Trans Politics, Trans Activism, also 'rolling is this transphobic?' thread

I think it is time to separate the discussion, and leave the Trans/Genderqueer/Agender/Questioning thread as a space set aside *for* trans/queer/questioning people (cis people are welcome on that thread! It's not a 'no boys' situation, but I think it's better to allow that space to continue be trans-led and focused on trans, nonbinary, questioning and genderfull ILX0rs, rather than trans issues in general, because it's exhausting for trans people to have to be 'all transphobia discourse all the time'.)

So we should create a wider thread for discussion of trans issues, transphobia, politics etc.

This subject is intensely emotional for a lot of people, so please try to be respectful and thoughtful. Genuine questions of 'is this transphobic, can we talk a little deeper about how and why?' are OK. General 'let me play devil's advocate with your life' discourse is really not OK.

A note on language: cis and trans are not slurs, they are descriptors, but we should all be careful of making assumptions. (Yes, I include myself in that.) I'm going to respectfully ask people to think carefully about use of the other common trans activism acronym in terms of accuracy and specificity - if in doubt, spell it out, in fact, spelling it out is good practice in general. If people or groups or ideas are trans-exclusive, then let's talk about and address that trans exclusion. If you mean 'trans exclusive feminism' then say 'trans exclusive feminist' - and if the person or idea is really not someone or something that can be called feminist (I'm referencing your G-L*nners here) think about whether just plain 'transphobe' or 'trans hatred' or 'trans exclusion' is a more accurate term.

Gender GP are experiencing a lot of issues with their website (don't know if this is a DDOS or if they are having too much of a good thing in terms of support) but a description of the issues here:

https://www.gendergp.com/transgender-community-urgently-needs-support-trans-healthcare-petition/

You can skip directly to their petition / open letter here:

https://www.change.org/p/transgender-healthcare-services-in-the-uk-are-broken-urgent-improvements-are-needed

(Just a reminder, do not give change dot org money if you want that money to reach the organisation you care about - if you want to donate, do so directly via trans organisations, change dot org money goes only to change dot org. They WILL try to catch you if you're not paying attention.)

Oh! I think the petition is UK only, so be mindful of that, too.

https://gal-dem.com/transphobia-sexual-violence-sound-like-a-man-hang-up-vawg-investigation/

I want to be careful not to suggest that transphobia is in any way less of a problem in America

and I suspect this may be just my perception based on the fact that Rowling has become the face of this on Twitter and in the media

but I get this sense that anti-trans politics and transphobia is a little more pitched in the UK? Or more of a high profile issue publically?

yes

I think the main problem is that it is much more acceptable within left and liberal/centrist circles. The main public faces of transphobia being ppl like Rowling, Hadley Freeman, etc. adds to that.

xpost

Probably still easier for a trans person to access specific healthcare here than in the US tho (but they're working on making it more difficult).

most distinctive about the UK situation is the extent to which influential liberals and liberal publications have been basically leading the charge and spreading stuff associated elsewhere with the religious or fascist right (and the hard right following suit has made this stuff pretty much hegemonic in UK media). there was a minor outcry recently from prominent UK liberals when biden made some minor gesture towards trans rights ("I can't believe I agree with trump..." etc)

Probably still easier for a trans person to access specific healthcare here than in the US tho (but they're working on making it more difficult).

idk how much it varies between states in the US. it's bad here and probably getting worse

Why does the UK appear more transphobic than the States? Why does that UK transphobia turn up more noticeably on the Left, among progressives and especially people who identify as feminists, in the UK?

Like everything else to do with differences between the UK and the US, it comes down to Class, and attitudes towards Class, what Class is, and how it works.

The foundational myth of the US is the American Dream, the idea that class is something fundamentally malleable, mutable, alterable that individuals can and do change over the course of their lives. That an immigrant can arrive penniless, work hard at a blue collar job, buy a house and send their children to university, at which point the family becomes middle class. Yes, in reality this is completely unattainable to most, but it is still a myth that people *believe* in deeply. In class, birth should not be destiny, to most Americans.

In the UK, class is something far more inborn, inherent, inflexible, and unalterable. The very deep British belief is that if you are born into a class, then you will die as that class, no matter how much money you gain or lose. The circumstances you were raised in, what accent you have, where you went to school, these things *matter*, both conceptually and materially, they will shape your future outcomes in life. A working class person who accumulates a lot of money will be dismissed as “jumped-up” nouveau-riche; a middle class person with a plummy accent who insists they’re working class because their grandad was a milkman will be lampooned as a fake "mockney".

At the core of Feminist thought, is the idea that sex is a Power Relation, like race, like class. Women are disadvantaged, exploited and oppressed As A Class. How you are likely to think about the class of "Women", what it means and who it contains, is likely to be heavily influenced by how you think "Class" works, whether you view it as inherently inalterable or fundamentally mutable. Do you believe that it is possible for an individual to alter their position, within a systemic power structure? If you, like much of the UK, you believe that is inherently impossible, that’s how you end up with supposed progressives who believe that transmasculine people are "jumped-up lesbians" and transfeminine people are "fakes and mockeries".

And that’s the most important thing to grasp about UK transphobia - these appalling ideas don’t just turn up in the ~Gender Crit~ feminists – they turn up among people like the UK Skeptic movement, who played a huge part in the Guardian-New Statesman axis of transphobia, people who are deeply invested in maintaining the class status quo from Helen Lewis to Kier “trans rights are just a culture war” Starmer; and also among traditional ~Working Class~ leftists who refuse to see gender as a class or a class issue, such as the Mark Fisher wing and the SWP during their rapey years. Which brings up another problem, that in the US, trans rights are unequivocally a progressive issue; in the UK left, they are often a stick to beat 'feminists' with.

The state of trans healthcare in the US vs the UK... this is complicated, because quite frankly, US trans healthcare is better because the US healthcare system is so fucked up. It’s so fragmented that it is far more open to individual healthcare providers, whether they are trans affirmative or exclusionary. Trans friends in the US keep and share lists of therapists, surgeons, HMOs, private healthcare providers etc. who *will* offer gender affirming services, and gender confirmation treatments if necessary. If you can find the money, you can find someone who will help you.

The NHS, on the other hand, is a political football. Centralised gender clinics in the UK function as a bottleneck, by design. You have to pass arbitrary tests designed and administered by cis people. In the US, trans friends share lists of doctors who will prescribe hormones; in the UK, trans friends share the exact statements you have to make to pass the gatekeepers, lying if necessary, to access care. (It is the exact situation that Sandy Stone describes 30 years ago in The Empire Strikes Back – that’s how far behind the US the UK is, in terms of trans care.) Trans people being put on waiting lists that are years long, or being told the referral time is literally "infinite" – that is a political decision coming from the current government.

