scum and anything short of perfect neurotypicality and physical ability makes you virtually unlovable in their eyes.

Being Trans is equally a wide field. For instance, if your problem is not wanting to interface with dick would you still date a trans man who isn't going to transition? In that instance you have someone who presents and conceptualizes themselves as a man but the body is still female. But maybe your heart of hearts desires someone who does not present as a man which is equally a valid preference.

So then what about a non-binary person? Non binary is under the umbrella term of trans and there is a whole host of different presentations. Like you can have a person who never transitioned and doesn't even present outwardly as any different than a cis person... But they may be agender and feel like gendered expectations are harmful, they may be fluid and their presentation changes from week to week but they still don't have a penis. A lot of non binary trans presentations are fairly outwardly invisible and I know a fair amount of guys with non-penis genital preferences of the "not even a little bi-curious" variety who are dating non binary and trans masculine trans people. There is a fair amount of enbyphobia and erasure out in the world at present. A lot of people tend to be so trans and enbyphobic that they think all of us are basically just something they never want to interact with or even spare a thought for so enbies see a lot of general transphobic rejection.

The concept that "CIS ONLY" is only screening out people with different sex characteristics than what you are looking for is a feature of transphobia via ignorance. It's not coming from a place of cruelty but it's still saying that just identifying as any form of trans is a dealbreaker because any form of acceptance is too much. Because if you can't handle even the thought of a romantic partner asking for you to use a gender neutral pronoun even if they have never so much as touched a horomone or a scalpel yeah, you are kind of adverse to trans people in a more endemic zero tolerance sense in which case calling you transphobic isn't someone being mean, it's describing your aversion in the same way a hydrophobic surface repels water.

While I agree it's certainly fine to have preferences there is also etiquette to consider. Transphobia at it's core is a belief that the very nature of being trans is somehow lesser than or repulsive. Transness is a very wide spectrum that has a bunch of different presentations so simply discarding the entirety of the category is transphobic.

It's more helpful to think of things more in terms the individual things that you are looking for and your deal breakers. Like if your major beef is about physicality there are trans people who retain their physicality and fertility of their birth sex. The feild of trans presentation is really wide. Trans people also generally understand dating as a series of hurdles in finding someone who will give them a chance. Having people just shut down the entirety of the category regardless of any potential reasons they might actually fit what you are looking for contributes to a pervasive fear a lot of trans people have about never finding romantic acceptance. "No trans people!" stands out of a request like a flat out condemnation of anyone who might so much as request a different pronoun rather than just as a personal preference.

An example of something inclusive but still firm on preferences would be something like saying - "I have a female genital preference, want to keep the door open to having children of your own one day and prefer people who present in a very feminine way" ... Because you still haven't discluded all trans people. You've just made it clear that you have a genital and presentation preference and you have a life goal that makes perfect sense. She/they AFAB non-binary partners who are generally femme presenting are rare but still exist and you are communicating your needs in a way that doesn't place a value on how someone internally feels about their gender.

Breaking down the root of transphobia is hard. It demands that we remove a value judgement off of being trans. This at some level means an internal assessment of where you might be open to trans partners and keeping the options open. Like if you are not okay at all with any form of transness because you have a core belief that we are just too much work with our pronouns and our weird way of self conceptualizing ourselves, that's transphobia. ...

Trans is an umbrella term for a group of people so internally diverse that virtually every combination of sexual physicality, gender presentation and gender identity is somewhere represented. Writing off every potential person in the category basically is saying that there are zero concessions you will personally make because even the smallest most unnoticeable presence of trans identity in a person regardless of their physicality or personality is completely repellant to you... Which while it IS a preference is still fairly hostile to trans acceptance.