In happier news, that indicates the winds may be shifting on transphobia within traditional bastions of feminism:

https://feministlibrary.co.uk/statement-on-transphobia-and-accountability/

thank you, that explains a lot, appreciate it.

I thought this was a pretty good article on the phenomenon as well from a couple years ago: https://theoutline.com/post/6536/british-feminists-media-transphobic

this fucking country

as a med student at Brighton and Sussex (i will be having my obs and gynae placements on the mentioned wards) THANK YOU!!! i've heard stuff about ward staff getting phone calls from angry old men about this and it's honestly baffling. like it's not going to affect you???

— ellen (@e_petersxx) February 10, 2021

re: fake story picked up by mutliple outlets about the trans police banning midwives from saying "mother" and "breastfeeding" on wards (non-gendered language has been recommended for people who aren't women, the press presumably thought it didn't sound dangerous enough unless they added the censorship bit)

one recurring theme in this shit is how provisions for trans men, nonbinary people and others keep getting portrayed as being done exclusively for the sake of not hurting trans women's feelings or something (this seemed to be one of JKR's contentions). it's clearly a strategic propaganda choice and related in some way to how trans men keep being identified as trans women, in public and in the press. has there been any writing on this phenomenon?

i literally couldn't sleep last night thinking about this wave of trans hostility currently sweeping across the UK, it's completely fucked up

my employer is now backing away from its relationship with Stonewall

i just literally cannot get my head around 1) why 2) why now

btw anybody who hasn't seen this Contrapoints should do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us

i feel you. between chave dappelle, the sports ban in tx, the bullshit in loudon county, it feels like the reactionaries are organized and amplifying more right now.

it makes me wonder if as a nation we genuinely accept LGB people or if we've just learned that it's not socially acceptable to discriminate against them the way it seems to be fine to do to trans people. The arguments are the same as they were in the 80s: the predatory concerns, the destabilising of family life, it's like we learned nothing.

yeah i suspect thats a major part of it. aside from terfs, its mostly the same interests (ie conservative christians/fascists) pushing these arguments and narratives. i think this is where the whole "you cant say [bigoted thing] about [marginalized group] without [non-material, superficial social repercussions] these days!!!!" complaint comes from, like this stifled antagonism that finally has a target that they can direct their reactionary hostilities towards with some greater degree of social validation.

it is odd though because in Britain a lot of this stuff is coming from a place you wouldn't necessarily expect. The Guardian isn't great but its unique selling point is its alleged left-wing perspective (comparatively, maybe, but generally lol) and to see it take such an editorial line has been confusing because it makes no sense.

it's going to be so obvious in 20 years to everyone what the right side of this argument was, the problem is that it's hurting people right now

^

If only there were actual problems in the world that people could direct their inchoate anger towards, maybe then they'd feel less harmed by the life choices of others that don't impact them in any meaningful way.

Bill 2 is 'the most transphobic bill ever proposed in Quebec,' activist says

Sorry if this isn't the right thread for this, but am I the only one who continually fucks up the right pronouns while speaking? My daughter's 12 year old friend is going by "they/them" and I keep messing up and saying "her/she". Really trying to get it right, but I'm becoming seriously concerned about my 51-year-old brain's ability at defeating my subconscious impulses.

practice! I’ve had a few people change pronouns in my life and just taking ten minutes a day to repeat to yrself a short script like “Their name is x. Their pronouns are they/them. They like x and it’s fun to hang out with them” or w/e works pretty well ime, and it doesn’t seem to occur to a lot of ppl

also gets easier the more they/thems there are in yr life, which will likely happen over time if you have 12-year-olds in yr life

also, it helps not to worry too much about it! not because it isn’t important (it is), but because the more of an anxiety you develop around it the harder it will be (again, ime). when you inevitably mess it up, correct yrself quickly and without any “oh geez it’s just so hard, I don’t know why I can’t get this, I’m so sorry” etc.

Thanks Nicole! Practicing is what I need for sure. Luckily, I’ve haven’t screwed up in front of my daughter’s friend yet and my daughter is more than happy to correct me when I do slip up. I’ll get there eventually.

I’ve had a few people change pronouns in my life and just taking ten minutes a day to repeat to yrself a short script

yeah, same ... also, what nicole says ... you will inevitably mess it up, but don't get defensive or demeaning

Open letter signed by 16,000 calls for BBC apology over trans article
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-59074096

You’d think they could have at least recapped the reason that the study is said to be flawed.

Nice to know that some “appreciations” were sent in, though, I wasn’t aware of a formal avenue for those. Maybe they should keep a running ticker of how many they get.

Fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck

the implication that “many trans women are lesbians, and many cis lesbians enjoy fucking them” is an equal statement to “all cis lesbians must be willing to fuck any given trans woman” is so deeply absurd, and the fact that so many publications treat it like a reasonable debate that must be had sucks so much.

there are people with certain physical traits who I don’t want to fuck; people have sexual preferences within a given orientation! but if I were to make a big public stink about it and imply or outright state that those traits invalidated their identity and the sexuality of the people who do, I would expect to be called out for it!

my heart aches for trans women in the UK these days, it’s bad enough dealing with this shit when it’s thousands of miles away

yeah, same ... also, what nicole says ... you will inevitably mess it up, but don't get defensive or demeaning

― sarahell, Thursday, October 28, 2021 1:39 AM bookmarkflaglink

it's just weird *how* defensive people get when they make this mistake, like, if you call a friend by the wrong name or say their last name wrong, and they correct you, you don't sit there causing a scene.

i've fucked it up, been corrected just like anybody else, it's....feedback, you apologize, correct, move on. not that I wouldn't understand why someone who has been misgendered a lot might be momentarily frustrated, but usually the correction is just a polite one and people go apeshit over it.

https://archive.md/MwYYz

uk getting very scary, they're planning to lump in trans-affirmative therapy with gay conversion therapy (as transphobes have been pushing for) and totally ban it for under 18s, also likely banning mermaids

feels like it would be a good time to start taking to the streets? the polls always seem to show that the transphobes are a vocal minority, should start taking advantage of that

Trending now in UK:
#CisISASlur

(and not trending in a "everyone is taking the piss out of it" manner)

these fucking babies don’t know what a slur is

who’s the snowflake now??

Fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck fuck K4thl33n St0ck

otm and also i think sussex have handled this quite poorly

there are people with certain physical traits who I don’t want to fuck

The problem is that women are being accused of transphobia for saying this exact thing, if one of those physical traits happens to be having a penis. Here's an example from Simon H. in a post on a different thread four years ago:

Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

a couple of trans comrades have outright stated that 1. sexual preference for certain/specific types of genitals are inherently transphobic

Further down in that thread, j. says they see people expressing this position as well and supposes it isn't too uncommon. It's clear that this line of thinking persists to this day -- it's easy to find very recent examples of it on Twitter. Stating the position is in itself an act of pressuring people into having sex with people they don't want to have sex with. Can we all agree that's a bad thing to do?

just to jump slightly backward to nicole and Neanderthal on pronouns upthread: yes it is new and will take practice.

But honestly it is really not that hard for well-meaning people to navigate this in a well-meaning way. As long as they're truly, y'know, well-meaning.

Currently I am navigating this because my eldest (14) is nonbinary they/them. So are many of their friends. I will likely mess up. But the guiding principle is just to... not be a dick, I guess? The people who are having the most trouble with it tend to already not be on board with the whole project. And of course if you're not on board with the whole project, your motivation to practice and be a non-dick is lessened.

For me, if I try to relate an anecdote about what Ash said to Jinx and how Sky reacted, well, I'm going to be using their names a lot more than I otherwise would. A sentence like "Jax said that Sky and Ash are going to Sky's house" both avoids misgendering, and avoids potential confusion between singular and plural.

the "not being on board" is key, if you support your trans or non-binary friends, you're not going to fly off the handle if you get corrected when you screw up. but if your viewpoint is "I'm really, really trying hard to do this bullshit for you, but as much as I love you, I think this is fucking stupid", you get angry when corrected because you think you shouldn't have to do it anyway.

dating while trans can be a gauntlet of managing different kinds of transphobia; i feel grateful to the few ppl who have been attracted to me without making me feel weird about their attraction. that's about as far as i care to have an opinion on the matter which is otherwise really dense and confusing to me

Stating the position is in itself an act of pressuring people into having sex with people they don't want to have sex with.

No. Conflating abstract discussions about ppl's preferences with coercion makes no sense to me - like if we were having a discussion about, for instance, whether it's racist not to be attracted to ppl of certain ethnicities, I think there'd definitely be ppl arguing that. Casting this as "lesbians pressured into having sex with trans women", as the BBC article did, strongly misrepresents the issue at hand - any casual reader browsing the headline will obviously interpret this as women being personally coerced into having sex, not some philosophical disagreement. Which of course is great for the gender critical crowd because their concerns all boil down to thinking trans ppl are sexually predatory anyway.

vtc, did u just not read the next sentence in my post or

cis people have long portrayed trans people as either punchlines or disgusting untouchables, often both. this absolutely informs who and who isn’t considered attractive collectively and individually.

this doesn’t mean that any given person must correctively fuck trans people, or that every person who doesn’t want to sleep with trans people is a bigot, but it does mean that we should all (trans people included, sometime especially so) examine and correct how those anti-trans biases affect our worldviews

now, if someone comes along and points this out, and someone else responds by loudly and publicly refusing to do so, rallies a bunch of cis people in support of their brave stand against being “pressured” to fuck trans people, and uses that organization to lobby against equal public services for trans people, then yes, they’re doing transphobia!

given that this is one of the main ways that anti-trans organizations have gained power and influence, and that that power and influence has led to very real material restrictions on our individual lives and collective well-being, you can perhaps forgive us for reacting to someone coming along taking the “just asking questions, let’s all be reasonable here” tone about “simply” not wanting to have sex with trans people comes off as in direct service of transphobia.

don’t want to fuck us? don’t fuck us! a billion tweets can’t make you. just keep it to yourself for god’s sake, it’s being used by more hateful people than you to hurt us.

erin is fucking great, it's so awesome to see her doing the advocacy she's doing. i'm a big... fan? i guess it's fair to call me a fan!

Uh,

Don Jr: "The radical transgender movement is per capita the most violent domestic terror threat if not in America, probably the entire world."

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lrqbque2fc23

fuck. like......

'ghoul' is too nice a word

Content warning: Ezra Klein

jk actually he has a good long interview up with Rep. Sarah McBride. Klein asks all the normie-liberal questions you'd expect about trans issues, but he gives her lots and lots of room to respond and he's thoughtful and empathetic about it. For a lot of his listeners/readers, I'm guessing this will be the most in-depth conversation they've heard with a trans person. Gift link.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-sarah-mcbride.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Pk8.2d4W.BmnhQ6O7SdZU&smid=url-share

This answer resonated with me, reminding me of my battles over the acceptance of gays in the '00s:

I recognize that when the house is on fire, when there are attacks that are dangerous, very dangerous, it can feel like we need to scream and we need to sound the alarm and we need everyone to be doing exactly that. I get that instinct. I understand that people would say: If you give a little bit here, they’ll take a mile.

We’re not negotiating with the other side, though. In this moment, we have to negotiate with public opinion. And we shouldn’t treat the public like they’re Republican politicians.

When you recognize that distinction, I think it allows for a pragmatic approach that has, in my mind, the best possible chance of shifting public opinion as quickly as possible. It would be one thing if screaming about how dangerous this is right now had the effect of stopping these attacks, but it won’t.

i think it's interesting to hear mcbride's perspective on this! thanks for sharing.

i disagree with a lot of the things mcbride says. i think what she says makes a lot of sense for the position she's in, as an elected congresswoman in the national house of representatives. she's following her beliefs. she wouldn't be in congress if she didn't believe in the value of compromise. i do believe in the value of compromise! i just don't think that i'm in a position to compromise right now. i don't think i'm in a position where compromise is going to be effective. when i look at the history of the great social movements - when i look at the movements for, say, women's rights in the 1910s, for Black civil rights in the 1960s, for gay rights in the 1980s - those rights weren't won by compromise. looking at the history, i don't see alice paul compromising, i don't see dr. martin luther king compromising, i don't see larry kramer making compromises. these are the people who inspire me. these are people who were hated, who were attacked. i value mcbride a lot, i value what mcbride is doing a lot. it's not something most of us can do.

mcbride and klein can point to poll numbers and suchlike, and for their audience, maybe that's important. i grew up in a family of lawyers, raised in the liberal tradition. i grew up learning about robert jackson, who said that certain things were "beyond the reach of majorities". when mcbride and klein talk about people supporting immigrants more than they support trans people, i don't see that as a loss. i don't see that as a loss because i understand that our causes are connected. to support immigrants _is_ to support trans rights, whether or not people recognize that. here in oregon, when ICE agents went after an immigrant, they went after a trans woman, a trans woman seeking asylum in the US. it's not just that, though. i know Martin Niemöller's confessional from 1946. first they came for the socialists, he said. well, first trump is coming for the immigrants. and people are speaking out. people are saying they will not stand for this. i went to the no gods no kings rally on saturday, and i saw all the people out there, all kinds of people. i saw moderates, i saw republicans, and yes, i saw communists and anarchists. all of us were together, saying quietly but firmly, "we are not ok with this". i didn't agree with every sign everyone had up, and we were together. that, to me, is compromise. it's not compromising with racists who were voted into congress in elections that were openly designed to exclude minorities, to exclude poor people. it's not compromising with democrats who support the genocide in gaza, even when they're family. even when they're people i love. what the israeli government is doing in gaza is wrong.

first trump is coming for the immigrants. if people are willing to stand up and say no, if people are willing to stop them at that hurdle - if they do that, trump won't be _able_ to come for me.

i think mcbride is right about one important thing. i don't think trans rights are won on social media. i don't think trans rights are won by catastrophizing, by screaming. i know this through experience. i tried screaming. and, i mean, i didn't. her analogy is that of house on fire. she says that, and i think: as a woman, one of the first things i learned is that if someone is attempting to sexually assault me, you don't yell "rape", because people don't come to help when you yell "rape". you yell "fire". i'm not saying that this systemic assault... i don't think it's rape or fire. but what i've learned is that screaming doesn't help, because people don't come. everybody has their own problems.

and, honestly, cis people don't truly understand what we're going through. y'all don't _need_ to. i don't _want_ you to. it doesn't help. it doesn't help to scream or fight or any of that. i don't want anybody to go out there and think they're gonna be john brown for us. other people might feel that way, but i very much don't feel that way. i've been talking to a friend recently, and per is having a very hard time. a very hard time. per is dealing with per ex-wife, and per ex-wife is really upset. really upset about the attacks on trans people. and it's very hard for my friend, because per ex-wife is frustrated and feels helpless and she takes it out on my friend. so no, i don't want people to scream. the only thing i ask for from allies - literally the only thing i want - is that when people come after people i care about, that they stand up and say "no, this is not acceptable". without negotiating, without _debating_, without _persuading_. without shaming, without blaming, and for god's sake without _policing_. good lord.

well, different approaches work in different contexts. i think there are lots of different things that can help. that said, when i see what mcbride is saying, when mcbride suggests that when we support non-binary people, we're "overplaying our hand" - i disagree with that really strongly. really strongly. this is one of the things that makes me so skeptical of electoral politics. yes, i believe in compromise, and my friend, my friend who's suffering so badly, per's non-binary. per uses neopronouns. and people can scoff and blame it on "social media extremism" if they like. ten years ago binary trans people were the extremists. i haven't forgotten that. i haven't forgotten how many democrats were willing to compromise, how many democrats were against gay marriage when it was politically expedient. when the poll numbers showed that most people were against gay marriage. mcbride talks about the regret so many people felt about being against gay marriage, about being wrong. the people i respect are the people like bernie sanders who didn't care about the poll numbers, who stood for their values. who believed those values were american values. bernie sanders has nothing to regret. and now, the democratic party organization is going out of their way to disassociate themselves from him, to make it clear that they're not like him, that he doesn't believe what they believe.

to me, what's important, in the real world, among everyday people, is to support people who aren't like me. that means supporting immigrants, supporting people who use neo-pronouns, particularly working to support people who white trans people haven't historically supported. my hope, my belief, is that if i stand by them, they'll stand by me. and the national democratic party doesn't seem to work that way. it feels like there's nothing they won't compromise. if rep. mcbride was at one of the protest rallies on saturday - i hope she was - that means a lot to me. because like i said, that is compromise, but it's recognizing that compromise has its limits. that there are fundamental values that... that a lot of these people believe America stands for. i believe there can be a thin line between compromise and appeasement. i feel like sometimes people who are in positions of power are tempted to cross that line. and i'm very wary of that. extremely wary.

i don't feel like i've "lost" on trans rights. i do, in fact, feel like i've won, and a lot of people just haven't recognized that. like kenshiro in hokuto no ken.

i was walking back to my seat at a wrestling show this weekend, and the friend who invited me pointed in the distance and told me "that person just called you gay". we had a good laugh. i've been prouder of my body lately. i've been wearing clothes that make my frame more apparent (in this case, a tank top, shorts, and sneakers). and the result of that is that people sometimes call me "gay".

being called "gay" was funny for a couple of reasons. first off, yes. yes, i'm gay, thank you for noticing. i'm very proud of it. i worked really hard to be as gay as i am. secondly, and more importantly, i was far from the only queer person there. if i'd been the only queer person there, i wouldn't have found it funny. i wasn't. this was a local wrestling show in _portland, oregon_. there were _lots_ of queer people there. not just in the audience. in the ring. in the headline match, a non-binary person won the championship belt away from a trans woman. most of the wrestlers on the card were gay. i am fully confident that every single wrestler at that show, including the straight ones, would have my back if this guy started any shit with me. so yeah, this guy calling me "gay" was very fucking funny to me. where exactly did he think he _was_?

yeah, i'm scared, just like mcbride is scared, just like a lot of us are scared. i'm still here. i'm not going to stop being who i am just because the poll numbers don't support me. because my rights aren't ensured by poll numbers. they're not even ensured by presidential edicts, by laws passed by congress, by constitutional amendments. what protects me are the people who stand up for me. i tried to come out thirty years ago, and then, nobody was able or willing to stand up for me. i don't blame them. i wasn't able to stand up for myself now. looking at things on the ground, outside social media - yes, i think there is a change. i see it around me. a lot of people who said they supported us have stopped. rep. mcbride, i think she makes a really good point. she says this:

I think in those early days after marriage, a lot of people regretted having been wrong on marriage in the 1990s and 2000s. And they said: I didn’t understand what it meant to be gay, and therefore I didn’t support marriage, and I regret not supporting something because I didn’t understand it. So I’m going to, without understanding, support trans rights because I don’t want to make that same mistake again.

my personal experience, my personal observation, bears this out. yes, there were a lot of people who said they supported me who didn't understand what that meant. my oldest brother, for instance, he clearly never at any point understood what it meant to support me. it was really clear to me in how he acted. and i had a conversation on christmas, and he wanted me to explain trans rights to him. i love him dearly. i believe in persuasion, i believe in talking to people and helping them to understand things they don't. my brother, though, he didn't listen to what he was saying. he got angry at me. he insisted he knew as much as i did, that his perspective was as valuable as i did, that ok, sure, he didn't know what it was like to be trans, but i didn't know what it was like to be cis. that we were equals. he said to me, finally - i remember this most strongly - that he was tired of me always having to be _right_. i'm really grateful to my brother for saying that. i think that was a really honest thing of him to say. i value that a lot. i believe a lot of people feel the same way, and a lot of us - i'm not excluding myself - a lot of us are too afraid to say that.

when he said that, i knew that there was nothing i could do to change his mind. there's nothing i can say or do that can fill that need for him. there's nothing i can say or do that can make him _right_ and me _wrong_. he was taught the value of persuasion like i was. what i wasn't taught - and perhaps this is evident in my posts - is the value of shutting my mouth. of ending a conversation. of recognizing when nothing more can be gained by talking, and walking away. i've been working to learn that.

My biggest issue with both Klein and McBride — although McBride certainly alludes to it — is that I think they put too much emphasis on "the left overplaying its hand" and not nearly enough on the force and fury of the focused right-wing media attacks on trans people. (This is a long-running problem, imo — even at this late date, the mainstream media and mainstream liberals seem to just not understand how the right-wing media works. They're constantly being surprised and taken in by right-wing media talking points.)

Meanwhile, Erin Reed with some good news: The judge who issued a temporary block of the trans passport ban has now expanded it from the original plaintiffs to trans people as a class.

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/federal-judge-grants-class-status

I think McBride is good at catching me at my own defeatism. Last Monday I had dinner with a gay lib-leftist whose had to move to Gainesville with his husband and his two kids b/c Miami has become too toxic. Yet he admitted he doesn't agree with trans athletes. This floored me. His line, though, was, "I'm willing to be proven wrong." What McBride got right was, we have to stop censuring people like this automatically -- people who are our allies naturally. I talked to him over good wine for a long time and I think I made a breakthrough, but, again, he was willing to be broken through.

Yeah the sports and care-for-minors issues were well chosen as exactly the wedge flashpoints they became, because in both cases there's at least a putative "victim" — other women athletes, or the minors themselves (because "what if they regret it" etc). I thought McBride handled them well by somewhat deflecting to the question of whether these are things we want or need politicians to be deciding, rather than families and doctors — or in the case of sports, athletic associations. I've had some success that way myself, like with my parents, by saying that we already have thoughtful mechanisms for handling those issues and we don't need misinformed and bigoted legislators making laws about them. McBride leaned into libertarianism, which I think is the right way to go for a lot of people who might not have really thought through all of it.

Okay, so, everything fucking sucks.

I need advice for a trans kid that I know. J is trans but she is not out with her parents. Her parents are divorced and she lives with her mom, who is a cool lefty. I cannot imagine that her mom would not be supportive. From what I understand, J does not think that her mom would be unsupportive.

We live in Georgia and with the supreme court ruling today, I'm fully expecting increasingly evil laws to come down the line until trans kids are being separated from their parents.

The entire family is from a VERY trans-friendly European country so I assume they have dual citizenship or something. They go back and visit a lot and they have lots of family and friends there. Father lives there.

My daughter and J are close friends and from what I've read of their text messages, they are secretly an item. They are 15. J is over here all the time and J is out in our home and around their mutual friends. I'm not sure how many other parents know, but J has gone places with my wife and my wife's friends and she has been out with all of them.

So.... I'm planning on sitting down with J at some point and and explaining why her mom really, REALLY needs to know about J's status as a trans person. If I lived in a southern state and I had residency in X country and a trans kid, I would GTFO immediately. Maybe that's why J isn't coming out to her mom, I don't know. If a bunch of other grownups know and a bunch of kids know, then too many people besides her mother know.

Am I off base about this? If J refuses to talk to her mom for no good reason, should I issue an ultimatum? "You talk to your mom or I do?"

I don't know about that.

There's a family dynamic about which you may not know every subtlety. I would not have wanted a well-meaning friend's dad outing me to my cool mom.

you definitely can’t come out for someone else. but you can encourage j still

Yeah. I know that's not my place.

The situation and my involvement has too many wrinkles for my smooth brain. She and I get along well; it's better just to talk and be there for her if she needs somebody.

But fuck, as a parent her mom needs to know.

maybe her mom *does* know on some level

yes, you're off base

If J refuses to talk to her mom for no good reason

not wanting to out come out to their mom, for any reason, counts as a good reason

your intentions are pure at heart but you're attempting to step into another family's business -- business that is extremely delicate -- based off a series of assumptions that you don't know to be true. i understand why the supreme court ruling is making you spiral, but you don't know that trans kids are going to be forcibly separated from their families. even if that was to come true, you don't know that it will happen in georgia, or that it would be implemented in the next 2-3 years while J is still a minor. you also don't know whether the family would want to or be able to leave georgia for europe. i would offer that the fact that you don't have the ability to move to europe makes it easy for you, in the abstract, to say that you would instantaneously do it. if the option was actually available to you, meaning that you could legitimately start the mental process of what it would be like to uproot yourself and your family, i think you would find that the decision is a lot less cut and dry than it seems on its face

again, i understand that times are feeling really heightened right now and the political environment in general is constantly inducing anxiety and panic for any number of reasons, but J's safety, as it relates to state laws, is not currently in immediate danger at the level to which you're worried. i think you can and should make J aware that your house is a place where they can feel safe and offer yourself and your wife as people who can safely be confided in, J already seems to understand that. but i would take a breath and a step back from this situation and let it play itself out w/ the understanding that if J's home environment is what you describe then their mother will protect her child to the degree you are describing if and when it becomes necessary

Thank you.

I was going to mention in your first post about it, Cow_Art, but what SCOTUS and Trump are doing is horrible enough without making it more horrible with imagined disasters, so let's not drive ourselves mad thinking cops will pull kids from parents.

Fwiw none of the laws that I know of restrict social transition. I'm in Tennessee and my high-school age son has a friend who's a trans girl, she dresses and presents herself as a girl and goes by her chosen name and pronouns at school — and per her mother, school staff have all been supportive. (Although under new state law they can't be compelled to use trans pronouns, most teachers are fortunately not assholes about it.) So minors can still begin to transition even in states with bans.

will it become something like the abortion bans - i.e. doctors in states that allow it will privately ship hormone blockers to states that don't?

GA currently allows kids to be treated outside of GA, so I assume that's the case.

In GA, if you were already being treated before the laws came down you're currently protected.

I'm assuming that all of this is going to get tighter and more restrictive, but who knows where it ends? I assume some states will make it child abuse to treat trans kids at all, even outside of their borders. I assume some states will deem it child abuse to raise a child not in accordance with the gender on the birth certificate, but maybe that's for the doom-posting thread.

will it become something like the abortion bans - i.e. doctors in states that allow it will privately ship hormone blockers to states that don't?

― Andy the Grasshopper

the thing with hormone blockers is that they are fucking _expensive_. in practical terms, it's gonna be really hard for a lot of kids to get them.

i tend to be, in some sense of the word, a "pragmatist" - just not legislatively, the way McBride is. one result of this is that i'm _not_ terribly upset by the supreme court ruling. i wasn't really relying on the current supreme court to validate trans rights. this is kind of how i look at the hormone blockers debate. in practical terms, _most trans kids do not have access to hormone blockers_. the thing that worries me more is this perception some trans people have, the idea that if they don't get hormone blockers it's "too late". when i was questioning, i heard this kind of narrative a lot from younger trans people, and i did internalize it. i went into transition with the attitude of "well, i guess there's no way i can ever be a Real Woman, i guess i'll have to be a Fake Woman".

i am, of course, a Real Woman, whatever the hell THAT means.

it's kind of weird because my take is at once "moderate" and extremely radical. on the one hand, not everybody is going to have access to puberty blockers. i think it _should_ be a legally guaranteed right, but i mean, practically? practically, if you got parents who don't support you being on puberty blockers, you're not going to be on puberty blockers, legally or illegally. the radical part is that i think someone can be a woman if they're 6'4" and have a bassa profunda voice. a lot of cis people, including my oldest brother, have a real hard time with that one.

I think McBride is good at catching me at my own defeatism. Last Monday I had dinner with a gay lib-leftist whose had to move to Gainesville with his husband and his two kids b/c Miami has become too toxic. Yet he admitted he doesn't agree with trans athletes. This floored me. His line, though, was, "I'm willing to be proven wrong." What McBride got right was, we have to stop censuring people like this automatically -- people who are our allies naturally. I talked to him over good wine for a long time and I think I made a breakthrough, but, again, he was willing to be broken through.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

the thing for me is that there's a bigger picture here. the talking points are about things like trans athletes and kids getting surgery. my approach isn't so much to _concede_ on these issues, but to reframe them. i mean it's great that he's "willing to be proven wrong", but what kind of proof is he looking for? the whole "it's not my responsibility to educate you" isn't just us being stubborn. it's this idea that we're supposed to disprove something that people had no real reason to believe in the first place. i see so many people wanting to ask me about this stuff and i genuinely can't figure out why they care so much. it's not a point i'm gonna argue because, honestly, it doesn't really affect me.

for me pragmatism is looking at it in terms of the larger picture, of how it affects people on a personal level. i don't think it's alarmist to talk about the bigger, longer-term consequences of these rulings and policies, because the groundwork _is_ being laid for separating parents from their queer kids. republicans are attempting to say that providing gender affirming care is banned because it is something they call "gender fraud". republicans are attempting to pass laws - there was one in, i think, montana? - that separated parents from their trans kids. to me, this isn't catastrophizing. these are the things that all of this talk about trans athletes is attempting to distract people from.

i think it is absolutely a question of values. the thing that baffles me about people like your friend is that it's not like they're just coming for trans athletes. these laws are directed towards people like _him_. has he never been accused of being a "groomer"? have people never suggested that he and his husband aren't fit to raise children because they're gay? does it not affect him that there's no longer a federal right to gay marriage? lots of gay men don't do drag, but does he not know anybody who does?

one of the reasons i reclaim the f slur is to say that, look, my rights are inseparable from the rights of cis gay men. because that's what transphobes call us. the f slur. people who insist i'm not a woman, they don't treat me like a man. i know what it's like to be treated like a man. it's that old canard where gay men were referred to as the "third sex" - not men or women but some horrible, monstrous _third_ thing. whether or not a cis gay man _supports_ trans people isn't particularly relevant. if the anti-trans gender gets their way, y'all cis gay men are gonna be treated like we are.

republicans are attempting to pass laws - there was one in, i think, montana? - that separated parents from their trans kids. to me, this isn't catastrophizing. these are the things that all of this talk about trans athletes is attempting to distract people from.

― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, June 19, 2025 4:13 PM (0 seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

a bill, i mean. it didn't pass. _this_ time.

Short version:

The goal isn't to keep "men" out of women's sports. The goal is to bully queer kids into killing themselves.

It's working.

it didn't pass. _this_ time.

The reason it didn't pass is Montana has a right to privacy enshrined in its state constitution.

Section 10. Right of privacy. The right of individual privacy is essential to the well-being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest.

That's the reason we still have legal abortion here, too, despite the state seemingly getting redder by the hour. If more states had a right to privacy that ironclad, we'd be a whole lot better off as a country.

the mcbride interview is terrible and cis people really shouldn't share it as insightful or helpful

a friend of mine who has been a trans activist since he first transitioned as a teen more than two decades ago mentioned something in his stories that rather than going for the argument that they did, lawyers should have gone for the equal protection clause under the 14th amendment. he said that some others had been making this legal case with some vigor— anyone know what he’s talking about?

i don't, but i'm also not a civil rights lawyer, so i couldn't really speak to it.

So as I understand the legal arguments presented by the plaintiffs and by the Biden administration, they did assert protection under the Equal Protection Clause. And the three liberal justices did believe the Tennessee law violates equal protection. But the conservative majority decided it didn't have to rule on that in order to uphold the law — their extremely tendentious ruling basically said this wasn't about people being transgender, it was about people being legal minors. So Roberts' decision says, basically, "We're not yet ruling on whether transgender people constitute a protected class for any purposes beyond the Bostock decision."

Since this court was almost certain to uphold the Tennessee law, it's really for the best that they didn't use it to directly consider equal protection. That will likely be decided in a future case, like the one over trans people being kicked out of the military. At least three of the conservatives — Thomas, Alito and Barrett — seem likely to eventually find that transgender people aren't a protected class warranting heightened scrutiny in discrimination cases. Barrett said so explicitly in her concurring opinion.

So it's hard to know how that issue will be decided and what the parameters will be. But the best cases to fight for it will be with adult plaintiffs, who don't have the rights limitations that minors do.

Meanwhile Chris Geidner has a good piece on the direct culpability of the NYT and other mainstream outlets in creating a climate that enable the Skrmetti decision: https://www.lawdork.com/p/where-is-the-outrage-over-skrmetti

and ACB in essence wrote, "Come back to us when you're discriminated enough, then we can talk."

Yeah. Her argument was so dishonest.

thanks tipsy!

Meanwhile Chris Geidner has a good piece on the direct culpability of the NYT and other mainstream outlets in creating a climate that enable the Skrmetti decision: https://www.lawdork.com/p/where-is-the-outrage-over-skrmetti

― paper plans (tipsy mothra)

Geidner is right, and.

My uncle sent me a NYT link this morning. My uncles and aunts, they do read the NYT. They're "boomers", I guess, but they're also progressives. I don't care what they read in the times, because they know me, and they listen to me and they respect me.

I pick my battles. I'm not going to prioritize fighting with my older relatives who think that all the "news" in the NYT is fit to print. It makes about as much sense as fighting with mainline Protestants. In America, they're literally dying out. Their place in institutional systems of power is not terribly important to me. I don't rely on them to protect me. It makes sense that Geidner cares about the New York Times - he's written for them. He's an important and valuable person but he _doesn't actually have any institutional power_.

that's what frustrates me most about a lot of liberals - they keep saying "put us in power and we can fix this". and mcbride can't, ok? mcbride can't fix this. her role is the role of every member of a marginalized group who has the approval of the Democratic party - to be tokenized. to be one of the "good ones". to be trotted out as an enforcer to keep the rest of us in line. i _don't_ think of her as an enemy or hate her or anything like that. she _doesn't speak for me_, though. people who think she _does_ speak for me because we're both trans women... that's central to the failure of liberalism.

i see pundits writing in newspapers about internet discourse being detached from reality, and they're right, and they're also mote-spotting (Matthew 7:3). in a lot of ways it sucks what happened to liberalism, what happened to Discourse, what happened to the "mainstream media", and _it happened_. same with the supreme court. do the democrats really think that if we just sit through another 50 years of this court that they can Fix This by strict adherence to the nomination process? i'm one of the rare few who _remembers_ merrick garland. i remember how the democrats failed to fight for him, because following The Rules was more important to them. the republicans had and have no such moral compunctions.

now i _know_ that the democrats didn't lose people when they failed to fight for merrick garland. and, at the same time... the democrats have lost most people. and rather than working to regain the confidence of their base, they're going for the 10% of people who are "undecided". for so long they've had this principled, high-road refusal to "play to the base" and now they _don't have one_.

and of course none of that is _overtly_ about trans rights, except it _is_ because all of these things are _interconnected_. because if someone doesn't fight against genocide in gaza, how can i expect them to fight against genocide in america?

why should i be outraged at the new york times? i don't think the new york times is a good paper. i think it prints a lot of things that aren't fit to print. i believe words are dead and actions are alive. why should i seek the living among the dead (Luke 24:5)?

The Democrats are kind of up for grabs. Which everyone is mostly treating as a crisis, for good reason, but also these are times parties actually can be redefined and realigned. The end of an old order (which God knows the Democratic leadership is) is always chaotic, but it also makes things possible. This is where having some more good inspiring leaders and a more coherent economic vision on the left would help. I'm sure people are stepping up in different ways all over, I hope some of them have chops.

Which is to say that obviously the time to advocate for trans rights is now more than ever. I was glad to see a lot of trans rights sign at the No Kings rally I went to. Protecting trans rights has to be part of the baseline for any actually useful Democratic Party.

The Democrats are kind of up for grabs. Which everyone is mostly treating as a crisis, for good reason, but also these are times parties actually can be redefined and realigned. The end of an old order (which God knows the Democratic leadership is) is always chaotic, but it also makes things possible. This is where having some more good inspiring leaders and a more coherent economic vision on the left would help. I'm sure people are stepping up in different ways all over, I hope some of them have chops.

Which is to say that obviously the time to advocate for trans rights is now more than ever. I was glad to see a lot of trans rights sign at the No Kings rally I went to. Protecting trans rights has to be part of the baseline for any actually useful Democratic Party.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra)

i certainly would support a democratic party that was able to effectively articulate and implement a coherent set of values, a democratic party that's "actually useful". that said i'd support any organization that's actually useful. the frustrating thing about the democratic party is that... my impression is that the people with the money want one thing, and the people with the votes want kinda the opposite. that's kinda the sticking point. i wish i could say i saw a method of resolving that conflict. honestly, i don't.

when it comes to "chops", my feeling is that we don't just "git gud" on our own because of some inherent genius. it's having access to those structured resources, that support. those institutions have been getting destroyed from the inside out since at least the '80s. i do think there's... not just regulatory capture, but also judicial capture. an actually useful democratic party, i support that, but any means for me to do actually useful stuff in an organized, minimally adequately resourced, non-violent manner... yeah i'd jump at the chance.

Talked to the heads of state-level LGBTQ advocacy groups for Tennessee and Georgia about the Skrmetti decision and the overall embattled state of LGBTQ rights in the South in particular. Both were forceful about rallying around trans rights and pushing back against people now wanting to back off a little.

Chris Sanders of Tennessee Equality Project: "I'm particularly frustrated by the very small minority of people who want to break off gay/lesbian/bisexual people from trans people. They fool themselves into thinking that if we just didn't have to deal with gender identity issues, the movement would magically have everything it wanted. And that is not true. The Project 2025 people do not like any form of what they would describe as 'aberrant sexuality.' And if you think for one minute that they are forgetting us, that's ridiculous. We are all in this together."

Interview here: https://theprogressivesouth.org/headlights-ep-10-lgbtq-rights-in-the-south/

A friend of mine wrote this, but I'd post it regardless. (gift link) Credit to him for getting it into the NYT.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/opinion/suicide-hotline-trans-kids.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Tk8.VFRW.zxILowzRKQpH&smid=url-share

The kids were telling us that to survive, they needed a kinder, safer world. We don’t have to take expensive, showy steps to get there. It can involve as basic a gesture as a middle school teacher wearing a rainbow necklace or a neighbor planting a trans flag in the yard. These are more than performative gestures to someone who feels abandoned.

A community college could open its library — and its L.G.B.T.Q. materials — to surrounding neighborhoods. The librarian could make a point of complimenting someone’s gender-nonconforming haircut or clothing. These kinds of safety signals let kids know where they can go in an emergency.

Hell of a moment from Kae Tempest at Glastonbury last weekend (and I say that as someone who didn't care at all for his earlier work as Kate).
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLhrAjBoirf/

That's powerful.

A friend of mine wrote this, but I'd post it regardless. (gift link) Credit to him for getting it into the NYT.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra)

kudos to your friend! it's absolutely true that trans kids don't need much in the way of support. a lot of times i will hear from cis people that they don't feel like they're doing "enough". funnily enough it always seems to be the people who are doing the most who have those concerns.

i don't know, maybe it's kind of ally imposter syndrome. nearly every trans person i know has imposter syndrome. worrying about not _really_ being trans, about not being trans _enough_. a good chunk of the cis queer people i know have told me similar things.

one of the best things an ally can do for a trans person, a queer person, a lot of different people, is like what george michael said: listen without prejudice. that's what i try to do when people look like they might need support. just say "hey, if you need to talk to me, i'm here to listen". and if they want to talk - a lot of times they don't, and i don't push them - i listen, and i validate them. i say what they're feeling isn't wrong, that they don't deserve to be treated how they're being treated.

it doesn't feel like a lot, but it's not a small thing. it's really fucking hard to sit with someone who's going through something awful, to hold that space for them. particularly if it's something you can't fix. it's incredibly valuable. i value the people who are able to do that a lot. i think a lot of the people i know feel the same way, even if they can't necessarily say it.

i'm linking to this post i just made in the "free speech and creepy liberalism" thread.

Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

anybody who seeks to support trans rights needs to know about this.

a friend shared this post with me, it really resonated with me

https://ruthpearce.net/2025/09/25/reject-trans-doom-posting/

Ruth is an amazing woman (and is/has been in some great bands, too). As someone who finds it difficult to go out and participate in community, I fall into the doom spiral of despair and inaction all too often, so I really needed to read this. I appreciate that it's not about positivity for its own sake, but as a foundation for action.

Great piece. This is a hard truth:

"We tend to consume doom-posting on our own, on a phone. We often have no-one to process it with, and little context beyond the content in front of us. In this way, doom-posting offers only a partial account of reality, and no way out from despair"

that's an excellent article, thank you for sharing, i know Ruth and she's a wonderful person. that was something that i really needed to read

this is a similar piece that gave me hope, written just after the uk supreme court decision, can't remember if i've already shared it on here or not

https://hjosephinegiles.substack.com/p/while-the-supreme-court-ruled-i-tore

this is a similar piece that gave me hope, written just after the uk supreme court decision, can't remember if i've already shared it on here or not

https://hjosephinegiles.substack.com/p/while-the-supreme-court-ruled-i-tore

― ava (aiva)

it's new to me!

for the most part i find it really personally relatable. the one thing place where i differ is that i _don't_ regret the time i spent attempting to appeal to liberal ideas of "trans rights". not because i thought it was _effective_, but because i needed to _learn_. estrogen didn't magically fix all my problems. it fixed _one_ of my problems, haha. i had to do a lot of work. i had a lot of crap to unlearn, and a lot of good stuff to learn. i don't regret coming into transition with liberal ideas any more than i regret taking 43 years to figure out that i was a girl. ignorance is the natural state, and we tend to learn what we're taught. transition gave me the opportunity to unlearn some of the crap i've internalized.

_this_ is why i have hope, and _this_ is why i continue to engage and work with liberals. i was a liberal, and it didn't benefit me, and i was able to learn, and i've seen lots of liberals similarly learn. it's not my _responsibility_ to teach anybody, and...

i was having coffee with a friend yesterday and she said "i hate to agree with the liberals, but maybe we do need a charm offensive". and what i said was that i'd been conducting a one-woman charm offensive for years. not only am i a white, cis-passing, professionally-educated trans woman (liberals tend to want to pretend this shit doesn't matter, but of course it fucking does), i'm pretty fucking charming, if i do say so myself. people can say whatever the fuck they want about trans women, and the people who know me... they can choose to listen to what those jerks on tv and the internet say, or they can listen to them and say "That's Kate! That's ridiculous, Kate is nothing like that."

i'm not disappointed that liberal politicians aren't supporting us because, well, for most of my life liberals haven't supported us. but not just for that reason. liberals have failed to meaningfully support _most_ marginalized groups. one of the liberal values i was taught was to be inquisitive. if someone is genuinely inquisitive, sooner or later they're going to figure out that what transphobes say doesn't really accord with the evidence. not only that, but the younger someone is, the less likely someone is to have internalized the liberal bullshit i internalized.

so yeah, for me, the best way to support trans rights is _not_ to spend my time focusing on trans rights. "charm offensive" nothing. for me, what's important is to _listen_ to people with problems i don't have, to learn from them, to fight for _them_. because the truth is that trans people are no longer able to fight for ourselves. we have no voice of our own.

of course liberal politicians don't speak for us. they never really did. the people who support us are all around me. i see them everywhere. the current system of oppression is built on lies and delusion, and it is failing, failing catastrophically. of course they don't want to acknowledge it's failing, because, you know, they're committed to lies and delusion. the truth is that most ordinary people are _better_ than the systems we're subjected to. the truth is that together we are powerful, but that power doesn't come from the labour party or the democratic party or _any_ political institution. it comes from our values, values which _aren't_ shared by people in charge of the system. of course they aren't. the system is so broken that people who have effective values, the kind of values that make a system _work_, _can't_ put them into practice.

when it comes to dr. pearce's post, i do agree with her general point, but i don't read gill-peterson's "reject trans liberalism" the same way she does. i don't think her essay is "dire" at all. her writing has really opened my eyes to a lot of things. i _do_ reject trans liberalism. trans liberalism has never had a place for me, even though i _am_ a binary-passing white woman. trans rights, to me, can be achieved only as part of a larger intersectional struggle. trans rights _cannot_ be achieved, i believe, unless they go hand in hand with the struggle against white supremacy, against patriarchy, against capitalism. the reason i say this, the reason i'm no longer a liberal, why i'm now an anti-liberal leftist, is because _that's what's most supported by the evidence_.

it's because of this, i think, that any argument for trans rights based on liberalism and liberal institutions is inevitably going to lead to doomerism and despair. this is why i spend so much time with liberals. this learned helplessness is the single biggest impediment to trans rights. lots of bad shit is happening, and it hits me pretty directly, on a very personal level. and that's _why_ it's important for me to tell the people around me, over and over, that we are _empowered_, that we not only _can_ work together to create a better world, that we are creating a better world _right now_ just by living our values. that we're doing it in a far more lasting and meaningful way than any asshole who talks a bunch of hatred and bigotry and lies ever will. no, i don't follow the news. that's not me sticking my head in the sand - that's me understanding and valuing the real power i have, the real power we have.

cracking post kate, especially that last paragraph there